Look Alive, Sunshine

Sunday, July 2nd.
Fifteen days after.

“Notice - Warning,” Tarquin reads. “Surrounding this historic mining townside are over 1,000 individual mine openings. Those openings and associated underground mine workings constitute an extremely safety hazard. Visitors to the area must use caution at all times. Children and pets should not be permitted to roam freely. Under no circumstances should these mine openings be entered. In case of accident immediately contact a member of the park service staff.”

Tarquin deigns to check his phone despite already knowing the answer. Only one bar, and it constantly flickers down to nothingness. No contacting any service staff then. Beside him, Ria swallows. Emmi’s eyes skim it over again as she reads it for what is surely the fifth or fourth time. Icarus sighs.

“Watch where you’re putting your feet,” Soran comments, and turns off into the hills. That’s about as much concern as they’re going to get out of him.

He should start looking, too, but Tarquin stares at the sign some more as well. So many people have likely looked at this, judging by the worn edges and the cracks in the support poles.

“So… would you be considered a child, or a pet?” Emmi asks. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who she’s talking to.

Tarquin looks at her. She smiles.

“Have fun!” she says quickly, turning away from them. “Be careful!”

For all her teasing, she cares. He doesn’t think Emmi is going to wander too far away from them. He has the staff, and there really is no sight of anyone else so he’s not too worried, but better safe than sorry.

“Where to first?” he asks. Ria gnaws on her lip. Someone really ought to invest in some chapstick for her.

She spins in a slow circle, eyes drifting all the way up to where the mountains meet the sky.

"I just… I feel like I should know," she whispers. She sounds heartbroken in a way he hasn't heard in a long time. A longing lingers deeper, desperation for information that no one has. Someone always has to be first, but is it meant to be them?

Muelara and her merry gang of aliens could've gone the opposite way up the coast. They could already have it.

The truth is you never really know.

"Maybe that's what we need to watch for," he offers. "You have to be intrinsically connected to something like that. If we find it, you'll know before any of us."

She looks up. "Do you really believe that?"

He nods. Tarquin hasn't believed in anything good for a very long time - not Gods, or help from above, powers to heal what's wrong with the world. Just nightmares and monsters and him, still standing even when everything falls apart around him.

Always him.

"If that's the case, it may not be here," Ria says. Normally she doesn't sound so certain but her shoulders have straightened, giving her that bit of extra height that she needs. Still nothing compared to the rest of them, but it makes her look… more.

She always was. He had that feeling immediately. But now she actually looks it.

"Well, let's take a look around anyway," he urges. "It could be out there a little ways."

Her confidence has not blown quite sky-high, but it's enough to see in her eyes. His, however, has ebbed out like the tide. That means they're one spot down. Either one closer to finding it, or never seeing it at all.

To be honest, Tarquin still doesn't know why he's here. They don't need him. Isn't that what it always comes down to? No one really needs him.

He considered it in Oakland. A bus ticket for himself across the country. He saw the airport outside of the depot and nearly high-tailed it. It's second nature to flee.

And yet he hasn't.

They would have let him go. No one has the leverage to make him stay. Even if Ria had tried… no, nothing would have stopped him if he made the decision. Tarquin has devoted a special amount of attention to not checking his phone, but looking for his service bars it was difficult not to notice the missed messages piling up. Yesterday it had been generic things. Today it was concerned ones. He had no idea what the others were receiving, but it had to be much of the same.

Someone would put the dots together soon enough. They would never know all five of them had left the city; there was no way to know such a thing.

Sooner or later, the pieces would slip into place. Every puzzle was completed eventually, save for the one left unfinished on the floor of his apartment.

He hoped he would get to finish it one day.

Ria could help too. She had a knack for it. Ria, who had wandered off a little ways into the dry brush, leaving him staring blankly at that same sign.

He walks to her side, the staff tapping against his legs. She's stopped in front of a wide netting spread out across the ground, quite obviously covering a hole at least ten feet in diameter.

There's one of said thousands.

"I didn't know they were just holes in the ground." Ria frowns, toeing at the edge of the netting.

"Might have just been a collapse," he surmises. Emmi is wandering off closer to what looks like a main entrance, a barred off hole in the side of the mountain. Maybe they lead to the same place.

Maybe people were just doomed to fall, too. If that’s the case it’s no wonder the place is a ghost town.

