I woke up screaming.

Fear.

Pain.

Burning.

Freezing.

Suffocating.

In my dreams, I could feel the dread creeping into my senses.
Death woke me.
Burning and screaming, then frozen and breathless.
I felt their pain, bore their fear.
More began to rise.
Absolute terror overwhelmed me.
I ran from my room crying at the top of my lungs for help.
Even though I knew that no one could.
A few people were in the round room, a couple more on the balcony.
They all came running.
I was unaware of the words that were spilling out of me, I am told they ran along the lines of, “we have to help them” and “they’re dead”.
Eventually they managed to get me back to my room where I curled up into a ball on my bed, screaming and crying in turn.
Orthus somehow managed to get Deia access to our building and within half a auxe she was by my side, gently encouraging me to focus upon getting the energy moving and easing the effects of the emotions that I was being fed.
It took almost a full auxe for me to regain my focus.
The sensation of pain slowly faded away and the feeling of pure terror subsided, reduced to panic, fear and confusion.
What I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, was that a large number of people were dead, and most of the rest were scared.
Judging by the burning heat then the subzero temperatures, I had to surmise that one of the ships, that were on course for Virrion, had exploded.  From the overwhelming number of people that were still feeling fear, they had all been audience to what had happened.  If it had been Rapture, the amount of negative emotions would be far less straight away as the others would be unaware that anything may have happened.
I spoke of everything that I had felt and thought to Orthus, Deia and Culpin, who had escorted Deia over.
Orthus vouched for my connection to the emotions of humanity for, as far as the rest of the galaxy were aware, no such link was capable of existing.  Nor should it, the details of the methods used to activate my link were only known to myself, Deia, Orthus and whoever helped them to carry out the process.  I had managed to keep it from Amelia, Jennifer, Julie, Phoebe, Silvia and even Phillip.  Which I hated and would have wound up telling each of them eventually.
It was cautioned that, unless Orthus gave me his approval, I should play dumb concerning the issue when it came to speaking to anyone in a position of authority.
Culpin Ocolai asked how it was that I could be sure of what I was feeling, however at the time, its attention was diverted to seeing if there could be some way of finding out the status of humanity’s pilgrimage, which seemed to keep him busy enough to avoid ask too much.
As he disappeared to see what he could find out, I pulled up a screen and sent out messages to as many people as I thought would help.
They all came back with an alert saying that they could not be sent, that the server would continue to try sending them out.  Logic told me that they would not be sent until the lockdown was lifted, however my heart would not listen and sent more nonetheless.
The messages that I had received up until that point were mostly filled with notifications of how bored the travelers were or details on the progress of Rapture.
Only two of them contained any notable emotion.
The first being a message typed out by Jennifer’s son, James.  At eight years old, he was more than capable of explaining to me how, when we all got to Virrion, he wanted to work with me to create some new games to play.  I had promised him that I would look out for some video games to replace his Sonic and Mario collection.  In the message he described how he had been allowed into a room where there was no gravity, so he spent the whole time pretending he was an underwater level of Rayman.  He wrote that Kayla, his younger sister missed me almost as much as he did, but she was not old enough to write words yet, so he let her play with the buttons and pointed out that “dkfjbwdehbwsijrg vrjhfbejcbw jfjdj edjfh” was actually her saying hello.
The possibilities of what could have happened to them consumed my mind, despair sunk in hard and fast.
I squeezed my eyes tight shut, forcing the tears back down.  I willed myself to disbelieve all of the scenarios that skittered through my head; if I gave into wondering, I would most certainly have become lost in an inescapable depression.
However, I have been there, done that and refuse to allow myself to dissolve back into that unnervingly comfortable darkness.
I would not let myself become numb, I had enough reason to keep fighting, more reasons than I had ever had before, more than anyone could ever have claimed to have.
I had to be strong.
Even if they were not counting on me, they were still my responsibility.
A fact I resolved to centre my existence around.
The second message was from one of the few who unknowingly stopped me from drowning in the murky depths of depression when I was a teenager.
Phillip’s message was brief.
“I got my biochip, writing this on my arm, bit weird.  We’ve found a way to charge our phones, ask someone there about the power converters.  It’s not like we can call or message but think of all the pictures and music and videos we can recover.  And I found this thing in my wallet, was gonna wait for a special occasion but I miss you and want to show you as soon as you get here.  Just a bit of proof of how old my feelings are.  Hurry back already x”
My biggest personal incentive blinked out at me from the wall where the console floated.
He had never felt so close yet so far away before.
Instead of curling up into a ball and bawling my eyes out, I pushed myself off of the bed and marched up to the roof, all but ignoring the barrage of questions that were flung at me as I headed through the round room.  I owed them answers that I simply did not have and until I could figure out what to say, I needed to focus myself.
As cowardly as it was, I left Orthus to explain what had happened.
Up in the dojo, I went though all of my routines and practices until I could longer stand. I had pushed out as much energy as I could and, as I lay there, simply waited for those emotions to filter back into me. As it began to replenish, I tried to examine what they were feeling in a desperate attempt to figure out who was still with me.  Keeping the emotions moving whilst inspecting them was a fruitless task that wore me down to the point of exhaustion.
It was not long before I passed out completely.

