legionmissions | SILENT HORIZON - [Part 2: Facing the Faceless/Escape] [modplot]

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SILENT HORIZON - [Part 2: Facing the Faceless/Escape] [modplot]

Who| Everyone in Silent Horizon plot
What| Fighting the Faceless, a perilous escape, and a chance to have a breather
Where| In the In-Between, the Silent Horizon, and then the Legion Cruiser
When| Chronologically, only hours have passed in the outside world from when the team disappeared, but it's up to players whether their characters perceived it as being hours or days
Warnings/Notes| Gore, blood, body horror, all the usual

They hear the voice again, calling out to them. Not the Faceless, not the dark whispers of this world. It's the same tinny voice that warned them, that told them not to give into the Faceless' offer. It's the voice that told them their Phalanxed teammates can still be saved if the Faceless is killed in time before they die.

It calls out again. Wherever they are, whatever the landscape is doing, they can hear it.

"I know you have no reason to trust me. I know you've been probably hearing lots of voices in this place, telling you all kinds of things. But I'm trying to help you. There's a way to end this, to stop the Faceless. Just follow my voice. My language synthesizer is broadcasting in the telepathic range like telepathic earplugs and I've managed to reconfigure it to broadcast through the entire In-Between. You should be hearing it wherever you are and you should be able to use its broadcast strength to navigate. I think I've managed to secure it from the Faceless and his Phalanx but there's no way to be sure."

How loud the voice is changes as they get closer or farther away. They can use it to navigate, albeit very crudely. And now that it's clearer, it's far more recognizable: it's the voice of the Robotican in the horrible footage that played before they were taken -- the one that had his head knocked off.

"My name is N-45LEN/Keth Series. My organic crewmates call --" He pauses, and sounds distraught. "--called me Lenny. I was a crew member of the Silent Horizon. This entire dimension is called the In-Between. It's made up of the body of the Faceless and I'm currently trapped at its core. I can see you Legionnaires from here through...what appears to be some kind structure for processing what equates to ocular stimuli for the Faceless. If any of you get lost, I can see enough to guide you here."

If they need it, they'll find that he can give them individualized directions, no matter what the landscape does, and he can give them to multiple people simultaneously. Having a complex processor for a brain has its perks.

"My organic teammate and I managed to discover the core of the Faceless and its nature, but I'm currently incapacitated and Bob...he just lost it. He nearly destroyed what was left of me and ran off before we could stop the Faceless. I saw him eventually accept the Faceless' offer and turn. If you make it here where I am, you may be able to destroy the Faceless' body enough to kill him, save your teammates, and destroy this dimension once and for all."

A pause.

"And if you could maybe take me with you when you leave, uh, I would appreciate that. Like, a lot."

[ooc post here]

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After the Faceless dies a screaming death and dissolves like flesh in acid, the Phalanxed Legionnaires drop like puppets with their strings cut. The transformation back is a gruesome one -- they suddenly lose the pacifying voice in their heads telling them everything that happened to them is alright and natural. The blood and horror around them stops looking normal and beautiful. For a single horrific moment they are themselves again, realizing how twisted and malformed their bodies are and how twisted and malformed their thoughts just were to match. The Faceless' black blood either seeps out of their bodies like an oil slick or they cough it up. Others vomit black sludge so much that it's hard to tell where they kept it all.

The more extreme the mutation, the more extreme the transformation back. Some will find it quick and uncomfortable, but not as bad as it could be. Others will spend several minutes in absolute agony as bones shift and reconfigure and unnecessary appendages snap and fall off.

When they finally change back, all of them will be dizzy from blood loss. Some might need help escaping. Others might even pass out and need to be carried.

The In-Between starts to shake and fall apart. They can all feel the tug of the exit calling out to them, as if the Faceless' dying body is trying to expel them as some kind of irritant.

Reality shifts and starts to break down, halls and walls crumble, bridges snap, and blood vessels burst open. The more they run, the more this place looks like the inside of a body. Even the final corridor leading out of the In-Between and onto the bridge of the Silent Horizon looks like the interior of a throat. The closer they get to the final corridor -- and the Silent Horizon -- the more reliably their powers will work again.

