Within the Facility
I fly down towards the opening, landing, and begin making my way inside. I try to reach out to my craft, but cannot properly, though I feel its presence. There is something deeply amiss here. There are no guards, nothing to impede me, I continue inwards, towards the head. It looks like this facility has been built around the entire skeleton of the crocodylomorph. The spine centers the ceiling, and the ribcage aligns corridors. A large door stands before me, blocking my view of the skull where my craft has been sitting all these years.
A voice breaks out over an intercom.
“Welcome, to the great Gravity Surge, we weren’t sure if you’d ever return. Shame what you did to my benefactor, but, they were simply a means to an end, and that end has arrived: you. I have done all what I am able to, and have been at am impasse for years. You have a very unique power, and with your compliance, together we’ll be able to uncover the very secrets of the universe.”
“I do not care about the universe. Open this door, and return to me my craft.”
“I’m afraid that’s not so simple of a request, you see-” I begin punching the door, bending its steel at the astragal. The voice pleads with me to stop, but I continue my assault until, exasperated, they open the door. They can no longer open all the way, but at last my ship is revealed to me. Its framework is suspended from the roof, wires and tubes extrude out from its mangled remains.
“As I was saying, your vessel here has been of great use, and is integral to my experiments and research. That spire you recently… repurposed was a long-standing conduit that helped us greatly. It was actually formed from pieces of this derelict spacecraft. Those cables you followed here, they allowed it to power our shield that your friends so unceremoniously shut down, and potentially much more. While we’ve been unable to harness or fully duplicate your powers, I’m sure you can see the benefits of aiding our continued research. You’ve fought the results first-hand, overpowered and impaled them. What do you say?”
“Return to me my craft.”
“… I, uh… I can’t, it had to be completely disassembled, what you are looking at is what remains of it. What we can do, you see, is work together, and–”
“Return to me my craft.”
“Okay, I can see that this will not work, please, feel free to enter your ship, the cockpit is still mostly intact. I’m sure you will find something there most interesting.”
I float up and around my disassembled compatriot, and land in the forward section. I see familiar panels lifted and removed, gutted circuitry and siphoned electronics dispersed. I approach the pilot’s chair, prepared to take the helm, but in my stead there sits atop a tangle of coils and tubes a skull, suspended in a greenish liquid, surrounded by a thicker, immiscible black fluid. It turns to me.
“I believe you two have met. Gravity Surge, meet… Gravity Surge. A crude interface to be sure, but without it I’d have been unable to achieve half of what I have. Your old pal Celrdrrun may not have been impressed with you when he sold it to me, but I was quite dazzled. He was able to preserve this as well as some of that primordial ooze you call a brain for me. I’ve personally witnessed your vertebrae dissolve and return to the ether without a trace, it’s quite a sight to behold. If you’d like to see your craft restored, I would recommend listening to me. It will take me at least three months to reconstruct it, but I will need the gravity spire from the city.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Then I simply don’t help you. No doubt you want to destroy me, but at the moment you don’t know where I am. Bring that spire here, or don’t.”
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