Chapter Text
Drifter smiled back at Vala Glarios, as pleasantly as a man might whilst having been caught with his pants around his ankles. “I don't suppose we're invited for dinner?”
“No. In fact, you aren't invited at all. Crewships, open fire!”
Lasers flashed. Energy projectiles spun into being. The full complement of fighters and crewships threw everything they had against one railjack.
Drifter engaged point defense countermeasures. “Cy, can our shields take it?”
“Yes. Barely.”
“Alright.” He ordered, “Tenno, swat them like flies.”
Citrine and Xaku fired their turrets. Lavos, however, simply transmuted matter into twenty-five target-seeking missiles that latched onto the first wave of oncoming fighters and obliterated them. Twenty seconds later, he did it again to the next.
Forty seconds later, a crewship's shields vaporized under the thunderous volley. Then, Lavos charged the Tunguska Cannon and slammed a nuke right into them. There were no survivors.
Drifter might have regretted unleashing the deadly Tenno if he didn't know that the crewship also had no lifeboats. Those were too expensive for penny-pinching Parvos Granum.
Two minutes later, the only ships left were his and the Obelisk.
“Are you sure I wasn't invited for dinner?”
“Go f*ck yourself.”
“Alright. Tenno, prepare to board that ship.”
One by one, the Tenno dropped from the railjack hatch into the Obelisk’ boat bay. Xaku was the last one out. They stopped Drifter. They opened up their small pocket realm in the Void, rummaged through a pile of health restores, automated hacking ciphers, and assorted posters until they found a small pin with a comm beacon attached. It was a loc-pin and it was used to mark one's location. They offered it.
He tucked it into his own void pocket. If something went really wrong, disastrously wrong, he'd activate it and the Tenno would come rescue him. “Thanks.”
Then they dropped into the ship and into the remains of what had been the welcome crew of men and robotic MOAs. Arterial blood sprayed around mangled men. Others were transmuted balls of bone, flesh, and scrap metal.
He swallowed back his gorge. “Alright. Let's find a Golden Hand.”
The Tenno carved through the Corpus defenders like a serrated knife through raw beef to find a gilded statue of Parvos Granum's right hand. Paying no mind to the corpses they heaped around it, they poked and prodded it until the pocket void realm known as the Granum Void opened up.
Ordinarily, no normal human had access to a stable void pocket. Granum was technically closer to someone like Loid than Drifter or the Tenno, even though he used his research into Specter Particles to ape their abilities and resistance to death for himself and his Sisters. So he couldn't maintain the Granum Void on his own. Granum, it seemed, had a warframe ally of his own.
Drifter fervently hoped that warframe ally wasn't expecting him too, and leapt in feet first.
He landed on hard, black obsidian. The squad joined him on an island of black rock in the midst of a swirling nebula of orange and blue Void clouds. A pyramidal Temple dominated the center of the island. All around it, Entrati artifacts of various sizes, shapes, and functions lay scattered with neither rhyme nor reason. Mirrors lay atop microscopes. A coffee pot was upturned next to two tea sets. There was no sign of the mocking, whispering grimoire he sought in the mess.
“This is going to take awhile.”
As soon as he touched the first treasure, holographic specters made of blue light appeared. Unfortunately, their laser beams were not holographic.
Qorvex patted him on the back. It felt like getting walloped with a brick. He pointed to the mess, then turned and flexed, and fired a beam from his nuclear core that flash-fried a specter.
“Alright. Watch my back while I look for a needle in a haystack.”
Drifter dove in. Flasks of alchemical concoctions mingled with bottles of Albrecht's favorite vintage. There were books aplenty. Romance novels with bookmarks still in the salacious parts. Journals with scribbled experimental notes next to a child’ doodles. But no corrupted books.
At least the Tenno were having a grand old time fighting endless specters. Citrine gave him a cheery wave.
It must be here. Far from consigning such an artifact to the trash heap, Granum must have expected him and buried it in so much junk it didn't matter that Drifter knew where to look. “If I were Granum, where would I put you?”
He spotted a battered cabinet. It's golden doors had been forced open. It's lock smashed. He mused one of Granum's more famous sayings. “Some doors ought to remain shut? Not in my world view.”
He climbed over heaps and piles. He forced the bent doors a second time.