I was awoken by a few voices frantically calling my name.
It had not even been half an hour since I had lost consciousness. 
Phoebe and Laura Barber were sprinting towards me. 
Laura B is someone who Phoebe and I used to online game with; she was online Laura and I was i.r.l. Laura, Phoebe having been the common factor in our games.  My social anxiety extended even to social gaming therefore I would rarely even log on if I did not think Phoebe was going to be online.  I met online Laura B in person when she made the trip across the pond for Phoebe’s wedding there had been a small selection of the online crowd that had made the leap to i.r.l. friends from Phoebe.  Laura and Todd Randolph had both made the journey from America just to witness the happiness of their online friend.  There was also Mikey Rivers who had come down form Leeds for the occasion from the same group of gaming enthusiasts.
Laura B had joined us on Kenglowe to learn about the animals of the galaxy.  Back home she had been a zoologist and had wanted to maintain her connection to the creatures that she was hoping could capture her heart almost as much as those that we had lost.
She was looking down at me over Phoebe’s shoulder as she began to shake me awake.
“I’m alive,” the sound of my voice only just about reached their ears, “it just takes me a while to move the energy enough to move again.”
“What were you doing? ” Phoebe’s eyes were red.  The potential loss of her husband and her family, most of which had been on board the Screnac and all of who had chosen to go to Virrion, had kept her awake since the early hours.
Laura B was alone.  When we were abducted, she had no close friends or family with her, the only people that she knew at were Phoebe, Todd and Mikey.  She was scared and worried for the people that had been lost, however her concern was primarily upon Phoebe who had become her closet friend.
“I was seeing if I could figure out who we had lost by trying to identify who remained,” my throat was dry and felt cracked, “but I can’t tell a person by what they’re feeling, and there are still quite a few emotions that indicate that there are some people who aren’t aware of what’s happened.”
I forced myself to sit up, the least that I could do was to tell her what I had felt and what I suspected about what might have happened.
All we could do was hope that none of her family were on that ship.
Even that felt wrong, as though we were wishing death upon other people.
I somehow managed to push myself onto my feet, “how is it down there?” my eyes flitted to the roof’s exit.
“Not good,” I have never heard Phoebe’s voice quiver like that, she was only just barely holding it together, “I’m going to advise you to maybe stay up here for the time being.  I’m sorry.”  Her voice broke, yet she cleared her throat and kept her eyes dry.  Perhaps because she had already run out of tears.  I resisted the thought that told me that she needed a hug, she was trying so hard to be strong, a hug might just cause her armour to crack.
“They’re just worried and frustrated,” Laura B said, “they need someone to blame…”
“And I’m the one that connects everything,” I could already feel the resignation in my voice, “if they need to blame me, they have every right to, I won’t hold it against them.  It is my fault that any of us are here at all.”

With Orthus and Culpin attempting to gather any information they could, all that any of us could do was wait.

