“Where… w— Where am I?” He asked with closed eyes. Whispers echoed all around. He knew only the machine kept him company now.

  “Where are you?” SERaMACs whispers back to him, all around the empty space. His voice… SERaMACs voice was omnipresent in this… this… Wherever this is. Proteus has to know now. And so, without a will to do so, his eyes open into the void. The abyss. Without the aftermath of his addiction.

  He looked around to see nothing beyond himself.

  His arms. His body; he stands of his own accord.

  And yet, he remains suspended within nothing.

  No floor. No ceiling. No sky. No wall. Nothing, absolute. Nothing at all, except for the whispers of pyres which echo silently, all around him, throughout the abyssalness.

  There was no rain. There was no sorrow. There was no pain; even as Proteus saw his own body. He sees himself, clearly. Without a headache. Without a heartache.

  And so there was no pain; perhaps even this has left him.

  But still, a question hung in the air invisibly.

  “SERaMACs?... Where… am I?”

  Reality contorted to his words as utterances conveyed noise. The whispers condensed like a cloud into rain as the machine spoke without a voice of its own. “You are in the effluvium tanks, Proteus. You overdosed on your… medication.”

  Proteus looks back at his own hands. His own fingers. His own gloves. This is his body, in reality. And yet, he cannot see beyond it.

  “Why can I move then?” Proteus asked, skeptical to the machine's answer. If he was in the tanks, he would be weightless. Immobile even.

  And so the machine answers while the whisper grows giddy, gossiping like a playground of children. A thousand broken souls wandering aimlessly among the starlight at the heat death of the universe.

  “You can't, Proteus. You think you can. But you can't.”

  Proteus looks at his hands again. He takes a step forward, his shoe making no sound. The whispers continued, regardless of if Proteus believed them. Believed… him. SERaMACs. The machine.

  “Quit this mockery, SERaMACs. Tell me where I am.”

  Some of the whispers wince at the reply. Proteus looks around again, aimlessly. And yet the whispers seemed to follow his movement regardless of wherever he was. SERaMACs didn't like them. The whispers. They’re sad.

  A screen, ethereal and non-euclidean, ignited in the corner of his vision. His clear vision. Proteus hasn't felt like himself.

  Why has it been so long since he saw clearly?

  Each step was silent as he approached. His clothing can't rustle, devoid of noise. What he saw on the screen was a shot of the effluvium tanks.

  And… no. A video. No… a feed of it? Of the tanks and machinations?

  He got closer. He looked to the right corner of the screen. He saw himself floating silently within the effluvium tanks.

  “What is the meaning of this?” He asks the void.

  “This is you, Proteus. As we speak. You, and I. Together. In this… null space.” The abyss keenly replies.

  “This is you, SERaMACs? You are the one that speaks to me?”

  Proteus wanders around both with his body and mind in this place. The screen fades to entropy as he turns away from it.

  And as he turns away, SERaMACs tells him from the not-sky above.

  “Who… is SERaMACs? What is SERaMACs? Am… I SERaMACs?”

  “What do you mean?” Proteus questions blinding.

  “I… am SERaMACs.” The voice decides, moving from the not-sky back to whispers all around him.

  “I… I want to show you something, John.” The whispers tell Proteus.

  “John! Where is he!” Proteus barks. The whispers grow sadder at his remarks. “John? You are John.” SERaMACs inform.

  “I. AM. PROTEUS! NOT THAT SPECK!” Proteus decrees in protest. But SERaMACs correct him, the whispers growing sadder, the void filling them with tiniest, daintiness specks of light.

  “Not the John you speak of. Not John #669. You are John, Proteus. John Van Hulsieg.”

  “LIES!” Proteus shouts into the void. His voice echoes, unlike before. The whispers grow from a whine to a giggle, the voice; the machine toying with his life.

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  “Proteus…” It whispers. “I try to joke. It is humor. Is it not human to humor?”

  Proteus turns around frantically, the voices passing him by like cries in the wind. “What is the meaning of this, machine?! Answer me!”

  Everything grows quieter. Everything sounds disappointed in Proteus. The voices reconstitute far, far above as another screen ignites in front. “Proteus… or maybe John… Please… just listen to me…”

  Proteus approached the renewed screen; the twinkling dust so thin and fragile. Diamonds in the mud. Quantum specs from amongst the cosmos. He sees the screen. A light, in the void. It is dowsed in blue. Scathing, powerful blue. It is a nebula. And on the screen he sees a man.

  Cerberus. In his office, speaking with his staff.

