"Is that supposed to mean something?" The Ember snapped.
"Awfully rude, considering I just saved your life, especially because of your incompetence, little Miss Firecracker." He pretended to take offence, but, for some reason, Antheia could never understand was how he maintained his talkative mood with a huge pistol being pointed at his forehead, especially with an irritated Ember on the trigger.
"Anyway, let's put this behind us." Tosh exhaled, delicately placing a finger on the top of the barrel of the Lex and slowly lowering so it didn't go anywhere near his face, at least. "I am Prelate Tosh of the Coiled Viper wing, Clan of Seven Willows.
The Ember stared him straight in his jade eyes for another moment before she, with visible doubt, shoved the gun back into the holster on her hip.
"Alright, Tosh, I'll believe you, but I have a couple of questions to ask you."
"Fire away." He smiled with relief.
"Firstly, why are you here? Secondly, where exactly are we?"
"I can answer the first part, but the second part is going to have to take a bit of explanation."
"Answer what you can."
The doors slid open with barely a whisper as the platform came to a slow, graceful stop. It was so still here, Antheia noticed; it was hard to believe that they had just come from such a hellish nightmare not two minutes ago. He led them out, being sure to stay at the front, for he did not fancy causing any suspicion among someone like the Ember, who watched him with narrowed eyes. They followed him round a corner, listening intently for his explanation.
"Initially, there were four of us here. Standard Tier Five Tower investigation, the only difference was that all the warframes here were tests; they wanted to gauge how well they did in the field as compared to simple drawing-board stuff. It was going fine until the Tower reactor decided to malfunction, and the purification systems keeping the Infestation from running rampant malfunctioned. We managed to escape to a safer place on the upper floors, but the Infested managed to find us anyway. This place is huge, so relocation wasn't a problem. The problem was that we couldn't get out, since the power to the Beacon was overloaded during the partial meltdown."
"What warframes are you talking about?" Umbra suddenly asked.
Tosh's face saddened, losing its previous annoying tactlessness as he stared blankly forward. "It was a Nephthys, like you there," he gestured with a quick flick of his finger in Ilene's direction, "a Bastet, an Oculus and me on the mission. The Bastet was suffocated by a Corrupter a few solar cycles back and the Nephthys died after trying to teleport out without the help of a Beacon."
"I'm sorry for that, Tosh." Ilene apologized with an empathy that Antheia long hadn't heard; she must have known how her fellow sisters fared under such a horrible death, for her expression was one of wrenching sorrow and… loss.
"You mentioned an Oculus?" Antheia softly broke the grievous silence, no less curious than any of the others.
"He is alive. But recently, he's been having- well, how should I put it… visions. You see, his eyesight was far extended past anything thought possible before with his warframe. He can see through the walls, detect thermal signatures, and see anything past when we would be blind. His vision has gotten so advanced that he can detect the muscle movements of attacks before you even make them. Incredible."
"I don't understand; what visions?"
"He's gone slightly- okay, I won't say slightly; he's gone completely insane. Apparently even when he takes off the warframe he sees things, hallucinations. Things start appearing out of nowhere for him; he can't even look at himself without screaming. All I can do is protect him from the Infested, but he's too far gone to do anything useful now."
Another moment of recollection passed before Tosh seemed to snap back to reality. He shook his head rapidly before swiping his hand over a glass panel, making the pair of doors in front of them slide open their silver jaws to reveal a nearly completely pitch-black room with only an array of computer monitors to call light.
Antheia was surprised at how spacious the room actually made itself to be when the four stepped in, led by Tosh, who sank into an opulent leather armchair in front of the screens. He plugged a fat cable into a small port on the back of his warframe's neck, which clicked and whirred randomly for several moments before he froze stiff. His eyes darted across the screens in front of him, the screens themselves turning into a flickering display of runes and endless streams of numbers.
His eyes snapped forward and his spine arched at a horrible angle before he slumped onto the table. Antheia gasped and rushed forward to help him, but his twitching hand rose to stop her.
"I'm… fine. It does that sometimes, although that time was a bit more painful, I think." said Tosh wearily, somehow cracking a dry smile as he sat up. Antheia looked to her fellow Tenno, but they shared the same indifferent look, except maybe for the Ember, who looked ready to draw her Lex at her slightest suspicion.
Tosh's fingers flew over the keys, the screens responding with their own small show as they flew through the Origin System and into the black Void, then zooming out and soaring past floating golden spires. Tosh's fingers stopped abruptly in the middle of their dance, making the screens stop at the view of a golden spire. It was identical to the others before and after it, except for one definite feature: no shining light glowed from its peak, no lighthouse to guide lost ships home.
