1.1
It was surprisingly hot in this portion of the planet. Hot and quiet.
It was good, to be honest. I appreciated both. The heat, I could drink deeply from, a bit of sustenance to take the edge off of me. The quiet, an inevitable result of my presence.
Except this quiet wasn't my own.
I observed my surroundings. Sand and cracked ground, behind me, a mostly flat plane that was dead and barren.
And in front, a city, at first glance. Tall buildings, glaring with skylight. Streets, constructed with efficient design. The delineation between city and surrounding desert was clear and stark.
Except, cities had people.
This place did not.
No city was quiet, like this. Hustle and bustle always made noise, yet there was nothing. The buildings were tall and bright, and the streets were well designed... Until you looked closer, and saw the cracks and melted pits in both.
Lifeless ruin had overtaken this city just as certainly as it had taken the desert that surrounded it. Search as hard you want, you won't find anything here.
Except...
That was a lie. I can taste it, hidden underneath the city. A pulsing thrum of power.
A jagged, yet continuous, oscillating pattern. Just enough variation to it even after that to clue me in that someone, something, is down there, using it.
The question was, who?
That's what I'm here to find out.
I move forward, gliding on legs and floating in the air, three or four hundred selves and bodies coordinated together. My sky-selves are fanning out, widening my sight and awareness.
Ground-selves have a different role, protecting the larger and more important Harvester-selves and Entity-self.
It's a bit of trouble to fit my Entity-self through these streets. They're narrow enough, with buildings tall enough, that I have to fold up the petals and limbs in order to pass through without crashing through the buildings. Still, I don't have to go far. Sky-selves spot an open area, probably a former park, and my Entity-self heads in that direction.
It's not particularly large. My Entity-self takes up nearly a third of the room. That's fine, though. I don't need the space at the moment.
My Entity-self settles, and opens, petals spreading wide, and limbs curling beneath it. The core opens last, blue light and energy spilling from within and shining brightly.
Only a moment later, a river of blue is pulled towards the core. The energy begins to fill my stomach, my reserves, which makes me happy. The trip here had been long, after all. The amount I'd brought with me had not been particularly diminished, but going so long without drawing in significant amounts of sustenance had been... uncomfortable.
Not that the food around here was what I could call... good, but it would do. Metals were often like that, as far more material sustenance went. Nearly all of them were dense, inert materials, not bad in its own right, but definitely time-consuming to process.
One Harvester-self climbs on top of a building, three long limbs and an odd relationship with gravity enabling it to more or less walk up the side. The building is a smaller one, wide and flat. My Harvester-self settles into place, and the three limbs lift off the ground, the core opening slightly.
Like my Entity-self, blue light spills out. Unlike it, however, the energy drain is much more focused. A vortex of blue energy begins to leech from the material beneath it, swirling together and upwards, into my Harvester-self.
Hmm. Primarily titanium and carbon, with trace amounts of other materials. A strange polymer structure, giving it a surprising amount of strength. Materially interesting, but ultimately...
Fragments of light drifted upwards, a spiralling groove appearing as the metal disintegrated. It was a slow, but steady, harvest.
But ultimately, nothing more than food at the moment. My Harvester-self consumed it, processing it into energy, concentrated that energy, and then redirected it towards my Entity-self. My reserves began to fill up- but again, materials like this were slow to harvest.
That's why I had as many Harvester-selves as I did. One was slow. Ten were faster.
The others settle into place one after the other, climbing buildings with careful gait. Once they do, they begin consuming their targets, ripping particles from atoms from molecules, all to feed my appetite.
And with that taken care of...
My sky-selves fan out, widening their flights in a spiralling path away from my Entity-self. I look through the city carefully, searching for signs of a disturbance that doesn't fit the rest of the city.
It could be easier. The maps I had access to before I came here were neither new nor precise. The general parts of it matched, though the specifics were a little off.
Case in point, there are more bunkers and underground entrances than there should be. It was easy to tell the new from the old, even without the benefit from the map. Time had worn away at both, but the older ones were artistically integrated with the city, bearing the same aesthetic and fitting in to logical, inoffensive places.
The newer ones, by contrast, lacked aesthetic. Little more than bricks engineered for maximum efficiency and accessibility, appearing frequently enough that anywhere in the city would have two or three available for quick access.
All of them that I can see are sealed shut. There are scratches and gouges on the doors and walls of the entrances.
Somebody had been eager, hadn't they...
Still, I continue my search. It takes only a few more minutes before my sky-selves stumble upon an anomaly. Another bunker much like the rest of the newer ones, but unlike them all, this one's doors aren't closed.
They're open. Not neatly, no; these doors had been forced open. Heavily scratched and damaged, with two deep impressions in the metal, bending it inwards, the depression itself shaped roughly in the form of hands...
I can imagine it, the course of events. Something large and strong had punched its way through, then forced the doors open with sheer power. The doors to a sanctuary, opened, and made vulnerable.
There is discoloration on the walls. Heat-marks, and more, long since aged into near-nothing... but not quite gone just yet.
Still... I had my way in, now, and that was all I needed. A quick glance at the sky showed chaotically shifting purple-pink, but the lack of faces within staring back at me indicated I probably wasn't going to be interrupted any time soon.
So, let's see... Who is it that's hiding here?