Societal Solipsism - Chapter 10: Keepers

Draconeural Research Base

79 Zephyr, 1330 AE

As soon as the alarms sounded, the blue ambient lighting within the records room switched to red. There was a prolonged moment of tension between the two men as they assessed one another. On one hand, they hardly wanted to spend the next several minutes together without cooling off and approaching the situation with level heads.

On the other, taking too long to get in motion would see both of them experimented on by the Inquest, if not exterminated outright. Reluctantly, but without any further hesitation to their movements, Hisoka and Liberius ran for the doorway into the central shaft. Liberius stealthed both of them once again and trusted that the blaring alarms would silence the loud sounds of their frantic steps.

The facility's primary shaft was illuminated by a central beam of light stretching from the bottom floor up through the hexagonal entrance platform above, and into a series of spinning rings at the top of the base. Around it, the ramps affixed to all 6 walls were abuzz with activity: even from the low vantage point, Liberius spotted patrols of golems and Inquest making their ways down the ramps in lockstep, leaving few gaps for people to pass through. He gritted his teeth and hoped that his applied stealth would be enough. The teams sweeping the ramps were starting at the tops and making their way down, much to Liberius' chagrin. A worse-trained security group would have immediately headed for the site of the disturbance, allowing the two of them to slip by with a little bit of trickery. This methodical approach would be a lot harder to deal with.

Still, there was little other choice. Neither Hisoka nor Liberius spoke as they ascended the systems of ramps towards the top of the base, both from fear of being caught and fury directed towards the other. Were it not for the stealth, Hisoka would have seen the fur along Liberius' neck standing straight up, and his teeth grinding together so hard he was liable to cause damage. Hisoka rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes, not sure where to channel his mounting upset. The charr hadn't telegraphed any sort of relationship issues in a way that he had noticed, so exploding had come out of nowhere. He played back Liberius' words over and over, until thoughts of his relationship were buried by the familiar chest-crushing sadness that came over him whenever he thought of his father.

It was strange to be thinking of his father now, while trying not to be captured deep underground. He had been more adventurous back before his father left, but nothing to this degree: just brief excursions with Ambrosine through the Krytan countryside. He tried to imagine what the man would have said to him now and visualize a reaction upon the warm face he remembered from years ago. The edges had faded like those in an old photograph, and when he tried to form words in his voice, they felt artificial and stilted. Time was clogging the gears of recollection like sand, and he had to stuff the thoughts back down. He was good at that.

Hisoka was so lost in thought he hardly noticed as he and Liberius drew close to one of the Inquest patrols. They were still one hundred feet distant, but he didn't want to get any closer. Liberius scanned the nearby rooms and shook his head: any hiding spots would likely be ones the Inquest already knew about, and were liable to be traps designed to lure would-be-escapees into positions where they would be captured. The charr uttered a low growl, and Hisoka watched as his shimmering form leaned over the railing. There were a few moments where his tail lashed back and forth, before the charr took off running down the ramps. The Inquest were still taking their sweet time making their way down the three spirals, and the paths below were empty, so he hardly cared for any sort of caution. Hisoka took off after him, gradually losing ground against the speeding charr as they raced back to the records room. Liberius swiftly reactivated the sleeping console, searched for the facility's map, took a second to examine it, and then took off running again. Rather than head upwards though, Liberius ran down.

Hisoka had to think: how much did he trust the charr? Liberius had gotten them both into this without any sort of plan for how they would get back out and was dead set upon fixating on this thread until it killed him. The human mulled over his options, but any alternative to following Liberius was looking grim. Even if he was mad at the charr, and not sure what would happen to the two of them once they escaped, Liberius was still his best option. With a deep breath echoing the one he took before entering the facility, Hisoka ran after Liberius.

