[A/N: I still don't like this chapter. Everything from the song to the ending. Something is wrong about it and I can't figure out what it is.]
CrushDaddyXx
THIS. STORY. IS. PEAK!!!!
Zeke, when you started this you were fumbling around in the Glens, terrified of the Eaters and then freaking out because you had to kill two bandits in a train. Now you’re about to kill a Fracture. Do you know how many people get to say that? Nones. Nones amount of people.
If what you and Elnor found is legit, a second Fracture cooking inside a giant alien meat pod, then you NEED to kill it. Do it both for the story and for the fact that it’s dangerous as well. The thing sounds like the final boss of reality.
You’ve stumbled across the apocalypse’s apocalypse. You need to burn it to the ground while tossing out devil horns.
MapHackJunkie
I hate that I’m agreeing with Crush about this. It makes me almost physically sick. But he’s got the right of it.
The First Fracture twisted an entire ecosystem into a horror show, and it created the Rift Scar. We all know how bad that was. Plus, it’s been mutating the Deadlands for years and basically destroyed all civilization.
What do you think is going to happen when a SECOND Fracture wakes up?
Gormommie
I’m disappointed in you Crush. I figured that you, of all people, would have given the most exciting option.
Zeke, don’t kill the Second Fracture. TAME IT.
You’re not limited to what’s possible in just Frontiers. Your fic introduced stuff from all the Fracture-verse games, which means you can do things that the players could do in Syndicate’s. One of those things was to tame monsters and pets.
Imagine how metal it’s going to be to be strolling through the Deadlands with a giant embryonic apocalypse floating behind you like a tamed pokemon.
Black Teeth Raider: “Who the hell is that?!?”
THE ENTIRE SKY SPLITS OPEN
Tell me that’s not the most absurdly badass Rockstar ending to the story?
JimothyTheBarber
Pet apocalypse.
Petocalypse.
Boom.
10161066
Jeezus. I know that Jimothy and Gormommie and the rest of you idiots are all joking about the petocalypse thing, but the more I think about Zeke’s situation, the more horrified I am.
Elnor and Zeke mentioned how the pod was absorbing materials from the Deadlands, right? When the pod was getting sabotaged by Marek, the sabotage was getting countered because it kept grabbing stuff with the storm.
That means it was taking ALL the materials. It was scooping up people left and right, and it was adding all of it to the alien virus and the creatures and the other stuff it was picking up. Then it was feeding all that into the pod to repair it.
Are you seeing where I’m going with this? The pod was probably breaking down everything it was slurping up. Whatever is growing in that reservoir is more than just a second Fracture created by the alien virus. It’s probably got a collective consciousness grown from all the thousands of victims it’s been absorbing over the years. It could be learning.
There’s no telling what that thing is. And if you think about it even more, it’s been absorbing all the emotions and the thoughts of all the terrified victims that got sucked up by the Janus Storm and turned into soylent green from the pod. The thing is probably so mentally warped that it’s…I don’t know what. I legit can’t think of a word that would encompass how messed up mentally that thing is.
KTMFinancier
I genuinely don’t know if the “petocalypse” thing is impossible or not. That’s how insane this story has just become.
Quantum_Amelia
I have a minor suggestion: KILL THAT THING! I don’t know how, but you can’t not interfere with whatever it is. Unfortunately, i’m not sure you can leave and come back with reinforcements; who would be crazy enough to go with you into the Janus Storm that’s not Shard Choir or Black Teeth?
HonoredBibliophile
Right, forget what I said about running away. There’s no safe distance from a Second Fracture. If Zeke doesn’t want to die in the upcoming apocalypse, he’s going to have to find a way to kill that thing while it’s still in its crib.
KickInator
Also. If a second Fracture is being grown in Frontiers, does this mean the other games also have something or someone trying to create another Fracture?
Shukuen
Ha! I was right, and the pod is eating people. Also, shit, I was right, and the pod is eating people.
Mithras131
Ah. There is no minimum safe distance any longer. Time to be a big damn rockstar hero.
