Arafura

Adrian woke up. 'That's impossible. I'm dead.' He couldn't see anything. 'That's because you're dead, idiot.' All he could see was an infinite black void, an utter nothingness that... must be his eyelids. He cursed himself and opened his eyes. Light tore into his retinas, momentarily blinding him anyway. Adrian blinked under the bright light and his blurry vision resolved into a plane of pale blue. A glimmering pure white strip of light ran parallel to his body directly above him, still dazzlingly bright. He turned his head to the side to see... himself.

Adrian blinked at his naked form lying on a hard surgical bench. A huge mirror comprised the entire wall. Turning to the left, he saw likewise with the opposite wall. 'Huh.' He looked up again at the light strip and suddenly jerked upright. Hadrian. What had happened to the other marines? Had they been killed? Why was he alive... it couldn't be possible. It just couldn't be. No Goroesian ships were meant to be in that area, in fact Arafura was on the fringe of known space. And yet... he was still alive. He saw the create reaching out to him. It's tentacles were less than a metre from encircling and crushing him into jelly. He shuddered at the thought but was disturbed from his reverie by a low whirr and a hiss of gas discharge. Some sort of robotic apparatus descended from the ceiling and began to hover in close to Adrian's body. A myriad of large and small arms fanned out, with lights and probes and sensors that seemed utterly alien to him.

Two arms in particular extended five small, rounded petal-shaped pads made of some sort of synthetic fibre towards his chest in a formation not unlike a small flower itself, with another, circular central pad also extended downwards at the centre. The robotic arms pressed lightly on his skin, leaving the pads behind. He now noticed that each pad had a small, translucent wire connected to it, leading up to the apparatus itself.

“That's weird.” The entire machine recoiled at his speech, the arms folding back defensively. The arms unfolded again, tenaciously, almost as if the device had a mind of its own. A light temporarily danced across his eyes, causing him to blink and squint with its intensity. The robot seemed unperturbed with his reaction, continuing to perform a variety of checks and tests on him and Adrian stared at the ceiling. 'This really is weird...'

A sharp prick of pain made him gasp and jerk up. The robot retreated back again, retracting a small thimble-vial of blood. An array of tiny arms patched his wound up with a strange plastic-like film, stopping the bleeding. “What was that for?!” The robot hesitated, almost looking at him. “Answer me!” Adrian's heart began to race. This strange room. The many-armed machine thing. The very fact of his survival. There was no way that he could have been saved by a explorer who happened to be passing by or even his own shuttle. Aliens. It has to be. As his head swayed with the possibilities, he felt dizzy, like he was going to faint. Damned machine must have drugged him...

He laid back on the bench and looked towards the left again. The mirror shimmered and a rectangle resolved itself from the glass, sliding away to reveal a darkened corridor, broad enough for at least two people to walk through. A clanging noise sounded; rhythmic and close. Out of the shadows a large, metallic object entered the strange room. Adrian tried to focus on it but felt his mind slipping. It was a figure, utterly alien and utterly indescribable, seemingly made of molten metal itself. Just as it seemed to be speaking to him, the world fell away into a black void and Adrian fell with it.