Chapter Text
Deep in the wilderness, Aloy made her way through a dense forest on foot.
She had always known spring to come with snow flurries, even persistent deep snow high up in the mountains. But here- the farthest East she'd ever been, and far north of Nora lands- spring came with warm rain and trees bursting into full, green foliage.
Spring. A year since the Proving. A year since losing Rost. A year since leaving the Embrace for the first time.
It might as well have been a lifetime, for all the things that had changed since then. A year ago, she'd been an outcast, a nobody- her only goal to win the Proving and find out who she was.
Now her name preceded her everywhere she went.
Aloy of the Nora. Machine-rider, Thrush of the Hunter's Lodge, Anointed of All-Mother, Savior of Meridian.
The Battle of the Alight had come at the end of last summer- a season past the Proving, after months of hunting down the Eclipse and searching for answers. Afterward, Aloy had left Meridian as fast as she could. She'd patched her own wounds, made sure her allies were alive and unhurt, and that the last of the Shadow Carja had been defeated- and then she'd gone.
It hadn't been hard to disappear, in the chaos after the fighting. She didn't tell anyone she was leaving, or where she was going. She didn't want them to know.
Her job there was done- purge HADES with the Alpha Override, stop it from raising the Faro swarm again to devour all life on Earth. Stop the Shadow Carja from taking Meridian. She didn't know how to repair the massive damage they had wrought on the way. The cliffs north of the city and huge swaths of the Jewel were obliterated, made into so much dirt by Deathbringer fire.
Aloy was good at taking down the big threats- not as good at dealing with the aftermath. Avad, Erend, and everyone else in Meridian would need to focus on rebuilding the city, not heaping praise on her that she didn't even want. She'd just be in the way.
And none of them knew that her real job wasn't really done.
Hunting down the Eclipse had led her to HADES; finding out why they wanted her dead, specifically, had led her to Elizabet Sobeck. Both had been parts of the puzzle that was Project Zero Dawn.
The Old Ones had destroyed their world when their war machines had slipped out of their control. Elizabet had given life on Earth a future by creating an AI named GAIA, with the ability to re-terraform the planet.
Aloy's purpose, the reason she existed at all, was to rebuild GAIA, which had destroyed itself twenty years ago to try to stop HADES- but not before using the last resources of the ELEUTHIA Cradle-9 facility, more recently known as All-Mother Mountain, to create a human child...
Some days, she wondered how GAIA had ever thought that she could do this. Genetic copy of Elizabet Sobeck or not, she was trying to recreate something that had taken hundreds of people a year to make, with the best technology they'd had.
She had a thousand-year-old ruin and a box of metal shards.
But she had her Focus, and the records left by the Old Ones, which had already gotten her further than almost anyone else in the world. The answers she needed might lie in the next ruin, around the next bend. She just had to start looking.
Without GAIA to continue her work of repairing the Earth, it would eventually start falling apart again, and Aloy was the only one who could do anything about it. Everyone- everyone- was counting on her.
So she'd left Meridian, running away before anyone could slow her down. No wasting time celebrating. She had work to do.
The first thing she needed to do was start looking for clues of where GAIA's other subordinate functions might be. HADES was gone; HEPHAESTUS, which she'd encountered in Banuk territory, was hostile but currently unaccounted for.
That left seven missing AIs, and she had no idea where to start.
On the other side of Carja lands was the Forbidden West. She didn't put much stock in it being forbidden- if she'd been afraid of what the Nora had called forbidden, she never would have left the Sacred Lands.
However, the accounts she'd heard of how dangerous it was were enough to know she needed to be well prepared. Not somewhere to go wandering without a plan.
The data she'd slowly begun to put together about Elizabet and her last days tugged at her. But undertaking that journey would be a waste without having something else- something more useful- to look for.)
North was Banuk lands. She'd be welcomed with Aratak and the werak in Song's Edge for as long as she wanted to stay, and she could consult with CYAN, see if she had any ideas about where to start looking. Maybe even go on to Ban-Ur...though a place colder than the Cut was hard to imagine.
