One could also arrive here secretly, without entering the parking lot road. This way, you could avoid drawing the attention of robots and drones. That must have been how 56 and 77 came. Those children shouldn't have put themselves in such danger just to maintain the streak of patients they caught. Sevda needed to warn them once again not to come to this area.
This region was considered a secret path into the factory. Due to its inclined structure, those pathetic and cheap robots couldn't stand guard here. It was technologically impossible for them to remain stationary on slopes, especially one this steep.
If you followed this zigzag dirt path, you entered a cavern formed by hundreds of small caves inside the mountain. A few Uruzens who knew that cavern could reach the factory by using those cave paths. They collected things from factory waste this way. Clothes, food, etc., reached the Uruzens through this route.
Sevda looked up at the small hole that served as the entrance to the caves, situated a few kilometers high. According to the children who carried the injured Uruzen, one of the robots had looked down through that hole after pushing the Uruzen boy. Why would a robot do such a thing? How could robots, who for years hadn't found or even tried to find the entrances to those caves, suddenly do this?
With the blades emerging from her arms, Sevda began to climb the dirt path rapidly. When she finally neared the hole, she fired a hook from her waist and embedded it into the upper rim of the opening. As she pulled herself toward the rim, the blades in her arms retracted back into their sockets.
Upon entering through the hole, she found herself facing a large armed unit. While robots in every corner carried crates loaded with explosives, others climbing chains on the ceiling were planting bombs on the cave walls. The person waiting in the middle of the cave filled with crates, holding a hologram paper, was Nuskul, the factory's production manager. This man—with a bald head polished to a shine, a goatee, dark circles under his eyes, and bruised-looking lips—ran around doing every task despite being the production manager. The reason for this was that the factory manager, Labiba, knew exactly how unqualified an employee he was. To make this useless man appear useful, Labiba had him running every errand.
Despite being a cybernetic and wearing expensive suits, he always managed to look stunted. He thought he spoke with confidence, but he only succeeded in shouting meaningless words. He believed everyone feared him, but in reality, most people tried to avoid him out of sheer disgust. In short, he was a loathsome man. The kind of man you wouldn't want near you, whose voice you wouldn't want to hear, and who would make you angry just by remembering him.
He squinted his eyes away from the hologram and looked at Sevda, who was staring with a shocked expression. Despite being a cybernetic, his face was highly expressive. This was because he was too stingy to pay the money required to fully mechanize his face. He raised his eyebrows and smirked as if he thought it was cool, whereas it only added to his repulsiveness.
"Welcome, Doctor Sevda. I thought you would swarm here like a flea after that recent accident. I wasn't mistaken..."
"What on earth is going on here?"
"We haven't met, have we?" he said, swaggering toward our girl. Sevda, not out of fear but out of discomfort, took two steps back to distance herself from the man. This was nothing but the reflex modules in Sevda's body perceiving her physical disgust as a danger. "Regarding a cybernetic doctor wandering among the Uruzens..."
"No! We haven't met!"
"If we had met, such a beauty..."
Sevda could not tolerate this man finishing his sentence in any way.
"Even though we haven't met, I know you well! Your name is never off the lips of the Uruzens."
"But I'm not mentioned with curses, am I?" the man said, smiling insincerely once more. It was clear there was a thought in the back of his mind that he had checkmated our girl. "Labiba is a god-king to them, and I am the grand vizier of the god-king."
And it was true. No matter how much cruelty TESO inflicted on the Uruzen people, no Uruzen blamed the corporation or its employees for the bad things that befell them; they only blamed blind fate. If TESO provided any help, then it was seen as a gift from God.
Was it an inferiority complex that the Uruzens possessed? Had their genetics, and with them their ability to reason, withered away from exposure to chemicals? These were all the things Doctor Sevda had come here to investigate. When she tried to establish a scientific base on the planet to research these, first TESO had opposed it. Then the local people...
For a very long time, her attempts to set up a research base on this planet had been constantly sabotaged. Only a few years ago had she been able to establish a research center under the guise of a hospital. To get approval from the SWR for the hospital, she had to involve one of her professors from the university. No one had the guts to sabotage an SWR-approved facility.
