Deus

...

Adam freezes in place.

The red mist swells and churns around him as the monoliths tower high overhead.

The word echoes and repeats down the vast streetways and up into the high reaches of the cavernous spaces overhead blending with the moaning of creaking metal.

He turns in a sharp circle and immediately begins a broadcast to the ship, "Omen one this is admiral vir calling for immediate backup. I am not alone, I repeat, I am not alone."

He got only static back.

Frozen in place and staring into the res haze, he becomes very unsettled as he notices a thickening in the clouds, great billowing resthat presses downward from above, covering the monoliths where they had once been rather visible.

He couldn't see more than a few feet in front of him now, and hugs the wall tight with fear gripping his chest. He reaches down to his hip and unholsters the gun that is strapped there.

The advanced sensory systems in his gloves transfers the feeling of hard metal directly into his fingertips. He kept his finger outside the trigger guard, worries being jumpy would lead him to doing something stupid.

He looks up and sees nothing but resmist.

It continues to billow around his feet, and now it is getting hard to see his hands.

He presses his back against the wall as he scoots back in the direction he had come following the map on his wrist indicator.

The Geiger counter on his wrist blinks to life and inside his helmet he begins hearing the slow rattling clicks as he is given an audio indication of the radiation. It seems to be rolling in with the fog.

That hardly makes sense as he hasn't been detecting any hint of radiation before this, but he supposes small concentrations of smoke is nothing like the billowing mist that now surrounds him. He keeps his back against the wall as the clicking grows faster.

The radiation is rising, though he isn't much worried about its effects on him. The suit was designed to withstand radiation in the direct light of a star, so it doesn't much concern him.

What concerns him is the slowly invading ressmoke, and how he can no longer see his own hand in front of his face.

His breathing comes hard and fast inside his helmet creating a surprisingly humid environment inside the climate controllessuit.

He turns off all of his lights as the billowing smoke keeps interfering with his line of sight, and he has a horrible feeling that the light is only giving him a halo effect, and making him more obvious to whatever could be watching him.

That voice hasn't spoken in some minutes, and in a way he almost begins to believe that it was some sort of hallucination. Perhaps it was all a figment of a torturesimagination on a strange alien world, and nothing was watching him after all. Maybeit was some sort of auditory hallucination brought on by an imbalance of atmosphere inside his suit.

He looks down to check his wrist indicator, but pauses halfway there. If that isn't the case, he isn't sure he wants to know. The thought of the voice being real scares him more than he would like to admit, so he stays quiet and keeps his way along the wall.

If he can just make it back to his ship, then he knows he ill be fine.

He feels better in the air than he does on the ground after all.

He is a pilot, and any issues he could run into while in the air are things than he is comfortable dealing with.

He has reached the edge of the monolith now, feeling it's cold steel pressing against his back.

The red mist swirls before him so thick that the scattered light reaching through to him is no better than the last fingers of twilight.

He stares into the abyss.

He is breathing hard and his fingers tingle inside his gloves with his back pressed against the wall.

He takes a deep breath glancing quickly down the side passage as he hears a deep and low groaning. He knows it is probably just the metal monoliths creaking overhead, but he can't help but think about the Ancient Greek Labyrinth and the minotaur that wandered it's corridors.

Quickly,he kicks the gravity fields on his boots to life,and presses back against the wall in preparation to launch himself forward into the mist.

He is just readying himself to push off the wall when...

Suddenly his fingers are touching nothing.

His breath catches in his throat, cutting off a scream as he silent pitches backwards into darkness.

His hands flail and his feet kick for a second before a hard impact reverberates through his suit, knocking the wind from his body.

His vision is completely obscured by blackness.

He can't breath.

Adam rolls onto his side gasping and choking mouth opening and closing like a fish as his stunned diaphragm struggles to take in air.

A warning light on his suit begins going off as his blood oxygen content takes a sharp downward spike.

He rocks from ide to side in a panic trying to find his breath again, and finally gasps in a loud wheeze of air.

The warning light in his suit slows down before finally stopping.

He lays on his side in the darkness gasping and taking long, slow deep breaths groaning slightly as he regains his breath. The suit's warning lights fade and then vanish.

