As the light disappeared Brynn had a moment before the suit's full functionality was turned on, that included the lights. Being left in the dark like that with only the knowledge that you were descending was off putting. Brynn stretched out her hand in the darkness. Her hand touched the clear pod shell earlier than she had expected causing her body to jolt slightly. Then she spread her fingers out across the glass. That slight context was enough for Brynn to imagine the suit as a dark speck hurtling down the side of a vast canyon. The image of being swallowed up in the depths was both alienating and comforting. It was being aware of how laughably small one is in the given scenario and knowing that the only thing left to do was to go through with the thing.
Allowing herself to be fully immersed in the acceptance and lunacy of the scenario it allowed Brynn's mind to drift. She thought of one of the only beings that can relate to this descent that she was making. Those dolphins with the burst ear drums that were found on the beech. Brynn presumes that they also made this trek, for what reason she couldn't know. Still, as she could still hear the deep water flowing around her that thought of what they went through was hard to avoid once the subject had taken hold in her mind. The willingness to continue as every instinct is telling them to stop, to still keep diving deeper when you could feel your body giving up, being so compelled that even those struggles is not enough to stop the pull. The idea of finding an answer and making certain that other creatures wouldn't follow the same fate was oddly comforting.
As Brynn had a small smile curl across her face in the dark as she realized again that this wasn't like all of those other research dives. This wasn't just looking for findings that would only excite her peers. This would have a direct affect on the world. It was a strange comfort but was comfort. It was short lived, however. It was so small, a minor thing. Brynn, lingering in her own thoughts, had a memory come to the surface of her mind. The memory was nothing special. The sun was bright and warm. She could feel the ocean breeze. The feeling of a loose cotton shirt and cargo shorts. It was on some large ship, a cruise ship. There was another person that was there and they were smiling. There was the feeling of being full after a good meal.
It was a happy memory.
It was not her memory.
She was seeing from eyes that were too tall, the angle of looking out on the ocean gave Brynn vertigo. The skin of the person felt dry and tight. The wind moving through their hair felt alien. The teeth in her head, the sound of the air leaving the lungs, the strange tightness in her throat. She could taste the last meal that this person had, even the small bit of food stuck in one of their teeth. The joints felt tight and the spine felt strained. She wanted to look around, to understand what was happening but this is only a memory. The sight looked over to another smiling person. She did not know the person that looked at them. She felt happiness and kinship. Brynn did not know this person. She did not know the cruise ship.
Brynn felt a gag reflex from the initial assault on her senses that she quickly forced back down. Trying to steady her breathing while touching her face and her body to regain a sense of proportions. Her eyes searched out into the dark space in front of her to find no purchase. Her skin crawled in her suit and she became all too aware of every part of her that was attached to the suit. Each of those wires began to itch in her return to her self, as foreign as the skin she experienced in that scene. She fought back the urge to yank them out of herself like an unruly patient with an IV drip.
"Brynn, how you doing down there?" That voice spoke into Brynn's ear again, a shocking sounds given that all that Brynn had been listening to were the ambience of the ocean rushing past her, "We just saw your readings spike for a moment, nothing too bad though. It is just that you are going to be in full control in a minute. Just wanted to give you the heads up and see if everything was good on your end."
Brynn had entirely forgotten that those connections would be monitoring her status. Instinctively trying to salvage her pride as an experienced diver she took a moment to center and calm herself. She had no idea what had happened but that was something to discuss once she got back up from the dive. At the moment she was close to finding answers for what brought her here and maybe even what had just happened. If the suit was going to be fine then so was she.
"Yeah, I'm good. It will be nice to be able to stretch my legs again." Brynn jokes to cover up the impatience and discomfort she had just felt. She had rapidly settled back into her goal oriented mind set, pushing that foreign memory from her mind as strongly as it came into it.
"Haha, yeah. I bet." The voice chuckled and she could hear through the feed a few others doing the same behind, "Alright, we'll get you up and running asap. Once you are online you are going to have to navigate the rest of the way manually. We just don't want anything getting caught on the connective wires. So, uh, Good luck down there!"
There was a moment of odd stillness in the air before the darkness that Brynn had been accustomed to is cut by the overhead lights of the suit. The whirring of the systems coming online as well as the dampened sound of the limbs coming online break the stillness of the deep. Brynn looks out to see the cone of light only illuminate small particulate in front of her. As she curls her hands in front of her she can hear the suits limbs move through the water. Brynn holds a hand out in front of her and sees one of the mechanical, multi-segmented limbs come into the cone of light. After the memory that she experienced seeing her actions reflected in a larger and very different body was mildly discomforting. Still, she had control this time. With that control Brynn tilted the suit forward and continued the descent, chasing all the unanswered questions that linger there.