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one-of-many-journeys · 19 days ago

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Day 7 (1/3)

No Man's Land

I set off toward Sylens' spooky workshop at dawn. If he saved Hades just to install it on another Horus...I don't care what his plans are. This time, I'm destroying it for good.

I could only get so far before I had to brave the waters. Better to stay hidden on the approach anyway.

No sign of activity when I made it to shore. One blinking green console in my path, clearly left for me to access. I prepared myself for another of Sylens' monologues.

In the holographic recording, Sylens recounted installing Hades on the Horus' detached processor core. At least that meant it wasn't able to access what remained of the Titan's systems. Sylens said he'd extracted Hades' knowledge—crucial information that I'd been so foolishly eager to destroy, etc. Then Hades spoke. I'd hoped I'd never have to hear its awful, grating voice again. It sounded...degraded. In pain, even. I could barely make out its words.

It said that the signal that woke it was meant for it alone, and that it transmitted for 17 years before ceasing. Therefore, Sylens concluded, it was safe to reboot Gaia without the same signal that attacked her all those years ago striking again and picking up where it left off. Admittedly, I hadn't even considered that the malicious signal could still be transmitting, waiting for Gaia to wake. Admittedly, I hadn't given the signal much thought at all, which in retrospect was just as foolish as Sylens said. Who or whatever sent it is the real threat to life on Earth, but I was so focused on my mission, my purpose to destroy Hades and repair Gaia as given by the message she left me, that I put that larger threat out of mind. If Sylens had just told me what he planned to do and explained his reasoning, I would have complied—we could have worked together. But that's just not his style, is it?

Sylens reiterated that he knew where I could find a backup of Gaia, holding that promise in front of me to force me to follow. I would have anyway. I'm the one with the master override. Only I can destroy Hades.

I searched Sylens' workshop before I set off after the tracks of Hades' new processor core dragged through the sand. When Sylens first received Hades, transmitted by his lance at the Spire, he had it trapped in some tiny, portable processor, far too small to hold its uncompressed mind. Seems that was the first form of torture that Sylens inflicted on it, but he had more in mind to coerce Hades into sharing its secrets.

Sylens had been keeping some sort of daily journal while he was here. Wonder who he got that from? Most of it was redacted, meaning the pieces he left out on the workbench were those he wanted me to find. After blasting the Horus' core free with explosives, he loaded Hades onto it and began his interrogation. The signal that woke Hades also made it sentient, therefore, Sylens reasoned, it could feel pain. It took him a while to find the precise stimulus that worked: data representing life and plenty. Visual, audio, or even just chemical data recorded by Gaia's machines as they surveyed the thriving environment. One particular holo of bunnies hopping through a field of flowers apparently triggered maximum distress, causing Hades' data structures to degrade. Its mind ate itself in rebellion against the presence of its antithesis within its own systems.

Sylens studied Hades' programming in detail, now that it was at his mercy. It seems like Sylens really enjoyed himself after all that time spent subservient to Hades' whims, doing its bidding for the promise of Old World knowledge. Hades' memory held knowledge of Gaia's programming, and Hades' original form as one of her subordinate functions. This part piqued my interest, as Sylens knew it would. In his journal, he noted the stark difference between how Hades' original code was designed by Travis Tate and his team, and what it became once the mysterious signal transformed it into a sentient, 'true' AI. What Hades became was something beyond Gaia herself.

Turning a low-level machine intelligence, serving as a simple extinction failsafe, into a being capable of strategic thinking, desire, and malice...even the Old Ones didn't have technology that powerful, unless the people of Elysium continued their research into AI. I had the same suspicions when first exploring the Zero Dawn facility, hearing the Alphas talk about their subordinate functions versus what they had become in Hades and Hephaestus. I suspect that the signal was sent by some other advanced AI out there, something that wants to take control of Gaia for itself. After all, the Old Ones used to churn them out like blades from a forge.

I need to see this data that Sylens uncovered for myself. I need to know what I'm really dealing with.

I followed the path left by Hades' core out through the old battlefield. With all the Faro machines littering the shore, it was no wonder Sylens made camp here. Plenty of parts with which to arm rebel uprisings. No mention of that so far in his messages and logs, only to say that he had a plan, one that would take months to accomplish. I have my part to play in it too, according to Sylens' little diary. And here I am walking right onto centre stage.

Machines along the path; a Glinthawk (I'd been hoping they didn't have them out west), and a few Scroungers. I detonated the Glinthawk's frost unit with two sharpshot arrows, then took it down with a few hunter arrows once it fell brittle to the ground. Before the Scroungers could sniff me out, I activated my Stalker shield and took two out undetected before taking the third head on. Good salvage from their scrap piles; found some more Greenshine, too.