He is left alone in the dark breathing heavily.

Adam rolls onto his stomach and then onto his hands and knees. The sensors in the suit's gloves can detect the hard smoothness of the metal under his hands. He doesn't see anything else at first, and is about to turn on his lights when a soft resglow begins out of the darkness. At first, he thinks it is just a hallucination or his imagination like he assumes the voice had.

But the light continues to grow, and, as it does, others join it.

A hundresmaye even be a thousand glowing resorbs about the size of his fist or a little bit bigger.

They line the hallway before him clustered on the walls and on the floor in groups that reminde him, not so comfortingly, of alien parasitic spores from popular science fiction.

He tries to crawl backward, but his foot hit something hard, and he turns to find a dark metal surface slick and impenetrable lit up by reslight.

He swallowes hard.

He was alone,

He tries engaging his comm though nothing works, and he was simply left alone in the silence.

Inside his chest, his heart pounded, and he does his best to breathe slowly and evenly.

With some trepidation, he stands and begins forward into the hallway.

The one mission he had actually wanted to bring other people on, and he couldn't. The shuttles were to clunky to handle an atmosphere like this and far too large to navigate all of the strange obstacles that he had spotted on his way down. It had been a one man job to make it here, and it looked like it was going to be a one man job getting out.

Sure the marines could take the pods down at his request, and they probably would if they receive his transmission, but he would rather they didn't it is far too dangerous.

Red light spills in through his face mask and glows off his skin.

The little red orbs pulse slowly brighter and then fading away giving him the foreboding impression of a beating heart or blood rushing through veins. The very thought itself sends shivers up his back as he makes his way down the dark hallway.

He doesn't realize it at first, but the expanse was much larger than he had thought, and the hallway in which he walks spannes quite wide, across a great entrance hall – or so it seems to him.

As he walks, the hallway seems to morph until it is no more a hallway but a large room.

Pillars rise up at the center, covered in the clusters of little red pulsing orbs.

The room is massive, so large in fact, that he can barely make out the ceiling in the darkness aboe, it seems to rise up into the very tops of the monolith itself.

The vastness of the room makes him feel very small, but he continues walking, knowing there is no point in going back.

If he is going to find a way out, it is going to have to be forward.

His heart continues to hammer in his chest as he passes massive pillar by massive pillar.

Again he is struck by how large the room is, and consequently, the size of the pillars, which are larger than redwood trunks and spout the little red obs like barnacles sprout on the bottom of a boat.

He doesn't realise it until he exits the forest of pillars that he has not even reached the center of the room yet. He is just at i's fringes and now that the pillars are gone, he can see across the vastness of the room to where an alien structure stands dormant.

He shivers as soon as he sees it.

Whatever it is.... It is wrong.... alien .... And unknowable.

His eyes try to follow its outline, but make it only a few feet before becoming confused and going nowhere.

It is a mass tangle of metal, constructed like a strange alien protein or some kind of warped sea creature.

The more he looks at it, the more his eyes churn in confusion.

He tires to look away, but that doesn't help much.

He shakes his head.

The weird tangled structure sits at the center of the room, all alone.

He wants to stay away from it, but at the same time he feels pulled towards it. He knows it is completely irrational, like all of the teenage girls in cheep horror movies going into the dark places instead of following their instincts.

He had always thought that those were unrealistic, but now he can see that he was wrong.

He understands the feeling as he is pulled across the open floor and towards the structure.

Like everything on this strange planet, he has immediately underestimated the size of the structure. As he grows closer, it towers over him, a massive twist of wicked metal swirls, infinite and completely unfathomable in the human eye.

Its almost two, maybe even four stories tall, and stretches out far enough to completely encompass a small building or even a house.

His skin prickles.

The same feeling as if he is being watched.

He glances over his shoulder but sees nothing.

He then looks towards the structure wonderin if something could be hiding in it. Is it some sort of alien nest? Are hose things on the wall its offspring.

Is he going to die here.

He stands there for many minutes, unsure of what to do or where to go.

Where is he going to find a way out?

He turns back to the structure.

