Falia waved her identification plate in front of the fist-sized runic sensor at the office’s entrance. She walked through the doors, a smile on her face, and offered a small bag with a prepared pastry to the guard standing just inside vestibule.
“Good morning, Jerric!” She said, brightly.
“Morning, Falia.” The man said, gruff as always. But, he softened it with a smile as he accepted the pastry.
Falia strode with purpose through the busy lobby, sunlight streaming in through the large windows, before reaching the localized teleport circle in one corner. With another swipe of her ID plate, she stepped onto the runed, metal disc and flashed away in a burst of light.
When she reappeared, she stood in a small antechamber outside a long hallway. While it looked like any other hallway in any other building, Falia knew better. The teleporter she had just used was one of the few access points to a small, highly secure pocket world, designed precisely for the research of her team and others like it. Research that would define the next generation of the Alteriad System, and possibly the universe beyond as well.
Specialty laboratory coats hung on hooks on the wall, next to small spatial storage devices for the researchers' belongings. Stowing her things and donning a cloak, Falia once again waved her plate at the final set of doors leading into the main laboratory itself before shivering as the system scanned her mana signature more deeply. Sighing as the scan finished, she stowed the plate back around her neck with a thin cord. Really, she thought to herself as she entered the hallway beyond, sometimes the security here just feels excessive.
Walking briskly down the corridor, she eventually turned into a modest sized room filled with desks, sensors, and strange display elements projecting various statistics via small illusion arrays. Other researchers roamed the space, examining the displays or interacting with the sensors. But neither the researchers nor the sensors were this room’s most notable features; instead, the eye of any visitor would be drawn to the far wall of the room, where a series of floor to ceiling windows opened the space out onto a large, square, metallic room. At the center of this room sprouted great pylons of metal, reaching up from the floor and down from the roof, each lined with delicate runework and glowing Mana channels. And there, floating between the tips of these pylons as though cradled in fingers of shining metal, pulsed a small, shining, purple-white sphere.
Despite being nearly featureless in its uniformity, the sphere seemed to rotate in on itself, somehow, the light around it bending into its depths. And while it rotated, pulses of light flashed in its corona, their pattern at once clearly ordered and meaningful but still deeply inscrutable, as though the governing cycle driving their flashes was just out of reach of the examining mind.
Falia smiled as she inspected the scene, then turned to the room's other occupants.
“Good morning, everyone!” She announced, before stepping up to a larger monitor and skimming through its summary of the night’s readings. “Interesting, but expected...” she mused aloud, even as some of her colleagues greeted her in return.
“Did you follow up on this anomaly, Rose?” Falia asked one of the other researchers, pointing to a particular chunk of data on the display.
“I did, yeah... It is odd, but I don’t see any real red flags in any of the scans after that. I plan to ask the simulation team if they have any insight into what that was; it was right in the midst of one of their tests, but those aren’t supposed to even interact significantly with the Core, so I’m not sure what to think.” Rose answered, twirling her hair around one finger nervously.
“Hmm. Strange indeed.” Falia said, pondering. “Well, nothing to it but to check in directly. Has anyone greeted the device yet this morning?”
“No, we waited for you,” Rose said, smiling knowingly.
Falia’s eyes brightened at that news, and she moved happily towards the central console. After all, who wouldn’t enjoy interacting with a sentient spirit capable of computations more complex than anything the Alteriad had ever built before?
Activating several arrays on the panel before her, Falia watched through the window as a new line of runes lit up on the floor of the metal room, flashing out to the cluster of central pylons. Toggling one last switch, Falia grasped the attached speaking talisman and spoke.
“Hello there, Core! Did you enjoy your evening?”
The pattern of flashes from the strange anomaly of pastel light in the arena brightened and twisted before settling into a new rhythm, and an answering voice emerged from the talisman before her.
“Hello, researcher Falia! Yes, indeed, I did enjoy my evening. I learned many new things, including how many insects there are in this containment chamber, the number of steps it takes the beetles with the blue and black shells which I have called ‘Beetle Species 3’ to cross the arena, the approximate extent of the damage the claws of these insects inflict on the truesteel floor, the fluctuation in the accuracy of the timekeeping array in monitoring room 2, and the...’
The voice coming out of the talisman kept going, listing ever more highly specific, often useless facts that it had “learned” in the previous evening. The voice’s timbre was slightly monotone and clearly artificial, but surprisingly expressive despite that, showing clear excitement at its various facts.
