[hr][center][h3][b][u][The Abyss - Paracausal Research Facility: Muriel - Interior][/u][/b][/h3][/center][hr]

Clearing the facility room by room was a slow, arduous task. Particularly when one half of the task force was sensory numb, blind, and deaf. They’d fallen back on gestures and sign language, and ID occasionally spelled out what she was trying to communicate in MG’s thermographics when her meaning simply did not translate.

Many of the rooms were filled with drifts of the glass-like crystalline powder they’d encountered at the entrance in small flurries. ID had taken a sample to be kept isolated in an enchanted and sealed container, but after encountering some Awakened moss in the hydroponics lab that was slowly crystallizing and disintegrating into the stuff, they’d agreed that “Sterilization” was the order of the day.

ID reinforced her Domain, spurred by the knowledge of the potential fate that awaited her should she have a lapse in concentration. She pushed it to the edges of the hallway and enveloped MG to help insulate her from any mental feedback, even though the floor complained about the large disparity in temperature. Most of the heat was directed in front of ID as she made slow progress down each corridor, lining the walls and every crack and crevice with searing blue flames without care to survivors or equipment.

The delicate balancing act of being hot enough to break down the magically charged silicate so her domain could forcibly re-aspect the crystallized haze, and also [i]not[/i] melt the steel reinforced walls and bulkheads took all of her concentration. Such that when four figures ran into the intersection she was approaching, there wasn’t time to redirect the heat. They had substance for only a second or so before they were erased. She guessed they were most likely multi-sensory illusions, since it’d take an hour or more to fully cremate a real human body, even at the foundry level temperatures she was holding ahead of them.

[b][color=#db60b0]"Heat not a furnace for your foe so hot that it do singe yourself, right?"[/color][/b] She grinned beneath her mask. [b][color=#db60b0]"Right?"[/color][/b] ID repeated, glancing back at MG, who just gave a thumbs up in response. [b][color=#db60b0]"Right. Right… Deaf partner,"[/color][/b] she sighed. What a waste of good Shakespearian humor.

Clearing all the spurs of the circular facility had taken quite some time, but they finally reached the threshold of the final chamber: the heart of the facility and storage area for some project numbered A-90T430S15. ID took a breath while MG keyed in the override behind her. She readied herself as the massive steel blast door shuddered and groaned: the heat had warped it just a little, and it probably wouldn't close properly after this.

ID braced, expecting a deluge of crystallized haze like they had nearly been buried under a few rooms back. However, besides the roar of heat blasting through the portal as it opened and disturbed a light dusting of the stuff, the room seemed relatively clean. ID eased off the temperature and consolidated her Domain to keep from fully erasing any magical traces that could be left behind. She signed for MG to hold the door just in case.

An enormous cylinder of white salt marble consumed the center of the facility. The top and bottom of the object looked as though it were beginning to splinter and branch into hundreds of roots before it disappeared into whatever Menagerie-made contraption was holding it in place. ID's luminous amber eyes raked the chamber; she tagged it as the heart of the [Warp] that had, until now, consumed the facility. As far as she could tell, the thing was inert, perhaps neutralized by the stress of the emanation it had caused... and if she'd taken that at face value, she'd be a fool.

She slowly circled the chamber's perimeter, running the flint skin of her fingertips along the transpari-steel barrier that once held myriad glyphs, wards, and charms. Enchantments that were crafted to keep this thing and its emissions segregated from the facility, since blasted by the psychic scream and eroded by the mind-aspected Mana Warp it had left in its wake.

[b][color=#db60b0]"And what secrets do you think you can hide from me?"[/color][/b] She whispered into the room as she peeled away the layers and layers of filters that blocked out most of the disruptive magical noise of the city's Ley Line from her [Dreamsight]. The pillar hummed with energy that pressed against her skin through the barrier; disconcerting, given that she felt it through the protection of her Domain. Swirls and eddies of disturbed mana thrashed around the chamber with storm-like intensity as she picked through them, isolating each yarn connected to the construct until she found the one that stretched out of the facility. ID sampled the haze of a cleverly masked spacial disruption as she stopped and turned her gaze directly onto the pillar for a long moment.

[b][color=#db60b0]"Found you,"[/color][/b] she announced coldly, reaching up to pluck the thread.

[url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XoFbJllomCo&ab_channel=MrAnonymas]A massive eye opened up on the pillar's marble surface.[/url] ID met the spaceless void of its four-pointed pupil unwavering. The room shuddered. In the [Immaterial], the gravity of ID's domain drew in the [Mind] aspected Storm and forced it to convert. The head of a massive winged serpent wreathed in incandescent fire bent low to meet the creature's gaze, and ID's eyes seared through the Astral like a pair of brilliant stars. There was a lurch of force. The transpari-steel barrier cracked between them.

Topside. Dark. It's raining. ID is holding someone's hand. Copper Drake is next to her. He's holding an umbrella for them but she still somehow managed to get wet.

He's trying his best.

They're waiting on a corner at a street light. Why? Right: her sister's graduation. They were there to pick her up. ID dare not move from the spot she was standing, and instead stared coldly ahead into the street at something Drake wasn't privy too.

[color=a36209]"Aren't you excited? You're going to meet her in person,"[/color] he asked, just like she remembered. Something in the tone of his voice felt forced. She stood stoic as headlights approached in the distance. You're wrong. It's coming down the wrong street.

[center][color=92278f][i]Are we wrong? Or is our memory flawed?[/i][/color][/center]

The sky shuddered. She felt the moon open its eye above her, gold, grey, green and pink staring down at her. The sky bled ink, and it slowly spread over the sidewalk towards her feet as they approached in a shitty white cross-over that belonged to someone's mom. It's supposed to be a black limo.

[center][color=92278f][i]Is it?[/i][/color][/center]

The whine of an E-Cell turbine being taxed. An armored truck rushed into the intersection. This is mirrored.

[center][color=92278f][i]We're being used.[/i][/color][/center]

She felt Drake flinch as the truck collided violently with the civilian car. The truck's reinforced bumper tore the crossover's front end off and it flipped three times before slamming into a light pole. Men with rifles pour out. Black uniforms. One of them is checking his magazine as they stack against the cover of the van: tranquilizer rounds.

No.

The ink was pooling against her designer flats, clawing its way slowly up her toes. One in the rear readying an isolation pod, another pulled a [NULL] talisman out of a tactical pouch. That's not right. The air tore as the ink lapped at her bare ankles. Right. Copper Drake hesitated just a moment too long. She felt a tug on her arm as he moved to go, and she crushed his hand in her iron grip as she remained steadfast.

The image froze, and for just an instant the scene she remembered so vividly flickered into focus. Drake was on her right, not her left. The crash was mirrored. Black Limo. Armored Soldiers. Insignia: Stylized cross, red on white. She dared not look into whatever gaping void Drake was trying to pull her into. The street was flooding; ink crawled up her knees. ID's face furrowed into a scowl.

[b][color=#db60b0]"Is that the best you can do?"[/color][/b] The sheer brashness of her words cracked the reality she stood in, as she spelled out her intention in the air between her and whatever fucked creature of the void was watching with letters of searing heat. MG would know what to do.

[center][h3][color=f7941d]R U N[/color][/h3][/center]