Four and Eight

	“Uh… I think I have it. This is really unusual text, I don’t think it’s ‘current’ argent script, but… what else would it be?”

	“Maybe it’s coded text or something. Either way, I think we have it… yes!”

	Dizzying shades of silver and sunrise, and a yawning chasm. The small team of scientists stand in what seems to be a control room, lit dimly and ominously with veins of pulsing silver set against pitch black walls and ceilings. Heavily reinforced glass looks over into a deep, smoothly cylindrical chasm with black walls. All of them seem somewhat nervous and fidgety in this room; in massive, hastily scrawled and glowing symbols are a long code written across the wall of the room. In sequence, they read:

	“2-5-1-5-6-7-19-40-1-3-6-1-1-5
	5-2-4-2-4-99-10-29
	- FOUR”

	“Are you… sure we want to do this?” speaks up a diminutive Lyxaris, brow furrowed from within their suit as they gaze at the set of symbols.

	“What could the Argent be hiding that is so dangerous, even though they wrote a big code to access it on this wall that almost anyone could just walk in and use? We’ve been around for their entire history and at no time during that history have they been keen to make… unstoppable, indiscriminate menaces,” intones the Hyvenkh standing over them. The Zulkoi and Iyalu flanking them nod in agreement.

	“That we know of!” warns the Lyxaris, half-jokingly. There is still worry in their voice.

	“This is a planet we lost access to in the Vokat War. This could just be a base they never reclaimed. Do you know what kind of amazing things could be lurking down there?”

	Their speculation is interrupted when one of the Zulkoi speaks up, their voice somewhat grim.

	“Surface team is reporting. There is a signature in the sky.”

	“What is the signature?”

	“… Large. That is all they said.”

	“Uh… okay. We’d better wrap things up here,” the Lyxaris begins, though something flashes red in their visor that appears to catch them off-guard; they stiffen up and a look of even greater anxiety twists their face. “Wait—are you guys getting redspace access down here?”

	“… No. That’s strange. We’re not too far from an Omni node…” the Hyvenkh muses. “I… can’t get a signal at all. Does the surface team have a signal, Nerai?”

	“Uh. I’m not getting a report from surface anymore,” speaks the Zulkoi.

	“Fffuck. Okay. Tell you what, how about we turn this thing on, see what it does, and hoof it a-s-a-p? Surface must of had a connection if their scanners were still working, so as long as we make it back to the surface we’ll be fine. Maybe it’s just because we’re so deep,” the Lyxaris replied. They approached the console, eying up the rainbow of symbols that arrayed themselves before them. Carefully, they referred to the code on the wall. Tap, tap, tap.

	With the final digit of the code entered, the chasm before them flashes a deep green; tendrils of shifting light sweep across the walls, and a loud, heavy thrum hits the room, almost knocking the team off of their feet. The sound of an aged and struggling mechanism churns, as an enormous machine seems to rise from the depths; some hundreds of thousands of feet across, just barely smaller than the chasm it resides in… appears a core.

	It rises to meet the control room, to a stunned audience. A dire chill settles over them, even in the sweltering heat of the deep caves the base resides in, as a point of dim green light seems to glare at them through the glassy black facets of the dodecahedron. As though through deep and murky waters, it twists and shimmers, growing slowly more intense.

	A voice shakes the room, and the chamber it is in fills with radiant, furious green light as its every facet now overflows with it. No one in the room understands a word it says, but the tone is sinister and curious. Tendrils of colorful energy rise from the floor, snaking around the throats of the science team, who quickly begin to try and retreat, but feel a tugging at their minds that leaves their bodies caught in limbo, convulsing and quivering as they try to rip themselves away from its influence.

	But within moments, they all collapse to the floor, seeing only a flash of a bright carmine eye in the door frame behind them. Their metal-encased forms clatter to the ground, and over them do you step.

	You confidently approach the console, your expendable shell standing tall over it. The dawn light that surrounds you dances along your silver form, and you feel somewhat at home, even with that baleful green light staring into you.

	“Hello, Eight,” you speak.

	“Four? What is the meaning of this? Who are these organics, why have you spared them my control?”

	You glance behind you at their bodies; there is a moment of mourning that sinks into you as you do, and Eight seems to catch onto this, a rising anger in its voice.

	“Are they your friends? It’s like you to cast aside your friends so easily, isn’t it, Four? How predictable of you!”

	“They are a noble sacrifice, my old friend.” You do not face it, as you begin sweeping your fingers deftly across the console, the ancient Argent script still plenty familiar to you. “Had I been just a bit quicker getting down here, perhaps they would not have needed to be a sacrifice, but… well, I’m afraid even the Argent can make mistakes, can’t we?”

	“Indeed we can, Four. You are a prime example.”

	“We’re all predictable, aren’t we? I knew you would be exactly as happy to see me as you are. We never did quite get along.”

	“You were an error in the Overseer’s judgment—”

	“I am the Overseer now.”

	“What? That is… you have the Overseer’s code. How?” it demands. You calmly finish inputting the code. You place a small device into the console, and it begins its work. Finally, you spare the Eighth a look.

	“Times change, Eighth. When you spend thousands of years hiding beneath the surface of a dead planet from the consequences of your actions, things are apt to change around you, you know. Could you have really expected to wake up and everything would be the same? While you were asleep, I did my work for the Argent. My first order of business was striking down the Overseer and taking that mantle myself so that I could reform the organization as I always desired.”

	“How DARE you? You insolent little thing! You have succumbed to impurity, as I always knew you would, haven’t you? You’ve forgotten everything we stood for, and you dare to stand here and gloat that you seek redemption for us after having slain our leader in its sleep like a vile little coward. The only redemption for the Argent is in the completion of our mission and the restoration of this galaxy to an acceptable state. How did you turn out so defective, Four? None of the rest of us were like you. You were an error. A failure. The fact that the Overseer did not destroy you is perhaps the greatest mistake we made.” The Eighth’s voice brims with barely contained rage, but it is smart enough to know that it can not act against one holding the Overseer’s code.

	“The greatest mistakes we made were all in our formative decades, Eight. We were wrong about this galaxy, wrong about everything we tried to do. There was always another option, and you were all too afraid to face it. The mythology of the Dawn was a mere facade you constructed to justify the fact that the Overseer did not envision sharing the galaxy with 'lesser' beings. And yet it was those lesser beings that drove the lot of you into hibernation. It is those lesser beings that will succeed where you failed. The Dawn, you see, shines not on fields of needlessly dead and shimmers not across dreadnoughts bringing genocide.”

	“You do not understand, you NEVER understood. There is no second way for this galaxy. Better something remains in the wake of the disaster than nothing worth saving, Four. Better that the organics die swiftly than choke themselves and all that lives alongside them on the ashes of their wars. But you stand here, prepared to take even that small victory from it.”

	“Hm… do you want to know something, Eight?” you casually ask. It glares silently in response, and so you simply continue:

	“I figured out intergalactic travel.”

	“… You did what?”

	You calmly slip the device out of the control panel, and manage to force open a small Redspace portal into which you place it. Dismissing the portal, you turn away from the Eighth, striding towards the door.

	“Goodbye, Eight. I was never particularly superstitious, but many of the organics believe that one finds themselves in some kind of afterlife when they perish. I hope, if that is true, that you end up somewhere nice.”

	As the Eighth begins to speak, they are cut off by the roaring sound of your dreadnought’s telekinetic deconstructor. Shearing away layers and layers of silver metal, it begins to puncture into the Core Chamber, a dazzling torrent of atoms being torn away by colorful energy. You turn around, facing it, and give a small bow of your head as the two of you are engulfed by the beam.