Out of Cryo | A Horizon: Zero Dawn Fanfiction

Chapter 10: ARTEMIS

"This is it then? Are you sure?"

"SYSTEM CONFIRMS ARRIVAL AT COORDINATES FOR SUBSYSTEM ARTEMIS."

I looked around before exchanging confused glances with Erend and Aloy. The Oseram man crossed his arms. "I don't see anything," he said to the Watcher. Then to Aloy, "I think your machine is broken."

The blue light on the Watcher's face blinked quickly several times. "SYSTEM IS OPERATING AT IDEAL CAPACITY. SYSTEM DETECTS OBVIOUS BUT EXPECTED MISCALCULATION."

I had to stifle a giggle. "I think Heph just called you stupid, Erend."

Erend rolled his eyes. "Yeah, well, you can tell it I think it's a liability. Besides," he said, gesturing to the jungle around us, "there's nothing here!"

I heard Aloy sigh and watched her put her hands on her hips before directing her gaze to the sky. Beads of sweat, no doubt a result of the very humid climate, ran down her face in rivulets. As for me, I felt fucking gross. It was ridiculously hot and the humidity of this weird, rainforest region south of Meridian made it a hundred times worse. The air was heavy and carried the scent of impending rain. How the hell a rainforest managed to grow here was beyond me, but I guess anything could happen in this new biosphere.

"Where is it, HEPHAESTUS?" the redhead asked the machine. "We're at the right coordinates but I don't see anything that resembles the place where we found you."

"SYSTEM UNABLE TO DETERMINE EXACT STRUCTURAL LOCATION."

"Well, that's fucking helpful," I grumbled. Erend chuckled while Aloy glanced over at me. She seemed to want to say something to me, but apparently decided against it because she just looked over at Heph and said, "That's okay. Maybe it's somewhere close to here, then."

Fine, don't talk to me, then. See if I care. Aloy had gone back to barely speaking to me like she had in the weeks before the Proving festival in Mother's Heart. When she had returned from speaking to Sun King Avad a few nights earlier she had been rather broody and sullen, and had said very little to either myself or Erend, going straight to bed instead after stating she was tired. I didn't know what her deal was and I didn't ask.

Ugh. This weather is making me pissy. Truthfully, I had been in a foul mood for a while now. I didn't have any specific reasons other than being frustrated with my situation in general. Other than just making some adjustments to the interfacing program I wrote and trying to come up with a clever story to tell people so that they wouldn't freak out about where I was from (for now, I was an outlander that had lived in Nora lands before joining up with Aloy and Erend), I didn't have much else to do and was getting really bored. Aloy had been either cold and distant or awkward and overly nice around me. Erend made an effort to talk to me but I could tell he felt like a third wheel in a bad relationship around us. A woman named Talanah had stopped by the house looking for Aloy one day when the redhead had gone to the marketplace to stock up on supplies for our trip to find ARTEMIS. She seemed nice at first and mentioned something about a hunter's lodge and a giant machine called a Thunderjaw and from what I could gather through a lot of unnecessary titles, Aloy was her...apprentice or something? I don't even know, but the way Talanah's face would soften every time she mentioned Aloy in her story bothered me. It was obvious that a lot of people here admired Aloy and deeply respected her. Or maybe they just wanted to get her in bed. Who knows?

It was crass and probably pretty rude to think of Aloy's friends like that but there was something about the way people fawned over her that bugged me. Like, they just saw her as some symbol or prophet or problem-solver and not as an actual person. And she just ignored it instead of telling them to fuck off. I don't know why it bothered me so much or why I even cared, but I did.