RE: THIS PROGRAM HAS BEEN CANCELED [S!1][ROUND TWO: ETA CARINA]
11-02-2014, 06:55 AM
The droning panic of Kriok's consciousness's scattered processes was now a thoughtless white noise, a thousand conflicting ideas all working at once. None of it was meaningful-- the only thing the avian perceived was her terse breaths. Breaths came heavily, pressure building and releasing against mechanical lungs-- valves opening, sterile oxygen diffusing across synthetic filters, the same process repeated over and over to an unceasing, constant rhythm, everything else was meaningless. Everything else was meaningless.
"You are infected." The dissonant, clinical serenity of the voice immediately shattered whatever calm the avian had.
Error messages darkened Kriok's vision for a moment. Layers of visual interface shuffled across Kriok's optical feed as the avian looked up.
A new environment imprisoned her, one of sterile, bleached walls and tile floors and painful incandescent lights-- a hospital, molded from the nightmares of another trapped dreamer. Something moved closer, entering her vision-- an indistinct humanoid shape, supported by abnormally long, stilt-like legs and stretched to spider-like proportions. A tattered medical lab coat covered the half-real phantasm, and its sleeves draped over its hands; a hostile glint of surgical metal was barely visible underneath. Its face shifted, an indistinguishable and unreadable blur as it spoke again.
"You are infected. You require treatment. Please, let us help you." It implored, its composure now replaced with melancholic pleading. One of its feet tapped against the unreal floor as it drew closer.
"Get away from me." The avian cawed in response, taking a few steps backwards. Her taloned feet awkwardly scraped against the smooth floor, tracing out thin scratches as her hooked claws reflexively curled and dug into the surface. A hissing trill escaped as her hand failed to grasp a now-missing weapon. Innumerable subroutines raced through the avian's algorithms and pseudo-synapses-- she wanted to run, run and never stop, she wanted to escape. Her mind quickly worked to reassert itself-- context flooded back to her, heuristics now dealt with the immediate, subroutines ignored the hazy static of probability. The droning panic ended as she heard another step.
"Please, please." The nightmare's desperate begging grew louder. The scrape of metal against metal returned, the hollow sound echoing in the distance as the shade took another set of steps forward.
"I am warning you to stay back." The avian crowed.
Kriok's fabricator-arm whirred, the manipulator-appendages at its end clicking together menacingly as the disassembler warmed up. A coating of visual overlays draped itself across her vision-- power levels were in acceptable parameters, magnetic confinement was operational, fabrication components were nominal. The end of her cybernetic arm flickered, alight with the warm glow of electromagnetic ignition. She tried to ignore the nagging subroutines that diagnosed her desperation, that chastised how she was willing to use a delicate and irreplaceable tool as a weapon. Only her immediate survival mattered now-- if she had to reduce this threat to its constituent atoms, she would.
Only her survival mattered, she thought. Sterile air diffused across synthetic filters as pressure built and released against her mechanical lungs. Only her survival mattered.
"Let us help you. Please, please, you are infected." The sound of another step forward echoed against the floor.
"Stay back y--"
The nightmare was next to her in an instant, moving with an unreal and impossible speed. There was no malice behind its face or its motions, only the detachment of a surgeon regarding an organ to be removed.
Circuit-nerves fired, her fabricator-arm swung towards it, its workings crackling with the brilliant ferocity of barely-contained fusion-- everything became an automated blur as Kriok unconsciously responded. Her vision lit up with warnings as the creature countered just as fast-- blocking her swing and tearing into her, cutting with a cold precision. She fought the urge to panic as the nightmare's hands became clear-- they were menacing, mocking appendages, constructed from scalpels and hypodermic needles and glistening surgical implements. Pain pierced her as a cluster of syringes impaled her arm, brushing past feathers to scar the skin underneath. Agony nearly-overwhelmed her as a blade made thin, methodical cuts-- as though testing her responsiveness, testing whether electric neurons could transmit pain.
"Please, please." The phantasm begged, pleading even as it cut away at flesh.
The avian's beak clicked as she desperately swung the fabricator towards the nightmare again-- directing the searing heat towards the nightmare in one final attempt. Her optical sensors refocused in horror as it failed to react-- as forces that tore molecules down to their constituent atoms did nothing to the nightmare, to something this unreal. In an instant a thousand panicked subroutines set in. A million isolated data packets of primal terror drowned her cybernetic consciousness.
"You are infected."
Kriok fell backwards, her own balance lost from the phantasm's assault-- and landed, stopping on a surface that had not existed until a half-second ago. Her leg made an attempt to kick forward but accomplished nothing more than spasmodic twitching as restraints came into being and tightened around her, as the inn's nightmare shifted and reassembled itself. The walls lost their bleached cleanliness, now coated with dirt and grime and blood. She was a specimen to be dissected, a patient among the insane-- even amidst the madness her automated heuristics analyzed and analyzed.
