CHAPTER 12: "THE VOID & BEYOND"

Complete. Absolute. Suffocating.

Speed was floating. Or falling. Or maybe he was drowning in air that felt like water, suspended in a void that had no top and no bottom, no forward and no back. There was nothing to push against. Nothing to grab. Nothing to even confirm that he still existed except for the one terrifying fact: he could think.

His body wasn't responding. He couldn't see his hands. Couldn't see anything. The darkness was so complete it felt like it had weight, like it was pressing down on him from all sides, suffocating him slowly, giving him just enough oxygen to stay conscious while it did.

This isn't real. This isn't—

What is this place?

Speed's internal monologue was panicking now, running in circles, eating its own tail. He tried to scream but there was no air to scream through. Tried to move but there was nowhere to move to. He was trapped in a black void with nothing but his own thoughts, and his own thoughts were turning against him, showing him all the ways this was wrong, all the ways this could be permanent.

No. No, I'm asleep. This is a dream. Wake up. WAKE UP.

He tried to fight the darkness. His consciousness thrashed against it like a fish on a line, pulling and struggling and screaming silently into nothing. The darkness didn't care. The darkness had all the time in the world.

Then something changed.

A light. Faint. Impossibly distant. Just a pinprick in the overwhelming black, a single point of illumination in a universe of shadow. Speed's attention snapped toward it like a predator toward prey. Like a drowning man toward air.

There.

The light was growing. Getting brighter. Getting closer. It started as a pinprick and became a dot. The dot became a glow. The glow became something that resembled actual light, actual visibility, actual hope.

Speed reached toward it.

His arm didn't move. His consciousness reached instead, pulling himself toward that distant light with nothing but the force of will, dragging his entire sense of self through the darkness toward salvation. The light was getting brighter now. He could see the edges of it, could perceive the shape of it, could almost make out what it might be leading to.

It was beautiful. Terrible. Consuming.

The light got brighter.

And brighter.

And brighter.

It stopped being light and started being something else—something that transcended the concept of visibility, that made his eyes water even though his eyes didn't exist in this place. The white was so intense it became pain, became agony, became the only thing that existed in the universe besides him and the void he was escaping from.

Speed tried to look away.

He couldn't. There was nowhere else to look.

The white engulfed everything.

Speed's eyes snapped open.

Bright blue sky. Fluffy white clouds. Sun shining down like the world hadn't just tried to erase him from existence. The transition was so sudden, so real, that his brain took a moment to catch up. One second: void and darkness and nothing. Next second: warmth on his face, texture under his palms, the smell of earth and plants and growing things.

He pushed himself up on his hands.

The ground was solid. Definitely real. Dirt mixed with something else—not concrete, not carpet, but actual soil. His fingers sank into it slightly as he pushed himself to his knees, then to his feet. His body was responding now. His legs were working. Everything was working again.

Speed stood up, still trying to process what was happening.

Around him: a cornfield. Golden stalks stretched in every direction, swaying gently in a breeze that was warm and carried the scent of summer. Mountains visible in the distance, hazy and blue. A small village barely visible on the far horizon, medieval in style, completely wrong, completely impossible.

This wasn't Ohio.

Speed's eyes went wide. He spun around, looking in all directions, trying to find something—anything—that made sense. The cornfield continued in every direction. The sky above was clear. The sun was hot on his skin. Everything felt real in a way that dreams weren't supposed to feel real.

"What the hell is going on?!" Speed said, his voice cracking slightly.

He looked down at his body. Tank top. Shorts. Same clothes he'd put on this morning. Same body. But everything else was wrong. Completely, utterly wrong.

"One minute I was in Ohio, now I'm—" Speed spun again, arms spread, trying to take in the entire vista. His brain was still catching up. His thoughts were moving like they were wading through mud. "WHERE AM I?!"

The cornfield didn't answer.

The mountains didn't answer.

The village in the distance didn't answer.

Speed was alone in a place that shouldn't exist, in clothes that didn't match the landscape, with no memory of how he'd gotten here and no idea of where "here" actually was. His heart was pounding. His breathing was rapid. His mind was cycling through possibilities that all started with impossible and got worse from there.

This wasn't real.

This had to be a dream.

But the sun was warm, and the ground was solid, and the wind was moving his hair, and everything—everything—felt more real than reality had ever felt before.

Speed stood in the middle of the cornfield, turning slowly, taking in the landscape with the dawning realization that whatever had happened to him, whatever that void had been, it wasn't over.

It was just beginning.