Dark Matter Ascension-Chapter 40B2 - : Saving the Signer

Priam let out a shocked yelp as he found himself weightless for a moment before slamming down again. “Ouch!” he shouted out, more out of reflex than anything else as his barrier had taken the hit. “What happened?”

Quinn’s voice came over the comms, “You’re sinking! Enduralife trapped their specimen room. You’re dropping down really quickly. The shell looks like it’ll be strong enough to hold back the pressure: but you’ll be on the ocean floor and unable to leave without someone rescuing you with a pressure capsule. Your oxygen is restricted in there, and you’ll be on the floor of the ocean in a few minutes.”

Greg shook his head as he dug his hands into the plastic door and ripped it aside. “Alright, lady,” he cleared his throat. “Sorry, I assume lady since that’s what you look like.”

“I prefer it. You are the Signers?”

Greg nodded, “I’m Greg, this is Priam. Our ally is busy on Enduralife’s island up above us. You’re Dee?”

The chitinous shell nodded, and the noise that came out, while intelligible thanks to Universal Translation, was a weird buzzing noise that tickled Priam’s brain. “I am Deasyl. Dee to my friends.”

Greg nodded as he cracked his characteristic smile and approached, “Now, let’s get you down from there.”

“Wait!” Priam interrupted as he dashed into the room. “She’s injured. Badly.” He pointed to the goop that was sliding out of her lower extremities. “She’s disincorporating! She’ll die if this continues!” Pulsar Physic (Rank 1), Priam thought. The slight, golden hue surrounded her, and her chitin seemed to repair itself. That’s only one injury, though. And she’s got a lot. Damn, I need a Skill Evolution that lets it heal all wounds like Greg’s thing. “Greg, do your healing thing! She’s got a lot of injuries.”

Greg nodded and held his hand over the woman. A dull, brown and blue glow emanated from his palm, and the woman’s chitin completely healed over. She seemed to ‘inflate’ and Priam heard the distinct whooshing sound of a thick, viscous fluid churning through the chitin. “Ah, that feels much better,” she said.

Priam reached up and began removing her weird, plastic chains as Greg held her aloft. When the chains were removed, the large man set her down. “Your chitin is awesome,” Priam said with genuine enthusiasm. “Mind if I touch it?”

“Sure,” she replied, holding out her arm. Priam poked at it, feeling the warm current running inside.

“Wow! So it is like a living shell, and not just something you can remove whenever?”

The chitinous shell’s face cracked into a smile: it was close enough to a regular person’s face that Priam could make out the emotions easily enough. She giggled, “That’s not quite right. Plorps can remove their chitin: but it makes interacting with places not on our world very tricky.”

Greg cleared his throat, “We need to get out of here. We’re sinking fast, and the sudden pressure on our bodies will probably kills us if we make a breach.”

Dee cocked her head sideways at a slight angle, “Not me. Pressure doesn’t affect me. But you two? I’m assuming you’re like most species? Bones and all that?”

Both nodded, but Priam spoke up. “I have barriers but I don’t know how much pressure they can withstand.”

Bloopa tapped on his head, and the Wayfinder’s words were partially translated by Priam’s species unique physiology, partly translated by his hat. You could withstand a large amount of pressure. The tricky part is swimming up in time to not drown.

“Oh, I can deal with the pressure. But the breathing part is an issue.”

Greg clicked his tongue and ran his fingers along the outside of his armored helmet, as if he was stroking his beard in thought. “I…hmm…we need an (Equipment) Boon to get something like a rebreather kit. And even then, that’s only for one person.”

Quinn’s voice crackled in Priam’s ear, “I’ll see if Jace can transfer his…standby…” A few seconds passed as the metal box around the group creaked again and Priam watched the metal buckle inward ever-so-slightly. “Yeah, he’s going to transfer the Rare (Equipment) he has.”

There was a flash of luminescent, blue starlight as a weird, pod-shaped device about the size of Priam’s torso appeared on the floor. There were four tubes that extended off of it, and the tubes each had masks that looked like they would hook around the face and head. “A Killer Whale,” Greg said as he tapped the device with his foot. “It’s a propellor and an air-pod. Enough oxygen for four people for an hour, and it can let us maneuver with the built-in motor. Now we just need to make a hole in the floor here so the decompression doesn’t kill us.”

