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Hypnobear Week 2022: Syncross Unified Written by: TiranMaster Edited by: JackDuRoi The other captives were struggling, all strapped onto the same conveyer belt. Freyr's teeth were bared as he saw several aliens wearing shining helmets working their consoles. The bear was unable to move. Beside him, crewmates shouted and wriggled in feeble attempts to break free. Freyr himself let out a roar-he pulled at his cuffs with all of his might, the metal let out a few creaking moans. Then nothing. Even with his formidable strength Freyr was unable to break free. "Damn!" he snapped. Teeth tight, his chest rumbled with frustration and his weary arms failed. "Freyr, you can do it, try again!" Quint's voice cracked as he yelled. The fox looked as agitated as Freyr felt. Freyr's heart twinged: Quint had never been the best under pressure.Huffing and puffing, Quint fell back to the rubbery surface below, just like Freyr had before him. Then it was silent, pregnant with thought as the captives pondered their helplessness.Footsteps, hard boots against the metal floor, echoed through the sterile room. Between the two conveyor belts, one of the aliens stepped up, its expression blank underneath what all could discern was a helmet, though it was alien and strange. "You may cease your struggling," it said, its words accented with another planet's dialect and tinted with synthesized voice, and yet it still managed to be perfectly understandable to them. "Your bodies will make for fine stock in the Syncross, please do not harm yourselves. The entry into the Syncross is painless, you will feel only joy." Though the creature gave no real inflection to its speech, something about the way its body tensed up with pleasure made the floor of Freyr's gut drop out. Metal groaned as Freyr strained his collar like a vicious dog on a leash. He bared his teeth and let out a powerful threaten-growl that made his restraints quiver. "You bastards invaded our ship, kidnapped us, and you expect us to just relax while you do whatever you please?! Get over yourself, asshole. Let us go, or our military will blow your spaceship into dust." The alien didn't respond. Instead it just turned away as the conveyor belt continued forward. Without the alien between them, Freyr saw Quint again, the fox's expression crumpled with stress and fear. He was trying to peer down the line. "How long do you think until we get to wherever they're sending us?" Quint asked, his voice quivering slightly. Pulling at his arm restraints once more, Freyr grunted and snarled as he wrenched his arm painfully within its binding. "I don't know, Quint, but do you have anything on you that could get us free? You just looking like a scared whelp isn't helping any of us!" The bear knew he was being too harsh, but he was security. It was on him that the ship had been so easily overwhelmed. He wasn't hired to be soft, he told himself, but even as flesh swelled in the marks where the cuffs pressed into him, the sorest bruise was his pride.. "I uh... wait... hey... HEY! What the hell do you think you're doing to our ship?!" Quint's outburst brought Freyr's attention to his surroundings again. There in front of them was a screen showing their ship. While the bear had never been too invested in looking over the schematics of the ship, he was well aware of what it was supposed to look like. It wasn't one of the nicest military vessels out in space, but it was a fairly hardy ship. The diagram on the screen showed several changes to it, a sleeker appearance, new black paneling. It looked much like the ship that they were currently in, one that had managed to sneak right past all of their sensors and disabled their ship with hardly a fight. One of the aliens nearby looked over, unfazed by the fox's rage. "We are refitting your ship. Do not worry, your entire crew will be back aboard within the hour. The Syncross are very efficient. You will all be processed, reprogrammed, and returned to the newest Syncross vessel." Ice ran through Freyr's veins. He really didn't like the sound of that, and what was worse was he saw a couple of their shipmates walking past them. Both of them had changed out of their usual uniforms, instead they were wearing the same sleek black outfits that the Syncross aliens were. "You traitors, what the hell do you two think you're doing?!" Freyr snapped, snapping at them in momentary frenzy, although he had a feeling he knew what they were about. Both of their heads were adorned with the same helmets as the aliens, and their normally expressive faces were both bland, as if they'd forgotten to feel. The pair stopped to look at him. He clenched his fists so tightly that his claws pressed into his palm to stifle a shiver. He couldn't see their eyes behind the black visor, but he imagined that they were as dead and expressionless as the rest of them. That was the worst part. "Do not worry yourself, Security Officer Freyr, we have both undergone unification," one of them spoke, and his familiar voice was monotonous and blank. He was a gorilla, one of the other security officers in fact, though Freyr had never gotten his name in the few weeks they'd been working together. "It is as our fellow Syncross have told you, the process is painless. The captain is undergoing himself right now, he is being unified, our crew shall not be split apart. There is nothing to worry about," the other spoke, a lion whose expression seemed so peaceful, it may as well have been a smile. In their strange, frightening predicament, the sight was enough to terrify Freyr into silence, and the pair seemed to take that as their sign to leave. Both of them started away while