Some time later, Michael was still trying to explain how he "knew" where the Tower was without having any concrete details. They seemed, understandably, skeptical that Michael could find the place in his head.

"But why can't you tell us where it is?"

"Look, I'm telling you," Michael explained to them again for the third or fourth time, "that it doesn't work that way."

Sarah looked at him with an expression that said she'd been getting frustrated with him. And with the other two women's eyes on them both, it made the whole experience worse. But the feeling of electricity inside Michael didn't abate.

"So let me get this straight. You can just look at your mind map thing and then see where The Tower is, right?"

Michael nodded, and then he realised that wasn't true, at least not quite. "Not quite, but it's kind of similar."

"How so?"

"I mean I have a mental image of it. I see it when I think about the location, but not really anything about where it actually is. It's not like a geographical map or anything." The other two girls gave Sarah a worried glance, and then he said, "What I mean is that, like... when I see a street sign and then I follow that route in my head and I get closer to The Tower. But not a concrete distance, so it's like, for example, when you are looking at an object and you can't really see how far it is, right? It's kind-of the same."

Sarah raised an eyebrow at him, and he sighed and tried again to explain. "So the point is, if you guys want to find it, you have to trust me."

Exasperated, the blonde looked to her two friends and said, "This guy hasn't worked out anything! He's still eating tortilla chips out of packets like a twelve year old, doesn't know how his power works and has almost been wiped out by monsters so many times it's a miracle there was anything left for us to rescue!"

"You call what you did rescuing me? Seriously?" Michael retorted, trying not to get annoyed. He needed the three women, he realised. "I thought it was called 'hostage-taking.'"

Katie shot a worried look at Sarah, and then to Michael and Lucy.

"What, so we should trust you to lead us into a big, creepy building in a dead land filled with monsters?" said the platinum blonde girl. Her anger had come on quickly, Michael thought.

"Well," Michael started.

"I mean it's bad enough you think we're just gonna take you on your word and you're not gonna screw us over or, I dunno, take us somewhere dangerous to trap us, maybe so that your weird black power thing can, like... feed off our blood."

Throwing up his hands, Michael returned, "What the hell are you even talking about anymore, Sarah?"

Stepping between them, the brunette, trying to defuse the tension in the room, said, "Let's not fight."

Sarah glowered at her.

"No. No way." the blonde replied. "Look. I'm not going with this guy to find some weird evil Tower where there's some weird magical object inside that does whatever. Or that lets him get whatever the hell it was he wanted from that goddess who visited him." Sarah threw a nasty glance in his direction.

"We've all had visions of the same place, Sarah. That's got to mean something."

"So that means we're all supposed to go along with him?" Sarah asked, turning her attention back to Katie.

"It certainly seems like someone or something wants us to," said Lucy.

"You're telling me that we should follow him on the strength of what, exactly?" said the platinum blonde, her tone getting more heated. Michael had thought she might not like him, and here it was. It didn't really matter what she said, it felt like to Michael she would just continue being as much of a pain as possible until he proved her right. And she would make a mistake that would prove to them he was worth following.

"None of you have to come with me. I don't even know where it is, like you keep pointing out Sarah. If you want to stay here, then go ahead. I've got nothing else to do in this insane world and really, I'd like my family back at some point if I can."

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

"The city is full of those monsters and no-one's going anywhere!"

"That's my point, though," Katie interjected, putting herself in the firing line. Michael watched her try to be diplomatic and get them to agree to help him.

"The whole city, hell, probably the whole world, is like this, Sarah, right? There's nothing for us to go back to. There's nothing to do. Why shouldn't we try to get out of the city? Even if Michael isn't totally sure about how his powers work?"

"Right," Sarah replied sarcastically. She pointedly turned to face Katie directly, saying, "So, that means that we're supposed to go on a magical mystery tour of the dead city, looking for this place that has called all of us for some weird, fucked-up reason. You don't think that sounds a bit dodgy?"

"OK," Lucy started. Michael watched as Lucy stood up, and looked Sarah square in the eye, before calmly saying, "Then how about this. I'm going with him." Her red hair was in her eyes a little and Michael noticed how they flashed and looked in his direction.

Sarah didn't look convinced at all.

