She was standing in the Void again, a few orbs floating around her serenely. The tears had dried, but her heart still ached. The instant she had pressed the button fire and light consumed here and she found herself back in this dark place. Alter was nowhere to be found, but she didn’t want Alter around her. Sun just wanted to be alone.
Her voice present again, she’d cried and screamed at the nothingness. She’d swung out at the orbs to try and hit something, but they floated away before her fist could make an impact. She’d pound her feet on the reflective surface of the ground, yelling at her reflection and at Alter. Her voice had gone hoarse long ago, but she’d continued yelling into empty air.
Now she was curled up in a ball with no tears left to shed. She was alone in the dark world and she knew she deserved it. If she had reacted properly John would never have gotten hold of her. If she could have just willed the fogginess away and gained movement of her limbs before she got tied up she could have escaped. If she were stronger, Roger would still be alive.
She wondered if he ever got to avenge his family. There were still so many questions left unanswered and she needed Roger’s help to get them. A new wave of sadness hit her, but she was so exhausted she just let it wash over her.
“Are you done with your pity party? I’ve been so bored here, let’s do something!”
Sun turned to see Alter juggling some orbs in the air with her feet. A fresh surge of anger lifted her from the ground.
“Why did you hurt me?”
“You mean that crystal that turned into a mimic of you? I didn’t do that. I have no physical body in the real world. If you do see me, I’m just a hallucination. What you saw was a crystal wanting to get purged.”
“It hurt me, really bad.” Sun wished he had better words to describe the pain the crystal had put her through, but no words seemed to fit.
“No one said purging was going to be easy. It calls for an incredibly high emotional peak. Pain is the default setting for purging a crystal, but you’ll find the rare one that uses sadness or heartbreak to elicit a high response.”
“But why does it have to be me!” Sun screamed.
“Because we are a curse. Our life is a curse. Everything we touch will be cursed. There will never be a happy ending.” Alter’s eyes were heavy with melancholy. “Knowledge is a curse.”
Sun didn’t know how to respond to Alter’s sudden change in attitude. She wanted to blame Alter for everything, but she knew it was all her own fault. And if Alter were speaking the truth about being a curse, then there was no doubt about Roger’s death being entirely on her.
“So what do I do next? I think I blew up a building.”
“You sure did!” Alter’s bright smile was back. “That was fucking incredible too! Here you were, crying like a baby, and then you just turn to John and press that button and BOOM! You should have seen the look on his face!” Alter fell into a fit of laughter, clutching her stomach.
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“What happened to the crystals?” Sun asked, annoyed at Alter’s outburst.
“Oh, Red grabbed one from the rubble of the building and the other one granted John’s wish, which is where we’re going. Have fun starting from scratch!”
The world around Sun suddenly dissolved.
Hot sand greeted her palms and knees as she chucked forward trying to regain her balance. Sand started flowing towards her from all directions; she was in some sort of sinkhole. Scrambling, she tried getting on top of the rising sand, but her limbs started burning from the exertion. Getting on her belly, she pushed herself on top of the flowing sand and crawled to the rim of the hole. Once she was safe from getting buried alive, she laid on her back and tried to catch her breath.
She gasped when she saw two suns in the sky, but frowned when she saw that one had a reddish tint and was slightly larger than the other sun. If her memories proved correctly, the suns from her home were the same hue and size. Great, now she was on a different planet altogether.
“Alter, you bitch!” Sun yelled at the suns.
Sun was getting so frustrated at Alter’s constant misdirection. Questions kept piling up faster than answers were coming and she knew Alter had what she was looking for but just kept distracting her somehow. Knocking her on a different world would definitely keep Sun busy. Groaning, Sun stood up and wiped as much sand off of her as possible. Her pants were still dyed red from Roger’s blood, and images of his hollow eyes echoed in her mind. Shaking her head free of the haunting, she looked up to see exactly where she was. Golden dunes lined the horizon ahead of her while scraggly orange rocks lined the horizon behind her.
“At least I’m not drowning,” Sun said dryly to the sand.
Not knowing exactly where to go, she turned around and started walking towards the rocks since she figured it once she reached them getting a foothold would be easier and she would be able to cover more ground.
She quickly started wishing that she was drowning again because the suns were unmerciful and the sweat seemed to roll of her body. The suns had been tolerable when she had arrived in this new world, but now that she had been trudging along in sand for miles it felt that her hair might spontaneously burst into flames. Even when she had collapsed, the sand burned through her clothes and it was less painful to keep walking than to stay in one place and bake. Whenever she looked up she expected to see the orange rocks a little bit closer, but they seemed to keep their distance no matter how far she walked.
Off in the distance, she saw a small orange cloud over the sand dunes. As she continued to walk, it started growing larger, until she could make out some sort of vehicle kicking up dust, driving in her direction. Hope and fear conflicted in her chest when she saw a reprieve from the heat but didn’t know if foe or neutral party was coming. At this point, anything that got her out of the suns would be an improvement.
Waving her hands, she called out to them, but they were still too far away to hear her. Even without her encouragement, the vehicle was heading towards her, so Sun just shifted back and forth on her feet to keep the sand from burning her toes too harshly. The vehicle got bigger and so did the cloud behind it. To her dismay, the cloud wasn’t as small as she thought it was and watched as it was spreading across the sandy horizon. Maybe the vehicle wasn’t traveling towards her, but running away from the cloud? Her thoughts were confirmed when she heard a booming voice come from the oncoming vehicle.
“Run, you idiot!”
So she did, despite knowing there was no way to outrun a cloud. Tripping over her own feet, she ran across the dry desert sand as fast as she could. She could hear the roar of the vehicle’s engine and the rumble of the dust storm behind her, approaching closer and closer. A hand abruptly grabbed her by her waist and hoisted her onto the vehicle. Sun followed the arm up and saw a smiling face.
“Welcome to the Rebellion.”