"The roof..." Plural said with a hopeless expression when she saw Tatters pointing at it.
"What? What'd she say?" Saturn asked in a panic, tugging her arm.
Tatters was disappearing into the distance. She was upside down and her spear was dangling behind her, attached to her belt. She was taken by Dark Jenny who'd grown a pair of demonic black wings. But Jenny's body wasn't with them.
Plural looked around her and froze at the sight of the horde of undead that encircled them.
"Hey! What'd she say!?" Saturn yelled as he shook her.
"She said roof! Let's go!" Circus said as she turned around.
Whether Jenny was up there or not, they decided to run for it. Plural was still frozen in fear, and Saturn grabbed her hand to pull her along while Circus stayed behind them to guard their flank. The building's entrance was covered with bloodstains, and the glass was broken, allowing them to enter without using the shotgun. They weren't so lucky with the second door, and Circus wasted no time to shoot the lock and kick it open, causing Saturn and Plural both to flinch. Nine left.
"Go!" Circus said. She turned around to see a monstrous creature running through the broken glass of the front door. This one was missing both of its arms. Circus used her second shell to shoot it in the head, and successfully broke the black thread, causing it to collapse backwards on to the ones that followed. She turned around again to find her two friends already climbing the staircase, and she followed them, reloading the two shells as she ran. Eight left.
Looking up, they could see they were in for a long climb. Circus hoped that her friends were fit enough to make it, especially with the agonizing screaming of the monsters that followed them. When she looked back, she could see they were running up the stairs too, but not as fast. They were getting in each other's way. Circus noticed how their black threads didn't go through the walls or ceiling, but all led outside through the building's opening. The threads showed no signs of tugging and probably had no limit to their length.
She stopped to shoot again, causing the creatures in front to topple over and slow each other down even more. Seven.
When she continued her ascent, she couldn't see her two friends anymore. Reassuring, on one hand, because they were making good pace. Worrying, on the other, because she couldn't protect them from any creatures that might've been inside the building already. When she hurried to follow them, she heard a wall breaking and her two friends screaming up ahead. She caught up with them at a section of the staircase with a big hole in the outer wall. There was a mangled corpse there, splattered across the inner wall that housed the elevator. Saturn stopped to warn her.
"They're throwing each other at us!"
She looked outside through the gap to find a much larger undead creature standing among the horde. It grabbed onto one of the smaller ones and looked like it was going to throw it again.
"Come on!" Saturn yelled at her.
Circus continued up the stairs and ran with her friends again. This little delay gave the ones chasing them up the stairs the opportunity to catch up to them again, and Circus had to use another shell to slow them down. Six left.
The running was starting to tire her out. Judging from the view from before, they were maybe about halfway up the building. And she knew it only got harder as they got more tired. Her friends were audibly tired already, more so than her.
♦
Tatters stared at the view and tried to let it sink in how Dark Jenny had effectively destroyed everything she used to fight for. Was it showing it to her on purpose? She watched the hellscape, expecting to feel something, but she felt nothing. Maybe it would come later, or maybe it would never come because she didn't care after all.
Then she looked up at her captor. Dark Jenny was coasting through the air and slowly losing altitude, using the wings as a glider rather than flapping them to fly. It wasn't using its red hair to fly either. She pressed the button on her retractor device to make the spear come back to her until she could grab hold of the handle, and prepared to strike.
But first she had to wait for the right time to attack so she could fall from a safe height. She scanned the geography up ahead and found there to be no end to the undead. She was going to drop in the middle of them. Dark Jenny's main body was out of the range of her spear, but with the way the wings moved, she could hit one with the right timing.
For any plan, there was a Dark Jenny to make sure things didn't go according to it. Before Tatters could strike, it dropped her in a park, in a spot cleared from the undead. The height of the drop was manageable, but when she landed on her feet, she felt a horrible pain in her ankle and collapsed onto her knees. Dark Jenny had held her by the same one it grabbed to pull her under the ice. It was surely broken by now.
Looking around, she could see the undead watching her but not moving to attack. Dark Jenny itself landed on an old monument, growing a single dark scissor-limb larger than any she'd ever seen before and snatching an undead from the audience to devour it. Dark Jenny looked down on her the same way it did that night when all she had was the plank.
