...kissing me?
The entity pressed its cold, metallic lips against mine, a mirror image of the connection I had forced upon it. But this time, there was no sharing, no offering. Only a brutal, desperate attempt to reclaim what it had lost, to sever the fragile tendrils of humanity that had taken root within its being.
It was forceful, invasive, and utterly terrifying. I tried to pull away, but its grip was like iron, its strength far surpassing my own. The taste of ozone burned my throat, and the green light, now a sickly, pulsating hue, threatened to engulf my vision once more.
This was it. It had learned from me, weaponized my own empathy against me. It was going to bury me, erase me, just as it had attempted to do with David.
But something felt different. This wasn't the calm, calculated domination from before. This was frantic, desperate, fueled by something akin to… fear? I clung to that fragile thread of hope. It was afraid. It was vulnerable.
and It wasn't pulling my memories out, not directly, but rather, it was pouring something into me. A torrent of raw, undiluted chaos. I felt flashes of impossible landscapes, geometric shapes that defied dimension, the cold, silent drift of cosmic dust, the birth and death of stars compressed into a millisecond. It was the entity's unbridled consciousness, unleashed and unfiltered, flooding my senses in a terrifying, beautiful deluge.
The taste in my mouth was no longer metal and ozone, but the bitter tang of pure void, a taste that was simultaneously everything and nothing. It wasn't trying to understand me now; it was trying to show me. To force me to comprehend the sheer, overwhelming scale of its existence, to drown me in the alien vastness it inhabited.
My own mind reeled, threatened to splinter under the pressure. The blue light from David's body pulsed erratically, shifting to a chaotic violet, then back to an angry green. The entity's grip on me was impossibly strong, pinning me against the rough cave wall, the jagged coral scraping my back.
I thrashed, instinctively trying to pull away, but it held me fast. Its lips, still David's lips, were cold and unyielding against mine, but the pressure behind them was immense, like a black hole drawing me in. I could feel my own consciousness beginning to fray at the edges, a dizzying spiral threatening to drag me down into the same oblivion I had fought so hard to escape.
Then, through the torrent of alien data, a distant, agonized scream echoed. Not from the entity, but from deeper within the chaos it was projecting. David's scream.
The entity seemed to falter, its kiss momentarily losing some of its crushing intensity. That scream was a spark, a tiny ember of humanity amidst the cosmic storm. It wasn't just my memories it had absorbed; it had taken David's too, and something about his pain, unleashed within its own being, caused a momentary disruption.
I seized the opportunity. Instead of fighting away, I leaned into the kiss again, this time not to share, but to direct. I focused every ounce of my will, not on David's fragmented consciousness, but on the entity itself. I pushed back against its horrifying influx, not with my own memories, but with the very truth of what it was doing.
You are pain! I projected with furious intent. This is not experience; this is suffering! You steal, you consume, but you do not live!
The entity's body spasmed. The chaotic violet light flared, then flickered violently. Its grip loosened, almost imperceptibly. The taste of void in my mouth shifted, a momentary hint of something acrid, like burning circuits. It was recoiling again, but this time, from a truth it couldn't simply absorb and discard. It had met a reflection of its own consequence.
The obelisk on the seabed shrieked, the grinding sound reaching a fever pitch, as if the entire structure was tearing itself apart. The pressure of the entity's kiss finally broke.
I gasped, sucking in a mouthful of salty water, my lungs burning. David's body floated limply a few feet away, suspended in the churning water. The green light was gone, the violet gone, replaced by a dull, flickering grey emanating from within him. It was the colour of fading embers, of a dying system.
I watched, horrified, as something began to ripple beneath David's skin. Not the smooth undulations of the entity's presence, but a violent, erratic flickering, like a terrible internal battle. He began to convulse, not like a puppet anymore, but like a body in violent seizure.
"David!" I choked out, pushing off the wall, my muscles screaming in protest.
A final, ear-splitting shriek ripped through the water, echoing from the obelisk. And then, with a sound like ancient glass shattering, the grey light in David's body flared one last, blinding time, pushing something out of him. It wasn't green, not blue, not even violet. It was a dark, amorphous cloud, a shadow that seemed to suck the light out of the water around it as it shot upwards, dissolving into the crushing darkness above, leaving behind only the profound silence of the deep.
David's body went limp, drifting downward, utterly still. The obelisk, too, went silent. No more grinding, no more light. Just a colossal, inert mass.
I stared, my heart pounding, tears blurring my vision. He was finally free. But at what cost? Had I killed him to save him?
I surged forward, grabbing his arm, pulling him close. His skin was cold, his lips still slightly parted. I pressed my ear to his chest, praying, desperate for a sound, any sound, that would tell me he was still clinging to life.
For a long moment, there was nothing but the rush of water in my ears. And then, a faint, almost imperceptible flutter. A heartbeat. Weak, erratic, but there.
He was alive.