The air smelled wrong, the breezes that sometimes gusted from Stacy's air ducts scented with a stale must that didn't belong there. Rhiow didn't like it - it reminded her of the stifling air in the caves in Old Downside, before Ith had led his people up into the sun. There was a thread of despair in that scent, of hopelessness and - perhaps even worse - stagnation.
And then, as she turned a corner, she caught a shimmer out of the corner of her eye. She stopped cold in her tracks, her ears laying back, and she eyed it skeptically. It looked like a nonpatent gate locus, but extended, more like a rip in the fabric of spacetime than anything as purposeful as a gate. She stalked forward, watching the way the hyperstrings bent around it.
This is not right, the Whisperer said. There is someone there. Rhiow hissed softly to herself and stepped through the rip without a second thought. If this was affecting her crewmates, she should do something about it.
The creature she saw looked like Kang, at first, but she was sure it wasn't him - for one thing, Kang was green. "Dai," she said in greeting. A general wish of wellness. "Are you alright?"
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The air smelled wrong, the breezes that sometimes gusted from Stacy's air ducts scented with a stale must that didn't belong there. Rhiow didn't like it - it reminded her of the stifling air in the caves in Old Downside, before Ith had led his people up into the sun. There was a thread of despair in that scent, of hopelessness and - perhaps even worse - stagnation.
And then, as she turned a corner, she caught a shimmer out of the corner of her eye. She stopped cold in her tracks, her ears laying back, and she eyed it skeptically. It looked like a nonpatent gate locus, but extended, more like a rip in the fabric of spacetime than anything as purposeful as a gate. She stalked forward, watching the way the hyperstrings bent around it.
This is not right, the Whisperer said. There is someone there. Rhiow hissed softly to herself and stepped through the rip without a second thought. If this was affecting her crewmates, she should do something about it.
The creature she saw looked like Kang, at first, but she was sure it wasn't him - for one thing, Kang was green. "Dai," she said in greeting. A general wish of wellness. "Are you alright?"