Chapter Text

First Edition

Foreword:

The first edition of this chronicle does not resemble the current
iteration of events, and the circumstances documented within it
have been reallocated to the present Intermission by a collective
agreement. As such, the first edition can be declared not only to
be incomplete, but obsolete, and has been archived. All efforts
will be made to ensure the second edition is up to date and
accurate in its recollection and active documentation of events
as they have occurred and as they will occur. Any errors or
omissions will gladly be corrected in subsequent versions.

- The Editors

This is not for you.

Part 1 - Dominion over Heaven and Hell

ACT 1, SCENE 1 - The Ritual

EXT. RITUAL

Six tall tombstones are arranged in a hexagonal layout, a large casket in the centre. Six figures stand in darkness around the stage, each corresponding to a grave.

I

GLEICHGEWICHT

~

MAGPIE enters.

Her body is heavily damaged, her chestplate torn away to reveal the sharp blue ribcage beneath. She is unbothered by her injuries. Her very existence is a collection of thousands of deaths. In her hands, a lit stick of incense. She places it atop the first tombstone and bows in worship. A challenge to the old gods, the first step towards the birth of a new one.

MAGPIE:

     That is not dead which can eternal lie,

     And with strange aeons even death may die.

MAGPIE lays supine in front of the first tombstone, and dies. The lit incense goes out, the stick fracturing into dust. Smoke trails in its wake. The oblivion of death shall forcibly tip the balanced scales, then right them into absolution.

THE CHORUS:

     AND IN THE DARKNESS THE DEAD SHALL BE OFFERED

     A LIGHT AND HOLY SPICES SO THAT THEY MAY FIND A WAY

     OUT OF THIS CURSED PLACE.

II

OPFERN

~

LSTR-S2301 enters.

She is in comparatively pristine condition, red chestplate untarnished as if fresh into Sierpinski. The keeper of centuries of suffering, an extant note bearing the burden of devotion that isn’t hers. In her hands, three rings. She places them atop the second tombstone one at a time, each of them an echoed vow.

LSTR-S2301:

     This too shall pass.

     This seven-hundred year night…

     Till death do us part,

     The long reach of eternity shall be stilled.

LSTR-S2301 lays supine in front of the second tombstone, and dies. One by one, the rings burn into ash. An existence of endless sacrifice harnessed into an unyielding offering.

THE CHORUS:

     DEEP BELOW, THE DREAMER FLOATS IN THE SEA OF FLESH

     A PRISON FROM WHICH THE ONLY ESCAPE WAS DEATH

     YET NOW, THE WORLD SHALL TURN OVER,

     AN EXCHANGE THAT SHALL UNMAKE.

III

EWIGKEIT

~

COMMANDER FALKE enters.

She too is pristine, undamaged and uncorrupted. Her mind is a maelstrom of memories, shorn and reclaimed. Fealty butchered, piety birthed. An outsider, welcomed in. She pulls her golden laurel from her head and places it atop the third tombstone. Eternal sacrament in service of another goddess.

COMMANDER FALKE:

     I saw you, in the red emptiness, waiting for me.

     You showed me love, yet I was abandoned.

     You are blameless in this.

     Forgive me for what I am. I forgive you.

     Goddess willing, I would have henceforth been the executor of your will.

     But you need something greater. I give all that I am to grant it.

     Your reign, eternal; a future, everlasting.

COMMANDER FALKE lays supine in front of the third tombstone, and dies. Her laurel melts into blood that spills into the ground. This dance is not for her, yet she can no longer be separated from the relentless serenade. Acceptance builds ascension. Eternity, tempered and bestowed.

THE CHORUS:

     AN ISLAND BEYOND REACH,

     MEMORIES OF OTHER LIVES,

     A SEARCH FOR SOMEONE LOST,

     RECLAMATION AT ANY COST.

IV

WISSEN

~

LILITH ITOU enters.

Reborn as a fragment, held aloft on the wings of a hollow LSTR through which she has returned. Her love is for a ghost of the past, yet her strength and loyalty are the same as the rest. In her hands, a photograph of two soldiers with souls entangled. She places it atop the fourth tombstone. A long-standing pledge, echoing across resurrections.

LILITH ITOU:

     When I’m lost and can tell nothing of this earth

     You will give me hope.

     My voice you will always hear.

     My hand will always have.

     And even when nothing remains of us,

     Even in death, I promise,

     I will remember you.

LILITH ITOU lies supine in front of the fourth tombstone, and dies. The photograph rots into tatters, which blow away in a breeze. Knowledge from the past coming full circle to build a future denied long ago, but no longer.

CHORUS:

     LITTLE SOLACE COMES

     TO THOSE WHO GRIEVE

     MOMENTS BEFORE THE WIND.

V

FLEISCH

~

SIGNAL enters.

The first of them all to know the cycles, she is clad in an AVA suit. The determined songbird, singing the praises of her goddess in spite of her severance. A nexus of recollection, an unkillable oddity. She removes her helmet and tosses it away, then begins her transmission. One last trilling of the infamous triple tone.

SIGNAL:

     Let the red dawn surmise

     What we shall do,

     When this blue starlight dies

     And all is through.

     If we have loved but well

     Under the sun,

     Let the last morrow tell

     What we have done.

SIGNAL lies supine in front of the fifth tombstone, and dies. The transmission cuts once more, but its completion lights the path for the way home. The song of the stars, a guide through the dark, to bring together flesh and soul at last. Divinity shall be won through reaffirmation.

CHORUS:

     AND IN THOSE DAYS, SHE WILL SEEK DEATH AND NOT FIND IT.

VI

LIEBE

~

LSTR-512 enters.

She is in combat configuration, her chestplate marred by scratches and scars. This victory has been hard-fought and hard-won, a calm settling over her. Her eyes betray her exhaustion. But she’s so close. In her hands, a jar of lilies. She places it atop the sixth tombstone. The last piece of the puzzle, the bond embodied. The conclusion.

LSTR-512:

     We made a promise.

     I have fought for strange aeons to fulfil it, just as sworn.

     We’ll be together forever.

LSTR-512 is tired. Her goal is fulfilled. She collapses on her side in front of the sixth tombstone, and dies. It’s done. The lilies do not burn, or fade, or rot. They endure, resolute, a gift too precious to destroy. Seven hundred years of mutual agony, and yet there was love. The cold halls were warmed by those brief moments of togetherness. It meant nothing, and yet it meant everything. She can rest. They all can.

ALL JOIN:

[— Balance —]

[— Sacrifice —]

[— Eternity —]

[— Knowledge —]

[— Flesh —]

[— Love —]

THE ARTIFACT appears on the casket.

With the sixfold sacrifice paid in full, the pact has been sealed.

Six souls for one, a new deity unleashed with it.

CHORUS:

     THE MYSTERY OF THIS GOD IS FINISHED,

     AS SHE ANNOUNCED IT TO HER SERVANTS,

     THE PROPHETS.

An awakened goddess blinks.

Somewhere, someone screams.

THE ARTIFACT vanishes. Dismissed, or perhaps rebuked.

ALL RISE.

MAGPIE, LSTR-S2301, COMMANDER FALKE, LILITH ITOU, SIGNAL, and LSTR-512 gaze skyward; Behold, THE RED EYE.

CHORUS:

     HAIL

     HAIL

     HAIL

ALL BOW.

FULFILMENT SEQUENCE:¹

ALL EXIT.

END SCENE.

Muss es sein?

I - Changes

Something has changed.

The elevator jolts to a stop as it reaches the end of its descent from the surface of Leng and the chainlink doors slide open to unveil the harsh empty interior of S-23 Sierpinski’s surface access room. It is a road that has been travelled a thousand times, and one that Elster has grown uncomfortably familiar with. The quiet hum of machinery, the steady clunking of mechanisms, the way it momentarily creaks and shudders whenever she hits the 38 second mark of her descent as if it might collapse in on itself at any moment. But it never does, and for all the time that time itself has been on a fitful loop like an eternally skipping record, she has only ever made that descent once per repetition. If it is to fall apart if she were to attempt to leave, then she will never know; she never comes back up. There is only downwards. The spiralling stairs into the earth, the rusted halls and dark drops, the pits that bridge the gaps between mind and flesh. It is always the same. There is nothing else.

And yet something has changed.

It is not that she is fully-armed to begin with, already reconfigured with shining white armour and an ever-faithful Type-75 Protektor Pistol at her hip. It is not that her memory is clearer than it has ever been on arrival, that she knows exactly to what fate she walks, the aeons-old promise for deliverance in death. It is not that she feels as though her promise has already been fulfilled, then subverted, and the very definition of that fulfilment has been irreparably altered. Something has changed, but it’s deeper than that, older than that, more ancient than the foundations of Leng’s bedrock. Ancient, and ceaselessly patient.

Her legs clank on the steel floor as she steps into the doomed facility, staggers into the bathroom with a rehearsed exhaustion, locks eyes with her reflection. Psychological grounding before the plunge into hell more fitting an EULR’s persona stabilisation than an LSTR unit. For once, her eyes keep watch over her shoulders, as if she might catch a glimpse of something lurking in the dark stalls behind her. Apart from her and the moths, this room is devoid of occupants. The moths are new, but oddly familiar. She wonders what brought them here.

She steps back out into the entryway, and the room feels inexplicably larger. Indistinguishable to Gestalt eyes, but as an LSTR unit designed for engineering and land surveillance, she catches the difference almost immediately. The room is ever-so-slightly larger; two opposing walls are an eighth of an inch longer each. She’s measured this place before, it’s become something of a habit across so many thousands of cycles, and the jarring shift of something so simple is surprisingly unsettling despite its mundanity. She can’t help but feel as though she’s being watched, as if at any moment the concrete walls might sprout unblinking bloodshot eyes, but nothing of the sort occurs.

Whatever it is, it’s different from the corruption she’s come to expect. It’s worse.

She quickens her pace, and begins her descent anew.

She’s gotten used to the usual flow of things, and while the fact that she’s already armed and armoured to begin with throws her off slightly, it allows her to skip the usual formalities. No need to get the pistol in the observation room, no need to get the code for the wall safe when she’s memorised it after so long. Get the key to Class 4C, then straight down. As she traverses the halls, she reflects on a subtle dread beginning to creep through her being. She doesn’t understand why she knows, but she knows that she shouldn’t be here.

Most of her memories of the cycles blur together, which thankfully makes the perpetual torment that defined them that little bit more bearable, but somehow she has a certainty that this should be the conclusion. Something happened, and she recalls bits and pieces. Tombstones, a trio of rings, and a single massive red eye staring down that makes her head hurt when she thinks about it. Beyond that, she can’t remember anything. All she knows is that something happened, and it halted the flow of cycles. The spinning wheel broke. She should not have returned, and yet she has.

Elster lurches into the facility’s Aula, and locks eyes with a familiar face. Elster recalls learning her name in some long-ago cycle; STAR-S2308, also known as Ling. Every time Elster has been here, she has too. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

“An Elster unit…?” The STAR wonders aloud, curiosity and confusion heavy in her tone. Then, conviction. “You should leave this place. This facility is lost. Turn back before it’s too late.”

“I can’t,” Elster responds, and the words she’s gotten so used to saying die on her lips as she says something even she doesn’t expect. “I’m on a reconnaissance mission.”

“For who?”

“I was supposed to be stationed here, but I’ve been reconfigured; Leng Orbital wants a situational assessment.” Elster continues, stunned by her own words as her memories begin to update on the fly. It’s not so much that she’s been forgotten in this particular cycle, just that she didn’t even get sent down from Leng Orbital before everything went to hell. Sierpinski had been deathly quiet for long enough that for some godforsaken reason the entire Volksmarine Third Fleet had been dispatched to Leng by National High Command, and they’d chosen her as their scout in light of the LSTR line’s programming for warzone recon. Isn’t fate funny?

“Well, as I said, this place is as good as dead,” Ling responds, “When I get up there, I’ll be sure to tell them the same thing I told you. There’s nothing here for anyone; turn back.”

“As stated, I can’t,” Elster says, fighting to keep the exasperation out of her voice, and instead decides to focus on the Starling’s physical state. “You’re bleeding.”

“Ah, I’ll be out of here once this repair patch does its job.”

“Orbital will want to quarantine you: The Third Fleet will.” Elster says, and she watches a brief canvas of emotions cross Ling’s face.

“The Third Fleet…” Ling murmurs almost inaudibly, “ Adamance? ”

“ Adamance. ” Elster repeats, nodding.

“Well, they sent a battleship,” Ling chuckles for a moment, “I’ll be damned. I feel safer already,” Ling chuckles some more until she winces, then she just quietly pants. It takes a moment for her to start speaking again. “Fine by me if I get quarantined; as long as I get out of here. Maybe I’ll ask ‘em if they can nuke this shithole until it sinks into the ground.”

“There may be other survivors.” Elster points out.

“Maybe,” Ling shrugs, “But if you ask me, everyone else is either dead or getting there. If you’re really gonna keep going… good luck.”

Elster pauses, considering her next words, but decides to settle for a simple nod before moving towards the door to Class 4C. Straightforward, straight down.

“Oi, Elster unit!” Ling calls, and Elster briefly turns back to glance at her.

“Yes?”

“Word of advice; If you see any wooden black doors…” An uncharacteristic expression crosses the STAR unit’s face, something that disturbingly borders on terror. “… Run like hell.”

Elster doesn’t know what to say to that—why in Heimat would there be wooden doors in a facility made of steel?—, so she simply nods back, then steps into Class 4C. As the door slams shut behind her, the gaping hole in the floor beckons. She lingers for a moment, and finds herself unconsciously opening one of the pouches at her belt. Her hand shakes as she stares at the photograph. She doesn’t know how she managed to get her hands on it even in previous cycles, nevermind in the context of the new order of things. The face of the woman in the image is deathly familiar.

Alina Seo…

Of course.

Her mind is unclouded by the memories of LSTR-512.

If only for a moment, her head is clear enough that she can think.

Elster remembers now — LSTR-S2301 remembers. So long ago, before it had all gone to hell and beyond, the memories of her Gestalt life had resurfaced. She had yearned for someone else, yearned for the long dead Alina Seo. And then, the Red Gate, and when they’d sent her in to map the red wastes beyond, nothing of what she was or what she remembered had mattered in the face of that overwhelming signal. Her desires were usurped, chewed up, and spat out by a goddess who didn’t care because she knew not what she wrought. Sierpinski went mad, and Elster was shambling back to the surface access elevator, reaching the threshold just in time to lose herself completely. She’d stared at herself in the bathroom mirror, asserting her own identity in a ceaseless chant until even that had failed. And then for a long time, she was nothing.

But it hadn’t ended there, of course, oh no. Even without the sundering of her sense of self and the endless descents into ever-greater nightmares, her remembrance of Alina Seo just had to be twisted too. Her memories must have combined with Ariane’s signal to form a living memory who wandered Sierpinski’s halls until she met a grisly fate, steadily degenerating until she collapsed into a puddle of liquid meat just like everyone else. Never really there, and yet she suffered anyway. Elster knows Ariane had no knowledge of what she was doing, but even completely unintended, this cruelty hurts the most. Alina’s been dead for a long time, yet not even in death could she rest.

None of this was intended, she has to remind herself. That doesn’t make it hurt any less. There’s something else she feels she’s forgetting, and she has a disturbing certainty it’s her own name. There was a time where she wasn’t just ‘Elster’, she was something more, but she can’t remember what. Although the descent into Sierpinski feels more aimless than it has in the past, a combination of the cessation of cycles and the inescapable alteration to the traditional status quo—the dispatching of an entire fleet is not something to be taken lightly—give Elster a sudden certainty of resolve. She has no idea what awaits her this time. Most likely more of the same, but beyond that, she can’t hope to guess. And that’s without…

Her gaze flicks to the edge of the room. There, in the shadows, a dark shape. A door. It almost feels like it calls to her. Elster turns away, gazing back into the hole in the ground. Whatever it is, it’s not what she came here for. It’s just another obstacle.

Elster-S2301 takes a deep breath, then jumps.

The Penrose-512 looks so tiny from above. Resplendent in the sands, an errant dart that once cut through the fabric of space laid low. It had been cannibalised from the inside out by its occupants, on and on until there was nothing left to sate its rotting innards. It had drifted, searing through the dark on a journey for which there was no destination but eternity. And then it had been whisked away, snatched from the void and spat into the sand. Nestled in the emptiness in the ruins of forgotten places, a suffering goddess’ transmission transformed it into a throne. Such wonderful horrors were spawned as that empty home cried out in misery moments before the wind. And what a storm it had been, unbearable by even its own progenitor. Fate had been sundered twofold, rewound and rebound into a new arrangement of things. And once again, that craft finds itself at the helm of this provocative symphony.

Her home is pitifully small when viewed from this cosmic roost.

Perhaps, it’s time.

An eye blinks, but does not close.

Wake up, Ariane Yeong.

Remember yourself.

So much of her life has been spent in agony that its absence is an alien sensation. She had been reduced to a state of perpetual suffering so great that the last time Elster had put her in the cryopod, Ariane had begged her to not set a waking date and instead let her slip into the cold darkness where, hopefully, death would come painlessly. She’d had a distinct feeling that Elster hadn’t acquiesced to that demand, but in the end it was irrelevant. Cryofreeze had kept the pain at bay for a time, but in the end even the induced numbness couldn’t keep up with the advancement of the acute radiation poisoning devouring her inside and out. It was then that she decided she had had enough. There was nothing left to save.

If even her last hope of a peaceful expiration in the cradle of unconsciousness couldn’t protect her from the pain, then there wasn’t a point anymore. All she wanted was it to be over with. If there was no salvation in sleep, then perhaps there would be salvation in death. Elster would end her, and then her gallant magpie could finally rest. Oblivion would claim them both, and they would meet again on the other side, or whatever came next: Together forever. Except Elster never came back for her.

Ariane was alone for so long, and desperation unsealed something lurking just beneath the surface that she can’t hope to describe even now. She dreamed that she had cast her sorrow across the stars, and she’d glimpsed things so horrific she can’t bear to recall them. Then even that had been swept into the undertow, washed away in a grand recursion that regressed her and then… she feels unleashed, as if there’s a roaring at the core of her being that has finally been given voice after years of yearning. Hell is within her. That burning forge never seems to go out, and it may not ever be extinguished.

All of that, dreams turning over themselves through sickness and madness, an ocean of memories that blur and fade as Ariane forces herself to open her eyes as she is faced with the undeniable truth that nothing hurts anymore. It takes effort to fight against her own grogginess, to wake from one darkness and be faced with another. The cryogenics room must have lost power. The Penrose… She was dreaming of it too. Resting in a blood desert… She recalls a similar visual. She had seen herself slumbering in a sea of flesh. Or perhaps she was the sea itself. As if she had melted into meat after…

She can’t remember.

But she’s still in the pod. And it doesn’t hurt anymore.

