The fluorescent light flickered overhead as the four of them looked on at the man seemingly frozen in place.
He was only in a pair of white briefs and an open-collared shirt which was covered in stains. When he saw them all, the man yelped and slammed the door shut after himself. Mark heard the telltale sign of a bolt latching into place before hurried footsteps receded into the compound.
Jason looked from the door to the consoles.
“This doesn’t make sense, this place was completely off the grid, no one should have even known about its existence let alone know the passcodes to get in.”
Jonathan snorted.
“We’ll worry about that later. For now, I’d like to find a place for Sam to rest. We’ll deal with him later.”
Jason stared at the door the man had left through and nodded.
“Fine. I’ll lead you to the bunks, but after that, I’m coming back here to see if I can understand what's going on.”
Mark was still holding Sam so he followed Jason to the door.
When they got to it Jason turned the knob with a little force and the lock's internal components gave out with an agonized plink before snapping and swinging inwards. They stepped into another corridor and followed it to what appeared to be a common room. The space was likely intended as a hub, with several passages leading deeper into the compound, but it was in a state of disarray. Junk food wrappers were strewn across the floor, along with empty emergency ration packets. Two couches had been pushed together and arranged in front of a projector, covered in heaps of blankets.
Jason did not look pleased as they looked about the room. Stepping over the mountains of empty soda cans they headed toward one of the nearby doors and down into another small room. The lights were out but this one was full of double bunks with steel frames.
Mark’s eyes turned to the corner of the room a second after Jason and Jonathan.
There, huddled up in the corner were three people. One was the man they’d seen before, thankfully wearing pants this time. But he was standing in front of two women, pointing a Glock at their group. The woman both looked to be in their late twenties but while one looked scared the other looked curious.
“What in the hell do you think you’re doing down here?” Jason growled.
The man frowned at his gun and remained trained on Jason.
“I- We were just trying to stay alive.”
Before Jason could interrogate the man further Mark moved further into the room. The movement caused the man to switch his aim over to Mark, but he ignored it and kept walking towards one of the bunks.
“Please don’t point a gun at my patient. Nothing is going to happen to you guys. As far as I’m concerned you did good surviving this long. Whatever happenes we’re not going to hurt you guys”
The man kept his gun trained on Mark, who used a portion of his construct to flip the switch on the wall, causing the blub above their heads to flicker to life.
This startled the man, but with better light, Mark could see he was at least open to talking. Mark placed Sam down onto a blanketless mattress and turned to look at them once more.
“She’s usually our friendly face, but as you can see she needs help. I’d consider it a personal favor if you guys were willing to lend me some medical supplies and some privacy.”
Of course, Mark had supplies in his backpack, but offering an olive branch here might be what they all needed.
The man didn’t look convinced but one of the women behind him spoke.
“There’s a first aid kit in the bathroom, I can go fetch it for you,” she said with a hesitant glance at Sam.
“Those are our supplies we can’t just give them away.” The man hissed at the woman.
Jason looked about ready to correct him, but Jonathan stepped in, catching on to what Mark was trying to do.
We’ll reimburse you in other ways for whatever we use. We have plenty of supplies we can offer. What are your names by the way?”
Jonathan wasn’t lying, at this stage, there wasn’t much in the way of basic supplies that they couldn’t afford. Mark wouldn’t feel it, even if they demanded ten times what the supplies were worth.
“Oh! I’m Alara, the man with the gun is Dorian, and this quiet little minx here is Selene.”
“Alara, why’d you tell them that!” the man frowned.
“Enough Dorian, they have injured. Let's move out into the lounge and I’ll get them what they need. They don’t look unreasonable.”
Dorian looked back at her and then at the gun in his hands, grunting he lowered the weapon. Not that it would have done him any good. Mark had their entire group behind a construct, but it wasn’t lost on him how easily this could have been them. These three must have been lucky enough to find this place early on, or they wouldn’t be this trusting of strangers. Unfortunately, they probably couldn’t leave even leave now if they wanted to. The Corrupted were too strong at this point. That pistol might put down one or two, but the hoards that would arrive after that would rip them to pieces. How long had it been since the end of the world again?
The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there.
Mark shook himself from his thoughts as Alara returned with a medkit.
Nodding his thanks, Mark turned to focus on Sam while the others left the room. Jonathan stayed behind to watch Mark work but the door was left open in case something happened that required their attention.
Focusing in on Sam’s wounds once again Mark began to flush them with Prana. He moved from cell to cell, making sure not to miss a single one. The moment his concentration lapsed for even a second the infection would burst out once more and reinfect the area, undoing all his hard work. Unfortunately for the toxin, Mark had ample energy to throw at it, and now with enough time, he strangled the infection until not an ounce of it remained.
Mark wasn't sure how much time had passed but eventually, every cell was in the clear. As a test, he released his hold on a small portion of cells, and when they didn’t reinfect the surrounding tissues Mark sighed in relief.
With a grin, Mark hit her with a healthy dose of [Invigorate] and waited for her to wake up, but when she didn’t respond Mark frowned. Sam remained still as the grave, not even her eyes shifting beneath her lids.
“What's going on Mark?”
