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Kel 25 had a sky the color of charcoal and dirt a few shades darker; Connie could only tell sky from earth by tracing the high black mounds in the distance, which stood out against the horizon like silhouettes of hulking giants. Against the pitch were gleaming white towers, hints of other colors shining like opals in muck. Connie looked for the three nested towers of what Pearl called the Temple of Heaven and Earth and started walking. The Robonoids followed her.
Her mission was simple: retrieve the poofed and damaged gems that had been trapped in the collapsed towers if she could, scout the area if she couldn't, and determine what had caused every gem in the area to suddenly lose contact with Homeworld three hundred years ago. Connie knew that Steven would have preferred to come with her, and that she would have been smarter to wait, but she really hadn't wanted to. It was only a little mission, and there were no documented predators or even multicellular organisms on this planet. If she was injured or got sick, one of the Robonoids would sent out a distress message. There wasn't any real danger.
Plus, she thought as her communicator activated in her ear with a little ding, it wasn’t like she was out of range. “... Connie? How are you doing so far? Is there any sign of hostilities?”
”Nothing yet, Pearl,” Connie said, climbing up a few boulders and sliding down the other side with a thump. Her boots threw up little puffs of dirt. “Just a whole lot of atmosphere. This place is really fascinating!”
It was. Gems had surveyed it three centuries ago and had found a wealth of minerals below the surface. They had touched down in their aesthetically-designed ships in all their multitudes, had built temples and towers and had started terraforming- and then it had stopped all at once, every preliminary colonist cutting off contact without warning, and since no one important had been lost, the Diamonds had written them off. Now, since gems were supposed to have individual worth as sapient beings, the Diamonds were finally sending out a search party. Three centuries late.
Maybe that wasn't too long for gems- Connie remembered no TV for one thousand years, thank you very much- but it was still discouraging. "I suppose it is," came Pearl's reluctant response, "but you can never be too careful. Remember, this is a scouting mission. If you encounter any dangerous situations, you are not to engage."
"Understood, ma'am."
Connie walked for another hour, digging out a protein bar for quick calories and ducking into shadowed alcoves at any sign of a glint. She found a smashed piece of what looked like a communicator, an intact gem destabilizer, and something that could have been a gem shard but turned out to be a rock. Eventually she passed under hulking abandoned injectors, thick bacteriophage drilled into the ground with empty tanks, but there were no holes around them where new gems had been born; Kel 25, for one reason or another, hadn't birthed any of the new Diopsides or Jades that it had been annexed to provide.
The injectors cast deep shadows over the black soil as the distant twin suns dropped under the horizon, one lagging behind the other like a nervous child. Connie checked her rations, figured they were acceptable, and called the Robonoids closer so one of them could provide some light. The rest of them continued to range out around her, scanning the ground for shards. The red light didn't damage her night vision, which was why it was so useful; it did bathe the alien landscape the color of warm blood, only illuminating the ground a few feet around her before the light faded into red-tinged shadows. Connie kept her eyes on the ground, careful not to step in any holes or trip over an unfortunate rock. She'd already tripped once, scraping her elbow, and she wasn't interested in doing it again.
Only another hour to the temple. She would have transported there directly, but the closest working warp pad had been out in the wastes, and Pearl had thought there might be gems who had fled to it before the colony's collapse.
Kel 25 had an incredibly dense core for its size, which gave it about the gravity of Mars, but its days lasted about three hours each. Connie had never had a chance of completing the whole expedition in daylight. She wouldn't have had a chance to go on the expedition at all, except that there was a breathable atmosphere and something had already happened to the gems in residence. The hope had been that an organic could scout out the location without being detected immediately as a gem might. Connie had mostly jumped on the chance because she'd been stir-crazy; it was spring break back home, and she hadn't been to space in ages.
