Reviving Sanity

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"We can't guarantee her safety. The swarm is almost here..."
"Yes but the systems are refusing to shut down. I can't cut her life support because the system won't let me."
"Fucking fine! We'll seal the place on the way out then but lets GO!!"
"Who the hell even cares if one cancerous bitch survives the end of the world anyway. She'll probably just end up being a giant frozen tumor with how rabid those cells are."
Shuffling, running footsteps receding...
Alone...
Dead silence, no sound or noise from the outside world.
I wish they had killed me. The pain scrapes my nerves into a ball and strangles them repeatedly until I feel nothing anymore... I don't know what happens to me now.
There's just the dead silence, the long, drawn out horror of my existence without anyone who cares.
I was left behind and left to rot. They probably don't even care if I rot or not.
The pain never fades, but it gets to the point where I start to, terrifyingly, get used to it.
Eventually, I hear systems booting back up, and a soft automated voice sounding from panels... Its too quiet for me to understand what its saying.
But somehow... the pain begins to fade. I can feel my body returning to what almost feels like...
Normal?
Is that normal?
Just the cold of the cryotube. Just blissful, neutral cold, no pain...
I can't hear the AI voice. It has to be an AI...
Finally, I begin to piece what it was it said together.
"I value life too much to allow you to exist in misery... maybe one day... You'll be able to meet the new tribal peoples who have begun to populate the world."
Tribal people?
What the hell happened outside?...
The darkness continued, with the occasional jostling, odd sounds, like machines and animals at the same time...
Finally, it sounded like the door was opening, quiet shuffling could be heard, and a audible, human gasp.
"What in the... A woman?"
A whirr, a Focus being used.
"Y/n L/n... Absolute nervous system failure due to... cancer... System restart, medical trial no. 3-B5 initiated... successful... system standby..." a feminine voice read out, "Cryogenic... she's frozen, is that what that means?... Revival systems ready?... Sure, I guess, try that- Shit, Rost is gonna kill me if I bring her back, but I can't just leave her here..."
Yeah, please don't just leave me here cause I don't even know how long I've-
Warmth.
Warmth.
Flooding my body, shooting through my veins.
"Revival protocols activated, patient defrost activated, please stand by..."
Crick. Crack. Crikcrikcrik-
"SHIT!!!"
KRRRSSHHH.
"Error. Containment barrier disabled or broken, please stand by, pleaze stan- plea- -an- -y..."
My fucking tube exploded with me in it... Of course...
But the warmth continued to spread and slowly, painstakingly slowly, I was able to move.
"Holy shit... Uh... are you alive? Y/n, right? Hello?"
All I can currently manage is a long, drawn out groan...
"Oh, good... Uh... So, I'm Aloy," the woman's voice continued, "Are you one of the Old Ones?"
"Old?... I guess I'm old, if... ow..." I groan, managing ti sit forward and smack my head on the protective metal framing that would have had the glass in it, "I guess this beats existing in pain for however long that was before the system activated to cure me..." I groan, rubbing my face and head, slowly opening my eyes and looking around.
Stalagmites and stalactites filled the room, water dripping from them ever so slowly. Broken down equipment littered the room, any trace of paper long gone. Broken, frosty glass littered the floor for a couple feet around the standing pod, slowly me how pressurized my ice had been...
And finally, my eyes lit on a girl dressed in simple leathers, decorated in red and blue, bright red hair dreaded, braided and locked up out of her face, a Focus attached to the side of her head.
"Aloy, I presume?" I groan, still rubbing my soon-to-bruise face.
"Y/n, I presume?"
"Yep..." I groan, "Wouldn't happen to have a spare Focus, would you?"
"No. Unless you know where to find one," she frowns.
I look around, "The doctors might have abandoned one or two around the hospital. There were billions of them in the world, for fuck's sake..." I groan, carefully stepping out of the pod, and snagging the edge of a counter before my face could meet the ground.
"Are you okay?!" She asks.
"I was frozen for I dunno how long... I gotta pee, I need food, and I need a Focus so I can try to figure out what was happening when the doctors left.." I frowned, looking around, fumbling, until-
Ah.
A drawer.
And it was stuck.
"Hey can you open this? Its supposed to slide out, it might have stuff in it." i point st the drawer.
She pulls... a fucking spear... off of her back, and jimmies it open, revealing two or three Focuses, scrap metal, and dead mold.
