Page 101 of Gates of Tartarus

She shakes her head but tries. “I can’t!” she whispers.

“Gemma, remember that painting in the shed? The one you’ve been working on with the lake reflection? With the purple sky and the black mountains?’

She shivers but nods.

“Just, can you focus on that?”

Her face creases in concentration and then slowly smooths out as she pictures it. Her breathing slows minutely.

“What do you need to fix on that painting? What has to be completed?”

I watch her face settle and feel her drift slightly, and her weak shielding calms down as she loses herself. I turn back to the women, who haven’t moved, and try to think of how I can help them. There’s nothing in them but blank, mindless terror, and I don’t know how much ofthemexists anymore. I can’t take away their terror – it would overwhelm me and be too much, and I couldn’t hold all of it. I decide to try to move one at a time. Reaching towards the woman nearest me, I slowly move to touch her hand. She doesn’t shy away, so I gently take her hand in my own, and, concentrating, push some of the little peace Gemma has given me into the stranger. It’s not a perfect solution, but it does enough that, when I pull at her, she comes, and we move towards the light together.

???

After two more times of walking women up to the factory floor, every muscle in me is screaming. My nose is bleeding again, and Gemma’s shielding is close to non-existent. I don’t know how we're going to do the last two women. I don’t have enough energy to do them both at once, but Ican’tleave a woman on her own, alone in that nightmare. Each roundtrip is a little over five minutes, which, in that blackness, would feel like forever.

Smith is frowning at me as I walk back towards the ladder. I can tell he’s gauging the way I’m walking, trying to tell how much I have left. He grabs a cold cloth from a table near him and wipes off my face, not accomplishing much but smearing dirt and blood over my skin.

“I don’t like it,” he says firmly. “I don’t want you going back down. We can wait. It’s only another twenty minutes or so.”

Ignoring him as much as possible, I push gently by him and start towards the ladder. Gemma stands to come with me but wavers on her feet, falling into a nearby EMT. He sits her down and immediately checks her eyes andblood pressure, then shakes his head at Smith.

“She’s done.”

Smith turns to me, still a few feet away from me. “Then you’re done.” He turns back towards Gemma, and I stand, frozen for a moment.

This asshole thinks he can just command me like I’m a freaking puppy?I huff under my breath, the anger giving me an extra boost. Grabbing my coffee off the table, I take several long gulps, watching Smith carefully. He glances back over his shoulder to make sure I’m being a good little doggie and sitting and staying when I’m told, then dismisses me completely as he speaks to the EMT about Gemma. Tanaka is overseeing the treatment plan of the women who were pulled up a few minutes ago, so he won’t be a problem. But sneaky freaking Walker is over near the services table observing the interaction between myself and Smith. His eyes narrow as he watches me casually put down my drink and float towards the hole.

I lock eyes with him and shrug slightly before grabbing the ladder and sliding down into the pit. Just before I do, I see him start forward, as though to stop me, and hear Maddox yell, “God DAMNIT, Kailani!” I hit the ground at the bottom of the ladder awkwardly, my hands on fire from sliding down instead of climbing down. Between the pain in my ankle and the pain in my hands, I’m distracted from the emotions in the room for a moment, but when they hit me, it feels like I’ve been punched in the stomach. I turn to the side and dry heave, trying to breathe through the thick pain coating every inch of the air. Swaying slightly, I stand and grimace. Gemma’s numbing had been doing more than I thought, and it’s hard to focus on anything but the sick, suffocating agony drilling into my bones.

With everything I have in me, I stumble forwards towards the corner. The remaining two women look lost and hopeless, and as I grab their hands, I search within me to try to find any comforting emotion to push into them in order to get them to follow me. There’s nothing. Nothing but the blackness and the excruciating descent into madness. I bite my cheek hard enough to make it bleed, and my mind sharpens briefly from the burst of physical pain. Icannotfail these women.

A sound behind me has me tensing, and the women close into themselves, fear written all over their faces. Walker’s familiar signature pushes into my psyche. He’s clearly frustrated with me, and worried, and oddly scared. But the strongest feeling I get from him is a certain belief. He iscompletelysure I can do this, and I pull that solid truth into myself before filtering it and pushing it into the two women in front of me. I am completely certain thattheycan do this, and as the feeling hits them, they rise slowly to their feet and follow me.

We make an odd group, hobbling along towards the ladder. Walker climbs up first, supporting one of the women. I’m about to help the second up the ladder, giving her an extra push of emotion, when all at once she seems to be in her body again, for a brief, startling instant.

Looking at me through confused eyes, she looks around, then up the ladder at the waiting help. Then meeting my eyes again, she whispers through cracked lips, “You’re not with Gaia, are you?”

I shake my head slowly. “No.”

“Thank God,” she breathes out. “Thank God.”

The Center Cannot Hold

Sunday, 25 November – Kailani

“Not with Gaia? Are you sure?”

“I know what I fucking heard,Smith,” I grind out from clenched teeth as the EMTs fuss over me, strapping me to a stretcher and rolling me towards the waiting ambulance. “Is this really necessary?” I ask them through a raw throat, trying to motion unsuccessfully with my arm. I get a cold, no-nonsense look from the female EMT who treated me earlier.

“Ms. Reed. You are covered in your own blood, have multiple contusions, and are showing all the signs of a serious head injury. Your blood pressure is through the roof. You’re havingsignificanttrouble walking, and you’ve gone against medical advice several times this evening. Now, I’m happy to give you some of the good good,” she lifts a hand which holds a syringe full of clear liquid, “to help you make up your mind, and please believe that I will if you continue to fight me on this. Otherwise, sit and stay.”

I flush deeply and cower a little.Shit. Don’t get drugged up twice in one day, Kai. Always good advice. Keep an extra tenner in your shoe, have a fully charged battery when you go out for the evening, and don’t get drugged up twice in one day.

The EMT nods shortly, seeing my compliance, and checks her watch. “You have five minutes, gentlemen.”

Walker opens his mouth to say something, and she glares at him, snapping, “Five. Minutes.”

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