"Harley! Surely, you're not that stupid! Did you think I wasn't anticipating you?" shouts the girl.
"Bullshit! I've got you right where I want you. Any sudden moves and I'll blow your brains out!"
"Look below your feet, you moron; I'm not the one holding the short end of the stick! Just you try pulling that trigger!"
Keeping his gun pointed at her, he looks and, below the balcony there is a series of beige rectangular bricks glued to the edge below the barrier, their red lights blinking. Black wires slither down from the bricks, connecting to a small device that sits beside one of the pillars. In her hand, she firmly grips a small cylindrical remote with a red button at the top. Her expression is calm; the tip of her thumb hovers above the top of the button like a levitating monk.
Harley's face blanches, but he tries to keep his voice steady. "Dammit, I knew she was a precog! That confirms my suspicion."
"And? What are you going to do about it. Harley? I knew everything you were going to do before you even got here. You've got no leverage against me. I've anticipated every move you could possibly make."
"Even this one?" he replies, pulling the trigger, but the gun clicks repeatedly.
"Even that one, Harley." she smiles wryly.
"What did I tell you, Harley? Any sudden moves and I'll be throwing roses for you on top a pile of rubble."
"There's more than just one of us you'll have to bury, or did 'ya not anticipate me havin' a hostage?"
"Collateral damage, Harley. What does it matter if you have a hostage or not?"
Suddenly Harley grabs me by the arm and pulls me to the edge of the balcony, holding me by the back of my head.
"You sure I got no leverage against you?" he laughs; the woman looks at me with astonished eyes, but says nothing. Instead she pulls out a pistol and points it at him. Simultaneously, Harley drops the rifle, wraps his arm around me and points his pistol at my head, laying the bottom of his shotgun on the edge of the balcony with his other arm.
"And? What about now? How much are you willing to bet I can't land a hit you?"
"You've got fast hands Harley; it's a shame, because you're dumb as a rock." she says, shooting above him, causing a light fixture to come crashing down on the both of us, sending us sprawling to the floor. My head spins as I try to understand what just happened. Everything is a cacophony of sounds and blurred shapes.
Harley grunts as he tries to disentangle himself from me. My head feels like it's been split open, and there's a warm trickle of blood running down my face. I can barely keep my eyes open, let alone make a move to escape.
"Quick, get away from the balcony!" she shouts. I quickly rise to my feet, and I feel Harley's hand grabbing my leg as I try to make a run for it.
"Where do you think you're goin'?" shouts Harley; he's trapped beneath a light fixture that had dropped on him.
I kick out at Harley's hand with all the strength I have left, my foot connecting with his fingers, eliciting a howl of pain from him. I don't look back, just run towards the stairwell, away from the end of the balcony.
"Help me!" Harley screams behind me, but I ignore him, continuing my frantic dash towards the stairwell. I can feel the building shake beneath my feet as she detonates the explosives; I trip and slide down the last few steps, managing to catch myself on the handrail before I fall.
I continue down the stairs from the balcony level and into the foyer; when I look through the double doors, the last balcony on the left is collapsed onto the ground, and there's a cloud of dust filling the auditorium. I scurry down the steps towards the sculpture and dart around, dashing towards the entryway; the door in the center is unlocked now, and creaked slightly open. As a whirring storm rolls into the city, hands made of lightning clap with thunder overhead. The rolling clouds paint the pavement with dirty droplets, and the shine of the panels against the skyscrapers surrounding the opera house is flooded with a deluge of gray. It's curiously warm; as the raindrops patter the walls and windows, they bounce off and touch my skin, and I can feel the feverish sky sweating off a sea of storms. I bolt out into the rain, alone, without any means to defend myself. I run like I'm running for the first time in my entire life; instantly the cold burns away like my body is sitting on a hot stove. When I reach the tip of a narrow walkway that splits the sea of low-rise buildings, I nearly slip across a pool of water, but catch myself upon a sign that's situated next to a set of stairs. When I turned my gaze forward, I see a black silhouette with blonde hair fleeing at a steady pace.
"Is it her?" I mutter to myself.
Catching my breath, my shoulder slides from the post, and I begin in to jog in pursuit of the figure in front of me. Before she turns the corner, I call out to her:
"Hey! Come back here! I need to talk to you!"