But despite her research, she couldn't find a definitive answer. She didn't know what it was that allowed these people to see even a dishonorable man like Nuskul as a hero. He had been the cause of numerous Uruzen deaths. Time and again, he had toyed with the fate of the Uruzen people as if picking meat from his teeth with a toothpick. He was the one who made them suffer and be tormented in the factory. The working hours, the working conditions, occupational health, and safety... it all came from this damned man. Yet, the Uruzens still mentioned his name with respect. Whereas they called our girl: "That damn pervert Number 24..."
Knowing there was some truth in what Nuskul said, Sevda fell into silence. Nuskul, with that insincere smile he thought was attractive but was actually base, walked toward our girl once more.
"Ah... you are speaking with a living, breathing folk hero right now, Number 24," he said, laughing. "Instead of waiting in line with paper and pen to ask questions as a scientist, you just stand there. I see an intense, angry disgust in your eyes."
"Are you going to blow this place up?" Sevda asked.
"Yes..." the man said, stroking his bald head. It was clear from his sigh that he was annoyed by something that had happened. "Manager Labiba was bothered by the garbage cans being constantly scattered. Those damn Uruzens were sneaking in every now and then to rummage through the trash."
"They've been doing that for a long time. You didn't just find out..."
"Yes... I didn't just find out but... but I was too busy to deal with the Uruzens. You understand... being the production manager of the corporation is quite a taxing job. You don't just deal with the lower section; you must satisfy the boss, and the boss's boss. So, you understand..." he added, gesturing toward his mouth. "...you have to be good at ass-licking."
"Then your boss got angry at you, didn't he?"
Sevda had heard many stories about Labiba beating Nuskul multiple times. Usually, in the rumor news circulating on the SWR Network, stories were told showing how pathetic and useless these men were. They were people who shouldn't be taken seriously. Everyone on the Network knew this. Only the Uruzens took them seriously.
"I could say my boss expressed his wishes appropriately. It took us months to find these damn caves. Well... now we've found this damn cave and we can blow it up. Don't worry... we've made our calculations. Our engineers worked hard. The explosion won't cause major damage to the mountain. Just a small collapse, that's all. We even paid a huge sum of money to outside engineers just to calculate the angle of the collapse."
"I don't care about the mountain..."
"But you protested many times saying we were destroying the mountain."
"Yes... that was a protest I did 30 years ago."
"It was a very nice protest. Slogans, banners, etc. You even convinced a few of the television channels," Nuskul added mockingly. "If only they had worked. Just like your other protests..."
Outside of this planet, Sevda was a highly prestigious scientist. The articles she wrote were waited for in lines before they even hit the shelves. Although the most downloaded articles on the internet were Sevda's, the most pirated or stolen ones under the guise of citation were also Sevda's.
While Sevda's word was like law elsewhere, not a single word of hers was listened to on this planet. The countless protests she made had been so simply ignored that they were quite humiliating for Sevda. Humiliating, discouraging, annoying... those were the things she gained from those protests. Half of her life on this planet had been spent fighting TESO both on this planet and outside of it. One of the main actors she fought was standing right in front of her.
"You can't blow this place up..." Sevda said. "...there are hundreds of Uruzens living in the depths of these caves. All of them... all of them are hiding right indi now out of fear."
"Yes... those sons of b*tches are getting on my nerves! Living here should have been forbidden for them!" The man scanned his eyes along the holes surrounding the cave. "How can they choose a place like this as a home when we've built a huge village for them? But it's no problem," he said, finally calming down. "Divine justice has arrived, and another exemplary story for the Uruzens is about to be formed."
"I won't allow it," Sevda said. "I won't allow such a massacre to be committed."
"I beg your pardon?"
Sevda unsheathed the blades in her arms and took a stance. This movement failed to instill fear in Nuskul. Nuskul's ignorant arrogance provided a psychological shield against the blades. Yet Sevda was a cybernetic dangerous enough to truly earn the nickname "The Butcher."
Every one of the robots stopped their work and looked at Sevda. A metal mask rose from Sevda's neck and covered her mouth. Two metal plates emerging from behind her ears stopped in front of her eyes, and a pair of metal goggles formed before her gaze.
