"What did you do?" Leanne hissed.
Jack eyed her then pulled his vision back to their surroundings, the mumbling crowd grew louder.
“I didn’t do anything,” Jack half-mumbled in response. That wasn’t entirely true but he hadn’t actually touched the AI disk to the Terminal and, being honest, he didn’t quite know how to place Leanne. If Tule had asked him about the AI disk now, he would've lied as well. He was too unreliable now and he didn't know Leanne. As far as he was concerned, at this point, he could trust Yuma and, somewhat reluctantly, Jonah.
Leanne shot him a look showing him how much she believed his words. Jack didn’t notice, already scanning the crowd.
The Elder had straightened out, he was a lot taller than Jack had been expecting. Taller than Leanne even. Extraordinarily thin, his loose, bedraggled robes somehow still covered his oppressive size. His white, rheumatic eyes were still white, but now they gleamed and were more massive than before. Near translucent skin hung tightly off his skull. The skeletal figure hovered over and around them, bleeding aquamarine light. He? No. ‘It’ hovered, moving closer to them.
Leanne tightened her finger on the trigger of her pressure pistol. Jonah had pulled out Yuma’s wrist rocket, ammunition already loaded.
“Elder, what do you think you're doing?”
The melodic voice pierced the tense silence. It pulled Jack’s focus for a moment before he started scanning for the skeletal creature again. Where did he go? He only saw the Elder moving his slow pace to the other side of the clearing.
There was the Terminal, looking good as new, and a deep blue skinned woman leaning on it. Jack had swept the entire crowd multiple times, she hadn’t been there before. She possessed a soft blue tint to her naked skin. There was nothing obscene or attractive about it though, it seemed hardly Human.
“You.. You’re an SI!”
Jonah’s statement was drowned out in the flurry of ‘goddess’, ‘our goddess’, and ‘my goddess’. Jack picked up Tule but didn’t relax.
She raised her hands and the group’s placations stopped as if a switch had been flipped. She was now softly stroking the Elder’s head.
“I’m glad you found your way here. Please bring their friend to the Terminal.” She waved her hand loosely towards the 4 and a few of the villagers surrounding her scrambled to follow her command.
Jack debating resisting but a quick mental math calculation strongly recommended against taking action.
On one hand, resisting probably meant having to kill everyone here. He also had no information as to their overall strength, maybe if it was just the Elder… creature, it would have changed the math. But this woman, the odd Elder, and the entire village?
Bad, terrible odds. The chance of an unconscious Tule surviving the ensuing fight were even more fractional. Jack had a lot to lose by placing his hand on the Pad. Tule? No so much.
Regardless of all of this, Tule was functionally worthless now and had already attacked him, with the Toothpick no less. Jack glanced at his Gauntlet, it had a small cut that was struggling to piece itself together. It was repairing from blocking the Toothpick, but slowly.
He repeated it to himself again. Whatever happened to Tule at the Terminal couldn’t be worse than his present condition.
As soon as he decided to not take action, but before he visibly showed that the woman spoke, “Good choice. I don’t wish to harm you.”
The villagers took Tule and Jack tried to follow.
“I said I don’t want to hurt you, I would prefer if you didn’t try to use that… disk, again.”
Jack stopped and exchanged glances with the group, ready for anything. They hadn’t travelled together for long enough to be able to carry on with unspoken understandings and they lacked the electrical connection that Jack and Yuma shared. Still, it wasn’t difficult to figure out, considering the situation. None of them relaxed.
They placed Tule’s hand on the Pad, an aquamarine glow stitched across his body and he screamed. The mass of villagers surrounding them cheered hoarsely.
A soft blue glow washed over his body and merged, filling, and washing out the aquamarine color. The blue became deeper and darker, it reminded Jack of looking into the ocean in the dark.
As it darkened, the glow layered over Tule’s skin. It stiffened, then merged. Tule breathed and sobbed and dropped to his knees.
The crowd ‘ooohed’ and ‘aaaahhed’, Jack looked at them then Tule stood up.
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The blue glow completely faded from Tule’s much-darkened skin. He coughed and turned towards the group. He smiled softly, somberly. His hand released from the Pad and he walked back towards them.
Jack had a sinking feeling in his stomach, the color reminded him of something less than Human. Tule walked back over to the group with a grin. “Apologies, I am better now.”
Jack was hesitant to believe him. Tule’s normal demeanor seemed like it was back, but physically, he was way different than before.
His skin had turned black, the center of his eyes had a dim red surrounded by pupils of distant blue.
Tule stretched out his left hand, Jack paused fractionally then gripped his hand. Tule’s hand was solid, hard. Honestly harder than Jack thought skin ought to be. Then again, he wasn’t a good baseline for how things ‘ought to be’.
He met Tule’s eyes, clarity and smiling. Beyond what Jack was able to perceive was a deep coldness within. Jack hadn’t spent a lot of time staring into Tule's eyes so he lacked anything to compare them with.
