Beyond the Horizon

58. And Burn

Nezumi exhaled slowly and let the strength seep out of him. He'd lost track of how long it'd been since he'd had a good night's sleep. He'd probably never had one, if he was being fully honest. His body had adapted to the constant shift, hurtling from rest to action in an instant. Adaptation had permitted him to survive and thrive once it became painfully obvious the Lab would never let him escape.

          Shion hurried ahead of him, making a beeline for Rin and Aki. Nezumi blinked, shaking away the blurred, white-haired twin clinging to Shion's side as he dropped down beside the sobbing youth and set a comforting hand on their shoulder. Dull fragments of pain prickled in the back of Nezumi's skull, stretching across his brain like thorns.

          He hadn't slept in awhile. He needed to sleep.

          The cool evening air of the outside world―We made it. We made it―tickled his cheeks and sent little pinpricks dancing across his arms. The hideous jumpsuit wasn't designed to ward off the winter chill. Nezumi knew that. It hadn't done much to protect him from the near-endless onslaught of cold air Rashi had pumped into his cell.

          Who runs the AC in the winter? Nezumi thought, a wave of frenzied panic slicing through him.

          But no. That didn't matter now. Rashi was dead. Or, if he wasn't yet, he was going to be. Shion's inelegant toss had mangled his legs and left him pinned. Even if somehow the officer had dragged himself to the elevator, Nezumi didn't believe he'd manage to make it out of the Lab before the whole thing came crashing down around him.

          The thought seemed to chill some of the panic radiating through Nezumi's body. Horizon Labs was falling down.

          The manic thought of it all sent tremors lancing through every inch of him. He trembled from head to toe, the chains that'd kept everything contained for the past decade cracking loose. The dreams he'd been clinging to so diligently since the day the Lab had wrenched his parents from him came rushing to the forefront of his mind: violent images of smoke and carnage, and the deranged song and dance he'd envisioned would come when it was all said and done.

          At his back, the building continued to belch smoke into the air. The cloisters of men and women in their ugly green jumpsuits worked on wrenching the fortifications apart, steadily bringing the horrible place crashing down below. Large chunks of concrete and the vibrant white walls crafting the outer structure of the building came dropping from the sky like dead birds, embedding themselves in the dirt and punching through the snowdrifts.

          Through the haze lurching in front of him, Nezumi could see Shion clearly. The bleach-white strands of his hair―a testament to the horrors he'd endured at the hands of these horrible people, the proof that he'd struggled to survive long enough to reunite with Nezumi and watch their nightmare come to its end―caught in the light of the flames beginning to crack their way out of the top windows. The Lab was destroying itself from the inside out, spurred on by the guidance of the VCs pulling at its supports and destroying its generators.

          At his back, a low voice gave a shout, and other voices rose to meet it. Nezumi looked over his shoulder to see the building swaying to the side. How such a massive structure had managed to hold itself upright during the brunt of their assault was astonishing. A testament to the Lab's desperation to thrive like the parasite it was, clinging to any chance of survival. Even with the full might of its prisoners' rage, the Lab was not so easily destroyed.

          He didn't know how he moved forward, but he did. Something mechanical inside him urged him to step forward, slowly, one inch at a time, until he'd managed to abandon the collapsing building and come to rest beside Shion and his companions.