Chapter 15:

(Episode II)(.5) (Act 2)

siVisPride


“Whaaaaaat?” Aiko whined out, hands thrusted palms first towards Leslie.

“…I love how much I think we’re face deep into the dirt; somehow there’s a grimy level of even more fresh shit to stomp us down into,” Maddie described her pained amusement.

Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!” Aiko continued to express.

There was only a swift and audible whacking sound as Tracy facepalmed herself, shaking afterwards.

“Great,” River shook her head and couldn’t stop doing it.

“…Does that…” Jackie could feel the rise of anger building and building.

“Like, I’m not even mad,” Maddie laughed out. “Just asking why even give the effort to spit on us; we’re already drowning in pure shit anyways.”

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN?!” Jackie exploded, so that the fear doesn’t claim her anymore.

Leslie slowly raised up his hands, “Self-influence. Auto-rigor of the siVis one’s design. As the information codex explained; siVis is just about you as you are it, it’s showing you as you are, could be, and more. You influence each other in conjunction and your contribution is making sense of it to make sense of yourselves. Something inside you all mutually agreed that maybe you should ease yourself into siVis use and it’s going to be limited until you all convince yourselves that you can use it…”

Jackie shivered at that. Someone so comfortable with herself, confident in it, now forced to fight against it, like somehow, it’s another enemy of hers. The idea that she has made her own self foreign to her mind was a problem that couldn’t be understood, much less solve.

She gave into the fear again, as her arms helplessly flopped to her sides. Her once fists uncoiled into daggling fingers, hands too heavy to even look at in despair, even though she couldn’t help to try.

Leslie frowned a bit, as they all looked to him, their faces searching his for any and all kinds of reassurance or caveats he just doesn’t have. He looked a bit angry himself, not really at them despite being another example of what he’s possibly directing his anger at.

“This could happen for a number of reasons, but the prime one we need to address first is how you all could possibly gain siVis.”

“We get it,” Aiko sounding fed up, “We get that you don’t think we should’ve done what we done, but don’t act like we couldn’t do it. We wouldn’t have done it if we couldn’t!”

You weren’t supposed to,” Leslie said coldly, calmly. “Like Tabby Morrow, like Dr. Taber herself—Like me, thank god for it, especially now. You all weren’t supposed to and that’s the thing we’re confused by more than anything.”

And nobody said nothing for two minutes.

Leslie continued, he himself trying to be professional but failing, “It’s realization, after all. It works less and less, the chances dwindle, the longer the person takes the realization and doesn’t push it further into ignition. In other words, Joe Average, you and I, people that constantly see this crazy shit day in and out and no reach that threshold, already missed our chances years ago. Tell me what happened.”

Still silent on their part, Jackie begun to be puzzled about the silence versus Leslie’s claim. She wants to find the words, to answer the question, to use the clear proof that they have… But nothing. Like a lump in her throat, paired with a hazy mind. But this is like trying to remember the face of a criminal that clearly and nearly pulled a knife on you; surely this should be vivid…

“So tell us, any and everything, about what happened. What caused this, because it wasn’t the Shift days ago, it couldn’t have been. What exactly happened to you girls, because none of this does not make a lick of sense more than usual. If you actually want to help yourselves for once—”

“WE DON’T EVEN KNOW!” Tracy screamed out, tears coating her face as she looked deranged, twist, hurt and lost. “And I know that the others don’t either! It was beyond us and everything that is; we experienced something that people never have and won’t for thousands of years if we’re lucky! It’s not exaggeration, it’s not farces! I can’t—We can’t—Even access the memories from our minds! But it’s still fucking there!”

She collapsed in a total fit, covering her face again, doing something that’s between sobbing and catching her breath. Despite out of nowhere it was, everything clicked into place with Jackie. Why Tracy was more morose, and more importantly…

As it continued to happen and the silence congealed to the point of it being hard to pierce, Leslie took it upon himself to cut through it.

“Is that true?” he sensed that it would be his final question to them.

“…Yes,” Jackie muttered. “I th…I thought it was weird how it didn’t… Intrude so far into anything yet. Ruled my—our thoughts. We talked about what we did, but… It’s a block, beyond that. How we haven’t talked about even amongst ourselves aside from the personal stuff…But she’s exactly right, I fear. What happened as a whole, what exactly we went through… It was just too much for us to handle.”

River didn’t feel like it was her place, but she softly put her hand on Tracy’s quivering shoulder, all she could do in her depressed state, looking squarely down at nothing. Aiko was getting restless, as if she was holding back her energy and seemed like she was going for straight to the door, but still thinking it over. Maddie of course looked the least bothered by this, just putting on a smirk and chuckling to herself as she closed her eyes.

Jackie was still helpless. She tried looking to her struggling hand, the only thing left to do something, and it looked alien. She looked to the right, the same result. Suffering from the aftermath. Accepting she’s made the greatest mistake in her life. All of them did.

Leslie then sighed in a huff, and the room grew just as darker.

They noticed the room getting darker as the cacophony of screams made the room vibrate.

Jackie was the first to snap out of it, covering her ears as she scanned the room itself, now able to spot every nook, every detail that she had but couldn’t access before.

The room was plunged into a shade even with the fluorescing lighting. Thick, off-color shade of the deepest grey. Jackie, they, can still see, maybe blaming the girls’ enhanced sight being the rest, but it still messed with their eyes due to the texture of it all, and the fact there was the grainiest texture to it.

