Next Generation Arsenal: Chapter 4 — Reticent Protocol
Kaosu's punch stopped.
Unfortunately, Kaosu could still talk.
"Who the hell are you?"
A man stood between him and Nyxus, arms folded. Blue light held a pocket of air around all three of them. Beyond it, pieces of the broken moon hung motionless.
Inside it, Nyxus floated upside down.
"Enough," the stranger said.
Kaosu pulled his fist back. That still worked. He tried throwing it again.
His arm moved. The punch lost its force before it reached the man's coat.
The stranger looked at him.
"Was the second attempt necessary?"
"I was checking."
"Check the moon. You've been very thorough with that."
Nyxus slowly rotated into view between them.
"Can we have a floor?"
The stranger opened one hand. A blue platform formed beneath their feet.
Nyxus landed on his head.
"Eventually," he added from the floor.
"My name is Aoikishi." The man glanced at the rubble outside. "You've both made quite the mess."
Nyxus sat up too quickly.
"The village."
Aoikishi's expression softened.
"Torin is alive. I moved him and the other survivors clear before the largest debris came down. The Corps are on their way."
"Show me."
Aoikishi drew a small window in the air.
Torin lay beneath a makeshift shelter, one arm bandaged against his chest. Someone knelt beside him. As Nyxus watched, Torin turned his head and said something the window did not carry.
Alive.
Nyxus let out a breath.
Kaosu looked at the little window too. His jaw tightened. When Aoikishi closed it, Kaosu looked away.
"The injured are being helped," Aoikishi said. "You two are finished making more of them."
Kaosu brushed dust off his jacket. "And you get to decide that?"
Aoikishi looked at his fist.
Kaosu lowered it.
"Temporarily," Kaosu said.
Nyxus found a flattened piece of bread in his pocket and began brushing it off.
Kaosu stared. "You're eating now?"
"I eat when I'm nervous."
"You're always eating."
Nyxus looked at the shattered moon, then at Kaosu.
"You're very stressful."
Aoikishi waited until the bread had survived inspection.
"I have a better target for you."
Kaosu's eyes narrowed. "Who?"
"Karma. Your loving kin."
"Don't call him that."
"Biologically—"
"I said don't."
Aoikishi nodded. "Good. We agree on the target."
Nyxus stopped chewing.
"The God of Chaos?"
"Yes."
"The one who made him?" Nyxus pointed at Kaosu.
Kaosu slapped his hand down. "I'm not a manufacturing defect."
"That's a family matter," Aoikishi said. "You can discuss it with him."
Kaosu studied the man who had stopped his punch.
"You can get me to my father?"
"I can teach you how to reach him without dying the moment he takes you seriously."
The joke died there.
Kaosu glanced at Nyxus. His opponent was bruised, bleeding, and still holding the bread.
Then Kaosu looked back at Aoikishi.
"I'm listening."
Aoikishi turned to Nyxus.
"What about you?"
"Does this involve more moons?"
"Probably."
Nyxus sighed. "At least you're honest about something."
Aoikishi raised a finger. A broken ring appeared above his palm, wrapped in pale fire.
Three letters hung inside it.
ACT.
"ACT," he said. "Field designation for the Anti-Chaotic Faction."
Kaosu looked at the letters. "That still doesn't spell ACT."
"It isn't an acronym. It's an instruction."
Nyxus swallowed. "Better than WAIT."
Kaosu almost smiled. He hated that.
Aoikishi opened a doorway beside the platform.
Beyond it stood a crooked tower on a barren plain.
Nyxus eyed the lean. "Is that safe?"
"No."
"Good. I'd hate to leave our comfort zone."
They crossed into cold wind and gray dust. Aoikishi closed the doorway before Kaosu could take another look at the moon.
"There's an artifact somewhere inside," Aoikishi said. "It may contain part of a route to the Terminal."
Kaosu stopped. "Which is?"
"A place where the deepest rules can be changed instead of obeyed."
Nyxus looked up. "Admin access?"
"That's the idea."
"And we tell it Karma loses?" Kaosu asked.
"We find out whether the rules protecting him can be changed."
"You said it changes rules."
"I said there is a place that can. I didn't say getting there would make you clever."
Nyxus nodded sympathetically. "Different problem."
Kaosu ignored him. "Why haven't you gone there yourself?"
Aoikishi pointed at the tower.
"Because I don't have a working route. I have broken pieces of one. Glitched artifacts. Most of what they say no longer makes sense."
"So we're looking for directions," Nyxus said.
"And someone who can read them."
Kaosu looked disgusted. "This is going to involve a puzzle."
The tower gave a long, low creak.
Aoikishi started walking. "Try not to punch it before we know which part we need."
They rounded a fallen pillar.
A girl walked through the wall in front of them.
Her shadow did not.
It stayed on the stone for a moment, then hurried after her.
Nyxus stopped.
"I think your wall is broken."
The girl turned so sharply that her hair remained facing the other way for a fraction of a second.
"You can see me?"
Kaosu looked at Nyxus. "Unfortunately, he sees everything he can comment on."
The girl held a flat, cracked artifact against her chest. Symbols crawled across it, disappearing whenever Nyxus tried to read them.
Aoikishi's eyes went to it.
"The Launchpad."
Her grip tightened.
"Is that what it's called?"
"May I see it?"
"No."
Aoikishi waited.
The girl waited too.
Nyxus glanced between them. "I think negotiations have ended."
She stepped backward through the wall.
Blue light closed around the courtyard.
The girl came out beside the same pillar.
She looked down at her feet.
Then at Aoikishi.
"Open it."
"I'd like to talk first."
