James Axler - Dectra Chain

"Ready?" he asked. "Let's go."

The door swung easily on its hinges, shutting with a positive clicking sound. The locking mechanism triggered the mat-trans unit. Ryan stepped quickly across and sat down next to Krysty, touching her softly on the arm, receiving a half smile from under the fringe of her vermilion hair.

They experienced the usual flashing lights, and the first tattered shards of white mist appeared. The metal floor plates began to glow, and Ryan heard the rising hum that always accompanied a jump.

He closed his eye, seeing the patterns of pressure building inside the retina. His ears started to hurt, and he swallowed hard to clear them. The sound was like the waves rushing beneath the stem of the Salvation as she bucked through the rolling swell of the Lantic Ocean.

Ryan pushed the back of his hand against his eye, trying to ease the speckled color of the deepening pressure.

His last thought before the swirling darkness enveloped his brain was to realize that the dancing patterns looked amazingly like flowers. Blood-red roses.