Chapter 95: Different Perspective.
The interior walls of the hidden basement were not like those found above. While every other corner of the pyramid that we’d come across at least had the semblance of an office space, this section had been left undisguised.
Its cold, metallic, sterile frames left naked for all the world to see. Pillars of entangled fibres and long-running cables hanging loose in plain sight.
To me, they evoked the feeling of a half-finished passion project. The kind of sick obsession that turned entire dorms of prospective and otherwise reasonable students into crazed racoons. As all were overcome by a need to try out one more build. To fix a few more bugs. To switch up the hardware one last time before going to bed.
Errant laptops and lab equipment would inevitably find its way into the wildest of places, as more and more bodies were added into the equation and the newcomers found that their predecessors were subsisting off of stale coffee and days-old doughnuts. The new arrivals would try to organize the mess and the old guard would curse, ask who had brought in the stupids and put their equipment back in an entirely different way. The new would come to behave like the old while the olds collapsed from exhaustion and then the cycle started anew.
It usually ended in one of two ways. Either the fervor dissipated as the weeks turned into months or…
‘Or there was a massive breakthrough that made it all worth it, and then some. That matter destabilizer back at Uni may have been an overfunded, overhyped drill, but the guys who did it were rockstars until they graduated.’
This place had obviously garnered more attention though.
We had been forced to descend six flights of stairs before we found any hint of machinery. The empty, unexcavated space between the two labs serving to cloak whatever it was that they were hiding here.
And what a treasure trove it was.
Each hallway was cooler than the last. Our breaths becoming visible as we kept walking through the metal corpse.
Each other room contained servers. Still very much running at what looked to be full capacity and still very much looking as if they would combust into flames at the slightest touch. The heat they radiated counteracting almost all of the central air conditioning.
They hummed as they processed their tasks. My cobweb turning up a series of DNA sequences
“Should I call it central refrigeration instead?” I wondered aloud. “I’m not uncomfortable per se, but that’s because I got Buddy and quite a few Shifter abilities that help me along. I can’t imagine normal people having a good time down here. Unless they were wearing parkas.”
“Maybe they were already Enhanced.” Dusty suggested. “The changes were prevalent enough that most people could afford to have the work done back then. I can’t see some group of rich scientists foregoing those upgrades.”
“Maybe.” I spoke. “But that doesn’t change that the drop in temperature is a bit excessive. Again, we’re not worried because we have Symbiotes, but I’m pretty sure even you guys would be uncomfortable without them. This kind of design is a poor choice for a lab unless it was absolutely necessary.”
“Wouldn’t it be necessary if they were dealing with the Drake?”
I shrugged.
“Not really. This much of a change wouldn’t have slowed him down at all. Which is strange, given how pieces of him are still definitely down here. From what I saw from his memories and from my own ability descriptions tell me, any drone of his should have been able to annihilate any ecosystem it found itself in. Even a fistful of flesh or a few errant cells would have had to potential to multiply exponentially. And that comes from the three Shifter abilities of his that I have. The Drake had many, many more tricks up its sleeves.”
They hummed as they processed their tasks. My cobweb turning up a series of DNA sequences
I was no geneticist, but I could follow my cobweb’s strings over to different sections of the system, including a cluster of storage drives internally labelled as ‘Genetic Reference Board.’
From there, it was fairly easy to deduce.
These servers were analysing genetic sequences that did not carry the evolutionary markers that earth-evolved creatures had. That is, the DNA the machines were processing did not correlate to anything found on earth.
A couple of months ago, I would have been salivating at the mouth if given such data.
Now, I couldn’t even summon the energy to be surprised.
The Drake had admitted to munching on many a creature back at the mansion, but those confession did not do any justice to the scale of his consumptions.
Entire sections of the Labyrinth as big as planets had been cleaned of all biomass as he passed. His own cells ever hungry for new lifeforms to assimilate and digest.
The store-bought lanterns shone a grey pale light onto the servers one last time. My mind wondering how useful whatever processing units or graphics cards were in there could have been.
