They could not control anything; the panels simply did not seem to allow them to do so, even doing the reverse of the action Kat had done in the vain hope it might return the vessel to the temple and open the door.

Kell warned them to cease meddling with the controls.

"You do not know what circumstances might unfold," he said.

Which did get them to stop.

Being in here was not necessarily a terrible turn of events. They had come for exploration, after all, and they had found something unique. It would only be an issue if they could not find a way out.

They naturally broke up into groups. Nadian and Kat were speaking quietly, the former's animated face seeming to be comforting. Kat, for her part, clearly felt guilty.

Fergus was talking quietly to Fromm, perhaps because both distrusted Nadian.

"Kell, what can you tell me about what's going on here?" Brooks asked softly to the Ambassador.

"Very little," Kell replied.

"I need you to do better than that," Brooks replied. "You're capable of more."

Kell looked at him with a little more seriousness.

"You overestimate my knowledge. There are things I know from experience, which are limited to Earth. There are things I know because they were imprinted into my being - these are sparse and general. And there are things I can see that you cannot. That is all it is - observations. But I do not always have the knowledge to make sense of them."

"You see more than me, and right now that's what I need," Brooks said, realizing that he needed to be more specific with Kell. "What do you see that I may be missing?"

Kell looked slightly amused at that. "Much."

Brooks took a deep breath.

"There is a presence here," he began. "I . . . spoke to it, before I came to."

Kell nodded. "Yes."

"You were aware of it?"

"Only once it made itself known," Kell replied. "Though to think it might not be here is foolish. Would your people leave a station without its machines?"

Brooks's mind raced. "Is it hostile?"

"Treat it as such," Kell replied.

"There's some difficulty for me there," Brooks said. "I cannot lie to it. The Present Mind knew what I was thinking when we communicated. It spoke with my own inner voice into my mind. It took the shape of people from my memories." He sighed. "We have technologies for reading minds. But this was different."

"From higher dimensional angles, lower-dimensional objects are visible in all their details," Kell said.

"As I can see all of a 2D picture in one look, yes," Brooks replied, frowning. "So it is able to look at my brain from these higher angles and . . . understand me?"

"It was made this way to enable its purpose; obeying its creators. It is a tool - the computer which controls this place."

"This 'enabling'."

Kell shrugged slightly. "It 'enabled' them to do something. What, I am not yet sure. Yet your guesses as to why it is so large miss the true point; it is not this scale to simply show power - though I am certain it did do that - it is this scale because the technologies behind it required this scale."

A terrifying thought, Brooks thought. What purpose could require so vast a station - what did it 'enable'? But it was not something there was any value in pursueing at this moment, when answers were still elusive.

"Is the Present Mind listening to us now?" he asked.

"Yes," Kell said. "But when it is not directly interacting with us it will not know our minds. It is a tool, after all - nothing more. It will only know our minds when it establishes direct connection."

"When I'm in the white nothingness," Brooks said, nodding slightly.

Kell looked slightly amused. "Is that how you see it?"

If it could read his mind fully - and it did seem to be able to see all of him - it would know of this conversation. Perhaps it would have to check, but it likely would. While it might feel unassailable, and perhaps truly was, it would also want to know of potential threats.

They had to be viewed as that, even if just because vermin could be a threat.

A sudden thought came to him. "Kell, if it has read my mind so completely - can it mimic me?"

"It could," Kell said. "I could see through it, if it tried, however."

Still, it sat uneasily with Brooks.

----------------------------------------

The paperwork before her seemed to have grown into a mountain, and Pirra wished she could just be doing what she was good at instead of all this nonsense.

They were just lists, projected above her desk, all of the actual work was digital sheets, of course. But even just that projected wall seemed to blot out all behind it.

Wonderful, she thought. She should never have agreed to the promotion that made her de facto head of Response.

Shouldn't Kai Yong Fan be doing some of this? She was the head of Response. Of course, she knew that Kai was really doing quite a bit more. It was just all much more in the form of supply and organization.

But much more than the sheer amount of work, it just felt absurd to Pirra that she was here doing paperwork while the Captain was inside an ancient, spooky, abandoned relic temple. The doors had closed on it earlier, and she had put herself on standby. Yet no order had come through activating her or her team.

