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You step through into the gate and everything goes completely quiet. A half second later you feel a dark rumble as if your head was under water during a thunderstorm.The sound gets louder and sharper and you begin to hear much more in depth, something like a thousand violins being tuned in unison. You begin to feel a tug on your body, all over from head to toe. The tug quickly turns from a light nudge to a hard thrust faster and stronger than a shuttle breaking atmo with a teenager at the helm. Your vision narrows then it all goes black. You try to breath, but instead of air you feel as though you’re pulling in fire into your lungs. Shouldn’t you be coughing? The feeling spreads from your core and dances out to your arms and legs getting colder as it travels… your hands feel "dry ice" cold but for some reason they don’t go numb.
Then it all goes to pure pain, more then you have ever felt, or thought you could feel for that matter. Regret enters your mind … how could anything be worth this? Agony overwhelms every part of you, even your ability to think about the anguish that’s coursing through your being. How long could this last? Much more and you doubt there will be anything left of your mind on the other side. How much longer? Oh just end… final death would better, please death come… something… anything but this…
You feel death grabbing on and it feels wonderful, then just as quickly as it welcomes you, it throws you out. The pain begins to subside and every fraction of a second that passes feels better than any moment before. The rumbling returns. You notice nearly all the pain is gone. For all the pain you felt the relief is just as strong. Your vision slowly returns. You look down…crazy, looks like blue flame dripping off of you. Maybe your eyes are playing tricks on you, who knows what's real after that?
You look behind you and see the same fire coming off the others. One of them screams and falls over. You expect to see more, a twitch at least but there is nothing. No movement at all. Their mind must have broken, can’t say you blame them… you felt so close yourself. Nanites won’t fix that, when the brain decides your dead, no technology in the known ‘verse will bring you back. They told you there’s one in nearly every group, but you thought it was just talk. Tuff guy talk to scare away the weak ones… guess not. Not the first time you’ve seen final death, you’re sure it won’t be the last. Hopefully the next one won’t be yours. At least on this side of the gate there’s half a billion UR credits set aside for resurrections… well may be more, now that there’s one less.
It’s a waste land as far as you can see… where’s the camp? You check your PR System “*&#@$” …of course… it’s fried. You pull a piece of paper out of your pocket. Well, I guess this wasn’t a joke.
At least you compass works… you think. 40km… might as well be 400 km the condition you are in. You wonder if the nanites in your system survived… if they didn’t the Vitamancer Virus will end you in less than 100 meters. You check your gun…then breathe a sigh of relief all systems functioning; you may have to put someone down if the Virus gets them. Rather have the virus take you then some 4th rate computer jockey that got infected.
You breathe in deeply… hold it and step through the barrier then exhale. One foot in front of the other …
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