There had been nothing. So much nothing...

And in it no concept of time, place, being or even existence. There was no sensation, there was no reason.

It was just void.

But slowly, the very basics of senses came back. The ones that were just there.

He could feel the blood flowing through his veins again, pumping weak but there none the less. There was no reason to it…

He could hear the world around him, thick and echoey albeit. There was no reason to it…

On his breaths he could smell the clean air, the scent of bleach and worry. There was no reason to it…

"What are you…"

"...It must be…"

"Explain…"

With no rhyme or reason he couldn't understand the voices. The words they were saying seamingly without meaning or cause. They just echoed, like they had been there for a long time, drawn out over so long.

Gale wished for nothing more than the world to begin making sense again. He could feel things in him, feeding his veins. Something was taped to his chest, beeping away.

Sense meant nothing there, wherever he was. He couldn't make any, nore could he understand anything. His mind was dazed, his body didn't hurt, yet he couldn't feel anything either.

It took him a few moments to realise his eyes weren't even open. the darkness was so bright. What had happened? He couldn't bring the memory back. It was just gone.

So he focused on the voices. They knew what had happened. Maybe they knew what was going on.

"...There is some truth..."

There was a pause. Still there were only snippets. There was little sense. A question? A statement?

"...you mean?"

The world began to fade to the ever present haze again. Like something was pulling him from it. He fought it.

He battled it with all his will.

He didn't want it.

He was scared, like a wounded beast. He wouldn't let it take him.

"Are you suggesting this City..."

He won.

Yet it was a long time before he woke.

Who on Earth thought making that damn heart monitor beep so loudly was a good idea?

Also who thought painting a hospital white was a good idea?

"Welcome back." Who thought…

"Alban?" He groaned. Gale scrunched his eyes shut, the light was unbearable.

"Hello Dad." He sounded more distant. The light seemed to lower slightly, its colours were muted out. Gale felt his eyelids open, he knew he had commanded them to, there was the sensation of spectating slightly. He didn't feel fully in touch, like his connection was weak. Most of the world around him was fuzzy.

His son was all that was in focus. Gale couldn't recall doing it, but he knew he smiled though. The worry on his son's face meant nothing. His presence so close meant nothing.

The black rings around his sleepless eyes meant it all. The faintest specs of stubble did, as did the faint watermarks down his face. Discreet, yes. Almost indiscernible. Yet their cause was obvious to him.

"Did you cry?" Gale croaked, his voice was harsh. Not that it was meant to be.

"Of course I did." Alban looked almost insulted. He looked like he'd been betrayed, after giving up so much. The hurt was ever present, and it fuelled into the anger that made up their lives. He couldn't help but snap back. "Why would you ask that?"

"Just wanted to make sure." He said with matching scorn. His eyes began to wander off his son as the world came into slow focus. A few things on a table over there, a garish poster over here. Vivid curtains split the rest of the room, yet no doubt it was more of the same; More beds, more curtains and more bloody beeping machines.

The cleanliness of it all was clinical, it was truly horrible, almost unnatural. He wanted to spill something, just to make it feel that much more homely. That's what hospitals were though, unnatural.

"Dad?" Alban snapped him from his observatory gaze. He must've been that way for a while. His eyes locked upon his son's unnaturally fast, a quizzical look on both.

"Why am I in a hospital?" His voice was flat.

"You had a heart attack." Gale's eyebrow raised. It wasn't from a lack of understanding, Alban always cut through it with razor sharp accuracy. "It might not have exploded, but a heart attack is a heart attack."

"So why'd you take me to hospital?" The calmness in his voice was almost harrowing. Alban searched for the right words, shock faded away. The frustration that made up their relationship returned.

"Didn't you want me to? Did you want me to leave you screaming in agony and dying on your bedroom floor?"

"Not why did you call them, you greased weasel." His eyebrows lowered into a steady frown. "Why'd they bring me back."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Alban's expression suddenly softened. He scanned his father's face. That frown never faded, that gaze never lifted.

"That's what this is about?" He put his head in his hands, there was nothing else that came to him.

"This is not my world anymore…" Gale whispered. His gaze was empty, it had now moved away from Alban, past the curtains around them. It was as though he could see something far away, yet he could not tell it. Neither could anyone else.

"I took that stone to the lab." Gale's head snapped back round, Alban's voice was cracking. His facade was failing, like the impacts of realisation after realisation had begun to shatter who he was. He straightened, searching for the words. "It matches no known elements. It has no charge in its atoms, yet it has an energy to it. Its existence defies the laws of physics… They can't understand how it is possible."

Alban looked down at the floor in a mix of disbelief and shame.

"It should not exist." He exhaled, his father still watched him. "It is not from this world."

"It's from the City." Gale said firmly. "What have I told you all along?"

"Dad so much is going on here it's hard to see straight… The facts don't line up, none of this should be real, something weird is happening here." He finally looked up, carefully pulling up his father's sleeves. "Your body is covered in bruises for seemingly no reason, and they're symmetrical. Like someone drew them on you to a pattern…"

"Instead of listening to science why don't you listen to your old man?" Gale pointed at him. He briefly caught a glimpse of one of the red marks around his wrist. "The City is as real as the chair you sit on."

For quite awhile Alban was still, and on some level Gale eagerly awaited his reply.

But he got up, still without words, but shaking his head. Gale let out a silent exhale, and watched with near tears as he left still without a word.

Denial was such a beautiful thing…

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To awaken amongst ruin and debris would cause anyone to panic. It would cause their world to spin, the questions to come forth at a terrifying pace.

And it did here too.

