ooc; Memory One
"Don't come any closer!" His eyes closed as the words flared across his mind. The voice was shrill-- a terrified child. It was high-pitched, desperate, pleading, and heard only within his mind. It was as though he was hearing the words from somewhere from the edge of his frontal lobe, down and across the temples, though there was no feeling or sensation to put it with. It wasn't audible... but he could hear the child crying out in his head. After a moment he opened his eyes again, speaking quietly to himself.
"My kind... they're inside that abominable place." before him he could see his own hands, gloved and holding some sort of controls. His eyes moved quickly over the HUD, taking in and processing the information that was meaningless without any memory to apply it to. Altitude, velocity, trajectories--- of what? It didn't matter. He looked forward instead, towards an ever-looming building. Still, though, there was the background noise across his skull- crying, desperation, pleads, the sheer noise of thoughts all colliding and integrating with his own, as though he and all the children were part of a network hub, minds linked together. In a way, he was glad he couldn't feel. With the way his eyes narrowed and vision tightened, he was sure that he was tense, if not in pain.
"I can't stand this," Again, he was speaking to himself. "I'm-" And the words were cut out by static. He was what? Nevertheless, the memory continued. Drawing closer to the building he came to a full stop, the edges of machinery visible in the edges of the screen. The voices and words in his mind had grown louder and more distinct. His vision blurrewd and swam with colour, more than likely fighting just to stay concentrated.
"Stop! it hurts!" The words rose above the jumbled mass of panic and desperation, the pure, frightened begging. "my head..." He glanced down, finger wavering on the trigger, when it finally hit him. He was going to destroy them. Whoever they were, whoever he was mentally linked to, and they must have known it.
"...Do I really have to kill them?" Again, his eyes closed, the scene going blank-- but still the sound of young children, screaming and crying out in pain and fear wouldn't leave his mind. How could he hear them in his head? He vocalized his thoughts aloud. "I could take them in and--"
"How naive." The voice was brazen, condescending, and distinctly the one from his dream-- that man that looked so much like him. There was static, and the voice continued speaking. It was different from the voice of the children, and different than how he heard himself. The children he heard on the front of his mind, near his temples. His own voice was all around him, distorted by the helmet he wore. The man's voice was from somewhere just over his shoulder, half distinctly auditory and half distant in the back of his mind. "How will you take them in? How will you raise them? Have you ever lived a normal life after escaping from that facility?"
As he spoke there were flashes of-- something. A flashback? He could barely see it, only wires and a child in white scrambling against a wall before he was staring back at the HUD and the controls in his hand. Still, that brash, confident voice continued to speak. "Stop dreaming of the impossible."
"But... this is too tragic for them." He replied back quickly. Perhaps it was a voice on a comm link? The man's voice was much clearer than his own, not hindered by the helmet.
"Tragic? Tragic, you say?" There was a hint of laughter in the man's voice. "Those kids in the facility, none of them think they are unfortunate."
Again, his field of vision narrowed as he stared ahead at the blank wall of the building. "Someday they will." The cries of the children had almost grown to the background of his mind as he focused on his argument with the other man.
"But do you think the girl piloting the Tieren felt unfortunate?" Again, mocking-- and Tieren was a word he wasn't familiar with. "She didn't, right? Stop forcing your opinions onto others. No matter how you beautify your words, your kindness is only hypocritical." The man's voice grew in intensity, spouting the words like a rant. "You pretend to be kind, but it's only self-gratification!"
"...They're alive."
He blinked and the twin of himself was before him- as though physically present. The sudden appearance threw him, though himself in the memory seemed to find it perfectly normal. His arms spread apart as he spoke. "They were modified! And one day they'll come to kill us! Don't pity your enemy!" it was impossible-- there was no visual link before him, was there? So why was he seeing what wasn't there? "or maybe..."
There was a gun pointed at him. The hallway was dark, the man before him was a child, too-small hand wrapped around a pistol. "Do you need my help again?~" the child spoke with the same voice, still mocking. "Sealing away the things you don't want to do so in the end you can say it's not your fault?" He was absolutely immersed in the hallucination, the cockpit, HUD, building, and crying children utterly forgotten.
"Sure, I'll do it." he man continued to speak, growing in ferocity. "Who cares about other people! I'll fight to protect my own existence!"
"that's just..." But his arguments were useless and meek, the man speaking over him.
"Then why did you come here?!"
"I came here--" Static again.
"To kill them, right?" The child grinned and he moved his own hands-- he knew he held the controls to the machine, but in his sight it was a gun, too large in his small hands, as though he were a child again.
"No! I'm here as a--" Static.
"So your position allows you to kill?" The gold eye was wide, lips spread apart in a grin. "It's only a trigger, pull it! Pull it with your ego! Pull it until you're ruthless!"
"...I don't want to shoot." His voice was much younger than before, almost matching those of the children crying somewhere in his mind. The golden-eyed child before him screamed something and his own head went back. "I don't want to shoot!"
Screaming filled his ears and mind as the building before him began to light up, flash, and explode. He continued to scream in pain and frustration as the building fell upon itself, exploding and collapsing, and all the voices and cries, save his own, fell away with it.
(Sight/sound/smell crystal, reference is here. punishment is being sung to by pudding for the next four days.)