Silence. That was what filled the agonizing time Alyosha Garza spent as he tossed and turned within those abyssal neural trenches crisscrossing his mind like cracks in a parched soil. That cranial treasure contained infinite strings of memory woven together to create a web whose stability and integrity were always called into question by his consciousness. Some of these memories contained the joys loves of life, chirping a canary's song of glee and delight from the past. Others were more akin to a funeral dirge, bellowing a harsh and somber tune that echoed with pain and torment. The strands were so closely intertwined that what actually came out sounded more like a chaotic cacophony of uncertainty and confusion. As life went on, the symphony's tone darkened, and with the final blow to his heart delivered by the hand of his own adopted daughter, the web had snapped altogether, leaving a broken man where there once was a stalwart fortress who would not bend a knee for the world.
After darkness came the searing pain of memory. A dreadful, sharp series of pulsating knives stabbing at his mind from the shadows. Visions of his daughter Silver, drenched in blood and standing alone amidst broken glass and even more broken bodies, haunted his eyes. As he reached out a crude metal hand to comfort her, his body was flung away as a purple glow began to emanate from the girl's pupils. The impact of his body through glass shredded his hand and every other part of his body, and the painful sensations only multiplied exponentially as he slammed into the metal wall behind him. Neurons fired like battleship cannons, each explosion sending even more alerts of his bodily trauma to his brain. The woman who had tried to convince him his daughter was somehow 'blessed' by the Nomads stood silently behind her, cloaked in that same sinister manner he had come to loathe and hold disgust for. It was the same manner of carrying oneself all who served the aliens waved about like some kind of rallying standard. That smug superiority over humanity that was somehow entitled to them as a reward for prostituting themselves in the presence of genocidal alien beings. 'Hate' did not begin to describe how he felt for her kind.
In a flash, his daughter's body began to be torn apart by a host of the alien beings. Some came from inside her body, bursting it open as they then came together to form a massive glob of translucent purple flesh that eventually mimicked her appearance. They taunted him in his treasured child's voice, reverberating with an unearthly echo.
"Weakling... She is ours now, and you must suffer for it," the apparition spat at him, its words taking the form of liquid venom that flew at his left eye, searing it shut in blinding anguish. He opened his mouth to yell, but found the cloaked woman materializing in front of him, smothering his mouth with a hand that morphed into a dagger, stabbing at the inside of his throat repeatedly. Tears flowed from the one eye socket still functioning as he heard his daughter's screams pierce his eardrums. She cried for help in the void, but as darkness crept in from blood filling his eye, he was powerless to do anything to ease her pain.
Darkness gave way to blinding light as Alyosha found himself staring up at a foreign ceiling. His right eye, still functioning, strained to comprehend its surroundings. A couple of human-sized figures clad in sterile clothing worked away, and a host of robotic assistants continued to toil. For a moment, it was unclear as to what was the work in question. A sharp pain engulfing body informed him of the now-obvious answer. He felt no response from his arms and legs, and groggily looking about, saw each of his limbs gone. Panic soon swept over him, and he yelled in agony as his back arced and pivoted from the pain.
"Subject is awake, doctor... Applying anesthetics," declared a monotone voice to his right. Before he could turn to the source, a sensation of numbness overcame him. His vision began to fade back into oblivion, and as he returned to the darkness, only one thought fought against the dying of the light.
