Mezzanine

| 5 |

The cold, dry air burned my lungs as I ran toward the factory. The world around me froze, like time had stopped. The only exception was the scream pounding through my head and the slow pulse of red light swelling in the lowest window of the building on the horizon.

I didn't know who was screaming, but it sounded like a girl. It was a cry of agony—of terror.

She wasn't screaming out loud, which made me worry she couldn't. Something was stopping her. Reaching out through thoughts was all she could do, and I was the only one that would hear.

Pins and needles danced across my skin, and my hair stood up on the back of my neck. A magnetic pull vibrated through the atmosphere, tugging me toward the factory. Static hummed and reverberated in my skull, amplifying to the buzz of a hornet's nest.

I glanced over my shoulder once. The green house shrunk with each step I took. Blue and white light pulsed out of its windows, but I couldn't hear even a hint of the music. Carter's form was barely visible—a shadow sitting in the grass next to the street.

The irrational fear that if I lost sight of him, he might disappear, crept over me, but I pushed it down. I couldn't focus on him right now. Whoever was screaming was in trouble. She needed help. Desperately.

Within a few yards of the building, a radiant warmth prickled over my body. I slowed my pace, my heart racing as a cold sweat slicked my back.

The red glow illuminated the old, faded graffiti that coated the walls—dark, unintelligible words. I could make out some of the letters, but they were scrambled.

What I did understand were the images. Painted red and black flames surrounded the window, with silver gears scrawled beneath them in place of coals. At the top, the flames turned into an angel—or perhaps a demon—forming from ash and taking flight towards the smokestacks at the top of the building.

My legs shook beneath me as I took the last steps to reach the glowing window. The acrid smell of burning metal laced the air, along with something putrid like rotting meat. I swallowed down the nausea rising in my throat.

Dark shapes moved within the glowing red haze beyond the glass. The hum grew in my head until it took the form of strange, unfamiliar words. Guttural tones like the cracking of a voice. Hissing and spitting like the whispers of a fire.

I placed a hand on the outer wall. As soon as my skin touched the bricks, I snapped back. Warmth poured off them like the entire factory was an enormous furnace. It wasn't enough to burn me, but the unnaturalness of it sent a shudder of fear down my spine.

"What the fuck," I muttered under my breath.

It was just a fire. Old chemicals or something that ignited within the building. There had been an accident here before, right? There were probably tons of combustible materials that had never been removed still inside.

It was natural.

Right?

The humming and buzzing of voices through my head told me otherwise. I couldn't just sit here and wait like a coward. Whoever was screaming in there was in pain, and I needed to help them.

I kicked at the window with the sole of my combat boot, but the glass was way too thick. I needed to find another way in.

I rushed around the edge of the building, bramble and thorny vines clawing at the fabric of my jeans and scraping at my bare arms. I stomped the weeds down as best I could, but after years of being abandoned, the perimeter of the building had become an overgrown labyrinth of thorns.

Finally, I reached the edge of the factory and turned around the corner, my skin stinging with fresh scrapes. The front had no windows on the ground floor, only a few small panes of broken glass on the upper levels.