There was a blinding flash of light; then... only darkness.
Trevor knew what was going to happen, so truthfully, he wasn’t expecting to see or feel anything at all.
Spatial Tears expanded faster than the speed of light and instantly shredded everything they touched.
Being caught in one, logically, should have resulted in a swift and painless death; but when the tear breached the containment field and exploded outwards, Lt. Ashford learned the hard way that theory and reality were two very different things.
As if he was struck by a tsunami of flames, Trevor felt his body literally being ripped apart as a soul-wrenching pain impossible to describe assaulted him with such intensity he immediately blacked out.
That should’ve been it.
End of story.
But it wasn’t.
Never in Trevor’s wildest dreams did he expect to wake up again after ’dying’, but he did.
The instant he regained consciousness, Trevor felt oddly invigorated, more alert and more clear-headed than ever before, but he was also in excruciating agony. If he was forced to describe it, it would be like his very existence was being sandblasted, gradually wearing him away.
To make matters worse, Trevor couldn’t pass out again for some reason and was forced to endure this seemingly unending torment.
Time crept by slowly, or perhaps flew by like lightning, Trevor couldn’t tell, all he knew was suffering; and yet, instead of driving him mad, the pain slowly but surely made him numb.
Somehow, eventually, Trevor was able to adapt to the constant pain and open his ’eyes’ to take in his surroundings.
Stunned by what he ’saw’, Trevor was so overwhelmed he momentarily forgot about everything, even the pain.
Looking around, he saw an ocean of the deepest darkness imaginable, filled with an uncountable number of shimmering multi-coloured auroras, all of which were twisting, turning, and flowing across the void.
It was simultaneously the most terrifying and most beautiful scene he could have ever imagined.
Dumbfounded, Trevor Ashford stared at the world around him as he flew backwards. It wasn’t until a long time later that he suddenly wondered, Where am I?
Clearly, he wasn’t back on the research station as that had surely been destroyed.
The Spatial Tear should have killed him, yet here he was, floating in this vast emptiness filled with mesmerizing rivers of light.
This obviously wasn’t space either, as he could still ’breathe’ here.
Suddenly realizing something, Trevor looked down at himself; but even after all the shocks he had received today, what he saw topped them all.
Rather than what he saw, it was more what he didn’t see that should have filled him with dread; however, rather than panicking, Trevor felt a strange sense of indifference as he thought to himself, Oh, I am dead...
Simply put, there was nothing.
No hands, no feet, no body, nothing whatsoever.
Trevor Ashford still clearly felt like he had his limbs, torso, and head; he could even turn his gaze around and ’move’ his appendages freely as if they were still there, but he couldn’t see them at all.
Stranger yet, when he tried using one of his ’hands’ to touch his other hand, despite there being nothing there, he could still ’feel’ it.
None of this made sense.
How could he still perceive and even touch himself if he didn’t have a body?
How could he feel pain if he didn’t have a physical form?
And why wasn’t he freaking out right now and instead just calmly analyzing his situation?
Several possibilities actually came to mind all at once.
This could be the afterlife, though if this was all there was after passing on, Trevor felt it was a bit disappointing. The scenery here was equal parts enchanting and frightening, but that was all it was; as far as he could tell, there was simply nothing else here.
Another possibility was that he had somehow miraculously survived and was now just unconscious, dreaming this whole scenario up. This seemed highly unlikely, though, as he distinctly remembered being hit by the blast of warped space and energy. It was such an excruciating experience that Trevor didn’t think he would ever be able to forget it.
Besides, the evacuation ship had already left, leaving no way off the research station. How could he have survived under such circumstances?
Still, the fact that he was even able to contemplate his situation meant that at least he was conscious of his own existence.
Understanding that, Trevor Ashford arrived at what he felt was the most likely scenario, though he had no way of verifying it. Somehow, his conscious mind, or perhaps his ’spirit’, had been separated from his physical form and then sucked into the Spatial Tear.
As long as what he was experiencing was ’real’, then at the very least, his mind needed to be present to perceive it.
Perhaps this is what it feels like to be a free-floating Soul? He pondered.
Trevor had absolutely no way of knowing if his guess was correct, or if such a thing was even possible, but sifting through his memories, which for some reason had become much easier than before, he recalled a number of theories which, when linked together, might be able to explain his situation.
The experiments Project Twilight was carrying out were an attempt to stabilize, then neutralize Spatial Tears.
The exact science behind this was beyond Trevor’s understanding, but he did know pouring Exotic Essence into the containment field was a critical step in the process.
Publicly, prolonged human exposure to Exotic Essence was known to cause crippling mutations that almost always led to a painful death, but according to some classified military reports Trevor had read, on very rare occasions, small amounts of exposure actually resulted in individuals growing stronger.
