tampered | Log:Ongoing

Log:Ongoing

When; Today
Rating; PG
Characters; Lyra

lyra_of_dust and Nagarov

beast_unbound
Summary; Lyra decides to snoop around, and gets into more than she expected.
Log;

Lyra hadn't really been intending to break into the locked off parts of Nagarov's shop. Really, she'd just stopped by for a chat with the man, but then she'd noticed the air vents, and she remembered that one scene in the movie, with people crawling around inside it, and she decided it had been a little too long since she'd had an adventure, no matter how Pan felt. It wasn't like he'd been lecturing her- he'd hadn't spoken after she gotten into the ventilation shaft, though she could still feel his disapproval and exasperation.

Lyra bit her lip as she crawled forward slowly, trying to make as little noise as possible as she headed in the direction that led to the space behind a locked door.

It didn't take too long to find another opening, and with some struggle, she forced the cover off, tumbling out with an "oof!" before she began to look around. She wasn't exactly sure what she had expected, but this certainly wasn't it.

She couldn't tell if what was in front of her was a living thing or some kind of machine, and she had no idea what it was supposed to do, but she took a few steps closer to inspect it as Pan sniffed tentatively.

"Don't touch it. You don't know what it does, and it might be dangerous. Or you'll break it, and then we'll be in more trouble than you've already gotten into."

"And just go back, after we've already gotten in?" Lyra said, but she jerked her hand back, "You're curious to, about all this. He en't going to mind if we just walk around a bit, either, and if you don't want to be here, you can go back on your own."

Pantalaimon was skeptical, but he followed Lyra, glancing around them as she started moving away from the vent, and letting Lyra lead the way.

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The inner chamber was nothing like the shiny new machine shop that led to it. Sealed behind locked and bolted doors, the core of the factory was a huge, dimly-lit morass of machine and tendrils. The vent's cover landed in a red mass instead of clanging to the ground; the substance shifted, rippled, and curled around it before drawing away and going about its business of feeding into one of the machines.

The one Lyra's hand was near, incidentally. It could have been some kind of static fleshy body, or it could have been a machine...but it seemed quite a lot like both. As the red fibers led in from a patch on the base, they stretched to another metal panel and disappeared behind it. Wires and tissue merged together as the fibers pulled a piston to and fro, back and forth, perfectly in sync with the machines next to it.

There was something...off, about the core. Nagarov rarely formed expressions from force of habit, but it was something good to practice, so he drew his brows together, raised one a little, and turned his thoughts away from visual input.

Something was moving within. Something not him, foreign, different.

A mouse? The warehouse had pockets of them here and there, although there was little food for them where no one lived.

Near Lyra's feet, the red streams on the floor shifted with the soft vibrations of her steps, inching closer to them, crawling along the ground as if it had intent. The walls were warm, the air shifting into and out of the machines like the breath of an animal, like she had walked into the mouth of a huge sleeping beast.

Pan's senses were sharper than Lyra's, but even she knew that something was strange, and she gasped and watched the floor warily.

She shared Pantalaimon's anxiety, as he shared her curiousity, the two sensations blending together in a rush of adrenaline. While she would never admit it, probably not even to herself, Lyra was scared. Not paralyzed by it, not willing to turn and head back, but enough to send prickles down her spine and making her more aware the shadows, and the sounds around her.

Neither she nor Pan were in the mood to talk much- if one spotted something, the other would know. She was nervous, yes, but she was in control of herself, and her fear wasn't going to stop her curiousity. Not when she was facing something so strange, especially if it wasn't trying to kill her. Still, Pan had a point. Better not to disturb anything.

At the back of the chamber were two large metal tanks with hoses running from their sides, a network of muscular valves pumping pistons that added a higher frequency to the heart-like bass. Near them, suspended at about her head level on a small platform, an array of wires on an unidentifiable part sat below a probe that looked not unlike a bat's wing, the end finger-bone a tiny claw that poked and prodded and moved the wires into exact location. Part of the wing's base stretched up to the ceiling, moved across in a smooth trail, and stretched down to brush Lyra's neck and shoulder.

Human. It pulled him out of his thoughts and back to the situation at hand. There was someone in the interior rooms. How had they -- no, the doors were still closed and locked and showed no sign of tampering.

...The grate. Something had fallen out and onto him before, but he had been more focused on other matters to pay attention to falling tiny debris. But someone had pushed through the grate.

His human form melted, ran together like wax, and drained out through the floor and into the vents. He would give the human a chance to explain themselves, and then he would see what to do from here. He was feeling curious.

