“Subject 042.”
“Yes Ma’m.”
“What is your name?”
“My name is Subject 04…”
“Stop.”
The command was gentle, unlike what he was used to. “Ma’m?” He said, confused.
“I’ve told you many times that your name is Ark.” She stood before him, her brilliant white hair pulled up in a bun, while a pair of sharp glasses sat stoically upon her slightly upturned nose. “Now, tell me your name.”
“My name is Ark,” he said, tasting the words, as if for the first time, despite having repeated this since their first encounter.
“Good. No matter how anyone addresses you, you should always remember your name.” Her gaze became distant, indicating the use of her netlink. While he waited patiently—arms behind his straightened back and face forward—Ark thought about how strange his daily life had become after this woman had begun instructing him. Gone were the rigorous routines of physical exercises he had never completed, as was combat practice, weapons training, survival instruction and realm excursions. He woke up in his isolated room, went to her office when required, then went back. Life had never been this good. That worried him.
“Very well, Ark, let’s see how we’re doing, shall we?” She said, immediately placing Ark into a state of alert. This was a test; he knew that tone well. It was the same manner all instructors initiated tests, and he always failed. Always.
“How do you greet a stranger?”
Ark blinked. He had learned to stay quiet when he did not know the answer, but he had been preparing himself for a difficult test, not… whatever this was. “H-Hello…?” He stammered, mentally kicking himself when he failed to speak his words clearly and with confidence. This would be punished.
“Are you asking me, or telling me?” She said, her mouth turning in a strange manner. Was that a smile?
“I’m telling you,” Ark said, deciding to double down. Better to show confidence and be wrong than both show indecision and be wrong. One failure was better than two.
“Then greet me as you would a stranger.”
He did as she asked, bracing himself for further failure. “Hello, Ma’m.”
“Hello,” she said, turning the edge of her mouth ever so slightly upward, “Now what?”
“I introduce myself… and ask your name,” he said, belatedly remembering the last part. Close call.
“Then do it.”
“My name is… Ark,” he said, unable to avoid the temptation to taste his own name, “What’s your name?”
“Hello, Ark. My name is Sylvia Leen. You may call me ‘Miss Leen’.”
He nodded, then froze. Her gaze—fixed on him. He was supposed to do something now, but what? Time was running out. Beads of sweat began forming on his forehead, as he racked his mind for the right response. With his mouth running dry, it finally clicked and the words flew out of his mouth. “Hello, Miss Leen. How do you do?”
“Very good,” she said, a proper smile gracing her face, “I’m doing well, thanks. How about you?”
“I am also well,” he said mechanically, relief washing over him as he got the answer right.
“Excellent, Ark. You did very well. Now remember this for next time; I want no stutter, only confidence. Names are important for making human connections, as is the willingness to show interest in the life of the person you are talking to. Understand?”
“Yes ma’am!” He said, instinctively stiffening his stance and straightening his back.
“No, no, no,” she said, shaking her head, “What do you call me?”
“…Yes, Miss Leen.”
----------------------------------------
“Name?”
Ark blinked, trying to recall what he had been doing before his mind wandered off into the past.
“Name, or get the hell out of the queue, kid!”
Bracing himself for a return to reality, Ark responded with confidence, “Ark, sir.”
“Shit, kids these days,” the man grumbled, “Alright, you’re on the list. Get the hell back there. There are people waiting.”
Ark looked over his shoulder, facing the massive cue that had grown behind him, as he and Mino had waited their turn. Faces full of indifference, impatience, and a very distinct sense of desperation looked back at him, through him, and around him.
Mino was waiting for him, brows furrowed with concern. “You alright?”
“I’m fine,” Ark said, dismissing the worried look in his friend’s eyes, “I was just lost in thought for a moment.”
“That wasn’t just a moment, Ark,” Mino said, carefully eying him up and down, “I tried talking to you several times, and you just stood there, looking into the distance.”
“I was thinking, alright!”
Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
“About what?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Ark said, passing his friend and approaching their destination, “We’ve got work to do.”
“Won’t be much left. We got here too late.”
“I know,” Ark said, sensing his frustration growing. Mino had a habit of expressing the obvious, especially when it was something negative. It was helpful to face the obvious problems when living every day on the edge of starvation, but it was also a pain in the ass.
They walked in silence toward the outer dockyard, where a rotund man with glasses and a stack of papers in his hands marked their destination. When they approached, the man looked up at them with a placid look and spoke in a straight monotone, “Oh good, you’re here. Late, as usual.”
“Better late than never, right?” Ark said, trying to lighten the mood.
“If you wish,” the man shrugged, “I’m not the one who’ll be starving tonight.”
Ark bit his tongue, knowing better than to respond to the taunt. Instead, he focused on business. “Mr. Wright, are there any assignments left?”
“Just the one,” Wright ripped off a piece of paper and handed it to them without looking their way, “The tunnels need cleaning.”
Ark swallowed. Beside him, he heard Mino do the same. “Are you sure there’s nothing else we can do?”
Wright looked up at them, eyes hardening. “Look,” he said, pointing a thick finger at Mino, “You’ve got yourself a good anchor here, and you’re small enough to get through the passages.”
“But you have the maintenance droids, why do you need us to—“ Ark began, but was quickly cut off by Wright.
“The droids ruins the plating, inviting rust. Why the hell am I explaining this to someone who’ll get absolutely nothing, if he does not take this job?”
Again, Ark choked down a response. He looked up at Mino, who looked back. He knew the boy was hungry—Mino was always hungry—just as his own stomach protested against the lack of work. “Alright,” he said, taking the piece of paper from Wright, unable to dampen the slight tremble in his fingers.
