Aaron stepped through and stopped walking.
The light had no source. Just existed, sitting in the cold air, landing on everything wrong. And in that light the chamber went back further than it should have.
Figures. Everywhere. Standing so still they looked like they'd grown out of the stone, All frozen yet tall, too tall. That dark material on their skin moving in slow wet waves, a sliding sound underneath the silence that Aaron felt more in his chest than heard with his ears.
Sera made a sound and covered her mouth with both hands.
"Don't," Nara said quietly to nobody specific.
Dain stood completely still. Voss took one step back. Jai said nothing. Hess said nothing. Nobody said anything.
Aaron looked at the nearest face. Mid-laugh. Frozen right in the middle of it, the expression still sitting there waiting to finish. He looked away.
Then Lim turned to the group.
"Okay so." His voice was low at least. "They're not moving. Like at all. They're literally just standing there. Big ugly statues basically. We're fine."
Sera turned and looked at him.
"WHATTTTTttttttttt—"
Six hands grabbed her at once. Hess had her left arm. Nara had her right. Marcus had her shoulder.
"Sera." Marcus. Quiet and final.
She caught herself. Pressed both hands back over her mouth. Her eyes were wet and furious and locked directly on Lim who had already moved himself to the other side of Hess.
"I was just saying we're erm.. nvm*"
"Lim," Nara said.
"Yeah."
"Stop talking."
"Yeah okay."
Jai put one hand briefly on Sera's shoulder. She breathed. Nodded.
"Along the wall," Marcus said. "Slow. Nothing gets touched."
The footsteps were too loud.
Every boot on stone sounded like a decision that could go wrong. Aaron watched the figures as they passed and the closer they got the worse the faces were. Not blank. Mid-thought. Mid-word. One had its arm half raised like it was about to point at something. Another had its head turned slightly like it had just heard a sound and hadn't finished deciding what to do about it.
All of them frozen inside whatever moment they'd been in. Standing with it ever since.
The wet sliding sound moved across one as Aaron passed close and he kept his eyes forward and his breathing even.
Hess appeared at his shoulder.
"How many do you think there are," he whispered.
Aaron looked at how far back the dark went. At how many were visible just in the first section before the rest disappeared into shadow.
"Stop looking," Aaron said.
"That bad."
"Stop looking Hess."
Hess stopped looking.
Aaron's band flickered against his wrist.
[ORIGIN POINT DETECTED]
He kept walking.
Origin of what. He already knew. Had known since the console and the portal and three weeks of data all pointing at the same place. This wasn't somewhere that reacted to portals. Portals came from here. Everything that had happened to the world, the first opening, the second, the things that came through and the people that didn't come back, it started here. All of it. From this room.
Jai appeared beside him without sound and looked at his band. Then at him.
Aaron shook his head slightly.
Jai nodded and kept moving.
Three quarters around.
Almost out.
Hess slipped.
Boot caught stone wrong and his hand shot out and grabbed the nearest thing and the nearest thing was one of them. His hand on its arm. One second. He yanked back hard.
He stood there.
"Sorry," he whispered to it.
Then looked horrified at himself.
Ten seconds. Nobody breathing. Nobody moving.
Nothing happened.
Hess let out a long unsteady breath.
The figure opened its eyes.
It looked around the chamber slowly. Like someone waking up in a familiar room, just checking things over. Then it found Marcus and something in its face changed in a way that had nothing Aaron recognized in it.
Marcus had both hands up, force visible between his palms.
"Don't hit it," Aaron said.
"Aaron Squeezed."
"You hit it every single one of them wakes up."
"And if I just stand here."
It crossed the distance in one step and the hit sent Marcus off his feet into the far wall. He dropped. Dust fell from the ceiling and settled on him and he lay there and everyone watched and nobody moved.
Two seconds.
Three.
He got up.
Blood from his hairline. Left side wrong. Got up anyway.
"Jai, Voss, left side," he said. Like his voice was the one thing he still had full control over. "Crane barriers. Dain behind me. Nara right. Now."
The air pressure dropped before Jai's strike landed. A compressed blade of wind that whistled in the silence and hit the figure's shoulder and the dark material resisted for half a second, tried to close around it, then split. Dark fluid ran down its arm and dripped from its fingers onto the stone.
It bled.
Voss drove fire into the same spot and it stepped back.
One step.
That one step changed everything.
"Keep going!"
Crane's barrier hit it from behind. Dain cracked the stone under its feet and it went to one knee. Marcus back in immediately, bad side and all.
It got back up and hit Crane before she finished building the next one and she went down hard, bleeding from her nose and ear. Grabbed Kang by the collar and what it did next was fast and Kang made a short sound and went down and didn't move and Nara screamed his name once, sharp and raw, and kept moving because she had to.
Soo went to cover Crane.
She shouldn't have.
The elbow caught her as the figure turned. Not even deliberate. Just movement. She hit the ground and the sound she made was something Aaron filed away in the part of his brain that kept things he didn't want.
Hess was still swinging. Crying hard and swinging anyway. Lightning crackling off both fists, real damage, not enough, not stopping.
Aaron stood at the back and watched.
It kept throwing Marcus aside instead of finishing him. It kept going for whoever drifted toward the center of the room.
He looked at where the group was standing.
At the entrance behind them.
Every hit had pushed them further from it.
"MARCUS."
Marcus took a hit and turned. "WHAT."
"IT'S HERDING US. EVERY HIT PUSHES US TOWARD THE CENTER. IT DOESN'T WANT US DEAD."
Marcus looked at the group. At the entrance. His face changed fast.
"BREAK FOR THE ENTRANCE. NOW. EVERYBODY."
The figure moved to cut them off and Marcus drove into it with everything he had left and bought them enough.
Jai took Crane's arm. Nara grabbed Sera. Dain and Voss took hits covering the back and kept moving anyway. Hess ran with his face wet and didn't look back at Kang and didn't look back at Soo and Aaron ran and didn't look back either.
The figure stopped at the entrance.
Watched them leave.
They ran until they couldn't and stopped.
Eight people.
The smell of ozone from Hess's lightning still hung in the cold air around them. Hess sat on the ground and put his face in his hands. Sera sat next to him and didn't say anything. Dain stood against a stone staring at nothing. Voss was still breathing hard. Jai stood quiet with his face doing something it didn't usually do.
Marcus had one hand flat against the wall. Eyes closed.
Aaron looked back.
Five figures standing in the entrance now.
Not the one that had woken up.
Five others.
Their heads turning slowly as their eyes adjusted. Five pairs of eyes catching the light at the same time. That wet sliding sound starting up across their skin, slow and rhythmic, warming up.
And behind them in the dark, more eyes opening.
One by one.
Then all at once.
Like they'd been waiting for exactly this moment.
"Run," Aaron said.
Nobody argued.