I do not own anything mentioned in this book, not even the characters, except for John Call. He is mine and mine alone.
Chapter 4: Pain
Larry sat straight up, grabbing at his head. The pain subsided almost instantly, like a pain long forgotten. He opened his eyes and noticed that he was sitting in his bedroom, light streaming though the curtains and catching on the dust, making it seem eerie.
He got up, pulling off the DreamLand system as he knew he would have to wait to re-enter. Pulling out the manual, he read that it would take until the system stopped shutting him out in order to actually re-enter the World of Dreams, and that was when the red light quit blinking on top of the device.
He wondered what had happened to his squad- everything had gone dark just before he had woken up here. Who was this Outlaw guy, and why did he try to kill all of them? Was everyone alive? Would the Pride send help?
Quivering with anticipation, he got up and went into the bathroom, grabbed a shower, and walked into the kitchen to get something to eat. Looking more presentable, he walked onto the balcony of his apartment and began to wait for the red light to stop blinking.
He leafed through the booklet and instruction manual that had come with the DreamLand device. Reading about the Gou'ld proved to be most informative. It seemed that in order to make the synthetic world seem more realistic, John Call had programmed in a number of villainous creatures that resided in their own separate portions of the universe. Chief among the list of dangerous-bad-guys to watch out for included the Gou'ld, who, just as Biffy explained, were parasites. Another was the Covenant from Halo, which implied that the rings that CH landed on were indeed a Halo. Then there were the Borg who cared for nothing except for assimilation or destruction, who flew around in a network, (they all thought the exact same thing at the exact same time). Most dangerous, it seemed, was the existence of the Yuuzhan Vong, which lived out beyond the galaxy that represented George Lucas' Star War's region.
Looking up, he noticed that the blinking had stopped, and he quickly hurried to reattach the properprobes to his body. Making sure that the back door was unlocked and that the front door was locked, he eagerly sat down on the lawn chair with the wind rustling in his hair and prepared to sleep.
The World of Dreams device whirled as he slipped into unconscious.