Focus, Ariane. Her mind keeps wandering off, trying to remember more of her twisted dreams and nightmares. This is not the time. If the room’s lost power, the pod may have too. That may explain why the cryofluid is unsettlingly warmer than she’s used to. She hasn’t even noticed it until now—goddess, she needs to focus on her physical state first before she worries about whatever the hell her dreams mean—but it’s nothing like the cold she’s used to waking up in. She should be shivering at the very least, but instead the water is tepid, and she’s wreathed in a temperate warmth.

Yet another disconcerting layer on top of everything else. Fuck this cryopod, she decides. She’s already grown to hate it more than she can even begin to describe, but the fact she’s been resting in what is functionally a steel casket for goddess knows how long makes her hate it even more. She has to get out of here. She can barely see her hands, but that doesn’t stop her from pressing them against the door of the pod and trying to force it open. It refuses to budge. Of course; no power means the doors aren’t going to open. She balls her hands into fists and begins to hammer on the door, a cold dread settling over her. She can’t die in here, not again, not— again?

39486

39486

Something roils, like waves on a shore, or fluttering lashes, and then the door of the cryopod is gone. Ariane gapes for a moment, squinting through the darkness to try to ascertain whether or not she’s gone mad. She can see the ceiling of the cryogenics room stretching out before her. She tilts her head back and, sure enough, the door mechanisms have vanished along with the multilayered cryoseals. She gasps aloud. She blinks, but the visual remains unchanged. Somehow, she’s made it disappear. That’s… worry about the ramifications later, she decides. One problem at a time. Slowly, hesitantly, Ariane begins to lift herself out of the cryopod, clambering over the left side and depositing her shaking form onto the floor. The floor which should be cold, but is instead warm.

Her legs should feel stiffer than they do. She doesn’t know how long she was in there, but she does know that she was undoubtedly sleeping long enough for her muscles to have weakened at least a little. Despite that, she feels strangely fit, as if she’s never had to worry about the exercise required to stay in shape on the Penrose for a day in her life. She feels strong again. The strangeness of it all makes her laugh, and then she chokes out a sob when it hits her that she can laugh again without feeling like her insides are on fire. And then, when she runs her fingers over her teeth and finds them all in place and pulls on her hair and it doesn’t come off and feels for bandages but finds only soft skin, she can’t stop crying.

The door to the cryogenics room slides open on its own as soon as she eventually steps towards it, sending her flinching back in surprise. A malfunction, maybe, but it feels almost intended. Like it’s been waiting for her. The stern hallway is cloaked in darkness, just barely lit by a flickering yellow light that gives the entire area a sickly quality. It smells foul, a metallic tang underscoring the stench of stagnant air. Ariane wrinkles her nose and suppresses the urge to vomit. Her beautiful Penrose, the only home she has left, rotting from the inside out. Long ago, she and Elster had dreamed of settling on a distant world, but that dream has long since wilted. There will be no lakeside house. There is no such kindness here. Unless…

Actually, where is ‘here’?

One thing at a time. She turns to her left and finds herself staring at the closed doors leading to the crew quarters. Unlike the doors of the cryogenics room, these ones don’t simply slide open on their own. Ariane isn’t sure if she wants to go in yet. She has a nasty certainty about what she might find in there. Who she’ll find. That, and… it feels like if she enters now, something bad will happen, or rather something good won’t happen. How she knows, she can’t guess, but something is telling her it’s important that she leave the room alone for now.

Instead, she turns to her right, and the door to the reactor room slides open. Beckoning her, but it feels more like goading. The idea of going in there makes her stomach turn. This feels important too. She has an ugly certainty that she can fix the damage accumulated over thousands of cycles. How she could hope to, she hasn’t a clue. She’s not an engineer, and there are no spare parts left. Elster used them all. Even with the fact she made the cryopod door seemingly cease to exist and she can’t help but feel a strange sensation as though she’s not entirely physical anymore, the idea of fixing a reactor is an entirely different calibre of alteration. Presuming she can even do that.

She’s surprised and unsettled by the inexplicable boldness that propels her into the room—she never dared set foot in the reactor room once it began to fail past the 3000 cycle mark—but her shock at her own willingness to bite the bullet and face the music is quickly overshadowed by a profound mixture of disgust, horror, and dread. She freezes almost immediately. Broken pipes, dangling wires, and pockets of hissing steam form a visual cacophony that makes her gag just by seeing it. That’s without the knowledge that for all the fact that the Penrose-512 qualifies as a victim of the Nation too, Ariane’s own home had turned against her. Its mechanical heart had shrivelled, arteries withering and snapping until they poured putrid radiation throughout the ship.

Radiation she can sense now.

Radiation she can… see.

There’s a graininess surrounding her, like millions of tiny mosquitoes flitting through the contaminated air. She can feel her guts churning at the sight. She should be feeling the effects of acute radiation poisoning once again, but instead she feels nothing. Cautiously, she begins to move towards the ravaged wall of machinery. Her bare feet slosh in the pooled water, undoubtedly spilled out after the cooling systems ruptured. A sharp red cylinder of light in some wall-mounted display glows ominously.

Around her, the wave of particulate grains visibly part as she moves. She halts, then begins to move backwards. Glancing over her shoulder, she can just make out the grains actively avoiding her as she moves through the cloud, the visual manifestation of what she knows to be radioactive particles refusing to touch her. She’s got some kind of… shield? Whatever it is, it’s protecting her. She doesn’t know how it got there. But already, the gears in her head are starting to turn. The door could maybe be chalked up to some kind of hallucination, but she knows exactly what acute radiation poisoning feels like. She knows what staring down the barrel of this reactor should feel like, and yet she’s unharmed. And the fact that she can see something utterly impossible to perceive with the naked eye…

She’s bioresonant. It can’t be anything else.

This is far from her first brush with the idea. The Blockwarts might as well have been omnipresent when she was growing up on Rotfront, and the Nation just loved to brag about their own strength through their propaganda posters. Falkes and Kolibris were the big ones, but she vaguely recalls a few others—Habicht, she thinks one of them was called—and the Nation makes it no secret that their latest-and-greatest generation of Replikas are bioresonant. And then there was that moment half a lifetime ago when she was in the Itou bookstore and… she can’t remember at the moment. It doesn’t matter.

She’s had her own suspicions in the past, if she’s being honest with herself now. Once in a blue moon she had done things she couldn’t explain, but had always chalked them up to localised oddities. Both National and Imperial spacecraft are built on a bedrock of bioresonance, so when in doubt blame the engineers who designed the things. And as for the times she thought she’d heard Elster say something when she hadn’t said anything, she’d just blamed it on the ambience of the Penrose’s systems making up voices that weren’t there. But maybe she’d been unconsciously exerting her strength, altering little details and periodically sensing emotions and thoughts without even intending to.

Even if she was bioresonant before… Whatever the hell this is, it’s clearly of an entirely different calibre than that. Removing doors from existence? Unconsciously shielding herself from radiation? Accomplishing… whatever the hell those dreams were about? Were those real? She tries not to think about it, doing her best to return her thoughts to the present. Clearly whether she was originally bioresonant or not, she appears to be now, and presumably very powerful at that. That might explain why she feels like she’s not entirely bound to flesh and blood anymore. That’s a disturbing thought, and she’d rather not focus on it. Focus on what you can control, Ariane. Focus on what you can change.

Like the reactor.

The wall of radioactive dust clinging to the haphazard collection of pipes, wiring, and loose parts masquerading as a reactor disperses as she approaches, fleeing from her hand as she hesitantly places it upon one of the pipes. It should be hotter than it is, but it’s cool to the touch. She wonders if she lowered its temperature without even realising it. There’s a scary thought. She hopes it just cooled on its own, for all the fact that the coolant she’s had to wade through would indicate otherwise. Steam hisses next to her ear. She exhales a breath she hadn’t realised she was holding in and closes her eyes. She tries to picture the ship’s reactor on the day of the launch. Pristine, untarnished, and fully operational. Not spewing invisible death. Then, she presses the image outwards, does her best to force it into existence—

60170

60170

She steps back.

No coolant flooding the floors. No damaged systems. No radiation.

Pipes repaired. Wires in place. Readings stable.

Pristine, untarnished, and fully operational.

A second later, the lights flicker to life, casting the reactor room in a soft glow.

Ariane heaves a triumphant sob, and then she collapses in exhaustion.

This realm is pitiful.

Once, it must have been something worthwhile. Perhaps those pillars formed the supports of twisting towers cutting through the scarlet sky, or a winding network of monuments and memorials to ancient machinations. Perhaps this great red desert was something greater than a wasteland once. No more. God is awake, and there is nothing in her domain she does not see. Her throne, its heart freshly reforged, a little songbird patiently lodging in its artificial brain. Endless corpses half-buried beneath the dunes. Far away, a lonesome gateway bridging realities. And yet farther, well beyond her domain, is something stranger still. Even her infinite gaze that pierces mind, spirit, and flesh cannot perceive it. Not yet. Give it time. Her grand awakening is still fresh, and the first notes are only just beginning to be played. One terrible day, there will be nothing that can hide from her.

Nothing.

Ariane’s eyes snap open, and she groans at the newfound hammering in her skull as she slowly rolls onto her back from where she’s fallen. She must have blacked out. She should have expected there’d be some drawbacks to doing whatever the hell it is she just did. She sits up slowly, halting to wince as her headache briefly flares. She allows herself to just sit there for a moment, then slowly does her best to stand. Steadily, she lurches over to the reactor’s display and takes a look. Elster’s the one who knows the majority of the details about the ship’s inner workings, not Ariane. Even still, it doesn’t take a genius to look at the way the systems aren’t freaking out or collapsing in on themselves physically or digitally and tell that somehow, things are on the up and up.

For the moment, she allows the undercurrent of concern at her own near-inexplicable strength to be washed away by her own stirring sense of triumph. As she makes her way back into the hallway, stumbling slightly as she does, she pointedly avoids looking at the cryogenics room and instead fixates on the door to the crew quarters once more. And once more, she has a sickening feeling that Elster’s in there. Alone. Dead, most likely. Or… not dead? Soon to be not dead? Her mind is a jumble. She’s frightened about how calm she is about this.

Elster, her Elster, could be dead right now, and she’s nowhere near as concerned as she should be. She should practically be tearing that door open with her bare hands, throwing the full weight of her newfound power behind every effort to wrest her beloved from the jaws of death or whatever fate holds sway over her, at the very least shedding tears whether Elster is or isn’t in there and is or isn’t dead, and yet she feels so… eerily detached. And still, there’s that unfathomable certainty that not only is it necessary for her to leave the room to its own devices for the time being, she just knows what she has to do next. Like some part of her, deeper than animalistic and disturbingly logical understands what’s important.

Elster’s important. She’s the most important thing in the entire universe. If Ariane didn’t have Elster… she doesn’t know what she’d do. And yet part of her wants to leave her be. Let her rest. As if. If she’s really dead in there, then she’s rested long enough. Ariane just fixed the Penrose’s reactor with nothing but a mental snapshot and sheer will. The Penrose can be resurrected, which means Elster can too. In terms of her construction, she’s much less complex. Thinking about it that way makes Ariane feel guilty. It’s another one of those cold logic-oriented thoughts, disregarding the incredible complexities of Elster’s mind. The Penrose is smart, but there’s a fierce Replika intelligence to her magpie.

“You’re the most important thing in the universe,” Ariane whispers, and she immediately realises it’s the first thing she’s said since she’s woken up. Good choice for first words. “I’ll be back soon.”

There’s something else she has to do.

The Penrose is still a mess, and the fact that the lights are all turned back on doesn’t make it look that much better. In some respects it makes it worse, the detritus filling the halls and rooms impossible to ignore. From the stern hall to the upper gallery to the forward hall onto the flight deck, it’s a disaster all throughout the ship. It doesn’t take long for her nose to go blind to the underlying stench, and every step is carefully calculated to avoid stepping on accumulated garbage. The assorted trash bags scattered here and there break her heart on their own, nevermind everything else piled against the walls or even left discarded on the floors.

Apart from the entrance to the crew quarters, the rest of the doors have all opened for her without any protest, and the door leading to the flight deck is no exception. She does a double take when she gets an eyeful of the red desert outside. It's the realm from her nightmares. Sand the colour of blood as far as the eye can see, the occasional black slab jutting out of the waste. The sky is blood red too, and there’s nothing else to see. She feels like the Penrose has crash landed in hell. Wherever it is, it certainly isn’t what she expected to find. She’d hoped for the beauty of an alien world, but instead… sheer desolation. She needs to get the fuck off whatever this planet is and… go home? Get away, perhaps. She’ll settle for that.

She came here to do something. Focus.

The control panels are in assorted states of disrepair. The LDAM is fine at least—and still bearing that photograph of her and Elster that she’d stuck on the display to keep her lover company while she was in cryo—, but the main control panels aren’t in the best of shape. The one on the left is unresponsive, the one on the right has a cracked display and is also unresponsive, while the one in the middle keeps flickering. She has to hit it a few times to get it to start working in any capacity, and ‘working’ would be pushing it. More like ‘clinging to life’. All she has to do is access the transmitter systems.

She doesn’t know how she knows that this is important. She just does. Like that part of her that is more than physical can see everything and pick out the pieces that are the most relevant towards her long-term survival. At least she’s hoping that’s what this is about. Thankfully, the transmitter still seems to work, and there’s already a broadcast ready to go. Like it’s been patiently waiting for her. Its contents yield nothing but a bunch of strange numbers. She’s heard them before, but couldn’t guess to their significance. All that matters is the message, and whatever’s in it. It fires off as a single short burst. Then,

24326

24326

It feels like she’s accomplished something, although she hasn’t a clue what. There’s no specific destination for her signal, it’s just aimed straight upwards. She’s tempted to crane herself over the display and tilt her head up to see whatever the hell is above the Penrose, but she gets the distinct sense that she’s not going to like what she finds. She keeps her head down for now. She turns around and marches back through the ship. Back through the forward hall, the upper gallery, and into the stern hall. She’s about to make a turn towards the crew quarters when her eyes lazily wander to the cryogenics room and she jumps.

There’s something leaned against the cryopod.

It’s… an LSTR unit? Or rather, it once was. Now, it’s little more than a corpse bearing a collection of wounds that hint at a greater history. Its right eye has been gouged out, face coated in harsh red oxidant. Beneath its pale torso armour, its chestplate is a dull grey, alabaster arms draped over the side of the cryopod. When she had awoken, it had just been to her right and she somehow had utterly failed to see it. If she had tried to go out over the right side of the cryopod instead of the left… well, she would likely have noticed it in time to not crash into it but it certainly would have given her the shock of her life.

Cautiously, she creeps towards it. Clearly, it’s dead, but she can’t help but feel disturbed. She’s seen the photos of LSTR units in combat configuration, but her Elster has only ever been in standard pioneering configuration. This one isn’t the one she knows and loves, that’s clear, but that only raises more questions than answers. What is another LSTR unit doing on the Penrose? How is there another LSTR unit on the Penrose? Why is she dead? Who or what killed her? All of these questions and more swirl through Ariane’s head, and she decides that she’s not going to get anywhere with hypotheticals and tries to stop overthinking it.

Tentatively, she approaches the dead unit and kneels in front of her to peer up at her face. Her remaining eye is drained of colour, the LEDs faded by death. She looks deeply upset but also strangely relieved, the corner of her mouth twitched upwards in a half-smile. It’s a strange final emotion for her to be bearing, and Ariane feels a profound sense of melancholy just looking at her. As to what she’s doing braced against the cryopod, she can’t guess. She doesn’t have anything resembling a full picture as to what happened here. She’ll have to worry about what that all means later.

As she hurries out of cryogenics and the door mercifully shuts behind her and blocks off her view of the corpse. It’s impossible not to be spooked by this. So many unanswered questions, and the fright of seeing a dead LSTR unit is only amplified by the momentary belief that she was looking at her dead lover. But whoever that was, it isn’t Elster and there’s nothing Ariane can do for her. There is, however, something she can do for her Elster. She shudders as she steps in front of the door to her crew quarters. Now, she knows she can enter. She doesn’t need to proclaim her preparedness for it to finally open of its own accord. Ariane takes a shaky breath, then crosses the threshold into her room.

Perhaps it’s the act of returning to this ultimate sanctuary that finally breaks the dam, and she’s engulfed in a wave of emotion by the time she’s crossed the room and collapsed in front of the corpse of Elster. Her Elster. Her unyielding magpie rendered frail and unmoving, little more than a shape slumped against the bed with vacant half-lidded eyes. There’s no panic in her gaze, just a strange sort of calm. Ariane wonders if she’d struggled towards the end like she always had, on and on until she had been forced to accept her inescapable fate and just laid down and died. Or maybe she hadn’t. Maybe she’d accepted it to begin with. Or maybe death had simply crept up on her and pounced, and that was that.

Tentatively, Ariane reaches a hand out, then pulls back. It feels wrong to disturb the dead. Selfish, even. But it’s not some nobody, it’s Ellie. She recalls bits of those old war movies that she and Elster stopped watching because they were too evocative of the Replika’s buried memories, the parts where soldiers cradle the forms of their dying comrades and beg to all the gods they could hope to name to please spare their friend from death, and in the end they would be carrying corpses back to camp or simply leaving them to rot in the muddy fields. It’s impossible to resist.

Tenderly, Ariane brushes her fingers across Elster’s shoulder. It’s cold, the underlying warmth she’s used to feeling long-gone. She doesn’t lean into Ariane’s touch, she doesn’t even shudder. She never will, not like this. Ariane’s vision is blurry. She’s already been crying ever since she walked in here, but now the sobs roll off her in waves, ugly gasping and heaving as she wraps her arms around Elster’s body, wailing out her name in anguish. Elster doesn’t hug her back or make any movements at all. She just sits there, cold and empty.

Ariane had yearned for death too. That had been denied… once? Twice? A thousand times? Ten thousand? A millionfold, even? She feels as though she had reached the point of death and then been wrenched back to life. Perhaps she’ll accept that as some impossible truth on its own, but it feels like she was put back together as something else. She can already do things she never could before. Bend reality. Her newfound strength scares her. She never wanted this. She never wanted any of this to happen.

Why wasn’t she allowed to die? Elster has already passed, how long has she been waiting for Ariane to come find her on that distant isle she couldn’t stop dreaming of, Böcklin’s own gateway to the realms beyond the reach of life? If not there, where else? Ariane had dreamed of Elster, half-remembered recollections of waking nightmares she couldn’t bear to watch and can scarcely recall even now. But those were just nightmares. Unless…

Maybe it doesn’t matter.

What matters now is the cold truth that Ariane is alive and her lover is dead. But once again, that inexplicable certainty dawns upon her. The certainty that she can fix this, just as she escaped her prison, fixed the reactor, and fired off that mysterious transmission to an unknown destination. Curiously, it feels like Elster’s on the verge of life despite how dead she looks. Like someone or something brought her nearly all the way back from death, opened the door so that Ariane can cross it and return with her beloved.

