I_L: Chapter 1

 

Noelle was in a pristine, domestic room, talking to a porcelain figure, "I don't remember who I was before. I remember getting injured, and finding the ship, and then just life there, living in a community of likeminded people." In front of her sat a faceless woman whose head was a pearly white mask with a long rubber cowl. A pencil skirt smoothly flowed down her legs and professional blouse and tie adorned her ensemble. She held a clipboard in one hand and every few moments, flickered ever so slightly- being projected from the three tightly clad, obsidian humanoid coated figures in the back who didn’t move an inch nor speak a whisper.

"Are you feeling upset?" The woman asked, her voice calm and motherly as if addressing a patient. But there was something artificial in it, even if the emotion felt real.

"I am." Noelle admitted, "It's so weird, like I feel like everything is a lie, and everything is superficial. How could that be, how could people believe so much of what they're told?"

"It's hard to believe something you're not used to," The woman stated. "I feel so betrayed." Noelle muttered.

The woman sat quietly for a few moments before asking, "What do you want?"

 

"I want answers, I want to find out what happened to me. I want to know why I cannot remember anything and who I am." Noelle stated.

"Then why don't you just return to the first place you ran away from?" The woman said, "You'll never find your answers working that dingy denipol job of yours you know."

Noelle turned away and sat at the very edge of her seat. The woman followed her up, "What's the matter?"

Noelle turned to face her, "What makes you think I want to find my answers?"

 

"I can't really answer that question for you." The woman stated, "But I can tell you who's really out there trying to figure it all out."

Noelle stared at the woman, and asked, "Who?"

 

The woman laughed, "I can't tell you, but you will find out, just trust in the people you trust in."

"But there are things in the Den, things I want to know, things I need to know." Noelle explained.

"What kind of things?" The woman asked.

 

Noelle hesitated, "I'm not sure. I've never been able to think too straight, it's like a fog, like I just want to run away from all the things that keep me trapped."

"You don't remember anything, why not just go home?" The woman asked.

 

"There was a girl in a forgotten Den that reminded me of myself, but I can't remember who she is. I cannot remember or make out her face, but she felt like family to me.." Noelle stated.

"Then, what do you plan to do?" The woman asked.

"I'll get up and go back, I-" She felt a knock at the back of her head. The hologram started to flicker, the three rubberized sets behind her twitched a little as if straining and calculating hard. "Looks like works calling. See you next time Noelle."

⍟

It was then that she snapped out of her trance, the present reality returning to her. "Something to do with the R.I.N.G., perhaps. With the machines that use them." His

 

copper hair and plain olive skin was unusual in this day and age. A hoomyn in the truest sense, as the vernacular goes. "Man fuck those guys. I haven't anything about them in the greater part of a decade, just copy-cats. Doubt it can be a group of machine worshiping imbeciles like them.

Besides, Lavalites don't seem to care too much for rights, as you'd notice." Ryoichi scoffed. "Like you're one to talk, tin-can." He banged on the Snythsteel of Baron's back dome, the obsidian shell encasing the top and a coppery, bulky ablative armor forming the construct of the synthoid's hull. His face, like a carved aluminum sheet eyed the road, mouthlessly 'tsking.' "Don't compare me to those fanatics. I'm made of sturdier stuff." His voice shook on his final line. "Besides, I've been called the best hackers alive Denipol has on hand. Can confirm there's no

R.I.N.G. involvement. And why would there be? They're as out of sight, out of mind as they come."

Ruined buildings, destroyed remains of civilization and a cyan-blue series of floating discs pulsed behind them, as far as the eye could see.

Security chief Noelle huffed abit as she took off her headset, Baron checking back on her. "We're here." He pointed up the tall metropolis building covered in slime. The ruins around them fortold of a city once thriving with life. But not anymore.

"While you were taking care of your business, we got a distress signal." Ryoichi pulled out a pocket Compt Communicator. Playing back was a scratchy plea for help.

"P-please, we've been overrun! They're everywhere, security cannot hold them much longer. We were supposed to be evacuated an hour ago but, something went wrong! This is Merchant diplomat Kagnarvox, if anyone's listening send help immediately!"

"Give us visuals." Noelle demanded. Ryoichi adjusted the settings.

