Chapter 10: Cataclysm, Pt 10
A rather intense heat bears down on all of you as you traverse the mostly-dead and anarchic city streets. It's oppressively hotter than it's ever been, and you have experienced many scorching-hot summers these past few years. More than half of you are profusely sweating and panting from exertion, yourself very much included.
Unbearable would be saying it lightly.
"We gotta find somewhere to stop and rest up," says the female nurse. "Not sure how much our patients can handle this."
"Yeah, I'm worried too," the other replies. "But the stadium's only a few blocks away. We can get there in fifteen minutes. At most."
"You really wanna put them through this? We oughta at least let a couple hours pass and see if it cools down a bit."
"What if it only gets hotter?" Kaja interjects. "Uh. I mean, sorry to interrupt."
"No, no, it's fine," says the male nurse. "I was sorta thinking the same thing too. If we do stop, and it does get hotter then we'll only get ourselves trapped somewhere."
"And we might get cooked in the process," Kaja adds. "At least stadiums are designed to deal with excess heat."
"I don't," says the nurse. "I…"
The nurse furrows her brow and sighs deeply, unsure of what to do next. And as she ruminates your collective future, you hear gunfire coming from deeper in the city. Not only that, but you feel the ground trembling ever so slightly under your feet.
"I think the stadium might be in trouble," you say. "I can hear gunshots - lots of gunshots."
Everyone around you perks up their ears quizzically. But most aren't able to hear the same things you are.
"I can't hear anything," says someone.
"I do," says one of the orderlies, Ben. "Just barely, yeah. Buncha three-round bursts, and also some kinda whining? Or maybe screaming? It's all animal-like."
Everyone pauses mid-step in an attempt to listen harder, but only the two of you can hear what's happening. And you nod to him in agreement - it isn't just the sounds of rifles being fired. It's also that faint sound of numerous creatures screaming and crying and probably also whining.
You're not sure what kind of animal it is, and you're not sure if you want to know.
"They stopped," you say after a few moments. You note that the rumbling beneath your feet has also subsided. For now, anyway.
"We'd best keep moving," says a patient. "Dunno 'bout the others, but I don't think I could stay out here much longer."
The group then picks up the pace as best you all can towards the stadium, even despite the oppressive heat, and that dark orange sun. And as previously mentioned, it only takes you the better part of fifteen minutes to get there.
But it most certainly has been a laborious quarter of an hour. All of you are sweating waterfalls by this point, and are utterly drenched. Everyone is breathing hard and heavy, especially the patients.
Ms. Janelle - the one with the broken arm - she sways and staggers as she walks, unable to walk completely straight or by herself. One of the orderlies is doing his best to support her, but he looks close to his physical limits as well.
You're also in pretty poor shape. If it wasn't for your ability to regulate your body's energies, you wouldn't have made it this far. In fact, you would likely have fallen long ago.
Still, you all make it to the stadium. Or more specifically, the street that runs alongside the length of the stadium, with its entrance at the middle of it.
The moment the soldiers see you approach, a number of them run out towards you. All are armed with rifles and wearing ballistic armor on top of their urban camo fatigues.
Some immediately go to physically support everyone who's wounded, while the rest dutifully escort you towards safety. They walk in a protective formation around the group as a whole, with their rifles pointed outward in every direction.
As you approach the entrance, you get a better sense of what had actually happened with the gunfire from earlier.
The corpses of numerous large insects are laid out everywhere in front of the stadium entrance. Their blue-black blood seeps out of their cracked and punctured bone-like chitin, and drips down to the searing asphalt below.
Not only that, but the wide street that runs perpendicular to the one you're on, the one that leads straight towards the entrance - it's also filled with countless insectoid corpses. Each and every single one of them has been riddled by dozens of bullets.
A sharp sulfuric smell invades your nostrils the closer you get to the massive slaughter. Some of you gag at how overwhelming it becomes.
All of you rush as best you can, not just because of that smell, or the sight of all those corpses. But because a sense of urgency fills all of you nearly at the same time - the insects could return at any time and relaunch their assault.
Though you all push yourselves to your absolute maximum, it takes only a few moments to get to the entrance. There, you find it heavily protected by army soldiers wielding their rifles and wearing their standard issue body armor. Piled up in front of them are large Hesco barriers and regular sand bags. And laid down in front of those are loosely-coiled razor wire.
