Chapter 18

Chapter 18

I watched from above as Third and Fourth siphoned more gas. Id lost count of how many trips theyd done but there was certainly no shortage of fuel. Parking mustve been a nightmare for Skylar Industries.

After standing there, in the center of building, right in front of the doors where people had walked in, seeing that blood. Not the scarlet color of life and oxygen but the dark stain of obsidian crimson?

Emotion bubbled in my chest, unbidden. That simmering chill. Id thought the cold that came with that anger was indestructible. A glacier. But this hell had proven again and again that something could shatter it. Id thought anger brought my focus to a razors edge.

Instead, Id broken down, cried, vomited, and screamed. Ive had nightmares the past two weeks, of dying, of failing, of all the twisted horrors that were still to come. I was paranoid, checking over my shoulder, feeling phantom pains where I was uninjured.

It wasnt anger, truthfully. How could someone be sure of something like that? Maybe it was just a front. A ruse to distract myself from what I really felt. It was an emotion directed at everything. And yet nothing at all. Pointless and meaningless.

It was a familiar feeling. That sucking sensation of something worse than just muddy shoes. A black hole that drained all energy. A bottomless pit of quicksand at the bottom of the ocean.

It was despair. Hopelessness.

I knew, I knew, I was just some guy. I knew that. I was no one special, no one near qualified to face whatever the hell a Field Bossmeant beyond the instinctive connotation. I wasnt military, I wasnt some great leader or fighter. I hadnt even graduated college.

But damn I wasnt about to give up. I didnt think of myself as a hero. The notion suggested I did this out of some desire to play out a fantasy. In a dream, maybe, not this hell. Not this nightmare.nove(l)bi(n.)com

I began dragging in any dry wood or flammable tinder I could find. Branches, brush, etc. Anything and everything that was dry. I had the manpower andI hopedthe time to spare.

Might as well do the fourth, I told myself. If Im taking the time to do all this.

And so I did. Uncap a random car, feed the vine into the tank, suck, siphon, fill the jug. Drag anything I could find that would burn into the building, climb the four flights of stairs, douse the floor. Repeat. It was hard manual labor, all done through my clones who had half my physicality, which meant it felt all the harder and probably took twice as long.

It was an easy price to pay for safety. I was taking virtually no risk. The problem was that it wasnt my life that was at risk here. It was everyone elses.

[Solos Instinct] went off. It was something like an itch, a tic, and an ache combined. Like something had caught my eye at the edge of my perception, only the equivalent to that as it related to every other sense I had. Combined.

A sudden, pressing, and absolutely certain intuition.

It wasnt my original self that was feeling it. It was my clones.

Inside, I whirled around, feeling the building groan and creak. The roots and tendrils strewn about the floor and walls, normally dormant and lethargic, began to twist and turn. As if the entire building was stretching. The Field Boss.

That was only one aspect of [Solos Instinct] going off. The clones couldnt see exactly what it was that made them worry. What urged them to act. But no single part of me needed to. Only one needed to see for the whole.

Every single person was walking towards the skyscraper.