The_Spanish_Inquisition
Hey Zeke, buddy, pal, love the story but perhaps it’s time to go the way of Brave Sir Robin. When danger reared its ugly head, Brave Sir Robin turned tail and fled. And in keeping with the RP aspect, WARN EVERYONE. This is a code black oh shit oh fuck if I’ve ever seen one. Dunno how you’d sabotage it yourself. Goood Luuuuuck dood.
BrightSky18
So this entire region is essentially on a ticking time bomb. Zeke could try to drain the contents of the tub but that would only delay it. Not sure how you would even fully deal with an alien terraforming pod.
PixelBaron
Everyone is forgetting that Marek already tried to solve the problem of the Janus Storm and the pod…and he failed at it.
Dood literally plugged himself into the pod for years and wrestled with an alien consciousness. He understood the ins and outs of the pod better than Zeke can. He was sabotaging it over and over and over again, and he still couldn’t fully kill off the second Fracture.
How the hell do you want Zeke to go about destroying it? What’s he supposed to do, guitar solo it to death?
RedCarpetManiac
Hmm…what’re we thinking? Thrash metal for that particular song?
Neo
You know, all of a sudden I think it is very lucky Zeke decided to learn glyphs. That thing needs to die right fucking now. There is no safe distance from it going off, so it has to die.
He has access to people who have been studying and designing glyphs for years now, they know how the system works inside and out. It’s time to use that to make the ultimate fuck you weapon. It’s time to kill a baby cataclysm.
Bilbo
Oh damn, an alien eldritch mind. That’s crazy. If only we had a bunch of magic fairy dust that deadens mental faculties that we could dump all over this place.
DuckDetective13
Oooo. You guys think that’s why the Black Teeth were mining all that Veylstone? Do you think they all knew that the petocalypse was inside the storm and they were planning for it?
ArtooDeetoa
| You guys think that’s why the Black Teeth were mining all that Veylstone? |
Doubt. I do think that they were trying to do something with the Veylstone, but I don’t think they knew about the second Fracture. When Zeke was telling us the chase scene through the desert, he mentioned that a Black Teeth guy was launching grenades at them. One exploded into the storm and there was blue dust everywhere and bits and pieces of the storm just died off. That had to be weaponized Veylstone.
My guess is they were trying to create something that could weaken or suppress different magical abilities, but they weren’t doing it to fight the Janus Storm. The Veylstone would be immediately helpful against petocalypse though.
Nitrham
Put it in a flask, save it in the inventory, and make Fracture molotovs to throw at whoever looks bad at you.
CrushDaddyXx
YES!!!! DO THAT!
If someone pisses you off you throw an apocalypse at them.
GnomelandSecurity (Proctor)
Don’t do that Zeke. That’s insane.
VeneratedWitchHunter
Before this thread gets even more out of control, someone needs to be the voice of reason here.
We don’t know the real truth of what’s happening. I’m not going to bring up lore right now. I mean it more that, Elnor’s psychometry might not be telling us everything. In the games, psychometry doesn’t give you “truth.” It’s more that it gives impressions on what happened.
ReCoil44 (Primary)
For years, the playerbase operated under the assumption that the Fracture in Frontiers was merely a contamination event. Now we stand before the more horrifying possibility that the Fracture wasn’t simple destruction. Instead, it was a developmental process and an ecological rewrite.
Ladies and gentlemen, although I believe very few of you are ladies, the Janus Storm has, through decades of uncontrolled evolution, birthed an intelligence that is capable of wiping out the entirety of the Deadlands. This story is finally back on track.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Wow ReCoil. Thanks for that. It makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside that you’re enjoying the cosmic horror of this place.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Elnor is still all messed up from touching the reservoir. I’ve got him propped up against one of the walls, and we’re as far from the reservoir as we can get. I piled a bunch of random bits and bobs from my storage all around him so he’s not touching anything.
He’s catatonic right now. Or close to it. His eyes are open and he’s not doing the whole seizing thing, so that’s good. He’s just sitting there and mumbling under his breath while I’ve been working. I can’t make out most of what he’s been saying, but I swear I heard him say something about “too many voices.” I mean…what the hell do I even do with that?
