New Hope: Book 1
21

Ellie stood hypnotized and blinded by the light beaming from the facade of the building when she felt a strange tightening and wringing in her stomach. It was like a combination of butterflies in the stomach with a sudden, albeit painless, contraction of all the muscles below her chest. Her head spun a little and she lost her balance, falling onto all four limbs. This feeling lasted only but a second but it was so intense that she felt sick. Then she realized the light is no longer blinding her. She blinked a few times and saw that she was no longer standing before a wall and looking at the shining symbols of the artifacts’ builders. She was inside an enormous, dimly lit chamber. The room must have been very high because she could not even see the outlines of a ceiling.

“Where am I?” Ellie asked herself puzzled, stood up slowly and looked around.

“Lieutenant Lassiter!” she asked through the radio. “Julius!” she said a little less confidently. “Anybody there? Hello, over!” she was trying to establish contact with anybody, her voice increasing with panic. She must have been inside the building, but how did she get here? Ellie couldn’t remember walking through any door or opening. Only the strange feeling in her stomach and dizziness. How did she come here? Why wasn’t anybody answering?

“Hello, can anyone hear me?” she asked again. “I think I’m inside the building. Hello!” she almost yelled, her hopes fading. Only silence. She couldn’t even hear any static. “The construct is probably damping the radio waves. Surprise, surprise,” she said angrily through clenched teeth. “I should have known,” she scolded herself for not resisting to enter the sequences of the images on the facade of the building. Though truth be told, she didn’t have much of a choice in the matter at the time. Ellie felt like her body was on autopilot and she could only stand there and watch herself make sophisticated and complicated gestures - like entering an access code to a prehistoric building.

Right in front of her, in the dim light of the room, there was... A throne? Ellie was surprised. A stone chair stood a few dozen feet before her. It looked like it was forged in rock, the same color as the bedrock. Very intriguing, she thought. “Then again, what’s not weird in a situation when one minute I’m standing in front of a flaming-red building in the middle of nothing on the Moon, and then inside some enormous room without windows and an illuminated throne in the middle,” sighed Ellie, smiling a little to herself.

The large throne was the only piece of furniture in the whole room, which gave the impression that it was not here by chance. Through the veil of darkness, Ellie tried to discern some details of anything around her, but it was impossible. It was absolute black. Ellie immediately thought that everything here had to have some meaning so she took a few steps toward the only furniture in the entire room. When she was at arm’s length from the throne, it started shining in a blue light, like the levitating orb on the Moon not so long ago.

Ellie hesitated a while. The last time she got so close to an alien artifact, it ended in an unpleasant fall, loss of consciousness, and near-death as her air supply almost ran out. Not to mention the series of strange hallucinations and experiences, which finally led her and Julius to a secret moon base. Albeit, the latter wasn’t exactly by choice. Now she was here.

“Meh...” she sighed, resigned. Ready for another round, Ellie touched the armrest of the throne. Nothing. No electric discharges, no visions, no intense light. Hm, perhaps I was needlessly concerned. She sat down on the chair to catch her breath and think about how to get out of this twisted situation.

She barely sat down when a bright and intense light flooded over her from above. The throne tilted back to an almost lying down position, and then the astronaut realized that she’s starting to lose consciousness... Again!

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