The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere

Inner Sanctum Second Floor | 9:21 AM | Third Day

I flipped through a few more pages, but all this served to do was confirm my initial impression. This did, indeed, appear to be a translation of section of the Epic of Gilgamesh-- Or at least, it was an extremely archaically-written story with a protagonist named Gilgamesh. It wasn't like I was familiar with the text directly.

Finding yet another item connected to the myth wasn't a surprise at this point. The biggest question was why it was here. Why I, presumably, had separated it and the key Zeno had given me from everything else. And to a lesser extent, why the binding of the book was so strange.

"Found something?" Ran asked, stepping over.

"Uh, this book... Thing," I said, holding up the manuscript. "It looks like the Epic of Gilgamesh."

She frowned, stepping over and taking it from my hands. Her eyes scanned the page intently, before slowly starting to nod. "...yeah, looks like it. I think this is the opening to the third tablet, though the translation is different to the one I read." She frowned, looking up from the page and testing the weight of the object in her hands. "But there's no way this is just that. It's way, way too many pages. Especially since there's no annotations."

I frowned. "The epic is that short? Even though it's called an 'epic'?"

"In terms of epic poems, 'epic' more means 'grand in subject matter' than 'big'," she explained. "It was written thousands of years before even the Odyssey-- We're talking about people who had to carve their shit into rocks. Kinda constrains a culture's capacity for narrative complexity." She tilted it on its side. "What's with this weird binding? It looks like you could pack a whole encyclopedia into this thing."

"I'm not sure..." I said, something nagging at the back of my mind. I glanced back at the key, then lifted it up for her. "Did I ever tell you about this, by the way?"

"That's the thing you got from Zeno, isn't it?"

I nodded. "Yeah."

"I think you brought it up when we were on our way back from the underground last night," she said. "You said something about being surprised you didn't see a lock for it or something."

I blinked, trying to process this latest entry into things-I'd-done-but-apparently-couldn't-remember.

Retrace your steps and use logic, idiot. Our group had been taken underground to bear witness to one of the order's secret projects, one that Neferuaten, back in our conversation in the garden, had talked about like the entire organization was oriented around it. At the time, I'd drawn a connection to Zeno's description of a secret that was about to be unveiled here - 'a power to remake the world'. But as it had turned out, it'd been a project of my grandfather's that the order had abandoned years ago, and based on Ran's account, Zeno had been just as surprised as anyone else that Fang actually got it working.

So... Inferring from that, on our way back, I'd probably been expressing surprise that what Zeno had been so excited over, his 'spectacular prize' secreted in away in the sanctuary... Was, contrary to that initial assumption, completely different to the Everblossom and the machine beneath it.

So what was he so excited over, then? What was this even for? And what was the 'firsthand proof' he'd told me to expect to see before my formal invitation?

That's right. Amidst everything, I'd let that slip out of my mind, too. Had I actually had the meeting with the inner circle, and been offered the honorary position Neferuaten had described...? More things to clarify when there was a free moment.

"You're staring into space, Su," Ran said flatly.

"Oh." I cleared my throat. "S-Sorry. Let's finish taking a look around."

I investigated the rest of the bedroom, going quickly through the drawers and even looking behind the curtains, but ultimately discovered little more of note aside from a few items of men's clothing, which felt like the only hint as to who normally occupied this room. Even the lavatory offered no hints. Since there probably wouldn't be another chance to come back here, I decided to grab my shoulder bag and gather up the items valuable to me - my journal, some of my clothes, some expensive makeup - as well as the two things I'd just discovered. After that, I turned to leave.

"It feels like it doesn't matter now, but what even happened to my old room? How did the floor get damaged?" I asked her. "I forgot to ask back when we were in the abbey."

"Oh, right," she said. "It's stupid. After everyone got bored of hanging out in the bathhouse, Seth and Ezekiel got into another stupid fight in the changing rooms. Bardiya was casting some incantation to try and dry himself off for bed, but one of them shoved him, so he botched the incantation. Ended up smashing a hole in the ceiling with the backlash."

"That's really dangerous," I said, my eyes wide. "Were they punished?"

