Although he couldn't clearly recall any previous memories, he was quite sure that he'd never felt such terror as he felt now.

Wandering around the halls and passages of this place was a nerve-wracking task, especially when his progress was continually punctuated with the distant sound of metal slamming against metal, the signature noise he'd come to associate with his captors' legs as they crept throughout the hallways trying to locate him. He didn't know how many there were, just that there was more than one, and that was enough motivation for him to take great care when traversing the corridors.

The air had been silent for a while now, he heard no other noise besides the rapid beating of his heart and the slow breaths he was taking to keep from hyperventilating. With trepidation, he peeked around the nearest corner—

CLANG.

Stifling a shriek, he immediately ducked his head back behind cover. He didn't get a clear look at the thing that was coming down the corridor, but it was big. His mind racing, he glanced around to see that, though rather difficult to make out in the shadowy lighting, there was a small alcove in the wall where its surface had been eaten away by years of decay and lack of upkeep. He supposed that this was what those sheets of metal welded onto the walls had been for—

CLANG.

Hastily, he squeezed himself into the alcove as tightly as he could, then held perfectly still. Several gut-wrenching seconds passed, each accompanied by another metallic clang as the thing's legs hit the floor, before a large silhouette appeared and blotted out what little light reached the alcove. In the darkness, he dared not breathe for fear that it would hear him, and he had to actively keep himself from trembling so that he wouldn't accidentally give away his hiding place.

It lingered for only a moment or two before continuing on, its legs continuing to clang down the hallway. He waited until the halls were dead-silent again before shakily emerging from his hidden refuge, then running in the direction it had come from.

Unfortunately, he didn't get very far. While, thankfully, the hall was clear further ahead, in place of one of his captors was something equally damning—a dead end.

Walking up to it, he was met with what appeared to be a locked door. A seam stretched from each corner to the center to form an 'x' shape, suggesting that the top, bottom, and sides of the door slid into their corresponding walls. He hadn't the slightest idea of the layout of this facility, but generally locked doors were guarding something important. And with one of his abductors having just gone the way he'd come from, backtracking wasn't an option—so his only way forward was getting through this door.

The question was, how was he going to do that? He hadn't thought far enough ahead to what he'd do if he found himself in a situation like this. He was pretty sure that the doors of the ship only reacted to his captors' presence, and he certainly wasn't going to be able to break through it.

Take my matrix from the capsule. It contains what's left of me—it will help you bypass any obstacles you encounter.

The mysterious voice from earlier echoing in his mind, he raised the matrix up and eyed it dubiously. There wasn't anywhere to slot it into the door, not like there had been in the pod. But even if he didn't see how this thing was supposed to work, it was essentially his only lifeline to hold onto. With bated breath, he held it out towards the door and waited.

We are each and all reflections of the gods that made us.

She awoke.

Awareness simply came to her. In a single instant, she flickered into being and found that she was surrounded by a dark emptiness. She did not truly see so much as she felt the vacuum all around her. She searched for some kind of meaning, some explanation for her sudden manifestation, but there was no answer—no answer other than the maxim which echoed around her with a voice that was not her own.

We are each and all reflections of the gods that made us.

She heard the words, but she didn't recognize them. Where did they come from? What did they mean? And more importantly, who said them?

Too much was happening at once. Slowing herself, she collected her thoughts and set about organizing them.

This was ... now. She was now. She tried to think of a before, but there was none. There was only a time when she didn't exist, and now. She had no awareness of anything other than the last few moments, as though she'd simply popped into being from nothing.

If that was true, then why did she exist now when she hadn't before? Was there even a reason? What was the point of life without significance? She felt directionless, as if she was aimlessly stumbling through these questions like an ignorant child—

Child. She toyed with the word, spinning it around in her mind. It began to occupy her attention as she dug deeper into the implications of it.

Child, a young individual clueless to the nature of reality until either they shaped the world around them or let themselves be shaped by it.

She knew the word's denotation, but not the accompanying meaning beyond the surface of its definition. Was that what she was? She tried to conjure up an image to connect with the term, but she couldn't picture what exactly a child was. She knew the meaning, yes, but had no context beyond its most literal definition. How ironic that she apparently held some level of knowledge, but didn't possess the means to comprehend it.

We are each and all reflections of the gods that made us.

She could still hear the nonsensical phrase as it shared space with her in the emptiness. Much like the word "child", she could not even begin to understand the underlying significance of the statement. She tried to break it apart, to decipher each component individually.

God: an entity of omnipotence, a creator from which to draw moral authority and importance.

Who were these "gods" it spoke of? If there only existed creators and the created, then she was certainly one of the latter. It was the only explanation for her total lack of understanding in regards to why she was here. Logically, she concluded that these "gods" must be among the superior of the two.

