I crashed through the window, glass shattering and falling with me as I plummeted to the ground. In that brief moment as I fell, I could see a very lovely bush below me. It resembled an overgrown fern, something that had been planted here and not naturally occurring, and appeared very soft. It would have been nice to land on, but instead I had jumped with too much force and overshot the fern. I hit the ground hard, my ignitor flew from my hand, and my bones crumpled into a pile. My head rolled away from my body and stopped in the grass nearby, facing towards my lumpy clothes.
"What the fuck?" I yelled. I looked around wildly and was at a loss on what to do. I was a disembodied head now, my friends were upstairs being attacked, and time was not on my side. I then heard a musket shot followed by a roaring bear, and I began to panic. I needed to get on with my stupid plan! I tried wobbling back and forth, but that didn't work. I tried opening my mouth all the way to move, and that didn't do anything. I started to hear Patti barking, and I began wiggling my jaw harder to try to move. My skull rolled, and I was now facedown in the dirt.
This caused something inside of me to snap, and I lost it. I began ugly crying into the grass. My friends were in danger, and I was down here, eating dirt. I don't know if any tears fell because I was a skull, but I cried nonetheless while I closed my eyes.
"Hey," I heard from a voice next to me. I opened my eyes and looked to the side. It was Jay. "Are you okay?" I let out a small whimper, and her face took on an expression of sadness.
"No, Jay, I'm not okay. I'm just acting okay, but I can't act right now." I said into the ground. "Are they dead upstairs?"
"Nah, Laura is really good. The door will hold for a long while."
"That's good. How did you get down here?"
"I'm still just a projection, Max. I just phased through the walls without those brothers seeing me."
"Oh, that's cool." I let out a breath I didn't realize I was holding, and a plume of dirt went up around my face. How was I breathing? I opened my mouth to say something, but I shut it. I went to say something again, but shut it once more. I could see Jay out of the corner of my eye. She was lying on the grass next to me.
"I'm still here, okay?" I choked back a sob at that. It hit me harder than I thought. Honestly, all of this was hitting me harder than I thought. I think Jay saw I was struggling to find the words, and so she continued. "Hey, can you move your other body parts?"
"Jay, that's stupid. My head is off and…" and my fucking clothes pile wiggled. "Jay, that's genius!" I thought about moving my fingers, and out of the jacket popped my right hand, moving like the Thing from The Addams Family. I watched it as it traversed its way around, conscious of myself moving it, and I reached into my pants pocket and found it. My ignitor. I struck it, and the purple cloud enveloped me. As it disappeared, my body was whole again as the rotted angel. Jay stood up with me and nodded approvingly at me.
"Jay, I… um…" I was still worked up from my panic attack. Jay's tentacle extended out and covered my lips in a shushing motion. I didn't feel it, of course, but I knew what she was doing.
"You'll be okay, Max." I smiled at her, and she smiled back. "Now, which way do we run?" Her shushing tentacle now became a thinking tentacle as it rubbed her chin.
"We?" I asked. "You need to stay behind, and help with the evac!"
"I wanted to tell you earlier, but I can't be far from you. A hundred yards or so, sure, but anything further and I'll be snapped to your position."
"Oh…" I said. I looked around and saw where we came in, and opposite that was where the maze continued. "Well, I guess forward?" I began to move and noticed Jay was still standing where we were. I walked back. "Hey, you coming?"
"You're able to pull yourself together quickly, you know that?" I rubbed the back of my head coyly. I pulled my hand back to realize some rotting hair had come off. I really need to get a new form. "Okay, let's go!" Jay broke off in a trot, which I realized I had never seen before. She always just casually walked and observed.
I ran and caught up with her. Jay looked at me with a smile as we began to run into the narrowing corridor of the maze again. As we made our way further inward, I noticed Jay was keeping pace pretty easily with me. That made sense. She was just like a hologram or a projection… What was she actually? I couldn't remember. I was about to ask when we came to our first intersection. This time, on the wall, I saw a lot of information.
There were multiple places and names, each with an arrow, pointing in either direction. This must be from Jessica's power. I could see directions! Jay turned to say something, but I spoke first.
"I see everything, Jay!" She remained quiet and looked from me to the wall. I scanned the list up and down. Where the hell was it? There was so much shit to read through when I finally saw what I was looking for and pointed to my right. "This way!" I broke off into a run, leaving Jay behind for a moment, but she caught up easily. We ran until we found another intersection, and I did the scanning again. Jay was back in observation mode, studying me. I pointed left, and we began to run.
"Jay! How long have we been running?" I panted out. Holy shit, cardio was not my friend.
"Eight minutes running now, we may want to set up the portal," she said in a normal voice. Running had done nothing to her! I stopped, and Jay did as well next to me. I panted and leaned forward, hands on my knees. My old, zombie body was not made for long-distance running. I stood up, opened my inventory screen, and pulled out the portal potion. I looked around and decided on the wall. I waved for Jay to get back, and I took aim at the wall before throwing the bottle. It smashed into a splattering of green everywhere and began dripping down. It looked like I threw a tomato against the wall or something.
"Did it work?" I asked. As if answering, the amorphous splatter formed suddenly into a circle, maybe three feet wide. It rippled like waves and let off a bright, green glow. I just stared at it, and then it started extending outward, like a finger pressing from the inside of a balloon. It stretched as it distended more, and it was gross. It made wet sounds, and it also smelled funny. I think my face must have shown how I felt, because Jay said something.
"Yeah, it's working." She looked ill as well. That's when the damn thing finally popped, and Church's unconscious head flopped out, followed by the rest of his body. He was covered in green goop all over. Then came a very scared-looking Patti, followed by Laura Vale. She stood quickly, reached into her jacket, and pulled an empty bottle. She began scraping the green goop into the bottle. Jay went to Patti, and I went to Church. I wiped the slime off both of them, and Church began to cough as he finally woke up. Laura had finished scraping the portal off and was stowing the bottle away when she turned to me.
"Lo siento, fuckers!" Laura said. Then, off in the distance, I heard the explosion.