Urban Fallout (hold)

(1.3) Empty Building

(1.3) Empty Building

Decrepit broken things, that was all this building held. That was why she had chosen to come here tonight. Kael pushed open the stairwell door. It stuck on an empty box that someone had discarded, probably when they'd been moving whatever had been stored in these empty storage lockers. Her hands were shaking at her sides, no matter how hard so tried to stop them.

“Fuck it!” Her voice echoed through the underground space.

With one hand, she grasped her elbow, pulling it violently to her side. Her fingers still twitched of their own accord, and she crashed into the wall, her shoulder and cheek pressed against the metal. She let out a sob, and a single tear made its way down her cheek.

Stupid. Stupid.

She slammed her fist against the wall.

This was not a sad occasion, more inevitable, necessary. She kept her composer, the single tear beginning to dry. Every so slowly, she moved forwards through the pitch black—like an animal searching for a place to curl up and die. Her shin hit something sharp and she swore again, biting down hard on her bottom lip. The offending object was hurled down the hallway, colliding with one of the metal doors with enough force to make a dent. Kael's hands shook by her sides, the psychic reaction accidental, hard to control when her emotions were as raw as they were. That was how easy it could be for her to hurt someone. All it took was a slip of concentration. And that was why the government needed to take her into custody. They were only trying to protect the general public.

From her.

She slid to the ground. In her pocket was the bottle of pills. They'd told her she'd feel high first, like she was on the cloud. Then she'd just go to sleep, on this cold floor, in the basement of this condemned building. It was three o'clock in the morning and she wanted to die. If everything were to go as planned, they would not find her for a long, long time. If she was going out, she was going to make as much trouble as possible. In the minds of the few friends she had Kael would much rather be powerful, dangerous, and missing, than the coward she truly was.

“If I could do what you could do...” Their word echoed.

“Is she classified as human? I mean, where do you draw the line?”

She let her cheek rest against the concrete, and for the first time in a long time Kael truly felt peaceful. The bottle was in her hand. She felt every groove, every seam.

The light above her flickered. For a fraction of a second the hallway had been illuminated with cold florescent light. Kael hadn't seen a thing. It had blinded her, and she had squeezed her eyes shut out of instinct. It was dark now, as black of before, and she slowly sat up. Just an electrical glitch. It was a miracle the bulbs were still working.

Again they flickered, sparks raining down from something faulty halfway down the hall. This time Kael saw the dirty hall in which she currently sat. There was garbage and graffiti, broken bottles. It was a dump, which made sense, because she was nothing more than trash. Satisfied with her final resting place, she popped the top off the pills. With the next flicker she saw their rich purple colour against the white of her palm.

One of them hovered, she spun it like a planet above the others. The lights just kept flickering. Why couldn't God just let her die in darkness? Suddenly a terrifying thought overtook her, and the hanging pill dropped to the ground. The intervals of light were getting longer, the dark shorter, like they were warming up. What if someone was here, someone who had turned on the light? Almost as if her thoughts had created them, footsteps echoed down the passage.

“Shit.”

She clenched her fist around her ticket to the afterlife. Whoever this was, they would not interfere. She placed the bottle on the ground, preparing the power that always lurked within her. When her finger made contact with the cement, a shock shot up her entire arm. All of a sudden, the air was charged with static electricity.