The abyss was cold and dark. She had sunk deep into the frigid waters, far beyond the reach of sunlight, and yet endless depths still lay below. Her hair drifted about her head, clumping and freezing together as chunks of ice formed. Her whole body was freezing, the dark water forming ice at the tips of her fingers, and in spiraling patterns along her skin. The cold endlessly poured down her throat, freezing inside of her lungs, and spreading up and down her spine.
Was she awake? Was she alive? She didn't know. Her thoughts were unformed, not following structure or pattern. She would drift through this void for years or days, or maybe no time at all or maybe eternity. But in her moments of fleeting awareness, when she could remember why she was here, she would cry out in anguish. Bubbles rose from her throat and slipped between her deep blue lips. And in the distance, there would be a distant light. And Fareeha could hear that this light wailed too. She would reach a hand towards the flickering ember, in vain hope to feel its light and warmth. She had sunk too far into the abyss, and the light could not find her.
Like shifting shadows moving through the waters of the abyss, memories would float through her mind. A past that had died with the world it had been lived in. She saw herself passing though clouds, wisping vapour swirling off her armour. She saw a hundred battles; a thousand men dying by her hand. She saw bodies torn apart by rocket strikes, skulls crushed in her hands. Who was she? Who had she been to have wrought such violence?
Shapes rose up from the abyss below, tendrils made of sharp, oblong metal. Limbs of articulated metal joints grabbed at Fareeha, robotic hands tearing at her frozen flesh and clasping at her throat. In the cold depths, the metal surfaces of the machines chilled her flesh all the more. She had descended deeper, to a layer where a swirling mass of a billion machines writhed and screamed. Pharah flailed, kicked, and tore limbs from bodies, but she was submerged in them, and they swarmed from all sides. The machines wrapped themselves around her, while a hundred robotic hands pulled her limbs out straight. Pharah clenched her chest, clutching hold of her last breath. The machines wrapped themselves about her body, as if trying to crush from her the last warmth she held within. A metal hand clapped over her mouth, muffling a final cry of rage. Fareeha felt the last bubble of air from her lungs drift between her lips. It slipped between the metal fingers and drifted upwards as Fareeha faded away.
Shafts of light stabbed through the web of metal limbs. Not the distant glimmering light; these shafts were brilliant and golden and glowing. They struck Fareeha's body, and she felt warmth and she wept and found the strength to cry out once more. New shafts of light broke though the tomb around her, as the light grew in intensity. The metal limbs recoiled. The machines that couldn't retreat from Fareeha soon enough were burned away, leave Fareeha untouched. The light descended towards her, beginning to take on a familiar shape. Finally able to move her limbs, Fareeha reached with as much strength as she could muster towards the angelic figure. A soft hand placed itself on her chest, and Fareeha felt her heart leap into motion again.
Her vision was blurry, her eyes as numb as the rest of her body. She could hear her pulse in her ears, heavy thuds, slow at first but gaining in pace. Her lungs were flooding with oxygen, reinvigoration spreading in a wave through her body. Her eyes were beginning to adjust, but the light was so harsh, nothing could be made out. There was a heavy weight on her left hand, like something wrapped tightly around her flesh. She tried to flex her fingers and found the weight resisted her movement. Curious, she flexed the fingers on her other hand. She could move these.
After a moment of squirming, she found she could move most of her body. The contact her skin made with the bizarre surface she lay on was still numbed, but she could feel her body awakening again. Something like a distant itch was growing in her side. Her eyes felt warm, and were now able to sense the fluorescent lighting piercing her eyelids. She wanted to groan, to complain, to ask for the light to be turned down, but she couldn't speak. Her mouth was so dry, her tongue a strange body resting between her teeth. When she found the light that penetrated her eyelids tolerable, she opened them again. A single figure stood over her, silhouetted by the fluorescent light above. The figure was leaning in towards her, looking her body up and down. Though Fareeha's eyes burned, she held them open, forcing them to adjust. Her mind rediscovered the technique of rapid blinking, which helped force the presence over her into focus.
The figure that leaned over her was an amalgam for viscous slime and cracked bone. It was emaciated and lean, so that Fareeha could see the twisted shape of the improvised skeleton. The wraith of rotted slime leaned over her waking form, beady yellow eyes glaring down at her. Black spittle coated the teeth that extended from the skull that formed its face. Its gangly limbs stretched out, gripping the edge of the cryo-pod and holding up the lid. Tendrils of black connected the twisted limbs like hanging moss. As it saw Fareeha's eyes focus on it, it leaned in closer with a macabre, skeletal sneer.
