They glare each other down for another couple of seconds, the argument curdling the air between them, and then Keith grimaces and inches his way out from under the cover of the bike's stabilizer. Pidge follows. Lance and Hunk are standing on the porch, the shack door open behind them.
"What?" Keith snaps.
"My mom called," Lance says, wearing an unfamiliar worried expression. "I guess the Garrison called and asked if I was at her house. We came out here to tell you, but, uh." He points at a spot in the direction they came in from. She shades her eyes to follow it, and a chill goes through her at the sight of a helicopter painted in the Garrison's colors flying low to the ground following the line of the highway. "That's not normal, right?"
Hunk wrings his hands. "I mean, they're probably not looking for us. We're just cadets. Well. Most of us are cadets. You guys definitely stole some stuff, and I guess we technically aided and abetted, but they wouldn't break out a helicopter for that, right?"
They all stare at it as it creeps closer along the highway. "If you want to get technical, we did steal information that might be considered critical to national security?" she offers weakly.
"National security? What are we gonna do? Snitch to the aliens?" Lance scoffs, but the bravado comes out a little shaky.
"I don't know, that's just what they told me the last time I tried it," she snaps back.
"Great. Just great."
Hunk shades his eyes and squints nervously into the distance. "You think they can see us from here?"
Keith gives a quick, abrupt shake of his head and shoulders, trying to dispel the tension she can feel prickling up his spine. "I'm not going to stick around and find out."
"What, are you going to, like, go on the lam?" Lance says incredulously.
Keith's shoulders hunch stubbornly, but Pidge feels a twinge of guilt go through her. "Look," she says. "Like we said. You don't have to come if you don't want to. It's basically my fault you got dragged into this in the first place."
Lance blinks and then shakes his head. "Nuh-uh. We talked about this. Still not happening."
"Besides," Hunk puts in unhappily, "I'm pretty sure they're not in a listening mood once they break out the helicopters."
She winces, and Lance's expression softens. "Look, you're stuck with us for now. So what's the plan?"
She and Keith catch each other's eyes without meaning to before looking away stiffly. She hears him shift on his feet. "This is the only building out here," he says. "If they're really looking for us, they're going to check it out. We take the bike somewhere under cover so we're not here when they do it and figure out what to do after they're gone."
The helicopter sweeps an arc across the line of the highway and they all follow its path. "You know what? I'm all in favor of that," says Hunk.
"Fine," Keith says shortly. His thoughts twist abruptly, and she gets a vague impression of the shack's interior. "Stay here."
"What do you mean 'stay here'? I thought we were getting out of here," asks Lance, but he's already ducked inside. Pidge lingers a moment, tempted to leave Keith to his own devices, but the discordant note ringing through the connection tugs at her nerves. She sets her jaw and follows.
At first glance, Keith's nowhere to be found, but she hears the hollow clap of a cupboard door shutting from inside the bathroom, and after a second he emerges with a dingy bedsheet stuffed under his arm. He pauses when he catches sight of her, shoulders rigid. She stares back at him, and after a second he grunts and his eyes skate away. When he heads over to the corkboard, she goes to the other side.
Between them, they pull it down in awkward silence and lay it on the sheet, where Keith wraps it into a suspicious-looking grey bundle before rocking back onto his haunches. He catches her eye again and looks away stiffly. "Just in case."
She gives him a nod. She doesn't like the idea of the Garrison finding it either. Not with what she knows about them now. "Where…?"
"It'll fit under the porch."
They maneuver it out the door past Lance and Hunk. Keith shifts his grip and she catches the drift of his intent.
"You-?"
"Yeah." She drops her end and he carries it off toward the end of the porch.
Hunk watches him go. "Was that the, uh…"
"The conspiracy board from inside?" Lance helpfully finishes.
"It's not-" she and Keith say it at the same time, and there's a short pause while they pointedly look away from each other.
"It's not a conspiracy board," he says stubbornly from where he kneels at the porch's other end. He pries at something and there's a hollow wooden thump as a loose board comes out of its place.
"I dunno, it looked a lot like a conspiracy board to me. Are there any other massive government cover-ups you guys want to come clean about? Crop circles? Bigfoot? ESP?"
The link flinches and Keith glares up at them through his hair. "No."
"Okay, but what is it?" Hunk puts up his hands defensively and shrugs a little. "C'mon. I'm curious too."
