Chapter 367: Empty Soldiers

An empty chamber rests at the end of the hall, working on auxiliary power from some batteries in the corners. I kneel, confused, at the edge of the hatch and stare down into the space. Why the hell isn’t there a reactor core in there? It doesn’t look like a hasty grab job, but it also doesn’t look completely clean; a few connecting wires hang limply from the ceiling and half of the ports in the ground haven’t been closed.

“It’s gone?” Pearl asks, voicing the confusion I feel. “How the heck is the reactor core just gone?”

I slowly shake my head without moving my eyes. “I… don’t know. Is there anything in the specs that says they take out the cores for… cleaning, or maintenance, or something?”

“Cleaning? Maintenance? Ha!” Pearl laughs bitterly and crosses her arms. “This mech’s logs say it was cleaned two months ago, and hasn’t been used for almost six. I don’t think they know proper protocol for cleaning those things out. Look at the access hallways! They aren’t big enough to take a core that size through, so they had to have built the mechs around the cores!”

“Aren’t those your blueprints?”

Pearl’s glare could wither an entire field of flowers. I take the point without another word; the shellraisers must’ve had some other way to get to the cores and get them out safely. Some tech that the Preservation didn’t manage to replicate. But obviously a lot of these mechs aren’t reactor-less. So how many others are?

I close the hatch and walk right to the exit. All the cameras turn ever so slightly to follow my movements, but now that I know they’re working on auxiliary power, I’m confident that they aren’t broadcasting to anywhere. Whoever was in here before me would’ve cut the feeds, or made sure they were showing a loop of empty space. I set my jaw and turn to leave.

“Are we checking the others?” Pearl asks.

“We are,” I confirm as the mech swings open. The hangar’s still empty, thank goodness. “If all of the others don’t have cores in them… then… well, I don’t know what the hell that means. But it can’t be good.”

I move to the next mech down the line and repeat exactly what I just did. The blueprints show a reactor, there’s a little power, but the containment field is empty there too. This time I shimmy down an access tunnel to confirm that my awareness isn’t hallucinating, but just like before, there’s not a thing to be found. Not even some radiant radiation. Whoever removed the cores did it long enough ago that everything dissipated.

So I move on again. Check the next mech. It’s empty too. As is the next one. And the next. And the next. All down the line, all missing their reactor cores–not a single one of them is ready to move. The only ones that were were the one Call took to get me and the one that exploded. But why? Why did the Preservation not notice all their mechs were missing their cores… or why did they remove them themselves?

“It doesn’t make sense,” I mutter to myself as my feet clack against the catwalk. “If they’re all out of order, then why are they still here? And if they don’t know, then why the hell don’t they know? Lizzie would’ve done maintenance on at least some of these. She would’ve known they were empty. I–she would’ve told Call.”

I pull out my Class Card and type out a quick message explaining what we just found. Call’s probably busy right about now, and if he’s busy with Lizzie, he’ll be able to ask her directly. All that’s left to do is wait for his response… and wonder what the hell’s going on.

“It’s almost like they abandoned the mechs. Maybe they took the reactors apart and moved them that way,” Pearl muses, then huffs and shakes her head. “No, no, we’d see signs of radiation leakage. Whoever took those cores out had to have put them in their inventory. But who has the authority to do that? The person who made them? The Preservation’s leader?”

She looks to me for confirmation, but I saw the exact same stuff that she did. The explanation of inventories being used to move the reactors makes sense to me, yet even that sounds like a shallow explanation. It’s missing all the reasons behind the decision; the cores had to go somewhere, so where did they go?

An unexplained lump pushes saliva into the back of my throat. Something tells me we’re going to find out what happened sooner or later.

“...If they knew the cores weren’t in the mechs, then…” Pearl trails off while staring at a mech. “It’d still be really dangerous, but it wouldn’t be like the other two. It’d be closer to those subway cars under your old city or the dump truck on the krarig. Do you think that’s why Speak wasn’t in any hurry?”

I close my eyes and lean against the railing once more. “That’s an explanation, not an excuse.”

“But–no! I know!” Pearl suddenly stands, knocking her invisible chair to the ground. “She was looking to see if anyone else knew the mechs weren’t going to be apocalypsed! They must’ve found out that someone was stealing the cores, but not who, and she was watching for anyone that only focused on defeating the one mech!”

“Mm… maybe. I’m not convinced. There’s something else we’re missing here because we literally don’t know enough about the Preservation hierarchy.”

Pearl raises an eyebrow. “Really? What?”