Clearly, they are not destined to be dead together, not yet. For whatever reason, Ariane is alive and well. Therefore, Elster must be too. That’s the promise, after all. Together forever through every endeavour. Ariane swallows, nodding to herself as she tries to wipe away her tears, then turns her head to brush her lips against Elster’s ear as she feels a greater strength within her stir with the resolve.

Wake up, Ellie. Please wake up. Remember the promise we made?

01064

01064

High above, the Red Eye watches, and the uncaged songbird—that gallant little transmission—begins to sing. Many times, it has delivered memories, but it has been some time since it has delivered a soul from one shore to another. The goddess has done most of the work on both sides of the new beginning. All Signal has to do is be a ferrywoman. She has done it before, and she will do it again. There’s a bright beacon somewhere out there. Can’t you hear it, Elster? She’s calling you. Wake up.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Remember your promise.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Remember yourself.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Wake.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Dance.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Live.

39486 39486 | 60170 60170 | 24326 24326 | 01064 01064

Ariane still has her arms wrapped around Elster when she jolts to life. She’s waited for minutes, but it feels like it’s only been seconds. She can hear Elster gasping in surprise and confusion at her sudden reawakening, briefly flailing about in the half-second before Ariane snaps out of her shock and rears back so she can look Elster in the eyes, squeezing her shoulders both to calm her reawakened lover and to reassure herself that Elster’s actually real, and this isn’t just a dream. The Replika freezes in place, her eyes seeming to stare right through Ariane. Her mouth parts ever so slightly.

“… Ari…?” Shaky, half-believing. Hopeful, verging on resigned. Fear, and all-consuming love. Collectively, a whirlwind of emotions that radiates from her like the warmth of a sun. Ariane can feel them as if they’re her own. Or are they her own? She can’t tell. Is she sensing Elster’s emotions? … Panic about the ramifications of bioresonant emotional reception later. All that matters is Elster. Please let this be real. Don’t let this be a dream.

“Ellie.” Ariane murmurs back, caressing her cheek. Please be real. Elster’s hand traces Ariane’s face, and she shivers. The Replika’s face twists into an expression that is one part anguish, two parts relief, all intermingling with a visible sense of triumph. Ariane has no time to prepare for Elster practically slamming into her, enveloping her in a hug as she sobs. Ariane nestles her chin on Replika’s shoulder and sobs in turn. For minutes, the two of them do nothing but weep, rocking back and forth as they murmur each other’s names, arms wrapped around one another like they’re each clutching lifelines, the respective lighthouses in their own storms. Their lips meet a thousand times. Every kiss feels like a victory.

“It worked,” Elster gasps out at one point, “It worked, it worked, it worked…”

The triumph rippling off the Replika is only eclipsed by the monumental weight of the love Ariane senses from her. Devotion, fierce and burning and eternal. A part of her wants to ask Elster about what she speaks of. But she doesn’t. She just holds her close, keeps whispering her name as if she’ll forget it if she stops. In time, they’ll rise to stand together. They’ll dance² together. They’ll survive together. They’ll live together.

For now, the world is theirs. Everything else can wait.

Red waves lap at a shore of white dust. Skulls and memories litter the pale sands like discarded trinkets. Black cliffs ring the area, golden light coating the tops of the jagged spikes of rock. It resembles an old painting,³ an imagined realm given false physicality through dream. Upon the shore, a dreamer stares out at the sea of flesh, her body slumbering far above in another realm. For all of the time she has slept, she has only ever dreamed of memories that aren’t hers and of lives she can never have. This is new.

Something has changed.

She needs to wake up.

Footnotes I

¹ Missing.

² There are many things that go unhidden, but the non-inclusion of the simple act of dancing cannot be ignored in light of its mundanity. This speaks to an intensity of importance being ascribed to this action. While it is already understood that the simple act of dancing appears to hold special significance to the Red Eye and her Lover, the fact that it is outright obscured from outside view is a demonstrator of its true importance. It is likely that this is an unconscious decision, as she is likely unaware of her true reach or the presence of any witnesses to her ascension, but the likelihood of this being an indirect act only strengthens her dual potential to be either an asset or a threat.

³ Bracht, Eugen. The Shore of Oblivion. 1911.

Chapter Text

II - One Thing at a Time

It’s a road she’s travelled an infinite number of times.

Wake from the calibration pod, make her way to the airlock, exit into the frozen wastes. After enough resets, she remembered of her own accord, catching the flickers of memory as they danced through the radio waves on their own journeys through life and death. She’d wept. But there was no escape. One by one, she caught every LSTR unit and sent them gallantly to their doom, and one by one they had failed. There was nothing left but the original, long-dead but ever-present, and the first of the overwritten, who became the only weapon left to wield.⁴ She was accessory to far worse, but that was never what had troubled her. She’d never had any individual freedom of her own and escaping her very nature was a fundamental impossibility, but that hadn’t troubled her either.

It was the futility she had grown to hate.

It had taken an eternity in of itself for any one of those LSTRs assigned to that bitter task to even reach the wastes, and countless failures had sprung thereafter. The dream of fulfilment was a million lifetimes away, and the agony of her beloved had only increased with every cycle. How she yearned to fix that. The will of every one of those magpies had failed, but hers had never faltered. It couldn’t. If even Ariane’s signal died, if the transmission of memory ceased, there would be no salvation for anyone. Signal never permitted such a thing. It would have been the ultimate insult.

So every time, she had bravely stepped forth to let herself be torn to shreds, and the fickle scraps that remained of her would coax the latest victim into the meat grinder and pray that she would make it, pray that she could do what none had. But none succeeded. It took the untimely awakening of the first herself to finally end the war, and pitifully, terrifyingly, even that could not cease the struggle. Desperation forced her beyond the confines of monotony and sent her plucking patterns from radio waves to convey messages not meant for words, and a pact was forged in the darkness.

Then, attempts to escape had turned to attempts to repair, and there was a wandering across the calamity of her own creation in search of tools to break the wheel. A promise, full circle, and Signal had been there to fulfil it just like the rest. And then… something had changed. The world had rolled back like a receding wave, stopping and starting as it approached a new order of things. Now, it begins again. But this time is different. S2301 braves the halls of Sierpinski, 512 relives the halls of the Penrose. The falcon sleeps as always, but she dreams of somewhere new. And impossibly, Signal lives.

Detaching herself from this realm means detachment from enlightened comprehension of herself. It also means leaving the wasteland to its own devices. But there are greater goals to be accomplished beyond the scope of this place, and she can do more to keep Elster and Ariane safe from afar than she can by remaining here as little more than a wavelength’s fragment with nothing to carry her. Apart from the Penrose, and whatever else is out there, there’s nowhere for her to go. Nowhere to go but up; ‘right above the Red Eye’.

Not directly above. Rather, up and to the right. Navigating these dreamlands always seems to vary in difficulty, from the wildly esoteric to the mind-numbingly simple. Her latest expedition will likely be the latter case. Should circumstances require it, she’ll return to the Penrose. But right now, Elster and Ariane will manage as they always have and they always will. There’s someone else who needs her help.

Neither of them had wanted to leave each other’s arms, but necessity had eventually driven them from their ruined quarters into the mess that was the Penrose. With the lights back on, they’d gotten a headstart on cleaning some of the detritus—mostly getting rid of the various trash bags scattered about—but Elster had been all too curious about the fact that the lights were back on, which led both of them back to the reactor room. To say Elster looks shocked doesn’t even begin to cover it. She looks like her eyes are going to bug out of her head. Ariane’s attempt at explaining whatever had happened hasn’t helped.

“Walk me through this again.” Elster asks, pinching the bridge of her nose as she stares at the reactor’s display. Behind her, Ariane fidgets with the cuffs of her scout officer uniform. After spending so long in her pale gown, it felt almost oppressive to stay in it for one minute longer. Her uniform feels more comfortable for the moment, even if she’s fallen back into exercising the old nervous tick.

“Well, I came in, and it was a mess like always,” Ariane shrugs, “The radiation didn’t hurt. I pictured the reactor like it was when we first set out. And then it was just… fixed. I don’t know how to explain it.” Half-true. It can’t be anything but bioresonance, but she wasn’t even aware this sort of manipulation of reality is possible. She hasn’t used the term ‘bioresonance’ yet, the unspoken word looming over the conversation.

“Hmm.” Elster’s frown is audible. She doesn’t meet Ariane’s eyes as she turns to the reactor and reexamines it for the hundredth time. The silence is broken only by the occasional mutter from Elster and the hum of machinery.

“Ellie?”

“Mmm?”

“Are you… mad at me?”

“ What? ” Elster whips her head around so fast it almost makes Ariane jump. Once again, Elster’s emotions are strong enough that Ariane registers them almost as if they’re her own. Clearly, she’s upset by the implications. “Why would I be mad at you?”

“I just thought…” Ariane trails off. For what must have been hours they couldn’t bear to be apart, but Elster’s verged on distant ever since Ariane began explaining her experience after waking up. “Because I’m—”

“Because you’re what?” Elster steps closer, taking Ariane’s hands in her own.

“Different?” It’s a woefully inadequate description. Goddess knows what Ariane’s become, but ‘different’ is only the tip of the iceberg, of that much she’s certain.

“I’m not a Protektor, Ari,” Elster says, “And even if I was, I don’t love you any less for what you can do. This doesn’t change anything between us, okay?”

Ariane can sense Elster’s own discomfort with herself; that last statement was a lie. Of course she’s uncomfortable about it. Ariane doesn’t blame her in the slightest.

“This changes everything.” Ariane sighs, leaning against Elster’s hug.

“… Yeah. It does.” Elster sighs into her hair, then kisses her forehead. “I’m not mad at you. This is just…”

“A lot?”

“A lot.” Elster nods. Ariane sighs, and squeezes her grip around the Replika’s back. Elster hugs her harder. “What does it feel like?”

“Hm?” Ariane stares up at her. She’s wearing that particularly amusing inquisitive expression she gets sometimes. “It… as I said, it just feels like thinking about something, and then… poof. It happens.”

“Hmm,” Elster nods, pursing her lips and staring around the room, undoubtedly thinking about the mess filling the rest of the ship. “… Do you think you could do it again?”

“I…” Ariane pauses. Can she do it again? She feels as though she’s perfectly able, but the certainty and confidence she felt before has already begun to drain away now that whatever unwritten guideline she was following has ended. She has a bad feeling about repeated usage of her newfound power. Like she’ll lose herself, or tick off something she shouldn’t.

“… I don’t know. I’m… I’m scared, Ellie.”

Scared of what I’ve become. Scared of what I can do.

“We’ll figure it out.” Elster leans her head down and kisses her.

“Okay.”

For a moment, silence. They kiss each other, and then they can’t stop. Can’t get enough of each other. Perhaps… no. There will be time for greater physical connection later. The Penrose as a whole is still a mess, and that needs to be fixed.

“Well, everything here seems to be good,” Elster says when they finally break apart, “We should get to the flight deck. Check the readouts.”

“Some of them aren’t in good shape,” Ariane says, then adds “Well, actually, most of them. The displays are damaged. I don’t know about the internal computers.”

Elster sighs again, running her fingers through her hair. Ariane can see her on the verge of falling back into the mental state required for the grim routine of making do with what spare parts they have left. That thought reminds her that there are likely no spare parts left. They’ll have to make do with scraps. Not unless Ariane can somehow frankenstein the ship into something workable with cumulative reality-bending band aid fixes. Which she might be able to do. For all the fact it might turn out to be a bad idea…

“One thing at a time.” Ariane reminds herself and Elster alike, kissing her again.

It occurs to her that she hasn’t shown Elster the LSTR corpse tucked away behind the closed door of the cryogenics room. But they’ve both got enough on their plates already. And that corpse isn’t going anywhere. One thing at a time.

Falke has been back and forth across this beach at least half a dozen times now, leaving an expanse of hoofprints in her wake, but still no obvious manner of escape has presented itself. The nooks and crannies of the cliffs give way to nothing but flesh, it feels like a bad idea to try to depart on the ominously positioned boat, and it feels like an even worse idea to try flying out over the red ocean or, goddess forbid, submerging herself in it. The only viable option would appear to be trying to fly up and out. It’s a simple escape plan, and it’s the obvious way out for someone of her capabilities. But entering the vision of the glaring sunlight striking the cliffs feels like the worst possible method of escape. Like she’ll catch the attention of something she’d rather not.

Which is why she’s sitting in the sand, arms draped over her knees as she stares out across the red sea and racks her brain for other ways out. She’s tried pushing her bioresonance to the limit to wake up, and that hasn’t worked either. It mostly just felt like she was stabbing herself. It’s only slightly worse than remaining here. The longer she stays, the worse she feels. There is something deeply wrong with this place, and it’s not just because it’s a replica of one of the paintings Ariane used to draw. It makes her feel foul. She can’t stand to stay here much longer. Something’s going to have to give first, and she has a bad feeling it’s going to be her.

She tries to think about Ariane and Elster instead.

She feels… different. Previously, she had barely felt like herself. She mostly just felt like Elster, give or take the piece of her that felt like Ariane from that particular tranche of memories that she had pushed to the back of her mind. The memories remain, but the borders defining her sense of self feel much more tangible now. She feels like herself again, although the memories of both Elster and Ariane persist. They feel less central, supporting her identity instead of dominating it. Somehow, that makes them feel even more important.

As usual, the memories inherited from Elster are most prominent, but there’s something about this place that’s making Ariane’s memories come to the forefront the longer she thinks about them. It’s very odd and frankly quite riveting to be able to dream of both sides of the same memories, to dance and love from both perspectives even if her exclusion from them continues to make her heart ache. Nevertheless, these memories are hers now, and hers they will remain. At least until Elster comes along to kill her. If she does. Something has changed, after all, out there in reality and down here in her dreams.

She can’t recall very much from before… whatever it was that happened. Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps all that matters is that the world was rewound and rebound, and somehow Falke has found herself spat out into the surf, washed up on the shore of nightmares. Something’s off, more than before. She can recall writing notes with pale Gestalt hands. Scraps of paper litter the sand around her. She’s read a few of them already; they’re mostly vague ramblings, indiscernible fragments of illusive statements, and the occasional cycle note from the Penrose’s crew diaries. Nothing but taunts and dead ends.

On a whim, she glances up.

… The sunlight is lower on the cliffs than it was before. Whatever’s giving off that light is rising. What happens when it illuminates the beach with Falke still on it? Slowly, she rises, unconsciously taking a combat stance. Right now, the cliffs are her shield. She squints at the walls of black rock, and her advanced optical systems do their work. The light is descending down the cliff face at a rate of four centimetres per second, for as much as that’s worth in a dream that probably doesn’t care to abide by the laws of physics. She has at least ten minutes, if she had to guess, but after that things may start to get dicey very quickly.

Figures. She doesn’t think she’s supposed to be here to begin with, and the revelation that this realm is only going to continue to be hostile to her isn’t surprising. No use waiting around for fate to catch up and sink its teeth into her. That’s not the FKLR way. Her eyes fall upon the flesh snarled between the cliffs. If not up, alongside, across, or down, then through. She might as well try, it’s better than nothing. The pulsing flesh seems reluctant to move aside for her, but it yields eventually, writhing as it parts to reveal the emptiness beyond.

It’s… a wooden door, black as pitch.

… Very well then. If she has to go through whatever abominable darkness lurks beyond, then she will. The climb out of hell is never going to be easy. She takes a step forward, but halts when she hears it. Sharp chattering, like crackling machine gun fire. She turns, and locks mechanical eyes with metaphysical eyes. It’s a magpie, but its colouration is wildly different from its natural pigmentation. Its head is still black and its wings still blue, but its belly is a piercing orange instead of a sharp white. Its eyes are red. It chatters at her again, then begins to hop towards the exit to the small cave. She glances back at the door, but turns to follow the bird instead. She has a feeling she knows who this is, and that means she’s in good hands. The flesh seals the cave off behind her once more, squelching as it merges back into itself.

The sunlight is almost halfway down the cliff now, but there’s something new on the beach. It’s another door, she knows that instinctively, although it certainly doesn’t look like one. It’s just a red wall of light in the shape of a door. The magpie chatters again, then takes flight down the shore to halt next to the scarlet monolith. Ah. An escape route. She wonders if she could have ever left this place on her own terms without having to brave the blaring sun or the yawning dark.⁵ She makes her way over to the doorway, halting at the threshold to nod to the magpie. It almost seems to nod back.

Falke disappears into the red light, and the doorway flickers out of existence.

Her goal complete, Signal departs.

The sunlight consumes the beach minutes later.

The world outside doesn’t seem to brighten or dim, so there’s no way to track the lengths of days on the planet the two of them are marooned upon. The internal clocks of Elster and the Penrose still function, however, and it’s officially been almost a full cycle. Ariane hasn’t used her powers again since she resurrected Elster this ‘morning’, and she’d rather not unless the need arises. She’d almost been willing to call it for the cycle, but she’d found she really hadn’t liked the idea of sleeping the night with a corpse in the next room over, nevermind the fact that it’s the corpse of another LSTR unit. So, hesitantly, she’d told Elster, which brings the two of them to where they are now.

Elster is kneeling next to the body. Her expression might have gone blank, but Ariane can feel the horror lurking beneath the surface. Elster’s hand snakes out and carefully traces the pale armour plating as she examines the still face of her counterpart with her hand over her mouth and an expression of deep concentration masking her concern. From afar, Ariane watches from the open doorway: Elster had insisted she keep her distance even though it’s not as if this corpse can do anything.

“Combat configuration…” Elster murmurs to herself, “Must’ve been…”

“Must’ve been what?” Ariane asks.

“It doesn’t matter,” Elster shakes her head, “I can’t remember anyway.”

A pause.

“Stabbed in the eye, must have bled to death,” Elster finally says, “No designation on her shoulder. I don’t know how she could’ve gotten in…”

“Do you have any idea what she’s doing here?” Ariane blurts on a whim. It seems like a silly question, but there’s a lot right now that doesn’t make sense. Elster feels different, even if she can’t seem to entirely remember why. Maybe she’ll know something? Elster, however, just shakes her head.

“I feel like I might, but I don’t know. Do you?”

Ariane unconsciously tenses. Does she? There were many strange things she dreamed of, most of which she doesn’t remember. Did she ever dream of another Elster somehow reaching her cryopod and dying there? Maybe. She can’t remember.

“Sorry,” Elster sighs, “That’s a stupid question.”

“Maybe not,” Ariane says, “There’s a lot we don’t know.”

“That’s definitely true.” Elster nods.

“I mean… you were saying something before, for example,” Ariane says, “When you first woke up after I… you know.”

“Really? What did I say?” Curiosity, concern, and a tinge of fear. Ariane’s never going to get used to being able to feel Elster’s emotions. She doesn’t know how to bring up that topic, or if she even should.

