Shattered Remnants of a Dream

49. Don't Look Back

Cecilia inhaled as she cut through the night air, just a few paces behind a sprinting Roufas. "Ahh, it's so refreshing to be back in the real world."

"It must have been difficult to use your powers within Earth's psynergy vacuum," Roufas spoke effortlessly, despite his lightning-fast pace.

"It hurt something atrocious," Cecilia reminisced. "I got a little carried away once and had to lift a large object. If I hadn't been able to displace the gravity around the object to manipulate its weight, it would have crushed me. And it was only 70,000 kg, at best!"

Roufas scoffed. "The vacuum had you that depleted? How frightening."

"Yes," Cecilia sighed as they whizzed around a corner. "It's a good thing Earthlings are so weak."

"Indeed," Roufas agreed. "I don't understand what Victoria could have seen in them."

The couple zoomed down an empty back alley behind the Neon Mirage, knocking down trash cans and debris with a psynergy-laced whoosh. Now that they were off the main street, it was quieter. Obviously, at least one of the four Knights had been to Enmetropolis before, since their auras moved gradually toward the Black Sector, the most lawless and confusing area in the entire city.

In the Black Sector, dilapidated houses, apartments and lean-tos merged and intertwined like the bones of a decomposing skeleton. The government never paid attention to anything in this area unless its inhabitants happened to overstep their boundaries. As a result, the community had turned into a massive junkyard, with streets blocked off by collapsed office buildings and sewer grates that led to underground havens. Broken neon signs from forgotten establishments scattered the streets like locust shells. Indeed, it was as black and vile a place as the name suggested, but Roufas and Cecilia had seen much worse.

"Mayhap they seeketh sanctuary within..." Saffron appeared from behind a rusted streetlight and approached his partners. "Bruce, Winslow, Mephistoclessia, and Rose pursue them now."

"They all split up?" Roufas inquired.

"With me they didst not reside." Saffron smiled sweetly.

"Figures," Roufas snorted. "We've never been very good at working as a team."

*

Edward sat in an egg-shaped chair within one of Enmetropolis General Hospital's many treatment rooms. With awe-stricken eyes he stared at Frank's body, which was wired up to at least three dozen separate cords and modules inside a transparent, jelly-filled tube. It was still hard for him to swallow all that had happened.

After exiting the portal onto the rooftop and entering a stairwell, he'd carried Frank through a dusty, dark passageway. Their journey eventually led them down a clear, white hallway, which Edward later learned was the back hall to the spa area of a hotel. It wasn't too long before they were spotted by a lone bellhop, a svelte man with a lock of pink hair and ice blue eyes who led them to the elevator without delay.

This was Edward's first contact with someone from this other world, and honestly, he wasn't too impressed. The young man looked unreliable, and shivered as he eyed Frank's mutilated body.

"Wh-what happened?" the bellhop asked at last.

"He...got into a fight." Edward said awkwardly.

"I see." The bellhop swallowed. "I'll get someone to take you to the hospital right away. This man needs serious medical help."

"Indeed." And that had been the end of their dialogue.

With the help of the hotel manager, the bellhop took Frank's body to the Linkway, a citywide transport system that Edward couldn't quite wrap his mind around. After an alien-looking pod carried Frank off, Edward allowed himself to be transported through the tube as well.