...

Strands of Samus' long blonde hair blew into her eyes but she ignored them. Both her hands were currently occupied gripping into the black basalt rock face, bare fingers white and red with that precious rasp of pain which meant she still had grip. Her half-covered limbs trembled but each inch up this rough cliff face was another bit of triumph, so she breathed deep and could barely remember the years when this acidic air had burned her lungs. In the distance, dark clouds rolled in over the hills, creeping up to strangle the sun. Clouds meant rain, and here on Zebes that rain meant death for anything without a diamond carapace.

Of course those sharp rocks thirty feet beneath her also meant death, so Samus continued to climb. A heavy bracelet of bulbous metal hung off each forearm, sliding and shifting awkwardly with every movement she made. They were very inconvenient and made this climb much more difficult, but they were her weapons so Samus kept them on, even as they jangled on her skinny forearms. Her muscles burned slightly from exertion but that lay over a more persistent gentle ache in her bones these days that came whenever she sat still. Samus guessed that ache had something to do with growing; she'd been getting a lot taller recently even though that meant all her limbs were really skinny now. Sometimes she thought she might be eleven years old now, but she tried not to think like that.

That was how humans thought.

Up here on the cliff, a thin rock ledge allowed Samus space to fit both her feet if she lined them up just right so she crouched down and caught her breath as she balanced with one hand gripping a stone crack. She was almost at the top. She'd need her strength up there.

Casually perched on the sheer cliff like a nesting falcon, Samus reached around her head to re-catch the stray bits of hair which had slipped free from their ponytail prison. That done, she smoothly sprang up from the little ledge to grab a just out of reach handhold. Her palm came down on target and the grip was good but Samus abruptly realized that the rock lip was a lot sharper than it had looked from below. The broken rock was edged like a knife. Her whole weight came down on that hand and a gasp of pain burst out her lungs.

Samus' teeth pressed together in a rictus as she had no choice but to hold tight and swing a dangling foot up for another purchase before she could mercifully release some of the blade-like pressure on her palm. Her other hand found a crack and she could lift the throbbing hand to inspect it. There were only a few spots of blood, though her fingers were trembling and refused to fully extend. It was a good thing the Chozo had made her skin harder to cut. Something about things in her body making a pattern of carbon. They still used a lot of words she didn't know.

Old Bird had advocated the procedure over Grey Voice's hesitance, saying that Samus didn't have enough blood in her little body to lose as much as she insisted on doing through the constant falls, scrapes, and bite wounds of childhood. Well, he'd somehow managed to say something to that effect, even though Samus had heard just four grunted words. So, despite Grey Voice's hesitance, Samus had gone back in the tank.

She'd wanted them to strengthen her bones at the same time, particularly since that particular tank trip had been first been initiated by her ninth broken arm. Fixing them was getting rather annoying. However, to that Old Bird had just said, "No."

Grey Voice hadn't even said that much but gave her more biology texts to read and put her in a corner for hours of study until it occurred to Samus that growth spurts and unbreakable bones might not mix. The Chozo never bothered to explain anything when they felt she already had the information necessary to deduce it. That was kind of like trust, but it was also very irritating. She'd gone hungry for days back when Grey Voice had abruptly stopped preparing food for her. Samus supposed she should have been paying better attention to what labor went into her sustenance, but she still thought keeping the raw ingredients on a twelve foot high shelf was just being intentionally difficult.

After more one surge up the cliff, Samus finally clambered over the last lip onto a broad shelf just below the top of the mountain. The oblong metal bulges on her dangling bracelets scraped and tapped on the black rock as she crawled to her knees. She stayed here for a moment, face to the ground, breathing heavily. Then another sound joined her panting. Samus slowly looked up to see the end of a metal staff tapping on the stone in front of her.

Old Bird looked down at her with faint disapproval. He flicked his eyes over at the sun, indicating that she was late. Of corse they were here first, they were always there first. Samus never saw either of the teachers pass her on these trips but no matter what destination they set across the sprawling temple complex from the depths to the peaks, they were always there first without the slightest sign of effort.

Samus just grunted and crouched down at Old Bird's feet as she eyed him suspiciously. She didn't know what today's lesson was and that was never a good sign. Her sore fingers ran over the oversized bracelet on her wrist as she kept her eyes on her teacher. The bracelets were ancient weapons, sized for Chozo warriors twice her height. They could protect her from anything. Samus just wish she had any idea how to make them work or what they did.