Tatters tried to stand, but even that was painful. She could feel every single wound on her body screaming at her again, like they'd opened back up. When she looked up at the glowing green sky, she realized she was being affected by the scourge all over again.
Then, in the distance, she noticed a fighter jet flying across the green sky and wondered if the military was finally going to get involved. Judging from the view from the sky before, however, there was nothing left to save here. Worst case scenario, they were going to bomb the whole city.
The plane changed its trajectory to approach Tatters' location, and she gave it the finger. When she looked back at Dark Jenny, it was also looking at the plane, copying Tatters like a child and sticking up its own middle finger too. In the meantime, it was disassembling its black wings into countless thin, sharp tendrils and spreading them through the audience of undead to surround Tatters from every angle.
The large scissor-limb that devoured some of the audience had grown considerably in length and was spiraling around Dark Jenny like some sort of hypnosis wheel.
A tendril shot out from behind Tatters, and she couldn't move fast enough to cut it off before it hit her. Her cape took the blunt hit, knocking her off balance and causing her to scream out in pain when she had to put down her broken foot to keep herself from falling over. Another tendril came from the left, but she was able to cut that one off before it reached her.
Tatters regained her cool and took a step forward using her good foot. There was no way for her to win anymore, so she decided to just hold out as long as possible to give the others time to get to Jenny. All while moving closer to Dark Jenny.
The attacks kept coming from all directions. Tatters didn't turn around anymore, so she wouldn't be knocked back. Her face was one of her weak spots, and Dark Jenny was looking her in the eyes the entire time, but it didn't laser her. It didn't even use its Jenny-body at all anymore except for some nonverbal communication. No, it was just toying around with her. With every other step she took, she cried out in pain from putting pressure on her broken foot.
Tatters had nothing left here. She was surrounded by the dead, and there probably wasn't a single survivor left in the city anymore, including her allies. She remembered what Plural's last words were to her. That they wouldn't see each other again. It made her feel both angry and lonely, because she'd started to believe it too.
Gradually, the tip of her spear started emitting the same blue flame as her bolt did when she cut off Dark Jenny's arm. This was the second time that'd ever happened. Tatters surmised it was caused by her emotional state, making the effect more powerful and affecting the air around the weapon. She had to be careful with it, as anything that came close to the tip was immediately erased from the world.
Unfortunately, she couldn't stand putting pressure on her foot anymore, and the voices in her head were getting louder. Dark Jenny noticed what was going on and gave her broken foot a tug using one of the smaller tendrils, causing her to fall over and scream in pain. In a swift move, enough tendrils joined in to restrain her arms and legs so she couldn't fight back anymore. One even coiled around her mouth to stop her from screaming.
♦
Rubble flew across the stairs in front of them as another undead corpse was launched through the wall and splattered its guts all over the interior surroundings. Saturn and Plural fell to the ground and looked beyond drained. Circus looked over the railing to see how far back their pursuers were. At this point, they had a good head start on them, but they couldn't rest and throw that away. They weren't getting any faster, either. She looked at the bundle of threads that moved up the stairs with the horde. It was too far away to reliably damage them with the shotgun, and she had two shells left. Only one of which she could use for self-defense.
"We gotta keep moving! It's gonna throw the next one!" Circus said.
"C'mon Plu, you heard her," Saturn said as he rubbed Plural's back. She looked like she was in the worst shape of them all. He got up and pulled her arm over his shoulder. Circus joined him and took her other arm.
"I'm so sorry," Plural said, out of breath and in tears.
"It's like you said, we're just office workers," Saturn said, also out of breath.
Circus could tell he just as was terrified as Plural.
"We're not saving Jenny just to let you die," Circus said, not as badly of breath.
The three moved slower like this. Circus thought about the number of stairs they had left, and she knew that if they moved slow enough, they wouldn't make it to the top anymore.
One of the floors they passed had a locked steel door that looked like it led to a maintenance section. It caught Circus' attention and made her consider whether the roof would even be accessible or not. Neither Dark Jenny nor Tatters took the stairs before. What if there was a steel door like that one blocking their way to the roof? In that case, she'd have to save two shells, meaning she had none left to use to slow down the horde.
