“Those absolute fuckers,” I griped to myself.

I had returned to the unlit, dark surface, hastened by the elevator to the first floor, and climbed up the stairs. only to be thoroughly pissed at what I found.

My bike, or to be accurate, what was left of my bike, was scattered across the ground, shards of scrap metal had been hurled as far away as fifteen feet.

The battery was a scorched hunk of metal, burn marks stretching out from it and coating the shards of metal.

It was all gone, and I had no idea how to get back to my ship without it. I had cruised here on the bike, sure some stints had been slow, but those were the parts where I had been moving awkwardly. Walking back? That would take hours, hours I did not have the time to walk for.

“Lilly, any chance there's a method of transport I could acquire from the facility? Maybe a bike or something?”

“No, there are no modes of transportation like that currently housed in the facility. There may be another way you could expedite your movement, however,” She told me, her voice going distant as if she were looking for something.

“Well, I’m all ears, I don’t know if I can make it back to the Junker if I don’t drive back, especially with all this gear.”

“Understandable, first of all, is your Wayfinder set correctly?”

I double-checked it, making sure it was set to return and tucked it back away.

“Yeh, it's set to return to my ship, are you going to do something?”

“You could certainly saY-y that, let's see how far you need to travel… Hmm. That… That can't be right, that would… Where are we? I… Pardon me. I will work this out on my own, thank you. Please head back and down to floor 31, I will direct you when you get down. I can't go holding you back on accident because I got caught up in something I wasn’t expecting.”

“No problem, but you could always tell me about it while I walk, not like there's much to do beyond talk and walk right now.”

“Iiiiii- don’t know, its probably boring to you, like the explanation about the hole.”

“The whole thing was more convoluted than boring,” I told her.

“Well… It’s just that the distance, the one I found by checking the time it takes for the signal to return after it's sent from the way finder… It would indicate that there is a far vaster distance between here and your ship than I expected,”

“How so? It’s a bit away, but not like extraordinarily long. It's kind of hard to tell time here, but according to my timepiece…” I hadn’t checked my timepiece when I got here, but I pulled it out and checked, subtracting the time I had been out and a bit for the time it took to go down the stairs for an estimate, “It took me… about an hour, by my timepiece, why?”

“One final question, your bike, it was terrestrial and travelled at a normal velocity for a cabinless terrestrial bike?”

She was asking it like she just needed to make sure that my bike was, in fact, some kind of kids' toy that wouldn’t have hurt me. Her mothering was one part comfort, one part a little belittling, and I wasn’t sure why I wasn’t more pissy at the tone, but I wasn’t.

“Yes, Lilly, it was a normal bike, one that uses its tires to propel it across the ground at a speed it would be expected to drive at, nothing special, well, it could change its configuration to hold more, but nothing besides that,” I told her pointily.

“That would explain why a four-wheel vehicle is being rE-referred to as a bike. Judging by the atmosphere I’m monitoring, and the time between pings, I would calculate you travelled some 16000 Kilometers, which is a significant distance.”

“Kilometers?” I asked, not aware of the distance. Whatever a Kilometer was, it was some kind of unit of distance, but it wasn’t one I knew.

“approximately 8000 Nautical Miles,” she explained deadpan.

That was. It was a lot longer than it should have been, but then again, it was also littered with those twists and turns. I had no idea what the deal with those was, but they were common enough to be annoying.

“Would distortions in space do that?” I asked her, taking the stairs two at a time with my much more dainty, flexible body.

It was surprisingly great for movement, though the hips made me a bit uncomfortable to move. They wanted to roll, not stride like I was used to.

“They certainly could, though the amount of distorted space needed to get that magnitude of distortion… It would have to be very distorted.”

“I had to do a lot of weird turns,” I told her, reaching the lift and pressing the call button. My foot started to tap almost immediately as I stood. I was interested in what exactly Lilly was directing me to if it wasn’t an act of transportation.