“Those are all wonderful, Core!” Falia eventually interrupted, “But I wonder if you could tell me if anything of particular note happened at approximately 4:35 in the morning? We see some odd readings on our charts at that time period.”
“How approximately?” The anomaly asked, voice very concerned. “I now understand that approximately can mean a great range of things. For example, at approximately 3:45:01.238104 in the morning I saw a beetle. Is that at the right time?”
“No, I’m sorry,” Falia said, smiling slightly despite herself. “Tell me if there was anything noteworthy that affected your demesne extent, internal mana composition, or external mana vent rate between precisely 4:00 and 4:35 in the morning.”
“Oh.” The voice said, disappointed. “That was not caused by the beetle. Rounding to the nearest standard minute, at 4:02 a minor spatial disturbance occurred which the protective arrays quickly corrected, at 4:12 there was a loud noise from another section of the lab with a correspondingly low mana signature, at 4:18 there was a second spatial disturbance which was again corrected by the arrays, and at 4:32 Simulation v108.3 failed, which was distressing.”
“Thank you, Core, that is very helpful!” Falia replied before releasing the flow of mana into the speaking talisman.
“Good call!” Falia said to Rose as she turned away from the central console, “seems like it likely was the simulation team.”
Frowning over another section of logs, she pursed her lips before continuing.
“I am a bit confused, though. Two random spatial anomalies that close together... This is a pocket dimension, so it isn’t unexpected, but still. Were there any other spatiotemporal disturbances last night?”
“I’m not sure...” Rose said, biting her lip. “I didn’t check for that.”
She moved to a different display and began manipulating the output data.
“Nevermind, I’ve got it.” Falia said, as her own display began showing the desired data. Rose walked over behind her, peeking at the outputs over her shoulders.
“This... this can’t be right.” Falia said, voice soft as she skimmed the data.
“What?!” Rose said, eyes widening, “200 separate anomalies last night!”
“The sensors must be on the fritz...” Falia said. “We’ll notify the maintenance team.”
“Besides,” Falia continued, standing back up, “Whatever it is, it won’t affect our work here.”
As if to spite her, it was at precisely that moment that the alarms began to blare.
“Come along, everyone!” Falia called, shepherding the group of researchers out into the hallway.
“Falia, come now, surely it is just a drill! There was no cause to force me to leave my breakfast!” A stodgy, older researcher complained as he hurried after the group down the hall.
“The policies are clear, Horace! We are to drop everything and leave immediately, drill or not...”
Falia’s chipper, but authoritative tone trailed off as a distant crash and scream of pain echoed down the hallway before them.
Making a snap decision, Falia turned down a separate corridor and began taking a different exit route. “This way!” She called out, voice echoing amidst the wailing alarm siren. This time, there were no complaints.
The motley group made it safely to the auxiliary exit point without any further excitement. A few more distant crashes were heard, and at one point the echoing discharges of energy weapons, but nothing threatened their increasingly hurried flight. Falia directed the terrified researchers under her care to form up at the end of the line waiting to access the emergency teleporter while a bevy of guards stood vigil over each of the incoming hallways, runed armor glowing and weapons primed.
“Come on, Falia!” Rose hissed at her, gesturing for her to join the line as well.
“You go on ahead, Rose!” Falia called back, projecting calm despite her own pounding heart. “Once I know that all the monitoring staff has evacuated successfully, I’ll follow.”
Rose seemed to want to argue, but the guards were sweeping everyone in the line through the teleporter too quickly to permit further conversation. Indeed, even as Falia attempted to excuse herself from the rush, a guard grabbed her arm and began wheeling her towards the teleporter as well.
“Wait!” She protested, yanking her arm free and stepping back hurriedly. “I need to confirm whether all the core staff on project X37.184 have evacuated!” She said, angrily. “Where is your captain? Who do I speak to to obtain that information?”
To her great frustration, however, the guard simply ignored her, instead turning with a curse as another set of loud crashes echoed down the passages, much closer this time.
“There’s no time to worry about confirmations or final policies!” He finally snapped back at her, even as the final few scientists and staff filtered through the teleporter. “Everyone needs to go, now!”
He reached for her arm again, and she instinctively took another step back, farther into the open corridor. And then, before he could close the distance and put an end to her complaints, the sound of running footsteps shattered the tense, delicate silence as another guard came sprinting down the corridor.
