Where do we go from here?
Her eyes were forward, but her mind wandered. She could hear the two behind the flimsy door. Willy the bartender undoubtedly cowered beneath the height of her partner and Jax ready to be disappointed again in the musing of a subhuman, but if there was a chance this idiot was being honest, then this lead would blow the lid off the killer.
What eyes cast toward her would return to their drinks just as quickly. She couldn't see faces, though they all appeared human. There wasn't anything to see other than humans, of course. Monsters were all human, and the demons we conjure are merely reflections of ourselves, or others.
A seed had been dropped so far down the rabbit hole of her mind that it had wedged itself in a spot between cold, hard rocks, that it, no matter how hard it reached and tried to plant itself, the seed of her past refused to grow in a mind that chose eagerly to forget it.
The sorcerer that haunted her, the one that implanted the seed inside her, the monsters with maws of fangs and the treachery of men whom could burn, freeze, and command the very rain above them. A nightmare for her to forget, but this, she knew, was real. This was a monster with the mask of a man, or woman.
Still, but unfocused, she didn't realize the bickering of the two men behind her had ceased.
"Jax?"
BANG!
Not wood, not bone, nor glass, but the explosion of a metal shell.
Jax!
She readied hers, hidden under her casual white tee and kicked the door open behind her. The occupants of the bar seemed not to hear, nor care about the commotion.
Inside, it was just a storage room with a dirt floor. No Jax, no bartender, nothing. She yelled for him, but no answer, not even from the bartender. Shelf after shelf was torn from the walls and no flimsy wooden board could be broken to discover a hidden room.
She darted into the bar room and found it now a ghost town. Empty. The commotion in the room muffled, faded, and then stopped. Now all she could hear was her heart and her thoughts.
Back in the storage room she pulled the broken shelves out into the bar and cleaned the small ten by twelve room out find nothing but wood and dirt. Something somewhere had the answer, but she had no clue where to look, or in the dim lit room, what to look for.
Knocks on the walls produced no deep hollow grave of comfort that she could break through it, and the ground beneath her was solid, no creak, no crack, just dirt.
What seemed like eternity passed, only seconds in reality. Had the world punished her so suddenly? Had Jax's willingness to follow the monsters into the shadows sealed his fate, or perhaps her desire to hide them as far down into her gut as she could muster blinded her to the very real threat of those monsters?
She still had a walkie, some means of communication with him. She pulled it from her pocket and raised it between mouth and gun that aimed for the doorway to the bar.
"Major Briggs, can you hear me?" She tried again, "Major Briggs!" A final cry as nothing returned as she wailed, "Jax!"
Bang!
Not a gun, not wood, but the earth itself gnashed its teeth toward her. The loud bang from beneath, or around, or somewhere she couldn't discern. She looked around, walked through the bar room to listen, to focus, to find.
Nothing.
With each bang the ground beneath her seemed to shiver, ever so faintly, but she could feel it in the balls of her feet echo up her legs and gnaw at her heart.
Gun ready, eyes to the storage room, she waited.
Silence.
Nothing.
Click.
The comfort of cold steel promised her a quick action to shoot, to kill, to flee, but even with the cold blue comfort of a gun she found herself in the realm of nothing.
The air picked up around her and cooled her the metal in her hands, but no bang, no Jax, and no bartender.
The air began to swirl.
The air began to move.
Air doesn't move quite so much in such a hot, dead building where even the fan was broken. As a quick gust pressed against her she turned to face it and the bullet raced from her to find the heart of a man.
Though perfectly aimed, he held the bullet just before it could tear his black fabric tunic, let alone his flesh. Eyes whitened, and long flowing white hair that swayed with the agitated wind, the man reminded her of someone. Of her past.
"Sonya Blade, Jax, we need you."
"Th'fuck are you?" She readied another bullet she'd hope would hit its mark.
"I don't feel his presence," the man etched with concern across those white eyes then focused on her after a quick once over of the room they were in.
He stood two meters across from her, back to the entrance, and feet just above the ground as the wind carried him with ease.
"There's no time. You need to come with me." No introduction, no time.
Follow the rabbit down?
Abandon her post?
Abandon her partner?
"I'm not leaving Jax."
"We will help you find him, but you must come with me now."
She couldn't lower the gun. She couldn't lower her guard. Those eyes were so familiar, but he looked vastly different than her jaded memories allowed her to peer into.
Jax followed the monsters, who does she follow?
Her only answer was a cautious step forward.
He nodded.
Where do we go from here?