Everything was becoming a black void. Sound was filling every nanoscopic stretch of this space, all while iceberg-sized chunks fell to reveal the color of the night without stars. The noise was a scream in a voice that lacked a pitch, lacked a voice and a frequency. It could be perceived and not heard, one could only [i]know[/i] that it was occurring.

It was strange, the way treating someone with the bare minimum of human decency could change somebody. Stranger still was the gap between what happened in Umbra’s head and what came after.

Human language did not possess a word for the feeling, for humans could not feel anything when they were dead. Its closest proximity would be to call it [i]sleep.[/i]

On the outside, it was more simple. The body of Andrew Becker ceased to scream, and collapsed like a doll made of yarn. There was nothing, not even the sound of running footsteps. But in a place only telepaths could go, ot was a much different situation. Ryder and Charles had felt a brain stop functioning from its own perspective. It was different from feeling a consciousness blink off the radar, it was like feeling everything someone felt as their brain began to go offline, while still fully aware until the final second. 

By all rights, they should have been snuffed out with him. Their own minds, stuck in his skull, might have been dashed to nothing all the same.

But the last words Umbra heard were not a lie.

Xavier’s mind was shunted back into him. A bit of a rough landing, resting in certain facets of thought not fully settling back in initially, before righting themselves. The feeling was not dissimilar from sharing a mental space with Ryder; Oppressive, imperious, the furthest from gentle.

She came back entire seconds after him.

There wasn’t a scornful glare on her face. Just a tired frown. Ryder dusted herself off, raised her improvised rifle and burnt a hole through the face of what used to be Andrew Becker. Just to be absolutely clear.

And then, she lowered it.

The guards had been ordered to stand down earlier. No one was coming.

[color=00ffff]”Let’s go home.”[/color]