Umbel (Terminal Trilogy #3)

31: Wash cycle

I did not care if I was going to be safe. I did not care about myself. I was an collision of other people, blank and opaque. Not absorbing, not changing, but nice.

A nice guy.

A large dog. I ran, watching the sky, scanning the identical city scape for some sort of something. Every now and again I caught a movement, someone staring nervously from their windowsill. A child leaning out from behind a flower box, fearful.

This was the worst event in their lives. I felt for them- I felt like them, young and restricted. In a maze I could never fully separate from.

The spectators comforted me and supported me, their presence like a reminder from the universe, like a cinematic special. Like I was a hero.

Was I special? It felt a lot like it, lately, all these people with power who were willing to drone in my presence, ready to fill my mind with details, fulfilling blank boxes. Ordinary citizens just got to read magazines.

But maybe I was more like a magazine than a hero, a contest winner, ushered from scheduled event to stiff meeting, never belonging, never adding much.

I did not know how to talk to people in a way that left me satisfied.

I banished my mind from my skull, an obedient hound of shadows.

A city is wide, but Hell always felt smaller than that, a tiny community where everything was always accessible- but as I skid forward, each bound forward kicking up dust clouds, I realized exactly what I could miss:

More destruction. I could smell the fire and death blocks away, and I took a sharp right turn until I could confirm my thoughts. Kelsey had activated his arsenal, taking out at least one building entirely. It lay in collapsed, a bundle of rubble, shattered remains of its neighbors mixed with it. Around it the ground was cracked, a sort of sinkhole having appeared at the base.

Though the darkness I could see the pillars that held the city. I didn't get too close- the people around the wreckage had already taken note of me, pointing and taking a picture or two. They seemed to move past me quickly, attention refocusing on grief, but I got moving.

Death, as always, was a bad sort of smell.

Continuing south, I passed by the hospital. It was unharmed, but quiet as everything else. I didn't see any lights, or a single person. But it was quiet and safe, so I filed it under okay in my mind and moved on.

The gate to the undercity was gone. Again, if my memory served me. Hell had survived a collapse like this once before, so this was fine.

Everything was always going to be fine.

I sniffed around like I was capable of it, searching for Micky or Michael or Amy or anyone else, really. Glenn, Kelsey, whatever. That redhead girl Michael liked to bathe with. The angelic police officer who stopped me once.

Anything to go on. Anyone to make myself useful to.

I pawed at the ruins, moving aside stones easily. I could've dug the place out myself, but I wasn't going to. I turned around another gentle corner, a small and easily jumped barricade soon in my way. A man with a gun watched the elevator that traveled from the depths to here to the surface. He waved his gun at me half-heartedly, and I just nodded, maw open.

I only became human again when I came to the elevator, requiring fingers to jam the button for 'down'.

And down, down, down I went, each tick and groan of the elevator building against my skin until I felt overwhelmed. If someone spoke now, I'd scream. Elevators had never triggered my claustrophobia before, but now I was over simulated, and it was like my feelings were projected with every look I gave, threatening to overtake this tiny box and drown me.