"To answer your second question, Ember, this is where we are. A Tier Five Tower located in a place far from where you and I come from. I haven't even been round the entire place yet; it's simply too big. This Tower has something about it, though, I must warn you. It does things to warframe powers, things that it shouldn't. It probably explains why you nearly blew up half the place back there." Tosh explained as he spun round in his chair.
"That doesn't-"
"Ah-ah, that's it. You have your answers. Now I must bid you a question, Miss Firecracker." He jeered, wagging his finger.
"Don't call me that." She replied coldly.
"Who are you, exactly?" He ignored her. "I should at least know who I'm talking to before I expose all my secrets."
Antheia spoke up first.
"I am the Saryn, but you may call me Antheia, Tosh."
"You'll call me Nyx. That's Ilene." Umbra continued with the introductions, nodding over towards the Nephthys, who had maintained a nervous silence until now.
"Hi." Was all she said, with a feeble wave.
"Excellent. I already knew who all of you were, but, as you must agree, there needs to be trust before we are to help one another, no?"
"Well, now I have to ask. How did you know?" Umbra huffed.
"I've told you that the warframes sent here were prototypes, correct? This," he gestured to the device on the back of his neck, "is a Nexus control port. Used only in the Nimda warframe."
"Nimda?"
"Yes, you can hear correctly, well done." He answered, as if to praise her, "I am proud to call myself the bearer of the first Nimda warframe."
"What's so special about you, then?" Umbra sneered back at him.
"The first 'non-combat' warframe in the field. Well, I would say 'non-direct combat', anyway; the frame was developed for the use of network breaching, file stealing, sabotage and the like. That might explain how I knew who you were, to answer your question; not even the Lotus' warframe systems can lock me out." Tosh bragged, grinning smugly.
"Are we supposed to be impressed?" She crossed her arms, anything but impressed.
"No, but you will when you see what sorts of wonderful things this place can do. You name it: turret overrides, airlocks, lasers, sentry guards, electrical discharges, power outages…" He continued his monologue, unfazed, as he recounted his list with his fingers.
"Ember, I hate to ask," Umbra's discontented voice sounded over the voice-link, "but how is this man going to help us, exactly?"
"I don't know, let's see if he can." For the first time in a while, the Ember seemed unsure.
"Alright, Tosh, here's the situation we're in:" She placed a hand in front of him on the desk, grabbing his drifting attention. "Our friend was cast out to the Void to die, but we have reason to believe that he is still alive. Ilene tried to get us to him, but we ended up here."
"Of course you would." Tosh added as he swiveled back round to face the screens, which now had begun to show some sort of schematics for the top portion of the Tower.
"What do you mean?" The Ember seemed more uneasy now.
"Just because the reactor was breached doesn't mean the Beacon hasn't stopped working, it just doesn't work the way it should. The Beacon seems to attract any travelling warframes and ships that come past; it's like a graveyard at the upper decks."
He let the silence hang for a moment.
"There have been many before you here; you seem to be the first ones to actually find us. The rest make up the Infested you saw earlier."
Those were once… Tenno? Antheia would have gasped if the horror that gripped her had allowed it.
"By 'come past' you mean that we were near to his location before we came here?" The Ember asked before he trailed off again.
"By a few thousand miles, but yes, you were."
"Then how would we find him?"
"Well, if it was close enough, I could try and reach out and steer the ship he was on into the hangar, but there's no guarantee that it would work." He shrugged.
"Just tell us, is there a chance?" Umbra pleaded, placing a hand on the shoulder of the chair and looking him straight in the eyes.
"Slim, but present." He replied, simply.
"Will you?"
"I guess I kind of have to now, don't I? My, my, this is certainly interesting..." He began his monologue once more, fingers tapping lightly over the holographic keys, making a gridded display coming up on the screen.
A small circle flitted about the monitor, expanding and contracting round various, tiny objects that floated aimlessly about the Void. The circle fixed suddenly onto a black, slim object with a small speck of green pulsating from the end. It seemed to move faster, much faster than the rocks and asteroids that flew about, grabbing the rare attention of Tosh, who leaned in and eyed the object with sudden interest. He drew his finger across the screen and lightly tapped the, receiving a small blip and a closer view at what it was. It appeared to be a ship with a wide body and a blade-like front, trailing a pale green fire from its engines. No lights shone from its windows, and its course seemed to have no real direction, just endless flight through nothingness.
Tosh immediately began to punch in instructions to the console, which responded in the same, frantic manner with the same shower of glyphs that raced around the screen. His fingers began to dance once more, playing softly across the holographic keys with swift, accurate strokes. His helmet closed over the front and lit up with minor pulses of blue light as he did his skilful work, almost dancing to the tune of his fingers. The screens, now completely clouded over, began to flash as suddenly Tosh froze stiff, leaving only his fingers in racking, erratic spasms. Antheia could only watch with silent pity as he started to send himself deeper into the mainframe.
