The Core: The First Guest

26. Lights out

It was dark and I could only hear things moving around me. I couldn't feel my body or even speak. I had tried using my Prime Speed Control but without sight, I wouldn't have known if it was working. Maybe the sound pitch would have been lower but I couldn't tell any difference. I tried calling up menus or anything to break the darkness but it all didn't matter if I couldn't see. I had never been afraid of the dark when I was younger so this wasn't too terrifying. As long as it ended soon. It had to end soon.

I started to count in my head to pass the time and to keep a grip on how much was passing by. I was just past a minute and a half of Mississippi's when vision returned.

I was hovering in the air above what looked like a silver dinner plate covered in Celtic knots. No, not Celtic knots, those were depictions of chains. I seemed to be smaller somehow, possibly because the prison plate that was holding me was on some sort of waist-high platform. A block of text hovered in front of me.

-Per Detainee Law ^6^18 detail 13-

Individuals, pets, or any mentally viable being shall not be separated from visual, auditory, and other required senses for longer than 10 minutes while being held without access to VR.

10 minutes of real-time have passed. Restoring visual access.

-Unknown Error-

-Unknown Error-

-Unknown Error-

"The shroud is gone!" I heard a male voice say out of view behind me. I tried willing my vision to rotate in place and to my surprise, it worked. I found myself facing two entities. They were both humanoid, to some slight degree. They both leaned over like hairless gorillas yet I found the sizing to all be wrong in that regard. Neither of them appeared to be overly muscular and their legs and hands seemed to have too many joints. These extra leg joints seemed to allow them to sit while standing. They were odd creatures to watch.

The one on the right chuckled and said "Esteemed Magus, can you close the blinds on your pet tanks? He won't recognize me in this form."

Right away, even without his form changing, I already knew who this smug and self-righteous loser was. Sure enough, the area around us changed, the walls off in the distance, see-through a moment before, changed to an opaque tint as Regeth soon stood before me. I would never admit it to him but it was the coolest thing to watch how his whole body morphed into the human Regeth I knew. It was like watching RT-1000 from the Terminator except there was no silver liquid stage. His body became whatever form he wanted it to be in moments. Muscles, skin, and clothes formed so fast that it was hard to make out if it was all at once or in stages.

A stunning realization hit me as well, the text that I had seen in front of my eyes had said that I was in real-time right now. So all of this happening before me was real and not a simulation.

Regeth, Elaya's dad, smiled a cruel smile down at me the whole time his body quickly flowed into him standing there as a dark-haired human man in a dark suit.

He leaned closer to peer down at me which made me wonder what he was seeing since I didn't have a body.

"Ah, I had forgotten about that Detainee clause. That is why the shroud was removed from his containment case." Regeth said as he stood back up, keeping his eyes on me with a smug smile.

"Yes, but I thought you said that this alien had hacked my System and force-generated an Avatar with it." The other alien, apparently Magus the 2nd, said as he looked off to the side at a wall of continually flowing data. "Everything seems to be in order... solar gravity repulsion is perfect, cr mining is on track, power is stable, and all systems are running perfectly."