Bolts are technological neck implants used by The Order to control the people of Kairos. Issued by The Order in the Welcome Center area of a prison under the commands of Warden Scathe on behalf of their ruler, The Timekeeper, these allow The Timekeeper to take over the body of any resident he chooses as a means to observe, prevent or squash any potential uprisings or challenges that could threaten his view of maintaining peace and order on the planet. While possible to have them removed, doing so can have catastrophic consequences, such as insanity, or even death in rare cases.^[1]

Appearance

Bolts used by The Order have been seen with a triangular head that usually is seen to glow yellow and is located on the back of a person's neck. Attached to the "head" are several strands of needle like appendages that burrow into the neck and forcibly attach themselves to the person's nervous system. Upon activation, the bolt also adds a slight yellow filter to the person's field of vision; when The Timekeeper takes control of an individual, the yellow filter turns a dark red in color.

Function

Bolts were developed by scientists of The Order to serve two purposes: it allowed The Timekeeper to somehow hack into and observe any person he chooses with a bolt and override their actions as a means to keep the population of Kairos under his control (or as he refers to it, a "guiding hand") This allows him the ability to use the individual in question as a form of surveillance, can force them into harming/killing others or even harm the user themselves (as seen when snapping the neck of a prisoner who got loose during a jailbreak). Despite this, several residents including Arjay have learned that the bolt's connection to the Timekeeper and the Order can be overridden by using drones similar to Echo-4; it has been shown it is also possible to even remove a bolt after it has been implanted. However, removal of the bolt can cause death or loss of sanity as seen in Callis and many of the The Rippers.

History

According to Arjay, it is believed that shortly after the arrival of Elpis in the sky above Kairos, The Timekeeper quickly developed into a tyrant and ruled that the residents of Kairos were no longer allowed to have free will. To bring the population under his control, people were abducted and experimented on until the technology to keep them fully under control was perfected. Dubbing them bolts, all remaining residents were soon brought to numerous prison facilities and forcibly had bolts implanted into them; any explorers who crashed onto Kairos were also quickly abducted after landing and transported to a facility to have the same procedure performed.

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