But, as hard as it was to avert her eyes from the Nimda in front of her, Antheia could spot the ship slowly turning its bow toward the golden spire; shaking and trembling, but definitely turning. The ship seemed to come alive, fighting against its new master with small shakes and shivers. The carbon-black engines roared against Tosh's influence, but he kept his focus and pulled harder. The engine buckled and strained against his will as he pulled the ship in closer, but it seemed to be giving up and being taken over by some other force. It started to ease its spasms and slowly began to gain speed directly to where…
"It's going straight for us." Antheia gasped with new, horrible realization.
The others seemed to notice this as well; they all wore the same, confused, hopeless expressions on their faces. The ship sped faster towards their location, not shaking or flinching from its new path. Tosh, who now seemingly had lost control, slumped forward in his chair.
"I don't think we have the time to wait around; it's heading right for the Tower!" Ilene exclaimed, snapping the rest of the Tenno out of their trance.
"We don't have time to run, either." The Ember remarked with a strange absence of any worry or fear, pointing at the screen with a clawed finger. On the monitor it showed the ship, a green streak against the black canvas of space, speeding on in its unfaltering flight.
"Then what can we do?!" Ilene looked back to the Ember, worry in her eyes and panic in her voice.
"I'll handle this." Umbra began, speaking calmly and assuredly to quell her sisters rising hysteria.
"Oh, and what can you d-" Ilene began to make a snide reply, but a sudden pale green wave of energy rushed from Umbra's finger to hush her.
The small beeps and whirrs from the monitors and the rumbles from the belly of the Tower now subsided and came as muffled noise in the background. No one said a word as Umbra pushed her hands outward, casting a large bubble out around the five Tenno that rippled with energy every few seconds. Antheia turned her head in surprise, looking out to nothing but a hazy, frosted image of the golden archways and dazzling white lights outside.
Antheia had barely opened her mouth before she was met with a low rumble and then an almighty boom from above her head. A sudden shockwave rippled down through the Tower to meet them, throwing the monitors off the desk and causing several of the orbs outside to die and break into small showers of glass. The Tenno, however, felt next to nothing, save for a small, intangible sensation that pressed upon their skulls. Umbra, however, seemed to feel the full force of the explosion, if not more, for the bubble had dissipated and she had dropped to the ground, blood trickling from her nose and her skin deathly pale. Her sister rushed to her aid while Antheia saw to Tosh. Opening up the helmet, she pressed two fingers to the side of his neck.
She felt a pulse; a faint one, but a pulse nonetheless. She closed his helmet back over and walked out into the half-destroyed hall, a distraught Ilene and her barely recovered sister following behind. The Ember seemed to still have ill opinion of Tosh, even when he was unconscious, so she decided against leaving him alone and stayed behind.
"Come on, Ash may be injured." Ilene said worriedly before splitting apart a nearby wall with her hands, creating a portal just big enough for them to walk through.
Antheia stepped through with some hesitation, but felt relief when she stepped onto solid marble once more. However, as she looked around, she slowly drank in the full destruction that the ship had left behind. Black scorch marks streaked across the walls. Glittering razor-sharp glass carpeted the floor and several wooden desks were splintered and broken into uneven pieces, as if a beast of fire had charged through and rended everything to woodchips and cinders. Antheia made care to switch on the gas filtration systems in her helmet, for the acrid smoke that clung to the ceiling and walls with black claws had made itself known within seconds, making her cough and splutter on its bitter taste in her mouth.
She drew her rifle from its holster and led the way round a corner, following the origin of the smoke and the concentration of the heat. After passing through another ruined archway with destroyed glass and charred wood, they found what they were looking for.
The helm of the ship, twisted and burned through to the frame, protruded at an ugly angle through the wall of the Tower, already falling further apart from the weakness in its melted joints. Antheia rushed towards the emergency airlock, which was held ajar by a piece of broken frame. She gripped the edge of the door and gave a sharp pull, to which it responded with a slow groan and then a whine, before flying open and knocking Antheia slightly off balance. She entered the craft and turned into the helm, where the only thing that was left seemed to be what used to be an armchair and half-melted computer consoles. She turned the other way and ran past the two sisters, taking the next right and entering a vast chamber with blackened domed walls and several weapons scattered across its splintered oaken floor. Next to the shattered viewing window lay a body, with what looked like a blood-caked blade sticking out from its chest, and next to that was…
"Ash!"