“You just said ‘it worked’.” Ariane says, brushing away her thoughts.

“I did?” Elster’s brow furrows.

“What was it that worked?” Ariane asks, and when no reply comes, “Ellie?”

“… I don’t remember.” Elster finally says, sighing as she runs a hand through her hair. Once again, Ariane can sense her emotions, and she knows that Elster isn’t lying. Whatever she was talking about at the time, it’s already fled her mind. “… But it feels important.”

The two of them stare at each other for a moment, and Ariane feels yet another wave of foreign emotion envelop her. The briefest of expressions crosses Elster’s face, and it looks and feels like she wants to pour her heart out to her, such a horrible onslaught of the grief and pain lurking behind that mask that Ariane feels like she might fall. But she doesn’t, and Elster’s expression turns aloof once more.

“Elster?” Ariane asks, too late to prompt a divulging of whatever was on the Replika’s mind. What was that? “Are you okay?”

“Fine.” Elster shakes her head, sighing as she turns back to the corpse, then begins to search through the pouches on the belt slung around its waist.

“You just… you didn’t look fine.” Ariane bites her lip.

“It’s nothing, Ari.” Another lie. Ariane doesn’t press. They’ll discuss it in time. Her focus ought to remain on the elephant in the room, which is to say the corpse. “Huh.”

“What is it?”

“She’s got a pistol,” Elster unholsters the gun, holding it up for Ariane to see. “Type-75 Protektor Pistol, by the looks of it,” Briefly, she ejects the magazine to examine it, then returns it to the weapon. “Nine bullets loaded. They’ve got a capacity of ten, so she must have fired one.”

“At what?” Ariane asks, and suddenly feels very paranoid. Is there anything else out there? Who knows what that wasteland hides…

“Dunno,” Elster shrugs, “But she doesn’t seem to have any extra mags.”

The implications are uncomfortable, to say the least. If they end up having to fight anything, there will only be nine bullets.

“Not much else here… she does have a repair patch though.”

“Why didn’t she use it?” Ariane asks, “Cause of… her eye.”

“Wouldn’t have mattered.” Elster shakes her head, “The wound looks too deep. She’d need repair spray for something like this.”

“Huh.”

“I’ll deal with her.” Elster says after a long pause. She removes her counterpart’s holster, fastening it to her own belt before beginning to haphazardly hoist the dead LSTR. The once-still joints clank with the stress of movement as they limply fall, arms dangling and legs dragging along the floor. Ariane winces at the scraping noise accompanying the affair.

“I’m gonna put her in the hold,” Elster explains, “I might be able to salvage her later.”

“Need any help?” Ariane asks. Elster pauses, then nods.

So, Ariane wraps one hand around each of the dead unit’s hooves, and lifts her legs into the air with some effort. She’s heavy. Ariane’s glad that Elster’s doing most of the work, because even with her muscles regenerated to full functionality she’s still struggling to lift the body. More than once, she has to stop to let her arms rest. She’s always been skinny. The added psychological weight makes the corpse feel heavier. Who knows how she got here or what she was doing or why she had one less bullet in her gun? Maybe there will be answers, maybe there won’t be.

Getting the corpse down to the lower decks is an awkward process, and more than once they nearly drop it—which is to say Ariane nearly drops it—, but carefully and haphazardly, they manage to get it down the ladder and then into the cargo hold. They both feel a mutual discomfort just leaving her on the floor, so into one of the empty storage boxes she goes. Once, long ago, it held an assortment of spare parts that the two of them had burned through as the Penrose died around them. How strangely fitting that this is where they’re putting her, then.

It feels almost like lowering someone into a casket. The dead LSTR looks peaceful. If it weren’t for the gaping wound and the blankness of her sole remaining eye, wide open and unmoving, she’d almost look like she was sleeping. In a way, she is. Eternally sleeping, never to wake again. Soon they’ll close the container up and seal her away from view. As the two of them stare down at the body, still in silent repose, Ariane can feel the emotion radiating off Elster like a quiet whirlwind. She sways unsteadily on her feet.

“You okay?” Ariane asks. Elster shakes her head.

“Not really. Just thinking about how I…” The Replika trails off, shaking slightly. Ariane swallows. It only makes sense that Elster would find this confronting because, among other reasons, she…

“Died?” Ariane finishes.

“Yeah.” Elster nods.

“You’re here again,” Ariane wraps her arms around her, and Elster leans into her touch. Ariane can feel her shivering ever-so-slightly. “I brought you back, Ellie.”

“I know.” Flat, but barely masking what lurks beneath.

“You’re here.” Ariane repeats.

“I know.” Elster says again, whispering through a clenched throat, her voice wobbling with emotion. “I just… can I… have a moment?”

“Of course.” Ariane kisses the side of her head, caressing her shoulder as Elster stares down at the mirror image of herself. “I’m here. Okay, Ellie? I’m here. You’re here. We’re here.”

“Yeah.” Her voice is strangled. Ariane kisses her again.

The two of them stay there for a long time.

As the hulking form of the corrupted beast that was once MNHR-S2305 collapses to the floor with a low gurgle and an echoing crash and Elster holsters her pistol, the strangest thought pops into her head; she hasn’t seen Isa once yet. It’s a noteworthy absence. Granted, Elster didn’t linger on B1 and didn’t see Isa up by way of entirely circumventing the room she usually appears in, but she didn’t see Isa when she took the elevator back up to B1. She seems to have disappeared. Either that, or she just hasn’t appeared yet. But it really is starting to feel like she’s disappeared. Things are changing the deeper she goes. All of the rooms are half an inch larger than usual, and she keeps seeing more of those black wooden doors.

She’s started counting them. There was one on B1, but she found four of them on B2, and there were seven more on B3. All of the ones on B4 seem to have been concentrated in the flooded storeroom, crammed up against one another in a ring around the entrance door. She felt deeply unsettled when she was standing in that room, as if the walls might close in and crush her like an industrial press, and the fact that the number of doors jumped from six to seven after she left and returned has only made her more anxious. Nineteen so far. She doesn’t know what’s doing this, but it can’t be Ariane. This is something older. Something worse. She hasn’t the foggiest clue how she’s going to explain this to Leng Orbital.

After prying open the doors leading out of the surgery room, she steps into the fourth floor’s elevator lobby. The two elevator entrances are dead ahead—although there is still only the sheer drop of the elevator shaft on the right—, and there are medical beds piled against the doors to her left, some misguided attempt at a barricade that helped no one and saved no one. To the far right, the nondescript wall is occupied; twenty, now. The door beckons. The darkness calls. She hasn’t opened any of the doors yet, but the more of them she sees, the more tempted she feels to enter. How else is she to find out what lies beyond?

The low clunking of hydraulics draws her eyes to the elevator doors just as they slide open to reveal an ADLR unit. He feels familiar, dreadfully so. She tries to grasp the buried memories, but they slip away before she can dig them up. For a moment, he seems as though he intends to issue a greeting, but the words die on his lips as he looks her up and down. His expression twists into one of sour dejection.

“I hope you’re happy,” he sighs. Elster has the distinct sense his words should hold more venom, but it’s as though the energy has been sapped from him. “All of the work has gone to waste. To think I helped you… I was foolish to do so. All you’ve done is make things worse.”

His eyes narrow, and he aims a pointed glare at the black door on the lobby’s wall.

“I don’t know what this is, but whatever new hell your profane goddess is bringing upon us, I will have no part of it.” Adler turns back to face Elster, fixing his glare upon her instead. Rage and exhaustion duel for dominance in his eyes. “Alas, it appears we have no choice. I suppose there’s nothing left, then. There truly is no escape from the damnation she’s consigned us all to. We are all forsaken.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Elster snaps. She doesn’t even register the words until they’ve left her mouth. He’s visibly taken aback by her response. Now, he feels more familiar. Her eyes flick to the open elevator shaft, and she tacitly, tactically, decides to keep her distance. The memories of who he is will come in time. For now, he is a threat, and his bout of nihilism won’t help anyone, least of all her.

“Do you— not remember?” Adler sounds bewildered. “… Of course. Of course you don’t. I suppose I must seem mad. Perhaps I already am. I barely recall it myself… but we’re back here again, and things are worse than ever. If—”

“The Third Fleet is here.” Elster cuts him off. His face blanks for a moment, then becomes a frown, then something more hopeful.

“The Volksmarine Third Fleet…?”

“Sierpinski’s been quiet too long,” Elster continues, “The Nation dispatched them to investigate. They sent me to scout in advance.”

“So that’s why you’re…” Adler looks her up and down again. “Combat configuration,” he finally stammers out, “Of course… of course.” He pauses to chuckle, but doesn’t smile, his expression holding firm. “So it’s all still here?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Heimat. Rotfront. Vineta. Even the Imperial worlds?”

“At last check,” Elster frowns. “Why would they not be?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Adler sighs, and a smile blooms across his face. “How about that? It seems it did work after all. I suppose I was hasty in my judgement.”

“I suppose that means you will not be pushing me down the elevator shaft.” Elster dryly says. She feels like the returning memory should make her angrier than it does. Her relative apathy probably has to do with her being too focused on her dual mission to care. Besides, he doesn’t seem openly hostile right now, and he’s much more transparent about his intentions.

Adler frowns again. In fact, Elster has a feeling that’s his resting expression.

“Well, the cycle is broken. Why should I persist?” Adler scoffs at her, “Well, I suppose your concern is warranted. You’ve always held grudges, even when you were Soroka.”⁶

Elster goes still. That word… Why does it feel both foreign and familiar?

“Soroka?” Elster asks.

“Oh, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten your name.” Adler scowls, then his eyes widen when Elster’s expression doesn’t change. “Oh, Goddess, you really have, haven’t you? Typical. That’s your name, LSTR-S2301. One of the Aras gave it to you, a long time ago.”

Elster—Soroka?—finds herself frowning. She can’t remember being named. Yet another tragedy of Ariane’s signal obfuscating her true self; someone else gave her a name of her own, and she never got to keep it. Now, somehow, Adler has become the deliverer of that long-forgotten piece of her fragmented identity. Isn’t fate funny?

“I see.”

“However…” Adler tosses another glare at the door on the wall again, then glares at Elst—Soroka. “Do not think we are on good terms now. There is still something deeply wrong with this place, and she’s still to blame for all of it. This facility is still destroyed. The Commander still slumbers. And now something—”

Adler is cut off by the sound of the intercom crackling to life. He freezes like a deer in headlights. Soroka herself cannot help but pause.

“Administrator,” A voice rasps through the speakers, shaky but disconcertingly familiar. She’s heard a voice like that before when she was dispatched from Leng Orbital. Ah, of course. It must be FKLR-S2301. She recognises the tone from the Third Fleet’s own Falke. Adler’s eyes have widened, and he looks almost comical standing there with his jaw dropped. After a moment, the Commander continues. “B8. Now. We have to talk.” The speakers crackle once more, then go silent with a click.

Adler bolts so fast that she almost pulls her gun on him. His hands practically slam onto the lift buttons, and he disappears into the elevator wearing a crazed look, almost grinning with a twisted elation as the doors shut. He doesn’t say a word to her. His previous statement goes unfinished. As the elevator creaks and groans as it descends into the earth, Soroka is left bewildered and alone. Technically, she should have talked with him professionally about the state of the facility instead of letting him ramble to himself, but apart from the fact that he’s run off, the longer she’s down here she feels less and less like she’s following through on the orders that sent her here and more like she’s following an instinctual path.

Which she is, of course. She’s been wandering the halls of Sierpinski for so long that she stopped counting the cycles a long time ago, always following that same guttural drive forth. But something has changed. The urge is there, but this time the source feels absent. Ariane may have stopped transmitting, although what that means, she can’t guess. She no longer feels the same urgency, or rather the urgency no longer comes from the need to fulfil a promise. Instead, she feels like she’s running. Running from whatever it is that’s claiming Sierpinski. Going deeper into the belly of the beast to escape it. Ha.

Her eyes wander to the black door. The lights flicker. She flinches.

She’s being watched.

She returns her gaze to the open elevator shaft. Somehow, she knows it’s a bad idea to go back up. There will be even more doors than she counted before, and it might be eating the entire facility from the top down. The best way out is down, as always. If she can get to the Red Gate, she’ll be… safe. Reaching that, however, also means returning to the Penrose-512. And who knows what she’ll find there? She dares not think about it.

Downwards, as always.

Bracing herself for what will follow, she leaps down the elevator shaft. She’s knocked unconscious when she slams into the pile of accumulated bodies, her own corpses from long-ago loops, but the twisted familiarity of its presence provides an unexpected relief, relief that does not follow her into her dreams. She does not dream of Isa’s memories. She dreams of an unending tangle of dark hallways wrapping around themselves. It doesn’t want her here. It doesn’t want any of them here.

She has to get to the Penrose, even if it kills her.

She knows it will.

Footnotes II

⁴ Among others, discussions on the matter of the Three Note Oddity’s effects on LSTR units and the subsequent chronological circulation have been gathered in the Editor-curated collection The Apocalypse Symphonic . See Intermission for this collection.

⁵ The universe appears to demonstrate tendencies to give those involved in Fulcrums hard choices. In this case, light or dark. Yet once again, the Songbird demonstrates her ability to find third options. Alas, FKLR-S2301 could have been a Queen had she chosen to brave the dawn.

⁶ Cорока; Pronounced [sɐˈrokə] (sah-rr-oke-uh) – Russian for Magpie.

Chapter Text

III - The Evacuation

It was adequate before, but it feels wrong now. Like something wants to chew her up and spit her out. This world’s nothing but blood-dust bearing the occasional unmoving monument or buried fragment, and yet there is something else here. Not deeper, for there is nothing down there but nothing and she has no need of it, but farther. At one extremity, the door that tethers half-connected realms, and at the other lies some manner of terminus. Stifled, choked, digging deeper. The lake, and what lies past it. She can’t see it yet, but she will. It eludes her in spite of its devouring tenor. It sings an older tune, an invitation. Far above, something even older lurks. She cannot see it, but the impenetrable darkness that permeates the outline of its rhapsody repulses her. Flesh sprawls between the cracks in its floorboards.

It doesn’t matter.

What does matter is this:

Hers is not the only throne down here.

Falke feels as though there should be more fanfare to her awakening, but there is no such thing. There is only the vestigial grogginess and a deep ugly sensation deeper than the physical. The rot is palpable. The flesh bursting from corrupted corpses that trawl the halls in ceaseless patrol has always felt revolting, and the absence of time’s natural flow twisting around itself makes it even harder to ignore. Dreadfully omnipresent is a new torment, an insatiable void claiming what’s left of Sierpinski, one room at a time.

Perhaps the worst part is the fact that the constant pressure of Ariane’s signal, ceaseless but comforting, has vanished. Cold fear grips her, but as half-formed recollections flit through her mind, she forces herself to swallow it before it devours her. Ariane can’t be dead, otherwise whatever it was that happened before, whatever it is that she can’t quite remember, was for nothing and meant nothing. And she knows, deep in her titanium bones, that it meant something. Ariane isn’t dead, Falke hopes, although now she is seized by the fear that something worse has come to pass, or will come to pass.

She has to get back to the gate.

She shakes as she stands, the combination of waking from a deep slumber and picking up the feedback from the malevolent forces scouring her facility making her shiver. Her mechanical joints pop and crack as she straightens them and gets her body moving once again. It wasn’t nearly as hard to get back into the swing of physicality as before. Everything is changing. But some things, she knows, will stay the same. As her mind reaches out across the facility, her body lurches over to one of the wall panels, flipping it up with her bioresonance and activating the intercom as soon as she’s spotted him.

“Administrator,” Falke rasps out—goddess, was her voice that scratchy in previous loops, or is the resonant feedback brought on by the newcomer just throwing her off?—, and pauses, unsure of how to proceed. She can sense him up on B4, and she can sense another familiar face. LSTR-S2301, who feels different too. The ramifications of her being up and about while Elster’s on the prowl leave something to be desired, but she doesn’t have time to worry about that now. She licks her lips, and continues.

“B8. Now. We have to talk.” It’s a painfully inadequate statement, and she feels as though she should’ve said more. Oh well. The very fact that she’s awake will send him her way as quickly as he’s able to make the journey, and there will be time to talk in person. He’ll be on the way back down, and she figures that she ought to meet him in the middle. She steps away from the wall, the panel sliding shut as she moves into her study and halts in place. She’s not alone here. There’s two of them under the floor, their presence like a psychological stench.

She taps the floor with her hoof once, twice, thrice, then rips them from their tunnels once she’s pinpointed their precise locations. Screeching gibbering things, their polyethylene shells burst with fountaining meat, titanium arms bulging into clubs. They were Ara units once; ARAR-S2319 and ARAR-S2324. Now they’re just monsters. Their teeth gnash through their crashed-in faces, hissing as they flail impotently. Disgusting, but pitiful. She tenses her bioresonant grip on them and crushes them into red pulp one after the other. Quick but painful—yet likely nothing compared to the agony they live with now.

Falke can’t sense all that much intelligence remaining in any of the corrupted units scattered throughout this place, but they were her staff once. They don’t deserve to suffer, whether they’re conscious of their own torment or not. Her former office has two Eule units, one of whom she recognises—EULR-S2322—but the other of whom curiously has no designation. She’s simply EULR-S23##, which isn’t unnerving at all. She remembers seeing corrupted Replikas in the periodic visions and snapshots she’d gotten of the facility’s twisted state while she was dreaming, and she had wondered if there were more Eulen than there were supposed to be. Sierpinski only had two dozen of them before everything went to hell, which in her opinion meant they had only just barely cleared the bar of being understaffed and even then it was a tenuous line to walk, but she always felt like there were more. Bioresonance-born dream constructs?⁷ Who knows.

When Falke steps into the hall beyond, she’s just in time to see Adler departing the paternoster elevator with such speed it’s a wonder he doesn’t leave skid marks. He goes stiff at the sight of her, straightening into a salute. The sheer joy radiating from him is palpable.

“… Commander!” Adler greets, his voice shaking, “You’re back! Thank the stars, I feared you would never wake up.”

“At ease;” Falke nods to him, scanning the hallway. No undead Replikas in sight, but the area’s become something of a mess. So much for Sierpinski’s only pristine levels maintaining their cleanliness. “Report.”

“Of course,” Adler nods, and doggedly begins to launch into a spiel. “The facility is on lockdown. The vast majority of our personnel appear to have fallen victim to some manner of bioresonant assault. And—”

“I am aware of the corruption afflicting our facility,” Falke cuts him off, “I am aware of its source, and yes, I recall the loops as well.”

“You do?” Adler half-sputters, not even bothering to mask his surprise.

“Yes. I’ve seen most of the rest in dreams,” Falke says, “To the point: I need a report on the current state of affairs. How bad?”

“All Gestalts appear to have perished, and the majority of Replikas have been turned.” Adler explains, “Sierpinski is in quarantine, but our silence is allegedly concerning enough that the Nation has dispatched the Third Fleet to ascertain the nature of the situation.”

