Chunks of silver metal lay on the floor of what seems to be the middle of a long and unlit hallway. The hallway appears slightly odd however, as farther back behind the chunks seems to be a sudden drop, a hole just placed in the middle of the hallway.
Also noteworthy, the floor of the hallway is completely bland with just a white plain floor, and the two walls on each side are different. The wall to the right side seems to have a pattern on the wall with different square tiles, similar to how a floor of a normal building would be. The opposite wall on the left side has what appears to be ceiling tiles, which is bluntly abstract for a hallway.
From the far distance of the hallway all the way up to the chunks is a long wire of sorts that runs along the floor, which has smaller veins spreading out. The wire is made of the similar material as the veins coming off the massive spinal cord, albeit smaller and seeming to be embedded into the ground.
It seems to spread around the building like veins running through a body, the infection spreading throughout the city. The main wire seems to run all the way to the chunks, where it then is curled up and reaches up above the ceiling.
That is until the wire suddenly starts moving, seeming to descend down from the ceiling. As it descends, the sound of screaming gradually yet quickly becomes louder, as it seems that someone is falling towards the hallway.
The man in the blue suit falls into the hallway, his body covered by smaller veins, which wrap around his limbs and body. It throbs and moves like a snake, with some covering his neck, entangling him in fear.
The man hits the ground on his back, and he immediately pushes himself up, trying to fight against the alien veins. His blue eyes and body is the only main source of light in the otherwise bleakly dark room, however even then it's largely covered up by the thick coils.
The main vein seems to be attached to his back, almost as if acting like an exterior spinal cord, while more veins wrap around him coming off of the smaller cord. It's as though the veins are consuming it in the way it consumed the building.
Meditat holds his left arm out and grabs the pink coils with his right hand, trying to pull it off him. However, while he tugs harder and harder to get it off, the coils don't seem to budge at all, keeping him held down.
He feels the coils getting tighter on his body, as though they were intending to crush him. The tightening hurt and there seems to be no indication of it stopping, making him more desperate to fight his way out.
He tries to pull the veins over his abdomen with both hands, hoping both hands would mean more power, yet even then he isn't successful at even moving it.
Meditat turns around, trying desperately to find a solution to free himself. He notices the long wire embedded into the ground, which sticks out in order to wrap around him. He looks down at the ground to see it between his feet, partially out of the floor.
The veins feel alive with a faint pink glow, moving around him like some alien predator, and they seem to all stem from each other. His blue eyes stare at the larger vein, wondering that if they were all alive, they could possibly feel pain too.
To test the theory, Meditat raises his right foot, aiming it at the larger vein. He takes a deep breath and yells, using his strength to stomp down on the vein as hard as he can, hoping it'd be enough to get it off him.
To his surprise, the part of the vein that he steps on breaks, as his foot crushes it and causes it to release a weird black liquid before seeming to be squashed. The black liquid flies onto the walls, appearing to have similar properties to blood albeit the darker color.
The rest of the vein running up and around his body all seem to burst as well, as the vein on his spine and coiling around his limbs explode with black liquid, which then covers his suit completely.
Meditat steps back as he is blinded from the liquid, putting his hands on his mask to try wiping it off. However, as he tries cleaning himself, he feels his suit becoming lighter as the liquid seems to start dissolving his armor.
Before he can do anything to prevent it, he watches as the goggles he was staring through dissolves, as does his whole mask. He stares at his hand, which was gloved just a second ago, but now exposes his skin.
Meditat blinks twice, and he looks down at the rest of his body, watching the squashed veins fall beside him like squished rope, and the rest of his blackened suit dissolves to reveal his blue pants and green jacket.
He stares at the floor, petrified, as he's no longer covered by his suit. It almost makes him feel naked, as while he had to remove his suit to get through the shield, at least he was in control of that.
Rohan's immediate instinct is to recover his armor, and so he holds his hands out, trying to tap back into his abilities and summon the blue mist.
To his horror, nothing reacts. No blue mist comes off him, his body doesn't turn blue, and he wasn't armoring himself. He just stands there, staring at his arms which stay sleeved by his jacket.
He looks to his other arm, trying to feel the fire within, the energy inside his body that he had been using to fight for so long. But when he tries feeling it, there's nothing, as though he had no abilities at all.
