Royal Blue

The Void that Calls Your Name (Chapter Twenty Two)

Alarms blazed from within the dark halls, which crumbled around him as he ran through them; Zero knew he had to work fast.

The attacks he'd summoned to stabilize the crumbling Lab would not last long.

Zero skidded around the corner and warped through a portal, his eyes flaring and chest heaving with the exertion.
He leapt out at the control center of the Core. The floor creaking under him as he landed.

Zero's eyes went wide at the sight that met him.
Oh good god.

The place looked... rotten. Dark blue corridors and beams broken down and dim; as if decades of rust and decay had developed overnight; and were all crumbling in on themselves.

A thin layer of fog clouded his vision and senses, smelling vaguely of smoke. The alarm lights still flashing; alerts still ringing. Though fainter now.

Zero moved quickly down, the runes of wire across the floor glowing strongly beneath him. The red tubing across the walls had burst in some places; gusting out hot steam.

Zero was silently thankful that the laser grids were turned off for the emergency protocol.
But there was no telling how long they'd stay that way.
He had to keep moving. Take what little luck he had and run with it.

So he did.
Through dark halls and tight spaces; until he finally arrived.

The main terminal of the core glowed with a darkness, a haze that was only exaggerated by the fog that filled the space.

Zero remembered faintly that no one was supposed to look directly at it. That the collision of that kind of power; a magic not native to this plane of reality....

It could drive any monster mad.

Zero moved to the nearby wall, pulling off his gauntlet and pressing a skeletal hand to the cold panel there, which quickly scanned him in.
The magic of the scanner tried to read his soul... but failed.

Zero squinted into the darkness, then quickly shed his armor.
It was too heavy; and the dense material seeming to block and disrupt it's already shaky functioning.

He tried again, and the machine recognized his magical signature immediately.

So, with alarms blaring, Sans left that armor in a crumpled heap and leapt into action, crossing the rickety metal overpass and moving toward the center. A large pillar of thick blackness; pulsing with power.
Sans tugged to straighten his familiar hoodie, and moved forward.

Sans' hands instinctively fell to a key pad at the base of the central pillar; as soon as his hands met the keys, three holographic monitors flickered to life. Grey and purple; Sans began quickly scrolling through the mismatched code, searching for stabilization procedures that hadn't been accessed for decades.

He found it, and entered the file.
His mind translated the symbols quickly; but it wasn't quick enough.

The sound of glass splintering and shattering was overwhelmingly close, and it rung through his ears and his mind. Sans' head whipped up from the lines of code.

The pillar shined with sharp cracks, dripping, leaking that black ichor.

The Core was far past unstable, even the light below him beginning to gurgle and spit.

The giant pipes connected to the central pillar rattled, bolts shaking as steam and toxins escaped. Alerts sounding all around; shrill and agonizing. His skull rattled under the pressure as his hands flew across the keys.