“Hmm, just how warped is the space? I don’t understand what could lead to that magnitude of distortion. space is not a simple thing to bend out of shape, just because its possible doesn’t mean it's normal to bend reality to our whims.”

“Weren’t you talking about sucking energy through a tiny hole in my body from some other place, then sucking that into a battery, all while it's still inside of me?” I asked her curiously.

The door dinged, so I made my way in, clicked the button for floor 31, and waited as the doors closed. Unlike the giant lifts of the Lighthouse, these were small, personal-sized, quiet, and felt almost motionless in their movement.

“Granted, a Quantum tunnel acting as a fuel line for a black hole, letting relative zero point particles fall into it to generate energy for you, is quite fantastical, but the sciiience is well understood, shaping space was small scale, purely physical things were a larger focus with the technology being developed, and changes on this scale... The energy alone…”

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

“I get it, it’s a spooky amount of weirdness, also, nice, you managed to explain it straightforwardly, now all you have to do is put them in terms I understand.”

“it’s a tube, letting water pour down from a higher place to a lower place, the water flows into the black hole inside of you, which is caged for your use, and your battery is filled from the black hole, releasing water?”

“Even better, you did it. I understand what you’re saying, kind of. Envisioning it is a bit hard, but it seems like it would be a pain to explore in detail.”

“It was the defining technology that uplifted humanity, granting them a nearly unlimited amount of power so great that it would run out closer to the heat death of the universe than today, it was the labour of hundreds of thousands of different scientists, from dozens of fields, it is indeed. ‘a bit of a pain to explore in detail.’”

I whispered, “That sounds incredibly important, it's good to know I’m now battery-operated with technology beyond my comprehension.”

She sighed, deeply unamused with me and my antics. She was so very focused and literal. She would be great to have at my back, especially with enemys like the collector.

Me and he had a meeting coming up, I expected he would try to dodge my appointment, but I didn’t care.

He took my sword and blew up my bike, I was going to cauterize him.

The door opened.

I looked up and read 25, and moved to press the button.

A light flashed, and a little voice from a hidden speaker told me, in a far too cheery voice, “Access denied, please input valid credentials.”

“Lilly? Any way to check where I might get some of those?”

“If I had a one-time code, I could request it, and if you were cataloged as a member of the legion in peacetime, you would have it, let me check records for any remaining cards…”

I waited a moment before she chimed up again, “There are no remaining methods of valid credentials in the building, I suggest you head down the stairs.”

I groaned, heading out of the elevator and out into the hallway.

The sterile light of the place was eerie to be sure, but it was just more empty hallways, it was nowhere as strange as the bottom floor, with its changing landscape. No White walls to stone to tent golemshit. Just blank walls.

I made my way into the stairwell and started down, but I decided to peek over the railing.

The dizzying height made me queasy, it was like staring into a mirror with a reflection of itself, spiralling down and down forever. I couldn’t even see the bottom.

I went to pull back and continue down the six floors I needed to cross when a shimmer of red-purple light caught the corner of my eye.

My head spun to try and take it in, but I couldn’t whatever it was that had that colour. I spoke up, my feet taking me around the bend to the next level.

“Lilly, what was that?”

“What was what?” She asked, “I’m sorry to say, I don’t have a perfect view of everything, what did you see?”

“I saw, I don’t even know what, it was just colour, in the corner of my eye. Red and purpley… but that’s all I saw.”

“The walls do not have any of those colours, and I did not perceive anything of those colours.” She told me.

“Hold on, I’ll do it again,” I told her and leaned back over the railing to stair into the pit, down into the dizzying height of the truly overkill depth of the facility.

I pulled back and saw the colour, only in a slightly different direction, or I supposed the same direction.

Down and towards the floors just below me.

“It's pointing that way,” I told her, pointing in the same direction it had shown up, “Same colour, same direction.”

“Go down a floor and try it again, I will see if there is security footage of the next few floors.”

