{The Search}

It all happened so fast.

In one moment, Valera was right in front of Aldrich, her shield readied, her newly regenerated fist eagerly clenched to bash in the foe known as Kinesis's head once more. Her previous blows had struck true to great effectiveness, after all, cracking open a hole in that annoying jar head.

But then everything changed. The entire room, full of golemic contraptions that she now knew as 'drones' and 'fridges' – yes, she had been studying avidly whenever she could about the real world on the marvelous invention known as the Net – just collapsed in on itself.

It was like the fabric of space was held up by just a few safety pins, and those pins had been loosened in one fell instant. Reality broke. The firmness of the ground, the greys of the metal tiles, the dry coolness of the air – all of it just swirled together into a mass of everything that became nothing.