The Stirring Child - A Warframe Story

[NeroAugustine]

“Tenno, you are needed.”

You look up from your codex, having been studying the new entries. You wait for Lotus to continue.

“I have been scanning the origin system for warframes in stasis, and have come upon something unexpected.”

You listen, tapping the head of a close by noggle, watching it bob under your finger.

“I have received a return signal from Lua. To my knowledge, there should not be any warframes in stasis there. I will need you to go down there and investigate the source of the signal.”

You pause the toy’s movements, caught off guard by the news. You nod, heading to the arsenal to gear up. Having been dealing with swarms of infested, you were happy for a change of scene, and the prospect of finding something new was always exciting.

“A warframe, asleep on Lua?” Ordis chimed in “WhAT A TWisT! How- …unusual. Operator, I suggest you hurry. The sender might be in danger.”
Your knees land on the deck as the navigation system hums to life; a faint blue glow engulfing you. In your hand, you hold a broken white sphere, encased in a gold frame.

Starring at it, you can’t help but find it a perfect symbol of the failed Orokin empire.

Beautiful, in all its lifelessness.

Your ships engines burst with energy, sending you toward your destination. As you approach Lua, you wonder what the Orokin were like before they fell. You knew from the what data you have collected on them that they were cruel, ruthless tyrants, and you’d seen the ruins of their civilization, but you wonder what they were like in their prime.

 

 

 

The Orbiter slows to a stop, howling as it hovers over a landing pad on the fissured surface of the moon. As the ejection system initiates, you drop, flipping into an upright landing, a loud clank of metal as your warframe lands upon the ancient surface. You look around quietly, glancing up to your Helios sentinel, who seems just as excited to be there as you, looking for something, anything, to scan.

A yellow diamond shows up on your display, and you pear through the eyes of your frame, taking in the double senses. The air in your transference chair is still and warm, but the frozen surface of Lua still reaches across space, nipping at your skin. The sensation isn’t new, but to contemplate it is no easier than it was when you first awoke.

“I’ve isolated the source of the signal. Seek it out.”

You tighten your grip on your rifle, moving forward from the platform, and across the cracked surface into a tall, half room. The front had collapsed long before, leaving the interior exposed.

You quicken your pace, heading into the structure. Its white walls were guided with gold, and, though long abandoned, it’s doors still lit up as they peeled apart to allow entry.

There was not an enemy in sight as you ran swiftly from room to room, dodging access panels, as they rose from the floor at your approach.

You kept an eye out for opportunities to loot.

With as long dead as the owners are of this place, anything of value was fair game, and you figured it’d be better used by you than some corpus scavenger looking to stuff their pockets.
You skid to a stop as the distance between you and the waypoint diminishes. The room is large, with elevated walkways wrapping around the rooms edges, but you are drawn to an amber glow in the center. On a round platform, you find the source of the signal; a golden rift floating just off the ground.

“A time rift.” Lotus says, taken aback. “This is becoming more confusing by the second. Tenno, I believe the signal is coming from the other side. I will need you to go through the portal and see if you can make contact with the warframe I am detecting.”

Unphased by the prospect of going through a time rift, you reach out to it.

A sudden shock sends your systems into a frenzy. You feel a pain as the connection with your warframe stutters.
“Operator! Are you alright!?” Ordis asks.

You don’t answer, focusing on the connection as it strengthens once more. Your breaths deepen as you feel the cold bite of Lua once more.

“Tenno, your transference was almost terminated.” Lotus said. “It’s stabilized, but you need to be careful.”

You were not feeling so confident now, and Lotus’s warning could have been more useful had it come earlier.

“Thank the stars, Operator! You had me worried. Hmm… Analyzing the feedback.”

You wait, mustering up what patience you could, noticing a few artifacts glitch across your recovering view.

Ordis quickly shed his concern, too intrigued by this turn of events.“It seems the Orokin had enacted a security protocol surrounding certain parts of Lua; an anti-warframe barrier. Such a thing would be down now, but if this fissure takes you into the past, it might still be active.”

“Tenno, I cannot justify sending you into this rift, seeing the effects of the barrier on your warframe.” Lotus said, noticeably upset by the sudden obstacle.

Before she could say more, you knew what to do.

The transference chair vibrated and was torn away, as you felt a rush of energy. Your senses warped as your consciousness shot through space.

Your feet planted themselves on the Orokin floor. You could feel a slight difference in gravity, but it didn’t take long to get used to. Glancing back, you looked up to your warframe.

“I do not know how well I can communicate with you through the portal.” Lotus said, recognizing your determination. We will monitor the rift and make sure it remains open as long as you are on the other side.”

You hear what she says, but are focused on the rift in front of you. Waiting through it, you imagine, could be the Orokin. Not the crippled skeleton that you know, but the empire alive and breathing.

…And deadly.

You take a deep breath, but the air is stale; not a good start, but you prepair yourself for anything, and step through the rift.

 

 

The blinding light subsides and you feel yourself drop a few feet before the ground stabilizes. Looking around you see the room you were in before, but without the age and decay. The atmosphere glowed in a dreamlike haze unlike you’d ever seen before.

Your wonder is stopped abruptly, as a large ring around your platform begins to hover and spin. A searing pain erupts from all sides as beams shoot out from the inner ring, connecting where you stand.

In a split second decision, you pull yourself into the void, and leap to the ring’s edge, escaping the laser’s touch just in time.

The ring kept spinning for a few seconds longer, before closing down. It was an Orokin endurance test. You had encountered them before but only in your warframe.

You wince, trying to weather the pain. You have no warframe to return to should you get too injured to continue.

Standing back upright, you look around. There was evidence of struggle. An attack had just occurred. You realize it could be the rebellion; when the warframes turned on their creators.

Your heart sunk slightly. This was still not the Orokin you wished to see. As you scan the environment, you wonder why there is an anti-warframe barrier surrounding an endurance test chamber meant for warframe training.

