SILENT HORIZON - [Part 1: The In-Between] [modplot]

[letsgolegion]

Who| Everyone who signed up
What| 2 spoopy
Where| In The In-Between, the pocket dimension inside the Silent Horizon
When| After Valor's Day. Mission starts shortly before "No Sanity Clause" and runs simultaneously in game time
Warnings/Notes| Potential warnings for EVERYTHING. This is a horror plot that may tread a lot of ground. Please keep in mind that you can stumble on disturbing stuff in almost any thread. We advise all players to put warnings in the subjects of threads when they lean towards cut-worthy stuff.


The mission was simple. The team had to board the derelict Silent Horizon, a ship with an experimental stardrive, after it finally reappeared in UP space, many hours after it was supposed to reappear, during its first field test. No life signs were aboard, but the presence of several Roboticans on the crew -- who were undetectable by bioscan -- meant that the ship had to be boarded to make sure the Robotican crewmen were gone, too.

The United Planets government, concerned about the loss of the crew members, asked the Legion to step in, in case the threat on board was of a metapowered nature. Due to the massive danger implied by an entire starship crew going missing, the response team sent on the mission was relatively large, more than enough to handle any hostiles. None of this "we'll just send one tiny team to go alone into a giant starship against an unknown threat" business. No, if there was a hostile force on the ship, the plan was "let's drop 25+ Legionnaires on its head." Safety in numbers.

It was a good idea. In theory. In most cases, it would've given them the edge that would've let them face something very nasty without succumbing to it themselves. But in practice, it just meant that it was a much larger team that suddenly went missing after watching the last video log of the previous crew on the command deck.

Screams poured out of the screen the moment it started to play -- automatically -- when they entered the command deck. Onscreen, they saw the original crew murdering each other, tearing each other apart in a blood-soaked rampage.

"Wait, stop! What's wrong with everyone? Why are you --?" cried out one of the Robotican crew members, clearly immune from whatever was causing the madness, but his cries went unheeded as one of his Coluan crew-mates bashed his head clean off with a chair.

After the video played, the darkness swept in, wrapping around the whole team of Legionnaires, making them feel frozen all the way down to their bones and stealing consciousness away from them. When they woke again, they all found themselves separated, waking up in a realm of nightmares.

The halls breathe here -- at least in the places that have walls. They flex in and out, like the passageways inside the lungs. Sometimes the walls give way to open nightmare-scapes, remote and foggy, or bright and alien and exposed. The landscape bends and shifts around them, reacting to their thoughts and fears. And every so often, far off, there is the pitter-pat of something strange moving through this place. Like the sound of many feet -- or hands -- slapping against the ground or flesh-walls.

At some point, there is always a voice that each of them hears, tinny and robotic and distant, warning them of a being called the Faceless, that rules this realm. They're told not to feed from his blood, that if they do they'll be made a part of this place. If they accept his offer, and change forms, they'll eventually bleed to death, and if the Faceless isn't stopped before they die, those that die in their mutated forms will belong to him forever.

It's not the only voice they'll hear, though. This is a land filled with whispers. And screams. And the sounds of begging sometimes, too.

And for some of the Legionnaires, the In-Between speaks to them, touches something deep and dark inside them -- and it's calling them home.

Comments

[vata]

It's the curse of curiosity that has her paced slowed once she reaches open ground. With more room to move, with the knowledge that Cortana is working as a safeguard and that she's set her own translocator to force him to press the limits of his own mobility, there's a certain confidence (arrogance) that sinks in as the seconds tick on with room to breathe.

High ground. She'll aim for that first.

The bodies are stepped over, ignored largely aside from passing glances designed to try and identify where they're from - what might have happened. It's been a process of understanding, following the intermittent shifts in landscape: more often than not, she's learned, it's specific. Targeted.

Is this Locus' reflection?

A question she mulled over as she clambers up the nearest cliff face, darting deftly across ledges until she's perched atop its plateau, exhaling once with a long glance outwards - committing it to memory. Truthfully, his odds (even with her unwillingness to kill him) don't seem good. Transformed as he is now, stopping the nightmare might not come quick enough to help him, might not save him at all; if he dies here, this— the memories she's kept, the data that she's stored— is the only evidence of his suffering that'll exist.

