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When she first restored the power to her Wonder the elevator would make very loud noises as it went, and she'd gotten used to the sound of metal scraping along metal whenever she used it. It wasn't until recently that she noticed the elevator had stopped making any kind of noises at all, and the change had unnerved her at first. What could have happened? Was there someone else here, moving around in secret and making improvements?

Ultimately, since it was improvement, Ekstrom decided to just be grateful for it and move on. Nothing happened, no one popped out of nowhere to explain the WWWWH of it, and...well. She was learning to be okay with not knowing the "why" behind smaller, arguably trivial, things.

It was an uphill battle, but she was trying.

"Hey, thanks again for coming," she said as the elevator took them up, an apologetic little smile on her lips. "I hate to pull you into this mess, but coming alone isn't really an option and there's only a handful of people I can trust that have a good handle on this sorta thing, so."

She pulled a polaroid from her subspace then, a slightly impish turn to her smile as she held it out to Themi. It was the photo she'd taken of Ashur's reaction to first seeing the mess that he helped her clean up however many weeks ago now. It was a unique picture in that the subject in it moved. This one showed the way Ashur's expression changed from calm but questioning to shock—wide eyes, slack jaw, and all—as the elevator doors opened to reveal the state the room had been in at the time.

"It's not much, but I thought you might like it. And it doesn't make up for the trouble we're probably about to walk into, but I'm hoping it might cheer you up whenever you look at it."

She grinned at her reaction—it was exactly what she was hoping it would be. It also helped that Themiscyra had waved off her apologies. Not because she was insincere about it or anything like that, but she was grateful to have friends that were willing to help her out with the tough stuff. She was lucky, she knew, and she did her best not to take it for granted. "Anytime," she said, her smile softening when she mentioned the girls. "I told him I thought you three would get a kick out of it. If I get any more good candids I'll make sure to save them for you."

Ekstrom glanced at the panel that displayed the floor they were on at the question, considering it for a long moment before shaking her head.

"Yeah, this," she said, gesturing toward the pendant on her necklace. "I thought it was just hiding it, but he said something about it being able to sense power and I think he was right. I haven't tried anything with it yet, but I can feel some kind of energy coming from this, so thinking about that...'guarding' feels way more accurate."

The elevator sounded off before she could continue, and the doors slid open to reveal a relatively organized and perfectly usable waiting room, though the damage was still all there—large gashes in walls, sections of curious discolorations, and the furniture was sparse and certainly looked like it'd seen far better days. The black substance was also still absolutely everywhere so it didn't exactly look or feel like a warm, inviting space to spend time in. It actually felt a few degrees colder here than where they'd just come from.

Ekstrom led the way out of the elevator. "As for how I wanna do this...I'm not entirely sure but I'm guessing I'm gonna find more tentacles before anything actually useful, which is why I need back-up. There's a couple more rooms I haven't tried yet," she gestured to the hallway entrance to their left, "so we're heading for one of those. I'm still looking for a way into the center room. Every door I've found has been locked, and all the windows that look into it are blacked out."

She sighed then. "It just stopped feeling like a coincidence after my last visit."

lKaefaux

She shook her head. "None, but it's a familiar energy. Like..." She reached up and touched the pendant lightly, brows knit together in thought. "Well, honestly like everything else around here that has some kind of energy. So I'm not too worried about what it is, it's more that whatever's here seemed like it was hiding it because of that energy. And if it was then that means it can sense energy, so if it gets out, that means it can move toward other sources of energy, and for all I know consume it somehow."

Ekstrom took a breath then, her thoughts immediately going to the Code first, then the power grids, and finally to the fact that there were still so many rooms she had yet to explore. For all she knew, there were other sources of energy that she had yet to find. What if this thing found those first? What if it could consume them? Would it get stronger? Strong enough to...

"Don't worry," she said, maybe just a bit too loudly so as to interrupt her own thoughts as she started toward the indicated hallway, "there aren't any open windows here or anything, so no snow, and I doubt it about the ice. At least, I haven't seen any signs of moisture besides the black tar-looking stuff."

She could feel the temperature very gradually lower as they moved in that direction, and so she glanced toward Themi. "Sorry," and then she paused and managed a little smile at the word play. "Yes to fighting it if we have to, and no I haven't. It's mostly because I'm worried about it spreading outside the room. What if exploded-off parts can break off and multiply or something?"

Again, the knight offered her friend a grateful smile and nodded in agreement. The only way out would have been to kill the ones that broke into the Wonder, so having more knights locked in the Wonder with her ancestor might have made all the difference in the world.

Ekstrom let the idea lie, wanting to shift her focus to the very real situation she could fix now rather than on what-ifs about the past. They came upon the door before long, and she could feel the cold from beyond it seeping out. A feeling of dread seemed to come with it—mild but sudden enough that she actually paused to consider it. She moved her hand over a section on the wall to the right of the door, summoning a panel that she examined for a moment before finally tapping on an icon. The door "clicked" and two small vertical panels slipped aside to reveal glossy black strips where door handles were meant to be.

"The other rooms were also like this," she explained as she moved back to the door and tapped on the black strip. There was a "beep," and the doors slid open. "Locked, and the doors are non-standard considering most other doors open automatically using sensors."

The room beyond was nearly pitch black. A frigid cold crept out through the open doorway, carrying the smell of dust and stale air. Lights flickered overhead but were barely visible through the black muck.

She swallowed the growing lump in her throat and hefted her shield on her arm. "Ready?"

Themiscyra gave a small, thoughtful hum, wrinkling her nose as she considered the idea of the weird entity being able to wander about and absorb other energy. No thanks. "We'll take care of it," she stated frankly in agreement with Ekstrom's... totally not overly loud proclamation. Each step of hers that brought her into lower and lower temperatures just made her senses bristle all the more, wishing briefly she'd somehow been able to take Ashur's cape before coming here.

The caution on potentially letting more out made sense, as did the prospect of damaged parts of the thing potentially forming more of it. "Kill it with fire," she gagged, absolutely ready to make all of the jokes possible about burning down wonders if weird stuff was populating them....

At the door, Themiscyra stiffened briefly, forcing herself to roll and flex her shoulders and hands, shifting foot to foot, till she could push her muscles to relax. But this felt bad, and every internal warning bell was ring-a-ding-ding-ing on whatever was on the other side of the door. Her hands fidgeted with the weighted chain, slipping a length between her two limbs in case she needed to launch the weight at something sooner rather than later.

The technology was cool, though.

She perked up a bit to that, watching with interest as Ekstrom manipulated the wall and door. "Oh huh... that's fun looking. I mean, I figured things were tech-y here, but still, seeing it like this is pretty cool." But the extra bits Ekstrom shared made her again hum. "So... actual security in place here, people need to want to be moving through this space, and probably whatever security authorizations, instead of being able to freely wander."

The door opening didn't help her nerves firing off, and Themiscyra let out a slow breath as she gave a rueful smile. It'd been... a while since she'd really thrown herself into a fight that invoked a response like this. A part of her felt a thrill for it, something long dormant she'd not indulged in years. Of course, that part wasn't nearly as loud as the awareness she had more reasons to get home safe now.

"With you," she confirmed, pushing back the mixture of fear, trepidation, and reckless excitement as she forced herself to step into the strange darkened room. Nothing here felt like it did on just the other side of the doorway, the light was wrong, the air was wrong. Her eyes shot about, looking for some sign of movement or other response within the weird darkness that had consumed the room.