The Trial already started!
Leon could tell, including the other 5 Ascendants of this crew as all of them fixed their worried gazes on the motionless body of their captain.
"Boss". Rex muttered worriedly, fidgeting with a spanner.
Kain's silvery gray metal skin gleamed like a sharp blade as he stared at Talia's body with a determined gaze that hid a subtle emotion of pain and worry.
Leon was also silent as he stared at Talia's unconscious body. It's already been an hour since she interfaced with the ancient network and lost consciousness, and since that time, inside the cargo trailer remained in a tensed state.
Her body remained slumped, and the remnants of her green ADE that coalesced around her kept on holding her in place.
Nobody dared touch her to support her out of fear of disrupting the Trial.
But they were not helpless about her situation though. At this moment, Ghostwire had an extremely serious look on his face as he paid careful attention to the telemetry data that was being displayed on his monitor wall.
He didn't dare directly interface with the ancient network, but as a NetRunner, it was his nature to naturally have a way around networks.
Seeing him in action reminded Leon of a saying. 'The front door has a lock for the naïve, but the real entry is through the window they forgot to latch. The real enemy of networks are NetRunners'.
"How is it?" Kain finally asked, no longer able to hold back his curiosity.
Talia's unmutated body told them that the Trial was going well, but they couldn't tell the progress, or if she was currently in danger.
The lack of information was gnawing at their nerves.
"The telemetry data is normal". Ghostwire answered.
"Is she ok?"
The NetRunner paused, before looking at Kain with his dull gray eyes. "I can't see or tell exactly what she's doing inside, that'll require me to interface with the network. I can only passively pay attention to her telemetry data to know if she's ok or not, and right now, she's ok".
Hearing that, Leon secretly heaved a sigh of relief even as he could not help his growing curiosity concerning Talia's trial.
'I wonder what type of Trial she's facing'.
'Is she in danger? Does she need help?'
Despite his thoughts though, just like the others, he was tensed and alert as he paid constant attention to the surroundings and the sky outside.
From what Talia said, Ascendancy is an act of going against the world. When an Ascendant nears a Rank threshold, their ADE Signature begins to destabilize reality, becoming capable of tearing open a localized spatial Rift.
With a Trial Catalyst, an Ascendant can tear open a rift, accessing a Trial. But Trials are not safe, both internally and externally.
Talia faced the internal dangers alone, but the external dangers? It was up to her crewmates to face them for her.
For the past one hour, the only reason why the world was not going crazy yet was because of Kain's ADE dampening emitter that was set to suppress Talia's energy signature for at least the first hour of this potential marathon.
It worked, but now, the first hour already passed.
Leon grasped his Spear tighter as he peeked through the slits in between the metal sheets forming the dome of the defense grid's third layer, spying outside to observe the situation.
Tick… tock…
Time moved.
1 minute after an hour…
10 minutes after an hour…
23 minutes after an hour…
Before Leon knew it, beads of sweat were already beginning to gather in his forehead as his heartbeat gradually accelerated. All his muscles tensed as his brain was in a state of alert and focus.
Then, it started.
The ADE dampener was still holding, but the readings in Kain's holo-interface finally began to change and fluctuate.
The Synth's face stiffened as he projected out the new readings.
Leon tensed as he looked at the mechanical lifeform, then suddenly, the readings spiked erratically!
[External ADE Flux Rising: 142% → 320%]
[WARNING: Local Field distortion detected!]
[Atmospheric composition changing!]
Bzzzt!
The world changed.
Every single one of them could feel it as Leon felt goosebumps on his skin, all of his air standing on end, while the Synths felt something like an electric sensation suddenly course through their skins.
Ghostwire's sensors glitched, cutting the vision of the drones outside even as the metallic plates of the cargo trailer began to hum and vibrate, making inside the trailer to turn eerily quiet.
They listened, then Kain looked up as a look of grim familiarity flashed in his dull gray eyes.
His metallic face was hard and stoic as he muttered. "A storm's here".
He barely said it when it hit.
WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…!!!
It suddenly hit like a hurricane!
The cargo trailer, including the canyon wall that it was wedged to was shaken to its foundations by the sudden force that hit it but none of the inhabitants inside toppled over from the shaking.
This was because of the gravity stabilizing effect of Kain's ADE dampener, a side effect of it, and it was what helped them to keep their balance.
As the gravity stabilizing effect triggered, the air and gravity inside the cargo trailer suddenly became stale and still, creating a vacuum-like state, protecting them and most importantly Talia's body from the shaking.
No one knew if the Trial would be disrupted if her body shook in reality, and so they were ready to defend her like her life depended on it.
But then, the initial blast of the storm passed, and the true storm followed.
From the distance, they saw a Waste Storm crashing down, rapidly advancing towards them with winds exceeding 400km/hour!
The Waste Storm was gigantic, its circumference spanning almost a kilometer, and it was pitch-black, carrying waste and debris, including the metallic scraps that were usually found in this fringe of the Wastes.
