I do not own Irina Spalko. Irina Spalko and related Indiana Jones characters and media are property of Lucasfilm and Paramount Pictures.

Chapter 1: The Void.

The ringing in her ears wouldn't stop

One moment the euphoric enlightenment filled her every molecule and in the next a complete disintegration of her consciousness ended her life. Only when her body came alive trapped inside burning flesh did she truly know she had survived her brush with the kingdom of the crystal skull. She let out a scream that made no sound. Fortunately, the pain didn't last. The Ukrainian's psychic abilities continued to serve her when she regained self-awareness. Not much, but she was able to ascertain that she had gone through a period of total nothingness. For however long, the colonel hadn't existed on any plain, living, dead, or points in-between. Time was a problem. She had no grip on it. She didn't know how long she'd been in that state or how long she'd been lying on the ground before she came to. Strangely, the experience, which no human (she knew of) had ever been subject to, mattered little to her. The only thing that mattered was that her brief peak into the crack in the cradle of knowledge had been short lived. She had known everything. Now she was once again in the dark, naïve and yearning for the answer.

There was a ringing in her ears that wouldn't stop. At least the pain had. She'd never felt anything like it before. It was nowhere near as gentle as the sting from her whippings in boot camp. The expertly trained agent/doctor/colonel longed for the sloppy spray of hard leather against her back in exchange for what consumed her now. At that point she'd even be willing to let crows peck out her eyes. The Soviet Union taught one to be very accepting of loss and pain…it tended to boost creativity in those same areas. Though usually improvisational mastery was applied to the fate of their enemies rather than to themselves in hypothetical exchanges for one gruesome death over another.

It was time, ears ringing or not, to gain a better sense of her surroundings and how she could escape wherever she was. Before anything else she had to gather herself. Steadying her breath so not to further her growing panic, a trait uncommon to her, she opened her eyes to darkness…nothingness. She rolled her head back and forth, trying to see anything that would give a clue to her situation. It didn't matter. Darkness…nothingness surrounded her. Sitting up proved to be less of a challenge than she thought it would be. Staying upright was much more difficult. She immediately became dizzy and fell backward again. She swore to herself, damning the heavens, the severe whisper soundless in the void.

As if on cue, her bowls rippled and contracted. Her breath quickened. So she wouldn't choke to death on the inevitable spew she rolled over on her side and let the vomit come. Wave after wave, the acidic stomach slop locked her head in place as it violently forced its way out her body. Gasping for a full intake of air she sprawled back out onto her back.

REST NOW. YOU WILL NEED IT.

The voice existed only in her head. It tore through her brain like a bull in a china shop. It was flat. Mechanical yet alive, neither male nor female.

Content not to argue, she gave in. Sleep didn't wait long to claim her.

Agent/Doctor/Colonel Irina Spalko had survived. Little did she know there had been a reason for it.

……………………….

Awake again. She knew. Wherever she was, it was elsewhere.

This time she planed everything ahead at half speed. One step…one second at a time. Again Spalko gently rolled her head back and forth, trying to see anything that would giver a clue to her whereabouts. All she saw was the thick void stretching on into nowhere. She waved he hands over her eyes and saw nothing. She patted herself down to her midsection. Everything was in its place, save her sidearm and her sword. The gimnasterka felt reasonably bolshevised considering the past…three weeks. Time had returned to her abruptly and unceremoniously. Her heightened intuition was returning, though clumsily like a muscle she hadn't flexed in a while.

Her panic was still evident, her heart feeling as if it were about to burst out of her chest.

Feeling ready to test further the fatigue of her abilities she concentrated on the panic and her heartbeat.

In her minds eye, she pictured herself encased a block of ice, her thoughts, emotions, her physical essence, frozen in one moment of time, her heart still somehow hot enough to pump blood. pump-pump pump-pump. And it was working hard, too hard. It had to go ten fold to push the clumpy, icy goo through her veins; it couldn't handle the workload, not in a thousand years. pump-pump pump-pump. It had to join the other organs in hibernation lest the KGB agent face certain death. pump-pump pump-pump. pump-pump pump-pump. pump-pump… pump-pump.

She laid still for what seemed like forever. She couldn't see it, but she knew her chest began to rise and fall much slower. Panic was replaced by cool desperation.

As Spalko's fortitude increased the more settled she became in her hellish situation. She sat up purposefully, but slowly. Found her legs with her hands, unable to see them with her eyes and checked them as she had her upper body. All was in order.

Getting to her feet was a bit of a chore. She tried coming up from one knee at a time. This proved impossible. Her boots had no grit in which to cling to make friction and hoist her up. The slick floor behaved like an ice rink. Combined with her legs weakness from disuse, she had to find other methods of getting herself up. She had to crawl, seeing with her hands, along the smooth service. It gave off a very sterile impression…clinical. There was a strict, angular way in which the ground met with wall. Putting her back against a vertical edge and lumbering into a squat, Irina pushed up and steadied herself. The wall's texture was smooth and completely indistinguishable from the floor. Why was everything so dark? Was it some kind of new dimension in which beings saw in other means than eyes and heard without ears?

Irina leaned against her support and walked the perimeter of her new domain. She must have walked it a dozen times, unable to understand the eerie simplicity of its 10 x 10 design. She was in a box. A box with no door. Her hands darted along each inch of her surroundings and found no break, change of texture, no small, slightly rough hint of hinges, no bars, no knob…nothing…nothingness.

REST NOW. YOU WILL NEED IT.

Once again her head lit afire.

No! Where am I!? Her mind fired back.

Something grabbed a hold of wrists. Cold and clammy. She fought against them. No use. She was putty. Spalko could barely stand; much less bring herself to fire off a kick. She folded quickly, collapsing to the ground. She screamed with no sound. She peered franticly into the void…the nothingness…to catch some glimpse of her attacker. Why couldn't she see them? Why?

She squirmed on the ground like a defiant child. The grip of her oppressor grew tighter. Tighter.

What did you do to me?! What is this place?! Why is it so dark?!IT ISN'T

Yes it is, Damn you! I see nothing! I hear nothing! Let me go!

IT ISN'T DARK. REST NOW. YOU WILL NEED IT.

A jolt of electricity sent her back into an absence of existence.

She would later come to terms with her void…her nothingness. Spalko was deaf and blind.

Next Chapter: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest