I was lying on my back, one leg draped over an overturned office chair while the other foot was in a small trashcan, a pile of papers half-covering me. The first thing I saw as my eyes opened, some unknown time after the darkness took over, was a face I had never wanted to see again. Granted, there were a few who fit that description. This one, however, was Jennica. It was the black and white zombie version of that girl, looming right over me with a manic expression as she reached down for… something. My face? My helmet? Something else? Whatever, she was reaching for me as my eyes fluttered open and took that in. But I was too dazed to move at all.
Fortunately, one person who wasn’t still dazed was Bloodfall (and I couldn’t believe I really included the word ‘fortunately’ with that). The woman was right there, looming behind the Jennica zombie before grabbing her by the back of her neck to yank her away from me. There was an audible yelp as she hauled Jennica around, giving her a hard shove into what remained of the car (it was upside down and missing most of its pieces). As I lifted my head to look that way, I managed to catch a glimpse of Bloodfall shoving Jennica’s head partway through the open passenger side door before rearing back to kick that door as hard as she could. It slammed shut on the zombie’s neck with a sick crunch sound, and the grayscale body collapsed, laying still for a moment before it disappeared.
I was still flinching a bit from that, despite knowing that wasn’t actually the real Jennica, when Bloodfall appeared in front of me again. She made a noise of annoyance, reaching down to grab my arm. “Get the fuck up, you think this is some kinda vacation!? Move, we’ve gotta get our asses in gear, now!” She bodily yanked me to my feet and gave me a shove toward the other side of the room. “Those motherfuckers are gonna keep coming, and none of us have any actual powers!”
That was when I saw Mingle. This room was some sort of waiting area, an open space taking up about one third of this floor. Behind us and to either side were the windows, a large portion of which were just completely shattered after our violent entrance. The other side of the room was mostly taken up by a wall with a receptionist desk in front of it, along with a couple doorways on either side. One of those doors, on our left and toward the west side of the building, was standing open. That was where Mingle was, along with the broken mop handle she was smacking one of the zombies across the face with before driving the splintered end right into the figure’s throat.
Even as I took that in, Mingle was already pivoting to let another zombie that I hadn’t seen yet go stumbling awkwardly past her as it attempted to lunge at the woman. She’d yanked the mop handle out of the first zombie’s throat while it was in the midst of vanishing (nice of them to clean up after themselves like that). But she didn’t actually stab the one that had gone past her. Instead, her foot lashed out to kick the thing toward us while she continued her pivot to shove the piece of wood into the throat of a third zombie that had been right behind that second one.
Meanwhile, that second zombie that she had kicked toward us was taken right in the face with a solid metal clang from the fire extinguisher that Bloodfall had just yanked off the nearby wall. It was enough of an impact to knock the thing onto its back, where it just stared up blankly before she dropped to a knee and slammed that heavy extinguisher down into its face with a violent scream that said way too much about how much rage this woman still had inside her. That was enough for the zombie figure to twitch once, twice, then disappear like it had never been there.
I wasn’t paying much attention to that though. By then, I’d come to enough to remember the whole reason we were here in the first place, and what had been happening right before I sent the car off that parking garage and crashed into this building. With a choked gasp, I stumbled away from Bloodfall and over to the nearby window. I was twisting my head to peer up at the sky, muttering a prayer the whole time. There was a thick knot in my throat, and it felt like I could barely breathe. Please, fucking please, God, please, give me this. Please, I can’t lose them now.
There, right there, the view in the sky. I saw the parking lot, with dozens of random spots of fire burning all around. I saw metal spikes sticking out of the ground, a pillar of ice that seemed to have caught hold of a couple cars as it rose up, carrying them with it, and more signs of various powers. I saw so much evidence of Casura throwing an absolute tantrum. There was a ten-foot wide and equally deep hole in the ground where something had come out of the sky to slam into it, a semi-truck was a smoldering ruin with a heavy dent right in the side of the cab, like she had punched it over there, and I even saw a forty-foot long, six-foot wide ditch she’d made somehow.
