The behemoth won, it had subdued the intruder, there was no longer a security issue to handle. The heavy claw, its surface etched by the act of piercing the metal walls, rested forcibly against my pale bloodless cheek, cutting in through my skin only enough to cause a small lesion. “Ceasing security process and returning to storage bay twelve” I think it said. “I am ready for your command master.”. I think I could still hear, I was so very tired, I would have made an attempt to speak, but I was just too tired. “Well what the bloody hell happened here.” I didn’t bother to take interest, only hoping that the sounds were here to stop the suffering. “Got yourself a bit of a scratch, eh Coppa?” it said. I just eased the wince on my eyes and hoped to fall asleep. I felt myself slipping down the wall, collapsing into a puddle of something so very warm. I felt like I was floating heavily through the air. 
	“COPPA!”, there was an angry voice hurting my head. “wh…” I tried to speak but nothing could come out. “Hold on a bit, you managed to put up a fight longer than I thought you would, you banged yourself up something nasty.” I didn’t bother to look and just fell back to a stasis not unlike sleep. There were wires and tubes coming from my arms and my leg and I was in pain like never before. “Coppa can you hear me?” I opened my eyes, the bright light above me stung like a salted wound. “Okay Coppa, take it easy, just rest and let me talk” the angry voice seemed concerned. “Hello Coppa, welcome. I know you have never been this far from Rubi-ka, so I’ll explain a few things. First that really bad piercing tingle you feel, is pain. I know you have pain on Rubi-ka but trust me it’s nothing like what is out this far from that place. Your nanites don’t work all that well right now. Usually it’s a slow gradual process for nanite death, but you lost a lot of blood.” He gave an inappropriate attempt at a slight laugh that did nothing to ease my pain, confusion or my growing sense of hate towards this voice. “You hardly have any notum traces left in you to supply the bots and they are dying out bloody quick. Sure healing is like magic for you back home, all elves and dwarves and magical pixies to take the pain away; welcome to the rest of the universe.” he said to me, continuing on, “I’m Jackamardocus Sitholipidicus, it‘s Latin I think, so people call me Jak. Incase the big guy back there didn’t tell you, I’m a bit of an engineer. A beauty ain’t she?” gesturing across me. Tones and buzzers began to alarm from the machines at the other end of my wires and tubes once I seen what he was nodding towards. The giant that tried to, and succeeded in slaughtering me was stationed in the bright white room with me. I flinched, and it caused pains in my chest and head. One tube released from my leg, it hurt and strangely it bled and continued to bleed out, I couldn’t see any nanobots stopping the flow and the pain wouldn’t go away. “See there, no nanites, no feel better.” he said as he rubbed a cool liquid on my leg and replaced the tube. An extremely painful ordeal not unlike an arrow wound, except the tube felt like an arrow a thousand meters long always passing through the wound. “rest up Coppa, we have a lot to talk about before we get to Senpai Fifty-six” Jak squeezed a bag hanging above my head and I felt suddenly tired, and swiftly fell into a slumber, his face fading into the background.
	Three years ago, November 28th , ‘478. A huge heavy thump emanated from the tops of the skyscrapers of Rome closely followed by numerous other thumps. It was Sunday evening and I was taking in the nightlife once more before returning to the Omni-Med campus. Lights were flashing through the high level fog which enveloped the city in the cool evenings. People were celebrating, small groups rushing to the streets. The explosions from the tops of the building were fireworks, the glorious Mr. Ross had returned safely. I was caught up in the commotion, swept away with the crowd. I and a few familiar faces  were on a side street trying to see a glimpse of the envoy that was rumored to have been transporting Mr. Ross through the city. I think I can see one of the Omni-Pol dropships in the distance” I said, causing a flurry of commotion in the people around me. I was overwhelmed by the fervor of the crowd. I was smiling, and laughing with the people around me at the situation, we erupted in a cheer at the mere possibility of seeing  the police cruiser. 
