Prism felt a linen-like padded surface beneath his skin as he slowly opened his eyes. His armor had been removed, and he simply wore his Red Wolves standard-issue grey briefs. His body ached and his mind was foggy, but he hoped that those feelings would pass. Breathing was even painful for him. He soon heard himself wheezing slightly. He also heard a great deal of movement and talking around him, including Deriges’ angry yelling not too far away.
The first thing that Prism’s sore eyes saw was Jaik’s strapping face, which wore a mixture of relief and worry. Jaik’s bright green eyes looked tired and dry. Jaik had taken off his own helmet, and his curly black bangs stuck sweatily to his forehead.
“Hey there, buddy.” Jaik said warmly while he stood over Prism, who was lying in a medical bed tucked away in a corner of the CCC.
Prism smiled weakly before trying to lift himself up from the bed. His thin arms struggled to raise his upper body, and they shook during the attempt.
“Don’t try to get up; your body is still recovering from all of the damage that the supervirus did to the cells in your body.” Jaik warned while grabbing Prism’s shoulders in an attempt to lay him back down.
Prism grunted and said, “No, I have to save Srell,” before trying to swat Jaik’s strong hands away.
Prism’s voice was raspy and his throat felt like he’d swallowed a handful of razor blades. He fought back the urge to cough, as he was worried that he might hack up a piece of his lungs. He was too starved of mana for his body to heal itself at an accelerated rate, but he had a plan to remedy that.
“See? You need rest.” Jaik said when Prism’s other arm gave way after he’d tried to push Jaik’s hands off of his slender shoulders. “You must’ve overheard Deriges’ attempts to contact Srell. He’s probably just too busy to-“
“No, I just contacted Srell! He’s hurt really bad, and the infiltrator is about to take over the border guns!”
Prism’s frustrated shouting made him begin to cough roughly. He began to hack up blood, and he felt a stabbing pain in his chest.
Jaik turned around and grabbed a vial from a nearby desk, then placed it in his transdermer. He quickly brought the transdermer over to Prism’s neck, but Prism grabbed Jaik’s hand and stopped him.
“No, don’t put me to sleep.” Prism said fearfully while wiping blood off of the corner of his mouth.
“It’s just something to dull the pain and make it easier for you to breathe.” Jaik held the transdermer up, as if Prism would know what was within it.
After sensing feelings of honesty emanating from Jaik, Prism nodded to the young doctor before he delivered the medicine through the skin of Prism’s neck. Prism sighed as the drug immediately began to bring him relief.
“Were you somehow able to telepathically communicate with Srell? It still isn’t working for me.” Jaik said while putting his transdermer back into his medical bag.
“Yes, it was the first thing I did once I regained consciousness.” Prism said softly. “If you take me to a nerve-cable, then I can get my strength back and restore my telepathy magic to normal.” Prism explained.
“You already tried and failed to connect with the base’s bio-system, and it nearly killed you.” Jaik reasoned.
“You cured me, so cure the base. Once it’s healthy again, then I can probably connect with it.”
Prism was optimistic, but Jaik was not.
“The base’s bio-system is too far gone. Normally, its own immune system could get a sample of an effective antiviral and use that to synthesize enough of it itself to fight off its viral infection, but it’s too sick now for that. And this isolated medical bio-computer can’t synthesize enough antiviral meds to treat a city-sized bio-system.” Jaik said while pointing at the bluish-green bio-computer console beside him and Prism.
The bio-computer was the size and shape of a wall locker, and ran up to the ceiling. It had a waist-height console attached to it that had colored keys that resembled small glowing sacs of fluid. Above that console was a large OLED display that was also connected to the tall bio-computer tower beside it. That tower also had several other strange attachments coming out of it, connected to flexible stalks that could be stretched and bent for ease-of-access. It made the bio-computer tower look like an alien tree of some kind, though such bio-computers were commonplace within Etrysian labs and medical facilities. A rather mundane office chair on five wheels sat in front of the console, and below the console was a brown desk that had several papers, vials, and medical devices strewn across it.
