#102

The elevator platform sat at the bottom of the Tower once its users were done with it. The smashed surface was still host to Mark's body, which had been totally disregarded; more effort had been poured into silently noting the crushed form of the Death Guardian robot, which had been lying at the bottom of the shaft (a fondly regarded antique). Mark slept the sleep of the dead.

In an ironic sense, at the back of his mind, he thought the phrase “sleep of the dead” was sort of hilarious.

Whatever remained of the young man was yanked back to seriousness as he maintained a sort of “x-ray vision” lock on the two. As he watched them, he didn't question it, just as he didn't question the fact that he was not just badly wounded and observing the two walk away—he was genuinely dead, but there was, as mentioned, something that remained.

At the back of his head, which was the only active part of his head in this state of being, he wondered where they were going. The second he thought this, an answer came; because in death, answers sometimes come quickly, for those who have earned it, or at least tried hard enough to earn it. He heard the voice say that they were going to the Blue Tower.

Even as white light surrounded his corpse and restored his soul to his body, in another process he didn't quite understand (but didn't question), he did wonder sincerely what the hell was up with all of these of goddamn Freudian symbolist things.

Then, to put it simply, he woke up.