A powerful tremor rocks the ship.
“Haah?!” with a gasp, 99380 finds itself swinging in the upper left hammock, kicking its legs in the air. The three heretics are occupying a hammock each with one left empty for any potential visitor. 99111 would sleep alone since its spat with 36658 while 99526 wanted to sleep together with 99380 as usual but decided against it on the off chance it started throwing up again and took the hammock under 99380’s.
What’s going on?
A flash of lightning washes over the room and makes 99380 tremble. In short, 99380 goes through a similar set of storm-based stages of freakout that Smiley did, and in the end mentally reaches out for any help.
99111 - asleep. 99526 - asleep. 36658 - asleep. 20100 - asleep. 10013 - close enough to sense but too far to talk to. Smiley - the same. 387, 93, and the Queen - unreachable. 65536 - asleep. Unknown changeling - asleep.
10013 is responsible for us and everything is wrong and weird. 10013 is a smart drone. It’ll know if it’s okay to go to sleep again when everyone high up is missing.
Just like Smiley, 99380 stops at the top end of the stairwell and in front of the door to the main deck, listening to the repeated thunder strikes and dealing with the nausea caused by the strong waves shaking the ship.
How are Smiley and 10013 out there and how can they be sleeping? Are THEY okay? If they’re not okay, what can I do?
Gotta find the smart drone. Gotta find the smart drone.
99380 walks out on the deck and gets its legs immediately swept by the wind. It covers its head as it’s involuntarily rolled across the deck and slammed against the wall of the nearest bar.
“...ouch…” it hisses. 10013 seems to be on the roof of that big building covering the hind third of the ship. How did it get up there? There’s no way it flew in this insane wind. 99380 narrows its eyes and shields its face from the water with a hoof, “...ah, stairs on the sides.”
Several deep breaths later, it runs out of cover.
“AAAH?!”
A blast of wind knocks it backwards this time, followed by a disorienting lightning and thunder that makes the terrified drone reach in panic for anything to stop its slide. Suddenly, the ground disappears and 99380 finds itself falling.
It’s the central pool which, presumably, had been drained for the night is far from empty due to the ropes of water falling from the sky. 99380 splashes into the pool, and its squeak of panic gets drowned out by the rain, only serving for the water to get into the drone’s mouth.
Something sparks inside 99380’s head, and 99111’s experience with such a situation transfers into it at undronelike speed. Its wings immediately start buzzing, giving it a minor lift. The holes in its legs close up, and 99380 starts flapping its legs as hard as it can.
Somehow, it’s working. 99380 manages to get to the side of the pool and hook its fetlock on the ladder leading up. With all strength it can muster, it climbs back on the deck while not letting go of the ladder, unsure what happened to stop it from drowning like 99111 did. One mental touch of 10013 later, 99380 has to reconsider this entire operation. The wind is just way too strong.
What to do? What to do?
A familiar sight greets it in the form of the bar where 99380 spent last morning. It’s a simple G-shaped establishment - 3 walls and a counter. While its roof is shaking and the bar stools are gone, the walls are holding up just fine. 99380 grits its teeth, unhooks its hind leg from the metal top of the ladder, and rushes towards the bar counter. It slips on the wet deck again, but its momentum is enough to carry it forward into the small building itself. Now partially safe, 99380 admits defeat and crawls under the counter.
Lightning and thunder strike in perfect unison, making 99380 whimper and look around for a safer spot. Unfortunately, it only results in it spotting the radio cables leading from the roof towards a hole in a wardrobe under the counter that’s covered with thick tarp.
“Maybe the nice fuzzy lady will help,” it mutters, carefully inching towards the waterproofed wardrobe. Opening it reveals the radio on the shelf near the top with an empty basket occupying the rest of the space. Taking a deep breath, 99380 recalls what little it saw when 36658 and the bartender were using it, “It’s all about these turny thingies…” it reaches for the knobs on the front.
*Click!*
“Eep!”
“Kchrhrhrhchchhsh!” the radio starts hissing.
“Okay, okay, it’s scary but it doesn’t bite,” mumbles 99380, slowly turning the knob that isn’t making the hissing louder, “Eeeh… it can talk without a mouth so who can say it can’t bite without teeth?” it pats the radio just in case before resuming to turn the ‘not-volume turny’.
“-listening…” a faint voice grows audible over the sea of static and the storm itself, “-payload… island…”
“Huh?” 99380 presses its ear against the front of the radio, slowly finding out a vibrating membrane hidden behind solid metal mesh that seems to be the radio’s ‘mouth’. The drone’s listening reveals there to be two voices talking, but that’s about it. The fragmented word salad means nothing to it, but it still makes it feel less alone.
