Ravens of Eternity

Though their path followed team Freya’s at first, they quickly turned down one of the short hallways and entered one of the larger storage rooms. The room itself was dark and dusty, just like most of the rest of the zone. Large crates were stacked up in the center of the room, and looked as though they hadn’t been disturbed in months, if not years.

The three of them headed straight to a corner where a small hatch was obscured by the shadows. Locke bent down, gripped its handle, and turned it with a CLACK.

He swung the hatch open, and peered down into the shadows below. And thanks to Azrael’s VitaLife, he could easily peer a dozen meters into the darkness. With everything clear, he climbed on down.

Raijin went next, but floated her way down instead. She felt zero need to use anything as clunky as ladders.

Behind her was Fluke, who quietly closed up the hatch behind him with a soft CLICK.

The three walked their way through the dark maintenance tunnel, which was dangerously close to triggering anyone’s claustrophobia. Of the three, Locke was the tallest, and his head came close to bumping the ceiling as he walked.

On top of that, the tunnels were just wide enough to let two of them stand side-by-side, but uncomfortably so.

.....

Raijin hovered in front of the other two, and gestured at one of her drones. It zipped off far ahead of them.

“So, uh,” muttered Locke, “when did you learn how to fly?”

“During a time when I couldn’t,” she responded. “When did you become so curious?”

“Never been not curious.”

“I can relate.”

It didn’t take them long before they came across a Prophet, face down on the floor. His body twitched lightly as he laid there. But Raijin completely ignored him, and kept on flying.

“Shouldn’t we do something about that?” asked Fluke.

“My drone already took care of it,” Raijin replied.

“Er, you mean your drone killed him?”

“Concentrated electrical blast to the chest, which led to sudden cardiac arrest. Azrael has been very helpful in teaching me the mechanics of biology.”

“Remind me not to get on your bad side.”

Raijin turned her head to the side as she thought about that statement, then gave a short nod.

“Yes, that is for the best,” she said unironically.

The three traveled for many minutes, down multiple ladders and further down tunnels. They also ran into the occasional dead Prophet. Which they sidestepped.

They eventually came to an inset alcove which had recessed handholds up one wall. At the top was a hatch that led to the room above.

“Here we are,” said Raijin. “I hear the logic circuits humming, and a handful of Prophets inside.”

Both Fluke and Locke glanced at each other – neither could hear anything except the light wind that whistled in the maintenance tunnels.

“Fluke,” she continued, “you’re an infiltration expert, neh? Please scout ahead of us.”

“My pleasure,” he replied.

He stepped into the alcove and climbed up the inset ladder until he reached the top. He grasped its latch firmly, and turned it slowly but silently. Entire seconds passed as he moved it by mere millimeters at a time.

Although it took time, he was able to slip it into an unlocked position, and raised the hatch a few centimeters. Just enough so he could peek through the gaps all around.

The hatch itself appeared to be behind some large machine, so he opened it all the way and hopped out. But he gestured for the other two to wait.

Without a single sound, Fluke crept up to the large machine, slid over to an edge, and surreptitiously peeked around a corner.

The Primary Databank was a vast hexagonal room that was darkly lit with red ceiling lights. In front of its six walls were huge logic circuits that spanned the height of the walls themselves.

And there were exactly five logic circuits per wall, with a roughly two meter gap between them.

Fluke was hiding behind one of them himself, and the heat it exuded spilled through his armor and into his body.

In the center of the room were strands of thick ropes made of wire that hung suspended from floor to ceiling. Each of them were lined up in orderly rows and columns across the ground, and spaced out equidistant from each other.

Suspended in each of those wires were multiple spherical databanks, exactly three per rope. In fact, the wire ropes connected straight into the databanks on top and below each of them.

Various colored lights blinked on their dull dark gray surfaces.

Scattered among the databanks were various Prophets, each of whom wore fully-enclosed dust suits and held an assortment of tools. All of them seemed engrossed in their work, so Fluke called up the other two.

They too came up as quietly as they could, and hid behind the same logic circuit Fluke was at. Raijin took a quick peek around the room, then turned back to Locke and Fluke.

“We will need to get rid of them quickly and quietly,” she said. “But we cannot damage any of the databanks or logic circuits. That will only hamper us rather than help. And unfortunately, I cannot help this time.”

“Wait, you can’t use your heart attack drones?” asked Fluke.

Raijin shook her head in response.

“The electrical discharge may disrupt the surrounding databanks,” she replied. “I cannot risk any amount of data loss.”

“Well, as long as they can handle a little blood splashed on ’em,” said Locke, “then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

“Understood. But please avoid any excess if you are able.”

The two nodded, then headed off in opposite directions.

Fluke crept around behind another logic circuit, while Locke went in the opposite direction. The two of them zeroed in on their specific targets, aimed down their sights, and squeezed their triggers.

