Omega dug for answers and expertise.

She delved through the store of souls for their colony. Brushing over the identities to discern which could serve her.

Categorized by profession and background. The wealth of doctors, surgeons, mystics healers. Advisors and observers. Researchers and dreamers.

Aoria’s best and brightest souls over the entirety of time that the archival process could trawl and whatever allies and volunteers from outside the ‘nation’s’ borders that passed the vetting process of the councils.

She dug with fury and attention to feel out for precisely the spark of insight and genius she would need.

There and there.

Then she sank through them, letting their knowledge and intuition well up within her. She called up their souls in her own and embraced what knowledge and cooperation they would give her.

It was not possible to force this. All good mediums knew that a willing spirit was the only spirit that could share its talents.

But Omega had learned most would be willing if they could feel a need that they themselves had felt.

And among the practitioners of medicine there was almost ALWAYS someone they had wanted to save.

A spark that lit the fire of their passion.

And right then omega could feel such a spark blazing in her soul.

That thing had BROKEN aleph.

There was a real risk that her friend would never be the same without this help. That in no incarnation after this would she be able to shed the scars on her soul.

Aleph was new, she was a fresh soul, a spirit unmarked. And Omega had thought she was ready to meet the dark and horror of space.

And out here she had possibly gotten Aleph’s entire series of incarnations tainted irrevocably.

Unless she could pull off a miracle.

And trust the very monster that had injured her friend so terribly.

Omega had saw how the beast ‘pylo’ viewed the world, she heard it leer and croon and caress her mind every time it ‘spoke’.

It was like temptation and tease in every single syllable.

But now she knew it also looked with ‘hunger’ it viewed everything as a instrument for it’s desires. A Potential conquest.

Every bulkhead, every single scrap of metal. The grain in its mucus and of course Omega and Quarti and Aleph. That sight had hungered and evaluated and graded everything around it like a piece of delectable meat.

It made Omega shudder to even imagine attempting what she was planning.

But Aleph was facing a future of torturous disgust. Possibly for dozens of life times before she finally succumbed and never returned to life.

Omega couldn't let that happen to her friend.

Not when it was HER fault that she brought the kid along.

No matter what it cost Omega.

No matter if she had to open herself up to that THING and it's horrible grasping, cloying thoughts and senses.

Even if it left her some hollowed out soulless husk at the end. She would save Aleph from this.

That determination shined and called to the healers in the storage, to the souls of diagnosticians and psycho surgeons. Maybe not the very best of terra, but certainly in the upper quartile. Omega reached for a small council of the best she could determine, filling herself with each of their expertise to evaluate the others until she settled on five to carry into her local archive.

It was maybe a bit much to try and hold at once for a channeling.

But she did not want to risk one overlooking what another could have spotted.

And it was Omega’s fault Aleph came in the first place!

She could survive a little over exertion and a slight burning in her spine.

Aleph hung curled up in on herself, still unconscious. It was just too cruel to let the girl stay awake in her condition.

It was time, there was no point in delaying any longer.

Omega faced the monster.

It’s voice washed over her like fluttering kisses.

“Mmm are you ready for me? My sweet little succulent? Are you ready to feel me in you and you in me as I feel in her? To know and stroke the precious morsel as she is lost in anguish?”

There was no way not to take the tone as something creepy and suggestive the way it ‘sounded’ and ‘felt’ in her head. There were even hints of phantom brushes and touches all over her body.

The beast moved and slided in the dark, black flesh or bone or whatever it was shining.

”Shall we satisfy her pain and loss together? Shall we become and twine as one in, to kiss and press the petals of her mind? With my sight cradled and nestled and writhing and your intent cutting and flowing into her-”

Omega had enough, the thing made her want to recoil and shiver. It made her spine want to twist and it made her blood boil when it spoke about Aleph like that.

“YES, Let’s just get on with it!”

Quarti was staring at her with a bit of a frown.

“The-freaksome-lustom-bustom nay’nt mean nothing by the slinky skinny speech omega. It’s all just swishing sashy lovey-dovey polite like yush? No harm or bite or hurt meant and just-twixing to save save and right her wrong. Don’t be so rudely shouty-nayer kay?”

