Psiohaema Fragments 1

Ulysses lifts off her mask and places it upon her shoulder. She was wise, or perhaps paranoid, to have kept it on at sea. Is it still paranoia if you were right? She counts her bags and her limbs, all still tethered to her. Why is she alone? Ingram can swim, maybe Ray can't, couldn't, maybe his lungs are full of brine.
The faint blue glow of sunrise threatens to fill the sky in the coming hours, but it is still unmistakeably night. Disoriented, Ulysses scans around herself. The beach is narrow, few meters of sand immediately give way uncomfortably vast walls of stone and machine. Black metal frames and rails carve deep into an unnaturally flat rock face. This appears to be the edge of some industrial construct, undoubtedly crafted by the bloodless, which means it's in their network, which means a path can be forged from here to a place where someone could hear her. From here. Where is here?
A thrashing shape spills out of the waves, and that trail of thought dissolves. Crawling up the tide, Ray, pulled out of the water by Ingram. He drags Ray forward by the straps of their armour, out of the waves and onto the pebbled shore, where they both fold onto the ground, soft waves lapping across their hands and knees.
Ulysses wordlessly offers Ingram a hand. He takes it, laboriously rising up to his feet. Ray has already started making Their way across the beach, not paying Ulysses a glance. She pretends not to notice, looking back towards the vast metallic cliff, now illuminated by the faintest suggestion of morning.
I: Thanks for helping me there and not just standing like a complete ass staring at the rocks.
U: That's okay.
I: I don't think you mean that.
U: That bloodless architecture, I can't tell if it's active or not from here.
I: Probably not, going by those pipes this is probably just a pump station.
He gestures lower down the beach, a line of wide tubes jut diagonally from the water into the metal cliffs.
I: It's too quiet, probably abandoned?
A pause, he still hasn't caught his breath.
I: It'll have to be connected to a wider local network right? They always are.
U: Yeah, maybe I can tap in, figure out where we are, maybe broadcast a distress signal.
This sort of disaster is not unheard of. Contingency plans are made, backups have backups. You still never expect to use them, though.
I: Oh.
His expression betrays a graver tone than his voice.
U: What is it?
I: Black Nail, I don't have it.
He pats where his sword should be hanging from.
U: That's bad. Did it not wash up with you?
Ingram closes his eyes and outstretches his hand, his fingers twitch as if being pricked by needles. He follows the sensation towards the ocean, where a dozen expressions dance across his face. Ulysses can't make out a single one of them.
I: No. I - it's fine, this isn't the first time. It'll come back, it always does.
Ulysses thinks his expression landed on doubt.
I: Did you- have you got everything?
U: I already checked. All my bags, 36 bullets, my coil is fine, float pack seems to be working.
R: This looks like some kind of pump station!
Ray shouts from the far end of the beach.
I: We know!
Ulysses and Ingram join Ray at the foot of the vast mechanical wall. Wincing for a moment, Ingram lifts himself off the pebbles and into the air, a handful of stones follow his feet for a moment as he drifts slowly towards a balcony jutting out of the wall. His arms tremble as he steadies himself, and he exhales visibly upon landing. The other two follow, float packs humming to life as they clamber upwards. As Ulysses ascends, she shuts off the engine on her chest, allowing the two on her hips to keep her stuck to the wall.
Ray is first to make it to the opening, they notice Ingram has already started down an unlit corridor.
R: Ingram, your sword?
I: Gone. Probably for a while.
A subarm swings over Ray's shoulder, passing a machete into their hand. They decouple it, sheath and all, and gestures to Ingram with it.
R: Take mine, I don't want to have to save your butt again if you get jumped.
I: Thoughtfully worded.
R: It's also the only weapon we've got that you can actually use, so, y'know. Unless you want to use a knife.
Ingram reaches his hand out, the machete jolts several meters out of Ray's grip and into his, before he clips it to his belt.
Ulysses is just now pulling herself over the edge. The inside of the wall is much like the outside, cold, black, and jagged. Pipes and cables flank a central rail. Machines don't need to see, so even if this place had power it would still be uncomfortably dark. The corridor seems to go on forever, vaguely winding from side to side. For many years now, the bloodless have become increasingly erratic. Constructs spilling in every possible direction, abandoned as quickly as they are started. Buildings inside buildings inside buildings, any suggestion of intent long gone. The unfailing core precepts are enough to keep the whole system from collapsing in on itself, but it is an uncomfortable equilibrium.