She waited.

There. The scrape of metal on stone as Old Bird's staff suddenly whipped into blinding motion. Samus sprang to the side, rolling up as the staff smashed down where she'd just sat, sending out flying shards. Then she jumped up, flipping back as the staff's next swing scourged a long scratch in the black rock beneath her. So, it was one of these lessons. Samus landed, bare feet sliding across the stone. She smiled, she liked these lessons.

The staff flipped and twirled through the air, tricking the eye as it seemed to flex and strike like a serpent. It was an illusion, aided by the way that Old Bird barely seemed to move more than a single hand as he continued his attack. Well, Samus would just have to fix that.

In the middle of the next dodge, she reached down and grabbed a loose rock about the size of her head. She spun and threw it right at Old Bird's chest. He easily stepped away, but that simple motion shifted the mental balance of their conflict. Samus had injected her will into this flow of the universe instead of only reacting. She just wished her arms were a little stronger, she knew that Old Bird could really have just swatted a rock that small out of the air if he wasn't humoring her. But she was still just a kid, even under the best conditions she'd just recently gotten to the point where she could lift an eighty pound weight more than ten times.

The dance up on top of the cliff had entered into a rhythm. Samus panted but she could easily maintain this speed for at least another forty-five seconds, keeping her eye on that flashing, twirling staff. Then the air beside Old Bird shimmered and he suddenly reached out to grab a second metal staff that materialized out of nothing. That new weapon whipped down as Samus realized she was in mid motion, too off balance to dodge this. The tip of the staff crashed down on her hand as it was briefly splayed against the rock during a handspring. The metal hit, and her finger bone snapped.

Pain screamed through her nerves. That was bad. Pain confused reflexes, muddled thoughts even if a single shattered finger was hardly a significant handicap for this kind of challenge. Pain made you predictable. Fighting this, Samus struggled for distance, trying to keep sight on both staffs now. There were tears in her eyes, another unfortunate side effect of pain which made this difficult. Difficult even if Old Bird didn't just then toss one of his staffs up high into the sky and then reach to materialize yet a third weapon out of shimmering air. Samus just had time to wrench her eyes down from the twirling staff when the new threat smashed into her ribs.

Resignation dominated Samus' mind as a cracking sensation signaled a new surge of pain. This lesson was ridiculously uneven, even for Old Bird. She would have even said "unfair" if both her teachers hadn't rigorously impressed in her that such a concept was just another illusion. They'd sent her up this cliff to tire her out, then hidden an entire armory behind the air just for Old Bird to use while Samus only had these stupid bracelets that she didn't even know what they were supposed to...

Oh.

The air shimmered with dancing, shattering light as a new metal staff slid into existence, right as Samus spun past to catch it in her hand. She slid to a stop as she faced Old Bird, panting in defiance of her cracked rib. For at least this moment the pain was thoroughly subsumed beneath exhilaration. Grey Voice had explained the process of retrieving hidden things almost one hundred days ago and Samus was quite astonished that she'd actually remembered it when she thought to look.

She now gripped her new staff in two hands in preparation for her own attack, ignoring the broken finger since she was still too small and weak to twirl the staff in one palm like Old Bird could. But Old Bird did not continue his assault, and instead simply caught his other staff as it came spinning down from the sky. He smoothly gripped all three weapons together in one huge hand and then gestured for Samus to come over. Samus complied, suddenly wincing and gasping as the intensity of the fight vanished to leave only the pain behind. Old Bird held out one of his long fingers, now capped in metal, and ran it down across Samus' cheek and neck. A few heartbeats later the twin pains were pushed back, receding to a forgotten throb.

A rough clicking chirp sounded out behind her and Samus turned to see Grey Voice standing on the mountain too, hunching his shoulders disapprovingly in Old Bird's direction. Grey Voice never liked it when Old Bird broke Samus' bones but Samus flashed back a broad panting smile to show that she was fine. The only thing that resulted in was Grey Voice now disapproving of her in equal measure.

He clicked his beak at Samus as he strode forward. Then he took his position and said, "The heart." It was a question dressed as a command.

Samus easily supplied the answer. "Energy is matter, matter is life, life is thought, and thought is energy. Past and future are the same present. All devisions are an illusion."

Grey Voice didn't give praise for mere recitation, but still Samus could see some of his thin remaining feathers puff up a bit. Old Bird didn't look back at them but he gave a slight cough that might have been a scoff at his companion.