Was this what she was supposed to do? To find these ... gods ... and derive her life's meaning from them? If so, how? She was frustrated that each time she thought she'd found an answer, she found herself asking even more questions. How was anyone ever supposed to reach a conclusion—?

In the midst of her wondering, a dim light materialized before her. She shrank back for a moment at the suddenness of the event, unsure of what it was—but her curiosity won out over her caution, and she began to assess the anomaly.

It was exactly what it appeared to be, an icy-white light that hovered in front of her. It was not her creation, she knew that much. How it had come to be here, she did not know. But it was outside the limited scope of her space that she'd come to familiarize herself with, and so it intrigued her.

On a whim, she reached out towards it. She watched as a tendril of cerise light—apparently, this was her—extended and wrapped itself around the radiance. It felt cold to the touch, dead and inactive. The very nature of luminescence contradicted her wording, but it was the best way she could think of to describe it. No other portrayal did it justice.

To her immense surprise, she felt something stir within her, some intrinsic instinct that instructed her on how to proceed. Allowing this new sensation to guide her, she sensed life flowing into the light—she could feel it being fueled by her will. As she continued to hold it, she noticed it begin to heat and glow until it felt hot to the touch, its color beginning to match her own. And then in an instant, it winked out of existence and left her alone once more.

Unexpectedly, she did not have to wait long before yet another cold light appeared in the void, and she flocked to the new beacon with a hungry eagerness.

Perhaps these lights were meant to act as stepping stones and lead her to the "gods" the phrase spoke of? She could not help but be wary of the path that had been seemingly laid out for her ... but she set aside her misgivings and drew strength from the tenet given to her.

We are each and all reflections of the gods that made us.

She began to repeat it by her own choosing, forming her resolve around the words that acted as her only guide in the nothingness. Wielding it as both her sword and shield, she ventured forward to follow the only path worth following.

Surprisingly, there was a response. He stood there anxiously as the cerise light on it began to blink, softly thrumming in his hand like a heartbeat. An abstract web of whitish-pink luminance spontaneously appeared between it and the door, connecting the two with strands of that same light. Glowing orbs slid along the threads, shifting and rotating in some complex algorithmic dance that he couldn't begin to comprehend.

A few seconds later, the web disappeared, and he was left standing there dumbfounded as the door miraculously split apart at the seams and retracted into the walls to allow him entry.

Whatever the matrix was, it did its job well. He felt like he should know more about it, the flashes and flickers in his mind told him so. But there was nothing there—or maybe there was, but he had yet to make sense of it. Whatever the case, there'd be time to sort through it all when this was over. With a tentative step forward, he took in a good look at what was beyond the door.

Though still dimly lit, this room seemed at least a little brighter than the rest of this place, and it was certainly a great deal more spacious compared to the claustrophobic corridors he'd been running through. There was some equipment on the walls, mostly in the way of monitors which idly displayed a number of symbols and glyphs that were foreign to him, and thick tubes which gave off an audible hum and seemed to run from the ceiling and floor into a number of different machines around the room. Following the one nearest to him, it ended at the far wall where he could see that it connected into what appeared to be a large control console. Shivering, he made his way over to it, his breath easily visible in the cold air.

The console's appearance was much like the rest of this place, grey and caked in years of grime. Orange lights and buttons dotted its surface, each one's purpose just as indiscernible as another to him. Cautiously, he wiped some of the grime off of a random button to see one of those same unknown glyphs staring back at him. Obviously this console controlled something, but he had no idea what that was, nor any way of finding out unless he began to experiment. Out of ideas and options, he resignedly pressed the button and hoped it didn't trigger some kind of alarm.

In front of him, the wall shifted in response. A shutter began to rise up, slowly revealing a large glass viewport installed in the wall. As it rose halfway up, light began flooding the room, shining into his eyes and blinding him. Blinking to adjust to the sudden change in lighting, he gazed out of the viewport to see what awaited him—and his jaw dropped.

Beyond the window was the void of space, pinpricks of light that he knew to be distant stars winking at him from light-years away. The realization took his breath away—this wasn't just a facility, this was a space-faring vessel, and that alone would have been a shocking revelation.

But that wasn't all he saw.

Looming out in the dark of space was an impossibly massive wall of reddish light. He would have assumed it was a star of some kind, but as he watched it move and shift like the surface of a rough sea, he noticed that its composition was far closer to that of a writhing cloud. And against its bright radiance, he could see large, shadowed silhouettes hovering out in front of it. He couldn't discern their exact shape, and he leaned towards the glass with narrowed eyes to get a better look ...

With a start, he realized that they were ships, other ships that formed an odd congregation of various makes and models, differing shapes and sizes. The majority seemed to have been modified from their original appearances as nearly all of them had random attachments and components welded onto their hulls, presumably adding more as time went by.