The temple came into view, opaline towers gleaming dully in the beams of the Robonoids, and immediately one of them froze like a pointing dog, laser fixed on a shining spot on the ground. Connie hurried over and plucked the gem up in her hands, then jerked back in disgust and dropped it. "Sorry," she said awkwardly, even though the gem probably couldn't hear her. She shook the black goop off her palms, grimacing at the sticky thickness of it, and scraped the rest off on a convenient rock, into the earth; then, pulling on gloves, she picked up the gem again and scratched the rest of the gunk off. It was a Peridot, completely undamaged but covered in dust.
She'd never reformed. That didn't bode well. "Pearl?" Connie asked, knowing the comm would activate at her name, "I found my first gem. She's a Peridot, and I don't see any damage, but her gem was covered in this weird black goo. I think it might be keeping her from coming back." She waited for a response, but none was forthcoming. "Pearl? Are you there?"
Connie felt goosebumps rise on her arms. "Spread out," she said, and the Robonoids fanned out around her, illuminating the area. Nothing moving but them, no changes close to them; but her communicator wasn't working anymore. Connie pulled off one of her gloves and reached up to tug it out of her ear, frowned when she noticed the speck of black on its shimmery casing. She hadn't touched it before just then, so where...? She touched the black speck, and it stuck to her finger easily enough, but the comm remained dull.
And here she'd thought Pearl had only been distracted for a while. Stupid. How long had she been out of contact?
More importantly, what was this black stuff? She stuffed the Peridot's gem in her bag, deciding not to use any more Gem tech if she could help it, and came to a decision, feeling remarkably clear-headed. The goop wasn't hurting her, and as long as she didn't get it on the warp pad it should still work, shouldn't it? But every moment these gems spent down here could mean they were deactivated permanently, if they weren't already, and nothing had actually harmed her yet. Plus, the more she brought back to the ships, the more chance Homeworld's scientists would be able to reverse whatever had happened to these gems. She just had to do her job and scout, like she was supposed to.
The temple's entrance was crumbled in on itself, the bridge that led to the rest of it cut off halfway and almost definitely unstable. Connie spied a higher level, half-open to the air, and shot her grappling hook to catch in one of the grooves. She tugged- it held- and buckled herself into her climbing harness, making her careful way up the crumbling mosaic of Blue Diamond. The Robonoids followed her closely, but kept to her orders not to touch the walls. She didn't want to risk losing them, too.
The second floor yielded more gems, stuck to the floor or walls, alone or in clusters of two or three. Connie pried them loose carefully, keeping track- Ruby, Ruby, Lapis Lazuli, some kind of Quartz- as she placed them in her bag. One of them she tried to pull loose and pulled in half instead, the black goop the only thing keeping it together; Connie swallowed at that, distant sorrow hitting her like a wave, and packed the two halves carefully, just in case. There weren't any other signs of struggle in the hallways- no scuffs on the walls, no holes in the floor, no broken weapons or shattered pieces. Only lights that wouldn't come on, and doors that had to be pried open with a crowbar, and that black dust collecting thick and tarry on every surface. Connie dug out her own head lamp, deciding on certainty over retained night vision, and lit her way forward as brightly as she could. It didn't help her unease as much as she'd hoped it would.
"I don't know if you can hear me, Pearl, because I definitely can't hear you," Connie said, voice barely a whisper in the empty rooms. It still echoed like a gunshot, deeper into the earth. "But you shouldn't send any gems down here. Something is seriously wrong."
Farther in. She started to find hints of life, signs that gems had existed here once: a few scraps of someone's pet tech project, gem script scratched into a wall in what looked a lot like graffiti, a chamber full of weapons strewn about like someone had interrupted a sparring match. There was an observation orb lying dead on the ground in one chamber, and a whole line of buttons and screens coated black in another. Some parts had script that didn't seem like Gem, too, or bits of technology that weren't familiar at all, but Connie ignored those; she had a mission to complete.
She found a Sapphire, two other blue gems she couldn't identify, and something she thought was a kind of Rutile. Her bag grew full, but she kept finding them, so she kept stuffing them in, wincing when they clinked against each other. There were three hundred gems here, at least. She'd never been meant to actually collect this many. She was a scout. Going into the earth.
