Chapter Song:

White Cloth

Chase laid on the floor unmoving as a result of the sphere's affects. His body was strewn about as if he were a ragdoll. The room around him was in chaos. Bodies and lab materials were haphazardly thrown about. Workers who had been standing around waiting for Chase’s procedure to start were limp and lifeless.

Chase saw nothing other than the strange colored fog around him, colors he didn’t even know of brushed past him constantly. On one hand, he felt entirely connected to his body, on another, it felt very distant.

“This will always feel strange no matter how many times it’s done,” Chase said. His voice echoed into nothingness.

The more he tried to listen out into the darkness, the more he could tune in on what was happening around his body. He could hear the faint sound so something sizzling, as well as the subtle drip of a liquid falling to the ground.

“From the sound of things, I guess we started. I’m here too so I guess it went well. “

Chase looked at what he could tell was his naked body that had a slight glow. Already being used to seeing himself, he looked around for anything else that might be new within the strange void he stood in.

“Nothing. Before, all I could hear was voices, now there is nothing. I wonder if more tuning needs to be done? Guess I’ll look into it more once I’m out of here.”

Chase sat down onto the seemingly invisible floor. With nothing to sit against, he laid on his back and gazed through the never-ending fog. The sky above it was as existent as the floor he sat upon, aside from the small dot of light that lingered far away out of reach.

“If this is the truth, then why can we not see it? Tell me A’en. Up there is where they reside, yet we have no way of knowing how far this tunnel goes. Why?.”

His question and search for an answer was met with silence. Chase sighed and closed his eyes, but he was not permitted to do so. Every time he tried, it was like looking back down onto himself. An out of body experience inside of an out of body world.

“I’ll just sit here quietly then. All I need to do is wait for-”

Sounds and echoes reverberated throughout the darkness. He could tell, to an extent, what was going on outside.

The entrance to the room opened and the sound of glass being crushed underneath footwear could be heard from Chase’s ears.

“Damn! I’m glad we weren't caught in this mess.” A woman said aloud, her Hispanic accent slightly changing her words. “Is that Mari?! Her eyes are sizzling, do you see that?”

“I did and I’m not trying to look again,” A deep voice said. “Look, there’s Chase, you got his clothes and gear right?”

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll start,” the woman said. “But damn, I wish they didn’t need to be a part of this.”

“Well it’s too late to back out now,” the man said.

Chase could hear the crunch of more glass as the steps got closer to him. It was futile for him to try and do anything other than listen in on the happenings outside.

“God, why does he have to be so small,” A voice said from the abyss of Chase’s vision. “The least he could do is put some muscle on.”

“Araceli, that’s so damn rude. Saying that while you aren’t even looking at his upper body. The man would be devastated if he heard that.” the man said. “Just hurry up and get him dressed so we can begin. We have about an hour before A’en starts wrecking this place.”

“Bermil, I know,” Araceli said. “Give me a hand with his eyelids will you.”

“Sure.”

Bermil put his hand on Chase’s face and opened his eyelids forcefully. Araceli placed a wooden tripod over his head that held a thin purplish crystal lens in the middle. She lined it up with his open eye and made sure his retina reflected the crystal. Out of a bag to the left of her, she pulled out a machine with the same type of crystal Harlan had before. The machine's crystal was lower in brightness and more opaque than the one that destroyed the room.

“Okay, keep his head still so I don’t mess up,” Araceli said.

Bermil held his head with a free hand as best as he could, while Araceli placed the machine into a slot on the tripod. She slowly cranked the handle of the machine to spin the gears inside. A small tray filled with sets of even smaller crystals spun around over a larger crystal. Araceli stopped spinning and let it run in circles while she took out a bag of matches.

She quickly lit a match and placed it over the glass pane at the top of the machine. With no delay, the small set of crystals produced a light that shone into the larger main crystal. A radiant white glow beamed down into the purple crystal on the tripod, directly into Chase’s retina.

Chase laid there as his companions did their work. He could hear the gears spinning from somewhere above him. As he laid there, he could see the fog turn into a color he could recognize, purple. The fog was no longer mist-like and instead looked like purple water. As if he were grabbed from behind, he was dragged far below the purple haze. With intense speed, a bursting headache ensued and soon all he could see was the shine of a purple beam.

