Joining
"I don't like this..." Michelle said softly. "I am infected with something. You know it. I know it. You shouldn't be touching me." She carefully did not move as the human doctor who had introduced herself as Amelia finalized connections to Michelle's skull.
"A little fear is understandable." Amelia said with a nod, her hazmat suit's gloves cool on Michelle's jaw. "Don't let it paralyze you though. There." The human said as she withdrew a bit. "All done."
"I... I will try." Michelle said as she squirmed a bit. The bed she was lying on was soft, but the two weapons aimed at her were very disconcerting. A Boltor in the hands of the Banshee she had met before and a Strun shotgun in the hands of a Vauban she hadn't met. He hadn't spoken the whole time. Michelle focused on the doc and not the two black holes pointed at her."You said it will hurt. What do I do?".
"Unfortunately, we cannot do it without pain." Amelia said sadly. 'Your neural paths are all mucked up."
"Mucked up?" Michelle said with a smile, trying to ignore the fluttering in her stomach and the cold devices attached to her skull. "Is that a proper medical term?"
"Oh, don't you start." Amelia said with a small laugh. "Two gives me grief just to do it." Michelle looked at the Banshee who was quivering a bit as if she were suppressing laughter. Then she sighed. "Michelle, this is going to hurt."
"I understand." Michelle said calmly. "Pain and I are old friends, doc. I..." She swallowed and then nodded a little. "I am ready."
"We will be monitoring." Amelia said gently. "No matter what, your memories are just that, memories. They can hurt you or kill you, but only if you let them. We will do our best to pull you out if there are...complications. But there is danger."
"You explained that before doc." Michelle said calmly. "I need to know what the Infested did to me." She bowed her head ."I need to know."
"Okay." Amelia said with a nod of her own. "Start counting back from ten, please."
"Ten, nine, eight..." Michelle felt something happen. A tingling started in her skull, a tingling that quickly became a burning. She forced herself to continue. "Seven...six... five.." She gasped as the pain doubled, and then redoubled. "Four..." She was biting her lip between words and it wasn't helping. "Three..." She held it in, but a scream escaped her mouth anyway. "Two..."
Michelle landed on her hands and knees on dark deck plates. She was back on the derelict. She was wearing a Tenno bodysuit and...
"No!" Michelle jumped as a young sounding voice screamed from nearby. "Don't..." Michelle looked up to see a young human woman half encased in some kind of pod. "No... please..." The girl was begging as Infested forms slowly spread goo over her. Michelle carefully did not look to see where the goo was coming from. She didn't want to barf. The girl was crying. "It wasn't supposed to be like this!"
Michelle stared at the girl, entranced. The girl looked like her! Almost exactly like her! But the girl was human. That was easy to tell from the wounds that the poor girl had suffered, wounds that still bled.
"It's okay." A soft voice sounded from nearby and Michelle's eyes went very wide as she saw...herself standing near the pod the girl was being encased in. The...other her wore a strange garment that seemed to be alive instead of Tenno garb or a warframe. Her face was twisted by emotion. It took a moment for Michelle to recognize the emotion. Lust. "We are almost done."
"No..." Michelle breathed, then froze as all eyes turned to her.
"Well, well, well..." The other, darker Michelle said with a leer. "It's about time you showed up. We can't do this without you, Michelle. Welcome to the first day of the rest of your life."
"Who are you?" Michelle demanded as dark forms started to move to surround her. "What are you doing?"
"Uh uh..." The other Michelle said, wagging a finger. "That would be telling. Just relax and it will be over in a few moments."
"They are trying to take us both over!" The encased girl screamed. "Stop them! I... This isn't real..." She pleaded with nobody. "This can't be real!"
"She can't." The darker Michelle said as Infested forms closed in on the Tenno. "Unarmed and unarmored, she is all alone again."
"Am I?" Michelle said calming as pieces of the puzzle fell into place. The girl wasn't from her reality. A mind travelling across dimensional boundaries. It...wasn't common, but it had happened. "Am I really?" She looked at the girl who was struggling for all she was worth. "What is your name, girl?" She asked kindly.
"Michelle." The girl said in a hopeless voice. "I didn't mean it! I swear I didn't mean it! I was hacking the game! I admit that, but... I didn't mean it!"