But, upon turning around, she quickly ignores me, and scurries out of view, furthering the distance between us.
"Dammit!"
I cross a parking lot and scale a metal gate, catching a glimpse of her silhouette as she veers around another corner to my right. She appears to be dodging me in a zig-zag motion in order to confuse her trail. I cross an alley immediately to my right, and catch her racing along the last few meters of the path. Glancing behind her before deviating further to her right, she disappears behind what appears to be a narrow enclosure situated between two houses. I quickly close in on her before catching my breath and facing her directly. With a strained expression upon her face, she leans back against a metal fence.
"Alright, no more running. I've got you. Do you have a minute to talk? Or are you gonna try and fight me?"
Her sunken lips tighten as a great shadow blankets the gap between us. Her eyes sink and turn into dark circles. She withdraws from the corner and drifts towards me, her arms crooked and bent like a praying mantis. A cold air grips my bare legs, and the words "GET AWAY" flash in my mind in bold white letters.
I glance downward, and witness the girl's fingers grow half a meter in length, and fold into sharp double edged blades. All of the blood drains from her complexion and she turns as white as a fresh corpse. Her hair shrivels and curls, her pupils grow like bubbles until her eyes turn black. She raises her finger towards my neck; my chin tilts up and away from it, and in an attempt to retreat, I stumble and fall backwards. My ass hits the ground hard. Her lips wrinkle, her teeth drip from her mouth, and she bellows a low, menacing groan. Reaching toward me, she raises her other arm for a swipe as I attempt to make a run for it.
Before I have time to flinch, an empty green bottle soars above me, smashing into the creatures head and shredding it's face with shards of glass. When I turn to look, I see the girl I believed I was chasing earlier, Lakme, facing down what appears to be her doppelganger. It yowls and thrashes like a cat fighting for it's life. Before it can do anything, I kick against the side of it's foot, causing it to fall. It was easily tripped up; it's face slams hard against the pavement, but quickly shakes it off and lunges at me. I barely slip away before it pummels the ground with such force that it bores a small crater in the asphalt. I jump to my feet and take after the blonde girl, who beckons to me before darting around the corner. The storm riles up in tandem with the chaos, and mixed in with the screech of lightning bolts across the sky are a series of howls and shrieks that sound like sirens heralding an impending air-raid. Thuds echo above the houses as the rumbling sky unleashes its fury. At the end of another long stretch of road, we finally break free from the winding maze of narrow streets, out into the avenues below the high rises. After crossing an large avenue littered wide with leaves, she wrenches open the closest door allowing the both of us to stumble inside; she locks the door, slamming the security shutter and closing the window shades.
"What the hell is going on?" I whisper loudly, pushing her up against the security gate and taking hold of her shirt with both of my hands.
"Is that how you greet somebody who's saved your life twice in less than an hour?" she says, turning her head with a gentle smile, but keeping her eyes locked on mine, causing me to let go.
Sullenly I glance down.
"It's okay." she says, "You can't have been awake any longer than a week. I can see it in your eyes."
Sizing me up, she drifts slowly away, checking the outside through a small crack in the shutters. She invites me over to one of the tables and we both sit down while the rain starts to pound against the window.
"Here's the thing," she begins, "You're not an esper, are you?"
"An esper? What's that?"
"You mean you've never heard of ESP? Never read any books, manga about psychic powers?"
"No, psychic powers I know, but the word 'esper'. I've never heard that word before."
"I'm only telling you because Harley mouthed off before you ran away. You were just going to figure it out eventually. I'm an esper, and he is too. We both have psychic powers."
"Right, he called you a 'precog'. Does that mean you can see the future?"
"See? I knew it, you're pretty good with words, but you already know too much, so I'm not going to reveal any details to you, for obvious reasons."
"And what about Harley?"
Suddenly she leaves her seat, flips the light switch, and uncovers a fine keyaki wood counter complemented by several short stools in a local kissaten. Aside from being plastered in cobwebs, the interior is otherwise very well maintained. What's strange is that there seems to be some overgrowth climbing through the floorboards. Small sprouts can be seen splitting some of the cracks in the wood.
