The Storm's Arrival

Seleste is frantically scribbling on her new board as the sky outside is growing darker. Ever since the gun revelation, she’s been investigating our lives, trying to figure out what we might be doing. She’s focusing on the why, adding to her timeline a map of the elevator and a list of our names and known facts about each of us. She also seems to have more listed down than we’d told her, which is a bit concerning. My focus, however, is on the speed at which she’s writing the things down, and looking information up on her phone, and generally doing her job. She wasn’t lying. Whatever else happened to her, she’s definitely working faster. Moving faster. Thinking faster. Interesting. She notes it as under her workaholic nature, but there might be more to it.

The storm is approaching. It’s making my skin crawl. Kat looks over at me, concerned. “Are you alright, Jackson?” she asks.

I shrug, responding with a half-smile, “Honestly? No. The storm is about to make landfall.”

Seleste looks over at me. “Can you just feel it, or do something about it, I wonder?” she says, not getting my meaning. Seeing I don’t see where she’s coming from, she adds, “You know, with your new leadership and control thing, can you do it to the weather you feel as well?”

Kat understands my actual point, though. “You want to regroup,” she says.

I nod. “And not be on the eighth floor, just in case I can’t do anything about it.”

Mister Jennings looks out the window, and nods. “It’s looking worse than earlier in the distance.”

“The wind feels like it’s built up to a borderline hurricane over the course of today,” I explain, “Not sure why, though that mostly just means the why isn’t a part of whatever this is.”

Mister Jennings nods. “Good to know, though. Not the wind thing. Well, actually the wind thing is good to know too, but the fact that there’s some kind of scope to our capabilities feels significant to me.”

Seleste uses a camera to take a picture of the board, as well as after a moment’s thought, the board behind it. I barely get a glimpse of that one, but it looks to be some kind of organized crime thing. Then, she grabs a day bag and says, “Alright, so where is everyone else?”

As I lead us out of her room, I say, “The college kids are figuring out what they can do and how to do it practically. Alyson already has some idea of it and was even able to teach it to Hilary, so she should be able to explain how to turn on and off these things to us. They went down to the ground floor, I’m guessing somewhere without cameras, like the loading bay that the staff definitely don’t use to smoke.”

“Or the sex closet,” Seleste adds.

Kat chimes in as we hit the stairs. “I’d check the bay first, because the hall next to that closet is likely where the shelter in place designated zone is.”

Walking down the stairs is much easier now that Jennings’s leg is healed. For a few flights, I do keep an eye on him, just in case, but after a bit, I stop worrying as much. “And after an eventful but cooped up morning,” I continue, “Hilary and Mikey offered to head over to the hospital to inform the Hernandezes about Mister Jennings being okay and a bad storm coming.”

Seleste looks confused and concerned at Kat. “Is that okay?” she asks, “I thought Hilary had something of a glowstick problem.” Clever, if there is working sound in the stairwell cameras, the only way to know what that meant was to know what it meant, otherwise it’d just sound like nonsense.

“When I stopped by, it wasn’t really a possibility," Kat replies.

I nod. “As I said, Alyson was able to help Hilary out a bit,” I brush off the concern. Not even Mikey would be dumb enough to walk around with a glowing girlfriend. “The Hernandezes are still there, when we went out to find this one, Mrs. Hernandez was still out,” I finish the list, gesturing towards Jennings as we head down.

Seleste nods. “And I assume they were affected just like us?”

I shrug. “Don’t know all the details, Win might know more, but the kid definitely knew things he shouldn’t have been able to know.”

Seleste furrows her brow. “If Mr. Jennings was affected, then it isn’t to do with being in the forest, it’s the light that flowed into the elevator and suffused us. I’m more interested in how it interacted with Mrs. Hernandez, seeing as she was out cold.”

I have to think about that for a moment, before I put together her reasoning. If our abilities are at least in part due to what we were thinking and trying to do in the moment, what would it mean for a person that wasn’t conscious. An interesting question, but not one for him to worry about yet. They finish descending to the ground floor, and head to the loading garage. There’s a truck parked there, looks like some delivery that was asked to shelter down here during the storm. And, under it using it like a benchpress bar, is Alyson. She doesn’t notice us at first, and Lyle is nowhere to be seen. From behind, right by where we entered, Win’s voice starts to speak. “Did you figure anything out?” he asks.

Turning to look at him, we all see him standing by the doorway. “Sort of,” I offer, “You?”

“A bit,” he says. Then loudly, he states, “Aly, Lyle, company.”

Alyson puts down the truck and rolls out, heading over with a pleasant smile. Then, from beneath the grate into the sewers which had some clothes strewn atop it, Lyle seems to push himself up through the cracks. Spilling through like a syrup or jello, then reforming inside his clothes. “We’re figuring it out,” he adds before he’s fully a person again.

We look confused and at one another, before Seleste shares our working theory. “Basically, we believe these new abilities are from the light inside the elevator, and are exaggerating and empowering some aspect of our pasts, as well as whatever we were focused on trying to do in the elevator.”

