2020-08-13 - The Power Gauntlet (Phase Four)

Kip had been sitting in Rekani's room, reading while waiting for him to come home from Platinum . But then something is changing. She doesn't feel so good and the idea of laying down sounds heavenly. Except that she can't stand, can't see? A coil of fear rises in her stomach.

Suddenly she's on her knees in the dark, trying to gather her wits. Blinking as her eyes adjust and the soft light starts to appear. Chancing a cautious look to see who else was in here with her.

August groans, rolls on his right side to get up. He's in UW sweats and a black hoodie, and barefoot. He'd been reading on the couch, waiting for Ellie to come home so they could have dinner. Now...

"Shit," he whispers, peering into the gloom. He glances about, trying to get his bearings, determine if anyone else is with him. He spies Kip, feels relieved to not be alone and simultaneously guilty for said relief. "Hey."

Even with his Sunday schedule freed from most work commitments, Byron still spent much of it in a suit, performing his Sunday ritual- this mental chess game that he plays with his mother. By the time 8:47pm rolls around, he's showers and changed and waiting to enjoy the rest of his evening with his fiancee. He had a lot to think about due to recent events, so as he pulls on a plain gray tee and comfortably fitting jeans, he tries to process everything that's been said and done while looking over his mental check-list of things that need to be done. Lilith was already setting the table and he could smell the delicious meal which she'd made wafting through the hall.

Then within a few scant moments, the delicious fragrance of a mouth watering steak starts to fade and all there was was this sickening darkness.

He knows that he's down on his knees once he regains himself, leaning forward to feel the ground beneath him in a blind manner. He hears sounds of movements, breaths coming from that heavy dark and he turns towards the first actual voice that he hears, "Roen...?" It's a guess.

"Hi." Kip says softly to August, a bit uncertain. Then her gaze flickers over to Byron. She has no idea who he is, but he seems to know August at least? She just gives him a little nod as her attention shifts back to the room. ""...Where are we?" She asks them both as she starts to try and get to her feet.

"Thorne," August says in a confirmation for both Byron and Kip. He winces at the rising light and accompanying sound. This isn't the sort of situation he's used to. This seems like...something else. (Christ, what if the Doctor was here for Round Two? This seems like his kind of deal.)

He's not happy to have to tell Kip, "No idea. Which is a bad sign." He takes a cautious step, glances at Kip and moves to help her up with his good arm. "Mind if I check to see what your Glimmer's like?" He grimaces. "It might be important."

Good, August was here. There was some comfort in being drawn into a Dream with several individuals who Byron knows he can trust. The other, he doesn't recognize immediately. Maybe it's due to the dim lights. Then again, her voice isn't something he recognizes either.

"Who else is here?" He asks as he slowly draws himself up to stand, his mind already going back to something that was brought up recently. "Just the three of us?" That's as much as he can see. Still, he'll check mentally for signs of anyone else in the vicinity, though he already has a bad feeling about this situation due to recent events. What he's doing is taking a head count and also to see if he can sense Lilith anywhere in this hellscape.

"My name is Kip." The Russian woman offers to Byron. "I think just us three." Then she nods to August. But, unsure if he can see her - she elaborates. "Yes. You may check." Now standing, she tries to take another look around. "This is very unsettling indeed."

August barely sees Kip's nod, so they verbal confirmation helps. She feels a brief tingling sensation, like fingers on her spine. "She's like Itzhak," he says, for Byron's benefit. And pauses, frowning. "That was weird," he murmurs. But he's not sure what it even was, so he just says to Kip, "Think you can make us a light? Might help with the visibility." And he can always summon a fireball if she can't.

Russian? That was new. Byron, himself, falls silent for a time, as he reaches out to scan their surroundings for any spark of emotion or hint of life other than themselves. What he finds makes him all the more uneasy, the way that every muscle in his body tenses. And the fact that he's trying to peer through the dark and fog as if searching for someone or something. "Kip. Byron Thorne." Odd to make introductions in a situation such as this.

Knowing what he knows, he's about to ask the question: So, Kip. Do you happen to be a Pusher?

