"Adam!"

"ADAM!"

He awoke to a distant muffled noise, an insistent sort of beeping that wouldn't go away coupled with a sort of roaring like he was standing next to a blast furnace. At first he thought that might be the case as he was hot, and getting hotter, but in his addled state of mind he couldn't think why he would be taking a nap next to a blast furnace.

Personally, it seemed like a very bad idea all things considered

"ADAM!"

WARNING CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE: RESTART ENGINES

He was so dizzy, and the dizziness wasn't going away, with every second it seemed to get worse as the heat rose.

"ADAM COME ON!"

Was that Sunny's voice, and she sounded in distress.

If there was anything in the universe that could get him to wake up, it was the sound of Sunny, a scared sunny, and that wasn't something that tended to happen very often. Adam's eyes flickered open, and when they did, he wasn't entirely sure he could make out what was happening. Lights flashed in his vision, and beyond that, everything was spinning in a kaleidoscope of fire and earth.

His head churned.

What was.

WARNING CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE: RESTART ENGINES

VELOCITY: 120 MILES PER HOUR, ALTITUDE 300 FEET

Altitude?

Velocity?

Huh, that was odd, he was pretty sure terminal velocity was about 120 mph give or take wind resistance most of the time. He just wished the world would stop spinning and- damn it was hot.

90 FEET

Why was,

Oh shit!

Adam turned holding his arms out to either side, and pulling himself out of a tumbling spin, the ground was fast approaching, or less the ground and more a burning lava field shedding sparks into the air, some of them high enough to catch on his clothing as he fell. The heat was incredible.

The ground was approaching fast.

"ADAM!!!!!"

WIth a roar his engines caught.

He slowed.

And shouted in pain as the heat around his legs rose to unbearable heat, one of his pant legs caught fire, and then he was rocketing back into the sky on a trial of golden light. When he was finally high enough, he reached down and batted at his pant leg quickly putting out the flames before they could do any real damage. His heart was pounding in his chest, and his breath was coming in slow, ragged gasps.

As far as burns were concerned, he couldn't be sure. His adrenaline was pumping so hard, he doubted he would have been able to tell, but at least the rest of him was in tact.

He was just going to have to pray to the Architect that he was fine. If he came back to the ship with a single scratch on him, Krill was probably going to beat him to death with a bedpan, which in his view was a pretty ignominious way to go.

He turned on the spot trying to find the facility from whence he had come, but he didn't see anything, just lava fields in all directions. He must have been blown partially off course during his flight. Inside his helmet Fealty helpfully provided a map for him dragging it onto screen in the guise of a little cartoon wolf. The animation was kind of cute, and he had never seen fealty do that before.

It was a learning AI so he probably shouldn't have been surprised.

Letting go of the map, the little animation turned to look at him, and in a way it seemed almost concerned, which was weird to say about an AI.

Then again he worked with the empyrean, and the ship seemed to be concerned about everything, so he supposed it wasn't really a surprise.

"Vitals."

The little cartoon ran off his HUD, but then returned with his request carrying an Icon in its mouth that looked like a little heart. Dropping the heart, it expanded into his vitals systems.

He was no doctor, that was for sure, but he was pretty sure a heart rate of 180 was pretty normal for near death experiences.

His comms system crackled, and he thought he heard his name but the rest of the words were garbled.

"Whatever communication jammer the little monster Noctus had installed was working perfectly fine.

But still he had his map, and he followed directions the few miles back to the facility openly roasting in the burning atmosphere. He caught sight of the facility as a ugly hunk of towering metal in the distance, squatting like an ugly little rock troll over its lava river. On the top deck, he saw a flash of blue, and Fealty expanded the image to reveal Sunny standing on the top deck pacing manically back and forth. Didn't take her long to see him, and when she did he could sense both relief, and rage in her body posture.

That was fair enough.

He landed on the deck, stumbling once, only to stumble straight into her upper set of arms. Arms which she used to grab him by the front of his armor, haul him into the air and shake him like a rag doll, "Can you stop almost dying FOR FIVE MINUTES!" Sunny didn't shout much, in fact it was pretty rare.

However

Her aggression, while it was supposed to be startling or even frightening, was having the embarrassingly opposite effect on him. It was a real pity for her that beating the tar out of each other was considered an acceptable form of foreplay in her culture. And the fact she was lifting him, and half plated SE armor was.... Well he was surprised that was even possible.

