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Once Basiluzzo's Wonder was done trying to deafen and/or crush all of them, once Basiluzzo himself came back from the trance he'd put himself in, once Stromboli and Basiluzzo made sure that Pendour and Abzu were alright, that left the matter of Stromboli's Code piece. While he and Basiluzzo checked on Pendour and Abzu, Stromboli looked down to his locator, a glint of it catching his attention out of the corner of his eye.

That was when he realised that it was showing him a thin lit path leading from the room.

Surprised, Stromboli straightened and pulled his locator out to where he could see more of it. Sure enough, there was a path, and it got stronger once Stromboli was focusing on it, though it did not get much stronger. "Ah, uh... Hm." He looked to the other people gathered there. "I don't think it was doing this until just now." At least, he didn't remember seeing it glow like that before Basiluzzo had done his meditation on his own Code piece.

The path was leading out of the room, back toward the way they'd come.

"Who's ready for more stairs?"

Basiluzzo looked over his shoulder to where his piece of the Code sat, humming quietly and gently spinning in place atop its glass pedestal. "...Yeah, sure, why not?" As he stood up all the way, he addressed Abzu and Pendour, "ready to get the last of this taken care of?"

Pendour had not spoken since Basiluzzo had gone into the secret room containing his Code piece. She did not speak, now, when he asked if she was all right. It might have been obvious that she was not. Her eyes were glazed, distant.

One of her hands was tangled in her hair, and she played with the strands almost violently.

She did stand up, though, as Stromboli seemed to notice something new.

She just wanted to sleep, but out of all of them, Stromboli was the one who was always the most welcoming, kind, and supportive of others. She wanted to return that favor as much as she could. She didn't have subspace blankets to give him, right now, and she didn't have words or smiles to give, either, but she could keep walking.

She could go with him.

She stepped down the stairs without complaint.

Going down the stairs was indeed easier than going up! It always was! That didn't mean he enjoyed it, necessarily, but it wasn't much of a headache. It definitely wasn't as much of a headache as his head actually was at the moment! This was a bit different!

Why was Stromboli basically running after the bat signal though?

"Hey, I gave y'all flashlights! I do still have mine though." He pulled it out, handing it off to one of the two of them because the darkness honestly was a bit of a relief. Did he have medication? Yes. Did he really want to have to be exposing himself to more bright lights? No. Not at all. Basiluzzo and Stromboli could handle this.

Could... Handle...

Her?

Something rang deep in his mind that he knew who this was, and he knew who this was more than it might have seemed. A part of his brain was jumping at the concept!

Another part was aching, even beyond the migraine, and he couldn't figure out why. Maybe it was something else he had seen? He had gone to his Wonder enough that he had gathered some memories besides the one that smacked him in the face earlier.

"He's Stromboli," offered Abzu, a smile on his face like much like the cat who ate the canary despite the fact that he was trying to piece together how he knew her. How could he? She was a force ghost of some sort out of a wonder that he had never been on. And neither had Stromboli! This was the first time he had ever actually managed to make it there!

By going through Basiluzzo's wonder to get there.

Wild.

"Y'know," he offered, amused, to Basiluzzo, "should've abducted him up here sooner."

dramallama

Seeing other people click on flashlights reminded Stromboli that he, too, had a flashlight. He scrambled for it, clicking it on and aiming it square at the source of the voice. The light shone straight through to the wall opposite, and it took a second for him to realise that it was shining through not only the room but a ghostly figure as well.

To his credit, he didn't drop the flashlight or anything else, and he didn't yelp this time. Instead, he and the figure met eyes, and he realised she was staring directly at him. "Oh, uh," her question registered to him belatedly. "My name is Stromboli."

She arched an eyebrow at him. "This house, this wonder is named Stromboli." Well, at least he was in the right place-- "So you mean to tell me that you have the same name as this house?" Well, wasn't that how it worked? Didn't everyone have the same name as their wonder? Basiluzzo did. Pendour did. Abzu did. Stromboli was willing to bet all the other knights did, also.

"...Yes?"

She regarded him for a long moment. "What's your name when you are not named Stromboli?"

Oh. He looked behind him to the other three, but decided to go for it. Theoretically, he was only among friends. It shouldn't hurt anything for him to tell her, "my name is Luke."

"Luke." This seemed to satisfy her. "So, Luke, why are you here?"

"Well, there are things going sideways. None of us could get to our Wonders," he gestured to the others behind him, "and the Code sent us to talk to our Code pieces." He realised, then, "Wait, what's your name? You haven't given us your name."

Was that a twinkle of mischief in her eye? It was hard to tell. "My name is Stromboli."

A long pause. Then, Stromboli ventured, "...what's your real name?"

"Ah, that? You can call me Thabet."

"Thabet! Like, from my memory, Thabet?" Basiluzzo took a step forward, gesturing emphatically. Thabet blinked once, twice in his direction. "Sorry. My name... well, I'm the knight for Basiluzzo. I had a memory. Your name was in it."

"Ah, Basiluzzo, that would make sense. And what was your name in this memory?" She squinted at him.

