With a brief flicker of focus, I latch onto the sensations around me. All the salt is flowing somewhere–and draining into somewhere else. Multiple somewhere elses, actually, if the different stopping points are to be believed. I need to get out of here and… huh.
There’s… only one thing left to do here. Pearl’s got the documents from the safe, Fleur’s got the documents from the room with way too many desks, and March has the info from our base. I’ve got the coins we were called for–even though the client made it seem like there’d be way more in the safe. All that’s left to do is try and save Fleur.
“Pearl, time to go back.” I take off my mask and let it rest under my arm. “Talk to you again in a little over two hours.”
She nods excitedly. “Sounds good! Good luck getting Fleur out of here somehow!”
Yeah. I’ve got a plan, but it relies on a whole lot of assumptions. One–that March can recreate the conditions for Fleur to live. Two–that a coin I left behind a long time ago is still there. And three–that my skill isn’t going to have any limitations that I only find out about when I finally try super long-distance relocation.
Oh, and four–that Noland’s going to be willing to break a Preservation rule again. But that one doesn’t even feel like a variable–it’s as close to a guarantee as I can imagine.
I roll my shoulder and stare down the waterfall of grease. None of my relocation coins are in a perfect spot for this. The one in the heart could be… fine, I guess… but if the krarig’s close to awake, I don’t have a guarantee that the inside’s still the same. So if I want to get out of here, I need to bring in someone who can help me. Easy enough.
Fleur’s relocation flares in my mind. With a single thought I drag her to me, and I flick out her coin right before their places swap. Her crystalline form blinks into existence in thin air, but with her tail covering so much ground, she always has enough salt under her to stay airborne.
Her core glimmers brightly for a moment. She barely moves to look around, and when I feel her attention on me, her core noticeably dims. Then she sees the safe, and it almost goes completely dark.
“...I apologize for keeping it from you.” She says quietly.
With a wave of her hand, I dismiss her guilt. “We’ll deal with that when you’ve got more than two hours to live. What’s the situation look like?”
“It is not ideal, but we have it handled. Mercenary used weaponry she claimed was ‘illegal’ to destroy the apocalypse-touched monster, and I have finished cataloging all the information from the room you left me with. If it was not for the Preservation and my… imminent demise… you would be able to leave without regrets.”
I offer her a small, sympathetic smile. “I’m not going to let you die, Fleur. You promised you’d treat me like a god, remember? I’m holding you to that once you’re safe, happy, and not even thinking about dying.”
Her core flickers ever so slightly. “If you can do that, I will gladly worship you.”
“Then get your praying hands ready, because plan ‘Heart Transplant’ is about to begin.” I say with a much less confident smile. “It starts in one of two ways–either you tell me the heart with the relocation coin in it is completely safe to teleport to, or you find us another way out of wherever the hell we are. Oh, and did you touch the relocation coins to the hearts like I asked you to?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Perfect.” I extend a hand, palm-up, to her. “Give ‘em here.”
She doesn’t move. Her core glows bright… but in a different way. The way it projects its light through Fleur almost makes it look like she’s blushing. And from the way she isn’t reaching into her body to give me my coins…
I hiss through my teeth as I replay exactly what I asked her to do. “Shit, I told you to touch them to the hearts, and nothing more, didn’t I?”
“Yes, you did.” Fleur replies, but it’s much quieter.
Motherf–okay, no, this isn’t game over. Fleur’s still got salt in the hearts. She can deliver it to me the same way she delivered the safe. I take another coin and push relocation into it, then tap it against Fleur’s arm. She accepts being targeted the second it touches her, and I stuff it away for later.
“The heart. Can I safely relocate there now?”
Fleur barely shakes her head. “It no longer has a way out. My salt continues to hold it at bay, but if you relocate inside, you will be completely sealed in.”
“Then that’ll just have to be stop number one.” I mutter as I prepare a me-targeted relocation. “Take this and find a way out of here. Get to the surface if you can–preferably our base camp–but only if you can do it without anyone from the Preservation seeing you. Otherwise, just go find Mercenary again.”
I flick her my coin, and she deftly snatches it out of the air. It easily sinks into her body, and without waiting for another word, she lets herself plummet to the sea of grease and salt below. Her glowing core slowly dims as she gets further and further away, until all that remains is a luminescent speck in the distance. Moments later that, too, disappears under the grease.
Stolen story; please report.
Meaning it's my turn. I focus on the relocation coin with a ready sigh, ready two shield coins in my holster, and relocate myself to the heart.
My feet slam against unstable metal that shifts and churns like an angry sea, and I instantly raise the mask to my face to help me ‘see’. Awareness spreads over the heart like a lantern’s glow, and with the darkness forcing me to be truly aware, I can see just how messed up the heart has become.
The entire place–metal, salt, wiring and all–beats and pulses like a hunk of muscle. Lukewarm grease flows around my ankles like the first warnings of a slowly sinking ship, pushed in from the panels Fleur had salted up and draining into… into…
I can’t see where it drains out. So maybe it isn’t. Maybe this entire place will be flooded in two hours, and when it is, the krarig will have won. Fleur dies, it wakes up, and the Preservation completes their goal.
“Well, it’s not like that changes the time limit.” I sigh and look around. The heart isn’t rhythmic at all–it’s chaotic, discordant, and random. “So it's still struggling against Fleur’s salt. Shit. Hopefully that doesn't mean I can’t target it.”