“Do I have immunity to the supervirus now?” Prism asked, knowing that he’d need to appeal to Jaik’s reason to get what he wanted.
“I believe so. This supervirus is incredibly stable. I doubt that it can mutate enough to circumvent your immunity.”
“Then I’ll drain the nerve grid dry, and then use its energy to save Srell and stop the infiltrator.” Prism said resolutely.
“Drain it? That’ll leave the base even more defenseless than it already is.” Jaik shook his head with doubt.
“Actually, by draining the base’s nerve grid of power, the border guns will temporarily be brought offline until the hydropower backups come online and supply them with power a few minutes later.” Risa said quietly from a short distance away.
Prism flinched when he heard her, having not been aware of her presence. She’d practically been invisible to him, despite her gaudy red and white plate armor. She’d been standing on the other side of the bio-computer, observing the goings-on of the CCC while Jaik treated Prism.
"Will draining the base effectively kill the bio-system?" Jaik asked Risa, who seemed strangely knowledgeable about it.
"No, not as long as the bio-generators aren't harmed. The bio-system will enter a low-power state until the bio-generators refill the bio-batteries to a safe-operating level, and then the system will resume as normal." Risa said softly before tilting her head slightly. "Well, as normal as it can run while it is infected with the supervirus."
“I guess we don’t have a choice then. The last thing we need is the hypergeneral and his fleet getting blasted out of the sky.” Jaik thought aloud while rubbing his stubbled cleft chin. “Risa, please inform Deriges of our plan.” He asked politely.
With a curt nod, Risa left the small medical area in the corner of the large room and went over to its center to speak to the busy base commander. Jaik looked down at Prism, who still seemed quite weak.
“I’ll carry you there, to wherever he says is safe to attempt this.” Jaik reassured Prism.
“Thanks. I’m not sure I’m strong enough to walk yet.” Prism said honestly. “She didn’t bat an eye about me being able to drain power from the grid.” Prism added while tilting his head far enough to see Risa speaking to a rather serious-looking Deriges.
“I told her and Deriges about your power to connect to bio-systems without a spinal port. They were surprised, but haven’t asked too many questions about who or what you are. Pack Command already briefed them about you and your unusual abilities before we even flew here, so it isn't a complete surprise." Jaik explained verbosely, which made Prism a bit impatient.
"We don't have much time. Srell could be dead by the time we-" Prism urged before he saw Risa walk back over. Her face was stolid and unreadable, as it usually was.
"Both of you; follow me. I'll take you to a nearby room so that he can access the base's nerve grid." Risa said meekly.
"Why can't we do it here?" Prism said in agitation. He tightly gripped the sheet that he laid atop.
"The CCC is on a separate bio-generator than the rest of the base, and we can ill-afford having our command center lose power for even a moment." Jaik explained to Prism.
Prism huffed like a child before giving an acknowledging nod of his head. Jaik leaned over and picked up Prism, carrying his much smaller teammate with both of his sinewy arms. Jaik looked down at Jaik for a moment as he held him tightly, wondering if he should put his armor back on. When he saw how Prism made a point to avoid looking at him, Jaik knew that he'd only irk Prism even further if he stopped to do that.
Jaik nodded to Risa before she turned around and led them out of the CCC. It was a busy room, full of about twenty soldiers at various consoles scattered around. The middle of the room was large and featured a large circular table that the senior officers were gathered around. Deriges loomed over the table, which displayed a three-dimensional hologram layout of the eastern wall of the base, where their enemy was. The room was darker than Prism thought it should be, and most of its light came from console screens and tactical tables.
Prism saw Deriges stare at him when they walked around the central area where Deriges stood in front of the round hologram-emitting tactical table. The stout, round-faced base commander looked upon Prism kindly despite his angry shouting at the officers gathered around him. Prism smiled weakly at Deriges, who quickly returned to arguing with his second-in-command.
