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D U L C E T
TASK FORCE NULL | EXEGOL | SUBTERRANIAN STATION
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The empty space was very full. All of its fullness wrapped around Cordé like a fractured mass, pulsing, contracting, rippling, and it was beautiful. Nothing prosaic or common about it; it was more articulate than anything from The Maw. It surged out, blinding and bleeding and thick and layered and absorbing. It so overwhelmed her ability to comprehend shapes that she hardly recognized it for what it was — a version of Solipsis and Mori’s visions to wipe out the galaxy, but digitised. Its message, its code of change, of recalibrations and adjustments of transformations and eventual destruction.
She’d abdicated her consciousness to delve into a world that was not fully part of Exegol, and at the same time, was deeply connected. The decision had felt obvious — four, at least, had died to get her here. Thousands more could suffer a similar end if she didn’t at least try.
And she was so good at running away from anything to do with Sion that tossing her mind to the digital ether came with no
second thought.
Now, that mind was entangled so intimately with that which did exist. It wrapped tighter and tighter around the tiny space she occupied, taking more and more until less and less of that which she was remained in the timeless cocoon. The longer she felt subdued by it, the less comprehensible it became. It was like sound, reacting to her movements, arguing with her while she tried, tried, tried to continue disabling it’s viruslike attack and command. The noise was like a crescendo of ice, or ice crystals shatting to form an unearthly noise.
From some far off place, another sound infused its way through the struggle:
Cordé... what are you doing? We have to go.
Adrift and dislocated, her mind scrambled and reached and reached for the sound of something that wasn’t the chittering of code. It was more than a sound, it was a deep, deep irrevocable feeling that unfolded slowly and stretched against the cocoon.
Within the program, the medic-forced-to-be-slicer was vaguely aware of the all-consuming context of her mission. She was aware of her body, the skin, the sinew, the curl of her gut. She was aware of the nerves that were firing in her brain as she became aware of the nerves firing in her brain. All the bacteria on her skin, and in her blood, the virii in her tissues. And how much it all felt like ash and blackened char.
She could feel something, air, moving through her throat and into the complex network of soft caverns behind her ribs. It was a strange and burning sensation. In the real world, through the thick, thick smoke, she gagged. Her lungs seized, a stabbing pain that throbbed against aching ribs.
It was the first pain she realised. The next was the otherworldly heat rolling over her and blistering her skin. Her throat felt shrivelled, useless, airless. Searing agony consumed every attempt at conscious thought, only primal fear existed now, and she tried to withdraw, to uncurl herself from the grasp of the code and back into reality, there had been a reality. But against the raw torching sensation that scathed and put coals in her throat, there was nothing safe for her brain to want to retreat to. Nothing but that voice, that
feeling.
Part of her willed that voice,
that feeling, closer, that last grasp of consciousness. That whole awareness tainted in regret and clung to the hopeful shape of
what if? It was more solid than the virtual sensations that threatened to eclipse her entirely. That sad hope was so familiar that it was comforting enough to feel magnetic. Like the outline of memories left behind that asked her to chase them again, to draw back out of the collapse of the program and —
— still breathless, her skeleton-covered fingers barely managed to pull the visor pierced into the skin above her temples. Her eyes opened to searing flames that burned her sclera and black smoke that forced her to choke.
She felt him more than she saw him, if that was possible. Was it possible? Was it her imagination? Her head was pounding, lungs failing, skin burning. Fire licked up around her, starved for the oxygen she stole with her final breaths.
“Si—”
On rubbery legs, she did not rise.
"You came back for me." The last of her breath spread like wings fluttering avidly through her chest. It was a feeling so immense it spread and spread, beating and flapping into a beautiful ache.
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F O E S | THE BROTHERHOOD OF THE MAW |
F R I E N D S | GA | NJO | SIA |
Sion Lorray
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