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Description
Resurrection

It was a moment only – a second of fire and steel and eco – and then I was gone. I simply ceased to exist.

There is awareness, of a sort, in this pulsing blackness. I can’t see, or feel, or move. I can reflect, of course; I’m not sure that’s what it is, but it seems to fit. I don’t even think I’m breathing, but it’s such a familiar feeling that really, I’m not afraid. I don’t know fear – except maybe in the face that keeps looming out of the black, but then, I don’t think that’s a face at all.

Laughter. Familiar and loud; painful to someone who has just found hearing. I can taste it, almost, although how can I taste? I know it – that voice, that voice. It isn’t screaming, this time, not like it did before. It’s – scornful? Deep and dark and dragging claws through the black, leaving slashes of something that oozes and crackles. There is another sound here too; another voice, thicker and richer. It hurts, that laughter, even more than the claws. That tolling bell that wracks me, and that tone that blazes through…

I’d give anything to live again - to taste it, and know it, and have it - but I’d give everything to die.

Pain.

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

He screamed.

His back arched like a bow, bending till the bones creaked and his whole body swayed, contorted unnaturally into a curve of flesh that seemed on the point of snapping. His fingers scrambled uselessly against the cold, slippery metal under them, curling up like claws and moving still. That lip curled back, teeth bared like fangs and mouth hanging open in a snarl that never made it past his lips. Eyes wide in charcoal black, like streaks of night against skin of alabaster, straining with pupils like pinpricks. Everything was rent by his silent, hideous screams and the straining of his skeleton – cracking like brittle twigs and breaking still as he flowed up into a form born of agony.

There was light – a blinding, pure white that pooled over his skin and pulled taunt the flesh where bones had pierced through, leaving thin trails of a deep red in the ocean of sheeting paleness. It crawled and slunk through his body, like fire and ice, like acid through his veins – fighting all the way through darkness, thick and black, where no light had ever been. So cold it burned and he screamed still, in those silent, jaw-breaking throes. Like a thousand needles in his flesh, no room left for more but coming on nonetheless, until it was pain beyond knowing or understanding and his fingers rent metal and tore into the skin on his face, leaving razor-lines of blood that ran in rivers down his ashen cheeks – only to close and dry in a blaze of light, just to be made again.

And finally, somewhere in that pure white, he found his voice.

Harsh, grating – a mockery of what had been before, and clinging still to some metallic note that others would never reach. It rose, a full-throated, heart-wrenching thing that he did not even attempt to choke back. Did not try to stem. Warping as it went, from thick and guttural to clear and crisp, hanging there unceasingly long after he should have drawn breath. But breath was useless to him now, without lungs to fill to the point of bursting. The body was a shell yet, and the dark fought to keep it that way.

Red blazed across his unseeing eyes and his body buckled further, spine snapping with a sharp crack – only the light guided it back, forced it back and welded it together again. His skin did not appear as flesh any more, but a thing of blood and gore that seemed to writhe and slink down his thrashing limbs. Dark raged, crackling streaks over his ever-healing face that were a touch of cool against the inferno. Blue, too, so faint against the black but thick and real in the white that sought to keep him whole, pulsing lines that sped its flow until the night began to buckle to its onslaught.

He blinked – vision came.

The pupils were pinpricks against a blaze of pure light, blinded by it. There was something living there that flesh could not hold – masked now by a flare of white streaked with red, but there nonetheless – and that death could not touch.

Fingers slowed against his skin, nails releasing their hook-like positions buried deep into his own chest, coated in a thick layer of crimson that was not washed away. Wounds closed, the body slumped somewhat in its unworldly arch, limbs relaxed and iron faded. That voice petered out.

And he breathed.

A deep, slow, shuddering thing that kept on – as if trying to make up for the lack, as eco darted still across his body and waged yet. The light still burned, but pain was eclipsed by life, and he forgot it momentarily as air rolled in. Unnatural to one who has just found it again, but sweeter than ever it could have been.