 

On the screen was a video-message from the head diplomat. He was wearing a suit and a nice tie. He looked as if he was dressed for the occasion. The top of the man's head were monotone plating and screws. His face looked relatively normal, despite the clear augmentations and robotic limbs, but it was hard to tell through the hologram. He was in pain. His lips were curled in a grimace. One hand was covering his chest, the other was at the side of his head, pulling at greenish slime. "Help us! We can't hold them off anymore!"

"The signal cuts off after that. What should we do, Chief?" He asked. Noelle stared up at the tall tower-turned-nest.

"GATE." She answered flatly. "Me and Baron will go in to check on the hostages inside. Seal it off with Synthtex foam and wait for reinforcements. If we don't receive word from these diplomats they're dead and we will get blamed. The Council's orders were quite clear about evacuating these people on any Priority-A7 class mission, and we'll responsible if they aren't back."

Ryoichi looked between the two superiors. "What if we lose any one of them? I could call for assistance but the longer we wait..."

Baron's thermal vision-setting scanned the area. "Heat signatures are going off all over the building." "Anywhere outside that, in the city?" Noelle took out her volt-pistol and edged a protective stance. "Negative." She smirked.

"The longer we wait the more they can get into the vents and tunnels. We'll seal it off and the diplomats will live. It's the only chance to take out the whole nest in one go, and prevent any further infestation." She answered harshly. Ryoichi nodded. He reached in the van for proper sealing equipment as the other two stormed carefully inside, watching him spray the entrances and windows with tight elastic material. The two made their way up the stairs, careful to note the drips of ooze from the higher floors.

"I'm going to use my laser to help close off the vents. I think it will take you awhile to get them out." Baron told her. She nodded. Noelle put on her breathing mask, while Baron raised his arms and started blasting the various tunnels and crevices from which their target could enter from, and floor by floor they continued to ascend.

She took off her mask on a new floor, noting the influx of bubbling slime. Suddenly they heard something crawling nearby.

"Look out!" Noelle shouted. The creature was a few feet away from her, one of its sharp claws digging into the pavement, as it moved towards her. Noelle was terrified. She could see the Tectonids' sharp black eyes staring at her, and she could feel its cold touch in her gut. Noelle and Ryoichi moved in swiftly. Baron stuck his arms out to fire, but watched as Noelle shot the creature in the face with an electrical flash. The Tectonid's mouth and its fangs drooped, and its numerous black eyes went up and then stared directly at Noelle. The tendrils flailed towards her. She shot it again. The Tectonid let out a horrible squeal, then it exploded into globs of goop and

jelly-like liquid. Tectonids had the ability to reshape themselves into massless bunches with said jelly, it was said to be assimilative and corruptive when touched by organics.

"This room is clear." She said. Baron was still staring at the goop that the Tectonid had been, like a person who had just seen a horrific tragedy. Ryoichi finally caught up to them and walked over to Baron, spraying the exits and windows with more sealant. Noelle could hear soft pitter patter above. She felt a sudden calm. The fear was gone. There was a reason she had been placed with them in the first place. No one got the job done quite like her.

"Attagirl." Baron patted her on the back, small motes of dust from his metal apparatus causing her to choke up abit for a second.

Noelle relented, suspicious. He had always been watching her carefully. Noelle didn't know what she was feeling, but she didn't have to fake her emotions. She always felt something was off with that synth.

She looked nearby at an elevator shaft. "I've got a plan." She felt a cold draft from the bottom- the cryo unit. "Baron, can you hack the infrastructure here?" He scratched his metallic head. "Its centuries outmoded, kind of like asking a pilot to operate an old chariot or wagon. But I suppose I could.. What do you need?"

"Just the cryo unit." She said. "Techtonid's are lipid-protein based creatures, their bodies are weak to cold."

He looked down abit. "You could never power something like that to reach the whole building, backup generators wouldn't take."

"What about a modern Exocore?" She tapped his chest. "1.2 gigawatts of big lug

enough?"

 

He coughed, more a performative act than literal. "I could power it up yeah. If that was your idea you should've told us when we were on the first floor, not halfway up. Surely you don't expect me to climb down the shaft?" He figured his armor and shell could probably survive such a fall, but he wasn't hired to test such things.

She grabbed Ryoichi's Synthtex cannon and aimed at the very bottom of the shaft. With an adjustment of the settings, she shot a massive spray until the lowermost level was stuck with stretchy, slick and elastic material.

"Don't have to." She shoved the cannon back to Ryoichi and clapped her hands off.

