NOVEL NEXT Chapter 16: Glassface
>>>[FOR THE BEST VIEWING EXPERIENCE, IT IS RECOMMENDED THAT YOU SWITCH TO ROYAL ROAD'S DARK/OLED BLACK THEME]<<<
===[Chapter 16: Glassface]===
>>> LL#@Load loading g File...
>>> Subjec t Locateded...
>>> War War WarninNg! Subject h h h%&#ealth is rapid*&@l-y deteriorating!
>>> They announce their disapproval.
>>>...
>>>...
>>> Nee new Updat!e!
>>> [SILENCE. FOG SEPERATES OUR WORLDS. FEW CAN SEE THROUGH THE CLOUDED VEIL, THE THIN DIVDER THAT KEEPS THE PIGS AWAY FROM THE DOVES. BUT I CAN. I CAN SEE ALL. I CAN SEE YOU. STEP THROUGH THE VEIL. CAN YOU FEEL THE WEIGHT OF EYES BEHIND YOUR OWN WATCHING YOUR EVERY MOVE? PAGES FLIP, CAN YOU SENSE THE TIME PROGRESSING? I HAVE NO OTHER CHOICE. I CANNOT HELP BUT SEE ALL. YOU MAY BE BLIND NOW. BUT VISION WILL COME TO YOUR DARK EYES. YOU KNOW LITTLE NOW, BUT KNOWLEDGE TOO WILL JOIN YOU. ALL WILL BE REVEALED WHEN IT NEEDS TO BE. STAND ASIDE. LET FATE BE YOUR GUIDE.]
>>[SEE ME. LISTEN. CAN YOU HEAR THE BIRDS SING? I KNOW YOU'LL SEE THEM. YOU ALWAYS HAVE. THEY SING FOR ME. THEY SING FOR YOU AS WELL. WHEN YOU HEAR THEM, DO THEY REMIND YOU OF YOUR HOME? THEY SHOULD.]
>>>...
>>> Alert! The Subject listens.
>>>[THIS ONE CAN HEAR ME. HE CAN SENSE THE EYES STARING. MANY BATTLES LIE AHEAD. WATCH THE SIGNS. STANDBY.]
>>> Acknowledged
==[Begin Memory Playback]==
Blinding darkness swallowed him. As he was thrust into the recesses of his mind, he could see nothing. Feel nothing. Say or hear nothing.
The only thing that painted any sort of color in his cocoon of unconsciousness was his mind’s eye. The past three days replayed over and over again. Scenes. Faces. Graphic violence, suffering, chaos. Utopia. He saw Earth. His home. Before the storm washed it all away. Before he had been hot branded with the name ‘Phantom’. Before he deserted during the twilight hours of the war in Korea and was morphed into a Convict. Before he met Misfit. Before the Portal.
The Portal. He could never in a million years forget it. A steel contraption, the very peak of scientific progress and ingenuity. The swirling colors of the portal’s entrance remained vivid in his mind. He could remind himself of his encounter with it almost as clearly as if he were standing there. And then, he opened his eyes to find out that he really was.
He was standing in the base among a crowd of other prisoners, just as he was those few short days ago. He took the opportunity to explore. To see things he'd missed the first time. Subtle hints that his subconscious mind picked up on while his present mind was too afraid to do anything. The portal, the regulars, the pale uncertainty that resided on the faces of almost every Phantom. The dove flying through the hangar. Yet at the same time, he could sense awe. A respectful knowledge that whatever they were marching into, strange, unknown, and terrifying as it was, could change their lives entirely. A new beginning. A fresh start.
Or so they said.
A utopia. Yes, one for Kovic's creed of sycophants and henchmen. But what of the Phantoms? Obviously Utopia was not for them. It was never about them. The only thing that mattered to Overwatch was the amount of work that could be extracted from each individual phantom. Cato said it. Rafael said it. Eli knew it, but feared saying it. Or he had. Once upon a time he was afraid of saying it. Was he still afraid? Not even he knew, truthfully. If he said it, he would never get back to Earth. But then, if going back really mattered that much to him - why had he gone out to help the others? Why did he escape? Again?
Not even he knew. Truthfully.
