“You know me. I’m a sucker for crazy,” Cor said with a smile.

“Director Ix,” Hudson called out. “How much longer until the silicates can breach your walls?”

“Approximately thirty-seven minutes until all material resources are exhausted and the enemy forces breach containment of the trial facility,” Director Ix replied.

“Can you open a portal to the other side of the planet with the resources you have?” Hudson asked. He was hoping that the bits of maseki they had traded in were enough to power a portal.

“Negative,” Director Ix replied, “While we have sufficient resources to open a rift, those resources are necessary for the maintenance of the facility, preventing immediate containment breach, and our final self-defense measures.”

“So if you opened a rift… the walls would cave in?”

“Affirmative.”

“What’s this ‘final self-defense’ measure you’re talkin’ about?” Cor asked.

“Self-detonation of remaining energy reserves to prevent our integration by enemy forces.”

“Going out with a bang, yeah? I can respect that. Might not want to be around when it happens, but can definitely respect it,” Cor said.

“But hypothetically speaking, you only have enough resources for one rift? Not two?” Hudson asked.

“Affirmative,” the director replied.

Hudson let out a sigh. “My crazy idea was to try and quickly mine enough maseki to get a portal further off this rock… but it sounds like that won’t work. The trial director is the only one with the ability to open portals… And if they open a portal, even for a brief second, that will use up all of their resources, the silicates come in… and ‘boom’ goes the self-destruct…”

“So back to the ‘bad’ plan?” Cor asked.

“Hmmm… maybe not,” Hudson said. Something about Director Ix had always bugged him.

“Can we take you through the portal with us?” Hudson asked. “If we can’t get the maseki to you, can we move you to the maseki?”

“Negative,” Director Ix replied. “This facility is unable to be transported.”

“What about… a part of you? Can’t whatever is ‘you’ be separated from the facility?” Hudson asked again.

There was a pause, as if the Director were thinking about the question.

“Unknown,” came the eventual response.

“What are you trying to get at?” Cor asked. “We ain’t got forever to sit around playing twenty questions with the warehouse robot.”

“That’s just the thing,” Hudson said, looking over at Cor. “I don’t think Director Ix is anything close to a warehouse robot. It’s never been clear what they are, but I think they’re a silicate, and they’re used by the Disciples somehow to run this place.”

Cor frowned heavily. “OK… But how does that help us? And if they’re a silicate, shouldn’t we just let them blow themselves up?”

“Well, if they are a silicate, then they’re probably like Sal was. No outer body, like those slimes and tentacle monsters, but reduced to a core…”

“...A core that you can pick up and carry with you, and use like a portable rift-making device,” Cor finished for him. “That sounds nice, but I’ve never heard of something like that being remotely possible, in all my years working for S.E.C.T., portalling on and off worlds all the time.”

“Who opened those rifts for you, to portal between worlds?” Hudson asked.

“The global AI,” Cor said, then smacked himself in the head. “It would have to be the same, right? Just like this Director Ix.”

Hudson nodded.

“Director Ix, are you a silicate?” Cor asked directly.

There was no response.

“Did you hear my question?” Cor asked again.

“Affirmative,” Ix replied promptly.

“Interesting,” Hudson said. “Either they don’t know, or they can’t tell us.”

“If they are a silicate…Where’s your core at?” Cor asked, standing up and walking around the hangar. “Maybe there’s another way to figure this out – just stick an eyeball on it.”

There was no response from the Director to Cor’s question about their core, or any follow up questions about its core, or how they functioned, either.

Stolen story; please report.

“Hate to say it again, but we are running out of time here…” Cor said. “Sounds like we’ve at least got the option to take a one-way portal behind enemy lines, if we can convince the Director to do that before they explode themselves.”

“Just give me a minute, I want to try one more thing,” Hudson said, sitting down and closing his eyes.

He focused his mind into a meditative posture, ignoring his normal five senses and seeking out his qi sense. He quickly found it after only a few moments – he was getting faster and using it – and spread his perception around him.

The area in the hangar was much smaller now – maybe only the size of a small house. He could clearly sense Cor, a vague impression in his senses. Without a cultivation base, he didn’t have much qi in his body, but he was still a living being and had a small amount.

Further out, right at the edges, he could sense a strange void completely empty of any qi whatsoever. It was either that or his qi senses were blocked somehow. That must be the press of silicates, slowly breaking down the trial’s defenses.

On the other edge of his awareness, he found what he was hoping for. A dense cluster of qi, moving in fantastically complicated patterns.

“There,” Hudson said, standing up and pointing at a completely blank section of the hangar wall.

Hudson and Cor walked over to examine the smooth, metallic wall. There was no evidence of any panels, buttons, grooves or any other features on the wall. It was completely smooth, and exactly the same as the rest of the hangar.

“Watch out,” Hudson said, activating his breathing technique and his sigil. Strength flowed into his limbs and he struck out with a fist, punching the wall in front of him. It dented slightly.

