The quaking voice calling out his name caused the senior researcher to start. He had been wandering round the outside of the island, listening to the screeching of the gulls and enjoying the calming breeze of the sea air. He had stepped out of the sliver labs for a while to collect his thoughts, the cloying air and unbearable heat created by the machines too much to bear. Of course, though, there was never much time to relax here.
The Riptide Laboratory was situated on a remote island off the coast of Otaria, a perfect location for their fossil experiments, out of sight and out of mind of those native to the continent. The project had been designed as a way of restoring to life all the species lost before the Phyrexian Wars, during the overlay of Rath onto Dominaria. They had been and collected many specimens from the ruins of the Stronghold, and were now attempting to revive some of the creatures lost to time. Some wizards welcomed the project as a pioneering attempt to research and understand ancient history; others thought they were playing too close to the fire, and had damned the project as unnatural and dangerous.
Pemmin turned around to see a young apprentice running towards him, hair tousled and out of breath, but desperate to seem professional. He stood up straight and bowed his head. "Pemmin, sir, excuse me for bothering you, but you're wanted back down in the sliver labs. I've been given a message. They've had a breakthrough with specimen XR17."
"XR17? Excellent," Pemmin replied, taking a last look at the clear blue sky before clapping the apprentice on the shoulder and walking back towards the laboratory. "We've been trying for weeks to discover how its power works."
"Apparently it's significant," the apprentice chipped in, trotting along beside him, eager to please. "I heard them talking."He looked no more than twenty, and seemed to be impressionable, and Pemmin would bet his last gold piece that he'd been on the island less than a week. Nobody who had been here any longer retained that positive, upbeat attitude, not after the months of grinding research that wore one down and made them permanently exhausted, or the long nights alone listening to the sea beat itself endlessly against the rocks.
"I should hope so, for you to have been sent out here to disturb me," Pemmin replied, and the apprentice looked abashed for a moment before Pemmin winked at him, and he regained his bubbly smile. "What's your name, son?"
"Faral," the boy replied, almost bouncing off the ground, so excited that a senior researcher such as Pemmin would care to know who he was.
"Well, Faral, thank you for coming to fetch me so briskly," Pemmin said as they passed through the main laboratory entrance. "I'll be sure to watch out for you in future."
"Yes, sir. Thank you, sir!" Faral almost tripped over himself in his haste to express his gratitude, and then with a bow, stepped backwards and almost fled from his presence. Pemmin chuckled to himself; the boy would soon settle in to life on the island, and perhaps learn that one need not be as observant of propriety as they would on the mainland. After all, each one of them were brothers, stuck out here together until they could seek out all the secrets they had been so desperate to discover.
Pemmin made his way past the communal areas and down a corridor to the left-hand side of the entrance hall, nodding at several other researchers as he passed. Being a senior project leader and powerful wizard, he was well-known around the laboratory with his signature short, trimmed grey goatee and ruffled silver hair. He knew he was past his prime, but took the view that with increased age came exponentially increasing wisdom, and had never once wished for the clocks to run backwards.
He turned a corner and continued down a flight of stairs. The walls and ceiling were illuminated with thin strips of light at their corners, which ran along the entire corridor, but these were clogged up with grime and it made the passages quite dingy. He had made it into the laboratory proper now, and the heat began to trickle upwards at a gradually higher temperature as he descended, causing him to wipe sweat from his forehead. They really had to do something about the heat, but despite their directors working on the case, no matter what magic they had tried to cool it down, the machines kept blasting their efforts into nothing and the burning heat remained. Of course, turning anything off was out of the question; the research was far too important, and so, they had learned to cope.
Pemmin reached the bottom of the stairs and the heat became overwhelming. He swallowed, took a deep breath and continued, trying to ignore it. XR17. There had been a breakthrough. Consider the implications of what this could mean for the sliver project. Do not think about the temperature, it is only a distraction.
He stepped along the passageway, the sound of his feet echoing along the walls. Doors lined his left and right, marked with numbers referencing their contents; this was the department which contained the live experiments, and each door was carefully numbered and monitored so they would know if anything strange was occurring, and could reach the source quickly.
Eventually, he arrived at an open door, and peered inside to find his partner hard at work. Senior researcher Nathron had been on the island as long as he, since the very beginning, and they had been working hard together on the sliver project as the main two researchers in charge of it. It had been at their behest that the sliver fossils were recovered, as they both felt that the slivers could have been a vital part of life on Rath before their destruction, and were keen to observe the species. Pemmin had done a lot of research but due to Volrath's power, much of the lore on slivers had been destroyed, so they were essentially starting from scratch when examining the creatures.
"I heard there was news," Pemmin announced from the doorway, and his colleague looked up, startled.
