A moment later, my body was unceremoniously hurled onto something solid and unforgiving, and the impact sent a violent shockwave straight through my skull. The thick helmet slammed against the hard ground with a deafening clang, and a sharp, blinding pain exploded inside my head as if my brain itself had cracked against stone. My legs buckled immediately, my knees forced down into an awkward kneeling position, while the helmet encasing my head began to vibrate and shift, as though unseen mechanisms were awakening within it.
For several agonizing seconds, the sound of metal grinding against metal echoed endlessly inside my head, overlapping and reverberating until it felt as if the noise itself was drilling into my thoughts. A suffocating pressure bore down on my skull, growing heavier and heavier, until—slowly, almost deliberately—I felt the thick helmet being lifted off my head inch by inch.
Then, all at once, darkness vanished.
