Ouroboros 3: Repeat Read Online Free PDF Page A

before.
    This exact scene, and if not the same down to every detail, then unnervingly similar.
    Over and over again.
    She would wake up in her own bed, or on board the Orion, or in some other part of the Galactic Coalition Academy. And people would tell her she was fine, that she’d just had an accident. That there was something wrong with the entity, but they were doing tests.
    With her help, they’d find out the problem.
    They’d track down the entity. They’d free it.
    Yet not once did they mention the Vex of the past, neither did they account for where Carson was.
    They just wanted to know about the entity.
    It was insane.
    It was insane.
    The last thing she remembered that made any sense was standing atop that roof and pulling Carson towards her as she forcefully opened the time gate. She remembered that immense energy crackling over her, surging within, pushing through her body and expanding it with true power.
    She remembered holding his hand in hers. She could still feel how it had felt as his fingers closed tightly around her own.
    In fact, as she sat there and completely ignored Alicia, she pumped her hand back and forth, holding onto that memory.
    ‘ Hey, Nida, it’s okay,’ Alicia began, walking into the room and flopping down beside Nida. She stretched out an arm, furling it around Nida’s shoulders. If Nida hadn’t known better, it would have appeared as if Alicia was truly being compassionate.
    But Nida did know better.
    ‘You can’t fool me,’ Nida whimpered, her voice little more than a modulated breath. ‘I know this is some kind of simulation. I remember being on that hospital bed. You can’t fool me,’ she said again. ‘Now let us go. Let Carson go,’ she added, her voice breaking with so much emotion it felt as if it would tear right through her heart.
    ‘ You’re confused, Nida; you were injured, remember? You just had a reaction to some of the drugs the doctors gave you. Everything will be okay,’ she cooed reassuringly.
    Nida didn’t react.
    There was no point in engaging with the simulation.
    Because that’s what it was, right?
    The more she went through it, the more she experienced the flawless details combined with the strange behaviour of her so-called friends and colleagues, the more she understood that fact.
    Someone was trying to manipulate her.
    For what purpose, she didn’t know.
    In fact, she hardly knew anything at all.
    But that did not stop her from whispering his name. ‘Just give him back. Stop this, whatever you want, we won’t give it to you. Stop this ,’ she pleaded.
    Alicia didn’t move her arm from around Nida’s shoulders. ‘You’re confused,’ she said in an endlessly soft tone that appeared to slash through Nida’s worry.
    But Nida would not be reassured.
    ‘Whatever you want, we won’t give it to you,’ Nida began to weep, tears trailing down her cheeks, collecting over her chin, and pooling down her neck. The sensation of it was perfect. The way they dashed upon her high collar felt exactly as if it were real.
    Yet it wasn’t.
    She held onto that fact.
    And as she did, she pumped her left hand back and forth. It was not at the memory of the entity’s power; it was the memory of Carson’s touch.
    As she held onto that, the feeling of Alicia by her side began to wane. It just drifted away, and suddenly intermingled back in with a sense of the cold medical table below her.
    In a snap, her room disappeared. No more bed, no more photo of her family, no more soft carpet.
    Just the nightmare she really was enduring.
    She turned her head again, using what little strength she had to stare over at Carson.
    No matter how many times she filtered in and out of those visions, he didn’t seem to shift. He would always be staring up at the ceiling with those dead eyes.
    She whispered his name, and this time it managed to filter out of her throat. She fought against the drugs that had been pumped into her system. She fought against everything until she