Pidge frowns, and her eyes drift to Lance, half-expecting the sonorous toll of the Knell. She's not sure if she's relieved or disappointed when it stays quiet. It's not something she really wants to explain. "Look, we can talk about it later."
"But-"
There's a solid thump as Keith kicks the board back into its place in the side of the porch. "We're wasting time." He jerks his head towards the dot of the helicopter, drawing uncomfortably close. "Do you want to wait around for them?"
Lance casts an eye toward it and seems to deflate. "Yeah, all right. Point taken."
They all pile onto the bike again, and Keith ignites the engine. It lifts with a faint, high whine - it's stupidly overpowered, but it's not meant for four people. Keith's thoughts spiral down to a fine, bright focus on speed and balance and he moves them away from the shack, tracking eastwards. He cuts them in a lazy curve leading into the mouth of a shallow trench that she knows eventually bellies out into a steep gully. She takes the opportunity to look backwards. The shack is darkening blot against the glare of the landscape, sticking out against the red soil and the faint silver line of the highway. The helicopter makes a slow, careful pass over it, and then another.
Hunk takes notice of her line of sight sight and leans over to follow it. "Oh, man. I think you were right about them looking for us."
"Why? What are they doing?" Lance swings himself sideways to peer around Hunk. The bike fishtails under the sudden change in load, drawing a jolt in the link and a hiss from Keith. Its right stabilizer skims low over the ground, kicking up a long puff of dust behind them.
"Watch it!"
"Sorry!"
The bike rights with a final burst from the side thruster. Pidge risks another glance backwards. A chill goes through her as she sees the helicopter bank away from the shack, heading towards their dust trail.
"I think they noticed that!"
"Shit," Keith mutters. He moves through a quick string of jumpy thoughts and she gets a brief, blurred impression of rock and shadow. "Hang on," he calls.
"What do you mean, 'hang on'? What are you gonna do?"
"Going to try and lose them," Keith barks over his shoulder. The pitch of the engine shifts higher as he opens up the throttle. "Now let me concentrate!"
They pick up speed, wending their way deeper into the gully as its walls climb around them. Keith brings them close in to the leeward rock face, crouched high on the footrests as he weaves them through the boulders that begin to crowd the path. Pidge keeps a wary eye on the helicopter. The pilot is definitely aware of them now, trailing them like a hyena following a wounded animal.
Gradually, the gully cuts deeper into the earth, broadening out to a narrow canyon as they speed further into the desert. They're getting close to the Knell's territory now. The walls reach far over their heads, and the path twists and and loops back on itself in between massive outcroppings of stone weathered into odd, top-heavy shapes, the sky visible only intermittently. Keith charts a low, fast course, keeping them as much under cover as possible, but she's acutely aware of how the bike's body glints in the sun and the plume of dust they kick up as they go. When she catches a glimpse of the sky, the helicopter is still there, doggedly tailing them.
"Hey, where are we going?" shouts Lance.
"Somewhere they can't see us from above. There's a couple of spots further in," Keith replies.
"Is that really going to work?"
"You have any better ideas?"
"Not really, but aren't they going to figure it out?"
"We can deal with it when we get there," she calls out. "We just need to break our trail and get them off us."
"Okay, but-"
At that moment, the Knell sounds.
She yelps, and Keith chokes out a curse as the bike swerves. It's thunderously loud, almost painful, and it pulls at her chest like another heartbeat. From Keith, she gets an additional overwhelming rush of intent - like it wants them to follow.
"What the hell is that?" barks Lance.
The link goes electric and she feels Keith's attention snap sharply up. "You heard that?" she calls and twists in her seat to look at Lance.
"Of course I heard it! How could you not?"
Hunk looks between them, frowning. "I didn't hear anything."
Lance whips around to stare at him. "Seriously?"
"Which direction is it coming from?" Keith barks.
"What-"
"Just tell me!"
Lance looks decidedly spooked now, but after half a second of concentration, gamely points off to the side. "Somewhere over to the left?"
Keith turns the bike to follow, and they skip through the shallow channel of rocks to the ravine's other side.
"What the hell, man?"
"Keep calling out directions! We're following it!"
"What happened to getting under cover?"
Keith makes a raspy, frustrated hiss, and Pidge wavers, acutely aware of the helicopter's unflagging, patient pursuit. But the Knell's an overwhelming resonance in her thoughts, and an insistent, almost physical pull in her chest. Blazing through Keith's side of the link, there's a steady core of certainty, beating in time to the Knell's thrum like a lighthouse beacon sweeping through fog.
