A New Kind of Machine Pt. 2
The Cauldron is noisy and busy with life as it had been when Aloy had first walked its tangled tunnels and open forges months ago, yet this time the Nora huntress walked with a more purposeful step. She has her bow in hand, careful to avoid the machines that patrol the metal labyrinth and the large assembly machines that work ceaselessly.
Vale follows her a few steps back, his eyes darting in every which direction to look at everything that he can. It's clear that this place fascinates him greatly. She remembers him mentioning how he was a bit of a tinkerer, all his weapons fashioned himself. How this place must have looked like a treasury of mechanical wonders to him. Aloy muses that she had similar feelings, except she wasn't interested as to how it was as to why, until she found her answer a few months ago. Now, even though she wasn't mechanically inclined, it still amazed her just to see the machines at work.
They reach a circulating belt of transporting crates that float through the air. Vale activates his Focus to scan them, his hands moving quickly, no doubt saving data for later reference.
"What makes them float like that?" he asks.
"I'm not sure, something to do with magnets," she answers.
"Magnets? What are those?"
"I think they're a special kind of rock that pull other things towards them, like metal."
"Oh."
They continue down the massive metal cavern, sneaking past the Watchers on guard. They pass by an opening where they could see the centre of the Cauldron, it's working arms moving back and forth to create another machine. They can't go there directly because of the giant gap between them, but Aloy remembers the path.
"That's the core. We should be able to find information about the machine there," she states.
"How do you know what we're looking for is there?"
"Because I've been here before."
"I figured that. You know you're way around this place," Vale says. Aloy turn back to face him. "I mean what makes you believe the Cauldron made that machine specifically? Is there something else here?"
Aloy stares at him while gathering the right words to say. So he was insightful as he was capable. A good quality, if it didn't mean having to dodge all his tricky questions.
"I'm… not quite sure. But there's an information hub at the core. It might give us details as to why the Cauldron made that machine," Aloy says, and it was her best honest answer. Once Vale nods, she continues to lead him through the Cauldron. They walk through the path that loops them through the outside into the fresh air before diving back in, straight for the core.
When Aloy reaches the final platform she stops to stare at the machine the Cauldron is currently building.
"It's the same machine," she exclaims.
"It's making another one?" Vale says, stepping next to her to get a view. Standing there in the middle of the domed force field is the same model of machine that attacked them at the gates. It's already active, it's red eyes darting back and forth and moving it's limbs one at a time to test that they work properly. "Well we know the first one didn't get the job done. Where's the core?"
"Underneath that machine. So we'll have to kill it first," Aloy points to the pylons around the core. "See those towers? Once I'm up there, I can take that shield down and we can destroy it."
"Good thing we came prepared."
Aloy ropes down the platform to level ground. Vale follows her. There are a few Watchers guarding the perimeter of the shield. Once Aloy takes care of them with some carefully placed arrows, she begins climbing one of the pylons, careful to avoid the electricity that jumps between the two metal rods near the top. Once there, she can see Vale placing his traps on the ground around him. She can't see exactly what they are, but she feels the need to call out to him.
"Okay! I'm going to lower the shield!"
"Good to go!" he shouts back. The huntress turns to the node that sits at the top of the pylon and strikes her spear in it. A few seconds later, the node turns blue and the alarm sounds. The pylon lowers into the ground as the shield disappears. The machine turns to her.
"Hey ugly!" Vale bark and shoots the machine with the cannon on his shield. The machine growls and focuses on him instead. The machine leaps into a sprint, but before it reaches him, the ground lights up in blue lightning and strikes the machine, paralyzingly it in place. Vale runs up to it and places a different kind of device on it, and then sprints away. A few seconds later, the side of the machine cracks open in an explosion.
It deals a heavy amount of damage. Sparks jump from its side wildly in a shower almost. The machine tries to turn, limping on it's one leg.
"Hit it before it transforms!" the mercenary shouts as he grabs his hammer from his back. Aloy loads two arrows onto her bow, but then a blinding light shines from the machine.
