Through Streets of Gray and Gold, Chapter I: Awakening

The first thing Ihaka knew was the Sound.

The second was a crashing, tinkling, lesser sound, vibrating through the liquid in which he was suspended.

The third was an unpleasant oozing, sucking motion, carrying him forward, out of the warm dark place where he had slept for so long.

The fourth sensation was... everything, all at once. Lights flickered and danced (purple blue white red) too bright and too dark and too fast for his eyes to adjust. He caught glimpses of dripping stone, shrieking machinery and sparking computers scattered here and there; blurred shapes huddled on the floor everywhere he looked, lying where they'd fallen in spreading puddles of viscous containment fluid.

(he tried to remember what the ruptured tanks were for, what they were doing here, what he was doing here)

Everywhere, above it all, on and on and on, was the overwhelming, all-consuming Sound.

His breath rattled, and with a sharp panic he realized that he couldn't breathe. He struck himself repeatedly in the stomach, coughing and retching as he convulsed on the wet stone floor. The stuff was thick and heavy and didn't want out of his lungs and stomach, but come out it did, to his relief.

Hands grabbed at him, and he tried to flinch away. His muscles refused to obey, however, and he finally gave up and let the helping hands pull him to his feet.

Someone was shouting. Dazed as he was, it took a moment to register that it was the blurry-faced, white-coated figure who'd helped him up, and a moment longer to understand that they were shouting at him.

He did his best to pay attention, but it was so loud and he was so tired, and staying upright and conscious came first.

His lack of response seemed to worry the stranger. Shouting was replaced by concerned inquiry, which he appreciated despite not understanding a word of it.

The white-coated figure, who he thought might be a woman, sighed, grabbed his arm, and set a brisk pace across the room. When he immediately stumbled and fell, the stranger darted back to catch him, cursing softly. White-Coat-Face draped his arm around her shoulders and took off again with as much urgency as before, if a bit more care.

Something long, stringy, and white kept falling in his face. It wasn't until he tried to bat it away that he realized, with confusion, that it was his own hair. His fumbling claws grazed his cheek, leaving bloody scratches; he flinched, groggily dismayed at the warm trickle running down his face, but the pain cleared his head slightly.

"Wh-whrr," he slurred, his voice lost in the cacophony of alarms and gunfire and shots and roars and screams and the Sound--

Amazingly, White-Coat-Face heard him anyway, and understood. "We're going to the Portal Hub," she barked in his ear. "You're underground, you're heavily sedated, and you're not safe." They maneuvered around a twisted hunk of metal buried in the floor. "Stay with me or you won't be alive, either."

Ihaka nodded dazedly. It was an effort to make out the woman's voice (it was a woman, he was sure of it) through the haze and the Sound and his own sluggish thoughts, but he caught the gist of it. Follow, live. Pass out or fall behind, die.

Or worse.

They ran for what felt like hours, twisting and turning with the dark, close corridors, fleeing by the soft blue glow of computer monitors and the harsh glare of alarm lights. More than once he nearly collapsed, but White-Coat-Face just hoisted him more firmly over her shoulder and ran harder than ever.

Finally, after what seemed like hundreds of near-identical passageways, they emerged into a huge, rounded chamber of smooth yellow sandstone. This one looked more even and finished than the--the-- (Containment Bunker, his memory supplied); less like a hastily blasted cave and more as though someone had intended Architecture.

Twenty enormous stone doors loomed from all sides, taking up nearly the entire circular wall. The wallspace remaining between them was occupied by other, smaller doors, presumably leading into other parts of the vast underground maze. A few yards away from the walls the floor rose sharply into a dais, several hundred yards wide, covered with sigil etchings and a wide variety of thaumoscopes.

In the center of the dais stood a massive obelisk, every available surface of which jutted with stone dials. Colored lines of numerous different hues followed the carved conduits, all glowing softly. There were no sensors or other electronic devices integrated into the obelisk, save for one small screen and keypad. Another white-coated figure worked industriously at this terminal, while several others scurried around the obelisk, twisting dials, pushing and pulling stone levers and panels.

Another time, Ihaka might have been fascinated by the strange construction, a patchwork of recent technology and obviously ancient thaumaturgical machinery. Now, he simply stared dully as his fogged brain absorbed the details.

White-Coat-Face waved and shouted something at the operators, who waved back and went to work with a will, reaching new heights of frantic activity. A wide line of the floor-sigils began to glow, forming a pathway of pale blue light to one of the larger doors.

As he watched, the massive doorway ground open, revealing a wall of eye-searing electric-blue light, pulsing in time with the floor-sigils. He started to shield his eyes with his hands, but his stinging cheek made him reconsider; he settled for squinting into the glare instead.

The obelisk hummed, the lines along its surface slowly rippling and shifting to match the color of the path and the gateway.

Not just a gateway, Ihaka understood too late. A Gateway.

We're going to the Portal Hub.

Oh.

He was aware of more presences around him, human and Summon both, but he couldn't have looked away if he'd tried. The light, though harsh, was mesmerizing, pulsing to a rhythm that was almost... familiar.

The Sound, he realized. It was moving in harmony to the Sound, like a beating heart.

He wondered if he should say something; but White-Coat-Face was shouting again, and then the small cluster of humans and Summons was moving down the path--very careful, he noticed, not to stray from it--toward the Gateway.

It should have been a long walk to the door. It was. And yet it also felt, in a way that worsened his headache, as if they'd hardly moved any distance at all. The door was far away, and then closer, and then it was rearing over him like a searing, whispering mouth.

He glanced down as they hurried past, noticed that the sigils had grown out into thin air (that he was walking on them).

He looked back up in time for one clear, flashing glimpse of White-Coat-Face--angular features, brown hair in a bun, green eyes behind rectangle glasses, mouth open to say something--

--and then the light washed over him, the Sound went silent, and all was darkness once more.