Oh, How We Drift

Chapter Fourteen

14.

Jess sat on the metal staircase opposite her and Chris' house, the cold steel frame of the platform was bolted into the side of a brick building, concealed from streetlights by its position in an alleyway. It gave her a perfect vantage point to look into the front windows of the house opposite; she watched with peering eyes, looking out for the inevitable visitors that would come with the night. Her recent escape from the office had not raised alarms, there were no extra spotlights or sirens in the distance. Whatever she'd stumbled upon was much bigger than she'd anticipated, something so big that the higher ups would rather hide it from the masses than let it show in the light.

She sat on the metal grating for what felt like hours, watching the storm clouds over head soar along, ever-present, always threatening to burden the world below with yet another rainstorm. Down the road to the right of the alleyway she could just make out the faint outline of the wall in the distance, the border that separated their world from whatever threats lay outside. 'God's rejects' was what people had taken to calling whatever lay beyond, whatever dwelled in the red mist and smoke, making the noises that sent a chill down the spine of everyone but Death himself.

Jess wondered if they'd ever begin to expand the wall; there used to be rolling fields of short, trimmed grass bordering the inner city, but now the suburbs that surrounded the skyscrapers almost stretched to the very border. Purgatory was expanding, and if it continued to grow at this rate, they'd need to find the extra space from somewhere. With everything going on however Jess doubted that property expansion and land acquisition were on the top of those involved mind's.

She was worried about Chris. She was worried that he'd buried himself in too deep, that while she'd been waiting here he'd already been caught, tortured and disposed of. She cared about him; not in a way of love, but also in a way of love, if that made any sense. She treated him like a brother you barely saw, a sibling that kept himself locked up in his room all day and very much kept to himself. But one that she would drop everything for. She always checked up on him, every night, making sure that he was eating enough and looking after himself. But now with his absence, Jess found a new motivation, an intrigue in her head to discover more, to find out the truth of what lay in the shadows. Whether that truth was welcoming to her or not.

Her thoughts were cut short by the noise of multiple footsteps in the road, the silence of the night was trembled by the approaching tip taps of shoes on pavement. Shadows were suddenly drawn across the road, cast by the overhead streetlights; there were five or six men, led by a significantly larger individual. They wore black and held long, wooden staffs in their hands; dark, almost ebony wood shaped into a long slender pole. There was a handle at the top and a second one almost halfway down the shaft.

The men queued up outside Jess' front door and made various hand signals to eachother, the large figure watching from the road, looking up and down. He turned around, his face now illuminated by one of the lampposts; Jess saw a single, golden orb peering around from within a face concealed in shadow. His actual head was not visible, save for the presence of a white bandage stretched across his other eye socket. It was impossible to tell from this distance, but Jess could have sworn that there were hundreds of flies buzzing around the top of his head. The man turned back to face the door once again, this time raising his hand in a fist.

Four of the five men at the door stepped back, the one at the front twisted his wooden staff and positioned it like a battering ram. A sudden flash of purple light was produced from the end of it, blasting the door inwards, creating a ball of bright purple flame that sparked and flickered as it flew in the air, dissipating into grey smoke. The men stormed in after the smoke had faded, away from Jess' sight.