Everything was void. There was nothing. No time passed. No process active.
++Initializing Reanimation Protocols.++
++Physical reconstitution…. Complete.++
++Cognitive Matrix… Re-established.++
There was nothing, but there was thought. The flash of the weapon that had destroyed Twoset in a fraction of a second. Recorded analysis showed it to be a primitive fusion rifle, compressing some kind of fuel mix to trigger a directed nuclear fusion reaction aimed at his face.
++Motive functions… Engaged.++
He rose from his sarcophagus in slow steady movements. Metal grinding metal as he gripped its edges, hauling himself onto the floor. Still, his thoughts were awash with the images of the battle he just left. Primitive should not be equated with non-effective, it seemed.
++Sensory suite… Error. Retrying…. Error.++
++Requesting Cryptek aid… No Cryptek signal in range.++
Twoset froze in his steps. All was dark. All was quiet. He knew that was not true.
Memories of the chamber filled his mind, as he analysed the countless (341) times he had risen from the re-animation chamber.
He calculated quickly what steps he had taken, from which side of the sarcophagus, and in which direction. Another tentative, calculated step brought him closer to the door… he thought. Followed by another.
It was the slowest Twoset had ever stalked the place he called home. A journey of a handful of seconds taken in painstaking minutes, until he could feel the threshold of the doorway in his grip and entered the hallway beyond.
Relying on the touch of the hallway’s walls and a map brought up in his mind, Twoset scolded himself for never memorising the feel of the Tomb’s walls in case of just this sort of predicament.
++Requesting Cryptek aid… no Cryptek Signal in range.++
He stopped by a four-way crossroad, taking his focus from navigation to potential solutions to his predicament.
No Cryptek. He still had the sense of touch, but that seemed to be the only sense operational. He had catalogued navigational knowledge of every part of the Tomb. Could he communicate? Difficult to test seeing as he would not be able to hear it himself. Cryptek or not, he needed technomantic information.
++Uplink established. Downloading. Complete.++
A vast trove of sensory and maintenance technologies opened itself to Twoset’s mind’s eye. Tried and tested works. Primitive alien works. All kinds of Necron design.
Quickly dismissing all that would require a Cryptek’s outside assistance, a chill of fear was rising within the ancient machine. Was he condemned to the darkness? The silence? He? A great and noble scion of the proud and storied Sautekh Dynasty, was to never again see another sunrise? Never to hear the ground quake as the legions disembarked from their arks? Was he to be a cripple, led by a bodyguard at all times for his own protection, much like the mad Nemesor Zahndrekh?
In desperation he started going through new prototype works, and there, found salvation.
It was a long journey for Twoset, down multiple levels of the Tomb. A light trek once measured in minutes became one measured in hours, with nothing but touch and mental map to guide him through vast chambers, near-identical hallways, carried across vast chasms over great machinery by floating platforms.
It was a journey made longer in experience when accompanied only by mental mapping and calculations, the feeling of ridges and traces in the metal walls, vibrations and thumping of machinery activating and moving all over the place. He had even frozen in place when what he assumed to be a swarm of Canoptek Scarabs crawled over his feet, passing by him.
Finally, he was in the right place.
He had known it with the reduced ambient vibrations. He had known it with his trust in the map in his mind. He had known it with the change in surface.
No longer metal on metal, but a soft layer made itself known between his feet and the floor.
He was sure there was movement of some kind around him, things unseen and unheard, keeping distance between them.
‘I am not here for you,’ he spoke, more to calm himself than to make any attempt at communication with unknowable success. ‘What I need is here.’
Crouching on all fours, Twoset groped and felt his way across the soft ground, moving unusable debris out of the way.
No. It couldn’t be that it was all unusable. There had to be something here. There had to be!
His slow, methodical movements turned to desperate flailing and digging. Soft material was crushed in his grip, a sticky wetness covering his hands. There had to be something!
He slipped and crawled on the ground, anguished cries escaping as he buried himself through the piles and layers of matter, tossing it around, his pride breaking as he found even his last hope snuffed.
Twoset let himself fall on his back. It had been his last hope. Dashed. Lost in the muck in the silent dark, with all his pride.
Then, something touched his hand. Something soft. Something soft that gripped him weakly.
Ever so gently, Twoset grabbed it back, rising from the ground and crawling over what he had felt, assessing it with the gentlest touches of his hands. Organic. Alive, if barely. Necrontyr-shaped, bipedal. A head full of sensory organs.
Marquis was gripped with terror as the metallic monster that had been digging through the alien charnel house had taken a hold of him. Blood ran off its frame, patches of skin and gore sticking to and sliding off its skeletal form. But it was its words, that came from the unlit head, that drew true terror from him. Its alien words that came in many alien tongues, one of which he understood.
‘I do not know if you can hear me, but I feel honour demands an apology from me.
If it wasn’t for my malfunctions, I would not need to experiment with the bio-digital interface.
I would not need your eyes.
Do not despair.
I need you alive.’