"Just do it!" she shouts.
Lance stares at her, eyes wide, and she's sure he's about to protest. But maybe the Knell is pulling at him too. After a second, his mouth snaps shut and his expression firms. "Fine! More to the left."
Up ahead, the gully splits and Keith throws them into the left-hand fork. She catches sight of the helicopter above banking to follow as they turn. The path grows narrow as they continue on, thick with boulders, the walls overhanging the gorge throwing it into shadow, only a narrow strip of sky clear above them. Keith is still pushing the bike hard, somehow keeping them steady, but there's a high whine to the engines as they labor under the load. The Knell's toll still hasn't stopped - it's reached that saturation point where she can't tell where it comes from.
"You still hear it?" she calls back.
"Yeah!" Lance frowns for a second and then points to an apparent side-passage where the ground bellies down abruptly, the canyon walls steepling together. "It's somewhere over there, I think?"
Keith doesn't hesitate, and aims the nose of the bike right at it.
"Oh man, we are going to die," she hears from Hunk as they plunge into the throat of the gorge. Keith has to slow the bike down, its stabilizers just barely clearing the walls. They wend through the canyon's shadows, and just when she thinks they've hit a dead end, Keith makes a surprised noise in the back of his throat and pulls them around the side of a boulder she hadn't even noticed.
They emerge into a tiny grotto. Keith steers them into the deep shade under an overhanging ledge and cuts the bike's engines. After the noise of the wind and the thrusters, the sudden stillness is eerie. The Knell is still keening its lone, uncanny tone, but it's never been so obvious that it's not a physical sound. They all startle and look up to the sky at the distant chop of the helicopter's rotors, but its shadow passes over them without stopping and doesn't come back. There's a collective sigh of relief. After a moment, Keith kicks the bike's stand into place, the sound loud in the small space, and carefully gets off. Pidge follows, and she hears Hunk and Lance dismount from their places as well. They all take a moment to stare at their surroundings.
The chamber is roughly circular, a cramped space hollowed into the cliffs like a knot in a plank of wood. Its walls bell sharply, so narrow at their top that only a sliver of sunlight makes it through to the ground, painting the rock in dark and gold stripes. Across from them, a crevice yawns open, just big enough for a person to pass through. Above it, she catches the faint, careful lines of a petroglyph, the outline of the lion's head and a person, back to back.
"Okay," Lance says after a moment. He looks uneasy, uncharacteristically subdued. "So we lost them for now. What's going on? What is this place? What is this?" He fails in the air nears his ears.
"You're still hearing it?" Keith asks sharply.
"Yes, I'm still hearing it!"
"Hearing what?" says Hunk, in tones of deep exasperation.
Lance frowns and turns to him. "You really don't hear that? Kind of a weird humming noise?"
Hunk hesitates a second, concentrating. "Maybe a little now that you mention it? I don't get how you guys were hearing it over the bike though. And why does it matter anyway? I feel like we have other things to worry about."
"I mean, you're definitely not wrong about that." Lance turns back to glance between her and Keith suspiciously. "So come on. You guys obviously know something we don't. What's going on?"
There's an uncomfortable pause while she and Keith catch each other's eyes. She can feel the unease hackling up the back of his neck. When it comes down to it, the Knell's just a feeling, not a collection of facts like the Garrison's cover-up of the Kerberos mission. It's too vague, too subjective, and it treads far too close to the link for comfort.
But there's no question now that Lance is hearing it. They're going to have to tell them something. After a handful of seconds, she shoves her glasses up on her nose and reluctantly spits it out. "We've been hearing it on and off out here. No one else seemed to notice it."
"We were trying to find it," Keith admits after a moment.
"Wait, wait." Lance waves a hand, squinting suspiciously. "Was that what the conspiracy board was? With the map and the strings?"
Keith gives a curt nod. Hunk and Lance exchange a glance. "When you say no one else seemed to notice…?"
Neither she nor Keith find anything to say to that.
Hunk lets out a heavy breath. "Okay, yeah, that's spooky. I can, uh. See why you wouldn't want to advertise that."
"But, okay, wait. So you guys were looking for this thing all this time and you never followed it out here?"
"We-"
"-tried," Keith grits out.
