Three Square Meals Ch. 142

She snorted and waved a hand at the wall, with its distinctive glistening white sheen. "Of course not. It's just a total fluke that it looks exactly the same, right? What are you always telling us about coincidences?"

"Hey, there's no need for sarcasm," John said, meeting her troubled gaze. "We all know how hard you worked on Crystal Alyssium and I understand how frustrated you must feel. You were justifiably proud of what you'd accomplished, but finding this doesn't make the slightest bit of difference towards the respect I have for your intellect and expertise."

She blushed and looked down in contrition. "I'm sorry, John... I didn't mean to take it out on you."

"That's okay," he replied, pulling her into a hug. "Exactly how you developed Crystal Alyssium isn't important. It was all an invaluable learning experience, which you're definitely going to need to rely on to research tech beyond anything Progenitors have developed."

Dana nodded and gave him a bashful smile. "Yeah... you're right. Sorry I had a meltdown."

"You're forgiven... but I am going to have to tan that ass until it's the same colour as your hair," he said, playfully smacking her armoured rump.

She laughed, an impish sparkle in her eyes once more. "Maybe I should throw my toys out of the pram more often!"

Alyssa walked away in the direction Dana had hurled her scanner and quickly found it with the help of the powerful lamps attached to her Paragon suit.

"Here's your naughty scanner, I think it's learned its lesson now," she said, smirking as she returned the device. "Do you want to give it another try?"

Reattaching the scanner to her belt, Dana shook her head. "Nah, it won't work; I don't think the scanner's powerful enough to penetrate the metal's surface. There is something else I can try though..."

She handed her Tachyon rifle to Rachel, then turned back towards the wall and focused her will inwards. Dana tapped into her psychic reserves, eager to find out the composition of this mysterious metal... but nothing happened. She frowned and tried again, but no matter how hard she strained, her psychic abilities were completely unresponsive.

"I'm being blocked!" the redhead gasped in surprise.

"There must be a psychic dampening device inside," Tashana murmured, placing her hand on the wall. "I can't access my abilities either."

John glanced at the rest of the girls, who quickly checked to see if they'd also been affected. Irillith, Alyssa, and Rachel then shook their heads as they realised that they'd been rendered powerless too.

"I can't even use telepathy," Alyssa said in a hushed voice, unsettled by the eerie silence.

"What about you, John?" Rachel asked, looking at him curiously.

He closed his eyes and tried to access his innate psychic abilities, but it felt like fumbling to light a torch while being submerged in molasses.

"You're being suppressed too?" the brunette asked when she saw his expression shift into a frown.

"Yes... but this is different from before," he replied, driving the point of his sword into the ground and leaning on the pommel of his runeblade as he steadied his breathing. "Just give me a moment."

Clearing his mind of distractions, John focused on the unlit torch he'd pictured in his subconscious. Falling into a familiar Zen state, he felt sharper now, and the cloying field that had trapped him in its grasping clutches started to lose its tenacious hold on him. He fought even harder, revelling in the sense of elation and freedom that brought, letting him surge towards his destination. With his arm outstretched, he touched the torch with a fingertip and it blazed to life, brilliant blue flames roaring upwards in response to his psychic call.

And just like that the barrier snapped, freeing him from its insidious clutches.

John let out a shuddering breath, then opened his eyes, and was delighted to see his runeblade swathed in the same azure blaze as the torch he'd ignited in his mind.

"Holy shit!" Dana stared at him wide-eyed. "You actually beat it!"

He studied the dancing flames until he extinguished them with the blink of an eye. "On Larn'kelnar's dreadnought I couldn't even sense the dampening field, but this time I was actually able to picture it stifling my psychic abilities. It wasn't easy to break free, but when I was able to visualise the problem, I could fight against its effects."

"We all suspected that defeating your guide and unifying your mind had made you stronger, but this is definitive proof," Rachel said, smiling at him in admiration.

John nodded, then turned to look at the wall. "Maybe I can just hack my way through..."

"Hold on," Tashana objected, holding up her hand. "I thought we were going to only use brute force as a last resort?"

"The Maliri obviously tried it but didn't get anywhere," Dana noted, jerking her thumb towards the ancient machinery. "If I'm not mistaken, that's a cutting beam, and that one over there is a diamond-edged drill. It looks like they exposed this side of the bunker and were trying to break inside, but I can't even see any burns or scratches on the wall. It must be as tough as old boots!"