There's just enough of a gap in the middle of it all for one or two of you to pass through without getting snagged or hurt. But you all go through as quickly as you can, patients first, then the nurses and orderlies. You and the others go in last.
It occurs to you how calculated that is - who gets to safety first. Someone must have decided for it to happen in a certain way. Like there's some kind of hierarchy. Then you wonder if whoever that person is, do they make their decisions based on what's socially acceptable? Do they consult a committee? Is it based on human nature? Or does that one person just deem themselves the authority on the matter, and that's the end of it?
Your brow furrows as you wonder what the truth of it is, and if that's even the right call to make. And also - who chose the person who decided those rules?
"Hey, snap out of it," says Kaja. "You're doing that thing again, and, well, you're up next. So get ready."
You emerge from the waters of your wandering thoughts, only to come to realize that you're now sitting in a massive medical tent. The tent itself appears to be deep inside the stadium, right on the grounds itself, as there's grass under your feet.
All around you in this section of the tent are a number of folding chairs, which most of you are seated on. The rest are presumably in the section adjacent to you, which has dozens of beds in numerous rows and columns.
Army medics are all over the place, taking care of everyone around them. And there are plenty that need help, beyond just your group. As far as you can tell, some are suffering heat stroke and exhaustion, others are bleeding and bruised, and others far worse.
There's so many others in need of dire help that your group only has one of the medics between all of you.
When he gets to you, he gets you to loosen your top a bit, then applies a soaking-wet hand towel to the back of your neck and shoulders. The relief is instantaneous, and you can't help but sigh in relief. You feel water trickle down your back, even as your skin cools faster and faster.
He then hands you a canteen with what smells like an electrolyte drink inside, then moves on to help Kaja.
You greedily take a swig of your drink, which tastes indeterminately fruity. But unlike the usual store bought brand, this mix is a little salty. A part of you wants to cough at the oddness of it, but the better part of you welcomes it.
You all sit there in silence as you cool down and rehydrate, and as the chaos of the field clinic swirls all around you.
It's about then that you realize that this entire place is noisy as hell. There's just all kinds of moaning and groaning from those in the beds. And there's all sorts of chatter from everywhere all around you, from what you perceive to be from the stands.
You imagine that most everyone else is up around there, which makes sense.
So what do you two think about all this? asks one of your companions, Telepathically.
Before either of you can answer, a chorus of replies comes from around you. Some thoughts are shaped well, like your companions, but most are messy and somewhat incongruous, like yours used to be. And what they all say is some mix of relief in the present and fear for the future.
Understandably so, after everything all of you have experienced.
You project your own thoughts and emotions outward and allow them to mix in with the rest swirling around you. As you do so, a sense of ease fills everyone's thoughts, if only for a moment. It's as though all you Telepaths are joined together in your shared fate, your shared trauma, which eases the burden a great degree.
As though all of you are now carrying that tremendous weight equally amongst yourselves.
It's the first time you've personally ever experienced any kind of community like this. Not just this otherworldly thought swarm thing, but the simple act of belonging.
A bit like a guild, honestly. Sorta like a bunch of random people in a game all working together to help each other out. Except, of course, none of this is a game. You've almost died a handful of times just getting here, and you're certain that it won't be the last.
Your thoughts are interrupted by the sound of rifle bursts coming from the stadium entrance. They're muted by the thick stadium walls and everything in between you, but certainly still loud enough to grasp your attention.
You feel each of the other Telepaths' minds shut off whatever they're broadcasting, and settle back down to more private states of mind. Some much faster than others, of course.
Not that it matters much in the big picture of things - you feel the emotional energy of the entire stadium shift. Everyone's anxiety spikes up sharply with every burst, and it diffuses out for everyone to feel. The raw emotion swirls around and through you, strong enough that you fear it could sweep you away.
Next to you, Kaja stands up so suddenly that you jump a bit in your seat.
"I need to go see what's happening," she says resolutely.
"What the fuck for?!" you cry out. "Let the soldiers do their thing!"
"I don't wanna stop 'em! I set the blade out front and told 'em it helps keep things away. I wanna know if it's helping. 'Coz if it's not, then I need to do something about it!"