The last option was the East, past the Nora Sacred Land. It was almost totally unknown, even more so than the Forbidden West. The West ended at the ocean, a month's journey from Meridian, but the East was said to go on many times as far.
There had to be ruins out there, maybe bigger and more intact, somewhere a rogue AI could hole up and hide for almost twenty years.
It was worth a try.
She spent a month or so preparing, and then she headed east. She made it over the familiar Nora mountains- steering clear of the borders of the Sacred Land- and into the lands beyond, just as the summer breezes began to turn cold.
The Eastern plains, just days past the Sacred Land, were unlike anything she'd ever seen. Flatter than even the Carja deserts, covered in tall grass that rolled like a banner in the wind. Walking across it felt like being at the bottom of a vast bowl, the blue sky endless.
Outlanders she met on the way told her of what they called the Great Chain- a string of ruins that stretched far across the land. If she followed it, they said, she'd reach a large settlement by a great gate on a river, over two weeks' journey away.
Overriding Striders where she could, she made it in a week. The settlement was right where they said it would be. The 'great gate' was a huge arch of battered metal, clearly some kind of monument of the Old Ones; the local tribe believed that the sun was bound to it, keeping it on its path across the sky.
(Aloy would have liked to see them argue with a Carja Sun-Priest. It might end with bloody death and declarations of war, but at least it would be entertaining first.)
She stopped for a few weeks, scouting the area, restocking her supplies. Plenty of the usual ruins of an ancient city- enough to fill her pouch with shards- but nothing that stood out.
It only took a week or so, to Aloy's dismay, before the locals figured out who she was. The stories of the fire-haired girl who rode machines and saved a king had made it there too. She was willing to deal with the attention to fish for information about where to go next.
The biggest ruin any of them knew about was to the north, the main settlement of another tribe built on and around it. Again, they told her it was at least a two-week journey, best taken with a group for protection against machines.
She overrode a Broadhead outside of town and made it in a few days. The city she found there was at least as big as Meridian, spread around the shore of the largest lake Aloy had ever seen. The towers of the ruins there stood taller than Devil's Grief, or even Maker's End.
She stayed there longer, combing the seemingly endless ruins and keeping her ears open. Like Meridian, a city this big drew people from everywhere. People from further east, south, and even back west- she spotted a few Banuk and Oseram- all talking about their delves and trades.
Winter arrived not long after she did, with heavy snows and thick, shifting layers of ice on the lake. Many of the outlanders and merchants bunked down in the city until spring, the roads impassable and travel too dangerous for most.
Aloy didn't think twice about venturing out into the cold- she hadn't won a chieftain's trial in the Cut by staying close to a fire. However, spending time in various bunkhouses between her expeditions, she learned something new- yet another thing she'd never known as an outcast, growing up mostly alone.
When a lot of people were stuck inside together for a long time, they started to talk. And the longer it lasted, the more their stories veered towards the strange and unexplained- which Aloy usually found the most worthwhile.
One particular story stuck out. Five years ago, a great rumble had come from the north, shaking the ground for days and days. Plumes of smoke had risen over the trees, pointing the way to a place deep in the northern wilds. This, in itself, wasn't unusual- underground ruins often collapsed and shook the earth with the force of it.
It had immediately attracted adventure-seekers from all over. The first delver in a new ruin would be rich beyond measure- provided they weren't crushed by loose wreckage, making the second delver rich, and so on and so forth.
Usually, a collapse would rip open a cave or chasm in the ground, an entrance into the ruin. But once the delvers reached it, there was no such thing to be found- not so much as an exposed metal surface to blast or hack through was visible.
It became a popular challenge for delvers from far and wide, and many claimed to have found a way in, boasting that they'd return with a treasure trove. But soon, people began to notice (because they'd started placing bets) that few of them returned.
By the tenth or twentieth delver to disappear, the excitement died down and the rumors started flying. This ruin wasn't just extremely dangerous, not in the usual ways. Something inside- a monstrous machine, or something else- was taking them. Eating them alive.
Those who did return (empty-handed) reported strange phenomena in the area. Machines stayed away from the whole area, turning away as though repulsed. They claimed to have seen eyes in the trees, ground shifting under their feet, voices luring them deeper in.
