The tumultuous waters swirled in a chaotic maelstrom beneath my feet as I peered over the lip of the well, transfixed by the hypnotic dance of moonlight glinting off the frenzied river far below. Tendrils of mist rose from the roiling abyss, their spectral fingers caressing my face with the clinging scent of damp stone and verdant moss.

A frisson of unease skittered down my spine, the hairs on my nape rising in primal warning. The night hung unnaturally still, the only sound the sinister gurgle of water rushing over unseen rocks in the depths. Something felt off, a discordant note plucked on the strings of my soul.

Shaking my head to dislodge the disquiet, I mumbled under my breath, "Looks clear from here...you picking up anything unusual?" The words slipped out before I could catch them, directed at the ever-present voice lurking in the shadowed recesses of my mind. Conversing with my personal invader was morphing into a compulsive habit - one I needed to break, and fast.

Sucking in a fortifying breath, I shifted my weight, preparing to descend into the abyss. The slick, algae-slimed stones betrayed me, sending me plummeting into the frigid embrace of the underground river. The glacial water knocked the air from my lungs in a burst of bubbles as it dragged me down into its lightless heart. Flailing against the inexorable current, my groping fingers finally snagged the slimy rungs of a submerged ladder. With a heave of straining muscles, I hauled myself from the water's clutches, collapsing onto the narrow ledge in a boneless, shivering heap.

As I lay gasping like a fish, a hiccup of laughter burst from my chattering teeth. "Well there's your shower." The thought jumped into my mind unbidden, and a giddy relief temporarily overriding the ever-present anger.

A flicker of foreign amusement curled through my mind, there and gone in a flash, but unmistakable. The interloping voice seized its chance, its tone almost pathetic, "Please, can't we just talk for a bit? I am so very lonely."

I scoffed at the absurdity of its request. This disembodied voice, my constant uninvited companion, served as the lone bulwark against true solitude...and yet its very existence was the reason I found myself so utterly alone. "We've been over this. I value my solitude," I shot back mentally while vigorously rubbing warmth back into my numb extremities. "And your incessant chatter is a persistent obstacle to that peace."

"That's not fair!" it protested, its whining pitch not unlike a petulant toddler. "I make every effort to keep my comments to myself, but it's nearly impossible when our minds are linked. Every thought that flits through your head, every fever-dream and night-terror, I'm bombarded by them all. Biting my metaphorical tongue every second of every day is beyond exhausting. This endless one-sided conversation is driving me insane."

White-hot fury erupted in my veins and I roared aloud, uncaring of who might hear. "Are you shitting me right now? 'Our minds are linked?' No. YOU invaded MY head, not the other way around, you life-sucking, parasitic twat. You're a trespasser, not a fucking roommate. I don't owe you shit!"

"Name-calling? Petty," the voice responded, sounding genuinely wounded by the verbal barb. I allowed myself a small, vicious smile, relishing the fact that I'd managed to pierce its emotional armor. Good. That was the whole point.

Leveraging myself up on an elbow, I glowered into the empty shadows. "Let's get one thing straight," I growled, enunciating each word with knife-edged precision. "I didn't ask for this. Didn't volunteer to play host to you or any of your body-snatching pals. You fucked up our world and if I had one wish, it'd be for you all to kindly fuck off to whatever festering asshole of a planet you came from. You in particular!"

"I know," it conceded, its tone dripping with an anguish that seared my thoughts. "But I can't control my emotions. I've battled to remain detached, to exist as a hollow shell within your mind, but it's an impossible feat. I'm entwined in every fiber of your being, every waking moment. Your thoughts, your emotions, your nightmares... they all flood my consciousness relentlessly. And yet you demand my silence? I've strained to respect your wishes, Alec, I swear it on my very existence. But the isolation crushes me, an ever-tightening vice around my mind. I can no longer endure this maddening muteness. Forgive me, but it's shredding the tattered remnants of my sanity."

A pang of something akin to guilt settled in my chest as the voice unleashed its desperate plea. This differed from our typical verbal sparring matches; raw desperation stained its every word, its emotions surging through our link in vivid, undiluted waves. "That's... understandable," I acknowledged, grappling for a more substantial response and finding none.

Rising to my feet, I wandered to the river's edge, perching atop a boulder worn smooth by eons of rushing water. My legs dangled over the churning current, and I watched the obsidian flow surge past. Like the River Styx, its inky depths promised oblivion to any that dared to enter into it. Call upon Charon, lest you face Charybdis.

Time trickled by, marked only by the river's ceaseless roar and the rasp of my breath in the damp air. Finally, I shattered the silence, my voice rough. "But what solution exists? You've burrowed into my mind, a constant reminder of a war I'm doomed to lose. Humans aren't built like your kind; our thoughts are our own, not meant to be shared."

"I understand," the voice echoed softly. "It's foreign to me as well. My species thrives on interconnectedness, our minds linked in an eternal web of shared experiences. But I've struggled to grant you privacy, to wall myself off. It's a torment like no other." It hesitated, and I sensed a fragile thread of hope weaving through its next words. "Perhaps, given time, we might forge a friendship. The alternative is an eternity of misery... But for now, I beg only for the chance to converse with you. Surely even that meager connection surpasses the void."

A violent shudder racked my frame at the prospect of enduring this alien invader's presence with no end in sight. Yet, as I turned the notion over in my mind, a grudging acceptance began to seep through the cracks in my resistance, blunting the razor edges of my dread and suspicion.

"Fine," I grumbled, teeth clenched. "We can talk. But you've got to shut up when I tell you to."

"You have my word," the voice responded, its excitement a tangible force that crackled against my skin.