It only took them a few minutes before they were standing within a well-guarded living room. After a quick look around, Jaik and Prism realized that it was the base commander’s living quarters. The lights flickered in the room, as they'd been doing in the hallways. A guard standing within the smartly-decorated brown and beige room walked over and removed a panel from the wall, revealing a thick yet ulcerated nerve-cable. The cable oozed a strange-smelling yellow liquid, which the guard was quick to avoid.
"Pus. The infection has gotten far worse in such a short amount of time. It may very well reach the bio-generators soon, regardless of their enhanced immune systems." Jaik said apprehensively. "Are you sure you can do this safely?" He looked down and said to Prism, who was still in his arms.
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"I am. Take me over there." Prism said while doing his best to block out the extreme feelings of fear and disgust that were being emitted from Jaik's magicked mind. Those feelings were making Prism sick to his stomach.
Jaik cautiously walked Prism over to the diseased nerve-cable and then propped his teammate up onto his unsteady feet against the wall beside the oozing cable. Jaik stepped back and watched Prism lean down slowly to grip the healthiest part of the nerve-cable. Jaik wanted to cover his eyes, worried that Prism would electrocute himself when he touched it. Prism closed his eyes when his skin made contact with the nerve-cable. He nearly recoiled from the torment that he sensed coming from the bio-system.
If Surmil's sick bio-system wailed, then Getla Base's diseased bio-system screamed in agony. It was all Prism could do just to withstand the foreign pain that clawed at his mind, unwelcome and unbearable. Prism realized that it had been a different strain of virus that had been used to infect the military bio-system, one far more potent than Surmil's. It ate away at the living grid like locusts who'd just awoken from a long hibernation, leaving only scraps of coherent data and functionality. Even the lighting could barely stay on.
"It's really bad, Jaik. This system is barely hanging on to life." Prism looked back and said to his young friend, who looked aghast. "I'm going to start draining it now, and then I'm going to rid it of this virus. If the system survives, that is."
Before Jaik could tell him to be careful, the room began to shake as Prism began to absorb what little bio-electric power was left from the nerve grid. The bio-batteries that Risa had told Prism about were too infected to properly maintain a charge, hence all the power issues throughout the base. The nerves writhed within the wall as they experienced something that they'd never been designed to deal with.
The horrified bio-system sent out gut-wrenching sounds from its myriad organs and cables that wrapped around the entirety of Getla Base. The soldiers within started to panic, fearing that their mysterious enemy had found a way to collapse the underground base in on them. The walls shuddered and the floors rumbled, but Prism forcefully wrangled control over the system as he withdrew the last of its strength.
A dark purple aura of siphoning magic appeared around Prism as he drained more and more of the bio-systems power, while at the same time reining the system in. He stopped its groaning, and kept its cables still so that the base wouldn't break itself apart. He felt the large organism's life-force flow into him, and he felt his own body grow strong again. He could stand steadily on his legs, and he could breathe easily and quietly.
The light around his body became a dark bottle-green, then a bright sapphire blue, and then a transcendent white. Soon, Jaik and the soldiers within the room couldn't look upon the resplendent light that enwreathed Prism until finally, in a burst of sound and light, Prism was gone. The room became dark and silent, even cold.
"Prism?" Jaik said softly in disbelief. "Prism!?" He then screamed.
Jaik ran over to the dead-looking nerve-cable, stupidly touching it as if he'd find Prism within it. He then started banging on the wall around it, still screaming Prism's name. He cried out, angered and saddened by all the times Prism had frightened him like that.
It always hurt Jaik quite badly when Prism seemingly died in front of him, because Jaik had come to love the strange alien when he'd first carried him out of the recesses of the lab he'd found Prism in. It was a love that had confused Jaik, and he'd done his best to lock that love inside himself. When he'd learned that Prism could sense his feelings, he buried the feeling as deeply as he could and resisted all thoughts that his love might manifest. It was a love that was just as strange and mysterious to Jaik as Prism was to him, and it always managed to bubble its way to the surface in Prism’s absence.
