In the dark tunnels, an eerie quiet enveloped Ark, like a sticky blanket clinging onto his skin. He felt his pupils expand, straining to consume what little light reached into the tunnels; felt the stale air pass into his lungs, full of age-old mold, smelling like a damp cellar.
Interrupting this undisturbed quiet was the low hum of the grav-suit, as it resisted the pull of Vanguard, as well as providing Ark a modicum of control within an otherwise, low-gravity environment. He kept it steady at about the center of the tunnel, slowly moving forward, allowing his senses to adjust to the tight space.
He felt his chest tighten slightly, as the enclosed space had fully consumed him, and the entrance faded behind him. Most of his life, Ark had lived in small, windowless rooms, which made it even more uncomfortable to return to that prior state. He felt imprisoned, on display; a stupid animal put into a cage and trained to perform tricks for the amusement of others.
Biting his lip, he resisted the emotions and memories. He had a job to do. Speeding up, he rounded the first corner, arriving at his first fork. From inside his suit, he pulled out the piece of paper that Wright had handed him. It was a hand-drawn section of the tunnels, since there were no digital versions available to Lowtown residents—for security reasons, of course.
Even this tiny scrap of low-tech paper with lines drawn on it was technically illegal. If he took a picture of it, using his netlink, he ran the risk of Vanguard recognizing the picture, which could land him in trouble. The last thing they needed was a visit by the Tanks—Vanguard security forces rumored to be tank-bred. Utterly incorruptible grunts that followed orders to the letter; orders coming from utterly corrupt officers. The perfect system.
Following the primitive map, Ark took the right fork and soon found his first mark. Pulsing with teal light, a small tear in the fabric of space had stuck itself onto the tunnel’s metal side. What lay behind, Ark had little way of knowing. This type of rift did not have the ability to transfer matter of his size, and there was no way to look through a rift. You had to pass through a rift to learn what it led to.
With a sizzle, it stuttered, sending out a small shower of sparks. It shifted slightly, changing its direction from horizontal to vertical, then shifted back a moment later. Extremely unstable, probably lethal for anything bigger than a mouse, the rift had the tell-tale signs of instability that most natural rifts exhibited. Without stabilization tech, anything that attempted to pass through would risk displacement; a rather nasty aftereffect of riftwalking when the rift changed orientation while something—or someone—passed through it. The results were often… macabre.
As he was supposed to, Ark attempted to use his netlink to register the rift and seek permission to terminate, but instead he received a sharp headache, as well as the same message he got after returning from his inadvertent riftwalk.
Initiation error… Vanguard link collapse… Neural network unavailable…
He needed the registration, though, or else Wright would not accept his results. Grinding his teeth, he attempted retry the connection, and was somewhat successful.
Initiation error… Attempting limited link…
Limited link established… Neural network will remain unavailable until full link is reestablished…
Sighing a sigh of relief, he used the limited connection to register the link, and finally received the response he required.
Rift class: too low to evaluate
Permission for civil termination, GRANTED
Once he read the message, Ark reached out and lightly traced his fingers across the metal near the rift. That slight disturbance was enough to make the rift stutter even more, shooting out sparks at an increasing pace as he closed in. When his fingers finally came into contact with the rift in the transverse direction, the spatial connection collapsed in a final shower of sparks, imploding in on itself, just as Ark swiped through it in swift motion.
He drew a long breath of relief, as he looked at his fingers, ensuring that they were all still there. Part of the danger of this work was simply disturbing these rift enough to destabilize the spatial connection. Using tools was preferred, but down here there was no room to operate them properly. The slightest mistake when connecting with the rift, like accidentally raising the tool a fraction of an inch at the moment of impact, would likely result in it being sucked into the rift, along with the hand and arm that held it. Even if there was not enough room for his arm to pass through, the sheer suction force of the rift would either crush or split whatever came into contact with it.
Still whole, and back in darkness, Ark continued on, sifting through the tunnels with practiced efficiency. This was not the first time that he had been asked to perform this dangerous task, and he had survived this far. His small frame, combined with Mino’s size as an anchor, made them an ideal pair for this kind of work—and much cheaper than running the risk of losing a maintenance droid from either the critters or a mistake when collapsing a rift.
Wright’s excuse of the droid ‘ruining the plating and inviting rust’ was laughable, as there was hardly any surface down here unmarred by rust, where decades of disuse and invasive pests had left their mark. While Ark passed through the darkness, he felt the stares of whatever hid down here, or heard the skittering sound of their footsteps on metal as they fled his disturbing presence. Ignoring them, he continued on, only stopping to signal Mino when he backtracked, allowing him to pull in the excess rope before continuing on.
It was during this monotony that Ark began feeling a strange pull in his left hand. The subtle pain from the lodged pieces of glass had been gnawing at his senses all day, however, over the next hour of tunnel cleaning, it subtly began to pulse with something new. It was not pain—Ark knew pain, intimately—just a tug now and then. The first few times, he ignored it, passing it off as a trick of his mind, but when his arm suddenly jerked out as he passed a side-tunnel, Ark immediately stopped in his tracks.
Staring at his flailing arm, Ark tried to regain control, clenching his teeth in the ensuing mental struggle to merely flex his fingers. For a moment, it was wholly unresponsive, like an alien entity had suddenly taken control of his very own limb. Only after a disturbing amount of time, did Ark manage to reassert his control, breath heavy with effort.
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As he kept flexing his fingers, making sure he was in command, Ark looked down the side-passage that had made his hand react. The consequences of this development was not lost on him—he understood that it was wrong and very, very dangerous. Licking his lips, Ark delved into his netlink.
The warning signs had all been there: the collapsed link to Vanguard, immediately after returning from his summons, the headaches and trouble reconnecting. These alone should have been enough for him to perform a defensive scan of his netlink, but it had been so long since anyone had attempted to influence him like this. He was out of training.
