The Split

Chapter 18

Undetermined

My journey was short, or at least it had felt that way. Left in the dark isolation of my own thoughts, I became briefly overwhelmed with grief. I had only known Ezekial for a span of minutes, but in that short time he had left a bigger impression than people I had known for years. In this dark nightmare, he was the eye of the storm, the briefest flash of life in a sea of death.

I felt numb from the loss, and paid little attention to my journey. When I came to a stop I immediately knew something was amiss. I could see a strange scene around me as I floated, disembodied, near the base of a person's head. I had no control of my direction, but could feel myself attempting to enter the mind of the person in front of me.

I was being fought; the syncing of thoughts and the entering of another body with Charles had gone nothing like this.

Finally I pulled through, and was met with a pounding pain as a spike went through my consciousness. Distrust and fear clouded my thoughts, and I realized it was coming from the mind I had just entered and not my own. I attempted to exert control over this new body as I had done before, but nothing was working. I had no control over the body itself, and couldn't see or use any of my senses. Even felt my thoughts pinned in place, gripped by a stronger resolve than I had ever known.

"WHO ARE YOU!?" a voice echoed through the hollow shared space where I was trapped.

Unable to answer, I felt the mind's touch as it tore into my memories with ease. It was a man, I knew that much. His thoughts were shielded leaving with me vague emotional impressions, as he watched my life go by in pictures.

"Was this the Presence?" I thought in a flash of panic, before another part of my brain reassured me.

Whatever this was, he was human, the emotions were easy to understand and he rooted through my mind like he was reading a story.

"WHO IS THE PRESENCE?"

The man was angry now, he had heard my thought quickly shifted his focus from my childhood to more recent events.

I watched myself in the strange green hallway, feeling his interest piqued and then be overtaken by disbelief upon seeing the figure on the throne. He played the memory again, mind reeling as he tried to put an answer to the impossible. His crude handling of my mind was far from the quick shuffling of the Presence, and I longed for him to stop.

"Please," I pleaded, "I don't know who you are or even where I am, but you have to trust me. I was sent here without choice and don't know how to leave." the memories stopped.

A cloud of suspicion filled the space as I sensed the man phrasing his response,

"I will give you time to explain yourself and this 'presence', but first I need to leave and tell my crew goodbye."

A blink later and I had vision.

I could feel myself in the corner of his mind, loosely held in place by his divided attention. Though his hold had relaxed, I did not test the boundaries, focusing on clearing my thoughts from panic and observing the room around me.

The place was a mess, torn walls were stained various shades of green and brown, and the ceiling looked on the verge of collapse with signs of obvious water damage. The scenery was secondary to what had really caught my attention first. Digital boxes of text and images covered the man's field of vision. Every time he turned his head even slightly a small marker would highlight different objects in the background, with a small wall of text describing the item. The boxes moved and flickered as I felt my host manipulating the strange interface with his mind.