The scream seems to echo throughout the ship. Morpheus stops talking and blinks. Thorndike drops the mattress he was dragging and jerks upright! "Dear me? Was that the Doctor Lady? She isn't in danger, is she? Envoy said this ship was perfectly safe to stay in," Thorndike claims as he gives Envoy such a look.
"I'll go look for her. A lady shouldn't be running around in here alone and screaming that is just, just, not proper!" Thorndike claims as he darts out of the room. "Even if she's scaly, she's still a lady and the way her tail ..." Whatever else he was saying is lost to echoes in the ship.
"Do you have any normal friends, Envoy?" Morpheus finally asks. "Or ones that don't get into trouble?"
"Do you?" Envoy asks back with a smirk, and then hurries after Walter.
"No, but that's not the point!" Morpheus calls after her. "So, I'll ... stay here with Cypher, then? Right." And soon Envoy discovers the trouble with a large, old, dead, ship ... it's rather dary and has a lot of corridors that shoot off from the main one. She's soon not sure which way Walter went! The corridor heads onward and deeper into the ship ... and at regular intervals it splits off on the right or left to sub-sections.
"String," Envoy mutters. "I should have brought colored string so they could leave a trail." Rather than risk getting completely lost, she closes her eyes and listens for the echoes of footsteps or ... more screams.
Another problem with large ships, everything echoes in here. She can hear a thumping in the distance ... but has no idea what precise direction it is in.
Having nothing else to go on, Envoy heads in the general direction of the thumping. She's never really been beyond the garden on derelict before, and has no idea how the ship is laid out. "Icarus! Daedalus! Walter!" she calls, hoping for a useful reply.
Running through the passageways kicks up a bit of dust into the air, causing the sudden desire to sneeze. As for a reply to her cries ... nothing. That is strange in itself. surely they can't be so deep that they couldn't hear her? The thumping also continues ... somewhere ahead.
Dust, Envoy realizes, and pauses to check the for disturbed dust ahead of her.
Eureka! Envoy sees a set of clawed-toe foot-prints in the dust heading down the main passage, then going down the third passage on the left. She also sees the outlines of Walter's boot-prints, seemingly following the claw-towed ones. There is a placard next to that passage, presumably with the name of where that passage goes ... providing one can read ancient Silent-One symbol-script.
Envoy does pause at the sign, hoping it's not changed much from Formal.. but then, this ship may predate the actual Expedition... but she can always try to guess.
There are differences, but if her guess is right, the sign reads along the lines of 'Cathedral of Genetic Purity'.
"That seems ominous," Envoy notes to the air, and hurries after the footprints. Could Elsa have triggered a DNA-keyed booby trap or something?
The corridor goes on for a hundred feet or so before it opens up into a large room. If she had to guess, probably forty by forty feet, and the domed ceiling some twenty feet above. Statues decorate the walls, depicting what are probably considered the most pristine form of the silent one, down to how exact the spot patterns should be. Lights flicker on and off in here ... and the thumping comes again. "Envoy?" a muffled, reptilian voice rasps at the far end of the chamber. There are what appears to be terminals there as lights dance that imply scrolling 'text'. Another flicker of light, and Envoy sees what looks like Elsa within some soft or glass, crystal, or plastic, tube. The thumping is the scientist beating on the wall of her small prison.
Rather than rush forward, Envoy pauses at the threshold. She was following Walter's prints too.. so she tries to locate him first.
Oddly, there is no sign of his footprints in this room. They seem to stop at the doorway. "Envoy, please, get me out of here," Esla calls out from far side of the room. "I don't know what this is, but ... I'm starting to get worried."
"Elsa, what happened to Walter and Icarus?" Envoy calls. "Did you see? How did you get stuck in there?"
"I don't know! I was trying to decipher the markings on the machine over here. When I touched the panel it .. lit up and this thing dropped around me. The screen then started spewing this script. I should have studied Silent-One writing better, it's moving too fast for me to read," th reptilian woman answers. "As for Walter and Icarus ... wasn't Walter out in the main area? Icarus said he was going to find you ... didn't you pass him?"
