It's Turbin' Time (Library of Ruina Modded/Arknights)

3.28 - Atziluth

It's that place again, you think.

The dream you visited, so long ago- where you met Abel. Way back then.

The strange feeling, the way the world feels to you, it's all the same. You're back at where it started.

You even feel as if you're floating in a pool of blood, just as you were before, in that first dream. Come to think of it, it hasn't actually been that long. This year is shaping up to be one of the most confusing and turbulent years of your life.

Probably not the worst one, though.

Ugh.

Your eyes are still closed, and you almost feel like just... not opening them. Not sinking deeper into this conspiracy. Into this crazed plot of a man and his extremely unhealthy coping methods.

But the truth is, there's no going back.

This entire thing is going to involve you, whether you want it or not, and you'd rather have it happen on your own terms.

You wonder if you're going to find Adam here- or at least, some sort of remnant. Likely not, if the Plague Doctor was speaking truth at all. Speaking of the Plague Doctor... no, now is not the time for thinking about it.

With a long-suffering sigh, you open your eyes, and you see the light.

Once again, you feel none of the physical sensations that afflicted your body in the real world. The exhaustion, the headaches, the lingering burn of your wounds and bruises that were collected throughout the fights of today, the faint taste of copper on your tongue, the stinging of old scars you didn't see fit to remove throughout your career, perhaps erroneously.

It's all gone.

The realm of dreams... it feels ethereal. Faint. Sensations are muted. You're used to pain, to having a little sting on the back of your mind, and here, it's all gone. It's unnerving, unnatural.

You didn't really stew on that before, on your last visit. You were likely just relieved that the Fairy was gone, the constant sensation of being sliced open from the inside vanishing.

Now that you got to spend some time without it, you realized that it wasn't the only thing that went away in this realm.

Hm. The Fairy is gone, now. You hadn't properly thought much about the implications, about what it meant. If you hadn't managed to get to Rhodes Island and get it removed, you'd be considerably worse off by now. You briefly consider that possibility, and imagine fighting Adam with your guts one step from spilling out. Terrible idea. There was still some volume of it, minuscule as it was, inside of your body. The lingering traces they were unable to fully remove. But all the rest is in a jar, now.

You wonder if whatever strange effect that was keeping it animated and functioning inside of your body- when the energy supply should have long since been depleted- still remains.

Clearing those stray thoughts from your head, you look around you. It's the same as it was before.

Light.

Bright, but not burning. Your vision does not seem to be even slightly irritated by its intensity.

You stand up. The sensation of submersion vanishes yet again.

As you do so, it is as if the light forms itself into new shapes. Slowly, but surely, the now-recognizable sight of L-Corp's central facility comes to life before your eyes.

More likely then not, there will be some manner of strange creature in this place, or an horrible, disfiguring sight. Perhaps the corridors will be laced with corpses. Perhaps the phantom images of the founders of Lobotomy Corporation will haunt these hallways. Perhaps Abnormalities, Claws, or that strange Arbiter will be waiting for you.

The room finishes forming. It is the same elevator as the first time.

Ah, a pleasant surprise. Perhaps you can skip the drama and leave already.

You try to tap the "architecture" button. It's the place you met Abel in, and the place where you appeared first, in X's dream. It's a good place to start- the button doesn't work. Figures.

You press "Control." Doesn't work.

You press "Information." Doesn't work.

Safety. Training. Central Command 1. Central Command 2. Disciplinary, Welfare. None of them work- it only functions at all when you press "Record."

As the elevator rumbles and descends, you notice how... strangely designed the facility seems to be. Jogging your memory, you try to recall the rooms you were in, before, at your last visit. You dislike this place, but it is interesting.

It seems that, the deeper you went, the more confusing and nonsensical the departments ended up becoming. You recall that Control had a fairly normal-looking room, with the lower departments of the first layer not being all that different.

But Central Command was just an enormous ballroom, for reasons that elude you. It only got weirder from there.

With a jingle, the room opens, and you step into the Record Department. Like you said, your destination is an utterly bizarre place.

A hallway lined with towers and clocks, melting into one another and into archs, clouds and wings in bizarre candlewax patterns.

As expected, a large machine stands on the middle of the room, designed similarly to an enormous clock. The words it speaks are utterly unintelligible, with how sped up they seem to be. It shakes its head around, spins around its own axis... it's almost as if it's headbanging. Heh.

You concentrate and slow down your perception to understand- and a spike of pain erupts. The debilitating flare of agony that forms is as if someone had rammed a railroad spike through your skull. You stagger backwards, and the creature turns its gaze towards you.

"We must cherish each and every moment." it speaks, this time completely clearly.

Then, it returns to its nonsensical rambling.

You aren't going to get anywhere with this thing. You simply step out of the room and into the corridors, which are... covered with papers, torn papers lined panicked scrawlings. You lower yourself to read some of them.

I've decided to start keeping a diary.

Frankly, I do need some way to keep track of what has been happening. I'm feeling really lost here. But hey, I got hired to a managerial position in a Nest. I probably have the skills for it.

