Rhine Lab, based in Trimounts, Columbia, is a major Originium Arts corporation where nine division heads split five research departments among them. This story begins when three of them go missing at once.

Ecology Division head Muelsyse vanished after leaving only a frantic message on the answering machine, while Applied Originium Arts Division head Dorothy and her assistant Elena disappeared from the new experimental facility. Former Defense Division head Saria turned to Rhodes Island for help.

But what the operators found upon reaching the base was neither a hostage situation nor an experiment gone wrong. It was a paradise every one of the missing had walked into on their own two feet.

1. The Last Words Left on the Answering Machine

The incident begins with the answering machine in Rhine Lab's director's private office. "This is bad, Christine. I think I've really done it this time……" It was Muelsyse's voice.

……Christine, this thought just hit me out of nowhere…… if that person is still alive, then we……

— Muelsyse

The message cuts off there. In truth, Muelsyse had been seized that very night by an unidentified woman and was being interrogated about Rhine Lab's secrets.

When Muelsyse refused to talk, the woman left only a single, short line: "Deal with her." A massive suit of powered armor then appeared and closed in on her.

The next day, Saria's meeting with Muelsyse falls through — she's not at the meeting spot. What Saria gets instead is a missing-person notice, and the place she turns to for help is Rhodes Island.

The Doctor, arriving on scene with the Mechanist, is met first with an unenthusiastic briefing. "I'm a mechanic, not a detective's sidekick……" she grumbles, but tags along anyway. "I just hope I can get back to the ship tomorrow and see my beloved workbench again."

It's here they learn that three people vanished from Base 359 at once — pioneer captain Sani, assistant Elena, and lab head Dorothy. While searching the back alleys, the two are soon ambushed by energy weapons.

2. Base 359, and a Kind Boss

Inside the base, an entirely different kind of day was unfolding. It was an ordinary morning — Dorothy's assistant Elena handing coffee to her Infected coworker Joyce, listening to a new researcher's grumbling.

Dorothy was the type to secretly make heating modules for the pioneers. Elena wasn't happy about it. "They're just the pioneer band. They don't even think of us as friends."

Dorothy answers with a smile. "They're all just ordinary young people." She seemed like nothing more than a good-natured boss.

But that night, Sani leads a raid on the experimental facility. The targets: the two researchers, Elena and Joyce.

We had no choice but to do this. No one in this facility genuinely cares about us. No one but ourselves.

— Sani

Sani was a pioneer — once a law student, until Oripathy took everything from him. To him, corporate researchers were just people who stood around with coffee in hand, talking about themselves.

And so the hostage crisis begins. Sani's demand is simple: that he and all his fellow pioneers leave this facility alive.

3. Something Nameless Is Born

The standoff draws an unexpected guest. Behind Sani and his group, an irregular silver mass comes crawling slowly into view.

In an instant, it disassembles an entire pioneer shack. Walls, windows, everything inside — all of it scattered into the sky as silver fragments.

Those things…… split into countless tiny units, break down the matter that makes up that house, carry it off…… then gather back together to form a single shape.

— Silence

They soon learn it responds to light and sound. Assistant Greyy's Arts manage to lure it away briefly, but the decisive help comes, unexpectedly, from Dorothy.

A 'gentle woman's voice,' rigged through the lab's speakers, plays out. "The doors of the experiment zone will open for you all the same." She had made them an escape route.

4. What Was Learned at the Bar, and What Was Lost

Chasing the disappearances, the Doctor's group follows Saria to her usual back-alley bar. Saria's informant is a man who used to be a lab surgeon.

The man, an Arts unit implanted in his right arm, can only lift his glass with his left hand. Asked about the silver reagent's identity, he goes quiet, gripped by fear.

Shaking like that, the bar's AC must be turned up too high. Why don't you drink one more to warm yourself up?

— Ho'olheyak

The mysterious woman Ho'olheyak appears and forces the man to drink. He collapses in convulsions, revealing a poison fang hidden in his left molar.

Ho'olheyak says she's after the legacy of the ruined lab, the 'Roken Tank.' Then, leaving Saria with a single warning — "don't be hasty about making enemies of anyone" — she vanishes.

5. The Eye Found Inside the Armor

While searching the alleys, the Doctor's group is attacked by yet another suit of powered armor. This time, Saria steps in herself, taking it on bare-handed.

No matter how much the armor broke, it showed no reaction — as if there were no one inside at all.

Just as Saria's fist heads for the core, the Doctor shouts, "Stop, Saria!" With that single cry, Saria halts her hand.

What emerges from the armor is a person. The Doctor extends a hand and says, "Hello, Muelsyse."

Days after going missing, Muelsyse is alive. She had simply been unconscious, used as a weapon all along.

The one clue left by a now-conscious Muelsyse was a number etched into her water-soaked hem: '359.'

6. A Beautiful Paradise, and Unfamiliar Guests

Inside Base 359's lab, the standoff was still ongoing. Sani's group makes it through the lab door and finally comes face to face with the owner of the voice.

"Hello, everyone. I'm the head of Rhine Lab's Applied Originium Arts Division and the director of Experimental Base 359." Dorothy greets them with a smile.

Sani immediately levels his crossbow. He believes the silver creature Dorothy created grew by feeding on his fellow pioneers' blood.

Dorothy doesn't deny it. "Knowing the truth won't do you any good. The more you know, the more dangerous it gets for you." Instead, she holds out her hand and invites him to join the experiment.

Just as Sani is about to lower his weapon, an arrow flies toward Dorothy. The silver entities guarding the lab react all at once.

