“…Mom?”

        The Engineer found herself standing in a strange place, sky and soft white clouds all about. Above was a bright sun, but not blindingly so, just right to be part of the heavenly scenery. She glanced down in front of her, eyes widening at the boy before her. She knelt down to his height, one hand on his shoulder, the other affectionately on his cheek.

       “Rad…? Raddy?” She breathed, almost unable to believe it. It was him, really him. How was this possible? All manner of thoughts and questions rose to her head, but in the end, she concluded that she didn’t care… she was with her son now, that’s all that mattered.

         Having no other words, she embraced him into her arms, breathing out a heavy exhale of relief… but something didn’t seem right. She tried to breath in, but the smell of brimstone filled her lungs. Her son began to laugh, at first normal, but the tone slowly grew deeper and more menacing.

       “You don’t think you actually deserve this, do you?” He asked. The engineer felt something warm dripping onto her, and she pulled away to see the boy’s flesh melting off of him like hot candle wax. Desperately, she tried to pile the flesh back on, to keep it onto his bones, but a sudden gust of wind blew him and the scenery away, and she suddenly found herself in some kind of darkly-lit office, outside was molten rock and lava.

    She turned around, facing a large desk, at that desk a large demon, staring at her in silence. Suddenly a ring of fire engulfed her surroundings, and slowly began to close in. In the distance, she could hear a familiar voice with an echoing boom.

“Victory.”

–

【🔧】— The Engineer’s eyes flew open and she began to cough, at first sitting up, then falling back over to her side, and proceeded to vomit congealed blood. She breathed, shakily, trying to get a grip on herself and calm down, but failing miserably.

      She attempted to scream, but instead retched one last time, this time just clear bile, fluid burning her throat as it expunged from her mouth, then rolled over to her side to catch her breath. Shakily, she attempted to sit up, trying to take in her surroundings as best she could with her vision blurring in and out. There were two figures in the room, she could see that; she could smell and feel that they were either outside in the shade or inside some small building with no air conditioning and open windows.