Considering that they were friends, that she was close enough to even consider letting him join Talon, Sombra supposes she owes him this much. A personal confession that has her glad Cortana's too absent to hear. It isn't weakness; she isn't so compromised. Just...

Sometimes you have to pour one out over your losses before you move on.

"Lo siento, Soldado." The nail of her thumb catches as she scuffs it absently across her lower lip. "You should have been stronger."

If it sounds cruel, it isn't meant to be.

[agnominal]

Locus might have agreed with her. He should have been stronger, even as strong as he pretended to be. But to say one doesn't care and to actually divorce themselves from that pain are two separate things. It's akin to cutting at one's skin with a knife and claiming not to feel it. He'd grown numb. He hadn't known when to stop until the loss was too great...

A planet's worth of dead under her feet.

Sometimes with arms outstretched, pleading, sometimes cowering away or trying to flee. Most are military but there are others. Civilians. Women. Children. They seem to line the path Sombra's taken, some riddled with bullets, some burned almost beyond recognition as human by explosions. The landscape itself seems cruel, bent inward, the cliff's edges ragged and blade-sharp, if she isn't careful with her step and grip.

And there's one more body when Sombra reaches the relative safety of the plateau. An angled helmet with a broken visor, blood-shot eyes staring up accusingly, and mangled armor streaked with accents of orange. At first, it just seems to be staring upward.

But if Sombra looks away, the next time she looks back, the corpse is looking at her.

[vata]

She likes to think she's hard it hard. That she's always overcome the disadvantages that would have held her down— and in a lot of ways, she has.

But her intelligence, for how deftly she employs it, is a luxury. The fact that her family was lost to her so early on that the memories don't exist, that Los Muertos, in spite of their rougher than ragged edges and criminal ways, treated her as their manita— their blood, is another. Always a buffer between her and the world and every soul or threat in it, which means she's never known this kind of pain.

Which means she's not as effortlessly resilient as she imagines, only less wounded than the company she keeps.

And here is the proof, though she doesn't recognize it. Broken, bloodied. Slack and unblinking, there's something about the armor that demands attention, carefully patterned as it is. A contrast to Locus' duller palette.

Only when she glances back from a precautionary assessment of her surroundings does she stop warily in her tracks. This place screws with you. It's meant to. Keeping that in the forefront of her mind, she forces her own breathing to stay even despite the initial skipped beat of her heart on wary instincts. If the ship wants her to give up the advantage of high ground over a corpse, it has another thing coming.

Her SMG's flicked up, aimed at its head. A coarse dare for it to move - every bit the chosen course of action from a girl that's a street thug at heart. "Asústame, panteón."

A beat. Two. Nothing.

"Pft." Sombra's shoulders drop, free hand settling critically on her hip. "Thought so."

[agnominal]

So, naturally, the corpse gives her just enough space to feel cocky, to breathe a little easier, before it swipes at her ankles, the quick flash of a metal blade in it's hand.

It starts to wrench itself upwards, armor twisted and dented but intact. It's the strange twist of the limbs within it that need to snap back into place when it pulls itself upwards, a strange, breathy little laugh echoing from inside the helmet.

Better think again, then.

Is that distant clicking in the background? Can't be. Must be the wind, too soft to hear distinctly.

[vata]

With that thing swiping at her ankles, she doesn't really care at the moment.

How is it moving? How is it real?? She hadn't seen him amongst the Legionnaires during either the briefing or the trip here; with armor like that, left abandoned in the span of a place like this, he can't have been part of the ship's crew before them.

Can he...?

Whatever. Screw it. She doesn't have time to burn on figuring out the details. As those damaged limbs start to snap sickeningly into place, her retreat no more than a few steps backwards to carry her well out of the range of his blade, Sombra drops the line of her gun, lip curled back into a scowl. "Didn't anyone tell you, amigo."

click — snap— Metal on metal, cocked and level.

"Never bring a knife to a gun fight."

And then, unceremoniously, she opens fire - aimed right at the fractured center of his helmet.