Regardless, you have had your fill of surprises.

Your footsteps echo through the quiet halls. They still hold a vitality to them, but one that is freshly bleeding. You did not expect to meet a living being here.

The rooms, brightly lit, were painted in blood, scorches, and bullet holes. Looking them over, you can visualize the battle. Swift movements of deft feet, loud resounding blasts of precision shooting, fatal slashes of razor-edged blades.

Were the Orokin prepared? Was this a war, or a slaughter? You contemplate these questions, wading forward through the fresh carnage of bodies that looked neither dead or alive. They appeared to be statues, felled in their perfection.

A high pitched call catches your attention, and you look up, to see a white hovering machine, Orokin in creation.

You are quick to duck into the void, letting the bright light it ran across the ground pass over you.

A sentry.

A column, knocked down in the recent blood bath quickly becomes useful as from behind it, you watch the drone scan the area. A bright glowing shield encircles it; the only thing causing you to hesitate blasting it with your beam. If you don’t kill it quick enough, it might sound an alarm, and you know that in your state, you’d be dead in an instant.

You watch the security bot turn around, heading through the doorway you expect to have come from, following cautiously.

You make a swift pace for the opposite side, avoiding detection.

As the doors open to the next room you are struck with awe. You’ve entered a large lab. Tubes of light crisscross overhead and at the floor’s edge it drops off, past railing into the depths of the facility, as the eggshell walls spring up a few meters farther, each one covered in panels of flickering Orokin lettering.

In the far end of the room, you spy something familiar. A chair, not unlike your own in the orbiter.

Approaching it, you see that the somatic beacon above is pulsing a bright red glow. You don’t doubt that this is somehow the source of the rebounded signal.

Your feet stick to the ground as you notice the blood in the chair’s seat. It is older than the pools you’d maneuvered past in the halls before.

An access panel beside the chair catches your eye. Sticking out of the center, a datamass pulses, to the same rhythm as the transference chair’s link.

While there is no warframe in sight, this was something you could take back, and maybe have analyzed.

You pull it from it’s terminal, immediately met with the droning chimes of the alarm system. You make a rush to the door, the data mass requiring both hands to carry.

As the door opens, you feel the heat of a laser, and roll to the side in a split decision; one that saves your life. Peeking out, you see that the room has filled with active beam traps, from those that pan the walls, to turrets that have sprouted from the floor, spinning its deadly lasers in four directions.

You grip the datamass tight, void dashing from the threshold to the security of a column, taking in a deep breath as you plan your next move. You don’t know what will happen if you get hit, but you don’t want to risk it.

You set the datamass down, and lean around the edge, firing a shot at one of the closest wall turrets. With a burst of smoke and sparks, it’s disk shaped spout pops off the wall, rolling a short distance.

You grab the data mass and make another jump to the next column, making just in time. The ground shifts downward underfoot as the square panel you landed upon exhales a puff of dust.

Your eyes grow wide as the walls open up, and two large metal sphere’s appear on each side of the hall, activated by the pressure plate.

Out of the top a column rises slowly. You quickly drop your cargo to fire a beam at one, only realizing too late that even if you destroy it, the one behind you will still trigger, and you are no longer holding the datamass.

Your consolation comes in the form of a boom as the farthest thumper is destroyed.

You reach for the datamass as the orb behind you sends out a shockwave, the hammer dropping back into its center. Your fingers brush against the metal handle as you are sent tumbling across the room.

You land and roll, the wind knocked from your chest. A beam passes dangerously close above your head as you regain your senses.

Close by you can see the datamass, but a laser is coming back around. You get to your feet, quickly jumping in its direction.

As you grab it, you see another beam approaching, too swiftly for reaction. Your hands are full, and you would not survive another blast.

In an instant the laser is there, and gone, but you are alive.

A console had risen from the floor, triggered by your approach, sheltering you from demise. You had been holding your breath, now releasing it, surprised to be upright.

The time rift was only a few more leaps away.

 

 

“Hmm… interesting.” Ordis said, puzzling over the data recently uploaded to the orbiters systems. “It seems to be an ancient Orokin datalog that’s been highjacked to send out a signal akin to that of a warframe. Attempting to decode.”

You rest, in warframe, by your kavat, stroking his head as you look over the surface of broken Lua. While walking around outside your frame is freeing, after the last pass at death, you felt a bit more secure in your armor.
”Tenno, you put yourself at great risk for this information. Thank you. It seems that after the attack and evacuation of Lua, the Orokin extended the defence grid to include the entirety of their installation. This barrier was deactivated when the moon was sent into the void, but until that time, warframes could not traverse Lua.”

You feel once again like that information was too pertinent to be thrown in as an afterthought to such a dangerous mission. You sigh, leaning up and tapping the head of your noggle once again.

“I have decoded what I can operator. Most of the information is in some indecipherable format. OH iT mAKeS ME-!!! It’s quite troubling. What I can gather, it refers to a warframe, known as Lilith, a stealth warframe created to take back hijacked Orokin facilities.”

Lotus speaks up as you listen. “There is something vaguely familiar about that name. Does the datamass tell of this warframe’s location?”

“Sadly, the rest is all in a format I cannot read directly. It is labeled as ‘Interrogation Data 53-A’”

You remember where you found it, as Lotus forms a response.
“Tenno, you collected this from a transference system. It could be that through one, you might be able to read the information yourself. Are you willing to try this?”

This whole ordeal has taken you out of your element, and you know that what comes next can’t be any more familiar. You give a quiet nod.

“Operator, I am now streaming the data through your somatics.”

You feel yourself peeled away from your warframe and cast into a sleep.

 

 

You hear a voice, or thoughts, you can’t quite tell. They sound like that of a child, another tenno; one still sleeping.

