Blue Crash
"Okay, you still haven't told me what the fuck is going on. Why do we need to escape?"
The duo had been sprinting through Precursor hallways for a little while now, Visk leading the way somehow, the azure glow of his biolights acting as a guiding lantern for Nari through the darkness. She'd been itching to ask that question for a bit but hadn't managed to catch up with him until now.
"Well, whatever you did with the reactor activated this whole place," said Visk. "I'm not sure why, but that includes the swarms. The swarms we've encountered so far are just the backup supply, and like a hundred times as many drones just woke up and are converging on our exact location."
"And you know this how?"
"I know you well enough at this point to know you won't believe my answer."
Nari huffed. Alright, so the guy had "died" again. She still wasn't sure what to think of that; obviously, she'd never seen him die, and he was still here, so no harm had actually come to him and what he was experiencing had to be some sort of vision of a possible future. Given past evidence, she was almost starting to think that despite all scientific reasoning, those visions might have some truth to them.
Her thoughts were interrupted by Visk suddenly vanishing in front of her. She stumbled backwards, glancing around before noticing a tap on her foot.
"Psst. Down here," Visk whispered, his head and upper right arm poking out from an open vent in the wall.
"Shit. This again?" Nari complained, crouching down and sneaking inside. For a ventilation shaft, it was surprisingly large, with enough room to comfortably turn around within, though not quite tall enough to stand up straight in. Still, it echoed the shaft Visk had had her climb up earlier to some extent, which was enough to give her some pause.
"Don't worry, we're not climbing up anything," Visk assured her. "Just gotta crawl through it a moment-"
He stopped speaking mid-sentence as a dim metallic rattle became perceptible in the distance. He stared Nari dead in the eyes, and though he was silent, his expression could only be interpreted as a "trust me now?" Nari nodded.
"I'm not sure why, but the swarms can't take the vents," Visk muttered. "This isn't a hiding spot. Sooner or later, they're going to destroy the structural components of this place and it'll come crumbling down, so we need to get out. This vent is a shortcut to the tram station. I'm hoping it'll buy us some time before the swarms catch us."
As he spoke, he began creeping through the vent, and once he'd finished, he accelerated to an awkward run, hunched over to fit below the low ceiling. Nari chased after him, both of them silent, the only sounds 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 Visk's reflection in the floor disappeared and they emerged into another mostly featureless Precursor hallway. Visk turned to the right and instantly broke into a sprint, gesturing for Nari to follow, though he didn't look back.
She ran after him as he continued through the hallways, turning seemingly randomly at junctions, though he had an air of confidence about him as if he knew what he was doing. As they navigated, she heard the rattling steadily grow louder. Nervously, she put a hand on her pistol, ready to pull it out if something jumped her.
She fixated her eyes on Visk. If she lost him, she was good as dead. The hallways here were so dark that his biolights didn't even seem that dim - with nothing else for her eyes to focus on, it seemed like he glowed with neon cyan light.
So focused was she on following Visk that she didn't even notice the rattling grow louder and the walls glow with an even brighter cyan light. Then, the duo passed through a doorway and Visk looked over his shoulder to face her. As soon as his head turned, his eyes widened. "Faster!"
Nari glanced nervously behind her, immediately regretting it as she saw a swarm just a few meters away. Instinctively, she unholstered her pistol and let loose a few shots at it. A few individual drones dropped to the ground, but there were so many still active that it felt like trying to stop an avalanche by melting each individual water molecule.
I can't kill this thing.
Immediately, she scrambled back into a forward-facing position, wrapped her wings around her chest to reduce how much space she was taking up, and sprinted forward with all the speed she could muster, her mind completely consumed in the rhythm of her footsteps. Left, right, left, right...at this point, the rattle was deafening and she didn't even dare to look back.
She was so single-minded at this point that she didn't even notice she was running across a tram platform with the tram parked next to her until Visk grabbed her wing-arm and pulled her to the left.