“Excellent decision. Now get. I haven’t got all day.” Saying that, the man looked back into his papers, which Ark recognized as a dismissal. He looked up at Mino, silently communicating their shared frustration. With a nod, they turned and walked the edge of the dockyard.
As they walked through the dilapidated structures and crumbling walkways, remnants of Vanguard’s past glory surrounded them. Once, this dockyard had housed majestic, space-faring vessels, capable of system-wide transportation. Those ships had been the lifeline of Vanguard, providing logistical support from Terra. Most of these were now lost; sacrificed in the assault on the Red Moon, leading to Vanguard’s exile. Now the dockyard functioned as a last stop for the desperate and hungry masses, as the rotting remains of Vanguard’s underside required an insatiable amount of maintenance.
The echoes of their footsteps resonated through the desolate space, a haunting reminder of what had been and what was now lost. As Ark understood it, Vanguard had never been built to perpetually occupy the subspace that was the only thing keeping them from being obliterated by the abyss. Aside from a constant sheering at Vanguard’s very existence, the bottom of the fortress was frequently infested with minor rifts, tears in space that allowed for critters to escape into the metal bowels underneath Lowtown.
Here, on the edge of Vanguard’s structural integrity, Ark was sure he could feel the alien movements in the tunnels below—a vast network of small passages that had once been used to transport goods from one end of Lowtown to the other, before wear and tear made them inoperable. Narrow spaces and sharp corners, the place was pitch dark and utterly infested with the worst of the alien invaders.
Ignoring the slight tremors beneath his feet, Ark’s gaze wandered across the time-worn dockyard; once a bustling hub of activity. He could not help but imagine the ships that had once been anchored here, great vessels that had carried their human freight into the abyss. Memories of the few vids they’d had access to during their time in The Maze resurfaced, showcasing the metallic might and daring triumphs of the riftwalkers. The contrast between the present reality and the grandeur of those days haunted his thoughts.
The pier next to them, now corroded and decayed, beckoned his imagination. With the force of his mind, he restored the rusty metal to its former glory, painted pristine white and marked with the blue and orange circles of the riftwalkers. At the far end, a sturdy latch held onto a magnificent Valkyrie-class vessel, its sleek design a testament to both beauty and functionality.
Caught in his daydream, Ark found himself lost in the rhythmic bobbing of the imagined ship, its solar sails and powerful engines pulsing with a sense of adventure and hope. From far away, Mino’s voice interrupted his reverie, bringing him back to the devastating present.
“You’re daydreaming again.” Mino said, voice laced with amusement.
Ark could not help but smile in response. “Well,” he said, shrugging, “I’m about to descend into the bowels of hell, can’t I dream before I get digested?”
“Nah,” Mino said, teeth flashing when he grinned, “I’m sure you’ll get spat out before you’re digested properly down there—you’re more bone than meat anyway.”
“Shut up,” Ark said, but could not help grinning back. With a sigh, he reached down to open the latch on a nearby equipment container. Inside, an old grav-suit laid roughly folded, a little too big for Ark. He dragged it out and put it on, feeling the many gravitational modules sagging around him due to the loose fit of the suit. He had a large one on his back, with a smaller twin on his chest. Around every joint, a miniature module would allow him free range of motion, even as he stepped out of the Vanguard’s range of gravitational control.
“You ready?” Mino said, grabbing onto the line that was attached to the suit’s waist.
“I’m ready,” Ark affirmed, the stepped onto the very edge of the docks. Peering down into the depths, the undulating edge of Vanguard’s subspace pocket seemed to peer back; ethereal eyes forming at random, then disappearing with another pulse of chaotic movement.
One breath. Two… He took a third, then leaned forward with his arms outstretched, allowing Vanguard’s artificial gravity to pull him down, down, all the way down to the end of its reach. For a few tense seconds, he was weightless, falling into the abyss at nauseating speed. Should the suit fail, Mino would catch and pull him back up, but that did little to settle Ark’s protesting stomach.
As he fell, he held eye-contact with the abyss, focusing on its chaotic movements, instead of the metallic belly of Lowtown that would remind him that he had willingly thrown himself off the edge. Down there, in the tranquil chaos, his mind sought to make sense of the senseless mess, imagining even more eyes peering back at him. Shapes of great animals appeared and faded away, before great horns of a mighty demon erupted from below, threatening to skewer him, should Ark be unable to stop his fall.
Just as he felt madness encroaching upon his mind, the suit kicked into action. With stomach-churning force, the suit asserted its power and stabilized his fall. Wind rushing into his ears, he came to a grinding halt. He hovered there, peering into the abyss, his mind still attracted by madness. Unable to drag his eyes away, he watched as something different appeared down there. A red blot grew out of the colorless mass, infecting the pristine chaos until it was recognizably alien to everything around it.
“What the…?” Ark furrowed his brow, sensing a chill running down his spine. Something was wrong, he could feel it. He was just about to signal for Mino to pull him back up, when the boy called down, “Ark! You still there!?”
Ark’s attention drifted for a mere fraction of a second, he lost sight of the red blob, and when he refocused, it was nowhere to be found. The unnerving sensation was also gone. Biting his lip, Ark decided it had been a hallucination. The human mind simply was not built to peer down into the abyss like he had.
“ARK!”
“Yeah, yeah,” he called back, waving his arms to denote the direction he wanted the grav-suit to take him, “I’m going.”
He rotated around, back toward Vanguard, and looked down the length of its underside to locate an entrance into the tunnels. There was always openings close to a pier, and Ark quickly found the pitch-black maw that indicated one. With slow movements, he manipulated the grav-suit forward, swallowing hard before he allowed the darkness to consume him.