Yuma appeared in that room again, the coils of pipes and flowing electricity were more organized than before and there were more of them. The swooping, organized pipes and fixtures filled more than half of the space. She could no longer see the walls like before.
She blinked and was staring at a woman’s face. A person. A different place.
The woman looked friendly with a soft smile and keeping a respectful distance away. Yuma looked around more. Korl she remembered. The other man she had an impression of but didn’t know much else.
“Where’s Jack? Where’s Tule?” These were the people she was hoping to see, not these three. Better than waking up alone, or surrounded by crabs.
“I’m glad you are all alright. Where are they?”
Cura looked uncomfortable. Why did she look so uncomfortable?
“Gone, somewhere. I don’t know where. Tule instructed us to wait by your side until you re-emerged.”
The Core was much different than it had been before. The giant crab was replaced by a giant hole in the floor. The only illumination in their surroundings came from the red emergency lights spotted around the circular room.
“Did you look in the hole?”
Cura looked to Telane and he nodded, “The hole drops… far. I couldn’t hear or see anything inside of it. It was absolute black. There were no responses to any of my attempts to communicate.”
Yuma considered, it wasn’t a deep introspection with her current IQ score but EQ picked up some of the slack, “what about the Clan?”
Telane shook his head, “Any of theirs with a high Senses Allocation was killed in the fighting. They lost the Sentinel and others.”
Yuma didn’t like that either. She hadn’t yet settled on whether she liked or disliked the tall woman.
Telane and Cura recapped what had seen after she had been put into the Pod.
She hopped out of the Pod, the movement shaking her heart. It felt cleaner, and the electricity, was deeper, stronger too.
Overall, her heart didn’t charge as fast or consistently as before but each time her movement provoked an excess charge it was greater than before. Bigger. There was also a less extreme consistent electrical build up. She didn’t have time to think about implications or strategy she moved towards the hole.
She leaned over the edge and looked down. Absolute black, like he said. She strained her eyes, then her hearing. It was something, but she wasn’t sure if she was hearing something or if she really wanted to hear something. She really hoped they hadn’t teleported. Was that even possible? The things she had seen. Electricity so dense it moved like snakes. Giant crabs.
She looked back to the Pod she had just climbed from. Hybrids spawned directly from these. Grown in these, she was at least partially sure about.
Korl finally caught up with them, scuffing his feet on the floor as he moped forwards.
Yuma whirled and fixed a glare that was impossible to miss, even in the dim red wash of their surroundings. She closed her eyes and turned back again. There. There was some sound. She couldn’t make out whatever the unfamiliar sound was.
With her eyes closed she reached out for the tether. It was faint, ephemeral, faint enough that she couldn’t even tell which direction it stretched toward.
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In the darkness, Jack felt another twinge in his Affinity. Only because of the darkness could he see the faint light. Far off, back out towards the sea and up. Yuma? He gently touched the connection, his caution rewarded. The tether was a vortex, threatening to pull massive amounts of electricity from him as a flurry of images blurred through and into his mind.
He shut his Affinity down and pulled the roiling current back into a sedate pace within his body. One image stuck with him, staring down a hole.
When his electricity had fully settled he turned back towards his Affinity.
He saw the light was still there but didn’t reach out again. The other bobbing light was steadily approaching them down the beach.
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Yuma let loose an involuntary zapp from her fingertip that blasted a chunk out of the metal in front of her. Her attention was split but her hand would be there in a few moments, the image that had inserted into her head was fading fast.
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Water. Incomprehensible amounts of water. The tether had already started to fade and was gone before she could get more than a rough direction. Still she had a direction.
The sound below clicked as the paired impressed connected with it. It was water below. They were floating in water. She looked over the edge. Jumping down there was a distant Plan B.
Cura softly walked up, “Can you make anything out?”
Yuma considered then turned towards the direction she felt the the tether. What they needed to do had not changed, the Bridge was still the goal.
“North.”
Cura pulled her attention away from the North, something was approaching.
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The bobbing light had closed half the distance now. With his eyes he could see nothing, with his Affinity he could only see the light. Still coming closer. He started walking towards it. The soft metal sand was level enough for him to walk forward completely submerged in his Affinity.
Jonah had finished analyzing whatever he had been analyzing, “Where’s Jack?”
Leanne was the only one to answer him, walking closer and scanning her surroundings. She was, at heart, a creature of consistency. Consistent actions, consistent surroundings, consistent results. She felt like she was getting sloppy in a new place.
Tule was… where was Tule?
