***
Darkness and light flutter before me, a great black-winged raven flapping wildly in my face. I blink against the vertigo, clamping my eyes shut, then prying them open. There's a screech in my ears— a high pitched hum that sinks its bit straight into one ear canal, through my brain, and to the other. Louder. Higher. The pressure in my head builds. Blinding light. Whiteness that bleaches my mind free of the stain of reality. Then sudden quiet. The whiteness softens. Blurs. The fuzzy edges bleed with tendrils of color. Floating like seaweed, they reach upward, tangle, weave together.
Oscar is in the grips of the Sentry and I'm trying to beat Jonas off of me. I'm screaming Oscar's name, twisting away. I catch a flash of his brown eyes, begging for help, but I'm unable to help him. Blocks of myself collapse inward to form a pile of rubble, but still I scream. If I can't break loose, I will lose everything. I am beyond panic, beyond despair. This is the ultimate crisis. This is the death of the sun. My mouth hangs open as I gape at the Sentry, turning, turning away from me with Oscar in its arms.
Streaks swipe across the image, like someone has clawed it out. It crumbles into a thousand glimmering fragments that fall, then disappear into nothingness. The empty space where they were is a black hole. It widens, growing like it will suck the entire universe in. Soon, it's so wide that there is nothing else. I look wildly around, realizing I'm alone. Realizing that the blackness of space is six metal walls that are close enough to touch. They move inward, shrinking around me. I flail at them, pressing my hands against the warm metal, but they continue to close in. I'm still screaming. I've never stopped screaming.
The invisible claw gashes through the metal easily, and it, too, falls into fragments. I'm spinning in empty darkness. Then I'm falling. Falling out of the sky toward the pavement. Below me, the grey expanse of concrete rushes upward like I am a fly it wants to swat. I tumble and spin. As I do, somewhere against the blue expanse of sky, I see a slash of white. The tower. I clamp my eyes closed and think about it. The tower. The tower.
The pain is dull and stabbing and throbbing and crushing all at the same time. It's like hitting my thumb with a hammer. Only, my whole body is my thumb. I'm not screaming, now. I'm in too much pain to scream. I lie still. I can't move. I'm sure that, with pain this intense, I have to be dying. Make it quick, I think. Make it quick. I can't do this much longer. I wonder what happens when you pass the point where you can handle the pain. Death? Insanity? I feel an earthquake opening inside of me, and I wonder which of these will emerge from the depths of the crack.
My pain dissects itself into stripes, and then fragments. It is gone. I gulp air, amazed at the sweetness of relief. I pull myself up from the pavement, finding myself intact, sit up, and look off into the distance. There it is.
I'm on my feet and running. There are Sentries in the streets. They turn and give chase as I whiz by them. Their metal footsteps pound against the concrete behind me. I run for the door, which I can see now, ahead of me. I run for all I'm worth. When I reach it, I dive straight through it, even though it's closed. My body sinks through like the door is a plane of water, touching my skin lightly, but allowing me to pass without resistance. Behind me is the crash of metal. The Sentries cannot follow me here.
I'm in a room now— a wide-open space with a wooden floor and beams of sunlight coming in a series of windows along one wall. There are rough columns holding up the ceiling in places, a raised floor at one end, and furniture, like someone lives here. On a table is a pair of broken sungoggles. A sharp stab of pain sinks through me at the sight of them. I think they're mine. No. They're someone else's. A mattress is on the floor, wedged into a corner against the windows and a wall that partitions the space. A book is next to the bed.
I walk to the book and pick it up, turning it over in my hands. The hard cover is bound in blue cloth, the spine exposed, careful stitching holding the pages together. I open it. The handwriting is my own, but the words are indecipherable. Even the letters are a scrawl of alien symbols. As I squint at them, they begin to move, to march around— ants on a page. Rearranging themselves. Looking at them makes me feel dizzy. I wince, blink, look away. My eyes catch a glimpse of city through the wide windows. I'm looking down on it, from high up. Buildings tall and short, pressing together into a mass that falls away to the horizon. Tucked into them is green, deep green, and just there, just at the edge, a sparkling string of silver that makes me stop breathing.
I don't have time to consider it, because the ant-letters have marched right off my page. They rise into my field of vision. Growing. Joining together. They build themselves into a swarming mass, a writhing nest that flushes to metallic grey. I take a step backward, and it has already become as big as me. But it's not done growing.
Realizing with horror what it's becoming, I look around for something— some weapon to fight it with. There is nothing. It's almost finished. Larger. I can see the shape of the Sentry, but the ants are still wriggling into place. Their bodies have a finality about them that says they will soon solidify. Without waiting, I lunge toward it. It stands more than half a person taller than me, but somehow I reach its chest. I sink my fingers into it, like claws. Like I mean to pull its heart out. The metal creature shrieks and writhes away from me. The ants scatter with a burst of speed, run over my whole body. They sting me. Their bites are black poison, running into me, surging toward my vital organs. Even though I'm in agony, I reach inside myself and watch the poison, the way it moves and pulses, the way it effects each cell of my body. I can see the molecular structure. What it's doing. How it does it. How it was made.
The unseen claw swipes at my world again, and I'm falling. This time there is no landing. Just dizziness that resolves to a cold day with melting piles of snow spotting the pavement. One of them, near me, has a hole in the middle. My eyes wander over it, then look up, even though they know what they will see.
Oscar's gaze meets mine as the Sentry moves toward him. I scream his name and lunge for him. The words are on his lips: I love you. Jonas' arms hold me back. I thrash, and writhe, but this time I don't scream. I duck and twist at the same time, and somehow I am free. Somehow I am running toward them. Toward Oscar. Toward the Sentry. Now, I am screaming. A primal scream, filled with interminable fury.
The claw swipes, and everything falls away.