Snatches of conversation drifted down to rustle lightly against her ears, like the whispering brush of falling leaves, but she paid them little heed. Her eyes were open, it was true, but they were barely aware.
There was so much inside her head. Where there had been one voice, there were many. Which was fine. The burble of soft whispers in her head was welcoming, probing, soothing... but there was something else, drip, drip, dripping into her head, soaking in slowly at first, gently, but now it was sloshing across her mind like a dark and foamy tide, seething down into her soul.
Ian seemed so fragile compared to the other, massive man beside him, Susan thought, staring at them as they squatted together above her. Ian appeared uneasy in a way that she had never seen before, leaning towards the man to listen to his hushed words, but pulling subtly backwards in hesitant, twitching motions as if afraid to come too close.
Susan understood the concepts of sexuality between members of the same sex, and understood Ian's revulsion and attraction, his revelation at how deeply the two newly discovered emotions mixed, but Susan had little use for them herself. Her own people rarely used their sexuality, and kept it stashed away as if it were an expensive roadster, hidden beneath a sheet in a locked garage, only taking it out for a spin on special occasions. But her species was fully functional and equipped. After all, for her kind, a body was nothing more than a tool.
Or more specifically, a weapon.
After all, when you're a member of the most powerful race in all of space and time, why skulk about as a biped?
"Look, I'm just not following you. Why did you try to kill me, why take Susan?"
"I was watching her, at the Exhibition... she can get me close, close to the man who uses my name, my title."
The words slipped into Susan's mind, skimming the surface like droplets of oil before being absorbed by the growing darkness within her.
There was something else there, that now lunged out and struck, hard.
Memories, sharp and quick, sliced through the synapses of her brain like a paper cut, deep and stinging, letting other, forbidden memories bleed through:
The vision was sharp, metallic, the surfaces within it tinged with unnatural highlights of silver and blue.
They had bound her, strapped her down, arms and legs pinned with steel, head clamped with an unforgiving lattice-work of stabbing pins...
Despite the sheer economy of force fields, they could not match the brute physicality, the terror of gleaming metal.
It was her, her own memories, she could see out of her eyes, feel all the sensations, but she had no recollection of this ever happening; it was like being shoved through a waterfall and finding yourself in another body on the other side- it was shocking, breath-taking. Horrifying.
She was still numb with disbelief of awareness, and without thought she extruded her fingers into translucent tendrils, their gentle ends feeling the steel clasps for release, their motions fluid and tender, a tremble of awe tingling through her, this new skill, this wondrous ability...
When the force knife sliced her hand off at the wrist, the air danced with the red spray from her spurting artery and pain, wrapped in shock, slammed against the inside of her ears: echoing, impossible, unbearable.
It was only when she saw her flesh re-grow itself that she knew where she was... or more accurately, where she had been. For this really was a memory, nothing more, of a past she'd never knew.
A Susan, of sorts.
She could hear it now, now that she knew what must be happening: a high pitched hum, the only indication that her body was still in regenerative flux-
Her people had mastered bodily regeneration ages ago, and under the proper conditions and technology, it could be used as an unmatched method of therapy, of healing, or infinite torture. Which meant this was her home world. And that it was her own people doing this to her.
Torturing her.
With her growing awareness, as one might feel the white and raised tissue of a forgotten scar upon one's leg, Susan could begin to sense the past torment, the past injury inflicted on this, her first mind.
In disgust, Susan tried to pull back, to shudder her way out of this memory, to reel backwards to the present, to Ian, to Grandfather, to a life she knew, but something caught her and held her.
"That man, he's using my name and my wealth to spread these, these 'devices', across all of England."
"But why?" Ian's voice, so far away, felt so warm, so comforting, but Susan could not reach it. She could see, with her dead and glossy eyes, shadowy forms appearing behind Ian, scattered, but gathering, pressing silently closer.
But she was still in the moment, still in the memory, and as helpless as ever.
Above her pinned and bloodied form, spiraling down out of the ceiling like a piercing drill, a massive crystal spike was lowered to rest upon her forehead, the point of pressure hinting at the massive weight of the form above. She watched with fascination as its rapid spinning slowed to a stop, poised, seeming ready to burst down, through her skull.
Instead, there was a quiet gurgle, and she sensed rather than saw, the fluid coursing down along the edge of the twisted, clear surface.
The hiss the liquid screamed at the air as it traveled toward her called its name as surely as it might have shouted at her with a chorus of a thousand voices: shalinai.
Shalinai was an acid, of sorts, designed for interrogating of the worst life form her people had ever encountered. And they were about to use it on her.
She tried to pull away, tried to regen her head into something new, something out of the way of the touch of the-
Too late.
The fluid, an intelligent acid, licked its way into her brain, frying through the gray and pulpy flesh, slipping into her capillaries, gushing through her veins, forcing its way along the red tide until it splashed against every nerve fibre of her body and burned.
Susan screamed.
Yet the voice was not hers.
Another voice, in her head, her 'old' voice that belonged to the person's head she was in, who was not yet her, said, 'Stop.'
And it did.
"I've watched him," the man, Bainswick, continued in the deep whisper of a voice, causing Ian to press closer once more, keenly aware again of the man's presence, and warmth in this cold night. "Like your friends you described, people step within the vanishing tower, yet not always out again. Sometimes not for days." His voice seemed to drop even softer, causing Ian to wonder if the man was doing it intentionally. "I even managed to-"
Ian never saw the blow, only found himself lunging towards the rock wall of the factory, and white punches of light battered his mind before he found himself on his back, his arms over his face, instinctively trying to ward off the blows of the men who'd found them, who must have snuck up on them. Ian kicked and rolled, thrashing as much as possible, trying to gain some space to pull himself up, out of the cluster of three men who hit and stank and barked yells in his ears that still rang from crashing into the wall. The wall… he tucked his head into his chest and pushed himself off the ground just enough to get his back upon the wall, and then kicking against the wall itself, he launched himself backwards, causing all of them to tumble onto the muddy ground.
A moment. He needed a moment to get his bearings, awareness, tactics… there were five of them on Bainswick, alternatively getting thrown off by his massive shrugs and then tossing themselves back on again, gradually wearing him down, sapping his strength, and tearing his jacket and shirt into the mud.
When the shovel came at Ian's face out of the darkness, he didn't have time to react.
Fortunately, he didn't have to.
A slender hand appeared out of the night and grasped the shovel.
The SLAP of the impact of shovel and hand was enough to cause Ian to slam backwards onto the ground.
"Enough."
It was a word, only a word. Simple. Firmly spoken. But only a word.
Ian couldn't believe his eyes.
Susan stood above him, her outstretched hand grasping the shovel just below the blade, a tiny figure in the darkness, all trace of her stupor gone. The seven men who'd set upon them paused in their attack to stare at her.
And then, as one, they came at her.
And the shovel danced like an ember from a hearth, the dim light somehow managing to catch its dull blade as it arced through the night, hacking and whirling with deadly precision. The air rang with the thick sounds of thuds and splatters. And then, when Susan lowered it for a final time, there was only silence.
When it was over, Ian remembered to exhale. But he dared not speak, lest Susan slaughter him too.
Perhaps because it was from such a harmless source, or perhaps because his head was still throbbing with adrenaline and pain, but the fear that stilled his heart when he looked at Susan was greater than any feeling of dread that he'd ever experienced.