So… this is the first fanfic after a long time of lurking on this site and forgetting to login and follow my favorite stories (sorry). Anyways, I would like fair, constructive criticism in the reviews and without further ado, enjoy.
All characters belong to their respective owners.
Phosphorescence of the Void Ch. 1
My body felt so heavy. My eyelids feeling like they were welded shut. I felt myself starting to drift off, but some stubborn part of me refused to let go. Distantly, I heard the beeping of machinery and the seemingly even more distant murmur of unfamiliar voices. Everything felt sore too. There was a constant pumping underneath my skin. Tubes. I need to get up. Even if I felt like laying down and allowing whatever was happening to me happen, I had to get up. It wasn't about my wellbeing, it was for the others. It was the least I could do for all the sins I have committed. The one thing I stood for now.
Yes, whatever was happening to me, couldn't happen. Whether it be Corpus or Grineer, they were not getting anything out of me. Despite how my head pounded like a war drum, I forced myself to focus.
The clanking of my metal boots echoed through the halls. It was just another day on the job, running gopher duty for the scientists. Distracting myself from the balancing act of carrying a stack of paper and tray of coffee, I glanced outside into the storm. The inside of this facility, though warm, still felt ever so cold. Then again, I am much better off than those poor saps stuck on outside guard duty, especially with that strange week long blizzard going on outside. I felt a headache come on. I might need to take some meds. "Wouldn't it be better if this entire facility just burned?" What? This feeling of resentment, it began to go away but... did I truly hate this job? No. I must be stir crazy.
Sumeragi paid the bills well enough and the snobbish elitist assholes working here were tolerable if you just kept away. The only interesting thing for me was the discovery of some freaky deaky tech that Sumeragi found lying about, half submerged in the permafrost. I had scored a quick look at the sight though I felt ill after. A feeling of queasiness came to me, looking back on it. Thinking about it now, the headaches and the rage seemed to have started right from when I arrived here and was one of the surveying guards during the first discovery. Also a week after that, the blizzard reared it's ugly head and has kept communication down low. A lot of equipment has to be regularly defrosted now. Whatever, I still had a menial job to do. Duty first.
I came to the autopsy room and walked into the room with a stack of notes from the expedition group in one hand and a tray of coffee in the other.
Maintaining a center was hard, I couldn't keep this up, especially with whatever they were pumping into me through those tubes. Each pulse was like a hammer, striking and forcing a nail down metal, except that nail was me and the metal was unconsciousness.
Wait… could I, even in this state of near unconsciousness? All I had to do was reach. Latching onto that core and allowing the heat to leak out through the tubing...
I entered into a room of panic, scientists frantically writing down observations and some manning the controls on the instruments administering the drugs into the subject. Said subject being observed was a child lying on an autopsy table, the room sealed off by a window and a heavy duty door you'd probably see in a vault of some sort.
The child though, he was giving off some very bad vibes, I swore I saw something drift off of the child's body, like some sort of mist. I had already put down the stack of papers and coffee tray when I heard something burst. It was one of the IV tubes that had been inserted into the boy's body. Even more chaos from the scientists as the boy began to groggily sit up from the table. The feelings of unease magnified. My skull was pounding. This feeling of rage, all of it funneled towards the kid. I began to draw the pistol hanging from my waist holster, switching off the safety whilst doing so.
The lights were too bright. I had to shutter my eyes close before my eyes completely readjusted. My head still felt hazy, and my body wobbly, as if it were made of jelly. As I supported myself on my two feet I could make out the scramblings of people. I looked in the direction of the noise at a window, inside the window a bunch of people in white coats.
My gaze shifted, taking in the entirety of the room I was in. The heat from the void energy I had used still lingered in me. Good. I needed to pump more through my body to purge myself of the chemicals still cycling my blood stream. All my focus though was taken away from me. Lightning coursed through my shoulder. I screamed as my uninjured arm rose up to where the feeling originated from. What was in my hand was warm and sticky. Blood.
Down several hallways away from the scene of chaos, there was an empty room similar in size and composition. Within it held 2 coffins. Inside one of them something, a massive humanoid, stirred
"THE HELL ARE YOU DOING" a scream permeated the room. A hand fell upon my gun arm but I swatted it aside. The abomination must die. I don't know why these feelings of disgust and rage were flowing through me. Blood was rushing through my head. The way it was looking at me. It had to die. IT HAD TO DIE. IT HAD TO DIE.
A light suddenly reflected off the window, the figure of the demon shadowed by the light. The sound of glass shattering came to my ears then blackness.