	It was getting cooler and much of the festivities had died down. Aside from the clusters of those enjoying the nights lack of temperance, and the children still running through the street with hand held fireworks enjoying their rare allowance to be past curfew, the streets were the same as any other night, stragglers attempting to walk far enough to slumber on a sturdy bench,  and night owls seeking pleasures less respectable. I and another classmate made our way through the city and back towards the shuttle station where we could catch a flight leaving for Omni-Med. Closer to the city limits we had to travel, regional air space evidently limited with Ross’ return. A much louder thundering launch of a firework, startled the two of us.
	Something had gone wrong, both of our comlinks went live with activity in the Med-Channel, “All medical personnel in the vicinity of Rome Suburb Blue, District 19. Medical assistance requested by security. Be advised possible hostiles in vicinity, record all activity for later inspection for evidence. Triage, to be overseen by highest rank of Omni-Med personnel available. Waypoint uploaded to your compass, you will be advised when the location is in the vicinity.” it was an automated announcement with the tell tale change in pitch and tone. Both of our compass units were instantly spinning, the yellow marker flashing in and out of view as we ran. It was leading us towards the source of that last launch, other medics merging with us as we closed the gap onto the location. Blazing flashes of light and heat radiated from behind a skyscraper in the distance as if some manner of hell opened its doors. Omni-Pol dropships were already arriving at the scene, sending down reinforcements. There were seven medics now, in our impromptu team. We stood back upon the request of one of the officers, the Pols were setting up a parameter of the area. Tall pillars capped with an orb reminded me of the street lamps in Borealis. The Pols were standing these up in the streets, once one was up a blue force field filled in the gap between the previous pillar and the new, they were locking down the location. Once the guard that halted us had his sector of pillars completed he motioned for us to have our ID’s scanned, and then to pass through the phasing blue wall.
	Security pillars are an interesting thing to behold. Not only do they produce a method of controlling access to a contained area, and emit a calming blue glow in sync with the akin sound of a fetal heartbeat, but they also have the ability to visually screen out harmful images. Things such as flame, blood, and any object smaller than a man was visually obstructed. Once the field was established, the scene  was transformed into what appeared as nothing more than an condemned and abandoned  structure, but the glow above in the smog was a sign that a fire was still burning.
	Passing through the field left many typically nauseated, a sensation too common in this sort of technology, ripping apart your cells at an atomic level and quickly reassembling them in relatively the same order as before on the opposite side. I always closed my eyes, fearful of the few extremely rare instances in which a fluke caused shredding of the internal nervous system, a particularly nasty way to use up an insurance claim. On the other side of the field everything could be seen once again in true form. There were torqued forms of people laying around in the crumbled concrete debris, a blood mist filled the air with a heavy scent of rust. Many were already in process of reclaim, and those that had yet to require complete reclaim were calling out in agony. There was already an officer of the Omni-Med AF present at the scene, possibly arriving with the initial Pol personnel. 
	“You three take the south, you two take the east, you other two start here. Everyone work from the parameter towards the center. Those who reclaimed, tag’em. Those with serious injuries take to the egress points marked by the beacons, all others, treat on scene.“ he commanded the directives like a professional field surgeon in a war zone, intimidating pointing at each of us and without hesitation pointing in the directions he ordered. “Medics, burn the nano, more is en route. We have at least four confirmed claimed, and last count twelve injured, and we are sure to find more. Move! Move! Move!” he shouted while we were on our various ways, I being one of the two he sent towards the south edge of the building.  We were both running, the young man I’ve never seen before, already injecting a nanostim he had with him. “You came prepared” I joked. I failed to see a support beam laying across the curb and took a tumble in our rush through the debris covered streets. The man paused in his stride glancing back at me. “Alright!” and I gestured for him to continue and found my feet again. He had already found the first survivor.  Immediately I joined to summon various nanolines with graceful gestures of the hands, each medic with various accents of the fingers. The orange glow from the fires higher in the structure were displaced by the ember red glow of the nanobot activity struggling to repair the tissue on the survivors. From the dropship above came more reinforcements, this time Omni-AF were summoned. Only one reason for that, this was no accident. I kept my head down, not allowing the troopers to distract me. One of the AF support units threw down a crate of nanostims behind us as he ran past, the metal case coming to rest in a puddle of water that found it‘s way down from where the fires were being fought. The case was a battle ready model and automatically began to open, righting itself from the improper position it had landed. The cobalt blue glow of the nanites were dancing on the surface of the puddle. He grabbed a couple of stims and tossed one to me, catching, popping the cap and injecting all in one motion. There were several male civilians, a woman, and several small children that managed to survive. Two children had to be moved to the evacuation point, injuries too severe to fully treat. One male was in critical condition for a while, requiring both of us to stop the bleeding and correct the internal damage, the other survivors were able to be fully treated at the scene.
