And what proved to be the night of Floyd's death would also prove to do Salome in.

But let's retract, to where it started. Right at the moment, Ritcher pressed that elevator button. The noise of which summoned two personal to question him for another form of identification.

Two people with heavy steps (combat boots made those thick noises) and the attitude of authority in their voices.

"What's your name again?" One of them had asked. A female's voice, he could tell behind the mask. The other, male, because he grunted with that disgusting hoarseness, pointed his rifle at Ritcher. He couldn’t see the gun hitting his back, but he sure felt it.

"I believe I've already given the men at the entrance my name," He said and pressed the button again. It came faster and binged open. He was just about to cross inside before the barrel of a rifle barricaded him.

"She asked for your name," The man said.

So he smiled, though they could not see it. And he took two turns. One to put his ear towards the woman, the other to put his ear towards the man. They repeated. He chuckled.

"Why am I being detained here?" Ritcher asked. He clenched his fist.

"Because that elevator goes up to Salome, that's why," she said. "And that's not something most of us are authorized for. So if you want to talk to her, you've got to at least have a reason. A good one, and a very good clearance too,"

"I just want to talk. That's it," He mumbled.

“You should know - if you were one of us,” She held her tactical shotgun close. “If you were…one of us you should know what kind of clearance you’d need to get up there,”

She took a step back and pointed her gun towards his head.

"Who are you?" She asked, her voice timid. The bottom layer, the people below the stairs caught wind. Some of the guards rose from their stools and desks. They looked at the scene.

It was like magic, watching Ritcher. A cane propped out from his side, seemingly camouflaged in his dark clothing. He let it fall and tap the floor with its tip, and caught it before it could land completely. And he tapped again, like some kind of Morse code to a being far beyond any of them.

He stopped. The air went cold, something coarse rubbed against the back of her neck.

"Do you live in sin?" He asked.

"I'm going to need back up," She mumbled into the radio on her shoulder. "Who are you?"

"Do you live in sin?" He asked the other man with the assault rifle.

They closed their stances off and took steps away from the man.

"Do you even have to answer?" Ritcher asked. "I can see into your soul. Outrage, despair, pleasure.” He turned to the man. “You seem like the type of person who enjoys killing, you must have been a good soldier before this life. Do you feel neutered now?"

He turned to the woman.

"You're not as dark as he his, though I can tell you wish you were,"

"I'm going to ask again," Her shoulders rose, she put the butt of her gun firmly against her chest. It was locked in. "Who. The fuck. Are. You?"

"No one,"

He slammed down his cane. Smoke covered the field. A large waft that extended out, past the stairs and elevator, leading up to the empty bar and the game slots, past pool tables all the way out, through the doors. And into the immediate area outside, like a smoke ring covering the base of the casino.

When it all settled, and the black dust receded, he was gone.

And the woman screamed.

The sand blew out, every which way and the young cadet could not see a thing past her hand which she put firmly in front of her face. Her own knuckles punched her back from the force, but perhaps it was a blessing, that the currents were strong enough to blow her. To shoot her into a dead slot machine, and then past it. She latched onto a slot lever, which she pulled down and yanked with the force of her body. She was dragged, feet, yards, as far as the bartender's lounge at the opposite side of the room. Her shotgun went off midway. It blew someones head off. Viscera flew, and eventually receded into the sand.

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She didn't stop until her back struck the wood. Guns all around her went off, but their flashes could not cut through the rising darkness. So she stayed, huddled and in a ball, as the sandstorm pushed against her.

It stopped after a few minutes.

She opened her eyes and removed her goggles. The sand came off from them, pooled at the rims of her glasses. It fell down to her boots, to a floor that had a thin layer of black sand. She rubbed her swollen eyes. When vision came back to her, she finally noticed the damage. A third of her comrades, dead. Their bodies stiff and limbs pointing out of waves of sand. She tried moving, her ribs were bruised, and each crawl towards her shotgun felt like a dagger picking at her.