Which galled her, though she did not exactly know why. She wasn't even eager to go into such a place. It just reeked of horror.

She glanced again at her lists of paperwork, sorting them into a vague list of priority.

This wouldn't have gotten so bad if she had just stayed on top of it.

She had half a mind to call for a surprise drill, to get out of this work. But that kind of thing was how she had ended up in this mess in the first place.

A call came in. She should ignore it, but it was her husband, Alexander.

Eagerly, she took the call.

"Hello~" she sang pleasantly. "Pirra is not available right now, on account of her dying inside due to the amount of paperwork she has in front of her."

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

Alexander let out a very human chuckle. "Hey, honey, I was gonna see how you were doing, but I guess now I know."

"I'm at least in the home office," she said. "It's more relaxed."

"Nothing like working in your pajamas," Alex teased.

Something about that human word had always irked her. She could not say it right; Alex thought it was cute, but she did not feel the same way. He mentioned it every chance he got.

She didn't really mind.

"I am fully dressed," she insisted, though, keeping to their in-joke. "You know I don't wear pashamas."

"I know, I know. But hey, I wanted to tell you that I'm not gonna be home until late."

"Oh," she said, her crest falling. She had thought they would have a nice, quiet evening at home together. Until the inevitable call for her to go into action because of some nonsense with the stupid temple.

"I'm going to a special event that Father Sair is holding," he continued. He sounded somewhat nervous, hurrying his words. "And I know it's not your thing, but - would you want to go with me?"

She was surprised at that; she had assumed he would be late because of his work.

She did not know what to say. She did believe in being supportive of her partners interests and hobbies.

Though perhaps a religion was more than a hobby? She wasn't entirely sure.

It really was not her field of interest.

"I'll have to see if I can get ahead of this work," she said. "I've got so much piled up."

The excuse felt lame to her, but it was reasonably valid. She felt guilty over it nonetheless.

"I understand," Alex replied. He sounded a little relieved; perhaps he'd been expecting a straight no. "But if you do decide to come, you'll have to leave your system at home. There's no modern tech allowed during the ceremony. Respect and stuff."

"Okay," she said, finding that particularly odd. What if there was an emergency?

Well, she could put in that she'd be incommunicado, and then they'd just page her at the event. It wasn't that big a deal.

"I'm glad you're going, at least," she told him. "Things have been so crazy the last few days, everyone's getting really jittery over this spooky space temple."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah, some of the Boku-boku even filed a joint complaint, saying they thought something was down there with them in Resources!"

Alex chuckled. "I guess you didn't find anything?" he asked.

"No, just them jumping at shadows. They said they 'felt it in their spikes'. I didn't even know what kind of sense that was to put into my report."

"Too many predators from their homeworld, I guess that would make anyone jittery," Alexander said.

He noticed that he'd been talking for a few minutes. "Well, good talking to you, honey. I'm gonna let you get back to your fun paperwork."

"Byeee~" she sang.

As the call ended, Alex found that something Pirra had said had stuck in his mind.

He really had other things to focus on, but the Boku-boku and their complaint seemed relevant, somehow.

The little aliens came from a world that was rife with large carnivores that could, in historical times, make snacks out of them. They had been discovered and uplifted by the Bicet, the only other species who they really got along with. But they retained their spiky growths, which were both a defense and a way for their body to rid itself of excess silicon.

He opened up a new tab on his browser and brought up scholarly research on the Boku-boku. They typically did not like to be space-faring, and their society had revolved around the collective gathering and storing of resources - a trait that made them very much at home in the modern Resources department.

But how did they react to krahteons, he found himself wondering.

This was a subject that there was not a lot of research into, it was just such a poorly-understood phenomenon, it was hard to test.

There was some research, however. And from both research and anecdotal evidence, he found some interesting data.

Boku-boku were very sensitive, more than most other species, to krahteons. The radiation had a nasty habit of interacting with the crystalline structures in their thorns, which made them brittle and prone to breaking. As they possessed nerves in their growths, they could even feel those micro-fractures, and often described the feeling as "crackly".

