When he came to, the first thing that Avery noticed was that he hurt all over.

Before he could even open his eyes, he winced in pain and had to clench his jaw to prevent himself from screaming.

’F*ck! F*ck! F*ck!’

Avery shouted expletives in his mind as he tried to adjust to his current agonizing state.

Fortunately, a few seconds later, he felt a slight pressure in his left shoulder and the immense pain quickly receded into a dull soreness.

Releasing a deep sigh of relief, Avery finally willed his eyes open to take in his surroundings. From how horrible waking up felt, he at least knew he was not dead.

Sadly, his vision was horribly blurry. Everything just looked like vague shapes and colors.

Still, he was able to track some movement, and the hazy turquoise color on top of the moving blob gave him some indication of who was in front of him and where he was.

"Dr. Raiti?" Avery asked, his voice raspy and hoarse.

"Yep. Glad to see you back in the land of the living. And seeing as you know who I am, hopefully that means you don’t have any sever memory loss."

While Mercedes may have spoken casually, Avery found the prospect of having lost his memories terrifying.

Quickly he began recalling his life in the order he remembered it, but he did not find any obvious gaps in his knowledge.

Of course, considering memory loss was mentioned it could easily just be that he did not remember that he had forgotten something.

’Wait! Something else is missing!’

As he was starting to get used to his horrid state, Avery tried to feel out his entire body.

However, at the end of his arms, he could tell that something very important was no longer there.

"My hands?! What happened?!" Avery yelled in panic.

Yes, his hands were completely gone. He could not feel them and when he looked down with his still bleary vision, he did not see their vague shape either.

"Well, I’m not exactly sure. When Kasandra brought you in here, they were already gone. Actually, your arms up to your elbows had been missing, so things are a lot better now than before. Don’t forget that you have quite the ability to heal yourself. Honestly, it’s astounding.

"You’ve only been in here for four hours and most of the damage has already been fixed. I certainly helped things along, but no normal person would have survived the condition you were in. I mean you were dead for a bit there. Still, you came back after not too long."

Hearing that he had been dead did not help Avery’s already frazzled mental state.

The last thing that he remembered was exerting his psionic abilities beyond anything he had before.

After that everything was blank until he woke up in pain in the Intrepid’s sickbay under the care of Doctor Raiti.

’Whatever I did must have worked at least. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure we would all be dead.’ Avery thought, taking a few moments to collect himself.

His body’s current state might have been distressing, but it was not as if he was permanently injured.

Now that he had calmed down a bit, he focused on the damaged parts of his body and could feel them healing at an accelerated rate.

It was strange to feel his bones, muscles, and nerves regrowing. Nevertheless, dealing with the sensation was better than losing parts of his body forever.

His eyes were also rapidly recovering, and his sight soon had mostly returned.

"You said I was in rough shape when I was brough in here. Mind giving me a rundown?" Avery asked once he felt ready to talk again.

"Sure, it was certainly something. I’d say that the biggest brain hemorrhage I’ve ever seen was the worst. The inside of your head honestly looked like a messy soup when I first did an image scan of it. After that would probably be your arms. Both of your eyes seemed to have exploded or something since they were entirely missing. Your eardrums had burst as well. Oh, and you were bleeding out of your body’s every orifice. And I do mean all of them."

Avery could only imagine the mess that he must have been and seeing as how Mercedes had told him he was dead for a bit, it really must have been bad. Undoubtedly the worst injuries of his life.

’They weren’t even wounds I got from a fight. Sometimes I really question hy I still use my abilities when they can cause so much damage to me.’

Still, Avery knew he would not stop using his inherited powers that he was slowly developing.

They were simply too useful, and when he lived a life rife with danger, he needed every edge he could get.

Avery was about to ask Doctor Raiti more questions, when the door to the sickbay opened and three women rushed into the room.

"I called them here since they three of them kept pestering me for updates on your condition. Seeing as how you seem fine now, I’m going back to my lab. I’ve got some new interesting data to go through."

With that, Mercedes left the room, and Kasandra, Jasmine, and Liesel took her place standing in front of the advanced medical pod Avery was inside.

"Glad to see that you three are alright. Unless I’m hallucinating right now and this is all in my head." Avery said in a joking tone to try and lighten the mood.

Expect, his attempt at humor did not seem to work and the three women burst into tears as they crowed around the medical pod.

There was relief in their expressions, and it did not take a genius to understand their distressed states.

Whatever Avery had done seemed to have basically exploded parts of his body.

While he may have fallen unconscious, or well actually died for a little while from doing so. Kasandra, Jasmine, and Liesel were forced to deal with the horrifying aftermath.

He could imagine that it must have looked like he was perfectly healthy one moment, and then the next blood was bursting out of him like a fountain.

Had he seen such a thing happen to any one of them, Avery knew he would not be able to stay calm and collected either.

The first one to recover was Jasmine, and she quickly began asking Avery questions about how he was doing and if he remembered them.

Apparently, Doctor Raiti had mentioned that there was a good chance he would suffer from memory loss, but thankfully it seemed he had avoided such an unfortunate fate. At least, he certainly did not seem to have forgotten anything important since he was able to answer whatever questions his three partners had for him.

"Okay, now that we’re certain my memories fine, and I won’t have any permeant damage to my body. Could you tell me what happened and where we are? I kind of blacked out at the end there."

Nodding their heads, the three of them began recounting the events after Avery passed out.

"We don’t truly know what was going on, but it was clear that you did something." Kasandra said.

"Yeah, it was amazing. That thing was trying to tear its way into hyperspace and then suddenly there was a bright flash of light. When we could see the display on the viewscreen again, the entrance had been sealed and there were severed tendrils and disgusting looking blood floating around." Liesel said animatedly as she interjected.

Listening to this, Avery recalled what he had actually been attempting to do.

Using his recently developed ability to sever the flow of energy, he had focused on the hyperlane entrance with the intent of cutting it off.

Apparently, whatever he had done had worked. The horrific monstrosity trying to kill them had been forced away, and the warped hyperspace had gone back to normal.

After that they had sped away and were still creating distance from the monster infested system.

Obviously, Avery’s reckless actions had not come without consequences though.

What he had done was well and truly beyond his capabilities. It had left him dead for a few minutes, and it was only thanks to his stupidly fast recovery and emergency from Doctor Raiti that he had managed to come back.

"I’m sorry you all had to see me in such a state. It couldn’t have been easy."

Avery felt that he was going to get lectured about being reckless again and putting himself in immense danger.

Yet, the verbal lashing never came.

When he looked up in surprise, Kasandra and Jasmine understood what he had been expecting.

The two of them smirked before Jasmine said, "Avery, we’re not going to get mad at you for saving all of our lives. It’s only when you do something needlessly reckless that it upsets us. In this case, I’m pretty sure none of us would have gotten away if you hadn’t done... whatever it was that you did."

For a few more minutes the four of them talked with each other and the tension between them soon faded away now that it was clear that everything would be fine.

Avery learned that as soon as he they got away from the horrifying entity, that those that had been paralyzed by its presence had started waking up.

No one seemed to have experienced any permanent damage which was good, and most could hardly even recall the experience.

This was good news, but of course, not everything was well.

The loss that had been incurred and the utter failure of the mission was crushing on morale. It was not going to be easy for everyone to accept and get over what they had experienced in that hellscape of a system.