OLD-WORLD EXTRA

Chapter 30: Rebuilding II

Laura entered the room, with Lily trailing closely behind.

They closed the door as they stepped inside.

"All right, thanks for waiting on me, I just had to make sure of a few things." He said.

"Are you guys ready?"

"Yes, we have decided to stay together as a family no matter what. So whatever it is, we'll face it together, all you need to do is just tell us. My son or not, I love you as I do my own daughter, and I'll do whatever it takes to help you." Laura said resolute.

Lily just stood there, bobbing her head up and down.

Suppressing a chuckle, Emir continued, "Mom, sis, listen up, I don't know how I looked like to you back then, maybe I looked like a training freak or a little genius that was always using a terminal to find out information that no child of my age, genius or not, should have been looking up."

"Though I remember that Mom seemed a bit suspicious of my behavior at times, to which I hoped that you would pass it off as me being smart, but it seems that I misjudged you."

Continuing, Emir told tell them everything he knew, except the novel, of course.

That is not something that anyone can handle, knowing that their lives were written by someone's imagination. Written just to be killed off, the only reason for their existence is just for the sake of the protagonist's mental development.

"All I did, was to prepare for the future, the future where we all died....." Emir paused, waiting for his family's reaction.

And as soon as those words left his mouth, he could see twisted expressions forming on their faces.

"What do you mean, Emir?" Lily asked in a hushed tone.

"Why would you think that we're all going to die?"

"Right after I was born, I heard a voice. I don't remember what it said exactly, but I do remember the voice itself. It only spoke to me one time after that, until it one day introduced itself to me as an AI called Lyra and said that she was there to help me get stronger."

"It wasn't for free, of course, nothing is, it was all in order for me to fulfill her organization's agenda, which is something I will know only after signing an NDA. Oh, and Lyra was connected to my neural network after my Nano-bot injection."

"So now, as you can imagine, whatever her backing is, can easily influence the UEF government to a great degree, and I'm not the first one they laid their eyes on, there are many others that went through this before, whoever they are, must have failed, and are most definitely dead by now."

"I asked her why she targeted me, and she simply said that the reason was because of the fact that I'm the son of a high-ranking hunter. And since then they have involved me in their game, observing me since I was born, they even forced me to say the things I told you both yesterday, seemingly wanting to play god."

"I know that we are to die in the future when I'm halfway reaching seventeen years old, I don't know when exactly or how, but I am sure that we were destined to, and it would happen....if I don't interfere, that is."

"I can't tell you how I know, but all I can tell you is that it involves my reincarnation, by the way, that's also how I learned of my TDS ability."

"This is the reason why I was so obsessed with protecting you, I thought that it was my goal, the reason I reincarnated, so I was fixated on training and gaining knowledge as soon as possible, I wanted to prevent that future from happening, whatever the cause may be, no matter the cost."

They sat there in silence, processing everything Emir had just told them.

"Before you ask me questions, there's someone that I need to show you."

[Lyra now if you can show yourself to them.] He said, sending the message through his mind.

[I forgot to mention this before, but they must wear a headset capable of connecting to the network to be able to see me, otherwise, I can only connect to devices like the holoscreen to show myself as a projection.]

Perplexed Emir asked, [How the hell does an AI forget?]

[I'm not a simple AI, you see, I'm much closer to a human than you might think.] She replied as a mischievous chuckle sounded in his mind.

Shrugging his shoulders, Emir walked up and turned on the holoscreen, as he looked back at Lily and Laura, his now real family.

"You can only see her if she allows you to, she is advanced AI after all, oh, and she was also the one training me about close-quarter combat, the augmented suit isn't something I bought either, it was provided by their organization."

"Now while she connects to the holoscreen, ask me any questions that you might have, I laid out the whole truth, and I now have nothing else to hide, uhh....well except knowing the future thing, but that's beside the point."

Laura sounded a sigh as she said, "Emir, this is a lot to take in, but we believe you. Although it still feels weird to know that my son is almost as old as me."

"But that's irrelevant now, so, what can we do to help?"

Emir let out a sigh of relief, which almost turned into a laugh.

"Thank you, honestly though... I don't know what we can do at this point. All I know is that I need to keep training and getting stronger so that when the time comes, I'll be ready."

"But what about Lyra and this organization?" Laura asked. "We can't just sit back and let them do whatever they want."

"I know," he said.

"But we can't do much, even If we wanted to, I mean, my cute jailer is listening to us as we speak, so we can't hide anything from them. We also don't know what kind of power they have or how far their influence reaches. The last thing we want to do is make things worse."

Just then her voice echoed in his head, [Connection initiated.]

Emir asked, "Are you ready to meet Lyra?"

"All right, let's get started," he said after seeing them nod.

Suddenly, a holographic projection appeared before them, depicting a young woman with long white hair, and piercing red eyes.

She looked at Emir and nodded in greeting.

"Emir, it's good to see you again, and I'm sorry for this."

"You as well, Lyra, and it doesn't matter now, so just go say hi to my family." He said, gesturing to Lily and Laura.

[Answer all the questions that you can and be sure to stick with what we discussed.]

Lyra's eyes flickered at them as she studied them for a moment.

[Of course.]

"I am Lyra, an advanced AI, and a member of an organization that you cannot learn the name of. My main purpose is to assist Emir in his training and development. My second is to observe him and report his relevant daily activities."

Slowly taking in Lyra's words, Laura slowly faced her and asked.

"Lyra, can you tell us more about this organization? And why did they choose Emir?"