The forest he was in had a strange ethereal beauty that he had not noticed while being chased by that monster.
His saviour was moving through the forest almost as if he knew it inside out.
Periodically, unknown gazes locked in on their figures, and at those moments he would freeze and not move until the gaze passed.
Some gazes were more sinister and forceful than others, some weaker but wilier, though freezing always seemed to do the trick at least so far.
They were going on in this manner until they arrived at a crack in a cliff face. The wounds on his body had mostly healed but he felt about as strong as a twig.
Passing through the crack, they reached a cave, where the man promptly dropped him to the ground.
He was almost expecting another wave of pain when he hit the ground, but thankfully nothing of the sort happened since the mist had healed him.
The man looked at him intensely for a few moments and spoke.
"The name is Gordon"
Pausing for a few moments, he also replied.
"Asaba but you can call me Saba."
Gordon joined him on the floor, pulling a bright, luminescent orb out of thin air.
Saba was stunned, staring at Gordon with his mouth agape for a dozen seconds before holding it shut and asking.
"How did you do that?"
"And, what was that thing that attacked me?"
"What is this pla-"
Gordon held his hand, asking him to pause. Saba let out a breath he did not even know he was holding.
Gordon then started speaking.
"First, I will begin with what this place is, this place… Well, you can call it a mirror version of earth except for one key difference, the existence of this energy you felt the one that healed your wounds…if you wanted to call it a name well magic would be the first to come to mind."
"M- magic?"
Saba slumped against the cave wall, the stark strangeness of everything was getting to him.
From his slumped position, he wondered if he was hallucinating, maybe he was dead and this was hell – a strangely beautiful hell, but still hell.
Looking back at Gordon, he felt a little unnerved at the way Gordon was looking at him. Feeling the ground him, he was looking for anything to keep him steady.
"What do you mean by magic…?" asked Saba.
"I know by now you have noticed the fact that your arm and ankle healed despite being chewed out by that daemon." answered Gordon.
Saba's arm throbbed at that comment.
"It seems you are a fortunate person; you are a healer." He continued.
Saba spared his right arm and left ankle a scrutinizing look.
"Healer? Huh, you don't say."
Saba stared at Gordon dubiously for a while before sneering.
"I wish were fortunate enough not to be here in the first place."
'Too fast, it is all happening too fast.'
"Look, I appreciate your help, but all of this can't be real", he said, gesturing around feverishly at everything around him while turning his back to Gordon.
"Where do you hope to go? You don't know what is out there?" Gordon said tossing the luminescent ball from hand to hand.
Unable to come back with a witty reply, he resolved to leave the cave and thought to himself.
'Maybe if I get out, all this will go away, no mysterious man speaking about things that shouldn't exist and certainly no rabid beasts hounding my heels.'
Taking a step forward, he felt a blunt force hit the back of his neck and he saw black, but before he passed out, he heard the words.
'For someone who had fought so bravely against the daemon I had expected more.'
Gordon lowered Saba to the cavern floor and held his chin.
'A healer and a powerful one at that, this is good for me. It also means the barrier is weakening; I wonder they will react when I report back.'
Saba dreamt; he dreamt of the life he had lived; it seemed so far away even though a day hadn't passed.
Saba woke up to the piercing light that leaked from the holes in his ceiling. Standing up from his swaying bed in his ramshackle apartment. He had urgent business to attend to; going to the bathroom, he emptied his bladder.
He rubbed his face and heard a knock on the door.
Cracking the door, he looked straight ahead, expecting to see someone.
He looked down and saw a disgruntled man staring back at him. Recognizing him, he opened the door and allowed the man to enter his room, he scanned the street with a cautious eye before closing the door.
The newcomer leaned against the wall and fiddled with the bionic replacement for his finger, something he did absentmindedly.
"What are you doing here Echo." Asked Saba. He had that name because he was the messenger for "group."
He caught Echo looking around the room, which was coming apart at its seams.
"Gosh, isn't this place a proper mess." He replied.
Echo's voice sounded like something out of bass speaker echoing out into the space; he bared marks on his throat a testament to the replacement of his voice box, another bionic implant.
"Don't dodge the question." Saba quipped back.
Echo turned around and shook his head.
"Who said I was?"
"Look, you up for another job."
Saba eyes turned into slits.
"I told you it was a onetime thing."
He had worked once as what was called a Transporter for their "group". He tried to avoid thinking of them as the syndicate that they were, it helped remove some of the reality of what he was doing.
Echo continued to stare at him some more before he said.
"See, you impressed the boss with your performance the last time you worked for us."
Pacing nervously in his small room while looking at the cracked floors, he heard Echo continue.
"The boss wants you to do another job for us."
Saba glanced at Echo's smiling face; he didn't like the way he was smiling.
"I know you could use the cash; it is easy money."
Echo bounced his gaze around the scruffy apartment while he said this.
Saba paced for a moment and considered it carefully, his shoulders sagged as he replied.
"Ok one more, one more time, I will do one more job."
Echo's smiled widened.
"Good, good the boss will be delighted."
He straightened himself from his leaning position.
"Same place alright, I've gotta run, more heads I need to clobber messages into you know, some things have to be said in person not over communicator."
With that he held the doorknob, a clanking sound resonated when his metallic fingers met it.
"Don't bail out on us last minute kid, else it won't be pretty picture."
The echo of his voice rattled the apartment.
Echo nodded his head as if complimenting himself on a job well done as he exited the apartment, leaving the door open behind him.
Saba looked out onto the street and spotted Echo's bright bald head as he weaved his way through the crowds.
For some reason he felt like this would not be the last time he would do a job. There would be another then another until before he knew it, he would be one of them.
In that moment he wondered.
'Its almost as if he left the door open as a message, telling me that my life would always be open for syndicate to enter anyhow they liked.'
Saba walked to the door and shut it forcefully, a dark look of his face.