Chapter Text
Lake Solaris: Unreachable. Merciless. The Great Mystery. Kurapika had seen it referred to as such in books, but none of its photos made it out to be anything special. The strange phenomena that occurred on its waters had been too erratic to capture on film, leaving the outside world with a less-than impressive visual record unable to corroborate the more fantastical accounts detailed in writing. For Kurapika, it meant endless frustration. With so little about the lake substantiated through video or photography, he'd found it impossible to fully prepare for whatever he might encounter while assigned as Hunter in-residence in the sixty-year-old research station located on the lake's shore.
Only after hours spent navigating the choked and shadowy paths winding down into the Solaris Basin did Kurapika get his first clear view of the research station. It loomed high up, like a forgotten ruin above the lake, desolate and unreal. Though the only man-made structure within miles of precarious wilderness, the vibrant, characteristic flora of the region hadn’t been incorporated into its austere design. The outer surface, as far as could be seen through the overgrowth creeping up the walls, was plated in dull, gray metal interrupted by tinted glass designating floor windows. At the top, the walls curved inwards before flattening out into an observation deck, giving the building the aspect of an overturned bowl a child had used to capture an escaping animal before it could disappear into the thick vegetation of the woods. Creeping up the walls were oversized, red ivy with a greasy, plastic sheen to its leaves, as well as knarred, teal-green vines that sprouted fluorescent yellow flowers streaked with black and magenta. They stood out, garish and deadly as coiled vipers, against the drab gray, and reminded Kurapika of the one thing no visitor to the Solaris Basin should ever forget.
Everything here pulsed with poison.
There were no animals, and as far as anyone knew, there never had been. The lack of birdsong and buzzing of insects, like all immense silences, had its own deafening roar that grew to a physical presence, encasing Kurapika as he drew nearer to the steep shores of the lake. The books he’d studied beforehand called it a desert of sound. Something about the position of the mountains, the elevation, the unreality of the water itself, arrested even the faintest breeze. Only the vegetation persisted, its flowers pollinated at dusk and dawn by three native varieties of moth, the tiniest of which was capable of alighting upon a single strand of human hair.
Kurapika halted at a point where the path veered closest to the edge of the sheer-sided promontory the research station sat upon. Grainy photographs of the lake in reference guides had failed to convey the unearthly reality of seeing its surface for the first time. The energetic, shimmering movements of the waves unsettled him, not just because they were the only other source of sound beyond his own breathing, but also because the movements had no immediately ascertainable source. The basin hardly had a breeze, and nothing lived within the lake. Nothing, that is, but one thing, as it was frequently speculated the lake itself might be alive. It was a pulsing, writhing, living thing, that gestured up incomprehensibly with each lapping wave against the rocky walls of the crater-shaped basin it had poured itself into unknown millennia ago and settled in.
A sudden urge to find a stone and toss it into the lake, to break the swirling surface with a ripple of movement that reflected his own will upon it, filled Kurapika, and he sat back on his heels with the intention of searching around. There were no stones on the path, however. Kurapika wasn’t certain if this were natural, or if, after decades of frustration and fruitless research, every possible loose item nearby the station had been chucked forcibly into the uncaring face of the lake in an act of spite that, if the current state of research into the region proved anything, had changed nothing.
Despite the heat of the sun on his back, Kurapika shivered before standing back up. He should keep moving, he knew that, but he couldn’t tear himself away from the cliff’s edge, not yet. The bubble of En he’d deployed to navigate the woods had been sending him mixed information. Something was there, and at the same time nothing. His eyes and ears confirmed the nothingness, and yet the longer he stood still, the stronger the feeling of something imminent grew. Some invisible force was narrowing in on him, reaching out with impossibly long fingers to yank him down from the cliff and beneath the waves. When he summoned the strength to step away from the edge, the threat departed like a passing thought he never would’ve entertained. All that remained was the feeling of being watched, studied, taken note of.