 

Baron laughed, he didn't ask questions though. He leapt down 35 flights of stairs, landing on the warm material until it, like a layer of stretched bedding. Crawling down over into the basement, he navigated 3 rooms over until he found a small locker in the wall. His laser popped it open. Seeing the cryoprojector for the building's cooling unit, the synth wired his chest's nuclear-thermal reactor to it and he reached for his Compt.

“Charging up now. Bout to get real frosty up there. Sure you'll be alright?"

 

"We'll be fine, this will help slow our enemies down. Can you have this building under – 20 °C as we go rescue?"

"Do it while we wait. Give me about 10 minutes."

 

"Make it 5." She ordered, cutting the link and signaling Ryoichi to head towards the stairs.

They could hear the sounds of muttering. The hostages. Both of them ran up two flights of stairs and finally saw the group in distress. They proceed cautiously, aware danger still lurked.

Ryoichi held up his arm and grabbed a sonic-grenade. from his backpack, the grenades' safety switches could not be broken unless a detonator is touched. Noelle examined the group, most of them researchers, but one in an ornamented beige suit out of place with the stark white lab coats and synthoids in hazmats.

"Kagnarvox , I presume? What's a Merchant envoy doing with a research team like this? Doesn't really seem typical, certainly not illicit I would hope."

The diplomat introduced himself. "Nothing unlawful, I swear! See I was instructed to be here from my higher ups. We were warned about Tachyon Cascade activity and some members of the research team protested, but they insisted we go. Our jobs were on the line- this order came from high up."

"The Upper Realms council? Some scum agenda at G.H.O.S.T.?" She asked. "Higher than that.. an Elder Dragon." The diplomat shook, his voice waiving.

"That's nonsense." She scoffed. "We need to get you out of here. You can answer to the interrogation unit once you're safe." Noelle attempted to walk away, only for him to dash forward and speak up.

"W-wait, you're Security Chief of Lot, section Ivy-8 right?" He nearly tripped on a puddle of Tectonid slime no larger than a sock. She caught him and told him gently to watch himself.

"Listen.. When the old man brought it here he wanted me to do something. He was so excited, but not because it was protecting him. He wanted me to find something.." "What kind of thing?" Noelle asked, as she looked at Ryoichi briefly, then back at the diplomat for the answer.

"He wanted.. you." Noelle's face went all pale.

"What do you mean.. they specifically requested me?"

 

"Noelle, you're his only remaining daughter. He only had one true companion in his life, and he needs someone to help him. He's sick, he needs a cure.." The diplomat told her as he walked closer, leaving her completely defenseless.

"What.. did he tell you to do?" She asked, still unable to believe what she was saying. "Ugh, forget it. That man is not my father. I don't care if he is dying. What's someone with his own planet and colonies crying about?"

"Noelle.." Ryoichi put his hand up to calm her down.

 

"I don't understand.." Noelle mumbled, completely at a loss.

 

"You do now." The diplomat told her as he bent down and gently put a finger under her chin. She still didn't know if she could believe it. Elder Dragon Mitarashi, world leader as one of the 6, had raised and governed her life up to this stage. That was a lie. It was probably a lie, but didn't really remember anything about herself or her childhood. She knew that he'd taken an

interest in her before. And she suspected many fortunate things in her life, from her numerous promotions, the beneficial oversights she often received from high above, to the greeting cards and tacky gifts weren't anything to scoff at. It was well within the possibility some aging dictator had her good eye, but she'd never acknowledge someone like that as her father. She never even met the guy.

So why was she having this conversation?

 

"Noelle.." Ryoichi repeated softly, his brows knitted in concentration as he tried to figure out why she was like this. Noelle looked back at him- only those she deemed to care about her or her them would use that title when referring to her. The woman looked at him in confusion. She really thought he had something to tell her. It wasn't hard for him to guess what was going on in her head. Confusion, loneliness, frustration at all the questions. The entire planet was a place of war and conflict. From the constant, almost daily news updates to her very own experiences, life here was full of problems. A few corporations controlled most of life for every social system, and unless you were domed, you were down here in the rubble as a strayer or staff. But Ryoichi had never seen someone like Noelle. The people up here had been in a state of shock, they were looking at Noelle like a beacon of warmth and protection, she'd come to resolve their issues and the last thing Ryoichi wanted was the world's greatest security sector unit to die. So he wanted to make sure Noelle wasn't alone.