Unless we destroy this vile breeding ground, we can't take down those monsters!

— Sani

Amid the chaos, Elena and Silence notice something else: the silver entities weren't attacking Dorothy at all — they were protecting her.

7. Not a Person, but a Voice

The truth is revealed in the deepest part of the lab. At the end of a tangle of cables, the missing pioneers lay in a row, wearing electrodes.

Derek, Helen, Gale, Sofia…… every single one had been 'saved' by Dorothy. People who'd been on the verge of being cast out for failing to pay their insurance.

Dorothy had connected everyone to a massive machine called the 'Hub,' running an experiment to turn even people with low Originium Arts aptitude into Casters. She wanted to give equal opportunity to the Infected, to pioneers, to everyone born without talent.

Silence pushes back on that dream head-on. "Dozens, hundreds, thousands of people combining their strength? That would become a toy capable of crushing even the sturdiest fortress with ease."

Just then, Joyce, who had been unconscious, suddenly wakes. She speaks in an unfamiliar tone. "Don't hurt Director Franks." As if speaking on behalf of everyone asleep inside.

8. Betrayal, and a Long-Overdue Greeting

While the experiment is briefly halted, Rhine Lab's Defense Division staff burst in. But their goal isn't rescuing hostages — it's injecting every single pioneer with an unidentified substance.

Only then does Elena realize the truth: the 'emergency medical bracelet' issued to the pioneers was actually a surveillance-and-execution device. The reason Joyce had woken was this very bracelet.

Elena contacts her boss, Ferdinand. But what comes back isn't concern — just a cold order to withdraw.

In the end, Elena storms into Rhine Lab headquarters. Ferdinand tries to win her over with promises of a lab and a promotion, but……

Take your 'gift' and your phony kindness and get out of my sight. Ferdinand Clooney, you and I are through.

— Elena

Meanwhile, Saria sneaks into Rhine Lab headquarters with Muelsyse to find the director, Christine. It's a reunion 1,497 days in the making.

"You've come back, Saria." "……Hello, Christine." A short greeting, but the years folded into it were anything but short.

9. What Filled the Sky

Ferdinand's plan had already entered its final stage. He releases the Transmission Substance across the entire experiment zone, forcing the experiment to completion.

Now is the only chance we'll get to seize this.

— Ferdinand

The lab building tears apart from the inside out. Through the rupture, a colossal silver geometric mass rises, swallowing the entire base.

Even Dorothy holds her breath. It was a sight she had designed but never actually seen in person. "So beautiful…… but strangely terrifying too."

The monster's attacks grow faster and faster. In that moment when neither pioneer nor operator can do a thing, assistant Greyy walks out alone.

How can you know if there's a possibility, without ever taking the step forward?

— Greyy

Ptilopsis joins in late to sustain Greyy's Arts. Together, if only for a moment, the two of them manage to pinpoint the monster's exact position.

10. The Story Mother Used to Tell

Behind a wall of sand, Dorothy injects the Transmission Substance into her own body. Silence's protests are of no use. "I want to hear their voices too."

On the other side of consciousness, she meets her childhood self. It was the fairy tale her mother used to tell — the story of a girl crossing the desert in search of a Caster.

The fairy tale ends like this. The girl no longer searches for the legendary Caster. "As long as you're by my side, that's my new home."

In the dream, Dorothy also meets the people she trapped through her experiment. Everyone waves and greets her, but they all look somehow exhausted.

"I don't know if we'll ever find another place this good again……" "……No matter how far we run, tomorrow comes anyway, doesn't it?"

Dorothy reaches to wipe away the tears of a young pioneer friend, then pulls her hand back.

I shouldn't have kept you all trapped here. I shouldn't have……trapped myself here either. I'm sure the view you'll see later on will be far more wonderful than anything I've ever seen.

— Dorothy

Outside the lab, the silver entity changes course. Its destination is none other than the very lab where it was born.

And so Ferdinand's experiment ends. The 'Hub' collapses, and he's left a failure, on the run.

11. Afterward

Dorothy was unharmed. But from that day on, the Transmission Substance still flowed through the pioneers' bodies. Neither Silence nor anyone else could say for certain what it would mean going forward.

Sani confesses the wrong he did to his childhood friend Mary four years ago. Mary answers not with words, but by pulling him into a tight embrace.

Enough talk about forgiveness and all that. Your childhood friend came to see you off — shouldn't we be doing something more meaningful?

— Mary

Sani sets off once more with his pioneer band, carrying a suspicious invitation from someone whose name begins with D.

In his final moment, Ferdinand crosses paths with Ho'olheyak again. She neither kills nor helps him, just leaves behind a single suit of powered armor as she departs. "……Pioneer."

Left alone in the wastes, Ferdinand finally chooses to surrender. Before the pioneers surrounding him, he doesn't resist — for the first time.

Saria and Silence look up at the same sky from two different cities. A hundred kilometers apart, yet the two of them murmur the exact same words.

Looks like it's about to rain in Trimounts.

— Silence & Saria

On Christine's desk sits a fragment of the 'Hub's' remains, seemingly out of nowhere. Though the report reads 'completely destroyed.'

The still-mysterious Ho'olheyak leaves Christine with a brief word. "Before long…… I might just become the collaborator you need most."

All three of the missing returned. But one stayed where she was, one set off on a new journey, and one, for the first time, walked out of the paradise she'd built herself.

They went to find missing coworkers, only to discover a paradise every one of them had walked into willingly. And the person who built that paradise chose, with her own hands, to set free the people she loved most.