The stories Safir told 11 about Nranhana’s Needle may not be factually correct, but surprisingly, they aren’t completely fantastical either. The stone tower itself may not have existed since Kesrock city’s foundation, but the same cannot be said about the piece of ancient technology housed inside it.

11 stands on an island of tulips, shielding her eyes as she looks up at the tower stretching out from the elevated garden. The afternoon sunlight glances off the crystal dome above, scattering color across the flowers and the gently flowing river. The water wraps around the sloping banks of the island protectively like a miniature moat, to ward off ants, probably, and five arcing cobblestone bridges, spaced out evenly like the points of a star, offer the only way into and out from the garden and its tower.

11 bends down, wipes her sugar-coated fingers across the untrimmed grass, and makes her way to the iron-enforced doors, pushing them open.

A gust of wind rushes out from within the tower, slapping 11 with the musk of old books and mildew. She steps through the threshold, wrinkling her nose and blinking her eyes as they adjust to the lower light.

She stops when she sees it; something she never expects to see, something she doesn’t at first recognize.

In the center of the hollow tower, wrapped within a spiraling rosewood staircase, is a cylindrical monolith of black metal, yawning all the way up through the ceiling and out of view.

The first question that comes to 11’s mind, is whether the name ‘Nranhana’s Needle’ refers to the tower of stone, or the monolith inside it. And a second later, she realizes with a surge of excitement the answer to the second question without even needing to ask it.

“No way.”

A long stretch of white carpet leads directly from the tower’s entrance to the base of the monolith, as if the entire purpose of this building is to house such a piece of forgotten tech. And it probably is, 11 thinks as she starts down the carpeted walkway, seeing as how there aren’t even light bulbs around anymore. No wonder they think this is some godly relic.

Heavy wooden shelves, laden with dusty manuscripts and worn leather covers, loom on either side of the walkway, their ranks broken periodically by concrete pillars with intricate paintings of animals and strange creatures adorning each of them. The ground floor is capped by a smooth granite ceiling, and a scan tells 11 there are six more just like it, above.

Around the monolith, the granite ceiling is cut in a wide circle, allowing for the full expanse of the monolith's cylindrical form to reach through to the top of the tower. When 11 looks up through the hole, she can see sections of the flower bulb, bone-white and still as stone, peeking from the sides of the dark monolith.

Unable to curb her curiosity for any longer, 11 places one hand on her chest, and her other against the monolith's dull, cold surface. She closes her eyes.

In the stillness of her mind, 11 feels a faint heat spreading through her fingers, and behind her closed eyelids, she sees light, pulsing from under the monolith's corroded exterior, as if within this failing structure, a slumbering monster is stirring.

It still works.

Taking a deep breath to settle herself, 11 sends out a burst of electrical energy through her hand.

The response is immediate.

The tower of obsidian hums awake, flashing in a staccato drumbeat between pitch black and dark blue. Even through her glove, 11 feels the hot current surging back into her with double, no, triple the voltage. Inside her chest, her own super battery sings out in recognition, and the feeling is exhilarating.

Caution: High energy levels detected.

Master Core temperature rising.

Activating Cores 18 to 20...

11 keeps her hand pressed against the metallic obelisk, letting the circuit build, tasting the power as it crashes through her. The monolith hums louder, the electrical current accelerating between it and 11, amplifying with every second that they’re connected, then every half-second, then every millisecond. The air begins to fill with an ashy smell as a high-pitched whine echoes through the tower.

11 yanks her hand back, breaking the circuit with a shower of blue sparks, singeing the carpet beneath her.

“Ow, ow ow…” She fans her hand through the air, trailing smoke and dead nanobots everywhere. She leans hard against a nearby shelf to catch her breath, the wood crackling from where it touches her bare skin. 11’s body feels so hot she worries her clothes might catch on fire.

“Mother,” she says breathlessly, “I think I just got rejected by a battery.”