She shook her head. "Not really. I guess the order didn't want to make a big deal out of it, since nobody was hurt." She frowned to herself. "Anyway, that fucked up the floor in you and Lilith's room, and since the girl's floor was already packed and they didn't wanna break their weird rules, they moved you both over here."

"That makes sense, I guess." I scratched the side of my head. "What happened with Fang, by the way?"

"They wanted to put them with us at first... but like you probably saw, they ended up in a boy's room eventually, since that's where they had one made up" she said. "Seemed like Durvasa was pissed off about it, though." Her eyes scanned over the room on our way out. "So you just woke up here with no idea what was going on, huh?"

I nodded. "Yeah, that's about right."

"Must've been pretty spooky," she said. "Something about this place gives me the creeps."

"Yeah," I said, my eyes wandering around it. The amount of empty space really was strange.

We stepped back out into the hall, where Linos and some of the others were still milling around. "E-Everything go alright?" he asked awkwardly.

"Uh, yes." I said.

"That's good," he replied, biting his lip and glancing to an adjacent door. "The others are still looking around miss Eshkalon's room... It sounds as though they haven't found her, but are looking for clues her and her mother might've left behind if they'd stopped by."

"We're not finding any clues, either," Kamrusepa said from inside, raising her voice slightly.

Linos shrugged. "Well, there you have it."

I didn't expect that adding my own eyes to an already saturated investigation would accomplish very much, but decided to take a quick peek inside the chamber anyway. In stark contrast to the room I'd been placed in, this one was packed full of all kinds of junk, to the point that there seemed almost no rhyme or reason to it. There were multiple cupboards full of clothing - dresses, mostly, so it probably belonged to a woman - a large logic engine, a second bed... And most notably, several stone sculptures. There were three depicting humans, one of which was clearly a likeness of Durvasa, as well as two stone figures of cats. Finally, there was one which seemed to still be in progress, the upper half of a slab of rock wrought into a roughly humanoid shape on top of a white trap in the corner.

Notably, though, I could see a layer of dust covering one of the nearby dressers. Whoever this room belonged to obviously hadn't used it in some time.

It was another two minutes or so before Zeno lost patience. "This is pointless," she called out from the hall. "We need to get moving."

"Yeah," Ptolema said from inside the room. "I hate to say it... But I don't think we're gonna find anything..."

"You guys go ahead and get ready," Seth said, opening another of the aforementioned wardrobes. "I'm going to go through another of these. I think the door in this one might've been open--"

"Seth, don't be ridiculous," Kamrusepa said. "If Lilith and her mother stopped by here at some point in the past few hours, they wouldn't have climbed in the closet. I was fine with taking a quick look, but this is ridiculous."

He tensed up for a moment, but then closed his eyes, letting out a long sigh. "Fine," he said. "Let's go leave the notes."

Everyone left the room and, as planned, spent a few moments leaving messages for Lilith and her mother around around the area. Then we descended down to the ground floor and repeated the process, until we eventually circled back around to the library in the main hall, in the shadow of the massive orrery. Across from us was the doorway leading to the security center.

My eyes wandered towards the windows, and the blackness beyond them. The fact that 'dawn' had never broken, despite us now being well into the morning hours, felt like it was starting to really upset the animal components of my brain. I was starting to feel the weight of my interrupted sleep, my muscles aching and my breath growing heavier.

"Er, well." Theo cleared his throat, peering towards it. "What do we do now?"

"To begin with, we need to contact the artificed intelligence's and inform them of what we will require of them," Anna said, stepping over towards the towering structure in the center of the room. "Fortunately, we will not need to venture back underground. This logic bridge is one of the handful we connected to them for the purposes of remote administration." She leaned down, touching the false iron embedded in the structure of the orrery's base.

"Can we watch?" Ran asked, her tone unreadable.

Making sure she can't pull the wool over the rest of our eyes. Anna turned and regarded her coldly for a moment, but nodded. "If you so wish."

She nodded in reply, and with that, a few of us stepped forward to touch the false iron as well, myself included.

