As Nox approached Chet, he felt himself slipping back into business mode.
Gone were the bright lights, the laughter, and the carefree energy of CoreCoaster. Now, standing before the junkyard, reality sank back in.
The contrast was almost jarring.
Yesterday had been color, movement, and noise. Today? The rusted, rundown sprawl of discarded technology and forgotten scraps stretched before him like a graveyard of progress.
The air reeked of rust, oil, and decay, clinging to his fur as he took in the sight of endless heaps of junk. Broken electronics. Shattered machinery. Twisted metal. Piles stacked so high they looked like
monuments. Most of it? Useless. But to someone like Millio? This was treasure. Nox exhaled, shaking his head.
"Alright, let's get to work," he muttered, glancing at Chet, who was already scanning the area. "We're looking for anything Millio can use. No distractions."
Chet grunted in acknowledgment and started wading through the mess. Nox followed, his hands brushing against cold metal, half-melted plastic, and dirt as he sifted through the debris, searching for something. Anything that wasn't completely useless.
He found a few things worth grabbing: intact silver wiring, salvageable screws and nails, always useful for Millio's gadgets. He even spotted a rusted chain, covered in oil and mud, but still intact.
"Eh, it'll do. Millio's inventions are one-time use anyway,"
Nox chuckled, tossing another half-scorched circuit board onto their maybe-pile.
Chet grunted as he hoisted a cracked tiny bus frame, the metal groaning under his grip.
"Urrgh, what do you think is down there?"
Nox crawled under the wreckage, sliding on his back to reach something deep in the undercarriage.
"Where? Down my pants?"
He smacked a rusted beam loose and slid out triumphantly, holding a decent interior panel like it was buried treasure.
FWOMP.
The small bus husk shifted and collapsed halfway down the pile, dragging a loose cascade of scrap with it.
"No, dummy—down there," Chet said, voice lower now. "The Undercity."
Nox laughed, brushing off his coat and chucking the part into their growing pile.
"Yeah, I know, horns."
He leaned back on his paws, watching the dust they'd kicked up hang in the air. It drifted lazily, catching bits of light from one of the daylight lamps overhead.
"I'd guess it looks like this dump, just darker. No Flush, no air cycles. Enforcers replaced by Bloodhounds. My dad used to say... it's like being buried alive in a steel coffin."
He muttered the last bit quieter, more to himself than to Chet.
"You need to crawl through blood and concrete to make it back up."
Chet had found part of an old pipe. He swung it like a sword, performing sloppy air cuts with exaggerated grunts.
"Did he ever say what it looked like?"
Nox's eyes narrowed slightly, his voice flattening.
"Not really. My father... rarely talks about it."
He wiped the grime from his hands and kept looking, eyes scanning for something better, perhaps a coffee machine for himself if he got lucky, but... that's when he saw it.
Something shimmered in the distance. Near the newest pile of junk, freshly dumped from a disposal truck, a strange shape caught his eye. Half-buried, sleek, and polished. It stood out against the rusted surroundings like it didn't belong here.
Nox took a cautious step closer, kicking aside broken metal bits as he bent down toward the object.
"What the hell is that?"
The more he uncovered, the clearer it became. His stomach twisted. For just a second, his heart turned cold.
"Is that... a head?!"
Instinct took over. He crouched down, brushing away dirt and grime, revealing more details. It had a strange look, a smooth, metallic surface, completely undamaged, with some faint blue lines glowing softly along its edges. Was this the head of a Protogen? The interior had a visor-like interface, polished and seamless.
A network of wires and circuits peeked out from the underside, as if designed to extract or upload data, a lot of data. Nox swallowed hard.
"Chet?" His voice was unusually serious. "Come here. Look at this."
Protogens can't take off their heads.
At least, not as far as anyone knows.
The procedure fuses skin directly to the alloy — sometimes even restructures the bone underneath. It's not like wearing a helmet. It's more like burning your face into a new shape.
Imagine if your eyes were too weak, so instead of getting glasses, you fused them to your sockets. Or lasered them in. Permanent. No going back.
The PTC once put it like this: "To achieve the final form, one must abandon all animalistic traits."
The translation? Become machine. Become pure. Leave behind what weakens you, embrace what makes you stronger.
Chet trudged over, his boots crunching over debris. His ears flicked.
"What in the world of Coreline is that?"
He leaned in, eyes narrowing, aware that operations like that were expensive, like real expensive. Nobody just tossed a fusable Protogen head in the trash.
But this one felt wrong. Like you wouldn't have to rip your face off to wear it.
Like it wasn't made for the high-society types who threw creds at surgeons to forget their sins.
It felt different—he couldn't point it out, after all he had rarely seen one until now. Let alone touch it.
It looked like this thing had an entirely different Purpose. Like it wasn't for them.
"It looks like one of those… Protogen things, right?
But it's, uh… dead, isn't it?"
He took a step back.