I’m sitting here and pouring water into his mouth from one of my water bottles, trying to get him to drink because I don’t know what else I can do. I’ve got some ranks in my First Aid skill but, I’m guessing I’ve gotta be at least Rank 7 before it tells me what to do about someone who just touched a bunch of creepy-ass Fracture liquid.
I put myself between Elnor and the reservoir, trying to block his line-of-sight to the thing because I’m afraid something is happening to his brain and the liquid is gonna call out to him and he’ll rush over and try to jump into the pool or something. That’s what happens in horror movies, right?
Eggs-BenedictAhnold
Leave his ass there and run. It’s his own fault for touching shit he shouldn’t have.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Okay. He snapped out of whatever was happening to him. He grabbed my arm and dug his fingers in and his eyes went all wide and terrified. He locked onto me and said “we need to leave. Now.”
The dude is freaking out and it’s completely understandable. I don’t know what happened to him when he touched the liquid but it was bad. We’re gonna try to climb up the ladder to get back to the pilot room, but I don’t think Elnor is in any condition to be moving.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
We stopped halfway up the ladder because I was right and Elnor was kinda weak and starting to slip and fall. I’m behind him and had to grab him, so now we’re both just sitting here with our backs pressed against the wall and our legs on the ladder.
Elnor is trying to catch his breath while I’m cursing everything because I swear I’m hearing something whisper in the shaft. I thought that it was just air moving all around us, or maybe Elnor was mumbling to himself again. But he’s not talking and the sounds are uneven and…fuck this place.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
We’re back in the pilot room. Well…we’re back in what used to be the pilot room. Kinda freaking out again because it’s like we took a wrong turn somewhere, but that’s a stupid thought because we were in the ladder shaft that only travels one way. We got back into the room but it all looks different.
The chair is still here and it’s still got the computer with all the logs on it. But the walls are…I thought maybe I was just dizzy from all the exhaustion of racing through the Deadlands and getting chased by the Black Teeth and then exploring the pod. But when I looked around at the walls and the room, everything looked all wrong. Something is happening with the walls and I don’t know what it is and I can’t describe it.
We’re on the floor next to Marek’s chair, resting and waiting for Elnor to get a modicum of his strength back. He’s pale as hell and all shaky, which means I doubt we’d make it very far through the pod and back to Jackie.
LostDeviljho
Hey minor question: Zeke glitches machines he touches to get forum access right? That didn’t happen with any of the screens in the pod…right?
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Dammit.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Just checked and you were right.
I’d used the terminal next to Marek’s chair to check all the logs he left. The terminal had already been glitching like crazy when I was fiddling around with it, so I didn’t think anything of it. But I just checked it again and in the upper right hand corner is this distorted DeepFracture logo.
I don’t know how to make it go away and you’ve all been on me to make sure that I’m logged off of machines, but I don’t know what to do.
Also, it raises so many questions. I can understand the logo popping up on my tablet. That happens all the time. It’s just like I downloaded an app or something. The fact it popped up on the ancient computers in the Glen and on the stuff in the library in The MIZ, was weird. But it’s the kind of weird that I’ve gotten used to around here.
This terminal is connected to an alien machine thing that soaks up random shit from the Deadlands and is meant to terraform the planet. So how the hell is it able to access the forum?
Whatever. I’ve got other shit to worry about right now. I’ll fix it later.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Ahhh. Shit.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Need some help. Uh. Shit.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
What kills wall things?
Z3ke (Original Poster)
What do you want me to type?
Z3ke (Original Poster)
It it it just sent words. I don’t. I don’t know what you want.
StoryLeech
God dammit Zeke. How are you turning this into cosmic horror shit?
Z3ke (Original Poster)
What is this? Who is responding? Who are these people?
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Shit shit shit. I need help. Creepiness just got dialed up to 11.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Elnor and I were resting and then the walls started fucking moving. They were shifting and bulging and shapes started forming in the walls. Faces were pushing out from beneath the surface and hands started pressing against the metal from the inside and I swear to god I saw an arm swimming through the walls.
