I checked the neuron with the clock. It was 1655.690. I had slept for almost 75 cycles. Back when I first woke I would sleep for hundreds, but that was a while ago.

Outside was damp, as per usual. The skies were still grey. There were still shadows to the north, to... his structure. But not for long. There were urgent matters at hand.

------------------------------//------------------------------

The machinery transitioned into tight walkways and odd fossilised houses, stacked on top of each other to form a sprawling mass of concrete. The stone had been eroded, the doors and windows broken by floods, and all unrestrained objects washed away. Each cramped abode was ridden with blue moss and shards of rusted metal. These houses were from the early days of the facility, emptied during the mass migration to Pillars' and... Searcher's cities.

The doorways were tall and wide and the windows were high. Or perhaps I was short, given they weren't made for me. Either way, I had no hope of entering most rooms as they were progressively filling with deep blue shrubbery. Navy branches sprouted from every crevice, decorated with bright leaves highlighted in lavender. Now every wall was coated in an azure moss, which appeared to glow slightly in dark corners. Where there was no moss there was lichen, also blue. It was a nice colour, but I was more than tired of it by now.

I continued through the narrow street which, like the buildings, were teeming with flora. There were attatchement points on the walls, perhaps for roofing or decoration, but whatever they were holding was long gone. The corridor opened into a wide open street which was, believe it or not, very blue. The sides of the road was lined with towering palm-like plants, with long smooth stalks and curling leaves that mimicked the now-eroded ornate architecture. They sprouted from a knee-deep field of grass and ferns that infected the road and swayed gently under the grey sky.

This was unmistakably in the centreline of the facility. The wide road, the tall buildings, the old-style rail line I tripped over while crossing the street; everyone was familiar with this place back in the day. To my left by a few kilometres would be the Monolithic Factory, and to my right the facility exit.

I turned right.

I found myself waking up after a week-long sleep again. The soft plants in the shelters were comfortable, and I really needed the rest. When I came out of the protected room, I noticed something unusual. Checking my short term memory, my suspicions were justified; the plants had moved. Or changed in some way.

I reached to one of the pseudo-trees and grabbed it firmly, my metallic hands sinking into the soft flesh. A very high water content, with underwhelming structural integrity. These would surely not survive the rain, yet they grew to at least twenty feet tall. 

I held my finger next to a plant and waited for five minutes, staying still with robotic precision. In that time it grew a whole centimeter. This was the method they used in the early days of the revolution to find deposits of void fluid near the surface. In a reasonable concentration, it would cause plants to grow in excess. Pretty cool, isn't it?

By the time I finished, it was beginning to rain again and I returned to the shelter.

Play it again.

I don't want to hear this conversation again.

Please.

You dissapoint me. There's far more important things to be doing.

Do I have to? I want to watch this.

You get one more before I turn it off. Once it's done, we will begin working on the rest of the cables. 

Fine.

------------------------------//------------------------------

862.347 - [LIVE BROADCAST]

PRIVATE STAR OVER THE HILLS / NEBULOUS HAND

SOTH: I’ve heard you-

NH: Run the biggest launch service on this side of the planet? Yep.

The streets fell into shadow as the retaining wall loomed above, stretching into the fog. It was angled slightly outwards, and the sides had large ridges running vertically every hundred or so meters. The base of the wall was lined with warehouses and old concrete buildings, and ahead of me was a massive steel reinforced roller door, still open. The concrete frame was striped yellow and black, with broken alarm lights on it. The rails in the street - which I had been tripping over constantly - led into the wall.

The tunnel was fairly long, at least a hundred meters through the wall. All of the concrete was stained grey, with a temporary releif from the ever persisting blue. It was partially darkened; the lights had not been running for hundreds of years. Light only came from the two open ends of the tunnel; but the end I was approaching was considerably darker. 

I would have expected the exit of the facility to be accompanied by a bright light and fresh air, but I was met by a dull shadow and the same familiar humidity. Two massive concrete ridges boxed the wall, extending into the low-lying clouds. The clouds here must have been less than a hundred metres overhead, reflected by a persistent fog that clouded the periphery of my vision. It was fairly open around me; there was the occasional pallet of boxes dotted across the floor. A wire fence lined one edge, and the floor dissapeared into a canyon of fog.

There were lines of different colours across the floor, but I couldn't find a guide. I chose the purple one, just like me. It took me down a pathway, then a catwalk. A floodlight lit the cyan void and faded into the emptiness below me. I heard waves crashing beneath the blue blanket.

I've gone too long without asking - what are these cables for?

If you were paying attention you would have noticed that each cable is equipped with several cameras, wires, and pneumatic transport tubes. As they have sprawled across the nearby areas you have slowly been gaining control over the previously hidden land. Your loss of communications, while fitting in the short term, has been greatly detrimental to our efforts.

You will be able to manipulate the structures and harvest their resources without remote overseers. Alternatively, you will be able to repair certain systems.

Like the comms?

Precisely. 

Why didn't you tell me this earlier? Let's do it!

I was led to a platform with a SkyRail line running down the middle. There was a train; several brown corrugated carriages extended into the distance. As if it were a heart, my puppet's backup rarefaction cell skipped a beat. I scrambled to find a control station, but there was none. It was likely in a separate building or automated as the station was typically equipped for cargo...

Not always, though. I had a faint memory of when this train arrived. This station was packed with Ancients awaiting their departure to an ascension ground. Since there were no ascension grounds on either of the Anchorite Islands, they had to take the train across the sea to... some other facility. I couldn't remember that. Everyone onboard had never returned, the train likely came back automatically. In that case, the route may have been left in the controller's computer.

I pulled myself up into the vehicle, minding the gap that revealed the underside carraige and an endless nothing. The air was thick with the stench of eight hundred year old unwashed public transport miasma and the various plants that had settled in dark corners. 

As it was the first carriage, it had the controller's compartment and a computer. The computer struggled to life with an unpleasant "Solitary Conduits" logo. I dusted off the screen and reached for the controls. I hesitated. I stared at the screen for a second, my hand hovering above the "repeat previous route" button. I lowered my hand. I raised my hand back to the button, then lowered it again. I raised my hand to my face, then placed it on the screen.

I leaned back out the door to the train and stared back at the facility. There was fog. My foot hovered above the platform, begging to be set down. I sat on the edge of the floor and dangled my legs above the roaring waves below. I stood back up, and turned from the door. I turned back. I looked out, expecting to see someone or something. The fog did not stare back. The fog no longer wanted me here.

With my eyes held shut, I returned to the controller's compartment and pressed the button. The door shut, and the power flicked on. A row of lights lit in sequence into the distance down the length of the train. They never seemed to end, so I only followed to the thirteenth carriage. 

I stared out of the barred window as the station moved away in front of me. The void-powered engines hummed to life and the platform drifted into the fog. A sound grew in the distance, from a quiet cracking to a torrential crashing of metal with mountainous magnitude. My hearing was overwhelmed by the roar of a catastrophe kilometres out of my sight.

With the sound of Searcher's collapse, I left Solitary Conduits behind.