She was among the dead. She could see them-- not the ones the nightmare had consumed, the ones she had killed, the ones she had let die. Their dead faces looked back at her, taunted her, judged her-- she should have been among them. As she tried to look away, a set of scalpel-fingers descended into her view, closing around the avian's eye. The walls closed in around her, tightening and constricting just as much as the restraints that now held her in place.
"You are infected." The nightmare's voice came one more time, barely audible against the dull scrape of metal against metal.
Kriok screamed and screamed and screamed.
---
"K-k-kr-kriok Searae?"
Leon flipped through the multiple pages of assorted dossiers, before settling on one. He alternated between looking at the individual lying on the floor, flinching at her injuries, and scanning the page to confirm that he was, in fact, examining the right individual.
It took my eye, a lone subprogram processed. Half of her vision was flooded with the black of disconnected optics, alongside a host of error messages. Critical loss of function, right eye, one warning read. Please reconnect optics unit, another. Kriok's talons curled, involuntarily attempting to grasp and eviscerate an imaginary prey.
"Y-you are, um, Kriok S-searae, c-correct?" He asked again. A polite cough escaped his lips accidentally. The agent checked the pages once more, looking at the glossy images that had been attached. Ostentatious plumage, industrial-grade cybernetics, and what he assumed was an irate glare were all matching characteristics-- The wounded avian seemed to fit the provided visual description.
"B-because, um, acc-according to t-th-this, that's your i-i-id-identity." He mumbled to himself, idly skimming the surprisingly in-depth personal history that had been compiled.
It took my eye, she thought again-- a half-second later she realized she had said that out loud, as the voice she heard responded.
"I-I-I don't th-think so, n-no. T-th-this is just an ill-illusion, p-p-perhaps you injured yourself? Th-th-they could be, um, s-s-self in-inflicted."
The avian stood up, glancing at the human briefly-- before noticing that the inn's illusory trappings had dissipated. A bare room, stripped of any furnishings and lined with years of accumulated dust and cobwebs, greeted her instead of the inn's shifting pandemonium. She wasn't inside the nightmarish recreation of a hospital, she wasn't restrained as a phantasm cut and tore at her, stripping away flesh and tearing out the infected metal that was part of her--
--She shifted uncomfortably, the wooden floor groaning as her claws dug into the buckled and warped paneling. Those thoughts of weakness and vulnerability were forcefully pushed aside, locked away as a facade of programmed stoicism reasserted itself. Her remaining eye shot a glance at the human standing in the room with her.
"Who are you, sj'tet." The question inadvertently came out as a dry, hissing statement.
"Oh! I'm, um, J-ju-junior Agent Leon An-antaros. I've been, er, ass-s-s-assigned to m-m-monitor you." He immediately replied, fumbling through the folder of papers and his satchel to produce an identification card that he quickly displayed-- the picture on it somehow managed to make him look more tired than he already appeared to be. The alien insult had gone either unheard or unnoticed, as he didn't acknowledge it.
"W-wow, you're, um, you're r-really an a-alien, huh?"
Kriok ignored the question-- there was too much to process before she rashly made a decision. Her remaining eye looked away, examining the extent of her injuries-- her finger brushed back tattered and frayed feathers, noting scars and incisions. One talon dipped into the empty metal socket that once held her eye-- nothing seemed to be broken, aside from the disconnected and frayed cable. Her hands began to unwrap the bandages around her long-healed abdomen.
"You have been assigned to monitor me." Kriok repeated back to him. Her beak clicked shut, holding one end of the scavenged gauze taut as she coiled the bandage around a wounded limb. A single robotic eye focused and predatorily stared at the human. She didn't trust a self-admitted agent-- he was probably added by the competition's organizers, in order to ensure their battle continued. Her paranoia-addled subroutines easily accepted the justification.
"Assigned by who?" She asked.
"I, um, y-yes. T-that's correct." Leon responded in a sheepish attempt to deflect the question. "I-I-I'm, um, n-negating the i-i-ill-illusion, you kn-know," He immediately added. "It's a, um, a t-talent I ex-exhibit. An e-e-e-extraordinary n-negation field."
The avian examined the room again, her head swiveling exaggeratedly to compensate for the missing field of vision. The inn wasn't like her earlier recollections. She wasn't being hunted and chased by half-real phantasms. It wasn't the opulent palace it was before the nightmare began. And, if the human was right, she was wholly dependent on him if she ever wanted to escape.
A moment passed in contentious silence before she spoke again.
"How do we leave?"
---
Moving through the inn with the human disquieted Kriok. With each step forward he made, the illusions around the hallway faded into nonexistence, with opulent wallpaper and carpeting returned to unpainted walls and wooden floors dusty with years of neglect. The illusion reasserted itself as they passed, leaving them walking in an island of normality in the midst of the hotel's facades. That sort of ability was unnatural, for someone who spent the vast majority of her life unaware of anything approaching the supernatural.