"Stupid!" Jaik shouted aloud when he finally started to calm down.
Linear lights that ran along the ceiling next to the hidden sprinkler nipples began to shine as more traditional generators started to whir to life deep below the base, converting the power of flowing seawater into electricity.
"Sir, what happened to him?" A younger guard asked Jaik.
"Return to your post and be quiet, soldier. Now is not the time to be asking questions." Risa said quietly, seemingly unfazed by what had just happened.
The soldier nodded to her and did as she said, despite the fact that she wasn't even a part of the Etrysian military. That was the respect that the Roses commanded within even their ranks.
Jaik kneeled on the ground near the nerve-cable, wallowing in self-pity. Risa walked over to him and squatted down in front of Jaik. She saw that his eyes were watery as they looked sadly down at the ground immediately before his knees.
"Your friend is powerful. He will return to you." Risa said with a conviction that made Jaik look up at her. "Have faith." She smiled and said when Jaik looked into her large, light-brown eyes.
After sitting in silence for a few moments, Jaik felt a tingle in the back of his mind. He gladly answered the telepathic call.
"Jaik, I'm fine. I'm within the bio-system, purging it of the virus." Prism's voice echoed in Jaik's mind, strong and true.
Jaik smiled widely at Risa, and he thanked her for her kindness. It was strange to him that she'd said those words to him minutes before Prism reached out to him.
"You idiot! You should've told me that you'd disappear like that." Jaik psychically said with a chuckle made aloud as a tear rolled down his right cheek.
"I didn't need you asking questions and holding me up any further." Prism said telepathically, along with a disembodied laugh of his own. "I can become a being of pure energy when I have a large amount of mana within my body. I am traveling through the bio-system this way, and I'll be getting to Srell like this soon. Speaking of, the telepathic link is fully restored for everyone."
Jaik began to hear the voices of all of his teammates echoing in his mind. They began to share information with each other, and Jaik was overwhelmed by the sudden inundation of requests. He got up from his knees, told Risa that he needed to use the bathroom, and proceeded to the restroom within Deriges' quarters. There he was able to apprise his team of Prism's progress.
"We've got Ursun and Theda onto the Sphingid now. We're flying up to the rooftop as we speak. It's been blocked off and can't be accessed through its stairwell anymore." Leanna told Jaik through their link.
"I know, Deriges was yelling about that in the CCC." Jaik shared.
"So we need to watch out for this Destructor guy that Srell was fighting." Ursun remarked telepathically to his team.
"Srell's unconscious. We can't reach him." Lorias stated.
"I'm done; the base's bio-system is virus-free and will be waking up soon. I'm heading to the border gun now to treat Srell." Prism's empowered voice could be heard in the minds of his entire team.
"It's amazing that the infiltrator hasn't killed him. That's weird, isn't it?" Leanna psychically asked her team.
"He might think that Srell's dead." Lorias reasoned through the link. "Srell's a tough little guy, he'll make it." Lorias then said lovingly aloud to the Roses on the Sphingid.
"We're coming up on the rooftop. Help Srell and then cover us." Ursun ordered Prism just when the alien materialized out of the control console in an electrical display that would dazzle most onlookers.
Prism felt a strange chill run down his spine as he returned to his corporeal, human appearance. He glanced back at the console, and saw that it had a strange apple-sized golden tumor next to it. Prism tilted his head curiously at the ugly golden mass that clung to the wall of the fire-control bio-computer connected to the console. He knew that the growth wasn't a result of the supervirus, but he wasn't sure if it was a feature of the controls or a bug.
"Be safe up there Prism. Even a cat only has five lives." Jaik said over their telepathic link.
"Odd. On most worlds, people say that they have nine." Prism mused telepathically before running over to Srell, who was in really bad shape on the brown ramp he'd been laying on for over ten minutes.