I raise an eyebrow right back. “If I knew, I would’ve told you already. But think about it like this; if the cores are being stolen and the Preservation already knows about it, then they would’ve had heavy surveillance on the mechs from the start. There’d be no way a mech could do as much damage as the first one did under their watch.”

“That makes sense,” Pearl readily admits. “So… what if it’s the opposite? Speak knows the mechs don’t have cores because the Preservation is taking them for some other reason, and she was making sure nobody else figures out that they’re missing. No, that doesn’t sound right. They’d just move the mechs somewhere else if they were going to do that.”

“Agreed.”

Pearl sighs and rights her chair, then sits down once more with a huff. Her forehead’s creased in intense thought, but just like me, we’re missing a few extremely important variables to complete the equation. Speak’s marching orders feel like the most obvious place to start. No idea where the hell I’d get my hands on those, though, since I highly doubt they were done through normal means.

“He’s fixed!” Slosh’s voice and form slither out of the flask at the same time. “I’m keeping him asleep for right now if you want to get out of here before he wakes up. Did you have any luck with the mechs, my savior?”

I sigh and twiddle an earring. “Yes and no, Slosh. Any chance you’ve noticed anything strange about this place? Something we might’ve missed?”

Its eyes widen as it recoils in shock. “How could I notice anything you might have missed, my savior? Your awareness is–”

“Spare me the theatrics. Did you notice anything or not?”

Slosh purses its lips and looks down towards the ground. “There are more of those wisps from earlier on the ground down there, but they’re already dissipating; I’d put them at a good dozen hours older than the others.”

I nearly snort in surprise. “A dozen. You’re sure? Damn sure?”

“As sure as I can be,” Slosh confirms. “They’re older than the minimal radiation in here at the very least. Is there a maintenance logbook? I had to keep a log for my trials when I was in charge of those. Speaking of; Click seems to miss you, but it won’t ever admit it. Pay it a visit the next time you return to the city, won’t you, my savior?”

“It’s been less than a week, Slosh.”

“Yes, well, we’re a clingy sort, all of us,” Slosh laughs. “Paindne, construct, S-word that I’m not sure I’m allowed to say; we’re all social creatures at heart. Even the salt elemental–excuse me, Halsia–goes to the shore quite often to make castles with the children. There’s something about you humans that just… well… I can’t explain it.”

I can’t help but crack a grin. “It’s probably the Illumisia in me, not the human, but thanks for the compliment. And don’t worry; I’m not staying here overnight. Information gathering is just one part of things, and Clutter’s so much better at it than I am. We’ll have to find some way to get him and Agathe here before Stonestep Solutions has their meeting with the Preservation.”

“And by Stonestep Solutions, you mean…”

I tap myself on the chest. “The part that says I’m the leader of it. All the shareholders, or whoever the hell they are, can go kick rocks.”

Slosh lets out a relieved sigh. “Very good. I’ll relay all that information to them so they can start getting ready in earnest. Truth be told, most of them are just enjoying their time on a new planet. Shameful, I know, but I can’t say I’m perfectly innocent either!”

A groan from down the catwalk breaks the silence like a gunshot. Slosh’s tiny form snaps to glare at the room with a mixture of confusion and disbelief.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen?” I assume.

“His magic is rejection,” Slosh murmurs. “That’s why he didn’t die. His body simply rejected the idea of dying so much and so hard that it kept him alive until now. What Class could that possibly be? Or is it a spell or relic he acquired from someone… how interesting…”

While Slosh licks its lips with curiosity, I clench the anonymity pebble between my teeth and take a breath through my nose. The kid has to know something. Though if his magic is actually ‘rejection’, as Slosh claims, then that could be one massive problem. He might see through the pebble’s anonymity without any issue. I’ll have to fall back on being the refugee Call saved earlier today if that happens.

“Slosh, you check out the wisps on the ground,” I say quietly and gently place the flask on the ground. Then I tap a relocation coin to it and put the coin in my back pocket. “Tell me when you’re done and I’ll bring you back.”

With a lingering glance at the groans beyond the doorframe, Slosh spills itself out of the flask and drips down to the floor below. It falls a whole three feet before it accelerates towards the ground at breakneck speeds, then comes to a splatteringly brutal stop a few feet before the concrete below. I’d almost forgotten that it could fly. And that it has an unsettling amount of eyes, which it opens to take a closer look at the wisps.

“Hello? Where… where am I?” A voice and footsteps warily echo into the hangar. Taylor follows quickly suit, turns to look directly at me, and frowns. “Are all those mechs? And a-aren’t you the woman I tried to give a tour to? How’d you get back in here?”

I smile with pinched lips and get ready to lie through my teeth.