BaryBybas
OH GOD. THE VICTIMS!!
Z3ke (Original Poster)
You guys remember that scene from The Frighteners where the ghost was stretching through the wall and trying to grab someone? Well, it was like that except slower and so much more creepy.
Elnor nearly got grabbed by one of the wall arms. It was reaching out for him and I freaked and shoved him to the ground. We got up and raced out of the room and there was this side hallway that I led us into. It opened up into a…storage room? I don’t know.
I tossed Elnor the Tech Slate and he basically just fell to the ground because it took all the energy that he had just to keep up with me. I told him the speech-to-text was on and explained that he needed to ask all of you for help while I barricaded the door.
That obviously didn’t work and I feel like an idiot for asking. He’s barely conscious and probably never heard of a forum before and he doesn’t know what the Tech Slate does. That’s why all that stuff was randomly posted.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
The barricade is holding. I think. At the very least, none of the faces or arms or legs have followed us through the walls.
It’s some freaky shit. We were racing into the room and I turned back to close the door, but before I could shut it all the way I glanced across the hall and a face popped up out of the wall. Its mouth moved and it croaked out something that sounded like “please” but then the face got swallowed by the wall again and I shut the door.
What the shit is happening? What the hell is this place? Fuck everyone who wanted me to explore it. I should have listened to Gnomeland and got out of here when I had the chance.
SignalLoss
You said it spoke to you?
Zeke, if those things can talk, you need to ask them questions. They could be the only surviving source of info about what’s been going on with the pod. You need to find out what they are and why they’re there.
EdinburoughArchivist
DO IT FOR THE SCIENCE!! DO IT FOR THE LORE!!
Byte-Sized
Don’t listen to them Zeke. Just pick up Elnor and run.
ReCoil44 (Primary)
Zeke, as your Primary, I am going to provide you with perhaps the single greatest piece of advice you have ever received from this forum: get ahold of yourself.
You are currently standing inside the most important archaeological and historical discovery in the entirety of Frontiers. Instead of allowing a handful of unsettling wall apparitions to rob you of the opportunity in front of you, remain calm. Maintain a healthy distance from the walls and observe them. You will be fine.
You are not being hunted by the Reclaimer. You are not currently fleeing the Black Teeth. You are not being attacked by a body hopper. You are inside an alien terraforming engine containing a gestating Fracture entity assembled from viral contamination, absorbed biological matter, and accumulated consciousnesses.
That said, under absolutely no circumstances should Elnor be permitted to touch any of the wall things. His psychometry is already out of control. If he touches one of the wall ghosts, he would most likely be inundated with memories and emotions from them. Put in simpler terms: his brain would likely liquify.
Congratulations go to Elnor for having been promoted from psychic detective to extremely fragile escort quest.
Now then, Zeke, whether you like it or not you need information. I say this not just because I want to learn more about the Janus Storm and this so-called Second Fracture, but because your survival depends on understanding what this place is, what Marek Vale attempted before his death, and why it ultimately failed.
What better source of information could possibly exist than the individuals who have been imprisoned inside this machine for years?
Z3ke (Original Poster)
What the hell is wrong with you people? You want me poking around the eldritch thing. You want me fighting a second Fracture. You want me leaving the only safety I’ve got to walk back out there and have a conversation with the faces melting out of the walls.
I don’t want more info right now. I just want to grab Elnor, get back to Jacie, jump into the jeep, and drive very very far away. That’s the plan. That should be the plan you all help me with.
GnomelandSecurity (Proctor)
Zeke, ReCoil isn’t entirely wrong here. You need info on what you’re dealing with, and right now those faces are the only source you’ve got.
As long as you stay away from the walls, you should be okay. Can they reach you if you’re in the middle of the hallway or the middle of a room?
Z3ke (Original Poster)
I don’t know man. That’s not something I’m really wanting to test right now.
The faces probably can’t reach me because they’re just faces on a wall, but some of the arms stretched more than others and I don’t want to test it.
