A/N: So, not the last chapter after all. I dunno why I even bother trying to predict such details. Bah. There ended up being a few things to touch on that I don't think the closing addition will allow, so, here we are.

Included in this chapter are a couple examples of the manner in which I picture Castle's imagination 'flexing' itself against the real world around him. It occurs in two different formats too, in case neither is confusing enough on their own. Blah. Sometimes the writing happens how it wants to, regardless of my intent. Anyway, just bear in mind that both examples are meant to showcase a unique affinity for imagination on Castle's behalf. He's not cuckoo. Per se.

She's gone.

Richard Castle knows it before his eyes open the following morning.

The previous night she'd stripped him gently, wordlessly down to his briefs and herself to her panties, and they'd drifted off in his bed closely entwined. He'd slept the way only the dead must normally be allowed, deep as oblivion and perfectly dreamless.

As consciousness stretches itself out into every part of him now, he's aware of the breeze from the east windows bathing him fully. If she were still there it would be partially obstructed. If she were elsewhere in the house he wouldn't be hearing only every other noise or lack thereof familiar to this place. Even without the evidence...he feels alone. It takes a moment of gathered resolve to force his eyelids apart.

The woman left no imprint behind, only subtle wrinkles marring the underlying plain white sheet.

Richard smooths the vacant space with his right palm. It's cold. He captures the pillow and draws it closer. The scent of her is strong yet. Blue orbs roll back to their whites and slide closed while he loses himself to it for a short time.

This had gone very differently with Kyra. He'd been taken by surprise that time, which was equal parts shameful naiveté on his part combined with her inability to question the popularly held belief. In a strange way his past might be termed a gift. It is a unique test of another person's desire to trust him, to believe in them, even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Far from being grateful for such a mechanism, he's long cursed it. It's human nature to conform to generalized ideas—not to blindly follow necessarily, but to receive them with a certain level of acceptance. That's part of being one of the tribe. Humanity evolved alongside a certain malleability to the disposition of the group.

Knowing Richard well enough to love him, however, demands original thinking.

He smiles faintly where he lies, because Katherine Beckett has that in spades. Prompted by the thought, the author ceases feeling sorry for himself in her absence and rises to start the day. He goes through the usual morning rituals quietly within the near-silence of the massive, brightly sunlit home.

She'd considerately made enough coffee for both of them before she left. There's a mug already set out on the counter for him, upside down upon a napkin. Rick lifts it to cradle the item against his chest and his smile unfurls again at the sight of a lipstick imprint of a kiss upon the abandoned white square of paper.

Beckett left a letter on his chair on the deck, which is just plain creepy. Of all the places in or around the beach house he might venture with his first cup of the day, she chose the correct one? The single sheet of off-white stationary is from a forgotten stack of them in his desk. It's weighted down on the left arm of the seat by two of the larger seashells they found yesterday on the beach. Two of them, he notes while settling into the wooden embrace of his favorite chair, his and hers.

Following a greedy gulp of his morning brew, he sets it aside and slides the single page free. He prods the shells side-by-side again afterwards, as she'd arranged them. Rick lifts the paper to his nose, testing, but there's no scent of her there that the blunted olfactory analysis of a person can discern.

Ooh, hey. What about that? An experiment goes wrong, a man's wife goes missing, and he has to track her using his newfound keen senses. No. Impossible. That has to have been done previously. Still, he'll check. He imagines Liam Neeson starring, standing, gun in hand, on a rooftop balcony somewhere in Paris, alternatively sniffing and cocking his head to listen with his characteristic scowl. "I will find you. I will k—ooh, freshly baked scones? Yum."

The stationary is clean, but also quite old. There's no crispness to the page as he unfolds it, but an aged softness and a whisper of sound as he slides the folded halves apart. The detective's handwriting is present in recognizably bold strokes, businesslike haste and confidence wed to every stroke of the black ink pen she'd used.

Morning Sleepyhead,

Sorry to slip away like this. You look so peaceful, finally. I don't have it in me to wake you.

Castle glances up with a squint at the brightness of the grounds beyond, vibrant green grass set against the backdrop of a clear azure sky. He purses his lips ruefully. She would be capable of noting the difference between him under the careful reigns of control as opposed to being genuinely at-ease. Do you miss anything? The lounging man frets over whether his grimness has marred the weekend for her, but soon eases it aside in favor of lowering his attention to the letter again.

It's the most natural thing in the world to let his imagination take over from there.