“Lua… it’s a beautiful thing. I am drawn to it. Perhaps it’s my name. Lilith, I’m told is derived from a creature of the night; of the moon.”

“Perhaps, it’s that every time I am there, I feel… something more. A stirring in my being. I’ve always felt an inner war, one that stills in the presence of Lua”

“But I am a warrior. I do not get to linger long in her beauty, nor can I explore her to the fullest. There are restrictions and barriers.”

The voice wavers, fluctuating in pitch.

“I could not stop my obsession. I could not live in peace without knowing more. What secrets did she keep?”

“What are you hiding, mother?”

 

 

You feel the familiarity of a cold outer case. It grows, stretching from your chest to your hands feet and head. You are in a warframe.

But not your own.

Through examination, you find yourself encased in a sleek warframe; feminine and delicate. Chromatic metals framed the pale form, accentuating its combination of smooth seams and angular armor. Her arm guards stopped just short of its shoulders, leg armor mirroring, terminating just below the hips. Black tubing snaked across the body, inlaid between white skin, weaving from head to tow,

She was crowned with a pair of horns that ran from her cheeks upward and back, giving her a fierce visage.

Lastly, hovering just around her back wrists and ankles you notice small floating pieces of metal. They pulse with energy. These nodes seem to release some kind of mist that weave around the warframe, as if alive.

This is Lilith.

“Now…” The young voice spoke, snapping you back to attention. “If I can just deactivate the barrier, I’ll be able to penetrate the vault.”

You gaze at your Orokin surroundings. A peaceful hum filled the air. An aura of majesty clouded everything; mystifying.

The vibrant oro roots shimmered with life and seemed to whisper.

Taking it all in, you realize that you are in a memory. It is the memory of Lilith’s operator.

A yellow diamond flickers to life far past the room you see.
”Based on the schematics,” Lilith’s operator’s voice felt like your own. “the barrier deactivation should be here. Whatever happens, I mustn’t be seen…”

You head toward the waypoint, with a slight hesitance, unsure of what you’d expect to find.

It doesn’t take too long for you to come across a patrol. Hearing voices, you bullet jump up through a loose vent, turning and watching them enter, weapon raised toward their heads. You lower it, remembering that you didn’t want to risk sounding the alarms.

You examine the soldiers, each second, growing more disappointed. They were more gold, more vibrant, and more noble than enemies you had fought before, but your expectations were not quenched. The legends and lore built them up to be something almost godly, but here they were.

A little less human and a little more polished than you.

You wait for them to pass, making a silent leap onto the ground they had just walked, heading carefully through the door.

There is something about going through doors, you feel, that puts you at a disadvantage when attempting a stealth mission. It could be that as those you seek to avoid are revealed to you by the doors opening, so are you to them.

As the door opens, you slide up toward a small planter, to keep out of sight. Soon the hallway opens up to a large room.
It’s a large waterway; nothing you haven’t seen before. Despite the familiarity, the ambient was thick with an unnatural, almost oppressive calm. You could feel it pressing against your shell. Was it a weapon of the Orokin, or just a side effect?
A multitude of guards paced the room. You’ve played this game before. You find yourself growing familiar with Lilith’s body as you slink from column to column, the occasional bullet jump needed to cover greater distances.

Almost to the end, you are stopped by the sight of a stalwart watchman, unmoving at the door. They hadn’t noticed you yet, but without killing, or making yourself known, you were unsure of how to proceed.
“Alright, Lilith... lets see if the Orokin can be entranced.” The voice in your head spoke.

Suddenly, your mind fills with information. You place your hand on the ground, and a small crack begins to form, glowing softly with energy. In an instant, it snakes across the floor, toward the unsuspecting guard. It reaches his boot, climbing up to his brain. You hold your breath, as the guard slowly looks around, before walking toward you, drawn without alert by your new-found powers.

You slide to a nearby outcropping, jumping up above and clinging to the wall high above as he passes under you. The door opens silently at your presence, allowing you to sneak through.

“I feel… guilty.” You hear the voice speak timidly. “This goes against… everything.”

You are taken off guard at first. The Orokin had always been your enemy. Every base you infiltrated, every cache you’ve plundered, code you’ve cracked, have all belonged to an enemy. This operator inside your head, she was disobeying orders. She was conflicted.

“but… I must know. I must meet you, Mother.” The voice dipped into a deep whisper, trailing off, drifting away in the sea of space.

You race around a corner, barely dodging a security drone. A white shimmering beam connected it to the nearby guards.

“They all share what they see, and hear. I must be careful.”

You do not take this knowledge lightly, staying out of sight. You take the high road, leaping above the guards from wall to wall, watching them turn their backs before dropping down to the console below.

Here, you watch Lilith’s hands work knowingly. A few soft chimes later, she is done, and up you fly.

“The barrier is down. Should any of the alarms sound though, it will reactivate…”

A new waypoint appears, and you turn to see an approaching guard. In a panic, you reach your hand out toward them.

You feel the floating nodes around your body hum to life as Lilith fades into energy. You are no longer standing where were you, but walking toward the console. The first thing you notice is your inability to control your movements. Then you hear it.

“What was that?” A voice; a thought. Not Lilith’s, but another, unfamiliar.

The guard turns from the console, walking back to the others, unaware of the small metal nodes hovering close to his body, small snakes of mist weaving through his armor, from one spout to the other.

“I must be seeing things.” The guard thought. You listen, your essence locked to his. It is disorienting for you. You consider how you are in a memory of an operator, in her warframe, in an Orokin guard’s mind.

He walks toward the door, giving you the chance. You spring swiftly out of his back, the nodes reattaching to you, following you to the exit.

You feel empowered. This warframe knows how to handle stealth. You consider the possibilities of being able to posses enemies, even if you cannot directly control them.

Your thoughts are stopped short, when you almost run into the watchman. He had returned from where you had lured him, back to his post, and was now turning to face you.