At the end of it lies salvation -- at least until the Silent Horizon starts to blow apart, too. Without the Faceless holding the derelict together, it starts to fall apart, doomed to eventually fall into the nearby sun. Even when the group is free of the In-Between, they'll have to hightail it to the Legion Cruiser in its docking bay, and have to do that thing where they run down exploding hallways looking cool in slow motion, helping each other as the ship blows to smithereens around them.

Though there are many different shifting paths to get out, if they work together to escape the crumbling pocket universe and the monsters, and then the exploding Silent Horizon -- they might have a chance.

He's up and walking before it's finished. Stumbling. Whether or not the mouth traveling up his throat and climbing his jaw is screaming is an unimportant question. What is important is getting out. He tightens his grip on the shattered end of some bone sticking out from the wall, can't help but notice the noise as the tip of his trigger finger grinds against it, bone on bone.

Nevermind.

Nevermind what's happening to his body, nevermind the whimpering moans coming out his mouth now, nevermind that inane curiosity about just where that mouth is located now, exactly. It's especially important not to pay any mind to that. What matters is making his body, whatever it's doing just now, work, and he does. Doesn't focus well enough to see reality twisting around in front of him, though, the first he notices his path is blocked is when he stumbles on a bunched up ring of muscle and looks down and sees a Legionnnaire below him.

Focus. What matters is that he can't get through the archway, or whatever it is, from this angle. The opening is low to the ground and he, for reasons he can not afford to examine too closely, is standing on the ceiling. He reaches out, leftover blood pooled around the flesh bunched up around his knuckles raining all a sudden down toward the other Legionnaire's head and shoulders.

"Help me," is what comes out of him first, a rasping, pointless sentence. "Pull me down." There's the more useful one, simple, direct. Focusing only on what needs to be done.

The corpse version of Felix that had been perched on his back? Simply vanishes, as if he never was at all. Locus doesn't have that luxury.

Instead he collapses forward, gripping at the ground as his body reshapes and retreats, the bony gear and chains falling away and slipping out from under his skin, and the organic growths over his armor peeling away. The undersuit beneath is a black-slick ruin, and he's lost his helmet somewhere along the way, but he barely seems aware of that fact.

Or anything, really.

Even once the transformation is complete and it's definitely Locus sitting there, he doesn't move. Doesn't respond. He'd thought it was over, and the things he'd seen...things he'd done...

They were better off without him. The Faceless hadn't been lying on that count.

He belonged here. Even as the In-Between started to collapse and fall apart, there was no sign that Locus was voluntarily going anywhere.

If the desperate rumbling of convulsing pathways is indicative of anything, it's that leaving him here means he'll stay here.

So where his tangled memories and guilt leave off, Sombra steps in. There isn't time to waste on talking— and at the moment, she doesn't have the energy or desire to. Like old shadows had tried to drag him to the ground, her fingers close tight around the collar of his armor where flesh sloughs away, unwilling to let him have whatever grim satisfaction he craves. Pulls with every ounce of strength she has, arms burning—

—and it isn't enough.

'You don't get to go all soft on me now...'

Her grip flexes, she snakes her arm around his listless own as her free hand moves to grasp the translocator at her side. "Levántate, Soldado. We're leaving."

"I belong here."

Even with that black poison oozing its way out of his system, he believes it. He'd failed even the Faceless at this point, unable to even be enough of a monster to complete the one task he'd been given. Yet how could he return with the other Legionnaires now?

With Sombra, who had extended her hand to him, and in return? He'd tried to kill her. Why, why waste her effort on someone who was not only not any use to her, but had actively worked against her?

He shook his head slowly, weight sagging. "You should go."

"No you fucking don't."

Does she sound like Azúcar anymore? The answer is no. Tense and angry, fed up with the idea of giving in, she sounds more than ever like the girl off the streets she used to be. Ignores another heavy tremor and glances around for the nearest uncollapsed tunnel, throwing her translocator as far as it'll go before turning her attention back towards him, bloodied fingers latching onto his jawline and wrenching it upwards to face her. "The Faceless is dead, whoever or whatever was controlling you is dead— I didn't do this to watch you die with them, Locus— stand up."

Consonants razor-sharp, as far as she's concerned, he can have the luxury of self-loathing when he's not operating on her watch.

His gaze wrenched up to meet hers, he stares back at her for a moment, uncertain. Why? The question bounces in echoes around his head. Why save him? Why didn't she take the killing shot earlier, when her life was clearly in danger? Why is she...