But what I didn’t see, what none of those things had led to, was the dead bodies of my friends. They were alive. Paige, Sierra, all of them, they were all still alive! Maybe not in great shape, of course, but they were alive. They were alive! Scattered, hurt, confused, and still fucking alive!
Even as I looked that way, Casura was yanking Murphy off the ground. She was snarling in a blind rage, spinning around to slam the girl up against one of the overturned vehicles. Except I knew for a fact that she could have made Murphy hit that thing hard enough to shatter every bone in the girl’s body. But she didn’t. It wasn’t gentle by any means, but it wasn’t enough to kill her. Hell, it wasn’t even enough to seriously injure her. And when Casura made a long, silver metal blade emerge from her wrist before driving it right at Murphy’s face, it missed by inches. The blade was just driven smoothly through the side of the car, doing absolutely nothing to her.
Releasing Murphy, letting the girl collapse to the ground, Casura spun and held her hand out toward Dani. A geyser of white-hot flame erupted from her palm and rushed that way… only to split apart around that girl and her injured lizards. It completely missed them. The worst they’d get from that was a little toasty. There was no actual damage. There was no damage from any of this. Nothing Casura was doing was actually landing. She kept missing every single time.
That was why I could see all those fires, all the evidence of her using so many powers. She was trying to kill them. She was trying everything she could to finish them off. But she couldn’t do it. I was in here. I was in the control building and the last thing I’d said, the thing I’d screamed, was for her to not hurt or kill them. And now she couldn’t. No matter how hard she tried, no matter what power she used or how close she was, Casura couldn’t actually seriously harm them. She was stuck, for now. And God was she ever pissed off about it. She was right in the midst of a violent tantrum.
Of course, there was something else I noticed in all that too. Time was still moving in that sports game slow motion, not the ‘almost completely halted’ version they’d been in for most of the drive over here. Part of me had hoped that it’d slow down again, but whatever. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. At least she couldn’t kill them. Now I just had to hope like hell things stayed that way.
By the time I took all that in, Bloodfall was grabbing my arm to yank me away from the window. “Yeah, congratulations, they’re still breathing. But if you’d like to actually keep them that way, we need to get up to the top floor! That bitch is gonna kick Julie and me out of here any second now, unless the fact that we’re with you stops her from doing that! Either way, we’ve gotta fucking move! If we’re gone, you just keep climbing, you got it? Get your ass to that top floor and take the cunt out. Kick her out of that room and take over, or whatever you’ve gotta do. Just put a stop to this!”
That whole time, she was half-pulling and half-dragging me to the doorway where Mingle was still standing. The other woman, in turn, glanced over her shoulder. “She’s right, kid, we’ve gotta move. We have no idea how long it’ll be before Casura kicks us out of this building. We think she can’t do the same to you. But it’s… okay, it’s more than just thinking, more than hoping. It’s… just call it a feeling we have. We’ve had it since the moment you made it in here. You’re different. The way you came inside, the way-- you’re just different. But you’ve still gotta get up to that top floor.”
Right, who knew how long my… control or whatever it was would actually last. For all I knew, Casura might find a way to break through it and start killing again any second now. It could be temporary. Hell, these two might be wrong about Casura not being able to kick me out of this place. If she did, if she managed to send me back out to the street and broke this little bit of control I’d managed to exert… no. No, I wouldn’t let that happen. I had to get up there, I had to stop this before she hurt my friends, before she… before she did anything. I had to get to that room.
Unfortunately, this clearly wasn’t gonna be a simple matter of strolling up the stairs to the top floor. Let alone just taking an elevator ride. There were already a dozen more zombies making their way down the hallway just beyond this door, heading toward us. Or, to be more accurate, blocking us. This was all about slowing us down until Casura-- or whoever the fuck was up in that top floor, could break through the control I’d managed to exert and kill everyone out there.
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The zombies weren’t exactly rushing at us. They were strolling, taking their time getting here. Of course they were. They weren’t the ones who needed to hurry, we were. All they had to do was slow us down, and the longer they did that, the better chance all of this would all end horrifically.
“You ready, kid?” Bloodfall demanded, while she and Mingle stood a bit in front of me, facing the incoming figures with their makeshift weapons (broken mop handle and fire extinguisher) ready.