There it was: a whispering screech that drilled into his ears. He shuddered and it laughed like a banshee's shriek.
He grabbed it. “Alright,” he called to the Tenno, even as the Void-soaked book scorched his fingertips like acid. “I got it!”
Then a power that wasn't his own wrapped around his limbs like cold molasses. It wasn't anything like a Narmer veil ordering him to put the book back. Nonetheless, against his will, he reopened the cabinet and put it down.
sh*t, he had time to think through the slowly reversed actions. Granum's warframe ally was expecting him and exerting their control over the Void pocket to remove him.
He grabbed ahold of that book for dear life and poured his own void power in to counter theirs.
It shouldn't have worked. It didn't help one whit with any other action as he and his Tenno allies were literally rewound through time, backwards through each and every motion until they were all dumped out of the Granum Void at Sister Vala Glarios’ feet. Somehow, he held onto the book with both hands.
Glarios stood next to a gleaming female warframe, who wore a veil on her head and a pair of small artillery cannons on her hips. A fresh squad of Crewmen aimed laser rifles at them. The scrapped MOAs were all back in action too. She said, “Thank you, Protea, for seeing off our unwelcome guests.” Then, she saw he held the page. “How did you-?”
“Hell if I know.”
She drew her sidearm, a sleek Tenet Plinx pistol that made his pistol look inadequate. “Nevermind. Hand it over.”
“No.”
Xaku's powers grasped her gun, stole it, and turned it into a void-made copy of their own. Then they did the same to the Crewmen rifles.
“How the tables turn,” Drifter observed. “Can I go? Or do I have to tell Lavos to transmute you all into chunky salsa?”
Involuntarily, Glarios looked down at the remains of the previous set of crewmen.
Apparently Protea's ability to rewind everyone caught her timeloop didn't extend to rewinding everything.
Then she said, “I can reformat myself with Specter Particles. I'll take my chances.”
All of Xaku's guns fired.
Drifter felt the familiar stuck-in-molasses stickiness of Protea's rewind.
A moment later, all of Xaku's guns sucked up their fired shells. Then they vanished. The Crewmen had their guns back. Vala Glarios had her Plinx back. This time, as soon as the rewind ended, she leveled it at his forehead.
“Go ahead, Tenno,” she dared. “He can't die. Not permanently. But me and Protea can make him relive the experience of blowing his brains out as many times as you want.”
Despite himself, he flinched.
That, more than anything else, held the Tenno back from unleashing their murderous impulses.
Vala grinned. “That's more like it.”
Then she grabbed him. With the cold circle of the Plinx's barrel to his chin, he had no choice but to march back to the boat bay where she ordered his Tenno allies off the ship. Cephalon Cy backed up the railjack beyond firing range.
“Give me the book,” she said. “Then I'll pack you on our last crewship as a free man so long as you don’t repeat,” she nodded meaningfully at Protea, “your stupidity of thinking you could get away with stealing from Brother Parvos.”
The book had not stopped mocking his predicament. In fact, it was taking more and more of his innate void power to keep it contained to the book. It, like Parvos Granum, didn’t believe in little things like shut doors. Like a parasite, it wanted to worm its way into his brain.
If Protea's time-warping powers were less absolute, he would’ve flung the book at her and hoped that imminent corruption distracted her long enough for him to bolt for it. Unfortunately, she’d just rewind him as soon as he moved a muscle.
He had no choice.
Well, he did, but getting trapped in a time loop of his head being blown off again and again was more than he was prepared to suffer for a book.
Reluctantly, he handed it over.
Vala holstered her Plinx and took it from him with a pair of tongs. Protea opened up a small pocket to the Granum Void. The book was tucked safely away in the junk heap.
His crewmen escort boarded their crewship.
He said, “Well, this has been a pleasant waste of time. I underestimated you.”
Vala smiled. “I know.”
“See you soon?” As soon as she drew her Plinx, however, he knew he’d been had. “I'm not getting on that crewship, am I?”
“Of course you are.” She directed him with her Plinx to board ahead of her. “We’re going to Brother Parvos’ flagship. He’s quite interested in cracking that book’s secrets. Protea is too valuable an asset to risk. You’re perfect.”
If glares could kill, he'd be a free man and even Protea couldn’t stop him. “So I’m your prisoner?”
“How the tables turn,” she purred.
