Chapter 13: Guns in the Distance
(May 4th --- 29 day after Outbreak)

"We leave in thirty," Jacen heard Sally say from the main room of the apartment they now occupied. Just as she had expected, the buildings on this block where connected, but that didn't matter much to Jacen at the moment; all he could think about was Mark and the explosion.

Jacen glanced despairingly at the shark suit folded on the floor next to him. He might be alive if he had his own armor, I should have given it to him, he thought irrationally. It should have been me…

"But is wasn't, so there is yet another name to added to The Wall," he said despairingly to the empty room. The Wall was the closest thing Intrepid had to a memorial for those who died by the creatures' hands. There where no bodies, no graves, no funerals: just The Wall, where each of the fallen had their name, date of birth, and date of death carved onto a small metal plate. Every death hit Jacen hard. It didn't matter to him that he'd never spoken with most of them, what mattered was that they had died doing what he said; and with each name added to the plate, he felt like he died a little inside.

How many is that now, Jacen asked himself and then laughed angrily. Oh yes, Mark would be number 34... Not that he found Mark's death funny, but Jacen noticed the harsh irony in the fact that Mark's entire life would now and forever be summarized by a small metal plate on The Wall. Thirty four and counting, he corrected.

Hearing Jacen's deranged laugh, Sally walked into the room. Taking one look at Jacen, she closed the door behind her and sat down next to him against the wall, wrapping her arms around her knees. "How are you holding up?" she asked eventually after half a minute of silence.

"Not too bad, not too bad; it's not like I killed thirty four people or anything…," he began in a mockingly upbeat voice and then trailed off. "Oh wait, I did!"

The noticeable imbalance of Jacen's mental state sent chills down Sally's spine. "Jacen, I'm worried about you; you're really starting to scare me."

"What do you care?" he snapped back.

Sally bristled with anger, but then relaxed, knowing people sometimes say things that they don't mean. "I didn't deserve that," she stated coolly. "Over the short time we spent working together on this mission, I've started to respect you; I respect you for what you have done so far, respect you for what you are doing now, and I respect you for what you are going to do."

"Wha--what I'm going to do?"

She stood up and smiled warmly at him. "Yes. Because I know that in the end, no matter how messed up you are on the inside, you're going to put your emotional baggage aside and be there, be ready to fight and save lives," Sally finished encouragingly and then walked out of the room, closing the door behind her.

"That… that was a low blow," Jacen commented to the empty room, feeling weak and emotionally drained. "Appealing to my better nature is just dirty."

"Yes it was", A voice agreed, "but wouldn't it be so much easier to just give up? Your sword is very sharp; it would be quick, and then you wouldn't have to hurt or worry ever again."

Jacen nodded dreamily in agreement. "That would be nice, wouldn't it?" he said to the voice, falling into a trance-like state as he reached for his sword.

"It would also be unacceptable, I will not allow it!" a second, more commanding voice declared. Something about the voice seemed familiar… in a bad way.

"What the hell are YOU doing here?" the first voice hissed, sounding upset and angry.

"I am making sure that you don't kill the boy."

"Great… Just great; do you even know what I was-"

"Who are you; where are you? The room is empty…" Jacen asked and then trailed off as he became aware of the nature of the voices, "Oh…Oh crap, I'm going nuts!"

A shifty looking figure appeared in the room, he looked exactly like Jacen in every way except that he was wearing a jet black jacket overlaid with red flames. "We have no real names as such…" it began matter-of-factly.

Another figure materialized, though Jacen didn't know if it qualified as a figure; it was more of a cloud in the shape of a person."We just are."

A third figure appeared in the shape of a rather distressed Olivia; looking prettier to Jacen with her face flushed in irritation. "Why is Olivia in here, though I suppose it's not actually her?"

"What the hell is HE doing here?" she asked angrily to the shifty Jacen; he shrugged and she turned back to the real Jacen, regaining some of her composure. "Anyways… Yes, you would be correct in assuming I'm not Olivia."

"So I am nuts… Right?"

The fake Olivia scrunched her face up in concentration, looking for the most comforting way to put this; she failed. "Err…No, not exactly, but let's just say that you could go either way at this point."

"O-K… so I'm seeing people who aren't there, but I'm not crazy…yet," Jacen added skeptically.

"Is it that so hard to believe?" the fake Olivia asked considerately. "Has our being here not forced you into thinking rationally again?"

Jacen tilted his head in confusion, letting out a breath that he didn't know he was holding in. "You're saying that you intended to scare the crap out of me and Mr. Shifty wasn't trying to get me to commit suicide?"

"Essentially," the shifty Jacen said with a sadistic smile.

"Err, thank you… but what about that guy?" Jacen asked pointing to the Cloudman. "I figure that you," he pointed to shifty Jacen, "are my evil side; and that you," he pointed at fake Olivia, "are my good side, but who is he?"

Fake Olivia and shifty Jacen glared at the Cloudman, and then fake Olivia turned back at Jacen. "First, things are never so simple as black and white," she said, pausing to point at shifty Jacen. "Pessimism is not strictly evil…"

"And Love is not strictly good; both can be positive traits in moderation and bad in excess."

