Page 289 of Light Leech

There was no panting. No sound of feet hitting ground. Only silence, and the occasional quiet word.

I felt that same fatigue from the stairs settle in. This was not as harsh as that climb, yet the onset of cognitive lethargy was creeping in. The difference between sprinting and jogging ahead made sense. All I had to do was remain steady. I didn’t need to win or come close to it. All we needed was to finish in the top seventy five.

Plenty of competitors around us seemed to have forgotten that as they sprinted by us. Ralia nodded as I glanced at her, keeping our steady pace.

I tried to access my neurospace to message her and tell her to conserve breath.

No. That didn’t work. I was in my neurospace and had no reason to breathe. Why was everyone else silent when they had no reason to conserve breath? Were they as new to the neurocore as I was?

“Slow your thoughts, bakuh.”

Zeg. He was right. Every thought exhausted my mind even more. I was wasting my cognitive stamina on ideas and worries that did not matter in the–

“Focus!”

Right. Thanks.

Run.

No breathing.

No thoughts.

Empty concentration.

“You can think, bakuh, just keep your mind on the race. Worries will exhaust you more than any other thoughts.”

You understand this race?

“I understand this world, to a degree, but cannot explain everything. Observe. Take things in passively, just as you did while learning Amerikese by watching Republic entertainment.”

How do you know I did that?

“Your mind is ever present with mine.”

I didn’t waste cognition trying to understand that.

The corridor stretched ahead of us, unchanged from the entrance. Two walls, a high ceiling, the wide floor, and a continuous tunnel ahead.

Staring down the black abyss before us, there was no end in sight.

When would this end? How long had I already been running?

Despite my best efforts to focus on the present, I reflected upon my time with Deleon. That corporate imprisonment had ended but in the beginning, I never saw that end being anything other than my grave.

Past wars, especially those that “unified” Medislavia had neither clear beginnings nor ends, yet the end did come.

Am I understanding this correctly?

People stopped. Some began walking while others stared into the abyss ahead and screamed.

Am I naive for believing in an end?

“No, you just have to forget your present suffering and have faith that your efforts will pay off.”

Why couldn’t you have told me that from the beginning?

“Because we reached this understanding together.”