The Last Dainv-Chapter 177

The Last Dainv-Chapter 177

The reflection blade passed through the flickering spectator force field, cutting through the spectator benches, creating a shower of sparks. A momentary pause followed after a metallic item hit the metal floor.
Suddenly, the environment broke apart.
The arena's red lights split like broken glass. Lines tore through Stormbreaker and Hellbringer, same with all the objects within the memory. The crowd's chant stuttered, voices cutting in and out before going silent.
Everything fell apart.
The world broke into artifacted chunks, breaking like a dropped mirror. Colours flipped, shapes twisted. The arena stretched to a tiny point of light.
Darkness surrounded them.
Gale gasped as he dropped to his knees on the cold floor of the memory chamber. The sudden switch and pixelation from virtual to reality cast him with a sudden nauseous spell.
The others looked to have a similar experience. Kyle laid flat on his back, heaving. Clyde bent over, hands on his knees. Rachel sat, hand over her mouth. Lily sat against the metal orb, legs stuck out in front of her. Ollie leaned against the pedestal beside him.
"What... the fuck... was that?" Kyle wheezed between breaths.
Gale pushed himself up, legs shaking. The floating orbs still hung in their columns around the room, each one glowing softly, but something changed. The central orb on its pedestal looked dimmer than before.
Then he saw it.
Next to the pedestal was a tablet looking object. The device looked like an tablet from Ringo but was fully made of glass. Organic material grew across its surface with veins pulsating, skin covering half of the screen. A glass orb that glowed a soft gold was stuck on the skin tissue. The whole organic material gave off a warmth as if it were alive.
Gale crouched down, reaching for it, but stopped as the living material moved slightly like it noticed him there.
"Gale," Ollie said with a coarse voice. "What did you do back there?"
Everyone turned toward him, waiting for an answer. Gale looked at the tablet again, then back to the group. "Something was watching us the whole time. From when we first entered the city. I felt it in the back of my head. During the fight, that feeling got stronger."
Lily almost gagged as she stood up. "I didn't feel anything watching us."
"Me neither," Kyle sat up. "But I was kinda busy trying not to get crushed by giant robots."
"So what, you just took a random shot at nothing?" Clyde said.
"Not nothing," Gale said. "When Stormbreaker entered phase 2, the thing focused on watching me more intently. I couldn't actually see it, but I could feel where it was. Up in the stands, hiding."
Rachel moved closer, asking, "You think that thing was controlling what we saw?"
"I'm not sure," Gale said. "But what it was, it was definitely what caused the memory to go crazy."
"What about you," Rachel turned to Ollie, "You took in dust. You going to be ok for this run?"
Ollie straightened up from the pedestal. "I'm fine. Nothing I haven't handled before."
"You'll deal with the addiction later, right?" Rachel asked.
"After we get home," Ollie said. "First we need to get out of here."
Rachel turned to Gale, eyes narrow. "What about you? You took a bad hit."
"I'm fine," Gale said. She probably didn't see him drinking up a Vit Vial.
"Gale's got some mighty mega HP potions," Ollie said.
"No shit?" Kyle asked.
"Shut up, Kyle," Ollie said.
"Are you sure that potion you took is ok?" Rachel asked.
"Leave the man alone. Everyone's got secrets in Aur," Ollie said flatly. "You think the Path tells you everything happening in North America? You think the Arcanes will tell us how dust is made? Let Gale be Gale."
Gale sighed. Not exactly sure how to tell them that he had a magical shop that he could purchase from. Cev also basically told him not to say anything which was reason enough that he couldn't say much to them.
"Convenient detail," Lily said.
Kyle and Clyde walked up, their suits burned and torn from the fight with Hellbringer. Kyle had a cut above his eye that's still bleeding. Clyde's right sleeve was burned away, showing red skin underneath.
"Not bad, rookie," Clyde said, stopping in front of Gale. "Kid was looking at the big picture. Rest of us were just looking what's in front."
"Lucky guess," Kyle mumbled, which from him sounded almost like praise.
"Thanks," Gale said, then reached down and picked up the organic-covered tablet, careful to touch only the parts not covered in living tissue.
"What's that?" Ollie asked, stepping closer.
Gale carefully looked at the strange mix of technology and flesh. The device felt warm in his hands, with gross organic material moving around the edges of what looked like a fancy tablet.
Guide, analyze this
, he mouthed silently, not moving his mouth.