Stand up.

He does, with effort. Every ounce of him aches, body covered in wounds, but there's enough strength in him yet to manage that much with her prompting.

The second he does, there's a tense little sigh of relief from her.

She thought for a minute it might not work.

His mass is significant: there's no guarantee that without bracing contact that the translocator will teleport them both out — so she's quick to grab hold of him before he has a chance to slip or fall in the chaos. Braced against his weight with her own and it's mostly her fingers curled in the contoured edges of his armor like if he were to go, she could somehow stop it.

"Lo siento por las náuseas."

And it's just a tired murmur before they're snapped through time and space in a sickening flash, broken down at point a and dragged to the clearer passageway at point b where the translocator rests, so low on energy it hardly managed the jump at all. Unlike the main (now-collapsing core), other Legionnaires are passing through here quickly enough to take notice. Someone else can take it from here, if he can't.

There's a wall at his back, it's easy to let him slump against it, patting the dead center of his chest plate with a bloodied hand.

She has to go back.

And without anything more than a single glance, drawing away from that point of contact— she does.

True to her word, there's a swell of nausea the second they are transported, but there's nothing left to come up. Just a gagging reflex before he swallows it down, collapsing back against the wall. He feels heavy, far too heavy, and she's done more than enough.

More than he deserves.

His eyes rest on her as she pats what remains of his armor before darting back, before he allows them to fall shut again. He will never understand her, he thinks.

But there are worse things.

Roland's legs are one of the few parts of him which are not shifting their agonizing way back into shape and so he uses them. His hands aren't so lucky but he uses them, too, in spite of the way the mouth still climbing up Roland's chin gives a little yell at the feeling of his bare muscle and bone gripping tight onto the other man's shoulder.

Stopping is a risk. Every time he stops, there's a risk he won't be able to start going again. Here the risk is a necessary one but still it grates at his frayed nerves, sends desperation and anger snapping out behind his words as he leans into the man's face, shouting.

"What the hell are you doing? Legionnaire, on your feet!"

The order is so sudden that he feels something tug, instinctively, before he can think. He straightens, despite the agony his body is in as it morphs back to something resembling human, but the look leveled at Roland is confused.

No, he's not one of them. He doesn't deserve that title, the ring, the mission. He's unworthy of it, he's shown as much here by falling victim to his own ghosts, and the Faceless.

He can't go back with them, not now.

Roland still hasn't figured out quite where his mouth's got to but he can tell its lips are drawn back, can tell he's baring his teeth. Seldom has he regretted not being broad shouldered and solid built, not having the kind of body which could pull a wagon behind it, if it wanted. His muscles are as well tended to as any weapon he's ever owned; they do what they need to. But now, here, with horror and that black bile warring for control of his stomach, with all the shifting parts of his body shuddering out of time with each other, getting this man's cooperation is non negotiable.

"Focus!" he shouts, taking the look of confusion at face value. If there were more time Roland could try and touch his mind, try and get through to him that way. Does Roland even have the concentration for it, like this?

"You'll die if you stay, do you understand that? You'll die, or worse. Unless you move!" On that last word his hand not gripping the man's shoulder rises and moves, meaning to try and slap the confusion off that face. There's no time for anything nicer.

I know.

He knows he'll die, distantly. In a way that hardly seems to matter. There's too much between him and the reality of the situation to easily shift back to, and so he's nowhere near prepared to block the blow, as he might have done on any other day.

Smack! Locus's head jerks to the side, the sting of it barely felt over everything else, but there's something about the move that jars him. The orders, the violence, there's familiarity in it. He can hold onto instinct if nothing else, and instinct says --

Follow orders. Survive.

Even if the man in front of him seems more like the horrors of this place than any Legionnaire, he has his attention. After a moment he nods, and moves to follow.

Process later, when there's time.

Roland nods back and staggers away, but realizes soon enough - and buries the frustration, the anger at the thought, because that feeling's not useful just now - that until he has some evidence whatever's come over the other man has passed, he'll have to do a little shepherding. He lurches back, reaching for the nameless Legionnaire's shoulder. His eyes have almost moved back into the same spot they used to be and this throws him off, might send his hand reaching for the wrong place. He'll have to get used to his face being on his head again and the thought's bizarre, disturbing, the last little detail that loses him the war he's been fighting with his stomach.