‘Too high a risk.’ I chided myself. ‘Who knows what kind of recovery methods there are for those things? Anything we erase would always have a chance of coming back. The potential danger of the data in the wrong hands isn’t worth the few gains. Be happy with what you’ve already looted and move on.’
We kept a steady pace for the next twenty or so minutes. Not quite power-walking through the corridors in search of the main bio-containment lab.
The darkness retreated as we approached with our lanterns. Shadows melting back into each other as our steps grew nearer and nearer.
All of it happened naturally and in almost perfect silence, yet part of my mind insisted on conjuring unreal whispers and half-hidden tendrils slithering between the black spots in the halls.
Normally, I’d be cursing out against [Limited Omniscience] or the other future-predicting abilities I had. That or the Tall Man.
But I could also tell that neither were the cause of my current troubles. Instead, the blame lay squarely on [Predator’s Instincts]. The power taking the form of a faint, malicious voice that whispered just behind my ears.
‘Leave.’
‘Danger.’
‘Predator.’
‘Danger.’
‘Leave.’
‘Leave.’
‘Run.’
I was an off change of perspective. To have my Shifter powers be the ones making a fuss while my Telepath powers remained silent.
The danger felt, more personal somehow. As if the fear was not logical or not coming from my brain to the rest of my body. Instead, it felt as though my body knew that it was in danger without my brain being aware of it and now the rest of me was trying to warn my mind.
‘No. That only covers part of it. I can feel all of my cells here too. More distinctly this time. I can feel all the bits that make my finger the organ that it is and I feel that all of it would detach itself from my body without permission if it could. So deep is its fear.’
“I think I’m starting to feel it too.” Dusty said.
“Yes.” Slab confirmed. “It is like a pit in my belly. Like a hole that took away all the warmth I still had. I don’t feel safe here.”
“None of us are safe here.” I told him bluntly.
“Again, I have no idea how these guys kept the Drake from ending your world. The cold couldn’t have been it. The Drake would have shrugged off anything higher than absolute zero and we’re talking 0 degrees Kelvin here. -273 degrees Celsius. Nitrogen literally boils before getting to that point and the Drake wouldn’t have bothered to slow down as he ate your lungs. So that couldn’t have been it. I’m still looking for the real answer.”
Deeper still, we began encountering virological and biological containment labs.
Rows upon rows of desks and computers facing a variety of adjacent chambers. The spaces being divided by what seemed to be bullet-proof glass. Kind of like room-sized terrariums. The kind of thing you build when you don’t want your mutated or possibly radioactive freaks of nature to get out.
Almost all of them were broken. Their former occupants having long-since departed.
There were also torn-apart skeletons on the ground. As if to accentuate the obvious.
Yet, that was odd in and of itself.
“There are no stains on the floor.” Slab commented before I mentioned it.
“Of course there aren’t stains on the floor Slab. It has been hundreds of years.”
“I know. But that doesn’t mean the bones should be this clean.”
Dusty shrugged.
“Whatever escaped probably had a snack.”
“I don’t think so.” Slab rebuffed her. “The only scars on the bones are from the obviously broken parts over the chest and from the spine. These people were killed quickly and without much struggle. Whatever did it did not make any other marks on the bones. If something had gnawed on their bodies, then there would be some kind of tooth mark of further breaking sections.”
Dusty shrugged again.
“Not necessarily. Not if whatever killed them drank their blood or drained them through some acid that leaves the bones behind.”
“If so, why are their coats still on them? Why are they undamaged? It is as if there wasn’t anything here to break down the bones or the non-living fibres.”
He pointed at the corners with his lamp.
“Look. There. That corner and that corner are all clean. There is no moss. There is no mold. Somehow, life or the leftovers of bodies are disappearing. Life itself is being blocked.”
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I was following their conversation. Trying to reach my own conclusions, when my instincts flared up a warning. The senses hitting me like an ice-spike driven through my brain.
For the first time since becoming a Shifter, I felt my body tremble involuntarily.
‘Come.’
‘Come.’
‘Come to me.’
‘Seek out.’
‘Seek Out.’
‘Come here to me.’
‘Be one.’
‘BE ONE.’
‘BE ONE WITH ME.’
“Okay!” I spoke out loud. [Dominating] my own body to shut off the noises.