But since August already volunteered to check her Glimmer, he simply waits for the man's results. "Knew it. A situation like this happened months ago with Lilith, Easton and Ruiz. And then recently with Alexander Clayton and two others, all of whom had different prominent Talents." Licking at his lips as he continues his attempt of visually scanning the area, his eyes peering up towards the ceiling at the moment, "Alexander nearly lost an arm. This is going to be more than just highly unpleasant, so be on your guard."

He then ends with, "We're alone, but not alone. There's something else. There's something else here with us? Observing us?" He's not sure.

Kip's brow furrowed, first at the sensation of the phantom fingers, and secondly at the mention of something like this happening recently with others. Her thoughts, of course, immediately drifting to Rekani and the fact that he was going to have some explaining to do if she made it out of this alive.

"Light. Yes. Let me try." Kip said, pulling herself back to the present and focusing, holding a hand out to try and manifest a light.

August looks in Byron's direction as he talks; the man's an indistinct shape in this weirdly lit place, so he's following the sound more than the sight. "...Itzhak came back from a bad one, it was like he'd had something caustic pumped into his veins. And Aidan, his arms were all bandaged up the other night." Two more then: a mover, another shaper.

"What did Lil and Alexander say it was like. Aidan and Itzhak didn't say, just that it was bad." Losing limbs is, of course, bad. But is that all that's bad? Are they going to come out of this with some busted ass part of their brain? Or lose a finger? One of those two things is inherently more tolerable than the other.

He watches Kip's light grow, flaring to life...and then die as it's consumed. "...okay. It's this kind of bad." He squints overhead, trying to make out what's up there. But rather than check it--and because he's working with a bum shoulder--he gathers up his Physical shield around himself first.

His dark eyes focused on the pulsating ceiling, Byron is distracted and repulsed by what he can only imagine happening next. Taking in a hard swallow, he then draws in a deep breath. As he speaks, he doesn't take his gaze away from the grotesque vision as if the ceiling were some womb (or that guy's stomach in Alien) that something was going to burst forth from. "Itzhak too? Shit. Yeah, Aidan was with Clayton. Clayton himself, he was... barely functional. He was in shock, but Lilith helped with that."

The light source falters then fails and he's quick to give them a heads up, "I think something's gonna drop down from the ceiling at any moment. I saw it pressing against the metal there, almost as if the ceiling itself was alive and made of some sort of metallic flesh."

He continues, "Lilith's retelling told that she and the others were being captured and placed into cells, like a prison. That's what I'm expecting will happen here."

The very brief reprieve of having light doesn't linger long at all. "Very bad." Her tenseness returns as the fight just...fades away. She looks towards August, then to Byron. Then towards the ceiling briefly. What was up there? If they're in a building, perhaps there is a door?

Kip tries to remember how to breath with that impending sense of doom sitting heavily on her chest. The hairs on the back of her neck are standing on end. Better to be safe than sorry. She follows August's lead, working up a shield for herself in preparation of whatever was going to come. Maybe it would turn out to be useless in the end...but maybe not.

She remains quiet otherwise though, listening to the information being passed between August and Byron. Though finally does ask, "...What happens in the prison cells?" Eyes lifting to the ceiling again to try and see what Byron saw.

August looks up overhead as Byron describes things, just barely misses getting a drop of that shit in his damned eye. "Gah, fuck." He pulls his hood up, for all that it'll do anything, begins to avoid the coalescing puddles on the floor. "Gonna guess that they smack your brain around until you cave." Whatever caving might amount to in this instance.

His eyes track one of those puddles...to Kip, right as she's being engulfed. "Kip!" He reaches for her, and reaches, trying to get some sort of boost to her power. Maybe she can use it to break free? But no, she vanishes down into the darkness.

What happens in the prison cells?

Byron has no real answer to that one, but he will state, "I don't know. They didn't want to stick around to find out." Despite the light going out, his attention is still focused on the ceiling. "I'm not sure what state Itzhak or Aidan or anyone else was, but Lilith returned near catatonic and shaking and from what I could tell of Alexander, they all went through some bad shit here."

