By the time the grizzly was found by wanderers on the border of the Iota system, Miranda's body had lapsed into a Coma, and she was on the brink of death. Physiological changes begun months ago by the nomad she was host to had altered her own cells to the point that they were more Nomad than human - at least on the inside - and those changes were the one thing that kept her from fading entirely.
Cells can be repaired, restored, even human cells... but the consciousness is significantly more prone to damage. Bits and pieces of her memory, her personality, her being, were transferred into the Mindshare. The knowledge that had been locked away deep in her subconscious mind by the entity in the Shrine was slowly pieced back together, bit by bit, image by image. That knowledge could prove to be the salvation of the K'haran efforts in Sirius, a map of sorts to a long lost remnant of an ancient civilization, that of the creators themselves. They could not afford to lose the information she held, but safeguards had been put into place to ensure it could not fall into the wrong hands; they needed her as much as they needed it.
***Awaken***
Miranda gasped her first lungfull of air in weeks, her body felt like it was on fire and frozen cold at the same time, pins and needles raced across her extremities and her mind cried out in agony and ecstasy simultaneously. Her vision was blurred, her ears ringing in more tones than she could count, the voice telling her to rise and live once more echoing in her brain like the reverberations of a drumbeat in a valley.
***(Calm)***
As the panic and anxiety of her sudden revival subsided, she began to make sense of her surroundings. The room came slowly into focus; first the blurry image of her hands in front of her face, blocking against a scrutinizing light, came into clarity... then her feet beyond those, she was sitting up on a cold, steel operating table... the bright light dimmed slightly, revealing a mixture of stainless steel walls and organic material that bore the appearance of slimy volcanic rock.
***(Warmth ... Light)***
***'Life'***
She was surrounded, several humans that appeared to be doctors, but standing among them, between them, behind them, were the beautiful, flowing and glowing forms of her brothers and sisters, K'hara, Nomads. Despite being born a human, she was more akin to them now, both mentally and physically. Her body was still passably human, though her hair and eyes had taken on a luminous gradient of blue and purple, and the faint glow of light tracing the outline of her bones could just barely be seen through her skin.
Miranda clumsily tried to turn and get down from the table, her legs weak beneath her, and the nearest man reached for her arm to help steady her, "Easy now, you've been clinically dead for almost a month, you need to regain your strength."
She looked around once more at the gathering, her memory was fuzzy but came back to her with concentration. She recognized the man who helped her, and several of the others, as agents of Das Wilde, which would explain the hint of Rheinlander accent in his voice. He lead her by the arm over to the opposite side of the room, to the bright light that had pained her eyes when she first awoke. Able to see more clearly now, able to focus, she identified the object the light was emanating from; a Nomad power cell. The blue and purple orb radiated with energy - the energy of the universe itself, the power generated by the stars throughout this galaxy and others.
Almost instinctively, she reached out to it, wisp-thin tendrils stretching through her skin and growing towards the light. Human skin wasnt able to absorb solar energy efficiently, it was dark and inhibitive. Those parts of her being that had transformed to be more physiologically akin to her K'haran brethren, however, were well suited to feeding on such a source, and they stretched beyond the boundaries of her flesh, reaching out to the 'meal' before her.
Her head lulled back and her eyes twitched as she felt the surge of solar radiation run along the tendrils into the core of her body, each pulse restoring strength, each wave bringing with it an almost overwhelming burst of pleasure and sense of fulfillment. Her blue and purple laced irises began to glow from within, sending streams of white light that reflected on particles of dust in the air. Her skeleton could be seen glowing through her skin as if it were irradiated, pulsing with the rythm of a heartbeat.
Eventually the pleasure subsided, as she was unable to absorb any more power without damaging even the nomad half of her biology. She withdrew her hands, staring at them in childish amusement as the bluish tendrils withdrew into her fingertips. She may have been clinically dead the past month, but her body had evolved far past what it was when she had escaped in that cold freighter. She was no longer human, but neither was she a Nomad... she was something inbetween, a true hybrid, defying what was believed possible prior to this point. Before now, hybrids were - in the most simple terms - a human mind occupying a nomad form, linked to the mindshare; a process which took a great deal of time and energy, and put great risk on the participants involved.
Her time aboard the Shrine, the events that took place in its hidden chamber, the long hours of meditation she spent with the entity that had inhabited the station for untold millenia... something must have prepared her for this, altered her physiology to the point of being capable of accepting such a dual existence. Thoughts, questions, were racing through her mind as fast as she could process them, and she slowly came to the realization that not all of them were her own. Long ago, she had become a willing host to a Nomad Incubus, and through it she had indirect access to the mindshare - the telepathic link connecting all Nomads within range - but this was different... stronger... direct. She was no longer a host, the Incubus she had once held had given all the strength it had to keep her alive during the Coma. She was a direct part of the link now, processing the thoughts of a thousand consciousnesses at once, downloading and uploading information without even the need for concentration or an active effort.
Miranda turned toward the Wilde standing next to her, eyes still glowing from her contact with the cell. As she spoke, for the first time since awakening, she felt a strange feedback... she heard her own voice through her ears, but also heard her thoughts echoing in the many minds she was connected to, "What... am I?
The man smiled, and in unison the other humans, as well as the Nomads within the room, replied, "Evolution." ***Evolution***
"You represent the first true hybrid, Miranda, a feat of genetic engineering that none of us could achieve before now. We dont know exactly how this happened, all we know is that the Shrine somehow altered you, and before you came here you were collecting information for it, information that may be the key to finding our creators."
"The K'vosh..."
"Yes. The information we need is locked in your mind, we were unable to transfer it to the Mindshare. Tell us... do you remember anything from your time on the Shrine? Do you know what it wanted you to find? What it had you search for?"
"Glimpses... I cant remember..."
The man sighed a sigh that was heard throughout the minds of a thousand entities, including hers. "We can only hope it comes back to you soon. Come, we're aboard Altair, I'll show you to your sanctum."
![[Image: Tenacity.gif]](https://sig.grumpybumpers.com/host/Tenacity.gif)
![[Image: 10oky75.png]](http://i44.tinypic.com/10oky75.png)
![[Image: vrucuv.png]](http://i39.tinypic.com/vrucuv.png)