Chapter III: Our Mother of Eternal Grace

Jack craned his head around the doorway to make sure that whatever creature was there was not waiting down the hall. He saw nothing but heard the pitter-patter of feet- or hands- scampering away. He cursed to himself. It was almost completely dark save the somewhat-illuminating beam of his newly-acquired flashlight. After making sure the coast is clear, he went back to the desk and ripped out drawer to look for something else- anything that can be of use. Jack noticed a large, asymmetrical hole ripped out of the back of the drawer. He pushed the desk aside and looked in disturbed wonder at a large hole made in the wall, narrowing away into a small tunnel. He could hear noises coming from the hole and decided it was no longer in his best interest to stay.

As he walked out of the now pitch-black hospital room, he kept himself relatively calm by prioritizing in his head.

Step one, he thought, find combat uniform and anything that can be used as a weapon. Step two, seek out other humans while retaining Level 7 cautionary protocol. Step three-

He shined his flash light rhythmically from one side of the hallway to the other as his footsteps echoed on the bare tile floor. He noticed that, the more he walked on, the more unsanitary substances he found on the wall. He could identify blood and rust fairly easily, but there was something else on the wall too, something he couldn't quite recognize until he came closer. He refused to touch it with his bare finger, so he took the scalpel and prodded it gently. It split open like a sac, excreting blood and chunks of hair and bone. A layer of muscle shone underneath.

Jesus Christ, Jack thought grimly, liquefied flesh.

Jack heard a noise from the left-hand side. He swiveled his flashlight over to see the round circle of light break on the unsanitary walls. He found a side hallway. He paused for a moment, steadying himself and preparing for anything that lay beyond. He checked for a moment. The silence held over the whole floor as Jack squeezed his flashlight just a little- to make sure it was still there, to assure himself that he at least had light if nothing else. Finally, after some deep breathing, he silently turned the corner and saw that it was a short hallway free of any signs of life. He sighed in relief, then tensed up again, wondering whether or not the sound alerted anyone. He heard nothing, so he walked forward, trying to keep his bare feet silent by simply shuffling along the narrow hall. It ended at a corrugated red set of double doors. They each had a narrow rectangular window. Jack looked through it and saw absolutely nothing. He placed his hand on the handle and turned.

It was locked. He heard the pattering of feet behind him. He didn't wnat to turn around. Turning around showed him what he was facing. Turning around meant he couldn't just ignore his problem. Turning around always scared the shit out of him. But he had to turn around.

There was nothing there. A sweep over the whole area, floor-to-ceiling, showed nobody or nothing in the hall.

The lock clicked behind him and the door swung open. Jack spun around on his heel and turned towards the room, cursing for a moment, then stopping. It took all his courage not to drop the flashlight. There were bodies. Bodies lined the room in different sections. Eyeless torsos with bat wings were in one walled-off corner of plexiglass. Bodies sewn together by amputated limbas appeared like a twisted kaleidoscope. Other things. Creatures with jaws extended to their feet. Creatures covered in eyeballs. All formerly human. And all alive. And in the center was an eight-year old girl. Her breathing was erratic, and she was hooked up to a heart and blood pressure monitor. The constant beeping coincided with the agonized moans of the twisted beings. Her jaw was missing and she was hooked up to hundreds of wires. He could see her jolt as electric pulses were sent through her small, frail body. Jack could barely breahe. He gagged on the now obvious putrid stench of iodine and blood. He took a step forward, and then felt the needle perforate the skin on his right arm. Liquid fire coarsed into his veins. He screamed, arched his back, and in the process saw a tall man with round-rimmed spectacles adress him with a smile that would have been somewhat charming had his face not been covered in blood spatter.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Adrian. I see you've left your quarters. I'm afraid that will never do."

And then the pain crescendoed in his head as his muscles spasmed, and he was thrown to the ground. He screamed openly and he supposed through the wincing of the liquid fire in his veins that the scream could be heard all across the building. Then he could barely think about what death was like before he passed out, unconscious, on the stained, blood spattered floor.

