Blue Crash
"So, what exactly is this 'void reactor' you keep talking about?"
Visk stared cluelessly at Nari as they walked through the facility. He'd taken up the rear; the scav seemed to know what she was looking for, and was powering ahead at a blistering pace.
After a moment, Nari stopped and turned around to face him. She reached into her bag and pulled out a black crystal. Squinting, Visk was just able to make out that it wasn't truly black; a plethora of colors sparkled within its inky surface, like dust within. Strangely, that dust seemed to shift any time he looked at it, almost like static, and he couldn't place where each color was located within, just that those colors were there.
"This is a void crystal," Nari explained. "They're what us scavs are really after, and the raw form of something called 'void'. It's used for a lot of things like warp fuel and gravity plating, but we haven't figured out how the Precursors made it, so scaving is the only way to get it right now. That makes these little buggers worth a lot."
The nerian then stashed the crystal back in her bag, and crouched down on the floor, pointing to one of the dark indentations running down the hallway. "The Precursors found a way to use void to power things. These conduits are their cables, and power most of the tech in their ruins. Same substance as the crystals, just liquid."
"That void has to come from somewhere," she continued. "The source is usually a void reactor, which melts the crystals down into liquid void for the conduits."
She stood back up and turned to face the darkness of the hallway. "Obviously, this ruin's powered off. Most of them are. If we find the reactor, though, we might be able to power it back on again. That should hopefully get the teleporter working. Hopefully."
Visk silently approved, following her onward into the facility.
They'd been walking a while; at this point, they'd left familiar territory, and the liralen wasn't entirely sure where in the facility they were. Nari had explained how Precursor ruins were laid out earlier; it sounded like they were currently underneath the central garden where he'd crashed. He wasn't entirely sure, though, and even Nari seemed a bit lost.
Down here, the facility was more intact and the flora was less extreme. Red vines and brambles occasionally broke through the walls still, and they'd even passed a few hallways that were fully blocked off by flora. Still, though, this section of the facility was mostly featureless; just endless black hallways, faintly illuminated by Nari's flashlight and the subtle glow of their biolights.
After the earlier ordeal, Visk was quite paranoid about swarms, and kept his eyes and ears peeled, jumping back slightly every time an unexpected mechanical creak echoed through the halls. Nari wasn't quite as skittish, but Visk occasionally caught a glimpse of her eyes, darting back and forth as they stepped into each new hallway.
After who-knows-how-long, Visk finally broke the silence. "Hey."
Despite her wariness, the nerian stopped in her tracks, almost falling over. She glared at him like she was about to maul his face in, then let out a deep sigh. "Shit. Cool, it's just you. What's up?"
"You've mentioned the Precursors a lot."
"Yeah, we're...uh, standing here. In one of their ruins," she noted.
"So I've heard," said Visk. "Who are the Precursors, though? Again, I don't remember anything, and it feels like some necessary context if we're trying to turn their stuff back on."
Nari awkwardly tried to conceal a smirk. "Sorry, this is...really common knowledge, so it's kinda funny to hear someone ask. They're...well, they're a species that colonized the galaxy a long time ago. More technologically advanced than anyone around now."
She steeled herself and continued walking through the hall. "About 25,000 years ago, they vanished. Nobody knows exactly why, just that it seemed sudden, and they had some sort of knowledge it was going to happen. They seeded our homeworlds with writings and technology to guide us to the stars, which is why most species started exploring space around the same time."
"A lot of folks wonder why they vanished," she continued. "Personally, I don't care too much about the history. They left behind a lot of advanced technology, stuff we haven't even started to figure out how to build ourselves, void-related and otherwise. So once the species of the galaxy began expanding through space, we all started raiding their ruins and salvaging stuff from them."
"Hence," she gestured around her, "scaving."
With that, she continued through a doorway en route to the reactor. Visk followed after her, silently contemplating what he'd just learned.
Nari confusedly tilted her head at the wall.
She'd seen a few void reactors in her time. Used some of them, too. They were usually embedded in the wall of a control room, with a port to insert void crystals, and a vat above it where you could see the void reserves build up.
This looked nothing like that.
The void conduit continued into the wall, just like she'd expect for any sort of void generator; the Precursors liked to hide things from view. But the vat and port weren't there; this wall was featureless and black, with no clear place to fuel it. It wasn't the normal black of Precursor alloy, either - this wall was noticeably a darker shade from its neighbors.
Those neighbors were more numerous than she'd expected, too. Until now, she'd never seen a non-rectangular void reactor control room. However, this one was a regular hexagon, with an entrance opposite to the oddly dark wall.
