Neo felt her spine turn to ice.
There were footsteps, or something that sounded like footsteps, coming from the hallway. Just outside the room, where she could hear the water flooding up the stairs, was the slow, steady clop of someone who was trying to be stealthy but wasn't quite sure how. Every now and then, the wooden boards would creak, and Neo felt like needles of liquid nitrogen were jumping out of her spine and into her back muscles, chilling her all over. She turned her head to look towards the door, terrified that some monster would be waiting there to pounce and devour her the moment it was discovered. When she moved, she feared every slight sound she made would attract the creature, every miniscule creak and pop of her cold joints, and every breath that might be her last. Something was closing in on them, and she would have to face it alone.
Nothing was in the doorway. Yet. But she could hear it getting closer and closer, inching forward.
Ruby coughed, startling Neo. She looked down to her injured and unconscious friend, then back to the doorway when she heard sudden movement. She grabbed Hush quickly and drew it, charging to the doorway and slashing at whatever was down the hall before she was even all the way out of the room. Just as she reached the hall, she heard something heavy splash into the water. The hallway was empty. After taking a few seconds to figure out what had happened, she stepped around the railing to the top of the stairs, keeping the pointy end of Hush between her and the water. The flood had risen to only a foot below the second floor where she stood, but the surface of the water here seemed to have mostly calmed down. With no wind or rain beating on it, the only ripples now were from whatever had just plunged into its murky depths. Speaking of which, Neo could see the dark figure in the water below her.
At the bottom of the stairs, in what would have otherwise been pitch black, she could see a black mass lurking near the floor. It stared up at her with glowing green eyes, eerie iridescent green spots and lines running over its length. A cloud of long filaments blossomed from around the evil green eyes. Neo stepped back from the water's edge, fearing that the creature could shoot up at her and pull her under the water at any second, leaving Ruby to die alone in this place. She kept her gaze locked on the figure in the water, certain that it was staring right back at her, just waiting for Neo to drop her guard for one moment. After what could have been a few seconds or several minutes of a standoff, Neo spotted several other dark shapes swimming into the glowing green aura around the creature. These were easier to identify as fish, which only caused her to back up even further. She didn't want to think of what would happen if all of those fish were infected by parasites like the one that had taken Ruby's arm. If they all started jumping out of the water and attacking her, she wouldn't be able to defend against all of them, much less keep her guard up against the monster they were now gathering around.
Suddenly, like a shark thrashing about, the dark figure snapped to one side, and a fish was snapped in half like a bite had been taken out of the middle of its body. Another snap to the other side, and another fish died. One by one, it chopped the fish into pieces, letting their dead parts float to the floor below. Neo watched in morbid fascination as, in the green light, she could see black squirming parasites crawling out of the fish and start to float through the water towards the creature. As if it had been playing and, now sensing greater danger, chose to stop toying with the fish, its eyes flashed brightly and the parasites stopped moving. They didn't float away like dead masses, or wither into husks. They froze in place, tendrils still reaching up towards their target, as if paralyzed or actually frozen.
It reached out with long arms, almost human-like, and grabbed parts of the fish and the frozen parasites, feeding on them ravenously. Neo had seen enough, and the creature looked to be distracted, so she moved away from the water and back into the room, closing the door behind her. She walked over to the window and looked out into the street, seeing the floodwaters rushing by. The rain was finally starting to let up, like a miracle, but the water wasn't about to recede. There was just too much of it in the city, and there was probably still plenty pouring down from Atlas. She was starting to seriously hope they would find people alive and well up above, but the more she wished, the less she was confident it would happen.
As if the world hated the idea of letting them have visibility, when she looked up at Atlas, she saw a white cloud coming off of the city. A heavy fog descended on the city of Mantle, quickly rolling over the tops of houses and swallowing up streets one by one. It was almost as if they simply ceased to exist when the fog reached them. Neo was glad for the curtain over the window, which she promptly drew across to block out the sight. Turning her back to the outside, she looked over the small room she had closed herself and Ruby in this time. She looked down at Ruby's still form, her only movement the slow rise and fall of her chest, with shaking shudders every time she breathed out.
Making use of what they had access to, Neo pilfered the closet and drawers in this house, like every house before, taking out all the clothes she could find. Making sure she had something good to wear, though it was a dress the likes of which one would give to a little girl for formal functions, which made her feel stupid, Neo shook it off and drew a pretty fur coat around her shoulders. She also set aside some similar clothes, which she hoped would fit Ruby, and everything else went to piling on Ruby to keep her warm. The air was getting colder, and Neo worried that they would soon be facing another flash freeze. If they were, she wanted to be prepared, but from the looks of their resources, that would mean venturing back out into the hall.