The smooth voice of the Synapse-Mother-System cools 11’s mind like a stream of water, calming her tight nerves, though not her muscles.

It is a power-amplifier belonging to the Proprietors of Arcadia, Gear 11, so of course you cannot integrate with it.

Judging from its design, this battery is most likely one of the earliest prototypes used in the Proprietors' mechanical Titans during the 20 year war, before the first generation God Giers wiped them all out.

The decay in its structure determines its manufactured date to be... around 2340. It probably never saw use outside of experiments.

11 lets out an astonished gasp. “That makes this thing almost two-thousand years old.” She looks to the ground, and taps her foot against the scorched part of the carpet. “So am I standing above an Arcadian base? Is there a prototype Titan under me?”

I cannot see under the ground, 11.

Unless it is online and connected to me, like you are, I cannot answer that question.

A pause, then,

There probably isn’t.

Over 99% of Arcadia’s bases were destroyed by the Mark I God Giers, even before the Horizontal Reset swept the planet.

The chances of you stumbling across an intact base, let alone a Titan, is astronomical.

“But not impossible,” 11 counters, detaching herself from the bookshelf to look at its contents. “It’d be like winning one of those lottery games the humans liked to do. Maybe I’ll get lucky. Wanna make a bet, Mother? I’m feeling lucky.”

She does not get a reply.

The monolith has gone dark once more, and as 11 turns her gaze back to it, she wonders why the humans who discovered this ancient piece of technology not only left it here unmolested, but built a library around it to hide it from the world.

“Their forefathers created living machines,” 11 whispers to the quiet and stillness, “yet the humans of now don’t have the curiosity or knowledge to tinker with a simple battery?”

I do not know the answer to that question, 11.

“Why not?”

The question is simple, and 11 only said to it make conversation. But Mother answers so quickly it takes her by surprise.

I do not know.

I only know that it is not my fault.

11 frowns, speechless for a moment. "I... didn't say it was." She tries to think back to those blurry moments as she was awakening, the fragments of the dream about the brown-suited man and his umbrella-carrying daughter, but those visions give little in the way of concrete information, and thinking about them only distracts 11 from her current task, which is to scan through these bookshelves for some real clues.

She comes across a thin leather-bound book with a very fascinating title, 'How to win quests and influence party members.' And even though 11 knows it is not going to help her, she pulls it from the shelf anyway.

“It was like they forgot who they were and what they were capable of,” she says, recalling ugly underground huts and cracked farmland as she studies the crude craftsmanship of the book's covers. “It was like… another Reset had happened inside Haven, you know?”

It may be 11’s imagination, but when the Synapse-Mother-System speaks again, there seems to almost be a hint of emotion to its tone.

I do not know why humanity had lost their technology, 11, and I do not know how to fix this. There are no protocols or contingency plans made to deal with such a circumstance. By all sense of logic, it should not have happened like this. The Soteria Procotol is flawless. I’m… supposed to be flawless.

11 cracks the book open, enjoying the satisfying snap. “Are you upset, Mother?” she asks curiously, scanning the pages.

'…and the wizard wrote from behind his arrow-ridden mattress, the blood flowing from his wounds leaving a crimson trail on the sheep-skin, ‘Under my robes is a weary heart, but a kind one - one that would do nobody any harm’…'

11 has scanned through half the book when Mother’s reply finally comes.

It is not untrue to say that I have failed in my task to protect humanity, at least to an extent.

However I, like you, do not have the capacity for emotion or feelings, so it is simply impossible for me to be, as you claim, upset.

A pause, then, as if waiting for 11 to absorb the information.

I suggest we do not dwell on what has been lost, 11, and work on gathering more information.

I remind you that, although the repopulation progress has slowed considerably, Pandora’s Gate may be discovered at any moment and we must be always ready to initiate Stage Three of Protocol Soteria.

11 shakes her head in disagreement, though is unable to pinpoint what exactly she’s disagreeing with. She closes the book between her hands, her mind heavy with unanswered questions, and moves on to the next shelf.