Private Edge of the Abyss

[Mistral]

Ana Rix

He only gave a look but was in agreement while Aya moved and was keeping the nurses stations in view, Seastone going towards the end of the hallway and then the wookie and Mistral after that. He got a chance to check the rooms and they were staying in line of sight while peering through viewing windows but also doorways as one of them would check while the other remained outside and within sight. "Can you hear me?" He was speaking into the nurses comlink for the moment and going over it. "The internal com system might still be working but it allows some contact."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana looked up from the nurses' station when Mistral's voice came through the internal system, relieved to hear him clearly even though she could still catch sight of the group farther down the hallway. She reached for the station's comlink and keyed it in response. "I can hear you. Clearly, actually." She glanced toward the corridor, spotting them through the open stretch before looking back at the console. "So at least one system in this place is willing to cooperate with us."

The working internal communications gave her another piece of information to work with. Whatever had emptied the hospital hadn't simply knocked everything offline, and the droids continuing their routines supported that. Ana returned to searching through the station interface, checking for environmental alerts, archived warnings, or anything that might have been pushed through the same internal network. "Keep the comlink with you. If the hospital issued an internal warning when everyone left, there might be a record tied into the same system." Her fingers continued across the controls as she worked, careful not to stray into anything unrelated. "And if you find somebody before I find an answer, I'll happily let them save me the trouble."

Mistral

 

[Mistral]

Ana Rix

Mistral gave a small nod of his head while he moved out of the room and remained in visual range. Spreading themselves out a little move but confirming that they would still see each other as he was tracking a droid but not chasing after it. He was motioning with his hand while they checked and then remained in the hallway as he spoke into the comlink. "If we do it will be helpful, these all look like general rooms for the moment but we are running out of visual space so going to have to turn around and try the other hallways." He said it while he was loking around though and there wasn't much once the droid went out of his line of sight.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana glanced up from the nurses' station as Mistral's voice came through the comlink, finding him farther along the corridor before he reached the point where the hospital's layout would take him out of sight. "Then turn around. I don't think finding out what's around the next corner is worth losing sight of each other yet." With no obvious emergency in the rooms so far, she was perfectly content to search slowly rather than let curiosity scatter everyone through an unfamiliar building.

Her attention returned to the terminal, and she kept digging through whatever records and system menus she could access while Mistral and the others worked their way back. "If those are all ordinary patient rooms, we're probably looking in the wrong part of the hospital anyway. There might be administration, security, maintenance, or somewhere that handles the building systems in one of the other hallways." She paused, considering the droid that had disappeared beyond Mistral's view. "And I'd let the droids go for now. They seem to know where they're going, which already puts them ahead of us."

Mistral

 

[Mistral]

Ana Rix

"Will do." He said it while he was heading back to meet up with the others and the chance that they would be able to search. He looked at the wookie and then Seastone and Aya as they came back and the gurney was there. Storiac was coming up the hall and had a look at them as she spoke. "There is rotting fish in some of the shops and spoiled food." Aya was looking at it and motioned with a hand. "Get the gurney's and lets move, until we know otherwise being on the move might be the best option or looking for external comunications and more supplies that might not be tainted."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana was relieved when Mistral and the others came back into view, but the shark woman's report immediately gave her something new to worry about. Rotting fish at an old shrine had been strange enough. Spoiled food sitting untouched inside shops suggested people hadn't simply planned to be away for an afternoon while the air cleared. "If the gas is only supposed to be dangerous for a few hours, food shouldn't have had time to spoil unless everyone has been gone considerably longer than that." She glanced toward Aya, unsure how quickly the island's heat would ruin whatever Storiac had found, but it was another detail that didn't fit neatly with their explanation.

Ana stepped away from the nurses' station to help with the gurneys, abandoning the terminal without much regret. Aya's suggestion to keep moving sounded increasingly sensible, especially if they couldn't be certain that anything left behind was safe to eat or drink. "External communications would be my preference. If we can reach someone off the island, they might actually know what happened here." She took a position alongside one of the gurneys, careful not to interfere with the injured passenger. "And until then, I'm voting against eating anything we didn't bring with us. I've already lowered my standards to emergency crackers. I refuse to lower them to mysterious abandoned-shop food."

Mistral

 

[Mistral]

Ana Rix

Mistral was looking at her and gave a nod of his head while he started moving and grabbed one of the gurney's. Going with Aya who had the other while Seastone was moving forward with the wookie and leaving room for Stoiac and Ana to go with them as they could move through in a group. Mistral was looking as the hospital opened up into an inner garden that they could navigate and Aya was motioning with one hand. "Check the doors." Seastone was moving as she looked over her shoulder but spoke with a nod. "The rotten food isn't good but come on you are so down about everything it will make planning harder when all you want to do is be somewhere else."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana gave Seastone a look as she fell into place with the others, though there wasn't much irritation behind it. "I can want to be somewhere else and still be useful. Those things aren't mutually exclusive." After killer plants, spiders, storms, cannibals, and everything else this trip had provided, she thought she'd earned the right to miss her ordinary life rather enthusiastically. "Besides, wanting a shower and a computer isn't pessimism. At this point, I think it's a perfectly reasonable life goal."

