We got through another section tonight. The encryption process seems to line up with the polymorphic code we found at the end of the last segment. Inserting the code at the right intervals reduced encryption complexity by a factor of twelve. It's like... the more we get, the faster we can access the rest.
This one was different though. No Albedo. No ships. No colonists.
The recording was... hazy. Scratchy. Like it was different from the others. Judging by the hands that kept appearing in the line-of-sight, it was still Ark, but the quality of was just... well. It was shit. We couldn't make anything out.
Well, not initially anyway. As the recording went on, the quality gradually became better. It was an alien planet - topography like nothing we had ever seen before. Jagged indigo cliffs with veritable seas of gray, untouched ash between them. The only light came from a main sequence white dwarf, barely visible on the horizon. Every few steps, Ark would stumble. From our analysis, the ash appeared to be volcanic. Likely pretty slippery. But something was wrong. After falling a few times, Ark's path became slewed, almost like he wasn't sure where he was going. After falling for about the fifth time, Ark just... stayed down.
At this point, the researchers paused the playback. This whole scene was so different from the others that they weren't even sure it was authentic. Attempts to pull up context ended up spewing garbage code throughout the server buffers. The whole thing was a mess, but I had a feeling that there was a point to it.
We resumed playback 12 hours later. Ark remained motionless on the ground, eyes up to the stars. Planetologists on the team noted the lack of atmospheric colouring. Whatever planet Ark was on, was essentially in a vacuum. Even with the sun up, it was very easy to see the stars.
It was about hour four when some of the research team noticed an eerie effect in the playback. The stars began cartwheeling across the screen at incredible speeds. Mathematical analysis concluded that it was a time lapse, even though the tiny white sun never moved. This revealed that the planet was tidally locked, though Ark's reasons for being there were still a mystery.
It was hour 20 when something finally happened. A giant black smear opened in the middle of the screen, blotting out where the stars had previously been tracing their way. Out of the maw came a slender, tubular vessel, angular nacelles glowing with incandescent heat as it exited the slip. Slowly the ship descended, settling down out of Ark's field of few. A few tense moments went by before a metallic face appeared in the corner of Ark's vision. It was vaguely human, though mechanical joints and fine, filigree-thin tracery plotted from the corners of the eyes, the mouth, and the ears to the back of the bald head. Instead of eyes, the face had two luminous blue optics. Even with the degraded quality of the recording, we could see that this was a Third-Gen Immortal. After staring at Ark, whoever-it-was seemed to hunch over and lift him up. The recording was jarred slightly, and we finally saw something that made our blood run cold.
Ark's body was decayed and covered with the same volcanic ash that coated the entire planet. His central chest cavity seemed to be badly scored, but what looked like industrial tools. One of his legs had been brutally amputated just below the knee.
It wasn't until later that week that the numbers had come back. He'd been left on that planet for just under a century. Left, seemingly, for dead. It was only after the recording was complete that a bit of code dropped into the context, arranging it all from useless heaps of junk code into more and more mathematical and cybernetic algorithms.
And wedged right in the middle of the math was a tiny, seemingly hand-written message.
"This cruelty wasn't expected or looked for. I will remember you.
And I will find you."
The cybernetic algorithms patched together to form a real-time, three-dimensional schematic of Ark's body at the time the recording was made. Extensive damage to his entire body, most of it so messily done that his internal nanomachinery wasn't able to fix it. An inch deeper into his chest, and whatever industrial tool the assaulter had been using would've penetrated Ark's biological core, killing him outright.
We'd heard about breakaway colonies that actively hunted Immortals. But this was the first time we'd been exposed to this kind of... brutality and cruelty. We shared a private moment afterward. We were shaken. Shaken, because the horror we thought we'd left on Earth had still, somehow, made it to the stars.
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