#blind mind

God I fucking hate surgery. Even the Vols with their spacetime bullshit can’t make it suck less. Recovery seems way faster than normal, though.

When you get the blind mind, and don’t undestand what did you say XD

Sorry VoodooDoll, I did mean we belive in you, for real! ;*

So she’s here?

Nearly.

I’ll go get suited up. Stall as best you can, guys.

Hey, and you take care out there.

{This is, in fact, an Omninet post. A cleared recording of the following events makes it public; embedded within the metadata is the following account. Content warnings for description of injury, identity issues, some body horror, and mild unreality.}

I’m holding onto a promise.

I have been in better walls.

True story, a translocator misfired once during a test run. Put me most of the way into a rotted alcove, gave me a wonderful panic attack. Lucky the universe tends to solve for telefragging events fairly elegant, otherwise I could have skipped a few meters up and got my atoms all mashed with the stone. Sometimes I still have nightmares about being stuck in there; entombed, stuck in the moment of panic before I could put my mech to use and break free.

It was a decent wall, all the same. Very least, didn’t hate me for being there. Not like this one.

The first, oh… five, or six hours? I was actually doing pretty good with this prowling thing. Staying low, stretching myself through the spaces between cable clusters and strange tech. Hearing it hum a little bit louder when I pressed my bulk against it. The spelunking expertise came in handy, and I was still dissociated enough to get a cool third-person POV on the whole thing. Cinematic, almost. I wished I was recording, thought maybe Styx— maybe anyone— would find this interesting.

That illusion’s been dispelled pretty thoroughly. It’s coming on hour eight, and I still can’t find where Lawahiz decided to plop her bridge or crèche or whatever, and it turns out no amount of self-hype will stave off boredom. Dragging, unhappy boredom; I’ve taken to popping the front of my body open, letting the meat inside curl out into the air like a fresh molt and do something, anything, to pass the time. It’s for the best I take these breaks, frustrating as they are— I’m not supposed to be interfacing with the AFFINITY system this long. My musculature feels like cube steak from the minute, compounding misalignments of the microneedles that embed over and over into my limbs.

I keep getting the sense that it should feel worse. I keep thinking about caterpillars, and chrysalises. I can’t tell if that’s a bad thing.

I record this now, to transmit clear and wide, that there be evidence of that which stands against us, should the worst come to pass. We are facing vastly superior technology; it is on the good will of our captors that we now depend.

I , Saleh Fakhour, attest that for the last 473 hours, our ship Jeweled Wings About has been held captive and at arrest by a Volador trade ship, identifying as Lawahiz of the Creed of Low Waters. This arrest was immediate and preceding any preliminary hails; our ship’s velocity was simply reappropriated by a blinkspace current, restricting our ability to move and presenting a clear and present threat by implication.

From this moment we were charged and set to a tribunal of Lawahiz’ making; she accused a member of our crew, Loulou Greeves, of having stolen an artifact from her in the past. When we attempted to negotiate the safe return of the artifact, she presented a secondary term of surrender— the use of said artifact to affect one of our number, resulting in their death. She has refused to be swayed from her conviction in this, and it is evident that to cede possession at this moment would be to condemn our own. I must stress that no Union judiciary channels were invoked or contacted in this time; we are located within Union space and are cosmopolitan citoyens of her planets, yet Lawahiz has seen fit to play all parts of fact-finding, judiciary, and punitive process.

We are now reaching a fever pitch. Lawahiz has moved upon us, and brought a number of Espada to board our ship and force the matter. We will protect our own, as allowed under the rules of war; following the broadcast of this transmission we will be going to ground by way of persistent hard-light shielding, which may yet buy us time. Yet still, the lives of at least two of our number are in jeopardy.

I forward chronal and positional data alongside the contents of this broadcast; I do not at this time request the presence of external aid, as to do such may provoke greater bloodshed. But I do ask that all observe this message and understand that we have been given no fair due; she has taken her will to execute upon us, with no consideration for right and will of our own.