Jordan had drifted off to sleep a minute after the girl’d left, realizing his exhaustion once again. As he did, Zain, now from the sound of it laying right next to him on the furry mat– started speaking. He was whispering, as if this were some frilly slumber-party.

“So– wait, why aren’t you paste at the base of a mountain right now? You fell near a mile.”

Jordan felt no breath on the back of his neck, yet the hairs there still stood on end.

“You’re the one who told me to fuckin’ jump.”, Jordan whispers back at him.

“Yeah, well, I didn’t expect you to do it!”

At this, Jordan again begins ignoring Zain.

As he shifts away from the apparition, he feels a bump underneath the mat– having too much give to be some imperfection in the metal flooring.

Straining himself somewhat to reach behind his head, Jordan feels what may be a short stack of thin, square sheets; they are smooth, likely laminated.

Pulling the sheaf out and bringing it to his face, Jordan finds it to be a series of color photographs, as if dispensed straight from a camera.

Flipping through them, Jordan is disturbed to find, among pictures of a snow-obscured towny and this sewer’s interior, many of the mountain he’d fallen from. He could tell this because in some, the point of the shot was so high up on the frigid rock that that damnable facility could be made out.

As he peered closely at the picture, desperate to know just why the photographer had gotten so close, and generally anything about the building, he found he had to draw his eyes away and rub them.

He had found the picture blurry, as if the snowstorm obscuring the mountain and shadowed construct in the background were actually occurring, animated, within its borders.

To Jordan’s astonishment, that was exactly what was happening. It was as if he were holding a state-of-the-art smartphone, and playing a video on it. He watched the snow pile up on a bank; this was no trick of the eye.

He flipped through the other photos and, paying more attention this time, found that they were all moving. A picture of the snowed-over village featured an old woman wrapped head-to-toe in thick overcoat, trudging through a haphazardly dug path.

Jordan, beyond bewildered, watches her clumsy stride. He places his finger, carefully, on the plastic surface, as if he fears it may pass right through.

He slides his finger across the woman’s head, seeing if he couldn’t knock her off balance. There was, mercifully, no effect, neither was there any when he bent the photo with the intent of making her crouch, or “pop out”.

Flipping through the photos, and fiddling with them and their moving imagery, Jordan had actually found that he was enjoying himself. Enjoying himself indeed, despite the confusion all around, and in his hands.

This fun ends, however, as a picture of the sewer tunnel catches his eye.

It is largely dark, but this just drew more attention to the light at its far end; the top-right corner of the photograph. The light of a lantern.

Illuminated just to the lantern’s side is a flat, mat-looking object, with a humanoid figure laid atop it.

Jordan nearly hurts himself whipping his head to stare down the darkened, metal hall. He is met only with darkness.

Staring back down at the photo, he finds nothing has changed.

Nervous, he raises an arm. The figure in the picture does so as well. In the same style, and with the same speed.

Jordan could almost swear that the image had predicted his movement, and the figure had moved before him. Upon further investigation, he found that they were in perfect sync, and concluded that these pictures showed the content of their images in real time.

As Jordan twiddles his fingers above his head, watching the shadows they sent onto the concave wall behind him via the photograph, he wonders aloud:

“Where the fuck am I?” “Who the fuck was that girl– Jocelyn? Who was she really, why’d she have these fucking things?” “Why’re they pictures of that mountain?” “What the fuck is going on?”

“You’re the fuck going on” Zain responds. “Get it? ‘Cause you probably fucked that girl.” “I bet you fucked with that girl.”

Jordan wished to himself that he could get up and walk away from– this, as Zain begins proclaiming aloud something along the lines of  “she actually probably fucked you, since you were out– if that’s how that works”.

Attempting to tune Zain out, Jordan flips through the photographs again, tossing those that he’d seen to his side on the mat.

One of these, landing away from the others, is the picture of the towny, wherein the old woman is still trudging clumsily through the snow. Jordan’s attention is elsewhere as Terry, dressed in a gray sweater and a parka, strides into the picture’s frame.

He walks past the woman without a word, looking side to side, swiftly turning and slugging her in the back of the head once he’s behind her.

Catching her as she falls limp into the snow, Terry pulls her behind one of the scene’s brick houses and out of the picture’s view.

Jordan has fixated on another photo, one that he had not laid eyes on before; it is of a lantern-lit room that seemed to have been built in some far-off part of this sewer-system.

There, sat in a wheel-chair, is an old man with a face like a veteran. He is wearing what seems to be a bullet-proof vest, his legs end before the knee, and his nose is long enough to nearly dip into the bowl of broth he is drinking from. Jordan’s eyes go wide, his tentative feelings of safety being annihilated as the man lowers the bowl, revealing a familiar symbol on his chest.

Jordan hesitated on what conclusion to jump to.

Was this some sort of trick? Couldn’t be. Had this guy stolen a vest from them, being some macho rebel? Maybe he’d seen wrong? He looked again. The symbol was scraped in many places, deep cuts into the vest perhaps suggesting an attempt to remove it. However, it was still there, all the same.

Jordan finally came to a decision. These people– that girl, at least, had patched him up, and he desperately needed help right now. However, especially given what he’d just seen, he could not afford to in any way trust them. His condition was regrettable, and not likely to get better; a grimace came to his face as he removed the veil from over his bandaged-up lengths of swiss cheese.

Sharing Jordan’s look of dismay, Zain bends down towards the “legs”, thumbing his chin in a thoughtful manner. “Yep, you’re doing the stanky-leg, all right”, he says.

Jordan considers bashing his head into the metal wall behind him in an attempt to banish the annoying spirit, but thinks better of it, remembering fondly the days when he body-checked lockers to comedic effect; he did not want to taint that.

Jordan considered having Scorched ‘El substitute his legs, again, in order to help him down the hall, but found it too painful to even try. 

Even with the spirit’s help, he could barely stand, and he felt that the pain of straining his ruined appendages could cause it to lash out; it had done just that, and to destructive effect, when Jordan’s legs were first shot to high hell.

Whether it came down to negotiating or fighting, Jordan had to be the one to go to them, assuming the two he’d seen were even working together. If they came to him, they’d be coming with a plan, and this would immediately put him at a disadvantage.

But how could he ever avoid that?

Above these sewers, in the town Jordan’d seen in the photographs, Terry can be seen within the stall of a public restroom.

He is sitting on the toilet, the lid down, and is speaking on the phone.

“Yeah. Had to incapacitate one. According to protocol, all non-operatives in the area are to be suspected, so yes, I’ve placed her in a place where it’s sure to reach her. Anyways, ‘still waiting on signal.”

Terry’s tone and expression are flat, much like Charleen’s had been. Beside him, in an open duffel bag, a gleaming metal nozzle and a large, unmarked cylinder can be seen.