Drawing in a deep lungful of the cavern's musty air, I let my eyes drift shut, striving to ground myself in the present: the gritty stone beneath my palms, the lingering bite of the frigid water in my bones, the river's tireless thunder. As a wisp of serenity settled over me, a treacherous thought slithered through my mind — perhaps engaging the voice in conversation wasn't the most reprehensible notion.

"Alright, what's on your mind?" I asked, feeling a bit more in control.

"Anything," it answered, almost pleading. "Just to feel a bit less alone, you know?"

Realization crashed over me as I surveyed my surroundings — here I crouched, miles beneath the earth, trading words with a disembodied entity that had hijacked my mind. How the hell had my life come to this?

My respiration reverberated from the cavern walls, the sound swelling to fill the void. Stalactites bristled overhead, stone lances poised to impale, while stalagmites thrust upward from the ground, a legion of timeworn teeth. The very air hung heavy with the tang of ages undisturbed, coiling around me in a smothering embrace.

"Let's just walk," I proposed, levering myself to my feet and brushing away the grit that clung to my skin. "Need to sort my head out, figure what comes next. Don't get the wrong idea, though. I'm still hoping you'll vanish one day. But for now, yeah, we can talk. Just... give me some space."

The voice stayed silent, but I sensed its satisfaction. It had won this round, and a part of me feared it might win the whole damn fight. I missed human connection and the ease of conversation. Could I actually...? No, I shook the thought away.

We walked in silence, me drowning in my thoughts, the voice seemingly content just to exist alongside me.

The cavern vaulted ever higher above us, the gloom thickening until it devoured all trace of light.

Soon, even my enhanced sight would fail in this blackness.

Pausing, I asked aloud, "Can you do something about the dark?"

The words had scarcely left my lips when a peculiar shudder rippled through me, the sensation of something writhing just beneath my cranium. An instant later, the cavern walls flared to life, a firmament of stars emblazoned within the living rock, while the river before me shimmered like an emerald serpent, its waters aglow with an unearthly phosphorescence.

I lingered by the water's edge, my gaze penetrating the depths beneath. The pipes glowed in ethereal hues of blue and green, snaking upwards from the shore, burrowing into the crust overhead. They formed part of irrigation systems, reaching far deeper than anything pre-war humanity had dared construct.

Our grasp of alien technology, while largely unfathomable, yielded the occasional boon. The laser drills, for instance, proved invaluable in pinpointing aquifers. No fresh water endured on the surface anymore; even the rain formed a toxic brew without treatment.

As my eyes acclimated to the ambient light, I surveyed the cavern anew. The soft illumination transformed the space into a realm of otherworldly enchantment. Despite the nightmare of infection, moments like these almost justified the torment.

Then the voice shattered the tranquility. "Could you give me a name?"

I recoiled, my heart lurching. "Jesus! What? A name?"

"I would like a name, if you could."

Bewilderment seized me. "Could... you don't have a name?"

"Correct. In my species, names are earned in battle, bestowed by commanders. I would have had one by now, but there's no one to name me."

The concept of earning a name through combat jarred me, a bizarre contrast to my worldview.

"Shit, that's heavy. I've never named anyone. Thought that'd be a dad thing, and that ship's sailed for me. I dunno, what do you want to be called?"

The voice wavered. "I don't know. I never learned our spoken language. You're my first host. I don't know our traditional names."

"Huh. That's gonna need some thinking." First host, huh? That explained its naive curiosity. It was, in a sense, a child.

A shadowy patch in the distance snagged my attention. I gestured towards it. "You see that?"

"I do," the voice confirmed. "Looks like a cave-in."

At the cavern's far end, near the tumultuous geyser bursting from the wall, fresh rock lay exposed. Unweathered, it stood out against the old, eroded surfaces around it.

A ton of rock must've crashed down right on the pipes' intake. I couldn't see past the water's violent spray, but I was sure beneath it lay a wreck of twisted metal. "What a fucking mess," I muttered.

"Why are you calling me a fucking mess?" The voice sounded offended again.

"Not you," I clarified, rubbing my temples. "The situation. Those pipes are probably fucked."

Surveying the rugged landscape, the chaotic waterways, the voice pondered aloud, "Why the hell would your people put the pipes right where the river starts? Wouldn't it be smarter upriver, closer to where we need it?"

Leaning on a nearby rock, my hands explored its damp, cool surface. "Beats me. I'm no engineer. Maybe less risk of pollution up here."

Midway through its response, the voice abruptly ceased, its tone turning wary. "Shhhh. Listen."

Annoyed but compliant, I stilled, shutting out the sounds of the cavern – the ceaseless surge of water, the rhythmic dripping, even the steady thrum of my own heart. Then - a sound discordant with the cavern's natural rhythm wormed its way into my ears, sending icy tendrils of dread down my spine - a raspy, wet breathing. A sense of foreboding coiled in my gut.

Every muscle in my body clenched, hairs rising on end, a primal alarm bell clanging. My heart hammered as I scoured the shadows, hunting for the source of this new, ominous presence.

There, across the riverbank, a mere thirty feet away, hunched a fully matured Turned. Its form crouched, all six eyes fixed on me with a ravenous intensity. I stumbled back, pulse racing, as the creature hissed, clearly vexed at being detected.

My muscles coiled, heart thundering against my ribs as I braced for the Viral's onslaught. Yet the creature remained still, its sickly yellow and purple eyes dissecting me with a calculating intensity.

A guttural groan rumbled from its throat as it rose, deliberate and unhurried. One clawed hand dug into the earth, another gripped its leg, and it unfurled from its crouch to its full, monstrous height. Its horned head scraped the cavern ceiling, casting a malformed silhouette against the rock.