It wasn’t like some comic-book story power-up where they suddenly became superhumans able to fly or shoot lasers from their eyes, but incidents of people gaining enhanced speed, strength, and sensory abilities had been recorded.
When the micro-Spatial Tear in the research lab had started going out of control, one of the first thing research team did was flood it with Exotic Essence.
What if, before the Spatial Tear hit, that massive amount of Exotic Essence bombarded me and allowed the bioelectricity that made up my consciousness to retain a coherent form? Trevor hypothesized.
Trevor felt it was possible, though in all honesty, he was just guessing randomly, trying to make sense of his current predicament.
He wasn’t even sure why he was doing this as it was fairly obvious that even if he had so far managed to survive, being trapped... wherever he was, he would soon die anyways.
Perhaps this was just his way of refusing to give up. He may have been a bit reserved in life, but Trevor had also been quite stubborn. Still, his current circumstances left him with basically no options other than to drift along with the current.
His physical situation was already worrying enough, but by now, Trevor had also noticed there was something wrong with his mind; namely that he was rapidly becoming cold and indifferent to everything.
His emotions, which should have been running wild, were growing duller by the moment, and it wasn’t just his lack of fear and panic that was odd.
When Trevor thought about Lillian, his memories of her were clearer now than ever. He could recall what she looked like, the sound of her voice, the times he played together with her when she was a child, and the tears they shed at their family’s memorial, but all the ’feelings’ which should have been associated with those events were missing.
It was like he was watching a holo-recording of someone else’s life, rather than remembering his own.
If a person retained all their memories, but couldn’t feel anything about them, were they really still themselves?
Could a life without emotions, where everything they knew was simply a database of information even be called life?
Getting nowhere with these philosophical questions, Trevor decided to focus on more practical matters, like exploring the void around him with the time he had left.
Perhaps he could find some way out, though to what end, he didn’t know.
Eventually, however, after trying everything he could think of to ’swim’ through the emptiness, Trevor Ashford reached a rather gloomy conclusion, What will be, will be.
With no control over his ’body’ or circumstances, only able to ’look’ around at his surroundings, Trevor decided to just close his ’eyes’ and wait for whatever end would come.
His consciousness thus slowly slipped away.
He wasn’t sure if he was no longer in pain or had simply stopped being able to feel such things; but now, Trevor was truly numb, indifferent even to his impending death.
Just as he resigned himself to fade from away into nothingness, though, Trevor felt what could only be described as a faint warmth on his ’back’.
Intrigued, he turned his ’head’ around just in time to see he was drifting towards a glowing white crack in one of the massive auroras. This crack almost looked like a Spatial Tear, and it seemed to be drawing him over.
Unable to change his direction, Trevor allowed himself to be pulled along, and in the next moment, he ’saw’ a brilliant flash, like a bolt of lightning, and ’heard’ a loud rumbling, like the crack of thunder.
The next thing he knew, he was thrown out of the void into a rather ordinary looking forest.
In that instant, Trevor felt the sun and the wind, and could even smell the air around him. The rush of stimuli provided new, yet familiar sensations, yet even though he seemed to have been ’saved’, he still felt nothing about it.
Escaping from the pitch-black abyss didn’t re-ignite Trevor’s emotions or awaken a desire to live, making him realize that he was already too far gone to be saved.
Death was still inevitable.
This lush forest was certainly a more peaceful place to be buried than that infinite realm of darkness, but that was about all Trevor thought about this new situation.
Before he could close his ’eyes’ again, however, Trevor ’heard’ the mournful cry of a woman.
His curiosity piqued, he glanced over to see a woman with long black hair reaching out towards him.
While this woman looked like she was quite far away, he somehow understood that rather than them being distant, the local space seemed to be distorted. On top of that, Trevor felt that either time was being warped, or his senses had been heightened because everything looked and felt like it was happening in slow motion.
Seeing the look of panic and desperation on the woman’s face as she reached out towards him, Trevor was puzzled. He had never seen her before, so why did she seem so concerned for him?
What’s more, how was she able to see him if he was just an incorporeal Soul?
Glancing down at himself, Lt. Ashford realized that rather than what he expected, his ’body’ now appeared to have a faint luminescence about it.
It wasn’t a humanoid form, of course, but something closer to a mass of black light.
In fact, around himself, Trevor saw other streaks of black and white lightning flying out in all directions.
Looking back at the woman, who appeared to be moving in slow-motion, Trevor Ashford felt that she was calling out to him, though the name she was shouting didn’t seem to be his own.
Suddenly thinking of a possibility, for the first time since he emerged from the void, Trevor turned his head and looked where he was heading, only to see a small boy with a bloodied body and a dull look in his eyes staring blankly towards him.
Trevor finally understood.
The unknown woman wasn’t calling out to him, she was calling out to her injured son who he was about to smash into.