He found that he could not access the details of their complaint earlier, it was outside of his security level. But he could piece together when it occurred.

It was about the time that Father Sair had gone down there, he realized.

He checked the priest's public data, to be sure. But yes; Sair went down, and then minutes later, the Boku-boku filed their complaint.

It had to be coincidence, he thought.

He looked at the chart of patterning for changes occurring in his DNA strand.

It was wrong to think this, he thought.

But his scientific curiosity was too strong. He ran the publicly-available data of Father Sair's movements against his corruption pattern.

As the results came in, he did not know how to deal with the panic that was setting in.

Because every time the Father had passed near his DNA strand, it had gained another mutation.

Yet it did not cover all, or even most of the hits.

There was something else, something he was missing.

On a whim, he ran Ambassador Kell's data against his list.

It did not match - he could not say if Kell was a potential source of krahteons, but he just had not come close by the DNA strand at any point. His movements were fairly contained to certain parts of the ship that did not include this one.

There was just one other person he could think of.

He told the system to check Apollonia's movements against his list.

He leaned back, feeling like he'd taken a punch to the gut.

Almost every remaining incident of mutation matched her being in close proximity.

She passed by this area often, on runs. Her schedule was erratic, and so therefore too was the exposure. But every single time she passed nearby, his test DNA mutated.

"My god," he muttered. The words had, until now, been just a phrase he'd learned to say. Now, he suddenly found himself wishing he truly believed in a religion, that it wasn't just a hopeful wish for faith.

There were still some unexplained gaps. Could . . . could they somehow make these findings make more sense? Put a context to them that did not disturb him so much?

He set the computer to seeking who else might match this pattern, flailing mentally. He did not know what this meant; if he should even be reporting it or not.

She was a CR. It made sense. Right?

But did anyone else know she was putting out radiation of the same kind as a Leviathan?

And what did it mean that the Father was putting out the same radiation?

He had to be a CR as well, Alexander realized. It was the only explanation he could think of.

He ran a comparison; krahteonic radiation was poorly understood, and really didn't behave all that much like other known forms of it. It wasn't a form of photon, but more like a charged particle, though even there just what the sort of particle they were could not be explained.

There were certain consistencies, however. He could compare this exposure to other instances.

It was not nearly as strong as those of a Leviathan, he found. Either the one they had encountered about a year ago or the records of the one at Terris . . . which the entire ship had just commemorated. That bothered him on some level.

But there were trace records similar to this.

From The Chain.

The medical facility for people exposed to krahteons, mutated by them. Like his plant DNA.

He knew that something big, something alarming, had occurred there. Being the husband of a major Response officer meant he picked up on such things, even when they were supposed to remain secret.

But he did not know what. Only that it had been . . . strange and alarming, and related to tenkions and krahteons.

Rumors gave him some more ideas. The stories had spread that someone on The Chain had been mutating out of control. Becoming something different, something dangerous. Apollonia had gone onto the station, and the situation had been resolved in a way that had resulted in the death of a resident.

Were the rumors true? What if . . . what if Apollonia and even the Father were basically like that resident on the Chain? Were they doomed to become something inhuman and dangerous?

He felt his heart rate increasing. He knew he was jumping to conclusions.

He almost called Pirra. But no - she hadn't been involved in that incident on The Chain. She might know more, but he'd have to convince her, then she could go up the ranks . . .

He wasn't in the ranks, though. He could bring his evidence to the top immediately.

He needed someone with maximum possible clearance. The Captain was off the ship, and Urle was on-duty.

He called Jaya Yaepanaya. She was the perfect choice, as Operations commander she'd naturally want to know of any possible danger to the ship, she was laser-focused on such things . . .

He got her message system. He didn't have the clearance to get through to her directly.

"Ah, Commander Yaepanaya, this is Alexander Shaw . . . I'm a botanist and I've found something that you need to see. I know it sounds odd, but once I explain it will make sense. Contact me as soon as you can. I . . . I'm afraid this could impact the safety of the ship."

He ended the message. A lot of other thoughts of what he should say came to him, along with the question of if he was overreacting.

But he had set his course. He just had to wait for Commander Yaepanaya to get back to him.