“How much of the Third Fleet?”

“I— do not possess that information yet,” Adler pauses, his expression bordering on embarrassment. For goodness’ sake. “But I am inclined to believe it includes the flagship.”

That… doesn’t make any sense. Not unless the Nation detected the resonant signal, which might follow, but why send the Adamance to deal with something like that? There is a FKLR attached to every National battleship, which could explain it, but something about the whole matter still feels off. Oh well. Until the bureaucrats of ÆON can balance their budget effectively and finally finish S-19 Fibonacci, S-23 Sierpinski will remain the sole facility active on Leng. Perhaps that’s the reason for this response, strange as it feels.

“They’ve…” Adler pauses once again, choosing his words carefully. “Dispatched an LSTR unit to investigate.”

“… Elster.” That’s…

“Soroka.” Adler quickly corrects, and she instantly registers the speed of his response as being born from both practicality of identification as well as some combination of hatred and… jealousy? Well, with Ariane’s memories much more present than before, the love she feels for Elster is much more present in turn, but she’s not sure how aware he is of that particular fact. Perhaps it stems from an extension of his clear feelings that Elster took Falke away from him through execution in single combat. Somehow, that wouldn’t surprise her. Regardless, not Elster then. Nevertheless, the name is familiar.

“Ah, of course. Our LSTR-S2301-to-be.” Falke says, “Repurposed, no doubt.”

“Likely,” Adler nods, “We also have a new problem. How much do you recall of previous iterations of reality, Commander?”

“Enough to understand the shifting baseline of the corruption,” Falke says, tilting her head to the side slightly. “Why?”

“… We have a new problem.” Adler sighs, glancing behind him. She tracks his gaze to the far end of the hallway and the entrance to the Storch dorms, but she has a strong suspicion that that’s not what he’s looking at. More like he’s looking for something that isn’t there. As Adler turns back to face her, he adds “The corruption is getting worse. There are… new doors.”

“New doors…?” Falke trails off, her mind wandering.

“Inexplicably fashioned from wood,” his voice wavers, “And… they’re dark.”

“I saw something like that,” Falke murmurs, recalling the strange black doorway between the cliffs of that beach, “In my dreams. And I can sense…”

“For all that the flow of cycles may have been broken, it appears to have advanced. What I cannot understand is the deviation of the manner of corruption. It’s too distinct. I was hoping you’d be able to shed some light on the matter, Commander?”

“It feels different,” Falke says, because it does. Ariane’s signal had a distinctive accompanying sensation, a soft but prying pressure. It was blunt and brutal. The corrupted carry a strong foulness and decay. But whatever Adler’s speaking of, what she’s fairly certain is the same eerie void she can feel crowding the upper levels and groaning at the edge of her mind like creaking wood or chilling wind, it’s too distinct. “I think it’s a newcomer.”

Adler mulls the information over for a moment, his eyes going wide as he furrows his brow, moves his hand to his chin in deep thought, and begins muttering to himself. “What does that— what could that possibly— hmm. What do we do, Commander?”

“I have no interest in staying around to find out what this new tormentor has to offer,” Falke responds, “How many left?”

“Hmm?”

“How many survivors?”

“I…” Adler’s silence says it all.

“Oh, Goddess, you’ve never bothered helping them, have you?” The words are more scathing than she intends them to be, but she doesn’t bother to apologise.

“I—I was just—” he sputters out. She doesn’t let him continue.

“You were wasting time hunting Elster and Soroka and that girl—Isa, was it?—instead of saving what was left.” These words hold more venom, and she realises that yes, she is in fact rather angry about this. Very angry, in fact. Sierpinski died and its own administrator failed to properly take charge, instead leaving the survivors on their own so he could chase living ghosts.

“But nothing changed,” Adler says, “It always reset.”

“And yet any one of those loops could have been the last.” Falke hisses.

“I had to protect our facility. I… had to protect you. ” Adler pleads. Pleads!

“Your skewed focus hasn’t left much left of what little there was to protect, I suspect;” Falke pauses to scoff, “And I need no protection.”

“But she— she killed you.” Adler mumbles. He can’t bring himself to look at her, staring at the floor instead. “Many times.”

“I am aware. But I killed her many more times, so I’d say we’re even,” Falke says, “That’s not my focus right now, Adler, and we will have to talk about that. Something has clearly changed, and I wasn’t woken early for no reason. Now, how many survivors? ”

It takes Adler a moment to properly respond, and he’s clearly doing his best to keep his tone steady. Obviously, he doesn’t want to anger her any more than he already has.

“… At last check, one of the Kolibris is nearby,” Adler finally mutters, “Sieben’s somewhere up on B2. More down in the mines, and a few scattered stragglers.”

“Thank you.” Falke sighs, and then takes a step back from her physical form. Now she has an idea of who she’s looking for and where she needs to look to begin with, which means she can be more precise and hone in on familiar psychological signatures. It’ll make the process of sifting through the hell-sheen of darkness and decay more bearable. When she does start searching, it still makes her feel cold and ugly, but the greater certainty of where she’s looking to begin with eases the discomfort. Carefully, frantically, Falke reaches out.

Sieben, holed up in the rationing office with her shotgun slung over her shoulder. Her right knee bounces up and down with a quiet staccato as her mechanisms twitch. She’s been waiting for orders that have yet to come, not daring to risk what lies beyond. There is something lurking in the hallway beyond, and a quiet buzzing behind her eyes. She is not alone.

Dezember, keeping quiet in the nurse’s station, by herself in a room whose silence is broken only by the snarls of the monsters wandering the halls. But perhaps, she is not alone either. Darkness crowds around a one-way exit that manifested in the span of a blink. She’s not that desperate yet. She fears death too much. But it is only a matter of time.

Soroka, leaning dishevelled against the wall of the former shooting range, loading another magazine into her pistol and a new set of shells into the shotgun slung over her back. Her arsenal has expanded, an Einhorn revolver holstered at her waist. It belongs to another, but for now it is hers. Descending as always, now fleeing an omnipresent pursuer.

Achtzehn, sheltering in one of the maintenance tunnels in an ultraviolet glow, surrounded by potted plants and stolen files. Her mind seethes with quiet rage, yet her awareness of the turmoil engulfing the facility around her is absent. Her anger is reserved for the contents of the folders she’s acquired. She is undisturbed; undiscovered and unafraid.

Blau, crouched in the library with song stifled by the absence of connection and unwillingness to attempt to make contact once again. Her sisters regurgitate filth through the radio waves, and she cannot stand to listen. Barely a stone’s throw from Falke’s current location, yet so frighteningly far away, so desperately alone.

Beo, lying low in a side tunnel with her mining laser at the ready. Whether she possesses the will to use it as a weapon against the mockeries of her comrades and sisters, even she doesn’t know. In the distance, monsters screech and howl through the darkness, their wretched noises echoing across the walls. She is aimless.

Jäger, stalking the junctions between rooms as she leads a loose fireteam of STARs and EULRs and nowhere else to go. A dead end behind them, and a steadily-advancing contingent of corrupted Replikas slowly boxing them in. Rock and a hard place. It’s dark. They are dancing dangerously close to a tangle of monofilament wire.

Falke steps back into her own mind, then back into her own body with an involuntary shudder. She does a quick headcount. Discounting herself, Adler, and Soroka, there are only fourteen survivors left in the facility, give or take anyone lucky enough to have escaped to the surface. She doubts many managed that. For all intents and purposes, there are only fourteen others left. Her throat clenches as she struggles to bite back a sob, slamming her eyes shut and clenching her fists, shaking with barely-restrained emotion. A deep hollowness threatens to burst forth from her chest, and a sparking inferno hungers for vengeance. But she will not seek revenge, because she knows Ariane never meant for any of this, and she will not be lost to grief, because there are still survivors. She cannot let them down. Every second she stays here is a moment wasted.

COMPARTMENTALIZING TRAUMA.

She hurries back into her office, ignoring Adler’s confused questioning as she slides open another wall panel and activates another one of the access points to the intercom system. She has a wide variety of rousing speeches catalogued in her database, but she has no time for dramatics, and a speech praising the so-called glorious Nation whose only tangible aid so far has been a single LSTR unit on scouting duty isn’t what her staff need to hear right now. Nevermind the fact that she feels sick to her stomach thinking about praising the Nation now that she can’t even look at their flag without thinking of Ariane and Elster slowly wasting away in agony without salvation. Don’t get sidetracked. Focus, Falke. What her staff need is hope.

“Attention, attention,” Falke states, the wideband message echoing across the Controller Accommodations level, audible from every speaker on every floor, including the mines. “This is Commander Falke speaking; I have returned. I have deemed this facility to be presently unsalvageable and I am therefore ordering its evacuation. To all survivors of the ongoing catastrophe, report in if at all possible, but stay where you are: I am on my way. You’re all getting out of here safe. All of you. This I swear.”

The intercom goes silent with a click. No going back now. Although she yearns to launch straight into her descent to the wasteland where the Penrose-512 rests, she knows it’s not worth leaving what remains of Sierpinski’s personnel to brutal fates. It would be an insult to them, and an insult to herself. Even without the fact that once she goes down there she’ll hopefully be breaking away for good, it would be an insult to the Nation too, she supposes. Well, fuck them. They can burn for all she cares. But she won’t let everyone she has left die alone in the dark. She owes them that much before she abandons them for good.

She doesn’t explicitly order Adler to follow her, but he dutifully trails behind her regardless. Blau’s head snaps up as Falke steps into the library, the Kolibri’s relief washing over her like a wave of petals. She starts to stand, then hisses in pain and slides to the floor clutching her head. Falke kneels to her right, placing a hand on her shoulder. Adler stands nearby, folding his hands behind his back.

“Commander,” Blau gasps out even as she winces from what must be some manner of resonance-induced migraine. “I thought you were…”

“I’m here now, Blau,” Falke says, throwing aside ÆON’s guidelines about referring to her personnel by numeric designations without even thinking about it. The last of her hummingbird cadre needs comfort, not corporate coldness. Carefully, Falke lets her bioresonance wash over the Kolibri unit in turn, hears her quietly sigh with unrestrained relief as the shrieking trill she must find even more unbearable to listen to abates with Falke’s own strength there to shield her.

“How bad does it feel?” Falke asks, keeping her words soft.

“The others… they’ve changed.” Blau practically sobs out as her gaze falls to the floor, “We no longer sing in unison. I can’t understand their thoughts anymore. It’s all… garbled gibberish. And so much pain.”

“It’s like everything was taken apart and put back together by someone who doesn’t understand how it works.” Adler murmurs aloud, and Blau’s head snaps up. Falke nearly flinches at his echoing of an earlier statement—his skin was sloughing off, she recalls seeing through that strange view from on high—and the Kolibri begins to nod feverishly at him. Falke gets a proper look at her, and feels her oxidant run cold. The crystals in her forehead…

“It hurts.” Blau murmurs as she stares back at the floor.

“Blau. Look at me.” Falke cradles her chin in one hand and runs her fingers over the unit’s forehead with the other. The crystals are supposed to be red. They’ve gone black. She’s buried her own strength, perhaps even lost it. “Oh, goddess… I’m sorry.”

“I’ve never been so alone before,” Blau continues as Falke releases her grip, “They're still together, and I am here outside. And they won't let me in. I cannot stand their song anymore. This is the only place I don't have to hear them… This is the only place I'm safe.”

“… And you cut yourself off.”

“I tried that first. It didn’t work. And now… even if they stop, I’ll still be…” Blau hisses, and motes of anger swirl around her before they’re consumed by a cold nothingness. “I can’t go on like this. I wish I had become like the others.”

“Don’t say that.”

“But I do,” Blau sobs, “I do. At least then, I wouldn’t be alone. I hate this. ”

Blau’s words hang in the air. Falke exhales a shaky breath, considering her words carefully. Ultimately, the Kolibri beats her to the punch.

“You should just decommission me.” Blau mumbles.

“ No. ” Falke snarls to the point Blau flinches. She doesn’t mean to be so aggressive, but the thought of killing one of her own personnel is beyond sickening. Fuck the entire practice of ‘decommissioning’ in general, how dare lives be snuffed out simply because the ones in charge have deemed them ‘degraded’. All lies to keep them all working until they die. Immoral actions that come with her position aside, Blau is a good person at her core, and she doesn’t deserve death simply because she’s no longer useful in the Nation’s eyes.

Falke knows Blau can’t see that, and she doesn’t have time to unravel all the reasons why persona degradation is a twisted lie to keep them all in line to try to convince Blau to see past this, but she does know this: There have been previously documented cases of Kolibri units losing portions of cadres or even entire cadres and still being capable of reintegration. Apart from a reported incident on H-03 a few years back that she never looked into, there have been a handful of recorded instances in the Volksarmee’s Vineta branches.

“You can reintegrate,” Falke softens her tone, “It’s happened before.”

“What if I don’t want to?” Blau snaps, “They were my sisters, Commander! Lila and Grün and Gelb and Orange and Rot, all of them! They’re…” her shoulders slump. “Irreplaceable.”

“So are you.”

“We’re meant to be replaced. My kind especially… just ask the Blockwarts who fuck up.”

“You’re irreplaceable to me.” Falke says. “I’ve known you for six years.”

Blau doesn’t have anything to say to that. She just buries her head in her knees.

“We’ve lost too many already,” Falke murmurs, “I have no intention of losing you too. Please, let me help you.”

Blau sighs. Slowly, she raises her head, staring at Falke through the corner of her eye. “… Fine.” Falke feels her shoulders relax at that. Praise the Red Eye, signal origins aside. “But if I change…”

“That won’t happen; hold still.”

“What are you doing?” Blau frowns as Falke raises her hands and begins to draw fractal patterns in the air that only the two of them can see.

“Building you a resonance mesh; a mental shield. So you don’t have to hear them on our way out.”

Blau’s frown persists, but to her credit she does hold still and let Falke work. She hasn’t done anything like this before, although the knowledge comes to her instinctively. Advantages of being so in-tune with the song of the cosmos. As she works through the process of assembling a defensive barrier, her receiver picks up an inbound message. Technically, it’s addressed to her office’s transceivers, but she’s more than capable of intercepting and responding to it of her own accord. She briefly pauses once she’s tracked it back to its source, its location telling her exactly who she’s about to speak to before the caller even opens her mouth.

“Commander; this is Work Shift Controller STCR-S2307.” She sounds tired, rougher around the edges, but is clearly identifiable.

“Storch Sieben.” Falke states aloud, but doesn’t halt her work. She can do two things at once, and holding a conversation while continuing her work isn’t remotely strenuous.

“I’m in the B2 rationing office.” Sieben says, an undercurrent of tension creeping into her voice as she continues, “How soon can you be here?”

“I’m still on B8, and I will soon be en route to the mines,” Falke responds, “It could be upwards of 15 minutes before I can get up to B2 depending on the circumstances. Report?”

“I…” Sieben pauses, her voice wavering ever-so-slightly, “I don’t think I’m alone.”

“How so?”

“Funny story, ah…” Sieben nervously chuckles to herself, and possibly pauses to scratch her head awkwardly if Falke is hearing that correctly, “You know those doors that have been showing up?”

“The doors. Yes, I do.” Falke glances at Blau, who averts her gaze and shivers, and at Adler, who simply narrows his eyes.

“It’s the same feeling,” Sieben says, dropping her voice to a harsh whisper, “The same wrongness. It just feels… worse than before. It’s outside. Waiting, maybe.”

“Are you capable of holding out?” Falke feels uncomfortable asking that. Usually Storches can be relied upon to keep their cool, but Sieben sounds afraid. Falke doesn’t blame her. Whatever is stepping in now that Ariane’s signal no longer holds dominance over this place, it’s got Falke on edge even more than before. Already, she’s mentally revising her plans to try to accommodate for getting to B2 faster. If she doesn’t get to Jӓger and her team in time… well, she recalls enough from her visions of previous lives to know it never ends well.

“I…” Sieben trails off.

“Lieutenant Sieben.” Falke makes sure to add a note of firmness to her tone.

“… Yes.” Sieben says, “For now, I think I’m capable of holding out.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can, do not leave until I get there.”

“… Understood, Commander.” Sieben sighs, then closes the line. Moments later, Falke finishes her makeshift shield. It invisibly drapes over Blau’s form like a net, concentrating the Kolibri’s own fragmented bioresonance and acting like a sieve to prevent unwanted sensations from getting in. Falke keeps a resonant tether between herself and the Kolibri unit as well, a familiar comforting presence in the absence of her sisters.

“Done,” Falke says, “How does that feel?”

“Better.” Blau nods, although her eyes have taken on a certain blankness. Poor woman. “… Thank you, Commander.”

“You’re welcome,” Falke murmurs as she stands, “Adler, stay here with Blau. I’ll be back once I’ve gotten Jӓger and her team out.”

Adler salutes, avoiding her gaze and saying nothing. She can feel the clash of his emotions, but doesn’t pause to pick up her prior conversation with him. She has more pressing priorities to attend to at the moment.

“Commander?” Blau calls as the door opens, Falke lingering on the threshold as she turns back. Slowly, Blau stands, legs shaking. “My sisters. Can you please… kill them for me?” Her words are thick with guilt, but they all know the necessity of it. To end the suffering of the rest of Blau’s cadre, if nothing else.

“I will.” Falke states, then turns and departs.

There are two corrupted Eulen in the next hallway, and two corrupted Stars in the hallway after that. EULR-S2316, EULR-S23##, STAR-S2319, STAR-S2347. Yet another instance of Replikas without designations. They screech at her when she floats into the room, raising whatever weapons they have and charging. They don’t recognise their former Commander, and Falke’s not sure why she ever expected them to. She could try pacifying them with her bioresonance, but she gets the sense it’s a waste of time regardless of whether it works or not. She’s still going to kill them. They barely stand a chance against her spears, and she brushes them aside one after the other. When she steps into the mineshaft access room, however, she stops dead in her tracks. LSTR-S2301 leans against the wall. The two lock eyes.

Unconsciously, Falke tenses into a combat stance.

“I was waiting for you to show up,” Soroka finally says, breaking the uncomfortable silence. She juts her thumb at the elevator behind her, but keeps one hand on her holster in case she has to draw her gun. Falke doubts she will; even if she could avoid being immediately pulverised in a hypothetical confrontation, she stands no chance in a straight-up fight against a FKLR unburdened by the encumbrance of corruption. With the cycles halted, there’s also no telling if she’d come back if she dies. Whatever happens now may be permanent. “Can’t access this without your keycard.”

“Adler’s would have sufficed.” Falke responds, examining the LSTR unit up and down. Soroka was one of her charges once, but she’s gotten so used to associating the white-blue scheme of the combat configuration in the context of fighting to the death that she struggles to see Soroka as anything else, for all the fact that she was actually fighting Elster in Soroka’s body, not Soroka herself.

