He fell.
Nightmare.
First the breast-bursting time of pounding heart and forgotten breathing, the madness of an ancient ruin rising out of its element, faster and faster, smaller and smaller into the darkening sky, a patch, a pot, a speck, a hint of light where the high sunlight touched it. And then a numbness and pain when the breath came again.
From somewhere the pressure of laughter; from somewhere else, a fury to hate it and force it down.
A time of mad shouting arguments, words slurred into screams, the widening crescents of laughing eyes, and a scuttling shape escaping him, chuckling. He did it… and he tripped me besides.
Kill…
And nothing to kill; racing into the growing dark and nothing there; pound-pound of feet and fire in the guts and flame in the mind. Falling, hammering the uncaring sod.
The lonely return to the empty, so empty, so very empty hole in the ground. Stand in it and yearn upward for the silver cables you will never see again.
A yellow-red eye staring. Bellow and kick; the detector rising too, but only so high, turning over and over, smashed, the eye blind.
The long way back to barracks, dragging an invisible man called Agony whose heavy hands were clamped upon a broken foot.