He wanted to keep her protected. To keep her safe. Ryoichi threw his arms around her.

He cried. Blood drained down his chest.

"RYOCHI!" She fired half a dozen volts into the Tectonid until it burst.

 

It's claw left his body slowly, the smell of sulfuric jelly and the metallic taste of blood covering the back of his throat.

"Stay with me!" She screamed, holding him. His lungs and chest had been punctured.

 

Ryoichi was smiling at her, he reached up and touched her face. "I love you.." he said, his voice strained. Voice broken."Take care, and stay cool babydoll." He fell to his knees, clutching his chest. The cadet let his legs fall and he slipped to his knees. The blue suit looked torn, blood smeared across it. The world tilted, and the floor became a jostling sea holding his embrace.

She stared down at his broken form, unsure of what to feel. Confusion. Guilt. Anger. A rush of emotions that were too strong, too volatile to properly classify, but she had to keep her hands and heart off of him. This wasn't the time to get sentimental, she needed a clear head. The sound of hissing around the room filled the hostages with fear, three other Tectonids starting to crawl nearby along the walls.

Noelle's eyes widened, tears drying down across her face. She raised her Volt pistol and started firing, flashed of electrical current rapidly splattering the large insect-like creatures in all their synthetic, carapace bulk. Crunched and hard on the outside, soft as jello on the interior, they rippled with each shot and spilled layers of goop along the floor. The people cried out and stepped back to avoid it, well too aware it was bad to touch.

When the three were completely spluttered, more Tectonids started to crawl into the room. Fury in her eyes, Noelle kept shooting.

"Chief, s-stop!" The Diplomat pleaded, noting her rampage were drawing piles of jelly- corpses and their fluid near and nearer. "Stop. Please, STOP!" His eyes were wide with terror.

"Get out! Get everyone out!" She yelled back in response.

 

But people didn't listen. Most had started walking around the room terrified. In a way it was understandable, the walls seemed to be crumbling inwards with the cyan blue and green slime, and the air became less breathable. The smell was sickening.

⍟

 

Noelle was too far gone, firing nonstop. One of the Techtonids crawled on the ceiling and hissed at a young secretary bun, she was clutching her notebooks like they held the secrets to her salvation. "AAAAAaaaHH!" Noelle fired atop, blasting the creature into fried goop. It fell on the girl, her floppy ears raised as she screamed.

"NOOOoahghhssss.." Her shout became a hiss, as the slime from the Techtonid began to merge with her body, tentacles growing out, form expanding rapidly. All of her fur dissolved.

Her eyes divided, grew and became jet-black, the limbs melting until they began to ooze, all of the goop seeping into her skin. "Uuuuugggghhhh.." She could feel her organs and skin melting into jelly and metallic shells forming around her joints and ribs as she hunched over. The call of a hivemind serenaded her with warmth. Begging for more to join, a thousand voices coming together to form one and it was all she could do to pull her hands away from the blackened meaty arms of the creature.

Her vision faded until the only thing she could see was a glistening cloud of metallic slime. The new Techtonid gashed and turned towards the same girl who had tried to save her.

"Oh God, oh God, oh God..." She was sobbing Noelle was stammering. "I.. I didn't mean.." it rushed forward and knocked the volt pistol out of her hand. She fell flat on her ass, until the swarm surrounded her. The girl would've accepted her fate for the incidental friendly- fire she just caused, had an airy mist not started to fill the room. Finally, Noelle sprang to action, feeling the Cryo Unit's reach.

She had a pretty good idea of what was about to happen, as the room was surrounded by the grey white smoke.

"Everyone, quick huddle nearby!" The group, scared and disoriented did so until they were in a single circle, Noelle joining them. She was trying to keep it calm, but it was difficult. She couldn't see through the gas that was blocking her vision, but it was cold as ice. The thermal sensory field of every Techtnoid in the room started to turn from a heated red to a deep dark blue. Their movements stiffened, then creaked and split. Every part of their mass turned hard, liquids freezing into solids. Cracks began to appear as quickly as they had a surface to. When the mist finally dissipated just enough, Noelle could see every single one of them in the room had completely petrified into ice.

She breathed a sigh of relief. It was short lived, as a girl behind her sneezed. The group was shivering, and then Noelle realized it was cold..too cold.

-20 °C to be exact.

