-1I don't own any of this stuff, save for Sarah, all the OOC-ness and whatever isn't already claimed by somebody else.
It started when Sarah Hornsby found the Shard lying amid the wreckage on the Mission City street. The Shard didn't look like much of anything, let alone anything special, just a hunk of dark, glossy metal the size of a small hairbrush. It was amazing she'd even seen it, as it had blended in with the pulverized dirt and charred remnants of unrecognizable things, but somehow… Something in the back of her mind had made her attention fix upon that spot. Now that same something was telling her that this… thing she had found was either important somehow or it had been once, that that she looked not upon a shard but a Shard. "Such a small thing…" It seemed to have been the corner of something, something heavy and ornately decorated, for she could see delicate traceries that must have once made up loops and spirals. "Such a small and innocuous thing…" The day's heat had baked it so it was warm in her hand, though with dusk falling it would soon cool. A bit of brushing with gentle fingertips restored its sheen. A static charge ran through her as she touched the now-clean metal, making her skin prickle. That was a little odd, but it couldn't be much different from shuffling across a shag carpet and then touching a doorknob. Sticking her find in her pocket, she brushed her hands off on her already-dirty jeans, letting the grime smear. It wasn't as if her jeans could get any dirtier, after all. Shaking her head, her midriff-length mousy brown hair falling over her blue eyes, she suddenly felt herself become very aware of how utterly filthy she was. Her first order of business upon getting back to her apartment would be a shower, followed by sack time.
The bedside lamp glowed with a warm, tawny light as Sarah sat in her bed, turning the Shard over and over in her hands. It was still warm. "That's odd…" There was something about it, this Shard she held. "What are you?" Ever since it had zapped her, she'd felt odd… She could feel some sort of energy coursing inside her, unnamed and unnamable. "I feel more alive than I have ever felt before!" Whatever energy was associated with being alive… That was what she felt flowing within her. It was pleasant, to say the least. Holding the Shard to her chest, she relaxed and just let herself slide away into sleep.
Sarah dreamed, and in her dreams she flew through space, passing star after star to alight on an unknown planet somewhere beyond all human knowledge. To say that it was alien to her would be an understatement. Structures and objects of unknown origin and function towered all around her, and everywhere she could spy the glint of metal. Was this whole planet metal? It was all alien to her, but the tableau of carnage and destruction was all too familiar. "War," she whispered to herself. Fantastical forms of great size fought, killed and died all around her. "Are they machines too?" Listening to their shouts and war cries, the language unfamiliar but the intent all too clear, she began to make out differences between the two groups. "These ones have blue eyes…" She looked across the battlefield. "…And those ones have red eyes." She was a ghost, no, less than a ghost, as the carnage raged all around her, shots and fighting forms passing right through her as she wandered. Across the way she could see a great many of the blue-eyed ones clustered together. All of them looked to one, and she marveled at the sight of him. An aura of nobility and wisdom seemed to pour forth from him, and the sound of his deep, rich voice only served to heighten that sense. "These are the good guys," she realized. Everything swirled around her and she found herself now standing near a cluster of the red-eyed ones. As before, all of them looked to one, but this one was the polar opposite of the first. Covered all over with spiky silver armor, with spidery claws for fingers at the end of powerful arms, eyes seeming almost to burn with unholy flames, terrifying fangs showing as he barked out his orders in a low, rumbling voice… He was as terrible as the other had been great, radiating immense anger and hatred. These ones followed out of fear. "The enemy," she whispered. The demonic one stopped in mid-sentence, as if something had startled him. "Oh no…" He was turning to face her. Surely he couldn't see her, she was a ghost… Fiery eyes focused on her. "He does see me!" An evil grin slowly took shape on that terrifying face. The face of the Devil, she thought. One of those terrible hands reached out…
"No!" She abruptly found herself sitting up in bed, tangled in the sweat-drenched sheets with the Shard clutched tight enough to actually hurt. It took a few minutes of deep breathing to calm down from the state of utter hysteria she'd woken up in. "Just a dream," she said to herself. Still, it had felt so real… Like it had actually happened at some point. She decided to think no more of it and went out to start her day.
That was how it began, and how her life began to change. By night she walked on alien battlefields, always seeing the same faces and fleeing in terror from the demonic one, who at first pursued her without fail. By day she experienced the strangest things… Lights turned on as she walked past, computers rebooted and flipped through files when she was near… And she felt something strange deep inside her, some sort of… connection to the demon of her dreams. It was as if her soul was falling as rain upon a parched land, or as if she was giving an indefinable something to the figment of her imagination. What could only be described as an excess of life energy was pouring out of her like water flowing through a pipe. She got the sense that whatever lay at the other side of that connection was relying on her for support, as if her strange power was the only thing standing between that indefinable presence and certain extinction.
As days passed, she began to hear voices. Broken machines cried out in her mind, weeping as if in pain, telling her what was wrong and asking for her help. It was quiet at first, just a vague whisper in the back of her mind, but each passing day saw it growing louder and stronger. The connection in her mind was becoming firmer, more definable, and what seemed to her to be her own growing strength increased the flow of energy leaving her, giving more and more to whatever lay at the other end… Her dreams were changing, too. Always she would find herself standing before that silver monstrosity, but its reaction to her was no longer quite as fierce, showing less evil intent and more desperation. It wanted to reach her, needed to, but it always failed to do anything more than scare her. Still, she was growing stronger, and so was whoever or whatever was linked to her. That was all, growing strength, an affinity for machines, demon-haunted dreams and a strange link to something she knew nothing about, but it didn't stay that way for long…