Eye of Israfel

Please note: Ariel is a unisex name and I'm using it. Deal with it.

~Rawiya

"Israfel, can you hear me?" The voice spoke in a gentle tone, like it was pacifying an angry beast. Am I so dangerous? It came from the person in front of the tank. My eyes slid open, and I peered through the hazy liquid. They were both on one knee, looking up at me like a devoted parent would when they crouched down to talk to their child.

Except neither of them could claim a relation to me, I felt. Neither had the pale skin of my arms. I could see them, lifted and bound around the wrist, tied by chains to the sleek sides of the tank.

"I... I can." My lips moved, my voice croaking and unused to speech. Where am I? Why do I know myself as Israfel? How long was I not-existing for?

"That's good! I'm very proud of you."

"Thank...you." I could feel my hair floating in the liquid around me. It was long this time. This time? Had there been another time?

"How old are you, Israfel?"

"I have been...merged with this...girl... for..." The words stopped coming. I felt a warm feeling under my skin, dancing along my spine. What did they call it in this language?

This language?

Ah! Pleasure. I didn't like saying things I didn't know about, and pleasure was what you felt when you had done something you liked. In my case, it seemed it was because I had stopped speaking.

"For?" the woman prompted. A man knelt down beside her. Bad, I thought. But... what was bad? I didn't know. Whatever I am, I feel like I know so little.

"How... long?" My lips said. I controlled them this time. Had I controlled them before? I was unsure.

"How long what, sweetheart?" A buzzing feeling started in the back of my head. Irritation, I think it it called. "What do you mean by how long?" Her voice grew sharper the second time she spoke, and she appeared angry until the man put a hand on her shoulder and whispered something in her ear. She waved to someone out of my field of view. Automatically, my sight-no, eyes-snapped up and I could see the vague shape of people, standing in front of something.

Console, I thought, but though I knew the word, I didn't know what a console was. My northernmost appendage-my head-felt empty, like knowledge was supposed to be there, but it wasn't. Acting on an urge tugging at my consciousness, I ordered a full mental scan and refocused my eyes on the man and woman. Her face went pale when our gazes met, and I wondered if something was wrong.

"What do you mean by how long, Israfel?" The man's voice was resolute and firm. A voice that I should trust. I blinked. This body was odd. It felt weird. The long hair. The blinking. I looked down. Body scan, I thought, and another part of me dove off to complete it. The brain scan returned while I sent off the physical scan, so I waited until the physical scan o gone to receive it.

Mental faculties 100% functional. Merging occurred with 0% resistance. Body has been in stasis for seventeen years since its creation and it has been twelve years since last awakening. Memories wiped after last awakening and the initial merging. I committed it to memory. It had been at least seventeen years that I had not-existed. So why now?

The body scan returned. The man's face was darkening, and it was getting harder and harder for him to look pleasant and patient. "I need... time. My thinking...process is...hampered by noise." They nodded understandingly, and retreated through a swinging place in the wall, joining the other males and females by the console. I opened the body scan.

Body is the fully-mature frame of protoplasm of the human species. This skin sheath covers fragile organs and moderately strong bone structure. The most powerful asset of this species is the brain, located in the skull. This particular body is that of a mature, young female above minimum reproductive age. It is strong and agile. I looked down. There were two odd sacs on my chest, floating in the water. They had odd, pink protrusions on their tips.

Breasts. The body scan supplied. The mark of an adult female, and the way the offspring of this race are fed. It was odd, but something told me I had been odder. This state between knowledge-less and wise unnerved me. It felt like something was missing. Something? Someone? The confusion in my head became too much, so I focused back on the man and woman.

"What is...it...you wanted to...know?" My speech was choppy. Language diagnostic. The scan went out, though I barely had sent a thought its way. They returned through the swinging wall.

"It's just a quick test," the woman said brightly. I nodded, and she continued. "Do you know your name?"

"It is...Israfel. I am the...morning's song on the...wind and the...scream in the...midnight blackness." It seemed that my consciousness had become so used to referring to myself in that way that I did not even have to put forth any effort towards forming the words. They followed naturally. What am I? The woman's thin lips pressed together.

"How old are you?"

"This...body...is seventeen. When I...finish this answer, I have been...awake...for four minutes, twenty-six seconds, 16 milliseconds and 50 microseconds." The man's lips thinned and pressed together this time, and he gave a signal to the humans at the console.

"Now, this is important, so pay attention!" She said, cheerful, though her face was struggling to scowl. "Now, do you know where you are?" I looked around. My tank and I were the only things in this room, apart from the people by the console, shielded by a clear substance, and the people who stood in front of my tank.

"This body is submerged in a tank. Environmental scans cite that it is filled with liquid nutrients and breathable oxygen to keep this body alive and in stasis for an extended period of time. Scanners check vital signs every five seconds and sensors are attatched to this body in order to detect even the tiniest changes." They nodded together, looking less and less pleased. "This body holds no memories, though it held them a short-enough while ago that the gaping holes are still burning."

The man gave a different gesture, and my vision moved like wild water, fading in and out so that I could not see anything.

I was going back into stasis.

Ariel.