Before leaving the nurses' station entirely, Ana gave the records one last search. Something finally caught her attention among the routine entries, and she stopped long enough to open it. The timestamp made her expression change. "Wait. Three days ago." She scanned the entry more carefully, checking the surrounding records before looking toward Aya and Mistral. "Whatever happened here, this system was still being used three days ago. I'm not finding anything newer than that." It wasn't enough to tell them what had happened, but it gave the emptiness around them a much clearer timeframe, and it certainly fit better with the spoiled food than an evacuation lasting only a few hours.

Ana saved what information she could before leaving the terminal and joining the others as they moved into the inner garden. She kept near the shark woman without assuming anything more about her than what she'd already observed, while Seastone and the Wookiee checked ahead. "So I'm not trying to make planning harder," she added, glancing toward Seastone. "I'm contributing useful information while complaining. It's called multitasking."

Mistral

 

[Mistral]

Ana Rix

"A good automated system can work for years, some have even been known to work for centuries without people around. There was older uses of it and we are not entirely seeing that here but it is helpful." Mistral said it while he was walking and able to plan on a few more sections. "Though for this, if it is good they might have had stormbreakers in case of a real danger that would be coming at them. This close to the dark water islands means that they would need to be safer then most and in times past there was the risk being the furthest islands out." Aya said it with a look while they were moving thr gurney's down the fall so that they would be able to look out and check more doors.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana stayed with the group as they continued down the hall, listening to Mistral and Aya while keeping an eye on the doors they passed. Mistral had a point about the automation. The functioning droids and hospital systems didn't prove anyone had been here recently, but the records she'd found did. "The machines don't bother me nearly as much as the three-day gap. They can keep doing the same thing forever if nobody tells them to stop. People usually leave more of a trail." Whatever had happened three days ago, it seemed increasingly likely the droids simply hadn't been included.

Aya's mention of stormbreakers caught her interest. Ana glanced toward her while keeping pace beside the gurneys. "What exactly is a stormbreaker?" She had learned enough during this trip not to assume an unfamiliar term was merely another name for something she already understood. "Because if it's something designed to protect everyone here during a serious emergency, that sounds like a very good place for the population to have gone." She paused, then added with a small smile, "And potentially a much better explanation than everyone mysteriously vanishing three days ago, which I would very much like to stop being our leading theory."

Mistral

 

[Mistral]

Ana Rix

"I wouldn't recommend going onto it or in it." Aya was looking at her and movin. "The Stormbreakers are monoliths, rise from the oceans around the islands that could afford to get them built. Basically break up large waves and wind that comes at them. It is just like a barricade but not every island has them but on a planet that is largely water the storms can in some places go for so long they become massive and on par with much orre dangerous elements from the wind and waves so we have adapted to being able to handle them."

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana listened while they continued through the hospital, her earlier assumption about the Stormbreakers quietly rearranging itself into something much larger. "Oh. I was picturing some kind of reinforced shelter, not an artificial wall sticking out of the ocean." Given what she'd already seen the weather do since arriving here, though, the scale made a certain amount of sense. A world dominated by water would have learned to treat storms as something more substantial than an inconvenience, especially if they could build enough momentum to threaten entire islands. "And don't worry. After everything that's happened, 'don't go onto the enormous structure surrounded by violent ocean' isn't advice you're going to have trouble convincing me to follow."

It did leave the question of the missing population unanswered. Stormbreakers explained how the island protected itself from extreme weather, but not where everyone went when something overwhelmed those defenses or another emergency forced them from the streets. Ana glanced toward Aya as she kept pace with the group. "So they're protection for the island itself, not somewhere people evacuate to. That brings us back to the mines if everyone needed shelter from the gas." Her expression turned thoughtful. "Except three days is a long time to stay underground for something that should have dispersed within hours. Either they had another reason to remain there, or whatever happened wasn't as temporary as it was supposed to be."

Mistral

 

[Mistral]

Ana Rix

"They are one of many, you need to have tools and purposes that will aid in protection to survive. I could list a dozen more methods but not all of it means it is a factor in what we want. We didn't have a gas alert notice or something so lets not jumble all of it into a scenario. There is still plenty we do not know and I am not going to jump at unknowns." Aya said it while she was moving and got outside with Mistral as she was looking around and he could see her as they guided the gurney's. Seastone moving and only stopping at one of the nurse stations as she grabbed a medical kit and put it over her shoulder.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana accepted the correction with a small nod. Aya was right. They had accumulated several pieces that might fit together, but that didn't mean they belonged to the same puzzle. The geothermal gas was possible; the mines were where the population seemed concentrated; and the hospital records stopped three days ago. None of that actually proved one had caused the others. "Fair. I'm connecting dots before we know whether they're connected." She glanced back toward the hospital as they emerged outside, then toward the streets beyond it. "What we actually know is that people were here three days ago, they're not here now, and something has them concentrated near the mines. I'll stick with that."

