Symbiosis - Prologue

“There will be war!”

The Dreamer lay wreathed in medical tubing, a fixed rictus of horror frozen onto her face, trapped somewhere between reality and her own subconscious mind. Her body was contorted on the slab, shuddering and sweating at the visions she saw; the medtechs raced to her side with muscle relaxants and sedatives to silence her. She convulsed as the first wave of the medication hit her system and reached out wildly with the desperate, grasping fingers of a child, clutching at the sleeves and hands of the faceless scientists beside her. She caught one, and her face rolled blindly toward him, staring straight through him.

“It fails,” she whispered, as they prised at her fingers one by one. “Already it fails. The fusions are too narrow. They will come…”

Her hand was torn away, and the sedative pressed her mind. Vainly she struggled against it, but without much hope. She never won. She was never heard.

“War,” she whispered. A tear escaped one heavy eyelid and slid unnoticed to the slab. The scientists left.

Except one.

Under the pretence of checking her vitals, he leaned over her face.

“What must we do?” he whispered. “Can we avoid it?”

The Dreamer’s eyes flickered open one last time, and she almost managed to actually look at the man above her.

“Find the worker: the damaged one. She can think…she must be freed…”

Her eyes glazed over.

“She must fuse…”

And she was gone, trapped beneath the oppressive weight of the dreams of a planet. The scientist straightened. He had what he needed. He left the room, and left the girl to six hundred million people’s nightmares.