Their rifles spat out quick three-round bursts with little more than a THUDDUDDUT, and erased the Prophets they aimed at. And before the first ones could hit the ground, the two of them trained their aim on the others, and fired again.

And in the span of a few quiet seconds, the Prophets fell down to the floor, dead silent. Blood spilled out of the holes in their chests, and dripped down to the ground below.

Once they were neutralized, all three walked towards the center of the room. All of them wowed at the wonder and the sight of it. The very air they breathed felt charged, and even somewhat oppressive.

Raijin felt as though she was swimming through data, that the electricity that held it all together kept all of them afloat.

Something like this was probably akin to a paradise in her mind. Albeit, a little too dark.

She hovered right up to one of the databanks, pulled out a datapad from her messenger bag, and connected directly to it. She opened it up and peered inside its contents, as though she was opening up a long-awaited present.

“This is a treasure trove of data,” she said. “Much more than I expected.”

“Alright well, let’s pull it all down and get the hell outta here,” said Locke. “Something about this place just isn’t sitting right with me. Like it wasn’t meant for people to stand in.”

“Same, sorta,” added Fluke. “It’s a bit like... I feel kinda unwelcome here.”

“It is neither,” replied Raijin. “You simply do not understand the circuit.”

She disconnected from the databank and hovered to another one. She connected to this one as well, in the exact same way.

“In any case, I cannot simply pull it down,” she continued. “There is more data than I have space. The only way to truly access it all is to take control of the base’s Command Intelligence. From there, we can compress it all down, and push the encrypted payload to our ships’ databanks. Hopefully we have enough space. I am thinking we do not.”

“Yeah, I only understood half of that,” said Locke. “But alright, so we hang tight and let you work.”

“Please protect me while I perform my Machine Trance,” she told them.

Then, she waved her baton at one of the more imposing circuits, and injected herself into the Command Intelligence’s runtime code.

~

Xylo aimed down her sights and fired on two uniformed Prophets with a THAK THAK. Both her bullets struck the two of them squarely on their heads, and killed them instantly.

The Prophets crumpled to the ground unceremoniously, their lives interrupted so suddenly.

As Xylo walked further into the hexagonal room, Azrael and Claire climbed out of the maintenance hatch behind her.

Azrael found herself dumbfounded as she looked around and saw row after row of regeneration pods. But unlike the sleek, stylish ones that Tetragrammaton Technologies used, these were far different. And far more utilitarian.

These were cylindrical, and hung from the ceiling over a recessed pit. The cylinder itself was completely transparent, except for the metal frame that ringed the edges along the top and bottom, and along its rear.

Inside almost all the cylinders were Prophets floating in an orange embryonic fluid. Whether they were unconscious or lifeless, Azrael couldn’t tell. All of them were varied in age, from babies to adults, but the majority were youthful adults.

Each of them also had a metallic ring wrapped around their heads, but in such a way that they obscured their eyes. There was a faint glow on the inside of the rings, which made them seem like halos.

The only other thing on the naked Prophets were umbilical tubes attached to their bellies. It extended down from the top of their pod, though they were encased in armored tubing outside of it.

The umbilical cord tube was accompanied by a number of other wires and tubes, which wound around each other in tight spirals. The entire strand led straight up to the ceiling, but turned towards the center of the room.

There, all of the strands converged and disappeared into the floor above.

All three were beset with shock and horror at what they saw. It wasn’t just that these were simple clones – it was that some of these were clones in the process of being printed out.

Azrael walked up to one such Prophet and watched as her body was stitched together bit by bit. It currently only had a head, neck, upper chest, shoulders, and upper arms. The rest was still being put together.

She could see the muscle and bone and nerves and blood being stitched together underneath her, built out of the fluid that suspended her. It looked like a slow and agonizing process.

To her, it looked like they were printed out the same way Raijin printed her machines.

She tapped on the terminal connected to the regeneration pod, and opened up its status reports. There were reams of notes that accompanied them, and they went back for years.

And they absolutely confirmed her suspicions – the synths were printed alive, but unconscious.

Her heart thudded in her chest when she realized that they no doubt felt excruciating pain all throughout the process, however long it took. Even though they were marked as unconscious, there was no way that their bodies didn’t understand what was happening.

.....

They still felt that pain all throughout.

Then she saw what was being transmitted through their halos, and her heart completely bottomed out.

As their bodies were stitched together, so too were their minds, warped by the halo itself. The memories of their previous versions were uploaded along with hypnotic numbing imagery along certain brain frequencies.

Hidden among those frequencies were Father’s Commandments, plain for her to see.

–

Father is the Grand Creator

His Word is Infallible, and Must Be Obeyed

Those Who Oppose Father’s Word Must Be Destroyed

–