Chapter 5 - Depths
(in which the group desperately tries to find their way back, and there is physics, and there is fog)
> "In spite of how things may appear to us, we are never trapped by where we are. The trap is always who we are."
>
> --Guy Finley
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"What?!" Iraklijs pressed his hands against the newly-formed barrier. "It... slid down behind us?"
"...krann," Ekut mumbled an obscenity in her language. "At least we have food and water. And days' worth of oxygen."
"What's point in it?" Spots shook their head. "We're trapped..."
Altair made a quiet and drawn-out white-noise sound. "It was a good life. Perhaps I will go back to my whole now."
"You two, stop doomtalking," Iraklijs snarled. "We're not in a sealed fucking box."
Zkeh, out of curiosity, reached into his pack, took out a small rock he had picked up outside the complex, and threw it into the abyss below.
A whole ten seconds passed. "Nothing?" the chohjozra hissed. "Iss it bottomless?"
Ekut's mouse-like ears perked up. "I think I heard a tink," she said, exactly thirteen seconds after the throw. "Might as well do some analysis," she said. The adversity of the situation did not faze her in the slightest, and her mind was as sharp as ever. "Iraklijs, what is the atmo comp, pressure and temp here?"
Iraklijs raised an eyebrow. "93% nitrogen, 5% CO2, 2% noble gasses. -45 celsius. 1.5 Earth atmo. Why?"
"This means the speed of sound is around 307 meters per second. The gravity here, meanwhile, is around 0.6g. The time that passed between the throw and the sound, 13 seconds, is the time it took for it to fall plus the time it took for the sound to reach us. This means that..."
Everyone sat down and listened to Ekut's calculations. She gradually switched away from reasoning in English, instead talking in a quick and terse language, before switching back at the end.
"...this means that we can substitute the equation, thus 13 equals the square root of..." more mumbling followed, "this means that the depth is around 409 meters."
Iraklijs clapped, a gesture unique to humans. "You did that in your head? Without BCI?"
"Yes."
Altair, meanwhile, chimed. "Verified."
"That's less than I expected... hm... I have an idea but I gotta think about it a bit more," the human leaned against the wall.
Spots coiled up around her body. Ekut, rather conscious about personal space, squirmed. "Smart. Smart thingy you are, yes... How come your kin didn't take over half the Oval?"
Ekut coughed. "Bad luck. Neighbors who hated us, like the ansethigno. Neighbors who blew themselves up, like the theu. Neighbors who were all but ruined by the ansethigno, like the mizino. Neighbors who are useless, like the sy!yvl. Dealt with those, peacefully or not, but you know that that period of the Oval's history was a rush against time, and we ended up behind. If only our core and the core of those oschee had been swapped."
Spots made a few clicking sounds.
"It makes me wonder," Iraklijs said. "Everyone reached the space age within one-and-a-half centuries, tops. Why? I know it's an unsolved problem, but why?"
Ekut shrugged. A grave silence followed.
It was broken by Zkeh slapping his tail hand against the ledge. "What now?"
Iraklijs took out a small, padded box with a tiny quadcopter, labeled 'Butterfly' with white marker. He placed his hand on it, and made it fly with his mind.
Equipped with a powerful and focused flashlight, the drone that resembled a hummingbird in its motion descended into the abyss. He saw the shiny, grooved ancient walls of the ravine through his camera-like eye, as if he was there himself.
"I see a bunch of wide-open hatches, tall enough for Spots and Zkeh and maybe Ekut, I'd have to put those cyber-knees to good use though," he said.
And indeed, there were dozens of them, placed in a pattern that could trigger trypophobia in those afflicted. This pattern continued for around twenty meters down, as it seemed.
BANGZAP!!!
The whole ravine lit up for a split second, as if a green-tinted flashbang detonated below, and a thunder echoed through the dense atmosphere. The shock of the connection being cut off knocked Iraklijs off his feet, and only a timely intervention of Zkeh's tail-hand saved him from falling to meet the same fate as his drone.
The others, of course, jumped and huddled against the far wall. "What--"
"Some shit blew up the drone as soon as I went deep enough down," said Iraklijs after recovering. "No idea what."
"So going down isn't an option," Tsip said.
"Actually, we should be fine if we don't go down low enough," the human instinctively dusted himself off, despite there being no such detritus here.
"...we need to test it somehow," Ekut said. "Clearly, whatever that was didn't target Zkeh's rock. Iraklijs, do you have enough drones to spare another one, to see if the destruction always happens at the same altitude?"
Iraklijs grimaced. "Only two more. And I wouldn't want to waste them. Look, if the drone didn't get vaporized for the first meters, neither will we. Work your plunger magic and get us down to the first hole we see."
Spots trilled. They quietly thought about how it was a miracle that this exploration group did not have a higher turnover rate. It did not quite compute in their collective-focused mind, how such a disparate and noisy crew could work so well together. And even they were considered something of a weirdo by their own species for straying so much from the hive.
Ekut sighed. "I suppose the alternative is starving to death here. Worst case, our deaths will be painless."
