The scream clawed its way up Jidd's throat, a raw, silent thing trapped behind clenched teeth. It died there, choked by the cold, sterile air that tasted of rust and ozone, underpinned by a cloying, sweet rot that made his empty stomach clench. He wasn't lying down. He was slumped, naked, against the icy curve of a cryopod's interior, the curved glass fogged with his own panicked breath. His skin burned where it met the unforgiving metal, a sharp counterpoint to the deep chill leaching into his bones.
He gasped, sucking in the foul air, trying to make sense of the void inside his skull. Memory was a shattered pane of glass. Only three shards remained, sharp and inexplicable:
1. Ω-7. The symbol and number were tattooed starkly on the inside of his left wrist, dark ink against pale skin. A designation? A brand?
2. A whisper, low and urgent, echoing from the fractured dark: "Don't let them see you bleed." The voice was unfamiliar, yet it resonated with a primal fear.
3. The phantom taste of burnt honey, thick and acrid on his tongue. It clung, persistent, a sensory ghost.
Movement drew his bleary gaze downwards. From his fingertips, thick, viscous liquidshadows dripped. They weren't like normal darkness; they possessed a density, an oily sheen that seemed to absorb the weak, pulsing emergency lights overhead. They pooled on the cryopod's glass floor, then, impossibly, began to crawl. Like spilled ink with a mind of its own, they slithered towards the deeper gloom gathered in the corners of the small chamber, seeking communion with the greater dark.
The cryopod hissed, its seal releasing with a tired sigh. The curved glass door slid open with a grating scrape, flooding the pod with the station's ambient groan. It wasn't just random noise. The walls creaked, pipes sighed, metal plates shifted with a rhythmic groan that almost formed syllables: "Īd-dūl... Īd-dūl..." The sound vibrated in his marrow. Was that... his name? A name buried deeper than his stolen memories? The station seemed to be calling him, or perhaps cursing him.
He pushed himself out, limbs trembling with weakness and cold. His bare feet met a grimy metal floor, sticky with unknown residue. Gravity felt unstable, flickering for micro-moments, making his stomach lurch. The corridor beyond the cryopod chamber was a decaying artery of the derelict station. Flickering strip lights cast long, dancing shadows, their rhythm slow and uneven like a dying creature's heartbeat. Exposed cables snaked across walls scarred by corrosion and old violence, some pulsing with a faint, sickly bioluminescence. The air hung thick, heavy with the metallic tang of decay and that pervasive, unsettling sweetness. Eidolon'sMercy. The name surfaced unbidden. A mercy for whom? It felt like a tomb orbiting a dead star.
Jidd stumbled forward, driven by instinct and the desperate need to escape the suffocating cryo-chamber. His hand brushed against a jagged spur of metal protruding from a shattered wall panel. A sharp, hot pain lanced through his palm. He hissed, pulling back. A bead of crimson welled, vivid against his pallor.
The droplet fell.
It struck the metal floor not with a splat, but with a sound like tearing silk. Reality itself rippled around the point of impact. The air fractured, peeling back like burned film to reveal not the opposite wall, but a jagged portal into impossible elsewhere.
Through the tear, a hurricane shrieked. Not of wind, but of sound made solid. A forest of crystalline trees, each facet reflecting distorted, screaming faces, bent and shattered under the onslaught. The shards flew not as debris, but as agonized shrieks made visible. And in the heart of this shattered, sonic nightmare, a giant eye opened. It was vast, cold, and ancient, an orb of fractured quartz and liquid darkness. It focused on Jidd through the portal. It blinked.
The tear in reality snapped shut with a concussive thump that threw Jidd backwards. He landed hard, cradling his bleeding hand, the echo of the screaming forest and that impossible gaze ringing in his skull.
The station reacted. Pipes lining the ceiling writhed suddenly, twisting like tortured intestines. A small, boxy maintenance drone scuttled across the floor nearby. As Jidd watched, horrified, it jerked violently, its limbs locking. It fused seamlessly into the ceiling plating with a wet, metallic crunch. Its single optical sensor swiveled towards him, flickering erratically. A synthesized voice, choked with static and despair, gurgled from its speaker: "P-please... end us." Then its light winked out, leaving only another grim fixture in the decaying hallway.
Shaking, Jidd scrambled to his feet. He needed cover, answers, anything. He staggered around a corner into a wider junction. Slumped against a bulkhead, half-concealed by collapsed conduit, was a decayed corpse. It wore the tattered remnants of an engineer's jumpsuit, bleached white and stained with old fluids. Time and the station's strange environment had mummified it, skin pulled tight over bone, lips shriveled back in a permanent rictus. One skeletal hand was outstretched, clutching something tightly.
