Lights of various colors flash across the dark.

Shrill sounds pierce the air, ominous and incessant. 

Slowly, these things filter into your awareness.

The array of lights resolves itself into focus: a console of display screens, at the far end of a darkened room. And the screeching noises, you realize, are several clashing alarms, nearby and all around.

What is this place? What happened?

With some effort, you raise your head to look around.

You are lying in an enclosed space with a clear glass cover above your face and torso. Cryo-pod, the thought pops into your mind.

A strange feeling of heaviness presses down on your head, and keeps your arms and legs immobile where they are.

With far greater effort than should be required, you will your hands and then your arms to break inertia, and they move about a bit, though in a tentative, unwieldy motion.

You cannot recall what happened before you suddenly became conscious.

How long have you been lying here? Have your eyes been open this entire time?

And then, the unsettling realization that you can find no memories of anything you had been doing before … nothing of what happened. 

Nor even your identity.

Who are you?

You feel a void in your mind, as if a barrier of oblivion keeps your mind from breaking through into your own memories and sense of self. 

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Then another realization, even more startling –

There is another presence in your mind.

You feel the otherness of it, though it feels greatly diminished and far away, as if at the periphery of your conscious mind.

Perhaps … this presence is to be expected? Is this presence the real you, or is it something else? A malevolent parasite, even? 

Or … are you the parasite?

Confusion overwhelms you, but slowly, you gather your own mind and begin to probe the parameters of this other entity within. 

Initially, you sense that it seems placid. Though somehow it does not seem particularly eager to communicate. If it even can. 

After a few minutes, your concerns feel lessened for the moment, and you turn back to your surroundings.

The dim lights of the control panel outside the cryopod illuminates most of your torso, of what seems to be a metal suit. The surface has strange markings that are indecypherable, and some scratches, but nothing seems too damaged.

Above you, the curved surface of the glass feels like a tomb, but you know instinctively, beyond certainty that this is a pod for medical purposes meant to heal you.

Whatever may have occurred to bring you inside this pod, at least now you seem in stable condition.

But the strange heaviness weighing down your limbs persists.

With the strange exertion as before, you compel your hands up to the glass as if in slow-motion, and futilely, weakly try to push up to open it. 

And then, as if in response to your efforts, the presence in your mind bursts out to communicate with pure emotional urging. 

MOVE. OUT. CRAWL. 

The sense of urgency and danger seizes your mind. You realize the lights on the console are flickering, as if the power is dying. And you feel the need to comply, as if the presence is only trying to help you.

You struggle in confusion, both within your mind, and your hands pounding at the glass. 

Until, at last, the glass enclosure slides open and the screeches of the alarms resounds across the open cold air.

Moving slowly, deliberately, as your body feels laden down from the metal suit, you grasp the edge of the pod and start to pull yourself up into a sitting position.

And then somehow, you roll over the side and then clamber onto the hard floor.

The presence continues to urge you on silently in the background, with a muted sense of approval for your actions, your steady progress. 

Crawling, putting one elbow forward after another in the cold dark, in a steady rhythm, you inch along like a newborn toward the nearest pod, its console lit with neon displays just a few meters away. 

Methodically, time seems to melt away into the oblivion of the dark.

You reach the pod and start to climb up the side, grasping at every jutting angle and ledge for a handhold – and though your balance and coordination are still awkward and tenuous, you find that your strength is far greater than what you ought to expect. Perhaps enhanced by the metal suit, you easily raise yourself up the side of the pod and then flop over into it.

This one is fully powered-up, with the multicolored lights of the displays and readouts pulsing softly into your eyes as you sink into the white cushioned interior.

Then the presence seems to expand in your mind, and makes your own mind diminish and recede into the distance, as it takes control over your body –

The other mind takes command of your hands and you can only look on, with your fingers flurrying across the panels with expert coordination, and marvel.

Soon enough, the controls are set and you settle back inside the artificial cocoon, and succumb immediately into a deathless sleep.