It's too late. The machine starts growing new armour to cover its vulnerable hide and to replace what it lost. The light hurt even looking at it sideways, which keeps her from aiming her arrows at the machine.
When the light subsides, she could hear the loud crunch of metal breaking. When she looks, she could see Vale swinging his hammer at the transformed machine with cool vigour. That makes no sense. Was he not blinded by the light?
Aloy remembers her arrows and shoots them at the machine. The armour is so dense that her arrows bounce harmlessly off the metal. She wishes for her blast sling, which she had left with her Strider outside. She searches her quiver for tearblast arrows instead.
Meanwhile, the mercenary takes a hard hit and falls back against a metal ledge. Somehow he stays conscious, but the machine is right on top of him. Aloy fires her tearblast arrow just in front of Vale's feet as the machine leaps at him. When the tearblast goes off, the force wave careens the machine just over his head, saving him.
Aloy lights some arrow tips on fire and sends them in the machine's direction. It dodges a few of them, but she could still predict its movements, just like any other machine she had faced. A blue arc also shoots the machine, paralyzingly one of its legs. She finds it comes from Vale's weapon. The hammer head is shifted from its place and a long barrel is revealed, worked into the shaft of his weapon that fires electric shocks. He fires again and paralyzes its other leg, rendering its front legs immobile.
Vale rushes up to it and brought down his hammer directly on top of its head, smashing the protective plate there. But it seems the paralysis doesn't last long. The machine jumps up and comes down on him with teeth barred. He stops it by letting it bite down on his weapon instead, but the machine tosses him to the side, across the Cauldron floor and tosses his weapon the other way.
Aloy can see it then; the glowing delicate nexus that sits in the machine's head, gleaming a brilliant magenta and now visible. She quickly picks a hard point arrow from her quiver as the machine charges at Vale. She leads her shot just enough and it strikes true. Vale is smart enough to dive out of the way as the machine skids past him into a heap.
She joins him as he stares at the machine. He isn't breathing as heavily as one might expect, but she could tell he was wincing a little, having fell on his back hard.
"I really hope there aren't any more of those things out there," he says, not taking his eyes off the corpse.
"What makes you say that?" she asks.
"Who else would figure out how to kill them like we did just now? That component you shot is right there, but I only made it available because I had the ability to scan it. Nobody else can do that."
"Wait, you can see its weaknesses?"
"Yeah, there's the brain on its head, and then there's the two devices on its sides that are protected by plating. Those devices are how it transforms with the new armour. You're meaning to tell me you didn't know?"
"I can't see anything with my Focus," Aloy says, and taps her device to make sure that hasn't changed since the last time they fought this machine. She can only see the nexus now because it is exposed. Vale shrugs.
"Sorry, I just assumed you knew."
"We managed to kill it, so there's no point in worrying about it now. But you'll have to let me look at your Focus sometime. I'm curious to see what's different about it," she replies, and turns to the centre of the Cauldron, where the core is rising from the ground.
"Sure, when we're not busy," is his response.
Aloy walks up to the core and gives it a quick once over with her own eyes before tapping her Focus. Nothing seems different about it physically, and a scan reveals nothing compared to when she hacked into it last time, but this time she wasn't looking to learn how to override machines; she wanted to look into the detailed logs of the core functions.
Aloy grabs her spear and sticks it into the node. She then activates her Focus to view the data. She can't understand everything she sees, but she can point out specific details she recognizes. One in particular; a query sent to GPrime, not responded to.
In fact there are several messages sent to the Gaia Prime site that are left unanswered.
Aloy knew that Hephaestus, one of the subordinate functions of Gaia, made the machines. If questions were sent to Gaia Prime about certain machines with no reply, then it would assume it necessary to go ahead and make a new machine. This was directed linked to the Derangement.
"What do you see?" Vale asks, which makes her snap out of her thoughts.