After only a brief glare at his companion, Grey Voice continued, "Just as the past will always exist, so has the future always existed. Any action you take stands on a foundation of those two facts. By examining the present and the past, the future can be just as visible. Surprises like that," he gestured to the staff Samus held. On cue her injuries twinged slightly in sympathy. "...they should not be allowed to occur."

Samus couldn't help grumbling a bit. "It's easier for you. You have a thousand years of past."

As soon as she said it she winced as she knew she was wrong. She'd slipped back into the human way of thinking again: in years and dates and math composed of numbers instead of words. But Grey Voice didn't discipline her, and replied softly after a pause. "Years are a meaningless term. When describing a mind, doubly so. The only true devision is marked by when look back on your past and do not recognize the individual making the thoughts in your own head." He flicked a hand out towards Old Bird with what Samus could have sworn was a smirk. "By that number he is sixty-seven."

"You are nineteen," Old Bird replied, barely passing his eyes over Grey Voice. Both seemed to be using the other's number, high or low, as an insult.

Samus frowned a bit at this whole exchange. She always had to be careful and make sure the teachers weren't setting up logical traps for her to fall into. Grey Voice's lectures were often as treacherous as Old Bird's games. However, she still needed to stand up for herself so she said, "But experience's still valuable. With experience comes a chance for understanding. You've both gotten the immortality treatments so you've got an advantage over pretty much anyone who doesn't. More time to learn."

Then she took a breath as she prepared another question. It was one that she had waited a long time to ask. "Are you going to give me the treatments too?"

Here Grey Voice looked over at Old Bird, now with a more pleading expression. As always, Old Bird declined to take a larger role in the conversation. Grey Voice sighed, "That is uncertain. The process is a decision of grave import. By moral design, to give endless life, the ability to create is lost. There is time yet for you to assess that choice."

Samus resisted the urge to squirm in front of them. She knew the science of what they were referring to but when the focus was turned on herself it was still a strange and hazy subject. It lived in the genetic part of her brain, the part which missed humans even as her memories of them grew blurry at the edges. She wasn't even sure what it was she dreamed of some of those nights in the nest bed.

So she shrugged it off. "I know, biological fertility. That's not my path."

"Do you see your path?"

Samus had expected this but still her breath caught in her chest. This was a keystone moment. She stepped forward and planted her metal staff on the black rock. "To be a warrior of the Chozo." This was the first time she'd dared to vocalize what had been growing for years behind her eyes

But Grey Voice hung his head and even Old Bird turned away. That was the wrong answer. Why, Samus could't understand. That was what Old Bird had once been, it was what he was training her to be now. Even Grey Voice's lessons were clearly centered around a life of challenge and combat ranging across the galaxy. Samus had seen the old murals, endless lines of Chozo in brilliant, deadly armor. She'd seen the etched lines of ships that ripped moons apart, of lone fighters who could stand against entire armies, and armies that could stand against multi-system species. She'd seen that this vanguard created the sheltering wings of peace that allowed the rest of the galaxy to prosper. That was obviously her purpose.

But Grey Voice said, "The Chozo are gone."

Samus' eyebrows came together. "No, you're not."

Only silence and the sound of wind followed. Samus felt her frustration wrap into a ball behind her throat. The first round of painkillers began to wane and she could feel her broken finger and ribs start to return to awareness.

She stepped forward. "We're still here. Three of us. I'm Chozo too."

"No."

Old Bird's grunt stabbed far more painfully than any splinter of shattered bone. Samus gripped tighter onto the staff that she had pulled from behind the air. The storm grew closer and the air tasted like acid.

Old Bird turned back from the cliff. His beak softly clicked. "You are human." Samus felt her stomach weaken. Her bones hurt. Then he continued, "You are human and you are Chozo. You are more things than you have yet to become. You are you."

Anger rose up and Samus spat back, furious that they used the same kind of lines she was so often chastised for. "That doesn't mean anything! That's a tautology!" Grey Worm punished any line of argument from her that even veered towards circular logic and yet that's what they told her now?

Beside her Grey Voice let out a long, grunting sigh. His breath whistled faintly. "Yellow Hatchling, all of existence is a tautology. That is the core of meaning itself."

Samus opened her mouth again, but Grey Voice raised one large, long fingered hand. "The storm approaches. We now return inside."

