Jason Luthor - Floor 21

I’m inches from her when I’m caught around the waist. I can’t hold back the squeal I let out as I feel my body suddenly collapsing beneath the pressure of a meaty limb that bursts out of the floor. She holds me just outside of arm’s distance, too far away for me to inject her.

But not too far for my bat.

I rear back and swing with every bit of power my muscles can give me, absolutely crushing the side of her skull. Her head rocks backward and she drops me, her hand going to her face. It’s the first time I’ve seen her in pain.

And she starts crying.

More like screaming and wailing, but her defenses are down. I start to rush her.

Then?

Then the floor beneath us groans like a dying animal before shattering into a hundred pieces, plunging us all downward. Fire, ash, and smoke rain down from above, along with burning muscle and skin. Nothing breaks my fall as I slam hard onto the ground, the breath escaping my lungs as I feel a hard piece of concrete slam into my stomach. I suck wind hard as I flip around, my vision going blurry while the corners of my eyes seem to fill with blackness. For a moment I’m too weak to even twitch my fingers.

Dad’s voice comes out of the haze of black smoke filling the air. “Jackie!” he calls. I see him leaping through the dark clouds pouring off the ground, only to see his body flail backward as a tendril strikes him in the shoulder. He screams as it cuts right through him, pinning him to the wall. Blood bursts from his upper arm as he struggles to pull the Creep from his body.

A thin-framed silhouette pops into view from the wall of flames raging hard to my right. It staggers forward, weak limbs carrying it step after step along the ground. The crying, though. The sobbing. She just keeps wailing as she stops near my dad and looks at him, her jaws detaching wider than humanly possible while she moans. Then she raises her hand. She puts it to his chest, and Creep just starts to pour out of it, like she can create it from herself. It starts to cover his body, molding over his chest and swarming down his legs.

I reach out. I try to do anything. I can’t. I can’t move. I can barely scream one word.

“Daddy!”

Sally’s head tilts up, and she looks off to the side, her lips quivering. Then she looks back at me, her eyes hidden behind those bangs of hers. She stares at me, struggling to speak. Then she says the only word I’ll ever hear from her.

“Da… ddy?”

Her mouth explodes into a scream as her arm erupts into ash and fire, a solid blade of flame cutting through it. Abbott’s sword separates her from Dad, but as she falls to the ground, she manages to create a thick limb from the floor that slaps the blade, and Abbott, like toys into the inferno. Off-balance and screaming, she collapses groundward, the back of her head hitting the floor next to me.

She’s breathing hard. So, she does get tired. She obviously feels pain. She cries.

Sally reaches upward, her fingers grasping at memories I can’t see. She’s sobbing.

“Daddy… Dad… dy…”

What kills me is that she remembers. At the very end, she remembers her daddy.

Whatever she was a minute ago, she’s different now. At least for that second when she remembers.

And yet there’s nothing else that we can do. The family she had died over a hundred years ago. The only reason she’s still alive is because of the Creep.

So I do the only thing that can be done.

I turn and plunge the needle right into her neck. She kinda jolts for a second when it hits, but she doesn’t scream this time. Actually she just looks at me. She stops crying. She smiles.

And then she’s gone.

Real quick: Abbott survived. Of course he did.

Whatevs.

Things move fast after Sally goes down. First off, the Creep. I mean seriously, what the heck? One minute we’re swimming in gunk, and the next it’s gone. It’s like someone pulled the plug on a bathtub drain, and it all just recedes away. Well, whatever power Sally had, Dad was right about her keeping the infestation going. Once she was gone, the entire floor settled down. Lockdown’ll stay in place for a few hours while they do some patrols ’cause, you know, that’s just sort of Security’s thing. Still, everyone’s obviously a lot more chill once we’re not ankle-deep in muscle tissue.

Which obviously, you know, makes sense.

Anyway, I’m not out of trouble, so I won’t act as if everything’s peaches. It doesn’t take Security more than a few minutes to clean up the area. You know, wiping away all that ash-gray goop. Afterward it takes them just a couple seconds more to grab and haul us back up the stairwell. It’s a forced march that’s just killer on my knees. As if we didn’t just fall through a hellish inferno onto the lower floor. Oh well, I’m young and strong, right? Guess I can take it! At least that’s how they’re acting. I mean, who cares about the girl that just put an end to Creepy Sally?

I’m not surprised when I see the door to Floor 1 again, although it’s kind of a joke by now. This isn’t the first time I’ve been let in through the front door, and by now I just feel less impressed about it. A floor full of psychos taking drugs to keep them happy? At least happy enough that they don’t talk to each other about what’s going on in this tower?

I’d rather live in the Creep.

Sure, I’d go hungry, but, I mean, at least I’d still be me. Are you really “you” when you’re always taking drugs to forget yourself?

See, I think about these things. I’m not just curious for the sake of being curious. I can get philosophical and stuff.

Of course, I don’t really have much time to ponder the meaning of existence as they drag me along down the halls. Dad’s with me the whole way, so that’s nice, but it’s so weird being escorted by Security while those cheery commercials shout at us from the air that “ A daily will do you ,” which by this time translates to some freaking terrifying behavior.

But, you know, I’m still me. I’m still curious. I might not want to live up here, but I do want to know everything I can about this place I call home. Because I really don’t know if what we’ve got going on in this tower can last forever.

Anyway, soon we enter a long hall. I know something’s different, ’cause there aren’t any doors. Well, none except the single pair at the very end of the hall.

Yeah. That looks like it might be, you know, important.

Abbott holds back my dad and gives me a push. I kinda want to tear his arm off for touching me, but I hold back my incredible strength. Heh. I look over at Dad, and he nods, so… I guess it’s cool for me to go?

I start to march, and the hallway seems to just stretch on forever. There are a few potted plants and a couple of soft-looking couches, but no windows or anything like that.

You know what it does have, though? Paintings. Lots of them.

I wish… I wish I knew who painted them. What they’re about. They were important enough to keep, right? Why, though? Does anyone even remember?

One’s of some guy, a military-looking dude with a weird white wig on. I’ll admit it, though, he looks freakin’ sweet. Guy’s wearing a cape, some crazy hat, and there’s this flag behind him in the boat he’s riding. It’s got these red and white stripes, and a bunch of stars on a blue background.

This next one… I dunno, it kinda sucks. It’s just a woman smiling at you. I don’t get that one.

Another one I spot is weird because I actually recognize the guy in it. He’s the dude that was on that cross in the Reception Hall. Uh, he looks like he’s in a lot less pain now, I think. I dunno, it looks like he’s at a dinner or something. He’s got, like, twelve of his friends with him.