The real world doesn't fade away exactly, but a layer of imposed perception is draped over it as surely as the colors of the world are lain upon every object in sight. The detective appears at his right and settles into the other chair, exactly where he wishes she were. He sees her as she was last night: a sweeping configuration of sublime curves and svelte lines, naked but for a cute pair of pink underwear. She grins at him and winks unashamedly, but also gives just the slightest bow of her head in a blip of shyness prompted by being observed while speaking openly to him. You do that sometimes.

He watches her face the distant coast while her voice forms the words he reads. "I don't want you to be worried about my being gone." The image he's conjured nods in self-agreement. "I'm still not running. There's something I need to do today."

"It's okay. I'm not afraid," Castle says, which qualifies as talking to himself, yes, but...it happens sometimes.

Beckett smiles widely again, a brilliant flash of pearl in the shade of the deck, but she doesn't reply. Not even in his imagination would Richard presume himself capable of representing the woman with that extent of accuracy. The letter goes on. "A few minutes ago, I called the Assessor's Office we visited last night. This probably wasn't on your agenda, but I need to see where everything happened. Once the owner there found out that I'd been in the room he keeps locked up tight, even to himself, it wasn't hard to get more information about the farm."

Castle sighs. For a moment the imagined scene vanishes. "Ah, Kate." It's equal parts regret for bringing her into his darkness, pride in her determination to finish what they started, and in a distant third is a stirring annoyance at the fact that the woman doesn't know when to stop. The sense of having uncovered something to its full comprehension is the finish line beyond which she'll let something go. Nothing short of it will suffice. I might have known better.

"Why am I not surprised you hold the deed on Llewellyn's property?" Beckett murmurs beside him and shakes her head sorrowfully. Her hazel orbs shift over the scenery beyond them both, distressed and unable to linger on any one thing for long. "I wear a watch and a ring. Maybe that's not the surest footing from which to preach about letting the past lie, but good grief, Castle. The depths of that madman's depravity is equaled in its degree of commitment only by the lengths you've gone to in keeping your guilt as close as you have." Her voice quiets to almost nothing. "It breaks my heart."

Castle sucks in a long, slow breath and shifts the page within his grasp against a press of the wind.

Beckett clears her throat and continues, "I'm headed out there now. John agreed to meet me, so I'm not gonna be alone, okay? I know it's not somewhere you're likely to want to visit again." The image of her at his side turns, regarding him with another melancholy smile. "I'm going to wait for you there, but not for long. I don't want you to come, but part of me thinks maybe you will."

"There's nowhere I won't follow you," the author growls.

"I want you, Castle, but I don't need you. Not this time. Wait for me here if you can, please."

"I can. I won't."

"Either way," the letter goes on to say, and he to imagine hearing, "I want you to know that I'm not going to the cavern because I'm still making up my mind about us." He has to pause again for a girding breath, and looks askance at the imagined image of her warily. "I'll be going back to the city after this. I can't think around you." She smiles wryly. "Not about what I need to be thinking about anyway." A puff of dim amusement escapes him unexpectedly. "That's not me running either. You and me, babe—we're doing this. I'm not asking for space. I don't want a fucking inch between us."

She'd underlined the expletive in the letter, which makes him hum internally with another note of humor.

"I like this new image I have of us. I only want some time to grasp it a little better." Kate tilts at him quizzically. "Don't you need that too?" Then she sighs and her dark hair sways with an indecisive shake of her head. "I'm not sure, but I can imagine that being the case. I can picture you staying out here to write our fictional counterparts a new adventure, working this all out that way. I'll do the same in my own less lucrative fashion. You'll come back to the city soon enough and we'll continue the work we're so much better at together than we are apart. And as we do that we'll get to know one another better, our intentional and unwittingly secretive selves. God, Castle. I can't wait. I'll see you soon, okay?"

The letter is signed: Yours, Kate. P.S.: I didn't 'steal' Connie. She begged me to take her.

Castle chuckles again to think of the detective tearing around Montauk's quiet roads in the Bentley, top down and dark hair flowing like a silken banner. He lowers the hand holding the letter to the arm of his chair and with that motion dispels the imagined images of Kate. There's so much color in the real and breathing midmorning around him. That won't fade away while the two of them walk for a little bit longer in the footsteps of a monster and his prey. No. They'll just carry that brightness within themselves for a little while, that's all. As burdens go, it'll be nice to bear one so pleasant for a change.

