Blackout | Matt Murdock

chapter thirteen | it had to happen sometime (2)

So, good news first: Michaela picked the right warehouse! Three cheers all around, she didn't get the fifty-fifty shot wrong on her first try.

Now the bad news: Inside the old, abandoned warehouse... is not an old abandoned warehouse.

Two steps in and she comes to a grinding halt, a zing of apprehension shooting down her spine. It's like she's stepped inside the TARDIS; not so much that everything's bigger on the inside, but the insides do not match the outsides at all. Come to think of it, she's dated people like that. What disappointing human beings they turned out to be.

The warehouse, though. It's... more reminiscent of an old library, she thinks. High walls, soaring ceilings, wood paneling everywhere. Shelves upon shelves of leather-bound books, stacked floor to ceiling. It's cooler in here than the dead heat of summer that permeates the outside world, and the scent of filth and shit stopped the second she crossed the threshold, as if it hit a barrier it couldn't cross. Straight ahead of her there's a set of solid-legged wooden tables, some of them adorned with clothes, others bare and topped with things she can't name but that look like they belong in museums across the globe. Artifacts from ancient lands, almost, something resurrected from the earth and sealed behind glass for the rest of human existence.

Except. You know. They're all just casually out here, uncovered, looking pristine and not at all like they've been damaged by time or neglect.

A thud from behind her makes Michaela nearly shriek, and she almost bites off her tongue in her haste to stifle herself. She glances back, groans at the sight of the closed door. That's fantastic. Lovely.

Where the fuck is Grace?

That's what she should be channeling her focus into. Finding Grace and getting the fuck out of here. She'd guessed whoever took Grace has powers of their own, so the grandiose interior shouldn't freak her out as badly as it does, but she just. Wasn't expecting this. She'd been imagining something akin to a gritty action film, the damsel in distress handcuffed to a protruding pipe, the abductor cackling madly in the corner while he rattled off his nefarious plans.

The sleep deprivation, as always, is her go-to excuse for the fucking shitshow that is her mind.

She's wishing for a cliched action movie fix right now, though – the Avengers swooping in at the eleventh-hour kind of thing, busting through a wall and shouting out some hackneyed line about saving the day, twisting up the bag guy in a conveniently placed length of rope. No rope here, just her and her toaster-oven hands, slinking along the edge of a bookshelf and hoping to whatever deity is potentially watching from the ether that she's learned something from Matt, the king of sneakity-sneaking. The floors are some glistening, exotic hardwood and unlikely to creak, but she steps lightly anyway, trailing a hand along the spines of the books lined up beside her.

There are hardly any sounds that she can make out besides the soft inhales and exhales of her own breathing. No voices, no sounds of a struggle. There is, however, a faint hum that she honestly feels more than hears, a vibration of the air, almost, prickling over her exposed skin and competing with the electricity zipping through her body for making her practically tremble with anticipation.

She'd downplay it, write it off as nothing more than faulty wiring or whatever those paranormal debunkers usually tout as the reason for ghostly encounters, but. Uh. The only lighting she's noticed so far comes from the frankly absurd number of candles that are planted on every available surface. They're perched high on top of the bookshelves, scattered in between the artifacts on the tables, cradled in candelabras hung from the wall. The effect they all generate is almost hypnotizing, watching the play of flickering shadows across the walls and the book spines, warm golden light glinting off the shinier artifacts in the room. Every momentary flash catches her eye and she has to fight to urge not to chase the perception of movement.