Then he sees it, the odd and unnerving rhythmic indentions in the ceiling as it bubbles and glistens like condensation before making the drop. "Look out! Take cover!" He calls before lurching himself out of the way. The start of the rain wasn't too difficult to navigate, though he'd feel the random droplet on his shoulder or in his hair just like with any gloomy, drizzling day. But the rain picks up and there's only so much that you can do to avoid it all without an umbrella.

"I'd say to try not to let this shit get on you, but it doesn't look like that's happening." He remembers what happened to Alexander, that being his most recent interaction with someone who'd gone through this. If he can't avoid the rain, he'll avoid the pools that they produce on the floor, leaping over them in bare feet, before he hears August calling out for the Russian chick some distance away. Out of all of them, he doesn't have the powers to do anything about it, but if anything, he'll navigate himself in that direction, keeping away from the actual growing puddle, less he's pulled in too, but by the time he gets there, there's no sign of her.

Right. We need to find a way out. Making his way to a relatively safe area, even if he's coated in the thing, feeling the heaviness and the dripping from his hair and the way his clothing clings to him in that uncomfortable icy chill, he starts looking valiantly in the darkness around them. "We gotta find a way out, man." This is said to August, though he sends out a mental reach to test whether he can still get a sense of Kip despite watching her be buried in the liquid metal muck.

"Then we definitely want to get out of here." Kip says to Byron's quick run down of what's been happening.

Kip is feeling confident that her shield once the rain starts falling, but then it doesn't seem to be enough for her to stop from getting caught up in the tar-like substance of what ever it is that's pooling along the floor. It's not long before she's shivering and trying to keep an eye out for some kind of door. "Do we try to-" Kip starts to ask...but then she realizes the puddles are starting to pool up and cover her. She was thinking along the lines of Byron. Get out. Run away. Too late for that apparently.

She tries to push against it with her shield. Tries to fight it. She cries out reflexively as it closes over her. Trying to reach out but, instead she's being yanked down into the puddle. Into gods only know where.

August pulls up short of the puddle that engulfed Kip, hits the ground in frustration. "Damn it." He glances over his shoulder towards Byron, grits his teeth. Yes. They need a way to get Kip back and get the fuck out. He reaches out with his moving Glimmer, trying to find the extent of the space. Are there walls he can smash open? He's absolutely feeling his inner Kool-Aid man right about now.

The black rain stops, and August stills. "What's--" The puddles rush together and snare his feet, quickly working to encase him. He can't hope to do for himself what he did for Kip--so he tries to get a blessing onto Byron before he's dragged under.

Byron can feel the density of this Emptiness (as strange as that may sound), buffering his mental reach, but eventually picks out emotions of panic and confusion from the distance. "She's still here. Somewhere." He murmurs to August, though mostly speaking aloud to himself. Breathing heavily, he continues his aimless trek, his gaze scanning the walls for any signs of a door or window, while avoiding the ever growing dark pool that threatens to fill the entirety of the room.

He doesn't notice at first when the rain suddenly stops, leaping over a spread of dark water to land safely on the other side. "I'm trying to find the door. Once we locate that," Then what? Go back and find Kip? He's cut off mid-sentence when from out of the corner of his eyes he notices August being drawn into a large mass of threatening muck. "Roen! God damn it." At the time, there was little chance of him making it there, because the entire floor was near covered in the stuff. And then it's all gone. August. The mysterious pools.

Byron is left alone, covered in the dark water as he simply stares down at the ground beneath him. This takes a few seconds for him to process, before his eyes return back to the wall. The others might be gone, but he still needs to find a way out.

Kip shudders as she rises up into this illuminated space. She looks around the room to try and get her bearings as she tries to stop the nauseated feeling. She walks up to the large glass-liquid window thing. "BYRON!" She tried to call out and attempted to bang on the window. Wondering if maybe she can get his attention. But where did August go? Did he get sucked in too? Would he come up here?

But, then the safes are here too and pose their own issues.

She turns back to the safes. She tries to reach out with her mind towards the safe that the thumping is coming from - to see if she can detect if it's actually something living or not. As she does this, she walks closer to the safe with the silence coming from it to examine the combination.

