A/N: Urrggghhhh I want it to be holidays again. I'm sick of work.

Anywho, update!

Oh and by the by the song:

Illusion by Kozoro

it's free to download if you enjoy it :) just go to https://soundcloud.com/kozoromusic

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Chapter Thirty-Eight: Illusionary Monsters

For the first time in...I dunno -years, I was able to wake without a crashing wall of pain rattling my body until I feel like I'm chocking on blood. Sure if I touched the yellowing black-purple bruises they hurt like a bitch but that's about it. Realising that X wasn't with me, I look over at the door to the kitchen, thinking that maybe he was out there again.

...But for some reason I could sense that he wasn't. The emptiness was frighteningly hollow within me.

Frowning at this, I get up to have a look. The whoosh door opens as I approach it... The room was dark but a strange moving pattern was forming on the ceiling. I was able to source it to something outside through the window.

Looking at the moving reflection, I see that it's similar to light rebounding off a liquid surface.

Great. In the time I was sleeping I managed to sleep through a flood.

Walking over to get a closer look through the window, half expecting to be under the sea with some fish and/or shark glugging passed the window, I get a bigger shock as the light was too...naturally bright and outside was...as far opposite a sea that I could imagine.

I came face to face with a grassy lawn and a small stream flowing through the middle and sun shining down like I was in fairyland.

...Right.

Ok.

...I was in an underground subway last time I checked.

Underground means no sunlight...right?

....So the new drugs X has fed me are hallucinogenic and I'm having a serious trip right now? Or I'm in a dream again. The thought chilled my insides until it burned.

I look over to the front door and saw it was also whooshy with a touchpad. Giving it a shot, despite expecting the 'access denied' voice to snap back at me, I put my hand to it and it switches green, opening up and letting a faint breeze through.

I could see sky laid out before me. Pale light blue without a single cloud and the sun beating down from overhead. I can feel the heat radiating off my skin. Looking down at the ground, I was standing in soft green grass that just covered my bare feet. It felt too real. I look over to a set of stairs built into the side of a hill I was standing on, leading down to the tiny stream that ran along the grass causeway in front of me.

Walking over to the stone steps, I go down them to the water's edge. Crouching down, I peer at the trickling water that was not much wider than an arm's length across. Smooth grey and black pebbles caused ripples in the water's flow but there wasn't any sound.

I reach out to touch the water.

I frown at the texture. It felt like water slipping between my fingers. It felt cool and wet but it was synthetic.

False. Fake. The words slither in my mind as I drew my fingers away, completely dry. I almost feel a growl gurgling in my throat, surprising myself. I felt a static pulse running over my skin and almost like a glitch in the breeze. It was tiny. Minor. So minuscule that if I wasn't so caught up on the contradictory surroundings, I wouldn't have noticed.

Standing again, I abandoned the silent water and instead followed the direction it flowed. Thinking about it more closely, despite this supposed open space of a wide grassland steppe, I still feel the oppression of cold walls pressing down on me from every angle.

Taking a shuddering breath, I feel myself turn a corner, even though there was no actual corner and suddenly came face to face with a Hexer. Eyes bulging, my body goes rigid as it walks towards me.

Did...-How?

It's mouth wide open, dripping black goo into the grass. Its limbs, awkwardly long were pulled down into a crouch. It was an Alpha. Not as complete as the helmet one that crashed me through a ceiling or four back in Bellasera. It still has flesh along the inside of its arms, stretched and saggy, holding on like torn rags. The chest was in the same state, only I could peak through the skin to see bone being consumed by black crystal. Underneath that was nothing but an empty cavity.

My thoughts constrict in my head, memories flooding, bleeding and pooling in my mind, trying desperately to come up with some sort reason for something like a Hexer is staring at me ready to chow down on me in a split second. All I can do is stare at it as the long spindly fingers reach out towards me. I back up out of its grip, only to hit a solid wall at my back. But there is no wall. Only sky and hills. But I couldn't move any further. The Hexer's slow outreach was torture as I was trapped inside my body, completely unable to move.

My pulse triples with every centimeter, closing the gap between us.

