Only On Paper

10 - The White Sea

I lean over and throw up into the pan beside my makeshift bed. In addition to the red contents-of-stomach I continue to heave, my nose also spouts a small geyser of blood. I can't help but wonder how long that's been going on.

I guess it had been shortly after we broke orbit from Venus that - apparently - both Vario and I had collapsed. This was all information relayed to me in my groggy state. Everything seems too bright and blurry. It hurts to listen, it hurts to think. It is actually physically painful to call upon memory.

Vario is far worse off than myself, however. I've never seen a sick Exo before, and Vario-644 is exactly what I would define as a sick Exo. Besides his violent shivering, his synthetic voice is emitting a low crackle - not unlike human lungs that are filled with liquid. Occasionally he will stir, and then scream loudly like he's being attacked. He has not regained any semblance of consciousness since our extraction.

Three weeks, they had said. Even my Ghost couldn't believe it, and had spent the better part of the last two hours scanning my head, which just made it throb even worse. Three weeks gone in the time it takes a Warlock to Blink.

The Huntress, I remember with a wince, calls herself Fjenne. She's the one who has been taking care of us while the Titan...

His name is... is it - no..

Aha!

Hayes, he had told me! Well, he has been coordinating with the rest of the search-parties before we make the jump back to the Tower. For the small amount of time I've been conscious, he's been up in the cockpit.

Fjenne is hunched over me now, her head is crooked to the side. The look on her face swims in and out of focus, and she looks extremely concerned. I sputter a few words, flecking droplets of blood into her face. She doesn't flinch.

The realization hits me harder than the headrush that comes after - the machine gun is gone! I'm laying flat on my back, which means it's not strapped to me anymore. I can barely make out the rest of the room, so I can't see the gun anywhere. I'm trying to explain to Fjenne why I suddenly sat upright, but I only hear a blubbering sound coming from my throat. Blood is literally pooling on my robes, and before long my vision starts to darken.

I slip out of consciousness again, but this time I dream. Vario is standing next to me, although we say nothing. We look down from a metallic plateau into a mass of brilliant white liquid, which is rocking and churning like the sea. In it I see my friends Lannin and Jorun, among dozens of others. They don't even have their Ghosts.

They are drowning.

For all the waves tumbling around them, not a single one of them is thrashing, no one is making a sound. No screams, no pleas for help. Those who can bring their heads above the water simply stare at the sky with empty eyes.

I look up to see what it is they are staring at. The sky is a deep blue-black of midnight, and the stars are absolutely brilliant in their radiance. They are blinking in and out of existence, almost as if by their own will. As they appear, they bring a song with them, and I'm struck by it's haunting beauty. The fact that it sounds something familiar to me brings my head great pain.

As I continue looking into the stars, suddenly their alignment is entirely clear to me. So clear, that even my vision becomes somewhat clouded with a radiant hype. I've never been so pleased to see something like this: every star in the sky makes perfect, logical, mathematical sense to me. I'm sure that I see a map of sorts in the sky, not unlike a compass. This is it! The stars will tell me everything I've ever wanted to know! Everything I need is here, it's always been here and its been waiting for me!

The longer I stare at the stars, the more clear everything becomes. They are real: I am not real. Vario is not real. My friends in the ocean of white, they are not real, either. It's all part of the plan, I know it now!