ENIGMA--Beyond Humanity

"You got me there, Typhoon," Chester said. "But even if it's the only way out, there's no need to take it one at a time and let whatever monsters they have cooked up for us on the other side eat us without a fight. I'd say we at least all step through at about the same time."

Typhoid smirked at the older man before turning back to the fellow with X-ray eyes.

"Odd. I hope you dont irradiate me. Here, im holding an arm out. We need to get into a field of light that will take us out of this room. I can guide you."

OOC: Presumably Typhoid would light up on a density-based supervision as much of his body is saturated with nanomachines and his metal mantle runs under his skin.

edited 21st Jun '12 10:04:11 PM by Stormthorn

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

"Alright... here I go..."

Elena then started to walk... tentatively and very carefully she put one foot in front of the other. She was unsteady, her legs trembled and she seemed very nervous... but walking she was.

She did have to lean on Guy a few times, but luckily none of those looked like she would really fall right on the floor had he not been there.

If I'm sure of something it's that I'm not sure of anything.

Yes, it should. Thank you for reminding me.

"Thank you..."

Leonard hesitantly took the other person's arm and let Typhoid guide him towards the light. He did not like being treated like an invalid, but right now he was helpless on his own. Leonard did not comment on the strange lights that were scattered through his helper's body, thinking it just to be another effect of his strange vision.

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Seeing the others getting ready to enter the light, Chester made sure to follow right behind them.

"That's it, you're doin' well..."

—Fairly soon, they were at the edge of the pillar.—

"Best if you held on here, Miss. We don't know how steady the exit is. Okay, one, two..."

—And with that, Guy stepped into the light.—

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Ophelia looked at Madeline when she spoke to her. Something about the woman reminded her of her own mother, if only from the way she spoke to her. She nodded slightly, indicating that she was indeed alright, if at least physically. She noticed more people enter that light beam, and she shook slightly. There didn't seem to be any other options... She hesitantly entered the light soon after the others did.

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With Leonard in tow Typhoid stepped into the pillar of light.

"Hold onto your hats, ladies and gentlemen."

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

"Well... I'm not going to be the only one left behind" Said Elena to herself before taking another awkward step, now into the light.

If I'm sure of something it's that I'm not sure of anything.

Elizabeth’s hand met no resistance as she reached for the blue circle; tiny forks of blue electricity leapt from its surface to her fingertips, though surprisingly she would find that this had no effect on her beyond making her skin tingle slightly. At the same time, the arrow-in-a-circle symbol on her suit’s abdomen began to glow as her hand drew closer to the light, changing in colour until it matched the pastel blue of this strange ornamentation exactly.

Beyond this, nothing really happened as her hand came into contact with the disk; it was warm to the touch, and its mild electrical current would make all the hairs on that arm stand on end, but that seemed to be the extent of its effects on the blonde thirty-two year old. As she did so, however, one of the nine green circles which ringed the slab suddenly turned blue as well with a soft chime; scant seconds later, the first of her fellow captives rose up through that gelatinous membrane in the center of the floor.

---

As more and more people stepped into the light at the center of the room, the blue helix began to revolve slower and slower until it was barely turning at all; one at a time, the abductees started rising into the air in the order that they had entered the spiral, a full five seconds passing between the start of each person’s ascent. All told, it took over a minute for them all to pass through the membrane and vacate the egg-shaped chamber; Madeline was the last to go, for she had been the last to step into the helix, doing so only once she had seen that the young girl with the elfin ears was alright.

In the cylindrical, grey-walled room above, each of the green lights running along the circumference of that broad circular slab had turned blue as one of the abductees began to pass through that strange membrane; now ten of these twelve circles shone with the same pastel hue, while the remaining two continued to glow a harsh shade of red.

Once Madeline had entered this second room, the etchings on the surface of that slab suddenly lit up with an intense azure light, one so bright that the single mother was forced to shield her eyes from its harsh radiance; then just as suddenly as it had appeared, the light died down, and a sound like plates of stone and rock sliding and scraping against one another began to emanate from the slab. The green and purple ‘roots’ which covered the surface of this enormous circle began to receded, retreating from its center towards the circumference; as they did so, the innermost segment of the slab sank into the wall with a groan and slid upwards out of sight.

