Tumbles fell.

As sand and rock and a desert night sky taunted him, insulted him, pointed out the predictability of his current circumstances, he closed his eyes. This fall would be the fall that killed him. All his journeys, all his discoveries, his bag full of old scrolls and his head full of old knowledge, gone. And of course, his life would be gone too, but no loss there.

This life was a waste. Dirty. Broken. Bent! Such a bad break. His friends had had solid, sturdy, stable lives. Good lives. His? Quicksand. No foundation. Just loose sand that sent him tumbling all the time. The fact he earned the name Tumbles was, as Wordy told him, deliciously perfect.

Well Wordy, he was about to join you in the land of blue sands.

Except, not. As the blackness of the pit cave swallowed him, he felt a slope of rock catch him. There was only blackness now, the cave devouring him like one of the sand worms, but a sand worm’s insides were probably soft and acidic, and his head, arms, and legs kept slamming into more and more hard, dry things as he rolled. The softness of a sand worm’s insides would have been a much more pleasant death, he figured.

Eventually the rocks were like a dune of large of grains of sand, enough that he slid down them instead of bouncing down them. They still cut him, and tore through his white, loose, thin clothing; a must for the desert, but horrible for blocking the nasty bites of sharp stone. They greeted him with as much malice as the dune gnats, and he winced and groaned and yelped with each cut and bruise. But, soon, he was still, no longer tumbling, no longer sliding, and staring up at a cave ceiling.

Alive! He got up, regretted it, and tried getting up more slowly the second time. All his bones worked, but they ached, and demanded he sit back down in the darkness on the cave floor. Well, he wasn’t going to do that, and he forced himself up onto wobbly knees. There was light, a little, managing to break through the hole above him. Way, way, way above him. He groaned all the more as he looked up, hand to his head to keep his loosened white turban secure. A tiny hole poked in through the mouth of the cave above. Enough light to see by, just.

“ ... it’s supposed to be here.” The old scroll had said the strange doors were here. Course, the scroll was generations old, and the dunes did not hold still. Maybe if the dunes did not move with time, this wouldn’t have been a hole instead of doors, waiting to swallow him? How did you manage to deal with the flow of time, Wordy?

With another groan, he walked back to the slope of rocks. A big hole in the ground, and it was a very big hole, easily a hundred feet. He wouldn’t be scaling that in sandals.

“By the sands! Dead, I’m dead. Dead!” He pulled his foot back, and took a kick at a rock. At the last moment, he remembered the sandals, and raised his foot high enough to miss the rock, only for the momentum to knock him back on his ass.

Tumbles you moron, you’re going to get yourself killed, after surviving a cave in! Calm down, calm down and breathe.

He forced himself to standing, and looked around as best he could. Darkness, rocks, a strip of light. Anything good? It was much cooler underground than the desert sands of the day, that was true. But all he saw was rocks. The scroll had said—bag! Where was his bag? Where was ... Groaning, he walked over to some large rocks, massive rocks, and looked down at the tiny bit of his bag’s strap sticking out from thousands of pounds of rock.

Dead, so dead. Dead and now he couldn’t even check the scroll. And his sand rider was above on the desert sands, sitting there, waiting to be taken. He backed away, head hanging, and kept walking backward until he put his back to the metal of the cave wall behind him. Metal?

He screamed and jumped away as the metal began to grind, immense moans shaking the cave as it tried to move itself, slide itself upward. Metal, up? It was trying to go up! Like a war machine garage! Except, not curving upward with sections, this metal door was sliding straight up. And it was a metal door underground! Why was there a metal door underground? The scroll had said there’d be ruins here, but this made no sense. And why was it moving!?

He stared at the old metal, eyes wide, gaze scanning across the wide surface looking for some sort of identifying mark. But the sands and the rolling rocks of centuries were not kind to anything, and even underground metal would suffer as the sand worms upturned the earth over the years. Bunkers and other hideaways or storage places from the ancient times were nothing but metal boxes now, and they had to be broken into. This metal door had to be from the ancient times, but it was moving on its own; they never did that. Or at least it was trying to move on its own, but grinding sounds vibrated inside his grave, and he raised his hands to cover his ears as it grew to a crushing scream.

