Dark Matter Ascension-Chapter 16B3 - : An ancient prison

Tonda, the shrouded sniper, lined up the head shot perfectly, counting down the seconds until the shot was supposed to be taken. Once the governor stepped up to the podium, and began his speech, Tonda lined up on the man’s wife behind him. One shot, five thousand Stardust, he thought as he pulled the trigger.

His shot arced out over ten miles of distance thanks to his location atop one of the highest towers of the ecumenopolis. No one would be able to find him. He collapsed his rifle, put it inside his chassis, and then jumped off the building. As he fell, his body unfolded into a jet-like shape, and he activated the thrusters built into the chassis as he rocketed to the portal leading to The Cosmic Corridor.

A message scrolled across his vision. Oh? A Conclave contract? Pulling up the message, he felt a bit of dismay. Another person on that stupid snow planet? Hmm.

Weighing his options, Tonda knew that the Stardust they were offering was decent, but he had already lost a chassis on that world getting one contract dealt with. But, that was a Signer for the secretive Dark Between Stars. Looking at the video feed that came along with the information, he saw a black-armored figure, standing on a field of glass, with Star and Gigastar power symbols. They were fighting an enormous crab, then the video feed cut.

Interesting, Tonda thought. Some Aspirant or Ascendant that the Conclave doesn’t want to or cannot deal with. Well, sure, let’s take this contract. He responded as he got into the Corridor, and went right back to his apartment.

Swapping to his current chassis’ bipedal form, he stepped into the prepared recharging platform, and then transferred his consciousness to the drone-sniper chassis. Taking off and flying fast for Poltor Six, he emerged into the skies of the icy and snow laden planet. Tracking a Star user should be easy, he thought as he went towards the last sighted destination.

Jace arrived at the next Complex, but this one was far different. It was not built into the ground or terrain like others: this was a massive, stone and steel building shaped like a castle. There were outer walls, crusted with ice and rime. Storing the hypercycle in the TPSB, he shot out the Ghostlight Grapnel and pulled himself up over the wall. There was a snowed-in courtyard that led to a central complex; the same height as the walls studded with small towers.

Dropping down the incline and sliding to a halt, he went to the wall and received a System notification.

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[Warning! You are about to enter a Complex!]

[This location has been marked by The Cosmic System as Tier 8.]

[Number of foes to clear out: 10.]

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[Quest: Clear the prison complex.]

[Time Limit: N/A.] 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶

[Reward: Epic (Augmentation) Boon.]

[Sender: The Cosmic System.]

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Jace cut through the wall and saw the concrete shift slightly but ultimately hold in place. Walking into the facility he willed Void Blade (Rank 5) [Rending] to activate. “Prisons,” he muttered as he shook his head.

Bad memories of them? Ollie asked in his head.

“No,” Jace replied as he began walking down one of the dark, cold corridors; his metal-armored boots surprisingly quiet as he made his way to what he imagined was a front entrance, given the exterior of the building. “I just know the corps put people inside prisons. Until they could be used.”

Sounds grim.

“Yeah,” Jace replied. “Not as bad as the skin-pits from what I heard on the street, but still abysmal.” He reached a metal door and tried the handle, finding it locked. Cutting through it, he kicked it down and found himself in a cage with another door. Cutting through that one, he emerged into what looked like a prisoner intake area. There were cubby holes in the walls, a large examination table, chairs with restraint straps, and a desk with an inert console.

Jace looked at the console and Edge of Possibility (Rank 3) activated as he instantly understood what was wrong with the device. “The power supply is just disconnected,” he muttered as his eyes followed a cable behind the device. Tracing it along the floor, he found it had been cut through. “No fixing that without some specialized tools.”

Standing up, he looked through the desk until he found what he was looking for: a guard manual of some type. Flipping through it, and letting Universal Translation do its thing, he was able to learn the layout of the facility. A lot of it was underground, and this ground floor he had entered on was intake and workspace for the guards and other personnel. There were living quarters upstairs on the second floor, and then a massive elevator that descended down to the prisoner levels.

Jace left the pamphlet and walked over to the next series of security doors, hacking away at them as he made his way to the elevator that would lead deeper to where the prisoners were kept. It only makes sense, he thought, that these foes that need to be cleared out would be people forgotten about during the cataclysm that ended the world.