You hop up after her, snapping up all of the bags the both of you have been carrying.
"What, you think you're the only one who can use Telekinesis around here?" you say as you chase after her. "You don't think any one of those soldiers could use it better than you?"
"Yeah, maybe," Kaja replies. "You called me a what - Level Seven Telekineticist?"
"Level Five. And you called yourself that, not me."
"What would you rank me, then?"
"S Tier."
"Think about that again," she says with a scoff. "The shadow creature thing's definitely stronger than me at it. I just barely held it off."
"Fine, A Tier."
"Great, A Tier. Sure. What if everyone else out there's only a B Tier? And no-one else but me can lift it out? Plus if there's another A Tier out there swinging it around already, then we can just go right back. But right now, I gotta know."
You grit your teeth as the two of you run down the hallways and past the stands towards the entrance. The sounds of gunfire become deafeningly loud, enough to make your head spin. Not only that, but you can feel raw kinetic energy pass through you, almost as though you're shooting the guns themselves.
It's a visceral feeling that shakes you from inside.
The soldiers themselves are laser-focused on what's in front of them, as they gun down insectoid after insectoid with ceaseless determination.
Ahead of them is the massive purple blade, partially embedded in the middle of the T-intersection in front of the stadium entrance.
The bone insects do their best to move around and away from it, but most simply can't. Some spill off to the sides and run away, down the highway. Some climb up on the buildings on both sides of their street, and end up going upwards along the building faces.
But most are still pushed forward, right towards the stadium entrance. Some are unable to get away from the blade, and are cut apart ruthlessly. The sheer mass of insects behind them shove them right into the blade itself.
Kaja immediately reaches out with her Telekinesis and yanks the blade out of the ground.
The act of it surprises some of the soldiers around you, but they quickly refocus on their task - they've more pressing matters to attend to. You sense that the commanding officer is about to shout at Kaja, to tell her to go back inside, but he stops himself when he sees her cut down rows of insects with a swipe of the blade.
The weapon itself slices right through them with incredible ease, as though it's cutting through them at an atomic level. But it hardly matters how many she and the soldiers tear apart with their weapons - the insects simply don't stop coming. Instead, it seems as though they push forward with even more intensity.
Chapter 11: Cataclysm, Pt 11
The ground under your feet shakes with incredible intensity, and the rumbling is almost as deafening as the gunfire. Which makes sense, seeing as there's tens of thousands of insectoid legs out there, all moving with frenzied abandon.
Each of them drum against the concrete into a furious crescendo, causing the world near you to quake. It's enough to cause the buildings all around to start to fall apart, specifically the ones that have already been damaged a great deal.
Huge chunks of them break off and careen to the ground with heavy thuds. They crunch and crush numerous insects on impact. The heavy wet thuds are punctuated by all manner of insectoid screaming and wailing.
Though that hardly slows their advance. Insects push forward from the rear and climb over and around the fallen debris.
Kaja's blade slices cleanly through a number of insects, splashing their gruesome blue-black innards all over the place. She swings it up and around as quickly as she can, then slashes it across the road, cutting down dozens of insects at a time. Then, she swings it back as quickly as she can.
As she sweeps the road, a half dozen soldiers or so fire controlled three-round bursts into whatever makes it past Kaja's reaping. They make simple, slight movements as they bear their aim on insect after insect, and rip into each of them with devastating bursts.
Though you certainly feel a sense of fear emanating from each and every person around you, they don't let that overwhelm them. Each of them exude an overwhelming sense of duty and dedication, and that helps them maintain their deadly focus.
More than that, you can sense just how mentally exhausting it is for them to maintain said focus, and keep firing with extreme precision.
"You two!" cries the officer in charge. "Get over here and outta the way! You're in the middle of everything!"
You and Kaja realize that you are indeed kind of in the way, and head over to his station as fast as you can. It's only a hop, skip, and jump away, and Kaja is very easily able to keep her concentration on swinging the blade around as she moves.
"You're the one making that weapon swing around, right?" he asks Kaja.
"Yeah, trying to anyway," she replies. "Why, you need me to do something else with it?"
"No, you're doing great. Could you move it a bit over to the left? There's a concentration of those bugs incoming."
"No prob."
