He looked up at the sign, and he reached, digging fingers in where the sign and the wall were. He stepped on someone, tried to climb toward the window, eye on the latch, darting over to look at the smoke behind him, then up to where the smoke was thick near the ceiling. The plexiglass front of the sign was a hinge, so it could be opened, and he dug his finger into that gap for the leverage it could afford.

The climb would have been hard on its own, but he was jostled. His hand slipped, and both his fingernail and the tip of his finger tore off as his hand came away from the hinge. A thin streak of blood was drawn on the plexiglass.

Someone slid between him and the wall, and he was no longer able to hold himself up. He landed on the ground, and people walked over him. His efforts to stand were defeated by the feet trampling him. He couldn’t stop coughing, and his vision distorted from the effort.

Behind them, the fire and smoke were getting worse.

He looked up, vision warped to the point that up and down and left and right were no longer clear, he looked at the walls that stretched skyward, the glass ceiling high above, the bodies pressed around him and over him. The view blurred with the tears in his eyes, growing dark as the people closed in above him.

The image distorted, going black, and he saw stars, flying past him, as if he was being buoyed elsewhere.

⊙

A scene faded, unremembered. Points of light became light. Darkness became shadows in a large, dark room.

There was no skylight, no corridor, no crowd or mall. In the center of the room was a spike of twisted metal and glass topped by what looked like a sundial without a marker. Light shone through the glass as if it was coming through the other side, but no source could be seen. The different tints of the red-blue-purple light divided the room into four sections, with a fifth left dark. Each section was littered with debris of different sorts.

Without even needing to look to check the position, Rain reached down for the chair. Always in the same place, the same position. The floor in his section was dilapidated. Uneven floorboards with spaces between them. There were scattered books, tools that looked like they hadn’t been touched in a while, and some assorted branches and dry pine needles, as if it was a space that had been exposed to the elements. He put the chair down on the ground.

“I don’t suppose you guys are willing to talk?” he asked. Again, he didn’t even need to look or check the position of the others. He knew where they would be.

There was no reply.