Was someone on the other side trying to lift the door? No, couldn’t be, that wouldn’t explain the noises. Unless a hundred men were pulling on enormous chains like in the South Machine Pits. Or maybe a grand engine, drinking deep of Earth blood, like the great lifts of the Repair City Omata? No, none of that or anything like that would be here, many miles from any village. This metal door shouldn’t be moving.

But it was, and did. As if lifting a mountain, as if lifting all of the sands of the world with it, the strange, flat, smooth, metal door, began to slide up into rock. He could see curves of metal, some sort of door frame, maybe ten feet high and ten feet wide that the door slid up into. Dust and dirt and hundreds of years of rock were snug to the metal frame, burying it, and the whole building beneath stone. But still the door managed to start lifting, and Tumbles winced all the more as he pressed his palms tight to his ears to try and block out the thundering rumbles and ear-splitting screech of metal grinding metal.

Silence greeted him, and so too did a hallway of darkness. Might as well have said ‘Tumbles come in here and die’ written in Earth blood lit on fire.

Behind him, was a cave wall he could not climb, and likely to bury him the moment he tried. Before him, was a large hallway, dark, details lost to shadow. What would Wordy do? He’d say something smart, something catchy, like ‘go forward when you can, unless it’s a sand worm, then go around.’ He only had the one choice anyway.

He dragged himself past the doorway, and sucked in his breath with a loud gasp as his eyes betrayed him. The walls were smooth! Smooth smooth, actual smooth. And ... they had lights! Lights were coming on, just like at the camp! Except these weren’t hooked up to any old energy machines, running on Earth blood with a grumble and groan. These lights were slick, silent, tall and thin, and they glowed a pure white as they overflowed the room. More, and more, some flickering, but most turning on gently, like the rising sun.

The floor was flat, and the color of a war machine, almost black but not quite. The ceiling too. No dust, despite how stale the air tasted, and he knew for sure no one had been in this room since ... since ... since the Reckoning! He started to tremble as he continued forward, lights continuing to light up as he moved along, and exposing more of the room. Another door, with a symbol carved into the metal surface. An animal? Some sort of bird, but it looked nothing like the dead-eaters he knew of, the only birds he’d ever seen. One of the birds of myth, then?

As he approached, a loud, machine groan surrounded him, and he fell onto his very bruised ass. Yelping, he stared on as steam started to drip out of vent holes above him.

“Decontamination in process.”

What in the sands? He forced himself back to his feet, shaking and wobbling, but standing, and stared up at the vents as the cool mist fell upon him.

The door closed behind him. He gulped, and turned to look at it, his entryway gone, his exit gone. Oh no, he was going to have an early reckoning at this rate. Wordy always said he’d tumble into a death hole. He didn’t mean literally!

“Facility damage critical. Back up systems damaged. Main power offline. Failsafe date passed as per Historics Act VI. Initiating emergency state 1-3-2-9. Beta clearance now provided to all access grades. Please contact engineering lead Doctor Fraam Dovnitz.”

“Um ... o-ok?” Talking. The walls were talking to him. Crazy gas? No, no it couldn’t have been crazy gas. This steam felt like water and it smelled like water, sort of. But none of the words made any sense. And he didn’t recognize the walls’ accent either ... and why did the walls sound like a woman? Why did the walls talk at all?

“Decontamination failure. Contamination levels grade B. State 1-3-2-9: acceptable contamination level. Please report emergency situation to Commander Joshua Vernimer.”

“I’ll ... I’ll do that.” Could the wall understand him? It, she, or whatnot, didn’t seem to be able to see him, or if it did, it didn’t care he wasn’t what it thought he was. He—the door! It started to slide open, slick and smooth, two doors pulling apart like a freshly greased bullet gun. He gulped again, and stepped into the new room.

No way, there was no way this was happening. He’d found a vault! One of the old vaults, from before the reckoning. A vault that hadn’t been opened in hundreds of years! Many thought they were legends, that they never existed! Oh, by the sands, he was in a vault!

And, being that he was Tumbles, he was probably going to die in the vault. Couldn’t climb back up, even if he could get the door behind him open. And there was bound to be something in the vault that would kill him. Because he was Tumbles.

