Antumbra - A Lost Cause

One on One - Chapter Forty Two

The restraints Arva and her team had been placed in were decidedly less cruel than before. Their hands were tied behind them, and they were being kept in a cell they had free run of. That said, there wasn't much to explore. It was about the same size as the last room she was in, with only a single bed and barred doors more akin to an actual jail cell. They were being guarded, but at this point they were all so exhausted and defeated they didn't even attempt to free themselves. Arva in particular merely sat on the damp floor, legs partly crossed, waiting for whatever came next. When the other Argonaut had appeared, the other Antumbra, she had frozen and was quickly subdued. They captured her comrades, threatening to execute them unless she stepped out, and when she did they in turn used her to coerce her teammates to give up their machines, at which point they were promptly escorted to this cell and their suits taken to some undisclosed location.

So there they sat, back at square one, only now Arva and the others had revelations to digest. Once she was out of the Argonaut, she was still afraid of the second Antumbra, but inside her own machine she had been filled with a paralyzing, foreign fear. Like she was feeling someone else's terror, a traumatic experience she never went through. She stewed on this information while Boomer rested on the only bed, Kyodai stood between them. None of them had spoken since they were placed in the cell, but then nobody had anything to say, except Arva.

"I'm sorry," she said to them, "I screwed up. I lost control and... I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," Boomer said, rolling to one side. "It's not like there's a right way to get captured. You did good, though, especially jacking that suit."

"How did you do that?" Kyodai asked.

"I haven't exactly tested it," Arva explained, "but I think I can just control any Argonaut I want. I found a finger off of one once, and when I touched the wires inside it moved."

"You must have touched a nerve," Boomer mused, "literally."

"Argonauts are controlled by an artificial nervous system installed throughout the machine," kyodai explained, "they essentially 'match' with the pilot's own impulses, and that's how you can move them like your own body, but everyone's patterns are different. You can't wear someone else's suit any more than you can wear their skin."

"It's a long and complicated process to remap the system, too," Boomer added, "and I very much doubt the IRT has that kind of technology built into individual units, let alone instant-acting ones."

"Every time I put on a new suit, it burns," Arva shuddered slightly at the memories, "and hurts badly, like pins and needles, or rocks digging into my body. Maybe the suits aren't changing? Maybe I am?"

"I'm pretty sure if you could rewire your entire nervous system on the fly, you'd die," Boomer said.

"I'm just telling you what I know," Arva shrugged, still staring at the floor.

"It'll certainly be a story to tell if we ever get home," Kyodai said. An awkward silence permeated the cell, defused only by the rhythmic dripping of an old pipe.

"They can't keep us locked up forever, can they?" Arva finally asked.

"Oh, they most certainly can," Boomer chuckled, "but I'm doubting they will. I bet they're asking themselves a lot of the same questions we are."

"They'll want to interrogate us again," Kyodai said, "as long as they think we have answers, they'll keep us alive."

"Speak of the devil," Boomer nodded towards the bars. Arva turned to see a man approaching. The same man who had questioned her the second time, the one who was kind to her. He was alone, and spoke to the guard in the same language she didn't understand. The guard nodded and opened the door. He entered while the older man waited, and approached Arva before grabbing her by the arm.