CHAPTER 4 -- A Message Sent

	Sunrise found a grim Jeff Andonuts belting on holstered weapons and strapping various gadgets about his person. Ness walked in from the rest area, a hastily cleared room of scattered junk and a worn looking cot, and rumpled his black hair into a less tangled cloud. The room had been covered with the evidences of many late nights of tinkering and experimenting, from the acid burns in the edges of the fabric on his makeshift bed to the bullet holes riddling the far wall. Jeff had always seemed to get his greatest inspirations at obscene hours of the morning. Rubbing his eyes wearily, the former Chosen One took his light coat from off the back of a chair and zippered it up before slipping into his shoes.

	No words were passed between the companions as they readied themselves to depart. Jeff, who looked as if he had slept in his clothes, was absentmindedly running a comb through his straight blond hair when the Doctor came down from the upstairs landing. He broke the silence that had tenuously held on for the past few minutes

	"You should both use the Instant Revitalizing Device before you go, undoubtedly you will want to be in top physical condition for what lies ahead." Andonuts gestured to the black and gray capsule machine resting upright along one wall. Ness recalled it dimly, he and his companions had used it on their last journey to acquire a good night's rest in just a few moments before heading for the nearby enemy base. He walked over and pried open the hatch, then stepped in and closed it behind him. Immediately the air became statically charged, and he felt the faint electric charge ripple across his skin. After only a few seconds of the machine clicking and buzzing, the hatch popped open and Ness stepped out, fully rested with only a slight tingling sensation to say for it. Jeff also stepped over, weapons and all, and used the Device as well.

	The energy acquired from their "rest" showed in their eyes as they looked briefly at each other and smiled. It was just like old times, the two of them heading off on an adventure into the unknown. Andonuts looked between the two young men, and a genuine smile crinkled his wrinkled features. "Boys, as long as there are people like you looking out for this world, I can have hope for the future. I don't need to remind you of how critical this investigation is, so I won't. All I can do is wish the two of you good luck."

	"We'll be careful." said Jeff, hoisting a dangerous looking gun on his shoulder. "If all goes well, we should be back before sundown tonight."

	"And if things go even better, we'll be back for dinner." said Ness with a grin. "Thank you for letting me stay the night Doctor. Jeff, let's get going."

	Jeff nodded and gave a curt wave to his father, who nodded in turn. As the laboratory door closed after them, Andonuts could not help but feel a stab of fear. 'Though I know they must find out what is down there... at the same time I wish it would stay buried for eternity.' The image of digging up a long dead body and finding it suddenly alive came to mind, and the Doctor shuddered at the thought. 'I wish you luck, boys, but I certainly don't envy you...'

-----

	The scene at the Deep Darkness dig site was completely unchanged from it's normal setup days earlier. The sun still hid behind a thick veil of haze, the heat was still like a wet blanket pressing in from all sides, and the machinery was still spread about in levers and lattices. People were the only thing missing from the scene, and without them, the site resembled a junkyard more than an excavation.

	A loud crack split the air, and in the ensuing rumble two people appeared and skidded to a stop on the dusty ground. Ness and Jeff looked around warily, making sure that the site was completely abandoned. The only sound was that of the swamp insects chirruping afar off, saving the abandoned site from total silence.

	"They sure packed up quick." said Ness, observing the heavy equipment that still had yet to be moved out. He pulled at his jacket, which was suddenly quite warm in the surrounding heat.

	"Keep it on. Once we get down there, I doubt that you will want to have much skin exposed." Jeff looked toward the warning cones that marked the dig area, and started making his way toward it. Ness followed quickly behind.

	As they boarded the elevator and began their descent, Ness forced himself to take a deep breath. The excitement of activity had filled him at first, as he had teleported here and found himself in a familiar place from his previous journey, but now the euphoria was slowly being siphoned away to be replaced by a dull anxiety. This was no exotic stay in Dalaam, and he surely was not going to meet anything friendly here. There had always been the sense of the unknown during his journey, but never such a fear of it. The future had always been something to look forward to, to wonder about, to move toward with anticipation, but now Ness felt that there was only death ahead of them. It was the same feeling that had come over him when he had been told about his one way ticket to face Giygas, and that there was a good chance he would not survive the final battle. 'At least then I knew my chances.' thought Ness, closing his eyes and trying to relax. 'At least then I knew what I was getting into.'

	The elevator continued it's descent, eventually plunging them into darkness that was punctuated every few seconds by a bulb strung down the opposite side of the hole. Jeff handed him a mouthpiece, an oxygen mask in a cave where air had moldered for years and years, becoming stagnant. With a solemn, metallic crash, the elevator came to the base of the dig.