Even if the stories were exaggerated, something was there- something none of those delvers would have known to anticipate. It would be worth checking out just to try to give their people some closure- but it was also the best lead she'd found in months.
Discreetly, she asked around for the location of the ruin, and when the worst of the winter broke, she set out.
Aloy followed the lakeshore as far as she could go, then continued north when it turned east. She passed more ruins and settlements on the way, but soon the wilds stretched on uninterrupted, and she journeyed deeper into rocky hills and verdant forest as spring came on.
The forest she'd been passing through for days gave way suddenly to a massive field of tall grass, the sun painting it with streaks of gold. Aloy crossed the tree line carefully, wading into the waist-high field.
It would be perfect for passing unseen by machines, she thought- if there were any machines around. She could see a long way, and not even her Focus could detect anything but mice and rabbits. She had to be close.
The field went on for miles, but eventually she emerged into a clearing with a scattering of ruins. A dark stone surface lay in big broken pieces; a collapsed metal frame that had once been a small building rusted in a pile. In the distance, she could see a few metal skeletons of the Old Ones' metal carts.
The ground was covered in machine parts- too large, and too many, to have come from a single machine. That, in itself, wasn't unusual. Hunts or machines fighting each other left debris behind, or scavenger machines picked apart and scattered the dead. But- machines didn't come here, and she was days from any settlement.
She examined the parts closer, looking, by habit, for anything to salvage. Some had traces of worn white paint, but no familiar markings, no Cauldron marks. None of it was recognizable as any part she'd seen before.
The Focus showed a few tracks- one noticeable long track, maybe something dragged away from the ruins, but nothing had walked towards or away from here. Either this had happened a long time ago, or these parts had...spontaneously exploded here.
With nothing else to go on, she followed the direction of the single track, into a sparse wood. Where it had been clear near the ruin, it quickly faded, and a hundred strides away it ended suddenly, like it had been wiped away.
Aloy sat down in the clearing, frustrated, reaching for her waterskin to take a drink- and that was when she heard it. A distant, clanging echo- the familiar sound of metal on metal, machinery far away.
The Focus confirmed the sound was real, not just her imagination- it was emanating from somewhere in the trees. Jumping back to her feet, she ran towards it-
-and stopped.
She'd walked right up to the edge of a wide opening in the ground- like a fifty-foot circle of earth had disappeared or been neatly cut away, leaving a bottomless hole behind. The source of the sound was somewhere below, the Focus showing it as pink ripples in the darkness, like a stone dropped in water.
Her instincts were going off like a ringing bell. This was far too easy, especially for a place she'd been told was impenetrable. But she'd come here to investigate a mystery, and she wouldn't get anywhere by staying out here.
She rappelled down into the chasm- it narrowed further down, and she barely fit through- before landing with a loud, echoing crash on a metal surface- a stair landing.
The walls of the narrow shaft weren't natural stone, but the smooth rock-like surfaces of the Old Ones' construction. It definitely wasn't a Cauldron- it looked like the Zero Dawn facilities, or the Firebreak facilities in the Cut. Made by people, not machines.
She followed the stairs to the bottom of the shaft, where a dark hallway led further in. The walls were featureless, other than a few wires and pipes running along the ceiling. Even the Focus showed her nothing.
After what seemed like ages of walking in darkness, she emerged into a larger room. A second level made of suspended, punched-metal walkways was connected to the floor by another set of metal stairs- half of which were rusting away high above her head, out of reach.
The only other path forward was at the far end of the room- a polished white door, jarringly out of place in the seemingly abandoned room. It was perfectly round, with two halves joined by a metal circle in the center. All of the edges were flush- no hinges or handles.
No holo-mechanism appeared in the Focus' sight, and the override module on her spear didn't react. It wasn't the same technology.
Aloy turned away, moving on to search for another path- and with a quiet mechanical whoosh, the door opened behind her.
She spun, reaching for her bow- but nothing emerged from the shadowy darkness on the other side. Activating the Focus to look for hidden danger, she stepped inside, nocking an arrow in her bow.
Without warning, and far too fast to escape, the door slid shut again behind her, trapping her in almost total darkness.
