Chapter Text
i.ii - interpersonal distance.
the distance that individuals choose to maintain between themselves and others while interacting, physical or cultural.
~ 𝞫 ~
“I wish Tate’s notes had been harder to find. If they were, I wouldn’t have to know what Murder Puke Babes was.”
Beta sat at the counter, pushing the last bits of stew around in her bowl while her sister was already going in for seconds. The inconsistency in texture that evening was throwing her off, some bits of pork less tender than others. She hadn’t previously been allowed much exposure to solid foods, so she needed to pace herself and chew thoroughly or she would gag. They’d discovered quickly after bringing her to the Base that she struggled with any strong spices or complex flavours too. The still lingering sting of being chastised earlier wasn’t helping her appetite either.
“Why couldn’t more of them do what Ebadji and Brochard-Klein did and make them available with security clearance? Why did so many of them collectively agree to what amounts to a digital scavenger hunt? With ciphers and clues! Am I supposed to be Sherlock Holmes now?”
“Who’s that?” Aloy asked, in between spoonfuls.
“Detective character. Deductive reasoning. It doesn’t matter,” Beta sighed. “If I don’t find Shĕn’s logs soon, I’m jumping off the edge of a cliff and down a waterfall.”
Aloy set her bowl down and leaned her head on her hand. “Are these notes really going to be that useful? Do we know if there’s anything in there that we don’t already have access to from somewhere else?”
“The small piece of HEPHAESTUS’s source code that we have only goes so far. It’s incomplete, very bare bones, and if we want any chance at potentially engineering our own machine production program, we’re going to need as much original research data as possible. My biggest fear was that the development logs weren’t stored in APOLLO at all and were attached to the sub-functions themselves, meaning that we’d have no way of getting at them. That’s why I bothered looking for Tate’s notes first. With HADES already dealt with, there’s nowhere else they possibly could be other than APOLLO. Best guess, if I find his, I can find the rest.”
“And you did,” Aloy reminded her.
“I did! The man was a master hacker but his biggest strength was his ability to maintain his anonymity. People never realized who was screwing them over until it was too late. If you knew him, though, you knew too much about him.” Way too much. Too much for any person to ever have to know about anyone or anything, ever. “As you’ve probably noticed, he was definitely… idiosyncratic. A creature of habit.”
“He clearly had a particular sense of humour,” Aloy added, rolling her eyes. She would have seen the logic bomb holo and read through enough of his personal notes to understand what Beta was talking about.
“His idea of a good time was dirty mags, grindhouse movies, and scrolling through shock image forums. Eventually, I figured out what the magic words were to link me to what I wanted. Would have loved it if they weren’t uh, things I won’t mention here because they’ll ruin your appetite.”
“Thanks for that.” Aloy picked her bowl back up to finish off her portion. With the nail firmly in the coffin on her own ability to eat, aided by the memory of such classic films as Cannibal Xerox and Kenzo: The Plastic Man, Beta pushed her food aside and slumped over in her seat.
“Essentially, I know what the thing I am looking for will look like when I find it, but I don’t know what the thing I’m looking for is yet. Does that make sense?”
Aloy raised an eyebrow. “I would say I’d like to help but you’re not doing a great job of selling it to me.”
“It’s fine. You’ve got enough to worry about anyway. I’ll sort it out soon. Hopefully.”
Her sister gave her another opaque look, some mix of pity and concern, but she didn’t press further. They sat in silence for a minute or two more before Aloy spoke up again.
“There are still a few Zero Dawn related facilities that we haven’t explored yet in Tenakth territory. Next time I’m close to one, I’ll give it a look and see if there’s anything that might point us in the right direction.”
The promise felt a bit hollow and Aloy probably knew that. Most of those locations had been low-security level materials storage, salvaged centuries ago and guaranteed to be devoid of any Alpha-tier communications or project data. But it was an attempt to lighten the burden at a time when Beta knew she already had so much to deal with alone.
“I’d appreciate that,” she managed to respond. She really tried to mean it.
There was a sudden ping at her temple and a call notification popped into view. It was from Erend. She answered promptly.
“Hey, Beta!” his voice barked out in a familiar drawl. “You busy right now?”
“Hi, Erend. Aloy just got back and we’re having dinner.”
“Great timing then! Patch her in!”
Beta sent Aloy an entry link and adjusted the call settings to holo-capture. The phantom image of their Oseram friend blinked into full view, smiling and waving, as though he were back at the Base already.
“Hey. Are you in Plainsong yet?” Aloy queried.
Erend’s eyes went wide and his smile began to stretch oddly at the sides of his mouth.