"NARI, OVER HERE!" the liralen shouted as an electric ping sounded across the platform. Gasping, he dove through one of the open doors of the tram, his grasp sending Nari into a tumble as she slipped out of his hands. Her eyes widened, the nerian scrambled forward just as the tram 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 illuminated the side of the tram. By the time Nari realized what that meant, she already felt a sharp pain in her tail, shaking it violently in agony as it felt like it was getting flayed apart...
Then, in a moment, the glow was gone, replaced with darkness and a faint purple light that she barely recognized as the reflection of her own body in metal. The pain was still there, but lighter in a way, like the difference between getting stabbed with a knife and having the knife pulled out. Before she had time to think, she felt herself accelerate backwards and hit the ground with a thud.
Nari opened her eyes, winded. She was on the floor of the tram; softly glancing up to the windows, she could faintly make out walls racing by at blinding speed, the occasional beam of starlight filtering through and scaring away the darkness.
Slowly, she came to her feet, and held onto a railing on the vehicle's wall as she maneuvered toward the front of the tram, where she could see a faint blue glow in the distance.
As she approached, the glow gradually resolved into the familiar shape of Visk's biolights. The train lurched a bit as it rounded a corner, and Nari winced as her injured tail hit the wall.
Eventually, she made it close enough to make out what the liralen was doing. He stood by a panel on the wall, all four arms dug into its surface, trying to wrench it off of the tram.
"What're you doing?" Nari asked.
Visk jumped slightly, only just now noticing her presence behind him. He released his grasp on the panel and turned to face her.
"Oh, phew, you're here," he sighed, dodging her question. "You've still got that screw-...shit, is your tail okay?"
Nari glanced at the injured, scratched tip of her tail, still wet and stained blue with her blood. "I'll be fine," she shrugged. "Hurts, but isn't lethal."
Visk nodded. "Glad you made it in here. That was a close one."
"Don't remind me."
The liralen turned back toward the panel. "So, you've still got that screwdriver from the escape pod, right?"
Nari scratched her chin. Though Visk had been unconscious when she'd grabbed the screwdriver, she'd mentioned it offhandedly to him when they'd been heading toward the void reactor. She was surpised he actually needed it.
"Yeah, I do," she replied. "What for?"
"I've gotta open this thing," Visk said, gesturing to the panel he'd been trying to open. "Brute forcing it is a pain, but if I can unscrew it it'll be a lot easier. Also, a screwdriver might give me leverage to cut the wires I need to."
Nari raised a brow. "What're you planning to cut wires for?"
Visk frowned. "Right now, the tram is scheduled to stop at several stations before we get to your portal. Time is of the essence right now, and if we stop that frequently, swarms will catch up with us and get into the tram. So I'm going to disable the brakes to get us an express ride to where we need to go."
"I don't suppose you're an expert in Precursor electronics?"
"I kept trying this until I stopped dying," Visk replied. "If we don't cut these exact wires, we die."
Nari sighed skeptically and handed him the screwdriver. "Alright, I'll take your word for it. Go ahead. Don't kill us."
Visk nodded and unscrewed the panel, pulling it off to reveal an array of wires behind it. He squinted a bit until he located a specific wire in the mess, then stuck the screwdriver behind it, pulling it back like a lever until the wire snapped.
Nari sat anxiously as he worked, hoping he did truly know what he was doing. Holding her tail in her lap, she winced as she ran a hand alongside its end, her fingers coming away bloodstained. Dammit, that hurts.
"By the way, if the brakes are off, how will we get off of the tram?" she asked nervously.
"Jumping out and using my grappling hook to not get knocked over," Visk replied.
"You're sure that'll work?"
"Certain."
Visk then took the screwdriver and put it behind another wire. "I already disabled the brakes, but we need to speed up as well," he remarked. "So, heads-up, I'm going to disable the wire that turns off the engines, and we're going to speed up quite a lot. You might want to hold onto something."
Nari nodded and heeded his advice, holding onto a metal bar in the wall with her wings. Visk grabbed a similar bar with his left hands, using his top right one to maneuver the screwdriver and snap another wire.
