The extraction

Context: Vesper catches Rain off guard and fully extracts his memories. His three fingers press onto Rain's forehead and spread apart as the record takes glass form. The UI, environment, and game itself are stripped from the screen until only the void and small acts of choice remain. No hidden or completed self interrupts the extraction. Rain later regains factual access to the story without recovering the feeling that he lived it; the exact state of the prism and return mechanism remains an open mechanical question.

The environment around me pulsed with a bright glow for a moment. And subsequently began to fade around me.

I was almost viewing this as a ghost watching my own life snapshotted in front of me. As if a photographer was hired to wait to take a perfect shot of the fight.

There I was, in a slightly hunched position in a motion of standing. Vesper, directly in front of me, held my forehead with his three left most fingers. A hint of a glass shard was appearing to emerge from my forehead.

To my left was Claire, on the ground, grasping her stomach and reaching her left hand towards me. A horrified look was painted over her face. 

To my right was Roxana, limping towards me, her lighter primed to activate. A pained grimace on her face with a direct glare towards Vesper.

It was all disappearing into a blank white scene.

Before I felt a eerie sense of relief

“No, I fucked up again!” - I shouted into the void. An expected silence followed as the weight of my mistake pulled my heart inwards on itself.

“Why can’t I be like them? Why can’t I just simply do the things I say I can do?”

Crystals started to emerge in an almost mocking, comedic way. Each crystal showing a moment I remember.

I saw the meeting I had with the rest of the group. The moment we all pooled our hands together in unison to confront Vesper.

I saw the moment in the asylum where I saw the smile on that patient’s face. The one that angered me so much without any reasonable explanation why. 

“I know! I already know! I haven’t forgotten the promises I’ve made. Yet I can’t do a single thing properly.”

I saw my face the moment before we left the train, the smirk that run across my face with a confidence of a man with all the pieces at the palm of his hand.

“Who the hell do I think I am? Being so sure everything would work out.” 

These memories were being pulled away from me and into an opening in the blank white scene. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything about it cause I knew it was worthless.

I flimsily held my hand up to catch a crystal floating towards the hole. It phased through without any semblance that I was part of reality in the first place.

It was over. I lost… I lost despite everything being lined up. With Claire’s breakthrough in predicting every single position of Vesper’s moves. With Roxana’s miracle of being able to stand up and go with us into the confrontation.

“I guess I’m a liar. A fraud trying to pretend to be someone who could make the impossible possible. Another fucking coward who can’t bring himself to let go of all these past mistakes from pulling me down.”