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There were many ultra-light cables and copies of various grip heads in Ekut's pack. Thus, just as she left one hanging at the vestibule, she left the second one hanging from the ledge. All five grabbed the ultra-strong cable and went down. Ekut hastily reeled it out, lining up with one of the square hatches, then fired another grapple into it, latching it to the loose end of the first. The combined cords formed an L-shape.
It was a square opening only a meter on its longer side. Indeed, Iraklijs had to crawl, alongside Tsip. Luckily, Ekut foresaw this and had them trail at the end of the group, to avoid any congestion.
The inside was pitch-dark. Altair offered to be handled by Spots as they led the way, and Iraklijs somewhat hesitantly handed over the crystal.
The pyramidal lantern flickered in annoyance as its radiant form was pressed into the translucent sleeve that Spots wore, so much that it could feel their slimy body through the thin insulation. But it was too polite to refuse hugs of any kind.
This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.
They began crawling like this. The whole tunnel felt like a particularly elongated coffin, and the only noises were those of knees, taloned feet, and a serpentine body against metal. Besides, of course, heavy breathing. It reminded Tsip of their homeland's industrial hives, except with less grime and less noise. A warm feeling of nostalgia washed over the kseldani, mixed with longing for a simpler, even mindless life.
"This place is very samey," Ekut noticed. "We should leave something to mark our way, to not go in circles."
"...I realized we forgot our markers at the rover. Goddamn," Iraklijs said.
Tsip nonchalantly curled their tail forwards, took out a pocket knife, and sliced off around forty centimeters of it. Iraklijs stared, his sole expressive eye wide, as the kseldani chopped up the severed appendage, producing thin slices that reminded him far too much of teal sausage. At least there was no blood.
"Markers," they said.
Everyone just stared.
"What. It will regrow. Don't worry."
"This is some 'Paradise' shit. Thanks for bringing back the memories," Iraklijs shook his head.
Reluctantly, and trying not to gag, he dropped the rings behind the group as they made their way forwards. This macabre tactic indeed stopped them from getting lost, as it turned out that the passageway was more of a three-dimensional maze, complete with vertical shafts that required further applications of the grappling hook to navigate.
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Twenty minutes later, the archeologists emerged in a fairly nondescript room, through an open hole in the floor. The first thing they noticed was a thin, tall, gnashing door.
"Are we really?" Spots slithered up to it and strained their eyes as they gazed into the flickering sight behind it. The fractal 'sculptures' of the vestibule were visible, alongside the unusable staircase and the grapple line.
"...on the other side? Looks like it yeah," Ekut paced up to them and squinted.
A feeling of relief washed over everyone. They weren't hopelessly lost. Zkeh hissed happily.
This room's purpose was much more mysterious than the vestibule or the transport hub, however. Attached to the walls were all sorts of screens, embedded into the Hilbert-grooved surface like windows into worlds composed of perpetually-shifting boxes, crosses, and tiles, glowing in clashing colors that would dazzle any relmai. There was not anything else in the room besides a single doorway, thin but without a gnashing gate.
Iraklijs stepped to the side and rubbed his eyes as he realized that the images simply did not shift in the same way screens or windows would. It appeared as if the shapes panned vertically, even as he walked horizontally. He clutched his aching head and looked away. "This place..."
Spots, if anything, seemed to be intrigued by the screens. After making the necessary records and updating their map of the facility, the group was preparing to move on, when Tsip touched one of the screens and leaned on it.
There was a pop much like that of an overloaded lamp going out, but nothing else seemed to happen.
"Hold on," Ekut said, and readied her rifle. "Something does NOT feel right here."
Tsip froze.
Out of the hatch in the floor that the five had just used for their escape, slithered some amorphous blob that seemed shinier than physically possible, the dim reflections of the screens appearing brilliant like telescope photos of nebulas.
Everyone stepped back, training their weapons on the blob. Zkeh, instead, raised his mattock. "No fire," Spots said. "No fire, no smash. Act like friends."
Its surface bubbled.
Stalks extended out of its clearly heavy mass for a brief moment.
Then, as quickly as it emerged, it descended back into the shaft. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief and put down their guns.
"...was this... one of them?" Iraklijs said. "Sapient?"
Ekut shrugged. "I'm just glad we didn't have to run again. Look, I know you all want, or maybe not, to delve further, but honestly we need to bring some proper markers, make a report to Tekatl, and maybe bring the cannon in here somehow," she did not notice the screens darkening, or rather did not pay much attention to it.
Spots nodded. "Being a free agent works when the ruins aren't a deathtrap. We gotta treat this seriously. Find a way to block the--"
Tendrils made of the same mirrorlike metal grabbed their bodies, all five of them, and pulled them into the shaft. Nobody could yell or thrash; their bodies simply did not respond to their brains' commands anymore. The last thing Iraklijs saw and heard was the frantic blinking and electronic screaming of Altair. Then, everything went black.