“We’re gonna be back a little sooner than expected,” he said quickly. The use of ‘we’ struck Beta as odd. He hadn’t mentioned anyone coming with him the last time they spoke, though that had been a while ago. She glanced over to Aloy who also looked confused. Clearly, he hadn’t said anything regarding this to her either.
“We? Is Zo coming too?” Beta asked.
“Uh no. Kotallo’s with me, actually. He’s getting us water right now.”
This was an even more puzzling development, considering Kotallo had been explicitly tasked by Chief Hekarro to lead the delegation that was supposed to be in Meridian, something that should not have been completed for at least another month. Aloy’s confusion melted into irritation. Then, for only a moment, a flash of disappointment, like she had hoped Erend was talking about someone else. Beta had no idea who she could have possibly been thinking of.
“Where’s the rest of the delegation?” Aloy’s tone was accusatory, making it less a question and more a demand. It was the same voice Beta imagined she would use to interrogate someone.
“The Chaplain’s got everything handled,” Erend rushed to argue. He punctuated it with a nervous laugh. “I wasn’t too excited to be trekking back without a travel buddy and I think the big guy took pity on me.”
It was an obvious lie, but his eyes were almost pleading. This was not a conversation he wanted to have right now. He couldn’t have been concerned about anything mission related. Erend had the political savvy to know an emergency on that scale required immediate transparency. Whatever this was, it was personal. Something with the potential to cause significant embarrassment. On the part of who, Beta couldn’t yet tell.
“Anyway, you can probably expect us to be there in the next hour or two,” Erend added. “We’re at the bottom of the mountain.”
Beta figured a silent stand-off was about to commence, one where Erend was forced to either offer an explanation or hang up without acknowledgement. Aloy just turned away and shrugged.
“Well, alright. We’ll save some food for you.”
Erend was visibly relieved. “Thanks. See you both soon.”
The call ended and Beta began processing what had just transpired. She was the last person she would trust with decoding any interpersonal situations, but she had gained enough experience in her relatively brief time socializing to know: that conversation had been exceedingly awkward. And from Erend of all people, who usually conducted himself with such confidence regardless of the scenario. That isn’t how I sound, is it? she wondered suddenly in horror. Tripping over my words, racing to explain myself? She pushed the thought roughly to the side. Now was not the time to make this about her.
“That was weird, right?” she asked.
Hopefully, she was reading the room completely wrong and her sister would reassure her that everything was fine. Instead, Aloy nodded and let out a deep sigh before gathering their dishes.
After cleaning up, they set the rest of the stew aside. It was getting much later but there was an unspoken agreement that they should be awake and ready for when the two men arrived, if only just to better understand what could be making Erend so nervous. They lingered in the Main Hall, killing time, updating each other on the less important things that had happened since seeing each other last. Eventually, GAIA informed them that their teammates were approaching and any fatigue that had begun to set in was rapidly replaced with anticipation.
“Guess who!” a voice that was undeniably Erend’s yelled out from the East exit.
“Welcome back!” Beta shouted in response. In spite of the odd circumstances, she was genuinely excited to have so many people be out and about in the Base at once. Over the past few months, it had usually been, at most, only her and one other person at a time, not including Sylens. Because Sylens had made it well known he did not want to be included.
The doors slid open and there was Erend, same as he ever was, good-humoured, if a little travel-worn. Had she not been present for the prior conversation, Beta would have had a difficult time noticing that anything was out of the ordinary. Meanwhile, Kotallo sulked in behind him like a rain cloud.
“Travelling always makes me appreciate whoever it was that thought up roofs.” Erend gave the door frame a quick knock, causing a satisfying pang to ring out. “Hope they gave him a medal or a statue or something.”
“Maybe they named a building after them,” Aloy suggested, standing up from the sofa to greet them. “Y’know, considering it would probably be the first one.” Beta wasn’t sure what Aloy’s intentions were playing into the bit, but perhaps the time waiting had tempered her frustration.
“Maybe his name was Building so all of them are named after him. How about that?”
“I’m sure that’s exactly what happened, Erend.” Aloy crossed her arms and nodded toward the counter. “Food’s still out. You can heat it up again if you want but it should be fine as-is if you’re not feeling patient.”
“Don’t mind if I do!” Erend dropped his bag to the side and sauntered over, while Aloy directed her attention to the Marshal.
“I wasn’t expecting to see you for a while,” she declared. Maybe it was less the case that she was no longer frustrated, but instead that she had decided to concentrate said frustration toward one person in particular.