It took him a second to remember, "I was named Ariska." The name meant nothing to him, but it obviously meant something to her. She brightened for a moment, then sobered. She began to pace back and forth silently, clearly thinking to herself.

"Ariska. Did you escape the burning of our Wonders, Ariska?" Her gaze was piercing, now. It took Basiluzzo aback, and it was a moment or two before he found the words to adequately respond to her. At first, nonsense came out of his mouth.

"My name is Richard now, but... I think so?" He frowned. "...You didn't, did you?"

Merrily, "oh, certainly not. It's why I'm still here even now. I couldn't just leave everything unguarded. You had to take care of the evacuees. The least I could do was guard what was left behind."

She saw the way that Abzu was looking at her. While the others had their full attention on Thabet, she stepped over to him and took his hand in hers, rubbing her thumb across the back of it.

Everything felt too far away and too close at the same time. Even the flashlights were too bright. Once the others had theirs going, she turned hers off, and squinted past the other's beams of light. Her head spun.

Thabet seemed far nicer than Irving, and she raised a hand in greeting, but she could not get those spinning thoughts to come together into words enough to say something as simple as hello, much less explain who she was, and where her Wonder was, and all of the other things that she should be saying now if she was polite.

She was not polite. Her free hand brushed through her hair, again and again, and her stare was blank.

Irving would never let her live it down if he saw her during an overload like this, she thought.

Abzu took Pendour's hand easily. And while he appreciated the reassurance, he also wanted to make sure she was feeling okay. It seemed her mood perked slightly when she tried to acknowledge Thabet, but Abzu squeezed her hand reassuredly when it didn't result in any words making it out of her lips.

He wanted to do what he could to help her feel better.

Abzu found himself grinning up at Thabet as he tried to put together why she recognized him, and why he recognized her, and somehow, some pieces of the whole thing started to slide together. She knew him as Mito. She was delighted by him as Mito. Mito had evidently known her well. "It has!" He couldn't quite help razzing an already flustered Stromboli, adding, "Even longer due to his resistance to come here!"

It was too bad he couldn't hug her back, honestly.

"Honestly," Abzu, who had always been a bit of an ethically ho, was willing to fully own what he was to Luke. "We're close. Friends. And perhaps we do know each other quite well."

He snorted.

"Just not maritally. Don't worry, Luke doesn't cheat." He wondered, though, of the implications of the fact that she said it was a pity that they weren't married. Was he married to her? Or did she just like how he was in his past life? Well, clearly she liked how he was in his past life, that was pretty obvious from the way she tried to hug him and how delighted she was to see him--

Happily, he followed after her, taking Pendour's hand if she wanted someone to walk with.

"Honestly, my head is pounding like a bass drum." Still true! "A fall can't make it any worse-"

"You know, I do wish you'd visited sooner," Thabet hummed, phasing effortlessly through debris and scattered furniture that the others had to scramble around.

Trying not to lose his knees on an upturned table, Stromboli replied, "uh, sorry about that, I guess. I haven't had the time to really visit until now." Thabet looked over her shoulder and fixed him with a look. "I've got a job that requires long hours, and until pretty recently I didn't even know this place existed." In response to her huff, "I promise I'll visit more often now that I know you're here."

"Basiluzzo has power and shields back," she pointed out, well, pointedly. "I heard when they engaged, through the wall that joins our Wonders."

Why did Stromboli feel like he was getting scolded?

"I know. I'm sorry." Did he sound a bit exasperated? She had no way of knowing that she was echoing the same mantra he'd been getting from Basiluzzo and Encke for ages. He wasn't staying away on purpose! He was busy! He had a career and bills to worry about! Not to mention patrols! Or spending time with his beloved spouse!

"I thought it was strange when the area around the Code piece began to change, and not for the better, but at least it brought you here." She seemed mollified by his apology and shifted focus. To Basiluzzo, she turned her attention and asked, "did you have any luck reaching your piece of the Code? I can tell you how to get in, if you don't know."

Basiluzzo thought back to the security telling them 'voice mismatch' when his father tried to get into the room. He wondered if it was still keyed to Thabet's voice. "Oh, no, I figured it out, but thank you." A pause. "Is there any way of getting in without the door falling down?" She gave him an alarmed look, and he hurried to add, "the glass didn't break!"

"Oh good, good." She shook her head as she led them down a flight of stairs and around a corner, through a door partially blocked by collapsed wall and knocked-over bookcases. Thabet waited for all of them to pick their way through the rubble, and then she was off again, down that hall. "All you have to do is tell the computer to open the door. It's voice activated." She paused. "...Wait, did you go immediately for the manual override?"

Basiluzzo gave Pendour and Abzu apologetic looks, Stromboli echoing them. To be fair to his son, Stromboli hadn't tried commanding the door with his voice, either. At least, not like that. Not that it would have worked--

"There was a motor error, though. The door wouldn't even move when we pressed the button."

"The button-- Oh, yeah, that would have been awful. My condolences for that being the option you ended up with. No one was crushed, correct?"

