“Well, if it isn’t the man of the hour!” The Commander shouted as Aurelio emerged from the barracks. The rest of the crew cut their conversations short and turned their attention to him.

He’d wanted to make his arrival a quiet one, but the Commander didn’t really consider that an option.

Fine.

“Careful, Boss. We don’t even know if he can speak our language. Or if he’s in cahoots with whatever fucked with our ship.” A lanky, olive-skinned man warned. He leaned on his friend, a white giant of a man, while ripping into a piece of jerky.

So, they did deal with the Vessel in their freighter ship.

“For once, Phin’s speaking sense here.” Standing next to the Commander with her arms crossed was an angular, toned woman with dark brown skin and piercing red eyes that threatened to pierce through his skull if he lingered on them for too long.

“I’ll take your points into consideration but look at this,” she pointed at Aurelio, “He’s now marked like the rest of us. That should be enough to tell us that we’re on the same boat.”

“Or he’s blended in…” The giant whispered in his deep baritone voice. Phineas tapped his friend's chest in solidarity.

“What Canty said. Not like it’d be an unexpected turn of events, considering the fucking night we’ve had.” Phineas added.

“Am I allowed to add my piece into this?” Aurelio tested the waters.

The Commander smiled, “Those answers one question for ya, Phin. By all means, stranger, make your case.”

Aurelio winced, “Well I can only tell you what I remember. I remember trying to wake up while on the floor and getting lifted by someone. And then being dropped on the floor and feeling like my body was being burned alive.”

He withheld his presence as an aberration to their ordeal. The majority of the crew was viewing him with a great level of suspicion, and he’d only cement that suspicion in their hearts by suggesting he was either omnipotent or a nut job.

“So, you don’t remember anything out in space? Nothing at all?” The other woman asked incredulously.

Phineas clicked his tongue, “I don’t like that, Boss. Find his pod in some wreckage with that Exo-Suit and he doesn’t have a damn clue of his whereabouts? No backstory?”

And he WAS a part of the tutorial section of the game. He’d just been graced with being frozen while they dealt with the first boss. But how did he get in the pod in the first place?

“Memory could be affected if he was stuck in the pod for a long time…” the giant let out another low whisper, much to his friend’s chagrin.

“You suddenly switch sides, Canty?” Phineas asked in genuine offense.

The giant shook his head, “No. Just want the Boss to have all the facts before she makes a decision.”

“He’s defenseless right now,” the woman stepped forward while cracking her knuckles, “Unless he’s got fine control of that ooze stuff, he’s an easy mark to take out.”

The Commander scratched her chin, considering the options of her crew.

“Well,” she turned to Aurelio, “I don’t think you’ve got a lot of trust at the moment, but I don’t think that’s enough to kick you out of this outpost yet.”

Aurelio smiled.

“My name’s Kalani. The crew calls me Commander or Boss most of the time and I expect you to do the same if we’re out on a mission. We’ve got our soldier, Elena, our scout in Phineas, and our engineer, Cantwell.”

“The name’s Aurelio. Thanks for bringing me with you all on your escape.” Aurelio responded cordially.

Kalani smiled, “Don’t think I ever mentioned an escape, stranger.”

Aurelio shrugged, “Figured that was the reason you all crash landed on the planet. Doesn’t help me to believe that the Commander would purposefully launch their ship into the broad side of the earth unless there was a good reason for it, and the only reason I can think of is a crash landing to escape a bad situation.”

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Aurelio let his statement hang in the air as he rummaged through his index of information on the remaining members of the starting crew.

Kalani was described in the game as a capable commander with a sharp mind, a stern leadership, earned respect from her peers and subordinates, and a seemingly easy-going demeanor. Aurelio opted to use her starting role the most when playing with his younger brother.

A discussion he’d need to have with himself now that he thought about it.

The crimson eyed Elena was written as a fury both on and off the battlefield. Material on the soldier often depicted her as the last one standing against overwhelming odds, or at least that’s what her role allowed her to do. He enjoyed looking at her splash art the most.

“What are you staring at?” Elena growled.