Further on, I found a strange growth covering the ruins of an old combat plane. The tough, pale vines grew from the base of a metal flower similar to those spawned in the east by Demeter. I couldn't get much information from the machine with my Focus—there was data there, but it was well guarded. Something to look into later.

Further on I met an Oseram sitting at his camp, there to delve in the ruins of the battlefield. I bought a new bow from him—a frost bow. Good for chillwater canisters, and I like the look of it.

The path finally led me toward a tunnel through the mountain. It looked like an old road. More of Sylens' equipment and camping gear outside, but no more data.

Inside, I found Hades, cooped up and withering in the blasted processor core Sylens trapped it in to torture. It sat in front of a gene-locked hatch, just like those at Zero Dawn facilities, though I didn’t see this place listed on any of the maps or logs showing network connections between facilities. If I had, I would’ve checked this place already.

First things first, it was time to destroy Hades. Permanently, this time.

As soon as I inserted the master override into the shattered face of the core, I felt a shock travel up my spear, lodging in my Focus. Everything went white, then red—at first I thought it was some sort of advanced Focus projection able to block out the entire room, like Gaia's message in Eluethia-9.

It showed a wasteland, dark and grey, littered with bare, stunted branches, a cold white sky in the distance prickled with static shapes. Then there was Hades.

In this dream it pulled me into, it looked just as degraded as it had sounded in Sylens' recording. No more glowing, twisting form of red appendages; it had no limbs, no means to move or affect. All that was left was a hard red core, stony claws struggling to cover its vulnerable centre, jittering around itself in fragments, embers. It saw me and named me for the last time: 'system threat'.

Even at my mercy, Hades took the time to mock me for failing to repair Gaia. I had some questions of my own to pose, though I wasn't hopeful for answers. And the thought kept coming back to me: it couldn't be a projection. I wasn't standing in a holographic theatre. I thought then that I was still in the tunnel, that Hades had fully hijacked my Focus' visual functions to show me a solid world instead of mere overlays. This, I was willing to believe. The Old Ones had used such technology, called it VR.

I asked about the Gaia backups Sylens purported to have found, but it said nothing. The moment it tried to divulge useful information, its voice lowered and guttered, becoming a garble of digital groans. Memory structures disintegrated, it said. Sylens' notes did say that was a consequence of his interrogation techniques, but I wouldn't put it past him to deliberately redact parts of Hades' memory that might tell me more than what he wanted me to know.

Hades couldn't tell me what Sylens was planning or where he had gone, only that he'd left 12 days prior. Giving himself an ample head start on my pursuit, I guess. That would've been right around the time Varl and I set off for Meridian. Oh yeah, he's terrified.

As to the other corrupted subordinate functions, Hades gave little direction. They 'escaped to coordinates based on...' that's all I got from it. As for who sent the signal, it called them its 'masters'. Plural, that's interesting. It wouldn't elaborate, only insisting I would fail, laughing in its shattered voice, like blood through broken teeth.

It was resigned to death. Some part of it even seemed thankful for my arrival. Sylens, it said, called this place its grave. He meant for me to find it here, and clean up his mess. I have a feeling I'm going to be doing some more of that.

Hades lashed and bucked in its final moments; three times it ended life on earth, it said, bringing about extinction as it was intended to. Botched biospheres, Gaia's first eager attempts gone awry. There was no difference in Hades' mind between extinctions enacted out of necessity, of protocol, and extinctions wrought in malice—the Faro plague, its attempt to reenact it, and now...whatever's coming. Its 'masters'. They're coming to wipe the earth clean of filth.

The landscape seemed to encroach, leeching deeper into my senses. Strange metal taste on my tongue, fingertips like rubber; the air was too still, smelled of ash. No projection had ever felt this way.

As Hades shouted its masters' goals, I activated the master override. Elisabet appeared in the blackened landscape like a beacon. This wasteland was more than Hades' dream, it was its memory. Three times it had rendered the earth in this image, and relished in remembrance, now given the ability to feel. It just kept yelling; I couldn't listen anymore. I shouted over it, ordering the override protocol to purge Hades from this world forever.

It was only when the 'projection' fell away that I realised the disturbing truth. I was still in the same position; hands on my spear, bent to insert the override module into the processor core. Everything I'd just seen, all the movements I'd made and every word exchanged...all of it had taken place in some sort of dream state, some interface between Hades' processor and my Focus. I've never encountered technology capable of that before. I guess Sylens was right about the signal that turned Hades into this—it's far beyond the technology of the Old Ones. A gift, perhaps, left by its masters?

Whatever had happened, I couldn't let it phase me. Sylens soon appeared, in real time if not in the flesh. Now that I'd performed my function and destroyed Hades, he needed my body to open the next door in his way.