"It gets too-" she hesitates for a second, trying to figure out how to describe it "-loud out here to narrow down."
Lance frowns. "What are you talking about? It's definitely coming from in there." He points at the crevice. The link goes taut. All of them turn to inspect the opening.
"Ohhh, I don't like this at all," Hunk interjects. "I mean, we are still very much on the run from the government and I feel like we should concentrate on that before exploring the creepy cave with the ghost noises."
There's a muffled flare of frustration from Keith, smothered under the Knell's insistent pound. Pidge hesitates, because Hunk definitely isn't wrong, but there's something about the tenor of the Knell that feels urgent now, focused and almost-aware. Like there's a reason they need to get to it. It's the clearest it's ever been for her, and she can feel it pushing at Keith like a riptide. There's something unquestionably different and important about it. "It's not like we can do anything about the Garrison at the moment," she offers.
To her surprise, it's Lance who breaks the stalemate. "I… yeah. All right."
"Really?" Hunk says dubiously.
Lance shoves a hand uncomfortably through his hair, pushing it up into short, sweaty spikes. "Pidge is right, and it's better than just waiting around out here. Besides," he casts an unnerved glance at the crack in the rock wall. "It's just… it's weird, all right? I feel like we should check it out."
Hunk lets out a sigh. "I can tell when I'm outnumbered."
"We'll get out of the sun, at least. And it's not like today can get any weirder."
"Buddy, you have to stop saying things like that."
They all make their way over to the crevice. Lance, having made up his mind, edges his way in first, shoulders squared with nervous energy. Hunk follows, his expression resigned, but there's a reluctant spark of curiosity in his eyes as he scrambles through the entrance. It leaves her and Keith hovering together at the opening, the connection between them humming. She catches Keith's eye, his pupils pinpricks in the stripe of light outside the cave's mouth.
"You think this is really it?" she asks.
The Knell hums a long, eerie tone, and a shiver goes through him despite the heat. "Has to be," he says after a moment. He gives a hard shake of his head, like he's trying to dispel the noise. "Come on."
The inside of the cave is cool and damp-smelling. She can see Hunk and Lance silhouetted just ahead of them, barely visible in the sunlight trickling through behind them.
"Whoa," murmurs Hunk. "This place is bigger than I expected."
"You're not kidding," says Lance, strangely quiet. He digs in a pocket and after a moment, holds his phone up. The corridor stretches out ahead of them as far as the sterile light of the screen will reach.
"Look," Keith says, and reaches out a hand to gently brush the wall, eyes gleaming oddly in the phone's glow. Petroglyphs climb the walls around them. People, in ones and twos and threes. An abstract, circular symbol like a sun. A painstaking array of dots that resolve into constellations as she looks at them. The lion, over and over.
"Oh, wow," says Hunk softly. "These are incredible."
"We found some like this before when we were looking for it," she puts in.
"Never this many together," Keith adds.
"What do you think they mean?"
"Don't know," Keith shrugs after a moment. "The lion's always there."
"The circle too, sometimes," Pidge adds.
They tread deeper into the passageway. The light of the entrance fades, and then disappears completely as they round a corner, leaving them only with the white glow of the phone for illumination. They're all quiet, the echo of their steps loud in the darkness. It feels like they've entered some kind of strange in-between place, a realm completely separate from the hot glare of the desert outside. The Knell croons a long, slow pulse in the forefront of her mind, and she can feel Keith painfully attuned to it, so focused that his thoughts almost disappear inside it.
The path makes another sharp bend up ahead. Lance and Hunk's shadows round it, and she hears a quiet "Whoa" from up ahead.
"What is it?"
"I, uh. I think you gotta come see for yourself."
She comes around the corner and nearly crashes into Hunk as she draws to a halt, mouth falling open. Distantly, she hears Keith's steps stop as well, feels his breath catch in his throat.
When she'd seen the petroglyphs, she'd imagined a flesh and blood lion, slightly bigger than a tall person. Nothing could have prepared her for the machine towering over them, still and shining in the faint light trickling through some aperture far above them. The Knell crescendos and somehow deepens before rolling off to a distant rumble when she lays eyes on it. The link reverberates like the plucked string of an instrument. Something aches in Keith's chest and then hers, and the indistinct echo of something not quite a voice bleeds through the connection.
"What is it?" says Hunk after a moment.
