To my immense and truly indescribable surprise, Ash’s formidable display of rage frightens away the darkness. I can see starlight. The air is warming up a bit. Ash shrieks in grander horror this time, as she finds Ash laid upon the ground, motionless. She sees him, and instinctively her voice explodes once again. She runs to him. Kneeling at his side, she bellows into the darkness once more, and lifts his head. I can see enough of his torso to witness his breath, and I am relieved by this at least minutely.In an unfortunate turn, my relief is allowed life for but a moment. With overt hostility now, the wind roars back at her. It bellows down upon her with great intensity, then very casually, very carelessly, it changes direction. In an inexplicable bout of thermal shear or false vacuum, or something equally preposterous, it forms an updraft of inexplicable power considering its altitude and proximity from the ground. With a moderately disgusting ease, the disturbance outside snatches her off the concrete and holds her aloft. It’s only for a moment, but it feels much longer. Regardless of what I see, I have to imagine that for Ash it’s an eternity. As the darkness stares at her – at all of us – I can almost see the eyes it stares with. For the slimmest sliver of a second, I feel its teeth, and that feeling becomes a thought that imprints on the onslaught of terror I am perceiving, so… there they are. Only for a moment. For some reason, this to me is the obvious step too far, and I know that despite the obscene absurdity of my surroundings, that this is just a trick of my frightened, fatigued mind.With a final snarl, the suspension of the moment breaks, and Ash is flung higher and sent careening toward the center of the umbral mass. I know she is conscious, but she is as quiet as Ash had been when it took him. Perhaps it’s shock. Or terror. Probably even a bit of true horror for her. She had to see him lying there like that up close.“What the hell was that?”I look to my left and respond in awe, “I have no fucking clue. I’ve honestly got zero insight to offer at this point.”He pauses and considers me. “I don’t imagine that’s a comfortable position for either of us.”“No,” I sigh, “I don’t imagine it is. What do we do about him?”We are slowly being forced backward as the doors inevitably continue their trajectory. “We can’t get him now. It’s almost closed, but I can start it opening again. It’s just…”“It’ll get in.”“It might not…”I stop him with my eyes and interrupt. “But it could.”“Yeah…” He exposed the thought behind his tongue with the tone of the word.Just as we are about to debate the ethics and relative value of each plan… and each life, we both shake our heads. “What do we do, then?”“I don’t know,” I say as I ponder. As my thoughts circle the events of the night, they return to the same one over and over. Perhaps thinking it repeatedly has brought it on, but I feel the slightest tickle at the edge of my sinus. Right where it is breached by the nostril. A sharp, bright feeling. “But I have an idea.”“I’m not going to like this, am I?”“Probably not, no, but, that’s only because you lack faith.”“I do?”“I think so,” I tell him with an honesty I believe to be Kadıköy Escort completely devoid of apology or brutality. “Don’t worry. I got this.”“And you’re basing that on?”“Confidence. Training. Ethical drive.”“Not survival instinct though, right?”“No. That doesn’t really stand a chance in the face of the other three.”He rolls his eyes a little, but nods his head. “Yeah. Point taken. Do your thing, I guess.”I force some brightness into my eyes, a smile onto my lips, and say, “I’ll be right back.” Before he says anything, I tell him, “Get ready to open this thing again.”“I’m on it.” As he starts walking, he looks back and says, “If it means anything, you do have it.”“Have what?”“My faith,” his words are cheesy, but I find them to be unexpectedly comforting right now. Inspiring, maybe. As if I really even know what those concepts are in this perceptually deepening tarpit of a reality.“Thanks.”Deep breath. Blink. Eyes shut tight. Full on sneeze. My head flings itself forward so far that I should have hit it on the door. Instead, I’m right where I wanted to be. Right where I intended to be, anyway. More or less. Before I do anything, I am surprised to find that I am falling. Not far, but a meter and a half, two meters. Still, I made it. Absorbing the impact with the careful bending of my knees is no strain on my ability, though.Ugh. Why are there so many fucking mysteries to solve? I should get my own reality show. Oh… There’s a curious thought. Doesn’t really fit the pattern, but if I find out that this is all for someone’s entertainment, I’m going to set them on fire.Ash is stirring, but only slightly. I take long, efficient strides but I’m careful to avoid seeming like I have an urgent task or that I might be trying to help him – not that I have any idea what I’ll do when I try and pick him up. When I arrive at his side, I take him by the hands to try and wake him gently before I guide him to his feet. The moment I touch him, he wakes, and his whole body goes rigid. His ankles swing together as though they are being dragged by magnets and he is pulled away from me.Engulfed in thickened shadow up to the shoulders, he looks at me with cold desperation and helpless panic. He knows. There isn’t anything else I can do, so when the unknown force pulls him taught against my grip, reflexively, I let go. It can’t do any good to go with him, but the amount of comfort I find in that is essentially immeasurable. The moment he slips away from me, his silence turns to sickening screams. The final echoes of his terror ring in my ears just as Ash’s do, and I am… broken. Only for a moment, but for it I am utterly devastated by my failure.Dizzied by the shock of the experience, it takes me almost too long to start moving. I hear the whispering call of the violent air and I am pulled to it. I feel it in me… a tightening grasp on the beating of my heart, tethering me inescapably to the terrifying sound. Just in time, I dodge its embrace and skitter backward. My spine curves back as I stand in horror. It feels as though I’m being pushed away by the force of my enemy’s retreat… Or perhaps I’m being pulled backward by a force which Kadıköy Escort Bayan means to protect me. Nothing about my movement feels as voluntary as it ostensibly is – as logically it