"Pemmin! Yes! I've done it - I've found out how XR17 operates!" Nathron scrambled up and led him over to the tank in the corner of the room, where the creature sat, watching them with distrustful, slitted eyes and hissing as it shrank away. They had successfully resurrected sixty sliver creatures so far, and had yet to find out how exactly they worked. It seemed that they could communicate with one another, as their brains ran on identical frequencies, and often they had been in separate rooms with the specimens behaving in exactly the same manner, which had led them to believe they had some sort of telepathic connection, but as yet, they had not discovered how it worked, or what purpose it served.
"Species XR17 feeds upon the mental energies of its victims. This explains why goblins remain unaffected," Nathron said with a gleam in his eye. "It draws mental power from its prey and uses it to directly feed the shared consciousness of the creatures."
"Of course!" Pemmin exclaimed. "The synapse theory was correct, then?"
"Indeed," Nathron replied, watching the sliver with fascination as it scuttled into a corner of the tank. "I knew we had dismissed it too quickly, so I took another look at it, and from the examination of the creature's brain waves when feeding it, it is clear that it is actually absorbing the psychic power of its prey and using it to directly increase the clarity of its own kind's shared psyche. What a fascinating evolution!"
"That's incredible," Pemmin murmured, considering the implications of such a discovery. "So could it be that creatures such as this one are what stimulate and power the larger consciousness of the hive?"
"Possibly," his colleague said, "but we will need to conduct more research before we can consider that as fact. It certainly seems likely at this stage, though."
"So they are linked together by this...shared mental drive," Pemmin said, mapping it out in his head as he spoke, "which controls them. Each of the creatures is affected by the actions of the others. Which begs the question, what controls the hive mind itself?"
"How do you mean?" asked his partner, straightening up and looking at him with a serious expression.
"Well," Pemmin said, turning his back on the tank and walking over to the table which was full of scattered notes and pages of calculations. "The idea that all of these creatures could exist with a shared mind is an incredible concept in itself. However, we know that in nature, that sort of hive mind cannot occur nor function without a leader - without some sort of control, or it cannot organise itself."
"That depends," Nathron argued, "if the hive mind is self-aware then it could control itself."
"Do you consider that the slivers' shared psyche is advanced enough for that? After all, they are technically very primitive creatures; if they had become evolved enough for the hive to organise itself, do you not think they could have avoided extinction?" Pemmin urged his colleague to follow his train of thought.
"So you think that..." the other wizard's eyes widened.
"Yes," Pemmin said, grasping his colleague's shoulders. "There has to be a leader. Something we're missing, the last link in the chain. We have to find it, and recreate it - think of what this discovery could mean for our research! A sliver so powerful, and sentient, that it can control the actions of all other slivers around it. A sliver that calls others to its presence and perhaps even creates them. What I would give to see such a creature!"
"Then let's start working on finding it," Nathron said. "There must have been one, once. Have we recovered its remains?"
"I don't think so," Pemmin said sadly. "We've used up most of the fossil supplies, and of what we have left, none of it has new DNA within it."
"Then we shall have to fuse some fossils together," Nathron replied. "Somehow, we have to make this being a reality. It would be the culmination - the pinnacle of all our research."
"And in the meantime? Do we continue with the sliver project?"
"Yes," Nathron said. "There's no reason to halt our research on the other specimens. For all we know, one of them could hold the key to the creation of this new beast. If we could find a way to tap into the hive mind, or observe its patterns, perhaps we could work out what it wants, and use it to form a controller."
"I'll get to work immediately," Pemmin said. "You start research on the new sliver - XS21. I will go and see to the other specimens, conduct the hourly checks and see whether I can glean any new insights on their mental state."
"Take a look at XQ12," Nathron called out as Pemmin made to leave, "it was behaving strangely earlier on, pacing about its tank all morning. I'm worried about it - and it might have some clues, if it is tapped into the hive mind. Perhaps with the more slivers we bring to life, the stronger the shared consciousness becomes and the more likely we are to be able to access it."
Pemmin nodded at his partner and left the room, closing the door carefully behind him and wiping beads of sweat from his forehead, affected once again by the sweltering heat. He turned right and carried on down the passage, further into the depths of the laboratory, his brain whirring with ideas. A conscious, sentient sliver! The thought was too exciting to imagine. Could they recreate it? They would go down in history if they did, as the researchers that managed to bring to life an entire, fully functioning species once thought extinct forever.
He reached the door which housed XQ12 and carefully let himself in. XQ12 was a strange specimen that was able to change its colour and form; they had documented it a while ago, but were unable to do much more research as it was incredibly skittish and would reduce itself to almost nothing upon seeing them approach it. Its abilities were fascinating, and Pemmin sorely wished they could examine it further, but he had no wish to harm the creature by forcing it to remain still, nor any guarantee that it would even work. And killing it was out of the question; they had spent enough time trying to revive these creatures, they could not undo all their tireless hours of effort.
