Fear’s fierce hold gripped my throat. Shots. A gun. My thoughts gained a panicked quickness that my body did not have. Is it the men from before?

I heard the sound of footsteps making their way over to the bathroom door. I looked around for something, anything that I could use to defend myself. My chest had tightened so much that I was struggling to breathe quietly. It felt like I was being suffocated by the terror.

The steps stopped right outside the bathroom door. I could hear the person breathing raggedly, almost as if he went through some sort of physical exercise.

He knew that I was in that bathroom. I felt it. Whoever had summoned me here was now here to kill me.

My brain didn’t process anything else except the person’s breathing and the shadow beneath the door.

“Are you Griffin?” A man’s voice.

I couldn’t get my voice to respond, perhaps thinking that if I stayed absolutely still he would leave.

The door rattled. He was trying to twist the knob but I had locked it prior to coming in.

“Are you Griffin?” He repeated.

There was really nothing to grab a hold of and use as a weapon. Instinct took over and I did something I couldn’t imagine doing in a million lifetimes. I flung the door open and charged the attacker. He looked taken aback, gun at his side, and couldn’t react in time to stop my rushing him. I shoved him into the wall and tried to grab his gun.

We wrestled for a second before falling to the floor. I hoped it would give me a better chance to get a hold of the gun but I ended up banging my head in the fall, losing my grip on him. He wrenched his hand away and used his other to hold me down.

“Who the fuck are you?” He yelled, gun now pointing at me.

A black well of terror erupted inside me seeing a gun so close to my face but even then I was still able to answer. “Griffin.”

He seemed to calm down at that, oddly enough.

“Oh, thank the gods.” He pulled himself off me but kept the gun trained on me. The gun itself was definitely not as advanced as the ones we had on Earth. It didn’t even look like it could hold more than one bullet but I wasn’t in the state of mind to test that theory.

Then I noticed all the blood on him. His stomach was covered in it, coat thick with crimson splotches, and upon looking at him now, the barrel of his gun pointed straight at me, I could see that he was the same man as before, the one I had… stabbed? The memory came flooding back.

“Come with me.”

I complied, heart pounding. I pulled myself to my feet and followed him down the hall. In the kitchen were Tamul and Rayna, lying on the ground, blood pooling around their heads. One bullet each, right through the brain. It was such a gruesome sight to look at and I couldn’t help but puke.

The man turned to look at me as I wretched and heaved over the floor but didn’t make any other move. The only two friends I had met were now dead, right in front of me. A few minutes ago they had been mere dream figures and now they were real people, dead.

“Take a seat.” He ordered. Even in the state I was in, I still noticed that it wasn’t gruff but shaky. Not in the same way Tamul’s was but in a different way, one that I couldn’t place.

I wiped the bile off my lip, stepped around my puke, and gingerly pulled a chair out from the table. He was standing by the door, resting against the wall, watching me.

The man’s foot started to tap against the ground, rapidly. Tap tap tap tap. It was the only noise in the now deathly quiet apartment.

My stomach hurt intensely, twisting and cramping violently. I clutched it tightly hoping it would do something to relieve the pressure.

What the hell were we waiting for why? Why didn’t he just kill me now? Was the other man going to come back? The pain in my stomach caused me to visibly wince and the man gave a slight reaction to that, like he got spooked.

His eyes darted over me and then he averted his gaze. His shirt was unbuttoned, exposing a glyph or a rune that had been carved into his chest. It looked fresh, the angry red kind.

The tapping increased in intensity, becoming an almost steady thrum in the dark stillness of the apartment. Then, suddenly, he burst into a rapid pacing, walking back and forth through the living room area. There was a panickedness in his breath now, one that hadn’t been there before. It was almost like he had manifested my own terror and was suddenly displaying it vividely. A hand ran through his short grayed hair. The tremors of fear that ran through my own body reminded me I was being kidnapped but I couldn’t help feeling confused by this man’s current state of wellbeing. If someone were to look inside the room, they might have mistaken our roles in the current situation.

His breath hitched suddenly and I saw tears streaming down his face. It was a desperate cry, one that seemed even more filled with fear than I had experienced, one that had shaken him to his core and it was so palpable I could smell it.

What caused him so much terror? There was something so off here, something that just didn’t make sense and I couldn’t place it.

The sound of boots storming across the wood walkway caught both our attention. It sounded like a whole squadron of men. Immediately, the man laid his gun on the worn floorboards, knelt down and raised his hands into the air, head bowed down. Men and women charged into the apartment, yelling orders. I couldn’t even get a good look at them before I was roughly grabbed and pulled out of my chair, hands twisted behind my back and handcuffs slapped on them.

One voice cut through all the noise. “Check them! See if they’re armed.” I was patted down right after and then pulled to the center of the room.

One person, a guard or an old fashioned police officer, held up the gun that the man had placed on the floor.

“This is the only weapon sir.” He unloaded it, slipping it into his coat. A woman, one I was facing directly, nodded. I could tell she was the captain. Her coat was a different color, red instead of black like the rest of the guards in the room. They all wore something akin to a metal kettle hat although smaller and more pointed. A large belt was equipped to every person in the room it seemed, holstering two pistols each.

Some of the guards were checking the bodies but ended up affirming the conclusion I had already come to.

The leader sized us up for a second, taking a good hard look at each of us. Then she made the slightest movement of her head, a quick tilt, and suddenly I was being dragged out of the room and down the wooden walkway. I caught sight of the other floaters and the massive city below but was quickly dragged through another door that led to a stairway. Down and down we went, spiraling.

We exited the door at the bottom of the stairwell and I saw, for the first time, grass. It was a small field, big enough to fit at least thirty or forty people. To the left was the base of the apartment building, or its foundation or something. It stretched up at least twenty high and I could see the walkways to the apartment rooms above it. The rest of the little plaza was protected by a guardrail which peered down over the city. Gates were positioned strategically along the guardrail and at every one what looked like a gondola was present. It was a sleek glass box attached to a wire and led to a floater that was closer to the city. I was pulled into one and a few guards followed.

A guard hollered a command that sounded like ‘Go’ and, with that, we were off. I was barely in this world for half a day and I was already being taken in by the police. I wasn’t really able to process what was going on around me. Instead, a sort of emptiness had set in. There was really nothing I could do and, at this point, I didn’t feel like doing much of anything at all.