“Araceli?” Chase said.

His vision was blurred, but he knew only one other person who could bring him back correctly.

“Yes, I’m here. You’re fine right? Do you need help getting up?”

Araceli removed the device from atop of him, Chase sat up on his own and held his head.

“I’m fine, thank you. You’ve gotten good at feeding it the right amount of input. Much less turbulent than the other attempts. Blurred vision and a small migraine seem to be the only effects that linger a bit now,” Chase said,

“I say that’s not bad for the sixth time then,” Araceli said.

Chase gave her a faint smile and stood up from the floor. Everything around him was still a twisted visual mess, but he could make out certain things.

“Where is Harlan?”

“RIght in front of you,” Bermil said. “His body is just the same as all the other workers, fried.”

“Right. The damned fool. Here I thought I could somehow convince him to come aboard. I did a bad damned job.”

Chase walked up to the body of his former best friend and squatted to see as much as he could. Harlan’s face let off a horrid stench of burnt flesh. Various other liquids within his head bubbled out of any holes that protruded his skull.

“Twelve years and you still couldn’t see how much of a failure this all was,” Chase said. He put a hand to Harlan’s burned head and put his fingers to his eyelids. He tried to close his eyes, but the lids were too charred to move. “If you only still had the heart you once had, maybe your soul wouldn’t be taken over by a fury of guilty flames.

Chase looked around the room for a moment.

“It’s a shame I can’t put any of you to rest,” Chase let out an exhausted sigh. “But I hope that you can see the truth behind why this had to happen.”

Chase reached down to the book in Harlan’s hand and picked it up. The contents were of no importance but he needed something to hide the spent Crystal inside. The very object that caused the occurrence of otherworldly phenomena laid on the floor beside Harlan. While it destroyed the very being of every person in the room beside him, it sat cold on the floor as if it were a normal crystal . This was the Sevltiene Crystal, it laid near Harlan’s hand on the floor.

A’en. It’s about time I finally got a hold of you.

“Bermil, could I get a knife?”

Bermil walked up to Chase and handed him his belt knife that was hidden beneath his white robe.

“Don’t break it like you did the last one,” Bermil said.

“Yeah, I know..”

Chase stabbed the knife into the book and cut a hole big enough to fit the crystal. The black sphered crystal was reduced to a clear opaque glass that could be seen through nearly perfectly. He picked it up and place it into the hole of the book.

“Alright, we should be fine to go now. A’en didn’t make a lot of noise did it?”

“We didn’t hear too much across the hall. Hearing a bunch of bodies falling was a good enough indicator though,” Araceli said.

“I checked by the windows too and covered them after we walked in. We should be fine for avoiding commotion till A’en starts again.” bermil said.

“How much longer do we have?” Chase said.

“We have about 30 minutes,” Bermil said.

“Alright. Let’s leave the facility then. If we have this much time left then we can probably take a bit more supplies if possible.”

“Sounds good,” Araceli said. She rummaged through her bag and pulled out a crystalline base tranquilizer gun. “Here Chase, take it.”

Chase’s vision had improved and was nearly cleared up entirely when he looked at Araceli. As she held out the gun to him, he thought she had a slight look of worry. Instead of grabbing the gun, held grabbed her arm and pulled her close to him.

“Chase,” Araceli said.

“I know. This is just the beginning,” Chase said.

“When we’re done, we’re going to the Edge.”

“That’s right. We both said we would go there. If the price to reach Circinus isn’t cheap, we need to do everything we can to pay its price.”

“That’s right,” Bermil said as he watched the two embrace. “We will ALL, reach the Edge. My son didn’t die for me to stop at the first step. I’m as ready as you two are.”

Chase chuckled and let go of Araceli, “To reach our goal. Let’s begin to go further. Even further than those before us.” He opened the book that held the spent Crystal. As he looked at it intently, a faint ring of light encircled his Iris. “This isn’t even the beginning of the beginning, but it sure as hell can be the start of something new.”