"Good afternoon," Pemmin greeted the creature, which watched him with large, wary eyes as he entered the room. "How are you feeling today, hmm?"
The sliver did not move, it just sat in the corner of its tank, its muscles tensed as if ready to flee at any moment. His presence made it unbearably nervous, he knew, and was sorry for the distress he was causing it, but it was vital that they collected this data. This was the only specimen of its kind which had been successfully revived.
"Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you," Pemmin said kindly, reaching out a hand towards the tank, but at the movement the sliver shrank away even more and emitted a strange whispering noise. The wizard sighed; he knew what was coming when that noise began and sure enough, within a second the sliver had disappeared. It hadn't actually gone, he knew; it couldn't teleport itself out of the tank. It had simply reduced itself to the size of a pebble, and changed its colour to match the surroundings of the tank. He would not find it, not unless it wanted to be found.
He cursed it for being so afraid of him, and turned his back on the tank to focus on the readings from the machines in the room. They had detected unusual mental activity that morning, he noted, as Nathron had mentioned; it had been very excitable. Its brainwaves had amplified, and the faint trace of consciousness which was the presence of the hive mind in its brain had increased substantially in strength. Pemmin eagerly noted down the results, excited that they may be on the cusp of discovering the meaning behind their shared psyche and more about the fabled creature that might control it.
He worked for hours in the room, letting himself get carried away with thoughts and ideas, recording the data from XQ12's monitor and calculating the repercussions for their research. It seemed that the psyche of the hive had had a surge in activity that morning, possibly after the discovery of XR17's ability; if it had been feeding psychic power into the other slivers, their brain activity would also have increased. He made a note to check the rest of the sliver labs before retiring in order to ascertain whether this phenomenon had occurred, because if it had, it lent substantial credit to their theory about the abilities of XR17.
Much later, after the sun had set, Pemmin stood and stretched, suddenly realising how long he had been working and how hot he was. It was time to finish for the night. Reluctantly, he gathered up the materials he had been working on and swept the table clean. He would take the papers back to his room to read over his findings, and then tomorrow morning he would go through the results with Nathron. He glanced over his shoulder to see that while he had been working, XQ12 had returned to its original form and was quietly sleeping in the corner of its tank, as far away from him as it could manage. He smiled a little; it was obviously comfortable enough to fall asleep with him in the room, and that was a positive sign. Perhaps, in time, it would be able to trust him.
As he made his way back along the passage, Pemmin remembered his resolution and made sure to check in on each sliver lab as he passed. Most of the specimens were asleep, and those that weren't watched him with either wary or ferocious eyes. It was another interesting point, he thought as he noted down the activity of XS22, that some slivers were afraid of him and others wanted to eat him. He was unsure what caused the vast difference in personality of the creatures, particularly since they all seemed to be linked mentally; it was certainly something else to ponder. He could study these creatures for several lifetimes, Pemmin thought as he left the room, and he was sure he would still not understand them.
He passed out of the sliver labs and into the other section of the live experiment wing; this was much like their own project, but nowhere near as extensive. They were merely attempting to revive fossils in order to re-establish ancient creatures that were already known about - the slivers were an entirely new entity that had never originally existed on Dominaria, and therefore required much meticulous research.
"I told you to pick his brain, not rip off his head!" came an echoing voice from one of the labs, followed by the stuttered flow of apologies from a meek apprentice. Pemmin chuckled. Late at night was when they generally let the juniors and apprentices practice magic on each other and some of the hardier specimens in the live labs; obviously one of the younger apprentices had put too much energy into a spell. He looked at his own hands and flexed his fingers. He didn't use magic often, being a researcher; he was far more interested in the study of nature than of the arcane. He had been hungry for power in his youth, though, and amassed quite an artillery of spells; if necessary he knew he still retained the powerful magic he had learnt as a young apprentice in Otaria.
Suddenly, he had a thought, and after ascending the staircase out of the live labs, he veered off to the right and followed the passage through to the apprentices' quarters. Upon entering the common room, several startled young men looked up and panicked at his presence, scrambling to stand up and greet him.
He held up his hands and smiled warmly. "I'm just here looking for Faral," he said. "Do any of you know where I might find him?"
"I can fetch him for you, sir," another apprentice said, tripping over his own feet in his haste to help. He scuttled up the stairs into the dormitories and vanished. For a moment there was silence in the room as Pemmin stood by the entrance and all the apprentices watched him warily.