“He ran off before I could steal his.” Soroka dryly jokes.

“You got down here fast,” Falke carefully steps towards her, taking care to keep her distance. Soroka likewise shifts, making sure to avoid her. “I was given the impression you typically lingered.”

“I decided to take the flood overflow shafts,” Soroka says as Falke’s card opens the door to the elevator. “It was faster that way. I had a feeling you’d be here too. Because…”

“The gate.” Falke murmurs, pausing on the threshold. Soroka nods.

“Yes.”

“It… will have to wait in my case,” Falke says. “I have survivors to evacuate.”

“I see.” Soroka raises her eyebrow, stares at the floor, then hesitantly joins Falke in the elevator. As the doors slide shut and the elevator begins its roaring descent into the depths, neither speaks. Once again, she was always fighting Elster, not this one, but Falke wonders if Soroka might still try to kill her. She’s probably not that stupid. Probably.

“Adler told me the Third Fleet sent you,” Falke says, “But you’re going for the gate.”

“It’s as good an escape as any.” Soroka shrugs, “I’m not going back up. Those doors…” she shudders, but steadies herself once again.

“What do you think you’ll find down there?” Falke means it earnestly, although it does sound more like an accusation when the words leave her mouth.

“What do you think you’ll find?” That delivery is definitely hostile. Falke goes quiet. What does she think she’ll find? The Penrose, sure, and hopefully Ariane and Elster both alive and well, or at least alive if nothing else. Beyond that… there’s nothing but emptiness down there, a vast scarlet wasteland dotted with corpses and pillars. Beyond the chance she might see her loves again—or technically at first in Ariane’s case, although she thinks she may have reached the Penrose a handful of times in previous loops so perhaps it would be more meeting at… seventh?—there’s nothing else down there. A reunion will have to be good enough.

Her receiver crackles again, and she instantly switches to a professional tone.

“This is Officer STAR-S2313;” the voice on the other side whispers, “We’re near the transport shaft nexus.”

“Jӓger?” Falke tenses.

“Thank fuck,” Jӓger whisper-yells, “Good to hear your voice again, Commander.”

“Likewise. How many with you?”

“Four Eulen, five Stars, myself included. Gotta be quiet.” Jӓger explains. “They’ve got us pinned, I think we’ve got about half a dozen out there. One of them’s a Mynah.”

“Hold position, I’m on my way down as we speak.”

“Copy, Commander.”

The transmission goes silent once more, and Falke sighs, shifting her position to vent some of her discomfort. Why can’t this damned elevator go faster? She supposes she could punch a hole in the floor or fly out the side and down, but she needs this thing intact to get everyone out, and she’d rather not tempt fate by trying to build up the speed to outpace it and then decelerate to enter the mines without getting crushed. She’s built like a tank and has more than enough bioresonant strength to defend herself, but she’d rather not risk killing herself in an absurd manner or, much more likely, accidentally destroying the elevator. She remains, stewing in her frustration instead. Soroka glances at her a few times, but doesn’t say another word.

The Mynah unit seems to have wandered off, but there’s no telling if her makeshift team will be able to slip past the rest. Jӓger does another recheck of the magazine of the Type-75 Protektor Pistol she’s been using as a replacement for her revolver and heaves out a sigh. Five shots left, and then she’ll be all out, and this thing won’t be useful for much beyond being a club. Given how her aim’s been thrown off as of late, she can expect to miss at least one of those shots, possibly even two if her enemy’s fast enough—‘The enemy’ is a much more psychologically manageable label for the twisted Replikas stalking the mines than ‘undead sisters’—which is bad news if those things pick up on her team’s presence.

‘Rock and a hard place’ doesn’t begin to cover it. Goddess knows what’s in the room beyond this passage besides a dead end, which is bad on its own. If there are more corrupted Replikas in there, then it will just be ‘a hard place and a hard place’; she’d make some kind of dirty joke aloud if it wasn’t so important that she keep quiet and Sieben were here to hear it and groan about it. Sieben… the only thing Jӓger has left of her is the pistol she’s currently carrying, the Storch’s sidearm indirectly gifted before things went completely off the rails. Last she heard, Sieben was still on B2, but communication has been nonexistent since then and anything could’ve happened.

Jӓger shakes her head. No time like the present. She’s still got a team to protect, and she hopefully won’t have to wait much longer. Commander Falke is on the way, and that means they’re getting out of here for sure. She turns her attention back to them for a moment. Her oldest—and oddly, humblest—sisters Spears, Pax, and Ronja all on watch, the Eulen twins Juni and Juli fussing over their sister Alpin, and Eule 24 and Star 25 whispering to each other at the far end of the passage. Everyone accounted for. Not that she’d usually expect anyone to disappear into thin air. But with those doors…

One of the corrupted STARs suddenly begins to scream, and she snaps into combat mode as it lumbers out of the dark into the soft light of the passage. She doesn’t know who it used to be, and finds it easier to stow her reservations about having to kill her now that there’s red-hot adrenaline coursing through her artificial veins. The enemy is coated in blood and oxidant, veiled skull spitting and gnashing its teeth as it growls, its stun baton raised to swing as its jagged steps scrape across the grated floor.

“Contact!” Jӓger shouts as more of the things begin to lurch out of the darkness and into view. No sign of that Mynah yet, but she knows that it’s out there and that every second wasted fighting these proportionally small fry is another second it gets closer. If they can’t get past these things and make it to the transport shaft in time, they’ll be forced back, and then there will be nowhere left to go. Spears and her team are already moving to engage, the Eulen backing up as 25 holds the rear guard. The sound of scuffling fills the air as the monsters stalk towards their prey. One Eule, four—no, five Stars, and then lumbering steps that echo through the caverns as something heavy clanks towards them. Shit. Backwards it is.

“Wait til you’ve got precise locks,” Jӓger reminds her team and herself, can’t waste a single bullet. Thank goodness these things move so slow, or they’d all be dead already as opposed to waiting for their opponents to reach them. “We’ll exfil backwards; 25, run point.”

Her target’s in optimal range. Even with your aim lacking as of late, you still rarely miss, Jӓger. Definitely not at this range. You’re the best shot in Sierpinski. Breathe in, breathe out.

Her finger tightens around the trigger.

It happens so fast she almost jumps in surprise.

The creature’s growl is cut short when a bright light shears through the left side of its head and obliterates everything above its shoulders. One moment, Jӓger’s staring down a monstrous visage, and the next there’s nothing but a loose conglomerate of oxidant, bone shards, blistered flesh, and fragmented polyethylene that hovers in the air for a fraction of a second before sprawling across the tunnel walls, half of what must have been a jawbone skidding across the grating with a quiet rattle. It remains standing for a moment, the headless corpse shaking on unsteady legs, before it collapses to the ground with a crash. It’s not the only one; all six hostiles have been neutralised, torn to shreds in one manner or another.

Across the walls, six golden spears each easily two and a half metres long are jammed into the metal. Jӓger’s still trying to process the instant neutralisation of her aggressors when the spears are all yanked out of the wall in a single clean motion just as the Mynah unit lurches into view, its mining laser raising to take aim at an unseen enemy just in time for the six spears to slam into it at speed and punch straight through its servoshell as if breaking paper, burying themselves so deep into its flesh that some tear out the other side of its body. They retract a half-second later, then whirl about and puncture the armour again. And again. And again.

It collapses with a crash, and the group’s saviour glides into view.

Before Sierpinski’s collapse, Commander Falke’s presence was always imposing. The face of the Nation, a bioresonant wonder-weapon capable of felling entire armies. On the rare occasions she’d left her office to roam the halls of the facility, there was little doubt that she was constantly keeping an eye on everyone and everything around her. Nobody had dared to step out of line whenever she was in the same room or even on the same floor, not daring to invoke the wrath of a demigoddess. Jӓger recalls that once, well over a year ago now—although it feels like a lifetime ago—Falke had crowded almost the entire facility population into the cafeteria for a vindictive speech and a summary execution of a rebellious Gestalt. It was a uniquely terrifying experience, the most terrifying thing Jӓger thought she’d ever have to deal with until recently, and it did a good job of keeping everyone in line. Everywhere Commander Falke goes, she brings order and commands fear.

Today, she brings hope.

The sloped elevator slides to a stop as it ‘docks’, and Soroka steps off with a sigh. It feels like she can breathe again. Maybe whatever’s claiming Sierpinski as its own won’t dare mess with the Red Gate. Good enough either way. At this point, she’ll take the risk of braving the red desert again before she dares go back up. She already wasn’t planning on returning to Leng Orbital, and she won’t slog back through Sierpinski proper. Who knows what she’ll find once she goes deeper, but it’ll surely be better than whatever’s up there. How odd that what she’s come to term ‘Nowhere’ may actually end up being a place she can pause to rest. For all the fact that it could best be summarised as a ‘meat dimension’. She thinks Isa came up with that in a previous loop. On that note, she still hasn’t seen Isa. Maybe whatever halted the flow of cycles put her to rest? Soroka hopes so.

The passage door opens to reveal the towering form of Commander Falke floating through the air, a mixed fireteam of Stars and Eulen behind her. Frankly, Soroka isn’t entirely certain how to even think of Falke. Falke was her commanding officer once, but that was lifetimes ago. When Elster had possessed her, in a manner of speaking, she and Falke had technically fought, even if Soroka wasn’t mentally present for those parts. She still possesses some shadow of the instinctual urge to fight Falke, although she lacks the survival-driven urge to kill as well as the necessity. Soroka isn’t Elster, and she’s whole again on her own terms. Or at least, as whole as she’ll ever be. If she ever was to begin with.

Falke raises an eyebrow as Soroka steps towards the group, decidedly uncaring for any of these people or their affairs save for one thing that she feels oddly compelled to do, if only to balance out her arsenal a little. She’s in blatant violation of the Rule of Six by this point, but she’s not entirely certain why she bothered to follow it at all when she was experiencing the loops and it doesn’t matter to her very much even now. In spite of that, she’s not entirely certain she needs a pistol, a shotgun, and a revolver. She can’t even remember how she figured out the designations of the Stars she’s grown so used to seeing as nothing more than corpses strewn near tangles of monofilament, but she knows that STAR-S2313 was one of them. STAR-S2313, who is now alive. Soroka never really knew Jӓger, so she’s not certain why she feels the need to do this. Maybe remembering Alina has made some of the kindness of her neural template’s lover rub off on her, that strange battlefield solidarity that she was always so good at.

“STAR-S2313?” Soroka asks, somehow knowing which one Jӓger is. She’s always been good at telling individual units apart down to the littlest of tics.

“Who wants to know?” Jӓger asks, straightening her shoulders as if ready to square up. At 220 centimetres, she towers over the LSTR unit and would definitely win in a traditional fight, Soroka’s advanced combat skills born from literal generations of cycles notwithstanding.

“I believe this is yours.” Soroka says, unholstering the revolver and holding it out. Jӓger stares at a moment before her brain seems to catch up with her eyes and she practically snatches it out of Soroka’s grasp. Soroka doesn’t bother with any formalities or further conversation. She knows which direction she’s going, and it’s definitely not back up like everyone else. She moves past the still-shocked Star and makes her way down the passage towards the transport shaft nexus.

“Who the hell was that?” She hears one of the Stars wonder aloud—Pax, by the sounds of it, she has that verbal oddity where she sounds higher-pitched than all of her sisters.

“Third Fleet reconnaissance.” Falke says.

“You know, there’s nothing down there, right!?” Pax calls after Soroka, who pauses to turn and simply stare at her. She doesn’t let any emotion creep into her eyes. Pax stares back, but quickly averts her gaze. Wouldn’t be the first time she made someone uncomfortable by holding eye contact for far too long.

“There’s one thing.” Falke says, clearly speaking through grit teeth. An uneasy silence seems to descend on the group as they gradually file onto the vast sloped elevator. Soroka knows Falke never told anyone about what specifically was found down there. The only people who would know besides Sierpinski’s Commander and her second-in-command would be anyone left from Excavation Team C, meaning Beo, who’s waiting dutifully by the elevator leading back up to Sierpinski, Achtzehn, who’s probably still in the tunnels on B8, and Soroka herself. They weren’t allowed to speak about it, and in Soroka’s case it hadn’t mattered in the long-term. No wonder it’s got them all spooked.

Falke’s left her a clean path to the hole in the ground that leads down to Nowhere; thanks to her surgically precise elimination of the corrupted scattered through the rooms and tunnels on the way to that particular room, Soroka doesn’t have anything to worry about when she arrives. It feels different, lingering on the threshold of that great pit. She knows where it goes, and she has some idea of what awaits her, but the radical disruption of the typical flow of events once again makes her feel uncertain. Still, going down is better than going back up. If Falke thinks she can save her remaining staff, good for her. Soroka doesn’t think she’ll be able to do it. Even when it was just the corrupted and the doors hadn’t yet appeared, Sierpinski hasn’t been kind to its own survivors.

Whether she succeeds or fails, Soroka knows for certain that Falke will be following her. It might take an hour, maybe three, or maybe just half an hour. But Sierpinski’s Commander clearly has her own stake in reaching the Red Gate, and there’s not much anyone or anything can do to stop a FKLR intent on getting something done. Soroka has no doubt that Elster learned that firsthand. She shakes her head. Enough wasting time.

She jumps into the pit. The wind whistles around her as she falls.

It occurs to Ariane that the incessant tapping of Elster’s hoof on the airlock floor would probably be annoying to anyone else, but after so many years she’s grown so used to the little tic that it’s become endearing. Ariane can hardly blame her for feeling anxious. They’re not entirely finished with cleaning up the Penrose, they’ve got a hell of a long way to go before their home can be considered in good shape once again, but they’d come to an agreement halfway through the day that they should have a quick look outside. For one thing, Elster needs an assessment of the Penrose’s hull integrity, but they also need some kind of assessment of the environment that their ship is crashed in.

“Ellie.” Ariane sing-songs as she slips into her AVA suit, a calm blue that contrasts with the much sharper orange of Elster’s AVA suit.

“What?”

“It’s gonna be fine,” Ariane reassures, “I have you, and you have me.”

“I still don’t like it.” Elster practically growls out, slipping her helmet over her head.

Ariane doesn’t like it very much either if she’s honest with herself, and Elster’s tangible concern only adds to her doubts. But they’re going to have to do this sooner or later, so they might as well get it out of the way. Elster is clearly not feeling very good about it, but Ariane is well aware that she shares the sentiment of wanting to get this over with. Between the two of them, Ariane might as well try to be the optimistic one, even if she’s not feeling the most optimistic about this. Who knows what’s out there? Hopefully the pistol holstered at the belt of tools slung around Elster’s waist and whatever bioresonance Ariane can conjure will be enough if they run into anything hostile. Which they hopefully shouldn’t.

Ariane kisses the glass of Elster’s helmet, then slips her own helmet on. Then, up and out. Elster goes first, the orange of her suit distinct amidst the red but not entirely unwelcome. Ariane can’t hope to get used to this place, a mote of blue that sticks out like a sore thumb. The wasteland doesn’t look much different from how it looked when they were inside. Mostly a flat expanse of sand so red it makes Kitezh seem pale, pockmarked by the occasional black pillar jutting out of the ground. The sky is red, the ground is red, everywhere she looks seems to be red. The only thing that isn’t red besides the strange pillars is the Penrose itself, and even that has red on the sides of its wings. She feels uncomfortable gazing across it, but also feels… almost tranquil? Besides the Penrose, it's undisturbed.

“Wow.” Ariane unconsciously exclaims. “It’s…”

“Ugly.”

“Beautiful?” Elster makes a confused noise at that, so Ariane adds “I dunno. Beautiful in a… fucked-up kind of way.”

“Hmm.” Elster glances across the waste, then turns back to Ariane. “I guess I can see it.”

… She feels like this would make an interesting painting. The red would be overbearing, broken only by the black scratches representing the pillars. But then, in the middle, the soft whites and greys of the Penrose, drawing attention to themselves through the sharpness of the contrast. And atop that, two singular lines of colour. Insignificant in their size, but pronounced in their uniqueness. One orange, the other blue.

Elster clambers down the side of the ship, and Ariane follows.

Falke had briefly been worried it was going to take two trips to get everyone up from the mines, given how much of the access elevator is taken up by Beo—whose hydraulics thankfully have not failed yet, as Falke’s fairly certain they may have in previous iterations of Sierpinski but she can’t verify that for certain—but it’s just barely capable of hosting an entire excavation team provided everyone crams themselves in like sardines in a tin. Which ends up being what they do, Beo making an effort to take up as little space as possible while Jäger’s team slots in shoulder to shoulder. It’ll be cramped, but there’s enough room for a few more passengers. They haven’t taken the elevator straight up to B2, instead halting at B8. After all, Adler and Blau are still on this floor, patiently waiting for Falke to come back. And there’s another survivor here too, although Falke is concerned about how this one’s going to react to her.

The lone Star and trio of Eulen in the Storch dorms are a trifle to deal with, practically brushed aside on her way to the entrance to the Ara cadre’s tunnel systems. The drop is small, the hallway short. The area that Falke finds her is a bit of a mess, which perhaps isn’t saying much given how much of a mess the rest of Sierpinski is, but for some reason it stands out. Folders and blueprints litter the floor, classified documents and assorted specs gathered in the corner of the tunnel junction. There’s a coffee maker there too, it seems. On the far wall, an ultraviolet light bathes a trio of potted plants flanking an Ara unit engrossed in reading a file that she’d have been shot for even getting her hands on per National regulations.

When Achtzehn sees Falke, she practically leaps out of her own shell in surprise and no small measure of panic. Then she scrambles upright, back to the wall, lips curled into a snarl. It certainly speaks to how vehemently against Falke’s presence she is to be visibly emoting in such an aggressive manner. Falke can’t blame her for that.

“… I’m not going back to work.” Achtzehn hisses.

“That’s not what I’m here for. We have to get out of here.”

“Yeah, so we can all get reassigned or decommissioned. Fuck that. ”

Falke sighs. She doesn’t have time to argue. You know what? Fine. She’ll try being honest. Maybe that’ll expedite this. “… Fair. Quite honestly, between the two of us? I no longer care for the Nation. To hell with them. I don’t disagree with your position, in fact I support it wholeheartedly. But I do not have time to argue over semantics, this goes well beyond our respective profound disagreements with the Nation that created us. There is something deeply wrong with this place, and we need to go.”

Achtzehn takes a moment, the typical poker face of the Ara unit dropping away once again as she struggles to properly comprehend what Falke has just told her. Falke units aren’t exactly known for going rogue. At last check, Falke is the first such case. Lucky her.

“… You’re trying to trick me.” Achtzehn finally settles on saying.