It feels as though he wasn't an Exhuman, he was just a simple ordinary person in a situation far out of his control. He looks at his nude hands, flipping them back and forth, frozen in shock from his sudden loss of power.
Even if he wasn't exactly utilizing his abilities consistently, only really using it to create the suit once before battle or relinquishing it after, with the only constant being the energy he provides to the suit, not having the abilities at all makes him feel incredibly weak.
Especially now without the suit, not having it makes him feel exposed and vulnerable. He needed the abilities to fight, without it he was any ordinary person, and being that meant he'd have no chance against the Babylonians.
Then again, he only had one left, and he has no idea what was going on with him.
Rohan looks up at the ceiling, staring at the hole that he was pulled into. He stares at the city in the distance, unable to even see the Octagon anymore from just how far away he is. Pulled away from all the action, and left in a desolate cold world.
He holds his hand up to the sky, as though trying to grab for it, trying to pull himself back up. He bends his knees and jumps up as high as he can, just hoping to be able to grab onto the edge of the ceiling to pull himself up. However, he isn't able to even get close, as the hallway is far too tall to jump to the top, and so his hand gets nowhere near the hole. He falls back to his feet, frowning in disappointment. He lowers his hand, realizing that there'd be no way for him to get back out of the hallway, at least not easily.
He lowers his head with a soft sigh, not having any idea what to do. He has no abilities, he has no idea what's happening, he has no plan on how to move from here. He has nothing, and without being able to conjure anything, he couldn't have Orial.
Rohan looks down the hallway, staring down at the floor beneath him. He looks at the two odd walls beside him, his eyes darting to the ceiling tiles on the wall to his left. He then turns to the wall on his right, recognizing such patterns as ones that are common on many floors for highrise buildings.
He looks back down at the floor he stands on, where the long wire is embedded into the ground like roots. It becomes clear to him however that he isn't standing on the floor, but rather the wall, which explains the two walls in his perspective, which are technically the floor and ceiling.
He puts his hand on his forehead, wishing that he could just make another suit and fly back out, or do anything to return to the fight. He still has a mission, but he couldn't return to it, not in the state that he's in. He isn't even sure why he can't use his abilities, as they never seemed to fail him, not until now. He was trapped in a living nightmare with no way to defend himself, leaving him as just Rohan, a typical college student.
He takes his hand off his forehead, and looks back at the long wire in the ground. He then looks up to see where it leads, as it runs down the hallway, without a clear end, for he can't properly see the end of the hallway with the lack of light.
Perhaps with his goggles and AVG he'd be able to, but just with his naked eyes, he's left in the dark. Even though the suit came from himself, he designed it and would create it with his abilities, the dependency he put on it to fight made him feel weaker than normal without it. Without it, he felt like the fraction of a normal man, unsure if he could amount to anything now.
Rohan takes a deep breath, knowing that he can't give up now, he was far too deep. He has to carry on, he has a resolve, and he couldn't let it shatter now, even if he had no idea if there was even a possibility of success. He has to keep going, only death would have a chance at stopping him. He stares at the wire, remembering that he still needs to try getting to the giant brain in the sky, as he feels that such aberration may be the key to a solution, whatever that would entail.
If the veins were all connected to the main spinal cord, which connects to the brian, then that should mean that the vein Rohan stares at which is embedded into the ground should lead him to the brain as well.
With no other options, since the lack of his abilities keeps him restrained to below the hole, he decides the best course of action is to follow the roots to the veins, and try climbing up. He takes a deep breath, and begins walking down the hallway, just pondering how chaotic this mess is.
He walks beside the roots, not wanting to step on it again after seeing the horrid reaction. He keeps the roots in the corner of his eye as well, anxious that it could grab for him again, and that his body would be the next to dissolve if that were to happen.
Following the roots of a massive spinal cord connected to a colossal brain in the sky sounds ridiculous, but so does doing it on the wall of a hallway; none of it makes any sense. To someone who planned on entering this battle following logic and clearing personal emotions, this deviation threw a wrench in those gears, as now he's entirely on improvisation.
The deeper Rohan walks, the more he is able to see the rest of the hallway, but even then he's unsure of how far the wire goes, and if he'd need to open a door to get elsewhere, and where that door would be. For now, all he can do is follow along, his footsteps being the only sound in the hallway, as the whole building feels completely barren.
However, as he walks, his eyes shoot wide open as he suddenly feels a sudden pain as though he was struck by an invisible force.
