The dream was weird. It was a mish-mash of shapes and colours that didn't resemble anything. Eventually, everything seemed to slowly stop, and lose all colour. The whole world was grey and stopped. Apart from Fise. He realised he was there and looked at his hands. Random shapes, black in colour, were surrounded by bright golden fire.
Then everything started to become normal and the chaos continued until a black smoke enveloped everything and sent fear through every inch of Fise's body. He woke up sweating. He looked around to make sure his eyes could see through the dark before something instinctual overcame him and he quickly opened his interface. Tapping a few buttons he arrived at a 'Dispense' screen and he selected a 2-litre water bottle.
A shelf extended from the side of the bed and a 2-litre water bottle was there. Fise reached quickly and bit off the cap before starting to chug it. He took big gulps. He was almost done with the bottle when he realised he was still thirsty. After finishing he ordered more. 3 bottles later he sat on his bed, waiting for his body to calibrate. He was feeling sick.
He drank so much he thought he couldn't move. Leaning back down on the bed, he tried to sleep. But the black smoke came again and he shot back up. Then his thought became clearer. He shouldn't be dehydrated. His stomach rumbled.' Or hungry'.Before he slept he turned on his med unit, which should have kept him safe and healthy while sick. And another thing didn't add up. He woke up thirsty and hungry. Even if his med unit didn't work, he should have only been a little famished and thirsty. But not on the level of drinking 8 litres.
He had a bad feeling in his gut and that almost made him vomit. He should've drunk less. An average human can survive around 3 days max without water. 3 weeks without food. The rule of 3 he learnt a few years ago; 3 minutes without air, 3 days without water and 3 weeks without food helped him a bit. He now knows that his med unit must have stopped working at most 2 days ago. He was a child, not an adult, and so he needed more water.
But this led to a question: why did his med unit stop? He clearly remembered turning it on. He opened his interface and checked. Tapping a bit he got to the page with the med unit and what was displayed shocked him:
Med-Unit node: On (Unoperational)
Learn More?
Fose tapped on the 'learn more', and it sent him to an error page, something about no connection. Weird; there's always a connection. He decided he wasn't going to sleep so he got up and started to stretch. As he did so, he could feel the water move inside of him, again making him feel sick. Done with the warm-up, he started doing push-ups before giving up and then onto sit-ups, before giving up again. Fise sat on the floor, his limbs spread out, looking at the ceiling. Trying to concentrate on a spot, he found it hard. It was too dark.
Sitting up, he went over to his window, which had the blinds shut, to let some moonlight in. He moved them up using the manual controls from the side. Since his med unit didn't work, why would his blinds work remotely? He looked through and saw nothing. It was so dark. It was usually like this, with Shrouds around they couldn't have light on at night. But this was too dark. The moon should have been out at least, or he should at least see the clouds covering it. Not a high chance of clouds, since they mostly appear to produce rain and there was no water falling; he couldn't hear anything.
Fise looked closer and he swore he could see little black waves move up horizontally, looking as if made up by smoke. He looked closer again. Fise saw it again. Multiple times. He followed them and they seemed to bend and if to make a circle. Inside that circle, the waves were smaller and harder to see. Fise leaned against the glass to see them up close. And 2 giant white eyes opened right where he was looking at.
Fise stared into those blank eyes, so white it pierced the darkness. His vision seemed to tunnel and he felt being sucked in. A golden flash appeared and he got a moment of clarity. He smashed the blinds shut before throwing himself to the ground covering his eyes. A Shroud. What was it doing on his window? How did it get there? Why? Fise asked himself those questions before standing up.
He almost had his soul ripped from his body. He had tears in his eyes, he was trembling and sweat drenched him. The knot in his stomach couldn't get tighter. He went to the door and put on some shoes before trying to open it like normal using a wave. It didn't move. He didn't care. He put both his hands on the side and pulled. The door slid open and Fise stepped out. He turned around to look at his room. And in between the blinds, he saw the pair of eyes. They stared at each other a bit. Fise didn't feel like his soul was leaving his body. His eyes widened. And his mouth opened in terror. Next to the pair of eyes, another pair opened. And another. And another.And another. They covered the whole window.