Kaja adjusts where she's swinging the blade, and moves it further towards the left of the street, as requested. Then she tears through a particularly concentrated area infested with the insects, who have begun to climb over each other as they skitter.
"Also, how far can you swing it out?" the officer asks Kaja.
"No idea," she replies. "I could probably fling it pretty far. But I probably wouldn't be able to get it back. Best I don't try anything crazy right now."
You glance over at Kaja and notice that she's beginning to strain as she swings the huge blade around. Moving it around so violently is clearly taking a toll on her. It dawns on you that it's probably taking a whole lot of her concentration to use it, just like with the soldiers and their weapons.
Except, unlike them, she isn't exactly practiced with her weapon - all she's been doing with it is carry it around thus far. Moving it the way she is currently is clearly taxing her mentally.
As you ponder your predicament, a half dozen soldiers come up from behind and go to relieve the ones up front. All they do is tap their shoulders three times to let them know they're there. Then, one by one, they stop firing and allow their relief to step in their place.
The transition is relatively seamless, and their lethality as a whole barely abates.
As the relief soldiers settle into position, the relieved soldiers back away with relaxed shoulders and stances. Each of them are breathing hard and heavy as they clear their weapons and reload their magazines.
One of them steps up to the commanding officer, even as he's recuperating and checking his equipment.
"Sir, permission to remove body armor," he says.
"Absolutely not," the officer replies.
"Well we ain't exactly getting shot at, so all it's doing is weighing us down."
"Well, regulations say they've gotta stay on during combat operations, no exceptions."
"Pardon me sir, but regulations didn't account for this kinda firefight against this kinda enemy. If we don't-"
Their argument is cut short when the ground shakes with a violent rumble, and almost causes all of you to fall down. It's definitely enough to cause you to stumble, and for Kaja's concentration to slip.
The blade she's controlling slams into the asphalt edge-first, cutting into two or three insects before embedding itself into the ground. At the same time, most of the soldiers at the front line pause their firing just for that moment, in order to keep themselves standing.
There's just enough of a lull in activity that the insects surge forward as a result, and gain precious ground.
Thankfully all of you recover rather quickly, and the slaughter begins anew again.
Kaja picks up the blade as swiftly as she can, and gets back to cutting down swaths of insects. At the same time, the soldiers around you switch to full-auto for only a few seconds, and empty out their magazines. It's as though they're attempting to catch up to that lost moment.
The relieved soldiers immediately hop to their sides to back them up as they reload, to keep the pressure up. But despite all their efforts, it hardly matters. That momentary lapse of defense has allowed the insects to gain a little bit of ground. Far more than any of you like. More than that, they're slowly gaining even more.
You can feel the hairs on the back of your neck stick up as more and more of those bugs get ever closer. They're going to overrun you, slowly but surely.
It dawns on you that you need to help somehow, that you can't just stand there doing nothing. If anything, you should do your best to try to relieve Kaja, so she can rest, if even for a moment.
But again, you don't know what you can do besides maybe use your Telepathy. Your Third Eye certainly won't do much - at least as far as you can tell. Performing a Surge like you earlier would affect everyone around you, not just the bugs.
Still, what would your Telepathy accomplish though? Would you try to reach out and talk to the bugs? And even if you could, how could you possibly talk all of them down? Especially since they all seem to be going absolutely berserk…
You decide to try anyway. It's the very least you could do. Certainly better than doing nothing, right?
You open up your mind and sweep outward with your Telepathy in an attempt to reach out to as many of those insects as you possibly can. As you open up and reach out, the low throbbing at the sides of your head begin to sharpen and take shape. The pain intensifies the more you spread yourself out, seemingly enveloping your mind as the moments pass.
Despite that, you keep going. And you do your best to sense the insects' minds. But unlike human thought patterns, you simply can't quite make out what they're thinking. It's all a mad jumble of signals and gestures and tones and movements that are somehow interrelated to each other.
It's almost as though they're all moving and thinking in unison, but with enough individuality to warrant a repetition of their individual signal. Or, rather, all their individual "speeches" are like all the others around them, just slightly in or out of step from each other.
As though their thoughts travel through every single one in waves, but originating from different points within the swarm itself.
It dawns on you that they have a hive mind, which is why you're having difficulty understanding them at all. But maybe, you can tap into their patterns, somehow. And maybe by doing that you can talk them down. If you can figure out how to talk to them at all.