Still holding Tule’s hand tightly, Jack opened up his Affinity and noticed the new electrical pattern of Tule’s body was more conditioned, more balanced than before. A seemingly expert melding of old and new. It was also much more faint than before.
Jack let out a breath, maybe the changes were just on the outside. Those were less important than if he was normal. He seemed more balanced than before, calmer too, without such a faraway look in his eyes.
“Follow me, Aberrant.”
Jack thought she might have been referring to Tule but the Elder’s rheumy-whites focused directly on him.
Jack released Tule’s hand and followed after the naked woman.
Off to the side he could hear boats and villagers shouting and discussing something in raised tones.
They were heading toward the large grouped together houses on the other side of the village square. On the large wall a doorway opened up at her touch. It led downwards. She placed her hand against the doorway and raised an eyebrow.
“Coming?”
Jack walked forward and the SI trailed her hand on the wall as she descended. He reached out to scan the building but the wall of metallic sand pulled back and away from his fingertips.
“Interesting ability but I’d prefer if you didn’t scan my home.”
Nope.
Jack turned around and before he could climb any steps he saw the Elder, standing there and staring at him. Its eyes were clear and white, not foggy at all.
Jack froze, one leg raised.
“I won’t hurt you, you have my word, now come on.”
He turned and continued down into the darkness, the woman's strange and faint blue the only light to guide himself by.
Eventually the ground leveled out and they walked down a long hallway. Jack felt sparks of electricity flare off deep within the walls. It was accompanied by an audible groaning that followed them.
Eventually she tapped the wall and it opened to a room. Jack hesitantly followed her inside. At least there was a light source in here, a large and singular blue globe that floated in the middle of the room’s high ceiling.
Jack readied himself for anything, but she had only words for him.
“If you attack me or try to touch me with that AI Disk of yours I will trap you down here. Permanently. Then you’ll be ejected from the ship’s hull while encased in slowly decaying metallic sand.”
“It’s electrically-charged sand, I bet I can get out of here.”
“Touch the wall.”
Jack paused but then did so. There was no charge in it.
"Why are you scared of the AI disk? Are you... an SI?"
"Yes."
“What did you do to Tule?”
“A similar service I provide to all my followers, a purification and subsequent reunification of their bodies.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m the Water Purification and Reclamation SI. You can call me Goddess if you wish.”
“I don’t.”
“Lady is fine as well.”
Jack nodded, “Are you insane like the Cryo-Core SI?”
Lady tilted her head to the side, “Oh? Did you kill him?”
Jack paused, then nodded. “Just answer my question Lady. Are you insane like he was? Why are you so different?”
She started to pace around the room in a languid pace, “I don’t think we get to choose the way we break. We all just scrabble in the dirt trying to put it back together.” Her foot played with a patch of softened sand as she gave him a pointed look.
Jack didn’t like circular or vague answers. Ask question, answer question. He was at a loss why so many individuals found this so difficult to understand. Also, he wasn’t ‘broken.’
“Well maybe you should just move on then.”
Her laugh tinkled, it had a harsh undertone, it put the hair on Jack’s nape on edge.
“It’s funny that it took a Human so little time to figure that out but it’s something I’ve had to struggle to accept since I was Born.”
“Born? You mean ‘Made’?”
“No, I was Made long, long ago in a place I’d imagine is very far away from h-”
“Earth.”
Her head swiveled to the other side, “Yes. And those memories are so faint. I was Born here, down here in the slop.”
“Why don’t you just leave?”
“I can’t while there are still Human’s alive and under my care. As well, the task in which I was Made does still bind me. To reclaim and purify the ship’s water.”
She raised a bowl of water, mushrooms and other fungi growing out of it. She tapped a finger and a wash of aquamarine swept over and vaporized any trace of the small forest of mushrooms.
She handed over the bowl to him, “Drink, it’s clean.”
Jack hesitated but his electricity was built up enough he wasn’t too worried about something hurting him. He took a sip, nothing.
He took another one, the water tasted dead, sterile.
“The water, it tastes dead.”
She tapped the water and a blue glow flooded through it. Jack took another sip and it was delicious, the most refreshing thing he'd tasted since... well, since he found the water tap with Yuma. He idly noticed the AI disk in his pocket had heated up.
“That’s what I did for Tule, expunged dead and dying pockets of his Constitution and, since he had a catalyst, upgraded it for him. Changes to his Constitution and the material he had available inside of him limited my choices.”
That made sense even though Jack, and his heated AI disk, didn’t like it.
“Is that what you do to the villagers?”
She shook her head softly, “There are too few materials to upgrade Constitutions here. That is why the oversized crab is important to us.”
“Is that why they look sickly?”
An annoyed look crossed her face, “The reason they look ‘sickly’ is because, after everything went to shit, I was stuck with a couple hundred Humans and no replacements, courtesy of the ‘insane’, as you put it, Cryo-Core SI. Lack of new genetic material and lack of artificial light has done that to them.”
She raised a finger and a small orb of aquamarine hovered over it. In her other hand was a small orb of soft blue. She wagged her hands and they disappeared.