The F.O.X. Project

Chapter 10: Lost

'I thought you were smarter than this.'
Trent peered over the rim of his book.
'What makes you say that?'
'Well, I wanted you to join us.'
'DCC?'
'Would it help if I told you who drew in that meteor?'
To say that Trent was a little interested would be a bit of a stretch. But he was intrigued.
'Why are you here anyway.'
'I thought you would need some company. Locked up in an endless black void. Nobody to talk to...'
'I would honestly prefer nobody.'
'Alright then. Have nobody.'
Mr C walked out the spontaneously appearing door and left Trent with his book.
'Though,' Trent jumped and instinctively looked around, 'I would like to show you something.'
All of a sudden, the world around him changed. He was no longer in the void and instead, staring in on Max Risdon crouching in a vent. Waiting for the right moment.
'He is closing in on you.'
'A Bounty Hunter?!'
'I suggest that you take my offer.'
Trent considered for a second. Just a second, but long enough for all those doubts and fears to try and crawl and squeeze their way into his mind. Shaking them off, 'No.'
'He is on his way.'

                         ♦️  ♦️  ♦️

Groaning, Max sat up. He had fallen down into a large cave system. Crystals glowing all colours of the rainbow gleamed all around him.
Surprised to be alive, he surveyed his surroundings. He found what saved him. Looking up, he saw a broken safety net and that he was sitting up in a relatively large puddle. His clothes were sopping and they dragged him down as he tried to get up.
He trudged forward down the cave system. It was really strange to find a cave system half way up the Obelisk. Maybe it was a different dimension and that Max had fallen through an experimental dimensional rift. He hoped not.

There was suddenly a strange warping noise and gravity was completely flipped. Max had to act fast to avoid smashing his head on the shards above, pushing his hands out and clinging for dear life as gravity went this way and that. Eventually, gravity cancelled itself out.
He moved forward and soon found himself in the mouth of a huge cavern. Inside it, huge chunks of rubble, old cars and entire 21st century buildings orbited a large rhombic dodecahedron emitting great pulses of dark energy. The Catalyst.
Max marvelled for a moment at this snippet of the old world. Torn from reality and held in stasis ever since The Catalyst was turned on for the first time. Fragments of old lives flashed before his eyes of people in their last moments as the catalyst was switched on. Ghosts of the past. People heading to work or school having no idea of the horrors that will happen to them in the next milliseconds. Completely oblivious until it is too late.
He floated down into an old subway station attached to the edge. Ghosts of people waited for their stop on the jagged snake, ripped from the tracks by the gravitational field, now ploughed into a wall with several ghosts collapsed on the floor.
Heading up a ladder, gravity reverted back no normal and Max came to a small grate. He opened it and peered out from the grated floor several floors up from where he had originally fallen. Two guards turned the corner and he quickly closed the grate again. The vents smelled like smoke and every now and then there was a security laxer grid. Not even made to trigger an alarm, the only thing the lasers triggered are small explosives made to blow you to bits when triggered. Max carefully manoeuvred through the occasional laxer grid and slowly made his way up to the area where Trent was most likely held.