<P>"Good... Good." There was a pause. "Go. Now."
<P>
<P><JC>--- --- --- ---
<P>
<P>The wind lashed against his jacket. He peeled it off and watched it tumble away in the breeze, floating towards the dark body that everything faded into...
<P>
<P>Someone might see it. The alarm might be activated. Dominic didn't care. His pain had come back tenfold. His head throbbed. His vision reddened.
<P>
<P>He had found a maintenance ladder on the side of the building. It was difficult to get to; There were several guards along that side of the building, but eventually the opportunity fleshed into existence, and Dominic brushed past them like a shadow...
<P>
<P>Now he clung to it like an angered animal, slowly ascending upwards rung by rung... Eventually the top found him, and his body eased over the ledge, and he laid flat on his back on the wet gravel of the rooftop. The night sky swallowed his vision. He could not move. He felt as though thousands of knives stung their way through his flesh and cut at him with jagged edges. And then even the stars were gone, and he realized he was passing out just before he lost consciousness.
<P>
<P><JC>--- --- --- ---
<P>
<P>He was standing in a great void. He couldn't make out which color it was, only that it was a void. It might have been black, or white, or gray, or brown, or a swirl of those. It was undefined, indescribable. It rippled as though it were a liquid. And something rose from within it: A face. That of a man. It was completely hairless, and entirely smooth.
<P>
<P>It was a machine. A great steel head, protruding from Nothing, writhing soundless lips. It was blue. The color stood from the surrounding nonexistence like a light in darkness.
<P>
<P>Then it collapsed. The countless pounds of metal came down, with a silent crash, a silent groaning, nothing, as it was part of nothing.