Taking a breath, like she was about to dive into the water, she opened the door and stepped out, closing it behind her. Hush drawn, she walked over to the top of the stairs and looked down into the murky brine. The dark figure wasn't right at the bottom anymore, but after a few moments she saw it swim past, snaking back and forth with a shark-like motion. Whatever it was, it was definitely a predator. With how it had responded to the fish and parasites, and how she was certain it was the thing she'd heard walking down the hall earlier, seeing that it was still there, swimming around on the first floor of the house, it still scared her, but it was oddly comforting. She would dwell on that later, once she'd investigated the rest of the second floor.
The first two rooms she checked looked much the same as the one she'd left Ruby in. Judging by the clothes, they were each a bedroom belonging to a little girl. Neo was getting to be on edge, more than usual for just being in empty rooms, even considering the things they had been subject to since waking up in this crazy mirror of the world they knew. She hoped these little girls had gotten to safety and were happily huddled together somewhere warmly embraced by their parents. She hated to think that they'd been devoured by some monster like the one downstairs. Little girls and monsters should never be mixed together.
Neo stopped, standing in the doorway to the third room. It was decorated with pink, and the dresses were smaller than the others. This girl still had dolls, which were laying on the floor of the room. The first sign they had seen of someone having been actively doing something before everyone vanished, and it was the toys of a little girl. Neo knelt down, scooping up one of the dolls in her hand, brushing the yarn hair out of the doll's cloth face. Reaching up, she wiped her hand across her cheek, smearing a tear back behind her ear. Why was she thinking like this now? She didn't like people, especially people with happy little lives safely behind the walls of a city. Why did she care what had happened to these little girls? Why had she just so casually thought of Ruby as her friend only a short time ago. She hadn't even noticed that she'd thought that until just now, and it struck her as strange. Why did she have to care?
It didn't matter why she cared. It only mattered to Neo that she did care. She hated it, because now everything hurt. Now she was scared, not just for herself, but for Ruby, and for every innocent person she'd never met who was now missing. Maybe they had all died, consumed by the horrors of this world, and they were all alone for the rest of time, however long it was that they'd be able to hold out. The only thing that she could see that kept her from being crushed by despair was when she looked up at the bed, there was no little girl. Not a corpse mummified by the cold or rotted by the heat, and no pile of bones. The girl hadn't been in her bed. None of them had been. Every bed they'd seen so far was neatly made, the blankets smoothed out with care, like a professional maid had gone through the entire city. Almost, Neo thought, like someone had been acting as a caretaker for Mantle.
Neo dropped the doll. She'd been struck by a bolt of energy, like light had broken through the clouds and was shining on her. She ran out of the room and down the hall to the top of the stairs. Peering down into the darkness, she caught herself just before calling out. What if she was wrong? What if this was a mistake? No, she shouldn't have thought that. She needed to trust this ally, this friend who had been looking out for them from the beginning. Cupping her hands around her mouth, she called down at the water for the dark predator.
"Penny! Penny, we need your help!"
At first nothing happened. Then, the shark reappeared, its humanoid arms reaching around in front of it and grasping the floor. The cloud of hair billowing around its head. The green eyes stared up at her, illuminating the darkness around it. If Neo just imagined the colors she remembered the goofy robot girl had and mentally placed them over the black shadows, it was her. It was Penny, down there, in the black water. If it was Penny, she didn't need to stay down there. She could be up here, with Neo, and with Ruby.
Neo put Hush away and knelt down close to the water's surface, reaching her hand out and touching her rippling reflection. She spoke to Penny. It just had to be Penny. "Come on. It's safe. I won't hurt you. Ruby is here. She's injured, badly, and she needs your help. I can't keep her safe on my own. Please. We need you."
Slowly, the shadow's body moved, visible legs kicking lazily behind it, and it swam up the stairs, its arms guiding it up to where Neo's fingers dipped into the water. It got closer, closer, until it was close enough that Neo knew it could reach out its hand and grab her. She didn't move. It reached up, its hand grabbing onto the third step down, pulling itself up to the surface and breaking through, its head raising out of the water. Neo froze.
The eyes were solid green lights, aglow with electric energy. The hair was a matted black mass, mixed with dark green and red where it had rusted and been covered with mold and moss. The body was nothing but a metal frame, almost all of it a reddish brown from rust, with the green lights along its body and limbs flickering from fluctuating power levels. Behind it, the swords dragged in the water, rusted and chipped, some broken completely in half, with only a few of their lights still operating. Unless there was another robot person, this had to be Penny, but then she had been through much worse than Neo and Ruby had.
Its mouth opened, water spilling out with a few scraps of fish. The robot's teeth were sharp, like a shark's, but in spite of the rust its jaw moved just fine. An electric buzz filled the air, mixing with a wet gurgle coming from its throat. Slowly crackling to life, like an old music box that hadn't been used in years, a synthesized voice crept out of the decrepit machine.
"Sal-u-TAtionzzzzzz."