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
His head pounded. His eyes struggled to open, feeling more like some weight had tied itself to both flaps of flesh, keeping them shut. The stranger felt himself drift. Something put its proverbial foot down, refusing to let itself fall back into the sea of unconsciousness. Distantly he heard the sound of machinery and even more faintly, the sound of murmuring. He felt sore all over. A peculiar feeling of something being pumped into him from his arms was felt. "I need to get up. I HAD to get up. If not for my own well-being, for everyone else. For the one thing I could stand for in this bleak world. For the other Tenno."
"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 his head pounded like a war drum, he forced himself to focus deep and hard. Reaching out, the stranger touched a nebulous swirl of energy deep within.
A perfectly regular man dressed in body armor with temperature insulating fabrics traversed through a lonely hallway, his only company being the faint winds outside. For him, it was just another day on the job as a Sumeragi Security officer. He was running gopher duty again for the scientists stationed in this god forsaken frozen wasteland. Distracting himself from the balancing act of carrying a stack of papers and a tray of coffee, he took a gander out into the heavy storm outside. "At the very least I'm not stuck outside like those poor saps." Allowing his concentration to drift for just a bit, images of an alien structure half buried in the snow came to his mind's eye. Internally the man shuddered, the aura of that thing sent chills in him. That opinion was one that was shared among many who had been the first ones to investigate the site. Many from that first expedition came down with a variety of illness from that visit. He was of no exception. Much to his irritation when he recalled, the officer remembered how the scientists rudely insisted that those severely ill stuck around to be poked and prodded at by the scientists before they got to a place away from the wreckage. "Snobbish Elitist assholes" Allowing a breath to escape his mouth, the man internally mused, "At the very least this cursed job paid the bills."
Like lightning, a migraine came onto the officer. He almost dropped the stack of papers. "Wouldn't it be better if this entire facility just burned?" Feelings of resentment burned to the surface. In that moment the security guard was sorely tempted to pull out his standard issue pistol. The two cumbersome things in his hands stopped him. As quickly as it came, the migraine left. "Ugh, I must be getting stir crazy... Yeah that must be it. That blizzard out there has been at it for over a week. Communication's down so I can't contact mom and dad. Yes that must be it." Steadying his feet, the man continued on his way.
In under a minute, the man came to the autopsy room. Setting down the tray of coffee and the stack of papers, the menial task was done. Taking a pause, the officer turned as he was leaving. He was curious about this so called 'alien lifeform' that was found among the wreckage.
The stranger was still reaching out. He felt the intrusions puncturing his skin pulse. They were pumping something into his systems. Each pump of fluid felt like a hammer strike. Each one pounding him into the floor that was unconsciousness. In spite of this, finally the stranger latched onto that wisp of energy. He clutched it in a vice grip as warmth flowed through his body, beginning to purge the intrusive liquids circulating his body.
For a single moment, the security officer had zoned out. Nay, it was his body was moving on auto pilot. "W-what's happening to me?" The moment his eyes had found themselves on the black haired teen strapped to the autopsy table, something took over. Something was going on with the scientists as they began to descend into chaos. Something to do with 'drugs not working'. He couldn't really focus on what those grade A a-holes were doing though. Something intrusive was funneling itself into his brain. It was different from the rage that he had taken as him getting an extreme case of cabin fever. The feeling was like arctic water pouring past his skin, muscle and organs and directly onto his skeleton. Blood was rushing in his ears as his hands unclasped the holster on his gun, undoing the safety while chanting words that weren't his own.
The intense light blinded the teen, his eyes shuttering to a close before readjusting. His head was a haze, his body feeling wobbly like the noodle dish served by the Ostrons. Glowing eyes finally took in his surroundings. People behind what was probably a reinforced window, their movements erratic and so were the faint voices he could hear coming from their rapidly moving mouths. As the alien teen got up to his two feet he began to tear at the tubes stuck in his body. Caring little for the holes beginning to bleed, the boy continued.
Giving himself a moment to focus, the child's glowing eyes intensified. Internally, the eldritch energies of the Void was rapidly cycling his blood stream. The sooner the drugs were washed from his systems, the better. He would've maintained this focus for however long he needed until a sharp pain tore into the teen's shoulder. Not expecting that, a scream of pain leapt from his throat as his uninjured arm rose to the source of pain. His hands returned with a warm and sticky feeling. Blood.