The moment he reached for his defensive measures, he knew he was too late. Violently, he was rebuffed from his own netlink interface and forced out of key control functions. His arm burned with mental fire as he took up the fight and tried once more, using his administrative form.
An ordinary Lowtowner would only have rudimentary tech, allowing them to interface with Vanguard Central Network, as well as minutely tap into the neural network administrated by Vanguard itself. Ark, on the other hand, had military grade tech installed before he could even speak, and had been trained in its use from the time he could walk. One of the key functions of military hardware was the administrative form, allowing Ark to mentally enter his netlink, fully immersed, and not merely through the normal interface.
Closing his eyes and initiating the command, Ark felt the influence resisting his attempts, although it was unable to override his primary authorities. The stomach-churning sensation of delving into virtual space overwhelmed him for a moment, and he could not help but lament how long it had been since he last attempted this.
When he opened his eyes again, he was in a shimmering world of glass-like textures, laced with text and numbers that intermingled and spliced with automated purpose. It was a world formed for Ark to make sense of the inner workings of the netlink, allowing him to operate it intuitively, not an actual representation of the netlink architecture. Only mindweavers—netlink specialists—were able to delve into the true architecture, and thereby touch the underlying structure of Vanguard. Even then, only a few ever attempted it.
Looking down at his own form, Ark felt a slight mental rejection at the elongated and sharply contoured form he was able to take in this space. It required discipline and training to maintain his awareness in this place, as it demanded a strict understanding of who ‘Ark’ was, distinct from everything else, or he might meld into the virtual space and lose his sense of self. Another danger was his mind fully rejecting this version of reality and begin shutting down, which could result in unconsciousness, coma, or—in the worst case—death.
With all the dangers foremost in his mind, Ark took in the surroundings, and was immediately struck by the severity of the influence. The virtual space was formed like the inside of a great, hollow cylinder, with Ark standing in the middle. Along the inside surface there were a multitude of access points, each with their own purpose, and formed by Ark’s intuition to be recognizable. He stood on an open plateau, formed of blue-tinted glass with green and yellow symbols moving across its surface. Around him, in the four cardinal directions, were the pillars that formed his primary authorities—intact and uncorrupted.
Everything else, though, was soaked in a viscous red, covering structures and monuments like a thin and slimy film. Straight ahead, he could see the archives—containing his virtual information and an entire library’s worth of books and treatises that he could read. Ordinarily it was a stoic building with a front of marble pillars over a triangle roof; now the red influence dripped down from that very roof, forming puddles that reached into the entrance and even enveloped several book cases within.
Ark craned his neck, looking further up, finding no areas untainted by the red slime, until he looked straight up at where there had once been a great chandelier, providing light to the virtual space. Now, it was the very center of corruption. The red slime extended downwards from the arms of the chandelier, like a thick snail, complete with a set of eye-stalks that scoured the surroundings.
When Ark looked directly at it, the monstrous slime twitched, and both its eye-stalks turned towards him, revealing copies of a very familiar object at their ends. Two amber orbs came closer, as the slime extended itself further down, and on the surface of each orb was a pantomime, human face, grinning at him.
If Ark had simulated hair on his polygonated form, they would have stood on end. He held his breath as the monstrosity descended until the two orbs were right in front of him.
W£LC¤M>, corrupted text appeared in front of Ark, as the two pantomime faces began to mime words, Y()u @re La/e.
“What are you?” Ark tried to sound threatening, but his words were similarly translated into text, making his intent useless.
N¤ T1me, the two heads shook in unison, GO>> N¤W>>
“You don’t get to tell me what to do,” Ark said, setting his jaw.
The two faces stretched their faces into grins that encompassed both orbs, before two simple words heralded the end: T1m5’s UP.
Then came the pain. Ark’s mind—already stretched to its limit to simply remain in the virtual space—cracked, blacking out his vision and sending him flailing back to reality. He fought unconsciousness with everything he had, knowing he would likely die if he did not stay aware. Even if Mino could haul him back, the risk of injury, or him swallowing his tongue, while being dragged through the zero-G environment was overwhelming.
Being forced out of virtual space meant that he had to recalibrate to physical space without the guiding system of his netlink, and the best way to do so, he knew, was to move. He tried everything to activate his body, kicking, screaming, punching—everything. The darkness of the tunnels would make it difficult for him to ascertain when he was back, but when he felt his feet slamming against something hard, he knew he had succeeded.
Then came breathing—which did not come automatically. His chest felt like a collapsed balloon, empty of air, forcefully resisting being blown up once more. He kicked again, trying to use the force of hitting the tunnel walls to remind his lungs of their key function: keeping him alive.
The dam broke with a violent gasp, after another few kicks. Gasping, Ark began taking control of his own body in a more deliberate way, ensuring that he could move all of his extremities. Once he was certain that all toes and fingers moved with intention, he untangled himself from the rope that had wrapped around him a few times in the desperate struggle. Once he had finally found his bearing and prepared to make a decision, he was greeted by a repeated line of corrupted text.
GO>> N¤W>>
It was followed by a renewed tinge of pain, stemming from Ark’s arm. Gritting his teeth in response, and ignoring the pain, Ark looked down the corridor that the influence wanted him to enter.
You think you’ve won? He kept his tongue, only speaking the words in his mind, You think you’re in control?
He sniffed. If pain was a useful tool to control him, the institute would have gotten better results. Instead, Ark reveled in the pain, knowing it was a sign of weakness from his captor. Whatever, or whoever, the influence was, it was showing its cards by forcing him like this.
Whatever’s down there—it wants it bad, he thought, biting his lips, and if it wants it, I can use it.