To say Ship's Technician Aarti Burkhdev was unafraid of danger would be a fallacy. In her time as a technician in the merchant's navy, she'd experienced decompressions, dodged gunfire on Omega, and once survived the downing of her ship. She had her fair share of the cold grip of fear, and over time, she'd gotten accustomed to the feeling.
But not this time.
Aarti shivered, and it wasn't because she was feeling cold in any way. She had no idea where the others were, nor where they were in the Heleus Cluster. Neither did she know where the hell here was, a place so dimly-lit that she was unable to make out details, the shadows seemingly angular - she couldn't be sure.
That, and the fact she was a captive.
Her gloved hands were above her head, an invisible force preventing her from moving them - all she could do was make fists. Same with her booted feet beneath her - no matter how hard she strained her thighs and calves, she was unable to kick herself free.
She hazarded a guess that she was suspended in some sort of energy field - she'd caught sight of a short-lived flicker of orange energy around her ankle. A mass effect field?
How long had she been here? Had she been awake this whole time, or…?
Aarti's breathing was loud inside the helmet. Most of her suit's systems were offline, the VIs disabled somehow, the data on her faceplate minimal, less than helpful. Comms signals were absent.
At least she still had oxygen…
… for how long? The readings on her faceplate displayed error messages.
Aarti blinked, and froze. A second ago, the orb wasn't in front of her.
She squinted, trying to make sense of what she was seeing. It was an orb, all right, about the size of a biotiball, with a shiny surface like oil, or ferrofluid. But there was where her ability to describe the thing ended, because…
The orb's curves looked and felt… unnatural to Aarti. No matter how hard her eyes tried to trace a curve, they seemed to slip to yet another curve on the orb, her eyes ending up where they'd begun, with her comprehension still lacking. No straight edges, no corners, no facets.
It looked like a orb, yet didn't feel like one. It hovered in front of her about two metres away, just… there. Shiny. Unmoving.
It gave off a sense of wrongness.
HUMAN. INTERESTING.
Aarti started at the suddenness of the voice, her heart leaping into her throat. It seemed to boom out of nowhere, echoing around the confines of the… chamber? Room? Her breaths quickened - she had a bad feeling about all this.
Aarti's licked her lip, swallowed. 'W-who are you? Where… am I? Wh…'
Her own voice sounded distant to her own ears. Weak, small, in comparison to the voice she'd just heard, the rest of her questions dying in her throat.
There was no reply.
Aarti watched as the surface of the orb began to ripple, her unease only worsening; it seemed to be actively defying her attempts at understanding it. The thing was alien, no doubt about it, something of the Heleus Cluster, not of the Milky Way.
And the voice: whose was it? An alien species native to Heleus? How did it know the language that she conversed in, a language of the Milky Way galaxy?
A GIFT.
Aarti's eyes widened, her body beginning to shake as she realised something: the voice wasn't coming from around her, she should have felt the vibrations from the force of the voice. She couldn't explain it, but somehow, the voice was inside her head.
At the thought, Aarti's fear mutated into terror. How was the voice doing this? What was happening to her? She struggled against her invisible bonds, the resistance making her intensify her efforts - to no avail. She was scared, dammit. She wanted to be out of this place, she wanted to be back on the Nexus. She didn't ask to be here - it was that damned cloud that knocked them off course!
RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, HUMAN.
Aarti contorted her body, her movements becoming violent, doing something, anything, to wrench herself free. At length, she stopped, her breaths coming hard. Tears streamed down her face, whimpers escaping her throat.
She blinked the tears away, sucked in lungfuls of air, trying to calm herself -
- the ripples were gone from the orb's surface.
Aarti bit her lip, her breaths shallow, as she contemplated the orb. What was it, really? Was it the source of the voice in her head? A sentient being, a blob of mercury, of ferrofluid, with no discernible features, talking to her psychically?
She threw her head back, a shaky laugh escaping her. The thought was ridiculous, yet darkly amusing! She wondered how she looked from the outside, a nervous, laughing wreck, a captive in this place, and turned her gaze back to the orb, looking closely -
- she couldn't see her own reflection in the orb.
IT BEGINS.
The orb began to move towards her. Aarti's nervous mirth evaporated instantly, the temporary sanctuary dropping out from under her, terror returning in full force as the orb closed in. There was an aura around the orb now, an air of… malevolence, of promises of pain and hurt, and Aarti opened her mouth to scream, but she couldn't, her heart thumping against her ribcage.
There was nothing she could do.
The orb touched her chestpiece. Immediately, shiny material flowed across its surface, racing along the lines and curves of the armour, coating it, making contact with her underarmour -
Aarti gasped - cold! So cold!
The fluid curled around her hips and down her thighs, climbing up her chest to her neck. She twitched involuntarily, reflexively, as the cold invaded her senses, her defences simply crumbling under the onslaught.
Aarti shook her head - was that… whispers in her ears that she heard? Soft susurrations, slipping in and out of focus, wordless, a single disembodied voice, inside-out, upside-down, a language she did not recognise at all, chanting, a multitude of voices, murmurs -
A sudden urge came over her. She was willing. No, she wanted to serve.
Aarti choked on a breath, the cold robbing her of it. Serve what? Serve whom?
She bit her lip to try and keep herself grounded, the pain keeping her focused for but a second. Darkness began to creep in at the edges of her vision, even as the fluid began climbing her faceplate. Her thoughts, a maelstrom, were beginning to blur and melt into one another, her teeth breaking skin, tasting copper on her tongue, struggling to stay conscious -
The mantra. Recite the damn mantra!
Aarti's lips moved wordlessly, years of repeating the same holy lines bringing them up from her subconscious with ease -
She wavered. She couldn't remember the fourth verse. Now that she thought about it, she'd forgotten the mantra, despite having just recited the first three verses not seconds ago…
The whispering, chanting, murmuring were getting louder and louder, a waterfall of noise growing in crescendo and tempo, drowning out the sounds of her breaths, her slowing heartbeat. And somehow, Aarti was beginning to understand them -
- there is only hesh.
S-silhesh will not… be t-tolerated, said the human.
EMBRACE YOUR SALVATION.
The words barely registered; the human's pupils dilated as the fluid roped its way up her neck, tracing her cheekbones, her jaw slackening, lower lip bloody, . She did not feel a thing as her heart stopped, the fluid pouring into her mouth and nostrils and ears, coating her eyes, finally encasing her head, a shiny humanoid form hanging, suspended, in midair.