Fabricated Chapter Thirty Four

They’ve been keeping an eye on things outside the campus, on the news and the half truths. Things are slowly ramping up. People disappearing, lights in the sky, stories passed off as eccentric but that PC recognizes as textbook from the false Enemy Within days. 

 

When the first real public landing happens, with pictures and speculation, too much for the government to cover up and too blatantly otherworldly to be seen as anything else, PC thinks it’s time. They don’t want to wait for terror missions to start. If they wait for that, then it’s far too late. They need to move now, he says, and everyone agrees.

 

The humans have over the weeks gathered up makeshift armor under the direction of PC (layers of clothes, leather jackets, soccer cleats), carry small dutifully assembled medkits on their waists, hold their weapons close as Alice approaches the Psi Gate with Outsider Shard in paw.  She pauses, looks to PC.

 

“Are you sure?” she asks. “Now?”

 

He glances at the humans, who nod; at the Spartan, who nods as well. 

 

“Yeah,” he says. “Now.”

 

He sees her close her eyes for a moment, regular :3 mouth turning into one much sadder, and then she lifts the shard toward the empty space of the Psi Gate. The Shard sparks, the Gate awakens with a hum, and there is the strange underwater facility once again, now looking much more like it does in the game. 

 

“Ok,” he says, “after me, I guess.” 

 

“After you,” says Tulip, whose normally brave voice wavers slightly. 

 

“No,” says the Spartan, stepping up behind Alice, “after me.” And before anyone can complain or argue, it has stepped around the doorstop cat and through the Gate, taking a few paces forward before pausing and looking back at them. 

 

“Somebody wants to play leader,” says Espeon, nestled on PC’s shoulder. He does not answer, tightens his grip on his gun as he follows, hurriedly closing the distance between himself and the Spartan. The humans come after, steps slow and cautious as they gaze around the long room.

 

As he stands there looking, he feels Eylion pull at his self, and jump up — he can see in the same manner as one would in the game, and he’s grateful. Keep it like this unless I ask otherwise, he says to it.

 

Understood, says Eylion, and then is silent again. 

 

“I don’t get it,” says Tulip. “What kind of glass is that even?” She nods at the sides of the room, where fish pass by and give the feeling they’ve entered some kind of strange aquarium. 

 

“Unearthly,” says the Spartan. “Stronger then anything your planet has.”

 

“It must have been here for a while,” says Alex, sniffling around some blood. “The Psi Gate was, right?”

 

“In game, sure,” says PC, tailing the Spartan as it moves up into the room with the roof and generators, pressing himself against one of the walls. “It was just out in the wilderness...I don’t know if that’s the case here.”

 

He sees Alex freeze, feels imaginary hair on an imaginary neck stand up as a voice rings out across the room in answer: “We have been here longer then you have been Awake. Our mechanisms outdate you, outdate your ‘game’.”

 

“Ah,” PC says, moving to the other side of the doorway of the generator area to mirror the Spartan, “so you’re just as chatty here as you are in Leviathan.”

 

“And you are as stubbornly unheeding as those who’ve listened to the fictional versions of us,” says the Elder. It sounds almost amused. “They got much of our thinking right in your game. But we are ever more merciful then even that.”

 

“Sure you are,” says Davey, a few paces away from PC now, behind a generator. Alex and Tulip take up positions across from him, behind support beams. 

 

“We could have taken your world at any moment,” the Elder continues. “But we have waited. And we have learned. And we are so very welcoming to compromise.”

 

“The only good compromise with you floaty fucks is a one where ya’ll are dead as hell,” Espeon says, jumping down from PC’s shoulder now to skitter into the next room. He calls softly after her, ‘be careful’, and the Elders laugh melodic.

 

“You intrigue us,” they say. “Little creature of fabric and polyfill... human creation that should not move or think or live and yet does. Something lower then even your makers and yet so arrogantly believing you can challenge what will come.”

 

A tsk noise. “Things can be different then the game, you know. We are kind and willing. Put down your weapons and come in peace.”

 

Espeon snorts from where she stalks ahead a few paces. “We’re not that stupid,” she says. 

 

“And yet you come here,” says the Elders; it sounds as if a different member is speaking now. “Why you, who do not even wear the armor of your militaries? You have no training and will die without anyone knowing of your efforts.” A pause. “And then you, ‘Spartan’, why do you not just go home? This planet and its people you have have no alliance to. Surely you are missed elsewhere.”

 

“I was helped,” it says. “I wish to return the favor.”

 

Haughty silence for a while. Then: “Of course we find humor in the actions of the unalive beings. You fight only because you believe your owners infallible. What can you do? Our weapons will destroy you the moment they are fired. Why did you not stay home and comfort, like you are made to do?”

 

“Someone has to do something,” PC says, and he tries not to let his voice shake. 

 

“Do you think that it must be you? Someone not even allowed to exist in whole?” There is another pause. “One of us remains in you. This deeply saddens us. You could do so much better. You could live so much longer. Come, Young one, there is much to be done.”

 

Eylion growls, but does not show itself. 

 

“We already killed your gatekeeper,” PC says. “I think that’s more then enough of an answer.”

 

“I suppose it is,” answers the Elder. “We may as well get this over with, in that case. It pains us, of course, but you leave us no choice.” 

 

There is a sudden swirl of psionic matter at the center of the next room Espeon has entered, the latter scrambling back until she’s at PC’s feet; the swirl condenses with a clap and at its center reveals a bright purple gash in reality from which three Mutons and two sectoids emerge.

 

“Oh, we’re really in it now,” Espeon says, firing off a Psybeam and killing one sectoid mid stride as it dashes for cover.

 

“Hostiles!” PC shouts as the Mutons charge at the doorway, and the relative quiet shatters.