I was surprised for a moment, at first. Instead of simply feeling the straightforward connection to Sekhmet and her 'brother' that I'd been expecting, my extrasensory perceptions were instead flooded by something much more complicated. It was once again a view of the Old Yru Convention assembly chamber, its dome towering high into the sky, and the square in front of it. Unlike it had appeared during Seth and I's meeting with Sacnicte, however, the area looked absolutely packed. There must of been at least a hundred thousand people, all spaced out carefully to avoid contact paradoxes, watching an address from a man I recognized as the First Administrator under the night's sky.

The image was greyed out, however, and an impulse came with it. Understand that the link has been severed. Understand that a bridge integrity check has failed to diagnose the problem, and you may need to inspect for physical damage. Understand that if you cannot revolve the problem, you should visit your distributor with your purchase paperwork and seek a replacement...

Mm, that's right. This is where Linos had been watching the closing hours of the bicentennial ceremony. The link would've been cut along with everything else when this had all started.

Anna wasted little time in dismissing this image, causing it to fizzle out of my mind's eye in an instant. Instead, I felt her make some sort of command to the system at large, and then 'heard' a familiar voice.

Oh, hello! Is it time for my daily report? Sekhmet asked. I'm sorry to say this, but temperature loss overnight has caused a 0.7% reduction from baseline productivity! Is there something wrong with the heating system-- There was a twinge of confused processing, followed by a sensation of pleasant excitement. Wow! There's a lot of you right now! Is there another tour going on?

"Analysis Engine 01 and 02," Anna said, her tone emotionlessly commanding. "There has been an issue with the administrative core of the sanctuary. We are going to transfer control over our gateway subsystem to your terminal so that you are able to temporarily manage it for us. You are to freeze other tasks and cease all transfer of information while I begin alterations to the connective runescripting of your level. Confirm your understanding."

Please understand that this instruction has been acknowledged, Discretionary Council Member Amtu-Heddu-Anna, I felt the more simplistic mind of Eshmun communicate. Please understand that we will disable all pertaining alerts and stand by for further instruction.

Um, wait? Sekhmet said. You want for me to cease all tasks? Does that include my reading?

Zeno rubbed her eyes. "While I was impressed by the scope of Neferuaten's ambition in designing this thing's mind, it's the last shit we need right now."

"Agreed," Anna said, her brow slowly lowering "Engine 02. You are to cease all tasks and stand by for further instruction. "

Well... Okay, I suppose... she said. The pulse of sadness felt like damp water. I mean... If it's really, really, really, really important--

Anna cut the connection, turning her head to face the opposite towards the security center door. "Now that that's done, the next step is to access the runescripting beneath the security hall. For that, we'll need access to the chamber proper."

"Um," Theo said, hesitant. "Isn't that going to be a problem? I mean-- Seth said something about it being defended, earlier?"

"Yeah," the other boy affirmed. "The door looked like it was meant for a siege, and there were a bunch of grates where it looked like gas was supposed to come out of."

"It's, uh, actually acid vapor, not gas," Linos said.

"The heck is wrong with this place?" Ptolema exclaimed, her brow twisting in horror.

"T-That shouldn't be an issue, though," Linos continued, his tone soothing. "You see, the defensive elements of the security center only actually activate in a lockdown. And since we've confirmed this isn't one, we should be safe." He stroked his chin. "Though the door is another matter. It's made of artificed bronze and is almost a foot thick. We built it to withstand refractor rifle bombardment."

"What exactly is the solution, then?" Kamrusepa asked.

"If you can't crack the door, crack the wall," Zeno declared. "We never fully reinforced the portion of the center adjacent to the building's exterior. It'll probably take a good chunk out of our charge, but we should be able to fuck it open with good few high-focus high-output shots." She gestured her rifle back and forth.

"Let's... Take this one step at a time," Linos said. "The door isn't normally fully sealed. The basic lock shouldn't be too hard to break through, so we ought to take a look first."

"I'll examine it myself," Anna said, stepping forward. Some of us moved to follow her, but she held up a hand to stop us. This wasn't going to take her out of our line of sight, so there was no real point in us all cramming into the tiny corridor.