From behind Lyra, below the vent from which she had come, a mottled red mass rose from the floor.

Lyra flinched, jerking away from the contact and breaking her focus on the probe as Pantalaimon made a soft noise of distress, and darted over to her side, scrambling up into her arms.

Don't panic. Don't be afraid. Lyra took a few deep breaths, holding her daemon against her chest before letting him climb up to her shoulders. She'd been through worse, she reminded herself, and she bit her lip as her expression shifted from anxiety to determination. As curious as she was, she felt Pan's suggestion to go back to the vent, and get out. She nodded absentmindedly. After all, there were other ways to figure out what was going on, besides poking at things- her hand brushed against a leather pouch by her side, before her muscles suddenly tensed at a jolt of alarm from her daemon. Pantalaimon was looking behind her, and he'd seen something.

The pine marten was staring at him as he rose up from the floor, forming first a column, then a humanoid outline, then arms, legs, a head. A face. Suddenly the alien thing looked human, colors and all, as if nothing had happened. Realistic to the painstakingly placed hairs on his arms and lashes on his eyes.

As he pulled himself into place, the light sensors settled into place in his eyes, and then there was the girl.

The little duet, the one that was two. The floor drew away from her feet, leaving a clear patch of floor; the tendril beside her snapped back up and returned to its probe; the machines took on a slow and wary thrum.

"Lyra?" What was she doing here? And so soon after he had learned of her, as well...

Pantalaimon's eyes widened as he saw the thing take form, although he was silent, but he didn't leave Lyra's shoulders.

Lyra didn't turn around until she heard Nagarov's voice, and then she turned around, glancing at him with an expression that was both wary and a little sheepish, and she suddenly remembered their early conversations, and the implication that her new acquaintance wasn't human. Well, that would probably explain a few things, but she and Pantalaimon could sort that out later, once they were alone. For now, she'd have to come up with some kind of explanation.

"Nagarov?" Her voice was surprised, not frightened, and she let her muscles relax.

"Ah- I was exploring, and-"

His expression didn't change for several seconds, as if it were frozen in place, but his eyes moved to settle on her. Finally, it all came together, chest moving with breaths that never came, fingers curled just a bit into a natural pose, weight settling into the legs.

This was all how he never expected, and although he had improvised many times before, he preferred for things not to go this awry. Nevertheless, always be understanding for the humans:

"I didn't secure this place as well as I had thought." Well, there was a truth if he ever heard one. "This was to be expected, eventually." He just hadn't expected her. Anyone curious enough to enter was simply another fly in the trap, but right now, confronted with this peculiar one...

He didn't know how to process it. He didn't care about her, particularly. He didn't know her well at all. But the nature that she had, the one like his, was something that intrigued him. She had so much potential. And so he would let her live.

In the face of that conclusion, he asked his many selves, now what do we do with her knowledge?

Lyra's face and posture didn't betray much of what was actually going through her head- deception was second nature, even if in the city she hadn't excercized it so much. So her voice was calm, as she explained, "I think you forgot about the vents- It was easier than some other places, actually."

She silently urged Pantalaimon to relax, and she felt him comply, clambering off her shoulders into her arms. Better- now, to reassure him that she wasn't going to go around shouting about this from the rooftops-while this was actually her intention, she still needed to be convincing.

"So this place is... Well, you pretty much told us you weren't human," No point in playing an idiot, after all. He wouldn't believe it, anyway.

"Yes. I've been so busy setting up...that I've grown lax in my construction." His hand rose to his forehead for a moment, fingers rubbing at the temples, and then they lowered again as he caught a flash of movement. His eyes flicked to the girl's second half as it climbed into her arms and settled there.

"Yes, that is true. We remember." He smiled now at her comment, and for once the gesture matched his mental state. There was a certain joy he took in information, and potential, and advancement. "This place is many things."

He was smiling- well that was a good sign, most likely.

Many things... The thought echoed through Lyra's mind, and she glanced down as she realized what Pan was thinking. It seemed nonsensical, but Pan's senses were sharper than hers, and the whole place did seem like a living thing...

"This place... It's a part of you, isn't it?"

The smile lessened to half-power, and he took a slow, deep breath. The pistons, the tanks, the working machines, the entire room breathed alongside him in a rush that ruffled Lyra's hair.

"A good observation. One many wouldn't quite reach." He raised both hands for a moment, encompassing the area. "It's not often a human stands inside another creature, but you seem unafraid." The floor trails crept a little closer, forming a ring around her feet that gave her a step or two of room but no more.