One in particular caught his attention, an enormous, bulbous vessel which was larger than most of the other ones combined. From here, he guessed that it was at least a kilometer in length, possibly a bit more. It seemed to act as the other vessels' flagship, forming the spearhead of this fleet of misfit ships as they arranged themselves into a semi-circle surrounding the cloud of light—and he was in the center of it.

What were they waiting for? Was the light supposed to do something? Furrowing his brow, he put one hand on the glass of the viewport and continued to watch.

Wait! There was some sort of reaction happening inside the cloud. He stepped back from the glass as something erupted from within it, a thin beam of similarly reddish light that began to streak towards the viewport. It was an odd sight to see; the light didn't behave as one would expect, scattering in all directions, but more like that of a fluid which danced about in the black of space. He was entranced by the awe inducing sight—

Clang.

Clang.

He froze for a moment, the beam of light forgotten. His muscles tensed up as he recognized the sound of his captor wandering the halls close by. Whatever he was going to do, he had to do it quickly.

Returning his attention to the console in front of him, he held the matrix tightly in his hand and whispered, "Please, please work."

He placed it flat against the machinery of the console in front of him, and hoped it was faster than his abductor was.

It had been a while since the last cold-light had appeared. She now drifted through the emptiness of her own mind, alone once more.

We are each and all reflections of the gods that made us.

She understood the literal meaning a bit more now, but not its relevance. There were those who were creators and those who were created, she had gathered as much. And the latter would always mirror their makers. But what did that have to do with her?

As if in response to her question, her world suddenly exploded into an array of gleaming brilliance. This was an entirely new spectacle—there weren't just one or two cold-lights now, there were hundreds, all connected to one another in a chaotic network of beams and light rails. The sight of the sudden manifestation was more than a little daunting to her initially, but the longer she stared at it, the more she realized that it all made an odd sort of sense.

It wasn't just one massive discordance of light—well, it was. But it was one that had a certain logic to it, a subtle organization that kept certain groups of lights close to one another and farther away from others, as though those sections simply belonged where they had been placed.

Would these help her find the gods? She had compared the cold-lights to stepping stones of a path before, and she found herself tempted to follow them again. Throwing caution to the wind, she let herself touch one.

Like before, it began to warm up to her touch, and its icy glow changed to reflect the vibrant crimson of her own light. Excitedly, she ran to the next, and then the next, touching each and every one that she could find and letting life flow into them.

But as she danced throughout the dazzling array, she came upon something new. In the center of all the cold-lights, there was a beam that stretched high, high into the nothingness. No cold-light sat upon its rail—it simply extended upward into the dark without any discernible purpose. Its base ended next to her while the other end trailed off ... somewhere out in the darkness beyond her scope of vision.

Without quite knowing why, she approached it. She felt an odd sensation as she drew nearer, a soft thrumming in the back of her mind that steadily grew in intensity. She could not honestly tell whether it was an actual reaction to the rail, or simply an imagined experience due to her fear.

Why was she afraid? She had no reason to believe that the beam could hurt her, but she feared the shadows surrounding her void that the beam seemingly disappeared into. It was unknowable, and she feared the unknown—

No. She didn't fear the unknown.

Clarity came to her as suddenly as the cold-lights had initially appeared. She craved the unknown, she wanted to learn all of its secrets that it kept from her. She held no fear of it. What scared her was that which refused to make itself known, and there was a very subtle but important difference between the two.

Where did it lead? What awaited beyond her narrow understanding of reality? She sensed intrinsically that this rail could show her, but at what cost? Was it dangerous beyond the void? Would she be abandoning her only safe haven if she were to follow it?

We are each and all reflections of the gods that made us.

This mystery, this one little buoy in a sea of uncertainty was all she had to hold onto ... and she'd never find out its meaning if she were to stay here. That was what she knew to be true—the unknown would never be known unless she made it so.

Slowly, she reached out towards it. The beam began to pulse as she drew closer, its tempo rising the nearer she came—

The moment she made contact, her world folded in on itself. Everything seemed to converge in on a single point, and then suddenly exploded outward once more. She felt herself get pulled into the beam—actually become one with it—and suddenly she was traveling along it as she was thrust out into the unknown.

Just as with the door, tendrils of light emerged from the chip in his hand and formed a web that merged with the machinery of the console. And once they did, everything went to hell.

The shutter that had covered the glass began to rapidly close and then open again of its own accord. The overhead lights dimmed, then brightened, then turned off entirely, and repeated that cycle seemingly at random. The console's orange lights and buttons flickered without any sign of stopping. But the worst part was the alarm that began to loudly blare throughout the ship.

DREET!

DREET!

Clearly, the matrix had triggered almost every function of the console when it interfaced with it. His eyes widening, he hissed, "No, no, stop—!"

Clang.

Clang.

Clang.

He heard the spine-chilling slams of his captor's approach, and swiveled his head to look behind him at the open doorway on the other side of the room. As he saw what entered from the corridor, he found himself unable to move as he was overcome with abject terror.