Dee raised her hand, “Oooh! Let me! Destroying things is my specialty.” She raised her hand and pointed it at the floor, before frowning. “Oh…right.” She walked out of the plastic-covered cell so she was standing on the metal flooring. “They had a polymer from the Nebula Alliance that negates my species’ goop.” As she said that, a trickle of the goop left her hand and sizzled on the ground.

“How’d they capture you?” Greg asked.

“I was going to be one of their Signers,” Dee replied as the acid continued to burn through the metal floor. “But I stole something from their faction leader. It was his fault, really, he left his quarters wide open! In fact, his whole mansion was so easy to break into. I got caught, and as a sign of ‘goodwill’ they gave me to this company.” She frowned, “They drained my goop for their medicine. Disgusting. If they had asked I would’ve sold it to them.”

Priam nodded, “I’ve heard that your goop can do amazing feats of healing if properly distilled down.”

“You’re right,” Dee said as she smiled at Priam. “What a smart, cute Oslia. Aren’t you?”

Priam felt himself blush and pulled down his hat, “I’m smart…not cute…I’m handsome…”

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She giggled as the acid finished eating through the floor. Thanks to the air pressure in the room the water remained relatively still and did not come rushing in. “Right, how does this Killer Whale thing work?” As she said this, her fingers began to glow purple.

Xera’s voice came over the comms, “Welcome to the faction, Deasyl Luna. You all need to escape, ASAP. Jace is almost at the servers. You need to secure the exit strategy.”

“That’s tough,” Greg replied as he put on his oxygen mask and helped Priam with his. “We have to go up to the island and steal a boat.”

“Steal?” Dee said as her ‘eyes’: well, the two, small crystals of the chitin’s covering where her eyes would be: lit up. “I can do that! Let’s get the biggest boat we can find!” She dove into the hole, and Greg grabbed Priam, “Barrier ready?”

Priam nodded, and instinctively took in a deep breath as Greg jumped down with him in one hand and the pod-thing in the other. They maneuvered out from under the sinking cube and joined up with Dee who grabbed on.

Greg tapped some buttons and a propeller inside the vehicle spun around before tugging the trio up towards the surface.

Jace had dodged a few more of those ‘Rods from God’ that had been directed at him: but at this point he was moving fast enough that they were not a real threat. The slime thing I fought wasn’t an Aspirant, he thought. It didn’t have a Cosmic Power symbol even after its invisibility thing faded. “What was it?” he muttered.

“Hmm?” Ollie asked.

“The slime thing.”

“That was a biomechanical organism created by the Nebula Alliance. They use them for assassination contracts. It was a programmable drone, effectively. They are great assassins, because they melt away the corpse. And they are disposable since they leave no remains to track, dissect, or trace.”

Making life just to use it for assassinating people? That’s screwed up. Jace kept running and got to the far side of the island. More mechs were in the way, and as he paused on a rooftop to catch his breath, a notification popped into his vision. Good, they made it out.

Quinn had reached out a few minutes before and had conveyed the need for his (Equipment) Boon to be transferred. Now, he had received an update that it had worked and his allies were on the way to a dock to hijack a boat for their escape. I just have to do my part and get to that server. Then I can get to the boat and we can get the hell out of here.

“They’re clear. No need to advertise I’m here. Dark Matter Cloak (Rank 3).” Jace vanished, and jumped down from the roof, slipped past the mech squads, and swiftly cut a hole through a building’s closed door.

Only to be met by an enormous blast of flame. It was so voluminous and came out in such a rush that it blew him back into the street, and he felt tired as the energy drain was substantial from his Shield absorbing the impact.

The mechs surrounding him all trained their guns where he was laying. Crap! Rolling back, he fired off his grapnel and pulled himself up to one of the building’s roofs as the place where he had been laying was torn apart by a hail of bullets.

“Oh, come on! You don’t want to play with us a bit?” A voice shouted out as a human, Star-symbol wielding Aspirant or Ascendant walked out of the building Jace had cut an entry into. There was a Wayfinder floating next to him: a very aggressive looking crocodile that looked right at where Jace was standing.

“Can he see us?” Jace asked as he jumped to another rooftop.

“The Aspirant? No. The Wayfinder? It should not be able to.”