Really, it hardly even counts as one. Hardly any free-standing buildings. Even the air isn’t so ominous as it undoubtedly is at the hotel; there it’s palpable, almost like you can taste it. Out here he feels… free.

Further evidence that it may not be all it’s cracked up to. Abandoned it is, but it doesn’t appear to be much else.

If there were something wrong he’d know, the same way Ria could feel something too.

Ria begins to edge carefully around the netting. He glances around. Emmi has stopped just outside the mine entrance and kicks at one of the wooden supports as he watches. Soran and Icarus are headed deeper into the hills, but who knows how far one of them will make it before they call it quits. It doesn’t look like there’s much that way at all.

“I think I might head up,” he decides, looking at the mountain peaks. They’re steep, but not that far.

It would certainly be easier than walking.

“Up,” Ria echoes. “Bird’s eye view?”

She’s smiling. “Something like that,” he concedes. That, and it’ll be easy for him to get up there, much faster than anyone else. In and out, completely unobtrusive. One transformation to get up, another down, and all in a matter of seconds. If someone is lurking around here, they’ll never know any the wiser.

“Will you take this?” he asks, shrugging the staff off his shoulder. “I won’t be long.”

He was prepared to put it back in the car until Ria thrusts her arms out. He steps forward, gently lowering one of them down until he can slip it over her own. “I won’t be long,” he says.

She nods, shifting her feet to get used to the new weight on her back, trying to crane her neck back to catch a glimpse. It already stretches over his own head; on her it looks practically comical.

Comical is good for a few minutes, anyhow. Anything other than bad would be.

She smiles again. He’s starting to see it more often.

He takes off.

―

A bird wheels through the sky far above their heads, dark as night.

“Hey!” Soran shouts up at it. “Fuck you!”

Admittedly, it takes him a second, at least until the bird swoops down enough for them to make out and croaks at them before flapping off again. He watches the raven - Tarquin, whatever he’s supposed to call it, disappear over the hill they’re ascending.

“He’s got the right idea,” Icarus admits. Soran should have taken off long ago too and got a good luck around. So what if he was stuck down here in the meanwhile?

It’s not like the wing thing is a touchy subject or anything.

Tarquin returns soon enough, landing on the remnants of a tree split into several precarious pieces, and caws at them again. Icarus is tempted enough to begin the descent down, but who knows what he’s calling them for. If he doesn’t go, Soran will find out on his own.

He’s beaten there by a long shot - his legs are aching, he’s sweating more than he ever has in his life, and he’s exhausted all over again despite having actually slept through the night. Perhaps it was the rude awakening this morning.

He’s just trying not to think about it.

“Oh,” Soran says. “So that’s the mill he was talking about.”

Icarus struggles up to his side, feet slipping on the crest. On the other side of the massive hill there’s some sort of structure built into it, numerous platforms and rusted through metal walls that gradually descends to flatter ground at the very bottom, where a staircase with several missing boards leads to the main platform.

“Mill?” he questions. Soran skids a few feet down the hill until his feet hit the first platform - the whole thing shakes and groans under his weight.

“Hey,” he warns. “Don’t do that.

Predictably, his reservations go ignored as Soran takes a few more steps out. The supports look unbelievably flimsy. Sure, it’s not a high fall, and he would likely only tumble a little ways down the rocky hill before stopping, but still. He’s not overly enthused about it.

"Be careful," Icarus hisses as another one of the wooden planks creaks ominously under Soran's weight. "You're being ridiculous. There's no way an alien thing is hidden in a man-made structure that was crawling with people sometime in the last hundred years."

"You never know."

"I do know," he insists, waving his arms. "Soran!"

"You want me, come get me."

Oh, hell no. Icarus begins his precarious scramble down the loose scree above the mill. They should have just gone to the bottom of the hill and went up the stairs - yes, they’re riddled with holes, but it’s still better.

"I wish you would stop," he tries, testing his weight on the first of the boards. Soran grabs onto a larger protruding plank and crouches down, as if about to lower himself into what little of the structure still exists.

"And I wish you would tell me what happened this morning, but we can't all get what we want."

Icarus swallows. Tests the next plank and moves forward once again. "Nothing happened," he says. "I just―"

"Continue to be a bad liar," Soran interrupts. "I know."