Omega sighed and turned to look out the bulkhead at the thing, it had not asked for Aleph to be brought out into the open and Omega was not going to offer, she would stay in the berth. And so would omega. It’s not like the walls really meant anything to the monster anyway.

“Then you are ready sweet and beautiful one? To part my defenses and touch where you have never before? To know and feel and let the touches run through and out and in? Sweet thoughts growing plump, turgid and ripe with your potence in the kernal and seed-”

“Yes, I’m ready!”

She called on calm, on focus and then shaped a space in herself to become what the Diagnosticians had been. She felt her vision growing different, perspective shifting. Lookiing on Aleph and on her memories of her care already she had hunches start to rise from her passenger.

There were already a dozen candidates but she needed data, real data.

She brought up the psycometry of Aleph from before their departure. As the experts and doctors before her there was no risks, no signs of danger or maladies anything like what she saw now in the poor girl.

No possessions or gauls of spirit or contortions of mind outside norm.

She had been healthy, a fresh soul but also a precocious girl.

Omega was looking forward to the two of them trading off as mentor and student down the old cycle.

She had thought she knew what to expect.

Before it had been like her eyes became grasping, groping fingers. Like her vision was a hungry suckling mouth on everything.

It had been dizzying and a bit overwhelming and nonsensical.

It was like every sight had become a vessel for her use, enticing in potential in every way.

But at the time she had still felt like she understood it anyway.

She had expected that.

Instead suddenly she was.

Two.

No more then two, it was like she was a weird blind and fragile little fruit clinging to herself and her proper self.

With long sinuous fore pair of limbs with dainty little distils and strong trio of aft limbs ready to grasp and pull. She shivered as her sight filled in and brushed every part of her. Making her flesh warm and quiver with anticipation and her own stomach clench around itself in sudden potential.

But where was the monster?

Omega was a medium, she was a wearer and carrier of souls, the essence of their skills. A Sharer of expertise.

She was used to riding with another terran meshing across her to become and give her depth of insight or practicum.

But she had always felt that hint of resistance, the slight tension that if she and the other moved against each other there would be a separation and she would lose what she had gained.

Now she couldn’t feel the monster and it made her nervous.

It must have been hiding somehow, ready to pounce on her. And she had trouble keeping it clear in her head that would be bad.

But no, she wasn't interested in these terrans at all. She had Tunie.

Ugh what would she even want one of these things for? They were fragile, it was like holding a aged water balloon. You were sure it was just going to burst at every moment.

She hoped that Omega-

Wait...

She shook both her heads and tried to blink, how did she blink she had no eyes? She blinked with the eyes she had been born with.

Where was Pylo? Where was herself?

She was Omega and there was no one else here...

What did that thing DO?!

It was like the thing had shucked out its soul or something, leaving just omega riding it? No it was more, she had it, all of it waiting to serve. It was not like using a soul’s memory, she didin’t even think it was simply her.

She looked to Aleph and all she could feel was worry and care, her care and yet also a thousand, no a million ways that she could find beauty.

The way her brain curled and furled and connected, down and up she could feel the pattern and-

The diagnostician flared in her, delight and wonder. She felt her blood starting to rush faster within her as her mind churned with the details, as Pylo’s mind obliged and looked where she willed.

Aleph’s heart seemed faster, the slightly out of sync flicker of the berth’s lights melted together into a smooth radiance. The motiles of tunie seemed to be weaving and moving in a rush. Jerkily twitching.

That, could be dangerous.

Pylo knew what had happened there, her heart seemed to slow even as it was hammering in her chest, her head and spine ached, she felt dizzy and out of sorts.

Like she had not gotten enough air.

She had almost blacked out from a downshift.

What was downshift?

She knew and yet she didn't.

Pylo knew what it was.

Omega did not.

Pylo provided a view of Omega’s own brain, burning up a few degrees over temperature and yet chilling down everything around it, parts of it practically starving for air. It was like she had suffered a slow down in her blood flow even as the stuff was packed tight as can be in her head.

Her brain had suffered a desync with the flow of the rest of her body.