"Do you know how to link to different devices?" she says. Hopefully he does, because she never discovered it, and she never learned how to when Sylens was communicating with her. Too bad he disappeared.
Vale shakes his head. "I don't. I can try to figure that out while you do your thing."
"Good idea."
Vale goes exploring into his own device as Aloy searches for more information.
After what felt like half a day, both them sitting there on the floor with their own displays, Aloy hasn't gotten anywhere, and she sits there simmering in frustration. She searches for any recent messages that might have led to the Cauldron making this dangerous new machine, but she can't. She did find her kill orders, however. A file referencing the Master Override and its recent activation was immediately followed by a new production sequence. Who the target is was based on who activated the Master Override, which, consequently, there was only person in the world that had the clearance.
Elisabet Sobeck. And since Aloy shared the same blood as she, when an identity profile popped up, it was her face on the screen. The machine recognized her as the scientist.
"Well, I know why the machine targeted me," Aloy says aloud, not meaning to. She flinches when Vale speaks.
"You figured it out? How?" he asks. Aloy hesitates for obvious reasons. She looks over her shoulder to find him staring back, waiting patiently for an answer. She doesn't feel like giving it.
"It's complicated."
"Really? That's your favourite answer, isn't it?" Vale says and sighs. Aloy looks away, feeling slightly ashamed for keeping more information away from him, but explaining her strange origins was going to be a lengthy and difficult conversation that she didn't want to have. "Listen, I gotta understand what's going on here if you want me to help. Don't you trust me?"
Her emotions quickly change. "Trust doesn't come to those who have just met, Vale," she replies spitefully.
"Even if one saved the other's life?"
Aloy sighs.
An alarm pins in her Focus and a red symbol flashes across several points along the data. The data disappears and a new entry of code starts to write itself.
"What?" Aloy fidgets with the new entries, trying to stop it but nothing seems to work. Eventually she lets it go until it stops itself, replacing all the data she had been looking at before, but in an eerie orange glow. A few more entries write themselves, one of which she interacts with. She can't read most of the writing except for the header.
Alert: Command Protocol directives initiated. .
"Command Protocol?" she ponders. "What's that?"
"What's what?" Vale speaks, still preoccupied with his task. She doesn't reply. She finds another entry she recognizes; numbers. The Old Ones used to number their days and years. This text is linked to the directives she just read.
3039/6/17. 18:24:47.
Aloy searches for the date settings in her Focus, curious as to what the date is today. It takes her exactly ten seconds to find it. When she does, her blood freezes.
3039/6/17. 18:24:57.
She shuts off her Focus and snatches her spear from the core.
"We need to leave, now!" she exclaims.
"What? Why?" Vale must've detected the urgency in her voice, because he shoots right up to his feet.
"There's no time to explain. We need to—"
An alarm sounds throughout the Cauldron. They can feel it at their feet through the ground. The core disappears into the ground as machines pops out from behind the blue one-way shields in large numbers. They starts to surround the two of them as they bring out their weapons and start firing them into the crowd of gathering metal creatures.
"Priority target recognized. Eliminate Elisabet Sobeck," a voice echoes over their heads. Aloy remembers the stagnant voice, the clear driven instruction that any blacksmith or tinkerer would use.
"Hephaestus!"
"You know who that is?" Vale shouts, blocking a Scrapper with his shield when it lunges at him.
"We need to get out of here!"
"I agree! But we can't climb back up to the platform under heavy fire."
And to further prove that point, Vale pushes her back and holds his shield over them to block the bolts from a Ravager's cannon. Aloy looks everywhere, for anything that can get them out of their situation.
She spots in one corner of the foundry floor a large stationary machine behind one of the pylons, probably used to build the Cauldron itself at one point. It's bulk isn't too big for them to climb over, but they still need to vault up a certain height.
"I know a way. Follow me!" Aloy cries as she shoots out the eye of a Watcher and starts sprinting. The mercenary is right on her heels, shooting at machines in her way and clearing a path. The Ravager leaps at them, but they both jump out of the way and Vale swings his hammer into the machine's back leg, breaking the limb like a twig.