[agnominal]

The corpse suddenly lurches into motion again, this time bringing an arm forward, and a second later a broad, brilliant blue hard light shield materializes between it and her. The spray of bullets? Not doing a whole Hell of a lot now.

And that head cocks to the side with a grating crack, as though to say 'really?'

You didn't think it was gonna be easy, did you?

The shield drops a moment later, and with surprising agility, the corpse leaps at her. He's still a ragged mess of broken limbs and torn joints, barely held together by metal armor and Kevlar, but that just seems to give him additional flexibility. His movements are at odd, disjointed angles, but he's quick.

A second knife has materialized somewhere along the path, arcing towards Sombra's throat at the first opportunity. And the second. The third? Is a cheap shot aimed for the kidney.

[vata]

She's quick. She's always been quick.

Even so, keeping pace in close quarters— dodging the knives he's flicked outwards— while trying to play into momentum to keep from buckling in blocking armored limbs is a tense, tense bet. Pushes her easily to the limits of her abilities. Key strikes: predict them, avoid them, if it costs her a spare hit or two in the process of pulling away from a cut to a major artery it's fine. Negligible. Mechanical thought processes running in parallel with the anger and the adrenaline.

The third knife's barely dodged. She's too slow to recognize the break in the pattern until it's been arced outwards towards her, and she stumbles off-balance in the process, twisting against gravity (and mirroring Gabriel's habitual movements) to slip behind her adversary. Pulls the trigger on her SMG without aiming to clear space in the process. To catch her breath.

And more importantly, to ask, panting heavily:

"Who are you??"

Severity of that question only tempered by the realization that she's bleeding from a graze at her throat, her hip. Damp heat without pain, severity measured when she sets her palm against her neck and draws it away a second later.

Lucky shots.

[agnominal]

The shots graze across his leg, his side, but they don't seem to even draw a flinch. Why would they? There's no way the thing in front of her is actually alive, as broken as it appears to be.

Still, it pauses long enough to consider her question, before...

I'm you, but stronger.

He manages to keep a serious tone, even holds that serious bent for a second or two longer before snickering, a noise that sounds garbled. Neck injury? It's likely, along with everything else. Heh, sorry. Couldn't resist, you going all serious on me. You wanna know who I am? You should ask my partner.

One knife tips, pointing just over her shoulder.

Who's right behind you, by the way.

The way he says it, there's no reason not to believe it.

[vata]

"You've gotta be kidding me, right?" One eyebrow lifts sharply, head canting to one side as she curls the nails of her free hand in against her palm. If his joke didn't pull an exasperated eyeroll from her (it did, shoulders going entirely slack in the process, dropping the line of her gun by an inch at most) this is enough to make even the most convincing argument from him seem like one more shot at trying to push her buttons.

"You can't seriously think I'd be stupid enough to fall for that."

Not while he's holding a knife that could be too-easily flung right into the hardware at her spine, thank you very much: it's literally the oldest trick in the book.

[agnominal]

Click. Click. Click.

A second later and there's a rush of air, followed by a large limb swinging straight for Sombra's wounded side, intending on knocking her across the plataue to the ground. A second later and Locus's monstrous form comes into view, panting from the exhertion but still clearly ready to take her on.

Took you long enough. The corpse spits with venomous humor, before moving towards the creature and patting it condescendingly on the shoulder.

Ready to finish this?

[vata]

It's her claws that she tries to stop herself with, cutting violet lines into the plateau before skidding to a ragged halt. That it takes her a moment— hand clamped down tightly over her side, teeth gritted to ignore that deep-set ache— to clamber upright is thankfully buffered by the corpse's sense of humor as it pats its so-called 'partner'.

There, at least, is a connection she can instantly understand.

"Soldado, escucha me." Flicking back towards her translocator without waiting for Cortana to finish infiltrating Locus' armor might only prolong the encounter: she doesn't have the luxury of undead resilience, fighting a war on both fronts won't get them out of this intact. So instead she opts to try and tip the balance the best way she knows how.

Partner versus partner.