Fise was frozen in fear before the eyes. Only when the eyes began to merge to create one big one, his fight or flight response erupted. He ran like the wind. The door closed just as the glass on his window slowly cracked. He flew down the stairs, 4 steps at a time before almost falling as he landed at the bottom and he took a right. He needed to get to the wave room. This many Shrouds couldn't gather up for no reason. Unless it was a wave. Fise was pretty sure this was the one due in 5 days. Or today. Somehow, Fise slept 5 days. And the Med-Unit stopped 2 days ago at most. He started to run down the long corridor and he never before felt so much hatred for its length.
He heard it, it echoed down the corridor and back again, giving him goosebumps and sending a shiver down his spine. The sound of breaking glass. He looked back, and he could hear the slow, rhythmic banging on a metal door. His door. The Shrouds entered the building.' HOLY CRAP!' Fise stepped on the pedal and started to sprint. He almost got halfway there when he ran out of breath. He looked back.
There, at the corridor's corner, he could see a black silhouette with bright white eyes stare at him. And then another. And another. He slowly panned away from them and looked out of the corridor windows. They were pitch black. Fise's eyes widened and he tried to turn away but done so too late. A pair of eyes opened. Then another.
Soon the whole corridor was full of them. And their gazes bore into Fise's soul. Again, that feeling of getting sucked in began to be felt by Fise. He had to turn away but couldn't. In his peripheral vision, he saw the shrouds from his bedroom slowly walk towards him. His hands clenched and he started to shut his eyes. His eyes started to close. He could see less and less of the corridor and was only left with the eyes staring at him. He clenched his fists harder. And he tried to close his eyes more and more. The only thing left in his vision was a pair of eyes. His face scrunched up. His hands bled from his nails.
He closed his eyes.
Before he did, though, a few golden flames started to spark into existence around him. Fise didn't notice. He kept his eyes shut. Turning down the corridor he started to run and slowly opened his eyes again. He was almost halfway there. He kept running but he felt like he needed to look. He turned his head left and outside the window, where he died see any of the shrouds. His gaze was instead met by one giant white eye. A Wraith. It was giant compared to him and the Shrouds. It stood 6 meters tall and 7 wide. Sometimes it was also 6 meters long. It started at him and Fise seemed to enter a trance as he looked at it.
He kept running, trying not to trip over. Before the Wraith raised it's fist and readied it by pulling it back. Fise seemed to burn brightly and he instinctively ducked. The punch was too hard. It tore through the glass and concrete, along with the wall on the other side like wet tissue. It was too fast to see. The punch sent a shockwave through the whole building. Fise was sent flying down the corridor. He landed and rolled a few times, before skidding slowly to a stop. Everything hurt.
Broken glass impaled him, his back was torn open by the punch, his ears were ringing and his left arm, the one he landed on, was most likely broken. He felt like just staying there and dying but he stood up and immediately buckled to one knee. He felt something warm and sharp rise in his throat before vomiting out bile, blood and what remained of the gel he ate before, along with water.
He felt dirty. But then fear overtook him and he started to run. The pain. It flared viciously through his body. Unlike movies and other media, where people only get broken bones or bleed a bit, in real life you get muscles split, nerves ripped and ligaments tore along with internal bleeding and the aftermath of bleeding all over the place and being weak: disease.
Fise tried not to think about his aftermath
he just kept running. But he was slow. He looked down and saw all the little pieces of glass and the like all in his flesh, he tried to vomit but nothing came out apart from a gurgle before he looked at his left thigh again.
