The self-repair took approximately half an hour.
Ashe had settled near the rock she had hidden behind earlier, maybe because in some instinctive way she still perceived it as a form of shelter. Cressa sat beside her for a while too, filling the silence with observations about the surrounding landscape and some occasional commentary directed at her brother.
For that half an hour though, things felt almost ordinary, something Ashe found very welcome.
Then, from several points along the walker's surface simultaneously, a short series of beeps sounded in repeating waves. Cressa was on her feet as soon as she heard them.
"Come on," she said, heading toward the open entryway of the walker. "I'm going to show you something cool."
And then she was gone, disappearing into the darkness beyond the opening. Halen had already begun moving toward it as well, unhurried, gathering a few items from the ground near where he had been working.
"Don't worry, it's not gonna leave without us," he said, noticing Ashe's hesitation. "It won't move until we're aboard and ready."
It was meant to reassure her, but she didn't know whether to find that eerie or simply fascinating.
Before entering, she looked up at the head of the walker which gazed passively toward the distance. She thought about what it would mean for something that size and that mechanical in its construction, to be aware of the people around it.
"Yeah," Halen said, as though he had already sensed what was troubling her. "It knows."
Then Cressa's voice called out from somewhere inside, clearly directed at him.
"Don't spoil it, Hal!"
He exhaled deeply, as if that single breath said everything there was to say about his little sister, then shook his head slightly. He looked at Ashe then made a courteous gesture toward the opening.
"Well… you heard the boss."
Ashe smiled and made her way inside.
The interior was darker than the outside was, so her eyes needed a moment to adjust as she stepped through. The first thing she encountered was a staircase, steep and narrow, worn at the center from all the use. She climbed it carefully, keeping one hand on the wall beside her at all times, until she emerged into the compartment above.
There, she stopped.
From the outside, the walker looked like a heavily armored machine built from thick and layered metal designed to absorb shocks either from the environment or otherwise. But from the inside, the walls were all glass. It was framed in round sections that stacked across the curved interior walls in the pattern of a honeycomb. The frames were dark metal, but the panels were fully transparent. This created the illusion that the compartment was entirely open to the outside while remaining physically sealed from it. Ashe found it astonishing.
The compartment itself was relatively spacious considering the outer layout. Four people could occupy it without difficulty and they could even walk around a bit if they needed to. Two worn benches ran along opposite sides and along the back wall, several large containers had been stacked and secured against one another. They were provisions, she assumed, based on what Cressa had told her outside.
"Cool, right?" Cressa exclaimed as she appeared from the far end of the compartment.
"Yeah…" Ashe replied with a low voice, still taking everything in.
She turned slowly, registering everything as best she could. As she stepped back, she bumped into something solid behind her whom she found to be Halen. He must have entered just behind her, though she'd completely forgotten in the face of everything around her. He paid no attention to it though and moved past her toward the containers at the back.
"But now," Cressa said, intentionally pulling Ashe's focus back to what was most important. "The main attraction!"
From the back of the compartment, without looking up from what he was doing, Halen chuckled a bit.
"Here we go," he said to himself, and began rearranging the containers, preparing for departure.
Cressa waited until she was sure Ashe was looking at her, then reached for a panel Ashe hadn't noticed until that moment. It was a dark metal cover that seemed to have more of a protective role than an esthetic one. When she pulled it back, it revealed a pillar running the full height of the compartment, encased in thick glass. But what mattered, was on the inside.
A complex structure of thick filaments revealed itself, branching and rebranching into finer strands until the ends were too thin to distinguish at all. They moved in a slow, continuous motion that had no obvious pattern. An intense blue glow formed where clusters of nodes gathered and moved from one section to another as the nodes moved as well. It looked like a vast network of neurons, contained within that glass pillar at the walker's very center.
The entire compartment was now tinted in the blue light emitted by the network.
"What is it?..." Ashe eventually asked, having completely forgotten about everything else that had struck her not ten minutes ago.
"It's the core," Cressa replied. "Or the brain of the walker, if you will, as best we understand it."
She reached out and placed her palm against the outer casing. The nearest filaments responded immediately, brightening and drifting toward her hand, rearranging themselves before dispersing once more. She then smiled at Ashe.
"I had the same reaction the first time I saw it. And it genuinely never gets old."
"Be careful with that," Halen said, appearing beside them. "That thing is not as friendly as it might look."
Cressa withdrew her hand and her expression changed slightly, becoming more serious.
"He's right," she said at last. "People have died trying to push too far with the cores. We've learned at a very high cost that there are boundaries to this technology. We can't alter these things more than they allow us to."
Ashe studied the glow moving from one node to another next to it.
"We signal them when we are ready and, for some reason we don't fully understand, they are able to respond. It's more like a conversation, really, only they are the ones who ultimately decide how it goes."
"You might want to sit down," Halen said, interrupting them and then nodding toward the outside. "It's about to move."
As if in response to Cressa's touch moments earlier, the walker emitted a series of deep vibrations, like engines coming to life. Its belly began to rise slowly as its four feet set into position, preparing to move again. The filaments in the core responded to it, brightening uniformly and accelerating their movement.
Then, through the honeycomb of windows on every side, the terrain began to slide past them, as the walker started to slowly make its way back toward Railen.