The Strange Story of Dr. Akai

In game time: June 15, 2352

Narrator: Akai

Players: Akai, Feyrin

Location: The city of Alexandria, on planet Osiris

Summary: Feyrin wakes up in a cell in the basement of a medical research center, recalling that she had been abducted by some mercenaries. She is hauled roughly out of her cell by some guards who then take her up to meet Dr. Phillip Chandler, a xenobiologist who has taken great interest in some recent experiences that she had. An alien abduction, some lost time, and some strange marks left on her body. She figures out soon enough that the doctor has a more maelevolent interest in her, as she views another patient nearby, a strange humanoid with leathery black skin, but whose face is unidentifiable, being that it has been cut apart and laid open to expose his brain, which glows red through some strange bioluminescence. The doctor was kind enough to set up some speakers so that the patient can still speak and share his thoughts.

Dr. Chandler takes a sample of some fluid from his mutilated patient's brain and intends to inject it into Feyrin, and at that moment she discovers an unexpected ability, a sort of psychokinesis in which she can seemingly cause her soul to leave her body and possess inanimate objects. In this case she possesses the syringe and injects its contents into Dr. Chandler's neck. While the doctor collapses under the influence of that substance, Feyrin frees herself and stomps on the doctor's head, killing him.

As Feyrin prepares to leave the other patient persuades her to help him, stating that he knows the access codes to get out of the tightly secured facility. He's been there for three months, subjected to Chandler's experiments, and he's learned a few things. She agrees to help him, using his guidance to put his head back together and tape him up, and she learns his name: Dr. Seito Akai. Together they find a supply room and some weapons, and after a fight with some guards, who Feyrin easily dispatches, they escape up to a private car park, and steal a sky car that takes them to the skies above the city of Alexandria. Akai reveals that he knows the place fairly well, having lived there years before, and he takes them to the only safe place that he knows, the residence of an ex-girlfriend, Tanya Aimes. Tanya is shocked to have her ex-boyfriend show up unannounced, especially seeing that he's changed so radically. The last time she saw him he was a fairly ordinary jackal recom. It doesn't help that he was reported as dead ten years ago.

Akai explains to Tanya and Feyrin that he had been part of the crew of the starship Stellaris. He was a manifold physicist, specializing in designing FTL drives, and he was part of a team that was testing an experimental drive that was supposed to have a greatly increased range and accuracy than current models. The drive worked, but it took them outside of the known universe, and they were contacted by some sort of hyperdimensional entity. Its intelligence was so bizarre that it drove the rest of the crew insane, save for Akai, who was somehow able to comprehend it and communicate with it. It transformed him, changing his body into a form that it saw as better suited to survive in that strange dimension, and inducted him into a cabal of similarly transformed beings: the Imaja. Composed of similarly brilliant minds, the Imaja endeavored to study the secrets of the universe, at the behest of this strange entity that had gathered them together. After ten years there the Imaja sent Akai back on board the Stellaris to normal space, for reasons that he did not fully understand. Soon afterwards the ship was boarded by a mercenary crew who captured Akai and took him to Dr. Chandler's facility. He figured out then that the Imaja wanted to add Chandler's intellect to their collective, and that Akai, being the newest member of the order, was being offered to him as a means of recruitment.

Feyrin reveals that she had been abducted from the surface of a planet where she was serving in a military unit. All she recalls was seeing a great monolith in the sky and then a flurry of bizarre imagery, before being deposited on a spacecraft, and abducted by the mercenaries shortly after. Her experiences gave her the strange powers that she has, though she doesn't know the reason that she has them. Tanya agrees to help Akai sort things out as he recovers from his injuries, and Feyrin decides to head out on her own and figure out what she intends to do with her life. She's concerned that the authorities might come after them, but then surmises that since Dr. Chandler was running an illicit operation out of a well known medical research center the people working for him would not want to draw any attention to themselves.

After Feyrin leaves, Akai stays for a few days, coming to terms with what he has become, and realizing that he needs to make a new destiny for himself as well. He decides to leave for Ceres, feeling drawn to the city of Shangri-La. Tanya helps him concoct a cover story, explaining his bizarre appearance as him being an escaped bioroid who came from a fringe colony to find a new life in Shangri-La.