If she had tried to hold onto that it could have killed her...

But she had something.

There were parts of aleph that had been tied up wrong. Twisted. Crumpled associations collapsed that had once been open and free.

Omega held the diagnosis of the problem and the best likely treatment in her head. Then she shed one expert in order to take in another.

Her spine hurt, It burned trying to swallow everything that pylo knew and saw while carrying another soul, her heart was hammering, she was sweating, her breathing was deep and not gasping only because she knew it would just make it worse.

Her eyes didn't seem to be working?

No it was her brain, her vision was filled with spots of ‘blank’ not seeing as she tried to get enough oxygen through her head after the ‘little’ spell of downshift caused deprivation.

She could just reach in and poke her brain, make a bit of it light up just there with her-

No that was pylo’s voice, this was pylo’s ‘sight’ her ‘taste’ her BODY.

Omega was just wearing her like a skin.

She was riding their Courier and Alien as if it was her own body!

She knew things as if it was her own mind!

That thought twined and twisted and omega felt a few cramps as parts of her stomach tried to move in ways that pylo could but her own body could not.

Tried to part her belly and open it up like the petals of a flower to welcome in something-

She had to focus.

Aleph needed to get unknotted and treated. And once again she looked and with the gentlest care now touched. Whispered soft upon the crenelated connective matter that was the creche of her friend’s soul.

She felt the psycho surgeon in her awaken with his own kind of wonder. He had dreamed of having what she and pylo now did.

She felt tears in her eyes.

She could feel the thought and ebb and flow of her friend, like a sculpture of somehow swimming spun sugar floating in her hands.

Pylo could see this?

Her head started to feel strange again.

Her spine was burning, her heart seemed to both slow and her veins fill with a thundering pressure.

The world around her was starting to rush past.

That was dangerous, she had to let go of looking. Not so deep.

Pylo’s flesh was spread out and wider, it was built to be that. She thought across herself.

Omega was trying to cram the experience of something a dozen times or more her volume through a nugget in her skull.

She felt the flow of time slow again around her, felt her head ache and spots splatter as her brain began to regain proper circulation pace.

There was, there was so many ways they would have to push and nudge Aleph.

She sneezed.

Sparkling red droplets danced into the air and shot into the walls or whorled in eddies.

Quarti was there?

There was something moist and fruity in her mouth holding her teeth from grinding into each other.

When had her jaw clenched like that?

She slowly relaxed but a snap of fingers drew her attention back to Aleph.

She looked and saw through pylo what needed to be done.

She pulled on the surgeon’s gifts and reached out to cut and shape her friend’s mind where the intuition of her elders had guessed would be needed.

Her friend did not move, still asleep. But She- Pylo that is could already see improvement. Well she thought it was improvement. Her vision was dull and colors seemed out of sorts. Her head and spine were burning.

Mouth was dry even as quarti gently rubbed a wet cloth at her lips.

She.

She let go of Pylo. Of herself.

She became small.

And everything hurt.

For a brief moment she looked up at where Pylo was. Not through the port hole, she could still feel a brief imprint of her there anyway.

The monster stirred and with a return of self directed action Omega lost the link.

Quarti just looked between her and Aleph with worry.

“Did it work-like?”

Omega had to forcefully relax her throat and jaw before she could manage to speak.

“I. think. So?”

Quarti nodded and smiled.

“So what was it like-ta-mind fuck the alien all squishy brainy close soulsies?”

Omega just stared blankly where she suspected pylo was looking into and through them from and shuddered.

“She doesn't have a soul quarti... She just, gave me all the meat, it’s all she was I was all she was and... she doesn't have one”

Quarti nodded a little less bright and cheerful, more sombre”

“Is fun word such playing with for snoogly oogly in each others heads, but ya ya, not many souls-folk out here, most such just meat and metal.. or just spirit pure and nothing else... hardly both likes us the people on the flats”

Omega shuddered and just rubbed at her spine before suddenly feeling a wave of weariness.

“I think I did something stupid...”

Quarti just laughed.

“If we’s was smartest little chikas none of us woulda left the big momma-fish!”

Darkness came and she slept.