The bottom level was only a short jaunt from the penultimate one. The hexagonal space was interrupted on three sides by the bottoms of each ramp, and the middle was taken up by the ley-line channeller responsible for the giant vertical beam. There was only one exit besides the ramps: a large tunnel in the same shape of the shaft, like the facility had been turned on its side and shrunk. Standing before it was a golem, unmanned at first glance. The large dome on the front belied the asura within, however. Liberius' stealth was no match for a closely-tuned pair of eyes, let alone advanced golemetric scans, and the golem turned at once to face the semi-hidden charr.

"Don't think I don't see you over there." The asura's voice buzzed out from speakers built into the golem's hull. Somehow, asura became even smugger when protected within armoured war machines. "Your little illusion isn't going to let you slip by. I'm going to—"

The asura cut out, and was replaced with a prerecorded message in someone else's voice.

"—going to prevent you from accessing the rest of the facility, as is protocol for intruders not deemed to currently be a threat to standard operations. A highly trained detainment task force will be along to collect and process you shortly."

There was a sigh, and the asura spoke in his own voice. "Anyway. Point is, you're going to stay right here until they come to get you." The golem's arm swung up in an exaggerated point, gesturing towards the slowly descending teams of Inquest and golems. Hisoka estimated they would take no more than ten minutes to reach the bottom of the complex, even with their leisurely pace.

"Nothing I can do to make you step aside?" Liberius asked.

The golem was impassive.

"How much do they pay you?"

No response.

The Inquest above drew closer along all three ramps, the heavy footfalls of their golems meting out the improvised tick of a clock that rung down to the deepest level. Liberius drew his pistols, not planning on finding out what the Inquest had in store for them.

The asura seemed excited by this, as his voice oozed smarmily from the golem's speakers. "Oh no, it appears I have encountered lethal opposition. It is my duty to inform you that you have been perceived as a threat to this facility, its equipment, and its operations. As such, I am authorized to prevent you from complicating matters further." The golem's arm drew up, powered on with a pleasant hum, and launched a rocket at Liberius' shimmering form.

The charr leapt backwards from the explosion, lifting his own arm to protect his face from splintering shards of tile. The flooring was pretty resilient, but a direct hit like that was going to leave more than just a mark. The specks of midnight blue tiling clinging to him rendered his stealth further moot, so he dispelled the effect. Careful not to get too close to the staircases or the beam of energy in the middle of the room, Liberius backed slowly away from the golem. The further he was, the more time he would have to dodge any projectiles. Conversely, getting closer would allow him to be more precise with his pistols. Weighing his options, he settled for circling predatorily to the side, not turning away from his opponent.

The golem raised its arm again, but this time Hisoka was ready. The shattering tiles had reminded him of Dawnside Quay, and he was fairly sure he could get the timing right. This golem may have been a more advanced model than the dock-guarding infantry back in Rata Sum, but that would just necessitate more precise timing. The golem's palm lined up with Liberius, and Hisoka swung his staff out. There was a flash of orange light from the golem's palm, immediately met with a matching glow of blue directly in front of it. Just like at Dawnside Quay, the explosive black cloud obscured everything beyond the Wall of Reflection.

Hisoka dismissed the spell, and looked over at Liberius. They gave one another tense looks, and Liberius huffed. "Let's just get through—"

There was a mechanical whirring from the cloud, which grew higher and higher in pitch until the black smoke was spun upwards in a tornado. The manned golem, arms outstretched, slowed its spin down until it was standing normally again, and gave a facsimile of a shrug. "Is that how you destroyed the golem back at Dawnside? I'll make sure that to pass that along when we're done here. Jury was out as to how you managed that. And that was you, wasn't it? Just like a couple of bookah to try the same thing twice." The asura spoke notationally, as if reciting all of this to be logged in a journal or academic paper eventually. Without missing a beat, he flipped from scientific curiosity to bloodthirsty combat. Each arm launched a rocket, and the twin projectiles arced towards Liberius and Hisoka.