The station’s nearest door was only a few minute’s walk uphill. For the first time in days, Kurapika was treated to sounds other than his own footsteps and haggard breaths. He tapped the access code into an unlit keypad, and something metallic and old whirled to life in response. There was a hiss of air escaping around a released seal, and the door slowly, almost cautiously, slid open just enough to permit him to pass. Kurapika squeezed through, irritated over the trouble and grumbling how he ought to be glad the door had opened at all. Still, it was only a minor inconvenience. In the ever-growing list of questions he intended to ask upon meeting the head research scientist running the facility, his annoyance over the front door not opening properly rested somewhere around the seventh or eighth most important thing. As always, first and foremost on his mind was figuring out what the hell it was he was expected to do out here for the next six months. It wasn’t an assignment he’d chosen for himself, and the description he’d been provided had come off as suspiciously vague and open-ended. There didn’t appear to be a real plan for what to do with him. All he had to do was show up and stay put. That was the beginning and end of everything he knew.
At first sight, the interior of the station showed its age, but not the full extent of its increasing disrepair. The encroaching vines didn’t obscure a single one of the large, convex windows that marched down the outfacing side of the hallway running in a ring around the entire first floor. The rounded walls were lined with small, clean, white tiles that gleamed in the late afternoon light. These lent an antiseptic quality to the hallway, like a metro tunnel that might second as hospital or a morgue. Kurapika brushed his fingers against the smooth, glazed ceramic as he walked further in, feeling it hard and cool to the touch through his gloves, and totally alien in comparison to the woods he’d been traveling through. The rolling sound of a wheeled machine hidden from view by the curve of the hallway told him the station was being kept up by robotic hands. That was how the tiles stayed so unnaturally white and brilliant, like the perfect, straight teeth of an executive’s son in a York Shin VIP lounge, whispering some bullshit Kurapika caught every word of into Neon Nostrade’s ear.
Kurapika pulled his fingers back, his hand falling heavily to his side. The crowded places of the past, filled with noise and conversation and his secret sighs of exasperation, were so divorced from the reality of this empty and echoing hallway that looking back on them felt like peering over the shoulder of another person’s life. He wasn’t that same person anymore. He didn’t think with the same single-minded focus that’d defined him back then and given him purpose. Whoever or whatever he was now, everything had changed.
Although there were no signs indicating where to go, Kurapika knew the way. He’d been briefed on the layout of the station and all of its primary landmarks. It hadn’t been guaranteed anyone would be available to meet him when he arrived. The route from where he currently stood to where he wanted to go was the same no matter which way he went, so, he made the arbitrary choice to turn left. The outside door, which had been waiting for him to clear the threshold, hissed shut behind him, and there was a violent puff of damp air from a line of grating above, intended to knock off or neutralize any debris that clung to him. One of the cleaning robots from further down the passage ceased in its tasks and raced towards him with a childlike eagerness to begin sanitizing the area. Kurapika caught himself on the verge of smiling down at it in welcome, but reminded himself it was a machine, and also, even if it could’ve accepted a greeting, wouldn’t have been able to see his expression behind the mask and goggles protecting his face.
Kurapika kept walking. The damp, claustrophobic heat of his gear was lessening now that the chill air of the station trickled in through his multiple layers of clothing. He wanted to wrench off his mask and the sweaty cap holding back the hair beneath his hood, to plop down right there in the hall and draw in several great lungfuls of cool, uncontaminated air, but he didn’t trust the straggling particles he spied clinging to his clothes. There was a protocol for full decontamination, but with no-one to greet him and no way to access the proper facilities, he’d have to endure for a little longer with the rudimentary sanitation measures of the outlying hallway.
After walking a short distance, Kurapika stopped at a large set of double doors and searched for the control panel he knew would be concealed under a flap of tiled metal. If he’d turned right instead of left, an identical set of doors would’ve appeared on his other side and led to the same central location. Many of the station’s design elements, particularly on the first level of the building, were part of a symmetrical whole. The only actual difference in choosing one direction or the other was the scene the hallway windows looked out on. Going right would’ve taken Kurapika past long windows looking out towards Lake Solaris, and he felt he’d seen plenty of it already on the way up. All he wished to do now was find out where he’d been assigned quarters and catch up on the sleep he’d been neglecting since he’d begun his trek.