Finally, I had the chance to confront him, but in every angry question I posed, I fell over myself to trip right into his logical traps. He let me kill Hades permanently because he had no use for it anymore. He didn't answer my increasingly desperate calls over the months despite having constant access to my Focus because he had no use for me.

Sylens met my anger and ridicule with infuriating calm. I can never resist his bait; I snap just for him to refute my outbursts with sedate reason. I know he's right. He was right to interrogate Hades and uncover this larger threat. I'd always assumed that once I repaired Gaia, my job would be finished. I'd have served my purpose, and Gaia would know how to protect herself and the world from further attack—she would be able to discover what targeted her and put a stop to it. Now it doesn't seem so simple, especially after witnessing first hand what Hades was capable of once imbued with the signal's power.

As for Regalla's rebels, their gadgets and overridden machines, Sylens refused to say. He had his own matters to attend to, that was all. Given all the crucial information he was lording over me, I didn't push my luck. Not yet. I'll get to the bottom of it on my own if I have to. Sylens wouldn't tell me what Hades told him about its masters either. That too would have to wait until after I'd retrieved the Gaia backup from the facility beyond the hatch.

Sylens said the place was used early in Gaia's development to train her alongside Hades, perfecting the balance between life and extinction. I remember reading about these tests in one of Travis Tate's meandering accounts. They had to make sure Gaia would relinquish control to Hades in the event of a non-viable biosphere, allowing it to undo terraforming procedures and leave a blank slate for Gaia to try again, put back in full control of her faculties. According to Hades, the two went through this dance three times before Gaia set our current world in motion. To Hades and its masters, this is just another biosphere to roll right back to zero.

Crucially, Sylens said this facility had been kept absolutely secure—no data in or out, which would explain why I never found record of it in the other Zero Dawn facilities. Even Ted Faro's purge order couldn't have reached within the walls. This could be it.

But I'm not a complete idiot. With all his urging me on, all his promises, I couldn't not suspect a trap. He told me that everything I needed was just beyond the door: a full backup of Gaia with all her subordinate functions—everything that I needed to save the world. I made my intentions clear. If this was another trick, I promised to hunt him down and cut his throat. He's seen me in action. He knows he wouldn't stand a chance.

He tried to reassure me with a fact I knew all too well: I'm the only person who can even open the door to the facility. There's no way anyone could lay a trap inside. Suspicions still raised, I didn't have any choice but to go forward and claim what I've spent all this time searching for, and what I was born to find.

I went ahead and activated the hatch's identi-scan, listening to the door's familiar address. It opened partway before jamming, the mechanism shunting and grinding against a monstrous growth of Firegleam. I'd have to detonate it to let the door finish its motion and open the passage. Sylens told me he'd been working on mechanisms to blast through such blockages, as Firegleam grows thick in the west. I remembered seeing samples of the crystal back on his work bench, kept for study. He sent me the schematics for an igniter, though I needed a specific part to clinch the design—a power cell from a Leaplasher. Another new machine.

I headed back outside for a pack of Leaplashers hopping around by the lake shore. I'd seen nothing like them before; powerful hind legs launching them up and down, shock-charged tails swinging, acid canisters on the upper back and a power cell on the lower.

I lured one away from the pack, then took it down by detonating its acid canisters, burning it out. I snagged its power cell and took it back to Sylens' workshop at the tunnel entrance, building the igniter as per his schematics. It was a simple mechanism, basic enough to mass produce as a weapon for, say, an armed rebellion. I kept that thought to myself.

Back inside, I activated the igniter and drove it deep into the Firegleam growth, setting a spark that crackled from crystal to crystal, sizzling for a moment before exploding in a shower of glass and spores. That was enough to clear the gear wheels and get the door moving.

If I had any doubts about the facility before, they were dashed at the sight of Hades' emblem projected on the entrance wall. I found data inside naming the place 'Latopolis', once a FAS facility that was turned over to Zero Dawn during its development, courtesy of Faro and his financial custodianship of the project. Thus repurposed, they called it the Proving Lab.

The water dripping down the walls as I entered concerned me some, and once I made it through to the main facility those concerns compounded. The entire lab was flooded, meaning I'd have to navigate a maze of rusted supports and broken corridors. Even if anyone else could have made it through that door, I'll bet most delvers would have turned back at what they found. Not me.

There was another gene-locked hatch at the other side of the facility, no doubt the most secure area where the backups would be found. So, I'm Sylens' all-climbing, all-scanning door opening machine once again. What a truly unpleasant nostalgia trip.

#ok I took a LOT of pics for this mission. frame by frame for beta bc of my Affliction. beta is herreee. and tilda. bitch of my heart #sorry for the hades/nemesis hcs I have a lot of thoughts about how the tech works #hfw #horizon forbidden west #aloysjournal #aloy sobeck #aloy #horizon #photomode

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