"You can all go back to your evening, don't mind me," he said, smiling at them once more, and gradually conversation started up as they relaxed a little. Soon enough, the boy who had run off to fetch Faral reappeared with Faral trailing behind him, looking incredibly nervous. He approached Pemmin and bowed his head.
"Hello, Pemmin, sir," he said in a timid tone.
"Good evening, Faral. I was wondering if you could help me with something," Pemmin said, and immediately the boy looked up, all trace of nervousness vanished and excitement in its place.
"Yes, sir, of course, anything!"
"It will require you to be awake for most of the night. Can you do that?" Pemmin asked. He didn't want to make the boy do anything he wasn't willing to.
"Yes, Pemmin, I'll do it, I'd love to," Faral said eagerly.
"Right then," Pemmin said, and motioned for him to follow. He took Faral back down to the sliver labs, leaving a ring of stunned apprentices in the common room, and showed him the numbered door system in the lab. "Each of these rooms is designated to a specific species. We keep them apart so they are easily reachable and everyone knows exactly where everything is. Here is a list; it shows you which slivers are in which rooms. Now, what I need you to do is feed specimen XR17 - you see the number on the room there, yes - at around midnight. The food is in a container in the corner of its tank; just press the switch to release it. Then, go into each of the other rooms and for the next half an hour monitor the brain activity of each other sliver. It'll all be on the machines for you, all you have to do is write down the readings for me. When you've done that, bring what you've recorded up to my quarters and slip them under the door."
Faral took the list and scrutinised it, nodding at everything Pemmin told him. "Yes, sir, no problem at all. I'll do everything and have it under your door by tomorrow morning."
"Great, thank you very much. This research is very important, it's helping us understand the power of XR17 and how it affects the other creatures. It might give a lot of weight to our theories that could possibly be presented to ther directors soon," Pemmin said. "If you can help me out with this, I'll make sure they hear your name when we show them our findings."
Faral's eyes widened to the size of saucers and he started nodding even more exuberantly. "I'll do everything you ask, Pemmin!"
"Excellent. I'll leave you here for now, then, to get acquainted with the area a bit. Everything you need is there on the list, and make sure you refer to the notes in each room if you're concerned about a particular specimen; if you get confused then feel free to come and ask me, I will probably still be awake. Have a good night and I shall see you in the morning," Pemmin said, clapping him on the shoulder and turning to leave the sweltering heat of the sliver labs for the last time that night.
Once in his quarters, Pemmin sat down at his desk and took out the notes he had made about XQ12 earlier that day. It was extraordinary, the readings that had come out on the meter; the behaviour that Nathron had witnessed was the result of massive hive mind activity that had whipped it up into a sort of frenzy. He was almost certain that it was a consequence of XR17's feed this morning, and was keen to observe it more. If only they could find a way of making it trust them, breaking the barriers it had erected, they could perhaps get a glimpse into the connections of the hive mind...
Pemmin woke with a start at the sound of a siren. He hadn't intended to sleep, and sat up to find that he had passed out at his desk late the night before. Checking the time, he swore and gathered up his notes, peeling some of the pages off his arms and face where they had stuck during the night. Not bothering to wash his face or trim his beard, Pemmin simply swiped the pages from the table and pelted down the stairs to the main laboratory, cursing himself for sleeping so long, and praying that the alarm wasn't to do with them. It couldn't be.
He burst into the sliver labs and found red warning lights flashing along the strips on the walls. He gritted his teeth - something had gone seriously wrong, it was a red alert. Pemmin ran to XR17's room, where he knew he would find Nathron. Sure enough, as he let himself in, his partner looked up from the table, but the worried expression on his face made Pemmin's heart sink to the ground. "Nathron? What's wrong?"
"It's gone," he said in a low tone. "XQ12. It's vanished."
"Wait - what? XQ12? Are you sure? It could have just diguised itself again-" Pemmin started, but his colleague shook his head.
"No evidence of brain activity in the tank at all. It's vanished, and I don't know how. I raised the alarm. It could be anywhere; the laboratory's on lockdown, nobody goes in or out. They're checking every tank and accounting for all the other specimens right now. I knew that something was wrong with it, after that surge of activity yesterday morning, I could feel it in my bones. I should have been there, I should have monitored it through the night," he said, dropping his head to stare at the table.
"No," Pemmin said fiercely, "this is nobody's fault. We will find it, and we will discover how it slipped out in the first place and lock it up better next time. Do not blame yourself, I am an equal partner at the head of this project and I share all responsibility for the creatures we've created."
"Will we find it, though?" asked Nathron wearily. "The hive mind, Pemmin. Whichever room we're in, the slivers will know, and they will see it. They know it's free. It can tap into the shared consciousness and stay one step ahead, become anything it wants whenever it wants."
