Evanescent (NaNo 2013)

Chapter Nine

He squeezed his eyes shut.

The voices around him, the desperate screams of his brother spun and faded into nothing as Hibiki found himself in a place that seemed to be away from the waking world. The incomprehensible noise flooded his mind, and eventually grew to be toneless chanting. Gathering all his effort, he stretched open his eyes, feeling lightheaded as the scene of the control room refused to submerged.

It was like he had woken up in a dream. The confined area stretched out through infinite means, and the translucent ground barely felt like a ground at all. It was almost as if Hibiki was suspended in space with an invisible force forming what felt like a floor. The emptiness had a ruby colored tint to it, the shades and highlights streaking onto where the lights would have reached or not.

What is this place?

Hibiki turned a complete circle in the imaginary dimension; the unseen force prompted him forwards.

Wake up, Hibi. You're in a dream and now's not the time.

A figure had started to emerge from the void a few meters in front of him. The opacity of the image had fluctuated a bit at first, just like an old television being turned on after years of abandonment. Eventually, the hologram became a full, three dimensional filmy shape, shaded in the crystal-like vortex. The figure before him had have silver, ghost-like hair, the ends twitching under the sucking force. A dark eye-patch was drawn over the left of his catlike eyes, which appeared to be made of fragile glass reflecting the redness of his surroundings. His pallid face had shadows where the obvious hollows were, and a the collars of his overcoat were turned up, their edges lined with white.

He parted his rosy lips to speak.

The chanting stopped. There was silence.

The figure's mouth moved, but no words came out.

Staring blankly into Hibiki's eyes, the figure repeated himself.

A...lea iacta... est.

The boy had read the words off the lips of the tall figure, recognizing it as a Latin phrase as he muttered it to himself. An uncomfortable feeling edged at his gut, and Hibiki reached willed himself to reach forward. Only his body refused to move. He was pressed down by the vortex, imprisoned by a certain gravity.

I am the Prince.

The figure opened its mouth to speak again, its dead orbs of sight boring into Hibiki's turquoise ones. The image of the person began to fade as a paler shade of pinkish red glowed beneath Hibiki, insanely bright to his eyes though the devoid light failed to brighten up its surroundings at all. The shapeless glow wavered, breaking into the form of a six pointed star with the boy at its epicenter. The pattern spun. Hibiki's world spun, and he was left with a toneless murmuring surrounding him.

Welcome to the future.

A toneless voice spoke, and Hibiki could clearly hear it this time. Its omnipresence had been definite, coming from no particular source at all. The pitch itself had been impossible to tell, and so was the gender. It was much like the voice that usually spoke in his head under normal circumstances. In the distance and at the thresholds of his vision, a piece of the vortex chipped off soundlessly. Though it was an oblivion that stretched across for endless eternity upon eternities, Hibiki could make it out as an edge.

The fragment disintegrated into crystal-like shards, then sand. And then it disappeared altogether, drawn in by the gravitational pull of the empty space.

A second piece chipped off, and then a third. Then the entire vortex started to fall apart.

At this rate where am I going to end up?

He broke into cold sweat where he stood, the soothingly perplexed swirls of magenta, red and black doing little to pacify his anxiety. The force beneath his feet him shook. A clear shard chipped off before him, floating into midair and hovering before fracturing, splitting up right where the tiny cracks were.

Hibiki opened his mouth to scream.

And gasped, his eyes snapping open.

A hand formerly clamped across his mouth was released, and the boy took in deep lungfuls of air. His senses of the waking world had returned, and the bright light of the Genetic Engineering faculty had stung his eyes. Movement. He felt movement as his jaw bumping against someone's shoulder— the crisp, white cloth of the lab coat which his twin wore. Realizing that the latter had him on his back, Hibiki struggled to free himself, taking a quick moment to glance around his surroundings.

“Here,” Katumi lowered the younger onto the floor, giving him a nudge as they continued running. “I'm guessing we have a minute left before this place demolishes, better get going.”

They were running down the stairs of the building, no longer in the restricted areas of the A-Block but instead in the general block. Hibiki pelted after them, taking two steps at once as he ran.

“The lifts were down,” Casper explained as they hit the end of the flight of stairs. Hibiki looked up, seeing the metal shape of the number 'Five' that stood out from the tiled walls.

“Yeah. All I can bet on now is that the main entrance isn't locked.” Katumi gasped, reaching the fourth floor some moments later. They ran in silence, concentrating all their energy onto the movement of feet and balance. Both Katumi and Hibiki had abandoned their rifles, though Hibiki had not noticed it. The eldest of the three had kept his, clutching the weapon as he ran.

Third floor.

Katumi swung around the corner, his momentum driven by his hold on the railings as he started down the next.

Second-and-a-half floor.

He cringed, wondering how much time they had left.

Come on...

He ran, panting by the time they hit the ground floor some time later. Time seemed to pass by in slow motion for him, and he wasn't sure whether he should be grateful for that fact. Pushing open the wooden door that led out of the stairwell, they streaked across the lobby as they exited beside the elevator units, across the length of the ground floor. The reception office was empty, though the lights had been left on. Katumi sprinted, not daring to wonder how much time they had left.

Then he noticed the figures in the distance, standing just beyond the main entrance in a semi-circular formation waiting for them.

“Konan!”