Gale leapt to his feet and immediately regretted it. Crashing back down to the floor now coated in a thick layer of scattered stone and crystal. He clenched his hands in it, feeling each fragment flow around his fingertips. He slowly drew upon his strength as the memories came back to him.

He pushed himself into a kneel. His eyes weary surveyed the collapsed ruins that had lain waste to all in their path. The stump of the once massive tower stood still proud, yet it was definitely dead. No more of worth than the countless other sundered spires and steeples. It had smashed apart the causeways snaking its base, the viaducts ensnaring its base had too fallen. The broadwalk was scattered with remains of roads that had stood against the coming tide. Their condition was now little more than the many districts that surrounded it.

"What did you do?"

"What I had to…" He replied, his voice was croaky from the still emanant ash and dust. "You left… I had no other choice."

"So like everyone else you get upset and smash up a load of stuff?" She was perched on the remains of one of those strange doorways, clearly unaware of the purpose it once served. Like everything here it was dead.

"Not quite. I'm not like anyone else" He replied awkwardly. Carola landed on the littered ground with a puff of dust underfoot. It caught the fading light brilliantly, less of a grey matte and more of an ever twinkling nebula of muted colours. Like everything else it faded to nothing. "Acting without purpose is as useless as not acting atall."

She wasn't too happy with that answer, her body tensed like he had crossed some unknown line. “How did you know it would work?”

“Well…” He trailed off quite quickly, trying to make sense of his own logic. Less logic, more hope. “Have you ever heard of the phrase… Winging it?”

Carola was silent for a moment, her head slowly fell into her hands. They gripped her helmet hard. “You have got to be kidding.”

“It was worth a shot.” Gale insisted, he looked around the desolate surroundings. “And it worked. Not exactly like I got anything to lose at this point…”

“What about your life you idiot!” She snapped, her visor glared at him. She made steps towards him. “Don't you care the you could've died!”

“Not really.” Gale shrugged, almost carefree. “Again, nothing to lose. Everything I have I’ve already lost.”

“Well that’s something I can understand.” She stopped in front of him, a frown no doubt hidden behind her helmet. “So tell me Gale. What was the intention here?”

"I was trying to weaken the City's grip on this world. Whatever made it has secured it here, I attempted to loosen it." he broke eye contact with her, looking down shamefully.

"What makes you think any of this is actually real, Gale?" She asked, doubting her own words. "Can't a dream be a dream? Can't hope be hope? Can't they be nothing more than that?"

She was gentle. She hadn't said anything out of spite even though, at least in her mind, she by far held the right to. She was talking as one person to another, regardless of circumstances and causes forced between them.

Gale took a brief second to find his next words. He wanted to be fierce, angry. Tell her to look around her and feel the mud. He wanted to bellow. She was here? Why couldn't she accept it? Why!

It seemed that part of him was gone…

"I have bruises up and down my body from my flight suit. A piece of the City came back with me. This is as real as it feels…" He explained carefully, although like always he avoided certain truths. She nodded with loose understanding. One could never truly understand this place's power.

"It feels pretty dead now…" Carola held out her hand. With a painful strain, Gale took his first shakey steps on two feet again. He looked around slowly, and she was right. If it could feel any more hollow and lifeless then it'd be nothing more than dust. The spires now looked muted and dirty, cracks rippled through everything, like one firm prod could bring it all down…

...and it felt like it was straining. like a deadman's grip, it would fall away soon enough.

There was that ever present thought. It was already there, why not let it die? Let it fade away. A good memory for some definitely… A story to another maybe. The world had left it behind.

"We can't let the past die… How can you hope to move forward? All of you?" He pointed at a random spire. "Think of it this way: Someone made that. Someone filled it with their dreams and their desires. Good or bad it didn't matter. That was theirs. Every facet, every room it was them. Like a home that you live in for decades and you make your own. Doesn't matter what anyone thinks, that's yours. Your memories, your best times, even parts of yourself you didn't know about… And they abandoned it…

"There is a reason each spire was unique because each person is too! look around you, it's not just all withered and died… It all became the same. Nothing but scattered rock and stone, dull and lifeless… That's why I've always said the City can save you all, because in the real world you have to be something more than the labels you live by. Worker, Driver, Soldier, Student, Man, Woman… Father…" He trailed off. His eyes glistened slightly before being blinked away.

"Here you can be who you are, not what you are… you can be what hides inside… That's all you should ever be. But that's not compatible with your world anymore. You get torn apart and judged not for being different but for simply not fitting with their vision of a 'perfect world.' Like putting on a show when you want to tear your heart out. The City give's people the courage to be who you are. That's why you need it…"

"What do you mean 'your world'? Aren't you human as well?" Carola looked back at him, her voice sounded vacant, he shook his head.

"This is my world…" He caught sight of a glistening blue crystal buried in the scattered mortar. He knelt down and plucked it from the dirt, turning it over in mourning. "This is what's left of it…"

The quiet felt heavy and dark. This world was so silent now, it was like a graveyard not for the living… So much was unsaid, then and now.

"Can you do me a favour?" Gale was thankful when Carola spoke again. "Don't break anything else."

He got up and turned to her. Her helmet was disengaged, she looked at him with recognition. She understood. Finally someone understood!

"I'm good at breaking things. I did it for a living." He said with a smile. It felt odd. "I'll try not to."

"I'm gonna think on what you said… I'm glad you're ok." She gave him a quick smile back. She raised her hand. "Goodnight Gale…"

She faded away immediately. Gale hoped she did not need long.

He looked at the scattering ash on the gentle wind. "Goodmorning… Friend…"

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