>>23840364Chapter 7: Neuronstorm
The suit shuddered again. Sparks flickered along the forearm plating. Oxygen levels oscillated between 22% and 18%, red digits flashing like alarms screaming inside her helmet. She clawed at the controls, but the HUD melted in her vision, fractalized, showing not numbers but faces — hers, someone else’s, memories that weren’t hers but felt unbearably close.
Purple tendrils writhed outside the shattered viewport, Xen’s islands twisting, pulsing, floating impossibly against the black expanse. Coins drifted past, spinning, spinning, some glowing faintly like neurons firing in a brain that was too big, too bright, too alive.
She stumbled, caught on the railing. Her boots didn’t touch the floor. Did the floor even exist? Or was this another hallucination — Earth rain dripping across cracked tiles, someone laughing at the mess hall, neon lights blinking in her eyes?
BEEP BEEP BEEP.
OXYGEN LEVEL 15%… SUIT BREACH…
The sharp pulse rattled her skull. Her fingers moved on autopilot, sealing latches, toggling valves. Sparks hissed. Pain lanced up her arm. She coughed, tasted metal. Alive. Somehow still alive.
A coin drifted past. She reached. It floated inside the suit briefly — a Pizeolectric Picard Coin? The absurdity of the name split her hallucinations into shards of laughter and panic.
Tentacles reached closer. They weren’t alive in a way she could understand. They were everything. She jumped, lungs burning, landing on another floating island. HUD flickered again — faces, brains, memories, stars, blood — it all blurred.
A voice whispered, familiar but wrong: “Protect the cortex. Don’t let it fragment.”
She froze. The memory wasn’t hers… or maybe it was.
And then she ran.