"Shall I see if I can at least make a dent in it?" he suggested, glancing around at the girls.

"Yeah, go for it!" Dana exclaimed with an eager grin. "The ultimate showdown... Crystal Alyssium vs whatever-the-fuck that is!"

Tashana hesitated for a moment, then stepped aside to watch with the rest of the girls.

John faced the gleaming wall in a combat stance, holding his runeblade in a two-handed grip. He took a deep breath, then turned his body into the strike, rotating his hips as the sword whistled through the air. It slammed into the wall with a deafening clang and John grimaced at the bone-rattling vibrations that shook his hands and arms.

Darting forward, Dana leaned down to take a closer look at the impact point. "Goddamn... you only managed to cut a few inches through!"

"I wonder how thick it is?" Tashana murmured, gazing at the white wall in fascination.

"Thick enough to make manually hacking through it a bad idea," John said, rolling his aching shoulder with a frown. "It's hard to tell for sure, but I think it's at least as tough as Larn'kelnar's armour. I was able to chop through a vambrace to sever one of his hands, but that metal was much thinner."

Rachel walked over to the abandoned machinery, a thoughtful look on her face. "Can we go back to investigate the main entrance? I'm curious as to why the Maliri tried to drill through the wall."

"Because they couldn't get in," Dana said, rolling her eyes as she stated the obvious.

"Exactly... but why couldn't they?" the brunette persisted. "Irillith was able to bypass the retinal scanner in the palace using Valada's personal data... so why would the Maliri go to these lengths to access a secret bunker designed for her personal protection?"

"Maybe they weren't able to access the bunker after she died?" Dana suggested. She tapped the cutting beam with a knuckle. "Maybe they figured the only way in was to try drilling through the walls?"

Rachel shook her head and turned to Irillith. "The final entry records you found only showed Valada accessing this facility, correct? And the last of those records was two centuries after Mael'nerak sacrificed himself to defeat Rahn'hagon?"

The Maliri hacker nodded. "It certainly appears so. No normal person would be able to hack the security subnet and make it out of that ambush alive, which means Valada was the last person to come down here."

"What are you thinking, Rachel?" John asked the perceptive doctor.

"I have several theories, but they're all speculation at this point," she replied, lost in thought.

"Alright, let's head back to the main entrance," he said, holding his hand out for Alyssa, who accepted it with a grateful smile. "Were there any psychic echoes in here?"

"No, nothing I could sense," she replied as they walked back to the other tunnel.

"Hold on!" Dana suddenly called out, beckoning John to return. "I just thought of something!"

"What's up?" he asked, returning to her side.

"I can't use my abilities to scan the metal because there's a psychic dampening field stopping me, right?" she asked, her eyes sparkling with excitement. "So if you can chop out a bit of the wall, we can just move away from the field and I can check it out properly!"

John gave her a dubious look. "You saw what happened, I barely made a dent in it."

She quickly shook her head. "You hit it hard enough to make a cut a few inches deep. I don't need a big bit, just a tiny fragment will do."

"Alright," John agreed, moving back into position and readying another blow.

His runeblade whipped around and slammed into the wall again and again, the massive impacts sending booming retorts echoing around the chamber.

"Stop!" Dana called out, darting over to the wall.

"Got what you need?" John asked, leaning on his runeblade's pommel.

She picked up a sliver of glinting metal and held it up in triumph. "This is perfect!"

The redhead bounded ahead as they returned to the tunnel, her eyes suddenly blazing with a golden light when they'd moved sufficiently far away from the ancient facility.

"Just give me a second, I'll take a quick look," Dana called back over her shoulder, as she skidded to a halt.

John braced himself for another furious outburst from his Chief Engineer, but when he caught up to Dana, her expression had shifted to enraptured fascination.

"So I'm guessing that's not Crystal Alyssium after all?" he asked the captivated redhead.

"No, it's something totally new," Dana replied in an awed whisper. "The arrangement of atoms in its atomic structure is similar to the Progenitor black metal, but the element composition is completely different."

"What does that mean?" Tashana asked, leaning in for a closer look.

"I think this was forged in the same way as Progenitor metal, but Mael'nerak used different materials to make it," she murmured, lost in thought.