For both of them.

He rises with the mug, letter, and shells in-hand and goes back inside to get dressed, feeling, for the first time he can recall, unafraid of the prospect of going back to that wretched place. Well, less afraid. He won't be alone.

From a distance he sees them standing together. The Bentley and John's F-150 are pulled over safely onto the shoulder. The pair stopped before the metal bars of the gate across the dirt road that leads to the farm. The Sergeant, dressed down today in jeans and a black t-shirt, straightens to his full height upon recognizing the Mercedes hybrid Castle is driving.

Kate turns with a lifted hand blocking out the sunlight to observe the writer's approach. She's wearing another pair of shorts and camisole top, the former red and alluringly succinct in their encasement of her long, toned legs, the latter article thin, white, and scooped across the back and bust. The woman's mostly bared shoulders round amidst a little slump.

Whether that's a gesture of relief or regret isn't easily discernible from a distance.

He parks behind the sleek and newly dubbed 'Connie'. Beckett meets him at the driver's side door before he can even close up after himself in a lunging crush of a hug and a fierce kiss that dissolves wondering about her reception one way or the other for several seconds. He's dimly aware of her capturing and slowly lifting one of his hands partially into place over the pert curve of her left breast. The galloping of the heartbeat beneath the firm but yielding flesh gradually arises through the mind-numbing haze of eroticism attached to the act. Oh. Yes, I feel you, Kate.

"Brute," she greets in a huff, and releases his hand to hug him again with a bit less forcefulness.

The writer is so easy-going, even conciliatory most of the time. It's a horrible nickname she's bestowed. A chuckle rumbles in his chest and explores the column of his throat. He smooths her back and sides. "I found your note. How could I stay away?"

Beckett eases up enough to lean back and regard him. She stares for a handful of silent moments before finally shaking her head with an alluring sway of her hair which gleams in the sunlight. "Will you ever learn to stay put when I tell you to?"

"I'll...think about it," he answers pointedly, and by the pleased narrowing of her eyes it's clear she's gotten his underlying message of approval regarding her plans for their immediate and near-future. Her fingers touch down in a playful shushing upon his lips, but Rick didn't intend on giving their plot anymore elaboration anyway.

"That's real nice," John complains gruffly as he joins them nearby. "I didn't even get a handshake."

Beckett eases back with a breath of a laugh, and chides the man with a reply Castle doesn't quite catch. His focus is more on the subtler cues of the woman's body language, which imply mixed emotions from having John present. It is a complicated relationship the two men share, to be sure. The same must be said for John and Kate at this point, which makes him wonder why she asked the EHTPD officer to come along.

Castle offers the other man his broad palm, but John wrinkles his nose, turns away some, and crosses his arms in stubborn refusal. "I don't need your pity."

"Looks like pouting is a family trait," Beckett taunts good-naturedly and John's broad shoulders twinge guiltily. She doesn't exactly approve of the man, but she recognizes his position in Rick's life. There's a semblance of peace being offered if not outright acceptance. Perhaps time and familiarity will allow the second to emerge someday.

That still doesn't explain why he's here now though.

"Were you waiting long?" Castle asks with a glance from one to the other.

"About an hour." the Sergeant replies, not seeming the least put out by that fact.

"I was hoping you'd be able to sleep longer," Beckett confides. "I was planning to wait until noon."

It's only ten-thirty. Castle takes a settling breath. He thinks he's kept his features in check, but it's hard not to be effected. Kate made a plan that included a determined amount of time for him to either show up or choose not to. He originally set her on this course, one she couldn't have thought we become so twisted as it has. The detective agreed to follow it, and now she's continuing to pursue it beyond his expectations—doing so while also carving out room for him to be by her side for the rest of the way. Partners. It's...it's a beautiful, and beautifully proactive thing she's done.

"I could still be dreaming," Castle replies at length, his voice a touch rough.

Beckett purses her lips with an almost private smile and hooks an arm through his right one.

John turns as well, leading the way towards the gate. He has a copy of the padlock key that secures the chain. Thick steel links clatter heavily against the horizontal aluminum bars as he reels it free and drapes it over the top bar.

A five-foot barbed-wire fence at either side of the passage encircles the entirety of the twelve-acre property. It skirts the full length of dirt road ahead on both sides. The plot therein is essentially a large oval of open field hemmed in by vary depths of forest on all sides. Elevation varies throughout it all in a few gentle hills, the largest of which they're ascending now along the road. Flora surrounding them is mostly scraggly brush and natives grasses. A few youthful pine trees have crept in here and there since last Richard visited, and a familiar, massive live oak stands like a sentinel with twisted boughs and a drooping mantle on the distant hilltop ahead and to their right.