Lyra didn't let her body tense. She shrugged, and her mouth twisted into a small smile, a partially genuine one.

"It's not often that humans do a lot of things- and this en't as scary as some of 'em, anyway."

"It isn't supposed to be frightening, or anything besides what it is." He narrows his eyes a little, but it's a calculated motion now, one of faintest approval. The smile stays eerily still for a the moment he peers at her, and then he moves entirely to lay a hand on one of the machines. "But humans tend to be afraid of us nonetheless." It is only reasonable.

She's a tough little girl, or she has seen much. Either way, she isn't quite like a typical human. She never quite was. He files that away with a sense of satisfaction.

"Tell us your thoughts." The way he says it has a certain desire to it, one that matches the look in his eyes as he searches her unwavering face, one meant to make note of the interest he had in her. "It's not often we can speak to another on our own terms."

Perhaps this would hint as to what she would do now. He didn't want to come out and tell her that she had to keep her knowledge to herself, because that would give her perceived power over him. He couldn't ask her what she would do with it, because that would betray his concern. He couldn't feign disinterest, because that would show that was deliberately not taking the situation seriously. So he would show her just enough of his real self to be non-human, but not so much as to be alien. She could appreciate curiosity.

Lyra nodded absentmindedly, nodding her head slightly. Telling him all of her thoughts didn't cross her mind, of course, but there were a few things she had to admit.

"Well... I'm en't telling anyone else about this, because that would just make a mess of things," For several reasons.

"I was surprised to meet you, at first. Outside of my own world... Pan and I never met many people like us, even in the city. So... I'm glad we met you, and this whole place... It's amazing. Pan and I... we've never seen anything like it."

Good enough, although there had to be some kind of negative thought in there somewhere. Clever, not admitting it. She clearly had a strong handle on her actions.

"It's biology, albeit complex biology." He takes a step forward, his feet moving atop the trails, a walking-on-water look as he passes Lyra. "I suppose that qualifies as amazing to those who haven't lived with it."

As he walks by, he extends a long-fingered hand toward Pantalaimon, to brush the marten's fur. He doesn't expect anything magical to happen, but nevertheless it was intriguing. "And I've never seen anything like this. Magical, to me." He restrains himself from grabbing the little creature by its nape and picking it up just yet. She may trust him, or she may not. "Is that why all of your world has these beings? Magic?"

"It's like a machine, almost." Honestly, it's a little unnerving, though still fascinating.

"Magic? No, there's a science behind it. Although the two... They en't always entirely-" And then he's reaching forward, and Pan flinches backwards, but he can't get far enough away to avoid him. It would have been worse if he'd actually grabbed Pan, but as it was, it was enough to make her shudder. The wrongness of anyone touching her daemon made her knees wobble. as Pantalaimon slid out of her arms to hide behind her feet, she grabbed his wrist, holding it away from her.

"Don't- touch him. That's wrong-" she forced out. The nausea was starting to subside a bit, but her face was still pale.

Fascinating. Entirely fascinating. His eyes seemed to light as the marten dashed down behind her feet.

Her hand holds his wrist away with surprising force, her face gone pale in the dim light, and he turns his fingers to reverse the hold and clasp her own arm. "Yet you stand here." His tone isn't menacing, or angry, just bland. Stating the obvious. He reaches out and lays the other hand on her shoulder, his fingers lengthening until they are long red tendrils that wrap around and link together to form a loop about her arm. The chamber's sounds are shifting now, the idle piston beat turning to an asynchronous pounding, all the frequencies off pace, the bat-wing probe turning away from its inspection of the biocircuitry and toward them both.

"You're a kindred spirit of sorts, Lyra. Most interesting to find. I never expected to see a human quite like us." His eyes settle on hers, and they're frozen in time now, no longer pretending to be human. A flat mask.

She twitched at the contact, but her legs were starting to become more stable, and she shut her eyes, briefly. Pan could hear the change in the pounding- was Nagarov anxious as well? His face had changed-it might as well have been a mask, for all she could read from it.

Her instinct would have been to bolt, to ger free, but she knows that's not an option. Calm. Stay calm, because there was no reason for panicking to get her anywhere.

"You've said something like that before, though hhere's a lot of stuff in this city no one expected to find. But I can't actually do stuff like this," she added, slightly shaking the arm he'd encircled for reference. She knew Pantalaimon was incredulous at her for making a joke, but she wasn't sure exactly know what to say- she didn't know what he wanted, which made lying a trickier proposition- no point in digging herself in deeper, after all.