GnomelandSecurity (Proctor)
So keep your distance from them and get ready to run.
You said yourself that you’re trying to get back to Jackie and the jeep. For that, you’re going to need to head through the pod and back to the garage. If the faces and arms and body parts are active throughout all the ship and on all the walls, then you can’t really ignore them.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
…
Fuck all y’all.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
I undid a bunch of the barricade and the hallway is so much worse now. Back when we were running from the room there’d only been a few faces and arms and hands pushing through the walls. Now the entire corridor looks like it’s infested.
Arms keep stretching out before getting pulled back in, and the faces are coming out halfway from the walls. I looked down the hallway and a bunch of the faces turned towards me all at once. Their attention just snapped my way. But it wasn’t all of them.
Some of the faces were staring off in random directions and a few looked like they were arguing with each other. One was screaming at the ceiling.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
It’s fucking creepy. That’s all I can really say about it. It’s creepy.
I took a deep breath and steeled myself and then poked my head out of the room again. One of the faces pushed out of the bulkhead directly in front of me. I thought he was young. Whoever had the face before…which is not something I ever thought I’d have to write. But his features kept shifting around and stretching and morphing and it was like the thing couldn’t fully remember how a human face was supposed to look.
One of the faces had said “please” to me, so I figured that maybe the faces could be talked to and reasoned with. I asked what the face in front of me wanted and who it was and if it would let me go, and the entire room just erupted in voices.
There were dozens of voices and they all blended together. They were laughing and crying and praying and screaming. Down the hall I heard one laugh so hard that I thought it was choking. Another just started crying. All the faces were talking at the same time and it felt like I was stuck in the middle of a crowded train station.
I asked what they were and what they wanted and what they were going to do with Elnor and me.
“We were promised revelation.”
“I was fed to it. Fed to it. Fed to it.”
“It was supposed to hold the key. My mother. Sick. She needed the key.”
“I wanted salvage.”
“We are together. We will always be together.”
“Please. Please just make the voices stop.”
“Salvage. Offer us salvage.”
While they were all babbling the walls kept swallowing parts of their faces. Their mouths would disappear into the surface halfway through the sentences. I tried telling them to stop and answer me one by one, but that didn’t work.
I asked who they were and I got a dozen different answers back. Pilgrim. Black Teeth. Victim. Nobody.
A voice called out from deeper in the hallway. “He tried to warn us.”
When I asked who exactly had tried to warn them and what the warning was about, six different voices answered at the same time.
“Marek.”
“The pilot.”
“Storm shepherd.”
“The screaming man.”
“The Choir knew the storm was hungry.”
StoryLeech
Yo Zeke, I’ve got questions for the wall people if you’re still talking to them.
Ask them:
Can the Second Fracture actually think yet?
What exactly did Marek try to do before he died?
Is there any way to kill the thing?
How long until it “wakes up” or hatches?
3Schofields
I want to know about that key thing that one of the faces mentioned. That sounded interesting.
DuckDetective13
Do you know which faces belong to which groups? Do they remember anything about their past lives? If there are faces from all the victims, some are going to be Shard Choir cultists and some are going to be innocent bystanders.
This would matter because the pilgrims and scavengers probably only know bits and pieces of the story, but the Shard Choir psychos intentionally fed people to the storm. If anyone would know about what’s going on with the second Fracture it would be them.
ClickWhirr
I wouldn’t trust a single thing the cultists say. They probably want the Second Fracture to be born. They’re insane. They worship a hole in the ground.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Look, I’ll try to ask questions but I don’t think you all understand how hard it is to understand them. Imagine you’re standing in the middle of a crowded room and all sorts of different convos are happening all around you and music is blaring in your ear. That’s what’s happening right now.
Some of the faces seem a little more stable than the others. I can ask them questions and they answer for a sentence or two before they start twitching and melting back into the walls. The other faces are completely insane. Honestly, that makes sense because what else would you expect after somebody gets soylent green’d by an alien machine?
Z3ke (Original Poster)
One of the faces has been laughing nonstop for the last five minutes while whispering “The walls are breathing. The walls are breathing. The walls are breathing.”