Chapter II: Tactical Solution

Corporal Susan Locke shifted her chestnut hair away from her eyes as she strode purposefully down to the office of Major Cobain. Two uniformed guards saluted the young woman at the door, and she looked them over warily. They weren't nearly on the strong side and no confidence showed on their faces; their knees trembled a little adressing her. They were the perfect example of the problem that Corporal Locke was about to take to the highest commanding officer in SWORD.

Counting the Captain and the Major who only rarely work on assignments themselves, there were only twelve people left in the entire organization. Eight of them were newly-instilled recruits, such as those two cowardly guards outside the Major's office. They know about a good deal of the Revenants and had the action protocol involving a good deal of them. The problem was either  that the recruits either didn't believe a single word of what they were saying, or that they did believe what they were saying, but trembled in fear at the very sight. They were too timid to pick up a gun and were always looking behind them- an amiable thing to do when on a mission, but simply foolish in the highly-protected complex. Corporal Locke feared that the newbies would run instead of fight or be too shell shocked to do anything. Last week Private Hurst shot himself when he realised exactly what was going on in the world. He died in his dormitory and wasn't found until role call the next day.

While walking down the stairs to the complex she thought about all the people she has lost in tactical operations, Liutenant Adrian being the most recent. She knew Adrian from ten years back when they were both police officers. She was twenty-one and just entered Homicide then. Adrian showed promise so he moved up ahead to Vice along with her younger sister, Jessica. She still remembered the call, the sudden stop, and she remembered the feeling as every muscle in her body tensed at the sudden cut off. She remembered Jessica's limp body, hanging by thin wire from the catwalks. She remembered Adrian. She hated Adrian once upon a time. Even when she learned what was truly behind it, when she knew that Adrian couldn't have saved her even if he tried to, she still hated him. But she grew to tolerate and even sometimes appreciate the work he puts in. The reason he moved ahead in SWORD was the same reason he moved ahead to Vice in the police department- he showed initiative and he worked when others couldn't be asked to work any more. They had a kind of symbiotic tie to each other. Jack would save Susan when a Revenant used more of its power or when it was craftier, and she would save his ass after he did something stupid. It worked and that's how they coexisted. Sometimes, they even joked, ignored the scar of their past for a short time. Then they were placed in the same squad when all other teams were killed in the wake of a startling increase in the number of Doors and Revenant sightings. They were an unstoppable Door-preventing team. Until three days ago.

No, she thought, best not think about that.

Shrugging off the thought, she finally made her way to the windowed door that read, "Major Cobain, SWORD Operations Manager" in Italicized letters on a bronzed plaque. Beyond the door was a short hallway, with chairs on the left-hand side and a plexiglass station behind which an attendant used to sign people in to see Major Cobain. Both were empty, and haven't been in use for three years. She wasted no effort in crossing the short hallway, military boots clacking on the checkerboard pattened tiles. She knocked once, echoing on the birch wood door, then checked to see if it was unlocked; finding it so, she opened the door and stepped in.

"Major, we need to talk."

The Major was on the phone with someone who seemed to be making it a one-sided argument. "Uh-huh... yes... I underst- you don't have to yell... yes sir." Finally the person on the other end of the line seemed satisfied and apparently hung up on Major Cobain. "H-hey!" He slammed the phone back into the reciever with unnecessary forcefulness and then glowered at Corporal Locke. "What do you want Susan?"

"Who was that on the other end of the line?"

"A government run agency called the Supernatural Analysis Bureau or some boondoggle."

"They want to shut us down?"

"They're threatening it. No. They want our little group to be bought and taken under their control. They apparently have subgroups operating in anti-Revenant groups. However, they call them Phobic Representational Entities or some shit."

"They're trying to buy us out?!"