Somewhere.

But this Wing seems to be really strange????

I don't know.

First of all, why are employees begging to leave? Are the wages that bad? I don't see anything wrong with the work. I just send them to talk to a skull?

Your eyes shoot up. Hired as a manager. Is this- is this from the manager? From a manager, you think. Which one of them? Abram? X?

...Adam.

It likely is Adam. You're dreaming of him, aren't you? Has he not vanished? Has another fragment of the mirror hitched a ride into your own head? You need to investigate. You move your eyes to another section of the scrawlings.

my secretary…

How cool is that? I have a secretary! I must have been really important before I forgot everything. What a time to get amnesia, uh? I hope there's some training courses I can look up or something this is all really new to me

But the secretary. I guess this was some sort of deal they had with the Head? Aren't humanoid AI supposed to be illegal?

that Malkuth girl was really cute though. She handled the stuff really easily!

I feel like she's someone I should look up to. Someone who's in control of themselves. Someone who always knows what they're doing!

I hope I can do this.

The rest of the lines are illegible. The handwriting is panicked, and they've been repeatedly written over, striken through and defaced until the it all became impossible to distinguish or understand.

You continue to search for another section, and it's more of the same scrawl, but you find bits and pieces.

I don't remember… too much about the job. I'm pretty clueless. Does that make me an idiot?

How am I supposed to finish a day in seven minutes?

It isn't really that hard. I thought it would be more complicated. I've been at it for five days and I've yet to fail a single mission!

We got the Punishing Bird again. Excellent. One of three. I just need to gather this one EGO and I can beat Gebura. This cycle, it'll all work out.

Can't we just have robots do the job? Doesn't sound too complicated. That might be the filter, though.

They seem to be out of order now, you note. Jumping from one day to another, from multiple cycles. Hopeless notes from older cycles, hopeful notes from the first days. A soul full of excitement, and the journey crushing it out of him.

There's a really important matter I need to get handled. I've been looking around my office, but there's nothing really useful. No documents, nothing, I can't find any clue to who exactly I'm supposed to be.

Ayin was kind of a bastard, wasn't he?

Why- why do I have to listen to her? Why do I have to give her what she wants? She doesn't deserve to live. She doesn't deserve to be a Sephirah. She ruined everything. All that she deserves is to be torn apart by a pack of Sweepers.

I don't like the Forsaken Murderer. Why do I have to hear his grunting when I go check up on him?

What's the point?

Hod is mad at me, too. What did I do wrong?

I'm not this person they keep talking about. I don't even remember what they're saying I did.

How am I supposed to get home after work? Where do I even leave? Surely it must be the Nest. I'm in a managerial position in one of the top-ranked Wings, after all. Everyone depends on Lobotomy Corporation's energy supply, don't they?

This is my third attempt at the Red Mist. It's already gone badly.

I think I don't like One Sin. I don't know why.

Where is the Punishing Bird?

When can I get out? When do I get paid?

Who am I?

I shouldn't press the button. I shouldn't press the button.

I hate this train thing

I think the Shelter might be the solution. I think... none of my employees are strong enough, but... Abnormalities can't be killed. They're stronger, aren't they? Much stronger.

There's a door. I can't cross it. There's something I'm missing. Netzach is still mad at me- was it that? It's... it's probably that.

There's no way out of this hellhole. I'm thinking of that employee- back in the first day. Almost every night.

fuck, I don't know where my stuff, any of my stuff, is. I can't be homeless in a Nest, can I? And a manager of my position can't be caught sleeping in the Backstreets. I'd get kidnapped in a heartbeat!

I don't want to be Ayin.

Someone died. I fucked up, but I'm sure I can fix this.

Maybe Angela knows where my things are?

How did I even get this job? And why can't I leave?

I made a mistake. Malkuth is mad at me.

I hate you, Hokma. And I hate Binah, too.

The pockets of this labcoat I'm wearing are empty. fuck

Where is Punishing Bird

Maybe I can just sleep in my office. It should be fine so long as I go to sleep after working hours, right? Are there accommodations or something?

I can't fix this

What day is it again

I've beat Gebura. I feel dirty. She didn't- she doesn't talk to me anymore. The EGO extraction systems are calibrated far more efficiently, but... I think I've done something wrong.

The notes start to repeat themselves, and as you continue to walk through the seemingly infinite corridor, lined with locked containment cells and an ever-increasing amount of paper.

I've won. I beat Chesed. Now, Gebura's the last one standing. I've failed for long enough.

We're almost at the end. I... I don't think I like this job. But I don't want to leave the Nest. What am I supposed to do? I crossed the door, but no Sephirah talked to me the entire day. There's something- something wrong with this.

I can't get out. I won't get out. I don't want to be Ayin.

The frequency of actually readable papers from the manager seems to diminish. You find reports of finished days, graded like- like school tests. All perfect notes. Missions with the signatures of the Sephirah- the ones who would become the Librarians. Chesed, Netzach, Gebura, Binah.

