Running With the Stars

Part 2

Chapter 9

The city rose in front of him like a firework spun out of control. Everything was light. Gold mixed with greens and reds and blues and every other colour imaginable, criss-crossing and arcing beautifully, interconnected and intricate in a way which made his head spin. Jeffery had seen buildings lit up with lights before, but these were different - these buildings were light. He didn't even have the chance to wonder if his eyes were playing tricks upon him before he was whisked forwards until he was standing there, directly in front of one of the great silver cathedral-like structures, complete with fluted archways and shimmering spires that stretched up into the unbroken blackness above. Of course, there were no doors or windows, but this did not strike Jeffery as odd. Indeed, it was the most normal thing in the world.

I'm here again, he realised. I must be asleep.

He wondered what would happen if he touched the surface of the building. He reached out his hand, slowly, slowly. Would it disappear? He didn't think so. His hand inched forwards towards the silver light, and Jeffery felt-

His eyes snapped open as he woke.

For a moment he wondered where he was. The darkness was near complete, except for a gentle, ghostly grey light that seeped in through the single window and cast everything in a low, fuzzy gloom. It was then that he remembered. By the sounds of things the storm had grown in intensity; he could hear the rain rattling off the glass of the window and he fancied that the howling of the wind had taken on a desperate air as it searched for gaps in the structure of the little hut.

It had been a strange few hours.

He cast his mind back to the moment Savannah had found him, poised delicately in a pile of his own sick. "I've got a hell of a story for you," he had said. But upon standing and shakily wiping his hands on his own clothes, it had become apparent that he hadn't the slightest notion of how to wring a coherent narrative from what had happened to him. In the end he had gibbered about waling up the bridge to the city, and then feeling as though he had been stretched out over a million miles and then snapped back into place. "I was right there and then I was here", he had kept saying, well aware that he had not stipulated where 'there' was and he had no idea where 'here' was.

Savannah, to her credit, had let him talk for a while before gently interjecting with some questions of her own, though if these were designed to calm him down then they were emphatic failures. The first thing he remembered was her asking which world he had come from. Of course, this hadn't made the slightest bit of sense to him and he had stared at her without knowing how to even begin his answer. More questions followed. He was asked about Relics, about the corporation ("which corporation?" he had asked) and, finally, about Tarnel.

"What did he say to you? It's incredibly important that you remember it as clearly as possible." she had said, gripping Jeffery by the shoulders and staring into his eyes.

Jeffery had taken a deep breath and resolved to answer the question as simply as possible. He said that Tarnel had found something, but Jeffery wasn't sure what it was, and he had said Jeffery was to find Savannah and someone else, but he didn't say why.

It must have sounded like the hysteria of someone in the midst of a full-blown breakdown, but in the end it had been enough. Savannah had nodded, grabbed him by the arm, and pulled him into the thick trees, scrambling through the thick undergrowth at a much faster rate than he would have considered sensible or safe.

His brain was still fogged, and he was constantly blinking his eyes against a dull pain that had settled behind them. A small voice in his head was whispering to him that this was all clearly some kind of hallucination brought on by a rupture in his brain, and – perhaps even more worryingly – it was a more comforting explanation than any other he could think of.