Vengeance

Deep below Mirror, below the City, below the glittering sands and hidden from the sun, waits destruction itself.

You stand in its presence. You have asked the small team that accompanied you here to disperse, and although reluctantly, they do. The room is dark, and smotheringly hot. It is a simple, hollow sphere, containing only a walkway that, most intriguingly, is fit for a creature not that much larger than you, and the centerpiece: the core.

The signals here that you pick up are dizzying. Your sensors are practically screaming, but you have muted them for now. In the center of the room, casting the only light into the dark, is a pillar of light encircled by heavily reinforced glass, within which another metal sphere is enshrined. The cold light faintly illuminates the gnarled roots of the machine on either side which crawl across the ceiling and floor and disappear into an array of ports on the walls. It is, perhaps appropriately, a spartan machine.

At some point, the Machine merely gave up on attempting to intercept your teams. It seemed almost curious to witness you for itself, like an animal playing with its prey; you suspect it will allow you to draw near before attempting to seize your throat in its jaws, but no fear plays on your face as you stare down the core of the Machine, and it stares you down too. You feel it, almost like you did the Heart; the psionic power coursing through this room is enormous, and contained within much of it is the thoughts and 'feelings' of this Machine, and though your peers did not understand, you had personally become adept at understanding and absorbing the nuances of the kind of psionic energy which carries such signals.

You detect within it, as you soak in its presence, exactly that kind of animalistic curiosity you had expected. It is almost like it does not regard you as a threat, or it does not feel fear or even understand the concept of redress for its actions. There is not what you hoped for, however; not even a glimmer of thoughtfulness, a mere hint at the idea that this horrid thing might feel something, anything at all, given the billions of years it has had to ruminate about the nature of its existence and the role it played here. For all of its power, you do not feel that it is intelligent enough to understand such a concept.

You step forward, placing a palm flat against the glass. You feel the signals licking at your palm, and you feel that baleful and inquisitive presence at your back, watching your every move. You feel an enormous heat, one that would sear the flesh off of a non-robotic creature even through your armor, as a trillion signals are blared into what you suspect is a transdimensional gate above the core.

"Phase?" you hear issued over your radio. "What are you doing in there? Are you alright?"

In response, you merely grumble. You brush off the concerns of your compatriots, and reel your hand back slowly, flexing your fingers and balling them into a fist. For that brief moment, the presence almost seems alarmed, and you brutally slam your fist into the glass. The vibrating bounces back through you, and practically shakes your skull, but harsh cracks form in the glass. The sphere inside recoils from you, but the glass pillar is thin, so it is still not out of reach. There are no defenses in the core.

You do it again. The glass begins to break, a thunderous, resounding, warbling noise filling the air. You hear footfalls behind you. The light begins to seep out as the containment is destabilized, and heat billows into your face. You do it again. Crack. Again. Again. Again. Each one is more rapid, more furious. A fellow agent grabs your arm, and you briefly look over your shoulder at them, panting with exhaustion and fury alike. In that moment, you feel something grip your mind: a righteous and burning rage desiring a vengeance far beyond your understanding. Without hesitation, you throw your comrade back and to the floor, and once more ram your fist into the glass.

It shatters, terrible cracks running across almost the entire pillar. The room decompresses as air begins to vanish into the gate above, pulling you flush to the pillar. Your hand passes through the glass, consumed by a deadly heat, and those behind you recoil as best they can as the heat comes pouring out. The morphic armor begins to melt around your hand, but you take hold of the sphere and rip it from the pillar of light, which all at once vanishes when the sphere is gone. The gate lingers for a few moments, giving you a glimpse into an empty, bright orange void, before shutting silently.

The room is dark, illuminated only by the I.C.A. eye insignias over the helmets of you and your bewildered allies. Embers of that cosmic anger stay within you, unslaked. You hold in your hand the core of the Machine.