August slowly stands in the small space, careful of his bad arm. He moves to peer out the windows, and seeing only Byron, scans his surroundings for Kip. No sign of her, though. He's moving towards the plants, eyeing them with equal parts wariness and curiosity, when the first explosion reaches his ears. He ducks and curls instinctively, right arm over his neck.

Nothing actually happens. He unwinds, still tense. ...it's just the sound. He takes a shaky breath and stands, still flinching at each blast. He stretches out his shaping sense to the trees, trying to take an accounting of their condition.

What he finds isn't good. But this might be the only way out. So he takes a breath in and out, and tries to purge that...whatever it is, out of them.

Byron already cast out an emotion detection net on first arriving to this place. He took a head count. Learned that there was something else, something much larger? More threatening? In their midst. Unlike the others with their own power sets, he really does have a limited amount of tools to use. Hell, since he'd just showered and changed and was preparing to relax with the fiancee for dinner and then some in the comfort of his own home, he didn't even have a firearm on him.

Taking cautious steps forward, feeling his way through the darkness, he does cast out a second net, sensing any electrical current that he may find. Maybe he's looking for a power source, mechanical doors? Other things that may evade mental detection, but that could be controlled in a mechanical way. Those things are what he seeks now. It's almost surprising to him that he picks up a few currents, or something of a similar nature all around him.

What are those things? Pylons, maybe? Security detectors? A lot of thoughts pop into his mind. He's still left uneasy and tense with the rather traumatic disappearance of the other and he has to wonder how they are all faring now.

Sensing that it would dangerous to pursue the energy source in the dark distance and the others are already behind him, the light open space is what draws his attention. His steps are hurried, quiet, but they are also cautious. Rather than racing to the light, he moves at a quick walk, positioning himself in a way that he can best see the inside of that door while keeping as stealthily as he can out of sight, in case something or other inside can detect motion.

Kip shudders again as she feels the cold air that surrounds the weird liquid-but-not safes. She decided that silence would be safer. If she can get the potential black-hole of quiet opened. Then she can decide what to do with the things making noise. Or have something to throw them into? She bites her lip a moment and then shakes her head, focusing on the combination again. Priorities. Getting these stupid things open.

Kip manifests her Glimmer, focusing on the lock. She's not an expert but she's seen plenty of those spy/thief movies to have a rough idea of how a safe works. She tries to see if she can work on getting the lock's tumblers into place and get the silent safe open.

If all else fails, maybe she can start throwing safes at the fake window.

August pushes at the darkness in the flowering trees, encouragnig the plants to fight back against it. To keep his mind off the blasts and screams, he starts reciting a poem, shifting molecules and bolstering plant cells in time to the words. "You don’t want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway, I don’t want to tell it." He swallows. "I want to listen to the enormous waterfalls of the sun."

It's not Sarajevo. It's not. There's no one out there getting blown to bits. (No? Not Byron and Kip?) It's not real. It's just a distraction.

"And anyway it’s the same old st--" His voice fails him when the pain hits. For a panicked moment his mind latches on to the very real liklihood that he IS back there, that there are snipers shooting children in the streets.

No. No, this is from these trees. It's what he's expelling from them. He sways, nauseated, then laughs in bitter victory. "Born and raised in this briar patch you," he coughs, "stupid motherfuckers." Healing hasn't not hurt him for as long as he's been doing it.

He takes in a shaky breath and keeps healing those trees, purging the darkness, or maybe it's drawing it into himself. And isn't that what it's always been? Taking someone else's pain and making it his own? "Same old s-story. A few people just trying, one way or another, to survive."

The closer that Byron gets to that space, the more tense he becomes. Things in the Dreaming are never this easy. Step by step, he makes his way forward. It's as if the space within the light was empty? Or he's catching it at a bad angle, though matter how much he moves an inch or two to this side, then that, nothing seems to come into view. A blank room. A hallway maybe? Maybe it's not a doorway at all but a vision or image being shown to him like through some magic mirror.

Then, his movements stop as he hears what can only be Lilith's voice calling out to him. Lips parted, he's about to respond, but he quickly zips it and merely waits and listens in case he's being tricked. Byron Thorne was an unusually cautious one for a millionaire playboy sort. As much as he wants to call out to her, he keeps himself from doing so, creeping his way forward even more until...