“-storm direction… whole day… cache…”
A set of numbers follows.
“Maybe they’re talking about changelings?” 99380 gets the brilliant idea to cover its other ear to shut off the outside noise. It barely helps, and only in it being easier to make out the occasional word that gets through the static.
“-until tomorrow… supplies… route…”
The words stop and don’t return within the next five minutes of 99380 patiently waiting.
“Awww,” pouts the drone and returns to fiddling with the frequency control until-
“Yaaay- OW!”
-it catches a quiet but consistent tune almost covered by the static but still audible, celebrates by rising up, and hits its head on the bottom of the bar counter. Satisfied with its current situation, 99380 crawls into the basket and closes the wardrobe from the inside. Curled up and safe in a dark and enclosed space, with the hissing of radio static and the underlying tune, 99380 almost feels like back home.
***
387 finds himself in a dark, enclosed space as well, although bent into a shape that would bring tears into the eyes of a yoga instructor. Whatever happened to him left him stuffed behind a layer of pipes lining the walls of the maintenance deck corridors.
“Ugh…” he breathes out, reviewing his memories on pure instinct even before his body fully wakes up.
Felt a scream, met 65536, dragged Chrysalis to her suite, discovered the books and newspapers… garbled mess… maintenance deck… garbled mess. Why did I go down here? HOW did I get down here? This place should have been locked.
As he searches the hive mind for his emergency black box recording, he pulls himself back into one of many alcoves lining the maintenance tunnels. When his head catches up, he freezes, his jaw drops, and he begins breathing heavily.
There’s nothing.
I KNOW I was recording what I was doing just in case anything happened to me and 93 or Chrysalis would need to act.
But there’s nothing no matter how hard he searches the local hive mind.
Don’t. Panic.
How can I not panic?! Whatever happened to me affected MY mind on a level that CHRYSALIS never managed to.
Okay, so… magic? Magic would explain wiping me, if by any chance I crossed a magic user with extensive knowledge of a changeling mind, but so far there hasn’t been a single report of any magic user ever successfully developing a way to control a collective construct like the hive mind. Besides, MY mind is drastically different from today’s changelings anyway.
He starts doing a series of stretches designed to show any deficiency in his physical form - bruises, pulled muscles, cracked carapace, anything that would indicate damage.
Nothing, so the memory loss wasn’t caused by a powerful blow. I can’t hear anything, smell anything, or see anything suspicious. If I didn’t know that I was following someone my only explanation would have been sleepwalking.
WHY do I still know I was following someone when everything else is gone?
Holes damn it!
The faintest flash of light makes 387 freeze. Soon, hoofsteps begin approaching, slowly but surely. The warrior isn’t skilled enough to shapeshift into invisibility, but he’s quick enough to scan the area, notice a ventilation shaft, transform into a fly, and get inside where he turns into a bigger bug to lower the massive love drain which such an affront to the laws of conservation of mass as changing a bughorse into a real insect is.
He feels his reserves depleting with every second he spends like this, but he needs to see who’s coming just in case. To his disappointment, the hoofsteps belong to a security guard wearing a flashlight on his head. To 387, his body language doesn’t show the faintest sign of anything suspicious. The security guard is supposed to be here, is bored, and this is a routine patrol.
Following the ventilation shafts, 387 flies out on the servant deck and transforms back. A quick check of his love reserves reveals that he’s still in no danger of running out. However, with his mind not feeling entirely like his own, unbreakable fortress anymore, he can’t stop the shiver running down his spine.
“I need a safe place to crash…” he mutters to himself. Almost on instinct, his legs lead him, for the third time, towards the drone cabins. As he enters, neither 36658 nor 20100, both weirdly letting their legs hang through their hammock while leaning against each other, wake up. His mental clock shows four in the morning which, here on the open Summer seas, should be bringing at least some light through the window, but he can only see rain and dark clouds.
He doesn’t feel safe until he locks the cabin door and leaves a hive mind marker saying he did so in case 10013 or Smiley come back before he wakes up again, and to ping the other drones if they want to get in. Finally, he lies down into an open hammock.
“...nyam nyam nyam…” 36658 mumbles quietly in its sleep, “...anguishdecimators…”
20100 instinctively chitters in response, its wings twitching into a brief buzz for a fraction of a second.
That’s all 387’s worried brain needs to finally fall asleep, this time, thankfully, without any mystery involved. In the background, however, there’s a small part of him which locks itself away from the world in order to scrutinize everything that happened tonight, millisecond after a millisecond.