His shoulders met hard metal as the arch crumpled, eyes rolling back and lips parted as he drew oxygen in raggedly. The light dimmed, and the dark with it, the fire in his flesh eased by coolness. It faded, and although he could feel it still somewhere deep in his marrow, the relief was so intense that he laughed.

That voice found a key it had thought lost, and the laughter rose, dark now and cruel – the very same that had exulted at their pain, that had plucked the wings from insects and watched as bullets tore through flesh – and something shifted that was not himself.

There was sound, too, and awareness of what was around him. He knew this, but he did not care, for death had been cheated once more. Painfully. Horribly. Enough to make him lament the fact it was done. But he breathed, and he had a voice, and his flesh was not hard with gears and wires.

Another noise that was not him, although he shifted against the cold metal at his back – the sides of it buckled by his eco-infused fingers – and let his hands search his skin. Finding it real and almost warm to the touch, but knowing well that it would encounter the inferno again. A low scraping, like claws dragged over a smooth floor, loud to his over-sensitive ears.

His laughter was choked back before it could gain the maniac edge, a sob near the end but still so full of that darkness. Elbows met cold steel, hands never leaving a stomach packed hard with muscle (more than before, surely?) as he heaved himself up. Muscles like water slouched him forwards, panting, to encounter the vision of his own legs spread out before him and dark, thick material that he was sure he did not own. Bright eyes blinked – shorts?

Those same eyes found his hands, bloody and resting gently on the curves of his hips, and he raised them up before him – studying the long, thin fingers that were so surely his own. But he had forgotten what it was like to feel, and soon enough he had coarse fabric under them, then the skin of his shoulders. Hard, like metal, where he should have been somewhat yielding – no more muscle that his slim frame had held before, but tough as stone.

He breathed, and his tongue wet thin lips that pulled into a smile, eyes sharp. Charcoal adorned the paleness of his skin, thick shafts of the stuff that moved when he did, angular and inscribed in his flesh. One hand went down to trace the lines of them, all over his chest and along his limbs, before rising to follow the paths the ones upon his face surely took.

There were scars – claw marks over his hip, five diagonal slices that could not come from any beast and surely should have healed in that flow. A thick stripe of white through the tattoo that adorned the left side of his chest, arrow-straight at first but slanting down ever so slightly towards one end, as if the instrument that had inflicted it had been quickly ripped away. More than those, that he did not see or did not bother to notice. Countless more, hidden beneath the film of red that covered every inch of him.

Movement again, to his right. A lot of movement coupled by innumerable sharp intakes of breath, and he turned at last to study those who thought to resurrect his flesh – and stared.

Slim, furred bodies shifted as large eyes stared back, ears sticking up from roundish heads and small paws doing a myriad of things as each watched. He breathed again, although not aware that he had ever stopped, and wondered why he should feel surprise after all the things he had seen.

He had been saved by rodents. With pants.

A chuckle made its way out, and he slumped back down to the table, staring at the lights overhead. But his mind remained on those slight creatures, and ever so slowly the connection was made.

Precursors!

But he did not look again, although his quiet laughter stopped and failed to start once more. He shifted, knowing the feeling of metal too well, so akin to him now. Sound. Movement. Weight rested on the table with him, and although he did not look he knew exactly where it stood.

“The tightness will fade,” came a slightly high-pitched voice, although obviously still male. “But there were complications with your resurrection…”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair without thought – freezing with it buried deep, stroking the stuff under his fingers before dragging a lock down to study. It swung, rich and orange as fire, before his bright eyes.

“… due to your excessive exposure to dark eco during the experiments you conducted…”

A slim finger raised, voice smooth as he interjected. “Helped,” he muttered, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Helped.”

“… your body is saturated in it. More contact was made when you, ahem, crashed – and that was multiplied a thousand fold when you met the Dark Makers, who infused it in with your very flesh. The fact that you already had enough it you to, well… anyway, they put in more than any mortal could hold. That was probably a large part of why you were so… whole when we found you.”

