After putting back on their oxygen masks, Kawa carefully and slowly opened the door, but he quickly closed it as soon as the gap started sucking air fast and hard. He wouldn’t want to get sucked suddenly into the room to his unconsciousness… or worse, death.

“Now what?” James asked.

“I… I have no idea.” Kawa shrugged his shoulders. He was still staring at the door, trying to figure out if there is any other way.

“What’s that?”

“What?” Kawa turned to James only to find him looking at one of hundreds of doors. But that certain door was not anything special, to Kawa’s confusion. “James?”

“This is… recent,” James said almost quietly, his eyes on the floor.

Kawa followed James’s eyes and almost gasped at such a horrible sight. There was a growing puddle of blood flowing under the door.

“Jessica, can you please unlock this door… It’s… room 1704,” James spoke into his microphone. 

“Sure thing!”

Just a mere second after they heard a loud beep coming from the door, it slid smoothly open to reveal even more corpses in the tiny room, most likely to be around five hundred square feet. James was taking it a little better this time. At least they were not butchered into pieces.

As soon as they entered the room, the door suddenly closed by itself. Then, they heard a loud click afterward.

“Jessica!” James yelled in panic once again after trying to open the door and slamming his fist on it. “What’s going on?! Why did we get trapped here?”

“I’m so sorry! I have no idea!” Jessica said nervously. “I’m trying to override the system! Europa’s technology is much different than Earth’s and Moon’s!”

“Great. Fucking great,” James muttered angrily, leaning forward with his hands against the locked door.

“Hey, James! Look at what I found.” Kawa waved his hand, as if he was telling James to come over to the only table.

“What is this?” James asked before he took a look at what Kawa was staring at. “Is this…?”

“Touchscreen desk, yes.” Kawa grinned at him. He took a rag out of the drawer and wiped the table, getting rid of blood stains. “Maybe with this, we can get out of here.”

“Hey, Jessica! We found a computer here! Can you get access to it in room 1704 and see if you can open the door again?”

“Yes, sir! Please wake up the computer, and I’ll take it over from there.”

Kawa pressed one of his fingers on the desk, waking up the computer quickly. It was showing the login screen.

CLASSIFIED

USERNAME: JOVE4837274 PASSWORD: *****************

LOGIN

“This is classified?” James raised an eyebrow. “In such a room like this?”

“I got in!” Jessica exclaimed. Kawa and James were watching as the desktop screen with countless quantities of folders and files came up almost immediately.

“Hey, what is this?” James clicked one of the files, making Jessica shout ‘hey!’ 

“Holy shit.” This time it was Alex who gasped in amazement. “That is what Jessica has been looking for!”

Kawa checked the name of the file again. “Ladies of Earth and Mars? Why is it on this computer?”

“They were trying to fool us by hiding all of the classified information in that room which would have been the last place we would’ve looked.” Matt joined the conversation.

“This is…” Jessica mumbled at herself at first and then read out loud, “February 17, 3703. To Colonel Sokolski, I am the representative of one of the anti-lord system organizations. Almost ten days ago, our plan to carry out the murder of the wives of the Earth and Mars Lords succeeded in order to get them turned against each other. It is a perfect example of how much dictatorship the Lord system is. They have been blinded by their own hatred for each other, which is the reason why they declared war on each other. Childish, don’t you agree with me?”

“3703? That’s ten years ago,” Shiro said. “Has Europa been keeping this from us?”

“I wonder if our superiors know about it?” Alex said.

“Maybe this is what our Lords and leaders need. Maybe it’s been Europa all along.” Jessica gave a soft sigh. “But… why would Europa keep it a secret?”

“More importantly, why did someone from the outside send this email to one of Europan leaders?” Kawa asked. “Jessica, can you please find out who it is? And what organization it is?”

“Yes, sir!”

“So there are still people out there who don’t believe in how the Lords and Ladies run,” Shiro said softly, almost to himself. “That same government system has been around for nearly a thousand years. Why are they acting now?”

“Good question,” Alex said. Kawa and Jame could imagine the medic shaking his head and shrugging his shoulders.

“What else did you find?” Matt asked.

“Apparently, Europa has not been on Mars’s side for the last few years. See thousands of reports on Mars? They were only pretending to be Mars’s ally so that they could spy on them,” Jessica said. “I wonder if something happened between them?”

“Does it mean that Lord Yuki Snow of Europa has some kind of plan for the war? It’s pretty obvious to everyone in the solar system that Europa is already involved with the war, assisting Mars -- or rather pretending to,” Shiro asked.

“This is fucking gold!” James exclaimed in excitement. “We found so much information! Our Lord will be pleased with us… the Sora troops!”

Kawa and James were watching as more and more files were opening on the computer. If they were able to bring this so much evidence back to Limitless, then they would be heroes! The war would definitely end!

“Jessica, what about the outside organization? Have you found its name?” Kawa asked.

“Let’s see what exactly this organization is… I think I found it, but this file is protected with the password. I should be able to crack it in a few minutes,” Jessica said with so much excitement in her tone.

“So, that’s what the Admiral wanted… Then, we can bring it back to Lord! We can finally defeat Mars!” James exclaimed in excitement.

Kawa grinned widely at the thought of Earth’s victory. Earth might have lost many battles, but they would definitely win the war!

“Jessica? Are you there?” James asked after a few minutes of no words from her. “Matt? Shiro? Hello? Alex, can you hear us?”

“Hello?” Kawa said a little louder than usual. “What is going on there?”

“Maybe the connection has been lost?” James checked on his headphone and microphone. He started the error search on the computer inside the goggle of his helmet, but after a short while, it was telling him that everything was ok.

“What now? We are trapped in this room with the dead samurais! What if something happened to them?”

James shook his head. “It can’t be. We need to contact Captain Williams and see if they can get through to them.”

“While you’re on it, I’ll try to find a way out of this room,” Kawa said. He walked around in the small blood-stained room, which looked to be some kind of mixture of studio and technology room.

“Captain? Hellooooooo? HELLO?” James nearly screamed into his microphone.

“James, look!”

“What?” The Lunan samurai raised an eyebrow before he turned to Kawa who was pointing. “That is a window. Can you please focus on finding the way out of here?”

“Exactly. We can go through the window!”

“That small?” James placed his fists on his hips. “You must be joking.”

“We can’t stay here forever, you know! There’s no food and water here… we will die in a few days if nobody comes and rescues us.”

James sighed as he scratched the back of his head. “Fine.”

They put their oxygen masks back on and moved toward the window, drawing their swords. They both counted to three before they hit the window hard with their swords, breaking it completely.

“WARNING! LOW OXYGEN IN ROOM 1704! INITIATING REPAIR...”

Before James and Kawa could hit the broken window one more time, another steel wall came down again. It was not only the window that was blocked by the steel wall but all other walls were replaced with the steel ones as well.

“What the fuck?!” James yelled as he started pounding on the steel wall. “This is so fucking annoying!”

“Guys, can you hear me?”

“Shiro?” asked Kawa hopefully, to his relief. “What’s going on? Is everyone ok?”

“T-they are dead,” said Shiro shakily. “Th-there was a bo-bomb in the server room. It went off. It wa-was the ma-main computer.”

“Shiro, hang on! We are coming!” said James, trying not to show worry in his tone.

“K-Kawa… I’m very sorry.”

“No, Shiro. Don’t say that!” said Kawa anxiously. “Don’t you die on us!”

“Shit!” James cursed as soon as they heard a loud beep, signaling them that the connection had been cut off.