As the unit crawled forwards, the sense of upset that I was able to pick up on, intensified.  I wondered if that was due to the information reaching Rapture.
What concerned me more was the fact that the fear and distress was not dissipating at all.  Why would the others still be scared?
Sad and at a loss I could understand, however I was picking up on the reality that people were still as scared as when the dread had begun, before I had even woken up.
I spent my time on he roof top.  Other than Phoebe bringing my bag up to me, Orthus bringing me the meals that she put together and the news that there was no news, I was left to my solitude.
For the others, having lost everything and almost everyone when they were brought aboard the Screnac because of me had been tough enough to endure, but having to continue on with the knowledge that, with some unknown event, they might have lost everyone else that was precious to them…
It was too much to bear.
The reason that they knew that anything was wrong in the first place was undeniably my fault.
The frustration that was building as more time dragged by.  No news came from off-world or about the investigation that would lead to the lockdown being lifted.
The inability to know or be able to do anything was suffocating.
Every face that I could remember circled around my head, begging me for help, blaming me for their pain and loss, burning in flames or gasping for air.

So I trained.
I repeated all of the exercises and movements until I had no energy, either physical or kinetic, and so I turned to my notebooks and began writing name after name, with descriptions where I did not know what they were called.  I wrote down how I knew them and where they were supposed to be located in the vastness of the galaxy.
By the time I had finished, it had been dark for several auxes.
I found that someone had brought out a cushioned mattress, similar to the ones from the Screnac, with my pillow and blanket.
I am not sure whether they, either collectively or with a majority vote, decided that they could not have me in the round room, or they assumed that I would want to be left alone.
Both possibilities were likely true, maybe they used one to justify the other, however I could not have cared less at the time.
I was relieved that I would not be forced to face them.  Overwhelmed by shame and guilt, coupled with my own pain and sadness at what I could feel, who we had lost and the frustration of not knowing or being able to even try to help, all that I could allow myself to desire was sleep.
Fortunately, there was a hygiene room in a small series of rooms on the roof.
I lacked nothing.
Except for knowledge.

I awoke to the sensation of three more deaths.
I felt each death at that time.  Before, there had been so many in such quick succession that I had not been able to distinguish between them. 
If one of the transport ships had exploded, that would have killed fifty people, at most. 
I was burdened with the knowledge that the number had risen to fifty-two, at least.
I struggled with the decision over whether or not to tell the twenty-six, already despairing souls, that were waiting bellow.
I sent messages to Orthus and Deia, asking their opinion.
It was early in the morning and it was a long while before either of them responded.
Deia had gone back to the clinic where she had been granted a temporary position and so was only able to send a message, telling me that she did not know enough about human mannerisms to offer an informed opinion, I knew them better and it would be down to me to make that choice.
Orthus said much the same as he brought me breakfast an auxe later.
One thing that I used to hate in stories; TV shows, films, books, etc., was that, whenever it came to lying about something of this magnitude, the character would always choose to lie and then have it blow up in their faces later on.  I could never understand why they would choose to lie when the truth upfront would have been so much simpler and less troublesome.
I could not speak for those characters, however the mere idea of having to actively open my mouth and say the words, “three more people are dead” made me feel like I would throw up or pass out or shake so much that I would vibrate into another dimension.
I knew that I had to bite the proverbial bullet eventually, so I asked Phoebe and Laura B to come up.

As I spoke, I could not stop a few tears from tracing the profile of my face.
Phoebe stood in silence, her head lowered, cheeks damp.
Laura B, tears flowing silently down her cheeks, put her hand on Phoebe’s shoulder and mouthed to me, “I’ll take her back down.”
I nodded, holding in my own sobs caused my chest to heave and my pursed lips to quiver uncontrollably.
The door closed behind them.
I stood as still as I could, trying to keep everything inside.
A series of bells rang, the ones that signaled the end of the local lockdown.
In the sky, I watched as the barely visible barrier around our building dissolved, the slight shimmer fading until the surroundings regained their rigidity and a sound that I had not even noticed, stopped.
I walked along the roof until I was out from under the canopy and threw myself into the sky.
Higher, higher and higher still, until all I could hear was the wind.
Stopping several hundred metres up, I took three short yet deep and measured breaths.
When I took the third, I pulled it as far into my lungs as I could bear.
I held onto it for a few moments.
I released my voice along with the carbon dioxide.

By the time that I landed, my voice was worn away and my tear-ducts dry.
I continued to train.