“They’re coming!” She shouted, as Falia and the guard she was arguing with turned instinctively to face her. “Lock down the array! They’re destroying the anchors! They’re going to destroy the Core--”
The guardswoman’s words cut off with a gurgle as a blazing silver light spurted from her chest, lifting her body off the ground to dangle limp on the impaling blade.
Falia was a researcher, not a combatant. Her class had evolved from [Privileged Youth] to [Student] to [Scientist] to [Principal Investigator], and she was proud of it. But nowhere in any of those myriad classes was there any expectation of or exposure to combat.
So as the silver light expanded and tore the woman into wet chunks, splattering Falia and the surrounding walls in smoking viscera, a part of her mind simply shut down.
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Someone was screaming, and she couldn’t tell if it was her, or someone else. Rough hands were grabbing her, throwing her to the side, right before another flash of silver separated the rude guard’s head from his body, blood staining her lab coat crimson.
Falia was crawling, hands and knees sliding in the gore as she fled, blindly from the carnage.
“Barriers, now!” A resonant voice boomed, and Falia saw sheets of blue light overlap one another behind her to fend off a whirling vortex of silver blades. A ghostly, taloned green fist materialized through the adjacent wall and crushed one of the guardsmen’s head in its immaterial grip. The guard screamed as he fell, head somehow flickering between being a pulped mess and being completely fine, as though it couldn’t decide which were the true reality. A ragged, long-haired man followed the green fist, flashing into the hallway in a blink and tearing into the guards with tooth and claw. The barrier fell an instant later.
Falia turned a corner, scrambling up to her feet as she heard the teleportation array behind her detonate, and a pulse of unconstrained spatial magic threw her to her feet once more.
Time blurred as Falia ran. Screams and the sounds of combat were nearly constant, now, guards engaging invaders throughout the laboratory’s hallways.
She made it ten paces into a hall when a section of wall exploded into the corridor, and another group of guards tumbled out, engaged in combat with a woman whose jaw opened too wide and whose clawed fingers stretched too long. Even as Falia scrambled backwards, struggling to find an escape, the woman snapped forward in a blur and sank her teeth into the neck of one of the guards, the man screaming as his lifeblood spurted on the walls surrounding them. Falia hurtled down a different corridor, tears streaming down her face.
Falia pressed herself farther back against the wall of the maintenance closet she had found, a thin strip of light through the crack in the door her only window to the outside. She didn’t know how long she had hidden there, as screams and muffled explosions echoed through the halls. She didn’t know when she had stopped crying, her body and mind numb to the terror still coursing through her veins. She didn’t know whether any of the teleportation gates were still open, or if she could even make it to one if they were. She was trapped, and all that awaited her was death -- if not by capture from the strange invaders than by hunger and thirst when the pocket world was left to drift asunder, all its anchors to the outside world cut.
Unless... a small voice in her head whispered. The voice that always looked for a solution to whatever problem was before her. Unless she somehow found a way to navigate an unstructured teleport back out of the space on her own.
But that solution just led to more problems. She didn’t have the Class, or the Skills to perform such a feat. And while unstructured mana manipulation was something anyone could learn, system classes or not, she had never bothered with it. But maybe there is a way to account for that... the voice in her head whispered. A specialized mana manipulation spirit with computational capabilities beyond anything else the Alteriad has ever built before, perhaps?
The Core. It was so obvious she could have kicked herself. It was designed to be a prototype for an eventual System Core -- something that could theoretically take over the work of the entire Alteriad system for managing mana pathways, identifying, extracting, and disseminating classes and skills, and optimizing mana flow in citizens. If it could, in theory, do all that, then it could surely help her at least navigate a teleport out of this death trap.
Her task was simple, then -- all she had to do was hide here, and wait for the invaders to leave, then she could pick up the Core and find a way to safely link with it as a System Periphery to instill an appropriate teleportation skill into her soul to leave the pocket realm. Hells, she realized to herself, if I do all that, not only will I live, I’ll probably get a promotion besides -- not just for proving the viability of their new prototype system core, but for saving the specimen as well for future study.
But even as this happy thought kindled hope anew, what she’d overheard the guard say just before all chaos broke out rang in her mind again.
“They’re going to destroy the Core--”.
If the invaders were here not just to destroy the research station, or to steal its data, but also to target the Core specifically, then her one shot at getting out of here alive wouldn’t last until after the invaders left the realm. If she didn’t get to the Core now, and somehow enact her entire plan in bare minutes rather than days or weeks, then she would have no other hope of escaping at all.
