Collision Course [+ Additional Levels]

Level Eighteen - Heavy Sleep

He simultaneously felt pins and needles all over. He felt the rush of electricity surging through him, powerful and exhilarating. Nearly all of his breath left him in a slow exhale that seemed to last forever, and his vision of Coily blurred.

What happened next was something that he felt like he was doing, feeling his muscles pulled toward various directions, and yet, he didn't actually move an inch, still firmly holding Coily down. So, he felt like he shot forward, falling... right into Coily and through the floor, his vision going dark. In reality though, nothing more happened than his fingers merely clenching, the room continuing to glow around him.

It was an odd experience.

He wasn't on top of Coily anymore. He looked around himself, at the void he found himself somehow standing in. Unlike the other darkness from before, he could see his hand when he moved it in front of his face (it seemed to be his instinctive test to see how dark a space really was). More than that, his eyes didn't have to adjust to find that the surroundings weren't truly black―they were a deep blue. Ahead he saw what looked to be a horizon, marked as a faintly lighter blue streak. When he looked up, he thought he could make out a domed ceiling―it was incredibly far away, though. Its height was mind boggling, it made his head spin looking at it. So he looked down at the new floor beneath his feet.

His stomach dropped and his head got light as he gasped, jerking and stumbling back.

The floor was transparent.

Heart rattling his ribcage from the sudden panic-induced adrenaline rush, he saw what he first mistook to be stars. His mind tricked by the illusion of there being an absent floor, he felt like he was almost falling through them. The night sky beneath him looked like they went on forever, its depth immeasurable.

Then, he realized that it wasn't night sky. He shakily crouched down to take a closer look. What he had thought to be "stars," were actually something quite different. His eyes widened as he took them in for what they were, glancing at the floor around him.

They were numbers.

Numbers were aglow beneath him.

He looked down below his feet again, face lit with the white glow of the spinning, flashing numbers, the reflection of them in his eyes, making them twinkle. The expression he had on his face was one of awe. His right hand absently reached for the numbers beneath the floor, and his fingers surprisingly sunk right through. He jerked his hand back with a startled gasp. Then, looking at the blue haze of the floor, he hesitantly reached for it again, curious. The floor felt thick, but his hand went right on through it, and he could see himself waggle and stretch his fingers on the other side. His wrist felt like it was in a gel.

"Whoa," he breathed.

With his hand through, he suddenly got this odd feeling that he needed to be on the other side. He narrowed his gaze at luminescent numeral digits as he thought it over. Looking up around himself at the deep blue space he was in, he came to his decision. Remembering one of his favored book series that he'd read some time ago, he pulled his hand out, stood to his feet, and quoted with a shrug what seemed like the most fitting phrase at the time.

"Hobey ho!"

And without a second thought, he leaped and dove through the floor, head first.

Below the surface, he instinctively shut his eyes and held his breath in the liquid-like substance. His unzipped jacket billowed in slow motion behind him, and his hair floated from his face as he slowly settled into place. Hesitantly, he blinked open his eyes.

The numbers twirling and flashing in their places that had looked white from above, he found to be actually purple. How they were so different in color from the two vantage points―being above versus below the surface―he had no clue. His gaze was guided upward, and he saw that the digits were rising above him. He wondered about this with a mild curiosity.