It sits quietly.

He shivers.

Its a strange feeling, it seems as if it is watching him, in the same way a person watches you or an animal, but as if you know that the animal can speak but is simply choosing to withhold that ability.

Like it was being INTENTIONALLY silent.

He takes a step back but stops.

Krill would kill him if he knew.

He always warned adam against the kind of impulses he is getting now, but he cant seem to help himself.

Before he knows what he is doing, he reaches out a hand his fingers splayed wide as he reaches towards the strange object.

His fingers remble a little.

And then they make contact.

At first he feels nothing until a sensation registers through his gloves.

The object is soft.... And warm....

...

Organic

....

He only has a split second to register this feeling before he is assaulted by a force so powerful he can barely comprehend it.

Knocked out of his mind.

Completely out of space and time.

His vision is obscured by blackness, though he feels as if he is spinning, his body whirling repeatedly end over end in some sort of eternal cartwheel. Though he cannot see he can sense a void of eternal blackness all around him stretching out to infinity on all sides

He cannot fathom how long he spins it could be a simple moment or it could have been a thousand years. His body does not register time in this palace, almost as if there was no time to register.

He is simply a conscience in a void of eternal darkness.

And then.... Light.

All around him an eruption of light, a massive expansion outward that begins from everywhere and nowhere all at once. His vision is filled with blistering heat though there is no pain. He is simply enveloped by a wall of white. And where there once was eternal darkness, there is only light.

It fills his vision and spills through him like a river of molten gold, rushing through his veins with a wave of fire and ecstasy incomprehensible by the human mind: a feeling no drug could ever touch.

He can feel it burning at his fingertips and toes, pushing his skin till it seems to burst and light leaks out through the cracks.

He is one with the light.

Part of it.

Enveloped completely.

There is no time, and no space, just the burst of light.

Then before him the light begins to condense, collapsing inwards to show the darkness once more, but, this time, instead of just one or the other, the points of light cluster together on a backdrop of blackness, sharing the space neither one dominating over the other.

The light continues to unfold, curling outward like a swirling sinuous body before outstretching great wings of stars.At once it seems like a massive dragon is stretched across the sky before its silhouette fades and it is gone, its body fading backwards into the illuminating mass.

He can finally comprehend what he is seeing as he watches stars form inside fields of gas at billions of times the speed. He watches them swirl together in great spiraling forms.

His body is shot through space at what must be trillions of times faster than the speed of light, though it seems to be no more than a gentle float through the vastness,, passing by towering spirals of stars and gas making galaxies and trails of stars hung like ribbons.

He reaches out a hand, feeling though not seeing and feels hot embers of flame across his fingers as he takes his hand through a field of stars causing them to burst away from each other like scattering dandelion fluff.

Infinity continues on below him and above him and to all sides of him.

The stars spin and so does his mind.

His thoughts are still even as they race, held together simply by the gravity of his own consciousness.

Stars take up his vision.

His mind can neither comprehend or begin to comprehend what he is seeing, but instead of confusion or collapsing inward on himself, he feels.

At home.

A warmth begins in his chest welling up into his throat and then behind his eyes.

The relief of returning home after a long journey,

Of seeing loved ones again.

Of returning to ones childhood stomping grounds and lifting their head to the wind as memories come rushing back on the breeze.

He takes a deep breath, though there should be no air to breathe.

The vacuum of space has no hold on him.

He is immune.

Powerful.

He is carried across the universe pulled towards it's edge watching as stars fly past on either side.

A pinprick of light, just like the others, and then it expands filling his vision.

His eyes widen as brightness envelops him, and he can sense something just beyond the veil of light.

He feels as if he could reach forward and cast the veil aside like a gossamer curtain.

And then.

Nothing.

The light stops, and he is no longer moving. The curtain seems to wave before him, and he can sense shapes beyond, or at least he swears he can.

He reaches out desperately.

But is pulled backwards.

His heart shatters.

Like a glass sculpture thrown to the ground with violent intensity The pain of it is immense and incomprehensible, and he doesn't understand why, which only makes the sensation all the worse, all the more confusing.

