Against the Universe - After ONE 18

THREE | A Wrap

Liam couldn't remember how he got in this place. He only knew the racing of his own heart and fear so great he had never felt before.

All around his view, weird shapes were exploding, changing colour, constantly merging and dissolving. A bustle of voices - some screaming, some crying, some laughing - blared in his ears. His senses were overloaded and his head hurt like hell.

But most noticeably, he was overwhelmed with feelings, like all his experiences had been dug out from the corners of his mind and mashed together into a strangle cocktail. Some of them he clearly recognised, others felt alien and unfitting.

Topping it all was a horrifying, howling bloodthirst, urging him to murder a thousand, no, a million people and enjoy their suffering. And then go on and on, forever, because that wasn't enough, because he would need MORE and MORE and MORE, because he was horribly empty and watching others' despair was somehow filling him for a second.

At the same time, it appalled Liam how such an emotion even came to be. His body froze in fear, but he was sure that he would explode any second because he simply couldn't handle a feeling so intensive.

Just as he thought he couldn't take it any longer, the ray of dancing colours faded out and his senses started coming back.

First, he realised something was cramping him; the grip fortunately allowed him to breathe. With wobbly legs, he tried to feel the ground, but he couldn't find it. At last, his vision stopped being all blurry, enabling him to recognise the situation he had got into.

Suspended in the air, wrapped up in vines, dizzy from the chaotic dream - that was his situation.

Liam looked down and gulped at seeing the distance to the ground. He closed his eyes and forced himself to breathe slowly. Same as before, got it...

His eyes fluttered open when he felt something touch him - the suspicious hand laid itself on his head. Liam's face morphed into that of discomfort as he tried to evade it, but his limited room for maneuver made it impossible.

"What do you want," he growled.

All of sudden, a wave of cold washed over him, making him shiver. And then came a similar one of heat. He tried bending his hands to get at least a little control over his own body, but that triggered his skin to feel like it was pricked by needles. He hissed. What the heck was happening?

The hand flew up and Liam finally got the chance to glare at it.

"Is there a reason you're keeping me here? What do you want from me?" he asked annoyedly.

It snapped its fingers and like under a command, Liam felt many feelings run through him at once. Fear, desperation, anger, sorrow. And that horrible, overpowering bloodthirst from before. Struck by panic at its mere presence, Liam tried to fight it and throw it out of his head.

It was when a single thought, coated in a thick layer of calmness, slipped into his open mind.

Stop fighting and surrender.

Liam froze, trying to understand. Was that him? Did he think that? He didn't think that. He wouldn't. Somebody else made him think that. Somebody else created this thought.

That meant somebody was talking to him... in his mind...

And smuggling emotions into his mind, too.

Which Liam didn't like in the slightest.

He looked up at the floating vine hand, at all the moving plants around him, and he connected the dots. It was them... This strange entity which had him in its grasp was experimenting with his brain at this very moment. The realisation made Liam feel sick.

He stared at his captor fearfully, not daring to speak. The hand pointed at him.

Surrender to me and I'll give you the power to fulfill your desires. I'll give you a cure for loneliness.

Liam's eyes widened for a moment, but then he averted his gaze. A cure? What could that possibly mean? Depriving him of his feelings? Putting him under anesthesia?

Or... or sending him back to Earth with his friends? Blind hope fluttered in his chest; he wanted that more than anything else.

But the more he thought about it, the more this offer seemed fishy. 'Surrender' to it? Give it complete control? No, he would never surrender to that bloodthirst out of his own will. He wished to never feel such a thing again.

Liam shook his head. "No, I won't do it."

Wrong decision. In a split second, the vines tightened around him, strangling the backpack.

Five seconds - and they loosened the grip, making him start loudly gasping for air; Liam peered at his surroundings, searching for anything that could help him escape, but he found nothing useful. All around him were just very tall trees, spanning tens of feet up.

Before he could even plan to do anything, the pressure increased again. Dizziness and drowsiness crept over Liam when the air started to run out once more.

LET ME GO, PLEASE! he screamed in his mind in a last-ditch effort.

But it didn't listen to him. It wanted to choke him unconscious, because then he wouldn't protest. Because then, anything could be injected into him without his mind firing all defense mechanisms at once.

And he could feel how the vines were beginning to open the gates of his heart, how he grew more powerless the more consciousness he lost.

He couldn't let them do it. He couldn't let them take control of him...

His friends were all alone.

I can't leave them.

At their memory Liam felt something inside him awaken, an emotion that was infinitely powerful, and yet completely his. Something fierce, but familiar and true. And that thing exploded, pushing the vines out of his mind, far away, where they couldn't hurt him.

It worked! He was free from their grasp...

...but that's when he realised the ground was rapidly approaching him.

No no NO!

*CRACK*

Shock overwhelmed Liam.

Instinctively, he looked down and there hit him a sight his mind had learned to forget.

His left leg... bent in multiple places.

Horrible flashbacks and panic struck him, adding to the physical shock... and Liam fell limp and unconscious.

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A/N

Do you have any theories about what happens next? Tell me in the comments, I'd love to hear them! See ya :)