Lt Alex Storm - Where Darkness Devours
Karen Morris
(( Caspia District Sub-Levels - Haunted Corridor - Boraxian Cityship ))
The heat clawed its way into the pores of Alex’s skin, intensifying and slipping inward as easily as mercury penetrates the skin - and just as deadly. Beads of perspiration became drops. Drops grew into rivulets. Rivulets merged into streams. And these streams infected every inch of her clothes.
Bancroft: ::checking his tricorder:: 50 degrees and rising… we’ve got about five minutes, maybe a little less. ::deep breath:: We’ll lose judgment before we lose consciousness, so let’s make some good decisions now while we can.
oO Focus, Alex. How do you break out of a cage? Oo
Storm: ::to herself:: You pick … the lock.
Alex looked over at Imril - not picking the lock. oO Maybe the mechanism is fried. Oo
Silveira: I hope you're enjoying the show Andoren. But we won't be sticking around for long. We don't burn easily.
Andoren: ::lilting:: Oh, but that’s the point, my dear man! You will burn – just not all at once. That would be far too boring. No… I want to see what peels away first. The flesh? The courage? ::chuckling:: Let’s find out together!
Bancroft: ::panting:: Actually, motor control is usually the first to go. Then the hallucinations start. ::glancing up at the ceiling:: You’d know that… if you’d ever actually studied pain.
The assault on her senses intensified. The stench of bodies. Of singeing debris. Of overcompensating electrical systems. The grating noise of a madman’s rantings. Alex pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. The pressure created a sensation on which to focus, allowing her to block out everything else and to concentrate on the problem.
Alex walked over to examine the door that burned her. The sizzle of the circuits and the cacophony of voices muted her words.
Storm: How…how can we unlock an electronically locked door?
Silveira: It's sad, you know. Because you're so eager and emotional that you're wasting an opportunity. An opportunity to get into power much more easily. After all it wouldn’t be a first time someone tagged as a terrorist shifted to a proper political and leadership role.
Andoren: ::dryly amused:: Ah, the old redemption arc. Yes, yes – the assassin who becomes the senator, the arsonist who builds an orphanage. I know the myth. But let’s not confuse legacy and… leverage. True revolutions don’t require redemption arcs.
Bancroft: What about… ::pant:: the nutjob… ::pant:: who gets a very special jacket and a padded room?
Alex mopped her forehead with her sleeve only to discover it had already met it’s liquid capacity.
Storm: ::in a whisper To Imril.:: Can we overload the circuits?
The Betazoid gulped a mouthful of air and willed it into her lungs.
Storm: Will the servos unlock or lock into place?
Bancroft: ::breathless:: Sixty seconds…
Vitor felt the sweat dripping in his forehead and he opened his arms.
Silveira: Fine Andoren, we will have it your way.
Her head burned; anger swelled behind her teeth until she couldn’t contain it.
Storm: Not if we can help it!
… Her fury burst out raw and unfiltered. Imril’s efforts on their behalf flooded the room with the sweetest air Alex had ever tasted. It was heavenly rain after a prolonged drought.
Imril: It’s never just a rock.
Bancroft: ::wheezing:: If that was the welcome mat, I really don’t want to be invited inside…
Bancroft: …but as they say, “out of the frying pan and into the mysterious chamber.”
Silveira: Careful. Storm, cover the rear, Imril, keep scanning.
Alex waited inside the sauna until the others exited. oO Don’t let this thing trigger again and leave me inside. Don’t. Don’t. Oo And as Imril stepped out, she was less than a half a step behind him, but once she was out, her lungs filled with relief.
Storm: On it, Boss.
Imril: Response
((Beyond the Corridor – Caspia District – Boraxian Cityship))
Often, darkness embodies the absence of light, yet some darkness feasts on light. In this room, the darkness consumed even the faint green glow of the seams throughout the chamber.
The shift from furnace to frost left her dizzy. The air cooled, carrying the tang of ash and the faint hum of machinery—a promise that this wasn’t over.
