Midnight. Or was it midnight? There was no one in the room with the broken Max LeBay. He lay in bed, a rag doll with most of the bones in his body aching and the pain flowing at all times. How am I alive? Flashes of what occurred zipped through his dreams at high speeds. The meeting, the quarrel, the guards, and the fall. Yet, somehow, he woke up. Broken, but alive. He laid in bed a broken man, dried blood on his chin, around his mouth and on his chest, a grisly realization of the damage inside his body. He wasn't bleeding anymore, though. It was dry, crusty dark blood. He still couldn't move. Maybe he was dying, slowly, painfully.
He dozed in and out of consciousness at times, staying awake for what felt like hours and sleeping for what felt like minutes. The strangest feeling; the feeling of being awake and asleep at the same time. The state of being on the border of rest and reality was a funny thing to experience. Maybe there are no cracks on the ceiling and it's just something that slipped out of his dream side. Suppose that garden gnome didn't look like a creepy child killer. Who knows?
Three in the morning… or was it two? Four? It was still dark. Darkness was all that Max felt. Well, that and the freezing cold air that would hit his bare skin. He couldn't move to shield himself, he couldn't breathe without it hurting, and he couldn't even swallow the saliva built up in his mouth without that clogged feeling in his throat. Through it all, he thought of home. The Vault, James, and Amata. Those thoughts and dreams of home were a remedy for agony, yet it left far too often and didn't come enough.
After he fell asleep for what seemed the thirtieth time, Max had a dream of space, traveling on some kind of space craft and floating on the outside of it in zero gravity. Oh, how he could almost feel the weightlessness He saw the bright lights of the craft shining on him, penetrating the glass helmet of his space suit and all of it seemed so real.
A very vivid dream for those close to death? Probably. Maybe his body wanted him to die peacefully and with calming images of a vastly unexplored space which was inhabited by no man. Wait...what about Dad? Max thought about how he would probably never see his father again, fail his mission of finding him and leave his dad out in the wastes alone with not a family alive. No, I am NOT going to die without at least finding my father. The dream showed James walking towards Max, exposed to the openness of space but walked as if he was on Earth. He reached out to Max, extended a hand to him. "Take my hand, son," he told Max. He did what his father asked of him but watched as his dad just poofed! into nothingness.
"Max!" He turned around and saw his lovely Amata, her beautiful smile and gorgeous face warmed Max's heart. He ran to her, desperate to hug the girl he missed very much. Arms wrapped around him as he wrapped his arms around his lover in a tight embrace. He smiled and laughed and took her face in his hands, but he was surprised by his Amata covered in bruises across her face. "Look at what they did," she yelled, before fading into nothingness before Max's eyes. Max felt no sorrow, no joy, no loss. He felt nothing but emptiness and loneliness.
Max sat on the spacecraft, brought his knees to his chest and sobbed.
Max woke up from his dreams of space and was instantly blinded by a bright light. He couldn't feel the bed under him and actually saw himself rising… and rising… and rising to the ceiling. His dreams have become nightmares! He felt himself pass through the floors of Tenpenny Tower, almost like some kind of spirit. Was he dead? No, the pain was too real for it to be a dream.
He risen through the floors and saw himself float through the sky and into the greatest void that was space. Rising and rising he went, into space and out of the Earth's atmosphere, yet still breathing fresh air. Max kept levitating until he reached the origins of what pulled him miles and miles above the Earth.
After he crossed the threshold of the beam's origin, he blacked out once again. Before he did, he thought he might've gone crazy, because what he saw baffled him. What Max saw, frightened, shocked, and intrigued him all at the same time. Because what Max saw, wasn't a man, wasn't a creature but probably a mix of the two. What Max LeBay saw at that moment, were three little green men with big bug eyes, big heads and clad in white spacesuits surrounding him.
They spoke to each other, poking and prodding at Max. A mechanical arm came down from above, its head spinning intensely. Max tried to scream as the arm moved the drill toward him but nothing came out. The drill cut open his body and Max blacked out.