	After the last child was evacuated, a representative from Omni-Pol Investigative Unit, came to each of the medics that were on the scene. “ I want to thank you each for your amazing skill and determination of your performance. Omni-Tek is your friend. I thank you for providing us with your comlink system, that we may download its contents. Omni-Tek protects. Thank you.”. He had such a calming voice, almost trancelike and we each handed over our personal comlink, which he scanned through a slot in his briefcase, a buzz, then deleting the contents and handing the comlinks to their owners as he went down the line of present aids. He was a tall man, well dressed in an Omni-Tek executive suit, a nametag seemed out of place on his lapel. Lt. Tim Leach. His name even seemed to calm, stamped into the brightly polished brass in a firm direct script that pleased the eye as light reflected from its surface. He accepted my comsystem, and returned it after a buzz. “Thank you…” he paused for a moment, gave a nearly unnoticed glance at an officer behind me before continuing “… Miss Bane, your support was a welcomed addition.”. The trancelike effect quickly wore off, replaced by the slight chill of a cold armored hand on my shoulder from the man behind me.
	“Up dear. Come on Coppa snap out of it, rise and shine.”. I placed a hand over my closed eyes feeling the brightness of the light seeping through my eyelids. The pain as a whole, was reduced to a dull ache yet my head and leg remained in the same tormented state. I was groggy as if awake and still dreaming when the same voice continued to stimulate my timid consciousness. I gestured a few groans towards the incomprehensible voice while making my way to a seated position. “Keep that leg elevated girl, your going to be hurting if you don’t”. I didn’t give the voice time to finish before I was fully seated. The pain in my leg spiked, feeling as if it were wedged under an ottus. The pain the light caused to my eyes was not of enough importance to have them remain closed . My eyes shot opened, and I gasped for air. I laid back down on the linen dressed bunk, slowly repositioning my leg on the surface. The wires in my arms were gone, as were the tubes but the wires in my leg were still in place, though they looked thicker and were not attached to any machine. I was, wearing, something, else. My coat was missing, as were my fine silken garments, replaced with some inferior lightly woven material in a pale cream color, just a bit too big for my size. 
	“Where? Who?” in such vague manner I asked about my environment. “I’m Jak. Your in a stable condition now, Just give it a bit of time to wear off. Drink this.” handing a glass of something lukewarm to me. I no longer was in the mental condition to fight the suggestion, not much else could harm me in my condition. The tepid liquid had a bitterness to it and eased my parched throat. I coughed, took a second sip, and handed back the glass. I could taste the earthy characteristics of the liquid, somewhat metallic and acidic, it was a mild tea he had given for my thirst. “Jak” I asked. “How long have I been out, what happened, why did I end up like this?”. “You been sleeping just over two weeks now, and there are several reasons. Could be a glitch, or that I wanted to test you, or perhaps you just pissed off my beauty.” I could detect an irate tone in Jaks voice. “I pissed it off? What?”. “No! I was just pulling your leg; which is pretty well shattered in two places, thus all the pins and the rods by the way.” his tone changed into a dry humor. “Big Bessy here had a hard time cornering you. I expected that you would have froze in place, or at least surrendered. But to have tried to get away from her while trapped in a tiny little room, I don’t know what you were thinking” he paused expecting an answer, but I just closed my eyes and tried not to think of the pain in my leg. “You were supposed to not run away, just stay put, but no, you thought it would be a good idea to interact with a slayerdroid and play hide go seek.” He had a harsh mannerism in his sarcasm. “ I had the droid stationed in the receiving bay set on detainment mode. Once you started hopping about like some damned coffee drinking rabbit, you left it no choice but to contain you in the method it was designed, force.”. 
