twenty-eighth jump;

[ataraxites]

CHARACTERS: Any and all.
LOCATION: Gravity Couches and beyond.
WARNINGS: Maybe some swearing, or even some violence, and more than likely some implied (and possibly explicit) nakedness.
SUMMARY: Another month, another jump, another round of new faces.
NOTES: It could just be the standard sensation of air on wet skin, but if you bother to check, you might notice the steam rising from your body, barely there and gone within a minute. By the time you get to the showers, it will be clear that it's not just taking you time to adjust. The room is cold — colder than usual, but no worse than the last jump. While it's nothing dangerous, it's certainly motivation to hurry through the usual routine and get dressed quickly.



It's getting closer.




YOUR EYES ARE OPEN.

KEEP LOOKING.

You wake up in darkness.

There's a breathing tube jammed down your trachea, and you're suspended in a tube of clear blue fluid. Upon registering your level of consciousness, the gravity couch drains the fluid surrounding you and retracts the breathing apparatus; the doors in front of you open, and you're deposited on the floor of a stark, sterile medical bay.

You are not alone.
There are others who have come before you, others who are awakening beside you. Some may be familiar to you, perhaps even friends. Others have much less amiable plans. Some are merely alien and inexplicable, but there are always those who might mean you harm.

After you catch your breath and your vision returns, you notice a number on the inside of your forearm. Maybe it's a familiar number. Maybe it means something. Maybe it's just a number. But the number—completely unique to you—is a tattoo, and it does not come off.

If you enter the room adjacent to the medbay, you will find a small locker with your number on it, surrounded by rows upon rows of identical lockers. Inside, you will find a few of your personal items, a communications device, and a ship's uniform in your exact size. The comms device is fully powered and connects directly to the ship's network; it's your only means of communication beyond physical conversation. Upon turning the device on, a neutral, automated voice will say, "Please take the blue lift to the passenger quarters." Any other attempts at communicating with the rest of the network are met only with static.

This is your welcome party.

Comments

[wolfchild]

After almost a year on the ship, she had plenty of advice.

"Don't go into the halls. They change and you can get lost in there. There are monsters there too. Don't miss the jump or you'll get turned into a puddle and then we have to clean you up. And don't be stupid."

The last should be obvious, but if experience had taught Arya anything, it was how stupid people could be.

[wrecktified]

Wow, that wasn't exactly what he'd been expecting- and it likely showed on his face, too. He was glad he'd asked, though.

Sort of.

"The... halls change?" What was this, a funhouse? Regardless of how interesting he found the notion of trickster hallways on a spaceship, he shook his head. "Nevermind, you said monsters?"

That was more important. Isaac frowned, all of a sudden looking tense and perhaps even a touch ill. "What kind of monsters?"

[wolfchild]

Arya bit her lip. "They're called manticores. I've never seen them. But they're dangerous."

Thing about being a child in a ship such as this was how much people tried to "protect" her. Perhaps they were under the impression that the less she knew, the less likely she would be to do something dangerous. With Arya, being in the dark only gave her greater motivation to seek out answers for herself, alone if need be.

[wrecktified]

At least she didn't say necromorphs. Then again, maybe they had just named them differently around here. But a necromorph outbreak only took hours to spiral out of control, surely they would have all long since been in deep shit if that were the case.

"Great, a new kind of monster. I was getting tired of the old ones," he mumbled, mostly to himself. New ship, new breed of hideous beast. It was like a fresh start around here. "Thanks for answering my stupid questions, by the way." This being the 28th- what was it, jump? That had to be a lot of questions. Over and over and over again.

Isaac figured he would have been sick of it after the third round.

[wolfchild]

Around that time it got very tiresome. But the new arrivals were hardly to blame. Arya gave a little shrug.

"You're welcome."

She slung an arm around Nymeria's back to head for the showers.