The Loneliness of Stars

  ~Inspector Joseph LaMont, in an informal interview looking back on his career

  I screamed as I fell directly downwards, back towards the ground. I closed my eyes, telling myself that I was imagining things. I opened them again seconds later, to find that I was still falling. I was very high up.

  Just as I thought all hope was lost, I felt someone catch me. Turning my head, I found myself in the arms of the green-cloaked man, closer to him than I ever had been before. His gaze burned into mine, and his eyes blazed with anger. I looked away. He slowly floated to ground, taking what felt like an eternity. When he landed in the middle of the clearing, he roughly dumped me to the ground. “Go. Psy will not return. Just survive until they come.”

  Getting to my feet, I turned on him angrily. “Just survive until they come? When everything seems to be conspiring to kill me? I don’t even know who ‘they’ are! Oh, sure, very easy! I’ll just somehow shield my mind from the mind-controlling floating slugs, become invincible so that mutant humans can’t eat me, and maybe I’ll learn to read other people’s minds so I know whether or not they want to kill me! No problem!”

  The man just stood there, motionless. After a moment, he spoke. All he said was, “I hope that the Witness is more intelligent than you are.” Then he vanished, leaving me with nothing to direct my anger at. I screamed and ran at the nearest wall of trees, kicking and hitting it until my knuckles bled. Finally drained, I sat down on the ground and cried for the first time in a long while. I had just had Ezekiel wrenched away from me a second time, and come closer to death than I ever had before. My mind was a mess.

  I took several deep breaths to calm myself, then shakily got to my feet. I slowly walked back up the hill, towards where Michaela and Mikhail were waiting. How long had Psy been in control of my mind? Had that all happened in an instant, or had I really been floating for a day? I broke into a run, ignoring the cries of pain from all of my limbs.

  I quickly reached the ridiculously sloping hill and ran onto it, not slowing down at all. My momentum carried me surprisingly far, and as I began to slip, I moved towards the sides and slid my fingers into nearly imperceptible gaps in the trunks of the trees.

  Or was it fungus? I shuddered at the thought of what I was actually touching, and kept going. I wondered why the planet still looked the way Psy wanted us too, and why it had not reverted to its real state. I decided not to question it too heavily.

  I reached the narrowing of the path shortly after I reached the top of the hill, turned sideways when I needed to, and burst out of the trees. Michaela and Mikhail were sitting on the ground outside, talking. They looked up at me as I stood in front of them, panting.

  Michaela leapt to her feet. “Are you okay? You’re bleeding!” Mikhail stood up more slowly.

  I nodded. “I’m fine. I just… took a fall. The path got rather steep.” I took several deep breaths and shook my head to clear it. Once I could think clearly, I turned to Michaela. “How long was I in there for?”

  She shrugged. “Twenty, thirty minutes, tops? Not too long.” I breathed a sigh of relief. My dreams hadn’t been in real-time.

  “What did you find?” asked Mikhail.

  I shook my head. “Nothing much. It was a dead end.” I didn’t want to go back there.

  They both sighed in disappointment. “Alright. Let’s keep searching, then.” We continued walking along the wall of trees for another hour or so, then turned around and headed back to camp.