A spiny vine snagged my pant leg and tore a long streak through it as I pushed through the foliage. This... place... this strange forest on the edge of the rocky outcropping... something did not feel right. Yes, it was alien, I knew that much, but still...

The colors were brilliant, and the shapes of the trees and the surrounding bushes and vines did not have form as I would have expected. They seemed to have an almost fluid movement in and out of themselves. It was truly beautiful, although admittedly unsettling.

My datapad made another attempt to initialize. First a whisper of a beep, and then the faint whine of current as it juiced itself up. The screen flickered; nothing managed to be displayed, but I heard more laughter. The tinny speaker was only just playing the sound of Liquid's unmistakable chuckle. Still unresponsive, I gave the datapad a few good whacks.

"Control, I am blind out here without the datapad. What is the major malfunction?"

I waited three minutes before trying to raise them again. "Control?"

Nothing. The only reply I received was Liquid's consistent laughter, rising and falling in a crescendo, as if it was responding to what i was saying.

I could feel my heart rate increase. Anger began welling up inside me, and my forehead was wet with perspiration. The forest itself seemed to respond to Liquid's incessant laughter, its fluidity and madness of color becoming more extreme in tandem with the spikes of sound coming from the datapad's speaker. I could feel it... it was entering my head once again... I was not just hearing the sound around me, I was feeling his laughter inside me, almost as if it was coming from me...