It only lasted a few minutes. The lights came back on their own.
Norman spent another couple of minutes inspecting the wires, eventually concluding that they were not in immediate danger. One of the control wires had burned out, but a safeguard had kicked in in time and prevented the core unit from overloading.
The cylinder had sustained some minor damage, though; it tried to unlock, then failed, then tried again, emitting a low hiss and clack on every attempt again and again. To be on the safe side, Norman cut the power to the device, and the contraption froze completely.
Kiri's focus was elsewhere though. "This is rather odd." When she handed over her tablet to Norman, his frown deepened too. They didn't have any clue on where their apple had gone. They had scuttlers positioned on the floor below, but those hadn't detected any motion whatsoever. The room directly under them was as empty as it had been before. "Some kind of hidden passage between the floors?" Remus mused. What none of them paid attention to was that the platform that had gone down with the apple, hadn't returned. And the contraption had failed to seal itself completely.
"That is what I thought, but the beacon I had injected into the apple has completely disappeared. None of our sensors, either in this room or the one below are not able to detect it now. That beacon should be detectable even from outer space." Kiri furiously tapped through the monitoring controls to identify if there was anything she had missed.
"So, you are saying it got destroyed when it was pulled in?" Remus suggested the obvious. Kiri was not convinced. "It's as if it just ceased to exist at one point. That is typically not how electronic malfunctions happen; our sensors didn't detect any kind of electrical surge or overheating." All the sensor graphs projected in front of them had abruptly flat-lined at the same point.
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After having another round of hurried refreshments, they decided that, given the state of their dwindling supplies, a prolonged stay in this place was not the best option. They directed their scuttlers to converge at their current location and started packing up as many of the storage slabs as their travel bags could accommodate safely. They would try to analyze the data stores from their ship waiting in orbit above and come back if they managed to decipher some concrete information about what the para-dimensional Wyrm-field actually was. None of them were particularly excited to venture into an unknown abyss of darkness. They thought they were playing it safe.
Two more hours later, Kiri found that she was now reaching her limits.
Many of their expensive scuttlers were yet to return, and Norman and Remus were engaged in a light debate on whether an expert on modern digital archiving algorithms could help with their work on deciphering these data slabs.
As it so happened, Garvin Schiller - an incredibly talented computer scientist from their batch, spent his last dissertation exploring higher compression density for long-term storage. His results had astonished even the experts in the space by increasing the compression ratios of existing hardware by 200% while retaining the current price point of manufacturing. He now had a long-term contract from the Protectorate to develop his techniques further.
Kiri sat down, leaning on one of the many pillars, and her eyes began to drift into sleep, and fatigue took over. Norman and Remus continued to discuss whether Garvin would be better suited for a career in the Protectorate or in industrial research. Between her throbbing foot and the vast size of the ziggurat, the last few hours had been incredibly exhausting, though she had tried her best not to show it. The metallic suit didn't do anything to make life easier, either.
After spending another fifteen minutes waiting for the five last missing scuttlers, Remus decided to cut losses and move on. They had only a few hours of night left, and nobody wanted to stay stuck here for another full day. Given the planet's weather, navigating out in the daylight was simply not an option. When he turned to the corner to wake up Kiri, his eyes widened and a cold shiver ran down his spine.