Watching the exchange was a bit like watching two large trees stare each other down. Regardless of how much shorter she was than Kotallo, Beta was pretty sure that her sister could stand at odds with practically anyone. She was somehow an unstoppable force and an immovable object simultaneously. Unlike herself, there was no possible universe where Aloy was the smallest person in the room.
“My aid was no longer necessary. Dekka is handling the rest,” Kotallo replied. His voice was cold. Though, from Beta’s memory, that was simply how he spoke all of the time. But there was that word again: ‘handle.’ Whatever was going on needed ‘handling,’ needed direction, needed someone else to manage it because it had gotten out of hand in the first place.
“Any other updates about the negotiations that I should know?”
“No. It was a long journey. I’ll be in my bunk if there is an emergency.” And I will not tolerate being bothered for any other reason, he pointedly did not say. Despite being a man of few words, the Marshal always seemed to get his message across, loud and clear.
“I guess we’ll… talk tomorrow then,” Aloy said as he walked away from her, heading toward his personal quarters. She strode back to the counter, fury burning beneath the surface, and snatched her spear from where it had been leaning against the wall.
“What is his fucking problem?” Beta heard her mutter under her breath, before she then stormed out the Western exit. The Sunwing nest above the Base may as well have doubled as an unofficial ‘rage room’ for those of the crew who would benefit from that sort of thing. That was likely where she was going.
Erend snapped his head to Beta with the same wide eyed panic he had displayed during their Focus call earlier. “What’re we eating tonight?”
“Boar. It’s usually boar,” Beta replied carefully. She made her way over and handed him one of the clean bowls. He proceeded to serve himself a large portion. “There are a lot of them running around.”
“Better than fish burnt on a campfire,” Erend laughed. “I would have tried to get a good meal in Plainsong but I was afraid it would be all twigs and leaves.”
Another puzzle piece Beta could add to her growing list of clues. They couldn’t have spent much time there if they hadn’t even bothered sitting down to eat. In fact, they couldn’t have been staying anywhere for very long on their journey, considering how quickly the two men had arrived contrary to when they would have left Meridian.
“... You said that you were planning on staying with Zo for at least a couple of days,” Beta reminded him.
His smile faltered. He thought for a moment, staring down into his bowl. Like if he bore his gaze into it hard enough, it could have magically transported him away from her questions and any accountability required of him. But he eventually looked back to Beta and the mask slipped by a fraction enough to let her in.
“I was but, between you and me…” Erend leaned in closer and dropped his voice to a whisper. “Kotallo was making the Utaru kinda nervous, so we didn’t bother them more than we had to.”
“... Did something go wrong in Meridian?” Something that he had to run away from?
A pained expression passed over Erend’s face. He sighed and directed his attention over her shoulder.
“Honestly, I’d have been more surprised if something went right after dropping a Tenakth in the middle of the Sundom.”
Beta turned around to follow Erend’s line of sight. The Tenakth in question was sorting through his things on the workbench next to his bunk, the picture perfect image of rigidity and focus.
When she had finally felt comfortable enough to crawl up from her hovel by the servers, Beta had been more than a little intimidated by the other residents of the Base. Most were only ‘scary’ because everything seemed that way to her at first. She had never interacted with anyone as loud as Erend, as chatty as Alva, as quiet as Zo, or as seemingly disgusted by the presence of others as Sylens. As time went on, she learned to adjust. Erend could easily control his volume if you asked nicely and Alva was just as willing to listen as she was to talk. Zo’s gentle, considerate silence was actually a welcome presence in the chaotic aftermath of Far Zenith’s defeat. And while Sylens hadn’t suddenly become the world’s friendliest neighbour, Beta had mastered the art of ignoring him. Kotallo was different, though. He was scary because he was fucking scary.
She didn’t bother feeling bad about it. Tenakth aesthetics were fundamentally designed to insight terror. Mission accomplished there. Aside from their cultural significance, the layers of patterned ink and paint were rarely meant for any kind of camouflage. What they wanted was for their enemies to see them rushing forward on the battlefield and shit themselves. Other tribes’ use of machine parts were usually either ornamental or practical, not both simultaneously. The Tenakth had managed to hit the perfect medium of the two. If anything, they wanted to subconsciously invoke the constructs they wore; that they would then carry with them the same strength or ferocity of, say, a Clawstrider or a Scorcher. It also didn’t help that Kotallo was a very large, very serious man already, with a headpiece that fashioned his face into the illusion of a permanent frown.
He looked up from whatever was occupying him at his desk and suddenly they were making direct eye contact. Neither of them moved for a moment, until Kotallo gave her a polite nod of acknowledgement. Beta attempted to return it with a small smile. She felt more like a chimpanzee baring its teeth in submission. The two of them had held some brief, professional text conversations over Focus but they hadn’t yet exchanged any words. If she was lucky, perhaps Nemesis would be defeated without them ever having to spare each other a single ‘good morning.’