The pain was excruciating. I dug my fingers in and made the pain worse. After some digging, the bullet I found had been caught by my Acromion. A clear metal on metal sound rang out, the bullet that had once lodged itself into my shoulder falling to the floor. There were certain advantages and disadvantages to having such a skeleton reinforced by the void. I wiped the blood that was coming from my nose, shaping a grenade made up of pure void energy in under a second while under duress was quite taxing.
After refocusing, it was apparent the alarms were tripped. The room beyond the window now being a mess of broken tech, miscellaneous office supplies, and bodies being a clear sign as to what tripped the alarms. The eyes that bore into me from that armored guard in that observation room were familiar. Yes, I remember those eyes well enough, the same eyes from the adults on board the Zahriman. Whatever, enough of that. That bullet wound gave me a good pump of adrenaline and gave me newfound clarity on the situation at hand. I had to get out of here and find my Warframe. The distant sound of footsteps underneath the shrill cry of the alarms were fast approaching. My gaze fell upon a vent in the broken observation room.
The first response times of Sumeragi were unparalleled, especially in their own facility. A squad of men came upon a scene of destruction. Limbs were strewn and corpses mutilated. Computers sparked and papers strewn haphazardly. "It's like a bomb went off here..." a second voice cut in, "Quiet Lieutenant, we need to investigate this room and the surrounding area, the subject couldn't have gone that far considering what drugs they were pumping into him." "Right... Commander what is protocol when we find Subject 2?" the now identified commander responded,"When we find him we are to detain him, if he struggles we shoot to kill, it's the instructions the head scientist gave us in the briefing; pay more attention Lieutenant" the first voice responded, "Yes sir!" The commander made a grab for his radio, preparing to report in to command about the containment breach.
Before the commander could even utter a word, the radio crackled to life. "Attention all squads! Subject 1 has breached containment, he's massacring personnel, we need backup now! Hurry to the command center and isolate Wing B, I repeat isolate Wi-" the line went dead. After a pause, the men systematically scouted then left the room, unaware of a pair of eyes from the vents watching them as they left.
"Subject 1? Wait that's probably..." that thought line trailed. He began to focus in on himself, probing for a bond. It was faint, but there. "Damn, transference signal is frayed. Probably has something to do with the crash and the drugs. How long was I out? I'm going to have to rendezvous with Umbra. Judging from their armor designs and that pistol, were they some offshoot of the Corpus? That couldn't be right though, granted both have sleek designs but no Corpus would utilize ballistic weaponry. Who were they?" Such contemplations ceased as the boy shoved the grate out of place. He had to keep things low key, not that it was hard now that Umbra was wreaking havoc through the facility.
"Scars?" As I shoved the grate way, I noticed scars all over my arm. Scars were normal from the void healing my wounds, being left behind if the injury was particularly deep. These scars were way too clean, not some sort of weapon wound but more like a surgical incision. No, I can figure out what the scientists were doing later but right now, I need to move. "Where do I go from here? ...I need to help Umbra and those men did mention a security room and isolating Wing B. Well… it might be high time to sow even more discord in this facility." I patted my shoulder, feeling up my now pristine shoulder. Taking some steps to avoid my bare feet stepping on the glass and other miscellaneous material littering the ground, I peaked outside the room. Putting an ear to the wall I heard nothing. Seeing as how no one was around or rapidly approaching my location, I began to scout out the hallways outside the room. One ear always trained to a wall and my other to the surroundings. After reading a few signs and possibly going in a circle for 5 minutes I had found it.
"Hmph, how quaint." The room before me was filled with screens and a group of 5 personnel manning the few stations.
Dark grey eyes glowed briefly before closing.
I felt lethargic but it was only natural. Every part of my being was now intangible and invisible. I had entered Void Mode. My vision was slightly hampered but I need only walk to the corner. It was a slow walk but my focus didn't even begin to falter when I positioned myself into the corner of the room. Everyone had their backs turned to me as I dropped Void Mode. "A bit more concentration is gonna be required for a controlled beam without an Amp to assist, but that's just fine." The Eldritch energies of the Void coalesced on my fingertips. Taking aim at the closest person whose parietal bone was facing me, I fired.
Blood and viscera caked the walls. The sound of gunfire echoed through the hallways as a shadowy figure ran in an animalistic gait. Bullets and lasers bouncing off the imposing figure's frame like water off a metal roof. The figure roared in response, a flashing light burning out the retinas of the line of personnel that were previously firing upon them. In a millisecond he cleared the distance between himself and the firing line of security personnel and proceeded to slaughter them all, his arm blades serving as adequate tools for the job despite their bluntness, the armor of the personnel folding like paper to sheer kinetic force.
