The lights in the shelter had flickered and died.
And the darkness squirmed.
The stench of piss, excrement and death hung in the air.
The shelter had moved, fallen, and with fall... the vents had died. And the screams had started.
That had been yesterday. I knew objectively that Endbringer attacks never lasted more than a few hours, a day at the very most, win or lose.
And this had been Leviathan, and not the Simurgh... there had been no screams, no quarantine... why hadn't they come for me? Us? Those who had survived?
The batteries and emergency supplies were suppose to last longer.
And yet.
And yet.
It was now dark.
The heaters had kicked in last night and things had been warm.
But they had shut off with the lights.
And it was dark.
I had been near one of the walls... when the lights and heat died. It surprised me how cold the wall had gotten so very fast. It wasn't freezing by any means, but it had gotten cold in a worrying way.
And so, I moved away from it, towards the center. Towards the people. Towards the few flickers of light from cellphones and watches. Towards the moans of the wounded, and the soft voices.
Away from those who had died. Their bodies had been moved towards the wall, so that the living wouldn't be near them.
At least, the air still felt fresh and it wasn't difficult to breath.
I settled in the darkness, fear and worry heavy in my heart. Despair was a companion. It wasn't something new. No, that had come from the way Emma had wound herself in isolation after the ABB attack. After she had abandoned me as a friend.
After...
He had given me hope.
Shelter and protection.
And he had walked away. To fight. To save others.
To leave me here.
Trapped in the darkness.
With strangers, and yet all too alone. Like I had been in the locker.
Trapped in filth.
Surrounded by the stench of decay, blood, and other things.
The filtration devices to clean the air was unable to remove all evidence of such.
I was all a long.
There was no one who would hold me, like she would have. Mother.
Everything had gone wrong since then. Since mother died all those years ago.
I had been hurt.
Broken.
Betrayed.
And now... I was trapped in the darkness.
Buried beneath the earth.
Like a corpse.
Trapped like a filthy insignificant worm.
I...
I...
I blinked.
There had been something else.
I had blanked out for a moment.
Or had I?
There was some... something wrong. I blinked and felt that disconnect again, as I stumbled in the darkness.
Worms in the dark. That thought filled my mind. Worms squirming. Blind. Helpless. Soft and fragile.
Those thoughts filled my mind.
And the longer I was surrounded by the breathing, the moaning, the soft voices breathing prayers. As the scent of despair filled the air. I knew with absolute certainty that this was true.
We were all nothing but worms.
And thus, I could only weep in the silence, blind and helpless. Hoping that someone, anyone would come. And yet, knowing with absolute certainty that none would.
That there was no hope.
None.
It was at then that I realized how much I hated them.
How I hated everyone.
Trapped here with me.
The heroes and villains outside who couldn't save me.
I hated the teachers at Winslow for not stopping the bullying despite knowing it happened.
I hated dad who did NOTHING, who didn't see anything wrong with sending me to school no matter how unhappy I was.
I hated Emma, Sophia, Madison, and their friends who bullied me.
More... I hated Mister Emiya who gave me hope before walking away. Leaving me here.
In the darkness.
Alone.
With nothing but the filthy things that pretended to be humans, but weren't. They were food for worms. We all were, buried here in the darkness.
More than everyone, I hated myself. I could have, should have done something. Anything to stop Emma. I shouldn't have had to depend on running away. On Mister Emiya's kindness.
I should have been stronger.
Darkness crept into my mind. Squirming. Consuming my thoughts.
My thoughts.
My body, the darkness squirmed within me. Beneath my skin. Rippling. Changing me.
I knelt and clutched my bony knees against my body.
And as my mind and body was riddled, consumed, subsumed, I saw...
How easy it would be... so very easy.
All I needed to do was... reach out.
And close my hands.
There was the sound of my hands clapping and then a moment of silence.
And the screams started once more.
One by one, the sources of light in the vault faded.
Consumed.
Devoured.
I crouched within the darkness, upon ice. Upon a frozen mirror.
And I fell.
Pushed.
Pulled.
Dragged under.
Slipped under.
Water that wasn't water.
Darkness, and yet I could see. I could sense.
Everyone.
The squirming and screaming worms.
The sources of light.
The heat that they bore.
And I was so very hungry.
So very cold.
My heart raced within my chest as I closed eyes and covered my ears against their screams.
Slowly, my heart calmed itself. Slowed itself
There was nothing to fear.
There was only the here and now. A oneness.
I relaxed. Yes, that was it. I could rest.
As the the pin-pricks of heat melted away into the darkness.
And I fell asleep.
I was safe here.
In the darkness.
Alone.
But not for long, I could sense the fecund nature of the darkness. The gift of warmth and light had fed it... had started a reaction. Soon, I wouldn't be alone.
I floated in the darkness, blind, unseeing and unseen in counterpoint to a pane of "glass". A mirror gate to sanity and light, a realm of angles and curves and soft sacs of liquid chemicals that sparked and twitched with chemically created impulses of electricity.
.
The Janitor | Darkness
Worm / Fate/Stay Night
.
Days later, it was clear when they opened the vault that something had gone wrong within it.
It had been one of the vaults that had fallen into the underground lake formed by Leviathan in its attempts to sink all of Brockton Bay.
There had been others, the survivors had been recovered without any problems.
The stench of rot, filth, and blood that came from it was not unexpected.
The silence was.
The absolute silence as the rescue team shone their flashlights into the empty vault.
Unlike the steel and concrete walls wet with condensation, the floor was black.
The black substance that coated the floor glimmered with rings of color from the light of the flashlights. Samples were taken as a formality before they closed the vault and declared it a complete loss and left it in the darkness of the underground lake.
There were no survivors in the darkness of that vault.