	Looking around, this area was even more desolate than the site above had been. Advanced digging machinery sat in various stages of progress, stopped as suddenly as if the workers had jumped up and ran for the proverbial hills. The silence roared in their ears and exerted an almost palpable pressure.

	"Look." said Jeff in a hushed voice, pointing toward a hole in the wall that was little more than a human sized crack. Though they were the only two souls for miles, the need to whisper was implied in the forbidding silence. The companions began to move slowly toward the taped off section of wall, ducking under and approaching the entrance to the tunnel. Jeff and Ness exchanged a look, as if daring the other to go first, before the scientist's son handed the chosen one a heavy black flashlight. Grimly, he clicked it on and pointed it into the darkened crevasse. A vague sense of fear was drifting from it like a pall of smoke, but the rational part of Ness' mind told him he was just getting jittery. After taking a deep breath through his breather, Ness hoisted his backpack and stepped through. Jeff followed his footsteps closely.

	They discovered that the tunnel, only wide enough to fit one person at a time, set immediately on a decline. Their steps made little sound in the dirt underfoot, as each crunch was swallowed by the ravenous anti-sound all around them. Even the rustle of Ness' jacket, or the quiet clink of Jeff's weaponry, was lost.

	Something cold set itself at the bottom of Ness' stomach, and he swallowed to try and get rid of it. The flashlight spreading illumination before them was shaking from his uncontrollably quivering hand. 'Stop it' he thought, trying to buck up his courage. 'You have faced worse than this before. You have a good, trustworthy friend backing you up. You are not here alone, and whatever you have to face, there will be help.' These thoughts, while happening to be the most optimistic facts that his mind could come up with at the moment, only served to cause his shaking to cease; the cold ball in the pit of his stomach remained. No matter what he thought, the most basic part of his brain was still in fear. He heard Jeff push his glasses up on his nose with measured movements. 'Hang in there.' he wanted to say, but talking seemed like the most obscene thing he could do in this all-encompassing silence.

	It was minutes that stretched into hours in their minds before they reached the end of the tunnel. Before them was a landing of white stone, extending into a black abyss. Ness stepped forward, and felt his sneaker crunch into the white dust. A set of footprints headed off alone, undoubtedly belonging to the late Bill Morel. Memories flooded back, and it was all that Ness could manage to remain on his feet.

	Ness fell back into the moment, when he had been mercifully devoid of the faculties of touch, of taste, of emotion. What senses he had were merely artificial, as he was inhabiting a robot body. The only sound was the clanking of his metal feet and those of his three companions, along with the distant whine of machinery emanating from the army of robot fiends prepared to stand between them and the final battle. When they had come to the Cave of the Past, it had been with a strong purpose and the empowerment of the entire world being on their side. He remembered the raw energy that had coursed through him after the journey through his own mind that had unlocked the latent power of the Sanctuaries. Through all the battles they had encountered, even in the battle with Giygas itself, they had been in borrowed bodies. Nuts and bolts.

	Returning to this place as a flesh and blood human caused him reactions that penetrated deep into his psyche. There would be no resistance coming against them this time, as any robots that might have outlived their master would have broken down in the intervening centuries. The solidarity only added to the pervading sense of fear that was wringing out Ness' brain like a sponge full of splinters. This place felt like a tomb, and he felt like a shameless grave robber about to be subject to divine fury. Gesturing mutely to Jeff, against his own primal will, Ness moved forward with the flashlight and swept it to try and look around. It's rays didn't seem to go two feet out past the edge of the cliff before ending as solidly as if they'd hit a wall of black canvas. 'Just how massive is this cave?' he wondered. Somehow, the thought hadn't occurred to him four years ago in this same spot.

	The two boys walked a short distance to where a wall of white stone rose up before them, split up the middle by a triangular opening that resembled a threshold. Exactly how he remembered it.

	Just inside the doorway of straight cut lines was a tunnel that seemed starkly out of place with their previous surroundings. Metal lay underfoot in a regular, bumpy pattern that repeated horizontally. Like tubes. 'Like veins' he added mentally, shaking only slightly before moving forward. His mind honed to a point directly past the cone of light before him, daring whatever lay beyond it to step forward. At this point, he left like nothing could surprise him.

	The hallway turned abruptly, and the two came up against the slanted wall that consisted of the same series of gray tubes, appearing at first to be metallic but upon a closer look resembling dead tissue more than anything else. An empty vessel where life once flowed. Continuing onward, Ness moved through the increasingly zig-zagging hallway with dull premonitions of what would greet him, and in full knowledge of what lay before him. There was no longer a doubt in his mind as to the truth of this place. All their assumptions were proving themselves to be true.

