Dexter looked into Ben's eyes and smirked. He pressed his fingers around them, "These are fake too, aren't they?"

Ben simply glared at him.

He brought his face close to him.and Ben looked away, "I told you before and I'll say it again. I have no interest in you."

"Does it look like I care?"
"You should," Ben said,"Honestly, this is disgusting."
"So, are you homophobic now? This is not the 21st century."

"No, I'm not homophobic. But there is this thing called 'consent'."
"And?"
Ben smirked at him, "You don't care either ways, why am I wasting my time?"

"Ben, work with me. With you by my side, we are invincible."
"I refuse."
"Why?"
"Because I'm not power hungry like you. And I, in my conscience, will never hurt anyone-- Whether I do know them or I don't."

'He sounds kind of like Lucifer--Just less annoying.' Slaine thought as he peeped at them.

"Is that your final decision?"
"It is final and unchanging."
Dexter smiled and moved away from him. Ben finally took a breath.

"So, you are not going to accept me?"
"Never."
"Fine then. Put him in the cells." He ordered his guards and they took him away.

Slaine looked away, "I thought he must've been living in luxury in the future." He whispered, "Is anyone even happy here?"

Back in the past, Gotham slowly walked towards the streets barefoot, in a long white shirt. She took the support of the nearby walls for walking. Her feet were crooked and awkward. To other pedestrian, she seemed to be infected by some disease. 

'I want to eat but I can't run towards them,' She thought.

"First, I should find the others." 

Lucifer reached the East waters. He jumped into the water and searched for her, but he couldn't find her. He closed his eyes and tried to sense her but he couldn't. He threw his hands on the water, "Dammit!"

Asselyum and Axel stood at the bridge.
"Where is Slaine?" Axel asked. Asselyum looked away, "I don't know."

Slaine sneaked out of the tower with his longboard and strolled on the empty streets. It was very dark outside-- Wasn't it evening though? It was dark and cold. He shivered as he cruised. The buildings around him were well lit inside and had people living in them. Almost every house had a huge chimney on top-- Giving off huge clouds of black smoke.

But why wasn't anybody outside?

"Attention, the curfew is now in effect. Please stay inside your own mecha districts. Anyone caught outside their district will be prosecuted by the firing squad of the city of Imperial Mechapolis. Please co-operate." He heard a voice from the top of the tower he just came out of.

"Curfew?"
"Hey!" Somebody shouted. They were dressed in black and had "Mechapolis Police" printed in gold on their shoulders. They didn't ask him any questions and simply shot at him. Lucky for him, they missed.

He got on his board and ran. They chased him relentlessly. He knew that if he was caught, it was over. They'd either kill him or throw him in the jail. But he wanted neither of that to happen-- He just wanted to go back to the past anyhow.

He was in high speed when a pebble on the ground greeted the board's tires. The board stumbled and he fell downhill, into a trashcan. Soon, the police buzzers faded away. He got up and looked around.

It was dark-- full of smoke and fog. He gave out the fog as he breathed. It was colder in that region of the city-- Probably because it was downhill. That place looked like an electronic waste dumpster. He looked at a small house before him, it had a broken door.

He decided he would hide there till it was safe to go out. He walked inside with his board and switched on the lights. The room was messy and dusty--This was probably some abandoned house he had walked into.

He saw another door and opened it. It had stairs going down. He slowly walked down and reached the basement of the house. It was lit in a green, UV light. Glass shards lay on the floor with some other items. It smelled of petroleum. 

But something was off. That room looked awfully familiar to him even though it was probably his first time there. It was not a completely square or rectangle shaped room. It formed an odd shape. Slaine reached the corner of the room and visualised it as something wanted.

"I knew it." It was the bar! There was this small rentable popping out of the entire room-- That was where the serving table was kept! And the small wall in between that reached till his waist--That was where the tables were kept. Even the bathroom was at the same place. Everything! Everything was the same as five centuries before! Someone had preserved it well.

But why? Was he hinting at something. Suddenly, Slaine realised. The door to the basement was on the floor, under the stairs. There were no stairs anymore-- Instead, a huge cupboard filled with various tools and robot parts occupied the space. Some of the stuff was thrown on the floor-- Seemed like a theft occurred there.

Slaine pushed the cupboard aside and removed the carpet from that area by cutting it with a sharp tool he found inside that cupboard. It was there! That door was still there! He opened it and walked down-- To the real basement.

He walked down the ladder and jumped down-- Just like they used to in the past. What he saw under there-- Blew his mind. The room was lit by a blue light-- The same colour as the ANDRIOD's eyes. One end of the room had a huge table, with files piling up into its drawers and the closet.

And just ahead of him was a huge glass wall, which was probably a tank, filled with a sea green liquid. A huge sea organism floated inside it. He had never seen such a creature before--To him, it looked something resembling a huge squid.

The other side of the room had a glass box, fixed on the wall. It displayed beneath it, "Preserved at 497K negative, Nitrogen." It had many test tubes which were filled with different liquids. All of them were different shades of red. Something told him that it was blood.

Slaine turned back and walked towards the table. A few notes were pasted on the glass book shelf behind it. And the wall beside it was decorated with certificates. Slaine looked at those, they were all of Ben's achievements.

"The Nobel price for revolutionary inventions and Artificial Intelligence, 2410" was one of them. So, it was Ben's laboratory. He had hidden it underground so there must be things in here that he didn't want the world to know.

But Slaine had reached there-- Was that one of Ben's plan? Maybe that's why he asked Mr Ben to specifically take that bar in Manhattan-- So that whenever someone from the bar would come to the past--They would recognise that room overhead and know what to do.

A few files were laying on the table. It seemed as though Ben left in a hurry-- Looking at the bad condition of all the files. Slaine picked up one of them and looked inside.

"This handwriting..." 

He recognised it. He couldn't believe what he read that night. From the birth of X-DROIDS till the invention of the ANDROIDS--It was all a conspiracy.

And Ben was the mastermind.

-To be continued

Dexter Benovolis
5500 Rebellion