Then I felt pinpricks of pain as needles pierced my skin. I had a sudden vision of mini-tentacles with bone tips and suspected that I’d made a good guess.
But could they control through my feet? It didn’t seem likely, but bearing in mind that I was an engineer, not a xenobiologist, I had no idea.
It beca a moot point as I felt more pinpricks of pain further up my leg. Could it reach my brain given ti? Yes.
Rembering that the earliest xosk had connections to the caches of technology the Artificers planted and knowing that Artificers saw as a young mber of their species, I wondered if I could sohow control it.
Then I felt pinpricks of pain above my waist.
I didn’t have ti for subtle ideas right now. If I spent any ti thinking through a clever way to (I don’t know) convince the xosk that it was my servant or find so hidden Artficer control chanism within its psyche, I’d probably find that I was on my way to being converted into a new mind among the many.
I did not want to be assimilated.
For lack of a better idea, I went for everything I’d been doing, but more so. Step one was counterintuitive. I stopped extending my ntal defenses as far out from as I could. Except for within my own brain, they were off.
The wisdom of this strategy felt questionable in the extre in the next instant. I’d no idea how effective it had been in keeping the xosk back. The mont I stopped, I felt pinpricks everywhere, from my feet to my head.
Worse, I could feel its mind or more accurately, minds. A vast horde of whispering voices chattered in the background of my psyche, uniting into one and speaking to .
==You’re not like the rest of them. I sense Xiniti technology within you, but there’s sothing else. What is it? It seems familiar.==
That was the part where I could have tried the, “Do you know who I am,” option, but I didn’t. I was trying to concentrate. To do that I had to block out the many minds of the xosk, Amy trying to contact over the comm asking, “Nick, are you okay,” the pain from the xosk’s touch, and the numbness I was beginning to feel in my feet.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
I’d been given exercises to practice earlier in the sumr. They were supposed to teach how to control the small amount of power I had without destroying myself like I almost did the first ti I used it. I hadn’t practiced every day, but I’d practiced enough that I knew the basics.
I pulled all the power I could out of whatever extra-dinsional space it ca from and released in a burst, powering my ntal defenses, and directing them as best I could through my connection to the xosk.
As the power released, I hoped I wasn’t wasting my ti. If it was sohow immune to whatever Daniel imitated in Lee’s ntal signature, I was about to die ntally if not physically.
I needn’t have worried. It worked, but it wasn’t pleasant.
The power flowed out of and the strain on my mind only felt worse when all the xosk tentacles started moving, so of them pulling out of , others driving in and moving around inside . Others raked across my skin.
When people looked over later, they pointed how small the holes were, how short the tentacles, and how shallow the cuts.
All of that might have been true, but it hurt. I’ve called it pinpricks, but it was more like my entire body was covered with cat claws and they all sunk it at once.
I scread and I wasn’t the only one. The xosk’s thoughts mirrored mine, but amplified by being repeated over and over, overlapping each other, rippling outward through the many minds in its body.
Along with the screams ca images of different worlds, mories of humans and aliens being absorbed by the xosk as I’d almost been along with so of their thoughts. My implant labeled the aliens, but I ignored them in favor of keeping the power flowing through .
I could get the implant to replay all of it later.
More interesting was the point at which it stopped being able to identify them, aning the mories were from too deep in the past or too far away for the Xiniti implant to have co across them. As the shrieking stopped, the last mory I experienced was of soplace cold and dark and a long wait before a shaggy, blue-furred creature opened a lid, showing (no, not ) the first light I’d ever seen.
I ca to myself then, stumbling backward, released from the tentacles, and almost falling over. Amy grabbed my left arm, steadying as the xosk’s tentacles slumped and its body seed to shrink, the top of it falling away from the wall.
I could see the top of a window fra ahead of even if I couldn’t see the windows.
“You killed that thing? Great!” Vincent’s voice broke through my ntal haze. “You want to help with these guys?”
Without wanting to, I checked my HUD. All the vampires from the middle of the room were coming our way.
User Comments
0 comments from readers