She climbed up to the third floor of the temple, forcing open the entrance to the first tower, and had squeezed entirely through before she realized that the only light she had was white. "Robonoids?" No response. She peered back through the slim entrance she'd managed to create, but no red floating orbs were in sight. They must have touched the walls at some point.
She breached the next inner sanctum, gazing wide-eyed at the delicate inlays of the ceiling, iridescent white and blue like mermaid's scales There was only one gem in this room- a Pearl- and Connie had to scrabble with her fingers for twenty minutes to pry it loose. In the inside of the tower, ceiling so high above it was like looking at the sky, she could see more clearly how the blackness had spread: it only ebbed into color at over twenty feet in the air, watermarking the walls like flood gauges. Connie stared at it, transfixed, then reached up to her comm- except it wasn't in her ear. Not on the floor, either, and not outside in the hallway.
"Pearl?" she asked aloud, confused, but the comm didn't spark to life. Because... it had been disabled, like the Robonoids. Disabled, and yet she'd kept going deeper into the temple without even marking her way, with only one light and no food and no way out and this hadn't even been her mission-
Why was she here?
She should have turned back as soon as her comm stopped working. She should have reported that something was wrong, taken the first gem she'd found back with her and come back with reinforcements, let Homeworld's scientists look over the samples she'd taken so far. She shouldn't have gone deeper in, alone, without giving her friends any way to track her or know what she was doing.
Something was incredibly wrong. Something was... affecting her, maybe, making her think in ways she'd been trained out of. For what purpose? What reason-
A glint in the corner of the room. Connie moved toward it by rote, but it wasn't a gem; it was a little doll with a shard of rock sewn into its chest, with too many arms and a face that wasn't human, wasn't really humanoid at all. Connie held it blankly, unable to make her mind work, before something in her screamed pay attention! and she realized that her hand looked wrong.
Her veins were black. She swallowed back panic and rolled up her sleeve to see the black streaks cutting through her skin all the way up to her elbow, which was stained pitch like she'd dipped it in ink; the dark stripes continued to her shoulder and radiated onto her collarbone, the back of her neck, above her breasts. She pressed on the dark parts, but didn't feel pain; whatever it was doing to her, discomfort was not a part of it.
Connie took a deep breath, forced herself to sit down and cross her legs. No more movement until she knew what was going on. That was final.
An alien doll. A black gunk that killed Gem tech as soon as it touched it. An infection that made her move deeper into the temple and forget what she was supposed to be doing. What did those have in common? What did they mean?
Unfamiliar script and technology meant... someone else had been there? For long enough that they would have made toys with gem shards and marked up the walls. They had been there, but they weren't there now. Possibly the same thing had happened to them as had happened to the Homeworld terraformers- as was happening to Connie.
She needed to get back to the warp pad. Connie got to her feet, stuffing the doll in her bag for safekeeping, and stepped back out of the exit. Her mind blanked when she stared down both sides of the hallway, but she gritted her teeth and chose a direction, scratching a long line across the wall with the remnants of a gem destabilizer. The temple wasn't that big. She could get out, and if she couldn't she could last a few more hours and follow sunlight to an exit. Whatever was happening, it wasn't going to get her.
Urgency forced her out of the tower, towards the outer parts of the temple, but the hallways all blurred together. Had she gone left or right, at that junction? Had she been at that junction at all? More discrepancies jumped out at her: rotted food beneath the black mold, sketched-out drawings of creatures she'd never seen before, a knife with unfamiliar stylings at the hilt. She kept picking them up to put in her bag before realizing that they weren't gems and didn't need to be taken with her.
It took her longer to notice that the reason she couldn't put anything in her bag was because she'd dropped it, somewhere between the inner sanctum and the first tower, and when she did notice it sent a cold trickle of fear down her back. So. She couldn't trust her own perceptions at all, then. What could she do?
She took the gem destabilizer- she still had that, at least- and scraped out a message on the walls, as legible as she could make it: DON'T TOUCH. IT CHANGES YOUR MIND.