Oh, Ollie stated in his thoughts, you would think that. But Cosmogenic Merging happened when Xera forced it. Which means that these people chose to remain, or are not people anymore.

“Experimented on?” Jace asked as he presumed the worst-case scenario.

Perhaps. Test subjects to see if there was a way to alter physiology to survive intense cold on the surface of a soon-to-be-frozen world.

Jace reached the elevator shaft and found the elevator at the top, with a set of stairs going up to the right. “Let’s check upstairs first,” he said as he walked up the stone steps. The upstairs living quarters were about what he expected: a few personal terminals, a workout area, bedrooms, a kitchen and commissary space, and a recreation area. But nothing that indicated this was anything more than a place for staff to sleep and recover.

Heading back to the elevator, he stopped as he noticed the slightest bit of swaying back the direction he had come from. “Ollie, remove my Edge’s Intuition restrictions so I can sense everything in range.”

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

On it!

Jace felt his awareness expand as he could feel everything in a twenty-five foot radius. As if his consciousness was expanded and he was looking down at himself and the surrounding area: including the ground underneath. Something was in the entry area that he had gone into. Void Shield (Rank 6), he thought as the grey barrier popped into existence around his body. Going forward, he knew exactly where this thing was.

Rushing forward with a sudden burst of speed, he lashed out and chopped at a heavily-bundled and robed figure that was holding some type of firearm. For a brief instant, he saw the Black Hole power symbol on their hand before that vanished as they fell, dead. “Dust them,” Jace instructed.

You must touch them with your symbol-hand. I cannot do it from range unless I’m in tether mode: which is not an option right now.

Jace reached down and did so, feeling the corpse vanish as a rush of energy surged into his palm in a wave of glittering, blue-and-white starlight.

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[Stardust Acquired: 30]

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He did not sense anything else, but elected to travel back to the entrance he had cut into the wall. A vehicle hovered in place, slowly collecting little bits of sleet and rime except where the heating elements were. A hoverbike. Jace walked over to it, “Didn’t count as Equipment?” he asked.

No. You can take it, but the TPSB is almost full.

“I don’t need it,” Jace replied as he cut through it and the vehicle fell, inert, to the snow and ice. He saw the rime start to build upon it, and knew it would be buried soon enough. Returning to the prison interior, he headed to the elevator shaft. “Ollie, keep an eye on Edge’s Intuition for me. If things get overwhelming to track, can you manage that stuff?”

Yup!

Jace walked into the elevator, “No power,” he stated. Cutting a hole in the center of the conveyance, he saw down into the darkness and could make out different landings with sets of doors. Planting his hand and attaching the grapnel line, he lowered himself down to the first set of doors, swinging himself back and forth to build up momentum until he could plant his legs on the wall and lock in place using the blades on the bottom. From his odd angle, he cut down the center seam of the doors, then punched forward with the hand holding the hilt of the blade. The metal door bent inward, and Jace maneuvered over to the gap.

A long corridor extended down, with procedures written on the walls for a process that Jace was able to understand thanks to Edge of Possibility. “They were doing experiments,” he stated as he walked down the hall and traced his fingers along the lettering. “This was the level where they did the first series of doses to remove the…well, I would say humanity from the prisoners, but they weren’t human.”

Interesting, Ollie stated in his mind. There is no note as to the type of criminals used. It could have been simple crimes for all we know.

The idea that that was a possibility disgusted Jace, and he scowled as he walked past several rooms and opened them, finding chairs with restraints, tables with similar shackling devices, and saw all manner of tubes filled with long-since-frozen chemical compounds. Room upon room until he reached the farthest end, which looked to be an office of some type.

There were no paper records he could find, and the consoles were all dormant. “We’ve got that Common (Secret Cache) Boon sitting around, right? Let’s see if it helps us find anything here.”

You got it!

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[Using Boon: Common (Secret Cache).]

[Uploading information to Wayfinder.]

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Got something! Back to the elevator, and down…a hundred feet. Bottom floor it looks like.

Jace returned to the elevator and descended, taking note of the state of pristine intactness each floor’s doors had. “Whatever was in here either did not or could not try to escape.” Glancing up at the elevator’s bottom, he knew even if these people had broken free, they would not have been able to escape. “Smart design,” he muttered.