[Control Panel (corrupted)]
[Allows fine grained control on structures.]
Great. Another non-sensical description, he sighed. But he could feel it himself. The fleshy stuff covering half the tablet had a signature; a mundane one. Under the clear skin, a small object beat like a heart no bigger than a marble. Tiny veins spread across the surface, carrying what looked exactly like blood through its network. The flesh moved slightly when his finger got too close.
"I don't know," Gale held it up for the others to see. "But from what I can tell, it's some kind of control panel. Probably connected to this whole memory system."
Lily stepped forward, narrowing her eyes at the item. "Let me see that."
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; any sightings.
She took the tablet from Gale, turning it over in her hands. The others gathered around, keeping away from the biological parts. Lily focused, and a thin blade of blue energy formed at the tip of her index finger.
"Let's see what makes you tick," she muttered.
She made a small cut in the fleshiest part. Blood immediately came out of the cut and the small heart beat faster. A high-pitched hiss came from the flesh, quiet but clearly a sound of pain.
"Fuck!" Lily dropped the tablet, jumping back. It hit the floor, making a second screech. "It-it screamed. Did you hear that?"
"That's some straight-up Starcraft shit right there," Kyle said, leaning closer but not touching it. "Like when the zerg take over terran tech. Gross and cool at the same time."
"Yeah, you think we'll meet some infested terran in this shit?" Clyde asked.
"Not exactly a good one to meet. They explode and shit," Kyle said.
"Ugh, idiots." Rachel stepped forward, picking up the tablet. "We need to see what's under all this... growth."
The organic material combusted, and the flesh blackened and pulled away from the glass surface. A high pitched screehing filled the room as the living growth burned away, cleansing away the tablet.
Gale remembered the thing she called homunculus under the Ann Family estate that Rachel used to experiment on. In Greater Sudbury, she even killed a bunch of rats herself. Damn, she's scary. Another thing to note, do not get on her mad side.
The screaming stopped when the last bit of flesh burned and fell off, leaving only the sleek device as the glass orb fell on the ground.
"There," Rachel said as she picked up the glass orb. "Wasn't this the orb that idiot #1 and 2 touched?"
"Thinking about it just makes me mad," Lily said, shaking her head.
Ollie looked at it briefly before putting it in his jacket.
"Everyone take a break. We need to eat and rest before figuring out what to do next." Ollie turned to Gale. "Can you get out the bowls and nutrition bricks? We all need to eat after that fight."
Gale immediatley materialized the items from his space storage. Each person got a shallow metal bowl and a dense, rectangular nutrition brick.
Kyle and Clyde moved to one corner of the room. They sat their backs against the wall. Clyde would laugh randomly as they ate in silence. Sometimes Kyle would stare at Gale.
Lily and Ollie sat near the central pedestal, heads close together as they looked at the cleaned tablet. Their talk was too quiet to hear, but their hand movements suggested they were arguing about strategy.
Rachel and Gale found their own spot near one of the glowing columns. The others began making their meals, each raising a hand toward the air. Water formed around their fingers, drops falling into their bowls.
Gale stared at his empty bowl, then at his brick. He never learned this skill.
"Here," Rachel said. She took his bowl and conjured water onto it. Putting both bowls on the floor, she put in the nutrition bricks into them and boiled both of the bowls. Mixing them for a couple of minutes, the bricks turned into paste, and she gave it back to him.
"Thanks," Gale said.
"It's funny. I feel like you hold as much secrets as my family. I thought I had you figured out, but then you pull something like what you did in that arena," Rachel said. "You've got almost as many secrets as my family."
The comment caught Gale off guard. He stirred the nutrition paste in his bowl. "You might be right. Though most of them aren't even my secrets to keep. My parents never told me anything important."
He took a big spoonful of the nutrient paste. "I still have lots of questions about the document we found in Sudbury. Dad was there. Working with the Silver Lions."
Rachel laughed. "After Greater Sudbury, I was planning to take you on a rift run together. Something easy, already checked out. Basically a tourist trip. Instead, your first rift is this death trap. An unknown nightmare where our first big fight was literally life or death."
"Is this normal for rifts?" Gale asked, taking another bite.
"Not usually. Standard procedure is at least a group of three or four squads to make up a company. Better chances to survive that way." Rachel took another bite before continuing. "For easy rifts, it's more like tourism. Beginners can go with a group and have a pretty easy time even if they don't fight much."