Originally, these metallic debris and scraps were harmless, but when they were suddenly carried by a wind storm exceeding 400km/hour, they became a nightmarish natural disaster.
Leon stared, and he was petrified. 'What the…!'
Beside Leon, Kain stared with a shocked then desperate look in his dull gray eyes as the storm approached.
Only one thought reverberated in his head. 'F*ck!'
He just realized something; he failed to account for a storm of this magnitude in his defense grid plan.
The storm gave them no time to think or plan, or come up with a countermeasure.
It arrived almost instantly, and it hit with raw force.
KABOOM!
The force of the main storm was less than that of the initial barrage, but it didn't make it any less dangerous.
And just like most storms, it didn't hit and stop like the initial blast, it stayed- mighty, relentless, and endless.
WHOOOO…!!!
Glass sand and metallic debris sliced through the metallic barricades that Kain had painstakingly set up for the past few days, some directly evaporating into dust at the most intense parts of the storm.
The dull gray eyes of the Synth narrowed.
Leon's eyes widened at the sight as he also realized the oversight. 'Dammit, why didn't I think of a storm? But, who would have thought a storm of this magnitude would suddenly hit?'
It was too late to regret; the storm was already here.
And yet, that was not all as suddenly, a second atmospheric phenomenon took place. From the skies, a cloud of grey shimmer suddenly descended like rain, obscuring the bit of illumination that kept the world in a state of perpetual evening.
Now, the world was forced into a state of perpetual night.
This was no mere rain though, this was…
"A Nanite Storm!" Kain's metallic lip quivered.
The situation directly jumped from barely manageable to borderline catastrophic.
Leon stared with an incredulous look as a swarm of rogue micro-machines descended from the sky, devouring everything and anything in their path, leaving only ruin and destruction in their wake.
They completed the remnant work that the first storm failed to level in its wake, rounding up a job of absolute destruction.
A question instinctively entered Leon's head. 'If I face that, will I survive?'
The answer made him shiver.
Tutututututu…!
The sound of muffled machine gunfire reverberated amid the storm as Kain deployed all the turrets on auto-fire. He was not about to just let the double-layered storm destroy all of his hard work without any retaliation.
The automatic turrets unleashed hell on Kain's command as he sought to protect a bit of the first defensive layer of his defense grid, but it was not enough against the storm.
None of it survived despite being reinforced with rebar and magnetic anchors. The barricades and metal walls, the gun turrets, all of it were sliced apart with no resistance.
Having worked on the defense grid too, Leon felt the pinch as the entire first layer of it was annihilated under the titanic stomp of the relentless storm.
If before, the world was in a state of perpetual evening, now, it was night, the darkest parts of the night as magnetic lightning snapped between dunes.
The world outside became a canvas painting of orange plasma and silver dust. Visibility was zero, and the only sound was that of static screaming.
None of them moved.
Maybe some of them could survive outside facing the storm head-on, maybe they could protect the defense grid, maybe they could fight back, but against a literal storm, a literal force of nature, or betterstill ADE, such resistance didn't make sense.
The defense grid was doing its job, taking on the brunt of the storm, protecting the cargo trailer from facing the worst of it though it was doing this at the cost of its own integrity and durability.
Within 10 minutes, the entire first layer of Kain's defense grid was destroyed.
The second layer couldn't be destroyed since it wasn't exactly material like the first layer. As for the motion-triggered EMP mines, Kain quickly configured them to not trigger no matter what to prevent them being wasted on a storm.
Only the third layer of the defense grid separated them from the storm.
Bang! Bang!
The storm battered against the metal sheets of the dome-shaped shield, including the energy barrier around it.
The storm engulfed the dome.
The world outside was pitch-black, filled with glass sand and metallic debris that flew with such velocity that made them seem like daggers, and the buzzing micro-machines that swarmed like they wanted to devour the world.
Leon felt like he was stuck in a nightmare.
The only lighting appeared when the heat-discharge vents went off, setting off flames that burned a portion of the micro-machines.
But in the grand scheme of things, it was a pebble in a desert. It did absolutely nothing in reducing the scale of this storm.
They could only wait it out, and hope that Kain's defense grid holds.
Badump… Badump…
Leon could feel his heart beating fast as he stared into the heart of the storm. 'What if the metal sheets don't hold? What if the energy of the defense shield becomes exhausted? What if it's directly overpowered by the storm?'
Different worrying thoughts filled his head, and for the next 20 minutes or so, Leon suffered this anxiety without reprieve.
Fortunately, his worst fears were not realized.
The worst of the storm finally passed. It didn't stop yet, but it was beginning to subside, and with it came hope.
Then, in the backdrop of the hope that rose amid the chaos, sensors spiked again, including Leon's system.
DING!
~----~
[Net-Signatures Detected: 6 entities approaching!]
~----~
"What?!"