(Episode XI) (Act 3)

“Jackson,” Maddie warned. “That wasn’t apart of the plan. We were ‘Run Because We Can’t Handle It’ girls before, and I think we still are.”

“True, and that’s still the first priority above all else,” Jackie agreed. She stared at the sheet with the school’s layout, less of a map and more of a construction/janitorial directory, just behind a layer of glass up against the wall. “That’s why I said pull a Megaplex, trap her if it has to come down to it. There’s no way we could win if we directly face her.”

“But that’s still too close for comfort,” Tracy brought up, helping River on her feet while still holding her. “I—y’know, if we run in the general direction of Extant and tell them to sound the alarms, there! We did all we could, and we could leave! W-we don’t need this to be complicated!”

“That would be fine if there wasn’t the fact that she’s possibly faster than us, and her hunting us down one by one would be necessary for the few of us to escape. And I’m sorry, y’all are messes, but I’m not gonna sacrifice play any of you. And I hope you all feel the same regarding each other.”

There was a notable silence.

Jackie sighed. “The thing is. The thing is… Us failing this whole time was due to us never adapting, it was never about the plan. Plans are things that barely survive contact with reality in the first place, something I should’ve considered this whole time. We think we have this ironclad solution and always get caught flatfooted because of course we were—it doesn’t matter if things were thought out. If the people don’t execute and execute under pressure… Everything fails.”

Jackie took the parchment from the glass case, by the indent built into it. She looked down at it.

“We run, if we can. If running isn’t enough, we stall and we figure out how to trap. And if EVERYTHING goes off the fucking deep end, then we hide and try to figure out what to do next.”

She glanced up at the girls.

“It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to scream, shout, sweat—we’re not superheroes. We’re idiotic teenagers that got into something stupid. But… As much… As much of the bad shit that comes out of us during times like these, there’s the good too. It’s not binary, for any of us. For better or for worse, use EVERYTHING you’ve got, girls.”

She then spun the directory around, pointing at the destination they needed to reach.

“Just need to cross the halls and the door’s right there,” Jackie explained. “We walk down some stairs and that’s that.”

“I fucking hate how easy that sounds,” Maddie grimaced.

“I know,” Jackie admitted.

Tracy repeatedly rubbed her face with both of her hands, seemingly getting faster with each pass through before suddenly stopping, practically praying with her hands now together with her thumbs joined under her chin.

“Ah well,” Tracy shuddered out. “’We few… We happy few…’”

“’We band of buggered,’” River interrupted with a reference of her own, adjusting her backpack.

Jackie turned on her heels, opening the office door and stepping into the dark corridors of the school.

“Would’ve been nice if we turned on the lights or something,” Maddie said.

“At least our eyes are adjusting to the dark!” Aiko chirped.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was more to work with than pitch blackness. Everything was more shaded, Jackie and co. could make out the various shapes and objects, but not the color—or the finer details.

So what was before them, what they were travelling down, was a featureless school hallway—lockers lining the walls, classroom entrances being further back, creating mini-hallways. Most of the fliers, papers, posters that lined the empty spaces of the walls fell off during the years, as the girls stepped on them.

“I hate how much this is taking me back,” Jackie murmured.

“You?” River said faux-accusatory. “I already have PTSD night terrors; this is a living nightmare for me. Especially since, y’know, I can’t really see the things concretely. But that might be a good thing, if I did, I might have another nervous breakdown thinking I’m a second late for Bio—”

“Was I the only person that didn’t have a bad high school experience…?” Aiko asked. “Yes, I went to school, haha that’s surprising Aiko—but I always hear about that… Did I miss anything?”

“Considering your zoinked approach to life in general?” Maddie said. “You basically checked out before high school could do anything to you. You never let it become personal. Even I couldn’t fucking do that.”

Jackie lead the group to the left, and all there was left was a straight walk down the hall. Before them, a steel door with thick frame stood before them—handlebar stretched across the door. She turned to the others, the all nodded. She proceeded to push against the handlebar, opening the door.

Jackie was the first to wobble, quickly urging the rest not to follow her.

“For fuck’s sake…” Jackie looked down.

The stairs were beginning to become undone. The metal structure was rusted brown in areas, to the point that the stairs that were supposed to be close to the wall of the building was leaning off to the other side. But below was the entrance to a lower, concrete set of stairs that lead to, hopefully, storage.

Jackie turned to the rest, “We all gotta rush it, but we’re not gonna use this going back up… So we have to find a way back, which shouldn’t be too hard…”

She exhaled, readying herself. Focusing siVis on her legs, Jackie leaped forward and started to dart down the broken staircase until she landed back on solid ground. She moved forward, trying to make way for the rest. And to her surprise—everyone managed to do the very same, with only minimal racketing regarding the staircase.

