Chapter 4: Awakening

There was a flashing red light. It wasn’t rapid or beating but a slow pulsating that seeped through Dina’s closed eyes and sank into her consciousness. As she drifted in and out of consciousness, she tried to think of why the red light was important. It seemed important but the memory of why refused to focus in her hazy thoughts.

She focused on the light. There was no sense of what time it was, only the slow and steady passing of time. She focused on it, swimming in the light until her body began to finally to respond. With each beat, her body tensed and relaxed.

Every movement brought more awareness of her body. She could feel the muscles in her legs tensing, flexing against the pressure that encased her body. The tendons in her arms quivered with every movement and she was able to clench her fingers together in sluggish movements.

The light bothered her. Flashing red wasn’t a good color on the space station. It meant something but her thoughts slipped away before she could dredge her memories. She only had a vague image of a placard posted near almost every corner in the station she grew up. It was a warning about something. Something important. Something dangerous.

Her memories slipped away and she was once again on the chair before the flight. The nurse—Melodi—was teasing her with her fingers and sending little flashes of pleasure coursing through her body.

Parts of her body that she had forgotten drew her attention. She was aching from Melodi’s teasing from hours before. She could feel how her nipples were hard and erect, rubbing against the inside of her suit with every pulse of the light.

She twisted her hips but that only brought her focus on her stuffed pussy and ass. The tubes and probes swirled her insides, striking against hypersensitive nerves. Her swollen labia clung to the tubes as they penetrated her, every twitch of her body rubbed the aching folds against the intruding devices. Little flashes of pleasure raced along her nerves as she shuddered with the resumed and aching need for an orgasm.

Lips working silently, she cursed Melodi’s name as she continued to twist and writhe in the confines of her firm suit. She could feel the liquid pressure encasing her body, buffering her movements until she ground against the firm edges of her protection. She twisted back again until she hit the other side.

The swirling of the tubes and devices buried inside her throat, pussy, and ass sent waves of heat rolling through her body. She shivered around it, tensing her insides to clamp her body around the thick intruders before relaxing in time with the red light.

Dina drew her attention back to the light. It was brighter or her vision was growing clearer. She blinked through the hazy liquid that surrounded her toward the faceplate that covered her.

There were only a few digital displays being projected on the glass, only the important things were every shown to avoid information overloaded. The ones on the right were tied into the ship’s navigation system and measured the distance and remaining time until their destination. She frowned as she focused on it, impatient until she could read the numbers clearly.

She did a double-take. The exponential numbers looked too high. She tried to remember the expectations but she was sure that they should be closer than petameters from the destination. The countdown clock still had over a hundred years of travel left, but it was only inching closer to their destination.

Slowly, she realized that the remaining seconds wasn’t moving as fast as it should have been. It felt like an eternity as each second rolled over, more than her hazy mind could account for.

A new display flashed into existence. It was her pulse. The sensitive measurements were picking up a rapid increase before she could even feel it beating in her chest. She stared at it and then at the clock and then back again. Every time she looked at the countdown, her pulse would jump.

It took longer for her brain to catch up to her subconscious. They were still a hundred years out and she was up. She shouldn’t be up, there was thousands of failsafes to ensure she wouldn’t wake up until they were already in orbit. There was no reason she would be staring at the clock.

Her heart beat faster in her chest. A whimper rose in her throat. She reached out. Her movements were sluggish, slowed by the pressure of the liquid both inside and outside of her firm suit. Her outstretched palm thumped against the edge of her stasis pod. It was a solid chunk that shot down her arm but it didn’t move.

Dina tried to call out, but her lungs were filled with fluid and tubes. No sound or movement could be heard as she beat helplessly on the inner wall of her pod.

She needed to escape, she needed freedom.

Kicking out, she thumped harder against the pod as her heart rate monitor turned yellow, orange, and then red. She couldn’t feel the impact of her toes through the firm suit but she heard it vibrating through the liquid.

A strange burning in her eyes told her she was crying. She blinked but the itching refused to subside.

With a flash of red, a new display rose above the heart rate: “Administrative Sedative.”

She tried to scream out that something was wrong.

A rush of warmth flooded through her body. She didn’t feel the needle but with so many tubes inside her body, they didn’t need it. Her heart rate plummeted. It no longer beat against her ribs, crushing her lungs with every pulse.

The monitor went back through the colors: red, orange, yellow, and then white. Finally it faded away along with the sedative notice.

She shivered at the intensity of the movement. She was terrified but it no longer caused her pulse to pound in her ears. She felt disconnected from herself, as her body was just a meat suit draped over her frame. At the same time, her mind was sharper as the haze cleared away. Whatever drug was pumped into her system, it pulled her completely out of the sleep haze of stasis.

Dine looked around until she spotted a display she missed in her initial panic, the pulsating red one. It was an atmosphere alert. She knew the icon from endless classes as a young girl but it had never happened in her life. Now, it was pulsating red with the poisoned display next to it.

Below the display was both her pod and suit integrity indicators. They were both green to show that she was still safe from whatever dangers were beyond.

She squirmed with discomfort. The vague pleasure and ache from having her orgasm denied had faded with her fear. Now, the tubes buried inside her body were a discomfort that reminded her that only a few layers of protection shielded her from whatever poisoned air surrounded her stasis pod.

There were no other displays on her monitor. The system that prevented information overload didn’t have anything else that would help her.

She worked her lips around the tubes impaling her throat and tried to figure out what to do. The sedative continued to wash through her system, flooding her with a pleasurable warmth that left her mind unfortunately sharp to realize her situation.

Caught, she could only stew as a thousand fears raced through her mind. Could it be a crack in the hull? No, then the displays would have shown the pressure sensor. A poison indicator meant that something must have ruptured. But if that was the case, the security systems were supposed to seal off each individual hanger—each one having a thousand stasis pods—from each other. That meant that the rupture would have been in her hanger. Automated systems should have easily handled that, so why was she woken up?

Fear fought against the sedative. She bobbed between growing anxiety and terror and the sinking sensation of her body falling further away from her consciousness.

A new indicator flashed on her screen: “Opening Pod 1%.”

She stared at it as her entire world shuddered. Something was opening her pod into the poisonous atmosphere.