🌑

Your empathic sense feels overwhelming--you understand her--you know you can still get through to her.

“7! I know how it is, beholden to the will of a mother who only sees you as a tool! A weapon! A thing to possess and use!”

You stumble forward as the worsening vertigo plays havoc with your balance. The world spins slowly around you, your head feels like it’s spinning the other way, out of sync.

“You couldn’t understand!” Her words carry a shockwave in the æther, pushing its way into your shield, putting pressure on your head. “Does your mother tell you who to be friends with? Who you can’t? Does she track your every move? Your every thought and feeling?!”

“She would if I let her!” You feel a pull like gravitation, drawing you closer to her. It’s all you can do to stay standing. You’re a meter away from her, and just behind her, the walls and openings of the rotating intermodule passage slowly cycle.

“Aydan! Don’t get any closer! She’s in your head!” Zeta says.

7 reaches out with her right hand, lines and lines of commands scrolling by on the terminal on her arm. You feel numb, light-headed, confused of your surroundings. You can’t resist lifting up your hand, reaching out to hers--you touch.

And she grasps you by the wrist, tight as a mechanical vice. The wall opens up behind her. You’re falling. She pulls you toward her. You collide--your momentum pushes her, and both of you cross over to the counter-rotating floor behind. You see Akiko and Zeta running up to you just as the rotation quickly carries you away.

Still falling in the low G, you feel her grip on your nervous system release. But before you can do anything, she has her fingers locked into the small joints of your hand. She turns it and your body has no choice but to comply, your inertia now her plaything as she throws you to the floor, pinning you down by both wrists. Although her weight is low, her strength feels insurmountable to your Lunatic body.

Her magenta eyes stare into you, piercing through your every defense. You can feel it in the near-æther--she’s starting to dissociate. Her technopathy will be far stronger, but her body will be momentarily vulnerable. It will be 30 seconds before your friends can reach you again on the other side--more than enough time for a skilled technopath in the æther to do anything she wants.