Your mind races, searching desperately for a solution.

Lilith raises her hand to her head, expelling a burst of mist into the face of the guard.

The guard grabs his throat, unable to call out, and like a dance, practiced to perfection, you pull a dagger from your side, decapitating him. The daggers blade sends a wave through the body, disintegrating it, leaving Lilith to stand there in the wake of the soft glowing particles she had just created.

“I….” The voice trembled. “What have I done?!”

You feel an emotional surge from in your chest, but you push on, trying to fend off the interference.

You make your way toward the waypoint, hearing the Operator’s thoughts in your head, and you wonder who really killed the Orokin. You could feel your hands move, and your mind crank, all like you have before. Did she make the killing blow, and you just felt it, or did you do this? Were you somehow responsible for her present turmoil. Regardless you make your mind up to be more careful.

You approach what looks like a heavily guarded vault.

“Mother… if I have done wrong, punish me.”

If only she knew what the future held.

The gateways ahead seemed to have some form of energy gate. The guards passed through them easily, but you could not expect the same, and should an alarm sound, the anti-warframe barrier would be reactivated.

An idea springs to life, and you once more force yourself out of the warframe, staring up to her. From the outside, one could not tell her inner thoughts were filled with such conflict and emotion.

You look to yourself, a bit shocked to find familiarity. You were not Lilith’s operator, but yourself. You consider that she hasn’t yet awaken, so maybe there is some sense to it.

A greater surprise meets you when you look up to see what routes the guards are to take. You find them frozen still. Everything is suspended, locked in time. Once you get past how unexpected it is, you realize that it makes sense. You as an operator do not exist in the memory, and so you cannot effect it.

To test this, you attempt to shoot a void blast toward an enemy, only to find your beam shooting past them, making no contact. You sigh, half wishing that it was as easy as infiltrating using the void to get past sensors.

You make your way through an energy grid, and once on the other side attempt to summon Lilith through, only to feel yourself get pulled back into her where she stood.

A feeling of dizziness mixed with frustration takes hold and you duck behind a storage cache.

Soon an Orokin guard passes by, and you posses his armor, hitchhiking through the door. To your relief, no alarm sounds. Hopping out silently, you maneuver up a wall, breaking through a loose vent.

Gate after gate, you use Lilith to her fullest, luring, possessing, and sneaking, getting used to her skillset.

“Why am I so different? So out of place? Are warframes supposed to feel so… alien in their own bodies?”

You sympathized with her, knowing the truth.

“I see these other warriors, and they are perfect, battle-hardened killers. Do they have the same struggle as me, or is every kill, every mission, just a means to an end? If I feel more, or different, am I wrong to?”

You find yourself thinking over her inner dialogue, as you close in on the final vault door.

“Am I supposed to follow this feeling, even if it leads me here, where I am told I do not belong? Or do I live in this… shell?”

You feel another stirring, of emotion and of consciousness. More than ever, it feels like you are sharing Lilith with another.

It feels familiar. You remember what it was like to wake up.

But the feeling subsides, and a pang of sorrow hits you. She had come so close.

“If I am wrong to do this… let me die, Mother.”

You scan the room for a solution. The guards walked densely, once again all connected by a linking drone.

You spy two consoles that you’ve deduced must be activated in quick succession, each one guarded. Without killing, this would be tricky, and even if you could lure them away, there was no guarantee you could activate either console yourself.

Considering Lilith’s abilities, you built a plan.

You drop into a tight corner, luring the closest of the two guards. He walks casually across the room, past the others. He does not have time to see you before you disappear, nodes latching to his armor.

“Why did I come over here?” You hear him ask. He stands in place, for a few seconds.

“Should I kill him?” You hear a quivering voice ask itself. “No one would see, but-…”

Whether it is you or the other Operator who is in control, Lilith hesitates, waiting as the guard walks back to his post. As he stands there, thinking loudly to himself, you consider jumping out to hit the panel, when you notice it’s already lit up.

“The console…” You hear her voice whisper. It echoes through your mind.

At her word, and your surprise, the guard reaches over and taps the console.

The timed trigger passes and it deactivates, but you are busy forming a solution. With another prompt, he activates the console, and you separate from him unnoticed, quickly leaping into the other guard’s body, who activates his terminal at the last second.

The large vault doors turn and wind, catching the eyes of many of the patrol.

A few, including the body you posses begin to enter the high security chamber, looking for a source of the sudden opening.

“I don’t understand.” The guard said, in too much of a haze to think rationally.

You stay behind as they leave, closing the doors behind you.

“This is it.” You hear the operator speak. “Something here must help. …must make me feel whole.”

You go to the data terminal, hacking it with ease.

A rush of information passes across the screen, and Lilith takes it all in.

“Wh-… what?” Your senses are overpowered with emotions of agony, fear, and anger.

You flinch, coming back to reality. Your chair’s shell hisses as it slides open, and you look over your transference chamber.

“Operator, you seemed to be experiencing a sensory overload. I had no choice but to pull you out of the memory sequence.”

Ordis’s expressions of worry were followed up by Lotus.

“The memories you experienced belong to to the operator of Lilith. It seems that whatever she discovered in that vault was too much for her to handle at the moment. There is more data to sort through, if you wish to return, but you must be careful. Her state of mind does not seem stable. Be wary of memory corruption.”

You wished to return as soon as you could. Lilith was something new and interesting for sure but you had to know what was found in that vault. Your mind raced with possibilities.

Did she learn of transference?

Did she discover what she was?

 

Did she wake up?

“O-operator, I have many concerns about this. It doesn’t seem quite safe. WhAT aN UnDerSTAteMEnt!-” He said, before clearing his throat politely.

“If you insist though, I will continue with the data stream.”

You give them the okay, and within seconds, you feel yourself slip away once more.