"Hello, human."
She started at the unexpected voice, looking around for its source. It seemed to be coming from everywhere at once.
"You made it further than most before tripping my alarms. Well done."
"Who are you?" Aloy shouted at the ceiling. "Hello?"
A tinny chuckle was the only response.
"You might actually be worth testing."
She heard a high-pitched hiss, and her vision immediately began to swim and spin. Aloy pried at the door with her spear, but it was useless. In seconds, ler legs collapsed under her, and everything went dark.
-
When Aloy woke, all she could see at first was light. Nothing like sunlight, or firelight, or even machine light. White, but cold, harsh, unnaturally bright.
Pushing herself up as consciousness returned to her, she realized that she was in a cell- a glass box, in the middle of a larger room. Her weapons and supplies were nowhere to be seen, and her armor had been taken from her too.
Instinctually grasping at her right ear, she exhaled hard with relief- her Focus was still there.
"Welcome to the Aperture Science Enrichment Center."
The same voice that had spoken to her before echoed in the small room. It sounded feminine, but metallic, distorted.
The AIs that Aloy had heard or interacted with in the past ran the gamut from entirely inhuman- like HADES' staticky, broken snarl- or convincingly human, like GAIA. This voice was more like CYAN, somewhere in between, expressive but not quite natural.
And if this was an AI, it had to be a new one, an independent system. This wasn't a GAIA subfunction- none of them had been equipped to do anything like this. Whatever this was.
"Thank you for volunteering for Aperture testing. Your contribution to science is appreciated."
"I wasn't volunteering!" Aloy shouted.
"Your decision to volunteer is, unfortunately, binding," the voice continued, in the same flat, disaffected tone.
Something had been taking the delvers- they had likely ended up right here, 'volunteered' for whatever this AI planned to do with her, too.
She had been taken captive before, with fewer resources. She was going to find a way out. But first she had to find a way out of this cell- which did not appear to have any doors.
"The portal will open in three...two...one."
The wall...disappeared.
With a pop and a sizzle, a perfect hole in the wall had simply vanished from existence, framed by a glowing band of light. It almost looked as if it were on fire, but it wasn't putting off heat. Aloy cautiously extended a hand through the hole, and-
She saw motion out of the corner of her eye, and spun to face it. She thought she had seen another person there...
She stepped through, onto the floor outside the cell- on the opposite side of the room. She put her hand back through, waved, and saw her own hand back inside the cell.
Aloy thought she had seen the pinnacle of what the Old Ones could do, but this was something else entirely.
The only way out of the room was another round door, which opened as she approached. The passage ahead was illuminated with the same grey walls and floor; when she reached its end, a section of wall flickered with light, displaying a large number glyph and several simple images of human figures.
Another door opened, letting her pass into another room, and closed behind her.
The next door- presumably the way forward- was high up, atop a raised platform at least twice her height. The smooth surfaces offered no handholds for climbing. A variety of odd devices were scattered around the room- a thin pedestal with a red button on top, a large tube on the ceiling, a bright red beam of light passing over her head and across another tall platform in the center of the room.
It was a puzzle. It had to be. Activating each device, in the right order, would open the door. Aloy almost laughed. When she explored ruins, she had to reassemble ancient technology to reactivate their systems, with no guarantee it would work, and the risk of injury or death if she failed.
Pressing the button on the cylinder activated it with a bright chime, and the tube above released a large box-shaped object, which fell to the floor with a loud clatter. It came up to her knee and was made of glossy metal panels, although it seemed lightweight when she nudged it with her foot.
With a familiar pop, a bright oval like the one on her cell wall- a portal- flared into existence high on the wall opposite the door.
A line had also illuminated to a darker panel set into the floor. Carrying the box with her, she stepped onto it, and it lifted her up to the center platform.
The red beam crossed directly in front of her, about at knee height. She studied its path- the device that it hit on one side was connected to the closed door by another line of lights, currently dark.
She pushed the box into the beam's path, and the door slid open, a check-mark lighting up green. She heard another pop, from below- and leaned over the side of the platform to see another portal, ringed in bright blue, on the ground.