Other sections of the slab soon began to do likewise, and as this slab—a door, Madeline realized—began to disassemble itself, she and the other abductees would be able to see that an eye-searing white void lay beyond it…and inside that void, there stood a wavering black mass which might have been a humanoid silhouette…

The Danse Macabre Codex

"Not a gladiator arena, but still not what I'd call safe," Chested said. Noticing the black silhouette, he pointed at it and added, "Hey La Forge, your fancy eyes see anything there?"

As he said that, he casually took a step back, so that that Typhoid was between him and the black figure.

Typhoid blinked in the glare.

"fuck."

He was uncertain what was happening, but he picked up on the system somehow registering the transition of him and the other abductees from one room to another.

"Where the hell ARE we?"

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

Elena shielded her eyes as she tried to see the black figure beyond the void "W-What...what is that?"

If I'm sure of something it's that I'm not sure of anything.

Thanks to the nature of his new eyes, Leonard was mostly spared from the searing light. But even for him, the strange humanoid shape in the distance was hard to make out. The shape was indistinct and it was difficult for him to be sure one way or another. It could be human, or it could be something that had roughly the same shape as a human. It could even be...one of their captors.

"There is...something or someone there. It somewhat looks like a person..."

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Elizabeth shielded her eyes and looked forward as the rest did, observing the unknown beyond.

"Be carefull."

She decided once again to just focus on moving forwards, and, shielding her eyes heavily, walked into the light towards the dark thing.

— Guy gave a small breath of relief as the transportation device gently deposited him on another floor, doing the same with Elena. Clearly whomever constructed it had safety in mind.

He looked about the odd place, unsure really what to make of it. Again he saw the arrow and circle insignia on those panels in the floor, lighting up as each of the abductees arrived. Does that mean we're part of some group? What does that symbol even mean...

Before he could ponder this further, a door opened, and he squinted at the silhouette within. Guy moved in front of Elena, keeping his hands in front of him.—

"Hello?"

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As Elizabeth advanced towards the white light, she would find her progress hampered; the very air seemed to resist her passage, as though she were trying to walk through a wall of molasses, and try as she might the be-tentacled woman would find it almost impossible to step beyond the threshold of that circular door. At the same time, she would be able to hear a peculiar sound coming from that white void, a soft thump which was immediately followed by a click not unlike what one might hear if one tapped their fingernail against a hard wooden surface. A second passed after this second noise, and then two sounds repeated themselves; the same happened a second later, and a third time shortly after that, a clear and regular rhythm that seemed uncannily like footsteps.

Leonard, thanks to his enhanced vision, would be the first to notice that the wavering silhouette was no longer standing still; it appeared to be moving towards the chamber in which they now stood, its strides matching that rhythmic noise perfectly. The figure’s appearance was still unclear, obscured both by the distances involved and the intense white light which lay beyond, but even so every step made it increasingly clear that the owner of that silhouette, though humanoid, was almost certainly not human; its posture seemed strange, and there were few people on Earth who were as tall as this entity appeared to be.

Ten seconds later, it had reached the doorway, and suddenly that white light flared up to an almost blinding radiance, obscuring the creature from view. Madeline let out a hissed of pain and squinted, tears leaking from the corners of her eyes; even having shielded them with her hands, that light had proven too intense, and she was forced to lower her gaze to the floor.

As such, it was their visitor’s feet which she first took in, and what she saw there as the light gradually dimmed to more tolerable levels made her mouth open in amazement.

There were two legs and two feet, like those of a human, but that was where any similarities ended; the limbs of this mysterious figure each ended in a pair of broad, scaly appendages like those of a reptile or a bird of prey, and each had three toes—the two outermost ones were thick and long, ending in short black talons, and where the big toe would have been on a human’s foot there was instead a wickedly curved claw that was at least as long as a banana, and much thicker. Madeline swallowed nervously; that sickle-shaped claw brought to mind the velociraptors from the Jurassic Park films she had seen in her youth, and it did not take much to imagine what sort of injuries such a sinister blade could inflict.

Next came the legs themselves; thick, muscular limbs with three parts to them and joints at both the knee and what she assumed was the ankle or heel, these scaly things only served to reinforce the dinosaur comparison in Madeline’s mind. Now that the harsh white light had dimmed, she could see that this creature’s legs were predominantly a smoky black, though small splotches of yellow, red and orange dotted them here and there to break up the monotony. The knees were turned away from one another while the ankles instead pointed towards each other, giving it a somewhat bowlegged gait; what this might have signified, the red-haired single mother had no idea.