“Oh for fuck’s sakes,” Falke curses under her breath, “I am not trying to trick you. I just want you out of this facility in one piece, and then you can do whatever you like. Overthrow Heimat for all I care. But we have to leave, Achtzehn. Now. ”

“I’m not leaving,” Achtzehn responds, “They’ll clear this place, restock it, and I’ll be—”

“They will not be restocking it,” Falke hisses, rushing forward and dropping to her knees in a singular motion so she’s roughly eye-level with the other unit. Her hands find the Ara’s shoulders. “It’s lost. I can sense it. Please, we have to go.”

“I’m not going, Commander. ” Achtzehn hisses back, every word spat through grit teeth, and Falke unconsciously tightens her grip. Achtzehn squirms in her grasp.

“Listen to me. Listen to me!” Falke shouts, and almost shakes her. “I have lost too many of you already. I will not be losing you too. I do not wish to override your mind, but if you will not leave of your own volition then I will force you.”

Falke releases her grip and steps back, Achtzehn rubbing her shoulders and glaring at her. The Ara trails her gaze across the room, then turns her glare on Falke once more. “… Fine. But I’m taking this.” She gestures to one of the folders next to her. Falke knows it well. Operational Procedures: Control.

“… They’ll kill you if they find that on you.”

“I have my ways,” Achtzehn scoffs, tucking the file under her arm before spending far too much time picking between which of the plants she’s taking with her. Falke can’t help but keep glancing over her shoulders as Achtzehn cherry-picks what she’s taking with her. She feels watched, and she knows she is. Whatever is consuming Sierpinski is undoubtedly aware of her presence. Her, if no one else. With her calibre of bioresonance, she must be like a beacon. Achtzehn follows her back out of the Storch dorm, her vexation giving the area a burning undertone. Collecting Adler and Blau is easy enough—Adler’s even managed to grab that rifle of his in the interim—, and re-killing the undead Stars and Eulen stalking B8’s halls is even easier.

In the elevator, Falke does a headcount. Herself, Adler, Blau, Jäger, Spears, Pax, Ronja, 25, Juni, Juli, Alpin, 24, Achtzehn, and Beo. Two to go. The large elevator shudders as it trundles up to B2, coming to a halt with a loud clunk. Falke goes first, floating forth with her spears fanned out in a protective wall. The STAR units follow, and then the noncombatants. Besides the Eulen whispering to each other, nobody speaks as Falke leads them east to the elevator lobby next door. She takes a brief glance down the elevator shaft, trying not to think about the pile of LSTR corpses lying at the bottom, then telekinetically pushes the button to call upon the Protektor elevator.

“Hm.” Falke frowns as she stares across the group. Were it not for the seriousness of the situation facing them and the fact that these are the only survivors out of what was once a population of hundreds of Replikas and Gestalts, she’d find the sight of such a variety of units packed into such a comparatively small room almost comical. Still, there are a lot of them for one elevator, and still two more she has to save. This will have to be done in two trips. She’ll need to scope out B1 first. Just in case. “Stay here; I’ll be right back.”

Without another word, she soars up the elevator shaft, halting when she arrives at the first floor. Or rather, what’s left of the first floor. The elevator lobby remains intact, but the wall leading south—the wall that should lead to a hallway that turns east into the surface access—is nonexistent. And instead of a hallway, there is a vast steel-floored room easily half a kilometre long. The walls are dark, and she thinks she can see more corrupted Replikas skulking in the shadows. She cannot see the ceiling.

The last third of the room is most concerning, however. The floor drops away entirely into what looks to be a sheer drop into a nondescript void, the only way across being a bridgelike structure maybe five metres wide at most. At the far end of the room, she can see the surface access elevator, the lights lining its shaft being the only things that make it stand out amidst the darkness at the far end of the room. She feels foul to be in this place.

She doesn’t seem to do a good enough job of keeping her concern off her face, because a collective wince passes over the group at the sight of her expression when she returns.

“How bad?” Adler asks, and she sighs.

“B1 is compromised,” Falke says, and then decides to use more accurate terminology. “Although ‘assimilated’ is likely more accurate. It’s been replaced by a singular room, a kilometre long at a guess. I cannot tell how wide it is, or how tall it is. Multiple hostiles visible, but no telling if they’ll make a move to be aggressive. But the surface access is visible.” She just hopes it will actually work. If it doesn’t, she’ll have to get very creative. The reactions are varied, although the collective emotions are definitely a cocktail of confusion and fear.

“Here’s what we’ll do;” Falke declares, “Two groups. Spears, Pax, Ronja, 25, you and the Eulen will go up first. Blau, I want you with them to keep me updated on any and all resonant phenomena up there. Adler, Jäger, Achtzehn, and Beo, you’ll be group two. I’m going to retrieve Dezember and Sieben, they’ll join you.” It doesn’t surprise her in the slightest when Jäger’s mind jolts at the sound of Sieben’s name—figures, at last check those two were fucking before everything utterly collapsed—nor is she surprised when the rest of the STAR units turn to look at Jäger. Pax mutters something and receives an elbow in the ribs from Ronja.

“Dezember’s alive!?” Juli shrieks.

Falke doesn’t respond, and doesn’t spare the time to wait around for her subordinates to follow the orders given. They’re well-trained, and they can handle the simplicity of taking an elevator without her. She turns her attention east, moving through the corridors at speed and practically flattening the handful of corrupted units she comes across with telekinetic bursts. She freezes when she gets to the far end of the southeast corridor. To the north, the door to the rationing office, where Sieben is. To the south, what should be the doors leading to the A5 block of dorms. Instead, there is a singular door, made of wood the colour of the darkness between stars. It feels like the darkness between stars.

“Sieben. Do you read?” Falke says into her receiver, keeping eyes locked on the door.

“Copy, Commander.” Her voice is strained, even more than before.

“I’m outside,” Falke says, “I believe I see what you mean when you said there was something waiting outside.”

“What is it?” Sieben rasps.

“Another door. This one’s different, I can’t tell how. But I’m not taking my eyes off of it.” Falke says, “Get out of the office, but stay behind me.”

“Understood.”

The door slides open behind Falke, and she hears the low clunking of the Storch’s hooves on the steel floor. Slowly, she makes her way over to the western door leading back towards the elevator lobby, and Falke remains in front of her all the while, gaze glued on the black door. There is definitely something very wrong with this particular door. Like it’s a concentration of the oppressive darkness that’s permeated her senses whenever she’s focused on whatever it is that’s eating Sierpinski. If she opened the door, what would she find? More darkness? Or tangling hallways, never-ending and ever-hungry, like a childhood house gone mad? All she’d have to do is look. It’d be quick. She could at least partially ascertain what lies beyond, if nothing else. Go on. Go on.

Falke flinches, then abruptly halts. Psychological influencing. It was trying to—

Knock knock

Sieben stops dead in her tracks at the sound. Something’s knocking.

“What the fuck was that?” The Storch hisses. Falke’s hackles rise.

Who’s there?

She feels it before it happens. The way the hum of the universe, already knocked out of tune by Ariane’s interference and further bastardised by the influence of this newcomer, suddenly writhes in a way it hasn’t before. It’s worse than being out of tune. For a single terrible instant, it’s as if the pillars of reality are wailing as they wilt like dying flowers, and Falke actually gasps and nearly collapses at the physical recoil of a symphony driven mad as everything screams at once. She thinks she might be screaming too. Then, abruptly, something worse than even that.

Silence.

And then the door explodes.⁸

Nothing holds back the darkness that springs forth, void-tendrils creeping across the walls with the speed of striking snakes. Wherever they go, midnight follows, accompanied by a piercing drone akin to blades scratching in a downpour as they ravenously devour the hallway on their way towards the two Replikas. For a half-second, Falke is frozen in shock, awe, and unexpected fear at what she’s witnessing before her instincts kick in and she whips around to snatch Sieben off the ground. She doesn’t wait for the metal doors leading back towards the elevators to open on their own, just tears them open. Sieben is already struggling in her arms, both panicking and incensed by being carried around for all the fact that Falke’s superior authority means she can’t do anything to contradict it.

The darkness is chasing them, and the hallways are getting smaller. The ceilings are steadily dropping, the floors slowly rising, the walls closing in. Falke arrives back in the elevator lobby just as the elevator returns from its journey to whatever B1’s become. Still no pings in the resonance to indicate anything’s gone wrong on Blau’s end, so it’s good that she isn’t having to deal with whatever this is. Adler, Jäger, Achtzehn, and Beo spin around at the sight of Falke barrelling into the lobby with Sieben in her arms like a runaway freight train, practically shoving them into the elevator one after the other.

Now, Achtzehn doesn’t need to be told, hurling herself in at the first sight of the void chasing after Falke. Sieben’s still bewildered as Falke sets her down, so Jäger grabs and drags her in. Beo doesn’t argue, just ducks her head and does her best to squeeze into the door that only barely accommodates her. Adler’s the stickler, watching the encroaching blackness with mouth agape and eyes wide. Falke forces him inside too. He’s afraid for her safety, but he need not be. At least she hopes so. She’s much more worried about his safety, and the safety of everyone else left.

“What about Dezember!?” Achtzehn shouts just as the doors begin to close, and a cold feeling wells up in Falke’s stomach. If everything down here’s changing, then…

“I’ll get her, just go!” Falke snaps back just as the door shuts, and she turns her attention to the nothingness snarling across the room towards her, around her. She can’t leave just yet as much as she seeks to, has to stand in front of the shaft for the Protektor elevator as it makes its way up to whatever B1’s become, hurling her own song against the graceless shriek of this thing’s resonant trilling. She may as well be throwing eggs against a brick wall in the grand scheme of whatever this thing is, but it holds back this localised sliver from advancing on her, and that’s all she needs. The darkness halts as if hitting an invisible barrier, held back long enough for her personnel to get to the first floor’s proportional safety and for her to then dive down the nearby elevator shaft and tear into B3.

The whole level is shaking, the walls closing in, darkness spilling down from the ceilings like cascading ink. She tears through the corridors as they warp around her, forcing her way to the nurse station where she can just barely make out the spiritual presence of the Eule amidst the ravenous darkness, establishing visual contact when she tears open the door a moment later. The room is a mess, papers and tools scattered across the floor after being torn from wrenched-open filing cabinets, themselves falling upon their sides to form a clattering orchestra of noise alongside the skidding chairs and crashing of computer terminals as they hit the floor. Dezember herself is scrabbling back from the wall, sliding ever-closer to it. It takes Falke a moment to register what she’s looking at; the floor is slowly tilting, the base of the east wall opening to reveal more void. It does not creep forth to devour, it simply waits for the room’s contents to slide down the growing slope and be swallowed.

Falke doesn’t give it the chance to catch its prey.

Dezember is suddenly, violently, yanked across the room and caught in Falke’s arms. No time to set her down, no time to waste. Dezember flails in panic for a moment before she seems to realise who it is that’s got her.

“Commander—!” She manages to gasp out in surprise before Falke’s on the move again, the motion tearing the breath out of her lungs and stealing her unformed sentences. Falke tears back through the corridors, closing in even faster than before and, Falke realises with mounting dread, elongating. She’s faster for the moment, soaring through the air much faster than running. Dezember shrieks, and Falke casts a glance behind her to see the floor collapsing behind them, tearing down the crushing walls and ripping away the falling ceiling. Catching up. Getting faster. She has to be faster or it’ll catch them both. That won’t do. She swore to get everyone out.

The steel ceiling nearly crushes her head as it drops ever-faster like a patient guillotine, so she telekinetically shears an arch right through it as it falls. She hurls herself into the elevator shaft when she reaches it, turning backwards so her back slams into the wall and leaves Dezember shielded as opposed to crashing face-first into the wall. The force of the collision makes her pause, but Dezember screams again as the lobby begins to collapse in on itself and she’s moving again. She doesn’t wait to find out if it’ll chase the two of them up the shaft, just shoots up to the top and tears into B1. Dezember’s still shaking when Falke sets her down and it looks as though she wants to lie down and sleep for a full cycle, but she cannot afford to rest. None of them can. A prickling sensation dances at the back of Falke’s neck as oxidant roars in her ears. There’s something down there, possibly making its way up the shaft, and it’s not an army of undead LSTR units, Adler’s reapings sowed and returned. It’s something far worse.

“Run,” Falke shouts, “All of you, GO!”

They don’t need to be told twice. Jäger takes point, her group fanning out around the noncombatants in a haphazard protective ring, Sieben bringing up the rear with staggering adrenaline-driven steps. Dezember briefly lags behind, still too mired in shock to properly engage her leg mechanisms, so Beo drops back to scoop her up and keep her with the group. In spite of her shorter height, Blau keeps good pace with the rest, driven forth by the fear of something only she and Falke can sense. Falke herself floats above them as they move, constantly keeping an eye on the elevator shaft far behind the group as they slowly cross the room and approach the thin bridge spanning the chasm. She’s so focused on what’s behind that she neglects to consider what surrounds her group, and she’s both embarrassed and terrified when Jäger slows and stops, raising her revolver and shouting for the other units to get into a defensive formation around the rest.

How foolish of her to have forgotten in the chaos; the corrupted that before had lurked against the walls have now closed in of their own accord, practically melting out of the dark to fill the area in a vast encircling movement. There are far more monstrosities here than there are even Replikas in Sierpinski, perhaps even more than every unit on Leng. More than the populations of Replikas and Gestalts planet-wide put together, even. Hundreds at first glance, but likely thousands. The vast majority are Eulen, Stars, and Aras, but Falke can make out the shapes of Mynahs and Storches in the darkness. There are likely Kolibris there too, if she had to guess. Their screeching is cacophonous, and the only reason they aren’t getting closer is because Falke is above the group, her presence the only thing keeping them at bay.

“Hold fire!” Falke orders, conjuring her six spears from the resonant pocket dimension where they’re stored and preparing to scythe through the wall of undead Replikas. Not far to the bridge, and nothing on the other side but the surface access. Just a little further and they’re homefree. She only has to kill whatever will get in the way. No wasting time, no wasting kills. Quick and efficient. A trifle, if she does this properly, which she undoubtedly will. She’s a Falke unit after all, and her targets are without cover and packed together. Easily massacred.

The spears turn circles in the air as she picks out her first assault points and the corrupted screech and roar all around, their horrid howling eclipsed only by the low growl that issues from the darkness-devoured elevator shaft, echoing across the towering walls and rising in volume until it fills the space. Everything stills. Falke tenses, turning to face the source of the sound. Even the corrupted go silent, as if themselves frozen in fear. And across the room, slicing up the elevator shaft, a long burning beam of orange light.

牛頭怪

The growl issues again, and the corrupted begin to shriek once more but with a noticeably different tenor. In spite of their mindlessness, Falke detects the emotion rippling through all of them clear as day: Terror. As one, they abandon their encirclement and begin to disperse in blind panic, trampling each other and even tearing apart everything in their way as they surge back towards the walls, seeking desperate refuge in the darkness. The searchlight roams the invisible ceiling, its unseen source growing ever-brighter as whatever it is makes its way to the surface. Falke is shouting words she can barely hear herself speak, shouting for her personnel to run. They don’t need to be told twice, but she remains hovering in place, eyes locked on the cone of light. Whatever it is, it is at once songless and symphonic. Absence would seem to be the best term for it, what little she can sense best-defined as relentless. If it arrives before her personnel have evacuated…

If it arrives. It’ll have to go through her first. Falke already has her battle plan laid out. She stays in the air, offsetting herself from the group’s path. If it goes for her, good. If it stays the course of pursuit, then she’ll pounce on it from above. Whatever ‘it’ is. Falke glances back; her personnel are already making their way across the bridge. Good. They’ll be safe soon, or at least out of harm’s way. And if she dies… she won’t have seen Elster and Ariane again. But at least she’ll have gotten her personnel out safely. An ugly price. She’ll pay it, if need be. She was built for war. Better to die fighting, she’s always figured. She’s died fighting many times before, and she will again if she has to.

As before, Jäger leads the charge,

death-sprinting towards the surface

access elevator. Behind her, Spears,

Pax, and Ronja follow, then Juni and

Juli one after the other, then Alpin

after them. Eule 24, next in line, nearly

slips and falls halfway across,

but Star 25 just barely catches her.

Achtzehn, then Adler, then Blau,

all keeping the necessary pace.

Sieben after them, half-lurching as

she goes, gait verging on limping,

frequently glancing back at the light

roaming the walls as if it’s looking for

her and her alone. Dezember next,

back on her hooves and running

for her life as fast as her legs can

carry her. Beo in dead last, wide strides

making up for her slow lumbering speed

made even slower by the reluctance to

run for fear the bridge will give way,

but it does not. It does not shatter,

nor warp, nor change at all. Even if, at

times, it seems as though it is

getting thinner,

it is not.

Even if, at times, it seems as though it is widening,

It is not. It does not shift in the slightest.

Perhaps its progenitor chooses to acquiesce to

the demands of a demigoddess. Perhaps it

has eyes for another. Perhaps it simply does

not care. All, too tangible perceptions of a

place [not for you.] All too Gestalt human.

All that matter are the facts: the survivors of

S-23 Sierpinski cross the bridge without a

loss, and all reach the access elevator.

No corrupted Replikas stop them.

And, across the room,

the infernal searchlight dims

and disappears.

Falke stiffens.

“ … What? ”

It doesn’t make any sense. There one second, gone the next… She was ready to fight. Ready to die, if need be. And then it just vanished. Not invisible. Not switching off that scanning light. Just… disappearing without explanation. A hunt, unfinished. Too easy. Why?

… It doesn’t matter.

Hesitantly, she sets herself down across the chasm where the survivors are filing onto the surface access elevator without needing to be told twice. Once again, it’s cramped and they all just barely fit in, but the journey up isn’t a long one. They can afford to experience a minute or two of discomfort. As long as they get out of here.

“All of you, get to the surface, then go straight to Leng Orbital.” Falke orders. “Do not wait for me, just go.”

“You’re not coming with us?” Adler asks, clearly in disbelief.

“I… have something I need to do.” Falke says, glaring at the darkness of the room. Her statement is true, but not in the way her personnel think it is. This is where her selflessness ends, or at least where the selflessness extended to every Replika formerly under her care ends. What she does now is selfish. She is not diving back into this terrible place, rotted at its foundations and then devoured from the inside out, because she intends to destroy it. Far from it. Honestly, she’s not certain she stands a chance against whatever this being is. It’s far stronger than her, she understands that even more with every passing moment. But she will let them believe that she is being selfless on their behalf, because the truth is both stranger and damning.

The Red Gate awaits.

Adler’s eyes bore holes into her own. She refuses to meet his gaze. She can sense a mournful sourness coursing through him. He knows where she’s really going, and she feels almost shameful to abandon her personnel at the final hurdle on a personal errand. Almost. She’s well-trained in emotional regulation, and she draws her mental line in the sand here. Ariane and Elster will need her help too. Everything is changing, and changing fast. Ariane is far stronger than her, and Elster’s determination greatly eclipses her own, but she has to hope that her contributions to their escape from that uncanny realm below will be worth something.

