* * *

Hercule opens one eye and finds that he is inside a field of white light and before his stands a doorway. From the doorway an image appears and covers his view. The image expands and it focuses to reveal a dark room with a table in the middle of it. Hercules gaze darkens.

Opening his eyes Hercule struggles to move, but is stopped by a leather belt that crosses his naked stomach. He then turns his head to the side and sees his arms are filled with needles and tubs. He reaches to pull them out, but is restrained by a strong hand. Hercule begins to struggle. Before he can do any more movement though, a needle pierces his neck and his gaze goes dark once more.

Waking up on a cold concrete floor, Hercule recoils and curls into a ball. He is reminded of that cold dark room he was tortured in. Turning around, his eyes look and find that he is not in a small room, but instead in a large warehouse like place. Suddenly, a door opens near him and blinds his eyes for a moment with a bright white light. Blinking he looks at the door as a silhouette covers the light and walks towards him. The silhouette crouches down and puts a hand under his arm and picks him up bodily. The figure then drapes Hercule over its shoulder and carries him into a bright sand covered area.

It seems as if he is carried for hours until the man that has had him on his shoulder puts him down by a large box. The man then crouches down again and whispers instructions to push the large red button on the side of the box when the speaker on the other side says to. The man then disappears and Hercule can hear him running away from the box. For an hour Hercule leans against the cool metal of the box until the speaker crackles and the words ‘Push the Button’ are heard. Hercule reaches over with a last reserve of strength and puts his hand on the button. Pressing it, Hercule is surrounded by a white flash and feels his conscious self being torn from his body.

The images disappear and Hercule finds himself inside the field of white once more, but with another man standing beside him. The man wears a long cloak and ancient ionic armour. The man looks at him and speaks in a low rumbling voice, “We are not that different you and I. We were both used as test subjects in brutal experiments, but there is a difference I have seen. From looking into your mind and going over my own memories of capture. I have striven for freedom, for individuality. You have not. Therefore you are going to submit to my imprisonment of you mind and the taking of your body.”

With those final cryptic words the man expands and disappears, though his laugh that emanates from the position in which his body was echoes. Hercule looks around trying to follow the echoes, but his gaze instead falls upon a black tree that seems to be sending pulses through the air around it. Walking slowly, or rather gliding slowly towards the tree. Hercule feels the air around him condense and harden, his movement stops as his vision is blurred. He then tries to touch the carapace that now surrounds him, but his hand is thrown back and his head begins to feel like its being torn open. Hercules vision goes black.

* * *

The carapace that holds a now unconscious Hercule falls from the beasts vice grip as it falls through a hole that is ripped in the floor by an explosion beneath it. The carapace comes to rest against a fallen wall, but only for a moment. The walls around the place where the carapace rests burst into flames as the cores force field give out and unleash and massive shock wave that rips the station apart. Hercules body lays unharmed inside the shell of the unknown material

.