"Go forward through this corridor you've been following until you reach the end," Seven wrote. "You'll find a partial staircase there. Once you reach the upper level, you'll enter a larger area. A really old one by the looks of it. There is a helical structure somewhere inside it, that's your reference point. Turn left as soon as you see it. The cluster of Seeds is beyond that point."
Ashe looked at the words in silence, then at the corridor ahead. The thought of encountering the Drift again did cross her mind, and in her current state she wasn't sure she would actually survive another chase if it came to that. But one way or another she had to get out of that place.
"How far is it?" she asked.
"Less than two hundred spans from your current position."
Ashe frowned slightly. "Spans?"
"It's the unit we use most often when mapping these places," Seven replied. "Think of it as roughly the distance of a stretched arm to the next. It's not exact, but it works well enough in ruins."
The number sounded reasonable in her mind so she started to walk slowly.
"Do you ever wonder what happened here?" Ashe asked after a while, unable to keep her thoughts to herself any longer. "Something must have gone wrong… something unnatural. The destruction inside this place… it's just too abrupt."
Seven though seemed to have no answer for her, since no writings appeared anywhere.
"And the pod…" she continued. "It had my name on it… if that really is my name."
She hesitated, then glanced up again trying to distinguish the farthest visible point.
"Do you think there are others around here? More pods, I mean."
Nothing appeared in response.
"Right… silence," she murmured. "Focus."
At the end of the corridor, the promised staircase came into view. Only then did she understand what Seven meant by "partial staircase". The lower half was still somewhat in place, but the upper half had collapsed almost completely, leaving only pieces of suspended stone in its place.
She wouldn't let that stop her though, so she began climbing.
The first section was manageable but when she reached the broken part, the only way to continue was to use the collapsed debris as a path.
She extended one arm upward to catch hold of a narrow edge above her. As she did, the sleeve of her bodysuit slid back slightly from the movement and something on the inside of her wrist caught her eye.
At first she thought it might have been dirt, but as she studied it, the shape of it just seemed too distinct for that. It was embedded into her skin in fine dark lines, forming a small and minimalist mark. It had a narrow central line with extensions branching from it. It resembled some kind of stylized winged figure.
Ashe was still suspended on the unstable rubble when suddenly a stone moved slightly beneath her weight. That immediately snapped her attention back to reality and pushed her back to climbing.
The final pull required more effort than the rest but she soon managed to drag herself onto the upper level through the broken opening. She remained there for a few moments, lying on the cold floor and breathing hard, until she finally found enough energy to roll and push herself to her feet.
But then, the sudden scale of the place forced her to pause again. Light fell from somewhere far overhead through openings she couldn't fully see, illuminating only certain sections while leaving the rest in darkness. What little she could make out, however, didn't resemble anything meant for human use. It must have been designed for something larger. Vehicles, perhaps, or some kind of shuttles.
On one side of the structure stood the monumental helix Seven had mentioned. It had five massive flanges that connected high above her head through which amber light came through. It was enormous and very much intimidating.
As soon as she decided she was safe enough in her current location, she turned her wrist upward again and looked properly at the symbol from before.
"Seven," she said, while studying it carefully. "You there? Can I ask you something?"
The markings appeared on the floor beside her, then extended across a nearby wall where the light made them easier to read.
"I can see it… The symbol you're looking at."
"What is it?"
"It's the dragonfly," the reply arrived a few seconds later.
"The what?"
"We've seen that symbol before scattered around several structures and mechanical instruments."
Then after a brief pause.
"Never on Emergents, though. This is new..."
"What does it mean?"
"We don't know," Seven replied. "We have found it in enough places for it to be strange, but we don't know what it means."
Ashe lifted her eyes and looked around the vast area once more. She then tried to pierce through the shadows as well, where infrastructure lay partially hidden.
"How can you see me at all?" she asked. "It's like you're right here beside me. And yet… you're not."
"I'm not," Seven said. "But yes, I can see you and your surroundings in high detail. We have access to technology here and a network we've learned to navigate that lets me follow where you are at a very personal level."
"How is that even possible?"
"We may have only been around for a dozen years but we've learned how to use some of what was left behind. Not all of it, most of these places still don't make sense to us. We don't know who built them, or why so much of it still works, or how any civilization could have made something on this scale and then vanished so completely. But some principles behind the machines here can still be understood by us."
Ashe read Seven's explanations as she slowly moved through the area.
"We noticed early on that even without our memory some of us could still understand certain things instinctively. Some ways of thinking, of testing things out, observing them. Scientists or engineers… whatever we used to be, some part of that seemed to have remained with us. So we studied the systems that were still active until we eventually learned how to use them."
The writing moved to a different wall.
"It's through those systems that I'm following you now," Seven finally wrote.
"So you can basically see what I'm seeing…" Ashe said, still processing it in her mind as she was saying it.
"In a manner of speaking, yes. But stay focused," Seven wrote after a moment. "You're at fifty two spans now. You need to reach that cluster of Seeds."
"Right."
She started walking again, turning left from the hall where the helical structure stood, just as Seven had indicated.
Until then, the area had remained mostly in shadows, with only faint light filtering through. But after a few more steps, the architecture opened abruptly to the outside, and the light hit Ashe full in the face.