The set of double doors slid open without hesitation, welcoming Kurapika to a new passage leading straight into the heart of the station. This area was darker, less superficially sterile. There were signs people passed through it at times, leaving marks the electronic attendants hadn’t been equipped to eliminate. Halfway down the passage, a long scratch began, like something had come to a skidding halt by digging into the wall. Kurapika stopped in front of it, noting that the gash went deep enough at one end to reveal a metal support beam. That the damage had never been patched over and re-tiled agreed with the reputation for carelessness the station staff had acquired over the past decade. Kurapika sighed, shook his head, and continued down the hall with less determination in his step.
From now and for the next half year, Kurapika would be under contract serving at the Solaris Basin Research Station. He’d have to accept whatever role the head of the station, Dr. Morro, assigned him, while also reporting back to the Hunter Association, the station’s newest owner and the offical, recognized governing body in charge of the region since last year. He’d been told to meet with Dr. Morro first thing at his workstation in the command center. If Dr. Morro wasn’t present, Kurapika was to wait until he arrived. Irritated by his lack of a welcome and exhausted from traveling, Kurapika hoped he wouldn’t be forced to wait.
The control room door opened with an odd, plastic click, and, like the door outside, pulled away only enough for Kurapika to squeeze through sideways. It shut behind him with a swishing sound much sooner, almost catching his bag. Kurapika refused to allow these minor, mechanical inconsistencies to alarm him. Commonly used things like doors wore down over half a century of use. The overlarge station had been operating with a reduced staff for fifteen years by now, meaning most systems vital for life had become automated and were maintained by teams flown in for yearly maintenance checks. The typical biologists and Hunters passing through to conduct research couldn’t be expected to double as electricians and mechanics every time something non-essential went on the fritz.
“Doctor, uh, More-owe?” asked Kurapika tentatively into the silence of the control room. The hum of fans and electronics murmured gently through the logistical heart of the station’s giant, overturned bowl. The air was too cold, like drinking water with every intake of breath. Kurapika had been so long on foot trekking through the forests of the region by now that, in the presence of such heavily conditioned air, he shivered. Only the camera footage of the basin playing on empty workstation monitors and along a row of screens mounted on the far wall gave any indication there was a world of greenery and natural light beyond the warren of tiled passages and sliding doors Kurapika had just come through.
“Morro,” corrected a gruff, disembodied voice. “Go up on the first syllable, trill the r, keep the vowels short. That’s how you pronounce my name.”
Kurapika’s eyes needed more time to adjust to the flickering penumbra. He turned his head towards the end of the room where the voice had come from. A switch was turned, and a pale light came on at one of the workstations. The man sitting there, presumably Dr. Morro, eyed Kurapika with distrust, taking full measure of him in seconds and deciding he’d come up short. Kurapika returned the sentiment twice over, though his own expression couldn’t be read in his gear.
“I assume you’re Kurapika,” said the man, leaning back. The creak of the chair sounded as tired as Dr. Morro looked. Kurapika didn’t hazard to correct the man’s mispronunciation of his own name.
“I am,” said Kurapika. He stepped forward. “I’ve been sent by the Hunter Association to offer auxiliary support in the work being done at this station.”
He stopped a few feet short of Dr. Morro. Lake Solaris had unsettled him on the way up along the cliff’s edge, and he glimpsed something equally as suspect in Dr. Morro’s eyes. Every nerve in Kurapika’s body rested on a hair-trigger as he froze and waited, unsure what threat might manifest, but fully prepared to engage it nonetheless. For the most part, however, Dr. Morro just looked slightly drunk.
“Is that really why you were sent?” asked Dr. Morro. Kurapika froze. “You mean your Association truly intends for you to serve an actual, functional purpose here for me, and that you weren’t actually banished here so they could get you out of their hair?”
