Maewyn forced her eyes open, seeing nothing but white. Sterile frightening white. She turned her head and saw she was in a small room. Trying to sit up she realized that she was held down . A sharp pain shot up her arm as she struggled against the restraints. Upon closer inspection the restraints turned out to be some sort of glowing strands of energy.
"Pavel?" she whispered hesitantly. Receiving no answer she sighed with trepidation. She tested the restraints again, but to no avail, she was held tightly down, unable to escape.
After a while, she heard a faint buzzing noise behind her. Swiftly floating through the air was a blue orb about a meter in diameter. It reminded her of ball lightning, seemingly composed of light or some other energy. Moving like a hummingbird it zoomed around the room before hovering directly above her chest. She studied it with mixed amusement and nervousness. Just when she began to think that it wasn't going to do anything but hover there, it abruptly plummeted down into her chest disappearing within her. Suddenly her heart felt as if it were being crushed by immense pressure from all sides, she screamed in agony as the feeling spread to all her internal organs. Never had she been so aware of her viscera as now, each pain drew a diagram in her mind of each organ affected. Now her muscles were contracting in spasms, arching her back from the table as clenching hands and feet pushed against the surface. Her teeth bared, she whimpered as the pain subsided by a few degrees, before continuing worse than before. The thing was taking control of her body away as it ravaged her insides. After about an hour the orb emerged again and left with a buzz.
Maewyn, drenched in a cold sweat, was hyperventilating with exhaustion and pain. Was this orb just torturing her? Or did it have some other purpose? She felt like she had been put through an industrial recycling compactor. She couldn't move at all, because it had stimulated her muscles to the point that she couldn't have moved even if she had wanted to. Her entire body was shaking involuntarily; tears pooled in her eyes running down the sides of her face, dripping off her nose and chin. Her tongue was swollen and her mouth was dry.
The aqua orb left her there for a half an hour, terrified and confused, before returning to hover over her as before. She stared at it with wide eyes whispering, asking what it wanted, why it was doing this to her, hoping for some sort of reaction. Instead, it came at her face and went within her skull. Pain like nothing she had ever felt before filled her senses, as if she were dying each second. She saw images flash in front of her, and she soon realized that the orb was looking through every piece of recorded thought in her brain. Images of the Enterprise, her pet frog her father had brought her from Earth, the first test she took at Saraswati University, kissing Leonard, falling asleep under a sky of stars, page 403 of Gray's Anatomy, taking a picture of a rare flower, dancing with Pavel, graphs of Phosphate levels, all these images were flooding her thoughts, overwhelming her. The thing was raping her mind, gleaning her entire being from her brain. Her eyes opened wide, the stress was causing her irises to vibrate so that she couldn't see. The anguish of mind and body was almost too much, she was beginning to slip. It was all she could do to hang on and not fall into insanity. She fought through another hour of this before the orb left her close to death. Blood was dripping from her nose and mouth down her face in streams, leaving dried trails of dark blue on her cheeks. She choked, trying to breathe with aching lungs.
