"The roof?" Plural said with a hopeless expression when she saw Tatters pointing at it.
"What? What'd she say?" Saturn asked in a panic, tugging her arm.
Tatters was disappearing into the distance, carried like a trophy by Dark Jenny, who'd grown a pair of demonic, black wings. And Jenny's body wasn't with them.
"Hey! What'd she say!?" Saturn yelled as he shook her.
But Plural wasn't listening to him, having laid her eyes on horde of undead that rapidly approached them from all sides.
"She said roof! Let's go!" Circus turned to the building's entrance.
Whether Jenny was up there or not, they decided to run for it. Plural was still frozen in fear, and Saturn grabbed her hand to pull her along while Circus stayed behind them to guard their flank. The lobby's interior was covered in bloodstains, and the glass was broken, allowing them to enter without using the shotgun. They weren't so lucky with the second door, and Circus wasted no time to shoot the lock and kick it open, causing Saturn and Plural both to flinch. Nine left.
"Go!" Circus yelled, then turned around to see a monstrous creature following them inside through the broken glass of the front door, missing both of its arms. Circus used her second shell to shoot it in the head and successfully broke the black thread, causing it to collapse backwards on to the ones that followed.
Having bought themselves a few seconds, she turned around to find her two friends already climbing the staircase, and she followed them while loading the next two shells. Eight left.
Looking up from the bottom of the staircase, it was clear they were in for a long climb. Circus could only hope that her office worker friends were fit enough to make it, especially with the agonizing screaming of the monsters that followed them. When she looked over her shoulder, she saw they were chasing them up the stairs, but they were recklessly getting in each other's way and slowing each other down. The black threads that connected them to the dark sky didn't phase through the building and instead went back down through the front door, the way they came. The threads showed no signs of tugging and probably had no limit to their length.
She stopped to shoot again, causing the creatures in front to topple over and fall on top of the ones behind, slowing them down even more. Seven.
When she continued her ascent, she couldn't see her two friends anymore. Reassuring, on one hand, because they were making good pace. Worrying, on the other hand, because there was no guarantee the building was empty before they came inside.
When she hurried to follow them, she heard a wall breaking and her two friends screaming up ahead. When she caught up, there was a big hole in the wall and a mangled corpse splattered across the central elevator housing.
"They're throwing each other at us!" Saturn yelled while pulling Plural up from the ground.
Circus looked outside through the hole to find a much larger undead creature standing among the horde. It grabbed onto one of the smaller ones and looked like it was going to throw it again.
"Come on!" Saturn yelled at her, sounding terrified.
Circus continued up the stairs and ran with her friends again. This little delay gave the ones chasing them the opportunity to catch up, and Circus had to use another shell to slow them down. Six left.
♦
In midair and upside down, Tatters stared at the hellscape below, like Dark Jenny was showing it to her on purpose. Everything she used to fight for, gone in a single night. And yet, she didn't feel the slightest bit of grief. Instead, she was laser-focused on her mission, on the possibility that Jenny could be brought back to life on that rooftop.
She looked up at her captor with burning resolve. Dark Jenny was coasting through the air and slowly losing altitude, using the wings as a glider rather than flapping them to fly. It wasn't using its red hair to fly, either. In fact, it hadn't used any of its Jenny-powers since their encounter on the roof.
Tatters pressed the button on her retractor device to make the spear come back to her until she could grab hold of the handle, then took the long, weighty weapon in both hands.
But before she could strike, she had to wait until Dark Jenny dropped low enough so the fall wouldn't kill her. Down below, there was no end to the undead, and it was starting to look like she'd drop in the middle of them.
Dark Jenny's main body was out of the range of her spear, but with the way the wings moved when it course corrected, she could hit one with the right timing and take her opponent down with her.
But for any plan, there was a Dark Jenny to make sure things didn't go according to it. Before Tatters could strike, it let go of her ankle and dropped her in a park, in a spot surrounded by undead. When she landed on her feet, she felt a horrible pain in her ankle and collapsed onto her knees. Dark Jenny had been carrying her by the same one it grabbed to pull her under the ice. It was surely broken by now.
Looking around, she could see the undead watching her but not moving to attack. It was like they'd all taken a step back at Dark Jenny's command, keeping their distance and trapping her in a circle.