Envoy frowns. "Walters's footprints end here at the door.. and I don't see him," she notes. "I didn't pass Icarus, and he didn't respond to my calls." Taking a risk, Envoy steps forward into the room, trying to watch side-to-side and up-and-down for anything that attempts to scoop her up.
Nothing makes a grab for Envoy as she steps in the room. The only movement is Elsa pushing at her prison and the scrolling symbols on the screens near her.
Still moving cautiously, Envoy makes her way to the console so she can try and decipher the scrolling symbols.
The text is small enough that it isn't until she's a few feet away that she can see it clearly enough to try and read it. "Primary genome isolated. Subject identified ad Terran, human. Considerable corruption of primary DNA sequences by forced recombination with Celestial DNA templates. Likely cause: modified retro-virus. Isolating and extrapolating human DNA for repair of genetic structure. Estimated time to re sequence of organism, two minutes. Probability of successful genetic purge and reconstruction, fifty percent. Secondary systems microwave purge of impure life-form prepared as secondary measure," it reads, more or less.
"Oh dear," Envoy remarks, and looks for an abort switch. "It sees you as primarily human, so is going to try and resequence you back to human.. by extrapolating the missing parts. And if it doesn't work, it's going to cook you.. But.. don't panic!"
"Don't panic? That's only possible because my adrenal system is mostly replaced by a reptilian version," Elsa remarks. She does look on a verge of panic ... at least in as much as a lizard might. There are sure a lot of switches on the panel ... and none of them are helpfully labeled as an abort. One of the smaller screen shows a countdown; probably how much time is estimated remaining for the re sequence calculations.
Running out of time, Envoy checks the tube itself for an external latch or release..
The tube is completely smooth, floor to ceiling. "I don't mean to be ungrateful," Elsa says on the other side, "But could you hurry it up!"
"Do you want me to attack the console, or try to break the tube?" Envoy asks. "Both are risky!"
"I want you do do whichever won't kill me," Elsa says as she draws her claws down the tube wall. Wow, that's a horrible sound. "Just try to disrupt it somehow!"
Be disruptive? Envoy takes a deep breath, and sings out, "Synchronize" to see if she can activate her implants.
"Connection established." chimes in her mind.
"Initiate oscillating gravitational gradient between opposing nodes," Envoy instructs, holding her hands out so the front of the tube is between them. Maybe she can slice it open by vibrating the molecules to their melting point..
"Field created," the implants chime. Elsa seems to warp as the tube around her begins to warp ... and the screens around it start going crazy! "Containment breach imminent, re sequence initiated early, probability of success less than twenty-five percent! they read. There's a hissing noice and some sort of mist is pumped into the tube with Elsa!
"No no no.." Envoy says, and tries to tear the tube open with the field. Surely a breach will shut it down!
The scream that comes from inside the tube seems to indicate otherwise! It takes a few seconds, but the fields rip apart the containment tube into hundreds of fragments that go flying across the room. Its occupant collapses to the floor, convulsing violently. Her scaled skin is ... cracking and shedding off. What appears to be lymph fluid seems to ooze out from behind it. As chunks of the scaling falls away pink, raw, skin seems to be taking its place. Here and there on the top of her head the scaled skin splits and tufts of graying hair sprout through the fissures.
"Elsa!" Envoy cries, dropping to her knees and.. well, not knowing what else to do! "I didn't think this could happen so quickly! You're becoming human again..."
Well, if she's becoming human it looks really painful. And ... somehow wrong. As Elsa becomes more human and looking like the woman Envoy remembers from her odd experience, she could swear the human is also aging rapidly as well. No ... Envoy is sure she is; her new hair is growing whiter, the skin is becoming looser, more leathery and her frame seems to thin out with each passing second.
"What do I do?" Envoy asks the geneticist, and glances over the console to see if it's reporting anything. "There should be stasis pods somewhere.. no.. Last-Daughter had the last working one.." Looking to her hands, she wonders if the crystals can manage a relativistic stasis without the mass or acceleration components. "Query! Is temporal stasis without spatial distortion available?" she asks.
"Free radical deterioration," Elsa rasps as her spasms are either slowing ... or that her human body isn't able to cope with it any more. "No time. No time. Can't beat time forever, can we? Well, at least humans can't," she says, voice growing fainter. Her withering lips draw up into a weakening smile. "Still, you helped me see my son again. Thank you, Envoy. No regrets, right?"