Icarus straightens. "I am not."

Soran snorts. He's still, thankfully, perhaps reconsidering his initial idea to descend lower.

He holds an arm out finally. "Are you coming or what?"

It's taken him this long to realize that he doesn't know if he's ever seen Soran wander around so casually like this in nothing but a short-sleeved shirt. Certainly not outside of their little apartment. The sun is bright and glaring but he can still make out each individual scar on his arm. Some jagged and long, some so small that he can't help but wonder if they're from something else. It's enough to send his stomach rolling - more than it already was, anyway. He's felt sick for a while now

At least he knows, looking now, that Soran doesn't so much continuously lie to him as he just hides things. And there's a difference.

Icarus grabs his arm, unintentionally or not at the heart of where the scars are the worst, wincing everytime the unsteady beams creak beneath his feet. Soran is craning his neck down the chute, but Icarus can hardly move. If he falls, that’s game over. Broken neck, maybe, if he tumbles over the cross-beams and lands the wrong way.

“Satisfied?” he asks, ignoring the wave of dizziness that passes over him when he so much as glances over the edge. “It’s not here.”

“What happened this morning?” Soran asks.

“Christ, can we not do this right now?” he fires back. “Or at least not here?”

“Seems like as good a place as any,” Soran says casually. He leans back over the opening of the chute; Icarus tugs back harder on his arm and nearly succeeds in pulling him away.

“Don’t be an asshole,” he snaps. “If I fell―”

“You think I would let you fall?”

“That’s now what I meant! Can we just go? Please?”

“A please?” Soran says incredulously. “I really must be going insane.”

“You’re not the only one.” Icarus takes a step back, as big as he’ll allow himself, and finally Soran follows him. The weight of that comment either goes unnoticed, or Soran is sick of trying. Unrelated, likely both.

Only when he’s on solid ground does he allow himself to look up, squinting against the harsh sunlight.

And he pauses.

Icarus doesn’t know why his gaze travels all the way to the horizon and all the way back, and why it sees what it does until he realizes that he’s not hallucinating.

A figure in the next mountain range. Two or three, even, as his vision gradually focuses. Not one of them is a desert-born mirage.

“Soran,” he manages. As he watches, the very first of the figures almost seems to disappear, melting to the ground. Two limbs transform to four as the whole body gives away into something else.

He can’t tell what it is from here. Something animal, almost perfectly blending into its surrounding environment.

“What the fuck,” he breathes. Soran has picked them out, too, watching alongside him as the same process repeats to the second, and then the third. All three lope off into the distance as they were never there at all. Despite nothing at all happening, really, his heart is slamming in his chest as if they’re running right at him.

“There’s a tribe that lives around here, I think,” Soran says. It almost sounds, dare he say it, like an explanation. “Probably skinwalkers, or―”

“What?” he croaks. “They’re what?”

“It’s fine. Don’t worry.”

“None of this is fine,” he bursts out. “God, I fucking hate it here, I feel like I’m going insane, I don’t know―”

“Hey,” Soran interrupts, readjusting a tighter grip on his arm to give him a little shake. It’s a damn good thing they’re on solid ground. “Chill. You know you don’t have to be here, right?”

“And where exactly would I be instead?”

“I don’t know, Vegas? You could be there while we deal with this.”

“Because leaving you here is smart,” he manages. “Right. Really good fucking plan there.”

“What about all of this makes you think leaving me here is bad?”

He read through it instantly, because as terrible as it sounds, Icarus would always be more concerned about leaving him here than anyone else. And, as today has gone, it’s just going back to this morning. Something is inherently wrong here, and he can’t place it, doesn’t know what it could possibly be…

He just knows it’s bad, and he feels himself headed the same way.

“I hate this,” he repeats. If Soran wasn’t holding onto him he’d sink to the ground and cry, he thinks.

“I know.”

“I don’t want to be here.”

“You can leave.”

“I’m not leaving,” he insists. “So stop trying to make me.”

Soran is quiet, finally. Wondering, no doubt, how all of this could have spun out of control this quickly, or maybe just Icarus. Of course he would be the one to go downhill first. It just fits. This is the story that was always going to be told.

Right now, despite it all, his body is just crying out for comfort, stronger than he normally does, but Soran tears away from him too fast and too suddenly for him to do anything. He whirls around, tearing his hands free from Icarus’ arms as he looks around.