"Gross..." I pull the Focuses out and wipe one off, putting it on and checking it, "Good still works..." I look around at the broken displays, frowning, "Ooookay... so... Please for the love of god, fill me in on anything you know about outside." I turn ti her, frowning.
She tenses, "What?"
"What is it like outside? Why do you have a metal bar with a knife on it? Why do you have a bow and arrow, wear leather, what the fuck happened to the world?"
Aloy blinked, and sighed, "Come on. We'll have to stay out of sight, but..." she tugged me along, leading the way, "I don't know what happened to whatever world you are expecting, but you're in the Nora Sacred Lands. The Embrace of All-Mother. I'm an outcast, my mentor, Rost, raised me, and people think the Old Ones sinned by creating and working with the machines, and were overthrown and killed for their sins. I'm not even supposed to be here, I was running a trail to train, but my Focus picked up a strange signal."
"So you know about as much as I do," I groan, following her.
"I'm training to run the Proving in a few months. Rost might be willing to take you in if I can prove to him you won't survive on your own, but he won't like that we have these..." she points at her Focus, "Relics of the Old Ones are... hated... by the Nora."
"Oh goody. So I have to learn to blend in right quick," I groan, limping over rocks and through freezing ass cold water, groaning, "I have way, way, way too much to learn," I sigh, limping and trying not to stab my feet on anything.
"Hide, down in the grass," she pulls me deep into a patch of red-topped grass, stsring out at...
Weird looking machines.
"Scrappers.. two... three of them. Stay low. If one gets too close, remove parts with this," she hands me her bow, frowning.
I take a breath, and stay knelt down as she sneaks off and starts taking them down one at a time with her spear.
Out of curiosity, I test pull her bow, and wince, nearly tearing my fingertips off.
Wow... This thing had some tension on it...
Looking back out to the field, I saw her sneaking up on the last one, and noticed a man with a large beard staring across the field directly at me, eying me more than a little suspiciously, until Aloy destroyed the last one, held up a hand to him, and waved me out of the grass.
"We need to help her- she isn't an outlander. She has been frozen since the time of the Old Ones. I fell into another ruin while I was climbing, and found her frozen... the thing keeping her frozen responded ti my presence and unfroze her..." Aloy explained.
"So then she is one of the ancient sinners..." the man said lowly.
"No, she wasn't..."
"I had a disease that was believed to be incurable..." I explained, "From what little I know from listening to the doctors, my cousin told my parents a lie, saying I did something to him, and I was abandoned to the doctors. Everyone believed the lie, and my care wasn't done very well- they hoped I'd die when they abandoned the facility. I could hear everything around me despite being frozen..." I explain, rubbing my arm, "I don't know what happened... I went in surrounded by a thriving hospital at the edge of a city. And came out surrounded by... This..." I look around, frowning, then stare upward at a giant, hulking black machine with long black tentacles stretching over the mountainside, standing menacingly over the valley around us, "What in the actual happy fuck is that?..." I breathe, terrified, especially to see how close one of those tentacles had come to the facility.
"The Metal Devil..." the man says, frowning, folding his arms as he watches me, "It whispered to humans promising servitude, but ended up making humans the slaves, and was overthrown by the All-Mother when she struck out. Those who remained faithful to All-Mother remain here in the valley, while the blasphemers and sinners moved beyond the valley ti their cities of metal, and beyond to the Carja lands and the frozen north."
I shake my head back and forth, trying to clear my thoughts, "Guess it makes sense that survivors would splinter off into groups and eventually have religions and beliefs different from the ones back in the old era... God, it all feels like yesterday..." I frown, pacing and biting my nails, "... I..."
"You can stay with us," Aloy deadpans.
"Aloy! She is-"
"A person wildly trapped out of time and with absolutely zero survival knowledge. She needs help. And she looks my age- if we train her well enough maybe she can run in the Proving with me and earn a place in the tribe like you want me to do. I just want answers but she'll need somewhere and training. We can just tell them you took in another outcast's child, that the mother died and the father didn't want her," she points out.
I look at them, gripping my sleeve.
Rost groans and rubs his face, before looking at me, "Follow," he turns and walks.
I take a breath and pad along, jogging to keep up.
Bare feet on stone, grass, and snow.
Back to the barest of bare basics, and having to learn how to survive.
With an old man who clearly doesn't want me around, and a girl who looks ready to take on the world.
"By the way, how old are you?" I raise an eyebrow at Aloy.
"Seventeen, eighteen soon," she looks over st me.
"I'm in my twenties. I was in treatments from your age til when I was frozen. I don't know how old I actually am now, but... yeah..."
