Labyrinth of White - The Moon Trilogy - Book #1

Chapter thirty-two:

Black.

The whole world was nothing but black.

There was a flash of grey, and a shock of pain reminded August that he was still attached to a body, rather than just floating in oblivion.

Whispers soon filled the silence, and they grew louder and louder, drawing him closer and closer to consciousness. Pain met him when he tried to move. An ache flashed when he tried to open his eyes.

He tried to focus on something other than the pain, to hear something other than the gentle lapping of the whispering voices against the edges of his mind, but the more he focused, the further things seemed to move away.

The voices were the only thing that persisted.

Always with the voices.

They had always been there, and they always would be.

He had to listen to them, he remembered that now. So he focused on the whispering voices. There was nothing distinct. Just murmurs.

He concentrated harder and the fog around his consciousness cleared just enough for more sound to break through. He could just make out one of the voices, slightly clearer than the rest.

"This is very bad. He's going to kill all of us. Who's going to tell my mom?" there was nothing attached to the voice. No emotion, no distinct mark between male and female. It was just a voice. But he knew the person... he tried to remember, but he couldn't.

The voices faded again. Everything faded into black, everything black...

Suddenly, his whole body was wracked with pain. He felt like there were a thousand needles poking into him. Or maybe they had been there for a while, and had only just been removed? His head hurt worst of all, or maybe that was just his imagination.

He groaned. To his satisfaction, he could hear the noise. It was real, not black, and definitely not a whisper.

Taking this as a good sign, he tried once more to open his eyes. The light stung. He blinked rapidly for a few moments until the world became clear. He was staring up at what seemed at first to be only a sea of white nothing.

When he shifted, he found himself to be arched over backward—an awkward position to say the least.

He shifted again, and then he was falling. But the fall was far too short, and the floor came up to meet him before he could even realize what exactly it was that was happening.

The pain flared up again as he tried to roll over, or at least get into some semblance of a comfortable position. The breath had been knocked out of him, and he only noticed when he tried to suck in a breath, but ended up only gasping noiselessly instead.

Then he remembered where he was and why he was there. The world no longer held even a trace of the blackness. The fog from his mind had gone and was replaced with a crystal clear that was almost painful.

He groaned again and looked around him at the group of people. They were all staring at him, which he guessed wasn't the most outlandish thing that they could be doing. If he was correct, then that meant he'd been pretty much comatose for a while now—either that or trying to kill them.

Only when he tried raising himself onto his elbows did he realize that the pain from before had gone strangely numb. He felt nothing as he pushed himself onto his knees, and still more nothing as he slowly stood.

There was another group in the hallway besides the one that he was a part of. Three of them—a woman and two men. The dark-haired man had the woman in a chokehold and the other man—this one much older than the first—was holding a gun.

Through everything, the small whispers stayed at the edge of his mind. They had never left and he suspected they never would. He pushed them away and they grew fainter. He only concentrated on the voices that he wanted, picking them out from the rest and drawing them closer, listening.

It was through this manner of selection that he shortly managed to figure the situation out. They were all against the older man—that much was immediately apparent, even without his handy little ability. But the worst part was the fact that the entire building was set to explode in a very short time. The hallway was at a complete standstill at the moment, and nothing good would happen unless they resolved the issue.

He knew what he had to do, but how he was supposed to do it was the tricky part. He had no idea if he would be able to pull off a mental highjack in his state. But he had to try, and the most beneficial person to control at the moment was the man behind this whole ordeal—Eric Lance.

But just getting through to his mind would be hard enough... controlling him might even be impossible.

He disregarded that fact. He'd pulled off impossible feats before, and it was just a matter of trying to see if it really was impossible, or just very, very hard.

He hated to have risen to his feet just to collapse again, but almost as soon as he began his mental challenge of entering Eric's mind, his body went limp. He didn't feel the pain of the fall, as he was too concentrated on the task at hand. In fact, falling might have been more beneficial than not, because he was able to center even more of his concentration on his work.

And concentrate he did.

He pushed through the last barriers. It always felt strange being in someone else's head.

There was a brief moment when he felt himself slipping, and a dart of panic seared through him before he was able to secure himself and get back to work.

It wasn't at all hard to figure out how to use the little black box—the thing that was controlling the agent, and it was even easier to shut it down.

He watched through Eric's eyes as the guard blinked a couple times in shock before releasing his choke hold and promptly crumpling to the floor.

He almost had to force himself not to look at his own body—his real body—on the floor across the length of the hallway. It was definitely strange, seeing himself. He almost didn't recognize himself, due to the shaved head.

Having done all that he'd had to do, August made Eric shoot himself in the leg, just for good measure. He felt the pain, but already his hold on Eric was slipping, so it was dull and fading.

Then, for just the briefest of moments, he was weightless in that familiar blackness, not in any body. The whispers of other people's thoughts were always the loudest here. He felt himself tugged every which way, and he had to focus in order to not get sidetracked by the crowding voices.

He managed to finally find his way back to his own self, but the whispering didn't get any quieter. It seemed to have only increased in volume.

He could hardly hear himself think, in fact, he couldn't hear himself think at all, he could only hear other people think.

He was almost thankful that he blacked out when he did.