	My groggy disposition was beginning to fade, hints of soberness floating to my head. My eyes were becoming used to the light bouncing off the stark white walls around us. I had my first real look at this Jak character. His face was smug, nearly arrogant. His sense of fashion heavily influenced by bad sci-fi films of ages past. Nobody wears orange coveralls, I thought to myself. The coveralls he was wearing were a hideous ICC instituted muted beige-red, a giant blue-green emblem emblazoned on the front. His grayed hair was so slick it appeared to be a elasticized substance growing from beneath his ears and around the back of his neck. He was obviously solitus, lacking the stature of an atrox, his pinkish skin bristled with hairs. His hands were marred by scars, stretched tight holding a folder. I imagined he was much older than I but in the lacking ability of nanites, he may have just not aged well. The room I was in was not much larger that the first room I was in, simply a higher ceiling this time. I was in a bunk, situated in the center of the room, a large cylindrical one armed machine behind me, surgical in appearance. I could appreciate the lacking clutter and lack of color, a very sterile sense of the room. There were no doors to be seen nor any screens or windows of which one may peer through. “Where am I?” I asked. “Well Coppa your on my ship headed to Senpai fifty-six, and currently in the infirmary laying on a bed approximately a meter above the floor.”. I was unsure if he was seriously answering the question and not attempting to be lively. “Where are my clothes?” the pain seemed to subdue while expecting an apology. “Ah, so the girl has a sense of humility after all. Clothing, right. Everything you had on was ripped rather well with your jumping about, hell, you even caught on fire there for a sec before I showed up, so I tossed the lot.”. I gave a scowl, and clenched a fist thinking back how difficult it would be to replace cloth that fine in clan black markets. 
	“Where are the doors?” I could think of a dozen more questions of greater importance yet this one seemed to be the only one to pass through the thought process. He began to ramble on about welding every door closed, and sealing them behind the metallic sheathing present throughout the ship. I couldn’t keep up with his hurried speech, he practically was giving a narration of his own interest. He rounded off the lecture discussing the properties of the teleportation rings and security features he adapted from something somewhere. I understood the gist of his purpose, creating a vessel which gave him a feeling of control, safety and personal pride. The ship was nothing more than sealed cubicles arranged inside of an old hulking shell of an out dated transporter, broken down enough on the exterior to deter interest from anything that could be on the interior. 
	He tossed the folder in his grasp onto my lap, sending a pulse of expectant pain through my body, thinking the bundle of papers would land on one of the metal protrusions on my leg. The anxiety was unwarranted, his spatial awareness on par of reality. “Answers are inside, read up. I’ll return once you have gone through it all.” The wall appeared to burn away like a strip of film that became too hot to hold together while he was talking. Jak left mid sentence, his last words becoming muffled by the wall healing up like a cut in skin. “What answers to what exactly?” but he was too far through the wall to say, if he even heard.
