[...And now we bring you a special segment with our guest, the famous Salient, Cloud Singer! Not only is he the youngest Salient to kill a Harbringer of the Swarm, but he's also surpassed Northern Lost in the Salient weekly kill..]
"This route is not government-sanctioned." The soft voice at my side draws my attention away from the glitching TV to Akira. Her pink hair is a stark contrast to the metallic sheen of her limbs, and her eyes, too sharp for a child, are trained on me.
"I should really disable your tracking device." I mutter, head cradled in my palm. Akira blinks one mechanical blink before shifting closer, the sensors along her arm whirring faintly.
"You would," she starts, "but then no one would know if you collapsed mid-route."
I shift at her words, pulling my sleeve further down my arm, carefully covering the scars that my echo had left behind from our last mission.
Her lips twitch into a slight smile, a slight reprimand. "You're still unstable." I glance back at the TV just in time to catch Cloud Singer's grin, the studio lights bouncing off his gleaming exosuit. His voice echoes through the cramped cabin of the drifter like a warning I don't care to hear. The screen glitches again, static tearing across his face, and I look away.
Outside the drifter, stars stream past, leaving particles of glowing dust in their wake. "Please brace for turbulence." Tara's familiar voice fills the drifter, and for a moment, everything is still before the drifter lurches to the side.
Instinctively my arm wraps around Akira's side, holding the child close to my side as my hand clenches into the armrest of the drifter's seats. "How long till we arrive at Orin-Kai?" I ask as the drifter's engine groans.
"Approximately 23 minutes," she replies, the metal in her eyes quivering. "Wind speed is 25,000 and rapidly increasing. Chances of the drifter's survival, 76%."
I scowl, grabbing a metal handle and forcing myself up on my feet. "I'll go help out Tara; stay here." I lean against the railings of the drifter before shoving open the control room door and slipping inside.
Tara leaned forward, short purple hair fluttering as her fingers worked the million buttons on the control panel. "A little turbulence like this is nothing for the Pale Vein." Tara says as I sit down beside her.
"Akira said wind speed is increasing. Was this forecasted?" I take over the steering wheel of the drifter, hands clenching as the wheel continues to jolt and tremble.
"No, if anything, this area of the Void should be more stable since we're already close to the Myrr Cascade's magnetosphere. I'll log it when we arrive to Orin-Kai." A cup shatters on the floor.
My foot braces against the floor as another large gust of wind tilts the wheel to the side, forcing me to pull the opposite direction, hands tensing. The soft whirring of the door opening makes me glance at the door, noticing Akira stumbling in.
"What are you doing here? I told you to wait outside; I'm not paying for any of your sensors' repairs. I mutter as the younger girl sits beside Tara.
"Unregistered biological signatures detected," Akira says, sensors fluttering. "A Hollow."
"Shit. How far out?"
"4,000 miles west, approaching at a constant pace of 12 miles a second."
"The drifter won't be able to handle it!" Tara exclaims, and Akira's eyes flutter shut, doing more calculations.
"We're moving at a pace of 7 miles a second due to the heavy winds. The best course of action is for Khora to extract, but you are still unstable after our last mission." Her pale eyes meet mine, and I click my tongue before gesturing for Tara to take back over on the wheel.
"I'm fine," I say, watching as the cyborg's hand brushes a small vial clipped to her side. She hands me the vial, and I unscrew the lid, the strong smell of animal blood filling the room.
"This smell! Do you finally require my assistance?" I let out a soft breath as I hear Eidolon's sharp voice in my ear. My echo. "The blood is less than satisfactory, but I suppose it will do." He lets out a scoff, and I tilt my head back, swallowing the liquid in one quick gulp.
"Akira, help Tara manage the drifter; the winds are likely caused by the Hollow, so remain on course." I wipe my lips with a sleeve before hoisting myself out of the control room and back into the back of the ship. Leaning on my toes, I unlock the hatch, wind whipping my long white hair up.
"Eidolon." I mutter, sliding down the helmet of my exosuit before leaping out of the drifter.
"You feel it too, don't you? This smell…" Eidolon laughs in my head while my fingers tap the center of my exosuit, the blasters on the sole of my heel thrum with life before launching me forward towards the beeping ping.
The beeping intensifies as I fly closer, shifting to my arm blasters as we approach the hollow. For a moment, all my visor reflected was nothing but the cold stars—then I saw it.
To a normal person, it would look like nothing but a shadow cast by some drifting debris. That was, until you looked closer. Slight movements, the air around it compressing. Its movements are smooth, jerky, and wrong. The body is a tangle of jagged black limbs and shards that caught the faint starlight, refracting it into sharp, eerie glints. Veins of violet and blue pulsed along its exoskeleton, fitting into the stars near seamlessly.
It hovered effortlessly, thrusters on its joints flickering, shifting direction with impossible speed.
The stars seemed to dim around it, swallowed by the void that clung to its form. My eyes narrow, my visor flickering with words. An aberrant Hollow, this close to Myrr Cascade's magnetosphere? For a moment we stare at each other, the Hollow's eery clicking filling up the space between us.
And then it lunged.