"An Old One, frozen for centuries..." Rost grumbles, clearly not looking forward to what was to come, nor making any sense of what I said.
--
For the next month, my days were spent learning how to do things with my hands. Hunting, cooking, making my clothes so that I could blend in, hunting down ingredients for medicines, training, learning to make and wield my own weapons.
In exchange for the training, I would tel them both stories about the old world. Aloy was endlessly curious about it, wanting to know everything that I could tell her...
Rost was... difficult. I could understand how his culture had ingrained in him that everything from the past was steeped in sin, and I expressed that I understood that...
But it was so hard, wanting to tell as many people as possible, wanting to... Help people learn, and just not be able to.
I conndcted Aloy's Focus ti mine and showed her how to call me and how to link up in the wilds, explaining to Rost that it was a way to communicate across vast distances.
"People used to be able to communicate all across the globe," I grinned proudly, but frowned, "... I wonder if I'll ever get to learn what happened..." I hugged my knees, "And figure out what the hell my cousin made up in order for everybody to hate me so much..." I whisper.
"Hey, you'll be ok... We're both here, and even if it doesn't work out with the tribe..." Aloy points out, "You could maybe find a way to travel past the Sacred Lands."
"I really doubt that," I say softly, "Its difficult to..." I frown, folding my arms, "Hard to explain. I don't think they'd let me out if I tried to get past the gates..."
Rost sighs, leaning against a wall, "Aloy, we need to restock the meat stockpile. Go see if that herd of boar are still down at the pass. Let Y/n know if you find them."
"Ok?" She frowns, grabbing her bow, "You're not sending her with me?"
"No. She still needs practice with her aim, and frankly, her form," Rost shakes his head, "We'll be training in the field."
She nods and leaves, frowning.
Once her steps faded away outside, he looked at me warily.
"Y/n... I swore not to tell her this... Nor any outsider. But since your situation is... if anything, unique, I should tell you about the Red Raids, the Derangement and my past..."
"Alright...." I look at him, worried about what I was about to hear.
"Almost twenty years ago now, an explosion cracked the sky, and black smoke rose from the far northeast... From then on, year by year, the world has lost all trace of sanity..." he frowns, "Soon after that, the cursed Carja began striking out at the other tribes... This became known as the Red Raids. People were taken or slaughtered by soldiers. Those who were taken were dragged off to be sacrificed in the Sun Ring, or made into slaves..." he frowned, looking away, "Soon after the start if the raids, my mate, and our daughter, Alana... My mate was murdered in cold blood, and Alana was taken..." his voice cracks as he sits, holding his head.
"I'm so sorry..." I frown, looking at him worriedly.
"They dragged the hostages to Devil's Thirst where we wouldn't dare go, slaughtering a hostage every time anyone dared get close... When they finally chose to try to leave the Sacred Lands, they crossed the border and slit the throats of the remaining six hostages, leaving them across the border and put of reach... Like the cowards they were..." he rasped, rage and sadness darkening his already intimidating features.
My blood was already cold, wishing I'd been awake to even try to help...
"The Matriarchs made me a Death Seeker when they saw the extent of my rage. I am ritually dead ti the tribe and safe from the taboo of leaving the Sacred Lands. I returned our dead to us, and gave chase..." he whispered, staring at hands, "The things I did to them more than make me deserve ti be erased from All-Mother's eternal memory. I chased them far beyond the known lands, all the way to a place where there were great plains of carefully grown food-plants... But the final coward wounded me... I made my way as close to the edge of the Sacred Lands as I could so that I could peacefully die as close to home as possible, but I had no home among the Nora any longer... A Nora Brave dragged me across the border when I fell, risking being outcast..." he sighs, rubbing his face, "They couldn't bring themselves to throw me back out. My being outcast- it was a way to compromise. I remain in the Sacred Lands, and I do not speak of what happened. Somehow, even after everything, the others still respect me..." he frowns, "When Aloy was born, she was given to me, outcast for not having a mother. The Matriarchs told me nothing of her or who she was..." he looks at me, "She has always been so curious... Even in matters attributing to the Old Ones..." he frowns, "And now she brought you to me. Your training is progressing well, but you have a ways to go to participate in the Proving..." he frowns, standing, "On that note, we should begin your training for the day- please don't ask questions when Aloy is around... Please..." he sighs softly.
I nod, grabbing my bow and spear, and following him. I need to fit in at least long enough ti be allowed out the gates of the valley.