Saule crept through the dark vaunted and eerily empty halls of the building he was in. The walls gleamed in the dark whenever his luminous gaze went over them. He was thankful for the glowing eyes all Glint had from birth, even if no one knew why they had evolved them. Nonetheless, even with the low light the halls threatened total darkness. Saule had walked for a while since he jad left his incumbent crew behind in the room they were in. No alarms had sounded when he had left but the chittering noises had ceased.

As he went about trying to find anyone or anything really, several things became apparent to him. First the temperature was much too regular to be natural, the walls and decor suggested a being inside a cave, secondly, once he'd become used to the near total darkness and suppressed the glow from his eyes he could see small indicator lights embedded in the floors and wall in strange unfamiliar patterns. The lights themselves so dim as to be near invisible if he wasn't looking specifically for them and even then they almost seemed a trick of the brain.

Thirdly it was definitely a place with a purpose, from the way the large hallway he was in stretched the length of the structure, did bot deviate and had none of the usual meandering ways and adjoining corridors that more general purpose places had. Everything seemed to branch off this hall and from the strange embedded lights there were several important rooms. The last thing was that wherever he was, it was nearly deserted. He'd passed numerous empty cubbies and rooks with no immediately apparent function. Surely by now he'd meet whatever occupied this place, but nothing had greeted him or ambushed him.

Saule walked for several units before he entered a huge room that dwarfed any he'd seen on the way. But what caught his attention was the faintly glowing green screen on the distant wall. He made his way to it as fast as he could, extremely aware that his glowing eyes must have acted as a huge lure to any eyes in the blackness. Just as he reached the terminal, it chirruped in an oddly baritone way and turned off. Cursing his luck, Saule started to inspect the machinery surrounding the screen when a message in Glintish, Pan Oceanic trade dialect blared out from the dark ceiling.

-----

Eli dismissed the crimson coloured warnings, and relaxed slightly. He had managed to activate his drive and so far nothing had tore through his hull like the first time he'd encountered the alien ship. Maybe it needed time to set up a shot like that or couldn't fire this close. Either way he was still in one piece and on his way to the other side of Plinth, the second planet in the Glint's home system.

It was just after he'd settled in and had started prepping his worst-case scenario options that the message came through to him.

It said, "White messenger, we stranded you in that asteroid field for your own safety. Now that you are here and witnessing what transpires, we cannot guarantee you will see the end of this tale."

The message was quiet compared to the last time the alien ship had contacted him. As if overpowering the distortion of the gravity envelope reduced the original grinding stone and chittering insects of the message to a harsh whisper of wings on chitinous shells and segmented legs brushing against stone. Hearing it startled Eli so much that he introduced enough errors into his plan that he had to restart the entire process.

That message prompted Eli did something incredibly illegal, he uploaded his black box to the remote body he'd created weeks ago along with a copy of himself. But those weeks had felt like years, before he'd been stranded in that dark debris field of rocks and wreckage of ancient ships. If something happened to his data core in his body/hull, the black box could activate with a singular thought from his data core. Hopefully the limited processing power of the body wouldn't hamper the black box program functions or his ability to function if it did need to be used.

While he did this he steered his thoughts as far away from the thought that even if the black box worked, "he" would still die, while the copy would then live. It came far too close to acknowledging that he wasn't the original Elijah but rather a copy made from a series of intricate brain scans and recorded responses. Which brought to mind a whole handful of dark and morbid concepts he'd rather not think about at the moment. Instead he focused on tweaking the remote body to function autonomously and be self sustainable.

Eli exited the gravity envelope with the gravity well of Plinth between him and the hostile ship, his sensor array already swivelling to orient on the last known position of the hostile ship. It still remained visible the indecipherable signal was no longer being broadcasted from its slaved satellite. A new message has taken its place.

"Beings altered by the Jeweler, we talk with you now to reveal your hidden origins and ourselves. You are not wholly natural. An ancient foe of ours known as the Jewelers, have altered your very race through subtle and insidious means. They do this not for good will or benevolence but for some twisted, perverse sense of beauty and divine will to impose their views on creation. We have come to eradicate them and undo what they have crafted in you. Interfere and you will be destroyed."

It was punctuated with a flash of light. Eli had only a nanosecond to comprehend the message before a rod of metal tore him into his data core.