 

 

“Lies…”

Your mind is filled with fear, agony and a seething rage.

“To keep such a demented secret… To manipulate us like this.”

You can feel Lilith’s operator phasing in between the realms of consciousness and slumber. The waves of it wash over you gently, in stark contrast to her own violent battle; a fight to awaken.

“I will not stay dormant any longer while some deranged Orokin tinkers with us like puppets, all in the name of some felled lover! This slumber, the vice that preserves it… and the beasts that created it… all will end. For me and my own…”
“I will wake.”

 

 

You jump through a waterfall, up onto an elevated platform.

Lua.

Lilith.

The room is empty, the vibrant glow and the calm it brings no longer warm, but oppressive. The waypoint comes up and you hear her speak.

“First… the barrier.”

You feel energized, fueled by a new dislike for the Orokin, and while you have little memory yourself of the Old War, you are happy to make new ones.

You go from room to room, taking out the sparse unalerted guards with ease. Your dagger energizing you with each lethal kill.

“Mother,” you hear her speak as you slice a watchman straight down the middle. “I do not hold any wrath toward you.”

You disintegrate, nodes, flying toward a panicking soldier. The others quickly fire at him as he flails. His deteriorating thoughts fill your mind, before you jump out of the guard, plunging your blade into his back, before leaping to the next.

As the room empties, you are subjected to a horde of dying thoughts.

“If anything, I hope to free you of your burden…”

One gate after the next, you bathe yourself in Orokin blood, heading toward the objective, till your vision becomes blurry; a red glow creeping in from the sides. Suddenly, you stumble forward, dropping to your knees.

Looking up, you find that you are no longer in Lilith; the frozen warframe suspended in a jump behind you.

“Operator? Can you hear me?” The voice of the familiar cephilon bounces off the stilled hallways.

“There’s some kind of interference in the memory. It’s nothing dangerous from what I can tell, but you will need to find a way to-BUGFIX- t-to eliminate it before you can continue.”

You exhale, familiarizing yourself with the limbo you’ve been once more trapped within. You begin to walk, soon stumbling again, barely keeping yourself upright. To your surprise, the room is not so open or straightforward as it initially appeared.
Large portions of what you thought were distant walls or floors popped out as you walked, averse to the alignment of the rest of the world. Areas hidden by other objects disappeared completely into the void.

You walked around a fallen body of a guard to find that the farthest side of his body, that you could not perceive from Lilith’s eyes, simply did not exist. This leads you to consider that everything you have been seeing and feeling has all just been a rendering of her experiences.

It seemed so vivid, and engaging, that you forgot it wasn’t reality. Instead, you see that it’s all just code; script.

Regardless, this disillusionment did not dissuade you from wanting to see it through. You needed to know what happened to Lilith, and her operator.

You steady yourself as you walk through the distorted memory.

“Operator, my readings indicate that you are close to the corruption. Do you see anything?”
Looking up, you see a dark black distortion, floating high in the air. Small bits of red dust hover around it. Your first attempt to zap it with your beam proves useless. A void dash to it falls short, but doing so reveals something useful. Though difficult to see, many parts of the room have fractured to create elevated platforms.

A jump from one to another takes both physical skill and caution. Because they differ in size, and blend in so well with the background, you find it difficult to judge the depth of your leaps.

After many tries, you finally make it to a platform close enough to reach the distortion. From it you feel a low rumble, one that makes you hesitant to interact with it.

“Operator, you must hurry. The state of the memory is very unstable.”

You take a deep breath before blasting at it.

It howls, beginning to collapse in on itself before creation a red burst, dispersing from its center like roots from a tree. As it vanishes, you feel a rush, suddenly thrown back into Lilith as she slides through the next door from her jump.

You scan the empty security room before walking to the console. A few quick taps deactivates the barrier, overriding alarms that could trigger it.

A new objective appears, and you head toward it keenly.

“Now then… The dampening systems are not far away. Curse it and its creators.”

Even in the heat of anger, you had previously been careful to not trigger alarms. Now that this threat was out of the way, you had nothing stopping you.

The next room full of mind-linked guards is quickly alerted.

In a torrent, you possess the one closest to the alarm system, jumping out, and slashing him open, before moving on to the next, evading bullets and filling the air with screams. Even the Orokin twice your height succumb to your blade, weakened by the gunfire of their panicked allies before Lilith deals the final blow.

It was not long before you were thrown out of her again, the sanguine glow plaguing your sight.

You become irritated, looking around the room as Ordis speaks in the background. You already know what to look for.

“Operator, I understand the frustration you may be feeling. If you wish, I can attempt to continue the memory sequence, despite the corruption.”

You shake your head, already having found the black glitch. While it was harder to get to, you found it just worth it, knowing you needed to get all the information you could from this memory.

Like the first, it disappears, and you jump back into the battle.

“This should be it. The power system… I’ll make sure nothing survives.” The voice was distorted with rage.

The alarms had gone off long ago, but the guards could do very little to contain you. Through the last door, you could see a swarm of Orokin soldiers, all alerted to your presence.

It was time to show them who they were dealing with.

With a bright flash, Lilith transformed into a spectral ghost. She was lighter as she jumped through the air, energy bolts passing through her, causing only minor harm.

You slide on the ground toward a panicking guard, who back-pedals desperatly as you jump at him. Your spectral form passes through him, and you feel your health return. He is left aching, a velvet mist enveloping him.

You leap to the next, painting him in purple. Each time you connect with another enemy, every one that you had hexed doubled over in pain.

A red glow enters your field of view once more, but you ignore it, engulfed by the heat of battle. Returning to a normal form, you spray a round of bullets at the weakened foes. Standing amongst the bodies, you reload, and look to the console, lit up in yellow.

You activate it, opening up the wall, lined with a series of crystalline capsules.

“I release you, my brothers and sisters.”

You fire at the wall, each glowing cell bursting one after another.