Prism reached out his hands and sent pulses of white light at Srell's body, which quickly mended his broken bones, fixed his ruptured ear drum, and treated his brain injury. Srell soon opened his eyes and saw Prism kneeling over him.
"I knew you'd save me, Magical Boy." Srell said affectionately before sitting up. "Did you kill that Destructor thug yet?"
"Sorry, I just got here. I sense his presence nearby, but he can't do much while the base's bio-system is still down." Prism said with a confident smile.
"Come on, Prism! Don't be dumb and underestimate your enemy!" Srell shouted angrily before rising to his feet and running towards the entryway to the border gun dome.
"What's wrong?" Prism called after Srell.
Srell was carefully looking out at the border gun's surroundings. He wasn't going to be caught unawares again, he thought.
"Where is he!?" Srell yelled back to Prism with his PAW at the ready.
"He's...inside another border gun, on the next wall tower over." Prism said dumbly while pointing in the direction that he knew they'd find the Destructor.
"Are you serious!? Go after him!" Srell continued to yell before taking off towards their enemy.
Prism blinked quietly before following after Srell. The two of them soon saw the Sphingid appear over the edge of the rooftop, moving almost silently in the balmy night air. Srell motioned them towards the other rooftop and then telepathically told his team that they'd find the infiltrator there.
"On it." Leanna replied back before the Sphingid began to fly a short distance away.
Before the moth ship could land, all of the border guns started to shift their lengthy barrels away from the sea and up towards the sky over Surmil. Prism and Srell looked up in horror as they noticed a large number of aircraft coming into view over the city's skyline. The ships were almost at a major airfield in the southern portion of Surmil.
"How!? You said that the bio-system's offline!" Srell shouted at Prism, who was standing beside him.
"It is...but the...hydropower..." Prism struggled to speak.
"These guns aren't on that system! They'd be able to be hijacked if they had normal electronics in them!" Srell yelled again.
"The golden tumor..." Prism said almost breathlessly.
Srell grabbed Prism's right ear, then twisted and squeezed it. Prism cried out in pain, and looked confusedly at Srell.
"What. Golden. Tumor?" Srell's sternly staccato question was the final push Prism needed to snap out of his own sensitiveness.
"It was on the console I appeared from, on the border gun's control system." Prism explained quickly.
Srell let go of Prism's ear and ran back to the border gun they'd just left. When he tried to walk up the ramp, he was struck with an intense heat on his skin that forced him to turn back. In his haste, he'd forgotten about the microwave defenses that the border gun domes had, and that they sealed themselves shut when they were in operation. Prism telepathically told his other teammates what was going on, and that he and Srell were handling it.
"Prism! We need to get in there! Disable its defenses and bust down that door!" Srell shouted over to Prism, who'd been standing meters away near the edge of the roof.
Prism leapt over to Srell's side and stretched out his right hand toward the border gun. Prism's irises shimmered with blue light as he forced the dome doors to open while rendering its defenses inactive. Prism found it quite difficult to do so as he fought against a strange force for control of the weapon. When Srell and Prism ran back inside the dome, they saw that the golden tumor on the fire-control bio-computer had not only tripled in size, but had released golden tendrils that wrapped around the console and the rest of the large control system contained within the center of the room. The tumor and its tendrils throbbed and glowed as they dominated the bio-computer, subjecting it to an unknown will.
"You didn't think to say something about this!?" Srell continued to yell at Prism, who was right beside him.
"It didn't look like this when I got here! It was just a small golden mass that could fit in my palm." Prism said in exasperation.
"Must be some sort of nanomachine colony. They're about the only thing that the Monarchists have that can directly interface and control living tech like ours." Srell said more calmly while he furrowed his brow. "They are really hard to make though, even for the Kingdom. At least, that's what Bighead says."
"I'll try to destroy it." Prism said while reaching out his hand at the tumor.