"So this place was really a farm once?" Kate asks. She pauses after asking and stares at the distant, ancient tree. A frown eases into place and she turns sharply forward again to continue walking at his left.

"Once," Castle confirms. "If you walk a few miles southeast you'll run into the oldest still-functional ranch in the country. This one was closed down, sectioned up, and sold off over a century ago. This particular parcel of that larger whole has been passed around far more than other properties out here. At one point it was held by a wealthy widow named Janice Cooper. Later in her life she became...a patron, let's say, of Llewellyn Matthews. She willed the property to him when she passed."

"He didn't..."

"What—kill her? We don't think so, no. Janice suffered a massive coronary in her sleep."

"Matthews didn't even touch the property for almost four years," John takes over explaining. "There are local ordinances in place against allowing structures to waste away to the point becoming condemned. So, eventually, he was forced to deal with it. That return visit must've been when he found the cavern, because one day he didn't give a rat's ass about it and the next he began an expensive and elaborate reconstruction effort in preparations for it becoming his primary residence."

"What did Llewellyn do anyway? Where did get the money for that?"

"You don't know?" Castle asks, and frowns over at John.

The Sergeant shrugs. "We only covered the details that mattered most."

"He was quite a famous artist," Rick explains to his fairer companion. "A sculptor."

"Oh shit," the detective grumbles. "That makes a sick kind of sense."

"The bastard's still widely regarded for it." John tugs a tall stalk of grass up from the roadside and idly peels away its looser sheath of stemming as he continues, "Which says nothing at all for folks' tastes."

"He's brilliant in the medium," Castle disagrees evenly, his jaw set. "That's never been in question. You should see his work sometime," he offers aside to Beckett, and sighs. "It bends the mind that someone could do what he did and also prove capable of creating pieces that are compared to Michaelangelo and Bernini. That's no exaggeration. It's not just the life he puts into them—it's the energy. Positive energy. Joy. Laughter. It's one more reason he was so hard to see for what he really..." he stops, expression tensed, and let's the subject die right there.

The others remain silent. They just walk for a ways.

A few minutes later the trio crests the hill upon the dirt road. They pause in close unison without a word needing to be spoken. A hundred yards below and beyond stands a large, two-story white farmhouse. There's a fenced corral alongside it, also white, presumably for working with horses. The roadway splits in the distance between that left destination and a right fork which terminates at the barn. It's also two-stories in height, a once handsome red exterior that has waned with time to a hue more reminiscent of rust. To the author it resembles the color of dried blood.

Richard shivers where he stands.

John turns and looks at Beckett. "Did you ask him about his imagination?"

"Huh? Oh. Uh...no. Why?"

"Now is as good a time as any." The Sergeant doesn't look at Castle, but faces ahead of them and settles into a lingering stance. He crosses his arms again. "Go ahead. Tell her what you see."

The author has zero intention of obliging—right up until his partner reaches for his left hand and threads their fingers together with an upward glance at him. She doesn't seem worried, only curious.

"I see the same thing you two do. It's just—

"Don't fuck around with semantics," John interrupts. "Just...do it." He looks down at his boots. "Please."

Beckett's grasp tightens imperceptibly as if she were reconsidering not flinching after all.

Castle feels his features go slack as he glances down the hillside for a full silent minute. Like imagining Beckett earlier, it's as easy as breathing to swap the reality before him with a...flipside of it within his own mind. In this case, however, it is a draining experience—not in terms of expended energy, but in how this particular endeavor of it scatters his emotions like a murder of frightened crows. They flee to far corners of his heart until only barrenness remains in their place.

Only a decisive unease lingers. It spreads a chill up from the soles of his feet, as if the ground were leeching away his warmth.

"I would recognize you even if I was blind," Richard unfurls, and even his voice feels bereft of texture, a dead thing with only enough inflection to be properly understood. "If I had always been blind, I'd still know you."

John's voice seems to come from a greater distance than is literal at the time. "What do you see?"

"There isn't much to be seen."

"There's nothing different?"

"There's nothing. Period."

A tinge of impatience infects the Sergeant's tone. "Yes there is. Describe it."

"What're you two doing?" Beckett asks from his side, nonplussed.

