Ouroboros 3: Repeat Read Online Free Page B

believe she really was dead.
    Resting there, it didn’t take long to fall asleep. His weary and emotional-wracked body was so fatigued, it took barely seconds to drift off.
    And when he did, he dreamt.
    Of her.

Chapter 5
    Cadet Nida Harper
    This was hell, complete and total hell.
    She couldn’t get through to him. She couldn’t reach him. All she could do was lie on that cold slab of a bed, her neck craned to the side as she stared at him. Occasionally she would try to whisper his name, but she could barely move her stiff and unyielding lips.
    She had never felt colder in her life. The sensations that currently ran through her had no parallel, no comparison. The frozen chill that encased her was so extreme it felt as if her mind would shut down from the pain. Yet it couldn’t, because they wouldn’t let it.
    Again another one of those shadowy figures walked into the room. They weren’t shadowy because they were encased in some kind of energy or were ethereal beings; they had no substantial form because something terribly strange was happening to Nida’s mind.
    She kept entering fitful visions, falling in and out and up and down.
    Yet in moments like these, where she opened her eyes and stared across at Carson, she tried to still her mind, she tried to focus her concentration.
    She had no idea how long she had been here. Hours, days, weeks?
    Time had just meshed into this unending struggle.
    He was lying flat on his back, an untold number of medical devices locked around his body. But worse than that—worse than the cold, silver machines—were his eyes. They were wide open and staring unblinkingly at the ceiling above.
    He hadn’t whispered a word to her, not once. And neither had he made a noise. If it weren’t for the slight up and down movement of his chest, she would have thought he was dead.
    But she held onto the fact he was breathing—she held onto it as if it was the only fact that remained worthwhile in the whole universe.
    She whispered his name in her mind, but again couldn’t push the words out of her cracked lips.
    All too soon, another one of those visions assaulted her. It came thundering into her brain like a bull, ramming away her sensations, and untethering her from the scene around.
    Soon a new one began to drift upon her, transposing itself onto the room with its cold metal beds and insubstantial figures.
    The room that morphed in its place before her eyes was one she recognised. For it was her own. Back at the Galactic Coalition Academy.
    Her room, her bed, her picture of her parents on her bedside table.
    She recognised everything. And more than that, the overwhelming sense she got as she stood there was that it was hers .
    It was familiar.
    Yet that could not erase what she had just seen.
    Carson on a bed with his dead eyes staring upwards.
    She crumpled her hands over her face, suddenly capable of movement as the vision became dreamlike. She was no longer aware of being tied down on that cold bed; instead, she could move freely around the room.
    She didn’t though.
    She instantly crumpled to her knees, drawing them close to her chest as she tucked her chin down. Rocking back and forth, she didn’t say anything.
    The scene around her, the dream, was unlike anything she had ever witnessed. It was perfect in every detail. And the way she could move her body was so real. It was very much as if she wasn’t in a dream and rather in some kind of encasing holographic simulation.
    ‘What’s happening?’ She whispered again. ‘What is happening?’ She said, even more desperation making her voice little more than a continuous hiss.
    Though she wanted to stay on her floor and rock back and forth, she didn’t get the chance.
    She never got the chance.
    There was a knock on her door, and before she could say anything, Alicia walked in. ‘What are you doing on the floor, are you alright?’ Fake concern stretched Alicia’s face.
    Nida didn’t even look up.
    Because she had faced the same scene