Dark Jenny itself landed on an old monument up ahead, growing a single dark scissor-limb larger than any she'd ever seen before and snatching an undead from the audience to devour it like a snack. Dark Jenny sat down and made itself comfortable on top of the snowy monument, looking down on her the same way it did last night, back when all she had was the plank.
Tatters stood up straight and grunted in pain. It wasn't just her broken ankle, she felt every single wound on her body screaming at her, like they'd opened back up. The dark green sky above was whispering to her again, seeping its influence straight into her wounds.
In the distance, she spotted a fighter jet flying underneath the dark clouds and wondered if the military was finally going to get involved. Judging from the view from the sky before, however, there was nothing left to save here. Worst case scenario, they were going to bomb the whole city.
The plane changed its trajectory to approach Tatters' location like it'd noticed her, and she gave it the finger as it flew by. When she looked back at Dark Jenny, it was also looking at the plane, copying Tatters like a child and sticking up its own middle finger.
In the meantime, the large scissor-limb that devoured some of the audience had grown considerably in length and was spiraling around Dark Jenny like some sort of hypnosis wheel. It had also disassembled its black wings into countless thin, sharp tendrils and was spreading them through the audience of undead to surround Tatters from every angle.
The first tendril shot out from behind Tatters, and she couldn't move fast enough to cut it off before it hit her. Her cape took the blunt hit, knocking her off balance and causing her to scream out in pain when she had to put down her broken foot to keep herself from falling over. Another tendril came from the other side, but she was able to cut it off before it reached her.
Tatters regained her cool and took a step forward using her good foot. There was no way for her to win anymore, so the best thing for her to do was buy time for the others to get to Jenny on that rooftop without interference from this thing.
The next tendril came from behind and knocked her further forward, then one from the left, and one from the right. With every other step she took, she cried out in pain from putting pressure on her broken foot, all while maintaining direct eye contact with her enemy who was surely toying with her at this point.
The tendrils were coming at her relentlessly from all sides, and most of them didn't make it all the way before coming into contact with her blue-glowing spear.
Still no sign of Jenny. The longer this went on, the more she started to doubt whether her allies were even still alive anymore.
Who are we kidding? We're definitely not gonna see each other again.
Perhaps Plural was right after all. Perhaps Tatters was the only living human being left in this forsaken part of the world, foolishly holding onto an impossible promise to someone she'd only just met today. It made her feel lonely, and like she didn't want this to be the conclusion to her pathetic life.
Gradually, the tip of her spear started emitting a blue flame, and the tendrils stopped their endless barrage when the weapon started vaporizing them just from coming close enough.
But the voices in her head were getting louder, and the pain from putting pressure on her broken ankle was starting to become unbearable. A perceptive Dark Jenny took note of this and gave her foot at tug from behind using one of the smaller tendrils, and Tatters fell over while screaming in pain. In a swift move, enough tendrils joined in to restrain her arms and legs so she couldn't fight back anymore, and one coiled around her mouth to stop her from screaming.
♦
Rubble flew across their eyes as another undead corpse crashed through the wall and splattered its guts all over the staircase. Saturn and Plural fell to the ground and looked beyond drained. Circus looked down over the railing to see they had a good lead on their pursuers, who were chaotically spiraling up the staircase while their black threads bundled themselves up and ran all the way down. Too far away to hit with the shotgun, and Circus only had two shells left, one of which was reserved for the emerald.
"We gotta keep moving!" Circus said and turned her head to the hole in the wall. "It's gonna throw the next one!"
"C'mon Plu, you heard her," Saturn said and rubbed Plural's back. She looked like she was in the worst shape of them all. He struggled to his feet and pulled her arm over his shoulder, and Circus joined him and took her other arm.
"I'm so sorry," Plural cried, out of breath and in tears.
"It's like you said, we're just office workers," Saturn panted, also out of breath and just as terrified.
"We're not saving Jenny just to let you die," Circus said, not as badly of breath.
The three continued up the stairs at a slower pace. Circus considered the number of stairs they had left, and she knew that if they moved slow enough, they wouldn't make it to the top anymore.