"What was that?" She spoke in half-stutter and half-scream. Immediately, She felt three points of pain. Her back, her shoulder, and her leg. Aches, and then the numbness of swelling. And she got the best treatment out of most of them. Because most of them (her teammates) had died, being slammed into things. The abrasive explosion of sand had crushed most of their bodies against some kind of wall or furniture.

She took a step forward and nearly fell. She landed on her knees, in front of her shotgun. There was someone's skull in front of her. She might have screamed if her ears weren’t ringing, if her head was not shaking. She felt dead as it was, and whether it was toughness or shock, she just stood. With the butt of her gun, lifting herself off the floor.

She walked a bit. Another corpse, his vertebrae was sticking out of his neck.

"Oh god," She said.

Not all had died, at least. Some of them were beginning to stand, at last, their legs wobbling and shaking too. Some were working the sand out of their guns. Most of the uninjured came from the team members outside who hadn't suffered the explosion.

It was the beginning of re-cooperation. It didn’t last long.

There was a tap.

A loud, skin crawling, stomach-turning tap. Like a hollow bell going off. It was a ringing noise, that came from the elevator doors (that by now had been forced open and malfunctioned).

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

And like ocean waves, the sand began to drag back. Not quickly, not even as strong as to carry them all with it. But the sand dragged, coming out of and exiting the open-mouth dead. The swollen wounds of the dying. It came out of nooks and crannies, out of boots and bleeding holes. It came on back, dragging itself towards the elevators and then once approaching, going upwards as if climbing the shaft.

She followed them halfway to a small spot in front of the elevator where they had regrouped. Blood came down her forehead, she stood against the guard rail to stand. What was left of it, at least?

"What's happening?" She asked a commanding officer. She felt sand in her boots slip out in between the gaps. They traveled the air in a long, wafty rope. She tried catching it, she put her hand against the sand, and it slipped through her finger cracks and went down, towards the elevator.

Magic.

"You didn’t tell us everything," She murmured. “You didn’t say what any of this was. If any of this could even be explained,”

She couldn’t even blink.

"As if I knew?” The Commander said. He breathed hard. “You should always expect something,”

"This is a horror movie or something." She looked around at the stiff expressions of the dead. "A disaster."

The Commander pushed her shotgun close to her chest. He raised one finger to her face.

"We still have a job, supernatural or not, dead or not. Get your head in the game."

She maintained her catatonic expression. Then she observed the commander, with wide, unblinking eyes and an unnerving stillness.

"If your guns are jammed, find new ones," The Commander pointed his flashlight into the now broken elevator shaft. The door mechanisms struggled to close even though the frame had been caved in, so they made a popping noise. Sparks flew out from the button-grid. "If you can't find any working guns, then start cleaning your own."

He pointed his flashlight up, then whined.

“The lines cut,” He pointed down. “The elevator is crushed, we’ll have to take the stairs.”

She saw the metal rope from the elevator hang like a noose.

"Where’s the target?" One of them asked.

“Probably up,” He said. “We’ve got, what, ten people up there plus our thirteen? Let’s move up, I’ll let the others know what’s going on.” The Commander said.

The others had started up the stairs. She stayed back, waiting for the Commander who dialed three times before he got an answer. His forehead looked cracked with stress, the lines growing wider and wider.

"Salome?" He sounded relieved. She wasn’t. "Yes, yes he made it through, we need to get you out-"

Salome hung up. He threw the phone onto the floor. Shook his head, slapped his helmet. Then he turned, to look at her. She couldn’t even feel her leg anymore.

"What are you doing?" He screamed at her. "Get up there!"

But she didn't want to move. Not even after getting yelled, she really couldn't move.

She looked to her side, at the corpse of her friend, who had his skin ripped off his face from the blast. Whose ivory-bone mask stared back at her, one-eyed (because the other was rolling around somewhere, or carried by the sand. Who knew?). This friend, who at one moment had stood next to her questioning Ritcher, who by sheer chance had been the one to die instead of her.

His body was collapsed into a concrete wall. If he only stood just a few degrees off…just anywhere where he could have been blown away instead.

She threw her gun down, and timidly limped back, as far as she could make it, before she could find a stool to collapse on.

The Commander’s eye twitched.

"Coward," He said. And picked up her shotgun.