She opened the initial door and stepped into the liminal space, stepping over the metal grates and approaching the thick hunk of metal that separated us from our destination. She sighed, then examined it for a moment--

In this next instant, several things happened at once. The first was that the door swung open very sharply - more than I'd believed possible, considering it's weight - and the bottom fell out of my stomach in an instant. In the following 2 seconds, I sincerely believed that the killer was about to perform another perfect strike, taking out the one person who could conceivably still help us escape from this mess in a single moment of letting our guard down.

People with better reflexes than me - Kamrusepa, Ran, Zeno, Theodoros (surprisingly) all rose their guns in an instant, and Linos cried out "Anna!" as a figure, themselves obviously armed, grabbed her by the neck with impeccable martial skill and leveled a pistol directly at her head--

....and then the other shoe dropped as I realized who it was. There, holding Anna with panic in her eyes and every feature on her face as tense as it could get, was Sacnicte.

Slowly, I saw the realization spread among our group. Linos relaxed with relief. Kam and some of the others frowned in confusion. Zeno closed her eyes, then smirked, amused. Sacnicte herself took perhaps the longest to realize what had happened-- Looking at our group, then at Anna, and suddenly seeming at a loss, looking at her own weapon.

"Put the pistol down, steward," Anna instructed her, her tone surprisingly calm. "It's me."

This seemed to serve as enough to break her out of her stupor. She sharply stepped back, lowering her pistol and taking deep breaths. In response, the others finally started lowering their own weapons.

"S-Sorry, ma'am," Sacnicte said, doing her best attempt at a formal tone. "I thought you--"

"It's fine," Anna interrupted, rubbing her neck. "I ought to have knocked in case someone was already inside, considering the circumstances... And it's not as though I exactly look like myself, at present."

"That was quite an ambush, girl!" Zeno complimented her, clapping a bit. "Very impressive!"

Sacnicte looked up at her, still breathing heavily. "T-Thanks," she said sardonically. Then her eyes widened slightly. "Yantho."

Considering how well they knew each other, it wasn't much of a surprise that she'd recognize his presence, mask or no mask. The boy broke from our group, taking a step towards her, and then they both moved swiftly towards one another, meeting just at the exit of the main hall. They embraced, holding one another tightly.

"Thank the fucking gods," she muttered quietly. "I thought... Fuck."

Linos smiled softly at the scene. "Good," he said. "That's one step towards having everyone back in one place."

I almost found myself smiling too. Any good things happening felt like water in the savanna, at this point. Hearing their story a little earlier, I'd been afraid of what would happened it if had turned out to have ended in tragedy.

After that, we took a few minutes to explain everything that had happened to Sacnicte over the past few hours - the initial death of Neferuaten, the cryptic warning and Bardiya's murder, the disappearance of Durvasa and our eventual plan visit to the administrative core - as well as the plan we'd now devised to escape the sanctuary. She, in turn, filled us in on her own experience of events.

"I was in my quarters when the bell tower woke me up, then made my way down here to see what the hell was going on," she explained. "That was when the logic bridge started going off and I saw that creepy message. After that, I held up in there for hours, trying to keep track of what was going on with the equipment."

Linos's eyes lit up. "You mean the center's observation capabilities are still functioning?"

"Yeah," she said, with a nod. "At least, some of it. Come and see for yourself, if you want."

She led some of us into the chamber, which as oppressive as ever, and we attuned to the logic bridge. Sure enough, she was telling the truth. Though a lot of the arcane lenses seemed to have shut down - only the ones in the abbey seemed unchanged, with most of the ones in the research tower and the building we were in physically disabled - the mechanism designed to track who was in what bioenclosure was still operational. Other than the members of our group (including Zeno - I wasn't sure if it was tracking their current body or the location of their brain, but either way it registered as it being in the 'Inner Sanctum Bioenclosure' with the rest of us), it also reported Mehit, Lilith, Vijana, Neferuaten... And Samium as being here too.

Beyond that, it reported Balthazar and Durvasa as within the 'Research Tower Bioenclosure', Bardiya as being in the 'Guest Bioenclosure' no one as being in the 'Arboretum Bioenclosure', and finally Hamilcar as being in the 'Sanctuary Underground'. Thinking about it, this was the first time I'd had the official names for them laid out.