He is a child, lost and alone, left outside cold and alone.

Unprotected.

He is lost in a well of agony.

Until a soft voice.

You Are Not Ready

The voice is, gentle, filled with concern, as if consoling a child.

It is not unkind, quite the opposite, and it acts upon him like the soft caress of a mother or father. Though he has no body, it almost feels as if he is enveloped, wrapped in protective arms, or a thick blanket during cold winter as the snow falls from above.

The veil fades back into darkness.

His body hurts for what he is leaving behind, but the arms lead him gently away, and where they touch he feels heat and light just as he did when approaching the barrier.

He can no longer understand what he is seeing.

Tears leak from his eyes, spilling outwards as points of white light to drip down and join the stars.

Then he stops moving.

Hands, gentle, and consoling cast him backwards to float out into space.

As soon as the fingertips are gone, the light vanishes with it.

He wants to stay.

He desperately wants to.

But the voice comes again.

You Are Not Ready.

And then blackness. The voice echoing in repeated circles around inside his head.

He hits the ground hard, and is knocked breathless for the second time. Eternity collapses in on itself back to a pinpoint focus so tight it seems claustrophobic and crushing.

He gasps for air feeling as if he is dying for a moment, though his body soon regains control over his own senses. The limited pinpoint of consciousness and sensation being his own, very limited body.

He is lying face down on cold metal, and the sensation of what he has lost wells up even more. He curls into a ball, his hands around his chest, knees brought up. Tears roll down his face and drip onto the screen of the helmet.

He sobs quietly, unable to control the overwhelming feeling that something profound and irreversible has been taken from him, though he doesn't know what.

Through his tears, and through the face screen he can see the swirling mist of red. The structure is gone and so is the monolith.

The ground rumbles below him though it is a distant thing, only a rattle.

He lays there for a long time as his consciousness slowly squeezes itself back inside his skull feeling confined and cramped in a sensation he would never be able to explain in words or in writing.

More vibrations though these ones are uneven.

"We found him!"

"Omen respond, we have found the admiral."

"That doesn't make sense! How did he get here."

"What do you mean."

"This is nearly thirty miles from his last broadcasted position."

The voices help him stitch his mind back into place.

A hand on his shoulder, barely noticeable through his space suit.

"Admiral, admiral can you hear me....." he has forgotten where his mouth is, "Adam!" More mumbling voices, "His vitals are clear, heart rate is elevated, reparation elevated."

"Picking up some abnormal cerebral activity curving towards normal."

That's Krill's voice.

He remembers now.

"Adam."

Ramirez?

Arms grab him around the chest and force him into a sitting position. His head lolls to the side.

A hand catches him and holds his head up. He leans heavily against Ramirez as he tries to remember how to move.

"Adam, can you hear me."

A light passes through his mask and onto his face.

He cringes away from the light. It hurts much more than the other light he remembers.

"Come on, buddy, talk to me." Ramirez pats the side of his helmet.

He blinks hard and takes a deep breath.

"Ramirez?"

"I'm here, I'm right here."

His tongue feels like lead and the insides of his mouth are coated in sandpaper. He coughs.

"Adam, what happened."

His vision spins, "I.... I don't remember I.... I was.... Inside, and then..."

"The monoliths collapsed, they just fell out of the sky and.... We thought you were dead."

"But I.... I was inside and then.... And then I was everywhere."

The marines looked at each other in some confusion."

"Your GPS cut out almost ten hours ago and shortly after that the monoliths began falling from the sky and collapsing in on the structures. It was chaos, destroyed everything. And then an hour ago your GPS coordinates appeared here.... Did you walk?"

He looked up confused, "No.... I... I don't know how I got here."

"Someone get him up and into the shuttle. He probably hit his head in the collapse."

"Good idea."

Two marines moved forward and helped to drag him to his feet.

His legs didn't work, so they had to drag him to one of the ground shuttles and then back over the open planes of the planet before they were able to find an atmospheric opening that would allow a less experienced pilot to fly out.

His head continued to spin.

He stared down at the planet and it's red haze as he was carried away.

In the back of his head a soft whisper.

You Are Not Ready