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Iraklijs came over to his mother's home, all the way on Earth, in the old city of Riga. The mission did not actually happen at all: they discovered nothing of note on the glass planet, and Iraklijs himself had asked for a leave.
She was very sweet; her cooking was so tender and fragrant, and her hugs were so soft, that he wished to never leave the apartment. The day-long stay turned into two days, and the second day was even more pleasant than the first; she cooked twice as many pastries and even knit him a new sweater. On the third day, his wife came over, and they enjoyed what they enjoyed. Nobody frowned. Everybody smiled. Nobody left the house. Everybody was happy.
He looked at his datapad's calendar and saw that a week has passed without him leaving the house. All the good, all the better. A month has passed. More time spent with his family. A year has passed. The more time relaxing, the better.
The same cars driving past outside and the same birds chirping on the balcony every hour? All good. Change is bad. Better to lay down in Oksana's arms. Those colors, fading to gray? All good. Colors are change. Change is bad. Those sounds, echoing into silence? Not needed. Noise is change. Noise is chaos. Anathema. The street outside wasn't needed. The fog is nice. It's uniform. As all things should be.
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Black fog. Unseen black fog, mental black fog. Emanating from the smooth metal tendrils.
Hairs and blankets of black fog that tasted melancholic, smelled crimson, and sounded sour. They wriggled into each nerve and each neuron.
And they pulsated as they grew.
Zkeh's chohjozra mind was in intense internal conflict. Despite being more humanized, for lack of a better term, than many of his compatriots, the alligator-like alien had a rather more complex and calm cognition than the rest of the group. He could resist the fog that tried to cloud his mind, where even Ekut fell as the fog pried away at her jumpiness. The others collapsed even faster: Tsip was enthralled in an instant; Spots' propensity for empathy was compromised and exploited; and Iraklijs simply did not quite have the willpower and stubbornness.
But Zkeh was different. His mind had the stillness of a swamp and the hardness of a mountain. He resisted the fog, dispersing it like a stiff and constant breeze would: with difficulty, but inevitably.
With immense effort, he began to writhe.
The rest was all a blur. Swings of the power-mattock tore into the thing of living metal, splitting it and spreading still-wriggling fragments of shimmering slime all over the dark chamber. Its ultra-hard blade clinked against the floor and shredded against the walls. It was only by miracle that the only collateral damage was Tsip, who could survive a gigantic vertical gash in their abdomen. Dropping the mattock and using his taloned hands and razor-sharp beak, the chohjozra hastily freed his friends from the wrappings.
The beast was now dead. Probably. Zkeh panted and turned on his flashlight. They all breathed, and even Tsip still subtly moved. No obvious injuries aside from the latter, whose gash was already mending itself.
They were at the bottom of a large, hollow sphere, perhaps fifteen meters in diameter. The constantly-bending grooves were much larger and deeper here, feeling rather pleasant to Zkeh's feet. There were no features whatsoever, not even an exit... which did trouble the chohjozra, but what worried him more was the state of his comrades.
CPR was clearly not needed, so he just sat and stared, breathing anxiously and praying to several divinities of his million-strong pantheon.
Iraklijs was the first to wake up. He simply groaned and paused for a second. "Where's Oksana? Where's Vaira? ...are we dead? Is this the afterlife?" he blurted out, picking out a chunk of living metal from his hair. It immediately crumbled into extremely fine, matte dust.
"No. Not yet," Zkeh said as he hugged Iraklijs. "You... can tell it'ss not the afterlife... we are not all being devoured by Hzkhha or drowning in Nzurag."
Iraklijs sat up, realizing what happened. "Where then? Are the others...? Also, Zkeh, you're a fucking hero," he reached to hug the chohjozra. "I had an awful dream. It felt so nice then but... it was brainwashing."
"First, I don't know. Ssecond, they sseem fine," Zkeh said as he hugged back. "And yess, lookss like we were being ssubverted."
Ekut began stirring. She simply groaned and clutched her head, not in a state to talk yet. Meanwhile Tsip stood up as if nothing happened and shook Spots awake.
"Situation: bad," Spots said. "Very bad," they patted their chest, where their rifle hung. "Do you all notice something about current state?"
"What?" Iraklijs said. He was more troubled by how Altair lacked its usual light, and was instead fully clear. This was not alarming by itself; even alien AIs needed to sleep sometimes, but the fact that it happened right after an attack on everyone's mind was troubling.
Spots patted the empty spot again. "Our guns are gone! Except for Tsip's carbine," they pointed to the kseldani, who was brandishing the short and thin laser rifle.
Ekut sighed exasperatedly, having seemingly recovered. "This just keeps getting worse and worse."
Spots took a moment to compose themselves before making an order. "Priority one: everyone, cut your air intake by a third. Won't suffocate but last that much longer."
Ekut nodded along, and everyone else realized that they had to comply. This rationing made Iraklijs feel like he was in a particularly poorly-ventilated room, and the scarcity of oxygen made his head hurt... or was that the lingering mind-fog?
"Priority two: FIND A FUCKING EXIT!"