Our shuttle arrives at the spaceship without any serious implications. I thought I’ve seen everything back in my days, but corpses walking? That’s a first. Or at least feels like that. Something inside me tells me, though, that if I’ve seen corpses walking in my past life, I would certainly remember it.

Back in the hospital, while we were fleeing from the corpses chasing us, they suddenly stopped. It felt like they wanted us to get away. But, since then, everything else went to hell. Mosa has declared that the city is in a state of crisis, the local authorities trying their best to take control the situation.

We were flying for about an hour in that tiny, metal box and it feels good stretching my feet inside the spaceship. Eladia’s spaceship is big, I admit it, but not as big as mine before it crashed on Primordial Earth. What I wouldn’t give to be there now, repairing it. I never did a good job searching for information related to my past while being there.

And that’s Eladia’s fault. She had to come and romance her way inside my head with her damsel-in-distress incidents and those big, brown eyes.

Damn! I hit my fist against the wall. The rush of pain from the punch helps me clear my head a bit. I turn and see the rest of the crew looking at me. Eladia and Silver look scared (Silver not so much since she’s an android and all), but Eladia certainly looks mortified.

She has that look on her face like I’m one of those monsters down on Mosa. To be honest, not knowing what’s hiding inside me, I feel like a monster. But for her to look me like that? It’s even worse than I thought.

In a sense, we’re all still shocked after a horde of corpses chased us, but Eladia seems like she can’t even recognize me.

Dale, the blond doctor, gets closer to me. I look at him sideways; this man smells differently from other men. His scent is fresh and gutsy like it wants to become your friend no matter what. At first, it felt reassuring having him here, but now, I don’t trust him. A man with that strong a scent can’t be trusted.

“Jay, you scared us all down there. It seemed like you couldn’t control yourself, beating those corpses. Is something going on? Do you have something you want to share with us?”

Yes. I want to say how sorry I am that I hurt Eladia, and you, and Silver, and Zan.

Stop the nonsense. You’re an Esuh. They have to respect you.

Here’s that voice again...my voice. Fuck, I’m going crazy. My anger drives me closer to insanity every day.

“No. Nothing. I’ll be in my room,” and I walk away.

I head straight for the elevator at the end of the narrow hallway. I can sense their eyes nailed on my back, but I don’t care. My head feels clouded, and I’m starting to lose consciousness. I’m afraid that something will happen, and I’ll end up waking up like before, in the middle of a blood bath.

The automatic doors open as I stand before them. I walk inside and turn my body around and watch the strange bunch of people standing across the hallway. It’s at that moment that it happens.

My left-hand feels cold and my right hot. I raise both of them and I startle at what I see; a dark substance oozing off my nails, starting to cover my arm while my other arm is burning just by holding the cube, that wretched tool. Before the doors close, I raise my head and see Eladia running towards me.

That’s when the light flashes…

I’m in the middle of a crumbled city with metal and glass buildings, none of them floating in the same peculiar way they floated on Mosa. I look around me and see many of those buildings in ruins. It kinda looks like Primordial Earth, only that it isn’t Primordial anymore.

The sky is strikingly white, so much it makes my eyes hurt.

“Where am I?” I shout at the emptiness of the city.

But nothing. The only thing that replies to me is my voice echoing all the way back to me, just a bit distorted.

Where am I?

Am I….?

I…?

Until it finally vanishes.

I take a deep breath. For some reason, the air is heavy and heady. It’s the same feeling you get on a really hot day. I keep breathing heavily although it doesn’t seem to work anymore. I lean above my knees; every scorching breath feels like the end is a step closer and everything around me is spinning faster.

Follow me.

There it is again. That voice. I raise my head and spot the beautiful lady with the blond hair. The color of her hair matching that of the human doctor, but hers being way more beautiful.

Follow me.

She keeps saying the same thing inside my head in that commanding tone that I can’t refuse. Either way, even if I don’t want to follow her, there’s nothing else I can do. She’s the only one here.

We walk for a while passing in front of many metal boxes with big rubber wheels below them. All of them are black, scorched by flame. But, we don’t stop walking until we arrive at a crossroad with four huge roads intersecting with each other.

Stay.

I stop and look at her standing in the middle of the intersection. A bright column of light falls on her. The sky’s now dark except the spot above her head. The light gets brighter until I can't see anything of her actual figure.

But, as suddenly it appeared, the same way the column of light disappeared. When the bright spot above her vanishes, it leaves behind two humans, one dark and one bright, seeming like a body and it’s shadow at the same time. Only that the shadow has its own body as well.

The dark figure sinks into the ground and disappears, while the bright one falls on its knees and runs away.

I know that the girl was trying to tell me something, but I can’t keep up with her. I feel cold and alone in the middle of this ruined city, and the only thing that comes to my mind is if I’ll ever see her eyes again.

Eladia.

The things I would do if I could see her again.

Suddenly my eyelids get heavy, and I spend a moment breathing in the dark. The cold feeling that covered my hands before has now returned, only that it comes straight from my heart.

A moment later, I’m falling into an endless pit. I stretch my hands above my head, trying to find something to grab onto, but it’s hopeless. I give up and fall to the great darkness.