Across Dimensions (ONC 2020)

Chapter Eleven: No Going Back

The longer I gaze at the photos, the harder my head pounds. A migraine stabs at my eyes, joining in the torture party that my body has decided we should participate in together. This is hopeless, nothing is coming back to me.

I drop the box on the floor, grimacing at the loudness of the metallic clatter as if it managed to smack me in the face, with the force of a brute. It may as well have, with how much it hurt.

Weariness unlike anything I've felt before passes over my body, begging me to rest. I close my eyes for a moment, jerking my whole body when I nearly nod off. Pain from my still untreated injuries joins in the torture Grayson chorus. A lovely result from such a sudden movement. I groan, wishing just for a minutes time I could be granted the ability to lay down and rest.

But it would likely seal my doom if Maximus returns to me sleeping. I need to remember something, there isn't an option not to, unless I want to simply give up. I refuse to do that, I've come too far to just curl up and die. Staying on my world would've resulted in the same fate. Whoever I was before didn't want that, and I'm not about to disappoint him.

Heh, it's weird how I keep referring to my past self like he's a different person. With how little I know about him, he may as well be.

I pull the crumpled note out of my pocket, the only link I gave myself to the person I used to be. He intended for me to end up here, but why? Perhaps there is some kind of clue that I missed on this. A different lighting to reveal a hidden message? Though if he was being pursued how would he have found the time to write such a thing?

Unless he wasn't.

In a situation like this, it is best to consider all scenarios. These pictures Maximus gave me could be faked, the supposedly tortured gaze, falsified. Maybe who I was worked with the government, and sought to seem like I betrayed them in order to accomplish some form of undercover mission.

Since I have not heard from, or known of my god-father till now, it's entirely possible that I didn't care about him, and willingly agreed to make him mentally suffer. They also could've lied, told me anything, and presented their own false evidence to convince me I was helping to lure out an evil man.

Though knowing myself when I walked through those gates, I doubt I would've cooperated with the government willingly. Unless they offered me something that would've benefited the people I cared about. Manipulation was not below them, and is often used much too regularly from my understanding.

So which is it?

Manipulated? Tricked? Tortured? Cooperated?

"Ugh, I have no idea."

My eyes scan the sentence on the note I wrote for myself over and over, like it will yield different results on the following read. "Trust no one. Never stop running. Remember the story of Maximus Hamilton."

But it doesn't. Nothing new springs to the surface of my blanked out memory. Just another useless piece of paper.

I turn it over, and as suspected, it's simply a blank backside to a no longer useful note. My eyes blur for a second, reminding me of just how badly I need to rest. During their moment of falling out of focus, I catch a blur in the upper right corner, a tiny splash of black ink that isn't readable from a regular distance.

With a deep inhale, I allow my eyes to temporarily rest, in hopes that they will allow me to use them just a few more moments,  to read the abnormally small text. Blinking away the sleep, I lift the parchment a few inches in front of my eyes.

Homunculus. Wait, what? Such a strange.....

Before I can finish my thought, countless images assault me. Emotions course through me, but I cannot make any more sense of them than the pictures flashing too fast for me to distinguish anything in particular. Nothing makes sense, it just hurts. I feel an all consuming loneliness wash over me, threatening to swallow all that I am.

Please stop, make it stop!

I drop the note, crying out and holding my head. It's as if a life's worth of memories pours into a conscious mind, tearing apart the very reality that I have accepted to be truth.

Many faces that I did not recognize until this moment pass by in a blur, some I feel joy for, others resentment and hatred. My minds eye lands on one particular individual, focusing enough to recognize her, to know her name, and hate it.

Vidya.

WC: 19,018