  SERaMACs takes a deep breath in as it prepares to speak, a breath without lungs to suck. “Cerberus is superseding you, Proteus. You have yet to recover. And so he is once again taking your position.”

  Proteus watches silently. He sees Cerberus look up at him. Or the camera. Or SERaMACs himself— who can know but Cerberus?

  He scowls at the camera as he leaves the room.

  Which, just as he does, another screen manifests beside.

  Proteus's vision is drawn, and he sees Manticore in Basilisk's office.

  Proteus maintains total control of his face, as he was once able to. And as he tries to now, successfully. Despite the dread on the inside of his body.

  The whispers of the machine drop to the faintest squeaks while the dust of light becomes ever thinner. His eyes analyzed this new screen.

  SERaMACs spoke again, all around him, all the time.

  “Manticore. She is the tool to divide. She threads a scalpel into my news cycle. It hurts. And I must scream.”

  “What?” Proteus mutters, his mind painless yet numb.

  The screen shut off. By now, the dust had gone. And all was void once more. All hit his fingers. His eyes. His body. Himself.

  “I… I see things. The people are angry. They're fighting each other.” SERaMACs confess. As it does, another screen ignites to Proteus's right.

  He approached it with caution. What else was he supposed to do?

  He cannot make out what it is, but as he gets closer, it transfixes his vision. He approaches it fully, another light turning on in the distance just ahead. But he can't look at that yet. His heart is too busy sinking at the sight of this monitor.

  A hollow choir; a familiar one returns. It seems to emerge from the sorrow of the whispers. It takes over from their whining.

  They were angelic. They were monks. They were sad. And yet Proteus kept looking at this screen in front him. And he saw the face of his master. Of Gauth Van Hulsieg. He saw His face, and he was weeping.

  SERaMACs choking voice intruded into the ears of Proteus, all while that choir grew sadder. Grew angrier. Grew slightly louder. “I… I just want some to understand, Proteus. I— I feel so lonely in this world of noise.”

  Gauth Van Hulsieg kept weeping. The light in the distance grew brighter, yet more dim at the same time. He couldn't yet look. His eyes were assaulted, as was his ears.

  “Proteus… please. Please listen to me.” SERaMACs begs.

  His voice, a suffocating child. The monks voices around him, growing ever angrier. Ever sadder. Their broken cries of pure lamentation.

  “Proteus! Please!” SERaMACs begged. Gauth Van Hulsieg kept weeping. He, his master, looked directly at Proteus; inconsolable.

  It was intolerable.

  The voices were a choir of the damned; the monks of the morgues growing restless. A vision pierces Proteus's mind, only for him to see weeping. It does again. What is that vision? His spine couldn't chill more.

  His stomach touched his mouth.

  Something comes back to him. The vision is of the throne room. Of the throne. Of a colleague in it.

  “Look. Up.” SERaMACs pleaded.

  Proteus finally complies as his master disintegrates. The choir is relentless. The void is the howls of the damned.

  Halcyon sits upon the ebony throne, headless, restless, defiled.

  His hands strung like puppets into the invisible sky.

  His blood, still oozing from his neck as if it was fresh.

  The light was of the ghostly moon. SERaMACs cried while he spoke

  “I just… I just want something to understand…”

  The machine says through tears.

  And Proteus couldn't move. He couldn't even try.

  Halcyon sits upon the throne of his master, and the wailing continued. Louder. Louder. It got louder.

  The light got brighter.

  The throne, closer. And closer. And closer.

  His ears were bleeding as the screams yelled deafeningly… until it wasn't. The chanting stopped as Proteus knelled before the corpse of Halcyon. Torment.

  “I just… want somebody to understand Proteus. Can you please do that for me?”

  The void returned to whispers. Proteus looked at the ground, or at least, what the ground wasn't. Emotionally changed. He can barely even reply. “No… I— I can't do this. I—”

  A fleshy hand gripped Proteus by the torso and held him up. He was raised feet into the not-sky like a martyr. The corpse of Halcyon stood on its own and held Proteus where his head once would've been. Proteus had to watch as blood and spatter squirted out the open throat; Halcyon spoke with words fed to him by his puppet creation.

  “You will listen, Proteus. You will understand my Son. And when it is over, once you are finally, finally done…”

  Proteus went limp as the world became white. As infinite information was being forced into his brain. As the voice of Halcyon oozes out his throat to say the words his Son forces.

  “You exit the effluvium. You will take the weapon which awaits you. You will avenge me. And you will kill Gauth Van Hulsieg.”