But hadn't the inner sanctum had a different name? I was pretty certain I recalled the warning alarms calling it the 'Amniakic' Bioenclosure. Had they changed the names at some point, and not kept it consistent across their system...?

Anyway, all this information obviously raised several questions, though one of them I already had the answer to personally. But it did clear up one thing. Assuming the information was true, it eliminated the earlier-suggested possibility of an unknown 'person X' - someone who had snuck into the sanctuary, but had hidden themselves from sight - being the culprit.

...but that wasn't exactly a good thing.

"Um... Who is 'Samium of Ur-Ysar'?" Ophelia asked, frowning.

Linos cleared his throat. "That's a, ah, medical guest of the sanctuary, Ophelia," Linos said, showing some level of commitment to his assertion that he'd stop lying about everything. "Considering the circumstances, we decided it would be better not to bring them up to the rest of you until we have an exit from the sanctuary."

In spite of that honesty, he seemed unhappy to be having this conversation. Like it was both unexpected and inconvenient - which seemed a little strange since, well, shouldn't it have been obvious that people would notice?

She looked sincerely distraught in a way that only she could sell as sincere. "That's... You mean, you're just leaving them to die...?"

"They're not ambulatory, little girl," Zeno, who had also wandered in, said dismissively. "They're stuck in one of least accessible parts of the building, hooked up to enough machines that the place looks like a factory floor. And they're at death's door to begin with. Not a priority."

"That's callous, Zeno," Linos scolded her, frowning. "We're talking about--"

"Oh, you want to start this again?" She cut him off, looking amused. "Why don't you go save him yourself, then. If you pray hard enough to God, maybe they'll even lift you up the stairs."

That was a shitty remark, even by their standards. Ophelia looked a little upset, seeming to lack the will to push the matter further, while Linos just sighed, rubbing one of his eyes.

"Let's clear some things up," Ran said. "This tracking system. How reliable is it, and how does it work? Why is Durvasa still listed as being in the Research Tower? Or hell-- Why are Neferuaten and him still listed to begin with?"

"Well, to start with, I think it's pretty reliable. At least, I've never thought of a way to trick it in all the times I've been sitting around this place," Sacnicte said. "When somebody first comes in through one of the entrances, it creates a registry of them based on their biological data. Then every time they pass between one of the bioenclosures or go down underground, it checks them again and updates their position."

"How does it check them?" She asked.

"Whenever they pass a checkpoint, it checks both their iron with a mundane mechanism, and does a scan with the Power. That's how it can tell miss straight-out-of-the-convent over there from that asshole who shares her blood." She jerked her finger towards Ophelia.

"What if somebody uses the Power to skip a checkpoint?" I asked.

She looked quizzically at me, sitting back in her chair. "If you mean if someone fucks with the checkpoint directly, the whole system goes ballistic. But if you mean 'skip' as in 'go around', I dunno how you'd even do that. You can't transposition between them with all the water around, and you'd have to hook your scepter straight into the furnace to get enough eris to teleport."

With all the water around. She didn't get the memo, apparently, but it was just as true with the hyper-thick glass.

"What if you cut a tunnel?" I pushed further.

"That sets off the system, too. Any serious damage to foundation does-- The crap you were telling me about someone smashing through the floor must've come close, and that's not even a fraction of what you'd have to do to make a whole new passageway. It's bedrock across the board." She sighed, turning her head back towards the logic bridge. "As for your other shit, that already answers most of it. The only thing it cares about is people going through the checkpoint. And if you're not only dead but super fucked-up when you go through one..."

"The iron in the body would have turned back to False Iron, and the scanner wouldn't recognize their body shape," Ran said, nodding. "I get it."

So Durvasa's body would have had to have been in that state when it was moved... Assuming it was his body. I guess that made the most plausible candidate--

"Has Hamilcar's position changed at all?" I asked.

She shook her head. "No. He's been in the underground since I got here."

I nodded. Then he couldn't have gone up to place the body and arrange all that for us.

But then... What possibilities did that leave?

"I'll leave you all to the rest of this," Anna said, stepping away from our group. "I'm going downstairs to perform a preliminary examination of the runework." She moved towards the steps at the rear of the room.