“I’m just caught by the deep reds of your eyes. They’re the brightest of the bunch.” Aurelio answered. She was unimpressed and unamused.

“D’you know what happened to us then? With the weird fucking fire in our chests and eyes?” Phineas asked. If he remembered right, Phineas was silver tongued and self-serving in his backstory material. He was his brother's character, so he didn’t commit as much of his story to memory.

Aurelio gave a non-committal shrug, “I’m guessing it’s a mark of some kind. Same opinion as the Commander here.” He turned to Kalani, “By the way, what sort of stuff have you found in this place?”

Kalani considered her words before speaking, “We’ve gone around the outpost and established a perimeter. Some of the buildings are locked behind mechanisms that Cantwell isn’t familiar with. As a matter of fact, the only buildings we’ve had access to so far are the station in the center of the outpost and those barracks behind you.”

A similarity between the game and his situation then. The base game required the group to commune with the stone in the center of the outpost before functionalities with the rest of the base started to open up.

“Have you tried interacting with anything in the outpost?”

Cantwell nodded, “Found a stone in a building full of monitors. Could hear it humming but it didn’t do anything when I touched it.”

Phineas looked up at Cantwell, “You touched the stone? Of course, you’d touch the stone. Risk your life, see if I care.” Cantwell stared at his friend with an unaffected gaze.

Aurelio looked at the well-kept buildings and located the building with a large radio dish embedded into a tower of metal beams and insulated cabling. He casually walked towards the facility, the rest of the crew following closely behind him with an equal mix of curiosity and suspicion.

The building was massive in comparison to the other structures, its size aided by the trunk of thick cables that ran down the metal beams and out to the rest of the outpost like roots in a tree. The doorway was faintly illuminated, and the air hummed with power.

“Is this the place?” Aurelio asked.

The nod from Cantwell was enough for him. He took a deep breath and passed through the threshold. None of the crew tried to stop him.

The experience of the first encounter with the stone was the introductory event for the players to unlock the first innovation of the outpost; {Power}.

There was a sudden shift in the atmosphere that made his skin crawl and his senses screamed for him to turn tail and run. How Cantwell was capable of dealing with the oppressive nature of the stone was beyond him.

Aurelio pressed forward despite his instinctual reservations and came upon the stone’s nest. Nestled in the center of the building was a massive, jagged monolith. The stone was a mess of grays and speckled black, grooves and symbols carved into the surface that gave off a soft, warm glow. There were wires that were plugged into the rock, the cabling snaking towards the exit along with a massive set of cables haphazardly hooked up to a myriad number of inert monitors.

He knew their purpose. They’d be familiarizing themselves with the station's function quite soon.

The faint hum in his ears from the stone grew in volume, becoming incoherent whispers amidst a sea of static. No matter how much he focused on the words, they’d elude his understanding. As described by the event, Aurelio pressed his fingers into the ember core in his chest and removed a mote of flame, gently pressing it into the monolith.

The flame was subsumed into the rock and the faint glow pulsating within grew in strength and speed.

At once, his mind was assaulted by an incomprehensible amount of information.

It burned. It hurt. It seared into him a mark, a brand, as the outpost roared to life.

What were once inert monitors blinked into operation, their displays showcasing a similar set of cryptic symbols amidst a sea of static.

There was so much it forced into him, an impossible amount of data and emotion stored inside of this being that it was dumping into him. Each attempt to wrap his head around it all made his body writhe in agony.

There was a take as well. As much as it gave, it slithered into the corners of his mind, his memories, and consumed it all. They did not disappear, thankfully, but the process it was using to capture each frame of each moment in his life was excruciatingly painful.

He couldn’t pull his hand away. He couldn’t move voluntarily, muscles firing on reflex as the rest of him crumpled to the floor like a wounded animal. Drool slid down his open mouth and billowed into steam within seconds.

The lines etched into his skin were blindingly bright and hot, so much so that the surrounding skin cracked and flaked and boiled at its presence.

It was in that moment where pain attempted to push him into the realm of a complete shutdown, that the monolith provided him with a clear and overwhelming message.

Disappointment.