Z3ke (Original Poster)
I don’t think they all realize that they’re dead. Maybe they do know what they are and are having a hard time processing it but…I don’t know.
I talked to one of the Shard Choir cultists like Duck suggested and the guy was still worshiping the storm even after being absorbed into the walls. How does that even happen? How does your consciousness survive this and still come out loyal?
This old guy’s face pushed out from the wall near the ceiling and he smiled at me with this creepy smile and his cheeks were stretched out too far.
“Marek guarded the holy wind,” he said, as if I understood what that meant.
I just froze and awkwardly said, “uh. Okay. Thanks for the info.”
Elsewhere in the room a voice called out, “the shepherd chained the revelation.” ANd then something underneath the floor started laughing and, this is legit a description I’m going to use for it, it was like multiple people were laughing through the same throat. I was thinking about it for the past ten minutes and that's the best description for what happened. Sit with that and realize it’s what you all sent me into.
Most of the Shard Choir people sounded genuinely happy with their lot in life. One woman’s face emerged halfway out the wall and she was crying as she was talking to me. It wasn’t sadness. She was seriously overcome with emotions while she was talking and water started seeping out of the walls.
“We helped grow a god.”
Another face popped up next to hers and he started babbling, “the Choir heard it dreaming.”
I asked what “it” was and the whole wall just started twitching. Hands started pressing up through the metal and then all the voices started talking again.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
We made it back to the garage. Jackie is still here and apparently the walls only wanted to talk to us because she didn’t know a single thing about the faces. When I told her about what happened, she just looked at me for a second and then moved to get the jeep ready. I put Elnor in the back seat and he’s resting now.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Both Elnor and Jackie want to get the hell out of here. The smart part of my brain, the one that is interested in my survival and not fucking around with shit I don’t understand, is screaming at me to get in the jeep and point it in any direction and never think about this place again.
But there’s a small voice in the back of my head and he sounds exactly like all you idiots and it’s telling me that I can’t just walk away from what I just saw down in the basement of the pod. I’m not trying to do the heroic thing here, but at the same time I know what’s down there and what it’s going to do.
I’m going to try to explain what I think happened. Keep in mind, this is all pieced together from insane wall people and half-corrupted logs and Elnor almost dying a bunch. I think I know what Marek was doing. I’m going to put on my speech-to-text, and I’m going to talk to all of you while also explaining it all to Jackie and Elnor.
Z3ke (Original Poster)
Okay. Uh. I don’t really know where’s a good place to start this story. I guess we can start with Marek getting ready to die.
He found this pod and he realized that it was an alien terraforming engine. When the original Fracture happened, it released an alien virus thing in the Rift Scar. The virus warped everything and it mutated people and it was twisting reality. But it only did it around the Rift Scar. What was supposed to happen was that the machine would take the virus and spread it throughout the Deadlands and then throughout the rest of the world, warping all the biology of everything and turning it into…well, I don’t know exactly what it was supposed to turn it into.
Marek came along and stopped that. He sabotaged the pod so it couldn’t use the alien virus to mess everything up. But he couldn’t stop it completely. He basically hijacked the Janus Storm and forced it into containment duty instead of…spreading duty. I don’t know how to say spreading duty better.
But what he had the Janus Storm doing was…instead of dumping the alien virus across smaller areas, the storm spread tiny amounts of massive distances. Think of it like pouring poison into an ocean instead of a drinking glass.
Unfortunately, Marek’s sabotage didn’t stay working. The pod kept trying to repair itself, and because it was advanced alien technology and Marek couldn’t completely understand it, he was only ever able to somewhat sabotage the thing and not completely shut it down.
Marek would try to break the pod, the pod would scavenge materials from throughout the Deadlands, and it would try to fix the sabotage. He sabotaged, the pod adapted. Over and over and over again. But then, Marek realized he was dying.
