The Dawn of the New World

Thick worm-like blackened veins started spreading from his spine towards the rest of his body. He tried to resist but the more internal energy he directed towards this 'corruption' of the flesh, the faster it spread.

In less than ten seconds the black webbing had spread to every part of his body. It covered even his face stopping only when his eyes were the last things left unscathed.

At this point, with a soft crack, his head abruptly spun to the side. The sound was loud enough to be heard by Isak who was sitting nearby.

He looked in his direction.

"Jarek, what's wrong?"

Jarek's head was facing the other way so Isak could not see what was happening to him. His body convulsed as if he was having trouble breathing which made Isak a little more attentive.

"Jarek, are you okay?" he asked a second time.

His other hand was already around one of the twin swords. Burak and Hao Xuan who were the only ones still up and about turned their attention towards them as well.

For a moment it was dead silent in the hallway. No one even bothered breathing aloud.

Jarek, who all three of them were looking at, slowly turned back around. His movements seemed robotic like he was not yet used to his body. He looked towards Isak, meeting his questioning gaze. He appeared completely normal now.

"Hmm," he nodded slowly.

Isak released the grip around the blade and relaxed a smidgen, but still didn't look away.

"Rest now. The door will open soon."

"Hmm," Jarek nodded deeply...

Burak stared at him for a couple more seconds before going back to fishing in his nose while Hao Xuan resumed conversing with Baracus. When Isak finally looked away, Jarek's eyes rolled back into the sockets a total of two times each before returning to normal.

He leaned back and closed his eyes like nothing happened, while no one else was the wiser.

*Beep*

'Molecular Analysis: Incomplete. Data Corruption.'

'You will have to come into physical contact or ingest a portion of it for the nanites to analyze it properly. Warning: These actions are not recommended.'

'No shit, I'm not eating it dumbass.'

Hao Xuan picked up a torch and burned the piece of cloth that had taken a life of its own. It was convulsing, jumping left and right trying to get away.

He then followed the tracks until they ended next to the door. There was a small glass screen that was covered by the same webbings.

This time Hao Xuan didn't try to clear it out like before but used the torch to just burn every bit of it away. It didn't make any noise or strange movements and simply evaporated in a cloud of white smoke.

When the console was all cleared up, Hao Xuan tapped on the cracked glass. It was cold to the touch, extremely cold. He kept pushing and swiping left and right but there was no response.

*Beep*

'The display is broken. Place your left hand over the console,' Baracus informed.

Hao Xuan did as advised. He could feel a thin interconnected stream of nanites moving from his shoulder side through the arm and to the hand.

'I guess Chaos Qi really does interfere with them huh.'

Unlike before when all the nanites could 'talk' to each other as long as they were inside Hao Xuan's body, now they needed to be physically connected to one another to transmit any data which greatly effected their efficiency and normal usage as before.

A couple of seconds later Hao Xuan's vision flashed and a blue window popped up in front of his eyes.

It showed a 3D structure, or rather a portion of it. The pyramid was divided into four parts and they were in the outermost one.

There were two more sections after this one and a fourth core that was at the very bottom of the pyramid in the dead center. But most of the areas around it were blacked out, leaving a handful of them still lit up.

'What do the blacked-out ones mean?'

'No power.'

The section they were in was blacked out as well.

'Can you open the door?'

'Negative. There.is.no.power,' Baracus enunciated each and every word.

'But then how will it open later? Even in the memory I saw it open and close by itself.'

'One moment...'

The 3D images alternated between different perspectives and sections along with a bunch of numbers and letters that flashed past Hao Xuan's eyes continuously, none of which he understood.