Irregular Pulse

You know.

"Please," you eschew slowly. "Help me... g-get up there."

He wraps his arms around you, and starts to press up against the door. Upon rediscovering that it's still locked, he steps back a bit, and then lunges forth. You've never seen him with such intensity, and the fish barrels through the glass entrance with a screeching crash, sending black shards everywhere.

As you follow him inside with a limp, your weak insectoid legs barely capable of carrying what was once an energetic form, you realize that the figures you had seen inside before were... false. Fake. The ghhhhh

hhh

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...Player-controlled.

That's what caused this... mess. Mess. Mess.

Harbinger foundry is an utter wreck, split in half. My pod crashed into its surface. I can tell that whatever's happening is happening in that tower at the very end, and I think I can spot... 'host'. The host. Somebody plugged an input aggregator into that fucking thing and now it's destroying everything around it. Picked 'knife', right? It must've picked 'knife', by the sounds of it. I know this job's dealing with the foreign, the whatever that doesn't make sense, but...

Shit's... shit's... sake.

I'm not going to make it out before the quake hits. Not without a miracle.

Gotta tell 005 to get the hell out of here, get out of the way, but this fucking communicator-- it's just useless! Useless, useless, useless. It's gotta be the breach so close. But I don't see it. I don't see shit!

Is the host the breach?! 'Mid'?

Well. This is where it ends, most likely. Maybe... half an orbit left before it all goes to shit. Quake. I get erased, or whatever happens after. Guess nobody really knows what.

I can make it to the top in time. I can find out... hrrk. Why. Why. Why.

"Quiet as a fuckin' ghost town," Salty mutters. "Y'think that's normal?"

Signs point every-which-way. "BACKUP STORAGE," down a stairwell. "PURCHASE HUB," down a gilded hallway. "OFFICES," towards an elevator.

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"You're useless, Mid," Civilian says softly. "...That's not your fault. You worked yourself to dust just getting here."

You nod slowly, sitting in that chair. The carpet hurts your head. "People at... th-the entrance, t-tried to stop me."

He chuckles softly. "But they understood eventually, didn't they?"

"I j-just want what I c-came for," you manage.

Civilian reaches over to the small device on his table, and tilts it around to you, saying, "This is how we start working on it. A blank universe in a little nickel..."

The carpet makes your head hurt. You've been h never been here before.