Shimmer, Glimmer, & Gleam - A Quest of Loss & Gain

You swallow past the dryness in your mouth and the scraping pain in your throat, and resolve to sneak past. You hold very still, and your patience is...

...Rewarded might be a strong word. Gleaming, reflective teeth gnaw into the glass arm of the bearded statue, and that deep bass voice cries out in agony. With every bite comes a tinkling crunch of something shattering and calving away, followed by the obscene chewing of the thing that is not enough like a rat. Blood flows freely from its mouth, and from the injured innocent you have willfully sacrificed to preserve your own life and your own ammunition. You can feel your gorge rising, and you close your eyes to focus on breathing through your nose. You can't afford to draw attention right now, and it's, it's already done. This person(?) won't be less dead if you act now. You already killed it.

You. Already killed it. Gods above...

The going is relatively slow, if you don't want these heavy boots to alert the rat. You shuffle and slide until you can get to some tray liners that have fallen all over the floor, which gets you a better turn of speed; with them under your feet, you no longer have to worry about accidentally creating a giant squeal with the soles of your boots. You reach the door to the other stairwell just as that soothing recording comes on over the speakers again:

T-Minus Ten Minutes To Impact. All Personnel, Please Evacuate The Facility. Repeat, T-Minus Ten Minutes To Impact. All Personnel, Please Evacuate The Facility.

Fuck. You swipe Nicole's keycard and slip into the stairwell; the heavy door closes behind you, and you breathe in a sigh of relief that is destined to be short-lived; the rat(?) hits the steel behind you at full force, and while the door holds - and the creature shrieks in pain as the glassy parts of its body crack and splinter - you're already taking the stairs down two at a time, shrieking in shock and feeling a strange, hot wetness on your cheeks.

Tears. Those are tears. You remember what tears are...

One flight. Two. This should be the first floor, but as you go to open the door on this landing you quickly realize that another of those odd, crystalline growths of glass is pushing its way into the steel, and the steel is slowly losing. The door above you is still shaking with impacts, so there's only really one choice.

Down one more flight, into the basement. Or possibly the ground floor? C'mon, you remember enough to realize there's gods you can pray to, surely you can remember an average building layout. Any time now. Any time. No? You can go fuck yourself? Fine.

It's dark down here, and while the light from the alarm is playing the shrill sound of it is blessedly gone. You swipe the keycard and slip inside, raising your gun immediately, but there doesn't seem to be anything moving. No screens down here, but no people either; instead there are variations on the same sort of model, displaying what you know to be the planet you're on (Domus), but after that you're drawing a lot of blanks about what exactly is being modeled in painstaking analogue detail. You approach slowly, curiosity giving you anything to think about but the three people(?) you condemned to die in terror and pain, and try for a closer look. It's not a weather model, and while you don't think you're an expert on air travel you're pretty sure these aren't flight paths either. For that matter, the other "large" object in the model very much isn't the moon...

A new voice comes on the speakers; it's low, husky, and in pain, and yet somehow soothing. Your body knows this voice, even if you don't. It feels...safe.

"Nicole?" the voice says, in confusion. "I'm reading your keycard moving through the facility - when you didn't evacuate with the first wave I...well, nevermind that. You need to leave soon, but since you're here still I need you in my office as soon as possible. Don't walk, run. Straight ahead from the stairwell, turn right on the opposite wall, it's the corner office. I know you usually clean the upper -" The voice devolves into wet, hacking coughs. "...Hurry, please. You should still have time to evacuate."

You look at all that distance across this floor, and then you look at a sign that points you towards the Parking Garage. Chances are the cars aren't working, based on the highway, but if it's vital that you evacuate you can always just sprint outside.

Pick 1 to LOSE
[ ] The certainty of safety
[ ] The chance at answers

You are eight minutes old.