"It doesn't know where the food is," Pemmin said, grasping at straws. "It might go back to its tank, to press the switch-"
"Don't be naive, Pemmin," Nathron said heavily, his tired eyes resigned. "We both know what slivers eat. Even the most basic life form has the intelligence to find sustenance. It's only a matter of time before one of us becomes food. Don't you remember what we said when we started this project, at the grand opening? Our discoveries were unprecedented, our success extravagant, and we boasted, "New links are being added to the food chain on a daily basis." Well, now we've done what nobody else has done before, and recreated a master race of slivers - slivers that are at the top of the chain."
Pemmin fell silent. He knew, he had known all along, that this was a risk. In part, it was why he had asked Faral to keep an eye on things last night, so that he would feel more confident - in his heart, and somewhere in his subconscious, he had known that the slivers were getting stronger, and with every new sliver they made, the hive mind's power grew. And now they had made one too many.
"Then we'll have to destroy them," Pemmin finally said, breaking the silence between them, broken only by the distant sound of sirens.
"It can't be the only way," Nathron said. "All that work, Pemmin...all those years...it can't all have been for nothing."
"We'll think of something. For now, come with me. I asked an apprentice to keep an eye on things last night. He couldn't have let the sliver out, he doesn't know how, but perhaps he saw someone or something skulking around and can lead us to a solution."
"Alright," Nathron said in the same heavy tone, pushing himself up off the table and gesturing for Pemmin to lead the way. "I'm no use here in any case."
They made their way up to the apprentices' quarters and spoke to the guard, who was keeping the apprentices inside until the danger was over. He let them through, into the midst of a hundred chattering young men who were swapping fantastical tales about the danger and what had happened. Pemmin spotted Faral among the throng and wended his way over, Nathron cutting a path behind him. None of the apprentices noticed them this time, so caught up were they in the state of emergency.
"Faral!" Pemmin called out, and the young man looked his way, then immediately lowered his eyes. "Come with me, please!"
Faral followed him meekly into one of the dormitories which was empty of people. Pemmin and Nathron stood shoulder to shoulder and faced him questioningly. "Now, Faral, we're not angry. But, if anything strange happened last night, you need to tell us. This is vital and could mean the safety of everyone in the facility. I promise you won't be punished, but you have to tell us if you saw anything out of place, or touched anything you shouldn't have, anything at all."
"Well...I..." Faral stuttered, looking up at both of them with guilt in his eyes and shifting nervously from foot to foot.
"Spit it out," Nathron said impatiently, and Faral stared at him in abject terror.
"Don't mind him, Faral. We just need to know," Pemmin stated again in a kinder tone.
"It was about half past two," Faral began, his voice quiet. "I'd done everything you asked and I was just finishing up looking at the last few sliver cages, when...I heard a voice. I didn't know who it was, but it came from one of the specimen rooms so I went to investigate. It was asking for help."
"Go on," Pemmin encouraged.
"It was in the room with XQ12 in it, the...the one that's gone missing. I didn't know what the sliver does, because there weren't any notes in the room-" Pemmin internally cursed himself for forgetting to leave anything there "-so I tried to be cautious when I went in. I know I'd heard something about it camouflaging itself and tried to remember exactly what it did."
"It can transform, become tiny or huge, change its shape," Pemmin said. "Usually it takes on the colour of the tank and shrinks down when we enter the room, it's very afraid of us."
"Well, I went in, and - there was someone in the tank," Faral said, causing both senior researchers to frown and exchange a glance. "He had the clothes of a junior researcher on, and he was banging on the glass and asking for help. I asked him what he was doing down there, and he told me that he'd been asked to do the rounds, just like I had, for two different sets of data. He'd come into the room and not been able to find the creature, so he'd tried getting in the tank to search, and got stuck."
"I never asked anyone else to patrol the sliver labs," Pemmin said. "What about you, Nathron?" His colleague shook his head mutely, the frown heavy on his face.
"I...I didn't know what to do. There was a person in there, I didn't know him but he was above me in rank and needed my help. I didn't want him to get attacked by the creature if it changed, so I opened the tank and let him out. He thanked me, dusted himself down and left, and that was the last I saw. I went to bed after that."
"You don't think..." Pemmin looked at Nathron, who put his hand over his face in dismay. "No...it's impossible. He was speaking...there's no way it could have..."
"What?" Faral asked, looking between them.
"The 'researcher' you let out was the sliver," Nathron explained from behind his palm. "After the flurry of activity from the hive mind, the increased awareness allowed it to absorb information from its surroundings. The slivers have heard us speaking, enough to mimic it at least. We knew it could turn itself into whatever it liked, but a human form - that's unprecedented, and very, very intelligent. We had no idea they were so advanced."
"They must have heard me asking you to look round," Pemmin said, closing his eyes in despair. "They communicated to it, and as soon as it knew you were close enough, it tricked you."
