escape
It isn't easy being a blind mech pilot.
The eyes, out of all the sensory organs, are the easiest to take for granted. They serve as the final confirmation of causation for everything: the sight of the something is always the final nail in the coffin on the consequences of one's own actions. So, for a blind pilot, there is no confirmation.
There is no trust that those screams you heard rattling outside your cockpit were the final cries of lives you failed to protect, or merely ones of terror, of souls who will escape with their lives.
You can only assume the best, or the worst, as Rishal Levy would tend towards.
And its that assumption that Rishal considers as he stumbles back to his quarters. For two weeks in the hell that was Somnato, that was what he'd pondered most.
It's all millions of miles away now, though. He arrives in the communal chamber, slowly walking towards his own room before stopping in his tracks and heading towards Silas' room.
His hand brushes across the face of the door before drawing back and clenching into a fist hovering an inch awar from the steel panel. It lingers there for a moment as he contemplates for far too long.
I don't want to be a burden on him, not now.
He stumbles back and enters his own room, quickly throwning down the his equipment before collapsing on the bed.
He lays there, for a moment, on his back and staring at nothing (though, he is always staring at nothing).
Eventually, though, he stumbles to his desk, and instead collapses on the office chair. He reaches over, feeling across the desk, before he arrives at his personal OMNInet terminal. A long cord comes out of it, which he violently attaches to a port on the side of his ocular-epidermal implant. The starting screen fills his vision. Maybe now, for a moment, he can find some form of escape.