That’s when things started getting bad. He tried one last ditch effort to sabotage the thing and broke the pod enough that the alien virus couldn’t really be spread by the storm anymore. Instead, it started gathering up all the alien virus stuff and storing it. That’s what’s in the pod down stairs. Marek had hoped that this would be the end of it, but the pod did what the pod was meant to do which was adapt.
The pod started gathering up every piece of material it could absorb. It wasn’t just the alien virus and the bits of metal and machines that it took from the Deadlands. It was biological stuff too. It was corruption and creatures and scavengers and all the people that the Shard Choir started staking out and leaving in the storm’s path.
All of the victims that were caught in the storm weren’t killed. Instead, the pod stripped them apart. It used their bodies as food for the alien virus living in the reservoir, and then it took their emotions and, whatever else it could, and overtime it started building a…brain thing.
The faces kept repeating things about how the pod had “learned us,” and it “remembers through us,” and other creepy shit like that.
I think that was what started really terrifying Marek. He was basically dead at this point, barely holding on, and he realized that the pod wasn’t trying to repair the damage that Marek had done to it. Instead, it was trying to collect the alien virus and then build a brain around it. It was taking all the alien virus stuff and combining it with the absorbed consciousnesses and meat puppet bodies to create something else.
At this point, Marek couldn’t do much. The pod was creating a thinking Fracture, and he barely had the energy to hold on. Near the end, he came up with a final plan to collapse the pod entirely and try to burn away the growing neural structure surrounding the Fracture before it fully woke up.
But by that point, he was too weak. Either he completely failed or the pod adapted faster than he could destroy it. I don’t know what all his plan called for, and neither do the faces. Not really. They talked about some kind of, uh, atmospheric thing that was tied to the original terraforming process. Marek damaged it years ago and they think it was part of his original plan.
The faces kept calling it something like, “the buried lung.” I don’t know if that was part of his plan or not. It might be nothing. All I Know is that Marek’s plan failed and the pod and the Second Fracture are all tangled up together. The faces in the wall keep saying the same thing over and over and over again, which is that it “dreams through us.”
[Woman]: And why is this our problem? Just get in the jeep and let’s get the hell out of here. Honestly, you started talking about faces and I don’t know why you think we should stay around. You said there’s some giant monster thing growing underneath this pod. Fine. Then we leave and never come back. It’s easy.
You’re forgetting the part that the pod is still active and that it’s not a “monster” in the basement of the pod. It’s a second Fracture! Or, it’s becoming one. I don’t really know.
[Woman]: All the more reason to leave.
What do you think is going to happen if we just drive away? Eventually that thing is going to wake up. If we’re lucky it would be years or decades. But eventually this pod thing finishes whatever it’s trying to do and then the second Fracture would detonate.
It’s not going to be like what happened the first time, though that was bad enough. The first Fracture basically killed off civilization. This one isn’t going to be contained or anything. It’ll think and adapt.
Humanity would lose. That’s it. That’s the end. If whatever is in the basement wakes up fully, then the Deadlands is gone. I mean, I plan to get the hell out of here anyway. I’m not sticking around The MIZ. But I got a buddy who is stuck in a chair and he can’t leave so I gotta help him out. And part of helping him is…well, we gotta kill whatever the thing is.
[Woman]: You want to kill it? How?
That’s…I don’t really know. But I think Marek figured it out. Again, I don’t know, but the faces said that the plan would have destroyed the pod and burned away the growing consciousness inside the embryo and released the stored virus stuff slowly across the Deadlands.
If his plan worked, the Janus Storm would’ve died permanently and the embryo would’ve died with it and all the trapped victims would’ve been released.
That would have been the “good ending.”
[Woman]: Why did you put that in quotes.
Because the Janus Storm isn’t completely evil. It’s been sucking up all the corruption and the contaminated materials and all the radiation and the alien virus stuff. If we destroy the storm, all that stops.
The corruption would start spreading and the alien virus would eventually start spreading on its own. The Deadlands would survive the second Fracture, but it would lose the containment system that’s been protecting it for the past couple decades.
[Woman]: So we either leave and the smart apocalypse wakes up. Or we kill the storm and the Deadlands will eventually die.
Uh. Yea. That sounds about right.