"Yes, exactly! And what's more, these bureaucrats are threatening to incarcerate all of us for interfering with government business... and... worse... if we don't comply."

Susan thought about this. Governments tended to be more strict and it would likely lead to a complete overhaul of regulation and protocol. But they had the experience, the training, the arsenal, the teachings, and most importantly the manpower to ensure it. But it means that their anti-Revenant activity grew. "Sir..."

"What is it?"

"Have you put any thought into rearming our soldiers or hiring new troops?"

"Excuse me?"

"Sir, we're down to only twelve men. Counting you and Captain Volodarskii, there are only four people here who have even encountered a single Revenant or their serfs-"

"And you want me to hire more newbies to get themselves killed?"

"Sir strength lies in numbers-!"

"And you think I don't know that!? You think I'm not aware that we need more men. You think I don't know that we're going to have to sometimes just let incidents happen so battle-weary survivors can be recruited? You think I don't know that sometimes we even have to pull members of the unknowing public out of their homes and lives and into battle uniforms? You think I'm not aware of that?!" She saw the corrotid artery bulging out of the left side of his neck. She saw his face reddening and his jaw setting. She knew when she pulled a raw nerve, and she also knew that there was no way to stop something like this once started. "You understand me? I know that we're going to have to do that but I don't want to! I have to sit down here every day to find someone with some kind of occult or combat experience that nobody will miss out of the phonebook, or look up possibly survivable attacks for people, and it eats me alive to realize what I'm sending them towards. It hurt when I recruited you and Jack, and it hurt every time before and it will hurt every time after. I know the Doors are acting up. The Revenants are becoming more active. They're preparing for- for something. I don't know what but it's going to be big. Incidents have risen 500%."

"Sir, I know, it's just..."

"I'm not finished," said her commanding officer, "Deaths from these incidents has risen 800%. You know how many people were killed this month alone? Three thousand people died over seven hundred isolated incidents, all covered up, all horrible and painful and you're expecting me to train people to send them out to end up like those three thousand-"

"Excuse me, sir. You were the one that said we were going to meet our horrible end if we signed up for this, and you know what? You said that's fine. We're saving other lives. We're making a difference, no matter how small or large, and we're putting the Revenants back, if only a little."

The Major was silent. He calmed a little, then he lowered his head. He looked at the stack of papers on his desk, then at the photo he always kept facing away from personnel. Corporal Locke never knew what the photograph was of. "...go. Look for people, but I don't want to be talked to right now."

"Sir?"

"I'll be fine. I just need to think." She left Major Cobain alone to his thoughts, and she quietly and worriedly went back to her own.

Chapter I: Fading Memories and Dimly-Lit Rooms

Jack Adrian was somewhere dark. Deep, inscrutable, impossible. He could feel himself slipping somehow. He saw light. Dim, grey, and flickering, but the light was there. He tried grasping for it, trying to head towards the light of consciousness, but unseen hands kept pulling him away.

In the darkness, fragments formed. They were fragments of his memory, forming and dissipating one after another. Each of them showed Jack's past, his most treasured and most terrifying memories. But this time, Jack could see everything that was going on.

First, he saw himself as a young child. It was strange, as he was looking in on himself from the outside. He remembered the location well. It was St. Anne's Catholic School. It was where he was sent off by parents who he thought were doing it for his own good; it wasn't until later that he learned that the two were settling divorce hearings and getting charged with disturbing the peace and drunk and disorderly conduct.

It showed the dark, teal Ford Explorer drop him off. A nun was waiting there for him, laugh lines and wrinkles. She was patting him on the head and telling him to come inside- congregation would begin followed by arithmetic and lunch.