“No,” I replied simply, making them both glance briefly at me while I stepped back into that main room and moved quickly over to a four foot tall faux-gold metal lamp that was standing next to the receptionist desk. Pressing my foot against the cord near the base of it, I yanked hard on the lamp itself, ripping it free of that cord. Then I tossed the shade away and tested the heft of it as I was moving back to the hall. “Okay,” I announced while moving right between those two. My hands were already lifting the lamp into a swing that smacked the nearest zombie in the face.
As that figure was sent stumbling into the wall to one side, I swung again, that time driving the circular base into the side of its head with enough force to knock it to the floor. “Now I’m ready.”
The two women glanced at each other, made a pair of soft grunting sounds that seemed to be half-amusement and half-disbelief. Then Bloodfall told me to keep up, while driving her foot so hard into the throat of the zombie I had knocked down that it actually made the thing vanish. I knocked it down, but she was the one who finished it off. Why didn’t I follow up? I knew these things weren’t real people. They were just manifestations or something. They weren’t alive, so why did I hesitate there? Why didn’t I finish the job by hitting the thing hard enough to break it?
No time to worry about that, though. Those two had already started to run down that hall, and I had to sprint to catch up. As they crashed into that line of zombies approaching, the pair worked together with remarkable efficiency and coordination. They’d obviously been here for a very long time, and learned how to fight alongside each other, how to trust each other. Which… given how this entire thing had started, and what sort of person they both were, said a lot about their time in this place.
At least I could help. With the reach of the lamppost, I was able to step right up behind them and smack several of the zombies backwards to give the other two room to work with. My heart felt like it was trying to pound its way out of my chest, I was sweating a lot, my hands were shaking as I fought to keep my grip on it, and there was an ache in my shoulders just from those few swings. This was a lot harder to do without any powers. Even just the hard impact of hitting those things in the faces and chests several times, with enough force to actually knock them back out of the way for the other two to finish off, made me feel like I’d been working all day.
Together, the three of us worked our way down that hall. More zombies kept appearing, but with these two being so capable and in sync, those things didn’t stand much of a chance. All they could do was delay us, but I was still terrified that that would be enough. Every second that went by was another chance for Casura to figure out how to throw me out of this building, or just push past my control. The whole time, I kept chanting that mantra in my head. Don’t hurt my friends. Don’t kill my friends. Don’t hurt them. Don’t kill them. I made sure to think both, because I didn’t want her to try to rules-lawyer her way into killing them painlessly or hurt them right up to the edge of death. I had no doubt she would find a way to exploit something like that if I let her.
Finally, we reached the elevator. But those two gave it one look, muttered, ‘yeah, right’ to each other, and moved right on to the nearby stairs. Apparently they didn’t exactly feel like being stuck in a small box that was suspended by a cable in a tall shaft any more than I did. It wasn’t like it would be hard for Casura to send some zombies up to fuck with the thing. And even if we couldn’t actually die in this mind-world, falling that far would probably slow us down just a bit.
Mingle yanked the doorway to the stairwell open, then used that broken mop handle to break the glass surrounding the emergency fire hose before yanking it out. “Move, go, up the stairs!” With that snapped command, she twisted the handle to turn the hose on and began spraying down the crowd of zombies still trying to reach us. By that point, they were coming from both ends of the hall, including the area we’d just come from. Mingle thoroughly soaked them all, the strong pressure from the hose enough to make them stumble a bit. But it wasn’t actually stopping them.
Then I realized that stopping them with the water pressure was never the point. Bloodfall gave me a hard shove up into the stairwell before swinging that fire extinguisher around as hard as she could into the wall. It left a hole in the plaster, which she reached through to grab some electrical wires. With one hard yank, she ripped them free, tearing them in the process. That live wire was quickly shoved down into the pool of water Mingle had created, just as that woman tossed the hose down and stepped back. There was a vicious, horrible-sounding pop crackle, and all those zombies were fried. It completely cleared the hall, at least for a few seconds.