For a long moment, she stayed in the closet. Panicking, breaths coming shallow and quick, visions of her death running through her head. But then she closed her eyes and forced her breathing to slow. She didn’t have time to panic. So, steeling herself, Falia pushed open the closet door and rushed off down the corridor, heading back to the monitoring station and the thin opportunity it offered.
Falia made it back to the monitoring room without encountering any further violence. She hypothesized as she ran --- somehow not able to turn off that part of her brain, even amidst mortal terror --- that the invaders must be focused on the various teleportation anchors dotting the edges of the facility, and thus be far from the interior rooms like the Core’s containment chamber. But the comfort this realization offered was thin, as she knew it was only a matter of time before they descended on their true prize.
Rushing over to the speaking Talisman, Falia hurriedly activated the arrays. Nothing happened. Cursing, Falia tried to activate them again, and again, but the runed lines stayed stubbornly dark every time. Eventually, she cleared her mind enough to realize that the station’s mana conduits must be disrupted in general, with non-essential functions disabled to preserve the pocket-world’s structure and security protocols. She wracked her mind to think of a way around this -- could she use her own mana, somehow? No, that would never work; she didn’t have the reserves to force sufficient power through conduits intended to be hooked up to the main grid.
Then her eyes fell on a large, metal stool sitting in front of one console, and the tall, floor to ceiling windows looking down on the Core in the flesh, and a much simpler solution occurred to her. It took Falia nearly 6 attempts to actually break the window, and she very nearly gave up. The thick glass was tougher than it appeared, despite the fact that it served no security purposes whatsoever, as far as she knew. But, eventually, she managed to affix a small metal control knob from one of the sensors to the pane of the window, and on her next strike the metal knob concentrated the force of her blow sufficiently so as to shatter the window with an explosion of noise.
Falia didn’t let herself worry about that noise as she stepped carefully over the ragged edge of the shattered window and approached the Core. She didn’t have time for worry.
The pulsing ball of light in the center of the chamber seemed more animated than she had ever observed it before. It flitted aggressively from side to side within the pillars of metal surrounding it, and the shimmering field of mana containing it within those pillars was sufficiently strained as to be visible to the naked eye. But, as soon as the window shattered, and Falia entered the room, the Core focused on her with a palpable intensity and began speaking.
“Researcher Falia!” It cried, distressed. “What is going on? I hear so many noises but I cannot learn anything! The exterior sensors are no longer functioning, spatial anomalies are occurring at a highly elevated rate, the beetles are greatly distressed, and you just broke the transparent wall with a stool! I am very confused and there are many things to learn but I do not understand any of them. Please explain to me all of these phenomena.”
It then seemed to settle and simply waited, as though it expected her to dispense perfectly reasonable explanations for all the current insanity post haste.
Ignoring everything that it had just said, Falia immediately cut to the heart of her problem. “You’re a natural spirit of computation and mana flow. Could you design a teleportation skill that would eject us both out of this pocket world? Without an anchor?”
“Falia that is not an answer to my questions.” The spirit replied, exasperated. “Before pursuing any further simulations, first you need to explain to me what the noises are, why the exterior sensors are--”
Falia interrupted the Core, snapping angrily at the spirit. The noises of combat in the distance had died down, no further screaming interrupting their conversation. The invaders had finished with the guards, then, and were en route.
“Could you do it or not! We don’t have long -- there are invaders here, coming to destroy you, and kill me! Can you get us out of here, or not?”
“There are invaders here?” The Core said, extremely curious. “What are ‘invaders’, Falia? They want to destroy me and kill you? Why do they want that? What does destruction feel like? If they kill you, can you please relate to me what the sensation is so I can better model that experience?” The Core asked happily, eager to learn new things.
“No!” Falia snapped, her forced calm unraveling moment by moment. “Just answer my question! I need to know if you can produce that spell!”
The spirit started to interject, but Falia was suddenly struck by inspiration.
“If you don’t generate the spell for me right now, I’ll make sure that you never learn anything ever again.” Falia said, tone cold and serious.
The Core suddenly grew very still.
“... you can do that?” It asked, voice soft and very scared.
And, with her life dangling in the balance, Falia looked straight into the Core’s twisting depths and lied. “Yes. Yes I can.”
The core stayed still and silent for only a moment longer, before it began to swirl about animatedly in its prison.
“Ok I have produced a mana program that should result in you teleporting back out to the real world. Now can you please explain to me what--”
“Tell me how to cast the spell!” Falia snapped. “Now!”