"Oh God," Faral said, bringing his hands up to his mouth and staring between them. "I did this? Is it all my fault?"
"No, no," Pemmin admonished quickly. "None of us could have predicted this. In all of our research, nothing even hinted that such an event could occur, or I would have never let you near it on your own. Now, what's important is not placing blame but finding the sliver. It could be anyone and it could be anywhere. We need to have the staff checked and every single person accounted for, ID and all. Faral, go and find the directors immediately and tell them that it's a Level 5 alert. Nathron, come with me, we have to go back down to the labs and guard the other specimens, it could be letting them out in the disguise of a guard as we speak."
Faral nodded and took off immediately, followed by the two older researchers. The guards at the entrance of the quarters let them pass, and Pemmin and Nathron descended the stairs once more, pelting as fast as they could go down the corridor into the unbearable heatwave of the laboratory floor.
"Where did they start?" Pemmin asked Nathron urgently. "Which way?"
"They started in the XQ sector where it first broke out, then I imagine they'll make their way through XR and XS," his colleague replied. "Go and check XR, I'll check XS, and one of us might find them."
Pemmin nodded and tore away. Time was of the essence now and it was vital that they find and contain every person in the building before the sliver managed to set its brethren free. He turned a corner and crashed straight into someone coming the other way. They both tumbled to the floor, and Pemmin sat up, rubbing his head and ready to curse whoever had knocked him down. He got a shock, though, when he looked up to see Nathron on his back by the wall where he'd fallen, also rubbing his head confusedly.
"Nathron? What are you doing? You said you'd go to XS sector?"
"XS?" he asked, puzzled. "I've just been checking all the tanks in XQ. They're sealed still, which means only XQ12 has escaped at the moment. They still haven't found out how it got out, though." The researcher got to his feet and straightened up. "But I haven't seen you all morning, how did you know I'd be checking tanks?"
In that moment, it hit him, and Pemmin swore loudly. "Come with me. NOW!"
He sprinted away, not caring if his partner was following. He had to get to XS - some of the largest and most dangerous specimens were in there, and if the creature got there before he did and had started opening the tanks, there would be no hope of containing them.
"Nathron, find the guards. Tell them to get out and seal up the sliver labs. Get all the staff evacuated - the directors should already be on red alert. Start getting the boats ready for departure, this could turn into a mass scale break-out," he panted while running.
"What's going on? The tanks are sealed, surely we'll find the beast..." Nathron really had no idea of what had happened, and Pemmin knew he had no time to explain it. He wheeled round to face his longtime partner and took him by the shoulders.
"Just trust me. We have to get out. This is it for us. I'm not risking anyone's lives in case we can't contain this outbreak. Trust me when I say I know what's best, and everything will be explained to you later," Pemmin said, looking deeply into his colleague's eyes.
Nathron stared back at him, and nodded. "I'll see you up there, then."
"No, you won't," Pemmin said. "This is my mess and I've got to try and sort it. Tell them to seal off the sliver labs the second you get the guards out."
"Pemmin! No!"
"Do it!" the wizard thundered. "This is no time to argue, GET YOURSELF OUT!"
Nathron glared at him, but started off up the corridor, pausing only to look back and say, "It was an honour working with you, Pemmin."
"And you, my friend," the researcher replied, and turned back towards XS sector. He had wasted too much time, he knew, and had to find his way to wherever the creature was. By now, though, it would have changed its form once more - it was sly, and they had been talking loudly. The hive mind would be communicating right now, telling it that he was on his way. What in God's name had they created, Pemmin thought to himself, and what did it want? What was it going to do?
He was stopped in his tracks by a long, shuddering cry echoing from the laboratory ahead of him. Only one creature could have made that noise, and his heart sank into his boots. This really was the end of the Riptide Project. How could they have been so stupid, to underestimate the slivers, to ignore the growing threat of the hive mind? All their research would be reduced to ashes, and the laboratory destroyed for good - and everything was his fault.
The door from the sliver labs wouldn't last long against the behemoth he knew was now free. Pemmin prepared himself to defend the corridor, ready for what would come at him. This was it, now, and he would make up for his mistakes by keeping the slivers in this section as long as possible, until the others could get safely off the island; he was not ready to have anyone die on his account.
Screeches and cacophonous noise began to arise from the depths of XS sector. He could only imagine the army that was approaching - sixty slivers, all strong, and powerful and influenced by the hive mind, invincible in a group and utterly merciless. Without a controller, without something to organise it, the hive mind was only focused on getting free at any cost, getting back to OUTSIDE, where it wasn't dark, and there were no whirring machines and where it wasn't so unbearably, overwhelmingly hot. He felt it in his marrow; the tribe was coming for him, and for them, and there was nowhere to hide on this tiny, desolate island.