The pain is so great that he bends forward and coughs out crimson blood, which splats on the white floor. He coughs blood again, and gulps, confused by the sudden pain and his own reaction. Nothing had hit him, and even if an invisible force did, he doesn't feel any particular pain to his body, more so he feels as though he was just struck somewhere.
He stares at the blood splatter, feeling as though whatever struck him, it felt as though it was nearly fatal. But he was alone in the cold hallway, so what could've hurted him?
His eyes then become wider as the revelation dawns on him. He's walking on the wall of a hallway, following a giant root connected to a massive spine that is drilled into the streets of the city, which is also acting as a massive wall. The spine leads up to a colossal brain hovering in the sky, which just appeared there.
None of it makes sense, in fact everything started to fall apart during the fight in the Octagon. He still doesn't understand how he killed the three Babylonians when his cannons were only meant to tranquilize them, and he has no idea how he burned the two hostages alive just from boosts alone. The whole night started to become senseless ever since the two twins touched the back of his neck.
It reminds him of the time he was on the rooftop with Cratus and Indra, who had both been defeated by him in the warehouse, with EPDs holding them down. He remembers the door opening and suddenly being blinded, followed by the distinct feeling of hands being placed on his shoulder. After that, the group vanished, and that was when the nightmare began with the exploding sun and the wave of Exhumans destroying the city. The nightmare began with the two hands on him.
However, this doesn't feel the same. In that nightmare, he was still able to move his body around, he was still standing on the platform and when he woke up he wasn't in the same place as when he was touched. He clearly moved in real time during the nightmare, yet that sounds impossible in this situation.
He had fallen off of the Octagon, and all the way to the city. He was standing impossibly on the wall without the suit, there was no way that if this was all an illusion, he'd be moving in reality.
He then remembers what Peitho said before he was grabbed. He mentioned how he and his brother were going to put Meditat in some sort of 'dreamy' state, and then how Cratus would easily tear him from there.
As he thinks back on those words, it begins to make sense: He may likely be in another nightmare, but this time it's more intense, as like a true dream, he isn't moving his body the way he is in the dreamworld. Instead, his body is likely limp and sleeping in the real world, which would let Cratus more than easily tear his body apart just like Peitho mentioned.
That first means that the experiences he's feeling right now aren't real, but instead they are artificial perceptions developed by the nightmare. The world hadn't truly rotated, and there wasn't a real monstrous brain in the sky.
Also, if the dream had begun right when Meditat was touched by both of the twins, there is a likely chance that every event that transpired after the touch was part of the dream. That means assassinating them and Cratus, along with burning the hostages, meaning there was a good chance that none of them were dead, and that they were completely fine.
While it's relieving to know that Meditat didn't in fact murder those people, it concerns him that the majority of the Babylonians are still up and likely conscious, in a condition adequate to fight and harm.
If Rohan was truly in a dream world, that means that nothing he does would affect the real world. None of his movements translated to his body, as he truly had no power over the events taking place in the Octagon far above him.
Knowing that and how he likely never even shot Cratus in the first place, the immense pain he felt that warranted the bloody cough was likely a reaction he felt from his real body, reaction caused by a vengeful Cratus.
Rohan slowly looks down the hallway, realizing that as long as he's in the dream world, there is no way for him to defend his body from being mutilated alive. While his mind may be active, thus his suit should still be maintained and powered, he couldn't use it to fight, leaving him powerless nonetheless.
Knowing that, it's somewhat surprising to realize that all he felt after such a long time since being placed in the dream was that one sting of pain, and he is still alive even now. Once his body is destroyed, he should no longer have the ability to think, not unless he was truly in some underworld, which he would rather not think about. So as long as he's standing in this corrupted world, his body is still alive, even if being damaged.
Rohan begins walking down the hallway again, passing the blood on the floor. He starts walking with more haste, realizing that as long as he's trapped in the nightmare, he can't fight. Now that he knows where he is, he hopes that perhaps the brain could be the key to escaping the dreamworld, although he can't be sure for certain, but it's the best bet he has. He could theoretically test suicide as well, but if he were to make a horrendous mistake, it could cost his life as well, and that's a mistake he'd rather not make. He doesn't want to die, he still has a mission to complete.
But as he follows the roots in the floor, all he can wonder is: If he isn't defending his body right now, then who is?