(Episode II)(.5) (Act 4)

There was no need for agreement, they all activated their arms and started to cleave around for Aiko, trapped in a pool that gets more gelatinous, more slippery, more unruly the more you dig.

Taking such frantic, sweeping swipes at the ground caused them to gain ground faster than they could think with their buzzing minds, Tracy screaming out as she found a hand emerging and clamping desperately onto her wrists.

Without any of the hesitation that has gripped her before, Tracy pulled herself back, shouting and grunting, for the others to come and assist. Everyone raced over and grabbed each other’s underarms, with Jackie at the back providing the strength they need.

Aiko’s head resurfaced, almost all of the sludge clearing away… Except the parts that have a death gripping on her, pulling her back so hard that her terrified face is stretched back, along with her head bent at an awkward angle. Tracy wasted no time.

“B-Beat it, Aiko! Beat it using siVis! F-focus your hands, okay?! M-make it some c-cool stunt o-or something!”

The buried girl’s eyes began to alight when Tracy said what she said.

“O-oh, y-yoou liked that? Uh, which--?” Tracy shook her head, as she figured it didn’t matter. “Yeah, let’s see you beat it! Beat being buried life! D-doing a stunt on death itself! C’mon! Live! Live in that moment, like you said!”

Tracy tried to motion how to activate using her thumb in her struggles, as her face began to turn as red as her hair. But it was enough, as Aiko let go a hand to activate the one that’s still gripping, hoisting herself up from her trap with siVis-unlocked strength alone; her binding straps popping off dangerously, but Aiko was rising from the pits all the same.

As the others collapsed on their backs, sides and rears; Aiko tried to stand tall as the floor settled and became solid again. Even if her knees were buckling, leaning forward and couldn’t stop her shivering, she wanted to prove that she conquered her fear, much less the concerned and sympathetic crowd before her and more herself.

After Jackie got up, and then the others, she proceeded to hug Aiko despite her visible protests. She yielded within a minute or two, becoming still.

“And that makes five,” Jackie said, grimly. But the tone was betrayed by the fierce, tired look in her eyes. “Now to fix this shitshow. For all of our sakes.”

“The nurse, right…?” Tracy asked.

“Indeed. And luckily for us…” River pointed to the direction she ran in to search for Aiko, “I heard him straight ahead. Was gonna report that, but, well…”

Jackie nodded, letting out and looking at Aiko, “Are you going to be okay?”

Aiko nodded back, vacant but was listening.

Jackie rubbed her shoulders and got in front of the girls. “We’re at the final leg, everyone. We can do this. We can make this a good day.”

The five young girls moved forward, braving the darkness ahead and around them, so that the goal that could’ve been above and beyond them can be achieved. No more fear. No more being lost. While they didn’t complete the maze, they got what they came for in record time.

Leslie was fighting against the manifestations of his demons, tussling even if it’s futile. What he was protecting was the completely untouched door to the stairway, but the influence of the siVis ability is creeping towards it along with the horde. He constantly pushed away the twisted caricature of not only people, but those affected by the Shift Noumena, siVis, and anything else the girls couldn’t exactly recognize. He fought back with the procedure he performed on them, just pushing them back, but he was so overwhelmed as they came right back. Despite it all, he shouted, he raged, he cursed not in the way Maddie does, but in terms of wishing venomous hatred for these soulless things. Or what they’re based on. What they meant.

The girls rushed in, not exactly thinking it, but clearly don’t want to give up or stand idly by now when they’re so close. Jackie herself grabbed and shielded Leslie, he being extremely surprised as the shadows wail on her.

“Would it by a tad cliché to say that all you need to do is not be afraid…?” she winced out.

Leslie looked at her, up and down, “How did you--?”

“We can compare notes when you stop giving into your fear! You did the rest and you’re more trained by it than we are! So, you just doing that would be it for them!”

He returned with an intense glare, as if she was one of the shadows.

“…Please,” Jackie pleaded. “I know we’re a part of the problem, we do. But unlike most of them—us… We’ve learned. We’re gonna right this wrong, we’re gonna actually use the things about ourselves we’ve failed to consider—hell! Here, how we go here, was a marriage between that and siVis! We can make it work. We’re already learning our lesson…”

With his intense glare, he began to close his eyes. And soon, the shadows lose form once more, crawling away.

Jackie let go of him, clearly winded along with the rest of the girls that had their own ways and episodes in dealing with the mess. With a cough and look at Leslie, Jackie proposed her plan.

“Are your supervisors, who brought the one after us in, are they upstairs?”

“Yeah,” Leslie said bitterly. “Glad to see you all using your heads.”

“Told ya’ we had ‘em,” Maddie added on, tapping hers, namely the forehead. “We just don’t LISTEN to them time to time!”

Leslie rolled his eyes, trying to hold back a smile until he remembered what was at stake. “Let’s go.”