Samus glanced over at the dark approaching clouds that now filled most of the sky above. A grey curtain seemed to draw across the ground beneath it. Then she glanced down at the way she had climbed up. Rain. The math between those two predictable velocities was as easy as it was unpleasant. She grimaced. She was going to lose most of her outer skin on this trip, but it was her fault for letting her teachers tarry here in another web of questions. Oh well, she turned to start to descend toward the first foot-hold.

A scraping sound of stone on stone made her look up. Grey Voice had vanished and Old Bird now stood in an new doorway that had just swiveled open out of a piece of blank rock on the mountain face. Inside was clearly a staircase descending down. Samus hung her head in exasperation as she walked back over to him. His instruction had only been, "Go to the top of the mountain." Climbing had been her own interpretation. Evidently Old Bird had decided that she should have already discovered this particular secret passage.

She shoved past him, not looking at his face which she reluctantly knew would be beaming with humor. Inside, the tunnel was effective a dark shaft ringed with carved steps.

She made her way down the steep stone stairs, narrow and sized for legs much longer than hers. It was very dark, with only the faintest glowing symbols on ancient etchings to allow sight at all. Samus' hard-won staff clinked on each step beside her, sketching out the shaft in echoes. Then, far below lights began to grow more frequent and more intense. The murals of dead, completed prophecies began to give way to current habitation and metal things.

Then she stepped out of the now revealed secret door into a long familiar hallway. A warm orange light washed out from unseen sources. The ceiling spoke to her:

"Hello, Samus."

Samus smiled in an indiscriminate direction, knowing that the engulfing presence would receive it. There was only one voice here that called her by her name. It was a nice gesture, even from a computer.

"Hello, Mother," she replied.

...

Samus heard the child's voice, radio waves bouncing across the night shrouded colony buildings and dark canyon walls.

"Help me, someone. My name's Roger and I'm scared."

She was already running, armor straining in the race away from that distant sighting of the impossible. With each pounding step the miraculous living Chozo was left further behind. How could that be? No, the mystery would remain after the immediate threat was dealt with. How did these pirates find what Samus had failed to find through decades of searching? That wasn't important. Where had the Chozo been? She had to move faster.

Her mind flashed back the Pirate command ship; a Chozo made cube, empty with a hollow center. The cube had been abandoned and unused, because it's cargo had already been removed. It's passenger had been removed. Now he stood on this same ground, and she was running away from him.

She shook her head in her sprint. The child had said that he and his mother were in the ruins, the excavation site. The map flashed in front of her eyes, blue lines floating into existence as dark hallways blurred past her. The closest entrance to the temple complex was in the center of the three canyons that forked off the top of the colony valley. It was back the way she'd just came. How had this child gotten so far away so quickly? There must have been some fast transport method known to the colonists. Some secret informal short-cut not included on the official maps.

Samus sprang her forward and tucked up her legs as a wide plane of glass shattered against the suit's metal skin. A constellation of shards briefly twinkled around her, spinning fragments sparkling in the street lamps and starlight. Then she hit the ground and paving bricks crumbled under her toes as she launched into a sprint once more. The canyon wall was at her left separating her from her destination, a barrier of living rock ten times taller than the greatest structure of concrete and metal that the humans had raised here. It's sculptor was the huge volcano and the very planet itself.

Except for that one part. Out of the corner of her eye, Samus spotted a Chozo era statue worked out of the living rock of the canyon. To most eyes it would look like just another of the many vaguely defined Chozo shapes that dotted this scene of their ancient home. Meaningless self-glorification kneeling down on one knee with outstretched arms. But nothing in this entire universe was meaningless. Samus exhaled gently as her boot swiveled on the street and bit into the pavement as she bolted off in that new direction. She recognized an abnormal aspect to the larger than life stone Chozo's posture, a silent language from an artist two thousand years ago. So she darted between pillar-like legs and zigged back around a fold of carved robe into a concealed tunnel behind. A long dark shaft stabbed out through the valley wall, straight towards the center canyon; straight toward the temple entrance. A shortcut. Samus exhaled with satisfaction as she raced down it, building to her top speed once more.

Scan picked up faint traces on the tunnel floor ahead of her. Several individuals had passed this way recently, making it likely she was on the trail of the colonists who had escaped Ridley. With each step into the shielding rock, the suit's background analysis grew quieter as the various waves of communication from planet and space all faded away. Then Samus was just left with her own breathing and the sound of her footsteps striking the stone floor.