You try to suss out what they mean by a certain chirp or wail or flicking of antennae or bristling of setae, but find no meaning to any of them. It's simply far too alien for you to comprehend. Certainly not while you're already pressed for time.
Instead of trying to find a way to translate how they communicate, you attempt to focus on their emotional state. A part of you thinks that if they're enraged, maybe you could try to calm them down. Like how you believe your despair had driven away the shadow creature earlier.
Something like that anyway.
You switch your perspective slightly, and focus on their emotions while tuning out their conscious thoughts. Though you're unsure how exactly to do it, you find it relatively easy to actually accomplish. A bit like turning the dial on something. Like a radio, or a volume knob.
And as you do so, you find yourself flooded with the insect's collective mood. It rushes at you with such intensity that you're almost knocked off your feet. It's potent enough that you can feel it wash over you in waves.
Though you open up expecting a great deal of anger and bloodthirstiness coming from them, you instead find yourself awash with fear and dread. And it's a deeply existential kind - run or die.
This surprises you a great deal - you imagine that their charge towards all of you has been their attempt to kill all of you. Because maybe they've got this instinctive need to wipe you out, the same way people tend to wipe out insects in their homes and such.
It only makes sense to you - they find these 'pests' everywhere, and have some deep need to remove them.
But in the end, it turns out they're afraid of something, and they're frantically running away from it with everything they've got. The entire hive is filled with absolute fear and dread - one that's driving them to the point of ruin, right into the tip of a blade, or into a storm of bullets. A fear and dread that far exceeds the amount of fear and dread that any of you are able to apply in return.
They're not here to wipe you all out - you all just happen to be in their highly destructive path as they run from something.
Your heart thumps at the thought of what that something could be. So you reach out further with your Telepathy in an attempt to figure out what. Your mind stretches out past the tens of thousands of insects further down the street - they're practically flooding it as they stream down in your direction.
All those minds, clamoring for escape - it's like a sea of deadly desperation.
And on the other side of it all, right where the insects end and that something begins, you realize why they're so afraid. Why they're running for their collective lives. The blood drains from your face as that familiar presence reaches the very edge of your Telepathic perception.
Its bottomless darkness tells you everything you need to know what's out there.
"The shadow thing's back," you say breathlessly. "And I think it's… it's coming this way. These bugs? All they're doing is trying to get away from it as best they can."
Kaja's eyes go wide the moment you mention the shadow creature. You can feel her heart thump with fear. It perfectly matches the fear that has settled inside you as well.
"It's coming here?" she asks nervously. "To us?
"Yeah, I think," you reply with a shaky voice. "I can sense it getting closer and closer, as it nips at the bugs from the rear. I can feel 'em getting snuffed out a dozen at a time."
A gravely worried sigh escapes Kaja's mouth, even as the ground rumbles more and more violently, as the insects slowly but surely crawl forward further and further.
Though everyone's doing their best to keep the tide back, there's little any of you can do against their eventual encroachment. And with the shadow creature right behind them? It all seems hopeless. Even Kaja's starting to feel that way.
"What do we do?" she asks. "Does it want this blade back? Do we hand it over? Do we fight it? Does it just want to kill everything? What the hell?!"
Outside, the blade wavers as her own control of it weakens, though it still cuts as easily as it always has.
You're unable to answer her - it's not like you know what to do. Between the both of you, Kaja's the one who knows everything, knows what to do, knows all the answers. Then again, who would know what to do at the end of the world?
Part of you wants to grab Kaja, find your Dad, and run away from all this. Why bother with any of it? Who cares what happens to all these people? But once again, the better part of you stops yourself. None of you are gonna get very far if you simply run off.
If you do run, what then? Out to that impossible heat? Into more dangerous chaos? Into the path of other fleeing creatures and insects? At least here, there's plenty who can protect the three of you from most of what's out there. That is, except that shadow creature.
A myriad of questions and thoughts batter your mind, even as the pain begins to become acute.
But how could you beat it? Like you had done last time? You could try again, but you're not sure if you can replicate that feat. And if you do, what would it do to the insects? What about the other telepaths? What would it do to them?
Worst of all, at what point will you stop caring about what would happen to them, and simply lash out due to your own frenzied desperation?
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