“Then how is it tracking me?” Jace asked as the Wayfinder kept staring seemingly into his eyes.

“I will try to find out.”

The Aspirant began shouting orders, and the mechs all turned towards where Jace was. Crap. He ran along the rooftops of the artificial city as thousands of rounds of ammunition were fired in his direction. The Aspirant was directing their line of fire.

“Ollie?” Jace shouted as he ran out of roof-space to run across, and leaped across the street, landing in a roll before running down a side street, away from the mech squadron.

“I cannot find out how they are doing it,” Ollie replied, worry tinging his voice.

Xera’s voice came through his mouth a split-second later. “Jace, it’s Ollie’s presence. That Aspirant chose some type of Skill that enables his Wayfinder to track other Wayfinders.”

“Doesn’t Ollie turn invisible and all that stuff?” Jace asked as he turned down another street, heading for the backside of the building that held his destination.

“He does: but he is still a part of The Cosmic System, and can be spotted given a specific Skill. If he goes back to the Starlit Sea-”

“They can see me too, then, right? Because of Cosmic Infusion?”

Xera went silent for a moment before coming back, “That would be accurate. You would have to suppress that Skill to truly vanish. They have a Skill called System Sight, which enables them to see the ‘overlay’ of The Cosmic System on our reality. That, combined with their normal vision, let’s them determine your location.” Her tone shifted to a mutter of annoyance, “If that information gets out, then his Cloak will be practically useless against Aspirants and Ascendants. Unless we do a new Skill Evolution…” she trailed off and became imperceptible.

“Okay. Ollie, get to the Starlit Sea!”

The spectral river otter’s eyes snapped back to normal and he nodded, “Good luck. I’m monitoring you.” He vanished with a pop.

Okay. Cosmic Infusion: turn off for now. Jace felt the change immediately as the world seemed to suddenly speed up, it grew duller, and he could feel the burning strain on his muscles and connective tissue to his prosthetic legs. Oh, wow. That Skill has been keeping all of this from affecting me? He shook his head as he got to the back of the building.

Using his incredibly sharp blade cutting a hole through the concrete wall was easy. Slipping inside was easy, too, as there was no person in sight.

Quinn’s voice came over his earpiece, “I’ve updated the map. Without Ollie to give me access, you’ll have to cut your way through.” The map appeared in front of Jace, and he saw that the server room was directly below the building. “Wait a second…” Quinn went silent for a moment as Jace began to head to the stairs. “Oh, that is devious.”

“What?” Jace replied as he headed down the stairs taking them three at a time with bounding steps.

“The server room is on the ocean floor. The room you’re going to is just the access elevator.”

Jace encountered a locked door that he swiftly sliced through, only to be met by a blast of molten metal and rock that drained his energy precipitously. Someone had been waiting on the opposite side, and Jace ducked up the staircase as he shook off the pyroclastic slurry.

A voice echoed out, “Got past my brother, did you?” The female voice was a near-perfect mirror of the male voice Jace had heard above. “This is a tunnel, you’re fucked!”

That’s what you think, Jace thought as he went down the stairs once more. The human woman was wearing Enduralife Enterprises attire, equipped with some suit of futuristic-looking metal armor. Jace threw his invisible blade, and it caught the woman in the chest. She coughed up blood before collapsing. Jace recalled the sword and walked over to the person, kneeling. Dust her.

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[Stardust Acquired: 50]

[Stardust Split: 10]

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5-way split? I guess this Signer is officially in the group. Jace stepped over the blood stain on the ground and had to carve through a few more doors. They must have had all of their security up on the surface level, he thought as the facility was very empty down here. “Quinn, do you know where all the security is?”

“Looks like they’re dealing with the situation at the docks. Let’s just say this new Dee person? She is good at drawing attention.”

Jace heard a noise behind him, and turning, saw the male Aspirant from above, flanked by Enduralife soldiers. “What did you do to my sister!”

It’s okay, he can’t see or track me. Jace threw his sword, and the [Astral Annihilator] Evolution on his Swordmage Stance caused the blade to pierce the invisible barrier surrounding the man. The extremely sharp blade sank into his chest up to the hilt, and the man gurgled slightly as he fell backward.

Jace recalled his sword and kept working his way towards the elevator as the shouts of panicked soldiers echoed out behind him.