The bottom floor was flat, polished stone, and a set of doors stood before him: just like the doors on every other floor he had passed. Ollie spoke in his mind again, remember, traps might be around. And your Void Shield is still slowly sucking up energy.

“I’ve got enough stockpiled in the Primal Hide to keep it going, what, for fifteen minutes straight?”

Yup.

Jace used his sword to cut through the doors, punched his way through the center seam, and was hit with a stale scent. He immediately sensed the figures inside of cells that were locked off by doors: a solitary confinement of sorts. Windows showed what was in each room, and he saw weird frog-like creatures: a large, central torso, two arms that came out just under the bulb-like head that sat atop the center, and thick, powerful legs.

These are what the residents of the world looked like, Ollie stated. The Guatch species. But these ones are much bulkier than their peers, which are normally leaner.

Jace felt a pang of sorrow for these things; trapped for who-knows how long. “How’d they survive?” he asked. “I don’t see a food chute or anything like that.”

Maybe more information at the end of the hall?

Jace followed the hallway down to a door and opened it, finding another office space. This one did not have any paper records either, but Ollie used his helmet’s HUD to highlight a hidden trapdoor in the floor, near the corner of the room. Going over and lifting the panel, he pulled out a series of small, leather-bound journals that seemed to have survived more-or-less intact. Carefully flipping through the pages, the purpose of the prison came to light.

It was a research location. They were experimenting on prisoners who were sentenced to death for various heinous crimes like murder, terrorism, and fanatical sacrifices of innocents. At least they deserved what they got, Jace thought as all compassion for the prisoners was dashed away as he read the various crimes the ten prisoners were interred for committing.

The experiments involved trying to make the Guatch adapt to the point where they could be frozen whilst alive, effectively putting themselves in stasis until their world, hopefully, got caught in the orbit of another star capable of heating the world.

“That explains why they didn’t get to choose during Cosmogenic Merging,” Jace muttered. “They were in stasis.”

Yup! Those people get their decision once they come out of stasis. We can only hold a world still for so long while people make their decision. After a two-minute timer, the world has to resume.

“If we woke them up somehow, would they get the choice?”

Yup!

Jace sighed, “Either kill them while they’re in this weird stasis: which, given these crimes? Is warranted. Or let them take their shot in the System.”

Xera’s voice came over the comms, “I leave it to your discretion, Jace. Some of them may truly regret their actions, some of them may be completely unhinged. You have to make a judgement call. Either give them that chance, or snuff them out.”

Jace put the journals down and stood up as he turned to the hallway, “The Cosmogenic Merging happens right when they come out of stasis? Can I have a chance to talk to them? See if they really do regret what they did?”

“That’s not how it works,” Xera stated. “Either kill them, or release them from stasis and let them choose. If they do choose Civilian, they will most likely die of cold exposure. I would imagine they all do the Aspirant Trial.”

“They should get the choice,” Jace said. “Everyone deserves a second chance.” Glancing back at the pile of notebooks, he recalled with perfect accuracy: maybe thanks to Ollie being in his brain, maybe because of the Edge of Possibility, he wasn’t sure: but he knew one exception had to be made. “The serial killer dies. The rest? They get another chance.”

He walked down the hallway and cut open the door to the chamber holding the serial killer. Walking up, he chopped its head off. “Now…to figure out how to lift the stasis from the other ones.”

Ollie’s voice spoke in his thoughts again, Use your Void Counter at (Rank 6) to disable the effect. It’s technically a spell-like Skill.

Jace went from chamber to chamber, repeating Void Counter (Rank 6). Each time, he felt more winded, and let his Void Shield fade. Each time, the frog-person sat up, froze in place, and then vanished with a pop just how Ollie did. After a few minutes, the Complex was cleared and Jace was bone tired. As the notifications popped up, he went to dust the one he had killed.

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[Quest: Clear the prison complex.]

[Time Limit: N/A.]

[Reward: Epic (Augmentation) Boon.]

[Sender: The Cosmic System.]

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[Stardust Acquired: 40]

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Jace used his grapnel to ascend back to the elevator and made his way outside of the Complex. A familiar whirring noise hit his ears, and he felt a pang of fear as he knew whatever drone had hunted him before was back.