"No tiene que hacer esto." Clipping her SMG to her side, Sombra lifts her hand— open-palmed— towards Locus as though laying down arms in a gunfight. Felix, for all his smugness, is wholly ignored; speaking in spanish gives her an edge against him by default, and with distance now firmly set between them, both he and Locus would need to cover ground before they could set a hand on her. "Soy tu amiga. Soy tu aliada. Puedo ayudarle - esta pesadilla no te pertenece."

After a beat, she adds, tipping her hand over by degrees: "Please."

[agnominal]

The monster stills.

When she puts down her weapon, it seems to confuse him briefly, long enough for her words to trickle across. There's no sign apparent as to whether they're sinking in, just that steady panting and the trickle of something dark and viscous down his chin. There's no sign of retreat, just calm consideration as Sombra stands there, vulnerable and hand extended to him.

It gnaws at him even now. He doesn't want to hurt her. This is necessary. She says it isn't, but she doesn't know, she doesn't understand what he's been shown. The chance he's been given. He has his orders.

He thinks of a scarf, soft and warm and bright red against stark white. 'Soy tu amiga.'

Felix, however, seems to be irritated by the lack of action taking place. In an exaggerated roll of his head, he shifts in behind Locus. Christ's sake. I have to do everything myself, don't I? he grouses.

And, planting a foot against Locus's back, he hoists himself onto the gear with surprising lightness, before seizing hold of the chains anchored to the mechanism and yanking sharply, forcing Locus into motion. The chains twist and rake against one another as they pull at his limbs, and with a bellow of pain he jerks forward.

You don't get to go all soft on me now, you traitorous asshole. Get her.

Another yank, and Locus swipes for her again.

[vata]

It prompts a groan of frustration as Sombra (realizing that her play's about to be entirely negated) darts forward into the swing, deftly throwing herself into the space left open at Locus' flank by his own desperate swipe. Tired as she is, their conversation's at least given her enough time to breathe.

From there, with one hand already tugging up her gun— the other giving Felix a salute with her middle finger— she opens fire on the silhouette actively pulling the reins. "Pinche cabrón!"

[agnominal]

The spray of bullets rakes up Locus's back, pinging off the gears and chains Felix has already wound himself into, and some bounce off the armor. Some? Tear into the undersuit and ooze a brownish-black fluid, sluggish as molasses. And a second later he tugs again, whipping Locus around to plant him firmly between the two.

And again, that breathy laughter escapes the broken helmet. Sorry to disappoint, manic pixie psycho. But you can't kill what's already dead.

Again, the chains tug, and Locus presses the distance between them. Felix's grip twists, and a choked gurgle from the back of his throat as that split mouth widens, raggedly sucking in hair as he staggers towards her.

[vata]

She's running out of room to maneuver, or the energy to, for that matter. Backing up draws her closer to the cliff's edge (closer than she's comfortable being), blood streaked across her side and looking nearly as spent as Locus himself— if he's still in there, that is. Without any direct response and only those pained, gasping howls as the occasional vocalization, she can't be sure.

Worse comes to worst, she'll teleport.

If it prolongs their chase, if she has to bury herself in the nightmare and hide, she will. Tells herself as much as her heel scuffs the edge.

"Locus—" The barrel's aimed at his head, held up in warning while he staggers closer. Holds her breath for a single, dangerous beat— and then with a chastising growl (intended entirely for herself), fires off a burst of ammunition at his left leg.

[steelandtemper]

Good news: The armor is still there, and still borderline functional. Bad news: Getting a signal through to it is like screaming over a freight train. Cortana skips up and down the spectrum, using all her considerable skill to push through breaks in the radio noise without ever dropping the connection long enough that she'll have to start over, or worse, the armor's counter-intrusion realizes she's there.

She hijacks the telemetry from the accelerometers, makes them lie to the other systems in the armor. They're not smart. They don't even count as dumb. They're just layered levels of instructions, if-thens created by human engineers brainstorming every terrible thing a soldier can do or have done to themselves. But if those systems could think, their decision would be simple.

You are falling.

Falls end suddenly.

Protect your wearer.