Its left arm dangled at its side, allowing Madeline a good at its hand; like the toes, its fingers were scaly and ended in sharp black claws, though these ones were far smaller than the murderous-looking talons which adorned its feet. Her eyes widened as she saw that there were six of these digits; an opposable thumb where you expect to find such a thing, four fingers of varying length that seemed partially fused together where their bases met the hand proper…and a second thumb, directly opposite the first one. A curving, seven inch long spike jutted from its elbow, and at the sight of it Madeline found herself turning slightly pale; she did not want to think about what sort of damage something like that could do to a human body.

Next came the torso, and here Madeline saw the first real clues that their strange visitor was not simply some wild animal walking on its hind legs; it wore something resembling a tank top shirt over its slender frame, a garment made of the exact same dark blue fabric as the suits which the abductees wore, and like those outfits this shirt was covered with intricate little lines of white and cyan which pulsed erratically to the tune out its alien heartbeat. The garment clung so tightly to its chest that Madeline could actually see the outlines of its ribs through the fabric; whether it was normal for this entity to have such taut skin, Madeline had no idea. A symbol was emblazoned on its chest, one strikingly different from the one which adorned each of the humans; where they all shared the same image of a brown circle containing a green arrow which pointed straight down, this entity instead had a purple hexagon whose interior was dominated by a yellow, upward-pointing equilateral triangle.

Finally, Madeline’s gaze fell upon its head, and she drew back a pace as she saw that it was looking straight at her. Eyes the size of golf balls stared at the twenty-nine year old from a face without any visible nose, black sclerae and acidic green irises surrounding pupils shaped like three-pointed stars; these giant orbs almost seemed to glow faintly with an inner phosphorescence, and Madeline felt as though they were staring through her, ignoring the flesh to look directly at her soul. Not a single hair could be seen anywhere on the entity’s head, and curious patterns of yellow and orange scales ran along its blunted snout of a face; tiny nubs of bone studded its thick brow ridges, and a thick dewlap hung from beneath its lower jaw like that of an iguana.

The creature stood within the doorway, so large that it had to stoop simply to fit within this circular frame; and even with its head and neck thrust straight ahead and its back bent almost to a forty-five-degree angle, it still towered over everyone present at nine feet from head to toe. It made no move to step into the chamber and simply stood there, staring at the abductees in complete silence; nictating membranes slid across its eyes for the briefest of moments, and then those acidic orbs began to move independently of one another, one roaming across the altered humans while the other glanced downwards at the edge of the doorframe. The edges of its body seemed to glisten faintly in the light of whatever lay beyond this room, almost as if the creature were coated in a thin film of something, and as its gaze played across the room those yellow, red and orange spots suddenly began shifting to a light purple.

The Danse Macabre Codex

Chester cautiously stepped back as he called out to the... thing. "You our new overlord, or we supposed to answer a riddle? You even speak English?"

Elena was dumbstruck by the sight of the large reptile looking at the rest of the humans. Once again a primal fear invaded her mind and drowned out any other thought and emotion she might have.

Experiment, abdubted, ginea pig... These words ran through her mind as she looked at the strange being... just as the lizard like giant inspected all of them calmly.

Trying to retreat again from the fearful sight, Elena slipped and fell on her bottom and back, though she barely felt the pain as she tried to retreat away from the thing, crawling backwards without being able to take her eyes away from the reptile.

If I'm sure of something it's that I'm not sure of anything.

—Guy could do nothing but stare wide-eyed at the bizarre thing before him, jaw slack.

No coherent thought went through his head in that moment, only a thunderous, all-encompassing, inescapable conclusion that what stood in front of him was not of this Earth. This was a complete unknown, far beyond meeting even the strangest foreigner. A sort of primal terror seized him, and Guy found himself rooted to the spot, every muscle in his body tensed for either fight or flight.

He became dimly aware of two things now, the first of those being the soft thud of a thin body behind him, hyperventilated feminine breathing accompanying the sound. Second, was the creature's change of colour, bringing with it old memories of an octopus he'd seen at the aquarium once.

As reason slowly started to creep back into him, Guy did the only rational thing which occurred to him, which was to raise both of his hands to his sides, palms spread open. He could think of no thing to say which could even possibly be understood, and so kept his silence, eyes fixed on the creature's weird face.—

Proud member of the IAA What's the point of being grown up if you can't act childish?