There’s something almost frantic to his eyes.

“What?” he asks. Soran whirls back on him, suddenly.

“Did you not hear that?”

“Hear what?”

There was nothing. No conversation, no sound of a raven back up the hill. Just the wind, same as always. When he reaches back for him Soran has gone stiff all over, muscles coiled, all fight or flight. It’s the same feeling Icarus felt in him just before he snapped that person’s poor fucking neck in the parking with a twist of his hand.

“Hear what?” he repeats. It’s so quiet. 

Maybe even quieter than it was before.

Soran doesn’t so much as twitch. “A gunshot.”

―

When Emmi hears the gunshot, she doesn’t even think.

She just moves.

Rocks and grit scrape open her knees and palm as she dives to the ground, keeping herself as low as possible. There are things embedded in her skin. She doesn’t dare move.

Across the valley, some hundred yards away, Ria is still standing. Walking, even, casually picking her way through the dirt, pausing to readjust the staff Tarquin left over her back. When she turns around a minute later to find Emmi on the ground, she freezes.

She should yell out to her. Physically can’t. All ability to task has died halfway up her throat, along with most of her air.

Soran has a gun, all the way up the hill. That’s the only explanation - him firing blindly into the desert to terrify them, or―

Ria skids up to her side, spraying her with dirt and dust. Before she’s even stilled Emmi reaches up, grabs a fistful of her shirt, and drags her to the ground. The staff nearly hits her in the head.

“Did you not fucking hear that?” she hisses, almost unable to register the sound of her own voice over the thundering of her heart.

“What?” Ria asks, not looking nearly worried enough for Emmi’s liking.

By the main sign, a raven lands on the hood of the car, dips down over the edge of it out of sight, and when it returns Tarquin is two-legged again. He waves a hand at them, a clear gesture to head his way, and he ducks back into the backseat of the car. Frankly, Emmi's never heard a better idea in her life.

"Let's go," she snaps, though she doesn't wait whatsoever as she lurches to her feet and takes off for the car. She can still hear the odd, offbeat echo of the shot ringing out in the back of her head even when Tarquin pops the door open, allowing her enough room to dive in next to him, Ria on his other side.

"What the fuck was that?" she asks, slightly breathless. Maybe the heat is getting to her.

She wishes that could be the explanation used for everything.

"You heard it too?" Tarquin asks. "Soran did, too, but Icarus―"

"Of course Soran did," she spits. "He's the one―"

"No, no, it wasn't him. The gun's in his bag, he didn't even have it out. Believe me, I saw them."

"Then who the hell was it?" she bursts out, twisting frantically in her seat. She doesn't have nearly enough room to properly look around. There were no cars anywhere near when they arrived, certainly no people. The shot wasn't even aimed at any of them, unless they missed spectacularly, but it was close enough that it felt like it was. Could sound travel out here further than she’s used to?

That has to be what it was. Someone further away popping off shots for fun, or hunting, or… or something.

Because nothing can be wrong.

Having to sit there waiting for Soran and Icarus only increases her paranoia tenfold, wondering who else could be wandering up towards them in all the minutes they wait. Even when she sees them it’s as if she’s convinced they’re someone else, a trick of the light, a stranger with a gun coming to finally finish her off. Her past, catching up.

The accusation previously loaded in her throat vanishes when Soran and Icarus both get in, the twin slam of doors behind them. He tosses the backpack by Icarus’ feet.

Even without Tarquin’s previous words, she can see the truth just by looking at his face. It wasn’t him. Not who took the gun out, not who pulled the trigger.

“Thought it might have been you,” she manages, if only to make casual conversation. The car rumbles to life.

“That’s me,” Soran says. “Randomly popping off shots into the desert.”

“I just thought,” she starts, but her voice dies. What did she think? Even if someone had been here threatening their very existence, he wouldn’t have shot them.

No, it would have been quick, efficient.

Silent.

“Are we actually leaving?” Icarus asks, equal parts confused and relieved as Soran begins to back the car onto the road.

“We can come back later.”

“I really don’t think it’s here,” Ria murmurs. In an odd turn, she seems the calmest of them all - surely some of that stems from the odd fact that she didn’t hear it, but Icarus isn’t reacting the same. He looks shaken like the rest of them.