She had assumed- hoped- that activating the devices would create a way to actually reach the door, but neither portal was anywhere close to it. Had she made a mistake?
Walking through the portals had been like walking through an ordinary door- but between two different walls. If she fell through, at full speed...
Taking a deep breath and steeling herself, Aloy jumped off the edge of the platform, straight down into the portal on the floor- and the world turned sideways as she passed through the one on the wall, flying across the room and landing next to the door.
Her brief elation at figuring it out was interrupted by...the smell of burning hair? She looked down to see a black, smoldering burn across the wraps on her legs.
The red beam, crossing directly in her flight path, had grazed her as she'd passed it, cutting through several layers of leather and fur. If that had hit bare skin, it would have been a severe injury- maybe fatal.
"Well done," the AI said. "You have successfully applied the basics of cube-and-button-based testing, as well as movement through portals. Please proceed through the chamberlock."
So there was a risk of death, after all- and unlike a ruin, this place might be actively trying to kill her. Great.
-
Hours later, Aloy trudged into yet another test chamber, exhausted and irritated. This was no test- it was some kind of horrible game, or maybe slow torture.
The end of one chamber only led to the beginning of the next, and there didn't seem to be an end in sight. Whatever this place had been built for, it had to be enormous. The tests built on each other in difficulty as well, adding some other kind of device to figure out as soon as she'd mastered the last, stretching her brain in all directions to solve them.
And this AI did seem intent on, or at least unconcerned about, killing her with most of them. Only a few chambers after the first, the floor had been replaced with some kind of corrosive sludge. Then there had been the maze full of harmless-looking, egg-shaped machines, which had quickly started shooting at her...
On top of that, jumping through portals and landing on hard floors, without any armor to protect her, was quickly beginning to hurt. An injury in here, even a minor one, would be a death sentence.
She needed to get out, and soon.
Surveying the new chamber wearily, she heard a strange noise- a loud tap-tap-tap coming from a far corner, its source hidden from sight by a platform. Carefully making her way towards it- she'd learned quickly that even innocuous-looking things in here could be deadly- she activated her Focus to try and get some information from it.
Her Focus had been less than helpful so far- of the devices it could even detect, most of them gave back unhelpful strings of data. She scanned the area in the sound's direction, and an angular shape lit up blue, its data scrolling out next to it-
ID: 22817
Aperture Science Modular Panel Unit
Pat. Pend. Aperture Laboratories 1998
Current Configuration: Wall (Test Chamber, Track #0218, Chamber 22)
Status: ERROR- Contact an Enrichment Center engineer- ERRORERRORERR-
One square wall panel was flipping open and closed erratically, with a mechanical whine that sounded almost distressed- like an injured machine. As she got closer, the Focus superimposed the structure behind it in her vision- like a hinge or a joint, connected to all the other panels around it in a huge grid.
So each wall panel- and floor, and ceiling- was a machine in itself, put together to form the whole room. She hadn't been moving through some massive building at all- it was all the same room, and, presumably, the AI was controlling it all.
When the panel opened, she could see split-second glimpses of a shadowy area beyond- a way out, or at least out of the tests.
Aloy waited for it to flip open wide, caught the edge, and pushed herself through the opening. She grabbed the thick metal piston on the other side as it slammed shut again, leaving her clinging to a wall of machine arms.
She was immediately glad she'd hung on, because she was hanging over a chasm. The entire chamber was suspended in an open space, its bounds shrouded in hazy darkness. How far underground was she? You could fit a small mountain just in the space she could see.
The space wasn't totally empty- she could see what looked like more panels hanging in the distance, various beams and giant pipes. Looking down- her stomach swooping at the blackness below- she saw a suspended metal walkway cutting across below her- close enough to jump.
Carefully aiming her feet, Aloy let go of the panel- and landed on the walkway, falling forward into a roll. The impact shook the whole structure with an alarming wobble, but it held.
She activated her Focus- and a signal, distant but strong, lit up. Unidentified signal- large processing core, origin unknown.
Aloy followed the walkway in its direction. This might be nothing like a Cauldron, but she had a feeling the signals would lead her to something like a core- and she wanted to see what was in it.