“…Nice work, girls!” Jackie said excitedly. “I was expecting a saga outta that…”

“Same,” River replied, looking around. “Waiting for that other shoe to drop is more stressful than doing this.”

“Good point,” Jackie looked about in the small, closed off area they’ve found themselves in. Just an empty lot, with overgrown grass with brick walls surrounding it.

Jackie motioned, and headed down to the lower steps, reaching the door. She turned on the knob, even applying siVis to her grip just in case.

She opened the door, showing a semi-blue-lit basement. Loot and boxes, covered in plastic or sheets, giving the place the aura of a sickly tomb, unearthed after so many years. The floors were just a desert of dust and insect shells, the ceilings were incomplete and seemingly an endless dark void. The blue light bulbs just hung on strings, swaying multiple sides as they rattle a hallow sound.

“I reaaaallly hope that there’s no toxic… Anything here, really,” Jackie confessed.

“It would be pretty funny if this has asbestos,” Maddie said.

“N-no,” Tracy spat back. “It wouldn’t—”

“Like, layered. A super snotty and high-tech place like this, just destroyed with asbestos.”

Tracy could only respond in a sound that’s crossed with a “hurmph” and a whine.

“What we’re looking for is gonna stick out like a sore thumb,” River informed everyone. “Regardless if it’s going to be something different from what we were expecting—”

Aiko pointed over at something, “It’s gonna look something like that…?”

From the clutter, there was a cyan, white, and black tip of a capsule ways away from where the girls stood.

“…Huh,” Maddie looked over.

“Yeah no, I just don’t trust this—” Tracy sputtered out.

“I get it, but considering the option of N’atural speeding back here to find the people who sent her on a goose chase; this could literally be a blessing,” Jackie pointed out. She then ran towards the capsule, and the others followed.

After passing three rows of cluttered junk, they stumbled upon the capsule. Like all Shift-related or Extant “technology”, it was covered in stainless white steel, black accented, and with a cyan core on the top. It was like it arrived just the other day, which stood out against the dusty, falling apart junk that surrounded it.

“Is it a way to open it…?” Tracy asked, so tense yet ready to move if something goes wrong or right.

“Fiction in general has always taught me that the glowing bit always is the key… Now let’s see if it’s the key to our salvation or the key to our deaths,” River “joked”.

Jackie exhaled. “If anything happens, run. Just run away and don’t worry about me…”

She extended her hand upwards, and pressed her hand against the cyan core.

SIVIS-AWAKED PERSON: YOUR ACCESS IS GRANTED

What made them jump proceeded to whir, the capsule opening itself up by it’s sides extending outwards, showing the line of canisters. Not unlike the canisters Leslie used to broadcast the Taber stuff.

FROM ONE HUMAN TO ANOTHER, WE ARE HERE TO HELP AND YOU SHOULD BE CONSTANTLY INFORMED: WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS TOGETHER

Jackie was still in shock over how… Easy all this was. But she heard the rustling of zippers behind her, turning towards it.

“C’mon, grab what we can!” Maddie ordered.

Shaking her head, she too started to open her own backpack, and took two canisters. Everyone else followed the same pattern.

“So we’re leaving now, right--?” Tracy’s shaken and on-edge tone was coming through perfectly.

“Ye—yeah—” Jackie adjusted her pack. “Let’s find the stairs…”

After trudging through fallen boxes, curling up books, spilt over sacks, and all manners of broken things, they managed to find a staircase on the otherside of the storage room. A room that lead to them.

“I just…” Jackie pondered aloud. “That’s it? That’s that…?”

“And we shouldn’t jinx it—” Maddie begun walking over to the staircase.

“She’s right!” Tracy followed after, and the rest did so in turn. “I can’t believe that I’m saying this but… Yeah! Sometimes, things just get better for a while…”

Maddie chuckled as she walked up the stairs. “’I have to admit/It’s getting better’…? Or however that song went?”

“Ah yes, ‘that song’, the Beatles’ greatest hit,” River needled a bit. Tracy giggled at that.

Maddie couldn’t help to mumble-hum the tune as they ascended the floors, eventually reaching the first floor again. The tune seemed to get clearer, despite sounding so distant.

“Jesus,” as Maddie remarked as they were crossing a hall, on their way to the main hall to the office and exit. “Did we go to the sub-basement or some shit? That was two floors we went up…”

Jackie stopped walking, as did the rest. They stopped everything, even breathing almost. Only to hear a soft, hallow tune echo throughout the halls.

“I thought you were still singing…” Jackie sounded broken.