The Core’s movements slowed, and it seemed to turn back to focus on her. “Tell you how to cast it?” It asked, uncertain. “But there have not been any successful simulations of integrating my spells into living hosts. I have not fully mapped your mana pathways. Why would the spell work for you?”
“Just try it! I don’t have any other choice!” Falia nearly screamed at the orb. Faintly, she thought she heard footsteps echoing down the hallway outside.
“Ok, Researcher Falia. We will begin Unscheduled Simulation Number 418.128.” The spirit said, immediately and enthusiastically caving in favor of pursuing more experimentation. “To begin, increase the rotation of mana in your core by approximately...” Falia felt a brief shiver as the spirit scanned her soul, then it continued “27.252%. Next, you will inject mana through your Brachial Meridian at approximately 18.419% emission pressure, while simultaneously sweeping your hands through a elliptical helix”
As the spirit continued rattling off instructions, Falia felt her hope die in her chest. What had she expected? There was no way she could learn to master such a complex mana art quickly enough to save her life. And just so, even as she began to try to learn the spell despite the hopelessness, the sound of breaking glass behind her announced the arrival of her enemy. Falia had run out of time.
Releasing her mana, Falia spun to face the window. A stream of people entered through the hole she had made; first five, then seven, and finally ten people fanned out before her, slowly encircling her and the Core. She recognized the long haired, ragged man and the woman whose jaw opened too wide among them, neither seeming injured in the slightest. Some regarded her with disdain, some with wry curiosity, and some regarded her not at all, paying attention only to the Core behind her.
At last, as the group formed a full circle around the arena, an eleventh person stepped through the broken window. He was a tall, lean man with hair pulled back in a neat knot. At his waist was sheathed a long, straight sword whose blade seemed to catch and absorb all the light in the room as he moved. Every step was deliberate and graceful, and not a shard of glass crunched as he walked through the remains of the window to stand before Falia.
“How curious,” he said, inspecting her, voice devoid of emotion. “A researcher -- a [Principal Investigator], no less. Remaining behind to protect her precious work. Finding herself here, now, just as we arrive to finish our work. Curious indeed.” The man lifted his hand off the hilt of his blade and ran his fingers through the air as though plucking invisible strings, his eyes tracking things Falia could not see. There was a palpable aura to him, a pressure that somehow compelled her to silence, that tried to push her back, to her knees. But she stood, regardless.
“Stop dawdling, Auran. Kill her and let’s be done with this. The arrays are nearly set.” The long haired man said, flexing his taloned hands impatiently as he stared at Falia.
“Kill her? Perhaps.” Auran said, still not looking at Falia, voice still devoid of any emotion. “Or Perhaps a different possibility...” he said, voice trailing off.
Then Auran moved. One moment he was standing before her, the next he was standing just past her, sword arm extended in a perfect lunge, blade released from its scabbard. Before Falia could even process the movement, she felt a pain spreading along her neck, a wetness dripping down her skin. Gasping at the sensations, she stumbled backwards, clapping a hand to her neck in horror. Blood pooled there, Auran’s sword having carved a line through her flesh.
This is it, she thought, mind growing cold with shock, this is how I die.
As she fell back and crumpled into a sitting position, her ID badge slipped off her neck and fell to the floor before her, the thin cord holding it around her neck cut through cleanly. It shattered as it hit the metal floor, and Falia could swear she felt something... more... something beyond the mere physical shatter with it.
“Interesting. It seems not.” Auran said, regarding her with the first spark of emotion he’d shown since entering the room. “She will accompany us, fate permitting. Proceed with the ritual. We have no time to waste.”
It took Falia a moment to process what the man had said. It seems not. Were she not dying? But... the blood? Moving her hand away from her neck, she found, to her amazement, that it was unbloodied. Her neck unmarred, save for the faintest of possible lines tracing along one half of her throat, as though a scar remained from an injury long past healed.
Just who are these people? How can they do... any of these things? Falia thought, staring in horrified fascination at the group surrounding her. But before she could consider any of her questions any further, she finally caught onto what the group was planning. The arrays are nearly set... Proceed with the ritual, they had said. The people in the circle surrounding her had not been idle -- rather, they had laid down a set of modular ritual stones equidistant from the Core in the center of the chamber. They weren’t destroying the Core, not at all, Falia realized.
They were stealing it.
And then, with a feeling of space itself tearing beneath her, Falia’s entire world went white as the Core, the chamber, all of the invaders, and she were whisked away into nothingness.