There was no sense of direction, only silence and drifting, flickering clusters of light, as though even the folds of time had been smoothed away.
Albeck's warning could only do so much. Even if the soldiers avoided touching the lights, the clusters drifted toward them of their own accord. There was no escaping them.
At the slightest touch, fragments of strange memories and emotions unfolded before their eyes.
The Blackwatch Legion was made up entirely of hardened soldiers with iron wills. But the consciousness clusters in Subspace could stir their most turbulent memories with a single touch.
Albeck knew that firsthand. He watched the soldiers drift slowly through the void. One man's veins bulged with agitation, another sobbed under his breath, and another clenched his fists... The space swallowed every breath, leaving their heartbeats as the only measure of time.
If they could not leave, Subspace would assimilate them all and turn them into new projections of consciousness.
But Aileen, the only one with a talent for Psionic Power, was still unconscious. There was no telling when she would wake.
How could they get out of Subspace?
Several ideas surfaced in Albeck's mind.
Subspace had no physical form. It was made entirely of consciousness. Separate, those consciousnesses were stars; gathered together, they became ribbons. The brilliant, dazzling clusters were projections of powerful beings.
They could approach one of those clusters and draw its attention, letting a powerful being discover them.
But... they had no way to tell whose side that being was on.
Red could mean passion or brutality.
Blue could mean Wisdom or deceit.
Pink could mean emotion or desire.
Green could mean hope or chaos.
There was mysterious purple, restless orange, disordered yellow...
They would have to gamble, and they would have only one chance.
The second idea