Braddock Town, Pennsylvania -- 2002
Feb. 27th, 2009 02:39 amIce creeps up the steel girders, crackling as it goes; the sense of dread, of oncoming unidentifiable bad, strengthens in the dark.
"Readings just went off the charts," says Agent Quay, and the handheld machine is beeping, insistent and too shrill.
From behind: a terrible scream. Liz whirls and finds an agent caught in the beam of her flashlight, his eyes rolling back in his head, his tongue hanging out, and his back wrenching into an angle not meant for the human spine. Something moves away from his head, rippling in the air; it might be mistaken for a cloud of frozen breath, if it weren't for the purposeful way that it moves, the sweeping turn that it takes against the lack of wind.
And then there are dozens of the misty entities, sweeping through the abandoned foundry, and more agents shrieking, and Liz doesn't have to watch; she just knows that a vengeful spirit dives and disappears into Quay's chest. His neck snaps with a sharp c-r-r-r-ack under the force of his convulsion.
The foundry fires light, suddenly illuminating decades of rust and neglect and abandoned machinery, and Liz feels her bones ignite in response; the telltale prickling up her spine. Her eyes flash blue-white, and every spirit in the foundry freezes at once, leaving several agents frantically batting at nothing over their heads -- and then the three men disappear, fading into the dark.
Agent Quay steps up, his neck hanging at a sickening angle, and his face -- Liz thinks, dimly -- isn't the face it ought to be. It's the face of a dark-haired stranger. His lips peel back from his teeth in an expression that has little in common with a smile, and Liz shudders blue flame.
Get out, she needs to say; she needs to warn the un-possessed agents. Get out of here before I-- but her throat isn't obeying and her mouth won't move, and that will, she knows, make this her fault.
Liz blinks and she stands in the eye of the storm, the spirits swirling around her in an ever-tightening cyclone. A voice bellows, searching for her, and she tries to shout that she is here, but she hears nothing beyond the roar of the cyclone and the overwhelming, overlapping pulse of disembodied voices in a dead language.
She cannot find her gun or her voice, and as the sick fear in the pit of her stomach ratchets up, so does the roaring inferno surrounding her, nearly eclipsing the howling spirits. The world shifts and before she can think that she ought to have more time than that -- a white misty blur of movement, all at once, and then something foreign (hundreds of foreign somethings all as one) dives into her.
Liz's head snaps back against her will. She does not recognize her own voice in the high, desperate sound that tears her throat; her flames WHUMP in desperation and explode (not quite an explosion, not yet) higher than she's seen them in years, and she can no longer fight it back, not with -- what had the professor called them -- demonic entities burrowing as deep as they can go, twisting and wiggling, clawing their way into every inch of her. They're cold, so cold, and she instinctively knows from the over-spilling cacophony of voices and hunger that they are seeking warmth, that they're reaching for the very heart of her fire.
Someone says her name and she hardly knows if she's sitting or standing or breathing but she thinks she may be screaming and she knows that she is choking, and as she sees the face of the man who isn't Agent Quay once again with that same rictus smile, she feels herself turn into uncontrollable fire and she knows what she is about to do.
"Readings just went off the charts," says Agent Quay, and the handheld machine is beeping, insistent and too shrill.
From behind: a terrible scream. Liz whirls and finds an agent caught in the beam of her flashlight, his eyes rolling back in his head, his tongue hanging out, and his back wrenching into an angle not meant for the human spine. Something moves away from his head, rippling in the air; it might be mistaken for a cloud of frozen breath, if it weren't for the purposeful way that it moves, the sweeping turn that it takes against the lack of wind.
And then there are dozens of the misty entities, sweeping through the abandoned foundry, and more agents shrieking, and Liz doesn't have to watch; she just knows that a vengeful spirit dives and disappears into Quay's chest. His neck snaps with a sharp c-r-r-r-ack under the force of his convulsion.
The foundry fires light, suddenly illuminating decades of rust and neglect and abandoned machinery, and Liz feels her bones ignite in response; the telltale prickling up her spine. Her eyes flash blue-white, and every spirit in the foundry freezes at once, leaving several agents frantically batting at nothing over their heads -- and then the three men disappear, fading into the dark.
Agent Quay steps up, his neck hanging at a sickening angle, and his face -- Liz thinks, dimly -- isn't the face it ought to be. It's the face of a dark-haired stranger. His lips peel back from his teeth in an expression that has little in common with a smile, and Liz shudders blue flame.
Get out, she needs to say; she needs to warn the un-possessed agents. Get out of here before I-- but her throat isn't obeying and her mouth won't move, and that will, she knows, make this her fault.
Liz blinks and she stands in the eye of the storm, the spirits swirling around her in an ever-tightening cyclone. A voice bellows, searching for her, and she tries to shout that she is here, but she hears nothing beyond the roar of the cyclone and the overwhelming, overlapping pulse of disembodied voices in a dead language.
She cannot find her gun or her voice, and as the sick fear in the pit of her stomach ratchets up, so does the roaring inferno surrounding her, nearly eclipsing the howling spirits. The world shifts and before she can think that she ought to have more time than that -- a white misty blur of movement, all at once, and then something foreign (hundreds of foreign somethings all as one) dives into her.
Liz's head snaps back against her will. She does not recognize her own voice in the high, desperate sound that tears her throat; her flames WHUMP in desperation and explode (not quite an explosion, not yet) higher than she's seen them in years, and she can no longer fight it back, not with -- what had the professor called them -- demonic entities burrowing as deep as they can go, twisting and wiggling, clawing their way into every inch of her. They're cold, so cold, and she instinctively knows from the over-spilling cacophony of voices and hunger that they are seeking warmth, that they're reaching for the very heart of her fire.
Someone says her name and she hardly knows if she's sitting or standing or breathing but she thinks she may be screaming and she knows that she is choking, and as she sees the face of the man who isn't Agent Quay once again with that same rictus smile, she feels herself turn into uncontrollable fire and she knows what she is about to do.
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