It is all Jordan can do to help Jocelyn carry him, propping an arm of his against the tunnel’s sloping wall. It was a worthless gesture, as she has him in something of a bridal carry.

Jocelyn seemed as aware as Jordan just how uncomfortably intimate this position was, despite its necessity– given the state of his legs. 

Their going was slow– it would be a long time before her hand was off the bare skin of his back, underneath his torn jumpsuit. 

He didn’t mind, however– even if she did have to stop every few minutes to rest.

Even before this whole prison business, it’d been a while since he’d felt a woman’s touch.

Though her hands were as clammy as his, and she didn’t smell any better than the sewer through which they trudged, being so close to her was a strange respite.

From his post-adrenal exhaustion, which had been weighing on him for so long. 

From the horrid realisation that his old life may be all but forfeit now, weighing as heavy in the back of his head as his last, can-borne meal now does in his stomach.

The idea he may never see his friends again. 

If Zain was dead, what might’ve happened to Scott? What of all the others? His parents were another matter of worry altogether.

For a long time, Jordan just clung to Jocelyn as she hoisted him along– not giving Rudy, who was wheeling forward behind them, any mind. He just clung to her, and stewed in thought.

Neither, out of Rudy or Jocelyn, knew what laid above the exit towards which they marched; only that it was there, and that it came up farther from the town.

The town where they’d doubtless be spotted, moving at this pace. They’d need a plan. One the others with him, as desperate as they likely were, hiding in a sewer, likely believed he had.

He’d made an impressive show of his spirit, and made some high claims, but in all honesty he was just hoping they could rely on their own, respective lucks.

 He imagined that Rudy would stop most any gunfire from reaching them, that he would deal with anyone Rudy didn’t see coming, and that Jocelyn would just carry him.

This was all assuming, however, that Rudy or Jordan would even be able to spot their attackers to begin with. 

Jordan had imagined that, once they reached this exit to the surface, it would be a largely flat area. 

He hadn’t seen much of the area past that hellscape of walls, on account of the seemingly very secretive nature of its denizens. Even after he’d escaped their restriction, the snow-storm hadn’t helped. All he’d been able to tell is that they were up on a mountain, and that there was indeed ground beneath it.

What if they came up into a dense forest? The side of another large hill?

 Jordan had grilled the others about their surroundings outside of the tunnels, and neither had provided any helpful answer.

Jocelyn had claimed to have been brought to the building against her will, not being shown any of its surroundings– much like him.

Rudy had said that he’d always been taken so high into the air, when being shipped out, that the clouds hid the ground below. The Foundation, as he described it, was not entirely trusting of even its own fighting force.

Jordan gave up on any attempt at formulating a plan. His mind was a wreck– it felt crumpled and dry, like an old sponge that could take in no more water.

So, he let it wander.

Spirits, a fall from a mountain.

That guy with the goggles– his frustrated grunt, as Jordan had flung himself away, despite all his efforts towards the contrary.

The fact that Zain hadn’t shown up since Jocelyn had first lifted him.

How glad he was, now, that he was so skinny– that Jocelyn might have it easier, carrying him.

So many of these spirit-things, that only he and precious few others could see.

A few others, half of which had tried to kill him– maybe even including Zain.

Whether Scott was alright– what he was doing.

Just why these spirit-things were showing up so frequently in his life, now.

Surely, he’d have noticed them before, if there were so many. Even if they had been invisible to him.

Was this all really just the doing of that one arrow?

Despite his attempt to relax, Jordan found his brow furrowing, and his eyes re-focusing.

Jocelyn had shifted to allow Rudy into the front, likely since he held the flash-light. Jordan’s gaze had fixed on him.

Rudy had detailed just what the Foundation was, and Jordan had got an idea himself whilst in their building. They sought to contain and censor the strange. Things like these spirits.

How, then, had Rudy been worthy?