Suddenly, he heard footsteps and someone came running down the stairs towards him. "Nathron, I told you - what are you - Faral?"
"I've come to help you, Pemmin, sir," Faral said resolutely, taking his place next to the older wizard, brandishing his hands in readiness. "I was the one who let it out; I'm just as responsible and I'd never forgive myself if I left you here alone."
Pemmin only nodded. The boy had a right to be here, if he wanted to be, and he felt better standing shoulder-to-shoulder with another wizard, even if he was only an apprentice. "Be ready then. They'll soon be here. What's the situation upstairs?"
"The door is sealed. They're readying the boats - some of the apprentices have already been loaded onto the vessels," Faral said. "I left as they were checking the last of the researchers' quarters to make sure nobody was left behind."
"Good," Pemmin said. "We've done everything we can; and now, we wait."
The echoing orchestra of screeches, crashes and thumps from in the distance was harrowing. Pemmin couldn't remember a time when he felt more scared, standing, tense, shoulder to shoulder with Faral and waiting for his own demise to come around the corner. Faral's breathing was heavy and shuddering next to him, and he knew the boy was just as afraid as he, even if he refused to show it.
"How long have you been here, Faral?" he asked offhandedly.
"A week today, sir," the apprentice replied, and Pemmin laughed in spite of himself. He had won his own bet. "Hasn't been a great first week, I'm afraid," Faral continued, and the older wizard laughed even harder.
"At least you'll get a good story out of it," he replied rather weakly, with a faint smile, and Faral grinned at him. "That I will, sir."
Then the apprentice asked him something he wasn't prepared for. "Do you have anyone, back on the continent? Anyone you'll miss?"
Pemmin stopped and thought. There had once been someone, long ago - a face came to mind, but he banished it away. "No. Only Nathron - we've been colleagues for twenty-five years. What about you, Faral?"
"My mum," he said quietly. "A-and my sister. I left, you see, to become a wizard and join the Riptide Project, because they needed the support. My sister's only seven. I guess I wanted to go back someday and see them living in luxury off of my research...from my name, when I was a high-class researcher like you." Faral smiled weakly, and then let it fade.
Pemmin didn't reply. He couldn't. It wasn't until a situation like this happened that all of it really became true, the danger that one faced every day when doing a job like theirs and playing God. There was always an ever-present undercurrent of not knowing, of being afraid of what you were creating, but nobody ever acknowledged it and simply worked on, continuing to research, continuing to recreate and never considering the possibility of it actually happening, because the consequences were simply unthinkable. And now it had, Pemmin couldn't even bring himself to think about the outside world, and what horror they had wrought upon Dominaria.
Suddenly, a screech echoed from ahead and a misshapen sliver tumbled round the corner, bleeding from several gashes and struggling. Another appeared and leapt on top of it, silencing it with a slash to the throat. It began to feed, as it hadn't noticed the two wizards standing at the back of the corridor. Pemmin let the magic within him build itself up and released a whirlwind of ice and hail at the creature, which realised its imminent danger and cried in anger and pain. The ice surrounded it like a storm, and it flailed around helplessly before collapsing in a heap, the sharp shards having sliced its throat open.
"Pemmin...did you see?" Faral whispered. "They were fighting. They're fighting each other. What if...what if the hive mind has broken down? What if they're not working together at all?"
Pemmin's brain was buzzing. The hive mind in disarray? Could it be possible? Without a controller, if the slivers were simply running wild, it was feasible that they could wipe themselves out before they managed to gain a foothold on the island. The two wizards took off running without a moment to spare, wheeling round the two corpses and sprinting off to the left, towards the cacophony of noise that erupted from XS sector.
When they arrived, though, they could see that they had come too late. The hive mind had assembled, and those that had denied it had died. The corpses of the weaker slivers littered the floor, larger ones feeding on them or stalking in and out of rooms. The doors and walls had been utterly destroyed, leaving a gaping hole in the side of the laboratory out on the island, through which several other slivers had escaped and were roaming the beach.
"That hole..." Faral said. "What could possibly have made a hole that big?"
The screams reached Pemmin's ears just as he realised what was about to happen. With a yell, he grabbed Faral and threw him into the nearest chamber, shutting the door and holding it with all his weight, just as the foundations of the laboratory itself were rocked and all the slivers outside began to cry and scream just like the wizards on the boats - the doomed souls that he had sent to their deaths.
Faral stared up at him, wide-eyed, as all outside suddenly became silence. "What..."
Pemmin slumped down against the door and put his face on his knees. "Specimen XS35. The most wonderful, and most terrifying thing we ever brought to life. It was housed under the laboratory...we never knew it could swim. If I had known it could swim..."