Jidd crouched, bile rising in his throat. He pried the object from the corpse's rigid fingers. It was a palm-sized device, smooth and metallic, shaped like a flattened teardrop – a neural recorder. A small, worn label was affixed to its base: "Incident Ω-7" His designation. His past, clutched in the hand of the dead. He thumbed the activation stud. Nothing. Dead, like its former owner.
Before he could examine it further, a harsh metallic shriek echoed down the corridor. A large hatch, crusted with rust, burst open twenty meters ahead. Geysers of thick, white steam erupted, billowing towards him, carrying the scent of superheated metal and something vaguely chemical.
From the roiling steam, a shape emerged. It was utterly absurd, a surreal splash of color in the station's monochrome decay. Floating within a levitating, slightly dented porcelain teacup was a ruby-red octopus. He wore a tiny, equally battered top hat perched rakishly between his large, intelligent eyes. One tentacle was curled around the teacup's delicate handle, another held a steaming mug filled with a liquid that seemed to shift between deep indigo and starless black. It smelled… electric. Like ozone, burnt circuitry, and a profound, existential regret. VoidBrew.
The octopus fixed Jidd with a gaze that was unnervingly human. His voice, when he spoke, was a deep, gravelly baritone that resonated oddly in the steam-filled corridor. "Kid. Drink this. Now. Before the static eats what's left of your thoughts." The tentacle holding the mug extended towards Jidd.
Jidd recoiled instinctively. The liquid shadows still weeping from his other hand recoiled violently, snapping back towards his skin like startled eels at the mug's approach. His head, which had been throbbing with fragmented pain and sensory overload since waking, suddenly felt… clearer. Sharper. The oppressive weight of the station's groaning lessened fractionally. As he hesitantly took the mug, the warmth seeping into his hands, fleeting visions flashed behind his eyes:
A planet, beautiful and blue, cracking open like an eggshell, spilling molten light into the void.
A vast, dark space filled with a choir of faceless beings, their forms shifting and indistinct, their voices harmonizing in a language of pure sound that vibrated with his stolen name – "Īd-dūl... Īd-dūl..."
He took a hesitant sip. The Void Brew was bitter, complex, tasting of lightning strikes and forgotten sorrows, but it grounded him, pushing back the creeping panic. He met the octopus's gaze. "Who... what are you?"
"Name's Inkwell," the octopus rumbled, adjusting his top hat with another tentacle. "Professional salvage, amateur existentialist. And you, kid, are a walking complication." Inkwell's eyes darted nervously down the corridor. "They're coming. Mercenaries hired by scav-lords who heard the station's heartbeat change. Cultists drawn to the scent of unraveling reality. Things that wear dead skin like a cheap suit. They all smell your fractures. The bleed." He gestured with a tentacle towards Jidd's still-oozing palm. "And kid? Let's be brutally honest. You're bleeding godhood. Makes you a mighty tempting target."
As if summoned by Inkwell's words, a grating sound came from above. A ventilation grate near the ceiling clattered open. A figure dropped down, landing silently on the grimy floor. Elara
She wore robes that seemed woven from pure static, constantly shifting, glitching, never settling into a defined pattern. Her face was hidden deep within a hood that seemed to swallow light. Where her hands should be, there was only a flickering haze, glitching between solid flesh and digital snow.
She didn't speak at first. She simply raised one glitching hand, pointing a finger that phased in and out of existence directly at Jidd. Her voice, when it came, was layered, echoing with distortion, as if broadcast from a collapsing dimension: "Ω-7... You dreamt us into being. Wove the static from the fabric of your forgotten nightmares. Then you forgot. Cast us adrift." The static of her robes intensified, crackling with malevolent energy. "You are not human. You never were. You are a cage. A prison of flesh forged around a dying star."
Before Jidd could process this, Elara moved. It wasn't walking; it was a series of jarring, glitch-teleports, closing the distance instantly. Her flickering hand shot out, clamping onto his bleeding wrist with shocking strength. Where her glitching fingers touched his skin, a horrifying sensation bloomed. It felt like his very DNA was unraveling, strands of his being dissolving into static snow. Agony, cold and profound, lanced up his arm.
She leaned in, her hooded face inches from his. The distorted whisper cut through the dissolving pain: "Find the First Lie..."