Usually the SE armor would require the use of a small crane to put it on unassisted.

Damn

Still he recognized the fear, concealed by the anger in her voice, and decided not to point any of that out.

CRITICAL SYSTEM FAILURE: POWERING DOWN

And then

Everything shut off.

Including the SE exosuit.

Power rushed back into his own limbs. He grunted in surprise at the sudden crushing weight, and Sunny, realising something was wrong, set him down only to watch as he crumbled like a soda can under pressure.

"ADAM!" she shouted not for the first time that day.

Holy shit the armor was heavy, even half of it.

The SE suit was paired with the SE exoskeleton for a reason. A normal human body was not nearly strong enough to handle it on its own, of that fact he had no doubt.

He groaned, and Sunny ripped off the helmet.

Behind her Red walked up the stairs panting and wiping streams of sweat from his face.

Celex made contact just then mind to mind

"The vats are destroyed, though there is one little tiny problem."

Adam didn't like the sound of that, Celex sounded pretty casual, but he always sounded casual. He would probably manage to sound casual if he was on fire and the only thing Adam had was a ten gallon bucket of gasoline.

"Go on."

"There were a lot of boid things in those vials."

An image flashed in his head. He didn't think it was intentional, but he thought he recognized the refinery room, now crawling with shadowy black entities in a state of hot pursuit.

"Might be a good time to start the shutt- mmmmm that is a problem." he must have missed the peart where the shuttle was thrown into the laval flow. He doubted there was much left, and the chance of that being flyable was about the same chance that he would have of retiring to Bramble and living a nice secluded farm life growing corn.

Sunny lifted him partially up, "Adam, are you okay."

"Yeah yeah, the heat shot my systems, I can't move, but that's kind of the least of our problems." maverick and Ramriez appeared just then, also panting and sweating. Maverick's edges had gone a bit fuzzy, and Adam thought he detected a subtle orange glow in her right eye.

"Get your weapons and cover that door." He ordered.

Sunny needed no second prompting.

There must have been something ins his voice, because she took her spear in both hands twisting it apart. From either hip she used her second set of arms to withdraw two more weapons, which both expanded into short curved swords with glowing blue edges. When tapped together their tips crackled with energy.

"Well hello there." He muttered

Sunny glanced at him, "What?"

Right now probably wasn't the time to reference Obi Wan and General Grievous so all he said was, "Sorry, nothing Just, can you put my helmet back on before the catwalk burns my face off."

Quickly sunny crouched down to do as he asked, which was right in time. The hot metal of the landing pad was nearly enough to start cooking his face raw, and he would rather avoid that as much as possible.

He tried doing a system reboot.

It didn't work

Probably the heat had fried something.

Which seemed weird as he had walked through boiling water in this suit before, then again the entire suit had been there, so the outside thermal layer had protected everything inside. Now that he was wearing only half armor, there was always a chance that some of the more delicate systems had been compromised by the heat.

Sunny had stepped onto the top of the stairs, and behind her Ramirez posted himself up against the wall, using the railing to steady his energy rifle.

A dark Aura began to glow around maverick, and the shadow she cant on the landing deck was significantly longer than it probably should have been. Her right eye was glowing with a visible pinprick of orange light as she reached for her weapons.

"Coming your way." Celex thought.

"Brace yourselves." Adam called, voice muffled through the helmet.

Something rumbled under their feet.

But whatever sound there might have been was drowned out by the roaring of the leava beneath them.

It was silent for a moment, nothing but heat and sweat, leaving the three of them stuck in a tableau of silence.

And then.

The door at the base of the catwalk erupted open and Celex came charging out technicolor hair whipping behind him in a wild man. He turned as he raced up the catwalk and shot a burst of golden energy into the choke point just as darkness was beginning to bubble out of the doorway.

The light blasted them apart, but it didn't last for long.

"What the hell!' Ramirez shouted.

Adam tried to reboot his armor again.

But nothing.

Celex sent several more rapid fire shots into the open doorway and every time he caught them, but every time more and more appeared, until eventually one of the shadows was able to break out and race up the catwalk.

Sunny didn't hesitate, lunging forward and slicing clean through its shadowy neck.

Sending it shead in one direction and its body in another where it dripped down into a large dark, tarry puddle.

And with that one

The floodgates were opened.