By that point, I was already backing away. As soon as I saw what was going to happen, I spun and sprinted up the stairs. So I only heard the crackle-pop, and saw the lights flicker. I was halfway to the next floor by the time the other two began to run up behind me. The way wouldn’t be clear for very long, so we might as well take advantage of the opening we had while it lasted.
As if to make that point even more clear, the door leading into the next floor started to open just as I reached it. With a grunt, I threw myself that way to slam into the thing, shoving it closed with some effort. Which lasted about two seconds before the things on the other side started pushing it open again, making me slide backward while I softly cursed the fact that I was so damn small.
Fortunately, the other two were right behind me. They both hit the door together to slam it shut the rest of the way just before the beings on the other side could force it open. Then Bloodfall yanked the metal lamp out of my hands and shoved it down in the space between the handle and the door. We let go of the thing and stepped back, watching very briefly as the zombies tried to shove it open. It came out a few inches, but the pole stopped it from going any further. Sure, in a few more shoves they’d be able to jar it loose, but we were already continuing our run up the steps.
If I had missed my powers before, running up flight after flight of stairs made that even worse. Not that I couldn’t do it, obviously. If anything, I’d become even more of a runner than before. My powers had made me get used to having tons of cardio. I could honestly probably race up and down all these stairs several more times if I had to. No, it wasn’t that running made me tired, it was that it took so damn long to get anywhere. I desperately wanted to paint my way up to the top floor immediately. Fuck, I could look up and see the ceiling all the way up there. If I had my paint, I would’ve been there already. This manually walking (or running in this case) stuff was for the birds. Or-- basically everything out of the water that wasn’t a bird, now that I thought about it.
More of those zombies kept trying to ambush us, pouring out the doorways at each level. But they were always just a bit too late, coming through a second or two after we passed that floor and kept going to the next. However they were being summoned, or whatever was happening, it was bringing them in too slowly. We left them behind us. It wasn’t worth turning to engage. They weren’t quite shambling like ‘actual’ zombies, but they weren’t up to sprinting either. They just sort of did a speedwalk thing. And they definitely weren’t coordinated at all. It made me wonder just how much direct control Casura had over them. Maybe she was just too busy doing her level best to break through my commands and murder all my friends to put that much effort into directing these things.
We were two floors from the top when our luck finally gave out. Part of it, anyway. The door there slammed open just as we reached that landing, the zombies pouring out just ahead of us to block the way. Immediately, the other two went to work, throwing themselves right into the crowd. Mingle yanked one of the grayscale figures by the hair to pull it away from me while it was in midlunge, giving it a shove back into the group while shouting over her shoulder. “Just keep going!”
So, I ran. I raced up those stairs and left those two behind, dodging sideways as the next door started to open. Grimacing at the sound of fighting behind me, I kept running, my feet pounding against the floor as I went up the steps three at a time, almost falling repeatedly.
There, right there! The door into that top floor loomed ahead of me, and I threw myself at it, slamming into the thing with enough force to slam it open. It went much easier than I expected, leaving me stumbling across plush carpet so quickly I almost slammed my shin into a low coffee table.
It was a penthouse. This place was just like any of the incredibly fancy hotel suites I’d been to with my parents, with wide, floor to ceiling windows overlooking the city below. Except instead of showing the actual city, they showed the view outside this mindscape. They showed that parking lot where Casura was still trying and failing to kill my team, my friends.
“No, no, come right in. No need to knock or anything,” a sarcastic voice greeted me. “Just barge right through my door and stomp your way over my carpet. Wanna raid my fridge while you’re at it?”
My gaze snapped over to the nearby bar, where a woman stood. She looked sort of like the unmasked form of Mingle, but different. Her hair was lighter and spikier. It was like-- like she was a combination of Mingle and Bloodfall, of course. That’s exactly what she was. This was Casura, and she was both of them put together.
Sipping from a glass of what looked like whiskey, Casura gestured with it. “Take a seat, make yourself comfortable.
“Let’s have a little chat.”
Joke Tags: Hold On? Hold On? If Bloodfall And Mingle’s Mind Selves Are Right Out There? Then Who The Fuck Is This!?