Well that explains why she looks like Olivia, Jacen thought when something occurred to him. "Umm Love, how long have you been around? I didn't know I liked Olivia till an hour ago."

Love spaced out for a moment, thinking hard about how to put it into words. "Well technically I got promoted to Puppy Love-O (O for Olivia) about an hour ago, before that I was Crush-O, before that I was Attraction-O, and next comes True Love-O. There's various other's in your head as well, like Crush-K (K for Kelsey), or Attraction-S (S for Sally); but I am the majority shareholder. I was such a cute little-"

"Ahem!" Pessimism half coughed. "Back on topic please."

"Ahh yes, sorry about that," Puppy Love began as she blushed with embarrassment. "As you said, Pessimism and I more or less intended to put on a little act on for you to get you up and running again; no one in your head profits from you dying. The plan had been for me to come in and persuade you out of suicide and the whole good verses evil sketch… that was until HE showed up."

"Well, since all of this has been a façade; I am leaving," the eerie Cloudman declared angrily and vanished.

Puppy Love scowled and gave the area where the Cloudman had been the finger; Jacen laughed in amusement; sure it wasn't actually Olivia giving the finger, but he'd take what entertainment he could get at this point. "That guy…err… entity… is bad news," she said with disdain. "Neighborhood hasn't done anything but go downhill since he showed up."

Pessimisms nodded in approval. "Ain't it the truth?"

"What part of me did he represent?" Jacen asked.

"He doesn't represent anything, as such… he--he's different," she replied with a trace of fear.

"Different how?"

The door opened partially and Sally poked her head into the room. "You say something?" she asked with concern.

Jacen stared at the IDF Captain. "No… Umm did you hear me say anything else?" he asked with concern.

She shook her head. "Nope, I've been sitting outside the door since I walked out; haven't heard so much as a peep from you." Sally eyed Jacen suspiciously. "Or did I miss something?"

"No," Jacen replied quickly. "… Umm, Sally?"

"What's up?"

"Im sorry…," said the troubled leader quietly, unable to meet Sally's gaze as he remembered the way he had treated her earlier, "About before; you didn't deserve that."

Sally smiled warmly at him. "Don't worry about it. You weren't yourself, though I'm happy to say that you are now." Her head began to recede out of view, but then popped back in. "We leave in twenty, that going to be enough for you?"

He waved his hand dismissively. "Nah, ten minutes is fine," Jacen replied. Sally withdrew, closing the door behind her yet again. What just happened? he asked himself, I remember hearing somewhere that dreams are the brain's way of processing information, but that wasn't a dream, and even if that were the case, where did the Cloudman come from?

Forcing himself to sift through the bizarre hallucination, Jacen began to put together the puzzle. Puppy Love is from my revelation about Olivia earlier, he rationalized; and Pessimism… Pessimism is…well that's just part of my personality. So what does that leave; what am-

"Jacen, we gotta go, NOW!" Sally's voice yelled urgently from the other room.

Sally closed the door behind her as she leaned back into the room and looked at the other seven IDF: six of them sat in a corner arguing rather noisily about a card game while Brett sat by himself, silently mourning the loss of his friend.

Seeing that they where occupied, Sally sank against the wall and buried her face in her hands. A minute ago she had told Jacen that she hadn't heard him saying anything; it had been a barefaced lie. In reality, she had heard the whole conversation as Jacen talked and replied to people who weren't there. For ten minutes she had listened in horror as the unstable leader teetered on the brink of insanity, unable to stop listening and fearful of confronting him until finally she had gotten to the point where she couldn't stand to hear another word.

The Jacen that Sally had seen when she interrupted him had been totally different from the Jacen that she had seen ten minutes earlier. As relieved as she had been at the dramatic improvement, she was also skeptical. Who goes from being drunk with grief to calm and collected in ten minutes? It's not natural.

Sally rested her head against the wall, trying to determine their next course of action. Officially the decision was what she had told everyone in the alley, however, as she sat resting against the wall, Sally wondered if that was the smartest idea. If Jacen was in fact better, then she would certainly stick with the current plan, but was Jacen really better or had he just bottled up the emotions to be opened at a later date? The latter of the two looked to Sally like a problem just waiting to happen; she could imagine him loosing control during a fight, and it would be dangerous for Jacen and everyone around him. Seems like there's nothing but bad choices…

Something faint sounded in the distance, reminding Sally of a chain of firecrackers. She had always been a bit of a pyro; back before she enrolled in Bestine Academy she would always bring fireworks back from summer road trips and set them off on a beach on the fourth of July. One year a police officer had caught her in the act of shooting off bottle rockets at a crowded beach, but instead of arresting her "My daughter really liked that blue one you just did" and walked away. Needless to say, Sally launched a lot of blue bottle rockets that night.

Intrigued by the noise, she got up and looked out a small window overlooking the main street. "I wonder why we keep seeing more creatures as we get closer to the recruitment office," Sally mused aloud as creatures migrated past, heading towards the center of town.

