Worm: Monarch 16.8, 16.9

I saw a flicker of light from the lobby, the glow of the device, and Coil wheeling around to face us, his screaming lost in the midst of the shrill whine and the shouts of the others.

My eye to brain response was too slow to process everything that happened next.  I saw it in snapshots: the swelling energy of the sabotaged power supply, Coil’s body coming apart in pieces, the chairs of the auditorium and fragments of floorboards being thrown into the air as the explosion seemed to move in slow motion.

Then it hit us, and I saw only white, felt only pain.

—Worm: Monarch 16.8



I opened my eyes to look, saw only cloudy white.  Dust?  It was similar to when I woke up with bleary eyes, but no matter how many times I blinked, I could only see a white haze with vague patches of light and dark.  Blinking made my face burn where the skin of my eyelids and around my eyes moved.  More irritating was the sensation that I had something in my eyes, except no amount of blinking was helping.  They’d been damaged?

Stupid to look straight at the explosion.  I’d thought I had another half-second to grasp what was going on before I had to turn my head and shut my eyes.  Apparently that wasn’t good enough.

—Worm: Monarch 16.9