Deanna was loosing control of her composure. Faced with the
hideous laughter and silence from the other side of the cave in, she did what
she could with reckless abandon. A beam of light pierced the rubble and blasted
it away. The dust quickly settled in the chambers, Raneaux had disappeared.
Danton knew what he would find on the other side but did not want to admit it.
The laughter and the memories of the shifting house from weeks ago played in
his mind. Nothing there had seemed real either. They had been pawns in a game
they were forced to play and here again they were being toyed with. He tried to
calm Deanna's nerves to no avail and felt the only way to do so now, was see it
to the end.
He pressed onwards trying to find a semblance of Raneaux.
The cave gave little clue as to where she had gone. A shadow on the floor ahead
left a lump in his throat. It was a body, he was sure of that, covered in a
cloak. Raneaux had not been wearing such an item but couldn't rule out the possibility
that she was underneath. He left Deanna to explore what she wished as he
silently investigated. His hand trembled as he lifted the garment and sighed
with relief as the body underneath was not hers. The figure had been preserved
in the dry air down here, a man much older than himself covered in puncture
wounds. The skin was dark around them, blackened but not charred. It had started
to spread across his skin in a geometric pattern of hexagons, plate like but
still his skin. To the side of the body, an unmarked canister lay on the
ground. He took it in hopes that it may be valuable and with that, he turned
his attention to the cloak. It was covered in circuits with wires laced into
the fabric connecting them. He pulled it up around his neck and for a brief
moment and Deanna was now alone in the cavern. He appeared again moments later
as if he had never left but now breathless, aching and with the cloak covered
in blood. He had no memory of where he been. If Deanna saw the marred cloak it
may panic her further and he quickly bundled it up around the canister and
stowed it out of sight.
He grabbed her by the hand, noticing that she trembled in
his grasp. His words failed him so he gently lead her through the opening at
the other end in hope for answers. Another body lay in the next cavern. He
tried to steer her away but her curiosity drew her to it. He had no qualms in letting
her satisfy this notion, presuming the body to be deceased. It too had the same
geometric skin as the body before but this time the woman here was covered head
to toe. She wore no clothes and had no hair and the extent of whatever transformation
had befallen her was easily seen. The body however was not a corpse. In a blink
of eye it was stood on its feet, its eyes a glowing muddied orange. Deanna's
grasp tightened as she stepped backwards.
The woman addressed them both, with eyes scanning every inch
of skin. Her voice was synthetic and vibrated like an insect's wings. She
denounced them as human and coldly catalogued them. Danton tried to converse
with the woman but she answered no questions, she only posed them. She noted
how their hearts were racing and from the walls, the woman summoned five wasp
like creatures almost a foot long. They circled the two of them adjusting their
flight as Deanna shifted on her feet. The woman tilted her head in what seemed
to be confusion. She told them both that their existence was inconclusive,
their forms masking their inhumanness. Deanna argued that she was human,
nothing more nothing less but her appeals were refuted. The woman told them
that modifications were needed for conversion and they were escorted by the
buzzing drones further into the cave.
It seemed that the stone had not changed most of this
cavern. The metal plated walls were unmarred and the floor rose half an inch
from the stone with hexagonal plates. A hum of machinery was now distinct from
that of the wings of the creatures that flew around them. They passed a fenced
off fissure in the middle of the room which dropped down to only darkness. They
were forced up a small set of stairs and
around the corner towards a faint glow of light. In front of them was a machine
set in-between two large hexagonal platforms that were raised from the floor.
Above each was the same, lowered from the tiled ceiling above. Wires passed
from the central contraption along the
wall to the bottom of the platforms. Danton and Deanna were separated and stood on each platform. The
woman turned her attention to control panel in the middle and started to
operate it. A solid light, just like the barriers from the room with the stone
table now caged them in. A few seconds passed before three beams of light
crossed above their heads from corner to corner. They generated an intense heat
and buzzed louder than the wings of the insects and the machinery put together.
The hexagonal cross started to lower, which instilled panic
in both of them. No matter how much they pleaded, the woman did not
respond. The insects crawled in the
walls again and disappeared from view. In a brief moment of composure, Deanna
tried to reach into the mind of the woman, hoping to find a semblance of humanity.
What she found were confused and conflicting thoughts, a mind that held many
voices all in conversation. Only one was the woman's and she was angry. Their
scans were inconclusive, they were neither human, nor inhuman or beast. The
woman's voice then responded to calls for her attention. Two humans had apparently
entered another laboratory and their scans were far more conclusive. One was
augmented with meta but they were both ripe for conversion. She stopped her
scans, the beams however still left over their heads and contorted her body in unnatural
ways to fit into the crevice in the rock to the left of Danton and followed her
insects.
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