"Obviously, it's a lion," Lance says, still staring up at it.
She snorts. "I think we got that."
Lance turns his head away from it to eye her and Keith. "You guys know anything about it?"
She frowns. "How would we know?"
Lance gives an exaggerated eye-roll. "I mean, I figured you might have more of a clue than us, what with all the conspiracies."
She winces a little guiltily, and his shoulders slump. "Sorry, man. This is just… a lot."
"How long do you think it's been here?" Hunk asks.
There's a short pause while they all stare at it some more. It looks pristine, its exterior plates clean and unblemished, despite the cave's damp. Around it, she can see a faint blue glow, like a hard light display.
"A long time, if it's the same lion in the rock carvings," Keith says quietly.
Lance lets out a low whistle. "All that time dressed up and with nowhere to go, huh?" he says softly, staring up at the lion.
He takes a step forward and the room disappears around them.
Pidge lets out a gasp without meaning to. Her eyes are open, but the cavern's gone and she's alone in some empty, colorless space. She can't see any of the others, feels herself weightless and bodiless, adrift. Her heart jolts in panic and she flails blindly, searching for a point of reference. Her mental thrashing thumps up against something. Keith's thoughts latch onto hers, solid and real and crackly with fight-or-flight, an anchor against the disorienting void. She grips back and has just enough time to realize everything else has disappeared for him as well before the emptiness suddenly isn't empty anymore.
They're in a space again, she and Keith, looking up and up at an impossible mechanical goliath. The tall, armored figure from the petroglyphs all those months ago flashes through her mind. There's a subtle, disorienting hitch, as if she were on an elevator starting an ascent. The colossus doesn't move, but there's a weighty feeling of attention. Keith's presence, thorny and on-edge, goes pinprick-focused as the familiar tone of the Knell bells out into the not-space. All at once, she understands that the giant has a name and that the lion… belongs to it? Is part of it? Somehow, the Knell, the lion (the Lion, now) and Voltron are part of the same thing.
The strange not-space fades in a way that feels slow and gradual, but somehow between one blink and the next, Voltron is gone and she's standing in the cave again. That back corner of her brain is still locked in a tight grip with Keith's, and she feels him let out a slight breath, knows they were both seeing the same thing. They catch each other's eye, and after a moment, the link slackens between them as they both draw back. Keith takes a physical step to the side, twitching some of the tension out of his shoulders. A little ways away, Lance and Hunk are dazedly staring up at the Lion, and she has an awkward moment of uncertainty, wondering if they'd seen it too, or if it's just her and Keith again.
Hunk clears his throat. "Uh. Did you guys just see something?"
"Giant robot? Voltron?" Lance advances cautiously. Hunk nods. "Oh, thank god!" exclaims Lance, throwing out his hands. "I was worried it was just me."
Hunk lets out a gusty sigh. "Oh, good." He pauses. "I mean, I'm still freaked out about. You know. Everything. But that's one less thing to worry about."
"Hey!" Lance calls, looking in Pidge and Keith's direction. "Did you guys see it too?"
There's an uneasy hesitation from Keith, and a momentary, reflexive shared reluctance to admit to yet another weird, unexplainable experience. But Lance and Hunk are apparently in on the giant robot vision too. "Yeah," she calls back.
"The Lion's part of it, right? So… what are we supposed to do about it?" asks Hunk.
Nobody's got an answer for that one.
After a moment, Keith frowns and takes a cautious step forward, hand reaching out for the thin blue glow surrounding the Lion.
"Don't just put your hand on it!" she hisses at him at the same time Hunk makes a sort of wheezing sound. He scowls, but drops his hand. "Look, we can use something else." She takes the strap of her bag and carefully prods it forward to intercept the blue light. It stops and slides like it's hit a glass wall, but nothing else happens. After a moment of watching it, Keith shrugs and, very carefully, extends a pinky finger towards it.
"Why would either of you do either of those things?" she hears Hunk say.
Keith's finger makes contact and nothing awful happens. "It's fine," he says, and lays his palm flat on it. Intrigued, Pidge follows suit. It's smooth and warm under her hand, and when she leans a little against it, it holds up her weight easily.
"How do we get in?" asks Keith.
"I dunno," Lance says, head tilted up to look into the Lion's eyes. He steps forward and lifts a hand. "Maybe we just have to knock?"
The shield disappears the moment his knuckles hit it.