"Don't interrupt," John replies firmly. "Richard...go on. Look at the ground. Start there."

He does so despite his reluctance, frowning some as the varied shades of green surrounding them bled slowly into browns, to greys, and finally to black. The vegetation shrivels as if stricken by a sudden, ravenous blight. It crumbles as a whole, falling like dust against the rigid surface of soil through which jagged cracks begin running rife from a killing dehydration. The ground splits apart with low groans as immense ledges of rock thrust their way steadily up through it. He watches tens and then hundreds of them rise up against a dimming, darkening sky, at times colliding and crumbling downward again into maw-shaped formations of volcanic rock. All too quickly their trio is standing on the edge of a bowl-shaped basin. The mountainous boundaries of its circumference push outwards impossibly until the blight has conquered all compass points.

"Jesus Christ," Beckett issues quietly, and he realizes he's been describing it all aloud for them.

"Keep going, brother."

In a precise opposite from the death of earth, the already green-tinged sky begins to dim further from the outside in. Like a low-hanging storm moving in from every direction, deep grey clouds converge upon the region in a derisive disregard of physics. The sun winks a last feeble ray of parting before the canopy swallows it whole. Unsatisfied, the sky grows only darker. It becomes a cruel mirror of the ground below for blackness. In some places the glassy tips of the taller obelisk formations vanish into the morass overhead, like pillars holding it aloft. The clouds begin turning clockwise as he observes, a cauldron of vaporous and congealing ichor being stirred by an unseen hand.

From out it lowers the whirlwind, not with a sway from side-to-side, but with the straight, plunge of a gargantuan funnel miles in diameter. It touches down in utter silence and without so much as a stirring of the dust coating the cancerous soil. All that denotes its unfurling is a tremendous inner vibration of impact in the author's bones, one which the world cannot, or will not, give a more literal voice to. As if in greeting, new crevices split open in the ground with sudden fissures of steam blasting skyward alongside a surging glow of fiery radiance, as if the mantle had been tapped.

Even that light dims in places. It deepens to oranges and reds that ebb and surge in time to the slow churning of the tempest in the valley's center. The lifeblood of the planet is drawn inexorably out. Striations of it glare out from the impossible funnel like great slashes of eyes, winking and vanishing only to reappear in new places. It flows up into the sky and crawls out into the clouds like networks of veins, or like lightning that struck with customary brilliance and forgot to fade afterwards. Instead it lingers and pulsates along with the glow of magma from below, both waxing and waning to the ceaseless, soundless churning of the maelstrom.

"Enough!" Beckett commands quietly, but sharply. The imagined scene is gone that suddenly. "Just...stop, Castle." Her palm is moist against his before she pulls away. The woman wipes it against her shorts and wiggles her fingers some before gripping him determinedly again. The snap of her head fixes an expression he cannot see on their accompanying officer. It drives the man half a pace away from her. "What exactly was the point of that fucking exercise, John? Was there some question in your mind about whether or not he doesn't like being here? You really needed proof?"

The target of her anger returns it in kind with a flexing shift of his jaw. "Don't you wanna know what he sees when you drag him around your city to places where people have likewise mangled one another? Tough shit. Now you do."

Beckett flinches and pales swiftly. She looks up at Castle with her lips parted, but the words flown.

"She doesn't drag me anywhere," Richard clarifies stoically to the other man. "Maybe I was just following in her wake at the beginning, but not now. Not for some time. We walk side-by-side."

John shakes his head slowly. "Sorry, brother, but that's bullshit. You're being led, sure as hell, and she's holding the reigns. Ask her about your caseload—about how her and the brass in The City have been steering you away from the ones they think you can't handle." He squints with a tilt of his shaved head. "Why do think they do that?"

"You really need to stop talking," Beckett grits. "You have no idea what you're talking about. I gave you a few brief cliff notes, and you presume to know the full story? Fuck you, John."

"Don't tell me," the Sergeant replies coldly. "Tell him."

"Tell me what?" Castle asks, reaching to lay a calming hand on his partner's shoulder. She writhes angrily out from under it, but doesn't release their gasped hands even when he loosens his in preparation for it. "Tell me what?" he poses again. "That they don't think I'd be comfortable investigating murders that involve kids? Or rape? Or scenes where the sheer shock-value of brutality is meant to be a message between rival criminal organizations?"

John arches an eyebrow. "You don't want to know what prompted them to do that? Why they're worried?"

