After receiving a look from Shu that clearly said, "Are you an idiot?", Joyce calmed down. She stopped trying to recruit Shu and instead pulled out a notebook from somewhere, beginning to write and draw rapidly.
Shu leaned over for a glance. She wasn't taking notes on him, but quickly sketching orthographic projections of various components.
After a serious look, Shu withdrew his gaze.
Can't understand it... This definitely isn't the simple orthographic projection you learn in introductory geometry. Joyce even drew layers, plating thickness, embedded plating textures...
Couldn't understand it, truly couldn't.
But fortunately, he didn't need to understand it. Shu could still create these things under Joyce's guidance. He already had experience with this; the Genesis Key was made similarly with Otto.
---||---
Sirin led the two of them down in an elevator, eighteen floors underground. Shu had a bad feeling about the number, but he could only follow Sirin here and watch her use her identification to open a very thick, heavy metal door.
Before opening the door, Sirin stood there awkwardly, nervously wringing her small hands. After taking several deep breaths, she muttered to herself and walked in.
At that moment, Shu received a somewhat familiar feedback from Sirin... fear.
But what was Sirin afraid of? Shu didn't know. He could only follow closely behind Sirin with Joyce, entering the massive laboratory.
Compared to the floors Shu had visited above, this level shocked him no less than his first sight of the cold fusion reactor on the thirteenth basement floor of Heliopolis Life Sciences Pharmaceutical.
The enormous room, tens of meters high, was filled with a dense network of pipes of varying sizes. The thickest pipes were several meters in diameter, while the thinnest were finer than a strand of hair.
They spread chaotically throughout the room—on the floor, walls, ceiling, and many even spanned across the open space.
But every single pipe ultimately led to the massive pillar in the center, which supported the room like a colossal sky-bearing column.
Wait a minute... this scene... Shu had seen something similar on the twelfth basement floor of Heliopolis Life Sciences... only this central collection pillar was even thicker...
"Integrated quantum computer?" Joyce's expression changed. "How could this thing be here?!"
"What is this?" Shu immediately turned, wanting an explanation from Joyce.
"This is the highest level of computing technology we currently possess! Future City has three such integrated quantum computers. The smallest of them is used to supply real-time computation for [Utopia]—it's a computer capable of simultaneously supporting the thoughts and actions of nearly a billion people!"
"What does that even mean?" Shu didn't quite understand, but the enormous number Joyce quoted successfully startled him.
"This is a machine capable of creating worlds!" Joyce said gravely. "A true, genuine world!"
Shu was stunned and suddenly looked towards Sirin.
In the brief moment they had paused, Sirin had already walked quite a distance, standing before several heavily protected experimenters, and was now entering the integrated pipe pillar.
"Wait!" Shu shouted, breaking into a run.
Sirin heard Shu's call and stopped, turning back in surprise.
But it was too late. The heavy metal door had already closed. Shu slammed his fist against it, but failed to force it open.
The next moment, all the pipes in the room began to flash an alarming, blinding red. A siren-like alarm blared, urging the experimenters in their thick protective suits to evacuate quickly.
A faint light glowed on Shu's hand, and he slammed it against the metal plate, leaving a fist-sized indent.
But it was only an indent.
"Joyce!" Shu turned back, shouting at Joyce, who had rushed to a control console at some point. "What is this machine doing?!"
Countless light screens flickered past Joyce's eyes.
"I'm looking!" Joyce shouted back. "[Blood Agate], Kendagua... The data here has a ten-year redundancy..."
The piercing alarm grew more urgent. Shu turned back and, through the small round window on the metal door, saw Sirin inside the pillar, now seated within an intricate, complex "cocoon."
Watching the door of the "cocoon" slowly lower, gradually enclosing Sirin, Shu pressed his hand against the door with increasing force. The suppressed [Hope] within him grew more violent.
"Found it!" Joyce suddenly exclaimed, snapping Shu's attention back.
Wait... why am I being so impulsive? The moment he regained his composure, Shu realized his state was somewhat off.
Sirin clearly wasn't undergoing this experiment for the first time; this scene surely wasn't new either. This meant Sirin wasn't in any immediate, grave danger...
Yet he had an overwhelming feeling that he was about to lose her... This feeling was strangely familiar, and it made him inexplicably disgusted...
Utterly disgusted... That was what had destabilized Shu's mental state.
Fortunately, Joyce's shout successfully calmed him down, allowing him to retract the [Hope] that was already nocked on the bowstring.
Withdrawing his hand, Shu shook his head and quickly rushed to Joyce's side. "What is it? What is this experiment for?"
Joyce brought up a dozen flashing light screens on the control panel and presented them to Shu.
["Probability of Successful Evolution with Blood Agate"]
["Sirin γ87-4 Fragment Gene Replication Experiment"]
["Sirin γ87-4 Fragment Gene Variation Quantum Computing Experiment"]
[... ]
Shu's pupils constricted. The names of these files were too direct, so direct that even Shu could understand what they represented.
"Sirin also has [Blood Agate] in her system, but her body has produced some kind of antibody specifically targeting [Blood Agate]! This has allowed [Blood Agate] to reach a strange equilibrium within her!"
"It's called an antibody, but it's actually a unique gene fragment specific to Sirin. And the γ-region of the gene code is characterized by its real-time computational properties..."
Joyce suddenly paused. She glanced at Shu, who was frowning intently, trying to understand what she was saying. After a moment's thought, she stated it directly.
"Assume there's a bomb. A specific password must be entered periodically to delay and inhibit its detonation."
"This password changes every moment. To obtain this temporary password, the machine that outputs this password—that is, the human body's own stress response system—must operate at full power..."
Shu understood. An expression of disbelief crossed his face.
"Are you saying... they're going to inject Sirin with [Blood Agate] to obtain that code?!"