He feels this odd sensation inside of him as something is trying to drag him forward into the lit room, but how? And that's when he understands. His inner light might not glow as brightly as many others in town, but it still exists. Bracing himself and trying to dig his feet into the ground, dropping to a lowered position to make himself heavier and to keep himself centered in defense.

Whether that's Lilith or not somewhere out there (maybe it is, but she's not here...), rather than continue on his path, he's now trying to fight his way out, to distance him from the room. Crawling on the ground, he works to drag himself as far from that lit space as he can, despite the nausea and pain.

Kip mumbles something in Russian, an expression of disgust as she starts to turn and twist the mechanisms. Trying to get over the slimy sensation that has overcome her. The silence is deafening in a sense. Her brow is furrowed in concentration as she focuses everything she has in opening. Especially with the absence of the other noises. Finally the feeling fades a little as everything clicks into place. Her heart leaps into her throat as the other two safes melt back into the floor.

She draws in a slow breath and opens up the safe. A bit of a dreadful feeling in the pit of her stomach as she slowly swings the safe open. Maybe she should've gone with the ticking safe.

August's teeth are chattering and he's sweating and crying against the certainty in the back of his mind that it's here, he's there, except Kip and Byron are with him and dying, dying. He keeps up with the poem, trying to use it to blot out the pain. "Mostly, I w-want to be kind. And nobody, of course, is kind, or mean, for a simple reason." He shakes, half-crouches as he keeps pushing these plants to grow. "And nobody gets out of it, having to swim through the fires to stay in...this world."

He sags, stops. Blinks at what the trees have become: a way out? Well. Maybe. The bombs have stopped falling, at least, and the screaming has moved on. He moves to the trees hesitantly, then swallows back bile and gets to climbing. It's not easy, one-armed, so he uses his moving Glimmer to lift himself.

Down on the ground and pulling himself forward and away from that lit space, each of his movements done in excruciating pain, Byron tells himself not to listen to the voice, no matter how desperate and frightened Lilith's screams are in his ear. That's not her. He tells himself. And if it were Lilith, she'd fight tooth and nail to free herself from that situation. More so, in light of the fact that Byron, himself, was missing back home.

Thorne's made up his mind and there's no turning back. No second thoughts. No regrets. Yet.

Every vein in his body felt like it was on fire. And the pull threatened to drag him all the way from whence he came. After a strenuous struggle to break himself out of its grasp, he's given a brief reprieve once one light goes out. Though another illuminates. Practically exhausted from the painful trek, he stops to catch his breath, though all that he can hear is Lilith screaming in his mind. Slowly, he pulls himself up into a kneeling position, his eyes slowly lifting to regard sudden outline of a door in the distance, whatever fire was burning in his body grows intensely cold when the next voice he hears is his father's.

Stephen Thorne's presence in his life left Byron incredibly traumatized. Even years after the former police detective's death, he still has nightmares of his past. Panic rises within him and just as he'd done during his childhood whenever he was anywhere near his father, Byron shuts down. He tries to clear his mind, his thoughts. Everything, so that his father won't be able to hear him.

Kip sucks in a sharp breath as the pain shoots through her as she opens that door. Finally, she manages to wrench her hands free but before she can even think about trying to tend to her hands- she's being assaulted by the most horrible screeching sounds to ever grace her ears. She drops to her knees, clutching at her head-which sends the pain in her hands flaring again - as she is momentarily paralyzed by the terrible screaming. A silent scream of her own on her lips.

Yeah. She should've gone with the ticking.

The screams make her think of every instance and experience she's had with Dreams and the Veil and even before, just doing her normal ghost hunting thing. All the times she's ever been scared. But the thought in the forefront is that encounter with the Veil spiders. How she and Ari would have surely died if Rekani and Nova hadn't shown up. Rekani. Ari. Nova.

Kip's thoughts try to fight through the terror and the screams. She desperately tries to focus on slamming that safe door, trying to get it to slam shut and stop the noise. She needed to get out of this mess and to do that, she needed some silence.

