Darklight: Precipice

Part 28: Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

“How are you holding up?” The voice asked behind her as she poured over the masses of data that was sprawled over her desk.

“You know it is generally customary to knock” she replied without looking away from her work “Even for the ‘High Patriarch’”.

“My apologies” Draz replied as he moved into the room. Natasha rubbed her forehead in exhaustion. 

“Rough day?” he asked her, pulling a chair from beside her and taking a seat. The lab was empty and the lights were dimmed – it was almost nine in the evening and the majority of analysts had already gone home.

“Ha!” Natasha replied cuttingly. “More like rough month”.

“I went to your office looking for you” Draz replied.

“I was almost climbing the walls in there” Natasha replied, not allowing Draz to finish his sentence. “I much prefer to work here, my brain feels less constrained”.

“Maybe if you took a little time out of your work you would be able to clear your head?” He suggested. Natasha finally looked up from the masses of graphs, tables and numbers printed on paper in front of her and just looked at Draz.

“Don’t you have your precious Utopia City to run?” she cut. “Or did you come all the way to Precipice just to babysit me?”

“I was merely suggesting...” he started.

“Shove it” Natasha spat. “So you’d rather I go and swoon and cry over Soran’s body as he lies there in that coma like a vegetable? Screw you, Draz. You’re the one who put him there. I was done with that after the second week”. She went back to her work. Draz sat in silence for a few moments; his grey suit creased untidily where he was sat in the cheap desk chair.

“You don’t even visit anymore then? It’s been three months”.

“Nope” Natasha replied. “What’s the point? Apparently they’ve got no way of telling if or when he’ll wake up again. He’s a lost cause”.

“I wouldn’t ever say that Soran is a lost cause, Natasha. He’s done a hell of a lot for everyone…”

“Everyone except his wife” Natasha said, turning to look Draz in the eye. He could tell that there once would have been tears in those eyes of hers, but now there was only a dry wall that kept those once flowing emotions deep within her.

“Perhaps so” Draz replied after a moment. “So how are the test results looking?” He knew it was best that he changed the subject hastily.

“Well” Natasha said with a sigh. “The Device, or ‘Gate’ as we’re now calling it, has given us a real insight into how the Crystalline Matrix operates” Draz smiled internally – get her talking about work and she’s much more stable. He could appreciate that.

“How so?”

“Have you not read any of my reports?” Natasha asked harshly.

“I would rather hear it from the expert” Draz replied, his demeanour cool as ever. He swore he saw the flutter of a smile pass Natasha’s face for a brief second.

“Well we know that the Matrix carries Arcane Energy and at the focal points there are greater concentrations of the crystals. But when they interact to generate the energy field for The Gate, they seem to vibrate – to resonate with a specific frequency that generates this unknown gravitational-displacement effect”.

“Any theories yet?” Natasha remained silent for a moment, looking at the data.

“I have some ideas, but I’m not a theoretical physicist, Draz. I’m going to need someone with the proper insight to help me figure this out”.

“Better than that, I can get you two” Draz replied, getting up and pushing the chair back under the desk.

“Really?” Natasha replied, surprised at the ease of her request.

“Indeed. I’ll get in touch with Dr Hammond and Lady Kisa, we’ll arrange for them to fly over here within the next week. I may even send Ana with them”. Natasha’s smile faltered slightly at the mention of Lady Kisa.

“But… weren’t you in Utopia City just an hour ago? I saw you on the live broadcast. How did you get over here so quickly?” Draz laughed.

“Those same Theoretical Physicists are surprisingly practical physicists too; they got the Displacement Drive in working order. But I’m the only one brave enough to use it”. He smiled at Natasha as he walked to the still open door.

“See you soon, Natasha. Thanks for the update”.

***

He slid his finger down the smooth copper-brown metal of The Gateway, a large grin on his face. The bright green energy that surrounded the sphere was still coalescing, growing brighter with each passing hour.

He had been focussing on this device since his visitors had left. Who would have thought? After thousands upon thousands of years of simply existing on this planet as a formless energy field, unable to interact with the physical world without a biological host… But then Master Kisa himself emerges from his petrified stasis and mere hours later a group of people arrive through the long dormant device! This was clearly the work of a higher power. But then again… there was no higher power than him.

Funny, he thought. ‘Him’? The idea of an assigned gender was as ludicrous as the biological machines that he inhabited were disposable. He wasn’t ‘Him’, that was a mere reflection of the male form that was currently being used. He was The One, he was The Faceless. He transcended gender, physicality, reality.

But that was not important now. The Faceless had been stranded upon this lifeless rock since The Forefathers figured out their weakness, their dependancy on biological life to graft onto in order to interact with the physical. At first The Forefathers had thought that their biology was unique and that they were the only forms that were susceptible, but with great loss they came to understand that The Faceless can inhabit any biological form that creates cellular energy, an energy which The Faceless exists within. And so they wiped all life from the face of this planet before The Faceless were able to use The Gateway to expand to the rest of their empire - he had never made it to The Ongoing Worlds, their other planets. And so The One was left to wander this world, a listless and formless energy field. But this gave him the opportunity to process and consolidate all of the memories, data, technology and knowledge that The Faceless had pulled from the heads of their hosts. Almost the entire library of knowledge of The Forefathers.

And then Kisa and the others appeared. Now with a biological form and access to another world full of hosts ready and waiting, he would take his place as the god he knew he was.