"I can't quite put my finger on it; it's very subtle. He appears to be capable of some sort of mind control, though it doesn't seem to be very strong, or maybe it's just not direct. He more than makes up for it with his abilities though, that's the real problem with Harley."
"You're speaking in the present tense; you mean to say he's still alive?"
Closing her eyes, she nods her head solemnly before responding.
"He's a career criminal. Killing him wouldn't be that easy."
As I sit upon a weathered bench, she continues into the kitchen and rummages around, returning with two cups of coffee. She sets one in front of me and takes a seat, cupping her hands around her mug. After glancing over the menu, I quickly become bored and start scanning the room. Through the blinds, I can see silhouettes of leaves drifting by the window.
"When we were making our way towards the Opera House, he was telling me about somebody named...Membrane?"
"Right, Membrane. You mean to say that you didn't talk to him following your wake?"
"No. Was I supposed to?
"That's how it happened with me."
"So you were acquainted; I figured as much. Well anyway, when I woke up, I was inside of a large apartment complex, and it was on fire; I didn't have much time to get out, and when I finally did, the whole place collapsed and turned into a pile of rubble. I didn't hear or see anyone else running out; I figure he's dead. Who is this Membrane person anyhow? What does he look like?"
"He's not a person...he's more like...an entity."
"An entity?"
Immediately, the black ghosts that were hovering above the bathtub come to mind.
"When I woke, there were these weird shapes floating above me. Could that be what you're talking about?"
"No," she replied firmly, thinking to herself for a moment before responding, "Membrane is more like this web or mass of pink flesh with multiple eyes. He seems to be able to appear anywhere he wants to at any given time, and it's always in a single room, no matter how large. Harley mentioned that he saw him to me too, but he skipped out on the details."
"Could that be where he's headed now? He mentioned that he wanted to take me to him."
"That sounds about right, but I didn't chase him down for obvious reasons. It wouldn't have ended well for me. It took me a couple of days and a lot of concentrating to set up that trap."
I find my hands clasped tightly together, and I force myself to relax them as I process what she's saying.
"How do we get out of here? Is there any way out?"
She pauses for a moment, staring at her fingers as they lay flat across the table, shaking her head before responding.
"Most likely not. I think we're living in the end times. Or maybe we're past that point already, I don't know. One thing's for sure though; things are only going to get stranger in the coming days. It'll take more than just luck for us to make it through."
"I can't think right now..." I say, lying my head on the table; Lakme says nothing in response, she pats my shoulder lightly, and I hear a clunk beside me as she sets down her cup.
"Now's not the time to think anyway." she says, and when I look up, I see the gun that Harley had taken from me, "I found this lying in the rubble below the balcony. Harley wouldn't leave something so important behind, so he must have had his hands full getting out of there. Best that you keep yourself armed; you never know when you'll be in bad company." she smiles down at me. I stare at the gun on the table before picking it up, feeling the balance and heft in my hand.
"Thank you," I mutter, still feeling the weight of the world on my shoulders.
Lakme returns to the counter, pouring herself another cup of coffee from the pot.
"You said you woke up in a burning apartment complex?" she asks.
I nod.
"Do you remember anything before that?"
"I had a dream."
"I had a dream too. What was your dream about?"
I'm forced once again to recall the nightmare I had before I woke.
"There was an apocalypse, and there were these angels in the sky; they were massacring thousands upon thousands of people."
"So you had the same dream that I did!" she said, slamming her hands upon the counter as she was reaching for her coffee, "Do you remember anything before that?"
Black hole. White wall.
Do you remember anything before that?
"There was a black hole...and there was a white wall."
"A black hole and a white wall? What does that mean?"
"Black...hole. White...wall."
"What?"
The image of the white body seizes me; I can't breathe. The black hole is sucking me in. My memory is a black hole and my brain is a white wall.
"Hey, what's going on with you?!?" she shouts, rushing over to me. I see flashes of her silhouette and the room in my mind, but everything is so bright that I'm nearly blinded; I'm helpless to do anything about it. I can't move, I can't scream, I can't react.
"Calm yourself down! I didn't mean to-"
The black hole in my mind swallows me and takes over; my vision becomes enshrouded by darkness. A million screams rip through the air, and the crackling of flames fills the void as my body slides off of the bench and hits the ground with a thud.
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