“Out! Everybody out! I decided that I don’t want to know what happened to the Drake anymore. Let’s blow this place to kingdom come!”
The air around us shook as Mittens manifested.
“Mittens has smelt! Mittens has knelt! Mittens will help!”
Mittens withdrew a comically sized explosive from nowhere in particular. The kind I’d bought in bulk from Peachy before my outrageous wealth was confiscated.
“Kaboom?” Mittens asked. His posture and facial expression making Anezka’s outline seem like something out of a sick child’s feverish nightmares.
“No Mittens! No kaboom until we get out. Come on guys. We’re leaving.”
I stopped receiving their thoughts through my cobweb.
“Guys?”
I turned my lamp towards Dusty and Slab.
Noting their vacant expressions seconds before they keeled over.
I was moving at once. My hands reaching out for their bodies whilst I began peering into the future.
From there, I foresaw them shaking. Twitching on the ground before their Symbiotes separated from them in roughly four minutes. Then I foresaw their suits turning back into the gelatinous form they and Buddy had before bonding. Then, I foresaw their suits drifting away. Crawling with mucous tentacles in the opposite direction that we arrived through. That is, deeper into the underground complex.
I blinked in real time and began to foretell the same thing happening to Dusty and Slab. Their skin and flesh dissolving. With the aftermath crawling on the floor with newly grown pseudopods.
“(Gnome)ing Drake man.” I cursed. Focusing psy into my fingers and forcing my body to heal them.
“Right you two.” I commanded. “Get up.”
They didn’t do so. Despite my [Domination] working on unconscious targets.
I grumbled and moved to heal them again.
Noticing how their cells were scrambling to follow a signal. A psionic signal.
“Damn it.” I groaned.
“Tall Man. Get me more Intruders. Ones with healing abilities. Get Dusty and Slab topside.”
Two anchorites spawned in from empty air. Alongside two inquisitors, two chanters and seven Solomonlings.
They picked up the two as delicately as they could and carried them away before their Symbiotes gave way.
I turned to the darkness then.
Groaning once more.
“Hold on Buddy. I’m going to keep healing you for a while. This might get ugly.”
‘No need to worry Sully! I’m way more upgraded than those two! It’ll take a lot more than that to get away from me!’
“Thank you Buddy.” I said with a sigh.
After that, the lack of life became even more obvious. More and more bodies lining the rest of the containment labs like decorations on Halloween. Some of them were even dressed up in still-sealed hazmat suits or paramilitary power-armor. Those draped in the suits had a pocket of stained or discoloured remnants somewhere within the outfit. Completely separated from their skeletons. In contrast, those in power-armor were nothing but skeletons. Their meaty bits having long-since vanished.
“Hey Tall Man? Start gathering more Intruders around the place and have them haunt the walls. All of them. Everywhere in the pyramid. But don’t destabilize reality too much until all the other humans are long gone.”
I felt the air tremble as the veil thinned. Beyond what little games I was capable of while the ability was still in the first Tier.
Faces began blossoming on the walls. Open eyelids and missing eyes weeping gentle brooks of half-purple. Half-red blood.
The missing orbs almost seemed to track me as I moved deeper into the compound. Chanting in soft, choir-like voices with every step I took.
“You act as if this is the first or second time we’ve met. You really shouldn’t be surprised anymore.”
“To help you, of course. I’ve said as much every time you’ve asked. My answer isn’t going to change anytime soon. Why do you refuse to believe me?”
“That was ages ago darling. And I only did it so you’d realize what being a Shifter meant. Its not my fault that you’re slow on the uptake.”
“I’ve been called worse by better men than you.”
I saw flashes of the Dragon and of the Drake. Recalling from the absorbed memories how the fiend had broken the children. Mentally, first. And then physically. And then on a spiritual level so deep that what remained could not be called children. Or people.
The Drake had been in a palace then. A cathedral of quivering, still-living flesh. One that was also him and part of him. Equal parts menagerie and torture chamber.
He had laughed then. He had laughed when the Dragon failed to kill him.
He had not laughed when exposed to Lady Agony’s Veiled Prince. Nor had he laughed when meeting mine.