She stayed alongside the group as they guided the gurneys onward, noticing Seastone appropriate one of the medical kits on her way past the nurses' station. Given how the rest of their journey had gone, Ana couldn't particularly object to taking useful supplies with them. Her attention instead moved across their surroundings, searching for anything that might point them toward external communications or offer another clue without requiring them to invent an explanation first. "So, communications next?" she asked, looking toward Aya rather than assuming that was where they were headed. "If we can reach somebody off the island, we might be able to replace some of those unknowns with answers. Preferably boring ones."

Mistral

 

[Mistral]

Ana Rix

Mistral gave a look before he was moving. "Exactly, we will just have to see about things first and then we can go over the next thing." He said it as Seastone was moving. "Communications should be this way and if they are not running we will just have to do it the old fashioned way. We make a large bonfire and use smoke signals to flag down others." She said it while she was moving and Aya was leading the way along the paths deeper itno the island. The roads going up the hills and into homes as there were energy shields set up for buffering against winds that might come.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana followed the others up the rising road, listening to Seastone's proposed alternative with an expression that suggested she still wasn't sure whether it was a joke. Given everything they'd experienced together, she wasn't entirely certain. "Smoke signals? On a planet covered mostly in water? I'm sure somebody would notice, but whether they'd recognize it as a request for help or assume we're having a barbecue is another question." She glanced toward Mistral with a faint smile before looking back at the path ahead. "Besides, with our luck, we'd accidentally summon another storm. I'd really prefer to try the communications equipment first."

As the road climbed farther into the residential areas, Ana found herself studying the houses and the energy shields protecting them from the wind. The island was clearly built by people who understood the dangers of living here, and she couldn't help but appreciate the engineering involved. It was the kind of practical preparation she understood, even if the threats were considerably different from what she usually encountered. "They've certainly put a lot of thought into keeping this place standing. Stormbreakers offshore, shields around the homes, and apparently enough automation to keep everything running when nobody's around." Her gaze lingered on one of the protective barriers before she returned her gaze to the empty road. "Which makes it even stranger that we haven't encountered a single person to tell us what's going on."

She kept pace with the group, occasionally checking the route behind them as the hospital disappeared farther from view. The gradual climb wasn't especially welcome after everything they'd endured, but at least the roads were maintained, and they weren't fighting their way through another wilderness. "If the communications are working, I'd consider that a major improvement to our circumstances. Someone who can tell us what happened here would be even better." She gave Seastone another sidelong glance, amusement returning to her expression. "And if neither happens, I'll help you build your bonfire. Just don't expect me to know what the smoke is supposed to say."

Mistral

 

[Mistral]

Ana Rix

Seastone looked at her. "Well it wouldn't be a small fire those kind to see for miles need to be a large portion of the island itself and you don't really have to make it say anything... something that large will say simply. "OH GOD OH GOD WE"RE ALL GOING TO DIE HERE HELP US." She said it and held her hands up while Mistral looked at her. "She isn't wrong, the basicaly reaction if you can see a several kilometer tall smoke pillar is to report it and be curious." He was moving as the homes were there around them with several showing large crates in the street and there for overflow of the water itself. I was drainage that put the sea water back quickly in flood or in rain.

 

[Ana Rix]

Ana stared at Seastone for a moment, trying to decide whether the Twi'lek was seriously proposing setting a significant portion of the island on fire. Unfortunately, Mistral's agreement made the idea sound slightly more reasonable than she wanted. "I think there's a considerable difference between attracting someone's attention and convincing them the entire island needs to be evacuated." She shook her head, though a reluctant smile tugged at her lips. "And I would really prefer not to be responsible for creating the next disaster everyone has to survive. We've had enough of those without manufacturing our own."

As they continued through the residential streets, Ana's attention shifted to the large crates near several houses. The drainage arrangements were another reminder of how thoroughly the islanders had adapted to their environment. Between the offshore Stormbreakers, protective energy shields, and systems that returned floodwater to the sea, it seemed they had anticipated nearly every ordinary danger of living here. "They really have thought of everything when it comes to water, haven't they?" she observed, studying the drainage channels as they passed. "I'm starting to think whoever designed this place would have made an excellent systems architect. Lots of redundancy, multiple layers of protection, and apparently a healthy expectation that something will eventually go wrong."

She glanced toward Mistral again, her expression softening into amusement. "Although I'm a little concerned that you're agreeing with her about the enormous fire. I was counting on you to be the reasonable one." Ana continued walking with the others, looking farther up the road in the direction Seastone had indicated earlier. "Can we at least find out whether the communications are working before we start discussing how many square kilometers of island we're willing to sacrifice for a distress signal?"

Mistral