The writer sighs inwardly. "Aren't they right to be? I'm not sure how effective I would be in cases where the victim's suffering is the full story behind the killer's intent. I know those crimes are out there. Maybe I could handle them, but that's Beckett's call, and making that distinction isn't even supposed to be part of her job description; she assumes that responsibility on my behalf. I imagine our arrangement sometimes involves enduring unnecessary grief from other cops who judge her protecting me from the worst our city has to offer."

John shakes his head. "I'm not condemning her intentions, brother. I'm trying to tell you why she has them."

"I already know why. She's an intelligent, compassionate woman with wisdom beyond her years." He can't bring himself look at her while he says it. "I trust her judgment, brother. You should too."

He starts walking forward again, and his companion startles into movement a second later. Her long stride puts them side-by-side again quickly. He's peripherally aware of John lingering behind for the moment. "Don't...please don't say anything," he requests softly, meeting Kate's gaze briefly. It's all so raw and revealed there: gratitude, relief, pride in his estimation of her. It all wilts some at his plea and gives way to confusion. "I'm sorry for talking about you like you weren't there. And also...if any of that came as a surprise. I hope to God it didn't."

Beckett glances away with just a splinter of bashfulness. "Not exactly. It's just...phew. It's amazing to hear that out loud."

"It's so wrong that it would even be brought up though. We know better. Any given theory we spin or any door we go through together without knowing what's on the other side—you and I know our places with one another, which for damned sure includes you at the tip of our spear. You know where to aim us all so that we strike effectively as a team."

They walk on for a two dozen paces before she breaks the silence between them again. "Am I correct in assuming then that you, uh, knew what was happening? About the caseload being, uh, edited some?"

Richard shrugs one broad shoulder, not seeing the importance of the question and more focused on the nearing destination.

"Castle."

"Hrm?"

"Answer me, please."

"Oh, sorry. Uh, no, I guess I didn't. I've never really thought about it. I always figured that when the really bad cases came along I'd deal with them one at a time, work the ones I felt comfortable with and stay peripheral on the others. Ah, I know cops don't actually get to pick and choose like that. Ugh, I guess I sounded like that spoiled playboy again, didn't I?"

"No, Castle—

"I just mean," he interjects mildly, "that I would step back if I thought I needed to, so as not to be a burden if those circumstances came up. I'm not made of steel. I know there are limits."

"We all have limits, Brute." The author pauses and looks askance at her. "What? I like my creation," she chirps.

"Mmhmm. I know just what you mean, Allie."

Beckett bares her teeth in a mocking snarl at him, but within several more paces she's eased back into seriousness. "I'm glad to know you were thinking about it. That shows more responsibility than I knew to give you credit for."

"It's not your fault that I'm a good chameleon."

She sighs, nodding once, but adds, "You saw me though."

"You've surprised me plenty this weekend." Saying so elicits another fleet smile from him.

"I suppose. It's fair to say I was trying to anyway."

"What a splendid way of putting that."

"Huh?"

"Past tense."

"Fuck yeah. Screw that noise. Mostly. Maybe not screw it quite yet, but we'll give it third base."

Castle chuckles briefly. "If you'd told me three days ago we would be standing within a mile of this place and that I'd be laughing at the time..."

"If you'd told me a few days ago I'd be sleeping nestled up in bed bare-chested against you..." The novelist cannot summon mirth for that comparison though. He does smile somewhat, but having her there against him last night was too good to make light of. She smooths his left bicep as if to soothe any ruffled feathers from the attempt. "Yeah," she adds quietly. "Me too."

They pause together in perfect synchronization with his shoes and her sandals set directly before the triangular tipped shadow cast by the barn looming ahead. Their mutual good humor cools and swiftly wanes.

The structure's over-sized front doors are designed to roll apart from the middle. There's a small gap already present between them, a line of flawless darkness three inches wide. That's normal. The space isn't even enough for a child to slip through, and the heavy duty chain is still coiled securely between two hollows cut into each of them.

John reappears at their side. His bearded countenance is marred by a scowl, but the author knows that's a reaction to the barn, not their previous difference of opinion. No mere argument would keep the Sergeant from having both their backs with all the force he could bring to bear. The man's thick fingers unlatch a keyring from his belt that jingles as he approaches the portal ahead. He frees the lock and pulls the chain down with a grating series of percussions that Rick can feel echoing in his chest. "Into the maelstrom we go," their fore mutters, and pushes the doors apart.