It takes August several seconds to really grasp what it is he's climbing. It should have been obvious the moment he touched this stuff that's not actually bark, but he'd been too focused on getting out, getting away.

He knows these faces, these people. (These children.) How many times has he seen them in his nightmares, lying dead in streets, slain by faceless shooters while out playing football, or walking to a bread line, or gathering firewood, in the decaying remains of the city they called home? And the ones who hadn't made it out of the hospital, or--

He coughs into the shoulder of his hoodie, clings to the tree that's clinging back. It takes him a second to get his stomach under control.

He's not scared. He's aware, in some dim corner of his mind, that he should be. He could be maimed for life by this place, destroyed by it. Never see his friends and family again, never see Eleanor again, never marry her and be a father. And yet the only thing these possibilities conjure out of him is rage.

His voice starts out low and snarling, ends on an enraged shout. "You think I'm afraid of you, you think I'm giving up and standing around while you hammer on me. Well I've got news for you assholes, I am getting married and you shitbags don't get to take that away from me!"

He wants to tear these trees apart, but first he needs to get to that light. Then that's what he's going to do. Smash this place to fucking pieces.

Byron remembers being a child and hearing his father's ride pull up just outside of their house on Oak. How he'd make sure that the television or radio was off and that everything looked neat and presentable, even after Stephen Thorne had littered the place with empty whiskey bottles the night prior. He would then go about his normal day, which usually meant homework. But once he got a sense of his father's anger, usually by the booming of the man's angry voice, that's when young Byron would turtle up. He knew, by then it was too late, he'd already enraged the beast within his father- the man who could read his mind and hear his thoughts. Or that's what Byron believed back then. So he would try to shut out the panic of thoughts racing through his young mind and despite the intense fear he felt, he would try to rein that in, sit there huddled while holding his breath. Trying not to feel anything. But for a child, that was a difficult task to accomplish.

That's what Byron Thorne is experiencing now. He heart had sunk, being dissolved by the acid within his stomach. He felt cold, colder than the chill of the dark rain that still clung to him. It starts out as a quiet whisper, his eyes shutting closed as he reminds himself that his father can hear his thoughts. He can hear your thoughts. Those are the words he used in a Dream not long ago, one that brought up those childhood fears. He remains there, so frightened at still for who knows what long. It's difficult to gather your courage to deal with a threat that's been plaguing you your whole life. His father's parting gift to his son even in death.

If he moved, the floorboard would creek and that would anger his father all the more.

Time passes as he remains there holding his breath and it's difficult to say how or when he gets the courage to rise, but he eventually does, all in painfully slow and careful motions. Tearful, wet eyes watch the door from his distance, never turning away from it if he can help it until he's fully risen to stand. He remembers the horror of hearing his father's footsteps come up the stairs and then seeing the man's shadow blocking out the light that creeped in beneath his bedroom door.

Creeping forward, almost as if he were tip-toeing, he knows that he has to get out of here and yet he's almost too afraid to try. He sees the other two cubic spaces and knows that one of them was controlling the others? Powering the others? Being guarded by some dark force? In his state of mind, Byron's not even sure now. He continues to move slowly, with care, looking between the doors as if trying to decide which to choose. Would they really open for him now?

The whisper of the elder Thorne's ghostly voice makes him stiffen up, like a child being caught for doing something naughty. Does the taunt anger him? No. Well, maybe. It's hard to tell how young Byron felt about his father besides the fear and young Byron is exactly who he believes himself to be now, very much like that previous Dream. More often, he would stand there and wait for his punishment. Then there are the few times where he'd try and run to escape such a fate, but the punishment would be worse (would it, really? Maybe that was in his mind) when he was caught. And it was never IF he were caught, but When.

It's the latter sense of flight that suddenly fuels him despite the fading of the dead man's voice and he's no longer treading as quietly as he can. In fact, out of his fear and panic, he's trying to will the doors open, his hands lighting up with electricity that he hopes will trigger something in those doors. Not knowing if Stephen Thorne were still in pursuit, this was Byron's last ditch effort.