"It wasn't you, girl." The Tenno replied. "Who tortured you?" The Infested around her froze as the Michelle in the pod gave out a whimper and the Tenno continued. "It's okay." She said gently. "It's okay, Michelle. I will help."
"She..." The girl in the pod was sobbing. "Dad loves her, but...she is evil... She gave me something and it made me fuzzy. I... She hurt me... I ... I couldn't... She made me look at pinwheels and... I couldn't..." The girl cried.
"It's all right, Michelle." The Tenno replied kindly. "It's over. You are going to let her go now." She said quietly to the dark Michelle who was staring from one to the other. "She doesn't belong here. She needs to go back."
"She is ours." The dark Michelle said with a laugh. "And so are you." Michelle felt something waft over her and she grimaced, fighting off the waves of pleasure. "Feels good, doesn't it?"
"It's a lie." Michelle said calming her mind and body. "And so are you. You might as well show your real form."
"This is my real form." The dark Michelle said with a snort. "Come, sister... Embrace us." A Leaper stepped towards Michelle only to pause as a Skana appeared in her hand. "Now, now..." The darker version said with a sigh. "Don't be like that."
"You do not own me. Us." Michelle said as she set herself. "We are not your prey. We are not your food. We are not part of you. Go away. Now."
"Michelle..." The darker versions aid with a sigh. "You can't win." She froze as Michelle grinned. A death's head smile. "No... don't..." Fear sounded in her voice.
"Whether I can win or not is immaterial." Michelle said as she knelt in formal seiza and reversed the blade. "I wonder... If I die, what happens to you? Hmmm?" Seeing as how this was all in Michelle's mind... If her mind died...
The dark Michelle sighed and Michelle went stiff as the blade in her hand vanished.
"You are going to have to do better than that." The darker aspect of Michelle said with a smirk at her expression. 'You tried that six times while we changed you."
"Okay." Michelle said calmly, rising it her feet. "I will. Michelle? This is real."
"It can't be!" The girl screamed. "These things don't happen! It's a fraking video game!"
"You were playing a videogame." Michelle said quietly. "Something happened. Do you remember what?" The girl stared at her and stammered.
"Endless Defense mission... I was... I was..." She swallowed. "I was Saryn... We were...trying to... I..."
"Easy." Michelle felt as if she had been punched in the gut. Some Tenno occasionally 'saw' people in alternate dimensions. Some had even said that they saw people manipulating characters that looked like them on computer screens. "It's okay. You are not insane, Michelle."
"But I have to be!" The girl screamed. "Infested are not real!"
"In your reality, they are not real, Michelle." The Tenno said gently. "In ours? They are all too real. Somehow you crossed the boundary. I don't know how we will get you back, but we will."
"You shouldn't make promises you cannot keep." The dark Michelle said mildly. "Or do you really think you can fight us all?"
"Actually..." Michelle said just as mildly. "I could." The dark Michelle stiffened. "You kept me unconscious. You injected things into me, into my brain. You mapped my brain over the four months that you had me, so you know it's structure. But you cannot control it. Or me. Which is why you have kept her around. You can control her." She nodded to the girl in the pod. "You stunned me and made her take the warframe off, didn't you?"
"I didn't mean to!" The girl in the pod screamed as the walls rose a little around her. "I swear I didn't mean to!"
"I know, Michelle." The Tenno replied in a soft, kind tone. "It's okay, I forgive you." The girl in the pod froze.
"No..." The girl stiffened. "No... No don't!" She screamed even louder as Michelle summoned power and a warframe appeared around her. But ...not entire. Part of it were missing, vulnerable flesh showing underneath.
"My mind, my rules. One chance, Infested." Michelle snapped. "Get out of my head. Now. Or we all die here." She raised her hands to activate her most powerful ability. "If any of us die, we all die. We are all linked through the mind bridge you forged inside my head. Other Tenno are aiding me."
"You were happy..." The dark Michelle said uncertainly. "You belonged. You were content."
"It was a lie." Michelle snapped. "You are a lie. Choose, infested. Now." The dark Michelle looked at the Tenno sadly and then vanished.