Run, don't walk, the comforting voice had said. So you run, sprinting hellbent to follow its directions. You almost slam into the opposite wall in your enthusiasm, but you manage to course-correct before that unhappy circumstance can come about. The corner office is easy to spot, and you're fully intending to just burst in, but the name on it is that sharp-bright absence that Cannot Be, and the pain that lances behind your eyes makes you stop and avert your gaze. You feel your gorge rise again, and you cough out a thin stream of saliva and blood that pools thickly into the carpet.

Breathing hard, you push the ajar door open and enter gun-first. There is another one of those models here, bigger, more intricate, with even more analogue devices that seem to be serving as controls. The figure standing at those controls is wearing a labcoat just as ruined as yours; it is, unmistakably, human, tall and rail-thin with stubble marking its gaunt face. Spines of glass, thinner than a promise, sharper than a lover's curse, jut out from its body, and from those wounds red, red blood soaks into its labcoat and drops thickly onto the device.

"Nicole," that pained voice says, without turning. "I could have sworn that -" The next word scrambles your mind, sends you staggering and reeling; you barely manage to hold yourself up against the wall, crying out in agony. The cupcake you ate earlier comes back up in messy chunks that leave you feeling hollow and awful, and the world swims and tilts. That voice is saying something, but you can't tell what, not when you feel like you're going to die...

Your senses swim back in, slowly. There's something running down your cheeks from your eyes, and when you wipe it away, there's blood on your hand.

"...You aren't Nicole," the person at the controls says softly. Soothingly. "Nor, I think, are you the other person who comes to mind. I wish I could be meeting you under better circumstances." It coughs, wetly, barely supporting itself against the device that it has, for the moment, paused working with. "Still, it won't do to be remiss. Welcome to your new home. It will..." The person smiles, or tries to. "It will be a bit of a fixer-upper."

You try to say 'what' and manage a wet croak. You cough to clear your throat, fail, and cough again; a mixture of fluids splatters into the room's carpet. "What's happening?" you whisper. "What's going on?"

"If this were one of my..." the person pauses. It seems to reconsider a word choice. "If this were a videogame such as I've been told of, this would be where I tell you there is no time to explain. And there isn't; however, for these purposes the gods have given us digital recording. Come here." It turns, hands gliding over the controls, looking for something, while you approach. The person finds whatever it's looking for and holds it up; your aching head takes a moment, and then resolves into information: this is a data splinter, or just a splinter, they replaced the thumb drive some, what, eight years back? Your phone can probably accept it. You take the tiny, pointed storage device between a clean thumb and forefinger, and shakily set your gun down so you can dig out the phone and work on slotting it in.

The person keeps talking: "You will need to evacuate soon or you will not survive long enough to be part of the first generation of novel alien life now native to Domus. Again, my apologies." It coughs again, and turns to the controls, continuing what it's doing. "My hope is that the refraction on Impact will revive the survivors in this building, but I can't bet on that...please listen closely. I'm having to rethink the advice I was planning on giving."

To Nicole. Who did not survive you.

"Hurry," you plead, as you finally manage to find the little plastic shield on the back of your phone. There's already a splinter in one of the slots, with PICS 4 JESSIE scrawled onto the side in tiny, neat, beautiful handwriting; the dots over the i's are little butterflies. You lay the bottom end of the new splinter in first, then gently press in the top until it clicks before sliding the shield shut. Phone back in the bag. Gun back in your hands.

The person spares you a look of...sorrow? Compassion? "Listen closely. Homo sapiens is finished as it was known. My species had a good run, but it will not survive the Impact unchanged. It is therefore vital to ensure the continuity of humanity, the preservation of our knowledge, culture, and morals. Don't -" it coughs again, and breathes hard, eyes fluttering. You step closer, trying to find a spot you can pat it on, help hold it up with, but those spines of glass...

It finds itself again. "Don't think I'm putting the weight of the world on your shoulders. There are already contingencies. Others will be attending to things, trying to help...Everlasting Lady, I did not come prepared to make first contact with novel alien life. I sincerely hope that one day in the far future you think back to this meeting and think me terribly incompetent."

You bite back cruel words to that effect. He does not seem competent right now. "Actionable plan please?" you plead in a hoarse whisper.