The first fragment dissipated as the next one became tangible before him. This one was one he thought he had locked away and destroyed until it was only a nagging sensation at the back of his head. But there it was- from an outside perspective and so realistic Jack could swear he could reach out and touch-

He did. And now he was his eight year old self. He tried to gaze down at his hands, or lift them up to his face to verify whether he was in his eight year old body but he found he had no control over his movements. He played out the scene from beginning to end: walking through the half-burnt hallways, looking and crying over children he knew, their pale lifeless bodies stained with vomit, their innards splayed out on the floor around them. He saw Mother Siobhan still in her rocking chair, her wrinkled kindly face half-rotten, half-burnt to the point where she looked like a mummified corpse.

He hobbled towards her on his one good leg. He tripped over an overturned desk and scraped his knee. His eyes blurring with tears, he tried to reach out to her hand. When he touched it, it broke away from the rest of the body with a dry, pronounced snap. Jack stumbled backwards, turning and running out of the room. The ceiling was collapsing in fire and fugue and as the walls came down around him, over the wail of the fire engines and the ambulance, there were the sound of unearthly shrieks. A figure turned the corner down the hall and-

Then the second fragment faded, and a third came. This time Jack didn't reach out to touch the fragmented memory, but sat and watched. He wondered if he could turn away from the memory, but as a bodiless consciousness his attention was unfalteringly fixated on the fragment in the emptiness, and he watched in horror as he realized what was about to happen in the memory.

This one showed Jack, maybe 18 or 19 years old, driving down the streets of Dayton in what you hoped was an old Chevy a bland enough color as to be inconspicuous. He and officer Jessica Locke of the Dayton Police were on their biggest assignment, hopefully finally putting an end to a gang of suspected human traffickers. The steps that took them to this point accumulated to about eight months of research and legwork, and Jack was brimming with satisfaction over how far they've gone and how close they are to catching them.

Jessica Locke had the standard issue Glock 22 that was given to all police officers, as well as a Walther PP sidearm. Jack brought his own Beretta for the assignment. It was the culmination of his first year of service in Vice and he was proud- he wanted to use his own gun to treasure his first major assignment's closing; besides, who would know? He also, in his foolish pride, forgot to bring the ammunition for the Glock from the armaments closet in the police station, much to Jess' annoyance.

He tried to close his eyes when they were about to enter the warehouse, but he was refused the pleasure by whatever dark forces held his head in place. He felt like Alex from A Clockwork Orange, strapped to a chair and being spoonfed images- except instead of mind-altering propaganda, it was the painful shards of his once-tucked away memories.

The door swung open into the long-abandoned Reynolds Theater. It closed down after failing to make profit when the Victoria Theatre and the Schuster Center opened nearby, and it was the center of activity for gangs. Jack had his Beretta aimed and at the ready, while Jessica pulled out her Walther PP and aimed. They nodded grimly to each other and Jack kicked in the double doors leading to the main stage, expecting to see the richly dressed scum- violators of free will and destroyers of lives, feeding off the misery of others- and men and women both paraded on the stage like mannequins or puppets in the slave trade.

They did see puppets.

"No. Nononono-" Jack said in perfect pantomime with his younger self as he looked at the fragment of memory. As an outside observer, it all seemed surreal; Jack hoped it would have lessened the pain, but everything was there in bright, vivid colors and sharp, unnatural sound. The giggling and laughing sounded like something out of a cheap horror movie from the seventies, but in that place and time it chilled both the officers to the bone.

Four men dressed in either expensive business suits or pinstriped suits associated with the Mob were standing up on stage. They weren't quite standing more than they were limply staying upright on the stage. One was nearly floating off the ground. Their heads were bobbed but I could see splotches of blood around the eyesockets and their mouths, some droplets dripping onto the already-tattered suits they wore. They were dangling as if from invisible strings. Then a xylophone and organ combination played somewhere off in the right wing, but it was so flat as to grate the ears and send shivers down the spine.