"You'd be destroying the entire border gun, then." Srell said hopelessly. "They're nanites. They've worked themselves into every cell of the fire-control system by now, maybe even the gun's large mechanisms too. There are probably trillions of nanites in there."
Prism knew that he couldn't rid an organism of trillions of smart machines in a short amount of time. He rubbed his frustrated face and looked at the shining golden mess that was spread out on the surfaces before them. It almost looked beautiful.
"What am I supposed to do, then? It seems like this guy has somehow installed these things on all of the border guns that this base has." Prism asked in irritation. He didn't want to give up if he could still stop things from getting any worse.
"We'll have to destroy them somehow. The border guns, I mean. If we don't, they'll blast the fleet out of the sky any minute now." Srell said dejectedly. "Is that even something you can do?"
"I could destroy one or two, but I saw ten out there." Prism said softly.
He, too, was beginning to feel the futility of their predicament. But then Prism had a moment of absolute clarity.
"I've been hesitant to do so without a mana convergence being nearby, but I can draw upon the natural mana in the environment to stop all of this." Prism's mood became buoyant as he spoke, though he knew that he needed to stay calm and be incredibly careful.
"Do whatever you have to do, just do it now!" Srell shouted as he saw the controls on the console begin to blink and buzz.
“Will electricity work on these things?” Prism quickly asked.
“Yes!” Srell replied loudly while nodding frantically.
Prism ran out of the dome, down its entry ramp, and onto the rooftop several meters in front of the border gun. Srell was quick to follow him, not wanting to be caught in whatever destruction Prism was about to cause. Prism raised his right hand slowly into the air as he stood tall and assuredly, inundating the area with a heavy pressure that made Srell slightly nauseous.
Prism began to mouth words of power, commanding the elements to his will. The words were alien to Æba, but she listened to them nonetheless. The magic that Prism's people wielded had a vast range and fluency that spanned the entirety of existence. There was no world where he would be deprived of his power for long, if he chose to bend that world to his own desires. It was a dangerous dynamism that could easily turn him into a tyrant.
"Rikwe, Fobo, Byiti!" Prism yelled as his voice took on a terrifying timbre that quaked in the minds of all nearby.
Srell stepped away slowly as he instinctively realized how much danger he was in. He saw small crackles of bluish-white electricity begin to appear around Prism's body, and soon wisps of light-blue plasma also appeared around the Elementeitan. The air was thickly charged, and Srell took off running for fear that his body would be ignited by the fulminant energy.
"Rikwe, Fobo, Byiti!"
Storm clouds formed in the night sky above them, seemingly out of nowhere. The air around Prism's body was glowing, and electricity began to arc from his body onto the concrete all around him. His outstretched hand was raised up higher up at the sky, and he began to float off of the ground as lightning shot between the new clouds above, followed by the sound of thunder.
Srell, who'd taken refuge behind a small artillery gun several meters away, watched the eerie scene unravel before him. He shared his sight with his team on the other roof, who'd been unable to apprehend the Destructor before he locked himself inside that roof's border gun dome.
"Rikwe, Fobo, Byiti!"
Prism's voice was just as resounding as the thunder that rolled across the coast. His eyes looked as though they were on fire, glowing a blue so bright that it would blind anyone who stared directly at it.
With a final closing of his raised hand, bolts of lightning flashed down from the heavens and struck several border guns, demolishing their domes and causing them to explode. Two of the lightning bolts arced between several of the hardier border guns that had survived, soon causing them to malfunction just as they were shooting their explosive rounds towards the assembled Second Athean Air Fleet. One of the rounds made it out of its cannon, but was so far off course that it came short of the fleet by several kilometers.
"By Eizavoba..." Srell said quietly before leaving his mouth agape. His teammates made similar statements as they stood by and saw the spell that Prism had cast.
"What on Æba is he?" Theda said in disbelief while she stood beside Ursun.
"Our salvation." said Ursun, who tranquilly took in the splendor of the moment.