Sykport

Previously

I found myself at ground level after moving from my vine to a tree, and then climbing the tree like a ladder down to the ground. The ground beneath my feet was soft and felt like dirt, rather than the steel I had been expecting; however foolishly I had believed that trees might grow on metal.

Around me were more trees and a thin haze that extended itself across the trees and plants. I could see the side of the structure barely; other vines grew along it and nearly obscured it. It appeared to me as a wall of vegetation, with the only indication that there was a man made structure behind it being the steel glimpsed between the branches and ropes.

I decided to walk out in the opposite direction from the tower into what I hoped would be another series of vines crawling down until I might reach the ground make make a more daring escape into the city. I decided that this forest I found myself in must be built like a greenhouse with some kind of invisible and ethereal barrier which made it warm. It would only extend out so far, as I witnessed the towers in the distance from above, and clearly saw that the forest terminated at some point.

Perhaps below would be people I may blend in well, I guessed.

I wandered in the direction that took me away from the wall of vines, through the forest. It was as I had glimpsed in textbooks of an alien world; the trees above blocked out the sky entirely with their leaves, so that I could not even see daylight. It was dark and there were faint lights strung haphazardly about the branches which granted dim lighting. I grabbed at one of the lights and it fell apart in my hands. It seemed to me some kind of fluorescent plant that glowed. Maybe, like the vine that grew as large as a tree, this plant was mixed with a light bulb, or firefly.

There was sometimes a clear path I could follow, but it twisted and shifted, and if I followed it for long, I found that I was walking in the opposite direction. I found a path that I believe circled endlessly; so that to take it and follow it would be to walk forever. I began to notice a faint buzzing noise, which I had never heard before. Little black things came at my face and I swiped at them, but more came. They were irritating, but did not seem to do anything. They'd land on me and crawl (I determined, after I killed one, that they were some miniature animal, with wings and legs) and fly away if I swatted at them. They had a habit of trying to get into my mouth, nose, ears, and eyes, and I decided that they must be a form of parasite larger than the microscopic organisms I had read of in school. I shuddered to think of them crawling around inside me, so I kept swatting and batting at them with my hands until I felt tired.

I began to run in frustration and that seemed to throw them off. I could hear them and see them, but it seemed that running would prevent them from landing. However, I was soon out of breath, and was again covered.

I came to a river, suddenly, and stopped. The flying dots continued around me but I crouched down at the water and scooped it in my hands. I tasted it with my tongue. It was fresh and clear; clean, I hoped. I drank perhaps greedily.

I felt the tip of a blade against my back. "Stand," a woman said.

I complied, and turned around, expecting to see the woman who I'd met in the bedroom, but it was instead someone new. Her eyes were not amber, but a calm blue. And her hair was almost white, although her face held no wrinkles.

"You're not a slave, are you?" She said. "I apologize." The woman sheathed her sword, and I noticed she was wearing dark green clothes; I could not tell what material, other than that it looked suited for hunting. "A guest of Rasputina's, an interloper?"

"I am an explorer," I said, which was partially true. I was a slave, but since I had left the engine, I supposed that I really sought to explore. I didn't think of what I wanted to find until later, but when she had asked me who I was, I knew that it would not be false to claim a position of an exploratory nature.

"Then we are one in the same. Where do you come from, explorer? What is your name?" Her hand was still resting next to her sword, half-curled around the belt. I think she was prepared to draw it if I seemed to present any danger, but I must have looked misplaced; my white outfit did not conduce well to hunting, and it was dirtied enough that I would fail to appear immaculate, an angel among the leaves and brush.

"I am Jack Carentan, from the Engine."

This was the wrong answer, for she pulled out her sword and I found it at my throat. I backed away slightly. "So you are a slave then, the new one. Rasputina mentioned that your innards are machines like the men from the Machina. I wish to see." She cut open my shirt and raised the blade to cut into my stomach, but I held up my right hand as her blade came down.

It severed my smallest finger immediately and then my ring finger at the second knuckle, and I screamed in pain. I doubled back and fell into the water, which she had not been expecting.

"Where are you going?" She called. "The river won't take you anywhere safe!"

I floated away on my back, trying to relax. My right hand hurt, but when I pulled it up to look at it, I could see that my ring finger was being repaired, and my smallest finger was reforming. I went in this manner for a good amount of time until the river emptied into a lake of some kind. I drifted near a log which I grabbed and held onto, as I floated aimlessly.

I heard the buzzing noise come back and the dots tried settling on my fingers, so I sumberged them into the cool water. Fish came to nibble at it once and I shook my hand and scared them away. I felt calm, and at peace.

"Get out of the water!" A man yelled. "Don't you know what we keep in there? It'll kill you if you're not fast!"

I saw him standing at the edge of the water, waving a gun to catch my attention.

"How do I know I can trust you?" I called back.

"It doesn't matter! You won't die under my watch! Whomever you really are!"

I began to paddle towards him, it was not far away I suppose, less than a quarter of a mile across the water. But I soon began to hear something groaning beneath the waves. I looked behind me as I paddled and saw a great disturbance on the water. I began to paddle more vigorously, my arms feeling weak now, and my legs sometimes feeling numb. I looked ahead and saw the man on the shore raise his gun (he held it at two points, which was unusual) and point it over the water. I looked at him and kept moving.

"Don't stop! For God's love and mercy, don't stop once," He fired his gun, which sounded like a bone breaking, and I saw white light flash through the air over my head into the water behind me. The gun appeared to shake when he fired, and I discovered that he held the weapon with two hands to keep it steady while it fired. The disturbance behind me intensified, and began to draw closer to me. He fired again.

I was now close enough that he reached a hand toward the log and grabbed it. I took a look behind me and saw a creature of nightmares rising from the water. Its teeth dripped syrupy black liquids, and its mouth was open both above and below the water. I suppose I was only seeing the head, that there may have been a body under the water I was unaware of and that it could have been a giant lizard for all I know, but it seemed to me a whale come to swallow me whole. I heard the gun fire and watched its munitions smash against one of the creature's teeth, breaking it. The creature's eyes widenend and then narrowed, as though in concentrated rage. I began to realize that there was a deep intelligence in the creature's eyes; something evil and malevolent like the nightmare it resembled, but something human, almost. It snapped its mouth and the water sprayed against me in a wave, and I was washed upon the shore.

It uttered a stream of groans that I had heard earlier, and here was where I recieved my best view of the thing. Its face was wide like a bull's, and the teeth I saw stuck outside of its mouth when it closed its jaws, so that it seemed like the teeth were too large for the mouth, hanging downwards over the lower jaw. It opened its maw when it saw me looking and I glimpsed its dark throat, pulsing and sucking in water and unidenfifiable debris.

Then its mouth closed and it submerged, a final groan on the air that sounded like disappointment.

"You are not supposed to be here, are you?" The man asked.

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