Against the Tide - A New Elysium Story [Complete]

21. Rainclouds on Satherna

Lars, a voice called out to him. I know what you're doing. Stop it.

He looked around, but he could not make out the source. That was when he realized that he wasn't actually looking around, because he found himself to have no head. Confused, he moved his hands to the space where a head should be, and they touched something that did not belong to his body. Amity's disgruntled meow startled him so much that he jerked and she almost fell off. He grabbed the cat and held her out in front of him. It was a silly gesture, he realized, because of course, he could have 'looked' at her anywhere else just as well with his sensors.

"Amity?" he asked her in confusion. "Did you just talk?"

No, you moron, it's me, the voice spoke again, sounding irritated. Amity just stared back at him impassively.

"I don't understand..." he muttered.

Cut the crap, Lars. I know what you're doing. You're trying to shut me into this dream, so I cannot interfere with whatever it is you think you're doing. I get it, it's payback. But it's game over now. Stop it.

"I'm not doing anything," he said and put Amity down on the floor.

Don't lie to me.

The voice began to annoy him. He clenched his hands into fists and wanted to take a deep breath, but it occurred to him that in this body, he didn't breathe. And as Amity rubbed her head against his metallic legs, he didn't feel it, he only knew because his sensors told him so. He bent down to touch her soft fur, but he didn't feel that either. Yet he could clearly remember what it would feel like, in a way that made no sense to his tactile sensors at all.

Lars, we have to go back. You cannot keep us in here. We're wasting time! This is not like the dark space of your CPU. We might get shot while daydreaming here!

"I don't understand what you're talking about," he insisted. "Who are you?"

"Seriously now?"

He turned around, and found the voice to belong to a body now. A human female with black hair and grey eyes stood before him. She wore a strange combination of a white summer dress and black combat boots.

"What's with those shoes?" he asked her.

"What's with your lack of shoes?" she asked back.

He looked down along his body, and realized that it now looked human, too. He stood barefoot in the sand on the beach in their mind, and the fog was denser than ever before. Null stood before him, her arms crossed, and she squinted at him in suspicion.

"What the hell is going on, Lars?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," he replied curtly.

She cocked her head to the side, eyeing him doubtfully.

"You're clearly upset," she pointed our. "Why?"

"I hate shoes..." he muttered and averted his gaze.

He couldn't bear looking at her, for some reason that he didn't quite understand himself. He preferred to stare at the fog around them instead.

"There's that strong word again, Mister Rational," she said, and without looking he knew that she smirked.

He clenched his teeth and bit back an answer to that.

She stepped next to him and leaned a bit forward to get a better look at his face. He continued to stare at the fog and ignored her, or at least he tried to. It wasn't easy. From up close, her eyes reminded him of the cloud-covered sky on Satherna, the planet of eternal rain. He also noticed now that he had never quite realized just how small her human form was. But then again, in this strange place, things weren't always right in proportion. His own appearance was, after all, nothing but a figment of her imagination, the form she had given him to make it easier to talk to him. He found himself wondering why she had chosen to give him this form, and in the next second felt irritated at the thought that he even cared.