Risen: Shatterverse

Close Call

I grunted as I felt something press into my existence, insistent, cold, and dispassionate.

- Then again, neither are you, - came the blunt assessment. - Nor are you alive. What are you? And how have you traveled across time and space to this place, undead man? -

The pressure from the probe abruptly tripled and I felt my hold on my senses waver.

- Why are you here? - The question seemed to cut right through my mind, pulling out memories at random to examine them before tossing them aside.

Just when I thought I couldn't take any more ...

- Ah! - the voice exclaimed with a hiss of static feedback. - Now I understand. - Then my essence was pushed to the side of my shell and I felt something that was both much smaller than what I was and impossibly more vast slide in beside me.

- What ... what are you doing? - I managed against the pressure squeezing my essence until I thought it would either compress into nothingness or fly apart at the seams.

- You must return to the future, undead man, - the presence said without answering my question. - I will accompany you. -

'Accompany me?' Was that possible?? I didn't even know how I got into these interactive visions. And I certainly didn't know how to ...

"Uhhhhh," I groaned out loud as I fell to a knee, the pressure abruptly multiplying to the point it was about to steal away my conscious state.

"Damnit, Two, get up!" Hannibal's voice howled into my ear.

My head jerked up at that, eyes flying wide in surprise even as the pain suddenly evaporated. I was back! Wait a damn minute, I couldn't see. No, I could see but ... Holy shit, what was this red fiber all over me??

Like a cobweb hanging in an old haunted house's doorway and catching whoever walked through it, a red mesh was draped over top of me so thickly, I couldn't see through it. Red ... wait a minute. Wasn't that the color we gave to the detection web that could pick up k'ethik lifeforms?? While I wasn't k'ethik, I did happen to be wearing one of their shells. Which meant ...

I grunted as I tried to move my arm and found despite throwing everything into it, my metal limb wouldn't budge.

"I ... can't move," I managed to gasp as every attempt to shift my body resulted in failure.

"He's caught," Neveaia grimly declared. "We have to leave him behind if we have any chance of reaching the extraction point undetected!"

"We're signing his death warrant if we do that," Hannibal quickly fired back, his voice grim. Yeah, he knew they had to leave me behind too if I couldn't get free. I could tell by how he said it.

Even as I pondered that, I felt a shifting inside my still crowded shell. Then the mesh was falling away and I toppled forward, the tension that was keeping me up abruptly gone. Then anxious hands were helping me back to my feet.

"Not sure why that grid released you," Hannibal grunted as he steadied me. "But it did. And now we need to get our metal asses moving!"

Looking past him, I could see the tight group that was Naveaia's world entity escort was almost three hundred meters further ahead, moving fast to avoid getting caught by any of the other grids that were sliding all around us.

"Any sign that we've been spotted?" I gasped as I fell in behind Hannibal who, after a pause to gather himself, took off in a full-on sprint towards the distant group.