You are about to shatter the last few when you feel a sharp pain in your back, and you drop to the floor. Grunting and standing up, you find the world frozen. Lilith is in front of you, held static in a shower of golden light.

Behind her, you see a large Orokin creature. He apears partially human, but with a long bionic neck, and lensed eyes. He is draped in robe, and holding out a large golden panel, opened like a scroll. From it, the suspending light emerges, beam spanning across the room before smashing into Lilith’s back.

You try desperately to attack the detainer with your void beam, but it has no effect. Attempts to climb back into Lilith fail as well. It dawns on you that the memory does not continue because it is done. You have reached the end.

 

The walls shook and began fragmenting.

“Operator? I’m having trouble retrieving you from the memory stream. It’s breaking down around you! I’m marking a potential breach point. Get there as quickly as possible!”

As soon as the waypoint appears you run for it. The thought enters your mind how quickly you are willing to abandon Lilith and her Operator. It is a memory. It’s not real. You know this, but you wonder if you would have fled just as quickly had they been.

The walls split, and floor opens up as you leap from one fragment to another. Steps turn into jumps, and jumps turn into leaps as the world falls apart.

Finally, you make it to the end. As you are pulled out, you see bits of the black corruption seep in from the darker crags of the broken memory.

 

 

“Tenno, are you alright? For a moment there, it seemed we might have lost you.” Lotus speaks somberly.

You rub your neck, a headache looming on the near horizon. With a heavy breath, you take account of yourself and your warframe, feeling as if you’d been gone for a long while.

“Operator?! What happens n-n-next!? That- can’t be the end of it.” Ordis laments.

“It is true that the memory stream has terminated, but there is still more you can do. It is highly probable that the efforts of this warframe helped you any many others wake up from their slumber, in their own time by damaging the suppression system. I believe we owe it to Lilith and her operator to find out what happened.”

Ordis snaps to action as you transfer into your warframe, ready. “Operator, I’ve marked a waypoint in navigation.”

Soon you stare over the small hologram of the moon in your hand.

“In addition to this, I’ve developed decoded the security data of the gates Lilith passed through in the memory. It seems she can collect data from security systems she passes through. From this, I have developed a cipher for each of these doors. I hope they come in handy.”

 

 

They do. The first security gate you come to is still active, and your frame is not outfitted for getting through it without raising alerts.

With the cipher, you slip through, finding it more than just convenient that Ordis was able to compile and utilize the data he’d gathered into something so useful.

“Good to see my ciphers are effective -AGAInST SUcH OROkin TRAaSH!” The cephalon chimed in.

Scanning your surroundings, you feel a sense of melancholic familiarity. More than just rubble and cracks, you could recognize blasts and scorches, all born in the heat of that last battle. An eternity had passed since just moments ago.

Not all the destruction was embittering. As you explored, you found a wall that had been weakened during the fight, and it took very little to break through; something nearly impossible had Lilith not done what she had.

As you made your way through the halls to the objective, you consider how strange it all is. This Operator that you’ve gotten to know did all these things, but when you were fed the memories, it all felt natural, as if you had been in control.

Could it be, you pondered, that you did, somehow have some influence by way of a sort of ‘void magic’, or is it simply that you and her are of like mind? Neither opinion held up well without further contemplation. You may consider It another time.

Leaping through the last door, all orokin ciphers expended, you push to your feet, and look at the far wall. Like you had seen before, it was covered in crystal cells. Many of the damaged ones had been removed, some replaced, but the state of the room told that Lilith’s infiltration could not have occurred long before the rebellion of the tenno.

Seeing a blinking light on the console, you approach.

“Tenno,” Lotus speaks “Upload the data in that terminal. It may be useful.”

It takes little time to send the data to Lotus to decrypt.

“I… Lilith…” She seemed stunned. “Tenno, we have more to thank Lilith for than we thought. At the brink of the tenno rebellion, the Orokin attempted to shut down all the cryo-chambers containing thier new enemies… containing you, but the damage to this system prevented that sequence from initiating. Before for the Orokin could reroute the command, they were hit again. This data you have sent me, it was the subroutine to execute all of the tenno in cryosleep. Lilith saved your life.”

Ordis, oblivious of the current mood, interrupted. “Operator, after compiling the somatic signature of the Operator, I might be able to use the data in this terminal to find where they’ve taken Lilith and her Operator.”

“Tenno, I’m sensing activity in your area. Right now, finding Lilith will be our top priority. Guard the terminal until we have what we need.”

Before she had finished giving the command, the need for it became apparent. The doors opened, and through them two detainers approach. Their necks stretch forward, and their long lankly arms stretch out from their robed torsos, hands grasping a metal scroll.

You jump at one, firing upon it. The bullets stop just short, negated by an invisible shield. Sliding close, you attempt to breach the barrier and slash it’s head off.

Once more, your attempts are stunted. Its shield sends you flying back, stunned and irradiated. You jump to your feet, searching desperately for a vulnerability as they split up, dividing your attention.

Looking back and forth between them, you catch sight as the one to your right raises his scroll toward you, firing a long golden beam. You jump out of the way, escaping a direct hit. Despite this, your shields quiver and fail.

The other one fires off a shot, which you also evade.

“Please be careful Operator! Lilith was taken down in a single shot!” Ordis pleaded.

“I am still working on it.” Lotus said, adding to your frustration.

As you dodge golden beams, you think to yourself how despite all the good Ordis has done, Lotus is still the one who ‘hacks’.

The divided attention costs you. A heavy burst of Orokin energy smashes into your warframe, suspending it and sending you tumbling out. You stand up, wincing from the ejection. Like before, the warframe you had controlled was detained. Unlike before, the world was still very much alive; something you realized just in time to duck into the void as the second enemy sent a beam of energy your way.

Unlike in a memory, there is no pause here; a truth both dangerous, and beneficial.