Suddenly the eyeless, tongueless heads of the four human traffickers raised themselves, and their arms raised, bones snapping or popping as they were lifted off the ground and were made to dance in the bobbing, jumping unnaturally like marionettes. Jessica lifted said, "Shit!", raised her walkie talkie to her ear. "We need backup here quickly. I'm seeing dead bodies here, and whoever perpetrated this is still in the-"

The walkie talkie fell out of her hand and her eyes bulged, miniscule ribbons of blood trickling down from her sockets as she suddenly became rigid. Then by some unseen hand she was pulled onto the stage and taken stage left. Jack never wanted to hear her screams again, but he was forced to. His younger double in the memory was able to move his hands up, to cover his ears and scream himself to block out the sound, but the Jack that was observing from the empty, black world could not.

The lights dimmed and the curtains closed. Jack stumbled backwards, cursing as he made his way to the door. The whole ordeal was disorienting, and he stumbled twice. This time, Jack could see the four suited corpses walking, legs splaying and twisting in a way that was just unnatural, jerking and bobbing as if on unseen strings, towards Jack.

The fragment faded, and in the fourth and final memory he saw he and Susan Locke sitting across from Major Gerard Cobain, hair snow-white and face scarred with battle experience. Susan's eyes were rimmed red with tears and every so often she set her jaw and glared hard at the Younger Jack, eyes a mixture of teary mourning and blazing. Younger Jack squirmed in his seat under the gazes of both Susan and Major Cobain, trying to fiddle his fingers and make sense of all that he has seen and heard in the past seventy-two hours. The pieces were there, and they kind of fit together, but there were big gaps in the puzzle. It wasn't until later that Jack knew that those gaps were left for pieces that could never be grasped and ideas that could never be explained. The puzzle would never be finished and it would remain so for the rest of time.

"You understand that the job you are taking is a hindrance, a liability, and almost an assurance for an excruciatingly painful death," the Major began, saying this fact so calmly and plainly that it made both of the newly recruited mercenaries uneasy. "However, what you are doing will possibly assure the safety and well-being of others. You can make a difference out there. I know I haven't given you all the details over what exactly we do- in fact, the way I see it is that the less of these creatures you know, the less likely you will be to kill yourself or do something else completely stupid. Private  Adrian, you've had not one but two encounters with the beings we face, so you seem to have more experience- not in fighting or stopping them, but in understanding or living with them, and in our line of business you have to get experience in both or else you're going to die before you walk out the door." Younger Jack was about to pipe up and ask how the Major knew that, but thought better of it and lowered his head dejectedly. "You, Private Locke, have less experience in understanding these creatures; hell, you called me an 'insane fool' four or five times in the past three days, but you have enough years on the force to easily make both of you equally valuable. In either case, you are now operatives of the Specialized Warrior Operations Against Revenants Division. You can shorten that to SWORD if you like. Now here are your badges, and we'll start training and analysis of some of the missions and beings you might have to face-"

The fragment faded and the Jack faded back into unconsciousness.

*********************************************************************************

Jack Adrian woke slowly, his mind trying to stay asleep, fragments of memory be damned, as if in rebellion for the inevitable rude awakening. When he did wake up, he found himself laying down on an uncomfortably hard bed, the head rest tilted slightly upwards. He saw the dim glow of two fluorescent lights that did little more than turn the darkness into a somewhat bearable gray. The walls and ceiling were coated in unrecognizable, disgusting substances. He tried to move his arms and legs and found that he was still too tired to walk. He looked around the bleak hospital room. Trays that held rusted and unused surgical equipment lay scattered. Hypodermic needles and syringes lay carelessly across the floor, like pointed traps eagerly awaiting their next victim. There was a desk and swivel chair, both aged atrociously in disuse.

Then he felt a crawling sensation in the pit of his stomach. He undid the IV that laced its way into the vein of his arm and removed the tube that ran up his nose. He turned slowly, checking the floor to ensure that he didn't step on anything sharp. His legs wobbled and he almost fell over into a rather clustered pile of needles, but he reached out and grabbed the desk for support. The desk gave way but he luckily fell backwards instead of forward into the pile. He felt pain in his inner calf as something pointed and possibly deadly broke the skin. He curse in desperation and picked himself up, clinging to the hospital bed for support. He shakily removed the needle from his calf. He could know feel a breeze and realized that he was wearing a white robe used by patients instead of his ACU. He winced in pain as he craned his head up and around and looked out beyond the doorway of the hospital.