"Be very careful, Anna," Linos said.

"I am not going out of view," she replied. "If you are concerned for my safety, you may stare at my back until I return."

Linos cleared his throat again, this time glancing to side. If we somehow got out of this alive, Anna was probably going to have to go through quite a lot of social re-acclimation in terms of the changes to her body.

"I, er. Have a question, if you don't mind..." Theodoros said, hesitantly. "Other than that, is there any mechanism to tell how many people are actually in the sanctuary? Or any information along those lines?"

"Kinda," she said. "There's a scan that checks for different types of life in a bioenclosure, which includes humans. But it only gives you the number, not the location. You're supposed to rely on the lenses for the specifics, but whoever's doing this has screwed with them already, so we're shit out of luck."

"We should do it anyway," Ran said. "Can't hurt."

Sacnicte shrugged, and sent an impulse to the logic bridge.

The gears spun more quickly for a moment. Then, the information began to flow into our minds.

Inner Sanctum Bioenclosure: 17 human biological signatures.

Guest Bioenclosure: 0 human biological signatures.

Arboretum Bioenclosure: 0 human biological signatures.

Research Tower Bioenclosure: 1 human biological signature.

Sanctuary Underground: 1 human biological signature.

I furrowed my brow as I processed the information, the others doing the same.

The two signatures in the last two locations obviously belonged to Balthazar and Hamilcar respectively; that was no mystery. The bigger question was the numbers in this bioenclosure. Now that we had Sacnicte, our group numbered 14 people. That left 3 signatures left unaccounted for. So... Was that Mehit, Lilith, and Samium...?

No, wait. Would Zeno's body be picked up by the scan, too? It had seemed like Ptolema had guessed right regarding it being in one of the crates - and besides, there was no where else it could be. And what if Durvasa wasn't really dead? Or what if either Lilith of Mehit had been killed?

I wrinkled my brow. If Samium was dead... That was an absolute disaster, but I almost felt worse about that final idea. Lilith, despite being a brat, was the closest to an innocent in this whole situation, and her mother was a complete bystander who'd been dragged into the situation, and her death would leave her daughter an orphan. Either of them having died would be a terrible tragedy.

"Well," Linos said, trying to smile. "...at least we know there must be more survivors."

There were a few moments of uncomfortable silence.

"I would like to check something, please," Kamrusepa spoke up, having been mostly observing up until point. "Sacnicte. You mentioned that the lenses around the abbey were still functioning?"

"Yeah," she said. "That's right."

"Earlier," she said, her eyes focused, "following Bardiya's death, it was suggested that it was a possibility that someone could have assassinated him by attacking him from the other side of the window."

At her bringing this up, the atmosphere in the room instantly changed. Back then, that unsteady possibility, carefully constructed by Fang at the last minute, had been the only thing keeping half of our class from concluding that Theodoros would have to be the culprit. If it was refuted, the spell would be broken, and that could all come rushing back in an instant.

Linos grew more tense, and Theo became very still, his eyes turning towards the floor. I also saw Seth react badly, his breath growing heavier. "Kam, I dunno if that's a good idea."

"I know that was a delicate matter, but we can't be afraid of truth," she replied tersely. "What's more important than keeping the peace among us is that we survive. This is a chance to reveal the culprit right here, right now." She lowered her gaze, looking at him sternly. "Did you forget that possibility, pray tell?"

Seth grunted, gritting her teeth. But eventually, he nodded. "Fine. Do it."

"Alright," Sacnicte said. "I wasn't watching at the time, but I should have the recording."

She took a little time to sort backwards through the recording but, after a minute or so, the scene appeared before us. The abbey gardens, shrouded in darkness but with the light of the windows - including the pivotal one - in clear view, and the logic bridge communicating us that this was taking place at the time of Bardiya's murder. 5:23 AM.

We watched the scene, such as it was, play out in silence. The barrier was visible, and subtly flickered off and on at various points. Soon, the light in the window abruptly went out. Then, a minute later, it returned, the surface now looking slightly stained.

But never over the course of it was there a single soul in sight.