Silence Falls

A minute past in Bert's realistically lucid dream world before Hermanni stood up from where he had been sitting with his knees drawn up again his chest at the edge of Bert's bed, and sauntered to the very center of the room. Tilting his head back, his blazing blue and green eyes peered skyward to the ceiling in reticence. He lingered there for a long time, doubtlessly mulling over Bert's broadcast that he was giving up on trying to escape the facility now that the competition had been hoisted up several impossible notches. With all the state-of-the-art technology and ploys involved, Bert had no idea how long it would take him to reconstruct a new strategy of escape or if there was even one to work with at all. Hermanni exhaled through his nose aloud enough for his host to hear from where he sat on his bed with his back braced against his headboard.

Bert watched him the entire time in reciprocal quiet, but became curious when Hermanni lazily raised a pale hand above his head, as if he were reaching for something only he could see. What could that have been, Bert had no idea for he couldn't see a damn thing himself. Frowning, he scanned between his ceiling and Hermanni, mystified. “Um, Hermanni...what are you doing?”

“Shh...” Suddenly, Hermanni's beautiful face was spotlighted by a light, a radiant light like the sun on a dazzling summer day on the surface. The kind of light none of the patients had seen or felt in years.

“Wha-” Bert spouted in complete astonishment, clambering further into the headboard as he peeked up to discover that there was a crack in his ceiling that hadn't even been there before. Upon further scrutiny, it wasn't a tiny fissure, but it also wasn't the size of fissure that anyone could ascend through if they were determined to escape.

Bert narrowed his eyes disbelievingly, reviewing the split and the dream version of Hermanni, who had not migrated from his position. He may have had no idea where the rift had come from, considering it wasn't there before, but he could believe in this dream world of his that Hermanni had been accountable for it's debut. Not the real Hermanni, but this dream version of him where his eyes flared and he had...well superpowers. Even in his dreams, after observing something like this, Bert would be too uptight to close the distance between Hermanni and what he had done. But this was a delusion. None of this was substantial, not a damn thing. Gradually, Bert rose from his bed and crept to stand next to Hermanni. The closer he got, the jitter in his stomach melted away like a chunk of ice that left him more complacent.

The alluring magical boy peeked at Bert with a smile, then back up towards the breach he had somehow made. Following his survey, Bert beamed in fascination at the crack since it had clearly enlarged in the center during the past few seconds. “Holy shit, what the fuck...”

“No...no, it's not possible.” The gap was now grand enough to examine through and escape from too if you weren't as distracted as Bert currently was. What he saw immediately made Bert conceal his face with his arm and shuffle away until his back met his bedroom wall. “N-No, stop, please! I-I can't...I just can't...”

What Bert had seen was something a person incarcerated years underground knew they'd never see again. Reviving himself, Bert deliberately lowered his arm to confront the scene again not that he felt he needed to. At the first short second glance alone he could now recall in detail of that world he sighted, it had saturated itself so thoroughly in his mind it was inscribe there like the tattoo of a longing wish, a dream unfulfilled.

There had been a huge ball of blinding light, it's permeating warmth seeping directly into your skin. The canvas behind it was familiar blue with random white smudges of various sizes strewn everywhere. And, even though he couldn't see them because they were out of sight, Bert knew below that blue canvas and ball of light was an battalion of transcending green giants.

“The sun...the sky...and the trees.” Bert established from his old memories. What he regarded through that growing hole was the outside world he and others like him had been unwillingly snatched from. “Oh my god...that's...that's the real world. The surface.”

Frantically hastening back to Hermanni's side, Bert accompanied him in gaping through the fissure at the supernatural scene. A smile quickly stretched across the dream Hermanni's face at the look of admiration on Bert's face. He looked like a child seeing an amusement park for the first time. The look of pure wonder and the innocent want for a world that felt just too far out his reach was charming.

“Above world. You desire, yes?” Hermanni gingerly queried, not wanting to perturb the fascination on Bert's face. It was the expression that he'd never seen in anything but these beings before him. He preferred Bert's expression, it was honest and simple with no deceptions.