Beyond the dim gray of the dilapidated room, there was nothing but blackness.

Kicking aside the debris, Jack looked warily around for something he could use to pierce the darkness that awaited him. He searched the now toppled desk, forcefully yanking open every drawer. There were swabs and tongue depressors and disposable rubber otoscope pieces. He blindly retrieved a jar, checked its contents, and moaned as he realized that there were severed fingers in the jar. The jar burst, sending the digits across the floor to Jack's dismay. He looked at them for a time. The fingers greatly varied, some swelling grotesquely into purple sausage-like shapes, and some withered and dried beyond recovery. Yet another one branched off at the second knuckle to two smaller fingers. He made a point to avoid them as he continued his search for a flashlight, and in his splintered mind a question began to form which he spoke openly, "Why would a hospital of any kind have severed fingers?"

None of the four drawers on the left yielded any light sources, so he went to check the right side. The first two drawers had absolutely nothing- in fact, they were completely empty of anything. Jack thought about this for a moment, wondering with some dread whether or not there was anything else in the remaining two drawers at all. He reached for the third one then jumped back as something slammed against the inside of the drawer. Jack stepped back as whatever was inside began pushing and bashing itself against the door. Small dents appeared, shadows making the punctures in the metal distinct. After a few minutes, the banging stopped. Jack looked for something he could use as a weapon. There was a scalpel on the floor, rusted and possibly dull, but it was the only sharp object in the room besides the syringes or glass shards on the floor, both of which Jack immediately crossed off as impractical and unsanitary. The drawer was the only one of the four to have a lock on it, and the bronze-plated key was already in the lock.

Jack reached his hand out for the lock. Then he pulled it back. He took deep breaths. He didn't know how many it would take before he could safely open the lock. He felt his mind trying to reassure him. "It's okay, Jack. It's in a small drawer. It may have enough rage or power to cause whoever or whatever running this place to lock it in an exam room drawer, but either way it would be the size of a small groundhog. You can take it." His conscious mind tried to reassure himself, but he remained there, frozen, hand just short of grasping the key in the lock. He didn't move into action until one of the two dim lightbulbs in the room fluttered faintly, giving a small electrical buzz, and then, after emitting a bright flash of light, promptly flickered out, pervading the room.

It wasn't just the oncoming, unnatural darkness slowly spreading to him that ate at his mind and caused him to open the door frantically- the flash caused a split-second image to be burned into his mind, and also let loose some light into the hallway beyond. A gangly, unnatural thing with what appeared to be spikes sticking out of it was running across the doorway down the adjacent hall at the time of the flash. It was too blurred to be discernible, but he knew it must have been either tall or it was crawling on the ceiling or wall. He saw two jointed tendrils that he recognized as the thing's arms. They bent backwards. The sight of the creature sent Jack into swiftly unlocking the drawer and yanking on it so hard that the rollers inside the desk broke and the drawer and its contents were sent scattering. He saw it. The flashlight. It was sleek and chrome, unmarred by scratches or blemishes. He pressed the metallic button and sent a shaft of light shimmering out into the hallway just as the other light flashed and gave out.

And he saw the creature again.

Prologue

"Too look into the World Beyond the Doors
Is to gaze upon the very fabric that makes
the constants of the universe."
- The Mfwalga Aha'zra, Volume III of VIII

"We were stupid
All doors lead to the Empty City
The City decides when we're ready
for it."
- The Last Reports of Dr. Theodore Weiss

Crouched on the concrete floor of the warehouse, aided only by the dim, ever-fading sunlight from the windows on the far walls, were three figures. They said nothing, but looked towards each other warily for solace and comfort, then casting furtive, disbelieving glances back to the platform above. In the still, empty air just above the platform, there was a Door.

