It had been a nightmare...
Sweat. Loads of it sparkled around the floor. My hands automatically neared my face, and wiped off any of the trails of lack of sleep.
"Commandos..."
Remembering the faint steps, of the alloy-geared death-givers couldn't help but make my body turn cold and lifeless. Like that of a corpse who knows its already dead.
I was not too surprised about such a nightmare though. It had not been the first time I had dreamed with such an event. In fact, by this point of my life, it was a common occurrence.
"What time..."
It was almost midnight. A day on pluto, was as long as 153 standard hours. The light of the sun would not reach their latitudes for another 48 hours minimum.
That also meant I'd slept for about three hours.
...
Without muttering any words, I stood up from the wet, sweaty metal ground. A headache assaulted my mind, as my head span for a few seconds, causing me to lose some balance.
"I might be dying..."
I told myself, as my hand scraped against the gems on the back of my nape. Their movement was incesant. I could feel them slowly rise, and lower. Grow and shrink in a slow dance. As if the mysterious 'thing' was breathing inside my neck.
"Gross."
Strangely enough, I did not feel weird in any regard. My mobility, reflexes, flexibility... Apart from the visible part of the alien 'thing', I was not in any sort of danger.
The medical scans revealed there was not any type of internal scarring, it was a fairly shallow growth, so as far as we knew...
"I won't become a zombie. I think."
Anyways... I opened, and closed the sliding door behind me, making sure no one would be too bothered by my movements.
As usual, I sat on the nearby operations table inside the lobby. Basically, a round table with holographic capabilities. I gave in a shallow breath, before picking up the data pad from where I had left it yesterday, and continued with my task.
The strings of code were needlessly complex, overly redundant, and ill-thought off. One couldn't simply rewire a line, without thinking of the rest of the code first.
It was the equivalent of a burning hot, well-oiled machine. It worked very efficiently, up until the temperature augmented, and it burst into scorching flames with you inside.
"A bother."
The worst-case scenario was: I ruined the comms forever, and so we starved to death in a few weeks anyways.
Best case, I did my does, and was able to use the base, as an emitter to contact the outside.
"Whatever the outside is..."
There was not much to expand on the subject anyways. As Mack said, it was already a miracle that I didn't die from a severe coma each time I had to sit in front of code.
...
"Let's try to compile."
It took someone brave, bold, and genuinely stupid, to press the tactile button. But I had been checking the smaller details of the kindly-thought-of update for nearly four hours, and I was plenty sure something wouldn't blow up.
'Yes... There's a chance it works. Maybe.'
Anyways. There wasn't much I could do. And time was of the essence anyways. There were plenty of tasks to take care of, other than staring at a screen for hours on end.
'Mmm'
First, it was a thin, slightly unnoticeable, floating shard.
I blinked a couple of times to make sure I was not hallucinating.
I was not hallucinating. There was definitely a hovering, shallow line, just in the place my hand had been at a couple of seconds ago.
"What is..."
It was an instinct. Almost as if drawn from the edges of the very concept of conscience. It spoke to me, or rather, acted on me.
My hand didn't shake, it neared the slight crack in the air and enveloped it completely in the shape of a fist.
I felt blood drip from my left cheek before I realized what was wrong.
"Wh!!!"
In a fraction of a second, my vision was sent into a dark blur. The fabric of dimensions revolted and twisted before sharply being cut into a net of webs.