He turns his head even as he reaches out, gagging, but only the smallest stream of that black bile is left to come trickling out. Once that passes he tries to lock eyes with the Legionnaire again, if the man's aware enough to do something like that. His voice, at least, is raised; he has some evidence that, if nothing else, his voice might get through.

"You can find the way out, can't you? You can feel it? If you can, run!"

It'd been agonizing, the turning, but it'd been gradual. Cocooned as he is in wires and pulsing veins York hasn't so much as moved since Cortana locked Delta away in his own little corner of his brain, distant enough to give York peace of mind, close enough to keep him from feeling entirely abandoned. But changing back? Within the confines of his digital prison Delta coils and curls and shrieks in fragments of code-

York is left to feel every wire retract, every vein burning as it peels it's way back through his body to the implant site. After a few gargling moments when he thinks he can move- needs to shove himself over enough to hack up buckets of black bile- he clears his throat and screams. No morphine, no healing unit, no deeply wound code to divert the pain and he must feel every inch for every moment it takes for him to become, well, him again. For the thing that had been Delta to be banished from their systems and leave him a collapsed, shuddering mess on the meaty floor.

Running- running isn't happening. He doesn't think he could stand.

York's scream echoes around the circular room and god, is that a sound she never needed to hear. Project Freelancer had more than its share of 'scientific failures' and training missions gone wrong; it's not the first time she's heard a team mate scream in pain, but it jars her all the same and shakes her into action.

Her feet slip across the blood soaked floor between her teleporting jumps across the room as she stumbles to a halt at the crumpled side of her friend.

"Easy now- just breathe, York."

He's lots so much blood. Connie doesn't know what Delta's status is but her best guess is that he's also incapacitated, which leaves no one to run York's healing unit.

"How do they look, Cortana?"

"Delta's not even broadcasting an IFF--hang on." Running on hardware designed to support her and unhampered by interference from the Faceless, this copy of Cortana has no problem bridging the gap to York's implant and doing the AI equivalent of knocking on the door...to no response. She sticks her head in, so to speak, careful not to do more than a quick once-over; the implant can't take her normally. If it's damaged, there's no w--what the hell.

It's what remains of a war zone. A war her other self fought, apparently, because her code is everywhere...including an intricate web woven around Delta, holding him mute and immobile.

...You know what, if the other Cortana thought it was necessary to truss Delta up like that, this Cortana's going to trust her judgment, and she backs out like a person who has just walked in on something they didn't want to see.

"Delta's in solitary, and I'm going to leave him there. I think he might have gone rampant, and this is really not the time or place to treat that."

She's probably going to have to explain her copying trick, isn't she? What a day this has been.

Breath rough and shakey he blinks, turning his head with great effort to see- Connie. Alive, well, Delta hand't-

They hadn't-

He is not so old or so badass he will deny a little welling of tears (he'll blame it on pain) to know she's okay. That he hadn't killed her again That at least one of them will get out of here. He's got nothing left to urge himself to move. In the implant, in the code- a warm wash of blue, unfamiliar but wholly welcome.

Cortana. The healing unit's systems are fairly straightforward.

A dummy AI or subroutine on the suit's OS would work just as well to keep it going, but no. An AI is required for some bizarre reason. Sorry about earlier.

A beat.

Is Azucar ok? Locus didn't-

"That's putting it lightly. If Delta's out of the picture then I need you to run York's healing unit."

The ground lurches and Connie's head snaps up, gaze darting as some of the sections of the corridor start to spasm.

"And we don't have much time as is. Sorry York, but this is gonna suck."

As Connie moves York to lean against the wall so she can better lift him her heart starts to pound as the fluctuations in this section of the hallway start to get more frequent. Leaning down she slings one of his legs and arms over her shoulders until he's curled around her in a fireman's carry and hoists him up. It takes her precious seconds to make it back to her feet but as soon as she's up she's leaning forward into as careful a run as she can manage.

The EM situation is so much nicer now...meaning Cortana has a chance to drop a line to her other self and get the details rather than admit there are two of her on the loose.

...Well, hell. Yeah, Delta can stay right where he is. The Faceless might be dead, but that doesn't mean Delta returned to sanity along with the humans, given the AI predisposition to instability.

Not your fault. 'Soothing' cannot be considered Cortana's strong suit, but she's trying. Azúcar's fine. A little beat up, but who isn't?

