District 42-Chapter 170: Next move
Casper was with his eyes opened when his consciousness returned. He didn’t know exactly what time it was, but his tired body already denounced that it should be night.
He was still feeling a bit dizzy because of the sedative. A strong pain made his head throb as if it was ready to explode.
Casper moved his hand to the side of his head, and there he could feel that something was different on its skin. However, it wasn’t anything like in his world. It was even unbelievable, and for a second he thought if the surgery was really made, but that constant pain was there to be proof of that.
"That’s just amazing... How could he open my head without cutting my hair or stitching to close it afterward?" He was rubbing non-stop that part, frowning hard.
"I always get skeptical because of the advancement in medicine of this world... Man..."
The soldier was going to leave the place he was on top of and pay more attention to his surroundings.
He sat, putting both feet on the cold floor of that local. He stood up from where he was, then walked around.
"Hello...?" He called, hesitantly, but there was no response. It was even creepy, due to that pitch-black and silent environment he was in.
He hit his leg and waist in a lot of things during his little walk in there. As he was still confused, it was hard to not bump into things, and also to control his speed and balance. He seemed like a little kid trying to walk in the darkness.
"Hey... Wait for a second... That’s a table... My table?" He looked back, to where he was laying before, then above. "That window is also in a position very similar to... Darn, I am at my apartment already..."
Since now he knew where the light switch was, he walked as carefully as he could towards it and lit up the lights. The sight of the furniture of his apartment appeared before his eyes, and he sighed in relief.
The situation of some seconds ago had made him get too nervous.
Casper knew that it was still risky to trust in someone from the Second Lab. Actually, he couldn’t trust any scientist, now even Adam, and for consequence MMA and Astrid, were on his list of people to watch over and be careful.
Every scientist of three of the four labs were under the Princess’s command. If she felt like it, she could turn all of them against Casper.
That doctor could easily sedate the White warrior and tell it to the Royal family, preparing him for everything they wanted to do.
The only lab that he could trust in was the New Third Lab, since he was, basically, the founder of that place, and Amelia, the director, was under his influence.
Nonetheless, the options of the soldier were just a few ones, and he couldn’t indulge himself in keeping with those injuries as well. His only choice was to rely on Astrid and hope that she had good contacts, even though she herself was someone that Casper should be suspect of, too.
"I think I may have been too careful with this matter, but I got no other way to go, instead of distrust everything and everyone."
That was being his line of thought for every action he had until that point after he left Halden. It was a way to be cautious that he developed there.
"Well, imprudent or not, my plan went just ok. And I made sure to hide my mask very well. Also, I should be thinking about what I will do for now since I got this issue with my head solved, and..." Casper walked some more steps, testing his foot and seeing if it was worth it.
He was still feeling a distant pain there, but it wasn’t as bad as it was before. Indeed, things were in order there. The doctor did a very good job.
"Great, the ankle as well. Anyway, I need to think about what I will do by now. Vick is a key-piece in whatever I will do, since she is the most influential person I know, and is always sticking onto me for her reasons..."
The soldier kept in deep thought until he was satisfied with his decision. His worries and insecurities probably would need some more work. It was not simple to just decide to change an entire society and then go for it. Not after everything he passed for. But he would try hard.
He was still split between the sides fighting in that district, and he needed to discover on which he would be beside to fight with.
"Despite all these troubles that suddenly appeared, I am sure that I can do something about it... I will work on my psychological issues, and also on my objectives."
He picked his smartphone, and for the first time, he was the one messaging the Princess.
"I need to meet you tomorrow, if possible. Will you come?"
...
On the next day, Casper was again inside the laboratory. He was anxious for his shift to come to an end since his meeting with Vick would be right after. She would come to see him there.
The soldier decided that he and she would be always going around in the same place if both stayed retracting to each other in some way. What the soldier needed at that point was to move forward. There was no way that he would afford himself to keep stuck just because of pride or for being extremely cautious.
It still gave him a bad feeling to be less protective with Vick and cooperate with her, and to some extent, he would keep some things to himself, but he knew that the Princess was not going to cooperate with him if he didn’t do it first.
"Soon or later I will see if my theory will be worth it. Unfortunately, I don’t have any clue if she will really act in the way I predicted, but Vick didn’t seem to try to keep me away from her. All this while, she wanted me to trust her. If I do so, maybe things begin to get better."
He kept remembering himself of this, to convince him that it wasn’t a bad idea and that he shouldn’t regret it and let himself down again.
As he prepared himself for the upcoming meeting, Casper was working at his desk at the section led by MMA. He was using the last couple hours of his shift at the laboratory to work on his AI project.
There were a lot of others scientists tagging along with him. He didn’t ask them to do so at all, but they ended up entering the project by themselves.
Casper was struggling alone to use everything he learned in that world to program the line codes of that AI and also to construct the body that would carry that intelligence. It was a lot of work for just one person alone, and it was killing him, also delaying his productivity.
MMA, right in that morning, had settled a deadline for him to finish his project. According to him, maintain Casper working on that and also affording him to use any tools he needed, cost a lot of money, so a deadline was something that the man couldn’t afford to not set.
It was given for the White warrior two weeks to finish at least a prototype, and it needed to work reasonably well. If the prototype was approved, Casper would have to work more two weeks on that, then finish it entirely.
It was a tough challenge, and a little time to accomplish that, but MMA couldn’t give him more since Casper wasn’t a scientist from his group.
In the end, those scientists tagging along with him were essential for Casper to make the prototype just in time. Of course, there were still a lot of issues to solve, and they were on the first day of the project, but he was confident that everything would be alright.
They also had all the data gathered in the previous prototype made by them, at least for the AI Programmation, and it was helping a lot to get things done.
That first day was frenetic, and the soldier barely noticed the hour passing, and when he realized, it was already the time for him to leave the Main Lab and go find Vick outside.
Casper said goodbye to his coworkers, that helped him so much, and also for the ones that he usually worked with, and got out of there hastily.
"If I get too late, Vick probably won’t be too glad."
Still with his lab coat and some papers that he needed to bring to his house to study them and have enough information to make his tasks in the other day, Casper left the laboratory.
Vick was waiting for him in front of the entrance.
"Hi, Casper." Her voice was a bit weak, her eyes were tired, and, overall, the woman was really exhausted.
"Hi... Vick."
"Let’s go... for our little trip." She called, then began to walk.