"What's wrong?" Visk asked, peeking over at her. His tail stood still behind him, and his tone of voice betrayed a hint of anxiety.
"Nothing," Nari replied hesitantly, unsure how true that was. "This just...doesn't look like the void reactors I'm used to. It's probably alright, I think."
With that, she stood before the command console at the center of the room. It was a familiar layout, reminiscent of other void reactors she'd utilized in the past. Though nobody had fully deciphered the Precursors' language, she knew the essential controls from muscle memory, the meaning of each lever deciphered by generations of trial and error before her.
Okay, first order of business - lights. Left switch.
She grabbed the handle of a metallic switch on the left side of the panel and pulled it toward her. With an electric snap, she heard the unmistakable buzz of lights powering on, then turned to her right to prime the reactor for input.
"Hey Nari, is this the reactor?"
Nari froze, then slowly stumbled away from the terminal. "Is wha-"
Her voice trailed off as she looked at the dark wall. No, not a dark wall - a window. A window into another room.
What the fuck?!
She'd thought the room they were in was large for a reactor control room. The room behind the window was easily ten times the size, a many-sided polygon extruded into an approximation of a cylinder. Magenta ceiling lights radiated inward from the edges of the ceiling, casting an otherworldly glow into the chamber below. Metallic spires of otherworldly machinery closed in on the center like claws, and in the middle was an icosahedral lattice of some unknown substance.
"Uh...yeah?" she weakly muttered, flashing a nervous grin at Visk.
Nari disappeared back behind the console. Whatever the hell this reactor was, she still needed to power this facility if she wanted to get out of here, and like it or not, this was the best option to do so.
She reached for the fuel intake button, only to find her hand hit flat metal. The button wasn't there.
Huh. Maybe the fuel intake is controlled elsewhere?
"Are you...sure you know what you're doing here?" Visk inquired from the side. "That this'll actually power things up, and not explode or something?"
"I...uh, think so," she coughed. "It's a weird reactor. Doesn't look like any void reactor I've seen, but it looks like it'll do something, at least."
Reaching a hand out to another lever, and ignoring Visk's expression of deep concern, she continued. "I've just got to power it on-"
She was interrupted by an otherworldly phwoosh as she pulled the lever, then a series of electric crackles coming from the direction of the window. Standing on her tiptoes, she peered over the console, then quickly winced back down when she saw what was in there.
It was...hard to describe. Hurt to look at, and hurt more to think about. First, that icosahedron had started spinning, quickly. More interestingly, though, there were a bunch of...circles, it looked like? Circles of nothingness. Not just darkness or something; it looked like some parts of space had just ceased to exist, and her brain had to fill in the details.
From the brief glimpse she got of it before she had to look away, those circles seemed to be drifting inwards, toward the icosahedron. She had a feeling she knew what they were doing, a suspicion further confirmed when she glanced at her feet and saw void flowing through the conduit below her.
But that can't be...that's not possible, right?
Is it?
Quickly, she turned the lights back off, then rushed toward Visk to usher him out, violently fighting the urge to look at the window. She reached out a hand to grab him, only for that hand to grasp nothing but air.
Puzzled, she glanced over at where he had been standing, and saw him crumpled on the floor.
Unconscious.
Nari leaned Visk's prone body against the wall. She'd carried him out into the hallway, out of view of...whatever was going on with the reactor. The facility's power had definitely been restored: the lights were on now, illuminating the dark metal floor with an eerie white glow.
She held a finger up to his wrist, and felt a pulse. Good, at least he's still alive.
The nerian took a nervous glance around at her surroundings. Currently, things were quiet besides the gentle hum of the reactor in the distance. It didn't seem like she was in danger, but she really didn't want to take any chances; who knows when or where a swarm might show up.
As she looked back at Visk, his eyes suddenly shot open and he gasped for air.
"Woah!" Nari exclaimed, raising an eyebrow at the prone liralen. "Hey, uh, you okay?"
"Yeah, I, um...it's nothing," he stammered. "Just...we're in danger. We need to go. Now."
Nari's eyes widened. "What do you mean?"
"Just trust me on this, okay?" Visk asked, a hint of exasperation in his tone. "Whatever we did back there, it woke up the swarms, big time. They're all over the facility."
Nari squinted, still not fully believing him. "And you know this how?"
"No time...to...explain," he answered, heaving himself off the floor. "I'm getting out of here. I'd suggest you do too if you value your life."