"No... that definitely wasn't made using a Soulforge," Alyssa interjected quietly. "Just look at the colour... and there's no residual psychic echoes."

"I don't mean Mael'nerak sacrificed thralls to infuse it with psychic energy," Dana explained. "But the wave patterns left behind in the metal are very distinctive."

"That's fantastic news," John said, slapping Dana on the back. "If Mael'nerak found a way to replicate Progenitor metal without using a Soulforge, there's nothing stopping you from doing the same."

She nodded, a newfound spark of inspiration in her eyes. "I need to get working on this asap!"

"As soon as we've finished investigating down here, we'll head straight back to the Invictus and you can get started on your research."

The girls accompanied John down the tunnel, taking the right turn that would lead them back to the room with the elevator. They crossed the large chamber and took the only other exit, which led into a high-arched corridor that matched the previous architecture. The passageway was long and perfectly straight, stretching on for a hundred metres towards a doorway set at the end on the right-hand side.

There were a few objects scattered across the floor outside the doorway as well as another piece of abandoned Maliri machinery. As John drew closer, he could see charred holes bored through the wrecked device, and the items on the floor were actually pieces of scorched armour.

"They must have triggered some kind of defensive countermeasures," Tashana murmured, eyeing the smooth walls with trepidation. "I can't see any sign of gun turrets though."

When the group were only twenty metres away, they were bathed in a soft blue light that swept along the corridor.

"What was that?" Irillith asked, her eyes widening in alarm. "Some kind of scan?"

Before anyone could reply, a stern voice boomed along the corridor. "Irin'brogari, lieth amest tel'kaintir mir vaharillian!"

They all froze and Dana whispered fearfully, "Did he just tell us to get the fuck out of here?"

Tashana nodded, sharing a worried glance with her sister. "That was ancient Maliri. He just said: 'Interlopers, flee this place or face annihilation!'."

"Fall back, everyone," John ordered, beckoning the girls away from the door.

Before she retreated down the corridor, Tashana grabbed one of the shattered armour fragments, then hurried to join the others. They regrouped in the main room by the elevator, darting concerned glances back towards the doorway.

"Now we know why they started drilling over there," Dana muttered, jerking a thumb towards the other tunnel.

"Why did you stop to take that?" John asked, pointing towards the scorched piece of armour.

Tashana unclipped a golden device from her belt. "I wanted to check how old it was. I can scan the bloodstains and use carbon dating to calculate their age."

"Nice," John said with a nod of approval. "It never crossed my mind to bring one of those."

The Maliri archaeologist gave him a wry smile. "It's a very convenient way of dating finds. You'd be surprised how often I've stumbled across ancient corpses during excavations." Her smile faded as she continued, "Or maybe not, considering the Maliri's bloody history."

The carbon dating device emitted a soft chime, alerting its owner that the scan was complete.

"10,100 years old," Tashana informed them.

"I thought Valada's first recorded entry to this facility was 10,097 years ago?" Rachel asked, frowning in confusion. "How did that Maliri die three years beforehand, when there's no record of her entry?"

"This device is only accurate to the closest decade," Tashana explained. "The dead Maliri must have been part of a group accompanying Valada."

"Ah, that makes more sense," the brunette said, nodding as her suspicions were confirmed.

John looked curiously at the doctor. "Have you figured out what happened here?"

"Yes, I think so," Rachel replied, her smile of satisfaction fading into sadness. "Shall we go and visit Valada's tomb?"

"Her tomb?!" John blurted out, looking at her in astonishment. "How did you leap to that conclusion?"

"I need to check one last thing to confirm my hypothesis," she replied, nodding towards the smaller tunnel. "I'll explain everything if I'm correct."

"Let's go," John agreed, eager to get some answers.

They approached the golden door at the end of the corridor and everyone turned to look at Rachel expectantly.

"This section was constructed much later than Mael'nerak's bunker and isn't part of the main facility," the brunette said, gesturing towards the gleaming metal. "You should be able to easily bypass the door, Irillith."

The Maliri hacker's eyes began to glow and she delved into the Cyber-realm to investigate the closed portal. John had previously found the scanner built into the door, so Irillith simply transmitted the digital image of Valada's retinal pattern to the device, and it spiralled open without any problem.