“Are you fucking kidding me?! Yeah, of course I want it! It's everything I once held for granted, but now is all that I want to be surrounded by every day.” Expelling a deep serene sigh, Bert grinned up at freedom permeating through several feet of dirt, and concrete. “This is crazy, I mean...I can actually FEEL the warmth of the sun right now and hear the birds...those are birds that I'm hearing now, right? I haven't heard them in so long, I don't know if I even remember what they properly sound like.”

“Yes, the singing feathers.” Hermanni mumbled distractedly, his fixation on Bert as he casually strayed around him. Bert calmly gave him a nod, refusing to separate his eyes from the breach in fear of waking up from this dream too soon. Never has he had such a brilliant dream of the world above him and right now it felt like he was living it. ”Bert give up? No. You go. Plan now. Purpose in your hands.”

Bert recoiled when he felt fast heat flourishing in the palm of his hand but before he could inspect Hermanni took that hand in his and raised it to his face. A blazing ball of heat was forming in Bert's hand, a miniature sun. Eye enlarging, Bert yelled in fright of being enveloped into flames. “JESU-”

“Sun. Power. Strength. Leadership. You have.” Hermanni explained, glancing down at the dwarf sun he had spawned for Bert on his palm. Overcome with emotion, Bert's eyes began to fill with tears he couldn't begin to understand. “Above world, not far. Close, very close. Climb to top. Fight way to top.”

Hermanni's grasp tighten on Bert's hand and curled it closed, snuffing the small sun in a puny wisp of smoke. Bert was 100% aware to every word that swam in his mind. The sun, he still felt it in his hands...hell, he had held it IN his hands and damn if it didn't feel real. Hermanni was trying to tell him the world wasn't so far from their reach. The rift in the ceiling showed proof of that. Hermanni was trying to give him the breakthrough he needed to keep going, the energy he needed to absorb to not give up, the words to propel him back on his feet, the reason to keep fighting. Only how? How could Bert do this with little insight of the facility and without getting everyone and himself killed? The thought of failing his friends was almost too much to want to go through with this breakout. He can't lose Otep and the girls, or Cris. He can't. He simply can't.

Hermanni sensed all of this and turned to face him, placing his hands on Bert's shoulders so he'd absorb his every word. “Listen. Everyone safe. Everyone alive. Must set Hermanni free. Release me. I protect you, I protect family. No one harm you and family. I vow.”

But Bert wasn't satisfied by the look of somber disbelief on his face. “No offense Hermanni, but you're just some slender girly looking man. You, nor I are in any shape shape to protect anyone down here nevertheless a bowl of fruit. Trust me, man, you can't fight the army of muscle down here. You're not strong enough. None of us are.”

Hermanni tilted his head to the side and said genuinely. “Your God, no time for children. He save you? You trap here. What he done?” He was pleased when the light from Bert's eyes dimmed considerably. “Trust me. No Creator. I protect you. Release me. Or...”

The division in the wall splintered before somehow sealing itself up completely, not leaving any discernible clue that it had ever been there. The sunlight that had been streaming through dissolved into nothing. Bert's eyes widen in dismay that he was once again immersed into icy darkness. His hand that held the sun started to grow cold again.

“No sun. No life.” Hermanni intimidated serenely.

“But you can't-” Bert began to respond though he had no idea why he was going to quarrel with a dream rendition of Hermanni...who he was beginning to sense was more authentic than he'd care to admit. The doubts of whether this moment was actually a dream or not was beginning to unsettle him because if it was real, where was Otep, how the hell did Hermanni make a tunnel in his ceiling that reached all the way to the surface and what the hell was he?

“Release me. Release my powers. Above world, to you, to family. Your choice. Above world yours. Free me.” With that, Hermanni set his palm on Bert's forehead as if feeling his temperature, smiling reassuringly. Bert blinked his eyes, and instantly found himself reclining against the wall the way he had before he fell asleep in the first place. Naturally, he had to have been asleep that whole time Hermanni had been here. The room was now dingy, the ceiling smooth and intact...and Hermanni nowhere in sight. It was a dream, just the nonsensical working of his imagination.