Erend finished his meal and went to take a desperately needed shower, leaving Beta with time to kill. She could have called it a night and gone to bed, but Aloy still hadn't returned from her abrupt outing and, even though she knew her sister could take on Thunderjaws and rebel armies single-handedly, it still made her nervous to think that she was out alone after dark. She also still had not yet been able to search for the development logs, something that absolutely needed to be done for its allotted time every day, or they would simply remain disappeared until the end of the world. You know, when Nemesis comes and we don’t have anything to fight it with because I couldn’t find the development logs? GAIA and Aloy would just have to deal with her working overtime for a bit longer. The payoff would be worth it.
She peeked around the room and there was no sign of anyone watching. It felt ironic that she should potentially find herself in trouble for wanting to do her homework. If she tucked herself away in this corner, nobody would have to know what she was doing. Her activity feed was set to ‘Private’ and GAIA respected their personal boundaries enough to not spy on them through the surveillance system. For all they knew, she was just playing solitaire. Or going through her messages. Or maybe reading a book for pleasure instead of panic.
“Beta,” a voice suddenly cut through the buzzing of her brain.
There was someone standing right behind her.
She went to turn around, answer the call and move on, but found her body couldn’t be willed. Whoever it was, they were too close, too tall, too unknown. Her blood turned icy then. The room blurred and her ears began to ring.
No matter how irrational a sensation it was, Schrödinger’s Specter loomed at her back and had haunted every moment of perceivable vulnerability she had experienced since landing planetside. Any second now, something would lash out and wrap around her, pulling her deep into the void. It was like her consciousness was trying to avoid capture by floating away and out of her body, where it would eventually break apart into atoms in the atmosphere and evaporate into nothing.
Please, not now. Not ever. Not here. Never again.
“Beta?” the voice repeated, something she could register as concern seeping in through the fog.
Logically, Beta knew none of what she was feeling was real. These were phantom pains from a wound that was no longer possible to replicate. What was real was her standing in the middle of the Base like a freak, completely silent and frozen still while someone tried to get her attention.
There had to be some way to tether herself back to Earth and materiality, reach up and drag herself back down to her mortal shell. Some kind of hard reset to fix her operating system failure.
She gripped the edge of the countertop as tight as she could. The smooth steel was cold to the touch and she could make out the seams underneath her fingertips, where the disparate pieces connected together to form a level surface. Her next inhale felt sharp, like it was cutting her on the way down, resentful of the idea that she wanted to fill her lungs. Using the counter as a vice, Beta firmly wrenched herself around, hoping she at least appeared more put together than she actually was.
You are a real human in a real space. You can reach out and touch the things around you. You are not in danger. Everything is fine. Everything is normal. You are fine. You are normal.
As the Main Hall came back into focus, Beta looked up at the catalyst of her current state. It was, as her mind had known but her body hadn’t, not a Specter. No more than a foot away from her was Kotallo. The space behind their designated dining area was not small nor even crowded at most times. However, Erend had left his bag on the floor and totally in the way, trapping the two of them in the gap between the back and front counters. The Marshal had been left with no choice but to hover. Perhaps he had not even been so close initially but moved nearer to her out of worry. If someone had all but turned to stone after she tried to speak to them, she would have been worried too.
She let out another sharp breath.
“... Can you back up a bit, please?” The words caught in her throat but she forced them out.
He obeyed her request immediately and she found she could finally catch her breath. The floor no longer shifting underneath her feet, Beta compelled herself to maintain some approximation of eye-contact while her nervous-system caught up with her head.
“Is everything alright?” Kotallo asked. She thought that he might have been furrowing his brows, but the huge chunk of machine metal resting on his forehead made it hard to tell.
“Yes. Sorry, I was distracted. Can I help you with something?”
He was quiet for another moment, observing her before speaking again. “Would APOLLO have any kind of archive listing the meanings of words?”
She wasn’t sure what she had been expecting him to say to her, but it wasn’t that. Taking only a millisecond longer than usual to kick in, the synapses of her brain switched into research mode and she released herself from her crutch.
Now, this was indisputably normal, at least for her. Sensory exorcism completed. Social behaviours rebooted and running at typical speed. So, not optimally by any means, but functional, if you ignored the slight tremor that remained.
“Oh, like a dictionary? Yes.” She scrambled to pull up the catalogue and check the integrity of the archive’s reference materials. Everything appeared to be in the right place, at least for the English Language guide. “We should have full access to the latest version of the OED prior to the Zero Day. I can send you a link later.”