The lights in the larger room were working better, less flickering. More of that weird, white steam was dripping down from vent holes too, but dispersing before it managed to reach the clean, smooth floor. So smooth. Did the people before the Reckoning always keep things so smooth? If you walked on it, why keep it smooth? Dirt and grit and bumps and grooves were better for not slipping, and not tumbling.

More lights started to turn on, from behind a glass wall. Glass, actual glass, clean and clear and slick and smooth glass. Beautiful. He came closer, hands up to his chest and elbows at his sides, ready to defend himself against the inevitable traps. But, what sort of traps did the Ancient Ones use? It was easy to look around for leg traps, with everything so open and smooth. Maybe ... maybe they could use the guns of old, and turn him into ash?

He came up to the glass, and stared. It was a window. So rare, so clean. It was tall, maybe ten feet high, and twenty feet long. On his side of the window were weird desk things, with buttons on them, and glowing symbols he recognized from the ancient symbols. No one could read them. By the sand, he wished he could read them.

On the other side of the glass was another big room, with a lot more of that strange steam coming down the walls from more vents, enough that the floor was covered in the steam, and it was hard to see the other side of the room. There was something in there though, something in the middle, some sort of big tube, slick, solid, smooth. It had a window too, so he could see what was inside the tube.

A person was inside the big tube.

“What in the sands!?”

“Query unrecognized. Please reword and restate query.”

He jumped and spun around. That woman’s voice again, coming from everywhere, from nowhere, and he gulped loud enough he could hear it in the dead silence of the vault.

And it told him to ... reword and restate query? Query, like, a question? The only person he’d ever heard use the word query was the Gun Lord of the East, an intelligent man with a penchant for shooting off kneecaps.

“Um ... who are you?”

“Miranda class interface protocol, version 8.3.1.”

He understood maybe half of those words. “W-Where am I?”

“R&D Center 43.”

“Forty three? How many R&D centers are there?” And what did R&D mean? He could ask that later.

“Classified, Alpha clearance only. Number in designation does not indicate amount.”

“Um, ok, um ... uh...” He was talking to a ... a machine? “Are you ... are you alive?”

“Miranda class interface protocol, version 8.3.1.”

“I know! But, are you ... um ... can you think?”

“Miranda class interface protocol, version 8.3.1.”

Ok, if this talking, invisible machine in the walls was alive, it wasn’t very smart. He thought maybe the Ancient Ones had made machines that were like people, intelligent. If they had, this voice thing didn’t sound like one of them. Oh! Better question.

“How ... how long has it been since the Reckoning?”

“Define Reckoning.”

“The Reckoning! The war! The great war that left the scorched Earth! That birthed the sands!”

“The war of 2092 was the last recorded war in history. Reports ceased before war was designated as ended.”

“Before it ended? When ... when was the last report?”

“Classified. Emergency state Beta clearance granted. Last report was on August 12th, 2092.”

Whatever Beta clearance was, it was helping him out quite a bit. “No, I mean, how many years has it been since then?”

“It has been 1274 years since the last report.”

Oh by the sands. Over a thousand years since the Ancients were killed. Wow. Wow! Proof that the Ancients existed, proof that they died in some kind of war, proof that they had vaults! Or R and D centers, whatever that meant. Wordy would have died of joy to know this.

“And ... and um ... what’s in there?” He pointed to the tube with the person inside. They must have been a corpse or something, considering how long this vault must have gone without being opened.

“Classified. Emergency state Beta clearance granted. Immortals Mark 8 in cryo-storage.”

He threw himself away from the glass, onto his ass once again, and scampered away until a good twenty feet were between him and the glass.

“One of the Im-m-m-mortals? They caused the Reckoning! The last great war!”

“The war of 2092 was caused by the assassination of political figure Abraham Leblanc. No Immortals units were deployed during this war, according to the last report.”

Ok, ok, he had a chance to learn some truth, instead of legends passed on by word of mouth. Ask something important! What would Wordy ask?

“ ... Define Immortals.” The machine had asked him to define Reckoning, why not return the favor?