Did that make sense? Did that make any sense at all? Would it matter if aliens saw it, since they might not translate? Maybe all those inscriptions she'd seen hadn't been graffiti but similar warnings, made useless by language barriers. Connie wished she wasn't too hyped on adrenaline and nerves to be fascinated by what could be an alien Rosetta Stone.
She finished the message and stepped back, turning to the exit- except she didn't know where the exit was. She didn't- but there was an exit. But she had a mission? No, the mission was to- to scout, to get out, to go deeper into the temple and into the earth. "I'm not doing that," Connie said to no one, but she found herself following a path anyway, stepping past discarded gems and organic scraps.
Connie trailed the gem destabilizer across the wall whenever she thought of it, but mostly she followed the path. Her feet were made for the path, or must have been, because it had been followed before. She could see prints in the black beneath her boots.
Her hand caught at one of the doorways, gripping white-knuckled, and she took advantage of the momentary confusion to wrench herself back and sink to the floor, bury her head in her knees. Stay still, she told herself. Stay still. When you get lost you have to stay still until someone finds you, you (deeper into the earth) have to wait for rescue. "Something's in my head, ma'am," she said aloud, because she thought she should. "I'm compromised. Can you find me?"
Somehow she was standing again, and then she was moving. Her feet hurt, but her pace didn't slow.
The headlamp flickered off, finally running out of battery. She didn't know if that meant it was daylight.
It didn't matter. She had a path.
(Into the earth)
She had a path and she would follow it, if her feet would stop stumbling, if her hands would stop catching at things, if her knees would stop crumbling when they didn't even hurt. Again she was kneeling, scratching something into the black gunk: st st st st over and over again, not even a full word. Stop? Stay? Stretch? "Steven," she tried, but it didn't make sense why she'd be writing his name anywhere. He wasn't coming with her into the earth. He was- in space, in orbit, at home. On the other planet. Not this planet but a different, vaster one, a stranger one with lighter soils.
The walls lost their gem-patterns and became dark and musty, close to her shoulders so she had to turn sideways to get through the passages. There must have been light coming from somewhere; she could make out shapes in the dark, and she didn't trip even once. The sides of the tunnels expanded and contracted under her fingers when she pressed against them. They were warmer than her hands.
Into the earth for hours and hours, until her stomach felt tight, until her feet cracked and bled, until her ankles blistered against her socks and her legs ached, following the path laid out for her. Somewhere she dropped the gem destabilizer, too, but she didn't mind; it was less weight to carry.
Finally the walls were more red than black, bathed crimson by a warm, beckoning light; Connie stepped out into an open chamber, a cavern so wide that its ceiling was like a stalactite-laden sky, and stared in wondering horror.
Once, Connie had seen the Crystal Heart that powered the Temple back in Beach City, bright pink and glassy; this heart was a deeper red, so vast it stretched from one horizon of the cavern to another, broader than all of Beach City combined. Gleaming bitter red, glowing with blood-warmth and pulsing, humming through her flesh until she felt loose like wet meat, flushed all in black and blood.
Others were there, too, strange beings with too many arms and carapaces, creeping along the walls or skittering on the floor. Connie couldn't move, could only stare with blown-wide pupils at the massive Beating Heart, the lovely sanguine center of the planet, could only absorb the sight of it. Her thoughts ebbed and flowed, jumbling into each other until some inner levy broke and sloshed them loose; then she crumbled to her knees, suddenly light-headed, and said, "Wait. I don't- this isn't my planet."
It was, though, came the thought. It was her planet. Her tunnels, her Beating Heart to serve. It thrummed through her like her own pulse, drove her blood to warm her. Connie shuddered, hugging herself, but she couldn't shake the feeling that it was right, that it had- "Those gems," she tried again, but the thought had already left her. Determination made her press on, made her gather them back to her like scraps of paper. She would say what she meant to say. "Those gems, you- hurt them. You're the planet. You hurt these people."
Some of the aliens came closer to her, catching her by the arms and pulling her back into a side of the cavern, into an alcove in the wall, into the earth. They herded her into the dirt and she kicked, bit at them, lizard-brain terror catching where coherence couldn't reach. But there were so many of them.