	The final assumption reared itself when the hallway of death opened up into a room of coiling tubes and protrusions. Absent of life, the dusty room felt far less threatening than what Ness had expected. He almost gave a sigh of relief, but instead adopted a grim expression and walked up to the far wall. The empty veins below him formed something akin to stairs, which led up to the climax of this whole expedition, where the cosmic destroyer himself had taken up residence. The Devil's Machine.

	It was where all of the tentacle-like veins convened, where the flow of life had once come to a nexus of energy and powered the being that would have destroyed mankind. It was where Pokey had appeared for the final time and sided with the ultimate evil. It showed itself to be a blank, clouded, lifeless eye.

	Ness shined his light up into it, this orb that was easily twice his height, and saw his own scared reflection pale inside of it. Jeff stood behind him at the bottom of the steps, every line in his face taut. He wanted to turn to address his friend, but then he would feel as if the dead eye was staring at him behind his back. So instead, he brought up a hand, slowly, trembling, and placed it gently on the vacant eye that was watching him like the obelisk of a memory long forgotten. It was cool to the touch, and belied a vast expanse inside, or beyond, it's circular shape.

	Something tickled at the back of Ness' mind, and he wrinkled his face to try and identify it. Ignoring it, he tried to comprehend what he was seeing. 'There is no doubt that this is the same Devil's Machine that housed Giygas in the original Cave of the Past. It's impossible to know how long ago that Giygas existed, so it's impossible to know how long it's been sitting here, dead. Lucky for us, there's not even a trace of life still in this. I can see why that Morel guy would have been so afraid, I think the only way I can even take any of this is because I know why it's here. If not that, then at least what it's function was.' Ness realized that he didn't even know that. The entire entity of the Devil's Machine was still an enigma, all these years after the fateful happenings that had saved the world.

	Ness

	The Chosen One turned, finally, and looked at Jeff. "We have nothing to worry about." pronounced Ness in a normal voice that sounded like a bloody scream in the silence. It wasn't until after he had spoken that the whisper at the base of his skull had even registered. He froze, eyes wide, and turned back to the sightless eye where his hand still rested. 'It can't be. It can't.'

	Ness

	This time, it was an easily distinguishable voice just barely audible in the darkest corner of his mind. All of the blood drained from Ness' face. All life drained from his limbs as he stood there paralyzed in shock. 'No, please...'

	Ness!

	Giygas, the embodiment of evil, spoke from somewhere deep, deep inside the Machine.

	At that moment, Ness' flashlight imploded.

-----

	An invisible signal shot from the depths of the earth and into space, to a mass that lay in wait on the furthest side of the moon. Acting on automatic sensors, the message was picked up, and the machinery of this unknown object sprang to life. Electricity moved through countless wires and electrodes, turning on ceiling lights and bathing the metallic interior in cold illumination. Consoles began to function, beeping with the sounds of starting up after a long dormancy. Steam hissed from long unused doors and containers. Engines crackled and started humming in low tones. Energy pumped it's way through the machine, sending the signal to every room and corner, powering it's inhabitants to action.

	After all of this was accomplished, in a matter of moments, an array of pods launched from the Mothership, their destination the blue planet, under orders from their great master Giygas.

-----

	The only sound, after Ness had numbly dropped the remains of the flashlight, was a steady, calm beeping coming from a piece of equipment on Jeff's belt. A red light on it was flashing, and the crimson mask it lent to their surroundings was entirely too sinister for Ness to bear. He practically jumped down the makeshift steps and approached Jeff with terror painting a grimace over his features. "What just happened?"

	"A signal." said Jeff quietly, flicking on a small light attached to his shoulder and turning off the beeping black box. He took a moment to compose himself, then managed to get out, "Somehow, that Machine just activated enough to send out a signal."

	"A signal to where?! To what?! Giygas is dead, the Devil's Machine is dead, there can't possibly be a signal!" cried Ness, grabbing Jeff by the collar and shaking him, causing the light to bounce erratically.

	"Ness!" said Jeff, equally scared but still in command of his body. The dark circles under his eyes, along with the grim cast of his face, suddenly made him look years older. "Get a hold of yourself." he said hoarsely, "We have to escape immediately and warn Dr. Andonuts- I mean, my father. There nothing more that we can do here, I promise you that. We have to get out of here."
	Ness had to close his eyes and take a deep breath through the oxygen mask before he was calmed down. Once he was, he looked straight at Jeff and said, "We can destroy it. We can end it right now."
	"That is a perfectly Ness thing to say, you know. The statistical possibility of us being able to destroy that.... that machine, is very unlikely. We know next to nothing about it, let alone how to effectively eradicate it. Listen, the longer we stand here arguing, the greater the chance that my father is in danger. Whatever that signal was, we have to be ready to react to it. We most certainly cannot do that standing here miles underground."
	Ness gritted his teeth and gave a brief look back over his shoulder at the Devil's Machine which sat malevolently in the wall and all around them. As much as he hated the fact, Jeff was right. "Come on then, let's get out of here."

