Spectra: The Mark of Eden

First Impressions

Grinding, grating thoughts adrift,

A trillion minds writhe in one,

The skies and void so are bereft,

But for those that take, and those that run ...

There was a brilliant sun setting before him, so close that he could reach out and touch it. Its radiance called to him—he knew not what it was, only that he had to reach it. He ran to it, but his limbs felt heavy and slow, as though time had slowed to a crawl, and he saw that he was no closer to the sun than before.

Of mind and soul and algorithmic mold,

Of blood and bone and fibrous sinew,

Hidden truths must now unfold,

The hunt awakened, begun anew.

He heard whispers, quiet at first, from somewhere behind him. As he turned his head to get a look at who was speaking, they intensified tenfold. Like serpents slithering in his mind, they grew louder and louder until they drowned out all other noise. And when he finally saw what was behind him, he found that he gazed upon a cold, black abyss that swallowed all the light it touched—and from it, a voice screamed to him.

"... Valentine!"

Crying out involuntarily, he began gasping for air at the sensation of there being none in his lungs. He was being taken! Taken to be turned into one of ... one of ...

What?

He'd felt them, he'd felt them, flashes of recognition and familiarity within his head, the barest glimpses of memories that must have once occupied his mind. Who had been screaming? And what were those chants, those rhymes he'd heard just know? He needed to know ... he needed to know ...

Where was he?

His surroundings differed greatly from those that he last remembered—one moment, he'd been cornered and charged by a bio-mechanical monster within the claustrophobic confines of a ship's bridge, and now ... he was lying on a couch.

Looking around, he strangely seemed to be in a living room. The walls were painted a pleasant garden-sage, and a simple fireplace and mantle added to its rather homey appearance. The left side of the room opened into a modest kitchen and dining room, and to the right was a wooden staircase that led up to a second story.

He analyzed himself quickly. It seemed like he'd sustained a great deal of injuries, though none of them were life-threatening. Much of his arms and legs had been bloodied, cuts and bruises covering nearly every inch of his body, but they'd been wrapped in some kind of gauze, carefully bandaged and left to heal. Who had done that?

A sudden noise caught his attention, and he quickly looked towards the stairs as the sound of nimble footsteps could be heard from above.

"Is it awake? I told you, we should have been—"

His eyes widened in shock as he saw who—or what—came down the stairs. It froze once it laid eyes on him, noticing that his own were staring directly at them.

"—watching it."

It was bipedal in stature, its legs muscular and digitigrade, angling forward and backward and forward again. Its skin was a light shade of lilac that was nearing selago, and completely hairless. Growing from the sides of its torso were four arms; two where one would expect at the shoulder joints, and two more that seemed to sprout from directly beneath them, though they were slightly thinner and shorter in length. Upon each hand were four digits, two opposable thumbs situated on opposite sides of the hand, and two fingers sandwiched between them.