Empyrean Iris Story Collection Vol. 3

Silhouette

Out of habit, and with only the flick of a thought, he activated his mechanical eye, painting the room in the eerie green of a night vision landscape.

He saw nothing out of place.

At his side, Sunny was still asleep curled up on her side head stuffed under a provided pillow.

She breathed slow and even.

Adam was a light sleeper, and while Sunny was not what he might have considered a heavy sleeper, she was not nearly as light as him. He shifted to the edge of the bed, and quietly reached down to retrieve his leg.

He could have gone back to sleep, everything about the room told him that there was nothing out of the ordinary, but still, there was something inside that bothered him, a strange and uneasy feeling in the pit of his stomach. Once upon a time, Adam used to think that such sensations were just the product of sleep deprivation or an overactive imagination, but after living so long with aliens, and reading some of Krill's papers, it had become apparent to him that the humans' intuition was better than most people gave it credit.

Perhaps he was reacting to some sort of unconscious stimuli his frontal lobe was not yet aware of. Perhaps a sound or a smell during sleep had bothered him enough to wake him.

His first thought was perhaps a smell of some sort, something that might indicate a poisonous gass, maybe even a carbon monoxide leak, though he quicky remembered that Carbon monoxide was odorless and tasteless, so he was unlikely to notice.

With his leg strapped on, he still took the time to test the air with his implants, looking down at the little glowing square on his wrist that determined the readings to be within normal limits.

The stone of the GA headquarters was warm beneath his feet.

Despite the dark and the night, the planet was still unbearably warm.

He stretched, cracking his neck and back as he stood. Behind him, Sunny rolled to her other side. He turned to look at her, worried he might have disturbed her sleep, but after a moment she stopped moving and went still again. In the glow of the green IR light, she still managed to look beautiful.

Adam had heard nothing, seen nothing and smelled nothing since he had woken, and a large part of him demanded that he just go back to bed, but now he was awake and alert, and there was no harm in being overcautious.

Feet and chest still bare, he padded over towards the door, grabbing up his spear and silently slipping out into the darkened hallway. The light was a little better here, diffused through massive skylights in the ceiling above.

He dimmed the contrast on his mechanical eye, using his primarily human night vision to navigate his way down the hall.

The corridors were filled with the gentle echoing of sand and wind clattering against the windows. It was a soothing sort of sound, mostly white noise like the rolling of ocean water or the distant cheering of a crowd. It faded, resurged and then tapered off from moment to moment creating a sort of chaotic rhythm in the dark.

But that was when

He noticed something

It was odd.

Over the sound of the sand and the wind there was another noise, louder and closer. It was hard to make out, but it seemed different.

Hefting his spear in one hand he followed the noise down a set of corridors and up a flight of stairs. As he walked the sound grew louder and louder until he could finally make out what it was. It was the sound of wind and sand, but instead of being outside, this sounded far too close, and with it came the slow whistle of wind being pushed through a tight space.