Leonard swallowed. What was going on? It was hard to make out the figure with his eyesight, but by the reaction of the others, it was most likely not good. He wondered if he even wanted to see-

And then his vision changed. His eyes went through a drastic change, as his sclera returned to a shining white again, while his iris became flaming red. Suddenly, a multitude of colours flared across his lens as his augmented eyes boosted into long-wavelength infrared. The creature stood before him, lit up like a flaring bonfire. Its body was a patchwork of light and dark colours, giving him a thermal image of the alien.

Leonard railed back in shock. What was this?! What was going on?!

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Typhoid crouched near Elena, scanning the others and frowning concernedly at Leonard. He couldnt bring himself to look at the alien. He wished he had his .22, knowing full well that it wouldnt help him.

"We...shouldnt be here. This is just some big trap."

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.

The entity’s roaming left eye focused squarely on Chester as he began speaking, staring intently at him for the duration of his questions; its gaze lingered on him for a few moments after he had fallen silent, but then the acidic orb began to resume roaming over the assembled abductees once more. Madeline had absolutely no idea what this might have signified; had this reptilian giant even understood a single word that had come out of the young man’s mouth?

At that moment Elena fell down, and the creature’s head whipped towards the black-haired young woman’s direction as she began to crawl away from it in panic; both of its eyes were focused entirely on her, ignoring the other altered humans at the moment as well as the circular lights which ringed the circumference of the door, and for a brief moment shockingly blue patterns resembling tiger stripes flared up all across its body. What these jagged pastel lines meant, Madeline could not fathom, but in any event they did not last long; the tiger stripes quickly faded away, leaving the creature’s scaly figure black once more , with whorls of violet and purple now replacing the smatterings of red, yellow and orange which it had had scant moments earlier.

For a few seconds the creature remained immobile, staring at Elena’s prone form with the same soul-piercing intensity which it had given Madeline upon reaching the threshold, silent but for the soft tapping of one massive sickle claw on the glossy grey floor. Then, still holding her with its phosphorescent green gaze, the entity stepped through the doorway and into the room with no sound but the soft thump-tap made by its steps, and slowly began to move towards the panicking young woman.

Madeline’s gaze hardened at this, and in spite of herself she stepped into the giant’s path; the twenty-nine year old had no idea exactly what she could possibly do against such an entity, especially given its great size and all the deadly weapons at its disposal, but she’d be damned if she was just going to stand there and do nothing while one of their alien captors tried to do God knows what with them.

The creature paused as the red-headed single mother placed herself in front of it, arms spread wide in an effort to block its passage. Those purple whorls grew more elaborate and more complex as it tore its gaze away from Elena and focused one eye on each of Madeline’s decidedly-amphibian hands, but after a moment these patterns returned to their original size and the creature’s arms shot out with surprising swiftness to grasp Madeline by her shoulders. The young woman let out a startled gasp at the sudden presence of alien hands on her person—they moved so quickly that she had not even seen them—and a part of her mind noted that its skin felt pebbly and somewhat cool to the touch; then, with surprising gentleness, the creature picked Madeline up, turned to the left and softly set her down out of its path.

With Madeline no longer in its way, the reptilian giant turned its gaze back to Elena and began to approach her once more. If it was at all aware of Guy and Typhoid’s presence, it gave no indication that this was the case; all of its attention was focused squarely on the prone young woman with glossy black legs.

The Danse Macabre Codex

Her first impression was that it was black. The air was strangely sterile, like it had been excessively scrubbed and recycled. It was cool, but unmoving. She had the impression that she was in a very small, enclosed space, and found herself beginning to worry. A moment later, she realized why: her breath, loud in her ears, could be heard echoing off of something directly in front of her face, and she could feel her breath rolling back onto her face, hot in the cool air of this confinement. Something organic-feeling wrapped around her, like tight-fitting clothing, and she got the impression of a one-piece swimsuit.

Alright, Shanna, chill. Let’s see if there’s a way out. She thought, then began feeling around in front of her. Her hands gave an impression of something hard and smooth, as cool as the air around her, though she could not tell if it was plastic, metal, or composite. She began feeling around and detected an almost infinitesimally small seam. She attempted to pry it open, but to no avail. That didn’t stop her: she wanted, needed to get out, and this might be her escape route. For some time, she struggled with the seam, until finally it gave way. The pod’s top slid open with a sudden crack and a painful grinding noise that implied something had been damaged.