After no more movement came from the mangled corpses of the personnel the figure paused, feeling up a signal, so faint, broken. But it knew where it was coming from, with renewed vigor it restarted its prowl, some doors that it came to which were previously shut opening to make way for him.
He couldn't help smiling as he observed Umbra's progress in the facility from a live security cam. Hovering over the various dead personnel, the backs of their skulls still emitting smoke from the pin point accurate void beams that had destroyed their brains, he began to type away at commands. The controls of the command center being surprisingly easy to utilize. " Very peculiar, most of the time this would require the direct hacking of Ordis and… Lotus…" The sting of betrayal and cold seized his heart.
His mood dampered, the boy liberated an ear module and a radio from a corpse. After a moment of listening, the boy left the command center, making his way to Umbra.
A contingent of security forces was double timing it through the hallways. Communication had been lost earlier with East command and it was apparent that the threat was massive enough that it had decimated the 6 platoons guarding the building. As they turned a hallway, they stumbled on a boy in a medical gown. From the description they had been given in the short briefing, the child was Subject 2.
"Hands over your head where I can see 'em!" The boy seemed to have been deep in thought, his attention still elsewhere. "I REPEAT, HANDS OVER YOUR HEAD OR WE WILL SHOOT" That got the aloof youth's attention. The youth lazily raised his arms up, in his left hand a radio. His response was delivered with a certain combination of casualness and cold indifference, "Are you sure you should be giving such attention to little ole me? There is something much more dangerous mucking about this facility besides me." The lead security personnel, presumably the commander, tilted his head at this. Before he could respond the wall adjacent to the soldiers exploded.
The boy observed in the sidelines. The skirmish was quick and bloody. Security guards were bludgeoned to death either by Umbra's fists or kicks. Some were torn to shreds by Umbra's bare hands and blade arms. Others were horrifically dismembered, their wounds instantly seared by the yellow Exalted Blade's heat. In the aftermath, a lone soldier who stood at the back took several shaky steps backwards, finally collapsing on the ground in a fetal position. The smell of urine and evidence of his pants soiled as a response to Umbra's brutal display became apparent to the child. With uncanny ease the boy walked over the dismembered corpses and to the soldier. Kneeling to be at eye level with the soldier a hand fell upon the side of the soldier's green helm.
Seeing how unresponsive the soldier was, his breathing erratic, the child tipped his head up in contemplation."I don't usually do this," Flashes of two grotesque and decaying women playing out in his head,"but what else can I do? Besides, the world is already an immoral place anyway." The void coursed through his hands and into the soldier's head, the soldier's mind was unravelled like origami. Memories of the base's layout laid bare for the boy to take in.
After a moment, the boy allowed his hand to slide off the soldier's helmet. He wasn't as cruel as to dive in and uproot the man's entire memories, thus causing even more agony for the man, but even still, the fully developed mind was incapable of handling the powers of the Void. This lone soldier was reduced to a vegetative state. At the very least not having devolved into some sort of being less than human. With a quick gesture of the chin, Umbra grabbed the unresponsive soldier and snapped the man's neck. As Umbra's gaze met his Operator's, Umbra's stuck armored hand out and flipped it palm side up. The boy merely smiled before taking the hand, the boy turning into a glowing, grey silhouette before disappearing into motes of void energy, the energy flowing into Umbra.
Making movements akin to a deep breath, the black, armored form of Umbra began to move again. Its gait this time was different. Instead of the animalistic prowl it had, it moved with a more civilized grace to its movements. The movement more akin to the walk cycle of a soldier. The figure's movement walking westward, off towards the direction of West Command and the crash site both buildings were built around.
Author's Note
So yeah this is my first fanfic. The update times are going to be extremely sporadic between my drive to continue writing and my personal schedule. This entire chapter was just a product of my procrastination and not properly finishing up my essay work.
So in a nutshell, don't place too many hopes in me though any criticism to my writing is well appreciated.
If you managed to read the chapter before I updated the entire first chapter, yeah sorry. I was bothered by the lack of the dash lines I wrote and this update is to fix that. Again sorry for making the first iteration of this chapter hard to read.
Alright 2nd and last update to this chapter, ideally the next will be dropping a little later tonight. Changes I've done is add more inner dialogue to the rage mode nameless guard and yes, the guard took too much VOID, it's bad for your health. also a short Umbra awakening dialogue.