I slosh my way through the blood-grease until my hand rests against a wall. It’s warmer to the touch than before, and even though the metal pulses like a living thing, it feels just as solid as before. Another relocation coin appears between my fingers. I breathe in through my nose, preparing myself for whatever the cost’s going to be.
It’s the first time I’m doing this without getting permission from something. All I can do is hope to hell that I have enough Worth left.
Coinbound Relocation Activated
Target: Salted Krarig Heart.
Cost: 4000 Worth.
Cost Reduced by 96% due to permission from ‘Fleur’.
…
Cost Reduced by 95.9% due to permission from ‘Fleur’.
Steep. But thanks to all the vendigators I killed, I can afford it. Even if I have to pay the same amount for the other two hearts. Fleur’s permission is shouldering by far the most of the cost, so she’s still mostly in control here… and… I guess this means the salt’s actually a vital part of her. Enough that it counts as her for permission, at least. I pocket the coin and turn away, trying to put that countdown out of my mind. If it goes low enough, using these relocations is going to put me into debt.
Even if Pearl can vouch for me again, that’s not a cost I want to eat.
“Architect.”
“Agh!” March yelps, then noise comes through that sounds eerily similar to someone falling out of their chair. “You’re back! Oh, thank goodness! Mercenary nuked the dumpceratops, and the other chunk of Preservation people are coming up on us dangerously fast. Then Fleur just disappeared, which I now realize was probably you, and… nope, nope, I’m rambling. Focus, Architect.”
A quick smacking noise echoes in my ears. “We need to find the Class Coins. Then we can get ouf of here.”
“Oh, yeah, I got ‘em.”
“...Huh?”
“Yup. Fleur was holding out on us, and she waited until I was somewhere we couldn’t talk before she sent the safe down on me with a message begging for her life.” I scrunch my nose as I talk. It sounds a lot worse when I repeat it. “So, uh, now I’m just waiting for her to show up somewhere safe. Then we can leave.”
March doesn’t say anything. She must be surprised that I found the coins.
“Architect?”
“I’m looking at something.” She mutters. “The Preservation people they sent the first time are an exploration group. Call is listed here as an ‘otherworld guide’, and everyone else are just low level members. Not important enough to have titles, even.”
I frown and lean against the wall to steady myself. “What does that have to do with anything we were just talking about?”
“Nothing. I was doing it before you randomly showed up.” March replies tensely. “This other group isn’t peaceful. They’ve got two speakers–Shout and Scream–and a dozen random people who specialize in dangerous target elimination. But… why would they send them out?”
“Because they want to kill the krarig?” I offer, but even as it leaves my lips, it doesn’t sound completely right.
“That’s definitely the reason for Shout and Scream’s group, but I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about Call’s group.” March’s chair squeaks, and her voice grows quieter, like she’s backed away from the mic. “If they knew the krarig was waking up, then there's no point sending a research group. Even in the reports Fleur read, it said the Preservation stopped sending low level people. So why is Call’s group even here in the first place?”
A frown crosses my lips as I remember what Diane said. My initial thought is that they were sent here to die. Diane for trying to fight back against Brandon and Call for trying to speak out against someone even higher up than him for a blatand and disgusting misuse of authority. But that doesn’t feel right. There were almost fifty other people with them. And unless the Preservation had reason to disappear all of them, it didn’t make sense.
After all, the Preservation could’ve just sent Call, Diane, and Razi here. In the eye of the public, it’s just an abandoned oil rig. Nothing worth sending that many people for.
“We’ll just have to ask the person himself in a few days.” I say to remind March of my deal with Diane, just in case she’d somehow forgotten in twenty minutes. “And speaking of, how’s the platform coming along? I might need it sooner than later.”
She hums in frustration. “I’m arguing with the non-Worth council right now, and they’re just arguing about the beauty of the skyline. It’s really annoying, but Banker says we have to keep up appearances with them. Even if all they care about is that the beach looks good.”
“Screw them.”
“Okay! Now it’s both of our faults!” March says excitedly. “Back me up when you get back, please. Then Banker won’t have a choice but to take our side.”
I’m not really sure that’s how it works. But if it gets Fleur’s platform made, then I don’t care.
The metal against my shoulder throbs hard. I stumble forward and wince, then turn on my heel to stare at the heart’s innards. Paneling strains at the welded seams with the increased violence, and a few welds simply burst under the strain to reveal wires, metal, and a shit ton of salt further in. Like, a shit ton of salt. Ninety-five percent worth.
But with every beat, the salt struggles. It’s battered and assaulted from all angles by the heart’s destructive birth, and I can imagine Fleur’s hold slowly withering away. And with every little bit of ground she loses, the greater the chance I have to end up in debt to enact my plan.
“Fleur, if you’re safe, give me a sign.” I call into thin air. “We need to move fast.”
A thin lance of salt, like a rose’s thorn stretched to a hundred times its normal length, shot right across my cheek. I wince at the pain of salt in my wound, but I don’t have the time to be annoyed with Fleur’s choice of messaging. For the second time in quick succession, I steady myself in preparation for relocation.
“Just two more hearts to go, Fleur. Then we’ll all get the hell out of here.”