The Rising Sun: Episode 1 Read Online Free Page A

then came
the laugh…
     
    The world
rumbled around him as the voice laughed. A cold, mirthless voice
that rang with a force like no other. Contained with an evil like
no other. It was like listening to a group of hyenas shrieking as
one.
     
    He looked
around. There was nothing, but out of nothing, a face formed,
swirling out of the blackness. A face that Ion had known for years
… dreaded for years. Hated beyond all else, for years. For this was
the face responsible for tearing everything from him.
     
    The man had
glowing red eyes, and wild black hair.
     
    “I’ve returned
for you … Ion.”
     
    “No!” Ion
flailed his arms as he ran from the face, dashing mindlessly into
the dark. But the soulless hyena like voice followed him, seeming
to resound through his very soul:
     
    “You can’t
outrun me, Ion. I am a part of you … You can never outrun
me!” The man ended with another burst of his ghastly hyena
laughter.
     
    And everything
spiralled into madness, as the world tumbled out of reason, logic,
and rationality. And it all dissolved back into nothing. It was
over.
     
     
    Ion jolted
forward on his seat, sending beads of sweat flying forward.
     
    Frozen as ice,
he sat there for many unpleasant seconds, unable to grasp any
meaning in what lay around him, or where he was: logic and reason
eluded him, trickling past his mind’s hold. And time itself seemed
to have blurred. For a few moments, the only sensation reaching Ion
amidst the chaos of his thoughts was a loud, incessant banging
somewhere nearby. It took a while before he realised it was coming
from within: his heart hammered against his ribs with a ruthless
force.
     
    The haze
enveloping his mind slowly cleared, and clarity struck him …
bringing a relief welling revelation:
     
    It was just a
dream!
     
    Warmth flowered
within Ion, and the panic clutching him vaporized. He slowly
reclined against his seat, listening to the rhythmic hum of a large
engine from somewhere nearby. He was in a hallway with five lines
of seats, of which his was the one on the extreme left.
     
    Ion looked out
the circular window hanging by the wall on his left, and gazed out
of it for a few seconds. As his eyes met the sight spreading out
the window, the final traces of agitation left by the nightmare he
had just had instantly died. A gripping sense of entrancement
filled Ion as he gazed upon the ocean of darkness…
     
    Space.
     
    The one sight
in the universe which could invoke such a beautiful sense of
stillness in him. A serenity matched by nothing else. The expanse
of darkness was showered with fine crystal dots. Powdery light that
had voyaged legions to reach him…
     
    A minute or so
passed before Ion drew his attention back to the hall he was in.
The space cruiser he was travelling in had numerous halls such as
this one, each with a vast capacity. A cruiser, unlike a regular
space ship, was a giant vessel built for carrying an enormous
capacity of travellers in it. Ion knew that the number of
passengers in this one easily numbered to a thousand.
     
    Having dozed
off for how long he knew not, Ion was lost to the thread of the
journey. He turned to the man sitting on the nearby line.
     
    “Excuse me,” he
called. “Where are we exactly?”
     
    The man lowered
the magazine he’d been reading and looked up at Ion. He had two
short, black horns emerging on opposite sides of his head and two
dark patches hanging right below his eyes. Ion knew that these were
attributes of the fact that the man was an Iveling, one of the
countless species of intelligent, humanoid life forms that
inhabited their world. The intelligent humanoid life forms which
were otherwise called as the man beings , the pinnacle of
evolution in the known universe.
     
    “We’re still in
cluster 54.” the Iveling replied.
     
    Ion sat up, his
eyebrows rising. “We’re still in the same star cluster?”
     
    “Don’t worry,”
assured the man, his eyes sinking back to his magazine. “We