"Fornicator."
A bony hand of jagged knuckles and many-jointed fingers clasped around her throat. Fareeha took hold of the wrist with both hands, her heart fighting to force blood through her limbs once again. She was dragged from the cryo-pod, her head striking the edge of the metal tube on the way out. The pain was like a spike of focus stabbing through her mind. The muck-coated skeleton lifted her up at arm's length, thrusting her head back, and her eyes closer to that hateful ceiling of fluorescent light. Her fingers were regaining sensation; she could feel the strange way this black tar-like substance clung to the nonliving bones.
"She hid you away in sin," The thing said, "'But the eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.'"
Pharah swung her hips forward and wrapped her legs around the creature's arm. One leg applying force to the inside of the gangly, gnarled elbow, and the other foot pushing the thing's face away. Then, she applied torque with her renewed grip, and pulled the thing's arm from its body. She fell to a floor some echoing voice in her memory told her was linoleum. She landed on a carpet woven out of a fine silk. The thing now standing over her growled and thrust with its remaining arm. Pharah rolled to the side, reached out, and grabbed the inside of the creature's leg. She pulled the thing's weight out from under it, and it stumbled forward, so that when she rose, she was on its flank.
Her arms wrapped around its midsection, her head took beneath its armpit. She lifted with all her strength. She waited until both of their weights were throwing them backwards before pushing off the ground, adding just a little more force. The creature's head struck the floor and partially concaved, its neck forced to the side at an awkward angle. Its body fell limp next of Pharah's. She pushed it aside and fought her way to her feet.
The thing was standing back up again a hair's breadth behind her. Tendrils of black slime lashed out and took hold of its severed arm, where the abandoned black goo had been trembling. It pulled the arm back into place, a sickly pop restoring the joint, and turned to face Pharah. She dive-tackled the thing, swinging her weight into the shoulder she lead with. She slammed the horrid skeletal thing into the side of the cryo-pod. It clawed at her back with talons made of fingerbones, and her head was filled with intense, focusing pain. Her mind felt like jelly, she was swimming with the drug that-
Her mother. She'd put her in there. She'd abandoned the last of humanity to hide her away. She'd drugged her so that couldn't keep fighting.
Fareeha screamed in anguish, and the thing clasped one of its bony hands around her wrist. Pharah shattered the bones in its arms, and elbow struck it across the face. She grabbed the malformed skull and slammed it down on the cryo-pod. Not content with how much the thing continued to flail, she pulled it straight up. Its broken face still stared out at her from the one eye that wasn't crushed. She lifted the lid and slammed the thing down into the bed, then used one foot to stomp the control panel. It chimed a low, angry sound, as if in irritation. The creature made an attempt to stand and Pharah slammed the lid down on top of it. She stomped on one of its shins, snapping it in half. She punched at the buttons of the control panel in a daze. It was like she was trying to text while drunk, and a fair bit distracted.
Plumes of freezing gas emanated from within the bed. The skeleton made a desperate effort to squirm out of Pharah's grasp, but she slammed the lid of the tube down on it one final time, then laid her weight upon it. An unearthly, pained squeal came from within. The thing's gangly, misshapen legs kicked and struggled, then fell limp. Pharah slipped and fell back off the tube. She hit the ground coughing and wheezing. She stood, and stumbled towards the door, head still swimming.
The room around her had changed dramatically. Gone were the utilitarian metal walls, the room had been redecorated with elegant flower patterns hand-painted across wallpaper. Gone was the corpse of the woman Fareeha's mother had murdered to put her in the pod. There was a double bed set up here, one half well-worn. Bedside tables surrounded it, covered in homemade candles. Fareeha looked over the strange room, shaking her head in confusion. The thing that had attacked her was still stuck in the tube, its unfrozen legs melting into a vile puddle that soaked into the carpet.
Fareeha stumbled out of the Vault's back room and hit the opposing wall. She pushed off with an awkward shamble forward. Her limbs felt strange, like she was unfamiliar with controlling them. She felt a weight on her left hand. Her head swung lazily downwards and she saw she was still wearing her gauntlet. The cryogenics had drained the onboard batteries. She slipped her finger underneath the metal and clicked the release. She pulled the gauntlet off and let it hang lazily from one hand.