"Wave functions required for distortion free stasis are not in the known patterns catalog," the crystals report emotionlessly.
"Free.. mitochondria. You use mitochondria for cellular metabolism. They don't have genetic repair capability from radical oxidation.. You shouldn't die here, Elsa! Not because of a stupid machine! I could try to transfer metabolic energy to you, like I did for Icarus.."
"No. I've lived longer than I ever should have and my life has not been without its own crimes," the deteriorating human says, her voice now barely more than a whisper. "I don't think I can be saved, not even by you. I'm sorry for everything I've caused. All my mistakes." Her eyes seem more and more tired, until her eyelids close. "Tell me. Did the good things I did make up for all the mistakes? Was my life worth it?" she asks.
Envoy lays her hands on Elsa.. and realizes the woman doesn't have a crystal neural network to link with for the transfer. Instead, she tries to use the crystals to power a spell, but of course there's no magic on Morpheus she can use. "You saved him. I can't think of anything greater a person can do than to save a child," she says, watching through tears. "I wanted you to meet Barabbas.. you have so much in common. What.. what do you want.. done with your body?"
There's no answer from the woman. She's so thin that Envoy can feel the slowing pulse of her arteries ... and then there is nothing. The only sounds that remain in the room is the occasional creak of metal from the ship shifting slightly as the surface winds buffet against it.
While the child in Envoy is curling up into a ball, the rest of her feels angry. But there's nothing to direct the anger at. She wipes her eyes, and closes Elsa's. She isn't sure what to do - she's never been good with dead bodies in the past. But this time she new the person, watched them die, and couldn't do anything. She glanced back to the console, to see if it was still active or not.. and forced herself to think about the missing Icarus and Walter. Are there other tubes here they might be in?
"Systemic failure." flashes on the screen over and over.
"You are not improving my view of technology," Envoy tells the console, and searches the room for signs of her other companions. Find them first, then.. then I can deal with Elsa, she tells herself.
"Envoy, what are you doing?" a voice, an impossible voice, asks from behind her. The voice is feminine, but with reptilian overtones. The scaled hand that appears on her shoulder is also all too familiar. "Why are you on the floor?" Elsa asks from behind her.
"What!?" Envoy blinks, and turns around. "Elsa?"
Envoy finds a very concerned looking humanoid-lizard woman, Elsa, looking down at her. "There is something odd going on in this ship," she says as she draws her hand back. "I keep seeing things that aren't really there. None of them have been .. pleasant. It's like something is drawing out my fears and making them real," she says as she looks about. "It wasn't more than ten minutes ago I thought I saw Icarus get killed, but then he was fine. I sent him back to the camp to warn everyone. Didn't he warn you?"
"I.. I don't know," Envoy admits. "I may have been dream-walking. I just saw you die.." She turns to look at the floor where the woman's body had just been. "This ship used to dream, I think. The dreams of the girl in stasis. I didn't dream in the garden, but.. I never dreamed back then. It might be safe there."
The floor is vacant when Envoy looks back at it. Elsa offers her hand to Envoy in case she wants to get up. "Are you all right?" she asks. "I hope my death wasn't ... horrible?"
"You were at peace, but.. I had to watch," Envoy says, standing up with the help of the offered hand. "I want to visit my adopted father soon," she says. "I want you to meet him. He created new animals."
Elsa seems at a loss for words other than, "I'm sorry." The reptilian humanoid then hugs her, thoguh it seems a bit unsure. "Maybe you worry that those near you will die and this place fed on that," she offers, then shrugs. "But that is conjecture on my part. And your father? I think I would like that. I hope he did it in better ways than I did."
"Made a six-legged bug-squirrel," Envoy says proudly. "Let's find the others.. they probably saw me run off and think I've gone weird."
"I'm more worried what they might be seeing in this place. It's not safe to go alone in here it seems," Elsa says as she heads back towards the entrance to the 'Cathedral'. "Too many bad memories here, I think; they draw out the others."
"We shouldn't explore without Morpheus," Envoy suggests, giving a glance back into the Cathedral. "He might be able to at least let us know when we're caught in a dream or nightmare. And I really hope Walter doesn't conjure up Inala by accident!"