No. No. No-no-no-no-no! After everything. Everything I have been through. When is it going to be enough? Turning my head to the side, my eyes almost closed, ready for the onslaught.

'Don't touch me' The words echo in my head as the fingers reaching towards me begin to glow red to white hot. Just as they almost graze my cheek, it melts away, dripping to the ground as a molten mess of metal.

Metal?

I stare in shock as the metal pools on the grass...not grass...for a second the grass glitches, revealing something like a railing...I was in a subway. I was underground in a subway.

I glare back at the half melted Hexer and the sky behind it as it begins to distort.

This isn't real-

Something suddenly blocks my vision, grabbing me and pulling me back into it.

"Stop now, Kae," X's voice almost liquefies my muscles as the tension suddenly drops from my body. I feel that everything changing...or stopping, like someone turned off a TV screen. The warmth from the sun was replaced by cold dead air that was being ventilated by a series of shafts scattered throughout the underground complex. But the air was still...wrong. Still rotten like the air I was surrounded by since I entered Bolin.

I pull on his hand to let me see the dreary and dark abandoned tunnels I was expecting to see.

In front of me was a half melted metal skeletal...thing that from all the exposed wiring, I could guess would have been some sort of robot.

I suddenly felt tired, the relief was draining to the core. But it was replaced by a bitterness that this fake Hexer exposed about me. I am still hiding in the corner. Still waiting in the dark for either some saviour or death to find me.

X's warmth was very apparent behind me as I realise I was still holding onto his arm when he stopped me. I couldn't help but tighten my grip. Why? Why is there a fucking robot and all this shit down here just to fuck with my head?

"I'm sorry. Seth did not think that the simulation testing would extend this far..." he sounds like he wanted to say something else but he left the sentence hanging and died in the silence. "I went to warn him since the communication line is still shut off down here."

I turn to him, "Why?"

"Why have I cut off any contact?" he looks to the ceiling as if her was trying to collect his thoughts, "Because I did not want any noise."

I exhale, knowing that that's going to be as good an answer from him I'm gonna get. "Where's Lady?"

"Seth has been occupying her with landscape simulations in another tunnel."

"Well, I was until something decided to glitch the system," Seth's voice rebound down the tunnel as he walks towards us, Lady in tow.

'Dreamer stopped fake jungle and fake monkey. Irritation stopped'. Lady padded up to me pressing her forehead to mine, 'Younger human child with raven hair made irritating monkey pull tail.'

"What's this about monkeys and tail-pulling?" I ask out loud.

Seth chuckles as he walks passed me, "A little light exercise for little Lady. Oh wow," he whistles as he stops in front of the melted metal carcass. "Holy shit. Oz ain't gonna like this. But well...at least we know your defenses are all up and running on a more conscious level now...and not when you're high on adrenaline mixed with a concoction of stress and exhaustion with primal survivor instincts. I'll agree with Hanna when she says that ain't a healthy state to be in often."

"It should not have gone into this section in the first place," X states.

"True...but I wonder..." Seth looked to be deep in thought, his eyes switch over to my face for a second before letting out a breath to dismiss it. "Well whatever. Hanna's expertise I guess."

"What is?" I ask.

"Oh nothing. I only downloaded the actions of accumulated data into the system to replicate physical and behaviour patterns of a number of Hexers we come across. The program can be unpredictable...especially with something like you in the equation. Even with the 'attack on sight order' shut off."

"What is that supposed to mean?"

"Easy kid. I'm not saying it as a bad thing...I don't think. My point is that you are an unknown equation on so many levels...and unpredictable."

"Riiiight." Glad we cleared everything up.

"No need to be sassy," Seth smirks before patting me on the shoulder. "The point is, I'm gonna have fun designing your survival courses."

"Uh what?"

"Specially designed for you to train and build up that poor excuse of a physique you've got going on."

"I'll help," X chirps in. He tightens his grip on me. Not harshly but enough to make me uncomfortable aware that we have an audience and my face begins to glow red. I tried pulling on his arm but it wouldn't budge, which just makes me all the more embarrassed. Especially since by the half hidden grin on Seth's face he bloody well knew I was stuck. Asshole

...And they say exercise can kill people. I can tell that this is gonna definitely be the death of me.