She burst out the other side into the night. The south end of this new canyon, the center branch of three, was half filled with several of the huge dome-like buildings of the Research Center campus. A warning briefly flashes in Samus' visor as a very distant floating shape was briefly visible between two of those structures. Metroid, out looking for surviving prey or more pirate sacrifices.

Samus turned away from that as she ran up the canyon towards the prime Chozo site. This narrow valley was clearly one of the landforms with volcanic origin, as within a few hundred yards the space was already contracting. High up above, flanges of stone projected out from each canyon lip, gnashing the sky like teeth, remnants of a former roof to this massive lava tunnel. However, sometime in the millions of years after the eruption, that tunnel had become a watercourse and some departed stream had carved down at the floor creating a narrow floor beneath a wider bench halfway up the walls. As Samus hurried along that lowest floor she could see structures of stone and metal up there, habitations built into the shape of the land as if they only half existed. Chozo buildings.

This path along the bottom was meant to be walked. To the immortal Chozo any errand that was not worth walking to was not worth doing, even if the distance was a hundred miles. The discoveries of immortality and prophecy had rather eroded that species' sense of urgency by the end. However, somewhere along the line here the humans had injected their own timeframes and so widened and paved the winding foot path into a nice straight road. Now, as Samus' jog reached thirty miles per hour she had to admit she was leaning towards the human opinion on time.

Suddenly the old narrow river course opened up on each side as in front of Samus' path the canyon's dark open reaches came to a very decisive end. A wall lay in front of her, a hundred and fifty feet tall, reaching up to where the canyon's roof reformed shutting out the stars. The wall stretched across the canyon like the end of the world, each side sprouting a statue of stone and metal as tall as the entire wall. In the center the glowing patterns and faint lights etched out a massive portal just barely visible in the night, locked and barred. The way was shut.

The huge amphitheater space in front of the door and wall was filled with modular white and blue Federation buildings, evidently a major workplace for the colony researchers. They'd even brought their own power supplies up here. Samus noticed that several strings of those cables snaked off towards the terminus walls before ending limply on the ground outside the door, snapped and broken. The gateway had been shut in a hurry. That at least fit with what Samus had heard on the coms.

As if on cue human radio transmission broke through, much closer and stronger this time. "Hello? Aurora unit? Anyone? Please, I need help! My mom is hurt and we're stuck back here? I don't know how to get the temple door back open from this side. Please, help me! There's a lot of blood."

Samus looked up at the massive wall. The boy Roger's transmission was coming from the other side, but she couldn't risk responding. The pirates could hear every open transmission here, if they knew she was at the Temple door already they might just blanket this valley with missiles. All she could do was work quickly and then try to get the colonists out even quicker.

She looked left and right, the suit's scan attacking each nearby federation computer. unfortunately, the humans emergency procedures had gotten ahead of her here; all the data she was searching for was wiped in some early stage of the attack. She would have to re-solve the door the old fashioned way. The two massive flanking statues seemed to stare down at her, the pale light from their dimly glowing eyes painting the beaked faces into the night's shadows. On each, one hand stretched outwards to the wider world, warding or welcoming with palms larger than Samus' entire body. On the other side, one hand lifted up and one sank down, the carved naturalistic postures reaching for something just out of grasp.

The suit was able to extract some small bits of the Federation's research. The first told the name of this complex. However, Samus didn't need the little box of text which floated into her vision, she could easily read the glowing orange letters etched in the wall one hundred and fifty feet of the valley floor. The Chozo had always been mercurial in what exactly they considered a secret.

The ten-foot high words shone out, seeming to levitate in the void of night. Translations from Chozo to human standard were sometimes easy, sometimes deceptively difficult. An example lay in the first of these two words, "Temple". Chozo didn't worship anything, but they revered everything. Chozo didn't need faith, but they created it. Chozo had no religion, until they made every aspect of their reality into a religion in which they were at once the highest gods and lowest sinners. The implication of the label on this wall was at once "laboratory", "refuge", "vault", and "school". For humans, "Temple" was close enough.

The other half of the translation was even trickier. In fact, Samus could almost feel the intent to confuse across the weave of time. This wall was thousands and thousands of years old. By Samus' scan it might have been the oldest Chozo settlement she'd ever found, and yet it had evidently been in use right up until the very end. The question was, for what use? Here the name only taunted her, this temple of an inscrutable cause, dating from long before the obvious interpretation. This was the temple of the searcher, of the warrior, of the hunger, of the hunter.