Jonah flipped through filters to highlight his immediately surroundings, he heard Tule splashing and swimming in the water.
He disregarded the concern over Tule’s actions, the water was pretty exciting from an intellectual standpoint. Perhaps it was having a similar, if less scientific, effect on Tule.
Jonah reached the infrared sensor on his goggles. He took them off then recalibrated the settings.
Leanne was staring off, down the beach. The foreign light moving down the beach toward their position + Jack’s electrical requirements = Jack’s location.
“This way,” she started off, leaving behind Jonah who was fiddling with and adjusting his goggles and Tule who was still splashing around in the water.
Jonah hurried to follow and Tule, something had caught his attention. His head tilted to the side then he started running after the three.
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On the electrically dead beach and with a nearly empty battery Jonah’s somewhat familiar finger stood out like a flare. He expanded that to catch the other two reach him. Lea was there, normal. Tule was different. It wasn’t a big thing but it was noticeable. This made Jack realize that everyone had electricity inside of them and it circulated and moved in unique patterns for each person. Normally it was too faint to sense, but here, now, he could. Tule’s was different, not completely different, but definitely different.
Jack turned and looked at Tule, he was already looking at him.
Their eyes met and Tule smiled. Jack tossed a grin and then turned towards the light again. He couldn’t place what was different but his gut was starting to knot.
Leanne was first to break the silence, “Can you tell what that is?” She squinted, “I think it’s a person.”
Jack dove back into his Affinity. The light was nothing special, simply a light, like one of the orbs that were in the Labs but this one seemed to float.
“It’s like one of the Lab lights but a full orb, and it’s floating. Can’t tell anything else yet.”
They group continued to walk and in a much shorter amount of time than any of them had predicted they were standing in front of an old man. Or perhaps, what had once been an old man.
He? had pale-blue skin, hunched over, massive eyes that were a cool-rheumy white. The orb of soft light floated from a cable attached to a gnarled walking staff. It was rich and dark, textured as well, real wood?
Each of the four’s analyses of the old man stopped at sight of the staff. Was that wood? It twinged something deep inside them, nearly beyond the level of their genetics.
“Hello — there.” The old man’s voice reminded them of creaking wood and pulled their attention from his staff.
“Hello. Where are we?” Leanne jumped in, she needed data.
“You - are on - the Grand Beach. This — is Water.”
They looked around, studying the water softly lapping onto the sand.
Jack pointed at the water, “Yes, we know that’s ‘water,’ what’s the name of this place?”
“Wa — ter.”
Jack oppressed the spike of annoyance just as quickly as it rose.
A place on the ship called ‘Water’, filled with water. No, he must have misunderstood it or maybe the old man was senile. He shot a sideways glance at Jonah. Maybe there was some type of surgery to transfer some of Jonah’s over-talking to the new old man’s slow, pondering, and vague answers.
“Do you know where a Terminal is?” Jack looked for Tule, they still needed a Terminal for him. Jack didn’t like the feeling he was getting from Tule, even if he did seem mostly normal.
Where was he? Jack caught him at the waters edge walking in and out of it in meandering sideways loops. Did he take off his shoes? They really needed to get him to a Terminal.
“Yes — our goddess - provides.”
Warning bells sounded off in Jack’s head. He knew the others were thinking along similar paths. Despite his terrible EQ it didn’t take a genius to figure it out as he caught each of their eyes.
“Oh yeah? That’s… good. Can we use the Terminal?” It seemed Leanne was taking the initiative to lead this particular interaction. Jack was self-aware enough to be ok with it.
“Of - Course. Of — Course!” The old man bent over and wheezed, “That is why — my - goddess - sent me — here…”
The old man sucked in another deep breath. Even crabs talked faster than him, and that included all the chittering and clacking in between their words.
Jack looked at Jonah.
Jonah was flipping through settings on the side of his goggles as he studied the light orb and the staff. Jack wasn’t sure if he should just accidentally break the goggles or something, stop him from focusing on useless crap. Still, maybe he would wait. Try not to make the useful scientist mad.
Before Jack could continue the train of thought the old man’s words brought him out of it.
“to retrieve - the four — that will bring - a - sustenance — beyond measure - for our village.”
Jack turned back and squinted, the crab’s ridiculous mass lay huge and still visible in the dim light of the beach.
Even better if someone, that wasn’t him, would eat the crab meat instead.
Jack nodded, “Ok, let’s - go - then.”
Jack swore the old man looked directly at him despite his his blind eyes before turning to begin his walk back down the beach.
They followed. Tule trailing after them through the edge of the water off to the side.