With that, he ran off into the hallway, Nari chasing after him.
"Okay, so where the hell are we going?"
Visk glanced back at Nari. "There's a powered-down tram system that runs through the facility. Well, it was powered down. It isn't anymore, so we can use it as a shortcut back to your portal."
"That makes sense-"
Nari was interrupted by Visk suddenly vanishing in front of her. She stumbled back, glancing back and forth before noticing a tap at her foot.
"Pstt. Down here," Visk whispered, his head poking out of an open vent in the wall.
"Shit. This again?" Nari complained, crouching down and sneaking inside. It was fairly large for a ventilation shaft, with enough room to comfortably turn around if need be, but given past experience, she didn't really trust this guy with vents.
"Don't worry," Visk muttered, noticing her hesitation. "This isn't like the vent by my place, we just need to crawl through it a moment-"
As he spoke, a dim metallic rattle became perceptible in the distance. Visk looked back at Nari and stared her dead in the eyes.
"Trust me now on the swarm thing?"
"Yeah, I guess," she mumbled.
Visk continued forward. "We're not hiding out in this vent, it's a shortcut to the tram station. The swarms don't know how to use the vents, so they'll be taking the long way. Should buy us time if we're fast."
With that, the duo began to run through the vents, hunched over to fit beneath the low ceilings. Neither spoke; the only sounds were the dim rattle of the swarms outside, and the clang of their feet against the metal floor.
After a few turns and a small drop, Nari felt cool air wash over her scales as they emerged into another featureless Precursor hallway. Visk turned to the right and instantly broke into a sprint, gesturing for Nari to follow behind.
She ran after him as he made a few turns through more hallways. As they navigated, she could hear the rattling steadily grow louder, reaching an uncomfortable level by the time she passed through a door.
Visk looked over his shoulder to face her. As soon as his head turned, his eyes widened. "Faster!"
Nari glanced nervously behind her, only to find a swarm just a few feet away. She yelped and jumped backwards, firing a few shots of her pistol at the mass. A few individual drones dropped to the ground from her efforts, but there were so many still active that she figured she'd need an army to be able to take the whole thing out.
Fighting this thing is futile.
Immediately, she scrambled into an upright position, curled her wings up in front of her, and shifted focus to running away as fast as possible. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot...the rattling was deafening at this point, and at this point, she didn't think she even had time to look back.
She was so focused on getting out of here that she didn't even notice the tram parked at the platform she was standing on until Visk grabbed her hand and pulled her to the left.
"NARI, OVER HERE!" the liralen shouted as an electronic ping sounded across the platform. Gasping, he dove through one of the open doors of the tram. That jump sent Nari into a tumble, and the nerian scrambled forward toward the tram just as the door began to close.
Barely avoiding falling prone, she leapt toward the door, unsure if she'd make it. Visk's eyes widened as a pale blue glow began to illuminate the side of the tram. By the time Nari comprehended what that meant, she already felt a sharp pain in her tail like it was getting flayed apart...
Then, in a moment the glow was gone, replaced with fluorescent white light. The pain was still there, but it felt different, lighter, like having a knife pulled out. Before she had time to think, she felt herself accelerate backwards and hit metal with a loud thud.
Winded, she opened her eyes. She was in the tram, facing a window; through it, she could see lights go by at blinding speed. Slowly, she came to her feet, holding onto a railing on the wall of the vehicle as she tried to make her way toward the front.
"What in the Precursors are you doing?" Nari asked, watching Visk wrench open a panel at the front of the tram.
"Oh, phew, you're here," he replied, dodging the question. "You've still got that plasma- shit, is your tail alright?"
Nari glanced at the bloodied, scratched tip of her tail. "I'll be fine," she shrugged. "Dealt with worse before."
"Alright," Visk nodded. "I'm glad you made it out alive. A few seconds later and you would've been like that bird."
"Don't remind me."
The liralen turned back toward the now-open panel. "So you've got the plasma cutter from the escape pod still, right?"
"Yeah, I do, actually," Nari confirmed. "Good eye. What do you need it for?"
"Cutting these wires," he said, pointing at a few wires exposed within the panel. "Right now, this tram's gonna stop at all of its stations, which will let the swarms catch up with us. I'm gonna give us an express ride to the portal room."
"I don't suppose you're an expert in Precursor electronics?" Nari asked skeptically.
Visk frowned. "Remember when I said I remember skills but not experiences? That's now."
After a brief moment of contemplation, Nari shrugged and handed him the plasma cutter. "Okay. Don't kill us."