"Are you going to fight for this?" At that moment, as two hovering drone cameras entered the cave, Sevda retracted her weapons and returned to her former state. Even if not official, this was considered TESO's territory. An image showing her ready to fight as an uninvited guest could cause trouble for her.
"If that becomes my only option..."
"Nonsense. You won't fight us. You'll turn around and walk right back to your Number 24 street."
"Nonsense? You must be confusing me with the Uruzens."
Nuskul first looked at the watch on his arm. Then at Sevda: "I have a meeting in 5 minutes," he said. "You'd better hurry."
"You heard him!" Sevda shouted. "You can escape, Uruzens! No one will harm you! Nuskul promises you!" Then she glanced at Nuskul.
"Yes! I promise!" he said with a weary air. "You can go back to your village."
Suddenly, the sounds of small but rapid steps were heard. Uruzens jumping from holes in the ceiling, floor, and walls began to run with great panic toward the hole opening to the outside. It was a pathetic situation that they had accepted death out of fear, especially when their fear was directed at such an unqualified man.
"Incredible!" Nuskul said, bursting into laughter. "So they really were waiting out of fear! Aha... incredible!" The fact that Nuskul was enjoying this so much set Sevda on edge. Sevda ran to save an Uruzen stuck in one of the holes. She broke the edge of the stone with her metal fist.
With the widening of the stone path, the Uruzen came out quite easily, but upon emerging, he pointed inside the tunnel and said: "My old father couldn't walk. He's deep inside..."
At that moment, Nuskul shot one of the running Uruzens with a gun he pulled from his pocket and laughed: "They are just like flocks of chickens... incredible, isn't it?"
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" Sevda shouted.
"Having a little fun," he said, wiping the tears from the corners of his eyes. This time he aimed his gun at the head of one of the Uruzens but changed his mind. "Anyway... I have to go to the meeting. The bomb explodes in two minutes."
"You said five minutes..."
"Most of them escaped anyway. I think I've spared enough lives for one day. It almost makes me sick."
"Damn it! Damn it!" Sevda said and jumped into the hole she had rescued the Uruzen from. As she tried to crawl through the narrow hole, her metal body let out a constant metallic scream from the friction. Uruzens were thin due to malnutrition, but Sevda was larger than a normal human. Her metallic body covered her like a suit of armor.
Finally, she found the old Uruzen—he was 32 years old. The man couldn't walk because his leg was gangrenous. He was trying to drag himself with his hands. Sevda put her hand around the man's neck and began to crawl backward. She knew she had less than a minute, but she prayed it wasn't less than half a second.
Finally, she emerged from the rock. She took the man in her arms and ran to the opening of the cave. She was just exiting the cave opening when the ball of fire explosion filling the entire interior of the cave blasted her out of the hole. As she floated in the air, the only thing she remembered was gravity pulling her to the ground like a magnet.
When she opened her eyes, she was barely able to sit up. The Uruzens waiting around her head were looking at her face with great fear. It wasn't hard to understand why they were looking at her like that.
First, she sat up and looked at herself. She was covered in blood and bone fragments. Then she looked at the spot where she had fallen face-first. While falling from the impact of the explosion, she had landed on top of the Uruzen she had taken in her arms. When tons of metal weight fell on him, the man had been nearly flattened. Nothing was visible but blood, flesh, and pain.
"Father..." one of the Uruzens shouted.
Another shrieked in response. As women's screams rose, the Uruzens clung to their men in the face of the horror they saw.
If it weren't for Sevda, hundreds would have died. But because Sevda had caused the death of one, they began to stone her. Amidst curses and insults, as Sevda headed toward Number 24 street, the Uruzens had learned one more story that day.
The noble-hearted Nuskul had allowed his people to escape so they wouldn't die while he blew up the cave. The witch named Sevda, however, had caught one of those trying to escape and killed him. This was the extent of the story the Uruzens would believe for a long time. These Uruzens came under the sign of Number 24 street and tore it down, smashing it to pieces. No one would go to Number 24 street anymore. Even those living around Number 24 street would move to another street.