Darkness at Noon
Chapter 8 - Schism
Egon was glued to the screen as the scene unfolded, a story told entirely with a shaking camera and the hurried blow by blow of a nervous newscaster. He was hardly listening to her chatter, tuning it out in favor of the background noises that could be heard over it. He leaned forward in Peter's old chair, which creaked threateningly underneath him.
The sizzling sound did not bode well for anyone. The mystery of what the sound pertained to was solved in moments. The newscaster shrieked and her hand came into view, pointing skyward. The camera shifted nauseatingly to follow it up into the sky, where an ignited glob of ooze was flying straight towards them. The camera angle changed abruptly, shifting to the ground and running feet. It came back up again several yards away and the ooze smashed into a pink Volkswagen that was unmistakably Janine's. It melted through the windshield and the whole car went up in flames before a half dozen firemen surrounded it and the camera flicked away.
Egon swallowed audibly. He'd never hear the end of that one.
From what he could tell the team had not yet confronted the spectre, but he could see their figures moving around on the bridge. A proton beam arched out of the middle of the cars, just barely missing Achira. That was to be expected; Achira was fast and cleverer than the usual fare. The beam shifted, capturing her briefly, which Achira responded to by vomiting forth another fiery mass. A beam originating from another location drove her back.
That was when he heard it, the high pitched alarm he had very specifically installed to announce only one thing.
Critical failure.
He stood up, horrified and completely unable to do a thing about it. The figures on the bridge scuffled and he saw the offending item thrown off the bridge before a concussive blast he heard all the way at theFirehouse knocked the line into static.
He leaned forward and seized the television in his hands. "Oanueterusunu..." He breathed.
Then the power went out. He held his breath for a moment before the emergency lights kicked in with a rattling hum, casting everything in red red red.
He let the television go, holding his hands out as if scalded. The containment unit needed checking. The emergency generators needed checking. And he just had so little energy at his disposal to do them, much less try and rationalize what just occurred.
He turned slowly away from the television, furrowing his brow and trying very hard not to calculate the potential casualties either from initial or potential latent effects. Portable nuclear generators were not to be taken lightly. His head began to pound and all he could hear was his heart hammering in his ears as he shuffled so damnably slowly towards the stairs. And then, just like that, the skin affliction fled from his arms and face, fluttering away into the dark like so much dust.
He felt hope light in his heart for a moment, but quashed it with the knowledge that the fact the affliction was abolished did not really mean anything aside from the defeat of the ghost and negation of the sustained effects she had controlled.
He clenched his hands into fists and stalked down the stairs to fulfill his role. He would worry about retrieving the trap later, the unit was a far more pressing concern. The slightest crack, the loss of any one of the Klein bottles...It didn't bear dwelling on.
And so he lost himself in the task of checking, rechecking, and rechecking the rechecking.
He wasn't entirely sure how long he had spent down there, but by the time he had assured himself the generators were functioning and would continue to function for some time, the unit was not in imminent danger of critical failure, and that nothing had escaped in the minute time it took for the generators to take up their functions he found himself feeling utterly numb inside.
So he sat on the stairs and stared at his shoes for a time, unable to will himself to move any further. There was no ghost to fight, there might not be a team to welcome back...There might not be a Brooklyn Bridge anymore for God's sake.
Yet here he sat. He was going to live - everyone affected was - and yet...Everything had just lost its point. Blown away like smoke.
Vaporized.
Perhaps even atomized.
He brought his hands up to his face, feeling the scaly texture that remained from where the patches had been. His hands slid up to his temples and he leaned forward until his elbows met his elbows.
The trap.
He had one more thing to do. One more thing to do, then he could stop and digest this further because for once nothingmadesense and he felt that nothing would make sense until all was said and done.
With that thought he dragged himself up the stairs. He had one more responsibility. Just the one.
For now, all he could do was put one foot in front of the other, and for a time that might be all he could do. He knew that he would continue to do so even if he wasn't aware he was going through the motions.
If that was what it took.
Schism is a song by Tool. Fun fact, schism in Latin means something like "separation."