A few floors up, they passed a locked steel door that looked like it led to a maintenance section. It caught Circus' attention and made her consider whether the roof would even be accessible or not. Neither Dark Jenny nor Tatters had taken these stairs before. What if there was a steel door like that one blocking their way to the roof? In that case, she'd have to save two shells, meaning she had none left to use to slow down the horde.
"If they catch us, you gotta take the emerald and run," Saturn told Circus.
"No!" Circus shouted.
Saturn looked at her surprised.
"If we all die, we—"
"Shut up!"
♦
Crack
Tatters screamed in pain after one tendril wrapped itself around her finger and snapped it. It interrupted the effects of her power, and Dark Jenny took the chance to cut the wire that connected the spear to her belt.
She was lying face down in the snow with her limbs restrained and her mouth gagged so that nobody could hear her screams. She'd conclusively lost the fight, and her opponent was toying with her remains, wounding her so she'd turn undead quicker. Perhaps it would gain control of her body and her powers then.
Next, one of the dark limbs pounded her from above like a hammer, breaking her ribs. Then, another tendril broke her left arm, but all she could muster up was a weak moan.
Don't die!
A tear ran across her face as she recalled Plural's parting words to her, wondering why the universe waited so long to kill her until she didn't want to die anymore.
A tendril took her hood and lifted it up to reveal her head. When she looked up, the head of the big scissor-limb floated in front of her, like predator with cornered prey. She could almost imagine saliva dripping out from the sides of its teeth. Tatters closed her eyes and accepted the fact that she'd get to rest permanently.
As she lay there in anticipation, the voices in her head slowly faded away as she zoned out and blocked off all her senses. She remembered when Plural first hugged her, how Saturn took her arm around his shoulder to help her walk, despite the way she treated him. The hot springs, and the way Plural looked at her when she took her hands.
She remembered how gentle Jenny was in the old town center, even though she was trying to kill her. How she jumped in front of her to protect her on the frozen lake afterwards. Tatters regretted everything. Her heart was racing with emotions that had nowhere to go. And so, she pressed her eyes shut hard and waited for it all to finally end.
…
The next thing she heard was a massive thump on the ground in front of her, like a large object just fell. At the same time, the tendrils went limp and released their death grip on her arms and legs.
She opened her eyes to see an angel with glowing golden hair standing in front of her with one foot against the severed end of the scissor-limb. The remains of the giant limb retreated to the body of its owner, and the tendrils that were restraining Tatters were cut off and slowly disappearing. Dark Jenny's facial expression was… pleasantly surprised. The angel was looking at Tatters and smiling. It was Jenny. Jenny gave her a thumbs up and said something, but Tatters couldn't hear it.
Before any of the dark limbs could grow back, Jenny teleported below Dark Jenny and kicked it straight up into the sky. As Dark Jenny flew upwards with its limbs trailing behind, it emitted bright, golden particles. Every time it slowed down its ascent, Jenny followed and kicked it again, taking them both further away from the surface of the planet. Like a golden rocket taking off into outer space.
Now freed, Tatters painstakingly rolled herself onto her back to see the spectacle, noticing the sky was no longer green. Jenny blew the dark clouds away when she blasted through them, painting the night sky gold instead. Tatters looked around her to see the distant clouds all cut horizontally. All the undead around her lay collapsed, and not a single black thread remained.
Tatters noticed the dark tendrils around her limbs had completely disappeared now. Her left arm was broken along with some fingers on her left hand, in addition to her right foot, right leg and her ribs. But she didn't care about that. Her attention was on her savior in the sky, who was reduced to a speck of gold heading straight for the nearest moon.
Tatters couldn't form any thoughts anymore. She just stared at the moon in anticipation, having lost track of how long Jenny had been flying for.
Then, an explosion of gold flickered on the right side of the moon, followed by a gold laser beam exiting out of the left side. As the beam travelled further into space, it lost its lean shape and fell apart, curving outward like a fountain and eventually fading away. It continued for a while, and Tatters watched, mesmerized.
When it finally stopped, the galaxy in the sky was bright and gold. Tatters nestled her head in the snow to make herself comfortable and enjoyed the view.
Slowly, it started sinking in. How she was still alive, and how Jenny and the others were alive, too. She started chuckling in excitement at the realization that she'd really see them again.
She thought for a while about what Jenny could've said to her.
"You're welcome," she said with a smile.