HE’S BEEN IN THIS PLACE BEFORE, though never this quiet, never this calm. it’s as familiar as it is foreign, a space that’s neither here nor there and yet it exists inasmuch as anything a man can see or hear or sense —
lou is gone. he knows it, knows something is wrong before he can even form the thought. no bb strapped to his chest — hell, no harness to strap the pod to — and the missing odradek makes him feel off balance and even more out of place. the wind rushes across the bare skin of his arms and he realizes, belatedly, that his suit is missing, too. eyes on the sky, but does it really matter here? if it rains is it just rain or is it something worse?
he scans his perimeter, palms flat against his chest where the pod should be; he’s increasingly aware of the volume of his own heartbeat. no battle, no war, just the eerie quiet that swallows his tentative, “lou?” as if he hadn’t spoken at all. @sentity