Again that finger wagged, a sound coming from deep in his throat. Somewhere, deep inside, he stirred at the mentioning of past lives.

“We simulated the effects of an eco vent, and submerged your remains. The dark eco kept you alive long enough for us to do that – in my belief, it would have done so interminably, unless it found another host, and the likelihood of that happening is very slim. The light boiled away nearly all the remnants of your cyber-self, and rebuilt your body - when it had done so we moved you here. The dark in you, however, had no wish to give you up. We have been giving you infusions of blue, red, and green to help with the fight that was going on internally. And externally, but internal was far more important.”

Weight shifted, and he blinked.

“The blue sped the light up, allowing it to move faster than the dark could, which is why your wounds were sealed to quickly after you made them, and kept you from folding in two. The skeleton is not made to undergo that much pressure, and had we not mixed in the green, I severely doubt the light alone would have been able to fix it such a number of times.”

He sighed – one hand still in his hair, the other falling to his chest and lying there, perfectly still.

“Red gave you enough strength to keep sane, and fully yourself, until the light could win. However, since we used so much, that too is now ingrained in your blood along with the dark. I’m very much afraid that the fight will continue there, because your body revolts to the intrusion. Dark eco is like a drug to you – while Light is repulsive, although to nearly all others the opposite should have been true.”

A question nagged at his thoughts, and he frowned. “Why?” he grated.

The weight moved again, near his left hip now. Someone, something in the room cleared its throat.

“Because it must be.” That thing on the table moved closer, and he found himself staring up at a pair of very big, knowing eyes. “No more questions, and no more answers. We will send you to Kras in a few moments, but you must be unconscious during the journey. It makes it easier, for us and for you…”

He did not hear the rest – shadows grabbed him and dragged him down, comatose in moments. His thoughts swan, thick and so confused, although one stood out like a candle-flame in the pitch black.

Kras.

Somewhere in the darkness he could hear the laughter again, and it burnt like a brand…

Description
Resurrection

It was a moment only – a second of fire and steel and eco – and then I was gone. I simply ceased to exist.

There is awareness, of a sort, in this pulsing blackness. I can’t see, or feel, or move. I can reflect, of course; I’m not sure that’s what it is, but it seems to fit. I don’t even think I’m breathing, but it’s such a familiar feeling that really, I’m not afraid. I don’t know fear – except maybe in the face that keeps looming out of the black, but then, I don’t think that’s a face at all.

Laughter. Familiar and loud; painful to someone who has just found hearing. I can taste it, almost, although how can I taste? I know it – that voice, that voice. It isn’t screaming, this time, not like it did before. It’s – scornful? Deep and dark and dragging claws through the black, leaving slashes of something that oozes and crackles. There is another sound here too; another voice, thicker and richer. It hurts, that laughter, even more than the claws. That tolling bell that wracks me, and that tone that blazes through…

I’d give anything to live again - to taste it, and know it, and have it - but I’d give everything to die.

Pain.

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

He screamed.

His back arched like a bow, bending till the bones creaked and his whole body swayed, contorted unnaturally into a curve of flesh that seemed on the point of snapping. His fingers scrambled uselessly against the cold, slippery metal under them, curling up like claws and moving still. That lip curled back, teeth bared like fangs and mouth hanging open in a snarl that never made it past his lips. Eyes wide in charcoal black, like streaks of night against skin of alabaster, straining with pupils like pinpricks. Everything was rent by his silent, hideous screams and the straining of his skeleton – cracking like brittle twigs and breaking still as he flowed up into a form born of agony.

There was light – a blinding, pure white that pooled over his skin and pulled taunt the flesh where bones had pierced through, leaving thin trails of a deep red in the ocean of sheeting paleness. It crawled and slunk through his body, like fire and ice, like acid through his veins – fighting all the way through darkness, thick and black, where no light had ever been. So cold it burned and he screamed still, in those silent, jaw-breaking throes. Like a thousand needles in his flesh, no room left for more but coming on nonetheless, until it was pain beyond knowing or understanding and his fingers rent metal and tore into the skin on his face, leaving razor-lines of blood that ran in rivers down his ashen cheeks – only to close and dry in a blaze of light, just to be made again.