Silence. Blessed silence. Though, for a moment Kip honestly isn't sure if she succeed or if she's actually just deaf. Slowly her head lifts and she sees that safe with it's slammed door melting into the floor, following with the others. Another puddle forms. Similar to the other but this one...should the light give her hope? A quick little sweep of the room saw there was nothing else there.

She draws in a shaky breath and starts to push herself up. Tears pricking the corner of her eyes from the pain in her hands and the ringing in her head. She stumbles towards the puddle and falls into it. She was going home or she was going into a new layer of hell.

Either way, she'd be out of this room.

August is climbing and tearing by turns. It feels good, and that makes him mad too. Nothing is good about this. The bodies of people he couldn't save are being used as a ladder in this fucking horrible place made by Them and he's not having it. Not any of it. This is the anger he never gets to feel, the fury he's worked so hard to learn to channel other ways. It was like this when he first came back from Bosnia, and it took years to find ways to handle it. All that hard work, and it takes just a little bit of him and pressure from Them to unravel it.

No, no. He's getting married! And he's having one hell of a bachelor party. Fuck Them. Fuck Them.

He claws towards the light, leaving ruin behind him. He'll free everyone from this tree, burn their memories clean. Like he should have in that other place, where people were being grown and harvested and--yes. As soon as he's out, everything is getting set on goddamned fire.

In his wild (and panicked) show of power, Byron just keeps on running, never letting the arc of electricity die. This was his desperate and blind attempt to get away from the fists of Stephen Thorne. Not even knowing whether any of this would work or not, he tries anyway, all the while racing in the direction of both of those doors. He doesn't even care which of them opens, as long as one of them does.

Racing through the darkness still, his feet pounding against the ground in time with the rapid beating of his heart, not just one but both doors open up before him. Which does he take? There's very little time to decide. Even if the ghost of his father isn't giving chase, he FEELS as if he's being chased, so there was no stopping to process any of this. Thus, his dark gaze flickers between the two doors. Luckily for him, they aren't all that far apart.

In one, he sees the Russian jumping into a pool for reasons. All he can think of is that she's being chased too. The other, he sees the trunk of grotesque trees, the image of what looks like a body... bodies falling from them paints a morbid picture. For all he knows, August could be one of those bodies, it's hard to tell. Which to choose, which to choose.

The trees themselves look far more threatening than inviting and the closer he gets to the pair of doors, the bigger the picture that he sees. They were bodies. Lots of them. All mangled. Looking back towards the pool, so far, he sees nothing. If that girl was willing to take the plunge, then he'll follow suit. For all he knows, August could've gone in before her. Thus, he makes his way into Kips's space, giving his new surroundings a quick glance to see what the danger was, but without much more thought, he leaps in as well. It didn't matter where it went. As long as his father couldn't reach him there.

Falling, falling, falling....

Kip doesn't see Byron outside the door because she's already jumped in. All she can sense is that nauseated feeling coming back. The terrible pain in her head and the sticky, bloody trails from her nose and ears. The laughter and taunting words follow her. Even as she collapses back on to Rekani's bed she can hear them. Almost feel the words writhing around in her brain. Trying to burrow deeply.

Soon comes the Rise. We will see you again.

When those terrible words resonate with her, Kip feels her whole body go cold. And then? She promptly rolls over on to her side and vomits on the floor.

On the threshhold of the light, August pauses to stare down at what he's done. One tree, mangled and ruined, the other, the one he climbed, only in good enough shape to let him do it. Clarity lands for a half second.

Where's Byron? Where's Kip? God, he has to find them, they have to get out.

Part of a hand grabs for his foot. He has to find them. But first. First.

He sways there, bloodied and blackened, feeling not unlike he'd felt when they'd first found him under that wall in Kosovo Hospital. Dazed, exhausted, alive. And angry in a way he hasn't been in two decades.

"I wanted the past to go away, I wanted to leave it, like another country." He wipes tears from his eyes. "I wanted my life to close, and open like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song where it falls down over the rocks." He holds out a hand, a swirling of sparks flying up from his fingertips to form a tear-drop of fire, tinged lavender.

"An explosion." He throws it down at the trees, but doesn't get to see the result. He just pitched back into the light while everything else goes dark.