So many, blank and empty-eyed, rotten black and sloughing skin into the dirt to feed the earth. They pushed her in and moved close, pulling strands from their bodies and wrapping her, binding her as the Heart pulsed through her mind and made her limp and unresisting.
They cocooned her away from the light. Connie's hands were trapped against her chest, fingers brushing the heavy strands as they smothered her; she pushed against them just a little, curious, but couldn't press past that. Into the earth. Into the planet. This wasn't something she should fight. The Heart beat through her in a lazy percussion, expanding and contracting scarlet on the insides of her eyelids when she blinked. She closed her eyes without meaning to and breathed slowly, in and out like she was meditating, until her mind drifted away.
The Heartbeat drove her blood to warm her.
*
Silence.
*
Connie opened her eyes with a gasp, wriggling in her bonds, and immediately tried to scream. Her body didn't respond to her commands, though, only moved like it had a mind of its own, and fear suffused her like cold water. She'd- been stupid, cut herself and not noticed, gotten mind-controlled and now it was too late-
The cocoon was dark and suffocating, red light bleeding through the fibers and making her skin glow dark, making the streaks in her veins stand out. The Heartbeat pounded through her skull, disturbing now instead of comforting; she tried to block it out, humming in her mind, but it bashed through her thoughts like they didn't exist, made her brain feel like it was welling up with blood. All crimson, behind her eyes, all saying go to sleep, leave it be, sink into the earth but she couldn't, she wouldn't, if she did she would cease to exist.
She threw every part of her will at her body, lashing out for control of one eyelid, one finger, one muscle fiber. It was as useless as fighting an ocean. Before, when the Heart had been leading her, she'd been able to subvert it; now it was like it had taken her brain and left her severed from every nerve ending, a vestigial organ just waiting to be culled. Like being a puppet. But she couldn't be, she didn't want to die, she had so much to do still- Connie tried to scream again, tried to cry, tried to thrash and escape but her body wasn't hers anymore, was just moving on its own like an automaton-
"Hold on," her voice rasped, sounding surprised, and she froze. That tone of voice- was that-? "Am I Connie?"
Relief surged through her, and she collapsed back into the background, desperately grateful. Not the Heart. Not a mindless puppet for an alien planet, not a meatsuit for breaking gems and killing shipwrecked aliens. Her body was in safe hands. In Steven's hands.
Her best friend didn't seem to know what to do with himself at first; he used her fingers to press against the skin of the cocoon, blinking slowly, then forced through the fibers with her shoulder. The push made him stumble painfully into the ground, and he righted himself immediately, staring at her black-streaked hands. They were shaking. "What's going on?"
I'm being mind-controlled by the planet, Connie tried to say, but Steven only turned to look around the cramped tunnel, obviously confused. He couldn't hear her, Connie realized with a start. He couldn't hear her at all. But then how would he know where to go, where to pick up the injured gems? Steven! Steven, I'm right here, you have to listen to me!
Nothing. Connie despaired as he stared at her surroundings, feeling her eyes go wide with horror. "Have you been trapped here all this time? Connie, I'm so sorry, I- I should have come sooner-" He cut off, tears pricking at her eyes, but Connie's mind was blank.
What? How long has it been? Steven?
Her body continued to move without her permission, Steven wincing at her bloodied feet and staggering with one hand to the wall. The tunnel they'd herded her into was so tight that it scraped against both her shoulders, constricting her chest when she inched sideways, and Connie was ninety percent sure that it had deepened after they'd cocooned her in. She felt Steven shudder at the claustrophobic fit.
Crimson light glowed at the entrance to the larger chamber, filling the doorway with red like a giant eye; Steven faltered, shrinking back, but squared her shoulders. He knew as well as Connie did that there wasn't another way out.
He stepped into the Beating Heart's chamber and froze up completely, pulse going rapid. Connie winced back from the thrum of influence that pulsed through her, marshaling her thoughts together as her only defense; Steven, still taking in the chamber, saw the carapace-aliens and shrank back into the tunnel. "That's not good," he whispered. "Were they kidnapped, too?"
