[BioLock]

Turning to assess my surroundings, I find our company in a brick storeroom well-lit by large colonial archways on one wall. Boxes labeled ‘provisions’ litter the ground and the occasional gun or box of ammo has been shoved amongst them. I hold my wrench tighter. Outside those archways is really the amazing thing: chalky blue skies and a warm ball of fire I have to assume is the sun– although I have no recollection of ever seeing it– there are clouds all over the sky with buildings nesting in them, and cobblestone walkways house a striking lack of people. I am suddenly struck by both a freedom from and longing for the deeper color of blue (blue scarf blue eyes blue suit blue face choking choking call the ambulance blue pen blue rain). that the sunlit sky lacks.

“Where are we?” I murmur, more to myself than to any actual person. I can tell by the aggravated silence that Sherlock has no more clue than I do. More pointedly, more certainly, I wonder “What do we do now, then?”

I don’t get an answer immediately, but I do get a warbled, megaphone-sounding voice telling me in the calmest tones “The False Shepherd has stolen the Lamb. Please, stay in your homes and report any suspicious activity to the authorities. The False Shepherd is armed and dangerous, do not approach him under any circumstances. Hide your wives and children. Take up arms. Columbia is protected by the Pilgrims of her city.” It droned on for several minutes with things of that sort before cutting out again.

“That’s not us, is it?” I ask politely, resignedly, feeling the familiar sock of constant escape already well-worn to my new feet.

A harsh scoff escaped thin lips, “Of course it isn’t; we’ve only just gotten here.”

The girls are getting anxious. They have never seen the sun either, and it’s too bright for their large eyes and pale skin.

“What do we do now?” I repeat, shaking Sherlock from a trail of thought somewhere outside the open archways.

He blinks at me strangely for several seconds before answering abruptly, “Hide them. The girls, hide them. We have to go figure out how to get off of this,” and he spits out these words like a personal offense, “floating city, and then when we have secured a way down, we can come back for them.” His mouth is moving as fast as his brain, which is never a good plan, I don’t think.

“Where do we hide them?” I ask, keeping my voice as level as I can muster.

He takes a deep breath that doesn’t seem to slow him down as much as project his annoyance, “There,” and he points to a random house out of the several around us. I throw my hands up n exaggerated exasperation and it draws a giggle from the girls. “Unoccupied,” Sherlock clarifies, the edge of his voice left with their laugh, but there’s still the taut cord of tension, “hasn’t even been rented out yet– you can see the empty rooms through the window because the last agent showing the place didn’t bother to close the curtains. Nobody is going to be looking in there– and you girls know how to lock doors and windows, yes? Yes.” He’s going to run out of steam if he keeps going like this, but the little ones are accustomed to it and wait for me to give them the all clear before emerging into the sunlight. After so long underwater, direct sunlight burns everyone’s skin a bit, and I’m glad when we make it to the other side of the street, under the shade of the rows of houses, and enter the one pointed out.

It’s spacious, there’s only one entrance, all the windows have thick red curtains, it’s perfect.

“Now, Delphine, you’re not the oldest, but you’re the smartest,” Sherlock tells a girl in a yellow dress turned gold with dirt and use and age, “You’re in charge until we come back.”

“Okay, Papa,” she answers with a nervous smile. “Don’t open the door, don’t look out the windows, don’t talk to anybody, and don’t be loud.”

“Good girl. We’ll be back soon.”

And then we leave.

We wander the city like ghosts, and my head is on a swivel like it belongs there. It feels natural. He stops to look at a map and I get more flashes of memory, all pink and blue shades of a baby and a home and a corpse on the floor and an old woman’s smile. I find myself sitting down when I come back to my own body, and I hear a panicked voice saying “John–” instead of “help.”

I flounder for a moment, and find that both Sherlock and I are sitting down where we’d previously been standing. He’s out of breath– and apparently so am I.

“You’re seeing these too?” I demand, both incredulous and hopeful. If this strange little man is seeing the same hallucinations as me, we might both still be crazy, but at least not alone.

He moves to stand, but ends up just staying where he is, “So it would seem.”

“Do you know what they mean?”

“You’re the medical man.”

“I’m a what?”

There’s a deep, heavy, physically painful sigh of disappointment, “Apparently we have these visions at the same time,” he notes, “but do not see the same things.”

I hear him, but don’t really listen, because I am much more focused on the pair of hooligans standing a few feet away. The man, tall and stout, has a chalkboard detailing coin flip outcomes, there seems about an equal number of both; the woman, slim and short, holds an ornate china tray with a single coin. I scramble to my feet, as does Sherlock on my right.

“Heads,” the man starts with a grin.

“Or tails,” the woman finishes.

The voices are familiar, and I recognize them from the Silverfish Diner. “Who are you?” I demand, reach for a gun and finding a wrench.

“Heads,” the man repeats,

“Or tails,” their voices are laughing, their faces grinning. They don’t seem to mean danger, but I’ve seen wider smiles mean worse things– I think.

They toss me the coin, I flip it begrudgingly, not liking the feeling of doing as I am told, but fitting it utterly. It lands on tails. I slap it back onto the tray, and it is immediately handed to Sherlock, who flips it with calculating eyes that send chills up my spine: he gets heads.

“Told you,” the man says, as if she were being particularly stubborn and he had known better all along. His smile flickers, “I never find that as satisfying as I imagine it.”

She pats his chin with a gracious smile that implies he was being stubborn and she was merely putting up with him. “Chin up, there’s always next time.”

“I suppose there is,” and before I can say a word, they’ve walked off down an alleyway. When Sherlock and I attempt a chase, they’re gone. This seems to be their pattern. Show up, say something cryptic, disappear.

I am wary of the specters, but also more than a little too exasperated and rushed and confused to care. “Well,” I start, but I don’t finish.

“Yes, I suppose so,” Sherlock assents to the nothingness I stated.

We continue walking, and it becomes quickly apparent that this area of town is under construction, hence the lack of other humans and the surplus of abandoned buildings. The girls will be very safe where we left them.

At some point we reach the edge of the platform this neighborhood is supported by, and we follow that edge until the sun reaches the top of the sky, and we find a wavering bridge to another, less desolate part of town. In the far distance, we can see a statue of an angel, and there’s a ginormous bird flapping its wings desperately around her head.

“That, um,” I swallow, a little nervously, “that doesn’t look promising.”

Sherlock frowns, “Not really, no.” There’s more people that direction, more chaos, less ways to hide, and a giant bird that looks somewhat malicious.

Still, we need a way down to the normal earth– not the underwater purgatory we came from and not the skyborn heaven we are in, but the wonderful and solid ground. Everything in Rapture was immutable and overgrown and dark. Everything here is evanescent and neat and bright. Both are awful, I just want an in between: I want that place of my visions with two comfortable armchairs with everything everywhere and always moving but always nearby with just enough light to see by on dark nights and a warm radiance for excited mornings. I want home– goddamn the fact that I am talking about hallucinations of places I have never even seen.

“Coming, John?” Sherlock invites, tone more careless than the way he’s crossing the bridge as it pitches slightly with the current of the winds under it.

His footing looks so sure until it doesn’t.