Zain had mentioned it– he was sure. Thinking back, he may have heard it when Scott and him were on the phone– just after they’d narrowly escaped his attempt at assault.

The arrow, or something else, chooses, somehow, who’s worthy. He hadn’t seen it happen, for all the people he’d known to have these spirits following them, but a person died if they weren’t worthy.

Then again, it’d been Zain who’d told him and Scott this. The arrow might as well just make people go insane, if he were any example.

Living in the sewer aside, though, Rudy didn’t seem addled.

The trio turned a corner, and there it was– built into the roof of the tunnel, and dribbling strings of light onto its glistening floor.

It was a ways down a maintenance tunnel– one whose floor wasn’t split in twain by a river of sewer-water.

It was the hatch– the one that would take them outside. Already Jordan felt colder.

Rudy took point; wheeling up to just underneath the hatch. It was out of his reach.

My Hero shimmered into existence behind him. It shifted to above him, floating right up to the hatch.

With arms that were invisible save for a pair of gauntlets, the golden spirit began to twist the hatch’s loosening wheel.

 Jordan wasn’t sure whether it was going so slowly to ease the hatch’s metallic squealing, or because the mechanism was too tightly wound.

All he knew is that his heart both soared and sunk when that solid column of light flooded in. He had the sickening feeling that he’d be diving straight back into Adrenaline Lagoon, in a moment.

There was a silent, nervous moment where the three just looked up at the aperture, and the flakes of snow already invading the tunnel space.

The cold washed over them as if it had been real water.

Rudy sighed to himself, the cripple being the first one to clamber into the unknown. It took the combined efforts of Scorched ‘El and Rudy’s apparently quite capable upper body to finally shove him out all the way. His wheelchair was soon to follow, though it had to be folded up first.

The feeling of My Hero’s grip, as it lifted him into the cold before Jocelyn, was strangely warm despite its so metallic appearance. It was not like the tingling, acidic burning of his own spirit, but instead reminded him of a spring day.

However, neither spirit could do much to dissuade the numbing frost that announced itself, as the trio stood above the hatch.

The wind threatened to freeze Jordan’s very ears off, and he nearly thanked God out loud when Jocelyn finally lifted him out of the snow. He could swear she was holding him tighter now.

The snow-storm Jordan’d so cursed during his last outing had dispersed, now, and so the trio found themselves at the outskirts of a very odd scene.

They had risen into a large, hill-ribbed and snowed-in plain. Far behind them was what seemed to be a village. A humble collection of stout buildings, made humbler still by the massive plumes of smoke rising from their foundations.

Rudy was struggling to shove his wheeled carrier through the snow, and making some surprising headway. He was going straight away from the village. “I’d say we’re two miles away from whatever’s going on there. Let’s get to making it three.” 

Jordan felt that sickness come to a head as he thought of trudging a full mile through this frozen waste.

From what he could see, Rudy was headed towards a sparse forest. More importantly, the village was in-between them and those mountains. 

From what he could feel of her, Jocelyn’s hands had lost all warmth about a minute into the walk. Her digits could be icicles, were she not constantly adjusting them.

Zain’s voice came to him a sudden echo.

“This seems a nice place as any to set up a lil’ tenty-poo, huh, ‘Jor? You remember that, how we did that in outdoor ed, or whatever it was called?”

With her presence all but removed, the comfort Jocelyn had offered was gone. With that dispelled, familiar negative thoughts began trickling back into his mind– like so much ice water down his back.

Like, for instance, thoughts of home. He’d pushed them away; forced himself to focus on the task at hand, on how impossible it was that he might ever return to that comfort he’d only recently realised how much he needed.

Like how he was all too damn sure that whoever’d burned that town had something to do with that Foundation. How they could in all likelihood see the three of them from the town, out in the open as they were– how a rifle’s crosshair could be on his snow-spackled head right that moment.

And, of course, perhaps the worst of all– the not-Zain had returned. Standing right to his and Jocelyn’s side, close enough to touch.