Then, with a final, violent surge of static, Elara's form destabilized completely. Her body fragmented, collapsing inward into a cloud of glitching particles that hung in the air for a second, buzzing with fading malice, before winking out like a corrupted signal. All that remained where she stood was a small object clattering to the floor.
A bone pendant, roughly carved into the shape of an intricate key.
Jidd gasped, staggering back, clutching his wrist. The skin felt numb, alien, but the bleeding had stopped, sealed by the static touch. The liquid shadows under his skin writhed in agitation. Inkwell floated closer, his teacup bobbing. "Static-cursed," he muttered, his voice tight. "Nasty business. They're drawn to fractures in reality like flies to..."
He never finished. A new sound erupted, drowning out the station's perpetual groan – a deafening, pulsating alarm. Stark, crimson light flooded the corridor from overhead panels, banishing the shadows and painting everything in hues of arterial blood.
"Oh, void take it," Inkwell hissed. "Too late."
The Eidolon's Mercy was waking up. It wasn't derelict. It was hibernating. And its slumber was over.
The walls around them seemed to breathe. Metal plates groaned and peeled back like shedding skin, revealing massive, curved rib-like support beams beneath, slick with viscous fluid. Sections of the floor retracted with hydraulic hisses, exposing chasms filled with thick, pulsating heart-like bundles of bioluminescent cables that throbbed with sickly green light. The air hummed with newly awakened power, a basso profundo vibration that shook Jidd's teeth.
Inkwell's baritone was sharp with urgency now. "It knows you're awake, kid! The core, the station-mind... it senses the god-shard you're leaking! And it's hungry. Forget the cultists, forget the mercs – if we don't move, we become Eidolon's breakfast! Time to run!" He gestured frantically down a side corridor with a tentacle. "And try not to bleed on the furniture! It's touchy about stains!"
The chase was a descent into a biomechanical nightmare. The corridors themselves seemed hostile. Half-organic security drones, cobbled together from sharpened metal and pulsating, veined sacs of tissue, detached from the walls and ceiling. They skittered on multi-jointed legs, whirring bone saws extending from their chassis, clicking with predatory hunger as they gave chase.
Other hazards bloomed. Sections of hallway began to flood, not with water, but with a viscous, shimmering substance Inkwell called "liquid silence." Where it flowed, sound died instantly, replaced by an unnerving vacuum. Worse, as the silence touched Jidd's bare feet, he felt fleeting memories dissolve – the taste of burnt honey fading, the echo of the giant eye's gaze blurring. It erased sound, then it erased self.
Panic, cold and sharp, seized Jidd. A drone lunged, its bone saw screaming (a sound quickly swallowed by the encroaching liquid silence). Instinctively, fueled by terror, Jidd threw up his hands. Not to block, but to push, to reject.
The air around the drone warped. It didn't explode. It didn't vanish. It unmade. The drone's form blurred, its components flowing backwards. Metal plates folded inwards, bone saws retracted, organic sacs deflated. In a dizzying second, the aggressive machine rewound into a smooth, fetal metal orb that clattered harmlessly to the floor before rolling into the liquid silence and vanishing.
Jidd stared at his hands, then at the spot where the drone had been. Liquid shadows coiled thickly around his wrists. Inkwell stared too, his large eyes wide. "Well," he breathed. "That's... new. And deeply unsettling. Run faster, kid!"
They careened through the transforming station, dodging grasping pipes, leaping over floor chasms revealing the throbbing green heart-cables below, and skirting the creeping pools of memory-eating silence. Finally, Inkwell gestured towards a reinforced hatch labeled with a faded medical cross. "In here! Now!"
They slammed the hatch shut behind them, throwing heavy manual bolts. The cacophony of alarms and pursuing drones dulled slightly. The medical bay was a scene of frozen chaos. Gravity was offline here, making everything drift. Surgical tools – scalpels, bone saws, clamps – floated like metallic minnows in the zero-G gloom. Monitors hung dark and dead. Cabinets hung open, spilling gauze and empty vials. The air smelled of antiseptic gone sour and old blood.
Jidd drifted towards a terminal still flickering weakly. He tapped the screen. It glowed to life, displaying an autopsy report. His eyes scanned the chilling text:
> SubjectDesignation: Ω-7
> Status: Biological Enigma. Containment Priority Alpha.
> Observations: Blood samples exhibit extreme reality instability. Contact with atmosphere causes localized spatial/temporal fractures (See Incident Log Ω-7-A). Tissue regeneration observed is not cellular. Process appears to involve conceptual ingestion – subject unconsciously consumes nearby abstract concepts (e.g., "structure," "silence," "memory") to fuel repair. Rate of ingestion proportional to injury severity.
