Firewall

Chapter 17

If there was anything Sky hated other than his uncontrolled mental shifts and squids, it was the feeling of being upside down. When the blood within his veins would flow down to his head, when his curly hair would fall to tickle the bridge of his nose, and worst of all, the fact that whenever he was upside down, he rarely had control over his body. Otherwise he wouldn't have been in such a position in the first place. Long story short, it was something he had grown to loath.

So when Sky woke up to find himself falling victim to all three of those unpleasant sensations, his first jumbled thought was along the lines of: "I must be hanging off the edge of my bed, that or I'm strung up in a tree."

Yet that muddled thought was abruptly shoved out of the way as Sky suddenly became aware that his arms were hanging down in front of him, and he could tell just from the feel of it that they were swaying side to side.

Sky frowned, grimacing as a sudden ache traveled throughout his head, a raspy moan escaping from his lips as he pulled up one of his dangling arms and gingerly rubbed his right temple. Sky's eyes were still closed; he had awoken with them shut for whatever reason he couldn't care to ponder about at the moment. Now that he was becoming more and more aware, Sky was beginning to feel pain all throughout his body. It wasn't sharp like a fractured bone or dislocated joint, but more like a dull, lazy ache, one of the many hints at exhaustion that Sky had become quite familiar with. This was the pain of a previous battle, and with a jolt he remembered the details of such battle.

Then there was the noise, the odd sound that Sky was now just becoming aware of. It was a simple noise, something easily describable, and that description could only be that of a clank. It was repetitive and mechanical, and now that Sky was paying attention it seemed to be in sync with the swaying motion he was experiencing.

Sky's eyes shot wide open, causing his headache to worsen to the point of making his eyes water, yet he barely noticed the discomfort. All of his attention was directed to the image before him, and to put it simply, it was brown.

The swaying sensation, the aching pain, the unusual noises, they were all coming together into one big, ugly, brown picture. Sky's breath quickened, but he didn't dare make a sound. He stayed as still as possible, eyes locked onto the brown surface his face was less than an inch away from. He hesitantly moved his hand from his temple to the surface, shocked to find that it was actually fuzzy to the touch despite the mechanical sounds it produced.

Sky then realized what a stupid mistake that was and yanked his hand away, his breath hitching as he actually heard something, an odd sound coming from the musty-smelling thing. Sky's eyes went huge as a groaning sound met his ears, as if someone was inside this fuzzy, mechanical structure, yet from his current view he could just barely make out a gap of sorts, which appeared to be the separation between the fuzzy coverings, and through that dark gap he could only see the reflections of metal. It was entirely mechanical on the inside, yet it groaned. It groaned, and groaned, and continued groaning even as Sky shut his eyes tightly in attempt to shut it out. While this happened, the swaying and clanking did not stop.

It was now that Sky realized what position he was currently in. Only the front of his body was hanging, mostly because he was slung over this thing's shoulder.

"It's going to kill me... It's taking me away to murder me..." Sky found himself hyperventilating, stupidly grabbing at the fuzzy coverings in front of him "I... I know what I saw... Within its code... this thing will..."

That was when Sky thought "screw it" and began to full on struggle, fighting for freedom against the mechanical housing that kept him pinned against this shoulder. A hoarse cry of sorts escaped his lips, an odd mixture of terror and determination as Sky found himself sliding forward ever so slightly in response to his struggle, giving him a faint sense of relief.