Aloy jumps up over the ledge in one fluid motion as soon as she reaches the deactivated machine. Vale tosses his weapons over before he jumps up after her and keeps going.
Luckily the path that they follow from there isn't guarded by machines. They run through the inner works of the Cauldron, on a path that Aloy hasn't explored before, and it makes her nervous. She doesn't know if there is a way out of the Cauldron in this direction.
They stop when they came to dead end. Some of the machines have followed them and they were firing a hail of projectiles at them to keep them at bay. Aloy looks around frantically. She sees sunlight down a tunnel, but it's blocked by a blue energy shield that has no node for her to hack into. All there is are metal plating that make a frame around the shield. She makes a quick decision and wedges her spear into the metal, beginning a lengthy process of pulling it apart. She remembers going inside the Cradle facility under All Mother mountain and ripping up the paneling when one of the doors stopped working once. There was conductive wiring underneath it that looked just like a machine's hide. If the Cauldrons were anything like the Cradle facilities, she would have the same luck here.
"I need something small and sharp!" she demands urgently. Pulling aside another panel, she can see a massive bulk of thick wires. "You got anything like that?"
Vale stops a Strider from kicking him with his shield. "A knife!"
He unsheathes the small blade and throws it hard enough to embed it in the wall right beside her head. She would have yelled at him for throwing sharp objects at her, but she's more concerned with escaping the facility first. She grabs the knife and starts pulling at wires and cutting them.
"How's it looking? Can you get us out?" Vale asks.
"I just need to find the power source to this shield. If I cut it, I can take it down."
Vale taps on his Focus and looks at the wiring for a whole three seconds.
"There, the red one!"
Aloy hears the familiar sound of a Scrapper charging up its maws. When she looks up, a yellow laser beam fires past Vale's shield and cuts open his leg. He yelps and collapses, but managed to put his shield in front of him. Aloy turns her attention back to the wires and plunges the knife straight into the red wire. The shield blinks out of existence, leaving nothing in their way from getting to the outside. She glances back at Vale just as he shoots the Scrapper with his cannon.
"Go! I'm right behind you!"
She sprints for the exit, still clutching the knife. At the end, the floor stops at a shear drop, but there's a metal overhang she can rope down on. She jumps, expertly lassoes the metal overhang and shimmies her way down. Vale follows her shortly after, sliding down on his own rope. The two of them land on the ground and continue running into the surrounding forest, putting as much distance between themselves and the angry machines as possible.
… … …
As soon as it starts to get dark is when they stop for a break. In the valley cliffs above them was Hunter's Gathering, and on the other side of them was a lake. She can see the blue gleaming eyes of the Sawtooths that patrol the corner of the lake in the distance. Aloy stands on the well-beaten road with her hands on her hips as Vale leans against a rock. With their little break she had time to ponder over what had happened in the Cauldron.
Her suspicions were realized. Hephaestus was mobilizing his machines against her, and creating powerful new machines in the process, and making the Derangement even worse than before. It was out of the question now.
What shocks her most is how Hephaestus know it's her he has to kill. Somehow it knows that Aloy had used the Master Override to purge Hades, which was hard to comprehend. The signal sent out by the Spire was meant to disable the Faro robots for good. It didn't touch any of Gaia's machines, but maybe there had been a crossed signal mixed in there somewhere – random machine luck. There were thousands of robots throughout the world, so it was definitely possible.
"You're awfully quiet," Vale speaks up. Snapped out of her thoughts, Aloy turns to him.
"Sorry, I was thinking."
"About what happened back there?"
"…Yeah."
A moment of silence passes between them.
"Who's Hephaestus."
It sounds more like a demand than a question, and Aloy is reluctant. Why did he ask so many questions? And why were they always about the sensitive subjects?
Something was going to have to give.
"And don't tell me it's complicated."
Damn his curiosity.
