Meanwhile, a single voice rings through the hull of the Sempiterna. It is smooth and mechanical, like a steel plough pulling through fresh soil.
>> Awaken, Vicar!
The voice has lost patience; evidently it has been at this for some time. A body sits limp in a nook near the back of the main corridor, covered in thick cables which snake around it and intermittently insert themselves into its frame. Through the cables, it is difficult to discern whether the nook was included in the ship by design, or if it was merely the most convenient place to store a body.
Every now and again, little streaks of light peak out from the metallic mass.
>> The Voices call! Do you not hear them?
>>
>> There are intruders in the Temple! I know you were not given
>> much time to acclimate to your new form, but you must
>> awaken and remember how to function!
Beneath the cables is a man wrapped in robes the color of parchment. Beneath the robes lie synthetic limbs, organs, and bones. What had once been flesh was now surgical steel and nanofiber musculature. The oily, false-flesh heart stood dormant, refusing to pump streams of nanite-infused ichor through his veins.
>> Vicar! Rise! Our time has come!
A finger suddenly twitches. Soon after, a fist clenches, and the ghastly hiss of a breath held for years whisps out of his mouth. His heart starts beating for the first time in years.
The man that rises is not the Vicar Malachi that bowed at the foot of the Council when he accepted the role of Keeper. He is merely a vestige, a shadow of his former self. Flesh replaced by steel made to last a hundred lifetimes in slumber.
How long has it been, Izic? <<
His voice is cool and calculated; far from the croak of the aging preacher he left behind. He shrugs off the cables and stalks down the corridor to the cockpit.
>> Roughly three years, Vicar.
He presses a palm against the control globe in the cockpit and the ship hums to life. Aged, lazy steel groans as the engines warm for the first time after thirty-six long months in empty space.
And, with a slide of his hand, the Spatial lurches forward; finding its way out from the furthest reaches of the Sector.
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