It's getting too dark to see. The left corner of Ulysses' face twitches slightly, and a pair of lenses on her headset flash into beams of light. Ray does the same, and Ingram clicks a switch turning his own on.
R: Ingram where are we going?
I: This looks like a pump station, it probably has a control station, maybe we can figure out where we are.
R: Figure out how? This place is dead, there's no way the wirenet reaches here.
U: Could have backups I can read, hard copies. You got a better idea?
R: Yes, I do. We climb to the top of the wall, where we can see anything, and go from there instead of wasting our time walking into this, uh-
They look around meaningfully.
R: -rotting deathtrap.
I: We'd never make it up in this weather, and if we did, we don't even know if there's anything up there.
R: Well maybe you couldn't.
U: Shut up Ray he's still getting used to it.
Ray mutters something about witches, lacking the energy to turn this into an argument.
They find themselves in a cramped control room. Rows of terminals stretch from the floor to the ceiling, cables weave between dials, switches, and ports. One end is dominated by a window of thick glass, it overlooks a vast chamber full of pipes of all sizes, feeding into great tanks and mechanical pumps that could crush anything that made the mistake of falling into their lift-arms, were they not dormant and rusting. Everything here rusts. Dozens of leaks spring from the ceiling, dripping into a shallow pool lining the floor of the pump room, illuminated by beams of light spilling through fractures in the roof.
Ray peers through the window, while Ulysses and Ingram rummage around the terminals, looking for anything that opens. Ulysses reaches a tall cabinet tucked away in the back of the room, tugging firmly on its handle, which has corroded so much that it pulls straight out of its housing, the door practically welded in place by rusted metal. She casts the handle aside and produces her knife, wedging it in the frame and levering the door open with a slight grunt. Inside are what look like server racks; metal boxes on rails, each covered in a variety of sockets, networked together with a daisy chain of wires. Apparently the door was enough to keep too much moisture from seeping in, the boxes are only slightly tarnished.
U: Found it.
She doesn't quite shout. Ingram looks up from behind a desk covered in dials and gauges.
I: Great!
He pauses.
I: It's going to be usable right?
U: Probably, I've seen more scuffed drives work okay before.
Ulysses runs her hand across the racks, looking for a suitable entry point. Ingram stands, awkwardly.
U: It'll take a while.
I: Right, I'll see if I can find anything in the other rooms, make myself useful.
She's too busy pulling cables out of her hip unit to see him walk off. Her interface has a wide selection of adapters of all shapes and sizes, fitting almost any standardised socket, human or not. Ray peers over to see her sat down plugging herself in. They're about to leave Ulysses to it before she calls out.
U: I need a hand.
R: Sure? You know I don't have an interface on me right?
U: These are all unpowered -
She takes two thick cables from a hip pouch and snaps them into a couple of round sockets, running one back into the device on her leg.
U: I can do it myself, but it'll be a lot easier for me if we share the load.
R: Aren't you scared I'll break something?
U: You don't need to, it's just a power line. It'd be very, very difficult for you to break anything in there, or for anything to get to you.
Ulysses hands Ray the other cable. Hesitating for a moment, they kneel down to pick it from her hand, and gingerly plugs it into a port on their back. Ray feels a slight shiver flash across their body as they diverts their energy into the machinery, and Ulysses clicks a final handful of wires into place.
She sits still for a while, motionless with closed eyes. It takes a few minutes of rummaging around the data in the drives before she finds something tangible and starts etching it down. Ulysses plucks a small cartridge from a slot in her terminal, and places it into Ray's palm.
U: A hard copy, for you. Hopefully the records aren't too outdated.
...
The train doesn't look so different from the ones Ulysses is used to seeing around the bureau. A chain of boxy carriages easily twice as tall as she is, carrying a mixture of fluid tanks, hoppers, and other shapes she can's quite identify. A loud hiss fills the station, echoing down the tunnels as the train comes to a stop. Even before it's completely stopped, mechanical arms fold down from the ceiling to meet it, grabbing onto cargo, plugging in hoses and cables. Like a scab over healthy flesh, this area is far more alive than rusted wall they found on the beach.