The three people, dressed in camouflage-patterned army combat uniforms and lugging heavy tan hiking packs with them, did not immediately react. They were too heavily weighted down and the sight of their target both unnerved and enamored them, calling them forth like a siren with its true face hidden.

The Door looked similar to any other door. It looked no different than the door that led them into the warehouse, or the door that took them out of the office, save for the unnaturally bright gleam of its color, or the fact that the Door suddenly appeared where a door logically shouldn't. First Lieutenant Jack Adrian adjusted the thick interwoven cords that looped around his belt. The cord attached to a pulley system that was fed by a large crank-driven spool of the thick metal strands. He grasped the cord, studying it, and he finally realized the full immensity of the task at hand.

Corporal Susan Locke and Private Douglas Jones stood behind him, both pairs of eyes locking in terror on the Door as the latch gave a resounding click and began creaking. The Door was opening. Smoke drifted out- no, it was not smoke. The more they stared the more it began to take concrete form. They were roads, twisting and contorting like thick tendrils of tar and paint as they escaped the doorway and flattened themselves onto the walls, ceiling and floors. Suddenly the horrible screech of metal threatened to burst the eardrums of the three mercenaries as the metal walls and some of the shipping containers had holes in them, ripping themselves into an impossibly endless void of nothing, neither dark nor light but simply not. A sign post suddenly appeared as if made of condensed vapor and quickly embedded itself on the far wall. A fire hydrant also emerged from whatever lay beyond the Door and fused itself completely to one of the few undamaged containers.

"Adrian, you know the mission!" Susan said, "Come on and shut the damn thing before this spreads!" Suddenly she pushed Private Jones aside as a manhole dropped from the ceiling with a whoosh of air and force.

Adrian nodded and looked gravely at the Door, roads and other things still emanating from the open doorway. He began sprinting towards the Door, just barely dodging the things that were sent from beyond. Shadows began forming around the perimeter of the door, beings with human forms and white pinhole eyes, engulfed in shadow and clawing madly at each other for escape. Adrian was right in front of the Door now and he saw the City in all its beauty. It dazzled him, and left him disoriented enough for him not to notice the shadowy hands reaching out towards him. Jones saw what was happening, and pointed it out meekly to Corporal Locke, who was busy firing at one of the beings of shadow. She took notice instantly.

"Adrian, shut the door! Quick-"

But the words were lost as Adrian's mind shut down completely, his body slouching but otherwise remaining standing. His eyes refused to register what was happening, and his other senses deadened as well. The shadows were upon him, dragging him in and slamming the Door almost shut. Corporal Locke tried making her way to the crank on the spool of thick wire, but the door and Adrian's half of the cord suddenly dissipated, severing the thick metallic rope. The roads that snaked out of the doorway like tendrils of asphalt also vaporized and ceased to be. The infinitely empty holes in the freight containers sealed up as if they never were.

"Dammit!" Corporal Locke exclaimed angrily.

"We're going to have to explain this to the Captain, or maybe even the Major." Private Jones gulped and his already-pallid face grew even paler at the thought.

"This is the first time a Door has acted up like that."

"That's what happens when we're not around in time to shut it back again."

"No, but didn't you see those shadows? That's the first time I've ever seen things like those."

"Yeah?"

"Don't  you realize what this means?"

"...no?"

"It means that the Doors- or even whatever lies beyond- is getting... agitated."

"Agitated?"

"Yes, agitated or... something. Hell, Adrian was one of our top people out there, and... this makes him the tenth person who's been taken in the past month."

They were silent for a moment. Then they gave each other knowing nods, trying to reassure themselves and each other, then they walked out of the warehouse, just as they began hearing the scrapes of corrugated metal containers straightening themselves. They left the warehouse to the shadows.