Down several hallways away from the scene of chaos, a near empty room similar in size and composition to the autopsy room were two coffins. Inside one of them a tall, ebony humanoid stirred.
"THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!" a scream permeated the room. One of the scientists attempted to grab at the gun but was swatted aside by the more muscular officer. "The abomination must die..." A prisoner to his own body, the officer could only question what was happening to him. "It has to die... It has to die..." His mouth flapped. Slowly the chant increased louder and louder.
When it reached a crescendo, a bright light reflected against the window. The sound of shattering glass and the feeling of heat were the last things the occupants within the observation room heard and felt.
The Tenno bit back a scream as his fingers dug deeper into his shoulder. Each nearly inaudible squelch was a signal as the pain got worse. Before long a metal on metal sound rang out. The bullet was successfully dislodged from the alien's Acromion. Times like this it was both a blessing and a curse for having Void reinforced bone structure, mused the teen. With that done, the Operator took the time to take his un-bloodied forearm and wipe his nose with it. Molding a grenade made form pure Void energy in under a second while under the duress of being shot was quite taxing.
Re-centering himself, the boy could finally take in what was in front of him. Klaxon blared in the background as he stared at the empty window frame. The room beyond was a broken mess of tech, miscellaneous office supplies, and bodies. It didn't take a genius to figure what had tripped the alarms. His brows furrowed as he recalled the shooter's eyes. They were the single most vivid thing that stood above the mess that were his memories of the Zahriman. Those were the eyes of madness induced by the nebulous properties of the Void.
Snapping to attention, the black haired teen heard the distant sound of footfalls. Those were undoubtedly security officers. Even if that shot was a rude wake-up call, it was enough to purge his mental faculties of those drugs. Adrenaline was pumping through his veins along with that mystic power that was the center of his being. A pair of glowing eyes 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 were 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 3?" 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?" He restrained a growl of frustration, "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 contemplation 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.
As his arms came to the light up above, the Tenno took the time to notice himself. He was wearing a medical gown which exposed his muscled arms. On the skin's surface were a large series of scars. They were far too clean to be a weapon. Those were surgical incisions, the boy identified. He squeezed his eyes shut, "No time to linger on this. I can figure out what they were doing to me later. For now I need to move and rendezvous with Umbra." A goal presented itself, recalling the guard captain mentioning a security room. "If he could run sabotage on their command it'll be all the more easy to meet up with Umbra. They were also planning on locking down Wing B." The lone Operator resolved himself to sowing discord in the facility.
Feeling up his previously wounded shoulder, the raven haired youth nodded to himself. His Void powers kicked in and made it so that the wound seemingly never existed. Quickly and carefully maneuvering around the bits of glass and machinery that littered the ground, the boy found himself within a curved hallway. To isolate all other sounds, he pressed an ear to the wall, hearing nothing. Confident in his isolation, he began to scout the corridor. After reading the arrows on the signs whose words he couldn't read "What kind of script is that?" and possibly going in a circle for 5 minutes, he had found the security room.
Dark grey eyes glowed briefly before closing.
A wave of lethargy came over him. A natural side effect as now he was intangible and invisible. He had entered Void Mode. Though his movements and vision were slightly hampered, he only needed to walk around a corner. After a minute of slowly walking through the frantically moving security personnel, the Tenno stopped in a corner of the room. From here everyone's back was turned to him. "A bit more concentration is gonna be required for a controlled beam without an Amp to assist, but that's just fine." Eldritch energies coalesced on his fingertips. Allowing his physical body to re- manifest into the physical world, the boy took aim at the closest person whose parietal bone faced him.
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 the figure paused. He felt a signal, faint and broken. It knew where it was coming from, with renewed vigor it restarted its prowl, some doors that it came to which were previously shut began opening, shortening his journey.
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 or… Lotus…" Cold stings of abandonment and betrayal seized his heart.
His mood dampened, the boy liberated an ear module and radio still hooked to the local channel 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 dying left and right. Some bludgeoned to death either by Umbra's fists or kicks, others torn to shreds by the berserker's bare hands and blade arms. While a small number were horrifically and painfully dismembered, their wounds instantly seared by the a blue 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 was evidence enough of his pants being soiled from Umbra's brutal display of violence. 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 morally bankrupt place anyway." The Void coursed through his hands and into the soldier's head, his mind unraveled like origami. Memories of the base's layout was 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 an armored hand out and flipped it palm side up. The boy merely smiled before taking the hand, his form taking on 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 proper soldier. The alien warrior began 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.