You dodge a second blast in your direction, running toward the Orokin guard holding your warframe hostage. You dash through him, finding the sensation immensely painful. Your frame becomes free to inhabit right in time, as you automatically retreat back to your somatics chair.

It takes little time to realize the detainer shares your sentiments, reeling in agony, shields sputtering in an attempt to replenish. You leap off the ground, feet feeling the heat of the other orokin’s beam, and plunge your blades into the neck of the debilitated foe. With a clean swipe, his head drops to the floor, followed shortly by the body.

You turn to the next, a bullet jump closing the ground between. You jump out, once more, feet landing on the ground.

This second guard moves in panic, rushing to let off a blast in your direction. By that time, you are launching yourself through him. Once more, it hurts, but it works, and after one last leap, his corpse and your frame hit the ground in unison.

“Tenno, I’ve gathered the information needed. Seek extraction.”

You wonder if she was just waiting for you to finish the battle, as you rush to the waypoint. Honestly, it wouldn’t surprise you.

You jump to the tilted landing platform outside the faltering architecture, proceeding to climb into your landing craft.

 

 

Your eyes trace the giant Orokin braces of Lua as Lotus speaks, the fragmented moon broken like an explosion, frozen in time. You could see Lilith in your mind, equally stilled yet blistering with golden energy, as you last remember her.

“That was a close one. Hopefully Ordis can analyze the data you’ve collected and track down Lilith’s Operator.”

“Working on it now.” Your cephalon chimed in. “Hmm. I don’t know if I’m reading this correctly…”

“What have you found?”

“It seems that the concluding remarks in the data leads back to the vault. Yes, apparently both Lilith was transferred into the high security Orokin lock-vault after her capture. The very same one she infiltrated. The warframe seems to have been transported intact along with a stasis pod.”

You read into the implications quickly, as does Lotus.

“That must be Lilith’s Operator. Tenno, Lilith’s Operator risked everything to free you and countless others. You may be the only one who can repay her for what she’s done. Break into the vault, and learn her fate. After all this, we cannot leave her locked away.”

Within minutes you are prepared.

 

 

A familiarity engulfs you, as your senses take in the white cliff sides that encase the golden palace. The wisps of memory lining the rooms ahead weigh down with questions, as the wearing details betray the passage of immeasurable time.

Sneaking forward, your ears catch the sound of corpus gunfire. A few decrepit rooms further and you catch the sight of blue flashes illuminating the seams of the doors.
“Rudor klem raft!” A Grineer soldier shouts to his squad. The nearing door opens as an luckless trooper backtracks through it.

You slide into action, swiftly jumping on his back, severing his head from his body, and slipping through the open door. You hug the inflatable barrier he had just put up, watching his living comrades fire at the threat before them. You lean out, sniping one of them in the back of the head, hoping to pull back in time to escape notice.

To your dismay, a crewman, spraying the wall behind you with blue laser, catches sight of you, calling out to the rest.

“Jattasey!”

He cries, dashing from cover to cover.

While you have no trouble, taking out the clueless Grineer, your shields take a few hits, and the barrier is slowly whittled away, by the focused Corpus fire.

You leap through the air, taking sight, destroying the shield osprey and blasting the helmets off stationary targets, before sliding across the ground, slashing a fleeing soldier in half.

You make your way aggressively through the crossfire. Like before, you have been supplied with special Orokin ciphers that grant you access to all the doors Lilith had successfully infiltrated.

You are thankful the security systems lacked functionality you had witnessed in the memory. Without Lilith, it takes more than usual to get through each checkpoints.

Progress bounces between swift and sluggish, but soon you arrive at the vault door.

Like before, the two-console system stood between you and your quarry, spaced too far apart to make a bullet jump, in time to activate both.

Your first attempt is to position your warframe in front of one console, separating from it. You walk, breathing in the stale air as you make it to the other console.

You activate the console and try to phase quickly back into your armor, only to find yourself at the console you just activated. You chide yourself, remembering that transference back into your frame pulls it to your position.

You feel a slight sense of frustration, scanning the chamber. At first, nothing helpful seems to reveal itself, until you look up. The high walls, are lined with glass hanging lights, and one of them seems to be fractured.

While it doesn’t seem to solve anything directly, you hope that maybe detaching it from the ceiling could make an opening in the wall to a new room, and a new path. You fire at it, and to your satisfaction, it drops as expected.

Large cracks sprout across the hard ground as the light fixture crashes down. The top, swings back, knocking the wall inward.

You leap through, but are brought to dismay, finding the room to be nothing but a supply alcove; the far door inoperative. You loot the room, having to jump to safety as the security system activates. A large white orb begins to spin, sending golden beams outward with malicious intent. You bring up your primary weapon, prepared to destroy it, but you find yourself unable to pull the trigger. This catches you off guard, as you feel like it must be some error in the transference. You make a second attempt, but try as you might, something holds you back.

From the back of your mind, a familiar, fluttering voice whispers. “The way in…” Lilith’s Operator, speech deep and distorted repeats itself as questions rush through your head. “The way in…”

You reenter the Vault room, gliding over the laser that penetrates the breach in the wall in its rotation. Your eyes light up when you see its path cross each of the two security consoles.

You knew what to do, and how much it would hurt.

Like before you positioned yourself in front of one of the panels, before leaving your warframe. You have to duck into the void for a split second to avoid getting hit by the orb’s beam as it pans across the room. You don’t want to get hit. Not yet.

You make your way carefully to the other console, keeping a mindful eye on the laser. Once in place, you calculate the timing, trying to mentally prepare yourself for the coming pain.

The laser approaches, and you activate the security panel. Within that very second, you feel a surge of anguish as your body takes the brunt of the golden energy. You feel yourself pulled to safety inside your warframe, and concentrate on nothing but pushing your armor-clad hand forward to trigger the second console.

