We're all in this virtual space together.
Vildiur

You walk over to the twins, confusion etched on your face. Theyeach hold out their gloved hand for you to take, but you aren’t sure you trustthe one smiling like a Cheshire cat. You reach only for the somber twin’s handand she yanks it back unexpectedly, shaking her head. After her twin shakes herhand insistently, the somber girl holds her hand out again. You suppose youhave to grab both of them but you aren’t sure why.

Your two palms touch the twins simultaneously but the reaction youfeel is totally different. The leather on the somber twins hand is rough andscratches your bare palm; you feel a pang of emptiness in your heart. Theemptiness is all encompassing and you feel as though it is eating your verycore. Where before you felt your atoms being torn apart, you now feel as thoughevery ounce of joy and life is being sucked from them. It is excruciatingagony, and she holds on to your hand tightly, as though she would never let go.The twin with the mischievous smile slides her silk covered palm into yoursalmost teasingly, her touch always slightly out of your reach. When the skin ofyour hand does brush hers though, it is like nothing you’ve ever felt. It isjoy and passion, true happiness like which you’ve ever known. Every neuronreverberates with happiness and fulfillment, only capable of being caused by somethingnot on this earth. You want to hold onto the sensation forever, knowing thatyou can probably never get this amazing sensation anywhere else in your life nomatter how long you live for or where you go. But her touch is fleeting, andyou crave is to drown out the agonizing pain that is her twin’s touch.

When the two sensations finally even out, you feel calmness washover you. It is like an equilibrium that of which is only found in the womb,before your life has truly began and your mind is an endless unmoving ocean.You see flashes of crimson hair dancing around you, and you reach out to touchthe almost familiar strands. The owner of the hair turns around to give you adazzling grin, acidic eyes mesmerizing. They are running towards a blurry imagethat you cannot make out from so far away, and the sanguine figure motions youcloser. You see an array of crow’s feathers dancing across the air in front ofyou, clouding your vision. Through the feathers you see flashes of a sparklingocean, swirling with every shade of blue you have ever seen in your life andsome you could not even imagine. A waif of a figure, ghostly pale, leans besidethe ocean, releasing a message in a bottle into the depths with tear stainedcheeks. The crow’s feathers continue to shuffle around your vision, blockingand distorting things. Now they part to reveal a blonde mopped mannequin, haveof the flesh on their face peeled off to reveal cold hardware underneath. Youshake your head and the crow’s feathers fall around you like snow, softlybrushing your skin and sending you sensations of the visions you had keptseeing. The exuberant figure with red hair runs and runs, his destinationalways out of reach. The ocean, the sylph, the mannequin, all clouded andtwisted within the raven’s black feathers. Your vision clears and the sombertwin stands before you, though you now know her identity is more than it wouldseem. She begins saying something to you though you cannot hear it. You stepcloser, hoping to hear the words.

She mouths her sentence again and again, until you finallyunderstand the message.

You are Alone.

Then you fall into blackness.

Myos dropped thelifeless woman, still in shock of what he had just done. Yes he had won...buthe just murdered a person in cold blood. Not to accomplish his goal, not todefend himself or protect humanity...but because he got angry. There wastechnically no blood on his shaking pianist’s fingers, but he felt the stickyliquid coating his palms and running between his fingers like the fake mudprovided for them in the center of the park in the middle of the residentialsquare. Myos looked around as if someone might have been watching those lastmoments, but the room was empty save for himself and the two lifeless bodies -one friend and one foe.

Game over, Myos.

The shaken man tore hislime computer glasses off with a start, his breath hitching at the message. TheEmpress was gone. She was dead; he had felt the life leave her and herbreathing cease with his own hands. Why was he still receiving the messages?Weren’t they from her?

Myos’s face wasdistorted in horror, and he brought the heel of his boot down on the infernalmachine, pounding it over and over until it was nothing but glass shards anduseless circuits. He wanted out. Needed out. He didn’t feel like a heroanymore, he felt like a criminal. What he was doing was illegal. So what if thecrazed woman wanted to turn humanity into her slaves that would be moreappealing than this horrible feeling in the pit of his stomach.

Myos shook thedistressing thoughts away, rubbing his fingers lightly over the star pattern onthe smooth area of his headphones to calm himself. What was done was done.Humanity was saved. A small smile graced his face as his torrent of emotionssmoothed out and his optimistic rationality took over. The tyrant Empress wasgone and he would be hailed as a hero - the stars that led him so far hadchosen his destiny like he knew they would.

Just as the thought wascrossing his head, fifty to one hundred men, all with the pin of the AliothEmpire present on their chest, stormed the room from all sides. It was a blurof sound and action, akin to an abstract watercolor painting, and Myos wasunable to focus on anything. He was being yelled at to surrender, accused ofmurder, treason, conspiracy against the crown, he was being tackled andmanhandled and pushed this way and that. He fought against the many hands thatgrabbed at him, twisting and turning to escape from the vice like grip until hefelt the warm buzzing of handcuffs being placed around his wrists. He tried totell them, warm them, explain of the Empress’s plan and how he saved them, hewas a hero and they should be thankful, but the guard ignored his desperatepleas and struggles to be released.

Finally, a loud thwackresounded in the back of his skull, and Myos felt his leaf green eyes roll backand warm liquid matted his hair.