"There is much here, and we intend to find it all. We have all the time until the end of worlds." His lips quirked in a weird smile that clashed with his unmoving eyes. Now the wing was sliding along the ceiling, dipping down so that its folds opened entirely. The trails on the floor closed in on the ring around Lyra's feet, creeping over her ankles, winding around her legs to hold her in place.

"We're aware that you can't, but you have your own secrets, just as we have ours." He motioned down toward Pan with his free arm. The wing's tip came to rest on her neck. "Any sufficiently advanced technology, or biology, is indistinguishable from magic. And that, Lyra, is a power all its own."

Not good. Lyra gritted her teeth in frustration as her eyes narrowed.

Well, running wasn't an option, and even if he meant her harm, she doubted there were any birds to come to her rescue this time. This wasn't the time for being frightened, this was the time to make sure she stayed safe.

"My secret?" she asked, biting her lip and allowing her free hand to brush across the leather pouch by her side. Yes... That would probably work. She probably didn't have any choice besides being truthful- she wasn't dealing with a human, and he might have been able to detect a lie.

"Right... Well, after I've found one of yours, it's only fair I tell you one of mine. Nagarov... Have you ever heard of a man named Lord Asriel?"

He spots the motion, and her unorthodox calm intrigues him. And she offers a secret -- while she could be lying, it seems that she wis more inclined to try to get her way out of this seriously than to blindly bluff her way into a worse situation than she is in. The bindings around her arm shift and tense their fibers.

"No, we haven't." His voice is breaking up a little; it echoes weirdly from other areas of the chamber, and the tones that make it up are dissociating just enough to notice. This opportunity is unparalleled. If he could find out how the creature worked, and how they were bound together, and...

He's acting like a human, he chastises himself. So eager.

"Huh... So your universe didn't get involved in his war, then. That man... He was my father," She lets her head hang down, and her hair falls in front of her face, obscuring her vision.

"He knew how to create openings to other universes... And he used that knowledge to fight a war against the Authority- what people call 'God'. And he actually managed to win, although we don't know how he got such a huge army set up in a few months..." She was being truthful, although she chose to speak of someone other than herself- albeit, someone who she was strongly connected to.

Pan's ears pick up the change in his voice, and he makes a soft sound.

"Your father fought...God?" His tones return to normal, but he's still watching her with those statuesque eyes. Were he not in the City, he wouldn't have given this speech the time of day, but right now it all seemed eerily plausible to him. The coils around her arm loosen their hold, still keeping her in place but sliding in a smooth ring rather than clamping down. "Continue."

Disconnected from this humanoid-self, the probe tenses as it adjusts and lowers onto the back of her neck and rests there on the skin. Its thin sensing tip draws a single bead of blood, but it doesn't have the bite of a needle, just a faint burn like a razor's nick that subsides as soon as it comes.

Lyra barely stopped herself from letting out a sigh of relief. Instead, she twitched her legs, trying to see if the tendrils had loosened any.

"That man... Everyone feared him. And apparently they were right to. I don't know how he knew what he did, although the alethiometer might have been a part of it. He and his daemon... They figured out a way to do it. And everyone thought he was mad!" The recitation actually helped take her mind off of her current predicament, and she didn't bother to look Nagarov in the eyes.

The holds on her legs are still strong, and although she has drawn herself away from Nagarov's original strategy, she has interested him in this tale instead. As he listens, he settles back onto his heels in a fluid shift, the machines around him syncing up into a slow, rhythmic, booming pulse that betrays his focus.

"Alethiometer?" The pulse pauses for a beat, then continued at pace. It is more obvious what a daemon was, from context -- it had to be that creature at her side -- but this word is entirely alien.

The probe is waiting there, with its tip just below the surface, in case she falls silent or resists. He doesn't want to break his first human here so quickly, but if she decides to, he will find a way to get his information without destroying her current form.

Lyra sighed, and tried not to squirm She would have considered sending Pan off to get help, but... That wouldn't have worked, and she wasn't about to give Nagarov an excuse to touch Pantalaimon again.

"A device, from my world. It means 'Truth Measure'. They're... They're something the Church didn't like, so they killed the man who made them- and tried to destroy most of them... And Lord Asriel was able to figure out how they worked. Can you let me go now? It's not like I could get out of this place or anything," She knew the last part was childish, but being immobilized like that was irritating.

He raises his brows, the coils around her legs loosening, and his faint frozen smile turns into a wider grin. "Very well." She has a point -- she can't get out unless he permits her now -- and so he nods once and withdraws the hold on her legs. "Now, this alethiometer. It is...a complex lie detector?"

He sounds skeptical as he withdraws his hand, glancing at the pouch her hand had brushed, and brings a hand to his chin.

Lyra exhaled, then shook her head before sitting down on the floor.

Pantalaimon moved into her lap, and she held him against her chest, feeling her heartbeat against him.

"No. It was... The man who made 'em was interested in astrology... Divination- that was hundreds of years ago. But the alethiometer... It actually worked. It was just that no one knew why," This was storytelling, and even if she was being honest, it was still enjoyable.

"Divination." He gives her a skewed glance, a flicker of red passing over his hands. "Do you have one of these items, Lyra?"

"Yes... The one that Lord Asriel used to have..." She noticed the red passing over his hands, and she made a face.

"You won't be able to find out how it works by taking it apart. What makes it work... It en't just inside of it."

"Then where is it?" He didn't look at her this time, but the absence of such and his nonchalant tone were a telling change. The probe was dangling behind Lyra, still in its foreboding position, and if she said the words, he would have all the confirmation he needed.

(I can't figure out if we're supposed to write in present tense or past tense. I'm following you, unless I screw up because I'm not thinking.)

Lyra shuddered. She had a pretty good idea where all of this was going, but she . Well, it was time to tell the truth.

"It's all around us... When I was first using it, I sort of knew that something intelligent was moving the needle, and it wasn't human, and I was scared... But Lord Asriel actually said it out loud. It's Dust," She shook her head slightly.

"And for what Dust is, well... It's a very strange elementary particle." She'd leave it at that. If he wanted further explanations, well... He'd have to do the research himself.

Interesting. So it really was science. Elementary particles forming some kind of intelligence...strange, seemingly impossible, and unheard of. The answer was not what he expected -- he had been waiting for her to say that she was the only one who could operate the device.

"So, this Dust is what drives your machine." He extended a hand toward her, turning to face her again. "Since you know how to use it, demonstrate it."

Lyra blinked. That was all?

"Fine. I'll let you pick the question- ask me something I ought to have no way of finding out- and don't pick something you'll be upset about me knowing, please," she said, forcing a great deal of sarcasm into that last word.

Pick the question? He stared at her in faint confusion for a moment. ...Oh! It saw the truth not as a lie detector, but as a device that told the truth about whatever you wanted it to.

The floor rippled and shifted around her as he watched her move, hoping he could ensnare the little gadget as soon as she was done with it. It was obvious now that she had it with her, it was small, and so long as this Dust was still in it, it functioned. If she had to be the one to use it, that would be most unfortunate, but he had no qualms about keeping her here to use it.

But the question. Ah, he could ask so many things, but he wouldn't be so human and predictable as to trap her with this one. He tapped his chin with his thumb, a habit he had trained himself in many times before remembering to do it. Something she ought to have no way of finding out.

He lowered the hand and turned toward her. "What was the last planet I lived on?" Since it wasn't one of the Big Three that he had told others, she couldn't guess. Chances are she didn't even know that Tau Ceti II existed.

A planet... The name would be tricky, but she trusted her own skills.

The question was easy to frame, letting the three hands slide to the globe, the compass, and the beehive.

The answer, though, took a bit longer. The answer was in terms of the name... And with a device that spoke in symbols, figuring out pronunciation was a bit of a puzzle.

"Uh..." Damn it, why'd he have to ask something like that? Oh well. Hopefully, his curiousity would be satisfied, and she could leave. She was supposed to show up at work soon, to.

"T-Tau Sentee Two," She said, pronouncing each word carefully, "Did I say it right?" Asking if she had the correct answer would, of course, be absurd.

The room's sounds faded to a quiet halt as he watched her look up from the strange flat gadget and say the words.

"...Yes." His eyes tracked the device now like a hawk watching an unwitting mouse. "Yes, that's it."

The pneumatic hiss of a single pulse. A red line rising up from the floor, a little periscope, reaching toward the alethiometer and her hand as if enthralled by the very look of it. A red-gloved hand extending to trace the edge of its cap.

This...could tell him anything. Everything. And he would never, ever be outsmarted again...

His voice was a blunt snap in the silence. "Teach us to use it." The grate on the vent rose up the wall, dragged by a set of red cords, and stuck into its gap with a discordant clank.

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Log:Ongoing

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