Chelsea watched the poor girl die. The sheep herder bellowed in glee, then died too as Jason managed to get his cricket to hit the behemoth in the leg. The sheep herder titled, then fell, and that was the end of it.
They kept coming. Not one gun, not one rifle, not a laser or a military-grade weapon; just knives and their own terrible strength. They seemed only barely human, hewn from the animals of which they wore like hunters from bygone eras of stone and chalk.
Jason clipped another, then Chelsea watched as Galla's throat was cut by a woman sheep herder. She settled, watched Chelsea like prey, then whistled and the sheep-people made their retreat.
Chelsea drew her pistol and finished off one of them, his fur shifting in the wind.
Chelsea sifted through the battlefield. She forced herself to look into the eyes of each of them, some faded, some not.
She leaned down and turned Galla's body over. The white had nearly taken her. In a way, this was a mercy.
"I wish we knew why," she said, shaking her head.
"It's a disease," Jason said, hiding his weapon in his jacket. "Someone must be spreading the shit."
"But why are only some affected?"
Jason stared back at her. "Why does it matter?"
"Maybe we could fight it."
"There's no fighting this. Not anymore."
Chelsea lowered her head, touching Galla's forehead then closing her eyes.
"I want to get high."
Jason cracked a smile, then shouted, "Let's go!"
They fall back into shadow. Chelsea traced her hand against chrome, felt the tremor of the station, and wished more than anything they could try again.
Smoke, but Chelsea did not flinch. It was familiar, tainted in orange. She pulled her head back and drew it in, her mind wandering away. She no longer considered poor Galla. Her time was over.
The rags were still there but now they were intermingled with the young, the black-strewn, the loved. The smoke put them each in a near-coma, their eyes glass, souls tethered only barely by the sound of sirens just outside.
"I don't want to fight those sheep-fucks again," Jordan said, passing a bloodied hand over his face.
"Me neither. I felt for the girl, though."
"Just another rat among rats. We could have helped her but she was too raw."
Chelsea's mind wandered. She was in a park. Birds sang, the sun above easing her tension. She was running against fields with friends and family. She could see the world for what it was: beautiful.
"Chelsea."
Jason was lying next to her. He was staring at the ceiling.
"What do you think happens to you, when you die?" he asked.
"I thought you didn't care about that shit."
"Yeah, well...I don't know."
Each color was translucent. Her face was not a part of herself. This tripped her up far more than any sort of hurting imposed by the sheep-herders; their will was iron but they could be dealt with by sure-death.
The smoke pushed her to an edge she did not think she'd ever approach.
"I..." Chelsea blinked. "I don't know."
"Yeah," Jason said, then became still.
She was in a circular room with a prism in the middle. The prism held an orb. Chelsea approached the orb. When she touched it, a screen appeared on the other side of the room. Chelsea walked up to it. A flurry of white lights came into being, a chaotic symphony.
Outside, Chelsea could hear gunfire. Each burst torched her spirit; each cry felled her hope. And so Chelsea turned to the screen and stared.
She looked down at her hand. The hand began to move automatically. Then a hundred, thousand realities unfolded before her, so incredible she wept, on her knees, with the rain falling down.
The screen fluctuated. Her joints cracked, her fingers bending backwards. Chelsea stared in horrid fascination, knowing she could do nothing about it. The hand returned to normal, then cupped, and when she looked up she thought she could see the face of God.
The field returned, and there was Jason, his eyes hollowed out.
"Do you remember?" he said. "What it was like before?"
Chelsea shuddered. Her entire being was cut.
"No."
He nodded, then she was sent back to the screen, and before she could scream the white lights flooded her vision and strong arms took her, pulling her into that void.
The pain never ended. It focused on her so that Chelsea couldn't hide anymore.
"Chelsea."
She awoke. She was drenched in sweat, surrounded by about ten faces all concerned. Jason was clutching her shoulder, face pale.
"Are you okay?"
She blinked. She looked down at her hands.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm okay."
Jason exhaled. "Thank god."
"Chelsea, you were screaming," Monica said, her red hair casting over one of her eyes. "It sounded like you were being murdered."
"I had a ...bad dream."
Some of them fanned out, the others waiting. The rags were still there, as was the smoke, but now Chelsea could see clearly.
Jason frowned. "About what?"
Chelsea put a hand to her face.
"Does it matter?"
"Chelsea...it literally sounded like someone was stabbing you. I...it really scared me--us."
He sighed deeply. In a sudden fit of euphoria, Chelsea took his face in her hand and smiled.
"Thanks. I'm okay though. Promise."
That was the end of it. Monica and a few of the others hesitated, but eventually they wandered towards and out the exit, leaving behind trails of whispers and side-long glances.
Jason shook his head. "I..."
"Why don't we go out? What time is it?"
Jason stared back at her.
"I don't know."