She lowered her voice. "As for those two... they're a special case
and
special in the head. Kyle and Clyde are notorious for it. Jokes are kind of like a coping mechanism, though they'd never admit it. The more danger, the more jokes."
"I heard my name," Kyle called from across the room. He nudged his brother, and both twins stood up, walking over to where Gale and Rachel sat.
"You talking about us?" Kyle asked, dropping down beside them. "Can't blame you. We're hard to ignore."
"Too handsome," Clyde said as he sat next to his brother.
"Too funny."
"Too talented."
Kyle leaned forward, looking hard at Gale's face. "You know, rookie, I've been wondering about you. Are you some kind of cosmic horror thing pretending to be human? Because that would explain a lot."
Gale nearly choked on his food. "What?"
"I mean, come on," Kyle said. "Nobody just 'figures out' how to take down a memory simulation by shooting at invisible watchers. That's not normal human behaviour."
"He's got a point," Clyde said. "Most people would focus on the giant death robots trying to kill them. Not look for the puppet master."
"I just..." Gale started, not knowing how to even say what to say. "I notice patterns. Details others miss sometimes."
"Details… like invisible things controlling killer robots?" Kyle raised his eyebrows. "That's one hell of a detail to notice while getting your ass handed over and bent backwards by Stormbreaker."
A spark sent over to Kyle's forehead.
"Ow! W-T-H?!"
"Leave him alone. We'd all be still fighting those Guardians if he hadn't done something," Rachel said.
"Man's saying some facts though," Clyde said.
"Hey, I'm not complaining. Just trying to figure out if I should be asking for his autograph before the cosmic horror reveal in the third act," Kyle said.
"We've seen weirder stuff," Clyde said. "Remember that rift in Texas?"
"Oh god," Kyle groaned. "The one with the talking plants?"
"Screaming plants," Clyde said. "They screamed whenever you got near them. Whole forest of screamers."
"Made sneaking impossible," Kyle said. "Try sneaking up on anything when the ground announces every step you take."
"Raven even got mad. Blamed us for not sneaking hard enough, like what the fuck," Clyde said.
Rachel looked at Gale. "See what I mean? Coping mechanism."
"We can hear you," Kyle said.
"And she's right," Clyde said. "Laugh or go crazy. Those are basically the options in this job."
Kyle studied Gale for a long moment, his usual smirk gone. "How'd you know? About the watcher. For real."
"I felt it. From when we first entered the city. Something watching us, following our movements. During the fight, it focused more on me," Gale said, giving up on what to actually say and just saying what came to his mind. "It's hard to explain. Like a pressure on the back of my neck. The hair standing up when someone stares too hard."
Kyle laughed. "Holy shit, rookie's got spider-sense. You know, like Spider-Man? That old comic character? When danger's coming, he gets this tingle on the back of his neck."
"I know who Spider-Man is," Gale said.
"Yeah, thanks for the history lesson on a hundred-year-old character," Clyde said. "Sounds more like Daredevil to me. Or Psylocke. You know, actual awareness beyond normal senses."
Kyle scratched his chin. "Actually, reminds me of Mateo back at base."
"Mateo?" Gale asked.
"Yeah. Guy's completely mundane, but he's got this weird skill or paranoia but more like a superpower at this point." Kyle leaned in to a whisper. "He can tell whenever someone's watching him. Doesn't matter if it's through cameras, scopes, whatever. He just knows. Sometimes you'd even see him wear a tinfoil hat."
"Makes him good at his job, but not exactly easy to get along with because of it," Clyde said.
"That's why he refuses awakening," Kyle said. "Doc told him his paranoia would get worse if he awakened. The sensitivity would go up until he couldn't function."
"That's Mateo's personal business, Kyle. Not something to share," Rachel sighed.
"What? We're in the middle of nowhere talking about weird senses. It's relevant," Kyle said. "Besides, rookie here should know why our controller sometimes ducks under his desk when you look at his monitor too long."
"Still not your secret to tell," Rachel said.
Clyde rolled his eyes. "Relax, mom. It's not like Mateo's going to know we told anyone. Unless he's got super-hearing too."
"That's not the point!" Rachel said.
"Got it!" Ollie's voice cut across their conversation. He stood by the central pedestal, the cleaned tablet in his hands. "I figured out how the control panel works."

Chapter 177