A bigger piece of glass was impaled there. It was slowing him down. And so, he went against all he learned about how to treat a stab wound and took it out. Blood flowed. And the pain spread. But it was numb, either because his nerves were too damaged or because the adrenaline was everywhere inside his body.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
But he pushed forward because the fear drove him to. And the fear came from what was behind him. The Wraith, instead of taking its fist out of the building, swiped horizontally. It went through the inner wall easily and exploded the windows and the columns in between on the outer wall. Fise ran as fast as he could, golden flame enveloping him, before looking back and seeing its hand slice through the air straight towards him. It couldn't continue its swipe and longer and so it's hand got out of the inner wall and headed toward the outer wall. And straight through Fise.
He turned so he faced towards it and tried a futile attempt at blocking it by crossing his arms into an X shape. However, unconsciously, all the flames around him gathered there. The hit connected, and with it, the pain. Fise was flung and spun through the air.
The Wraith's swipe ended when its hand exploded out the outer wall. It readied its other hand and punched. It went through the ceiling and what was left of the walls. And the Wraith readied another punch. And another. It seemed to want to destroy the corridor. Luckily it only aimed for the middle of it.
Fise ended his flight abruptly as he hit the Shroud room's massive metal door with a loud crack. He fell and rolled away a bit. He lay there. Then he tried to stand, before buckling. His right shoulder was dislocated and his right shoulder blade had cracked. His wrists and arms were fractured, yet only his left was broken, though a lot more accurate to describe it as shattered.
He thought that he was paralysed and a shiver went through his spine before he discovered he could still feel everything, fortunately, or unfortunately.
BANG!
His eyes shot up to look down the corridor, and he saw the Wraith beating at it.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
It sent a barrage of punches at it.
Again and again.Before suddenly stopping. It turned towards Fise, took a step, and sent a hook with it's left fist. It'll hit Fise right in. It travelled quickly, some moisture condensing around it. It almost broke the speed of sound as it exploded the outer wall and headed straight for Fise, who was burning in golden flames. Around half a meter, however, it started to slow down considerably, along with the debris it launched. It stopped 10 centimetres away from Fise's wide eyes. The world lost its colour, and everything was still, except for Fise and the flames surrounding him. Just like in his dream.
Fise finally registered the fist and stepped towards the metal door, his back pressed against it. Then the world gained its colour back quickly, along with it, everything also quickly sped up. The fist went past a meter away, bring air with it which smashed into the debris, launching iron at high speeds, and Fise. But he barely moved. He acted quickly. He used what was left of his strength and put his hand on the door.
The Wraith took its hand out and loomed inside at its carnage. It gazed at Fise, he stared back, seemingly unaffected by its gaze, before he was starting to get sucjed into the door. Fise lifted his hand, put all the effort he had. He remembered the pain, the fear. And the thing he tried to hide the most, his anger. And so, in front of the titan, he raised his hand. And showed it the middle finger.
It opened its eye wide and then seemed angered, it delivered a punch straight down the corridor that broke the sound barrier and crashed into the metal door. But it was useless, Fise was gone. The door didn't even bend.
Fise stumbled a bit as he entered the first part of the room. He went to the corner diagonally opposite the entrance to the second room and slid to the floor, leaning to the wall. Adrenaline left him, and he felt weak and in pain. The golden flames were just like the ones he saw the other day. It slowly faded away. He started to breathe rapidly, and spit out little droplets of blood. On of his lung were probably punctured by a rib.
Blood filled the corner, flowing out of Fise. He started to get light-headed. But he stood up and slowly walked over to the door. As he reached it he leaned on the door frame. But not for long, because he had to quickly duck as a chair came his way.
"A Shroud kill it, AHH! Help! We need to kill it no-Agh get off me!" said a girl who looked angry.
"Emilly calm down, that's not a Shroud, it's one of us, and he's injured." said a boy, trying to calm her down.
"Oh..."
As the 2 were talking, FIse lay down in pain, cursing the girl. Some people came over and picked him up by the arms, but seeing him flinch, they tried multiple ways before finally oy supporting his shoulders as he walked to the far wall.