"Yes! Yes, of course - listen closely. Leave this office. The parking garage will be the closest exit. Flee as far and as fast as you can, at least to the yellow lines at the edge of the property, but don't stop running. You won't be able to escape Impact, but there's a distance at which you can ride the resulting refraction. It is vitally important that you concentrate on what it is you want or need most. Anything will do. Something you're curious about, art, carnal pleasure, a meal, it doesn't matter as long as you concentrate. If you survive, the splinter will have...context. Do you understand?"

You try to answer. Can't. Nod instead.

T-Minus Five Minutes To Impact. All Personnel, Please Evacuate The Facility. Repeat, T-Minus Five Minutes To Impact. All Personnel, Please Evacuate The Facility.

"I'm not going to make it," the person whispers. "Maybe I'll survive the refraction, but if I were you I'd stay away from this place for a good while. Go. Run."

You reach for it again, and with surprising strength it swats your hand away. "Go!" it repeats.

So you go.

You go through the basement (offices? Labs?). Your legs burn as you slide during the transition into the asphalt of the parking garage, which is slick in that way asphalt gets after rain, when the oils soaked into it rise to the surface. You sprint past cars where every bit of glass inside is shattered; you try not to look at bodies slumped over with mirror-shards in their throats and faces, try not to hear the voices of statues pleading not to die. You emerge into the night air, and with no other direction to run towards, you start sprinting for the burning city by the bay in the distance.

All around you, in the grasses that surround the road, are tall poles with speakers mounted on them. That voice that is sort of like yours, but not like the impaled person's, is still speaking, informing you that there is one minute to Impact. You cross the yellow "line" (the letters TIL spray-painted onto the grass, over and over again, forming a boundary) at T-Minus Twenty Seconds, with your lungs burning.

The mirror shard in your breast is getting warmer.

T-Minus Ten.
A dip in the grass; you go flying forward and into a roll you didn't know was trained until just now, springing back to your feet with only minor additional pain in your shoulders and back. Every breath saws at your throat.

T-Minus Nine.

You have to focus. What do you want? Answers? Your identity? Safety? Comfort? Some fucking nicotine?

T-Minus Eight.
The highway is making noise too. Voices from statues trapped in their cars. Fires licking away at metal. Here, and there, a car explodes in the distance, and you cut away from the highway to put some distance between you and any shrapnel.

T-Minus Seven.
Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck -

T-Minus Six.
A thought occurs to you; you wrench your bag off your shoulder and bundle it to your chest so you can rip it open. The gun, you need to -

T-Minus Five.
- Unload the gun in case you come in hot and hit something, a misfire could kill you just as well as this Impact. You push the cylinder out and rattle that bitch around until the bullets fall out -

T-Minus Four.
- Good enough, you shut the bag tight, sling it back over your shoulder, keep running, keep running, don't stop -

T-Minus Three.
- Really wish you had more time to figure out what to focus on, no pressure, it's just your life. Is it even your life? Is this your body? Is 'you', you, or are you a blank template for someone else to fill back in? -

T-Minus Two.
"Everlasting Lady, I don't want to die," you sob, between heaving breaths.

T-Minus One.
On nameless instinct, you come down hard, and leap -

Impact.

The world before you splinters, comes up all in shards like a smashed mirror; the sound is almighty, beyond your ability to describe, there is a terrible feeling of rushing. Before your very eyes the city you're running towards falls away like glass from a frame, and behind it is another city, similar and yet so very different.

Refraction.


Despite your own fears, you do manage to focus on things that might be important to you. But some are, obviously, less important. What kind of place do you want to go to?

Pick 4 to LOSE; GAIN the rest.
[ ] Access to immediate survival needs
[ ] Access to practical knowledge
[ ] Convenient access to your FUCKING nicotine
[ ] Someone who needs your skills
[ ] A friend
[ ] A defensible position
[ ] Someone to take charge
[ ] Access to ammunition
[ ] Access to medicine