“Classified. Emergency state Beta clearance granted. Immortals are elite combat units developed by the First States Alliance. As a deterrence measure, the twelve best soldiers employed by the countries in the First States Alliance were upgraded with the latest in nano technology, synthetic flesh grade F38, and powered by a miniaturized, internal nuclear fission core. Based upon the previous failures in cyborg technology, new cyborgs were designed to have synthetic bodies that closely resembled their original bodies, to prevent terminal brain dissonance. The result was the Immortals, cyborg soldiers that do not age, function for thousands of years on a single fission core, have extreme strength and reflexes, and require almost no food or water. Unlike previous attempts at cyborg technology, it was deemed imperative that Immortal synthetic bodies share some human functionality, to both prevent terminal brain dissonance, but also to prevent psychotic breakdowns in the human mind due to lack of familiar stimulus, as the Omega units proved was required. They—”

“Ok! Ok, I get it. Super soldiers...” Easy to say, hard to imagine.

A loud crash forced him to turn around. He recognized that sound, even with these weird metal doors and walls between him and it. The sound of a cave in. Crash, bang, crash. Over, and over, loud enough he had to cover his ears, and hard enough he could feel the vibrations shake the whole of the Earth. So it wasn’t the contents of the vault that were going to kill him, it was the desert herself. She never did like Tumbles very much.

“Entry point B now compromised.”

“Yes, thank you! Because, yeah, the giant falling rock bang sounds didn’t make that obvious! ... are there any entry points not compromised?”

“Negative. All three entry points into R&D Center 43 are compromised. Please initiate emergency measures to insure rescue.”

He sighed, walked back over to the glass, and banged his head against it. Didn’t matter if he accidentally woke up the Immortal thing now, he was going to die. He wouldn’t have been able to climb out of the hole anyway, let alone move an avalanche. He was a small guy! Smallish anyway. Lean and strong, but that only went so far when you were kind of short and kind of light.

No rescue was coming. Hell, even if the village he last visited knew where he was, no one would have cared. No one alive would care he was going to die. The only person who was going to see him die was a machine from the ancient days. Such a sad reckoning.

“ ... can ... can the Immortal ... Mark 8 be revived?”

“This Immortals unit is in cryo-suspension. Deactivating cryo-suspension requires Beta clearance. Emergency state Beta clearance granted. Do you wish to revive the Immortal Mark 8?”

He gulped, loud enough for the sound to drown out his heart beat, but only for a second. Thud thud thud. He stared on at the tube ahead of him, did his best to see through the mist, and shivered as he locked eyes on the dark skin of the Immortal. His imagination had painted them as giants, a hundred feet tall, armed with enormous guns that spit bullets the size of people, swirling with molten lead. This thing before him didn’t seem much bigger than him, maybe half a foot taller? But, the machine was wrong about the Immortals not being a part of the great war, so was it wrong about other things?

Did any of that matter if he was going to die?

“Are there, um, any other rooms in this place?” he said.

“Affirmative.”

“Great!” He spun around and looked at the walls nearby. If there were doors, they were pretty well hidden, slick and smooth. “I ... uh, where are the doors?”

“Stand by.” Some grinding noises, loud, shrill, dirty and broken, filled his ears and the room too, until the hard sound of grating metal crawled up his legs into his back. He walked toward the sound, and watched on as one of the walls tried to part ways. He was right about the doors being subtle, the mist falling from the walls hiding the cracks of its shape.

“Let me guess, entries to other rooms compromised?”

“Stand by ... Hallway A-B door compromised. Please initiate emergency measures to insure rescue.”

Predictable.

“Is there any way for me to get food or water from in this room, or the room the Immortal is in?”

“Negative. Please initiate emergency measures to insure rescue.”

Dead, so dead. He had no emergency measures! His emergency measure was the sand rider he left topside to explore the hole in the ground! His emergency measure was the little bit of food and three canteens he had of water, in his crushed bag! His emergency measure, was climbing out of the cave, that was probably completely collapsed now!

What now? Nothing he could do now. Trapped in this room, with an Immortal. What do? What do what do what do what do what do.

“ ... awaken the Immortal Mark 8.” By the sands, if he was going to die, might as well do it exploring what ancient mysteries he could uncover. Wordy would say ‘throw yourself to the wind and see what happens’.

“Affirmative. Beginning awakening procedure.”