"And if you don't wanna come, Sarah, then don't."

"What? Lucy... You're on his side?"

"It's not a 'side'," she said, shaking her head at Sarah. "If we stay here, nothing changes. We run out of food, and the world is still insane." Michael had a suspicion that he might be in Lucy's favour a little more, even if he wasn't quite sure why. She certainly didn't trust him as much as Katie seemed to.

But Katie didn't seem to want to get involved in this stalemate anymore. Sarah's gaze, like Lucy's, turned to Katie and Michael watched the two girls in silent communication, seeming to discuss, or at least consider, the situation. Katie turned from Sarah and looked at Lucy, and then she finally said, "I'll go too." Her face, her body, all looked like they had been weighed down by the decision. "But if it looks too dangerous, we come back. Or at least I will."

The three women were all standing, facing each other down, while Michael was sitting. The whole thing was getting to be a bit much.

"Look..." he started. They didn't pay him any attention.

"You've both gone insane."

"You heard me, Sarah. We've got nothing here, so we should try to go find this thing, this tower."

"That's fucking insane!" said Sarah.

Katie's voice wavered slightly when she spoke. "Me and Lucy are going to go, Sarah. Please come with us. We'll be safer together." Her quivering voice had the slightest note of sadness and a small, quiet pause filled the room as Michael realised how scared the brunette actually was, deep down, behind that facade of control. The blonde gave Katie and then Lucy a hard stare and sighed.

Michael said, "Girls..."

But again, they all ignored him, as the women made a silent decision. Lucy's hard, almost feral, expression made him worried that Sarah's mistrust of him wasn't misplaced. And Katie, despite looking and sounding scared, gave the blonde the same intense gaze. Sarah said, "Fine. I'm not staying here alone."

Lucy's expression was difficult to read and Sarah didn't seem to know how to react.

"Right," Michael started, "I guess that's settled."

Once again, the girls, still locked in a three-way staring contest, ignored Michael as he watched the girls reach some kind of resolution in the unspoken communication between them. It was as though he had suddenly been sidelined, the decision having been made by them already and his voice now extraneous. It didn't sit well with him, but at the moment he didn't feel that it mattered.

He needed to get out of the city, away from this house and this bizarre new reality.

But as the silence settled over them, a small thought bubbled up from his mind.

There was the feeling, the tugging at the back of his mind. The pull towards The Tower. It started as a subtle, strange feeling, but proceeded to grow stronger as his mind showed him a vision, becoming more urgent and compelling, almost. The three girls were now having a hushed, hurried conversation as Michael was thinking, and their talk had taken on a serious and determined air.

Michael, who was only partially listening to them now, could only focus on that single thought, which seemed to grow into a desire, an impulse. He could barely understand it himself but there was an overriding and powerful urge to leave this place, as if staying there, or being there with the three of them was somehow unsafe, or threatening.

Michael got up from the chair he'd been sitting on, the other girls not paying him any mind as he made for the doorway that led out to the stairs.

Before he got to the doorway, his mind's eye was overtaken by flashing images of dark things; some were the creatures that had attacked him before but there were also dark, almost alien images. There was something inside his mind, in that deep, hidden, secret part, which told him to flee. To run away. The world had turned upside-down. He'd found himself with strange powers, three girls he didn't know or understand, and a quest that had come from an entity he couldn't identify.

Something deep inside him said that, maybe, Sarah had been right, and he should leave the girls here and try and make his way out of the city on his own. His vision began to swim with black shapes and darkness.

He was almost to the doorway now and he heard a voice. A quiet, subdued one.

"...Mike? Michael? Hey, Mike, where are you going?"

He somehow came back to his body for a moment, a dim awareness telling him that he'd dropped to his knees and was holding his head in his hands, and then he got a panoramic vision of the Tower assaulting his vision, and what looked like a tall, dark figure clad fully in a black cloak and a shadowed hood was in front of it.

And then his mind exploded and his consciousness faded to nothing as a great darkness enveloped his body, and Michael fell into unconsciousness. When he awoke, the three women were looking down at him, concern and worry etched onto their features as they helped him stand, taking his weight with surprising ease.

And in the dark corner of his vision he could see a black, hulking figure.