To a human tongue, that word was pronounced "metroid."

The feel of dramatic irony was always rather grating.

A new broadcast crackled across the air, and Samus spun back in surprise as she realized it was coming from the Research Compound. Despite all her former concern for the security and secrecy of the five thousand remaining people Aurora held in her sanctum, the bio-computer now spoke out into the air for all to hear.

"Aran, the temple door must remain closed."

Samus continued to examine the solid horizon of that carved wall. Far over at the side, beside the legs of the massive statue, an older instillation of Federation equipment showed one of their initial attempts at tackling this same problem. Scan revealed faint traces of past drilling. The suit suggested one small hole, just enough to snake through some electrical instruments or basic drones. Unfortunately, that would not help her now. That drill was was typical of humans; they encountered a complex riddle and their first reaction was to just power past it with focused violence. Despite the urgency, Samus smirked to no one. Truth was, if not for the current mission constraints her first reaction to this door would have been a sustain barrage of every type of weaponry she could muster. That did end up being the answer about half the time. Instead she continued looking and inspecting.

This deep and narrow canyon at night was practically a cave. The faint remaining lights of the Chozo carvings and the Federation electrics looked like the colony webs of two dueling species of luminescent fungi across the floor and walls. A faint breeze curled down the brush the dust here. Then through that same cold night air, Aurora's broadcast returned.

"Pirate communications have revealed the casualties among the revealed shelter inhabitants. That is tragic but it means the most important mission objective must be to to keep advanced technology out of Pirate hands. The temple is currently sealed and keeping them out, this state of affairs must be allowed to continue."

Samus wondered if Aurora had picked up any of her interactions with the computers here at the door, or if the bio-computer was just guessing what she might be doing after hearing Roger's transmission. Guessing accurately, Samus had to admit, but anyone with an access to her file would probably have made the same conclusion. Aurora was right of course, only the Pirates had a Chozo captive who they'd just brought to the planet surface. This vault door was about to become a beaded curtain and the Federation forces had no way of knowing that yet. Samus continued to work.

"Please, Aran. In all likelihood the Pirates are taking advantage of this transmission to lead you into a trap that advances their plans. Aran, please acknowledge."

Another great guess, Aurora was on a roll. This Ridley had spent most of the day verbally taunting her, of course he would be wracking his brain to figure out how to use Roger's transmission against her. Suit analysis of micro-signatures in the transmission at least gave a high probability that it was a real juvenile human mouth making those sounds rather than some Pirate computer faking the whole thing. She still was expecting an ambush to collapse on her at any moment, but what did it matter? She had to save the child. If you understand your own nature, you understand just how few choices there really were.

Aurora was sounding desperate though. There had to be a lot of underlying direct orders at play to make an incredibly powerful AI sound like it was struggling with an issue. What exactly had the federation found in this Temple of the Hunter? What was so terrifying compared to what these Pirates had already demonstrated? Samus needed to know, since with the Chozo in hand Ridely would have it soon enough. This temple was huge, and if Samus remembered the satellite map correctly, it had three main entrances, one in each of the main branch canyons. This door was simply the closest.

A super missile barrage against the door sounded more appealing by the second. The good news is that the Chozo were great fans of security through obscurity and so there was undoubtably a way for a stranger in a Chozo battle suit to open this. She just had to hope that it wasn't a way for someone in an undamaged Chozo battle suit to open this.

Her scans traced an invisible web of different materials and thermal sensors showed deliberately unshielded conduits behind the armored surface of both the door and the two huge statues. It would have been really useful if Aurora had include the temple data on the data dump she'd given when they'd had that hard wired connection. The Federation's attitude towards "need to know" was always infuriating. Samus always got it in the end but the process really racked up her felony record.

The statues' eyes were glowing so Samus shot them. That didn't seem to do anything. Then she set herself to climbing up the metal robe of the flanking statue who's hand reached towards the earth instead of the sky. The general idea was that the Chozo loved making their keys inconvenient to reach.

Aurora's shielded facility began broadcasting again. "I am forwarding a transmission from Commander Nakamura." Samus' eyebrows came together as she examined the back of this metal palm larger than a transport van. The Federation forces really were concerned.