Lyle nods, so whatever this weirdness is with his body must be what he was focusing on. Alyson furrows her brow. “I don’t get it. I was trying to understand what was actually going on with the forest, and I have no idea what it is.”

I nod, furrowing my brow. “Interesting. I wonder, have you reentered the elevator since?”

“No, it’s shut down, remember?” she says, a mix of confusion and fear in her voice.

I bite my lip. “Maybe after the storm, we can investigate the shaft,” I offer, “It might give us a better idea of how this happened, especially if that is what you were trying to do when everything went to shit.”

Alyson seems upset by the idea, then she blinks and says, “That sounds like a plan,” and I believe her. Despite her fear, she’s confident and curious enough to investigate. I nod, though Win seems to look at his friend curiously.

“Oh, by the way,” Win says, “While we head back inside, have you guys tried not breathing?”

We shoot him a look, each of us a unique combination of concern, confusion, and curiosity. “Why?” Kat asks, her look much more one of concern than the rest of us.

“Right, that would sound bad,” Win quickly says, “See, I realized it when we were underground, I don’t need to breathe. But when I checked with them, they both do. Curious about you guys.”

“Worth a try, and it’s subtle enough,” I offer as I lead them inside and start holding my breath. As I do so, the other four adults here do as well.

Seleste is the first one to start to heave again, somehow simultaneously hyperventilating and heaving. Honestly, it was not even a good amount of time by normal standards. Thinking about it, that does make sense. If everything in her is running so fast, so constantly, she must need so much more oxygen than the rest of us just by default.

Next, Mr. Jennings starts to breathe again. He held it for a good amount of time, but nothing spectacular. It’s also around this point that I realize it doesn’t feel like I’m holding my breath. I grab and hold my nose, just to be sure.

As we make it to the shelter area, we gather by one of the doors. There are several other people we recognize from around the hotel milling about, but none are interacting with us. After a fairly impressive amount of time, around eight minutes, Seleste starts to breathe once more. It’s at this point I realize what’s happening. It’s as though the air that I’m holding in my lungs is refreshing itself, without any need of actual air. Not sure how that is physically possible, but that is how it feels, at least. I ask Win, “How does it feel for you, the whole not breathing thing?”

He shrugs. “Honestly? It doesn’t. Like how that feeling of needing to breathe starts, but then just sort of stagnates, never being gone, but never getting worse than when I used to hold my breath for about twenty seconds or so. You?”

I shrug. “It feels like I’m breathing. That’s why I had to plug my nose, because I thought I just might have been.”

“Weird,” he says, “And you guys?” he turns to ask the others.

“Nope,” Seleste says, “Seems like I’m even worse at it than before.”

“I’m a little worse than last time I tried it,” Mister Jennings offers, before explaining, “Though admittedly, I’d mostly attribute that to age. Haven’t held my breath like that since my army days.”

Kat frowns. “I don’t know? Like, I definitely needed to breathe, but that was not normal. I was expecting like a minute or two, tops.”

Win nods, actually understanding. And Lyle chimes in, “That’s the same as me. I mean, I was nowhere near that long, but compared to what I’m normally doing…” he trails off, before shaking his head and adding, “Or I guess it’s what I used to do, this being our new normal.”

“What are we talking about?” Mikey says from the doorway. He and Hilary are here, along with the Hernandezes.

“Thank you for sending them with the heads up,” Mrs. Hernandez adds, from a wheelchair, “I did not feel comfortable being in the hospital when the storm hits.”

I nod, not fully understanding, and then walk over close to them, “Wait, how did you get here? Wasn’t the wind or rain a problem?”

Hilary frowns then looks around. Seleste recognizes this as a paranoid concern and quickly stands up, ushering all twelve of us and a baby into the closet. “They don’t have cameras in here,” she explains, “Because of certain inappropriate and frequent behaviors they don’t want any proof of. What happened?”

Hilary takes a breath, then says, “Well, when we started walking, we ended up moving pretty fast. And we all made it there, talked to them, and back all before the storm hit in earnest. It looked like it was about to while we were in the lobby, though.”

It should have already. I wonder why it took the extra couple minutes. Interesting. Kat smiles at me. “Time for Seleste’s test, right?” she asks.

“Seleste’s test?” Mikey asks.

I sigh. “Seleste was wondering, considering my other talents, if rather than just feeling it, I could do something about it. Control it somehow.” Then, looking back at Kat and Win, I add, “Winsten, can you bring Kat underground with you and wait right by my ankle, in case this goes very poorly.”

“Sure,” he says, “But why bring Kat?”

“Because, in case this does go poorly, I would greatly prefer not to bleed out stuck in the ground,” I say. Then cracking my neck and holding my breath, I head out to the lobby. And, I think about what I was feeling, what I was thinking when I asked Mister Montero to extend our stays. I look up to the storm cloud outside, at the trees nearly ripped up by the wind, and I ask politely, “Sorry, but we’re going through a bit of a time right now, would you mind calming down.” As I say those final five words, I can feel sparks leaping between my lips. And the trees begin to stand straighter.