He pointed to the relatively untouched stairwell, the door blown off it’s hedges by the door’s own shadow.

Jackie was surprised, “That’s… Convenient.”

“There’s a lot of this that’s fishy,” Leslie began. “9/10, an siVictim’s activation is a burst, uncontrollable and showcases the strengths and weaknesses of the person, leaving in what we usually call an impression. This should’ve been worse.”

Jackie then looked down, hearing that. Their running theory of the victim being weak as they are was basically shot down and continues to show how much they’ve botched their situation.

Leslie looked at the group, noting Jackie, but chose not to address it, “This gives us a chance, whatever this may mean, to storm up there and get in close enough to help sedate him.”

Jackie looked at the boy, as he turned forward. He was barely audible, but Jackie heard it:

“The bastard might’ve gotten to Mom and Dad…”

The group bolted for the stairs, running by the door and climbing up the stairwell, cloaked in shade as well despite it being a sanctuary. And the shade grew thicker and thicker, as they got close to the heart of the problem, the sight being so reassuring yet so terrifying of what could possibly be next. They reached the top floor, where the door was smashed against the opposite wall, with just blank darkness within the entrance.

“Here it is…” Jackie’s voice rung out, so vulnerable. “Finally…”

Then Aiko’s voice croaked out, as she was looking down the stairwell, “Guys…?”

Jackie’s heart sunk at that, but it strangely, she felt that way before. Getting used to it? She ran and looked over the railing to see what waited them.

All shape, sizes, abstract, simple, complex shadows raced after the group and had been for some time. And as they were crowded together, they were as deep and black as the shadow within the door. As the rest of the girls could only crumble in exhaustion, Jackie looked on.

“They can’t be our shadows…” Tracy whimpered out.

“…Yeah. They aren’t ours,” River answered for her, and everyone.

Jackie looked at Leslie, “Go.”

He was taken aback, even lowering his guard so much that he looked more frightened, more distressed than what Jackie could’ve ever pictured him looking like.

“If you get hurt by this and all of what we did was pointless,” Jackie coldly stated, motivated by something hotter. “Go! We can buy you time, and if you solve this, maybe everything can revert back to normal!”

“You were just saying you were learning!” Leslie said in… Concern? “You can’t do that when you’re dead—”

“THEN GO SO WE DON’T DIE! YOU HAVE AN OATH; NOW DO IT!”

Leslie relented; he ran into the darkness as the girls faced the oncoming one. Once again, as Jackie moved back to them, somehow different faces portrayed the same emotion.

Jackie couldn’t help but to sniffle, as she activated her arm with her hand molded into a fist. Feebleness, despite all that they’ve done. But then again, it wasn’t enough. It just wasn’t fucking enough.

Meanwhile, plunged into darkness, Leslie could only rely on something of the mix of muscle memory, spatial awareness, and total recall running in the now dank halls. Even with the run-ins, bumps and pauses, he figured out how to get to the siVis Trauma Center, using his ID card to get into the doors. This was it; he could assist his parents in solving this patient’s cosmic mania to save everyone, the girls, Jackie…

What was supposed to be blinding light at the end of the tunnel turned into his greatest nightmare.

Two doctors, an older couple, was mutilating a patient.

Using some kind of technology; they were trying to harvest patient zero’s pieces of himself, turned into exotic “puzzle pieces” by siVis and the machine’s help. The lowered flexible prongs the machine had buried itself deep into the broken man. They looked towards Leslie, feverent. Caught.

Leslie was speechless.

“Why did you have to do this of all times, Leslie?!” the older, greyhaired woman with a bun and glasses with chain-hoops hanging off of them. A familiar, passive-aggressive phrase turned into condemnation. As the balding, also glasses wearing man could only watch on.

But none were paying attention to the patient, leaking darkness from the orthoses of his head so much that it masked it. They couldn’t see him, but he could see them. Leslie walking in, with such an expression, seemingly is what drove him over the edge.

He jerked, kicked, struggled and violently spasmed as he screamed more and more, despite his throat raw and still in relative pieces. The pieces themselves began to glow and spark, with the two professionals look in wonder and adject terror as they never seen this before.

The piece that the machine hold started to glow brightly, started folding in tandem, disassemble, reassemble, until the very room and its people began to warp. And before they screamed themselves, protested, run, or knew; a very familiar, wispy glow overtook them and the hospital in darkness.

The glow stripped things down to the essentials, moved within space that wasn’t up, down, right or left, and overtook the hospital of horror. A Shift occurred and warped the hospital in half, then the block, then the neighborhood, soon part of the city.

Then it hardened.

Sliced the hospital in half.

Then the neighborhoods in its path.

Then it continues to slice through the city.

Then finally, the island of Davenport itself.

And just as it began, it disappeared. Leaving with warped destruction and many, many implications.

And one more thing to fear, even there already was just too, too much.