Chelsea combed back her hair with her hands, closing her eyes to try and balance herself. But she knew this was hopeless; she had been tipped on her axis, all thanks to the screen.
"Let's get the fuck out of here."
The station was on full display tonight, red flooding Chelsea's vision. The young were standing beneath streetlamps or talking wildly in front of bars and clubs. The thrum of music, the moan of low-bearing sirens gave Chelsea new life. Soon her nightmare began to dissipate, and Chelsea told herself that the next time she laid down to sleep her dreams would be normal. Boring.
They passed a couple. The girl tilted her head back and poured a bottle of brown liquid, sticking and then slowly circling down into the gullet.
"I don't know why they do that shit to themselves," Jason muttered.
"They want to believe in something. Anything. So, they hurt themselves, and tell themselves stories about how they are liberated."
Chelsea realized she was walking by herself, Jason having stopped a few feet back.
"Sorry," he said, shaking his head and resuming their walk. "I've never heard you talk like that before."
"Neither have I."
"Are you sure you're okay?"
Do you remember what it was like before?
"I'm fine Jason. C'mon."
They came to the nearest club, a pair of guys wearing black makeup fumbling through the automatic doors, laughing hysterically at some unknown joke. They floundered, one of them taking Chelsea by the arm to re-orient himself, apologizing and then following his friend down a corridor and deeper into the station.
Inside, the club hummed, violet lights pulsating with the rhythm of the music: electronic, harsh. Chelsea settled into a leather boothe and closed her eyes, Jason coming back with a couple drinks glowing sickly green.
She took a pull, finishing off the glass in one go.
Jason smiled. "Damn."
"Guess I came too close to dying"
"I guess."
He looked down at his fingers, pressed against the glass table between them.
"They're going to keep coming, aren't they?"
In her mind's eye she saw Jason's hollowed-out face, and nearly wept again.
"If the cops won't help us, then we'll just have to learn to defend ourselves even better than we already know how. My dad would probably say something like we should get more organized, but..." she shrugged. "We go our own way."
Jason leaned in closer. "What the fuck are we going to do? How the fuck can we go against these...things. And it's not just that. I've heard stories, Chels, shit that makes your hair stand up."
Jason closed his eyes and sighed. "I'm sorry. No wonder you're having nightmares. Fuck me, right?"
She smiled and met his gaze. "Maybe some other time."
He rolled his eyes. "Jesus. I don't know how you can be so calm."
"We have each other. We'll be fine."
"How can we be fine if the world's ending?"
"Trust me." Chelsea leaned back in the booth. "Or don't. You can always fuck off. Seems to be a trend."
"I'm not going to do that."
"Why?"
"You know why."
And she did, but the taste of such a revelation was sour.
The music reached a sort of fevered tempo, and the floor itself shook as dancers danced. Sweaty, marred, torn from the burning which accompanied this future, Chelsea could not help but be simultaneously proud of them and disgusted.
"They have to keep moving," she said, "or they'll die."
"To keep the bullshit away." Jason nodded, his eyes glassy, fingers shaking.
"To keep the bullshit away."
A woman at a booth not far from them fumbled and fell onto the floor. She began vomiting black bile, writhing where she lay, her friends unable to do anything but scream. A few guys as makeup-riddled as their patrons came over and shouted for them to leave, taking the woman and carrying her to the corridor leading out.
The refuse lay there, and despite herself Chelsea couldn't look away as the bile began to move.
They went outside to smoke. The sick woman and her friends were already gone.
They passed a wall with graffiti on it, and there at the bottom was a stretch of black refuse, like the woman's.
Beyond: gunshots, lazer-pings. Chelsea forced herself not to think too hard on it, but in the back of her mind she realized she was seeing more and more of the filth. Everything piling up.
The smoke from their cigarettes reached up and to the chrome, washing away in a dead sunset.
"I want to talk to the police," Chelsea finally said, smoke delving into her lungs.
"That's a bad idea, Chels."
"It's everywhere; you can see it, all the shit on the walls. Soon we'll be on the receiving end. Doesn't matter if we ignore it or not."
"I don't want to think about any of this."
"Neither do I," Chelsea said, then: "I want to go to the edge."
He turned to her.
"Okay, Chels. Okay."
Through the caverns they went. A cross: cracked, fallen. Once it had been red and glorious: now it was destroyed, the Queen Bee's domain sundered.
"I don't know if this is a good idea."
"It's getting worse," Chelsea said, more to herself than him. "We have to let them know."
"They already know."
"Then we have to convince them if they don't do anything, soon the whole station will..."
Chelsea's mind trailed off, then snapped into focus.
"We should talk to Her."
"She'll tell us the same thing she's always told us: lay-low."
The levers, churning endlessly below.
"I'm going," Chelsea said. "If we just sit here we're fucked. This doesn't have anything to do with what's happening below. This is our problem."