The massive doors open, as they had before, but this time, you have the luxury of leisure, watching them part as cool, previously undisturbed air spills out of the chamber.

Entering the room quietly, you see two large capsules. To the left, a dark metallic somatic tube, a bit more sturdy than the one you had escaped yourself. To the right, Lilith, in cryostasis. The lighting inside the cell brings hope; active systems.

“Remain in the area.” Lotus said. “I will attempt to bypass the stasis pod’s security, and free the Operator. Hmm…” Her inflection bears surprise.

“Tenno, I’ve found out more information on the Operator of Lilith. It seems they were biologically male. This may explain the fluctuation in their voice, and could very well be a major contributor to their dissonance with Lilith… As far as we can tell, they have never woken up. It is impossible to know just how well he will adjust to this new life.”

You process this information with mixed emotions, trying to imagine what it would be like to live as Lilith’s operator did. Your mind replays thoughts and feelings he had shared with you, however involuntarily.

“The somatics tube is unlocked.” Lotus speaks, preceding a hiss. The metal stasis chamber begins to pull back, revealing an empty container.

“The cell is empty? But my readings-…”

A flash of golden energy bursts from above, causing large pillars of electricity to shoot downward, surrounding Lilith’s cryotube. With a loud crash, the glass shatters, and Lilith lands on her feet, looking to you menacingly.

“Look’s like someone’s come to play.” You recognize the voice as Lilith’s Operator, but something about it feels wrong. It no longer suffers the indecisive flutter of tone, sounding more masculine, but in the memories, the voice had always sounded honest, and inspired. Now it rings with a sinister playfulness. “Time to play.”

You step back as Lilith vanishes into a mist, swarming your body.

Panic sets in; the hum of radiant Orokin choir crowding your brain. This, you struggled to think, must be what those you possessed felt once they were aware of your intrusion. In a desperate plea for release, you smash the ground.

The mist is launched away, as the Lua warframe materializes, sliding backward from you.

She stands up, hands tightened into fists. “How rude~.”

 

 

You pull out your rifle, firing a volley in Lilith’s direction, as she dodges in leaps and strafes. She sends return shots in your direction.

You are quick to pull out your blades, swinging them with deft precision to deflect the bullets, and finally a dagger’s swing as your opponent leaps over your head.

Your weapons bounce against each other, showering the ground with sparks. You backpedal, head weaving to miss her blade. You plant a foot, preparing for a full force block.

It connects, and Lilith’s weapon ricochets off your own, opening her up to your own attacks.

The first swing connects, sprouting forth another swarm of lightning from above, but in a flash, she disperses, surrounding you like before. Just as quickly as she engulfs you, she pulls apart from you, kicking the back of your head, and swinging a blade into your back.

Your warframe stumbles forward, having taken a serious wound. You turn, firing at Lilith with your secondary. Your bullets, incendiary, burst into a blaze, causing Lilith to reel. This gives you a chance to fire off a few more shots.

As she takes damage, the air around her fizzles with void static. Large pillars of golden lightning strike the ground.

This feels unlike any ability you know Lilith to have. If anything, they seem reminiscent of the beams fired by the Orokin Detainers. You know you do not want to find out the hard way.

Wary of them, you keep your assault on the enemy steady as long as she remains solid.

This is not long.

She throws her arms out, becoming spectral, and leaping toward you. You are familiar with her Hex form, knowing that your bullets will do little to her. Slashing at her does very little as well, and as she phases through you, you feel your frame burst with pain.

Her second leap comes, but not quick enough. You boost upward, spraying bullets in her direction. Her attacks persist, ceaseless.

Running low on ammunition, and health, you feel nothing short of rage.

You were fighting the very soul you sought to free; one you had sympathized with, and even marveled at. You had worked so hard to get here, and now, all the powers you had learned, turned against you, seemed unfair and even dirty. With the beams of energy that would explode unpredictably around you every time you fired at her, even what damage you did deal seemed counter-intuitive. One wrong step and you’d be ejected from your warframe.

The thought rings in your mind, opening up a new strategy; maybe the only one left.

You roll to the side as Lilith attempts to glide through you once more. You aim, and fire one last time. The bullets pass through her, but what little harm they cause is enough. A group of beams shoot down, scorching the floor as you jump out of your warframe, staring down Lilith as you line up your shot. She leaps toward you.

In that instant, you slip into the void, dashing forward, through her.

“What!?” Her puppeteer’s voice shrieks, as Lilith rematerializes, bouncing away from you and making contact with a detention beam.

You grimace at the scream as the possessed warframe seizes in the blinding light. “This-… isn’t… over!!!”

A shockwave bursts forth, knocking you off your feet as the energy dispells, leaving the room quiet. Lilith, broken and scorched rests on the Orokin floor.

“Scanning.” Lotus broke the silence. “Lilith’s connection to her operator has been broken... Seek extraction, Tenno.”

 

 

“From the data you’ve recovered, we can glean important information about Lilith, and the security systems that detained her. As for the operator, there is little to go off of.”

You sit in your orbiter, listening. You can tell by how Lotus spoke that this would be the end of the hunt, for now.

“I will keep my channels open. For now, we must continue our own mission. Despite the last interaction you had with Lilith, and possibly with her operator, they have done a great deal for you, and all Tenno.” Lotus’s words are lightly colored with remorse. “We will strive to make their sacrifice worth it.”

After hours of meditation, and frame modifications, you walk to your codex, deciding to scroll through the newly collected data, breathing out a heavy sigh. As the data logs of the recent events reach conclusion, you raise an eyebrow at something the entry contains.

The blueprints for the Lilith warframe.

You look it over, tapping the head of a close by noggle, watching it bob under your finger.

“Tenno, you are needed.”

You look up from your codex, having been studying the new entries. You wait for Lotus to continue.

 

 

To Be Continued…