Stargate Universe -

“Who are you?” Mira asked. Her hand rested on the zat’nik’tel at her hip, though she knew it would do nothing.

Mira watched the symbol multiply on the screens. Seven arms became forty-nine. Forty-nine became 2,401. The spiral was not a symbol. It was a seed. And it was planting itself in every system, every mind, every soul on the Hammond .

It was a thought. A thought that did not belong to them. A thought from outside . stargate universe

It was from inside. Inside every living mind. Buried so deep that evolution had forgotten it was there, layer upon layer of consciousness hiding the one thing that could not be allowed to surface:

He was humanoid but not human—taller, thinner, with skin the color of weathered bronze and eyes that held no pupils, only a faint swirl of gold. He wore robes of a fabric that seemed to shift between solid and liquid. He did not stand when she entered. He simply looked at her, and she felt, for the first time in decades, the prickling weight of being truly seen. “Who are you

“It’s a distress call,” she said. “But it’s not for us.”

And somewhere, at the edge of everything, a hungry thing with seven arms and no eyes opened its mouth and began to read. Seven arms became forty-nine

Instead, she stepped into a library.