The sounds, like a dozen men upon war machines riding with blaring trumpets; except, not. He stared on at the tube in the next room, and raised a brow as the kssssh and whirrrr and zzzzzzt tickled his ears. Not loud at all, almost gentle. The steam in the room lessoned, and lessoned, and the tube started to fill with a gentle white light, illuminating the deadly terror inside.

The deadly terror was a woman.

He raised a brow, tilted his head to the side, and watched on as various lights of different colors started to turn on in the tube, tiny ones, like buttons. It looked like the lining in the tube thing was a cushion? Only cushion he’d ever seen that wasn’t hard as stone was the Gun Lord of the East’s throne.

His eyes didn’t stay on the tube for very long though, as the draw of the Immortal caught his eyes. A woman, but not a woman. Tall, fit, lean, strong. He could see her muscles, her abs, her strong-yet-feminine shoulders, the thickness of her legs and tightness of her waist. But as the mist faded and the tube lights finished turning on, he gasped.

The Immortal’s skin was the color of night sky, with layers of curving, sleek armor coming off of her limbs. The armor looked more like proper metal, like steel, and it looked ... pretty, like, whoever made it wanted the pieces of armor to look elegant and slick. She had shoulder pads of the strange metal jutting out of her shoulder, curved with a spike that rounded back, all smooth and shiny. The same with her wrists too. Gauntlets! Or wrist guards, something that left her black hands exposed.

It was the same for her legs, layers of the curved armor covering the outer thigh of each leg, curving downward, with a spike on each curving downward as well, always with slick, smooth shapes. Kneepads of metal as well, with a spike pointing outward and up, like a snake fang. She had shin guards, the dark silver wrapping them, and a few spikes sticking toward their outside. No shoes though. He could see her toes, black, the same as her hands, her stomach, her neck, her breasts, her face.

Face! She had lips, a tint of navy against the night black of her skin. Why the armor of her shoulders, arms and legs did not cover more important areas like the chest or stomach, he did not know, but the passing thought faded as he stared on at her sharp chin, and the dark navy lips beneath her nose. The nose bridge raised into a slick, curving metal barrier that covered the Immortal’s eyes. More than covered, it looked like it was a part of her upper head, dark silver flowing back into large spikes, covering where ears should have been, where hair should have been.

She was beautiful. It made no sense! The armor made no sense, and yet he could not stop staring at the slick machine. Solid. Sturdy. Stable. All the good things he could possibly imagine, the Immortal embodied. It was as if someone had taken a human woman, tall, lean, strong, dipped them into the night sky, and then grafted ornamental silver armor to their arms, legs, and the top of their head. Lines of a brighter silver ran up and down along her dark body in beautiful designs too, curving with the shape of her abs, her breasts, her legs and waist and all the beautiful muscles of a warrior woman. If she asked, she could be accepted as a member of the Silver Eyes, the body of a warrior and huntress and seductress.

Tumbles laughed, and slapped himself in the forehead. There was no use in arranging the words into a story in his mind, when he was going to die, trapped in a vault with an ancient, living war machine.

“Computer, report.”

“Aaah!” He threw himself back and away from the glass, as the voice of the Immortal reached through the window as if it were not there. A woman’s voice. A normal, perfectly normal sounding human voice.

“Catastrophic damage. Facility compromised. Emergency state 1-3-2-9 initiated.”

“... 1-3-2-9. Seriously?” The Immortal of death walked up to the glass, and looked down at him. He thought. She had no eyes! He could not tell where she looked, as the sleek visor of dark silver covered her eyes completely, burying both her of eyes and her forehead in the beautiful metal before it slicked back into spikes curving over her head. “Hey, you, what the fuck happened? Who are you and where’s Doctor Dovnitz?” Such a strange accent!

“I ... I um ... I’m Tumbles. I d-d-d-d ... d-don’t know who Doctor Dovnitz is.”

“ ... Tumbles.”

“Y-Yes ma’am.”

“How about you give me your real name?”

“T-Tumbles is my real name. It was given to me after I became a man.”

“ ... um, what?” The woman walked closer to the glass, and raised her hand. Oh by the sands, he’d offended her! He raised his arms up to defend himself, knowing full well it was pointless. If she wanted, she could destroy the planet. If she wanted, she could—tap tap, tap tap, tap tap. “The fuck are you talking about, when you became a man?” She tapped the glass with one of her fingers.

