[Shian]

"Commander, I... there was... an incident."

^I'm aware of that Sergeant,^  Marcus' voice dripped with disdain over the comm ^I am asking for details of said incident, specifically why did you of all people break gate protocol?^

Johan winced.  "Sir, this is what happened..."

-----------

The inside of Aden's head felt like tar; thick and black and viscous and hard push his thoughts through.

The last thing he remembered was the squad being on patrol, and there was an attack and then, everything was a blur.  He had no idea what happened to him, let alone if the rest of the squad was dead or not.  All he knew was they did something to him.

The blackness that filled him was making his body its own.  He could feel it driving him back to his base.  It wanted to be inside the walls.  Aden didn't know exactly what it has planned, only that it hated Aden and the rest of his kind with a loathing that burned like a blowtorch.

He tried to fight it with ever ounce of strength he could muster, but it wasn't enough.  It took all he had just to try to warn Kara, for all the good that did.  The dark merely surged and forced him deeper back into his own mind. 

It felt like drowning.

After a few moments, Aden had the sensation he was being carried.  There were voices, filtering faintly into his dark prison. 

Was that Lanning? 

I have to warn him!  Have to warn everyone!

Damnit, why won't my body work!

[Sonya the fox]

"Yes, that's right, take him in, keep him 'safe' within those walls.  When the time comes, he will play his part...you will 'all' play your part and pay for what has been done.  For now, I must tend to another..."  With the closing of the gates and the swish of a tail, the mysterious creatures all disappear into the night...

-------------

Aden lay there almost comatose, atleast to his observers, while inside he fought a losing struggle to keep his own body, to warn anyone around him, to do anything but watch in horror.  Why did these creatures hate them with such intensity?  Maybe....maybe if he stopped struggling...maybe if he just 'went along' for now he could step in just long enough to save someone... nothing left to lose now, just play along and try to guide the...the...thing, inside him, rather than lose.  Hopefully the meds can find it before it's too late...

[Shian]

The cold oozed around him. Aden tried to tell himself it was like easing into a tub of ice water and forced down the panic, forced himself to relax, forced himself to let the dark envelope him.

Easy.  Just relax.  Ride it out.

This is going to work, he told himself over and over again, it has to...

---------

"Pulse is weak... blood pressure low but stable... and what the..?"

The med tech frowned at the med scanner and wondered briefly if it had broken.  The soldier they'd brought in, a "Michael Aden Conners" according to the id, was unresponsive with depressed vital signs, except for brain activity which was spiking in ways she'd never seen before. 

And now they seemed to be subsiding. and she still had no idea what was causing it, or why for a moment there seemed to be two brain patterns. 

[Trerro]

Rinzik sighed. Here he was, working in an advanced science base, here to make all sorts of fascinating discoveries... and he was stuck doing military tech support.

-Data is corrupt. Discard? [Y/N?]-

He traced a tentacle over the logs. "We replaced everything. We ran every test. All of the comm gear is brand new, working perfectly." He tapped his beak on his desk, thinking. "And screwing up data at 3 meters, inside our base, no one even moving... even if we plug a cord in to eliminate the possibly of something in the air. It's not on our end, it's not on the other end, it's not any kind of jam, what haven't I checked..."

With a wide,  vertically thin, almost wispy ribbony serpentine body, 8 tentacles (4 with venomous stingers, 4 with sticky suction pods), dozens of tiny feet, no real hands, and a razor-sharp beak, "gifted scientist and tech expert" wasn't the first thing most humans had in mind when they first saw Rinzik. It had taken him some time to get the humans to stop shooting at him on sight (the shield belt held out *just* long enough), and most still kept a good three tentacle lengths away when speaking with him... but they couldn't deny how much he had helped the base... his unusual thinking and inventiveness had saved it multiple times now, and they had finally let him move in and work more directly with them... well, near them anyway. Few trusted him, but the rest all certainly respected him... at a distance... with a hand on a holster.

"...wait. N. Definitely N. We have 5 saved now, bring them all up, graph it against our energy use..."

As he stared at the readout, all 8 tentacles shot up in a gesture of surprise, and all 3 lab assistants dove for cover.

"I just found our 'interference'. It's not the equipment. It's not enemy activity. It's not the lines when there are any. It's not anything in the system that we didn't put there. What's left?"

"Uhh..." came a nervous voice from under a desk. "The only thing that leaves is... the... electricity."

"Correct, or more broadly... the energy. The energy is speaking."

Three heads stared at him, at least one wondering if he had taste-tasted the local herbs.