She sat anxiously for a few minutes as he cut all but one of the wires, hoping his past life was that of an electrician. Holding her tail in her lap, she winced as she ran a hand alongside its end, her hand coming away bloodstained. Dammit, that hurts.
"Should be good to go," Visk remarked, giving a thumbs-up. "Now, uh...hold onto your tail, this thing's about to go fast-"
Visk's words were cut off as the vehicle lurched forward and began to rapidly accelerate.
The train had begun to decelerate as it approached their destination, and Nari was getting pretty nervous. She'd made the particularly wise decision of looking out the window for most of the journey. Every single station they'd passed through was completely overrun with swarms.
"Is this station...safe?" she meekly asked Visk, who was also staring out the window. The liralen turned to look at her, his eyes wide with anxiety.
"Hopefully?" he shrugged. "Not the hallway, though. We'll need to go through more vents to get around it."
He saw Nari begin to open her mouth and held up a finger. "Don't worry, it's another easy one! Just follow me."
Visk walked over to the tram door as the vehicle slowed to a crawl, and gestured for Nari to come with. With a final lurch, the tram stopped and the doors opened with another ding.
Instantly, Visk was sprinting out, leaping over a fence on the edge of the platform. Nari followed, barely avoiding getting her wing caught on the railing, and trailed him as he ducked inside a vent.
"Okay," Visk explained, speaking between breaths as he ran. "We're gonna end up on a platform. I'm going to use my grappling hook to get to the portal, you're going to fly."
Nari's heart dropped and she stumbled for a moment. "I'm not going to fly."
"Huh?" Visk asked confusedly. "You've got wings, this planet has a dense atmosphere, we're going over a huge pit. It's not rocket science."
"I...can't. Sorry. I just can't do it."
"Why not?"
"Story for another time," she hissed. "Just like how you won't explain how you know all these things about where the swarm is."
"Okay, okay, I get it," Visk grumbled. "In that case, uh..."
He went silent for a moment and stood still, Nari barely avoiding colliding with him. After a few seconds, he continued running through the vent as if nothing had ever happened.
"Alright, when we reach the pit - uh, NOW," he began to explain, interrupting himself as he stopped dead in his tracks. This time, Nari did crash into him, and they both stumbled back as Visk barely avoided falling off the ledge before them.
They stood on a small maintenance platform on the wall of a great chasm; Nari recognized it as the same one she'd seen when she'd first entered this place. The green glow of sunbeams streaming in had long been replaced by the faint purple of the night sky, but this place was far from dark; the sides of the pit were illuminated a bright cyan. A cyan she knew well by now.
The glow of an enormous swarm that spread as far as the eye could see.
It looked almost like an enormous spiderweb. Clusters of drones formed curtains between different platforms, infesting the facility like razor-sharp vines. There were a few openings without any drones, but they seemed to be closing rapidly. They didn't have much time.
Nari almost leapt out of her skin as a deafening crash echoed through the pit. In the distance, one of the bridges spanning the chasm crumbled apart, its pieces falling down to the floor so distantly below.
"Okay," Visk muttered, breathing heavily. "We're going to back up a few feet here, then we're going to get a running start off the ledge. You're going to stay right behind me and the moment we leave the ground, you're going to hold onto me for dear life. If your wings are going to provide lift, don't let them, otherwise it'll throw off my grapple. Got it?"
Nari weakly nodded and backed up.
As promised, Visk then broke into a sprint, Nari tailing him uncomfortably closely. Then he leapt off the ledge, Nari wrapped all four arms around him, and she closed her eyes.
She didn't remember much of the next few seconds clearly. She felt herself accelerate forward, then opened her eyes to see a blinding shower of blue speed past their sides. Visk screamed and she felt blood stain her face. She heard another crash and saw a hunk of Precursor alloy barely miss her face. Then she felt solid ground below her, and Visk, soaked blue with blood, stumbled forward, inching around a gap in the floor.
Nari followed him as they rounded a familiar corner, ducking beneath a curtain of crimson leaves. The ground was crumbling around them now, she could hear the roof above her caving in...but there was the portal, and the scene of a familiar room within it, clear as day.
Genli.
Visk was breathing heavily...then he was in her arms, passing out. Nari looked back at the entrance to the room as it slid down into the floor and she felt the ground below her start to rotate. Then she shoved Visk into the portal, ran, jumped, and rolled forward as an enormous buzz shook the air behind her.
She felt herself hit the ground, and the violent blue glow that threatened to pierce her eyelids suddenly flashed away into calm, quiet blackness.