“Thank you,” Kotallo said, before walking away without any further comment.
From zero words to less than a hundred was not a massive jump by any means, but compared to before, they had practically just exchanged vows. Though, in an ideal world, she would have been able to do so without feeling like she was being hunted for sport.
Soon, Aloy returned, hair disheveled and noticeably cooled down. Erend joined them again in the Main Hall, whatever conflicts that were brewing set aside until morning.
“They took this huge Old World machine used for mixing and filled it with explosives to see if you could clean the stuff out of it that way. Guess what happened.”
“I assume they blew it up?” Aloy asked. She sounded amused but also tired. Erend had hit a second wind and Beta couldn’t complain; this was the most enthusiastic she had ever seen him be about anything even slightly related to science or research. Still, it was getting late. They would want to be turning in to sleep soon.
“Exactly! But it was a very big boom. You gotta see the size of the dust cloud afterwards!” He whipped his head around to Beta. “Is there any way we could recreate some of this stuff? Could be a great way to kill a couple of hours between all the reading.”
Beta frowned. “Erend, they explicitly ask that you do not try these things yourself. Directly to the camera. Every single episode.”
“Ah, you don’t even want to take a crack at making see four or uh, what was it? Ballsticks gel? No idea what goes into them but I do know the first one blows stuff up and the second one gets blown up.”
“No, Erend.” Beta was startled by the sound of her own voice echoing from across the room. She glanced over to see Aloy looking back at her, equally jarred. It was always a bit uncanny when they caught themselves saying the same thing at the same time, sometimes even with the same tone and intention.
That had been happening a lot recently. Not consistently enough to become a habit, but every once in a while, when her sister was at the Base for more than a few days, there would be a particular incident that sent Beta into a momentary existential black hole. It was likely just because they had been spending so much more time together. However, it was still a stark reminder that they were two homes built on the same foundation, painted different colours and decorated with different furnishings, but ultimately only separated by a few thin walls.
She centred herself again and cleared her throat, looking back to Erend as casually as she could manage. Mercifully, he was doing a decent job of pretending not to have noticed.
“No explosives… But I will try to find the proper measurements for ballistics grade gelatin so that you can smash it with your hammer. Would you like that?”
Erend smirked and huffed out a laugh. “I’ll be looking forward to it!”
Aloy leaned over to rest her elbows on the counter, hands clasped. “In the meantime, if you’re looking for something to smash a little sooner than that, we need to stock up on Chillwater tomorrow. Kotallo can come too.” Her face then soured a bit, like she suddenly remembered that she wanted to be mad at him. “If he decides he’s not busy.”
“Maybe let me sleep for a day and ask me again.” He was overcome by a well-timed yawn. “Oof. Weren't you just out on a mission? Are you not exhausted?”
Aloy sighed. “It’s not like I was doing much. Mostly talking. I didn’t have to fight very hard to get them to agree to a formal meeting. If anything, it’s made me more restless.”
“Lucky you,” Erend said, raising an eyebrow. “Glad to hear the Tenakth are willing to stick their necks out for us, at least. It would be great if we could say the same about anybody else.” He leaned back into the sofa and crossed his arms.
“Are the Ealdermen still giving you trouble?”
“Things went… just okay. It’s always just okay.” He raised his right hand to rub roughly at his eyes and nose, the fatigue of the evening finally setting in. “The Claim doesn’t have the same kind of military that the Sundom has. Everything’s local. Sometimes that’s pretty nice. Me and Ersa were only able to do what we did during the Liberation because nobody was there to tell us we couldn’t.” He laughed quietly to himself, a brief puff of air coming from his nose. “Not that anyone ever wanted to try telling Ersa she couldn’t do what she wanted. But if you’re trying to do anything large scale, good luck getting a Silverminer to work with a Portersman or a Forgefeeder.”
“Sounds like there’s a lot of internal politicking,” Beta said. If she couldn’t be of more direct help negotiating, she could at least let the rest of the team lament and commiserate when needed.
Erend threw his hands up and they landed back in his lap with a smack. “None of them can stand each other. It’s a mess! Half of these old pigs still think the Vanguard are some kind of Carja trap and the other half won’t do anything until the Sun-King himself gives them the go-ahead. Things might clear up once the Carja figure out their issues with the Tenakth, but as it’s going right now…”
His eyes slid over to the sleeping quarters as his voice trailed off. The lights were down and it could be presumed that all its occupants were sleeping – or pretending to be.
“I don’t envy him. That’s all I’m gonna say.”
After a moment, Erend looked away and shook his head.
“But uh, small victories, right?”