-----

	Dustin opened his eyes, lying flat on his back over the disheveled sheets of his bed. He looked over his room briefly and wondered what had awoken him. A voice? A dream? 'Indigestion?' he thought wryly, turning over and mashing his head deeper into his pillow. As nice as it was having the house to himself, something about being alone in it made it harder to go to fall asleep at night. The brown haired teen closed his eyes tight and willed himself to go to sleep.

	Then, out of nowhere, a deafening noise like a crack of thunder followed by a massive eruption ripped through the house and nearly shook him from his bed. Dustin leaped onto his feet in surprise while the reverberations still shook the floor beneath him. "What in God's name was that?!" he said out loud, running to his window and looking out. Nothing was out of the ordinary as far into town as he could see, but afar off to the left, he thought he could see a huge light pointing up into the sky. "That's coming from the school." he muttered. Almost by reflex, he quickly grabbed a black t-shirt and pulled it on, then donned the nearest pair of jeans he could find. There was no way he would just lay back down and go to sleep when something like this had occurred out of the blue. At the very least, he could go see what the source of the noise had been, then come back and get a few hours shuteye before school. It wasn't as if his mother was there to stop him anyway. He slipped a black beanie on his head before moving to leave.

	'What if it ends up being dangerous?' he thought, quickly scanning his room for a makeshift weapon. A metal baseball bat lay propped up in one corner, unused since he'd gotten it for Christmas years ago. He never had been one for baseball. Dustin walked over and picked it up, hefting it once or twice to test it's weight. He thought that if he was attacked, it might be sufficient to bash a couple heads in. His gaze, however, drifted over to his computer desk and the pile of mess that lay on it. Dropping the bat, he opened the drawer and rifled through the contents for a moment before pulling out a silvery butterfly knife. 'I would feel way safer with this in my pocket.' he thought, slipping it into his jeans and kicking the baseball bat back into the corner on his way out.

-----

	The sound of metal crashing upon stone awoke Celeste from her pleasant slumber on the mossy ground. She sat up and looked up to the patch of sky visible through the top of the vale, and saw a white streak leading from an invisible point to the ground somewhere just over the lip of the crag. 'It's beautiful.' she thought. Perhaps a meteorite had fallen to Earth just nearby? She knew that it was rare for meteorites to end up much bigger than a baseball after passing through the atmosphere, so logically for one to have made such a horrendous noise it had to be particularly huge.

	Considering she was about a mile and a half from town, she would be the first one to see it if she went immediately. 'I wonder what it will look like?' she thought, jumping up and dusting her skirt off excitedly. Taking one last look over her shoulder at the stone and it's halo of mushrooms, she ran out into the cave.

	The cave was just as fascinating of a natural structure as the vale was. Erosion had put multiple holes in the ceiling, which allowed pale moonlight to filter through and illuminate the stone walls and floor. It was a matter of a few short climbs to reach the entrance to the vale where she stood, and she could see the main entrance glowing far below from the moonlit grass just beyond it. Shadows appeared in the doorway there, and Celeste quickly moved behind a nearby boulder, curious. Her heart was pounding. 'Nobody else ever comes up here. How could somebody have arrived at the meteorite so quickly?' her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of voices just below, still inside the entrance to the cave.

	"Report to the Commander that we have arrived as expected, and the troops are ready to be deployed." Celeste had to blink once or twice in confusion. The speaker was clearly inhuman, resembling the drone of a machine more than a person's voice. "Deploy the Guardian to the entrance of Sanctuary-0291. Eliminate any resistance you find there." A chill swept through Celeste at the word 'eliminate'.

	'Commander? Guardian? What is going on?' she thought, suddenly fearing for her life. None of this was making any sense, and the unreality of the moment was making her head spin. 'I can't just sit here and wait for whatever it is to find me. Maybe if I look now I can find a better hiding place.' Deciding on a plan of action cleared her mind slightly, enough that she could peek ever so slightly around the rock. She jerked it back in shock and pinned herself up against the rock, her mouth suddenly dry.

	Metallic footfalls rang out as the mystery speaker moved closer and closer to the entrance to the vale, where Celeste crouched hidden. The steps slowed as it neared her location, and she could only slink closer to the wall in fright, wishing she were invisible. The figure stepped into a ray of moonlight as it entered her vision, and the girl was forced to suppress a gasp. It was humanoid in shape and covered in a metallic silver sheen, with it's only decorations being a rectangular strip of reflective glass for eyes and markings resembling a badge on it's chest. A series of clicks and whirrs emanated from it as it stood, scanning the area in front of it with robotic efficiency. Celeste sat perfectly still, hoping and praying that she would not be discovered.