“Okay, so we don’t come back, ever,” Soran says instead. “Sounds good.”

If he’s rattled, even in the slightest, then that’s for the best. No use in wandering around a place that feels more dangerous than it looks.

Emmi knew what she was getting into when she spoke those words at the hotel, even more-so when the old man had begun to circle new places. She had opened that can of worms. Willingly, too. Even still, it makes the most sense. For something to have been undiscovered for long, it has to be hidden in a place that sets people’s nerves alight, drives them off when they think they’ve even begun to crack the code.

A place like the one they’re leaving, but it’s not the only one around here. The hotel is the same way. There are a dozen more out there. And, judging by that old man’s knowledge, everyone knows about it.

Everyone knows, and no one cares? How is that possible? Emmi has had enough difficulty living in normal places, and can’t for a single second imagine living in one like this.

She definitely should have left while she had the chance. Let them complete their far-fetched mission if they want.

Now she’s invested, though. She wants answers as much as the rest of them do, and she wants the satisfaction of finding the damn thing and then getting the fuck out of dodge, intact and alive. This place won’t be her end.

Even a half hour away though, when Soran pulls off to stop for gas at the only station that seems to exist anywhere around here, she feels like it could be. Soran gets out, Tarquin too, but she feels frozen to her chair despite the sweat pooling around her legs. Ria has already assumed her previous position after letting Tarquin out, legs tucked up to her chest.

“Neither of you heard it?” she asks. “For real.”

Icarus glances over his shoulder towards her. “Why would I lie about it?”

She shrugs. Everyone lies. It’s not always for a good reason. She does it all the time. They didn’t hear it the same way but they look equally suspicious.

Emmi eyes the ramshackle building across the road, the little blinking sign in front of it. “Maybe we really should go see a psychic,” she tries. “They can tell us if we’re all going certifiably insane or not.”

“Have fun,” Icarus mutters. “You’ll be doing that alone.”

“What? You don’t want to know?”

“I already do know. And I’m beginning to think the same about everyone else.”

So what, she’s off the bender. Big deal. At least thinking about that, calling herself crazy, is making the gunshot and the rolling hills and the scorching sun seem like lesser things

Tarquin returns to the car with drinks, bless his soul. Another distraction. He drops a smaller plastic package into Ria’s lap - from her angle, it looks sort of like chapstick. She chooses not to question it. Soran keeps tapping his fingers along the windowpane to her right, startling her every time one gets too close to her ear.

She’s still not fully distracted.

The gunshot, those Agency members in the park, the eerie coloring of the room this morning, the silence in her being the first to wake… it all feels like it’s beginning to add up into something more. Filling into a cup that’s not big enough to hold the contents being shoved into it.

Soon enough, it’s going to spill over.

―

She’s still sitting in the car like she’s never going to get out by the time everyone else does.

Tarquin, too, slides across the back bench to follow Emmi out when Ria doesn’t move, let alone even unlock the door to her left.

It had seemed like a good idea to head back to the hotel for the day. Ria had thought so, too. Now they’re back, though, and she’s beginning to re-think it all. They’re not going to find it unless they’re out there looking, and being here only seems to make things worse by the minute.

“I’m going to go ask that bastard what the hell happened out there,” she hears Soran say, but can’t see him. A building door creaks open and slams shut.

Tarquin peers back in through the door. “You okay?”

She nods. She didn’t hear it anyway. The panic seems to have subsided some in the two hours it took them to get back, but now in return it’s her that feels off, and it has nothing to do with the little cylindrical tube she has shoved in her pocket. She has no idea what it is, but Tarquin gave it to her, so she’s going to keep it.

She should get out of the car. Act like a normal human being, you know. With the door wide open the heat will start to pour in, and soon she’ll be sweltering, left out to rest.

And Tarquin is still waiting for her.

She slides out too instead of reaching for her own door, shielded from the sunlight by him hovering above her.

“Food?” he asks. “I’ll let you eat nothing but jam and won’t tell anyone.”

It’s not like she has anything better to do.

She follows him back to the cafe, resuming their exact same seats from this morning across from one another. The difference is the few other people lingering about now - a small family in the far corner, a couple to their distant right, an old man flipping through the newspaper by the largest of the windows. And them, the oddest of all, parked smack dab in the middle not far from the main counter. She’d rather be up against a wall.