There was a brief pause as Aurora's broadcast signature flicked to relay a different ID. Then a female voice whispered over the electric spectrum. "Um, hello? Hello, who is this? My com just turned on. Hello? Is this regarding my request for those file declassifications on Aran's case?"

Clinging to her perch fifty feet up, Samus couldn't help smiling. Hello, Officer Yin. How are you?

It didn't sound like Yin had slept either. Samus could hear the nearly silent tremble of vocal cords stressed by exertion and stimulants. Yin said, "Records? Only there's no ID on this call or-"

There was a brief click and then Nakamura's rather angry voice took over. "Damn it, it does outgoing calls too? Aran, if you survive this I might want to murder you for what you did to my com system."

Samus was starting to like Nakamura, for all the secret goals hiding behind his words. She hoped it was the pirates who had released the metroids on this world. She'd be disappointed now if she had to kill the captain. More disappointed since she had no idea how she'd manage it from here. At the moment she had other problems, including this one band of red stone on the statue arm that was conductive to electricity for some reason.

Nakamura sounded tired too. Of course probably hadn't half shredded many of his vital organs during an uncontrolled planetary reentry but the battle had to have been stressful for him too. "I know the pirates can hear us, so you can't safely reply, but you can still listen to us."

Samus frowned at a bit of ancient engraved writing that decorated the wall. "The weight of your sins will rise to the fall of..." Did that clue mean to go up or to go down?

Somewhere in space, the Commander sighed, "There are lives at risk down on the planet. I know. But if these Pirates manage to incorporate even more Chozo technology then everyone on this ship, everyone in this sector is at risk. Analysis came back on that attack from the Pirate capital ship and it was Chozo wave-beam technology. They've cracked some code in a way even the Federation hasn't managed."

Ah, she had it! If she analyzed the last line of that poem the it meant that she just had to...No, wait, that was just the name of the door's Chozo designer. Samus clonked her helmet's forehead against the rock in frustration.

Nakamura was still talking, "Thwarting the Pirate forces must be your top priority. It must be your only priority. Aran, I'm afraid that's an order. Do you understand?"

Samus jerked back from her latest experiment poking at the statues, the suit's shield sizzling. Why and how was that thing full of acid?! She hopped back and landed down on the canyon floor with a thump as the dust shook from the impact of her boots. She glanced up and back, at the night sky framed above the distant Research Compound. Someone up in those stars Diomedes was slowly repairing, however it sounded like it still might be a few hours.

It also sounded like Nakamura had read a psych profile of hers somewhere. He was talking like Adam, though he hadn't risked calling her "lady" yet. She couldn't blame him for that, it was a legitimate psychological tactic when faced with a difficult command. But her eyebrows came together all the same.

Samus stepped back and looked at the massive wall as a whole. Then her eyes focused on one precise point that was suddenly very clear to her. She'd found the key. She raised her weapon. Nakamura was right, she was being an idiot. Against everything else on the line, Roger and his wounded mother were paltry feathers to weigh down that scale. But Samus also knew herself and she knew what she would do. It was inevitable, and still she hesitated.

Floating text blinked into sight on her visor. "Your path lies before you."

The suit's malfunction was here again. Again it was offering opinions and judgments in a strangely living wording. Was it worth it to hope for one particular explanation?

"Do you understand? Yes/No"

A tired smile ticked at the corner of Samus' mouth. Her thumb swept to the left.

"Then let's get going, Lady."

Samus fired. Burning energy splashed across the hidden keystone and eldrich Chozo circuits glowed into life, signaling that she had solved the puzzle. It was always nice when shooting worked.

The door rumbled open to a massive stone hall that slumbered in a bath of dim reddish light.

In that moment Roger's transmission crackled to life again, his little voice quick and happy. "Thank you very much, Samus Aran." Samus' heart faltered. The child had never known her name. "You are as effective as always." Off to the side of the inner room, beside where the Federation had drilled that tiny hole through the wall there was a single small remote transmitter lying on the ground where it had been poked in from outside; a Pirate made transmitter.

Samus took a deep breath as she heard the pounding advance of armored feet charging up the canyon behind her. The reaches of the silent temple took those hundred sounds and knitted their echoes together into a soft thrum. It drifted off through the winding halls ahead like the quick heartbeat of a small creature. Inside the deserted temple, it found no answer. Samus breathed out.

Then she turned back and fired.

...