"Is that the box?" Rusty whispered.
Emilly nodded, motioning him in. He walked over, looking down.
"It has a picture on it."
"That's the box..." She stared at the picture of the Duke, then shook her head slightly. "We need to get this to Caledon."
A short transit time later, the three were in the main room of the Caledon II estate. Emilly stared with some concern at the tentacle poking out of a potted fern by the fire.
"Oh!" Rusty said. "A piano!"
Emilly knelt by the box. "It should still work," she said distractedly. "I don't know if it's been tuned."
The poet followed her gaze to the fern. "Maybe I can generate another energy sphere..."
"Em?" came the partially mechanized voice. The same slight echo, the same everywhere-and-nowhere direction. "I can't see."
Em closed her eyes, breathing.
"...Em?" The voice was rising in pitch.
"It's all right, love. Just stay calm," she soothed the voice. "Can you answer a question?"
"I'll try..."
"Do you know where the temple is?"
"Uh..."
"It's all right. Just say whatever comes to mind." She looked at Justine and Rusty, worried. "He's not answering..."
The silence stretched on. "Hiro?" she finally whispered, putting a hand on the box.
"Dark Sea...the temple's in the Dark Sea...I think."
Emilly breathed out, shaking. Justine looked over.
"That sounded like an answer. We need to get this somewhere safe. Do you two want to head to the coordinates he gave, and I'll put this up in the attic and meet you there?"
"All right..." Emilly touched the box once more, then stood. "Let's go."
Justine nodded, picked up the box, and climbed the stairs to the attic.
She arrived first. It was dark. And wet. Instinctively, she sprouted gills, looking around. The black sands told her she was at the bottom of the Dark Sea. Staring at a...brightly lit temple, that she now briefly remembered seeing the first day of the attack.
She stepped cautiously into the temple, and hit a brief distortion field, dizzying her. Suddenly she couldn't breathe, and it took her a few seconds to realize that the field was keeping the water out of the interior of the temple. She made the gills disappear again.
What she saw was...puzzling. It looked like a jumble of machinery, some vintage, some merely dated. She sent ports to the other two and stepped forward. She pushed at a set of panels a bit, and they refused to budge, so she finally crawled under them. She heard the others arrive and called out.
"Over here!"
She rounded the corner, seeking open space, and stopped dead. Hiro! In a cryotube! She ran to the side, hands running over the chill surface, searching for control. Justine stepped up beside her.
"Words of power?" Justine asked. Emilly stared at her, before her eyes snapped wide.
"Oh gods, we lost track of Beta-El!"
"[Sh*t]," Justine muttered.
Emilly began searching frantically for the power buttons, and was then flung over the side by one of the power panels, starting to spin.
"ACK!" she yelled, fetching heavily against the side of the tube. She heard a pneumatic hiss behind her. She flung a hand up. "Watch out! The panels are turning!"
She whirled, staring at the open tube in shock. Hiro... She looked at the others. "Is he breathing? Tell me he's breathing!"
She leaned over, her breath visible in the cool air rising from the tube. She watched his eyelids flutter, then finally...open.
"Hiro!" She reached for him, Justine bracing his other side, helping him out of the cryotube. They got him standing, he pushed at their hands, took a step...and then fell forward. The poet caught him, looking up in concern.
"What the hell?"
Hiro shoved weakly at Rusty, his other hand reaching for a nearby suspension tank. Emilly looked over.
"But--no, we just got you out of the pod!"
Justine watched. "I think he had a plan..."
Hiro coughed. His voice was weak and thready. "It's...been...a while..."
Emilly half-leapt, half-fell off the other side of the tube. "Gods, help him in!"
Between the three of them, they got the tank open, and helped him inside. Before the door closed, he turned, meeting her eyes, then Justine's. "I need...to quarantine..."
Emilly just blinked at him.
"I wasn't awake since..." He breathed, swaying slightly. "I think the Middle Ages..."
