Free The Wraeththu Chronicles by Storm Constantine, Paul Cashman Page B

vague, pulsing colors.
     
    "There, that's better. Lie still, Pell and rest. I'll be back later."
     
    I heard Flick leave the room, slowly. I heard him close the door, oh, so quietly. He would have run down the stairs.
     
    Inside me, irreversible processes had begun to work, yet I could not feel it. No churnings, no bubblings, no strange movements. A sigh escaped me, high and lisping, and childhood tunes scampered from my memory. Now I skipped naked in the red dirt of the cable fields, Mima at my side, both of us laughing. Now the pink sky arced over us, a symbol of innocence; the dark was beneath the horizon.
     
    The first assault, when it came, hurtled rudely through my half-sleep. It felt like a knife turning in my stomach, wrenching, pulling, tearing. My entrails were being torn from me. I shot upright in the bed, the room filled with a high, unearthly sound. My own scream. Half-blind with pain, I squinted at my stomach, terrified of what I might see. Nothing. No blood, no spilling, shining ropes. With sobbing breath I lowered myself back under the blankets. Tears ran down my face. The room was so quiet, not even an echo of my cry. Only quick, shallow breaths hissing in my head. As soon as I shut my eyes the invisible weapon plunged into me again. My body threw itself to the ground, arching in agony. Lights zig-zagged across my vision. I clawed the floor, the edge of the bed, myself, anything. (Stop this. Stop this!) A hard surface, cool and smooth, slapped against the back of my hand. I heaved myself forward and rested my cheek against it. (Somebody come. Somebody please come!) Eyes open, movement on the edge of my vision. I turned my head quickly, and looked. Looked into the hideous face of. ... Something. Oh, that something! A fiend. A creature; ghastly. Screeching, I backed away, flailing my arms, falling, helpless. Oh God! The gray-faced demon did the same. Mimicking, mocking. And then I realized. No demon, no creature. Hallucination? No. Just this: a mirror. That is all. As the pain ebbed from me once more, sick fascination made me look again. This . . .? This! Whimpering, I crawled closer to the glass my half-naked scalp gleamed damp and white, a long matted plume of hair fell over my face. My face! Bloated, gray, the eyes rimmed with red, the mouth wet, purpled and slack. My body was bruised and discolored, the left arm nearly twice its normal size. I could look no more. Crumpling onto the floor as a new spasm of incisive pain ripped through me, upwards, from my vitals to my throat. Mucus and blood and frenzied sound sprayed from me. My eyes were blinded by black, marching shapes and ziggurats of light.
     
    Suddenly, activity, voices. "Get him back on the bed!" Strident, unrecognizable. A softer tone: "It's started.
     
    Hands lifted me and where they touched, raw skin seemed to be peeling away like charred paper. Distorted faces peered down at me, eyes like saucers. And then a thin trickle of bitter juice was forced between my swollen lips. My jaws were clenched so tightly, someone had to hit me hard to force them apart. The agony was indescribable. Death would have been preferable, and fight to the death it was. Thiede's blood and mine, and if mine won I knew there would be no me left. As suddenly as it came, the pain shot back to a hidden place to brood. The room flickered, lurched and then settled, perspective see-sawing back to reality. I was gulping breath, swallowing foulness.
     
    "A short respite, Pell." Seel's face hovered over me, disembodied, pale. " This is just the beginning, but we are with you."
     
    Smells of fading years, years of innocence, came back to tease me. An Untimely stillness of Autumn changed the room. Mellow light. The changing; it had begun. My changing. Within myself, within myself.
     
    That was the last thing I could remember clearly. Afterwards, it was horror, pain, fever, filth and sickness. Occasionally, I would feel lucid enough to understand what was happening around me,