Eyes adjusted, nostrils flared, skin pebbled, and a shiver crept down her spine. Yet Alex noted none of it. Her eyes fixed on the fixture, which rose out of the stone floor. It stood guardian over a black candle that lit itself as Alex, the last of the group, stepped inside. What was it? An altar? It was dingy enough. A pedestal? It was tall enough. Was it to worship at or to speak from?
.
Bancroft: ::sarcastic:: Super…
Silveira: OK people we still have a job to do. Focus…
Alex once again turned the light on her phaser on, but the darkness devoured much of that light as well.
Storm: There may be a dampening field of some kind in here.
Imril: Responses?
Clack, click, clask. Something sharp was tapping on the stone above them. Sil raised his phaser.
Andoren: ::sing-song:: One, two, three… The candle finds the wick, and the wick finds me. I do so love rituals and traditions. Don’t you? ::beat, intimate:: You’ve entered one of our holiest places, my friends… a place built for one to plumb the depths of their own being. ::sinister pause:: Tell me… Who among you still believes your soul is your own?
Following Sil’s hand motion, Alex walked the perimeter of oblong alcoves with their goulish accessories and vestments.
Silveira: Dammit… I knew I left something in my other pants…
Gears and wheels began to turn as Andoren’s voice taunted them. oO Look past the ridicule - focus on the clue. Oo Alex’s tongue touched her lip, teasing apart the riddle.
Storm: I have an idea.
Imril: Response
Silveira: Someone give me a quick reading, we need to know where we are and with who. And gather closer.
Storm: ‘The Candle finds the wick and the wick finds me.’
Bancroft/Imril: Response
Silveira: Talk to me people…
Storm: He’s telling us how to find him…
Bancroft/Imril: Response
Silveira: Unless we find another way… Let’s rock…
Storm: Don’t you hear it. The candle!
Bancroft/Imril: Response
Alex strode across the room. Muttering a curse under her breath, she took her recently healed hand and pressed the lighted candle down into the pedestal. Her palm sizzled and the scent of burnt flesh rose sharp and putrid. She gritted her teeth and pressed harder. Pain bit deep, familiar now — almost welcome.
Storm: Gods…
But this time, she refused to wince. The flame extinguished, and the back of one of the empty alcoves slipped upwards, illuminating the chamber, which in the light could be seen for what it was - a mausoleum.
Imril/Bancroft/Silveira: Response
Light erupted around them, searing away the last trace of shadow, stabbing through Alex’s pupils, making her stomach twist. She forced her breathing steady - contol was the only weapon she still had. For a heartbeat, silence hung heavy — and then the walls themselves seemed to breathe.
The alcove gave way to something vaster. The Hall of Flame opened around them—vast, cylindrical, and reverent as an ancient temple reborn. Light cascaded from a great glass sun etched into the cupola high above, spilling golden fire over the chamber. The walls below gleamed white and perfect, their smooth stone curving down twenty feet before blooming outward into twelve radiant arches. Each arch marked a separate alcove, a dozen petals surrounding the blazing heart of the room.
At the center, on a raised dais, Andoren stood with arms outstretched, the prophet of his own inferno. Around him, twelve clusters of families knelt beneath the gaze of his guards—supplicants, or perhaps sacrifices—waiting for the word that would decide their fate.
Alex shielded her eyes against the brilliant light, and a familiar voice sang out.
Andoren opened his arms as if to receive wayward children. The light tinkle of his tone contrasted with his mocking words.
Andoren: Oh no! ::He put his hands to his mouth and tipped his head.:: You found me! ::Then turning his palms upwards and shrugging, he taunted:: Whatever am I going to do?
Imril/Bancroft/Silveira: Response
But from above the group still huddled in the mausoleum a click, click, clickety clickety rang out. A shadow rippled across the ceiling. Then legs — eight of them — descending in jerky grace. Her pulse jumped. She didn’t think, she fired. The beam fizzled out against its shell like a match in a storm.
Storm: Phasers don’t work!
The creature reared, then skittered forward, herding them into the light.
Imril/Bancroft/Silveira: Response
Karen Morris
((OOC: This is a repost because somehow, my signature got left off of my original sim. There has been one sim in this scene since this one was posted.))
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Tags / TBC
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Lt Alex Storm
Tactical Officer
USS Artemis
O240103SK2