That's where the injured were taken care of. He saw a line of pods with a cross at the bottom, lining the back wall, with doctors and other medical professionals around. But they all stared at Fise. Some visibly grimaced.
They took him to a corner where he was inspected and cleaned of blood and glass shards and then bandaged up. After he was done and they used some emergency healing device to take his rib out of his lung by inserting some nanobots, Fise asked how he was. They just told him: "You are gonna be okay." but the fact that he peeked at some hologram the doctors used with his name on it and saw that his number of major injuries were 9, he doubted that statement.
They then prepared him a Med Chamber. It was like the med unit in his bed but 100x more efficient at healing. They told him to stay calm and other instructions he couldn't care less about and then was placed in 'recovery' or a coma where you dream and his body was dosed in nanobots to repair him. Fise remember those flames and the way the punch stopped and restarted that resembled his dream 'What should I call it? Maybe... I'll call it a Sta... cause it helps you stand...' he was fully placed in Recovery and forgot what he was saying before, entering a world full of a mish-mash of shapes and colours just like before.
He had some shape in his hand. And again, everything stopped and lost colour, except for him, his flames and the shape. He threw it and it went through the air normally, covered in golden flames before stopping mid-air as the flames disappeared. Then everything became chaotic once again. Before some black smoke came, and like before, ended his dream.
2 days later...
Fise had a few tests done once he woke up, to see if anything was wrong. Eventually, they finished them and left him to recover some more. Right now he was walking down the corridor after leaving one of Emmy's lesson.
He reached his room and sat on the bed, closing his eyes.
The corridor and his room were repaired in a few hours after sunrise on the wave's dawn. As Fise sat there, he tried to bring it out, that golden fire. It felt the same as the two other ones he saw when the 2 were fighting, but now he could see it. He just sat there and tried to bring it out. He thought of the time he saw it properly when he was in front of the massive door.
Suddenly, a warm feeling arose within him. He opened his eyes and he saw the flames all around him. He sat up, feeling the power in his muscles, feeling like he could punch through a wall but he calmed down and remembered that exact time. When time slowed to a standstill and he got out of the way.
He thought of that and began trying to replicate it, but it just didn't seems to work. He was getting excited, after all he had realised what his ability was:
Stopping Time.
He stopped his excited thought and thought one simple question:
'How does time stop work?'.
He could move inside of stopped time, but why and how is time stopped anyway? If time was stopped and he moved, shouldn't he have caused a massive nuclear explosion or at least an explosion due to not only the superheated air particles, but the vacuum left where he had been? And since time was stopped, shouldn't he technically have moved faster than light, so why could he see?
He stopped thinking too hard about it and tried to stop time again. Maybe by doing it, he could realise how it worked. He felt something come out from deep within him, but nothing changed. He kept trying and he got closer and closer. Then something seems to have been triggered as he thought harder and harder about stopping time. His aura began to fluctuate and...
The world slowed and lost colour. Fise saw this briefly before time resumed. It seemed that it was on a timer. It lasted around the same amount of time both times. He tried again and eventually it activated a third time, lasting the same amount of time no matter how hard Fise tried, so it wasn't about him constantly needing to hold the time stop.
He opened his interface and looked at all his notes;
Time Stop
Time: ~0.25 seconds
Max movement possible: 2 meters
It wasn't much but it'll get longer. When he tested the max movement speed, he just put all the aura in his legs to leap forward and he stopped time and he got to 2 meters. But it wasn't enough. How was he moving anyway? During the stopped time, he moved backwards and he saw a see-through version of himself, like a ghost. The one you see in video games that shows you where you were, and this ghost seemed to be the same; it showed where he was when he stopped time.
And he guessed the time. He was getting tired, it seemed stopping time gets him tired, along with moving in it. Now he knows how long he can move and how far he can move.
Now the next test would be to see if he can affect anything. But that'll come tomorrow. If all powers took this much energy, he didn't know how the 2 fought for so long before.
Fise sat in his bed, the golden flames retreating and closed his eyes. He slept