And finally, somewhere in that pure white, he found his voice.

Harsh, grating – a mockery of what had been before, and clinging still to some metallic note that others would never reach. It rose, a full-throated, heart-wrenching thing that he did not even attempt to choke back. Did not try to stem. Warping as it went, from thick and guttural to clear and crisp, hanging there unceasingly long after he should have drawn breath. But breath was useless to him now, without lungs to fill to the point of bursting. The body was a shell yet, and the dark fought to keep it that way.

Red blazed across his unseeing eyes and his body buckled further, spine snapping with a sharp crack – only the light guided it back, forced it back and welded it together again. His skin did not appear as flesh any more, but a thing of blood and gore that seemed to writhe and slink down his thrashing limbs. Dark raged, crackling streaks over his ever-healing face that were a touch of cool against the inferno. Blue, too, so faint against the black but thick and real in the white that sought to keep him whole, pulsing lines that sped its flow until the night began to buckle to its onslaught.

He blinked – vision came.

The pupils were pinpricks against a blaze of pure light, blinded by it. There was something living there that flesh could not hold – masked now by a flare of white streaked with red, but there nonetheless – and that death could not touch.

Fingers slowed against his skin, nails releasing their hook-like positions buried deep into his own chest, coated in a thick layer of crimson that was not washed away. Wounds closed, the body slumped somewhat in its unworldly arch, limbs relaxed and iron faded. That voice petered out.

And he breathed.

A deep, slow, shuddering thing that kept on – as if trying to make up for the lack, as eco darted still across his body and waged yet. The light still burned, but pain was eclipsed by life, and he forgot it momentarily as air rolled in. Unnatural to one who has just found it again, but sweeter than ever it could have been.

His shoulders met hard metal as the arch crumpled, eyes rolling back and lips parted as he drew oxygen in raggedly. The light dimmed, and the dark with it, the fire in his flesh eased by coolness. It faded, and although he could feel it still somewhere deep in his marrow, the relief was so intense that he laughed.

That voice found a key it had thought lost, and the laughter rose, dark now and cruel – the very same that had exulted at their pain, that had plucked the wings from insects and watched as bullets tore through flesh – and something shifted that was not himself.

There was sound, too, and awareness of what was around him. He knew this, but he did not care, for death had been cheated once more. Painfully. Horribly. Enough to make him lament the fact it was done. But he breathed, and he had a voice, and his flesh was not hard with gears and wires.

Another noise that was not him, although he shifted against the cold metal at his back – the sides of it buckled by his eco-infused fingers – and let his hands search his skin. Finding it real and almost warm to the touch, but knowing well that it would encounter the inferno again. A low scraping, like claws dragged over a smooth floor, loud to his over-sensitive ears.

His laughter was choked back before it could gain the maniac edge, a sob near the end but still so full of that darkness. Elbows met cold steel, hands never leaving a stomach packed hard with muscle (more than before, surely?) as he heaved himself up. Muscles like water slouched him forwards, panting, to encounter the vision of his own legs spread out before him and dark, thick material that he was sure he did not own. Bright eyes blinked – shorts?

Those same eyes found his hands, bloody and resting gently on the curves of his hips, and he raised them up before him – studying the long, thin fingers that were so surely his own. But he had forgotten what it was like to feel, and soon enough he had coarse fabric under them, then the skin of his shoulders. Hard, like metal, where he should have been somewhat yielding – no more muscle that his slim frame had held before, but tough as stone.

He breathed, and his tongue wet thin lips that pulled into a smile, eyes sharp. Charcoal adorned the paleness of his skin, thick shafts of the stuff that moved when he did, angular and inscribed in his flesh. One hand went down to trace the lines of them, all over his chest and along his limbs, before rising to follow the paths the ones upon his face surely took.