Simultaneously, she speaks aloud to Connie, gently sending a few tendrils of code into the implant to check on the healing unit. "Not unless your helmet works on his armor. The implant won't hold me and I don't think he wants anyone in his mind right now."

Pause.

"I reiterate my opinion of your Director's programming skills, by the way."

"Always knew you wanted to get your hands on me." It's a rough, twisted rasp of sound, but York manages something. It's flat and automatic but it's audible. Something for Connie to know he's not dead.

Something to keep him from screaming a second time as she hefts him up.

Inside-

It's a ragged mess. A screaming shattered mass of code and broken protocols and failsafes that faled to be safe every which way. You're good?

D couldn't hurt her, he knew that but this thing-

It reached in and tore D up without so much as a sign. Not a blip. Not a blink.

A little of the dread eases out at the sound of his voice as rough as it is, and through grit teeth and a tense grin she replies, "Keep dreaming, York."

Connie grunts and slows to a stop, leaning her weight forward to balance York across her shoulders to fumble at her helmet's clasps one handed.

"It's worth a try. And I still completely agree with you."

Yanking the helmet up and off it takes her a minute to balance it in one hand and slide it up and over York's head without bashing it in his face or knocking his nose in. The visor is dark for a few seconds before it flickers to life as it recalibrates to York's suit. Not that Connie can see, as soon as it's on she readjusts her grip and keeps sprinting.

"All right, I've got this." Cortana's been riding in Connie's armor long enough to know what to expect, and where she'd been managing holograms before, she now kicks the healing unit into gear, as pointless as her presence is. "You know, I could re-wire this to run on a subroutine. There's no reason it needs even a dumb AI, much less Delta or me."

Ran into worse during the war. There aren't many people she's willing to tell about the Gravemind, even that obliquely, but York's stared into a similar abyss. He's earned a little honesty. You held on. A lot of people didn't. She's not talking about the Faceless, not entirely, and even with her feather-light touch on the implant, that much comes through in a subtle shift, the way someone might look aside when the past rises to haunt them.

Do you want me to do something about the pain? I saw how Delta was handling it. Well, the other Cortana saw, and passed the logs over to her. Functionally the same thing.

I don't wanna know. Any other time? It'd be a joke. Right now it's utterly sincere- the idea of anything worse is staggering to the mind and horrifying on more levels than he can begin to stand. But she's here, she's fine, Connie's roughed up but fine, Sombra's fine-

It's more than he can ask for. He's got half a mind to tell them to leave him with the walls closing in the way they are but-

He's been there before. Not long but long enough to be terrified of going back. The dark, the silence, the...nothing.

"You know me. Always dreaming." Lines from a familiar role that he can swing sometimes. Most times.

Please. I'm gonna throw up over her armor at this rate and she'll bitch forever if I do.

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short_changed - 2017-01-18 05:13 (UTC) - Expand

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steelandtemper - 2017-01-18 05:48 (UTC) - Expand

And then it hits.

Suddenly his mind snaps back to reality, and it is Not. Good.

Stephen is suddenly and viscerially aware of how wrong everything is and feels. He's not...in a human shape at all, he's made of bones and there's far too many legs and WHERE ARE HIS HANDS--

--the gore around him doesn't bother him as much as the fact that he'd let himself succumb to this beastly place. He let it in, he'd failed. Despaired.

And right now, he was choking back horror and--and--black stuff--

--it gushes out of his beak and between the bone plates and everywhere and then the pain hit--

--he hit the ground as his body twisted and reformed, cracking noises as he yelled in pain--it felt like he was being torn in half, being pulled apart, his muscles on fire, his bones breaking--extra legs snapping off, his scythe-hands splitting back into soft, damaged human ones, the beak on his face just falling off and clattering to the ground like a mask. Black stuff was leaking from his now-human mouth and nose, just gushing, but that was secondary to the pain.

--passing out was a thankful welcome. He could only hope for someone to drag him out of there before it was too late.

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SILENT HORIZON - [Part 2: Facing the Faceless/Escape] [modplot]

THE ESCAPE

Roland Deschain

Locus

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cw for emetophobes for a bit of gagging/mostly dry vomiting, i'm not sure how to phrase it

York & Delta

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Stephen Strange TW: Body horror