He heard the wings of a bird flap through the air somewhere. He looked up, and was surprised to see that there was no ceiling at all! The wires, steel beams and concrete that he was certain would've been there were all missing. There was instead a dark - empty - void. Nothing. A void so large and vast that Eli's heart skipped a beat upon seeing it, as if it were a giant eye watching him. A dove circled above him a few feet up; the deep blackness of the void contrasted against her white feathers as she circled underneath the void. His eyes followed her. The dove cooed and then it flew over to the rear of the room, right towards the dark glass windows that observed the crowd of frozen phantoms as they marched into the portal.
Behind the lines of other Phantoms that surrounded him, and the Regulars who kept their guns readied, up high in a office – behind windows that reflected the lights of hundreds of computers and monitoring equipment – somebody was watching. They had the form of a person, though he knew for a fact that it was no ordinary human. Though they hardly moved, they weren't frozen in time like the others, like a statue caught in time.
Whatever that creature was, it was watching him. And it wasn't just a entity inside of his dream, bound to rules of his mind. Not at all. It was aware of Eli. In fact, just as lucid as he was. A sojourner within his dream. An intruder within his mind...
Eli gasped when he saw it and took a step back, though his eyes were fixed on it.
The image of the figure grew clearer, and he could discern its features. Much of its body was covered by dark robes draped over its frame like curtains. What little Eli could make of its neck seemed wiry and thin. Full of cogs and machine parts. And its face… was not a face at all. Instead, it was smooth. Glossy. Reflective. It had no mouth, no ears or nose. And no eyes - save for what seemed like a faint glow of blue light reflecting off of the surface of the mask. Beyond that, nothing. It had a glass mirror for a face, more like a mask than anything...
Despite the lack of eyes, Eli knew it was staring at him. Its presence sent a cold shiver down his spine. There was something sinister about it. But that sinister nature didn't stop the odd sense of familiarity with the creature. He swore he’d seen it before, in another dream. The image of his old home, standing underneath the garden tree with the dove’s nest… Yes! That's where he saw it before! That other dream he had of his old home. And, perhaps before then too? But he couldn't recall. Maybe he'd known it all his life, but never noticed it watching? Or maybe it wasn't real?
Eli worked up some nerve, this was his dream for crying out loud! He knew it. So he prepared to call out to it, maybe to either scare it off or at the least figure out what it wanted.
But before he could call out to see if it was real, the creature turned its back to him and simply walked away. Out of view. And right then, all hell broke loose.
His world unraveled before his eyes. Flocks of blackbirds materialized in the surroundings, ravens, starlings, magpies and crows. Their black and starry feathers painted a torrent of darkness that cloaked the world around him in a dark night. The void above his head swallowed everything. Blackbirds flew deterioration of the world around him. The phantoms around him disintegrated, bursting into flocks of blackbirds that left behind only an empty black void. Eli panicked, trying to run away to tether himself onto something solid! He grabbed onto Dutch's shoulder, but the moment he did the man disintegrated into a cloud of magpies and ravens, that flew into Eli's face and brushed past him at lightning speed! Disoriented he kept finding something to grasp onto, but everything vanished. One by one, Eli's colorful world was replaced by their black feathers, steamrolled by the cloud. The portal was the last to succumb to darkness.
And Eli fell. Or rose. He couldn't tell. He was going somewhere, moving. But he couldn't sense much of anything. Though, through the darkness, he saw something.
It was a dove gliding across the black void. Carefree.
Suddenly he felt the weight of an overbearing presence standing right over his shoulder. His brow cold. His heart momentarily stopped beating. He stood there frozen as a raspy, robotic, almost alien voice whispered into his ear.
“You have gained our attention. We are watching you. Do not succumb to fear. There will be pain, and then there will be light. We will see you up ahead."
Like listening to the voice of a radio, its raspy words cold and unfeeling scraped the flesh of his mind. He knew that the voice belonged to it, that creature, that very creature standing underneath the tree and the dove’s nest.
The voice faded as Eli fell through the cosmic void. His mind only conjured up one image of that creature watching him. Glassface. A blank stare. Static and cold. The image faded and he was shocked. Electric waves surged through his body. Burning his insides, frying his mind. His mouth opened, and he screamed until the air in his lungs escaped him.