If you'd actually hear me I could help you, Connie couldn't help thinking, nervous and snappy with it, but of course it didn't reach him. Steven hid in the tunnel until one of the aliens stepped into it and stopped at the sight of him, then said tentatively, "Hi. I'm Steven. Can you, uh- can you understand me?"
The alien regarded him blankly, head lolling and eyes rotten black out of its head, thorax falling apart like an ant possessed by fungi. Black sludge dripped off it and plopped onto the floor; one of its many arms hung limp and snapped-off at its side. Too far gone for thought, Connie figured, and felt Steven mirror the conclusion. His arm rose up defensively in front of him as the alien approached, then faltered when no shield appeared. She could feel the realization steal over him: no powers, no familiarity with the body, only whatever Connie had left in her after being held captive for what had apparently been more than a day.
Steven, you have to listen to me! You don't know the way out!
"Can you hear me?" he pressed anyway. "Are you still alive in there?" He reached out- Steven, what- and touched the zombie alien's side, making a face at the sludge coating Connie's hand. The alien paused, body stiffening- Connie felt a burst of incredulity- then flew into motion, grabbing Connie's wrist and slamming her against the wall. Steven yelped in her voice and kicked out at it, wriggling loose and ducking beneath its claws, but her body was weak. Other aliens wrestled it onto its knees.
They held her arms behind her back and forced them- forced Steven- to look into the Beating Heart.
It was blood and warmth and vitality so intense it hurt to witness; was glowing brighter than a star, washing the world crimson like a moonset, feeding its life into the dirt and the rock and its trillions of spores. Its arteries reached into the core of the planet, its capillaries fine and fast beneath its crust, its lungs molten in the mantle of the world. In the high chamber it was the world, so large it reminded Connie of Steven's description of the Cluster, and its veins reached over Connie's head like massive tree trunks sunk deep into the earth. Deeper into the earth. She was- this was her planet, she belonged to it-
She felt her fists clench. "You can't have her," Steven growled with her voice. "She doesn't belong to you. None of these people do!"
Something thrummed, pulsed, throbbed through her flesh and pulled it apart like cooked muscle, loose and stringy; Connie felt nauseous and transfixed, overwhelmed, but Steven only said heatedly, "She doesn't belong to anyone." The hive-aliens crept closer, stained with black goop and dripping it. "I need you to let her go, okay? I know it must have hurt when Homeworld started drilling into you, but Connie didn't have anything to do with that. She's just here on a rescue mission."
It doesn't care, Connie tried to say, but the words wouldn't come. Steven, what are you doing?
The Heart reached into her head and twisted, dragging a scream out of her that never left her lips. Connie lashed out at it, trying to make her thoughts a sword, but it batted her aside like she was nothing, smothered her thoughts until she couldn't breathe.
"What are you- stop that!" Steven sounded panicked. Could he feel it, could he feel her? Could he hear her? The Heart pulsed brighter in retaliation for his command, searing out every thought in Connie's head even as she spat and cursed at it, threw all she had into resisting, but it wasn't enough and the agony was blinding, Steven Steven please-
"I said stop it!" Steven screamed in Connie's voice, and the red light snapped back and dimmed like it had been struck. Connie felt strange, like there was something overlapping with her body, something new coursing through her like fresh energy- and then the sensation disappeared, feet moving rapidly beneath her, and she realized that Steven was running.
Running the wrong way. Connie tried to lurch her feet in the right direction, jerk a hand, anything, but her body wasn't her own: Steven had taken it over completely. She settled for yelling at him, trying to get him to hear something, but she was too late. Her body ran up to a dead end, panting and shaking, and she felt her face fall. Steven whirled around, but the aliens were already blocking the exit, clustered against the light. We can still fight! she yelled, but he was already shrinking back, hesitance making him slow.
He could heal anything. If he could just get her body to the surface he could resurrect her, anything would be better than being an eternal mind-slave to a sociopathic planet, seriously, Steven! One of the aliens jerked closer on rickety legs, and Steven dove under it, rolling onto his feet and dashing down another hallway. He bounced off the breathing walls in his haste, shuddering at their warmth, and took passages wildly, darting back and forth like he was under a spell.
