Infinite Dark: Awakening
Chapter 26

Sarab opened her eyes slowly; blood trickled down from a gash along her head. She heard numerous alarms going off inside her suit, but still… she was alive.

She peered through her cracked suit helmet and looked out into space. She was drifting freely in darkness.

She groaned but this only caused more pain. She looked out and saw a stream of icy mist flowing from her suit. She knew in the back of her mind that this was the hibernation stasis gas that would preserve her as she slept within her suit, making it a modified cocoon.

Without the gas freezing her body there was nothing but her force field and life support keeping her alive, which she estimated would last for no more than several hours.

She assumed they were successful with the attack, but there was no way to know. Her communications were out and she was adrift in an area they had chosen to fire upon because of the low chance of hitting a planet with life.

Sarab sighed and laid her head back in her helmet. She was about to smash her own helmet and let the effects of space take her when she saw something out of the corner of her eye. A shimmering slow moving black cloud.

At first she thought she was seeing Dark Matter but soon realized this was not the case…

Horrified she saw a swirling mass of darkness take a form that had haunted her dreams since she first saw it.

The black arms, a body that appeared to be draped in a large robe… no face was upon it but she could feel it staring into her soul.

“Garrgghh…” A voice sounded in her mind; “I have survived… although not unscathed… I have been weakened… you have wounded me deeply Commander Sarab…”

The voice did not penetrate as it did before but it was still terrible to withstand.

“NO!!!”

Sarab screamed; punching her helmet in with her hand, trying to kill herself before she could be absorbed.

But, Rogue was too fast. It lurched towards her and wrapped itself around her.

Sarab fought, struggling against the darkness, but there was nothing physical to hit.

She felt herself pinned down, and then it began. Her face and body was going numb all over.

She saw her suit disintegrate before her, sucked into the blackness that smothered her. Next, she saw her own body being torn apart, disappearing into nothingness all around her. She tried screaming and kicking with all her might but she was no match for it.

In her final moments Sarab felt her mind expanding out as something invaded into her very soul. She could hear other voices within her mind now, but she herself was floating powerless in darkness.

She heard weak voices overshadowed by a dominant one that delved into her most inner secrets and desires.

“Hmm…” The voice murmured; “What is this planet… Earth?”

Sarab died then and there, because all that she had ever been was gone, from that point forward all she knew was… hunger.

To be continued in “Infinite Dark #2:Black Hole Eclipsed”