Her eyes, already adjusted to the dark, could pick out shapes on the ground as she pulled herself into a standing position. They appeared similar to the pod she found herself now standing in. Some sort of shape seemed to be emblazoned on the floor, but in the dark it was difficult to discern. She stepped out of the pod and looked around. The room seemed featureless aside from the pods and the vague symbol on the ground, though the recycled feeling of the air was all-pervasive and uncomfortably cold.

Someone’s been here before me. It looks like I’m not the only one who was—what? Kidnapped, I think. By what? Probably that thing everyone’s been calling “Engima.” So...alien abduction. She stifled a snerk. That’s not cliché. Alright, to take stock. She remembered the skintight suit she’d felt in the pod and looked down. As her body had told her, it seemed uncomfortably organic, in a fleshy sort of way, not a plant sort of way. She could barely make out some sort of...veins? A living organism? Note to self: find something else to serve as clothing ASAP. A shudder of revilement went through her as she contemplated the idea of wearing a living creature. Then, something else caught her eye, something even more unnatural.

There appeared to be gill-like slits running along her forearm. She noticed the one on her right arm first, but a quick check yielded another one on her other arm.

“Wha...” She exhaled an almost-question in shock. Her hand shaking, she reached over to touch the slit on her left arm. She grimaced as both her hand and her arm—she could feel it—reported what her eyes had already told her. She ran her hand along its length, both horrified and mesmerized by the feeling. Suddenly, however, a thought struck her: Are there more? I truly hope not.

She checked the rest of her arms first, and saw nothing. But the check of her legs yielded two more of these gill-like things, running down her upper legs. She grimaced as she looked at them. Her mind reflexively clamped down on the rising panic in her mind as she closed her eyes tightly and began taking deep breaths.

Okay, calm down. It’s obvious that these aliens did this to you…why? An experiment? If so, then what hypothesis are they testing? It’s possible that they’re testing “I want to see what they do with this” but they’ll still need a control group of abductees without these... Her mind deftly slid around contemplation of these changes. So where are they? Perhaps we’re being kept separate. It’s possible that they were the ones who emerged before me, but that seems unlikely—they were also probably altered, and in the same way I was to avoid unforeseen circumstances. As she had no reason to remain standing, she sat down against her pod. Poor saps...wait, I’m one of them. I hate when that happens. She pressed her hands into her face, trying to suppress a sob that promised to be the first of many, but drew her hands back in shock when she felt two more “gill-slits” on her face, one on either cheek. Oh no, no no no, why...God, why is this happening to me? She curled up, burying her face in her knees. Her muscles tightened in an attempt to stop or at least suppress the sobs that wished to shake her body. Tears, only occasionally reinforced by a vocal cry, ran down Shanna’s cheeks and over her “gill-slits,” merely reinforcing the change, and this made her cry harder.

She didn’t know how long she stayed there, her mind a wordless jumble of shock, desperation, and an attempt to find a way out of this mess, while her altered body simply kept crying. Finally, some rationality returned to her.

Get it together. She told herself. She pulled herself to her feet and wiped away her tears. Her stomach did a somersault as her arm rubbed across her face, reminding her acutely of the alterations to both. Just don’t think about them. Think of a way to get out of here. She looked around, her mind grasping on to this singular goal for a semblance of stability, though normalcy was unlikely to appear on the menu. A few steps brought her to the smooth-looking wall, and she began walking down its length, running her hand across it in hopes of detecting some nigh-invisible seam.

edited 10th Jul '12 10:35:31 AM by Wysp

"Your mission is not to nuke the squid god." —Faramir

Typhoid was, for all of a few seconds, utterly paralyzed by the mere presence of the creature stalking after Elena. It was strange and terrible and beautiful all at once, like something out of the deepest drug-trance dreams.

He clutched at his cloak, feeling the cool nanofluid flow between his fingers and reform. It wasn’t a weapon, but it gave him a sort of dull comfort and inside he felt less frozen. His mind worked, pulling on his education for details. Reptilian. Highly evolved…he had read a novel once about aliens with two thumbs, Devils to all appearances, bringing instrumentality to humanity. Eyes were an obvious weakness, but now he could see how strong it must be.

Only the blind man and this woman had stirred him from his apathetic and unflattering view of the survivors around him. They were having trouble, but kept trying anyways. Not unkind to him, despite who he was. He hadn’t consciously resolved to fight for either of their sakes, but the fluid under his fingers was separating from the cloak and hardening.

Consciously, he was lost in the implications of the power the being before him possessed.

While the breath's in his mouth, he must bear without fail, / In the Name of the Empress, the Overland Mail.