Mark glanced up at Jonathan with a stoic expression. He was closer than Mark remembered, holding Sam’s other hand.
“I don’t know. Give me a sec, she should be waking up at this point.”
He already knew [Prana pulse] was returning the all-clear, so something else had to be wrong.
Mark checked everything he could think of but nothing wrong jumped out at him. He was just about to try another dose of [Invigorate] when he thought of something else. Maybe there really wasn’t a problem with Sam’s body. Mark triggered [Nature control] and her tapestry expanded out in front of him. He was proven right a second later when he spotted the secondary tapestry overlaying Sam’s original, growing at an unprecedented rate.
Before, it had been growing at a constant pace, but now it was as though the damage to Sam’s cells had caused a chain reaction, accelerating the change to her body. The duel nature of Sam’s tapestry was rapidly falling into sync as it grew to match her old one.
Having identified the problem Mark had to decide what to do. Did he try and stop this?
Another deeper look confined that he still felt no danger from the process. Sam had even hinted that she thought this was something positive, but without her being awake, he didn’t know what she wanted.
One thing he did know was that certain areas of the new tapestry were advancing at uneven rates. Some were moving at blinding speeds, while others were bearly at a crawl. This imbalance could cause problems so Mark tried to figure out what was causing it. It didn’t take long to realize that it was her reserves of power that were causing the variation in speed Mark was seeing.
Sam had enough Mana, but was burning through her Aura and Prana too quickly.
Opening his eyes Mark looked over to Jonathan.
“Jon, come over here. Her body needs Aura and I don’t have enough to give.”
Jonathan stood quickly, a relieved light entering his eyes now that he knew he could help Sam.
“Before I do this. You need to know. It’s about her mutation. Whatever it’s trying to do is changing her. Seeing as though she is not awake to make this choice, we have to. You need to be alright with this, otherwise…”
Jonathan’s eyes narrowed on Sam but he swallowed.
“She’ll live?”
Mark didn’t have the words so he just nodded.
Jonathan then grunted and placed his hand on Mark’s shoulder.
“Then take what you need”
Jonathan’s Aura sunk into Mark, causing his muscles to twitch. The third and final piece of the puzzle coiled with his Mana and Prana, creating a potent combination of energy. The last time Mark had felt this much raw power was when they’d undergone the rite. Resting his hand on the pommel of his dagger, Mark used the conduit to refine the energies further. Then placing a hand on Sam's forehead Mark let the power loose, allowing her tapestry to pull in as much as it needed.
The sudden growth increase was to be expected but not to this level. Power flooded from Jonathan and was refined by Mark, only for it to be gobbled up by the growing net of strands inside Sam. The foreign tapestry weaved between Sam's original one with a speed and precision that he couldn’t replicate in a hundred years. Weaken areas spread up to match their distant partners until the entire thing fell into harmony.
Even still it was not done.
Enough power flowed from Mark into Sam and he realized it would begin to affect their surroundings again, so he had his construct seal them inside. The process itself was awe-inspiring to watch, it was like an inversed mirror completing itself.
Sam’s skin began to shift with the growth of the tapestry, and as it neared completion, her entire body started to absorb the light in the room. The beautiful cosmic bruise spread across her skin, transforming her body into that of a night sky, adorned with glowing purple and white hues, punctuated by stars.
If Mark hadn’t had a firm grasp on her, it would have been hard to tell where she began and the world ended.
Finally, it completed itself and this was where things went wrong.
The tapestry that had once been in perfect balance seemed to grow greedy, suddenly attempting to absorb her original one. To mack matters worse it was using Mark’s and Jonathan's power to do so. He tried to close it off, but it was like taking his hand from a live wire. Mark couldn’t stop the flow, anger poured from him as he realized what it was about to do. Mark tried to use his own Mana to build a wall but the tapestry consumed it down in moments. Mark felt Jonathan’s grip on his shoulder weakening as his Aura trickled to almost nothing.
Grunting, Mark was so tired of everything trying to take more than it should. If need be Mark could use the store of Corruption he had to feed the process but that would only make things worse. This process wanted to evolve Sam further, leaving her human half So instead, Mark let go of his control of his mutated core.
At first, nothing happened, but this process was greedy and didn’t care where the power came from. Like a faithful hound being called, as soon as the corruption felt the pull it rushed towards Sam’s body.
The moment the tapestry and corruption met it was as though ice and fire had crashed into one another. The tapestry squirmed in displeasure and the Corruption burnt away as though it were unable to exist in its presence. Whatever else happened Mark used the gap to break the choke hold it had on him and pull away from Sam. The moment he did the process seemed to run out of steam and revert to its original size. Mark quickly shoved his Corruption back into its home before letting out an exhausted sigh.
Looking over he saw that Sam had still not moved, but he lowered the construct around them. Glancing back he saw everyone poking their heads through the door to look in at what was happening.
Mark glanced at them and then Jonathan to make sure he was all good. What he didn’t expect was for a voice that sounded like it came from everywhere at once. Glancing back at Sam’s starry form he saw her sitting up while clutching at her head.
“Oh god, my head. What happened?”
“Oh god, my head. What happened?”
“Oh god, my head. What happened?”