"Should be good to go!" Visk remarked, giving a thumbs-up with his lower right hand. "Now, uh...hold onto your tail, this thing's about to go fast-"
His words were cut off as the vehicle lurched forward and began to rapidly accelerate.
They'd been riding the tram for about fifteen minutes now. Nari was getting quite nervous; she'd made the truly wise decision to look out the window most of the way, and as the pure darkness had slowly faded into the faint glow of the night sky, one constant she'd noticed was that every single station was overrun by swarms.
"Is our station safe?" she meekly asked Visk, who was standing by an open doorway at the side of the tram. He'd cut another wire a few minutes ago, which had opened up all the doors on the vehicle, making the air within feel about as windy as a hurricane.
"Should be," he answered confidently. "The hallway outside of it won't be, though, so we'll need to take the vents again to get around it."
Nari opened her mouth to protest and Visk held up a finger. "Don't worry," he assured her. "It's another easy one! Just follow me once we're on the ground."
The liralen's posture stiffened as he glanced out the doorway and unholstered his grappling hook. "Okay, we're about to reach our stop. Hold onto me tight."
Nari nodded and walked up to him, wrapping her arms and wings around his torso and grasping on for dear life. He'd explained the plan to her a few times now, and she knew what she had to do; it was just a matter of actually pulling it off.
"Alright, we're arriving..." he began, putting a finger on the trigger of the grappling hook. "3...2...1...JUMP!"
As he said that, both him and Nari leapt off the ground simultaneously, and Nari heard a thwing as the grappling hook activated and latched onto a metal fence on the station platform. She felt herself accelerate suddenly as the duo launched out of the tram and smacked into the fence.
Instantly, Visk rolled forward and regained his footing, sprinting off the edge of the platform toward the wall. Nari stumbled after him, barely avoiding getting her wing caught on the railing, and trailed him as he ducked inside a vent and sprinted through it.
"Okay," the liralen explained, speaking between breaths as he ran. "Here's the plan. We're gonna end up on a platform. I'm going to use my grappling hook to launch us toward the portal, and you're going to get us the altitude we need by flying."
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 makes sense."
"I...can't. Sorry. I just can't do it. Shouldn't your visions have explained this to you?"
"No?" he said. "That's not how they work. Why can't you fly?"
"I'll explain it if you explain how your visions work," she grumbled.
"Okay, okay, I get it," Visk frowned. "In that case, uh..."
He went silent for a moment and suddenly stopped moving; Nari barely avoided colliding with him. After a few seconds, he broke back into a sprint and continued through the vent as if nothing had 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 were on a small maintenance platform protruding from the wall of the great chasm Nari had seen when she'd first entered this place. The green glow of the sun had long been replaced with the faint purple of the night sky, but this place was far from dark; the sides of the pit were illuminated in a brilliant cyan, a cyan she knew well by now.
The entire chasm was filled with the largest swarm she'd ever seen.
It looked almost like an enormous spiderweb; clusters of drones formed curtains between different platforms, infesting the facility like razor-sharp vines. There were some openings without any drones, tunnels through the chaos, but they were closing rapidly as she watched. They didn't have much time.
Nari almost leapt out of her scales as a deafening crash echoed through the chamber. In the distance, one of the bridges spanning the chasm crumbled apart, knocking away the nanobots that swarmed its edge as its pieces slammed into the distant floor below.
"Okay," Visk muttered, breathing heavily. "We're going to back up a few feet here, then we're going to run 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 like you did getting off the tram. If your wings are going to provide lift, don't let them, otherwise it'll fuck up our velocity. Got it?"
Nari weakly nodded and backed up.
As promised, Visk then broke into a sprint, Nari tailing him as closely as she could manage. Then he leapt off the ledge, Nari wrapped all her limbs 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 side. Visk screamed and she felt blood stain her face. She heard another crash and saw a hunk of stone 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.
Venator-423c.
Visk was breathing heavily...then he was in her arms, passing out. Nari glanced 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 flickered away into calm, quiet blackness.