Freyr looked towards Quint. The fox's eyes had started to well up at some point. Shaking in his bindings, the engineer peered past his feet once more, his eyes looking towards something not too far off down the line. Freyr took a deep breath to calm himself, and called out once, his voice breaking before he cleared it and tried again. "Quint, calm down, do you have anything on you?" The fox looked towards him before wiggling about in an attempt to get anything out of his pockets, but they weren't easily accessible without the use of his hands. At this point Freyr himself didn't have too much hope. He was certain that at some point between being knocked out on the ship and waking up on the conveyor belt, he'd been stripped of all of his weapons. "N... nothing, I'm sorry," Quint said with a droop of his ears. The fox and bear saw more of their crewmates walking past, clad in furtight black uniforms, expressions blank. "Captain... Captain!" Quint called his voice a mix of excitement and fear as they saw the familiar shape of the wolven captain of their ship. "Captain Redmont, please, tell me you're still you!" It was a long shot, Freyr knew, especially as the captain drew close and his head was encased within the same helmet. His buff body stood out in stark detail in the Syncross uniform, at attention in a way that neither had ever seen, the same straight posture that the others had. "I still retain the memories of who I was before I was unified, Quint, but I am no longer the wolf that I was mere moments ago. Do not worry yourself, the joy of unification under the Syncross is wonderful. You will become part of something greater that will make our existences simpler by sliding us into place as the cogs we are." The normally strong-smiling timbre of the captain was gone, in its place was the cold smoothness of the aliens, and neither could say anything more as they slid down the conveyor belt once more. Freyr pulled at his arms once more, but the fight was draining out of him, he knew it wasn't too much longer before they were turned. "Quint... I... I'm scared," he admitted, leaning his head back to look at the ceiling. It was unfamiliar, not the safe roof of their ship, but an alien roof that fit in with this new life he was about to be forced into. "I-I am too," Quint whimpered. The pair didn't have much else to say as they could hear the sound of mechanical systems running, some sort of device depositing the helmets that were being slotted onto the others. Freyr craned his neck and couldn't see the process until it was far too close for comfort, the next crewmate in front of him screaming as they were lined up. The bear was able to see a large machine above the conveyor belt, a small hatch opening and an arm sliding down with a helmet in hand. Once the helmet slid all the way down out of Freyr's eyesight, the screams stopped in mere moments, and silence was left. "Freyr, can we escape?" Quint asked, both of them knowing what was coming next. "I don't think so," Freyr admitted, grunting as the conveyor belt slid forward and he found his body being flipped over the edge of the belt. He was forced to stand by the belt, his body suddenly facing forward, seeing some of his crewmates with the helmets on in the process of stepping into a press that would apply their new uniforms. "Quint, let's try to re-" the words didn't come out all the way though as the helmet slid over his eyes. There was a jolt and a moan as Freyr felt the helmet interface with his mind, sliding into his brain, unifying him. It was so fast, the sudden connection to Syncross, the overwhelming wave of what it really was. They would stop existing as people, they were mere fingers of a being so much greater than them, and that stopped being horrifying when Freyr was reprogrammed. It was so much more simple when Syncross instructed him how to think, erasing his emotions, and filling him with a great joy for being a part of Syncross. The bear stepped forward without meaning to, it was his first command, Syncross told him to step so he did so. Joy buzzed through his body as he stood at attention, letting out a sigh as he realized how much easier it would be to submit. At his side, Quint did likewise, the fox starting to discard his clothing as the fear drained from his face. Freyr's expression grew blank as well as he was reveling in the sheer joy of obeying, all the while he allowed his mind to grow detached from the fear and the thoughts of mere moments before, the past was suddenly irrelevant. Syncross needed them in the moment, they were pawns in its scheme, and they were to merely follow commands. Stepping forward when prompted, Freyr allowed the machine to press a new uniform over his body, knowing with information given to him by Syncross that it would easily block any lazer fire or any other attacks. Syncross knew what it needed to do to protect its vessels, and so Freyr put his trust into the machine as it instructed him to. Turning around in unison, Quint and Freyr started down the path towards their ship. Others shouted to them, asking what was happening, and they answered as they deemed fit. Syncross was not afraid to share its message of unity, and so its pawns weren't either, the fox and bear were happy to explain. For some reason their crewmates weren't as eager, but they would learn soon enough. The two continued until they were back aboard their ship, the upgrades underway, the pair starting to help in construction of a conversion facility in the subdecks of their own vessel. Syncross sent all of them a buzz of joy at obeying, but not a single word was spoken amongst them, such things weren't required anymore under the singular mind of their controller.