I took her at her word as she became silent, instinctively, from year upon year of work in a field where some random Salt Addict could gift you a surprise pound of lead and an oneway vacation to the forever box for looking funny.

I did it again, assaulting my senses with the spiral of concrete stairs, before looking up.

It was in the same direction but a handful of floors down still. Three more floors down.

I whispered, it felt right to whisper. I felt the need to conceal myself growing, there was a feeling of tension in my neck that made it tingle, pre-fight jitters but throughout my skin instead of my full body.

It was an alien sensation that reminded me that this was not my body on a deep, gut-twisting level.

“It's pointing to level 31, Lilly, is there anything on cameras.”

“Jacalyn, your undergoing a fight or flight reaction, there is nothing on cameras, would you like me to calm you?”

“The first rule of being a mercenary, the biggest, most important unofficial rule there is, is to trust your gut. I don’t understand what you mean by that, but if it's any form of sedation, no. I would rather be tense and wrong than jumped.”

“According to remote viewing, we are alone, there is nothing moving on fifty floors above or bE- beeee- or under you.”

Nothing above or below on cameras, a good sign, auspicious even.

I started to sneak down, getting myself ready with my handguns and then my Carbine.

I got down to 31 and took a deep breath.

“Get ready to direct me. 3… 2… 1…”

I put pep into my step and cleared the doorway, one way than the other. I blinked. The colour splotch showed on the same floor, forward and to the left of where I was looking.

“Forward, pass three doors and down the first left corridor.”

I followed her instruction, trying to distribute my weight while power walking, gun raised, clearing every open space, checking for anything alive as we came closer to the splotch.

Tension building, my skin stood on end, in a familiar and unfamiliar way, as I became very aware of tiny hairs all over my body.

“Right.”

Closer we were getting closer, what if that’s what I was feeling… What if it was some gadget?

“One more Left, find a door labelled storage 2, it's unlocked, I checked.”

Left was the same corridor as the splotch but in the opposite direction.

I got ready, counted myself down and cleared in the direction of the splotch.

The hallway was totally normal, then I blinked, and it was different, a cavern made of meat, shapes all over the wall, it led down into a space that did not exist.

There was a thing there; it was like the dog thing from earlier, but like it was heavily pregnant.

It turned its head towards me, and I started backing up.

It oriented itself towards me and lumbered one step towards me, I blinked, but it didn’t go away. It’s step was met with a contraction of its belly, it started to let out a noise, and I lined up a shot and hit it in the throat.

Then I turned and ran like my ass depended on it.

My eyes kept scanning left and right, looking at the placards, the placards that I could now read, the placards I hadn’t been able to before.

3175 – Dr. Simons

3186 – Pauline Cherinko

Storage 1.

The thing let out a gurgling noise behind me, and Lilly said something that I blotted out, focusing myself on the doorplates.

3189 – Officer Cordon

3196 – Artificer Digsby

Storage 2.

3198 – Mr. Johnso-

Storage two.

I almost shouted it by breath, picking up from my exertion, I focused in on the door and grabbed the handle, I looked back over my shoulder, it was moving, gore dripping from its missing hunk of its neck, and red-purple ooze flowed out of its wound, and sloped audibly too the floor like it was a horrific slab of canned meat.

I pulled the door open and nearly threw myself inside, and I heard it scrabble towards me.

I turned, slammed the door shut, and after a moment, found the lock and locked it. It was an unfulfilling button that let out a whirr clunk moments before the creature threw itself bodily into the door, once twice, and then stopped.

“So… What happened to nothing’s there? Any ideas because that thing was all fine and dandy, but I don’t want to run into many more horrors coming out of otherwise normal corridors.”

“I… IIIII- I have no idea. It was hiding in a… But how? I don’t understand.”

“That is starting to sound like the story of my life, like a personal catchphrase,” I told her.

“Att, least we made it. Turn around. I think I’ve outdone myself.”

I did, and my eyes opened wide.

It wasn’t like storage, it was an armoury. An armoury fit for a lunatic like me.