arrival;

[freezers]

ARRIVAL; WAKE UP

A spark of electricity convulses through your body, and you jolt awake - underwater. Or, at least, that's most peoples' first guess. The color is more vibrant than water should be, and heavier, your body feeling sluggish against the weight and drag of it. Or perhaps you're just slower to respond, distant, limbs and mind still drowsy and reeling. The bright fluid doesn't sting when you blink, if anything, it's soothing, healing, calming. Fortunate, that, because you're going to need it. As the pod-like chamber you're held in starts to drain of the liquid, your senses start to flood back in. Awareness filters in like a window curtain holding back the morning sun, gradually easing away with each inch the water line lowers. There's something on your face - a mask, strapped around the back of your head, and other thinner tendrils against your cheeks, your ears, your neck. Narrow tubes are channeled through in your nostrils, and cables have slithered in through your ears, plugging into God knows what on the inside of your skull. There's a click that you feel more than hear, and the tension on them slacks, disconnected from somewhere inside you. Pull - up, back, to the side, whichever way you want - and they start to drag free. Far from the most pleasant feeling (likely leaves you wanting to crawl right out of your skin), but it doesn't quite hurt or burn, yet. That's for the inch wide tube shoved down your throat and held in place by the mask. It's also what's keeping you breathing underneath this blue, space-goo, though, so maybe don't go yanking it off until the lid of your pod opens. As the fluid drains, a voice crackles in over the sound of water oscillating around your ears. Not something played from a speaker anywhere, nothing projected on a screen, and whether the cables are still in your ears or not, you hear her all the same, as if she's more inside your head than she is broadcasting over a speaker inside the pod or coming muffled from outside. Even still, it's stuttered and interrupted, like the connection is weak, interference like static white noise buzzing through and covering up parts of sentences. ❝ I don’t have a lot of tim— RIP can’t spare the power to run this more t—, so pay attention. No one knows where it came fr— out of radio contact when it happened, whatever it w— Everything in its path. There is no fighting it. Only surviv— Droids handle most of the maintenance, but she’s getting wor— Take the load off. Whatever happe— just keep Ripley running. If the ship stops, we’re all dea— —’re bodies are new, still adjusting. You’ll be on unsteady legs for a while, so take it slo— might end up face-planting, and there’s only so many replacemen— Mess hall’s lock— so make do. The cryo pod fluid’s the most nutritious thing around, just don’t think about wh— —’s all I can tell you. Good luck. ❞ The plexiglass lid of the cryo pod pulls back, and you're free to sit up and yank at the mask on your face now. Be careful, as that tube's been stuck in there a long while, and it's no kind of shallow. Yank carefully, or risk a sore throat for the next few days. When you pull, it goes on, and on, and on, about two feet or more of clear, plastic tubing dragging out from your throat. Droids buzz through, hither and tither, tapping at consoles over the other closed cryo pods, but ultimately ignoring the others waking nearby, most of them strangers, but at least somewhat humanoid looking. Looking down at your hands, at your naked body, blue fluid still clinging to your skin like bioluminescent tree sap, everything seems to be how you left it, aside from some healed wounds, perhaps. Or maybe it isn't - maybe humanoid wasn't the body you last recall, maybe there was no body to recall at all. The HOST takes what it can from your mind and morphs to attempt the most accurate fit. Some alarm is to be expected, but the goal is to minimize it. Not everyone handles the fact their soul has been put through digital transfer as well as those around you now. Crawl free and take this body's first steps - your knees are likely to buckle underneath you, gravity dragging you down, but don't feel too bad, you aren't the only one flailing like a newborn, baby deer. Whether you've emerged in perfect health, or still bleeding from a previous wound here or there (nothing fatal - you'll live), it's up to you and your new friends to make it to the medbay at the end of a long, long hall of sealed pod after sealed pod. The droids won't be paying you any mind as they hover by, and they lack the capacity to speak and answer any of the eight million questions you might have right now. Try to snatch them if you like, but fighting isn't the brightest idea, as you aren't exactly at your best, right now, are you, Bambi? And yet, neither are they stopping you from roaming free wherever you please. After all, you'll need to find something to cover yourself up - you're still flashing all and sundry. It seems some merciful someone has left a stack of thin, cloth sheets on one of the medbay tables, so it's best you pick one up, towel off a bit, and then toga it, until you find something more durable (that being a bright, orange jumpsuit in a storage vault about a 10 minute walk down the halls). As you leave, glance up, and there's one last thing you might notice. Scrawled on the wall above the door that leads you out of this room and into the ship with a faded, black marker, someone's written: “KEEP HER FLYING” » NAVIGATION «