He lowered his arms, and raised both brows as he stared at the beautiful machine.

“M-My adult name ... Tumbles. I, I um ... I suppose you wouldn’t know, great Immortal, if the world did different things, before the great war.”

“Great war? What? The fucking wa—Computer! Report on Leblanc war.”

“Please narrow query.”

“Oh I don’t know, how it fucking ended? Because there’s a civilian fucker in this highly secret R&D center looking at me like I’m one of the four horseman, and talking about the great war. Fill in the fucking blanks!”

“Last report was on August 12th, 2092. State of Leblanc war unknown.”

“Hmm, a year after I went under. Any other Immortals woken up?”

“Last report indicates no other Immortals have been deployed.”

“Enough with this last report shit, get me Comms!”

“Intel network is down, Immortal Mark 8.”

The Immortal marched back and forth in front of the glass, pacing like an angry wife waiting for her idiot husband to come home so she could kill him.

“Computer, how long since the last report?”

“It has been 1274 years, five months, and thirteen days since the last report.”

The machine of death stopped, turned, and stared at him. This time he could tell, because her body went still with her visor aimed at him, her breathing stopped, and her shaking fists paralyzed at her sides like funeral stones.

“ ... w ... what?” she said.

She didn’t know. Despite the skin of onyx and the divine metals on her limbs and head, he recognized the body language of a human, a normal person, a woman. She reached out, put both hands on the glass, and let her head droop down between her arms and shoulders.

Through it all, Tumbles stared at her, trembling, unable to get up, on his ass and weight behind him on his palms. She didn’t know, and he woke her up. Maybe the computer — whatever that was — wasn’t lying about these Immortals. They were just humans, like him, turned into weapons? And ... and somehow, she’d been sleeping all this time?

“ ... I’m sorry,” he said.

Her head came up, and pointed in his direction, her hands still pressed to the glass as she leaned against it. No eyes, but she did have a mouth and nose, and he could see emotions through them, if only a little of what the eyes normally held.

“The fuck are you sorry for?”

“I, I um ... I fell down here, from the sands. Cave in. This, this um ... computer? It ... it says I’m trapped, that ... that we’re trapped. And um, it said ... I could revive you.” He wasn’t sure what ‘fuck’ meant, and at this point, he was afraid to ask.

“ ... then I should be thanking you.”

“Thanking me!?”

“Yeah. R&D protocol, no actively researched weapon or device can come out of lock down without human interference, even after the Historics date has passed. That includes Immortals in cryo. Of course, we were good to go, bug free by the time the war started, with years of tests and ... whatever, doesn’t fucking matter. We went under until they were sure there were no issues, and I guess the Leblanc war got out of hand during that time ... immensely. Christ, over a thousand years? Really?”

“ ... I ... I have only ... um, Computer, to tell me if that’s true.”

Sighing and grinding her teeth — her tongue was navy like her lips, her teeth silver — she tapped the side of her head, underneath one of the spikes where her ear should have been. “Turning on my AR. Maybe we can confirm.”

“AR?”

“Augmented Reality. I guess you’re only familiar with the sunglasses or contact lenses version. Ha, who the fuck am I kidding, a thousand years? You probably have better shit now.”

“ ... sunglasses? Contact lenses?”

“What? Seriously? Your English not the best or something? Eh, sorry if that’s mean. I’m guessing you’re Indian?”

He looked around, down at himself, then back at her. “Indian?”

“Yeah ... from India? Tan skin, white turban, black beard—I like the trim beard look by the way, very cute.”

A compliment, from an Immortal! Cute! He wasn’t sure what to make of that, other than to blush. A woman complimenting him was a marvelous thing to be treasured, even if it was from an ancient machine of doom.

“I ... I don’t know what India is.”

“ ... seriously?”

“The, the um ... the legends say, the great war led to the time of Reckoning. And ... most ... most of the world died in fire.”

“ ... this day just keeps getting better and better. Ok, you know what? Instead of spoon feeding me just how fucked everything is, I’m getting us out of here. The Intel Network is down, and my AR is telling me jack shit.”