"Have you already forgotten what Mark said?" Brett asked coldly, not bothering to look up or move.

"He said that the moan from the creature in the alley called the others… oh so you're saying that the creatures are on the scent of someone," she speculated, agreeing with his reasoning. "Well at least we know that someone is alive out there."

The IDF Captain waited for a moment for Brett to respond, but he remained silent. Finding it evident that he was done, Sally turned back to the window and pulled it open, straining her hearing to catch the firecracker sound over the collective moans. That quickly became unnecessary because whereas the noise had nearly been audible to begin with, it was now noticeably faster and more frequent to the point where explosive barks overlapped one another. Those aren't fireworks, she realized in a strange mixture of relief and horror, those are guns, lots of guns.

"Jacen, we gotta go, NOW!" Sally yelled as she pounded her fist on the wall and then turned her attention to the others. All of them except for Brett hadn't noticed the gunshots but they certainly had overheard their captain yelling at the wall and were at the moment looking at her expectantly.

One of them, Jay, looked at his watch, then to the cards he was holding, and then glanced back up at Sally. "We still have fifteen minutes," he stated matter-of-factly. The other players looked at him wearily and those nearest to Jay scooted away from him as fast at they could.

Sally scowled at the boy's callousness. There where a number of things that she had learned about Jay throughout the morning that she didn't like, the top of the list currently being the fact that he could play cards when Mark had died little more than an hour ago. Sure, the other five where playing too, but they weren't enjoying it, nor did they dare to challenge her authority. "Jay, what the he-" she began angrily.

"Come on! Just let me finish this hand," he whined. Sally clenched her fists in anger, she knew that in truth the IDF wasn't a real military, and those in it weren't real soldiers, but hell would have to freeze over before she let anyone challenge her. One day the IDF would become a real military, but for that to happen they had to at least act like one. She began to approach him, but stopped when she saw Brett sit up from his solitary corner. He was a Sergeant in the IDF, that meant that the others answered to him and he answered to Sally. Trusting that he would take care of it, Sally stood back.

"Jay has four of a kind; quad tens," Brett said in a neutral tone, having a perfect view over the boy's shoulder. All the other players folded instantly; Jay threw his cards on the ground angrily. "Good Jay… Now get you're insubordinate ass off the ground and get ready. We are going now!"

Heavy footsteps shook the floor from the other room, and moments later Jacen emerged through the door, clanking loudly now that his armor was back on. "What's going on?" he asked.

Sally explained the situation briefly and finished just as the others were up and ready to go. She led the group into the hall preparing to usher them up the nearest flight of stairs; the apartment building was four stories high and they were currently on the second; they needed to get to the top . The group made their way to the stairwell that they had used earlier and continued up, progressing slowly past the third and fourth floor despite the near crippling lack of light. Abruptly the stairwell ended and Sally walked right into a cold, smooth wall; it made a metallic pinging sound.

"Damn it!" she cursed through the dark as pain shot through her nose. Someone bumped into her, pressing her against the wall. The figure tried to back up but then someone ran into him, restarting the event. Pretty soon, everyone was pushed up against someone. Sally heard the sound of thousands of little titanium rings clanking against one another as the figure grunted and braced one arm on each side next to her head against the smooth wall, relieving a little of the pressure on her. "Ohh Jacen," she whispered teasingly in amusement, "What would Olivia think?"

Instantly Sally had a lot more room, as she had expected. "Ok everyone back up and give me some space to feel around," she ordered.

"You can feel around me anytime," a voice towards the back called in a suggestive manner. That was unexpected, she thought, I guess he picked up momentum from my Olivia comment. In a rather unusual occurrence Sally felt her face warm slightly and gained a new appreciation for the darkness that enveloped her.

-Wham- The noise of the strike echoed in the stairwell as someone lightly hit the loudmouth on the back of the head. "Shut the hell up Danny," another voice said from nearby the first, who moments later added: "Wait… who's Olivia?"

Forgetting the mission, Jacen began to perform damage control. Sally ignored the hollow threats that Jacen began to utter in the general direction of the troops and placed her hands over the smooth surface of the wall: it was cool to the touch. Experimentally Sally knocked on it, and it made a hollow metallic sound. She began to run her hand up and down the metal surface until she found what she was looking for: a doorknob.

Turning the knob, she pushed against the heavy door and swung it open, bathing herself and the others in the strong light of the early afternoon sun. Instantly she got a headache as her eyes took in way too much light. On instinct she closed them and waited as others behind her had similar experiences.

Using her right hand as a visor, Sally opened her eyes partially and took a step onto the roof. The ground under her feet made irritating grinding noises as she walked over masses of synthetically white rocks; it reminded Sally of nails scratching over a chalkboard. I hate that noise, she thought, I hate it so much!

Hearing that clatter of rocks grinding together, Sally noticed the absence of another sound entirely. The gunshots had stopped. "Oh shit!" she exclaimed and looked back at the others who where clumsily emerging onto the rooftop. "Come on, we have to hurry."