The Vault around her, that had once been a desperate collection of humanity's knowledge and artwork, was in complete disarray. The book shelves, which would have done a perfectly fine job of storing books in order, were replaced with desks that held volumes of texts in precarious stacks. Loose papers and sticky notes stuck from between a thousand pages. The image was at once so bizarre and so familiar to her. On her left, a humble collection of parts had grown into a compressed maze of equipment; a nonsensical clutter of garage tech, some of which Fareeha understood, most of which she didn't.
She approached the nearest flat surface large enough to rest a stack of papers on. The papers stacked in that spot were schematics, diagrams, scribbled notes. Fareeha leaned in close and studied the handwriting of the notes. Her heart leapt in her chest. She'd recognize that chicken scratch anywhere.
A gurgling, pained scream came from the cryo-pod room. Fareeha shook her head about, forcing her mind to focus. Her eyes searched the nooks and crannies of the chaotic vault.
"Angela? Angela, are you here?" She whispered.
She had been here. She had found the vault. Why had she left Fareeha in the pod? And what was the thing that had attacked her? Fareeha walked over to the exit. The door had been closed, the staircase leading up to a bleak metal surface. Fareeha spotted a button mounted beneath the pictograph-covered breaker box. It glowed with a dull red from within, the light tracing around the faded words Open/Close. It was a simple box mounted on the wall, the wires running up from it in plain view. She hit the button and with cries of protest from ancient hydraulics and rusted metal, the door rose, opening the staircase up to the basement above. Fareeha turned around and walked back to the workbenches.
She saw a sturdy looking satchel that only had a few items in it. She tossed her gauntlet inside without looking. She let intuition guide her hands as she grabbed supplies. She took a some of the notebooks that lay strewn about. She grabbed a flashlight, an electric lighter, a medical kit. There was a mini fridge in one corner. Its design was simple and functional, a largely featureless steel box. Fareeha could only tell it was a fridge due to the glass window set in the door, illuminating the food inside. She opened the door and grabbed one of the apples from the bowl on the top shelf. They looked like crab apples of some sort, but their skin had a different texture. Fareeha turned the odd apple about in her hands curiously, and took a bite. Her body relished the return of food to her system. She couldn't remember the last time she ate something other than MREs. The apple's flesh was sweet and tart, and brimming with juice. Fareeha wolfed the apple down in a hurry, pitched the core over her shoulder, then tossed a few more in the bag. She opened the plastic container on the lower shelf. A loaf of bread. She took the container.
The shambling black figure, dripping that rotten, stinking ooze, stumbled from the back room. Broken chunks of bone that the ichor had no more use for were dropping to the floor at its feet. It convulsed as bones moved about its body. Chunks of slime that were still frozen stuck out from its flesh, the slime working to melt down the ice. New facial bones emerged from the face, pushing away splinters of bone and shattered teeth. The eyes were like growths of infectious tissue within the mismatched sockets. Fareeha set the bag down at the bottom of the staircase, then turned to face the thing.
"Where is she?"
The thing cocked his head. Flesh peeled away from the broken face to make the twisted smile wider. A dark chuckle sent black bile spilling from its mouth.
"I'm right, aren't I?" It sneered.
Every knuckle of its fingers sprouted new fingerbones. It sprinted forward, flailing and shrieking like a deranged animal. Pharah snatched the scalpel from the tray of tools at her right. Once the creature closed the distance, its first flailing swing was the one to come closest. Pharah had to duck under it before taking the tricep muscle. The second swing was already thrown off course by desperate correction, giving her an opening to take the tendons of the wrist. A jab between the ribs was rewarded with the hiss of a deflating lung. She'd stepped aside now, and the thing's careless momentum carried it past her. The thing's neck vertebrae jutted from the slimy skin, making it easier to aim between them. The thing tumbled forward on the ground, writhing uncontrollably. Pharah slipped around it again, putting the exit at her back. The thing could regenerate quickly, this was clear; the way the slime clung to the bones, the vile imitation of other bodily functions. It had a scalpel punch through its spinal column, and it was still trying to get up. Whatever the creature was, killing it was starting to seem like it would be difficult. At the very least, there wasn't a need to hold back.
