Among the Stars

Eleven

A/N: Here, a long chapter to make up for the few previous short ones. Happy?

Bright light hit Milo's face, as he woke up with an aching neck and a rumbling stomach and it took a while before it hit him where he was. He had gotten used to waking up to the boring grey interior that was his spaceship, but he hadn't seen natural light in about 2 weeks. When he realised that he was in London, the aching neck was long forgotten and Milo couldn't remember ever being so excited to get up.

After he had eaten breakfast, Milo put some food in his bag, since he had read about earth having some kind of exchange product that you needed if you wanted food. The first thing he noticed when stepping outside of his spaceship was that everything was loud. Musca had always been a very quiet place, since vehicles were otiose. Everyone could fly anyway.

His spaceship had actually crashed on the edge of Holland Park and he could see fast moving vehicles rushing by. Besides earth being loud, Milo decided it was also very fast and, apparently, really bright. Where the sky at Musca had been a sort of indigo or violet, here it was bright blue. The sunlight gave Milo a headache and the only thing he wanted to do now was search for a place that offered shelter from the brightness.

There was a group of trees standing nearby and Milo considered sitting in its shadow for a while, but remembered that he didn't come to earth to lounge, he had a goal. He had to find Logan to guide him through this world of constant stimuli and he had to find him fast, before he got crazy. Approaching the stream of speeding vehicles seemed like a good idea to Milo, they might be able to take him to Logan.

On both sides of the main road where the vehicles were passing, there were strokes of concrete, with loads of people walking on them. Milo had honestly no idea what they were or what was going on, but he decided now was not a good time to realise that he should have done more research on cities and just started walking along with the stream. Everyone around him looked at him weirdly and Milo started feeling uncomfortable so he stopped walking to check if he maybe had some sort of stain on his shirt.

The moment he stopped, however, he felt the air being pushed out of his lungs, as a great force suddenly pressed against his back. Milo tripped over and could only regain balance after grabbing the back of a bench. His heart was beating madly and he couldn't remember a time where he had felt more scared than now. He turned around to see a broad man looking at him angrily and shouting things he didn't understand, despite his Babelfish.

Away. The only thing running through his mind was that he should run, find a place where the angry, shouting man couldn't find him. So that's what he did. As fast as he could, he ran away to find a hiding place, while trying to dodge people on his way. That's when he found a kind of stairs inside the pavement, leading somewhere under the ground. It could be his only chance and Milo didn't have to think twice about taking it.

Down the stairs, Milo found a rather large kind of room filled with people, most of them walking even further down. Feeling helpless, Milo couldn't think of something else than just to follow them. After all, maybe if he was in a crowd, the angry man would lose sight of him. For a moment, Milo felt reassured, he was sure he was going to find Logan and everything would turn out alright.

Of course, life wouldn't be that good to him and he encountered another obstacle. There seemed to be some kind of gates and Milo really started to panic now. He had no idea how to get through and if he even should get through. Everyone else around him looked like they had no problem getting on the other side at all, but Milo couldn't figure out how they did it.

Deciding it would probably be for the better to follow the stream of people, Milo started walking towards the gates. Maybe there was some kind of device that scanned your eyes to let you in or maybe they just opened automatically. However, when he neared one of them, it didn't open for him. Milo wasn't one to give up so easily though. The gates probably just didn't work properly.