There is no passenger space on this unit. The closest thing you can find on these trains is bays for active drones, but they must come on a separate vehicle here. If it were in worse condition, maybe they could sneak onto a broken cargo carriage, where they'd have plenty of space without fear of getting crushed. Instead, the trio walks up to a train car containing a pair of machine banks which hum softly, connected to the station only by a single cable that had lowered from a gantry. Computers? A battery? It doesn't particularly matter. The carriage has a small crawl space for maintaining whatever is on it. Ingram hops over the gap and onto the small platform in the middle of the train car before sliding a hatch open. He offers his hand to help the others jump over and inside.
There is little space inside the carriage, just the minimum room to interface with machines it carries. Ray lays down, Ingram sits by the hatch, and Ulysses pokes uninterestedly at the panels and sockets on the walls. All too tired to start talking again. A few minutes pass before the train whirrs to life, heaving under it's own weight as it slowly accelerates out of the station and into the tunnels ahead.
...
Ray lowers Ulysses down, she groans as he props her up in the corner of the room, the bleeding has mostly stopped now. She tears off her own gear before removing the girl's headset, and reaching to unfasten the gear from her chest.
R: Help me get this off, I need to get to the wound.
She nods and makes a noise, then begins to loosen the straps with her uninjured right arm. Her processor comes off first, barely touching the ground before Ray unclasps the stabiliser engine from her front, still hanging on by its cables. Ulysses tries to prop herself up by her left hand, but buckles under then pain, yelping.
U: Aagh!
R: Don't do that!
It's hard to tell if she sounds more angry or scared.
R: Just - let me do the rest, please don't pass out.
U: I need to take the rest off, you can't reach it from here.
R: I know, stop moving so much or you'll open it again.
Ray doesn't wait for a response, they're not sure if Ulysses can give one anyway. The girl leans off the wall, steadying herself with her good hand as her teammate takes off her backpack, then unzips her jacket. Under the sleeve the wound looks worse, blood has soaked down her arm, rendering it in thick red sap. For a moment Ray hesitates, it's bleeding more than they'd thought. If it weren't for her bloodbank she would have passed out minutes ago, maybe worse. They slow as they pull her undershirt up over her head, then back down along her arms. This isn't a sight they're used to, Ulysses always seems to cover everything. They immediately discard the thought and start rooting through a first aid kit.
U: Is it bad?
R: You've lost a lot of blood, I'm going to try to close the wound.
U: Ray.
They can't quite make eye contact. She's trembling slightly, beads of sweat forming on her porcelain skin. Ray looks up.
R: It's okay, you're going to be okay, I've got you.
They move forward, kneeling over the girl's legs as they grasp her arm with one hand and brandish tweezers with the other. Lower along the fragile limb, a set of white scratches glisten faintly.
R: This might hurt.
They say, already grabbing a scrap of cloth from within the wound before gently lifting it out, careful not to agitate the cut any more. Only a couple of pieces made it in there, thankfully. With the wound cleared, Ray produces a flask and a sterile wipe, and begins cleaning. Ulysses has stopped making noise. Tension lowers as the shock fades; the world seems to have stopped by the time Ray finishes dressing the wound. A fuzzy sensation washes through their head, like they're about to pass out. A noise of indistinct words and images melts into their thoughts, not their own - a feeling of fear, or comfort, or yearning, or shame? Disoriented, they look at their hands and sees a half-dried trickle of metallic red running directly from Ulysses' open wound to their exposed finger, her thoughts seeping into their own. They quickly pulls their hand back, only to see that the girl has been crying, quiet uneven breaths, as if she's trying not to be heard. Ray feels himself panicking; why now? When has Ulysses ever let herself cry around anyone? They move without thinking and hug her, embracing her frail body, careful not to disturb the wound. One arm around her side and another holding the back of her head as she sobs weakly. Her skin is soft in their hands, her body so delicate it feels like wrapping around a blanket. They hate that they wanted this.