	The folder was antiquated, a leather envelope held closed by a strap wound around a knob on the cover, faded gilded lettering too worn to read. Inside the envelope were a few hundred pages, most in new condition, several obviously well read. The cold texture against my bare fingertips. A sharp sudden  burst of adrenaline shot through my system, heartbeat quickened, pupils dilated, blood capillaries restricted, muscles tensed.  “Where the hell are my gloves!” I shouted at the wall, looking around for my beloved gloves, the soft, delicately manufactured, beautifully sterile and clean gloves. I dropped the folder, papers slipping out like cards from a dealers hands, throwing the linens from the bed, searching what few places my gloves could be laid. I found myself standing barefoot again in the barren room, in foreign cloth, bare handed, feeling naked and alone. Pain. Pain returned as the adrenaline wore though its effect. I sat on the floor, one good leg under me, the other stretched out across the stark white tiles of the floor, metal ends reflecting the light like eerie stars in a daylight sky. I sat there, in the floor. “This is insane” I thought to myself, “It’s fine, I will be okay.”. The papers were scattered across the floor and under the bed, the only piece of furniture in the room. They were out of order, if thee was an order to begin. I looked around at the papers, waiting for the pain to subside, the throbbing was more irritating than painful, much like spending the night on a low quality mattress does to ones neck and back.
	The floor was cool to the touch, the air was heated to a comfortable level but the structure itself was cold. I looked around the room, studying the walls and ceiling for vents or something indicating a possible escape  if one would be needed. I stretched out a hand, feeling the wall. Cold, ice cold. I ran my hand across the wall, the texture was rougher than it looked. The wall looked smoother than glass, I couldn’t even see any sort of surface to the wall. Holograms, the entire wall was a hologram, I could see it closely just a hairs thick sheet of photovoltaic film. There were vents or openings somewhere in the room, doorways aside. Not much to do for now, not until my leg was healed. I sat. The papers were still scattered, they were almost calling out to be replaced neatly into their folder.
	As I picked them up I could see that the papers were randomly written, notes more than works of any refined author. Many were hand written, a few neatly typed, and every so often one was just a labeled sketch of some mysterious shapeless blob. They seemed interesting enough, in a room devoid of distraction. “Effects”, “Cause”, “Symptom”, “Source”, “Lifecycle”, and “Alien” made constant references in the notes. I was always partial to those words, specifically those words sparked my interest and I would read around them, collecting a vague idea of the topic in this folder. Jak had a pretty good idea how to gain my attention, using these papers. 
	“…material found today proved unique in construction. The biocommunicator rendered the mass into a jelly which was able to then be run through the organics regenerator, results shall be published next Thursday pending proper security clearance. I hope not to be forward when providing a preliminary thesis on the origin of the matter. The biomass growing here is remarkably similar to the alien tissue samples collected on Rubi-ka, having similar reaction to stimulus except this biomass found would appear to be benign and more speculative, native to the environment. Tomorrow the expedition will continue into the southern quadrant, our geologist, biologist and seismologist will accompany the crew to collect and study more of the life forms found, and conduct environmental testing of the soils. There shall be a continuance to the research at another…” the train of thought seemed to drift off into an unfinished report. The style of writing and its unfinished nature begged me to ask on the origin of this work, questions for Jak whenever he returned.
	“… model X-91 showed a trait similar to gestation of an insect, the pod grew three times its original size at which point in the cycle the organism began showing signs of a larval form, protruding bristles were formed shortly there after along the length of one side … stasis was started twenty three days after podification of the mass. Dissection was granted by the company, and we … biological system of internal structure was well defined into three distinctive systems, a liquid filled series of bladders near each moveable joint, a complex order of capillary tubes throughout the organism, and a digestive tract including three compartments…”
	Interesting as they were, the papers failed to distract me from the knock on the wall behind me. A cold steel on steel knock. A second and third quickly followed, this time with a enough force to push me away from my seat on the floor. “Warning Proximity Alert.” there was an intercom announcement, and a fourth knock. “Warning Hull Breech, Hold Nine”. The wall behind me began to become very cold and noisy, I pulled myself back away from the unwelcoming groans and pops coming from the other side of the wall. Watching the wall flicker, the holographic image faded revealing the true nature of corroded structural components slowly starting to be pulled away from my room. “What the hell now?” I thought to myself, as a support column snapped its first bolt from the floor.