"Wha-? No!" The girl pleased as Michelle stepped up to the pod and started ripping it open. "This isn't happening..." She said with barely controlled hysteria. "This can't be happening! This can't be real!"
"Easy girl..." Michelle said gently as she lifted the quivering human out of the pod. "Easy..."
She held the sobbing form close as the world around her warped and shifted. The dark and forbidding derelict vanished and a small room appeared. Furniture appeared around them and Michelle sat down carefully on a couch, still holding the sobbing girl. Her warframe vanished.
"Amelia...?" Michelle begged. "Help?"
"I thought I had seen everything." Amelia said, appearing nearby wearing a bodysuit instead of hazmat gear. "Easy..." She crooned to the girl sobbing in Michelle's arms. "It's okay, Michelle..." She said, her hand coming up with a scanner. "This will whirr, but nothing will hurt."
"This can't be real..." The girl sobbed as she hugged Michelle tight. "This...can't..." She stiffened as the scanner whirred, but relaxed a bit when it did not hurt her. "I... I am sorry..."
"It's okay. It's not your fault." Michelle said, rubbing the girl's hair. "How could you know that you were breaching a dimensional boundary? If you did. My bet is that the Infested did, somehow."
"It was...just..." The girl gasped as Michelle soothed her. "It was all so...wrong... Everything... I... I cut myself... but..."
"I know." Michelle said sadly. "I tried to die too while their prisoner. They wouldn't let me." She sighed deeply. "This isn't over."
"It isn't?" The girl begged, trying to burrowing into Michelle.
"No." Michelle replied. "They still have access to my mind." But then she grinned, a faint echo of the darker version of her. "But it works both ways."
"Careful." Amelia said cautiously.
"I know." Michelle said with a sigh. "They cut most of the links, but they can't cut them all or it kills us both. I am a threat, and I will be a threat, but a containable one. We need to see how to help you, Michelle. Okay?"
"You are nice." The girl said as she relaxed a bit. Then she started to cry again. "Why couldn't you have been my stepmom?" She demanded as she started to wail.
"Life is rarely fair. But... In your reality, Michelle..." The Tenno replied. The girl stared at her and the Tenno smiled. "The authorities have begun asking questions. I cannot guarantee she will be punished. But I will do my best."
"But... I..." The girl gulped. "I don't want to go back!" She snapped.
"I know." Michelle said sadly. "But you must. This reality is not safe for you." The girl started to cry again and the Tenno sighed. "Michelle, I need you to be strong. You are strong or you would have been subsumed by the Infested long before now."
"They were playing with me. Like my stepmom..." The girl sobbed, hugging the Tenno tight. "They would hurt me, then let me heal, then hurt me again... I..."
"I know." Michelle's voice was super soft now. "I saw some of it. Those memories were blocked, but... I saw some of what they did to you." She was rocking the girl gently and the young human relaxed a bit. "I need you to stay here with Amelia while I go back to your body. I know how to do it now." She sad to Amelia's quizzical look. "Can you stay here? Talk to Amelia?" She asked as she gently moved the human off her lap.
"I am scared." The girl said, abject.
"I know." Michelle patted the girl's arm. "But it will be okay. Protecting others is what Tenno do."
"I..." The girl swallowed. "I understand. I will...stay."
"Good girl." Michelle said as she hugged the human lightly, then sat back.
"Nurse?" Michelle called as she came awake. "Is anyone there?"
"I am here, Michelle." A different nurse appeared in the doorway. "Is everything all right?"
"Sort of." Michelle said with a grimace. She was still strapped to the bed, and from the light levels it was night outside the hospital. "This is... um...going to sound crazy..." She paused and then chuckled. "Right place for it, huh?" The nurse stared at her and Michelle sighed. "Sorry, my sense of humor is...off at times. I need some information. I have been...out of the loop. What can I ask?"
"You can ask just about anything." The nurse replied evenly. "I may not have an answer or be able to answer." She looked carefully at Michelle. "You are...different."
"I think I figured out what happened." Michelle said slowly. "And before anyone says they don't believe it, I don't believe it. But it happened. There were odd brain waves on the EEG, right? Alpha and Theta waves that did not match any known human readings, yes?"
"How do you know that?" The nurse asked carefully. "No one has said anything..."
"Well..." Michelle said softly. "It's like this..."