There were scars – claw marks over his hip, five diagonal slices that could not come from any beast and surely should have healed in that flow. A thick stripe of white through the tattoo that adorned the left side of his chest, arrow-straight at first but slanting down ever so slightly towards one end, as if the instrument that had inflicted it had been quickly ripped away. More than those, that he did not see or did not bother to notice. Countless more, hidden beneath the film of red that covered every inch of him.

Movement again, to his right. A lot of movement coupled by innumerable sharp intakes of breath, and he turned at last to study those who thought to resurrect his flesh – and stared.

Slim, furred bodies shifted as large eyes stared back, ears sticking up from roundish heads and small paws doing a myriad of things as each watched. He breathed again, although not aware that he had ever stopped, and wondered why he should feel surprise after all the things he had seen.

He had been saved by rodents. With pants.

A chuckle made its way out, and he slumped back down to the table, staring at the lights overhead. But his mind remained on those slight creatures, and ever so slowly the connection was made.

Precursors!

But he did not look again, although his quiet laughter stopped and failed to start once more. He shifted, knowing the feeling of metal too well, so akin to him now. Sound. Movement. Weight rested on the table with him, and although he did not look he knew exactly where it stood.

“The tightness will fade,” came a slightly high-pitched voice, although obviously still male. “But there were complications with your resurrection…”

He sighed, running a hand through his hair without thought – freezing with it buried deep, stroking the stuff under his fingers before dragging a lock down to study. It swung, rich and orange as fire, before his bright eyes.

“… due to your excessive exposure to dark eco during the experiments you conducted…”

A slim finger raised, voice smooth as he interjected. “Helped,” he muttered, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Helped.”

“… your body is saturated in it. More contact was made when you, ahem, crashed – and that was multiplied a thousand fold when you met the Dark Makers, who infused it in with your very flesh. The fact that you already had enough it you to, well… anyway, they put in more than any mortal could hold. That was probably a large part of why you were so… whole when we found you.”

Again that finger wagged, a sound coming from deep in his throat. Somewhere, deep inside, he stirred at the mentioning of past lives.

“We simulated the effects of an eco vent, and submerged your remains. The dark eco kept you alive long enough for us to do that – in my belief, it would have done so interminably, unless it found another host, and the likelihood of that happening is very slim. The light boiled away nearly all the remnants of your cyber-self, and rebuilt your body - when it had done so we moved you here. The dark in you, however, had no wish to give you up. We have been giving you infusions of blue, red, and green to help with the fight that was going on internally. And externally, but internal was far more important.”

Weight shifted, and he blinked.

“The blue sped the light up, allowing it to move faster than the dark could, which is why your wounds were sealed to quickly after you made them, and kept you from folding in two. The skeleton is not made to undergo that much pressure, and had we not mixed in the green, I severely doubt the light alone would have been able to fix it such a number of times.”

He sighed – one hand still in his hair, the other falling to his chest and lying there, perfectly still.

“Red gave you enough strength to keep sane, and fully yourself, until the light could win. However, since we used so much, that too is now ingrained in your blood along with the dark. I’m very much afraid that the fight will continue there, because your body revolts to the intrusion. Dark eco is like a drug to you – while Light is repulsive, although to nearly all others the opposite should have been true.”

A question nagged at his thoughts, and he frowned. “Why?” he grated.

The weight moved again, near his left hip now. Someone, something in the room cleared its throat.

“Because it must be.” That thing on the table moved closer, and he found himself staring up at a pair of very big, knowing eyes. “No more questions, and no more answers. We will send you to Kras in a few moments, but you must be unconscious during the journey. It makes it easier, for us and for you…”

He did not hear the rest – shadows grabbed him and dragged him down, comatose in moments. His thoughts swan, thick and so confused, although one stood out like a candle-flame in the pitch black.

Kras.

Somewhere in the darkness he could hear the laughter again, and it burnt like a brand…