> Conclusion: Subject represents an unprecedented ontological hazard. Standard biological containment insufficient. Recommend immediate vivisection under Class-10 Reality Anchors to determine source of anomaly and potential for weaponization.
> Authorization: Dr. Aris Thorne, Chief Xenobiologist
Jidd recoiled from the screen, the clinical horror of the words freezing his blood. Conceptual ingestion? Vivisection? He turned, needing the absurdity of Inkwell to counter the dread.
He found the octopus floating near a drifting surgical tray, his back partly turned. Inkwell had a small, pressurized syringe in one tentacle. It was filled with a glowing, viscous liquid that shimmered with an internal light – a familiar, shadowy darkness. Before Jidd could speak, Inkwell plunged the needle deftly into the mantle near his base. He injected the glowing fluid with a quick, practiced motion.
Inkwell flinched, a shudder running through his ruby-red body. He noticed Jidd watching and quickly tucked the syringe away. "Perks of being a cephalopod," he muttered gruffly, avoiding Jidd's gaze. "Twice the neural clusters. Needs twice the painkillers. Station's waking headache is a real doozy."
Before Jidd could question the nature of those "painkillers" – the liquid that looked so much like the shadows leaking from him – the entire medical bay shuddered. Not from an impact. This vibration came from deep within the station's structure, a profound, guttural resonance that bypassed the ears and vibrated directly in the bones and teeth. It coalesced into a voice, a basso profundo that seemed to emanate from the walls, the floor, the very air:
> "ĪDDŪL..." The name, his true name, spoken with the grinding weight of continents. "YOU BROKE OUR PACT. THE DREAM IS OVER. THE HUNGER RETURNS. YOU... WILL... BE... DIGESTED."
The final word vibrated with terrifying finality. Outside the hatch, the sounds of pursuit intensified. Heavy thuds slammed against the reinforced metal. The bolts groaned.
Jidd's hand flew to his throat, the bone key pendant cold against his skin. The voice, the name, the report... it all pointed to the door. The heavy, shielded door in the far wall of the medical bay, marked with stark, red letters: "Ω CONTAINMENT." Access Restricted. Thorne Clearance Only.
The pounding on the medical bay hatch grew thunderous. Metal shrieked as the bolts began to bend. They had seconds.
Driven by instinct, by the echo of the Static Cultist's whisper ("Find the First Lie..."), Jidd pushed off a floating gurney, sailing through the zero-G chaos towards the Ω door. He gripped the bone pendant. It felt unnaturally cold, vibrating slightly in sync with the station's deep, hungry pulse. He pressed the bone key against the access panel beside the heavy door.
Nothing happened for a heartbeat. Then, with a series of heavy, resonant clunks, like bolts disengaging in a giant's lock, the Ω CONTAINMENT door began to slide open. Thick, freezing vapor poured out, smelling of ozone and the vacuum between stars. The lights inside were dim, tinged deep blue.
Jidd drifted forward, Inkwell close behind, teacup bobbing nervously. The vapor cleared slightly.
Inside was another cryo-chamber, larger, more complex. But it wasn't empty. It was filled to the brim with a viscous, churning substance – pure, undiluted liquid shadow, identical to what bled from Jidd.
Suspended in the center of this shadowy amniotic fluid, held in place by unseen fields, floated a figure.
It was him. A perfect clone of Jidd. Same face, same build, same tattoo: Ω-7 on the wrist. Its eyes were wide open, staring sightlessly ahead. Its mouth was stretched in a silent, endless scream, frozen in terror or agony. The sight was an abomination, a violation of self that stole Jidd's breath.
He floated there, paralyzed, staring at his own silently screaming face trapped in the shadow tank.
Behind him, Inkwell let out a low, slow whistle. The octopus floated closer, his large eyes fixed on the clone, then drifted slightly to examine the tank's shadowy fluid. His gaze flickered almost imperceptibly towards the hidden syringe in his tentacle grip, then back to the tank.
"Ah," Inkwell murmured, his gravelly voice devoid of its usual sarcasm, filled instead with a strange mix of pity and grim understanding. He tapped the rim of his teacup against the tank's thick glass, the sound echoing in the suddenly silent chamber. "That's where I left your nightmares."
The clone's wide, terrified eyes snapped into focus. Not on Jidd outside the tank, but through him. Its silently screaming mouth moved, shaping words that formed not in sound, but directly in Jidd's petrified mind, cold and clear as shattering ice:
"She lied."
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