“That leads us to the crux of the matter. Your Intruders.”
The walls continued.
“They are not, as you mistakenly believe, predictable friends. The dimension you’re calling them from is not a prime material one, so you cannot fathom what their existences have been like. Neither can they for that matter. They do not know compassion, as sentients do. Foul as you believe me to be, I at least know of the concept and can appreciate how it feels.”
“I have fought Telepaths who indulged in these abilities before. All of them, to a fault, were utterly self-destructive. For the beings summoned from Pandemonium are incapable of relating or interacting with the material plane as we do. Unless they come from high-tiered abilities. Ones that allow them to form their own personalities.”
“By using abilities like [Unstable Reality] you are courting not only your destruction, but the destruction of entire civilizations. All it takes is one errant thought and the things that come through will devour planets whole before you can blink.”
“It has four horns! And centipede legs! They’re twitching! And they’re flickering in and out of reality! For (Noble)’s sake! They’re wrapping themselves around your shoulder!”
“No! I am not (Noble)ing high you imbecile! Look at it! Look!”
‘Yeah. Come to think of it, he really didn’t like Mittens either. And yet, the part of the Drake locked in here didn’t react to the Intruders all over the pyramid and that was before the bloody thing was outright possessed. But there also isn’t any difference in the ambient Psy right now. And I’m not picking up any signs of the Drake. I mean, I didn’t pick up on the Dragon’s mind either so that can be explained. But I don’t recall him having any kind of ability to deter Telepathic detection. Domination and charming effects yes, he could do it by having multipole brains; but not detection. He couldn’t do that past the natural resistance that passives like [Predator’s Instincts] provided. Once merged and levelled to upper Tiers, those passives would have been more than enough for the Drake in most circumstances.’
‘So either the Drake drone was somehow unthinking or… no. I’d still be able to detect it. There just isn’t a way that…’
Another signal came to me. A vision from the future.
I saw a thin strand of possibility that had not been there before. The wider electronic grid coming online as new instructions came from… from…
I sent my body hurling forwards. So that I was five meters away before the turrets sprouted from the floors and ceiling. Then my senses crawled through the new sub-system. Invading through the interfaced devices in the intranet. My mind adjusted to communicating with machines and I ordered them to stop at once.
The false tiles had only just begun to give way, when the process halted.
“Error.” An electronic voice called from the speakers.
“Subject not recognized. Subject not in logs. Subject displays abnormal psionic behaviour. Su sus sus su…”
“Save it.” I called out. The seconds stretching into eternities as all my focus went to [Limited Omniscience].
I saw more possibilities now. Despite the picture being clear earlier.
They all led to the Drake. None of them ended with him escaping. Though he was here. Sort of.
“Huh.” I intoned. “That’s actually smart. Its only a spot of brightness in an abyss, but it is something. Kudos.”
I walked forward with more confidence now. My senses compressed alongside my attention.
Passing two more floors without another incident.
Then my eyes went to the samples strewn around on glass containers. Each one presented like a museum piece despite being technically dead.
I saw their futures and confirmed that it was safe.
So, I smashed one in and touched the desecrated tissue sample contained inside.
Ability Gained: [Scales] 2 has been added to the Status.
A rush of knowledge, or recognition, passed through me. Like inspiration from on high or the guiding hand of a parent.
‘Huh? Is that all? How simple.’
I focused my psy and forced the tissue into me. My skin gobbling it up like a snail or a carnivorous flower.
I turned to another one and did the deed once more.
Level Gained: +50 Maximum Psy. +8 Ability Points.
Ability Gained: [Chitin] 2 has been added to the Status.
Ability Gained: [Feathers] 2 has been added to the Status.
It seemed so simple then. Simply do what I already do with [Protean Form], but change things a bit on the cells structure.
It really did sound stupid when I thought about it that way, but there was no better way to describe it at the moment.
‘Come.’
‘Come.’
‘Come to me.’
“Yeah yeah. I’m going.” I said aloud. Taking my sweet time with the samples laid out in front of me before going down. After all, why not? Not like he was going anywhere.
Ten minutes later saw me heading down another two sealed checkpoints. The turrets having long since been de-activated.
