The Void

My head spun. All reasonable thought sprouted wings and darted out of my chaotic mind. I heard someone scream, an insane sound, like a madman. The last remaining coherent thought told me that I had issued that scream. Then it, too, disappeared in a flurry of unlikeliness.
I was in a void. The only thing I could see around me was nothingness. Not black nothingness. Not white.
Nothing was colorless.
I shut my eyes, and color exploded behind my closed eyelids.  Orange, purple, pink. Sanity.
But when my eyelids opened, even a slit, I heard the screaming again. The nothing that surrounded me was in between black and white, but the opposite of gray. It was every color mixed together, but so far from anything comprehensible.
I could feel myself going mad. I was immune to the burning in my eyes and the screaming in my throat.
I was going mad.

***
The observers were gathered around the wallscreen, watching the figure floating in the midst of white. Even their advanced video technology could not capture the void’s non-color. All of them were dressed in white, and they sat in SensiChairs hooked up to their brains so that they could control any technology in the room with their thoughts. The room, crafted entirely of glinting steel, was silent except for an unwavering scream that came from the speakers embedded in the walls. The observers seemed to relax from their previous concentration.
One of the observers, a balding man in thick glasses, muted the wallscreen. The screaming stopped. He turned to the others.
“Is he going mad?”
A young scientist with brown hair answered him. “He will. The cells in his brain can’t process the void.”
“Why?”
“We humans are not used to non-color. Our eyes, our brains, nothing about us was made to see and understand it, such that it gives us physical pain, as we see here. To encounter it will soon drive the boy mad.”
A third chimed in. “His brain cells are not equipped to—“ he broke off suddenly. “What was that?”
Soon they all heard it: a steady clang of metal against metal.
“I thought,” growled an observer, “that we were in a high-security cell?”
The others said nothing.
The sound grew louder.
“Who goes there?” shouted an observer.
Suddenly, the indestructible door blew into a million pieces. The man who had designed it quavered.
Through the drifting smoke stepped a seven-foot steel creation, a humanoid suit that could only be controlled by a human inside. The steel reflected the fluorescent lights, as did the glass on the helmet, making it impossible to see who was inside. Whoever it was carried a four-foot laser-missile launcher, a formidable weapon capable of destroying a six-level building in one shot. Or an indestructible door.
It was then that a robotics scientist noticed that the suit, unlike any of the ones he had created, was made to fit a woman. But he had no time to wonder over it, because she cocked her laser-missile launcher and a whirring sound filled the otherwise silent room. She pointed a steel finger at the wallscreen, where the figure had crumpled to his knees.
“Hand him over.”

***

The smoke climbed lazily upward behind the towering figure as the fluorescent lights continued to glint off of her helmet shield. The whirring gradually ceased as the observers quivered with silent panic in their SensiChairs.
She sighed. None of the observers made a move. The white-steel walls shimmered menacingly.
"You're hopeless," she said in exasperation. Her raised arm fired a steel dart that instantly plunged into the heart of a button beside the wallscreen with perfect aim. The button shattered, and the crumpled figure in the wallscreen winked out of sight.
As she turned to go, she threw one last glance at the frozen observers, and they had a split second of a glance at her face.
The observers had been expecting a female government agent, an experienced and trained killer. What they saw was quite different.
They looked into the face of a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl. Judging by her pale skin and almond-shaped eyes, she was from the northern regions of eastern Siberia. Her eyes were a pale blue, and seemed to look right through the scientists, even as she turned away. Or rather, her left eye did. Her right eye was framed by the same almond-shaped lids, but instead of an eye, there was a pale silver sphere. It was split into four sections, like an X, each of which could recede or contract, thus opening or closing her eye. Out of the tiny hole in the center beamed a ray of icy blue light.
The girl leaped out of the smoking hole in the wall and sprinted off with surprising agility. She knew the layout of the Observatory. She knew exactly where the boy in the void was now lying in a crumpled heap on the steel floor.
Meanwhile, the observers were recovering from their shock. They began brushing the debris off of their white coats, dialing numbers on the emergency telecommunication system, shouting and asking questions.
"Just a child..."
"But the boy..."
"Where are they?"
"Send searchers..."
All this while the boy and his rescuer escaped.

***

I looked up slowly, groaning, head spinning. I wouldn't have attempted this difficult feat if not for the pounding of metal on metal coming ever closer. When I had raised my head to as high as it would go, and the pounding was right outside the room, I decided to open my eyes.
Everything was normal.
There was no head-pounding non-color, no explosion of void-like insanity. There was a polished white-steel floor, polished white-steel walls, and a gleaming platform that looked like an extremely complicated teleportation device.
The footsteps entered the room and stopped. I turned and found I could stand up. I did so, and was soon blinded by the glare from the helmet shield of a robotic suit. I staggered against the wall.
"Oh, sorry," came a girl's voice.
There came a clicking and whirring of mechanics, and I looked up in time to see fragments and sections of glass sliding over each other and receding from the girl's face.
For some reason, she had a smooth metallic shield over her right eye. I was struck first, however, by how young she was, about my age. Her left eye seemed to pierce me; she seemed much older than her features told. I was instantly wary of her.
"Who are you?" I asked cautiously.
She spoke without her her expression changing.
"Not now. Definitely not here. Come, I'll get you out."
Her accent matched her eyes and skin--Northern Siberian. I wasn't sure if I wanted to trust her--she could be working for the Observatory. But really, what choice did I have? If she had the will, she could help me escape, judging from the laser-missile launcher on her back. But before I could make my decision, an infinitely quiet whirring reached my ears. Her huge mechanic hand gripped my arm powerfully.
"Quick," she muttered as her helmet shield closed.
I had no choice. Soon she was walking out of the room, speeding up despite the bulk of her suit, dragging me along with ease through the white-steel corridors. Soon she was sprinting, practically carrying me as I leaped after her, my feet uselessly pushing off the ground once in a while.
Faster and faster the strange girl carried me, till I shut my eyes: they were blurring from the constant assault of wind.
So I contented myself with wondering. Who was this girl? Did she know me? Why did she have that shield over her eye? When would my questions be answered?
My musings were interrupted by a large bump, a burst of fresh air, a tugging on my arm, and an effortless venting of heat from where I had been a second earlier.
I opened my eyes. The girl's helmet was now level with my head, but that wasn't what shocked me. We were at least fifty feet above the desert ground and climbing. On top of that, the bases of the suit's feet were emitting shimmering gravity fields to reverse their gravitational direction. In short, we were flying.
The girl didn't look at me. Instead, she seemed to be manipulating strings of data that skittered across her helmet shield. I still couldn't see what was behind her "eyepatch."
We broke through a cloud cover, and I was instantly drenched. I could barely see the beads of water on the her helmet, the occupant of which was still staring at the moving green symbols.
Then we emerged from the cloud, and I was struck by wonder.

to be continued...