Change was inevitable down here, but something in Ria was still clinging to the same things she had done before - easy escape routes, taking shelter even when it wasn’t necessary, always making sure at least one person in the room was being looked at before she was.

One of the children in the corner in the room is pointing at her, hushed whispers spilling from his mouth. Likely something to do with her hair, she rationalizes, but then anxiety swallows it whole like a raging beast. She blinks. Feels the contact slip and slide in her right eye.

Tarquin returns with a plate of fries in one hand, scattering several packets across the table between them. She expects a reaction, but gets none. Her eyes are clearly fine, then.

The kid quickly stops pointing, too, swatted down by what she assumes is his mother.

“They put all the jam away, or I would have grabbed some,” Tarquin informs her, tearing into one of the packets.

“Have to get some extras tomorrow,” she murmurs.

“That’s the spirit.”

With several of the packets open he works on creating a goopy pile of their contents, something red that’s brighter than blood but still manages to make her nauseous regardless. Even when he turns the plate towards her she refuses to dunk her finger in it.

Fries are good, though. Simple. Today simple is something they need.

Tarquin looks better than before, but his eyes are watching the room with every fry he shoves in his mouth, using each one as an opportunity to glance around casually. Her back is to most of the room, which means she’s the one with eyes on the door. She’s never had to think in such a way before, not so intently. Before an escape plan was fleeing from a particularly painful conversation, a training session in which she wasn’t going to be able to do anything anyway.

Now it’s for her life. If someone in here pulled a gun, what would she do? She may not have heard the gunshot today, for some reason, but she’s heard enough already. There’s no way she would make it to the door even despite her size. The window, then? None of them are open, but Tarquin could shatter one of them. Would that be quick enough?

She has no idea. She really needs to learn. All of her options need to be open. Every-day she spends with them feels like a lesson that she’s not picking up quickly enough.

Just like before.

“I’m not the only one that feels off, am I?” she asks. Tarquin finishes his fry, sitting up straighter in his chair.

She already knows the answer.

“It’s this place,” he answers. “It’s… old, and a lot of bad things have happened, and when that happens things linger.”

“Bad things.”

“And good things, too.” He shrugs. “It’s just usually the bad ones that are so prevalent.”

“When everyone was joking about hauntings I guess I didn’t really get it.”

“Can’t blame you. You had nothing to go off of - now you do. But don’t worry, we’re all in the same boat. You can take comfort in that if nothing else.”

The confirmation is nice regardless. “Thank you,” she says.

“For what?”

“For getting it. And me.”

Tarquin looks embarrassed, almost, trying desperately to be nonchalant about it. “It’s not a big deal.”

“It is. No one’s ever really tried before.”

A lie. People have, actually, a handful of them who mean just a little bit more than the rest of them. They just never got very far. That was all Ria, though. Ria was the one who didn’t let people in, who locked herself away. Who looked for evacuation routes from the moment she opened her eyes.

She doesn’t know why it’s different down here with all of them. With Tarquin.

Ria hasn’t felt good in days. Halfway to bad, if not downright horrific. Despite that, though, she hasn’t been recently dosed with a good sense of fear.

Something in her is safe, here, even if nothing else is.

And that is worth taking comfort in.

―

“You finally asleep over there?” Soran asks.

Besides him, Icarus is both still and silent. Finally. Between them both he was always the first one out, an odd thing to get used to when you hadn’t had anybody sleeping in your bed in God knows how many years, but not… bad.

Tonight had been, though. The past few really. Soran could only watch him toss and turn for so long before he felt compelled to ask why it was happening, which led to nothing good, which led to anger and misunderstanding and Icarus practically draped over the opposite edge of the bed, eyes fixated on the floor.

He was closer, now, drifting even in sleep. Soran could feel the warmth of him, sunk lower, wondering if it would help.

It didn’t.

Usually he could follow quickly enough, but tonight was different. He remembered the look on that man’s face when he had come back to the lobby, something accusatory on his lips. Why, he doesn’t know. But it had been there.

And then… what had he said? Something like, “it happened, didn’t it?”.  Maybe it wasn’t that. Close enough, though. Soran hadn’t even known what it was until he had been awarded a legitimate explanation.