"I thought you said this was her tomb?" Dana said, peering into the room beyond. "It looks more like one of the guest suites on Genthalas to me."

"We know Valada visited this place thousands of times," Rachel replied as she stepped into the lounge, studying the gilded Maliri furniture arrayed tastefully around the room. "She'd want to be comfortable while she was down here."

There were doors leading off from the Lounge and a quick exploration revealed that there was a dining room, a study, a kitchen, and all the amenities you'd expect in a luxury suite. One of the doors led into a relatively small room, the far wall of which was dominated by what appeared to be a Maliri airlock.

Tashana walked over to the runic control panel and studied the data on the display. "The atmospheric status is showing that the next room has been depressurised. Is this it? Is this Valada's tomb?"

"Yes, but that wasn't its original purpose," Rachel said quietly.

John glanced at Alyssa and saw a tear roll down her cheek. "Are you okay?"

"This place echoes with her grief," she replied in a haunted whisper. "So much pain... the loss more than she could bear..."

"Come on, let's get you out of here," he said with sympathy, putting his arm around her shoulders.

Alyssa shook her head and looked up at him imploringly. "Please don't make me leave, John. I need to see this."

"Okay," he reluctantly agreed, seeing how much it meant to her. "Open it up, Tashana."

The Maliri archaeologist touched several runes on the panel, and after what seemed like an excruciatingly long minute, the light shining on the display shifted from red to green. Now that an atmosphere had been re-established inside, the door cracked open with a quiet hiss, then spiralled up into the ceiling.

"Wow..." Dana murmured, gazing wide-eyed into the huge room beyond. "What is this place?"

There were scores of display tables set up around the vast chamber, with countless small objects neatly arrayed on each one. Lining the edges of the room were clothes rails, with hundreds of outfits filling every inch of available space. John noticed that many of them appeared to be suits, designed in the style favoured by ancient Maliri... and the man who had inspired that trend.

"This is Valada's shrine to Mael'nerak," Rachel said softly, as she led them inside.

Tashana picked up a golden goblet and studied it reverently. "I've seen this before on the Nexus files! It belonged to Mael'nerak, didn't it? These are all his personal possessions..."

"She gathered every last memory she could," Alyssa whispered, her fingers brushing across the suits. "Anything to help her remember what it felt like to be loved by him..."

They watched in silence as Alyssa mimicked lifting one of the suits from the rail, copying a psychic echo that only she could see. Lost in the grief-stricken memory, she glided slowly towards the rear of the chamber, then over to an oval archway in the far corner. There was a large bed in the adjoining room, and when Alyssa gently pulled back the silken drapes, they could see its solitary occupant. The Maliri noblewoman lay perfectly preserved, curled up on the covers with one of Mael'nerak's suits clutched to her chest. Her final expression reflected the serenity that had eluded her for the last two centuries of her life.

"Valada..." Tashana said in a hushed voice, removing her helmet and bowing her head in sorrow.

Irillith removed her own helmet to brush away her tears, then slipped an arm around Tashana to comfort her sister.

A grey mist slowly enveloped Valada as Rachel approached the bed. She studied the ancient Maliri for a long moment, then let out a melancholy sigh.

John walked over to join her, looking down at the woman who had made such a huge impact on Maliri society. "Did you find the final answer you were looking for?"

Rachel nodded as she turned to face him. "She was dying from a malignant brain tumour, just like those we healed in Edraele and the twins. The pain must have been excruciating towards the end and she chose to be surrounded by her memories of Mael'nerak in her final moments."

Reaching down, she picked up the remote device that Valada had used to seal herself inside the vault.

"Why build this shrine here?" John asked, glancing at the brunette. "Was it to do with the facility Mael'nerak constructed?"

Before she could reply, Alyssa spoke up, gazing sorrowfully at the deceased matriarch. "Mael'nerak told Valada that if she was ever in danger, to come down here to be safe. When he cut her off, she felt so alone... and desperately wanted to feel safe in his arms again. Valada was a good matriarch and faithfully followed her Progenitor's orders... but she couldn't get into the bunker, the DNA scanner didn't recognise her."

"Mael'nerak must've made some last-minute changes to help her survive without him," John reasoned, looking at Valada with newfound sympathy. "He enhanced Valada before sacrificing himself against Rahn'hagon... which permanently altered her DNA."