"You should have tried being interesting."
Kaosu made a small sound that might have been a laugh.
Aoikishi pretended not to hear it.
The girl walked through the blue boundary. Her body passed through easily.
She reappeared in the middle of the courtyard.
Nyxus watched her turn.
"It's not stopping you," he said. "Every exit leads back here."
"I noticed."
Aoikishi held out an empty hand.
"The artifact may be dangerous."
"So is the man who put me in a cage."
Before he could answer, the Launchpad flashed.
The courtyard dropped out from under them.
Nyxus fell toward a dark opening. Kaosu caught the back of his coat and hauled him onto the fallen pillar.
The floor returned below them.
Then vanished again.
"Was that you?" Kaosu demanded.
Aoikishi shook his head. He held one palm toward the blue boundary, keeping it steady.
The girl stared at the artifact.
"It thinks your exits are destinations. It's trying to open them."
"Can you stop it?" Aoikishi asked.
"Can you stop adding exits?"
He opened his hand.
The blue enclosure disappeared.
The girl pressed two fingers against a moving line on the Launchpad. She dragged a broken symbol into place.
The floor returned.
This time, it stayed.
Nyxus looked down from Kaosu's grip.
"You saved me."
"Don't get comfortable," Kaosu said, and dropped him the last foot.
The girl stood beside an open path.
Aoikishi did not close it again.
"You can read that," he said.
She looked at the place his cage had been.
"Yes."
Nyxus dusted off his knees. "We should recruit her before she learns more about us."
"My name is Yamiya Miekō," the girl said.
One of the Launchpad's branching routes collapsed into a single point.
Aoikishi moved two fingers. The route unfolded again before Kaosu or Nyxus noticed.
Yamiya noticed both things.
"Do you know it?"
He looked at her face rather than the artifact.
"I don't know you."
"That wasn't what I asked."
"No," Aoikishi said. "It wasn't."
Kaosu folded his arms. "He does that."
Yamiya lowered the Launchpad slightly.
"Some people called me the Glitched Child."
Nyxus pointed toward the wall. "I can see how that happened."
"My home was deleted."
Nyxus lowered his hand.
Yamiya looked down at the symbols.
"I was little. The sky filled with red numbers. Then the houses started losing pieces."
She swallowed.
"Someone was holding my hand. I remember that. I don't remember who."
Nobody interrupted.
"There were words above us," she said. "Content Deleted."
Nyxus stopped moving.
Aoikishi saw it.
Yamiya did too.
"You've seen them?" she asked.
Nyxus looked at her hand, where two fingers had briefly become transparent.
"Yes."
"Did anyone else come back?"
Nyxus shook his head.
Yamiya watched him for a moment, then nodded as though he had answered a question she had asked too many times.
Aoikishi crouched beside the Launchpad.
"My guess? Whatever left Nyxus unfinished caught part of your deletion too. It interrupted the command. It didn't reverse it."
"So it keeps trying to finish," Yamiya said.
Aoikishi looked up.
"My fingers disappear," she continued. "People look through me. Some mornings I have to wait for the floor to remember I'm standing on it."
"Does the artifact help?"
"I can hold it when I can't hold anything else."
Aoikishi studied the symbols without reaching for it.
"Who taught you to read them?"
"I don't remember. I could read these before ordinary words."
Yamiya rubbed her thumb over a faded mark along its edge.
"I remember getting them wrong. Someone would make me try again."
A small smile appeared and went away.
"They were very annoying."
Nyxus looked at Aoikishi.
"Teaching tradition," he said.
For the first time, Yamiya almost laughed.
Then she turned the Launchpad toward them.
"This route is dead. The place it led to isn't there anymore."
Aoikishi followed her finger.
"And the line beneath it?"
"Something passed through before it broke. It left a way to follow."
"Toward another relic?"
"Toward something. I can read the directions. That doesn't mean I've been there."
Kaosu looked at Aoikishi. "I like her answers better."
"So do I," Aoikishi said.
Yamiya pulled the artifact back.
"What is the Terminal?"
"A place we're trying to reach."
Her eyes narrowed.
Aoikishi tried again.
"Some of the rules behind deletion may be accessible there."
"Could it bring my home back?"
"I don't know."
She waited.
He did not add a promise.
Nyxus sat on the pillar beside her. This time, he left the bread in his pocket.
"If he says he can fix everything, we leave," he told her.
"We?" Yamiya asked.
Nyxus shrugged. "I have questions too."
Yamiya looked from him to Kaosu, then back to Aoikishi.
"And you're going after Karma."
"Yes," Aoikishi said.
"Then I want to come."
Kaosu raised an eyebrow. "Just like that?"
"No." Yamiya faced Aoikishi. "No more cages."
He nodded.
"And if I say I can't read something, you believe me."
"Agreed."
She glanced at Kaosu.
"And he doesn't touch the Launchpad."
"I wasn't going to."
Nyxus looked at Kaosu's outstretched hand.
Kaosu put it in his pocket.
Aoikishi smiled. "Welcome to ACT."
Yamiya looked at the three of them.
"Is there anyone sensible in it?"
"Applications are open," Nyxus said.
She shook her head, but stayed.
On the Launchpad, four small marks lit up.
Yamiya pressed the broken route. A thin line crept across the surface, searching for whatever had passed through it before.
For several minutes, the symbols led nowhere. Kaosu paced. Nyxus ate. Yamiya kept reading.
Then a new word appeared.
Kaosu's face changed before anyone spoke.
KARMA.
Nyxus leaned closer. "We found him?"
Yamiya pulled her fingers away.
"No."
The line was moving toward their four marks.
"He found us."