Strange, fragmented notes and stories about Abnormalities.

Heavily redacted texts on agents, curriculums sent to Lobotomy Corporation, contracts involving energy production, a few singed and burned agreements between Wings- between R-Corp. and L-Corp. Negotiations involving T-Corp's TimeTrack protocol, purchases of vast quantities of K-Corp's healing serums.

Complex diagrams and blueprints regarding Singularities and their complex interactions. You try to take some of those to take a deeper look, and place them inside your jacket. Can you take things from the dreamworld? Likely not, but it doesn't hurt to try, does it?

What you can read, you commit to your mind- strange projects and the design of a large machine- something designed to store time, like Lech's internal batteries, only at a far greater scale. Fascinating- the sort of thing that could be sold for billions, back in the City, if you could escape the Wing agents hunting you down for it. And it is only part of a greater whole.

As you grab another paper- a confusing series of equations regarding something you don't really understand, but what you do understand is enough to realize what it is. The references to T-Corp, and the energy requirements of a level so absurd, so unfathomable- it cannot be anything but what you are thinking of.

It is a piece, perhaps a small piece, of the necessary infrastructure for the TimeTrack protocol employed in L-Corp's main facility. The absurd timeloop machine that only the impossible wealth of a Wing could sustain.

And at the end of it all, another room, dark as pitch. An enormous container of glass, shattered to pieces. There are puddles of water scattered around the ground, and you have the lingering feeling that something escaped from this box of glass.

You open a door on the side of the room. Another corridor. More of the same, more data worth a CEO's ransom, more Abnormality tales and agent records redacted and altered so many times as to be more ink then paper, more junk and unintelligible garbage. Then, Extraction.

A black room, black boxes with strange words scattered around the department. An aura of sadness and sorrow lingering in the air.

On the middle, another machine. This time, it is recognizable to you. Her appearance is very different, but something screams inside of your heart, and you know who this is- the Arbiter. The one who tore you apart.

She does not seem to notice your presence. You sigh and pass through her trying to not pay much attention to her words. But a phrase escapes her mask, and you hear it perfectly.

"You cannot escape the Head."

You think you have, in a way. Heh.

You walk out of Extraction, and into Architecture. No elevators this time. The geometry of the place seems to have been altered. More pieces of paper litter the hallways, but this time it's just the same phrase, repeated over and over.

Every Abnormality may not have a reason to exist, but they all have a will to persist.

The room you enter is not the same as it was last time. It's almost entirely melted, a psychedelic nightmare. Large metal structures, human bodyparts, photographs and personal possessions tossed around haphazardly, some sort of improvised diagram of a human, something vaguely resembling a human brain in a deformed jar. A pair of eyeballs stares at you from the ceiling, and you step on someone's jawbone as you make your way towards the center of the room, where a corpse lies.

It is undoubtedly Adam. His corpse seems... half-shattered. One second is the corpse of a human- organs spilling out, blood trickling into the floor. Then it is some strange thing, a reflection and a story, torn into pieces, impossible to repair. Parts are missing, and with every blink it seems to be a different part. It is bleeding itself all over the floor, and the room is drinking deeply.

It has nothing left to say to you. It does not have enough consciousness left to beg for mercy, and you suspect that even if it had, it wouldn't.

There is only one thing that can be done for it, now. You take out your sword, to finally put the final shard of Ayin out of its misery.

Your blade touches his neck, and he doesn't budge. Adam does not even flinch as the blade pierces through whatever was left of his spinal cord. It's little more then a shot in the dark, but it seems to work- you hear the mirror shattering one final time. Then, he isn't there anymore. The room isn't there anymore.

The world isn't here.

You don't step into a clearing. This is not happening. The sun's light does not shine from above. This is not a pleasant memory. It is not yours.

Your mind reasserts itself. The fog of confusion clears.

Ayin is there, laying on the grass. A middle-aged man with black hair and golden eyes, dressed in almost completely black attire, with the exception of his pristine white labcoat. He is... there.

Waiting for you.

You cough politely.

He turns his eyes towards you, and moves to a sitting position. He smiles faintly. His face doesn't seem to be very used to that expression.

[] Write-in.

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Character Sheet Unlocked: Adam (under WhiteNight)
Character Sheet Unlocked: Jamie (under WhiteNight)
Character Sheet Unlocked: Sona (under WhiteNight)
Character Sheet Unlocked: X (& [CENSORED]) (under Lobotomy Corporation)
Character Sheet Unlocked: The Plague Doctor (under Lobotomy Corporation)
Character Sheet Unlocked: The Dreaming Current (under Lobotomy Corporation)

You have gained a trait. (E.G.O Gift ("Hippity-Hop"): A light-blue shark tail, granted to you by the Dreaming Current. Though you can control it- and even use it as an additional limb without issues- it has a range of involuntary movements, which seem to be connected to how you are feeling.)

Ayam Adom has gained a trait. (Shapeling: Flesh twists and bone knots under her hands. Life springs forth from a drop of blood.)

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