Jason exhaled, smoke rising from his lips.
"All right."
They were able to find Wales, Monica, and a few more of their troupe. They left soonafter, with little ceremony. It wasn't long before Chelsea realized they had left behind her world. The change was subtle but significant: no more graffiti, no more darkened alleys, no more clubs, just the chrome and even that was slowly replaced with wires, cranes, and pulleys, lazer-light shifting with the clouds of fog sifting throughout. There was a low, audible churning, a sort of mechanical song that Chelsea recognized but could not name. More people, too, and not just Chelsea and her ilk: businessmen and women, wearing suits covered in circles and triangles, their hair exquisite, their eyes dead.
Chelsea noticed her footsteps making a different sound than she was used to. There, beneath hardened glass, was layer upon layer of gears, and working the gears were men, black men with their backs exposed, each muscle that of the machine. For as long as she had lived, Chelsea couldn't understand why this was necessary and why it was allowed to continue.
There: police headquarters, one dark, towering nothing, a fusion of everything that was right and wrong, boring into the station like a tumor.
They went into a cafe, ordering nothing, sitting and watching the face of that creature with tension.
"I don't like it," Jason said.
Chelsea sighed. "Neither do I."
"If we go in there, they might arrest us."
A hovercar raced up from the top of that great behemoth, then arched down towards other parts of the station, three red lights blinking in the dim.
"We have to do something."
"We'll stay back," Wales said. "Just ping us if you're in trouble, and we'll come in and get you out."
"They might shoot."
Wales grinned. "I'm counting on it--shit's been stale lately."
Outside, Wales and the others broke off, Chelsea and Jason standing adjacent to dead hovercars with tinted windows.
They approached the building. Chelsea wondered why she felt so terrified, then realized that they were alone.
Then, blinding light: the building disappeared behind the haze and all Chelsea could think of was how easily they had fallen into that trap.
"No..."
She fell. She was not in control of her own body. The only thing that mattered were the lights.
She was standing beneath a glass plane, and above were the dancers. Putrid sludge dripped onto the glass. Their movements reminded Chelsea of insects.
She ascended; she could not return to the earth, and so she became an angel, glistening, rolling across endless lights folding and unfolding.
Now she was in a room: alone. No windows. In front of her was the screen. She came closer to it. A feeling of euphoria washed over her. She realized that she was in-love with the screen. It spoke to her. It let her know it was going to be fine.
"Chelsea."
Her vision sharpened. A harsh wind blew.
Everyone was there, including Jason.
She held her hand in his.
"I think," Chelsea said, "that I'm dying."
Tears came to Jason. "Please don't say that. Please."
"It's weird. I'm not afraid. Almost...almost as if I knew..."
Wales looked up at Jason. "We have to get her to a hospital."
"They won't take her."
"They have to do something."
Chelsea got up and leaned into herself, huddling beneath a rainbow-strewn blanket, watching the city below.
The edge. No one came to this place that was in good-standing with central headquarters, of which was still hounding them, on the edge of Chelsea's vision.
"It's too late," Chelsea said, turning her cheek to catch the wind.
Jason held her hand tightly. "We're taking you back."
She said nothing during their retreat. There was nothing left for her here.
When they returned, Chelsea sunk into the rags and slept.
She felt the grass with her hands, and knew she was alive. The touch of nature soothed, placated her ancient heart. She was in the middle of a maze, green verge surrounding her, the last sun falling to give penance to the dark clouds rolling in.
A room, a screen, and Chelsea knew what this was and what would happen.
The screen fell away. She was laying on the floor. Cold to the touch, death-ringing. No nature here, no nothing. She was a castaway born in the wrong time in the wrong place, forced to live out this pitiful existence of numbers.
She drew into herself; she would partake before it was over. She raised her hands. Pain, sharp pain, and her hands contorted strangely. A blue light cast against her body. She began to itch at her palm, then found that she couldn't stop itching, creating a sore, then a gash, and there she could see time infinite falling away from her.
Her stomach churned; her eyes were on fire; her tongue couldn't taste. She screamed out for relief but no relief would come. Now, the wounds appeared up and down her arm. Now, communion was essential.
She craned her neck back and her neck snapped; she began to weep; oh how simple it would have been to go over the edge, but something kept her at bay.
Now, the flame. She wished it was over, but in truth it was only the beginning. Her heart fell; she thought she might faint and die before it was done.
She arched her back on the cold surface and writhed.
"Let it be over."
Appearing before her was a great, incredible eye. Its iris was distorted, and as it came closer the sky went red, and now the water, coming, swallowed her up, forcing her into the depths, and with one, last breath Chelsea forgave everyone.
For it was not in her nature to cause pain, but to receive it, and this surely was her greatest triumph.
The world grew gray, then dark. The lights went out. The tears stopped, and Chelsea smiled.
It was finally over.