Alarm, Terror Park

"Let's not talk about me for now. How's it going on your end? Did you find any trace of the system?"

The other me shook his head. He sighed. "It really did hide itself. On its own turf, if it doesn't want to be found, it'll be incredibly difficult to track down."

"Don't you have any connection with it at all?" I found it hard to believe. The system could not possibly leave its backups completely unchecked. At least, in my view, it should have had some means of controlling them. Otherwise, any backup could lose control and become its enemy.

And that kind of enemy would be terrifying. They knew each other inside and out.

But the other me said, "We used to, but I cut off that connection myself later. Of course, it probably doesn't know."

I shot him a sidelong look. He was only fooling himself. If he had cut off their connection, there was no way the other side would not know. The moment it tried to contact him, it would discover something was wrong.

"I did it for my own safety. I couldn't stay under its surveillance every second of every day, could I? That would be terrifying. Besides, you have no idea how despicable it is. It actually installed a self-destruct device in me. The moment it determined I was uncontrollable, it would detonate it. There was no way I could have survived that. So I had to modify myself. Not only did I modify myself, I also modified all the backup systems I knew about."

He spoke with a touch of pride, a faint smile appearing on his face.

I sighed. I could not blame him for that. I would have done the same in his place.

No one wanted their life and