Dr. Morro coughed out a hoarse sound like a laugh he’d started but lacked the momentum to follow through on. Seeing this, Kurapika relaxed. As a general rule, he chose not to argue with drunks in bad moods. “Will I be assigned any particular job while I’m here?” he asked. “I’d like to know what, if any, purpose I’m expected to serve. I wasn’t given a lot of details beforehand, but maybe I could help with your research a little. Since I don’t have a scientific background, however, I’ll need a fair amount of training and support.”
“Frankly, you can throw yourself into the lake for all the good your help would probably do me,” scoffed Dr. Morro. Kurapika remained impassive. “There’s very little to study these days. There’s very little left we haven’t tried on that…the lake. We’ve pretty much arrived at what you might call an impasse. Nowhere left to go.”
The man paused for Kurapika to ask him why this was. Kurapika did not.
“Well,” continued Dr. Morro with a newer note of agitation. “Just know not much has changed since the first idiot who set his eyes on this damn lake decided to dedicate his wasted, idiot life to cataloguing every wave shape and funny dance. If you’re any good of a Hunter, you should know that. And, you should know being sent here is basically a slap on the wrist for you people, not an opportunity.”
“I’m aware the field has stagnated.”
Dr. Morro snorted. “‘Stagnated’. Sure. I guess that’s a polite way to put it.”
The groan of a machine initiating a new cycle of operation interrupted the tense quiet following Dr. Morro’s scornful laugh. A new process, a transition to another phase, likewise began on Dr. Morro’s face. In moments, he was businesslike, startlingly sober, and twice the age he’d appeared while grinning up at Kurapika from his workstation when Kurapika had entered. Without a word he stood and moved to another desk. There, a ledger lay open. Dr. Morro flicked on the lamp above it and leaned in closer.
“It’s three of us, with you here,” said Dr. Morro. “From the information I’ve been sent, I see you’re a Pro-Hunter, specifically a Blacklist Hunter, which means you have zero relevant skills for scientific work. We don’t get a lot of escaped convicts in the Solaris Basin. So, you can do maintenance and equipment retrieval. Some of the probes and cameras out there are precariously placed, and accessing them requires a certain level of physical prowess neither Costu nor I possess. Some have been out of order for over a year by now. We need them brought in so they can be repaired or replaced.” Dr. Morro paused. He looked up from the ledger to Kurapika and shrugged. “So, I guess I just need to know if you’re good at climbing.”
“Fairly competent.”
“Great. We can give you the appropriate gear for outdoor work, too,” said Dr. Morro. He looked Kurapika over again and tsked at what he was wearing. “I’m shocked they didn’t send you out here in a set of coveralls. Did you really make your way down from the mountains in just trekking clothes?”
“I took careful steps.”
“Care? It was luck. There’s no way you didn’t make it through those woods without getting exposed. You were just lucky none of it was lethal. I can see the blisters on the back of your hand. Costu will set you up with ointments and bandages. Costu, by the way, is the medical doctor. I’m the PhD doctor. Don’t come to me for medical advice. If you fall out of a tree, I can’t help you. And if you fall into the lake...ha! No-one can help you.”
The blistering rash on Kurapika’s hand burned dully with the reminder. He shifted to adjust the way his clothing pressed against the warm, stinging patch that by now had spread over his hand and up his arm. Everything in the woods pulsed with poison. Emerging unscathed, especially with the paths in such neglect, had been impossible.
“We’ll reconvene tomorrow, as a group,” said Dr. Morro, handing Kurapika an envelope with his individual access code and corresponding quarters assignment. He’d done this with great care, granting Kurapika a wide berth and warning him not to touch anything until he cleaned “all that shit off from outside”. Once Kurapika had the envelope in his hand, Dr. Morro stepped away quickly to reclaim the seat at his original workstation much further away.
“Go find Costu in the doctor’s office. I have work to do, so, maybe he can give you the grand tour. He pretty much just sits around anyway. It isn’t like he has anything better to do.”
With this, the conversation effectively ended. Kurapika didn’t waste time with any brusque goodbyes or faring wells that would’ve been meaningless to someone like Dr. Morro. Instead, he turned around quietly, and without a word, he left.