Hudson paused, closed his eyes and sought his qi sense briefly. He wanted to break through the wall to get to the mass of qi on the other side, but he didn’t want to actually destroy what was on the other side.

After looking again with his qi sense, Hudson opened his eyes and adjusted his aim slightly. Quickly and methodically Hudson began to attack the wall, this time with his hand open and fingers extended. At his current level of strength, he could use the tips of his fingers as a punch to gradually open a hole in the wall.

After he made a hole, it was a simple but tedious exercise to widen the hole. The director did nothing to stop them; most likely because they lacked the resources to do so. In a short minute, Hudson and Cor stared through the wall at the inner guts of the trial director.

A tiny, marble-sized ring of green jade sat on a raised pedestal. Intricate carvings covered the entirety of the marble – an inscribed formation, most likely. Multiple wires ran from the ring to the surrounding metal walls, and also down onto the pedestal it sat on. The pedestal itself appeared to be carved from a single piece of pure, solid maseki, and had incredibly complicated formations carved into it.

The formation on the pedestal must have included multiple sigils as well, because simply brushing his gaze over it once was enough for Hudson’s eyes to water and his head begin to ache at the sheer amount of information those sigils were trying to compress onto his mind. They were an order of magnitude more intense than the signs in the sigil challenge.

Hudson averted his gaze quickly. Cor swore as well, wiping blood from his nose and the corners of his eyes.

“Well, good job finding it. So… what’s the plan now? Grab it… and run?” Cor asked. “I’m all for crazy plans, but that thing looks like it’s rigged to explode.”

“No kidding,” Hudson said. “That jade-colored ring is a lot smaller, but it does seem similar to the cracked crystal that housed Sal.”

“True,” Cor said.

“So if we pick it up and take it with us…”

“Hang on a second… I understand getting a little greedy and grabbing everything you can, but where are you trying to go with this?” Cor did not appear to like this plan.

“I’m not sure. But if we can actually take Ix with us through a portal that they open, then we find a bunch of maseki that hasn’t been sucked up by the silicates, and maybe they can open a portal to like another planet somewhere. Even if it isn’t Earth, it will be better than here.”

“So you want to steal a portable rift maker. Can the trial director actually open rifts to other places? Can you, Director Ix?” Cor asked.

“We possess the capability and knowledge to do so, but currently lack the resources,” the director replied. “Normally, our rules would not allow us to open such a path to another world, but in this extreme case, we expect the core directive to protect our trial participants will take precedence.”

“OK then, good idea, sounds possible,” Cor said. “But if they’re a silicate, and we take the thing out of this contraption, who’s to say that the trial director won’t then try to eat us up?” Cor shook his head. “I bet half of those wires and sigils and crap are keeping the thing locked up and on a leash.”

Hudson couldn’t argue with that logic. “You’re probably right. But nothing risked, nothing gained, right? And it’s not like we have a ton of good options.”

“Fair enough,” Cor replied. “But I should take the risk, seeing as you can overpower me if I go off the deep end again. It’s startin’ to get a bit crowded upstairs, but what’s a few more voices in the ole brain box?”

Again, Hudson couldn’t fault Cor’s logic, even though he knew that the last thing in the world that Cor wanted to do was touch another silicate.

“You sure about this?” Hudson asked Cor.

“Nope,” Cor said. He swung his arms back and forth, stretched his neck from side to side, then gently slapped his palms on his cheeks. “But when it’s go-time, son, it’s go-time.”

Hudson moved out of the way, and Cor gingerly put his hand through the opening, shielding his eyes from the sigils on the pedestal with his other hand. He paused, took a deep breath, then reached out and touched the jade ring with a single finger.

“Ok, nothing happened,” Cor said, poking it again a few times. He then tried to pick it up off of the pedestal, but it was stuck fast and wouldn’t move at all. He strained and pulled as hard as he could, but to no avail.

“Director Ix, can we not remove your core from its housing?” Hudson asked.

“We are unable to directly perceive our core or the protections surrounding it,” Director Ix explained. “Extrapolating from your conversation, however, it is possible that the formations inscribed on the surface of our core or the surface of the pedestal are actively circumventing your efforts.”

“What would happen if we just took a sledgehammer and smashed all this stuff into pieces?” Cor asked. “Then grabbed your main core here and ran.”

Hudson looked at him askance, but Cor only shrugged.

“Unknown,” Director Ix replied.

“How about I try instead?” Hudson said. “Maybe we just need to pull harder.”

Cor nodded, then readied his rifle, taking aim at Hudson.

“Just in case, ya know…” Cor said gruffly.

Hudson shook his head and then took a deep breath. He reached a hand inside the wall and touched the jade ring in the center of the wires and formations, but as soon as his finger touched it, his surroundings disappeared into a now-familiar white mist.