must be.The push and pull cease altogether now and I just fall. I land hard, and it hurts. It hurts quite a lot, actually. There’s nothing rusty at least, but the roof beneath me is scattered with pebbles and crumbs of broken concrete. I flop forward as a shard of despair stabs violently through the makeshift barrier which isolates it, and my whole body just sort of folds closed at the waist.With bits of rocky conglomerate sticking to my skin in the imprints they have made, I stand gradually and fearfully. It’s regrouping. From out here it is almost cloud-like in behavior, but upon a cursory inspection it seems to defy a lot of the basic laws of fluid dynamics. It doesn’t mix with any other gasses – say, nitrogen dioxide – and it doesn’t seem to impact their movement, either… to say nothing of the fact that there’s no more vapor inside it than the salty mist out here. Between the pain and the urgency of my situation my training snaps back in and I summon my ability to focus once more.The clutter in my mind is a distinct sort of chaos, and it’s that chaos I’m relying on right now. I don’t know enough about how it works, so all I can do is try and recreate the circumstances surrounding the previous… “jumps”, I guess? I really don’t know what to call them. “Teleportation” seems too grandiose.Unfortunately, this time is a little different. My eyelids clamp shut and start to flutter in the same moment. The spheres beneath them roll here and there of their own volition, dancing a dance that everyone in the club is mistaking for a fit of some kind. We know it’s not, of course. I wouldn’t be thinking so clearly about it. Regardless, I think… I think I’m about to…Hello, blindness. Salutations, familiar sense that I’ve been falling a little bit too long. What’s new is the continued unpredictability of my ocular muscles. All of my muscles, now. It’s so fucking cold, but this can’t just be a series of violent shivers. This just isn’t how shivering works. My teeth are chattering, but every part of me is flinching and spasming. This is not how I wanted this to go. I’m sure I look like I’m undergoing a particularly violent grand mal seizure, and I feel terrible for scaring him more than all of this already has.Hmm… Feels like I’m horizontal now. Yes, I’m sure of it. I don’t know if this is the darkness of the cloud or something different. It feels different, but assumptions are the enemy of discovery. There’s no way it’s taking this long for me to hit the ground. Even though I’m somewhere else, I’m still here. More or less, anyway. For a slow moment, my mind loses touch with the nerves and senses of its vessel, fading deeper into nothing until I am brightly awakened by the thud of two arms catching me and cool electric lighting from beyond the interior door of the antechamber.He can’t hold me for all that long after catching me so unexpectedly, so he sets me as gently and efficiently on my feet as he can. “Hey…”“Hey,” he replies, “How are you doing Escort Kadıköy that?”“Still…” I drift away for a moment before finding my words again, “Not really… sure.”“Well, it’s weird.”I look at him outright quizzically, “That notwithstanding, I’m going to keep doing it anyway, if it keeps saving me, you, or us.”“That’s not what I meant. Sorry. This just keeps getting stranger. All of this.” He is visibly exasperated.“Yeah.”We sit. I’m dizzy. The light flickers on for a moment, but only lingers a few seconds before fluttering away again. We’re sealed in. I shouldn’t think hermetically, but by the looks of that door I’d say that we’re locked down pretty tight. I don’t think it can get in here, but we certainly can’t go back out either.He sighs fearfully and whispers, “I guess we’re waiting it out, then.”“That or we try the other door.”“Don’t you think we should stay as still and quiet as possible?”“I do, but the nagging of foggy memories of a veritable cornucopia of life or death experiences, and piles of anecdotal evidence are all telling me that action is usually better than inaction.”His voice is riddled with trepidation and lightly peppered with outright terror. “If you’re sure, I trust you.”“Good then,” I say as I carefully move toward the interior door, “Let’s get this open.” For just a moment, as it is illuminated dimly by what light is on the other side, I become uncomfortably aware of my body. He smiles. “Looks easier than the last one, at least.”“It does. What are you smiling at?”“You look nice in that light.”A fragment of a smile appears on my lips before I control myself. “Find something long and metal in all this scrap we can use to pry it open. I’m going to try and get a better look at what’s inside.”“Yes, ma’am.”It’s not that I’m not gratified – and a little amused – that he has become visibly aroused after having said that to me, but I also don’t want there to be any ambiguity, so… “Don’t ever call me that again.” The killing stare behind my words pierces him like lightning.“You bet.”He proceeds toward the exterior door and shuffles about in search of something specific. I’m glad he has an idea of what he’s after. Rather triumphantly, he holds up the piece of metal we’d used to jam the front door open earlier. I can see in the limited silhouette of the exterior lamps that it was pinched closed and flat by the door as it was forced out. “How’s this?”“Good thinking! Bring it here.”As he walks, he asks, “Hey, what’s your rank?”I’m not as genuinely befuddled as I sound, but I’m definitely curious. “Why do you ask?”“I can just see myself wanting to know that at some point. Making conversation, really.”“Lieutenant, Junior Grade Violet Imogene Mallory.”“Sounds impressive when you say it that way, Lieutenant Mallory.”“It’s not. Like, at all.”“I know.”“It’s a fancy way of saying that because I went to school longer, I have more authority than a lot of soldiers, sailors, and specialists who have been doing their jobs for twenty longer than I’ve been alive.”“I know what it means,” he says, “Though that’s not necessarily the way I’d have said it to you.”“Then you’re a better woman than I.” He looks at me quizzically for a moment. “Or… whatever.”“I just meant that I like you enough to be polite, regardless of my feelings about armed forces.”“Well, that’s an obtuse way of saying so. But, thank you… And, how do you feel about the military?”“Badly. I’m only realizing that now though, and honestly, I don’t know why.”“I’m not unsympathetic to that position.”