Transitory

Chapter 16

Consciousness came and went in waves. One moment Nate was riding the tide toward a state of awareness, and the next he was being dragged back down to the black depths. The darkness always ended up winning in the end, however much he tried to fight against it.

Although brief, the few seconds he was awake between blackouts had at least allowed him to catch tiny snippets of dialogue.

“Nate? Can you hear me? It’s Helen. Please wake up. Jesus what do I do.”

Helen’s words became distant and muffled again. When her voice returned it was joined by someone else's. Time was passing much faster than Nate could grasp.

“What happened?” A Male voice. It was Cameron.

“I don’t know. He told me to check on you. But then I saw him stop suddenly, so I went back,” Helen replied.

“Did he just collapse?”

“Yes, I tried to get him up but he’s too heavy. What do we do?”

“Just calm down and—”

Blackness again. Nate had no idea what he'd missed each time he resurfaced. There wasn't the time to find out before he was once again ripped away.

The next voice he heard was one he didn’t recognise at all. It wasn’t Cameron or L'Armin speaking, though it was definitely a male voice. Whoever it was he could tell the person was within a short distance of him. Everything else remained too distant to be heard clearly.

Much more time had passed than before. But the veil of darkness that blocked out the world around him each time he lost consciousness, didn't arrive. He'd expected the world to disappear, only for it to then reappear moments later, once again leaving him guessing the length of time that had passed him by. When this didn't happen, Nate knew he was finally waking up properly.

A tiny point of light appeared suddenly for him to focus on. Slowly something was coming forward through the emptiness. It took him a little while to realise his eyes were slightly open and were allowing a sliver of light to pass through. The world had returned and with it a tingly feeling began to spread throughout his whole body.

He no longer lay on his front, face down in the dirt—the ground wasn't pressing against his nose or cheek, so he was confident about this at least. He assumed Helen or Cameron had flipped him over, no doubt while trying to wake him. As for the rest of him, he was still too numb to determine his overall condition.

His limbs felt distant, almost like they'd become detached from his body and were floating around somewhere nearby. When he tried to rub his eyes—as he always did when awakening from a bad dream—he lost control of his arm, with no idea where it was heading. It soon made contact with something unexpectedly, possibly the floor to his side, he couldn't tell. The disorientation had destroyed his sense of self.

After three failed attempts at opening his eyes, he gave it one last try, though with a disturbing amount of effort. Once he'd managed to separate the lids, he opened his eyes wide and was immediately disappointed by the distorted and blurry scene he saw.

The light was trying desperately to shine through a film of sleep that coated his eyes, but not enough could get through. It took a couple of quick blinks to clean up the image completely. Then, with his sight restored, he surveyed the world around him and noticed how much dimmer it was than expected.

Again he could hear a voice in the background that he didn’t recognise. He could make out a rhythm to the words the person used—but not the language—and it sounded to him like some sort of a chant. It was repeated over and over again, without a gap in between. It was strange, but he found the quietness around him even stranger.