Blood Obsidian

Issue 9

Fear response - Part 3

Where Alaina found these places, Caitlyn did not want to ask. This time, instead of a stark, abandoned wasteland, Alaina had found a stark, abandoned, half-built building. Not quite a skyscraper, such as those that had glutted the centre of New Hastings, but one with a number of different floors, all in one stage of construction or another. It felt oppressive, as though it blamed her, personally, for its sorry state.

Alaina, wearing exercise clothing, not school authorised, stood in front of Caitlyn with a whistle and a stop watch in her hands, both attached to loops of cord wrapped over her neck. She had even tied her hair in tight braids, like athletes, or boxers, or MMA fighters did, though Caitlyn had never seen Alaina exercise in her life. Not outside of gym class and even then she managed to get away with doing as little as possible.

"What are we doing here? It's late and I promised Aunt Mary I'd make dinner." Caitlyn grimaced as Alaina tried tugging the tight jogging pants out of areas they were designed to creep into. "Are we even supposed to be here?"

"Ha! No! All part of the fun. Just, if you see a flashlight coming from that-away ..." She nodded away to the other side of the building. "... run. Or, you know, fast float, or whatever. This is your exercise for today my studiously heroic friend."

For some, unknown reason, Alaina had started talking like a character from an old comic book. If she ended up calling Caitlyn 'my dear', then that was it. There was helpful, then there was delusional and Alaina was straddling the border with an inner ear problem affecting her balance. Off to the side, on a block of concrete blackened by an impromptu fire, some time before, Caitlyn saw a bag with a few triangular party pennants sticking out of it.

"I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you've been here a while? The flags?" She picked one up, noting the cheap glitter falling from it like colourful snow. "Look, whatever it is, I appreciate it, but I'd just like to get home, relax, maybe finish that essay on geology ..."

"Silence!" Alaina held up a finger, giving Caitlyn an imperious look down her nose. "I, your sensei, have placed twelve, count them, twelve flags throughout this building, on various floors. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to find every single one of those flags and return them to me within ten minutes or less. In order! You will notice they have numbers on them? In that order. Starting in five ..."

"Wait! Wait! The numbers are in glitter, and it's already falling off this one." She held up a flag that only had half the 'four' visible of the 'fourteen', and almost none of the 'one'. "Can't I just ..."

"Four ... three ... get ready ..." Alaina ignored Caitlyn's concerns, holding the stopwatch in front of her face and the whistle at the ready. "... two ... suit up ... one!"

The whistle echoed and reechoed around the abandoned building, causing even Alaina to clutch at her ears. Even so, despite the pain, she held up the stopwatch, showing Caitlyn the diminishing time Alaina had given her and, Caitlyn hated to admit it, Alaina was right again. While she had this dumb superhero suit, she needed to know how to use it. She felt the stupid thing wrap itself around her, hiding her clothes as though they weren't even there, and jumped up through a hole in the roof above them.

This floor looked little different from the one below, only there were a few more concrete posts rising from the floor to the ceiling above. She took a few seconds to orient herself before seeing the first flag and Caitlyn could only imagine Alaina had decided to make the first one easy for her. Dangling from a cable runner in the ceiling, the flag with the glittery '1' on it billowed in the slight breeze.

Caitlyn ran toward it, reaching out and up to grab it, only for the flag to speed away, pulled by a thin thread that Caitlyn hadn't even seen. A thread that led all the way around until it reached Caitlyn's ankles. Alaina had said it was a test for her fast floating ability and she wasn't lying. She tried to concentrate on the ground, looking for that thread and something in Black Staff's suit 'heard' her. Everything suddenly came into sharp focus, as though Caitlyn had put on a pair of perfectly adjusted spectacles.