"If they catch us, you gotta take the emerald," Saturn told Circus.
"No!" Circus shouted.
Saturn looked at her surprised.
"If we all d-"
"Shut up!" she interrupted him.
♦
Tatters' face was pressed against the snow. Her arms and legs were restrained by the powerful tentacles and the wire to her spear was cut during a moment of weakness where Dark Jenny broke her finger and she released the effects of her power on it. This position reminded her of how she lay on the frozen lake, with her limbs tied to the plank.
One of the dark limbs pounded her from above like a hammer, breaking her ribs.
A tear ran across her face when another tendril broke her left arm. She didn't have the energy to scream in pain, so all that came out instead was a weak moan. Her eyes looked hollow. She felt the pain and fatigue in her body again, the same way she always did after she lost her adrenaline. There was no energy left inside of her to resist, and the battle was already over.
Dark Jenny was toying with its defeated opponent, likely wounding her enough to get her to turn undead. Perhaps it would be able to control her powers then.
Another tear followed. Why did the universe wait to kill her until she didn't want to die anymore? What did she do to deserve this? Just once in her life, she wanted to be saved by someone.
A tendril took her hood and lifted it up to reveal her head. When she looked up, the head of the scissor-limb floated in front of her, like predator with cornered prey. She could almost imagine saliva dripping out from the sides of its teeth. Tatters closed her eyes and accepted the fact that she'd get to rest permanently.
As she lay there in anticipation, the voices in her head slowly faded away as she zoned out and blocked off all her senses. She remembered when Plural first hugged her, how Saturn took her arm around his shoulder to help her walk, despite the way she treated him. The hot springs, and the way Plural looked at her when she took her hands.
She remembered how gentle Jenny was when she was trying to kill her in the old town center, and when she jumped in front of her to protect her on the frozen lake. She regretted everything. Her heart was racing with emotions that had nowhere to go. And so, Tatters pressed her eyes shut hard and waited for it all to finally end.
…
The next thing she heard was a massive thump on the ground in front of her, like a large object just fell. At the same time, the tendrils released their death grip on her arms and legs.
She opened her eyes to see an angel with glowing golden hair, standing with one foot against the severed end of the scissor-limb. The remains of the giant limb retreated to the body of its owner, and the tendrils that were restraining Tatters were cut off and slowly disappearing. Dark Jenny's facial expression was… pleasantly surprised. The angel was looking at Tatters and smiling, it was Jenny. Jenny gave her a thumbs up and said something, but Tatters couldn't hear it.
Before the dark limb could grow itself back, Jenny teleported below Dark Jenny and kicked it straight up into the sky. As Dark Jenny flew upwards with its limbs trailing behind, it emitted bright golden particles. Every time it slowed down, Jenny followed and kicked it again, taking them both further away from the surface of the planet.
Tatters rolled herself onto her back to see the spectacle, noticing the sky was no longer green. Jenny blew the dark clouds away when she blasted through them, painting the night sky gold instead. Tatters looked around her to see the distant clouds all cut horizontally. All the undead around her lay collapsed, and not a single black thread remained.
She looked back up at Jenny, who was reduced to a speck of gold heading straight for the moon. Tatters noticed the dark tendrils around her limbs had completely disappeared now. Her left arm was broken along with some fingers on her left hand, in addition to her right foot, right leg and her ribs. But she didn't care about that. Her savior in the sky had her complete attention, even though the gold speck wasn't visible anymore.
Tatters couldn't form any thoughts anymore. She just stared at the moon in anticipation. Then, an explosion of gold flickered on the right side of the moon, followed by a gold laser beam exiting out of the left side. As the beam travelled further into space, it lost its lean shape and fell apart, curving outward like a fountain and eventually fading away. It continued for a while, Tatters didn't keep track. And when it finally stopped, the galaxy in the sky was bright and gold. Tatters rubbed her head in the snow to make herself comfortable and enjoyed the view.
She thought about how she was still alive. The fact that Jenny was here meant the others were alive too. She couldn't contain a genuine chuckle when it dawned on her she'd really see them again.
She thought for a while about what Jenny could've said to her.
"You're welcome," she said with a smile.