"Oh, I don't wanna be involved in this, Nox."
Nox turned the object over in his paws. It was heavier than expected, the material was cold to the touch, a mix of metal and some advanced polymer. Smooth, but with faint, almost invisible seams tracing across its surface. The device felt… alive. Like a faint heartbeat pulsing beneath the surface.
"I thought so too, but..."
Chet made a disgusted face.
"Nox that's fucked up, leave that thing."
But Nox wasn't listening. Something about the design wasn't... right.
The front was sleek, featureless, aside from the faint outlines where the visor would usually light up.
His fingers ran along the edges, no rough welds, no exposed screws, just a seamless, almost organic design that felt more grown than built.
Was it really a head? ...No.
"This doesn't feel or look like a regular Protogen head. Look inside." He tilted it slightly, tapping his claws against it, a dull, sturdy thunk. Not quite metal, not quite plastic. Durable.
He took a closer look at the sleek interface inside.
"This might be a gadget. Or maybe... a mask."
Chet raised an eyebrow.
"You're kidding. That thing's got wires inside. How do you know Protogens aren't just built like that?"
Nox could feel the cold but soft inside of the mask, almost alive with dormant potential. Pressing against it made it adjust to the pressure.
Nox shrugged, a smirk creeping onto his face.
"I don't. But I always trust my gut."
Before Chet could stop him, Nox lifted the object and put it on.
It was lined with a thin, silk-like padding, seemingly adjusting to his facial structure. It felt almost alive.
The screen lit up...
SYSTEM BOOTING... Loading 1%
NEBULAR 4.0 SYSTEMS ONLINE
Status: OK
Power Source: Internal Arc-Cell Charge: 98%
Diagnostics Check: All Systems Operational
Neural Interface: SynchroLink Established Latency: 0.002ms
Environmental Sensors: Calibrated
AI Companion: ACTIVE
Helmet Initialization Complete: 100%
Nox froze as his vision shifted. A strange overlay flickered to life across his sight, flashing information in the corner of his vision.
Chet took a step back. "Uh... Nox? Put that thing OFF!"
Nox blinked, his voice now distorted, robotic.
"I... I can see everything."
The mask had turned on. Now Nox looked like a Protogen, his eyes projected on the mask's smooth overlay as two orange round lights, swiftly moving around, his mouth a sharp zigzag form synchronizing with his voice.
The AI voice continued:
HUD Status: Online
Visual Overlay: Activated
Targeting Systems: STANDBY
Tactical Feed: Synced to Command Grid
Encryption Level: MIL-GRADE PROTOCOL 7
Motion Assist Modules: Enabled
Chet frowned, shifting uneasily.
"Nox, you sound like a damn robot right now and your eyes and mouth!"
Nox lifted his hands, flexing his fingers. Everything felt... odd.
Names. Tags. Information everywhere—dots, layouts, data floating all over the place.
Data popped up over random scraps of junk. It was like an augmented reality filter, except it wasn't just junk. It was on every surface.
There was a map, a pool of information about sectors, shops, and... people.
Then, one tag stood out.
Chet.
Nox froze. "C-Chet?"
His voice was quieter now. He reached out, fingers hovering over the strange floating data tag.
Chet, rummaging through old parts, glanced up. "What now?"
Nox hesitated. Why the hell was Chet's name on this mask's overlay?
He tapped the tag, more details appeared.
DATA ENTRY: CHET
Species: Bull
Occupation: Gardener
Wage: [CLASSIFIED]
Height: 2.90m
Living Space: Sector Crossway
Notes: Strong, Naïve, Low IQ
Nox yanked the mask off, his heart pounding. Chet's expression darkened.
"Nox. What the hell did you just see?"
Nox hesitated.
"Nothing important... just some weird comments. Probably a glitch."
Chet narrowed his eyes but didn't push further.
"Right. Well, let's just finish this job and get out of here. I don't wanna be part of some freaky tech horror story."
Nox nodded, but the unease didn't fade. This mask was something he had never seen before,
And whatever was hiding inside it... felt important, valuable. After gathering enough scrap, the two made their way back to the boulder.
Nox placed the mask near a crate, covering it with old scraps.
Chet watched him.
"So, uh... you keeping the head? You're even freakier than I thought, man."
Nox adjusted his scarf.
"It's not a head, Chet. It's a mask. And I think Zee might be able to figure something out about it."
Chet rolled his eyes.
"Right. Definitely not hoarding. I dunno what Zee's gonna think about this thing."
Nox smirked.
"Listen, some things are just too unique to toss into the scrap heap. Besides, if I show this thing to Millio, he's definitely going to try to disassemble it. Can't let that happen."
With that, a groaning Chet lifted the boulder, creating a gap for Nox to squeeze through.
"I'll be back in ten minutes!" Nox called as he vanished inside.
Chet muttered,
"You always say that..."
And with a deep, heavy rumble, the boulder fell shut.