"Since--WHY--but--the--WHAT??" Em said.
"It will take...a little detox," he murmured.
She bit her lip, nodding. "I...understand. Of course. Take all the time you need."
She watched the door close, wringing her hands.
"But it is...good...to be home..." he said. "I...can...lie...down..."
The tank sealed, the liquid rising up around his form, suspension gel filling his lungs. He closed his eyes.
"Can we...get you anything?" Justine asked.
Hiro slowly turned in the tank.
Emilly leaned over to whisper to Justine. "What do we do with Hiro in the box?"
"Do I have...a bedroom?" he asked. His voice was thick due to the gel, and the pickups on the outside of the tank seemed to occasionally pop with static. "In the mansion?"
Justine blinked. "Umm...Yes. Of course."
He opened his eyes. "Or...do we have a medical bay?"
"We have a medical bay on the Prometheus," Justine said.
Emilly nodded. "And we have the medical wing of Tannhäuser." She looked around at the odd conglomerate of machines, some covered in dust, some humming with life. "We'll make one if we don't, but...for right now? It might be safer--down here. There are...things...happening. Above the sea."
Justine nodded in agreement. "Probably, yes. Might be better if we just bring you what you need here."
"Until we're--sure, everything's back to normal."
Justine nodded. "Until...yeah. Everything is safe."
Emilly took a step forward, placing a hand on the column. "You're here, that's the important thing."
"Okay..." Hiro closed his eyes again, seemingly in thought. "How many of the back-ups have made it?"
Emilly thought, tapping her lip. "We're missing...three." She thought. "Wait, not counting you? Four."
Justine looked at her."Can we count the one Beta-El has? Because...we've kind of...lost her."
"We'll find her." She sounded sure. She wasn't.
"All four...made it?" he asked.
"No...just Beta."
"Um, not so much, no," Justine added.
"We can upload...Beta, and any others...to me in the Tannhäuser lab."
"The back-ups are still out there. We just need you to help us find them."
Emilly nodded. "Or go find them if you need them, but...after you recover. Yes." She looked from the pod, to the column, and back again, before looking at Justine. "I guess 'gives of herself' just meant 'be here'..." Something was missing. It bothered her she couldn't immediately see what.
Justine looked back at her. "I guess so?" She toed the ritual rug at her feet. "The rug here, though...almost looks like we were set up to conduct some sort of ritual?"
Emilly looked back at the tank. "Maybe we'll have to..."
Justine followed her gaze. "Use what we learned from 'Thaumaturgy in 21st Century Economies' to find the other back-ups."
Emilly nodded.
"And the Codex Magisterium," Hiro said.
"That's going to take a while," Emilly replied.
"Do we have a while?" Justine asked. Emilly shrugged.
"If this got rid of the rifts, all we'll have to do is clean up debris..."
"Hopefully, once we separated the two instances, that will close the rif...wait."
Emilly tilted her head, looking at Justine. "What?" She thought. "Oh, you're thinking Beta? Oh..."
"Is there a child in a rift?"
"No, I brought Athena back." Emilly said absently, then turned to look at the poet sharply. Had she told him that?
"Okay...Beta should go to..." Hiro trailed off, seeminginly in thought.
"No...were the creatures that attacked us the guardians of the backups, or were they sent by the adversary?"
"The Ringmaster?"
Hiro stared at them. "What...kind of creatures?"
"There was something about guardians, right?" Justine asked.
"Eye beasts. Interdimensional tentacles. Energy rifts. Sharktopi."
"Yeah, no, that is eldritch horror stuff..."
Emilly nodded. "That's...likely good, then. Means the path to the guardians is--"
"Sounds like either the Ringmaster," Hiro interrupted, "or some [a**hat] opened too many big rifts..."
Justine cringed. Emilly just sighed.
"That would be Lina, yes. Opened a HUGE rift on the site...."
"That's definitely going on her performance review." Justine said firmly.
(Continued in part LIV.)
No comments:
Post a Comment