She checked on her fabricator implant as she walked. It miraculously appeared to be intact, but her interface indicated it was malfunctioning. She ran a diagnostic check on the device, running through each part-- and each part returned back that it was functioning normally. The human's ability must have somehow disabled it, and it gnawed at her that she had no idea how.
"S-so, um." Leon began, breaking the awkward silence they had since their initial encounter. One hand nervously ran through his hair as he continued. "I-is it o-okay if I, um, a-a-ask y-you about your s-s-sp-species? Is th-that, um, in-insensitive?"
Kriok sighed tetchily. "Is that not included in the profile you apparently have on me?"
"O-oh. S-sorry." He sheepishly replied. The agent made some effort to not look completely dejected over the avian's dismissal, which consisted of looking away and uncomfortably clearing his throat as he walked.
Nice work, sjiit, Kriok mentally self-deprecated.
"Sj'te-- Leon." The avian began, taking a few stilt-legged strides closer to the human. A subroutine sarcastically noted that she was already off to a great start on her apology, beginning it with an insult like that. "I, ah, I apologize for speaking like that. I--"
She stopped, reconsidering what she was about to say. Her eye scanned the human-- Leon, he has a name, a process corrected. He was just an adolescent, Kriok realized. If he wanted the battle to continue, it would have been as easy as leaving her alone and letting her die-- and he hadn't. Circuit-neurons fired, calculating how to reconcile his behavior with everything the avian knew, before Kriok interrupted their computing and spoke.
"I have been dealing with considerable trauma. It has made it--" She paused, hesitating again. "--difficult, to interact with others." She finally admitted.
An awkward silence hung in the musty air as she finished, punctuated only by their breathing and their footsteps.
"O-oh," Leon finally said. His walking pace slowed, as he thought about what she had just confessed. "I a-am, um, s-s-sorry to hear that. I g-guess that explains t-t-the injur--"
"They were not self-inflicted," The avian immediately retorted, immediately after catching herself as she realized just how vitriolic her tone was. "How could I have removed my own eye?"
"It, um, it w-would be d-d-diff-difficult." Leon hesitantly agreed. "B-but, um, t-this is a v-very powerful i-i-ill-illusion, s-so it would not be im-im-impossible. N-nothing here can h-harm us, however. O-only un-unnerve us."
The two of them turned a corner, into a new hallway. Just outside of their protective field were the barely recognizable remnants of Alaster and Timothy-- tattered scraps of what had been a robe, a broken clockwork armature stripped of armor and machinery, fragments of bone with no flesh remaining, and little else. The agent pointed at the remains. "L-like this," He said, gesturing awkwardly with his outstretched hand. "Th-this will j-just, um, dis-dis-disapp-p-pear, as s-soon as we are, um."
What was left of Timothy failed to disappear.
"O-oh. Oh no, n-no no no."
"Leon?" Kriok asked. He had fallen to both knees in a quiet state of horrified shock, too terrified to cry or do anything but stare at the remains. The avian glanced around nervously. They needed to leave, and remaining here like this did not facilitate that. She almost considered dragging him out before realizing that Leon might not have ever seen someone die.
"It's m-m-my f-f-fault," Leon sobbed, unable to maintain what emotional composure was left.
"Leon, listen to me."
Kriok knelt beside him, and almost extended an arm to comfort him before retracting it-- she doubted her capacity to be anywhere close to reassuring with the level of industrial implants she had installed on her current body. Her neck contracted slightly as she looked at him, attempting as best she could to be at eye level. "Leon?" She asked again.
"It's m-my f-fault th-they died, b-because I-I was, I w-was--"
"We can't change that, Leon. We--" She began, but stopped as a sudden rush of old memories resurfaced. She was looking back at her dead home, a too-perfect digital recollection of everything that had happened-- every sight, every sound, every sense, perfectly recorded. She could recognize everything, everyone who had died that day. Every body that remained catatonic, every machine that stood dormant and silent, every building that was empty and slowly being reclaimed by rust. She was asking him to move on when she had never done so herself.
"--We have to accept what has happened and keep going. Nothing will let us fix the past." She finished, trying to push the memories into a distant recess of her mind.
Leon waited in silence until he finally nodded, sniffling slightly as he wiped his eyes. "Y-y-you're right," He said, unsteadily moving to stand back up. "L-let's, um, l-let's k-keep going. I th-think I kn-know where t-t-th-the exit is."
Neither of them would have any real chance to enjoy their reprieve, however, as they were immediately plucked out of their relative positions in the multiverse and forcibly flung across the cosmos. After an indefinitely-long hiatus, Last Thing Standing was back on the air.