"It's a… mind, of some sort. I don't really understand it myself," Aloy answers, which is about as close to the truth as she can come up with. She really doesn't understand how the AI works. "It makes the machines that inhabit the world, to heal it from… what the Old Ones had done to it."
"What are you talking about? What did the Old Ones do?"
The Nora sighs in frustration.
"Do you know anything about the Old Ones at all?" she asks, whipping her head around to face him.
Vale shrugs. "A little. I know that something big wiped them out. How else would a whole civilization fall?"
"What about the robots that killed them and destroyed the whole world?" Aloy brings up. It's likely he doesn't know, which is a whole other topic she's relenting having to go through, and it frustrates her even further.
"What?"
"Or the group of people that made this all possible, what they sacrificed so that we could have a future? Why is everyone so ignorant!" she shouts, her pent up anger building. The mercenary holds his hands up.
"Alright! I get it. You clearly know something the rest of us don't," he says through bared teeth. The annoyance is evident in his voice as well.
Aloy turns away, trying to control her flaring anger with with a few conscious breaths, but they're shaky and quick. She crosses her arms and her head dips down. Her head spinning with chaotic thoughts, she closes her eyes to try and collect herself again.
"Sorry. I used to doing this alone."
"I can tell."
"Look," she begins, trying to keep herself from bursting out in rage, "the things I know… nobody else in the world does. And I haven't gone spreading that knowledge around because it challenges the way people think about how the world works. They would call me crazy, or a sun-baked savage, or a… whatever they come up with. Believe me, I'd like to tell people, make them understand, but people already have their own cultures, their own way of thinking. And some people don't like change," she explains.
"Some people are more open-minded than others," Vale replies, anger replaced with a simpler tone. "Like me. My people never had an ideal, or a religion. We believed that hard work would get you somewhere in the world, and believe me when I say I worked very hard to get here. I want to understand, so that the world the Old Ones left us isn't destroyed by some machine who's only trying to kill one girl! Ah!"
When Vale tries to stand, his one leg gives out and he collapses onto his knees. Aloy immediately goes to him. The wound is on his leg, the skin burnt along his inner thigh from when that Scrapper had caught him off guard. He had run all this way on an injury.
"Your leg…" Aloy begins, but her voice trails off. Vale's face is scrunched up in pain, but in anger as well. He calms himself with one steady breath and casually turns to face her.
"Don't make all my hard work for nothing."
Aloy realizes he is presenting her with a choice. His ignorance to the situation was only because of her negligence to cure it. He would die looking for answers if they continued on this path, and the blood would be on her hands. She already had enough people die because of her, she didn't need this burden.
She also thought back to their earlier conversation back in the Cauldron. If they were to continue, it had to be on a foundation of trust. Trust would allow them to confide in each other and help each other and learn the secrets of the world. Screw what Sylens thought about trust.
"Fine. You want the truth?" Aloy gets to her feet. "You'll have it. I won't give it to you all at once. It's overwhelming, even for me," she sighs, "but if you're going to do this with me, I need your word that you won't speak of this to anyone. I'm trusting with secrets that could destroy the world."
She stretches out her hand in offering. Vale stares at it, long enough that she thinks of retracting it, but then he takes it, and she's surprised at how tough it is to pull him up, but he manages to stand up.
"I promise. I know that doesn't sound like anything, but your secrets won't leave my lips."
He releases her hand and then crosses his arm over his chest, a fist clenched over his heart, and he bows. She suddenly feels uncomfortable. A bow in her mind would be an act of recognition towards royalty, like the servants in Sun King Avad's court would, but she's hardly royalty. She doesn't say anything though, as it's probably just a custom among Vale's tribe that she's unfamiliar with.
When he stands up straight, they both nod to each other.
"So what next?" he asks.
Aloy points to the mountains in the east. "We need to go to Meridian. I need the Master Override."
Interested in what Vale looks like? I managed to draw up a little something over on DeviantArt. The link to it is on my profile, so go take a look and tell me what you think!