Connie didn't understand until Steven muttered, "Come on, Garnet," doubling back and narrowly dodging more of the hive-aliens, and then she realized it was future vision. She hadn't known he could carry that over into another body.
Her feet were bleeding worse now, but there was no time to stop; Steven sprinted into gem-made tunnels at last, taking turns like he'd lived in the temple all his life, and tripped over her bag, slamming hard into the ground. He scrambled upright immediately, tense like he was about to keep running, but stopped and stared at the bag for a second before grabbing it and slinging it over her shoulder. Connie sighed in internal relief.
Finally her body wouldn't move any farther, muscles shaky and unable to hold her weight, and Steven wedged her into a small alcove at the temple's edge and hid, ears straining for any sign of pursuit. It took a while for Connie to push past her exhaustion to notice he was speaking. No- he was crying, tears streaming down her cheeks and leaving trails in black dust. "Please don't be too late," he was whispering, hugging her knees. "I'm sorry I didn't notice, I'm sorry, please don't be too late, you'll be okay, I know you will-" and Connie hadn't thought about how it must seem, that he'd taken over her body when he must have only wanted to contact her, but now it was all too obvious.
I'm fine, I'm right here, we're almost out, she tried to push at him, but he didn't hear her. He just kept weeping, quiet and terrified, completely unaware of her presence. "I'm gonna get you out of here," he promised, "we have a plan, okay, we just need to get to the cliff and we can get out, take all these gems with us, you just have to be alive in there, okay? Don't be a zombie. It's hard to be Jam Buds with a zombie."
Believe me, Steven, I'm trying my best.
Eventually she heard scuffling below them; Steven heard it too, scrambling to her feet just as a horde of aliens erupted from the dirt, and then they were running even as Connie felt like she was about to collapse. The aliens were fast, wherever they'd been from. They moved like spiders or scorpions, skittering in quick tiny steps, and Connie's exhausted body wasn't quick enough to outrun them.
In her mind the Heart pulsed come back come back come back, but she didn't have to listen, didn't even have to resist listening; her body wasn't in either of their control.
The aliens chased them to the west of the temple, away from the warp pad and to the jagged hills; Connie was only starting to remember the maps she'd reviewed when Steven crested a hill and she realized they were heading straight toward a cliff. Was this what you were talking about? Steven?
Her friend froze, staggering like he saw something else, then- stumbled, faltered-
Connie leaped to her feet, adrenaline coursing through her veins, and whirled to see a horde of aliens encroaching. Her brain felt empty and strange, echoey, and she couldn't find any trace of Steven anywhere. "Steven?" she shouted through her rasping throat. "Steven, are you there? What am I supposed to do from here? Did you see something else?"
Future vision could have told him this would kill her, or that his body was under attack, or any number of things. What had made him leave so suddenly? What had he seen, what was he planning to do? Was the cliff still part of the plan?
It didn't matter; either way Connie was cornered, and she'd never been clued in in the first place. She backed up as the horde approached, snarling and lashing out at reaching appendages, and thought, come on, Garnet. Thought he was heading toward the cliff, he was running full tilt and stopped suddenly, if I'm caught I'm dead anyway and Steven won't let me die-
The cliff. The cliff was the plan, and Steven hadn't been planning to stop, and anyway she was out of options. If she died, they could retrieve her body and resurrect her; if she broke every bone in her body, Steven could heal her. The only unacceptable option was being enslaved by the Beating Heart, and she already knew Steven could pull her out if that happened.
It was like one of the trust falls that their gym teachers made them do in school: close your eyes, spread your arms, lean back. Let gravity take you. If you were lucky- if the other person was strong enough, was paying attention- they would catch you.
Was Steven strong enough? Was he paying attention? Connie already knew the answer to both was yes.
"You should have asked nicely," she rasped at the encroaching horde, daring to smirk, and stepped backwards into open air.