Once the poor stupid armor thinks it's moving fast enough to break a human when it hits, Cortana fakes a deceleration. No stop is instantaneous, however it feels to the human experiencing it, and within a fraction of a second, the armor reacts, dumping all other feedback and locking the underlayer in a catastrophic shutdown that the designers long ago decided was preferable to death.

"Okay, got it, he's stuck until his armor can reboot--" Cortana lets awareness of the outside world return, and Sombra will just have to imagine the surprised blink. "--What the hell?"

[agnominal]

And he goes rigid, just like that. Felix curses and kicks at the gear, tugs at the chains, but Locus isn't moving. His head sags forward with a deep, pained rumble, and for a moment it's almost as though he can rest.

But it hurts. It tugs and pulls at his tendons, his bones. He needs to move, needs to bring Sombra into the fold, and not even this is allowed to stop him. If his body rebels, it must be broken and reformed.

Oh to Hell with this...

And a second later there's three knives, thrown in quick succession over Locus's shoulder, aimed directly at Sombra.

[vata]

"Tú te lo pierdes, 'manic pixie psycho'."

As he moves (predictably, she thinks) for his knives in utter frustration, Sombra doesn't bother to dodge. Her stare is fixed on him, on committing his face to memory before reality distorts. Snaps clean across digital space away from Locus' own personal purgatory back out into the empty metal hallways from before.

And then, after a beat, her attention shifts towards Cortana's obvious bewilderment:

"What?"

[steelandtemper]

"Tell me what that was all about while you're running," Cortana says with a huff. "Armor lock only lasts as long as it takes to reboot."

The tactical window returns with her, the motion tracker's absence of any hostiles only so comforting in this jumpscare nightmare they've been dumped into. For the moment, at least, Cortana's too exasperated for her own demons to be chasing them, and the way is refreshingly free of tentacles or twisted, almost fungal creatures that were once people. Small mercies.

[vata]

To her credit (translocator back in hand, clipped immediately to her side to recharge) she's already on the move. Where Locus had been limited by his size when it came to mobility, his 'partner' didn't seem to suffer from the same weaknesses.

Tired or not, she's not taking the chance.

"He had a friend." Said bitterly enough to be entirely transparent - not that it matters when they're sharing the same mental space. "A dead, pain in the ass friend."

And then, with a weary little shrug as the thermoptic camouflage masks her silhouette (not the bloody trail she leaves behind, but when the flooring shifts from metal to flesh again, it won't matter), Sombra adds: "I did what I had to do to keep you covered, manita."

[steelandtemper]

"Fortunately, so did I." That's about as close to a heartfelt 'thank you' Sombra is going to get, at least without either of them being on their deathbed. "Try to stay alive, though." She might be leaving the implication that Sombra is already a pain in the ass in there just to keep things from getting too mushy.

"How bad is it?" Sombra lacks both Mjolnir's precision feedback (not to mention biofoam injectors) and the Chief's unbreakable stoicism, so Cortana's not sure she can judge the severity of the injuries.

[vata]

"Hey, that's what I'm here for. Free of charge." They're a team, even if a disjointed one at times. To Sombra, there's a comfort in that: it's familiar, safe. A luxury that she can't rely on, but every once in a while? It's nice to have.

Still, it's the question that has her shaking her head, more keen to denial than acknowledgement in the moment. "I'll live."

The cut at her throat is easy. Hardly bleeds anymore except for when she pulls at it on occasion, but the impact laid into the one across her side's made the bleeding more persistent, and it's exacerbated by the heightened pace she's keeping. Eventually she's going to have to stop and apply pressure. Try to bandage it with— something.

There'll have to be something.

[steelandtemper]

"I can compensate tactically for the weakness, but if it gets worse, don't lie to me." They're sharing time in Sombra's head, after all, and Cortana can feel a phantom sting in her equally phantom side, echoed from Sombra's nervous system.

"Let's see about finding someplace to hole up for a while." Maybe someplace with an opening too small for any hulking monsters with weird complexes and mouthy friends. Up springs a hologram showing a map of what Cortana can detect of their surroundings with the omnicomm's sensors.

A maze of twisty passages, all alike. Hopefully they won't run into any more grues for a while.