"Wait, it's supposed to do that?" Basiluzzo wasn't sure if her laugh was at him or not.

"It's a security measure. It assumes that if you got to that point, something is wrong. You would have known the door falls and had the cushions in place."

"There are cushions?"

"Wait, were there no cushions? What in the world did past you do with them? No matter. No one died or was permanently deafened, and I guess that's the important thing to take away." She led them around another corner, down another flight of stairs, through a ruined door. The debris was getting less dense, easier to avoid or climb around. "We're almost there."

This was so much easier than the process of finding his own Code piece. Basiluzzo gave Stromboli a look that was openly envious. Stromboli replied with a broad shrug.

Indeed, they were almost there. After a scant few more minutes of walking, Thabet rounded another corner and presented them with a room with a chest in the center. "There it is. If you can get the chest open, the Code piece is in there."

"Is it locked?" Stromboli didn't wait for an answer, however, striding forward and trying to open the chest. It did not open. "I don't suppose you know where the key for it is."

"There isn't one. Not a physical one, anyway." Thabet seemed apologetic. "We had a trade agreement with a Mercurian company, and they handled a lot of our security technology for us. There is a passcode, but I have long forgotten what it is." She regarded the chest for a moment. "I was trying to get to it, to take it somewhere safer, when I died."

"Maybe it's already unlocked?" It was Basiluzzo who spoke up, craning his neck to look at the chest around Stromboli without getting in his way. "Maybe it has a latch, or something."

"I would try that."

"Really?" Stromboli was skeptical, but he poked and prodded at it nonetheless. It did have a latch on the front, but nothing about it moved when he tried to twist, to bend, to pull, to push, to-- Oh. Pushing and then pulling worked. At least, he stood there with a piece of the chest in his hand and looking over to Thabet with alarm. "Was it supposed to do that?"

She did not look convinced, but offered, "well, does the chest open?"

This time, the chest opened. Inside the chest was the ball of light that looked like what Basiluzzo had found in the secret glass room on his own Wonder. Without even thinking about it, Stromboli reached for it.

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Stromboli had a busy trading port on the surface of the desert. Ships and caravans alike came and went with precise regularity, picking up shipments of Basiluzzan glass and crystal and dropping off all manner of spices, new and fascinating foodstuffs, and supplies--all of which Stromboli took a cut of, of course. Today, a large portion of the port was cordoned off. A new trade agreement had been struck with a settlement several days' worth of travel across the Uranian desert, one whose supply of gemstones was widely variant from the ones Stromboli normally imported, in new and fascinating ways, with fascinating forms and new colors of amber they had not yet seen--

Their people had been a strange lot. Reticent, reluctant to meet and discuss terms, instead trying to demand of the Stromboli envoy what the terms of business would be. When Stromboli's people had turned to leave, their tone had shifted suddenly. This was not an uncommon happening. Many people softened their stance at the prospect of losing business altogether, and these people wanted access to the thick, clear Basiluzzan crystal that the people of Stromboli had an exclusive export agreement for.

So they had come back to the table, and all was well.

And now, the first shipment of gems was to arrive. The export of crystal had arrived the day before according to the ledgers, the only one the other people had ordered, strangely enough. But they had sent the agreed-upon three crates of semi-precious gemstones, crates that the crews on the surface of the port unloaded gingerly. Some of the gemstones were brittle, meant for ornamentation where they would not be touched, much less rattled around.

The foremen thought it was odd when the crew of the ship insisted on going inside their craft before the crates were opened. 'We know our offering is good. We are eager to return home', was the only reasoning given. That was fair enough, and the head foreman ordered the first crate opened for inspection. The weight was accurate, but the contents would need to be verified nonetheless--

As soon as the lid to the crate came loose, the sky went dark, buzzing filled the air, and there was nothing but fire and screaming--

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Stromboli came out of the memory with a gasp, skin pale.

With a hum, the lights flickered on.

They should have come here first, thought Pendour, since Thabet seemed to have a very good idea of how that secret door on Basiluzzo worked, up to and including the presence of cushions. Maybe then, her head wouldn’t be spinning so much. The tiny pricks of light wouldn’t feel like too much.

Maybe she would have been able to socialize.

At least Abzu was able to lead her through the messiness of the Wonder. She didn’t trip.

At least, although Stromboli’s code piece was trapped in a box that he had to fiddle with for a while, the puzzle of opening it did not come with any loud surprises.

No surprises in the present life. It was a different story when Pendour found themselves swept up into the memory.

The explosion would have rocked her under the best of circumstances, and she yelped as she was pulled back into the present, clapping her hands over her ears once again. Worse was the smell of gunpowder and smoke and flames and-

Burning flesh. She didn’t know if that was part of Stromboli’s memory or her own, but it was choking her, now. She squeezed her eyes shut as the lights turned on, and she saw a flash of Faustite’s smirking face, saw the charred corpse.

She pressed her forehead into Abzu’s shoulder, and dig her fingernails into her scalp as hard as she could.