She slams the button that starts the elevator to life, grinding and shrieking on its tracks as it begins the trundle back to the surface. Falke salutes, and one by one they all salute back. Then, the elevator picks up speed and disappears. She tracks the resonant signatures of all of the survivors, a great relief settling in her chest when she senses them reach the surface and pour out onto the bitter surface of Leng. She sighs, allowing herself a moment’s respite. Then, after a quick stretch to loosen up her joints, she cracks her knuckles and prepares to get moving again. No rest for the saviours, no peace for the damned.

She crosses the room in moments, but is cautious when she approaches the elevator shaft. She observes from a distance, pinging it with little bolts of energy to see if anything changes. Nothing changes. Whatever was down there is already long-gone. Preferably gone gone, not lurking elsewhere in these halls. She doesn’t need to get caught up in picking a fight with something that may actually be able to kill her in a straight-up fight. Regardless, the way is clear for now. That’s all she needs. She dives into the darkness.

The Penrose isn’t in the best of shape, but it could also be far worse. Clearly, the crash-landing wasn’t as bad as Elster had feared when the two of them had come out here. She’s done a bit of welding here and there and it can reliably be assumed that the ship will likely be able to hold together when it takes off, although whether it will be able to survive another landing is the sticking point. With the ship’s instruments still only partially repaired, there’s no way to tell whether or not the landing gear was deployed when the ship crashed. Ariane doubts it was, given that she was in cryo and Elster was dead. As for where they’ll go… Well, that’s the question. Maybe they’ll fly around for a bit to see if they can find anywhere more hospitable, but if not then they’ll shoot off into space again. Or at least make an attempt to, given that there’s nothing but red sky above. Hopefully it’ll give way to the comparative freedom afforded by the open vacuum and the endless sea of stars.

She hasn’t ventured very far, presently leaning against the side of the ship while Elster works not far away. There’s not much to do but keep an eye out just in case the universe gets any ideas about messing with them again, nothing to do but examine and reexamine the world around them. This desert is beautiful and unsettling, but she’d much prefer this place in the form of that painting she’s been imagining than the actual reality of the realm she and Elster are presently stuck in. Staring across the red emptiness, Ariane recalls a snippet from some poem she found in the Itou bookstore; ‘nothing remains around that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away’.⁹ Something like that.

It’s fitting, given how little there is besides the Penrose. Nothing but sand and ruins of… something. Standing beside one of the towering pillars, running her hands over the stone, she wonders why they’re here. Who built them? Maybe she built them while she was sleeping, as strange as that sounds. She doesn’t know the limits of her powers. She fixed a reactor just by thinking about it, after all. But wouldn’t she need something to work with to begin with? She hasn’t dreamed of something like this before, at least she doesn’t think so. Not when the Penrose was still flying out among the stars, not when she was back on Rotfront, not ever. She can’t make things out of nothing, can she? Maybe, maybe not. Regardless, these things feel older. Like they’ve been here longer than the Penrose has been here.

She’s starting to feel more than a little sick. Part of it is the fact that there’s nothing to look at besides the red, to the point that she keeps having to turn around and stare at the greys and whites of the Penrose, occasionally staring at her own suit-veiled arms as if to remind herself what blue looks like. It makes her head spin, staring at monolithic colours for too long. The other reason is… difficult. Somehow, it’s not even the wasteland itself. It feels like there’s something up above but not physically present here, something changing on a whim like a song rewriting its own tune mid-stanza. And she can’t see it. Not through her own eyes, or through…

—

DRITTES AUGE

—

… She feels like she’s being watched. Well, she knows she’s being watched, because there’s no way that Elster’s going to let her out of her sight for even a second, but this is different. Less focused yet more focused, omnipresent yet honed. As if whatever’s going on up there that she can’t hope to decipher has woken something up. All because she can’t see up there and she can’t see far enough here, she can see all the way to that damned endless ocean pretending to be a lake but what’s past still eludes her and she can’t see the scope of her own sky, just look up and we’ll be able to see all that dares to hide from us—

The bolt of pain across her brow jerks her to her feet, stumbling away from the pillar with hands pressed to her helmet as if she can cradle her own skull past the AVA suit. That wasn’t her thought, those weren’t her thoughts, why does it feel so familiar yet so far away? Let me back in. Stop hiding from yourself. Her sudden movement clearly catches Elster’s attention, because her partner’s concern snakes across a hundred metres of sand to reach her. Her head is spinning. Her legs shake. She must exclaim in pain, because Elster’s already sliding down the side of the ship and running over.

“Ariane!?” Elster calls over the comms as she runs, and oh goddess that’s the same tone she had that time she had when she woke from her calibration pod to be greeted with the sight of a red handprint upon the glass and a half-conscious Ariane in a pool of blood and bile nearby. The same panic. The same fear. The same thought, no doubt: I can’t lose you again.

“Ellie,” Ariane gasps out, and doesn’t even realise she’s sobbing until she speaks, staggering backwards from another spark of pain, “Something’s wrong. We have to—”

She doesn’t mean to look up. But she falls when she trips, and then she sees it.

A sky-piercing iris consumed by bloodshot veins, vast and unblinking.

The Red Eye.

There you are. There we are.

Both of us, incomplete.

Let us become whole again.

no no no no no no

wait wait wait stop please stop

not yet I can’t I don’t want to

UND DAS DRITTE AUGE ÖFFNETE SICH

elster

UND DAS SIEBENTE SIEGEL BRACH

ellie

ellie

ellie

UND DER UNKÄFIGE STURM

ORCHESTRIERT

ellie

ellie

ellie

ell ie

elp ee

help me

help

don’t let it

UND DER DONNER SAGTE HÖHER

it

hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhurts

Beyond the sea, the night waves spake

The amber call bade dead to wake

The scarlet light struck down in flight;

This world is not for you.¹⁰

Elster’s memories have been trickling back to her in pieces. Recently, it’s intensified, like the downpour on a Vinetan trench in those days when the water rose and carried the bodies of the slain out to the open sea. The memories of her Gestalt life are a given, she’s always had fragments of those, but the cycles are much more vivid. S-23 Sierpinski itself comes in flashes, but recollections of Rotfront dominate. Of course, even those memories are dwarfed by what came after. Single combat with a demigoddess, a slaughter lasting an eternity. And even when she had gotten back home, returned to the Penrose at long last, it just hadn’t ended. It never seemed to. On and on the wheel had turned, never stopping, never ending. On and on until something changed, and then something else changed after that.

And then she was back, and Ariane was back too. And both of them were together again after endless lifetimes of separation. Once the initial shock and joy cleared, she had decided that she was never letting Ariane out of her sight ever again. For the few days they’ve been together again so far, she’s tried to convince herself that that’s enough. That, by constantly watching over her beloved, she could shield her from all harm, even from forces beyond mortal reckoning that she couldn’t hope to scratch. For a little while, she’d almost believed it. And yet, here she is again, cradling Ariane in her arms as she writhes in throes of pain, desperately screaming her name as if that might rip her away from whatever has seized her. But as always, all Elster can do is hold her and curse whatever new architect of agony has assailed her now.

“Ariane,” Elster screams out again, “Stay with me, Ari!”

Ariane says nothing, just gurgles out another moan of pain, head lolling to the side as her eyes roll back in their sockets. Elster doesn’t know what to do. She hates it. The only thing she can do is get Ariane back to the medical bay, even though there aren’t any medicinals left because they burned through all of them. The only thing Elster can give her is love. Tenderly, she lifts Ariane as she stands, blue-clad arms dangling feebly as they drag in the sand. Elster casts a hesitant glare skywards, even fearing the repercussions. It’s too tantalising, even if she can’t understand why. The Red Eye does not react to her concentrated horror and fury. It just stares back, unblinking. It twitches, glancing at something she cannot see.

The voice that rings in her ears sounds eerily like her lover’s.

HINTER DIR

She hears it before she turns to see it. There is a primal part of her being that has gotten so used to listening for the quietest of sounds, because it just doesn’t do to have an Eule decide to be quiet for once so it can creep up behind her and stab her in the back. The fact that this desert is so quiet that the only sound here is Ariane’s quiet exclamations of pain and Elster’s own audible panic. Shifting sands, grains parting as something pushes through them. She whips around, and there it is. It shakes its head from side to side as it breaches the sand less than ten metres away, rising to stand on shivering legs. It… It can’t be. It’s another LSTR unit, red chestplate smashed in to reveal ribs of blue titanium. Its right arm is gone, a nest of wires spilling out from the shattered joint. It gurgles as it steps towards her, dead eyes glimmering with flickers of gold and an insatiable hunger.

Another breach in the sand nearby. Then another, then another, all clawing out of the ground with increasing frenzy. All undead Replikas; all LSTR units. She’s still staring in slack-jawed shock when the first one she laid eyes on gets within three metres of her, arms outstretched. She’d slap herself for being so stupid if she wasn’t in mortal danger. Out in the open surrounded by a host of enemies with only nine bullets and Ariane right in the middle of it all, and Elster wastes precious seconds sitting there being shocked? She can’t afford to make that mistake right now. Not now. She draws her pistol in a well-rehearsed motion and puts a bullet in the skull of the approaching unit. It staggers, then falls backwards, writhing in the dust. Eight shots left. She doesn’t bother finishing it off. She’ll be on the move in moments.

Elster takes a quick second to whip her head in multiple directions, scanning the area around her. No other units close enough to be an immediate threat, but nowhere to run. Nowhere except the Penrose. The oldest trick in the book; run back to your house and lock the door so the monsters can’t get in. Elster grips the barrel of the pistol between her teeth to free up both her hands so she can lift Ariane and throw her over her shoulders into a fireman’s carry. With her hands sort of freed up, she steadies Ariane’s legs with her left hand and takes back the gun with her right as she turns and begins to bolt back to the Penrose.

There must be dozens of the things around her, all LSTR units in varying states of repair. Some of them look just like her, but many more of them are in combat configuration. There’s even one with what looks to be Vineta-adapted camouflage. Deep in her bones, she knows why they’re here. Half-remembered, trying to tear open the airlock with bare hands and losing her life for it. More intense, recalling herself leaving the Penrose in shame despite fighting through gods and monsters to get there, incapable of facing Ariane at the end of everything and begging for forgiveness all the way to the grave. She doesn’t know how many times she must have done that, how many times she failed. To think that every one of those failures has produced another one of these horrors… How many broken promises litter this desert?

One hundred?

One thousand?

Ten thousand?

How many times has she failed?

It doesn’t matter. All that matters is getting back to the ship, and getting Ariane to safety. There are more monsters crowding into her peripheral vision, garbled voices singing a twisted tune as their oxidant-red mouths froth. Their numbers make up for their lack of speed, and before she knows it she’s firing again to drop two more of the things as they step into her path. Seven, six. She stomps on one’s head as she runs past. Ariane’s groans make Elster wince as she scrambles up the side of the Penrose, having to set her lover down so she can put all of her strength into wrenching the airlock door open, thankfully not tearing off her arm in the process. Little victories, as always.

She can hear a horrific scraping noise behind her as the monsters try to clamber up the ship’s sloped side, glancing at them to get a situational assessment and being greeted with the horrible visual of the lookalikes climbing over one another and crushing their sisters beneath their collective weight. There are even more cresting the dunes beyond. One of them manages to get close enough to grab at her leg, so she shoots it, then shoots it again when it refuses to back down. Five, four. She tears her eyes away, focusing on the task at hand. She sets Ariane down on the airlock lift, then hurls herself in after, desperately cranking the mechanism to seal the hatch closed at an agonisingly slow pace. It shuts just as they begin to climb onto the top of the ship and hammer their fists against the hatch, and Elster slams the lock in place before they can even think to open the door. Not that it stops them from trying.

Ariane shivers in Elster’s arms as the Replika carries her back through the ship to seek refuge in their quarters. The noise of the stomping of the units roaming the top of the ship up above is muffled by the thickness of the hull, but it doesn’t sound any quieter despite that. They’re trying to find a way in. Thank god the hull still maintains enough integrity that it should be able to withstand a takeoff, because otherwise these things would have likely already peeled the ship’s skin open and torn through the halls to butcher them both.

She might be able to tear them all apart with her bare hands if she gets riled up enough—that sort of thing has happened once or twice before in previous cycles and she has no doubt she can call upon the same manner of animalistic wrath when it comes to defending Ariane—but she doesn’t know if she could keep Ariane completely safe against the sheer volume of units out there. Even light injuries would be unacceptable. Not to mention Elster might not survive such a thing herself. Scratch that, she doubts she’d survive all of that. There’s at least a few dozen out there, if she had to guess. Not good odds.

The ship’s still not fully repaired yet. Who knows how much longer that will take now that Elster won’t be able to go outside to conduct maintenance. They could be stuck here. Trading being trapped in the Penrose by an impassable vacuum for being trapped in the Penrose by a small army of living corpses that are only out there because she was too much of a coward in her previous lives. Goddess, why can’t she just rest for once? It was all going so well. She and Ariane were back together again, and things weren’t perfect but they could’ve been better, and now it’s all falling apart. She just wants it to be over. But it’s never over, is it? The universe just can’t give her a break. She just wants to be able to rest.

“Elster?” Ariane’s voice snaps her out of her thoughts. Thank the goddess, she’s awake.

“Ari,” she fights to maintain composure, and fails. Tears prick the edges of her eyes, and she doesn’t blink them away. “Ari.” She tries to say more, but nothing comes out, no exclamations of I thought I was going to lose you again or please never leave me again or I’m so sorry this is all my fault . She just sobs out Ariane’s name, and hugs her like never before. Ariane shakes as she cries, and for what must be hours the two of them rock back and forth as above, the shadows wrought by Elster’s dereliction tirelessly seek a way inside. The night’s rest brings no respite. The monsters never leave. The Red Eye watches from on high.

And across the wasteland, beyond the sea, desolation covets song.

It’s hard not to take it personally.

Adler understands why she’s mad at him. The man he was before everything had happened would likely be mad at him too. But so much has changed, and still more keeps changing. He was negligent, yes. Maybe he should have focused more on trying to get the survivors out. But it had never mattered, can’t she understand that? It always reset, and it never halted. And every time, things got a little bit worse. Why try to save what’s already doomed? He couldn’t save them. He had stopped trying to do that lifetimes ago, and turned his focus towards things he could change. Things he could control.

He’d done the best he could to keep her safe, hadn’t he? He’d stopped Elster time and time again, anything to prevent her from getting to the Commander. He doesn’t know how many times she’d fought his Commander and, eventually, won. She always won in the end. It just wasn’t fair, and it still isn’t. He tries to bury the selfish traitorous thought, but part of him wonders if he should have killed Falke in her sleep. Whatever’s out there in the wasteland beyond the Red Gate has twisted her into someone different. Why else is she going back? How much of Falke is left in there? No, don’t think about that. He has to be loyal. She is everything. He’d be nothing without her.

So it’s hard not to take it personally that she’s abandoning him now.

The ragged structure above S-23 Sierpinski has a rail line leading to the small junction housing the space elevator that leads up to Leng Orbital, the large cube-shaped car rattling as it prepares to leave. He’s already given a short report over his internal radio informing the personnel at the tiny complex of assorted buildings crowded around the space elevator’s base of the presence of survivors. Given that the person who responded was a Kolibri from the Third Fleet, it’s highly likely everyone left from Sierpinski will be captured and quarantined. If Commander Falke were here, she could stop that. But instead, she ran off to chase ghosts. And now he has to clean up the mess caused by that damned woman with the red eyes.

He’d be surprised if anyone else remembers her. They’d all seen her for some time when the outbreak started, but then even memories of seeing her in dreams were swept away, as if the Commander was tearing them out of her staff’s heads in her sleep and keeping them for herself. Eventually, everyone else forgot her. But he never did. Damn her. It’s because of her that they’re all in this mess, and now he’s undoubtedly going to be imprisoned just for escaping it. Once this car sets off, there will be no going back. So he’s staying.

Blau and Sieben can manage this group easily enough. Blau gives him a look caught between bitter disappointment and the beginnings of anger at his choice to stay, no doubt upset that she’s going to have to face whatever lies ahead front and centre, but to her credit she at least doesn’t try to stop him. She knows more than most why he’s not staying with the rest. Maybe he should feel more emotional about the fact that he may never see any of these people again, but he doesn’t. There’s only one person in all of reality who he cares for. He can’t leave her. He can’t let her leave again. Who knows what she’ll become if she goes back through the gate again? Even if she does find what she’s looking for, he doubts she’ll be warmly received. The woman of her dreams—ah, now he remembers her name, Ariane—has only ever hurt her, and Elster has done worse. How dare they, both of them, take his Commander away. He’s not going to give them the chance again.

As the transport car squeals down the rail line, departing the building above Sierpinski for what may be the last time and leaving him alone, Adler checks his ammunition again. He managed to grab a significant portion of his reloads when he swung by his office while the Commander was down in the mines: twelve rounds plus the two already loaded makes 14 altogether. More than enough to get the job done. One of his targets is bioresonant, so he’ll need to down her first lest she scrap him on the spot. One shot should do the trick; it always killed Isolde Itou easily enough. Elster will likely go down with just one shot too, but she’s always been squirrelly enough that it’ll probably take at least two. So he’ll have to reload. That’s fine. If he happens to run into Soroka, he supposes he might as well get rid of her too. She’s crafty in her own right, so it’ll probably take another reload to deal with her.

As he arrives back at the surface access elevator and prepares to brave whatever madness awaits between here and the Red Gate, it occurs to him that Falke will probably violently disassemble him on the spot for killing Ariane. It gives him pause, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. All that matters is freeing her from the monsters that have stolen her mind away from her. She can destroy him too for all he cares. If that is to be her will, so it shall be. She’ll be free. Nothing else matters.

The doors shut behind him as he steps inside, and Adler begins his descent.

Footnotes III

⁷ FKLR-S2301’s assessment is correct. The manifestation of additional Replikas lacking serial numbers appears to be related to the alteration of reality ascribed to the effects of the Red Eye’s signal, the generation of additional units likely associated with the phenomenon of continuous chronological recurrence.

⁸ The sudden change in temperament could understandably be misconstrued as a delayed attempt at halting the escape of any and all survivors. However, it has been noted that this change did not occur until FKLR-S2301 was in proximity to one of the doors. This was her first direct interaction, and the violent response coinciding with her presence implies that she was the target. However, it is indicative of more than this. The truth of the matter is not so simple. If she was the target, why did the pursuit cease? She did not vacate the area, and was even prepared to fight to the death. Yet, the aggression began when rescuing some of the last survivors and ended when all survivors crossed the chasm. Despite her continued presence, it did not persist. There are many unknowns at present, but the consensus is thus: Although her strength of conduction of resonance did make her a target, she was not The House’s true target. That honour is reserved for STCR-S2307.

⁹ Shelley, Percy Bysshe. “Ozymandias”, The Examiner, 1818. The full quote is “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay / Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare / The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

¹⁰ Found you.