Hisoka's wall may not have been effective at defeating the golem, but it was adequate for shielding against its projectiles. He planted his staff in the ground and shielded himself once more, while glancing towards Liberius. The charr dodged to the side and ran across the room under threat of fire. Another rocket missed, and then another. Liberius snagged just enough time to raise one pistol and fire a well-aimed shot directly towards the cockpit's semi-spherical bubble. The bullet narrowly passed an opposing missile that Liberius was forced to dodge, and landed home in the red shielding. A small white dusting of damaged material appeared on the surface, but there was no shatter, not even a crack. There was, however, a brief laugh from the asura as he trained both golemnic arms on Liberius. The charr rolled away from a rocket, only to find himself directly on top of a bundle of grenades that had been laid to his side.

There was a sickening lurch as the explosive blast pressed up against him, before Liberius shadowstepped across the room. The spell was hasty enough that he didn't cancel his momentum, and went skittering limply across the floor. He got to his paws and took a few deep breaths, mane falling into his eyes and mussed up awkwardly from his acrobatics. He had barely managed to hold onto his pistols through the warp, years of training in the fahrar teaching him better than to drop them over something as mild as a grenade-fuelled teleport. He may have been a ranger back then, but that was just basic training.

Despite this, Liberius opened his paws and dropped both guns to the ground. Their barrels clanged resonantly, and he looked up to face the golem. He frowned and half-lidded his eyes, every detail the very picture of surrender. Hisoka growled and buried his head in his palms: not only had Liberius dragged them down here, he was going to get them killed because he couldn't just leave something alone. He looked up to see the approaching Inquest squads only a couple minutes away from completing their exhaustive descent down the ramps, and he felt a fist close around his heart.

"I've had worse fights," said the asura, voice syrupy with mocking pity. "That shadowstep was quick thinking, for a species as disadvantaged as your own."

Liberius didn't look up. He just had to give the asura a moment.

"We have just a small bit of time left to us now. I'd say that I would visit you in the live specimen chambers, but I would be lying. You weren't that entertaining, really. Maybe if you'd done something truly creative, then—"

The golem was gone, and in its place was an asura sitting several feet off the ground. He opened his mouth to continue speaking, closed it, and looked all around himself. Experimentally, he placed his palm on where the bubble of his golem should have been: he could still feel it, but it had gone invisible.

Liberius grinned at him, grabbed his pistols from the floor, and began to rush for the hallway with nothing more than a cursory wave towards the prone Inquest. Hisoka followed, casting glances towards the fist-slamming golem rider. He was pounding on the console's invisible controls, eliciting nothing more than discordant beeping in response from the indignant machinery.

The tunnel that had until just recently been guarded was fairly short, with a single room at its end. It was hexagonal like the rest of the base, with each of the five walls not taken up by a standard entrance taken up by a variable, magical, one. Five asura gates lined the room, each slightly different than the rest. They looked experimental, adorned with extra bits of machinery that had been grafted on like life-support systems. Directly opposite the tunnel was the only normal one, serving as a baseline from which the others were derived.

Wordlessly, Liberius ran to the gate and pried one of the stones out. There was an array of crystals within, circling a smaller one in the middle. Desperate, and with no other options, Liberius substituted the central crystal for his looted one. It was by no means the correct way to tune an asura gate, but the connection was established nonetheless. With Dawnside Quay as the last location listed on the crystal, the gate flared to life. The sights and sounds of the Port Authority bled through the gate, tinted cyan by the glow of the portal.

Liberius made to step forwards, but Hisoka hesitated. Liberius growled out, "Come on, they'll be down here any minute."

Hisoka still paused. "Are you sure this will work?"

"I got us down here, didn't I?"

"Yeah, and you nearly got us trapped and killed, or experimented-upon!" Hisoka balled his fists, and Liberius shook his head.

"Better than not doing anything."

Hisoka angrily stomped through the portal, before turning to glare at Liberius. "You're unbelievable."

Liberius slammed a paw against the side of the gate and bared his teeth. "You're—"

There was a brief magical whine that was cut off as the connection shut down. Hisoka stared at the gate as it shifted from cyan to purple. The growling charr was replaced with a bustling city cube.