The worse part was when they noticed the shadows.

Stretched, exaggerated, and could no longer represent the shape of the object it owned its existence to; as if the tail-ends were an old chord, unproperly installed and no one cared, minutes from snapping away as it bottled-necked.

In now a mode of panic, they checked to see their own shadows and a semblance of dread and disgust filled each of their chests. The very same thing.

Thin, mispresented, elongated, simply and utterly wrong. And as Tracy, hiding behind her guard of fingers with the two near her right eye opened for her, she rose, as her shadow caught her while she was hunched over.

It choppily followed her lead, updating itself at such a sluggish pace, it didn’t even bother to. She was upright, yet the thing that was once her shadow corrected itself by standing up, but her back still hunched over, within a knot no human, not even siVis affected ones, can place themselves in.

Leslie ran to open the door and bolted to help with the evacuation under way.

The girls followed in a rush and tried to not pay attention to the things that failed to follow after.

The shadows lagged, crunched, halted, and was dragged into a pile of mess. They along after their hosts, writhing and barely holding on.

They all paid for trying to avoid their shadows.

They saw the stiff, pulsating, two-dimensional growth, twitching along the walls—ceilings—and floors, before they saw the people and patients crammed into the once hallow hallways. The voices of authority like the security guards, other nurses, medical staff and doctors were lost in the flood of panic and hysteria that outnumbered them. People were crushed and became the crush, and it felt like everyone in the building was either in this hallway or was like this in general. It was something out of a horror film, but trying to be artistic, Avant Garde. But it failed, and it was the failure was what made the colorless images so scary.

The girls were somehow swallowed up within the colorless masses, unable to tell who’s who or find the people that mattered most to them. The display was still, but wavering, enough personal space to panic, but the panic quickly closed off access. They were submerged on all sides when all of them needed to breathe.

But the shadows were free. Free to dance sickeningly and without pause. Looming, and before every single exit or pathway, contorting and suffocating everyone present as they looked on, cornered. Surrounded.

Trapped.

“EVERYONE, PLEASE, CLOSE YOUR EYES!”

Jackie’s attempt to crane her head three or so times toward Leslie paid off; even if she couldn’t directly see him. He was desperate, angry but desperate.

“JUST CLOSE YOUR EYES, THEY CAN’T HURT YOU, PLEASE, JUST LISTEN TO ME!” and he was instantly drowned out, within the waves of fear.

Jackie snapped her neck back and held against the person that pushed against her, “LISTEN TO HIM, LISTEN TO EVERYONE ON THE MEDICAL PERSONEAL; REMAIN CALM!”

They tried shouting over people for their own good, but their voices paddled, splashed violently, against the constant, turbulent airwaves. They were too focused on one thing, a thing that they all in someway all thought about. What they were slowly wired into doing by this land of the unknown. Even this microcosm of humanity reflected the collective’s thoughts, their worries, their ultimate fever. And it was answered all at once:

siVis ABILITY!

The only voice to breakthrough and reached out towards everyone, because it didn’t travel through the air. Everyone heard it and there was no way not to hear it.

Everyone promptly lost their minds, before the real reason to do it appeared before them.

Jackie froze when she saw her shadow turn three-dimensional before her, too sucked up in the state to notice that it was happening with everyone. It was different, this time; not aimless and distorted anymore. Just a simple, goop shape that formed from nothing and quickly took up all the space before her, before everyone, before she knew it.

It formed itself into a thick, ever-present wall that shouldn’t have stretched as far as it did; the space she was in had no more space to take and yet it took it all. A formless, pitch black wall that stretched for miles and it was corralling her from all sides, even before her.

She felt every single bead of sweat, from her condensation from head to toe, flung off in different directions as she punched, driven—no thought—driven to do something, anything. Her wide-eyed vision that was shaking along with her body didn’t care if the punch meant nothing, she threw one again and again and again and again, again again again again, and again until she realized the shockwaves that left an impression sucked forward towards her arms, snaring them tight. She jolted, shot, backwards to free herself as if that were an option, but the wall wasn’t pulling her; she provided the push and pull. She was so close to it, she couldn’t use her legs as a last resort, and because it was simply too late. She was being absorbed into the wall and the wall was her world.

“H—help—Heeeeeeeeeeeeelp!” she screamed out, sounding so panicked, so little. “Please God no please, please, pleeeeeeeeeaheheheheeeese…!”

And soon she was close enough for her mouth to be covered, whipping her head violently to pull away out of survival instincts that were never supposed to deal with something like this, something this magnitude. The wall enclosed her in every single stance, every viewpoint. Every move she made meant precious little and ultimately, it was the absorption that consumed her. There was no time for thought, couldn’t afford to, with the next action that could be her last.

She reached out to her body, and the lock didn’t respond.

She pleaded to her body, and yet, the lock wouldn’t budge.

She told herself that it would be the end of her, both of them, if they continue this. Still, the lock remained tightened.

Jackie felt the lock, it’s layout, as she banged against it, trying to rattle it open. It was just enough of her arms, legs, and midsection than the lock, her siVis jointed tight at places as she tries to activate it, rest back into their natural form. She did this to herself, she had to remind herself as she tried to control herself. There was nothing she could truly do and she wailed out as a last ditch effort to deny the claim, the now status quo.

She refused.