 

"Shoot.." How long would they last in the room like this? Noelle scrambled and looked, until she spotted the Syntex cannon and rushed towards it.

"Everyone, this is going to feel a little uncomfortable, but you need to huddle up!"

With a clear shot, she blasted everyone with stretchy foam. The gooey film began to liquidify on the entire crowd, coating them solid and stretching around their bodies, encasing them until they were rubbery muffled silhouettes. She could hear their protests but, what can you do?

"Atleast it should be warm in there." the chief figured. Could they breathe? This stuff was designed to wrap up subdued prisoners and live criminal targets, so she supposed they could. The gas continued to spread, and chills ran down Noelle's body. She crawled over to what was left of Ryoichi. Ice was nipping at her pores in a coldsweat and she couldn't stop shivering.

The girl, struggling to breathe, remembered Ryoichi's last words. "Stay cool." That sonabitch always did have the worst sense of humor. Her eyes finally shut. She felt her body lying on cold hard ground. The ground was cold. She was cold. Maybe death was cold too.

Noelle fainted.

 

She started to have visions of a nightmare.

 

⍟

 

 

 

 

A girl with long dark hair, wearing a red, hooded, rubber cloak and carrying a glowing red sword stared down at her. There was a figure behind her cloaked in shade just in the distance. She was on the floor. Was she dead, she wondered? The girl in the red hood pointed her sword at Noelle. A voice whispered into her ears. She couldn't quite make it out, leaning closer.

She felt a hand grab her shoulders and pull her up. The contrast in her face was replaced with the brightness of day, although it had been dark before. "You okay?" The female voice behind her. It was the red-cloaked woman. "Do you know where you are?"

She shook her head, trying to focus.

 

The girl in the cloak pointed her sword towards Noelle's head and started to dance. The other figure behind her started to back away. The cloaked girl's vision seemed ethereal and intense. Her otherworldly eyes, black as the black holes of space, and piercing like a thousand stars. They caught Noelle's eyes with her own.

She was so beautiful. Noelle loved that face. Something bright as the sun shone from

 

above.

 

Beautifully vivid. Another face, a golden body so powerful and so intense that Noelle couldn't even stare at it for long, she had to shield herself. She felt a flush of warmth from that source, the same one that had turned the dark starry night into a brilliant sunbeam of daylight. The red-cloaked woman offered her hand out.

"It's about time you finally die, Noelle." She said with a smile, trying not to crack. "W-what?" The foxgirl almost sobbed, her ears twerked.

"Joking! Joking geez, aha still you're so fun to tease. It's time to wake up actually." Somewhere, she heard the echo of a voice, calling her name.

⍟

Her vision blurred and she lost consciousness. Wait, no regained consciousness. She'd lost consciousness before, losing herself in that weird dream was simply a form of waking up, atleast she figured.

"Noelle?" The voice was closer, this time. "Noelle, Noelle." The voice was a whisper, but she was certain it was not the other girls, or any girl..

A flash of light. A medical light. "Noelle? Can you hear me?"

She felt the air blow from her lips, the cool breeze blew away the images. She was awake again, and she was lying on a metal table. A catgirl was next to her. Up above her was Baron.

The girl's arm was mutated with Techtnoid material, dripping bluish goop as tentacles sprang out the arm. "She'll have to be amputated to stop the infection," He said.

Noelle got up, piecing her memories together and realizing her mission was over. "The hostages.."

"They're safe." He replied. "You saved them. You did that."

 

She got off the table and started to pace around the room to get her bearings back. Then she looked at him.. he'd called her Noelle. Noelle hated when certain people used that name, or atleast, those she felt uneasy about." "Where are we?"

"About to head to Europa."

 

"Why?" She looked out a window to see the vastness of space before them.

She recognized that vessel wing anywhere. They were on an Xi Highfleet ship. Why were they? They never sent a military vessel to retrieve a lone Security team in charge of the Lots.

"To celebrate. Looks like you're a hero, Noelle." He scoffed. "You've been out for 3 days, in that time you've been given a promotion."

"You're not with the Lots anymore? Are you going to stay with them?" Noelle asked.

 

"I left the Lots. So did you, Noelle." Baron chuckled to himself. "You're in Upper Realms management now.. the new Convoy Corina. A constable now, how about that?"

She bit her tongue. "Say what?" He raised a glass. "Let's drink to that, detective."