"It - wait - that was caused by a creature?" Faral exclaimed. "The boats!"
"A tsunami. A wave the size of the island, made by a sliver from your worst nightmares. I heard it being set free, earlier, and I knew our time was up, but I didn't think for a second it could get out in the ocean and..." Pemmin let the tears slide down his face. "We may be the last survivors of the Riptide Project."
Faral stood up. "We'll never know until we check. Let's go out to the beach and find out."
"I can't...I can't bear to see what I've wrought," Pemmin shrank away as Faral tried to help him up. "This is my fault - all my fault. Death couldn't contain the slivers; what made us think we could? In our arrogance, we have brought about the end of Dominaria."
"If you're not going, then don't," Faral said in a stern voice, "but I refuse to believe that with all those talented wizards out there, directors and all, not one of them is still alive. I'm going to find out and I'm going to save whoever I can."
With that, the apprentice marched out and shut the door, leaving Pemmin to his misery, alone in the shattered laboratory with the remnants of his dreams around him.
Suddenly, unbidden, an image came to mind of Nathron. His partner, whom he had attempted to save, who was now probably at the bottom of the ocean with the rest of their colleagues. Why had he remained in the sliver labs? Had it been a cruel twist of fate, a trick played on him, he who had caused the cataclysm and tried to do the right thing? Or was it his destiny to live on and bring the warning served by the Riptide Project to the rest of Otaria - that no wizard should ever be so arrogant as to believe he is a god.
At that thought, he dredged himself up from the floor and shook himself off. Faral was right. There might well be some survivors out there, and if there weren't, he had to find a way to get off this island. He and Faral would spread the word about what had happened on Riptide, and prevent something like this from ever occurring again; and if they could, put a stop to the sliver menace that they had released on their countrymen.
He left the laboratory through the hole, stepping over the corpses of the slivers that had perished. Out on the beach, the sand was sodden, water slapping everywhere and rubble spread as far as the eye could see. The laboratory itself had been reduced to ruins, and from one glance he was sure that nobody but himself and the apprentice remained on the island. He scouted about for Faral, and located him at the edge of the beach, staring off into the water. He followed the boy's gaze and saw experiment XS35 in the distance, a hulking mass just below the surface of the ocean.
"It's pointless, isn't it?" the boy asked, his eyes following the massive creature as it wended its way across the ocean. "Everything...we're so small, in this massive world, and whatever we do, nature will find a way to break us."
"This isn't nature," Pemmin said sadly. "Nature destroyed these creatures. It was us. We brought them back, and unleashed them on a world that wasn't prepared. It never will be prepared. We can only hope that we survive a little longer."
Suddenly, a creature appeared behind Faral, and Pemmin called out in alarm and shot a beam of ice from his hand at it. It didn't even slow the sliver down, however, and it raised its claws in anger and lashed out. Faral cried out as he fell, unable to move fast enough out of the sliver's destructive path, and Pemmin stared, struck dumb by its power. To shrug off the attack of a master wizard like it was water...what kind of monster was this?
It hissed at him, and he switched hands and shot forth a burst of flame. This time, the sliver screamed as it shrivelled and died, burned up by the intense blast of fire. Pemmin shook slightly as he watched it curl, blackened, into the sand, and dropped to his knees beside Faral. "Did it hurt you? Faral?"
Faral didn't respond, and Pemmin looked down, desperate not to know what, in his heart, he already knew. The boy's eyes were open and glassy, and he stared sightlessly at the sky. A trail of blood wound its way from the base of his skull to his heart, marking where the sliver had slashed him open. Pemmin put his head in his hands and began to weep; the sole survivor of the Riptide Project.
A screech echoed across the island, and he turned to see XR17 glaring at him from high atop the ruins. It raised its claws in a gesture of defiance, striking a terrifying figure against the stark and burning sun, and slipped away under the rubble. Only then did Pemmin fully understand what he had done - what they had all done.
"What have I done?" he whispered, his tears staining the sand as the beach ran red with blood. As the sun began to set in the clear ocean sky, he stumbled away to the end of the beach, where there was a rowing boat hidden in a cove for emergency use. It had not been destroyed, so he pulled it into the water with the last of his strength and collapsed inside it, casting himself adrift into the wide oceans.
The glow of the sun illuminated the island's profile as he drifted away, staring back at what had once been his home. The slivers crawled and slithered upon it, screeching and hissing into the empty air, their hive mind diminished and confused. He continued to watch until the island was distant, the lonely screeching swallowed into the sunset, and prayed to all the gods that somehow, something would save them all.
"Only an apocalypse could stop the slivers now," he whispered to himself as the twilight arrived, and with it, the beginning of the end of Dominaria.