He had even looked it up to see the truth of it all, but was rapidly trying to forget it. Useless information was all it added up to be. A murder out in their lovely little ghost town not long after it had been established, a single killing gunshot. A subsequent lynching and the second stringing up of the same man when people didn’t get enough pictures the first time.

Some of the locals still said they heard gun-shots when no one was around to fire them.

That explains little of his own trauma, a split second dose of fear. When was the last time he had been shot - a hundred years ago? He had no idea. The most recent starburst of a scar still sat just below his right shoulder, all the way out the back. It hurt like a son of a bitch, though, a pain unlike most others. They were hard to forget.

Soran hadn’t been scared for himself, though. Hadn’t been in a very long time.

Icarus twitches, the first of what he knows is many. He’s been doing that a lot lately in sleep, never calm for long, restless like he’s trying to get out even when his eyes are closed.

Getting him somewhere else would be the smartest thing. Even if it’s not Vegas, anywhere would be better. He’s not going to leave willingly, though. That’s the problematic part. Soran would have to drag him, if he even conceded to that, and would follow him again if he tried to leave him elsewhere.

He’s never going to just simply listen. It’s not in his DNA.

That could just be rubbing off from him, too. It seems like a lot of things are. Perhaps that’s where the sudden, newfound restlessness is coming from. He’s still twitching like there’s no tomorrow, eyes moving rapidly beneath his eyelids. It doesn’t exactly look nightmarish, but it doesn’t seem like there’s a real difference between that and the  reality of waking anymore.

He swings his legs out of bed, finally, close to ten minutes later. It’s too warm to breathe. A walk will do him some good.

Will it?

“Thanks for the cynicism,” he says under his breath, collecting the keys to lock the door behind him. Not something he would feel the need to do normally, but…

Well, there’s no but. He’s just going to.

He’s been almost everywhere in this place it seems, except the locked opera house, but he’s not in the mood for breaking and entering tonight. Besides, a more interesting prospect lies at the other end of the hall where there looks to be no exit. Only a door lies there, ‘PROHIBITED’ across it in blocky letters that are half-scratched off.

He tested it yesterday morning, but didn’t go in. And it still opens the same tonight, too.

From the outside this area of the hotel looks the same as the rest, if you ignore the boarded up windows, rusted up nails beginning to hang loose from time.

It’s nothing like that on the inside.

Soran suspected as much from the outside. Inside the walls are hardly standing, the hall desolate and abandoned. Paint chips lie scattered across the floor, billowing up in clouds of dust when he opens the door. Where the hallway opens up in front of him the plaster has begun to peel away from the ceiling, exposing rotting wooden beams that could collapse at any second.

He knows better than to go any further - he just wanted to see. Besides, if it’s bad out in the actual hotel, it’s worse in here.

There are noises lurking in the distances, growing and echoing in the barren hall. The few doorways left intact seem safe. The ones with loose, swinging hinges do not. He can see things beyond them; nothing that takes shape, but shadows that threaten to do so the longer he dares look.

His walk has ended without warning. Even a few more steps seems like to bring him towards some amount of uncertainty, more than he’d like.

Every multitude of sound is swirling into one sound, creating discordance despite the lack of volume. Faint voices coming and going in casual conversation, footsteps to go along with them. Laughter, a shrill giggle that wanes off into a thin, reedy sounding wail.

It feels like he’s stuck on the other side of a door, unable to see what’s on the other side. But this is it. He can see everything and yet nothing at all.

There’s a void here somewhere, trapping all of the bad things. What’s leaked out has wreaked havoc on the hotel, and yet the worst of it is hidden here, on the other side of an impassable void.

His foot scrapes against a layer of plaster. The wailing abruptly stops.

You should go.

That he should.

Soran backs up out the door, letting the soft yellow-orange light of the hall envelop him again. With the door open like this he feels just as unsafe as he did on the inside, as if he’s letting things out.

It’s closed for a reason.

He pulls it shut, almost no sound when it clicks back to frame. It looks as if a grouping of shadows rush the door just before it closes, pulling themselves apart when they find no exit. Back into the depths of their abandonment they go.

He already feels better having closed that door, but the feeling lingers. That very one that’s been affecting them all, steadily driving them insane.

It is not just Icarus that he should be sending to Vegas. They all should go before it’s too late.

If only he could.