Pharah's foot came down on the thing's head, smashing it into paste. The improvised skull lacked the structure of properly interlocked bone. Her foot now slammed into this puddle of sludge, the thing pulled its head back together, in hideous contortion, entirely around the extended extremity, its face a concave and warped mess spread across discordant tissue. The creature arched its back, rose on all four limbs, and stood straight, dragging Pharah's foot up with it. It was threatening to throw her off-balance. She pushed off the floor with her other foot and brought it down on the thing's shoulder, throwing herself backwards. She landed at the base of the stairs. The thing took a stumbling step forward, and turned to face her, its head torn in half. As Pharah rose to her feet once more, teeth strewn about the mess rearranged themselves to the edges of the massive gouge torn out of the head. The skull parts rearranged themselves along the surface, seeming to be attempting to orient themselves around the new shape. A black tongue extended forward from the gaping, improvised mouth.
"Where is she?" Pharah repeated.
"Ruggh… mine," The thing gurgled and spat, "Mmhpggh… took her from me!"
"What have you done to her?!"
The thing lunged. Pharah slammed her fist into the Open/Close button, and in a fluid motion, ripped the wires from the box. The flash of sparks drew the sickly yellow eyes just slightly off target. Pharah leapt upward, pulling her legs up, and thrusting her arms down to counter the momentum. Her feet struck the thing's chest together, stopping it in its tracks. She hit the floor again before it did, but that meant she was getting up faster too. She grabbed the bag and took the steps two at a time. The giant, heavy false floor was descending fast. Pharah dove forward, slipping through the disappearing gap with no more than centimeters to spare. The door closed with a heavy thud, and beneath the thunderous sound, a slimy crunch. A bony black arm squirmed and flailed uselessly on the floor next to her. Fareeha breathed a sigh of relief.
She stood. She took a few deep breaths. Her side felt sore, the last of the nanobiotics her mother had given her still working to patch up the gargoyle's lucky shot. There was little more than a patch of discoloured skin there now. Fareeha adjusted the strap of the satchel on her shoulder, then headed for the elevator. She entered the elevator shaft and looked upwards. There was nothing but darkness above. A service ladder, simple metal rungs bolted to the stone wall, extended upwards. Fareeha had been in a drugged haze on the way down. It had sure felt like a long way down at the time. Fareeha grabbed hold of the metal grips and pulled herself upwards.
The great dead mech still slouched where it had fallen, in the open door of humanity's last fortress. Here was where she should have fell; where she should have fallen side by side with her mother, standing between humanity and the end to their very last breaths. Here was where her mother had abandoned the last of humanity's defenders. And for what?
The walk through the Command Center had been surreal. There was no question time had passed, but how long defied estimation. Though the bodies of Omnics remained in some corners and sprawled in some halls, they were rusted almost to the point of unrecognizability. Their hulking shapes had been reduced to mere suggestions of form by time, and the crevices of the limbs and interiors of their chassis were thick with dust covered spider-webs. No human bodies remained, regardless of where Fareeha looked.
She came to the great doors and found herself face to face with that great dead mech once again. Its head still displayed the tunnel her last shot had carved through it in molten metal. There was an anomaly to the thing's appearance that caught Fareeha's attention, though it took her a moment to place why. Like so many machines that lay dead in this city, the giant corpse was painted with the Eye of Horus. But this act of accreditation hadn't been hastily scrawled in spray paint, as was the norm. The Eye had been drawn with exquisite detail and exact precision. It was as artful a representation of the Eye as Fareeha had ever seen. More than that, it was exactly a match for the tattoo beneath her eye; most renditions got the angles of the lines just a bit off.
Beyond the doors, the great ring of dead Omnics remained as well, though ages of sediment were beginning to cover the metal in patches of dirt. Weeds and creeping vines were loosely scattered across the massive wall of dead, growing where rainwater would run in streams down the metal shapes. A bridge had been constructed of scrap metal, stretching from the top of the ring to the base of the door, turning the sheer climb into a manageable slope. Fareeha took the bridge with tentative steps, finding it far more stable than it appeared. She reached the top of the ring, looked out across the city, and gasped.
Green. Green as far as the eyes could see. Plant life wrapped around buildings, spread across the streets. Flowers of every imaginable colour covered the streets. The varying heights of the ancient ruins created canopies at all elevations across the city scape, each one a teaming menagerie of flora and fauna. There were insects everywhere, moving in great clouds amongst the flowers. Ponds were scattered about, garnished with reeds and lilypads, and teeming with frogs and lizards. Small fruit trees were dotted through the streets, the offerings they bore plump and glistening in the sun. There were no birds to be seen, but they hinted at their presence with distant cackling calls. In the blinding light of the sun, faced by the endless landscape of brilliant colour, Fareeha felt like she might faint. She closed her eyes and exhaled. She wouldn't allow herself to lose focus now.
"Angela," She whispered, "Where are you?"