My eyes were going wall to wall then. Taking in the informative signs painted on the thickening walls.
“Psionic Dead Zone Ahead.” Read one in red blocky letters.
“Grav Lock Ahead. Do Not Approach Gravitational Containment.”
“No need to tell me friend.” I exclaimed. Now feeling the drift in ambient Psy for the first time.
It was, odd, to say the least.
As if a little, very very small shard of ambient Psy were being drained by the second. As if sucked into a vacuum.
Only, instead of acting as an amplifier like my reality warping abilities, it diminished the variations on Psy. Almost, as if taking ambient Psy, focusing it, and turning it into the Psy an Enhancer would be using.
It did affect me. Of course it did.
But I already had so much Psy that it barely made a difference once I’d gotten used to it. Which again turned this into a dilemma.
“Okay. Didn’t even know it was possible to focus Psy into a particular Type through a machine. Peachy certainly didn’t offer anything like that. (Gnome), even my [Overwhelming Avatar] can’t really do that. Most lesser Intruders get a mix of all four Types depending on what they possess. The tech could be very useful.”
On the other hand… Drake. Risk of contamination. Not good.
I forced my body to sigh and kept moving deeper. Into the deepest sections of the lab.
“Wait a second… is that what the Dragon did back there? Turning the Psy around him into Enhancer-only Psy? Damn it!”
‘Come.’
Whispered the voice.
“Jeez! I said I was coming already!” I shouted.
Now hastening my steps.
There, at the end of a very long and very wide conference hall, was a thick, green vat.
And within it roiled a storm of psionic energy. Shining down a series of containment spheres that each made up another portion of the gravity lock. A device that increased the gravitational pressure within a targeted direction.
Inside it, were a clump of cells. Floating helplessly against pressurised air from all directions.
It was invisible to the human eye, but I could still make them out through the screams from my instincts.
Looking down, there were rotted stains on the floor that surrounded the vat.
It would seem that none of the missing giblets made it to the drone.
I looked back up and sent my mind through the innermost systems.
Over thousands of logs and written reports and a myriad warnings written in big red letters, I got the message.
“Psy cuts out in case of breach. Gravity persists for a few seconds after breach. Cells, now starved should die before breaching containment. DO NOT TEST”
“Ah what a bunch of idiots.” I said in defeat.
“They must have milked it for all it was worth and never thought of how it might be affecting the world around them. Though that is unfair of me. I’m a bit of an outlier when it comes to sensing things. How could they have known?”
Still, it was perhaps a blessing that they didn’t realize what was happening until it was too late. If they kept poking at it, it would have inevitably escaped sooner or later. With this outcome, none were left to prod it further and gamble earth’s future in the process. The gravity engines were powered by the biothermal reactors so there was no danger point there. Not unless they failed somehow.
“No. Better to put an end to this now.” I reasoned.
I was just about to call out the Tall Man as if he were an angry rottweiler. Telling it to savage everything in that particular direction, when I hesitated.
‘Well, if he’s going to die anyway, I might as well try something out on the cells here. Good practice for the real deal.’
I opened a hole through the confounding psionic device.
I pushed my mind through and into him.
And I immediately regretted it.
Even as a swarm of cells barely hanging on, the feedback felt like being crushed by elephants. Millions, trillions of voices calling out at once from the echoes of their absorbed vitality.
Yet I stood my ground. Sending over the most evolved version of [Mental Bolt] I now possessed.
[Solomon’s Righteous Indignation X] flew. Striking the center of the containment tube like a thunderclap.
The air popped and these walls too were driven to possession. My Intruders coming out as hideous, twisted faces paralyzed mid-grin.
That imbalance disturbed the psionic engines for one second. Just one second.
That was all it took. For the cells to grow into a human-sized body.
The flesh and bones instantly adapting to the form of the gravity as my attack fully settled.
The newly grown nervous system disintegrated.
And then it was re-grown.
The mind inflating from nothingness to call back out to me.
‘Food.’ It thought.
And then the aftershock of the power struck it again and it thought no more.
Lingering in the world now only as half-remembered memories. Real, new perspectives from the Seeking Drake.