A rather intense heat bears down on all of you as you traverse the mostly-dead and anarchic city streets. It’s oppressively hotter than it’s ever been, and you have experienced many scorching-hot summers these past few years. More than half of you are profusely sweating and panting from exertion, yourself very much included.
Unbearable would be saying it lightly.
“We gotta find somewhere to stop and rest up,” says the female nurse. “Not sure how much our patients can handle this.”
“Yeah, I’m worried too,” the other replies. “But the stadium’s only a few blocks away. We can get there in fifteen minutes. At most.”
“You really wanna put them through this? We oughta at least let a couple hours pass and see if it cools down a bit.”
“What if it only gets hotter?” Kaja interjects. “Uh. I mean, sorry to interrupt.”
“No, no, it’s fine,” says the male nurse. “I was sorta thinking the same thing too. If we do stop, and it does get hotter then we’ll only get ourselves trapped somewhere.”
“And we might get cooked in the process,” Kaja adds. “At least stadiums are designed to deal with excess heat.”
“I don’t,” says the nurse. “I…”
The nurse furrows her brow and sighs deeply, unsure of what to do next. And as she ruminates your collective future, you hear gunfire coming from deeper in the city. Not only that, but you feel the ground trembling ever so slightly under your feet.
“I think the stadium might be in trouble,” you say. “I can hear gunshots - lots of gunshots.”
Everyone around you perks up their ears quizzically. But most aren’t able to hear the same things you are.
“I can’t hear anything,” says someone.
“I do,” says one of the orderlies, Ben. “Just barely, yeah. Buncha three-round bursts, and also some kinda whining? Or maybe screaming? It’s all animal-like.”
Everyone pauses mid-step in an attempt to listen harder, but only the two of you can hear what’s happening. And you nod to him in agreement - it isn’t just the sounds of rifles being fired. It’s also that faint sound of numerous creatures screaming and crying and probably also whining.
You’re not sure what kind of animal it is, and you’re not sure if you want to know.
“They stopped,” you say after a few moments. You note that the rumbling beneath your feet has also subsided. For now, anyway.
“We’d best keep moving,” says a patient. “Dunno ‘bout the others, but I don’t think I could stay out here much longer.”
The group then picks up the pace as best you all can towards the stadium, even despite the oppressive heat, and that dark orange sun. And as previously mentioned, it only takes you the better part of fifteen minutes to get there.
But it most certainly has been a laborious quarter of an hour. All of you are sweating waterfalls by this point, and are utterly drenched. Everyone is breathing hard and heavy, especially the patients.
Ms. Janelle - the one with the broken arm - she sways and staggers as she walks, unable to walk completely straight or by herself. One of the orderlies is doing his best to support her, but he looks close to his physical limits as well.
You’re also in pretty poor shape. If it wasn’t for your ability to regulate your body’s energies, you wouldn’t have made it this far. In fact, you would likely have fallen long ago.
Still, you all make it to the stadium. Or more specifically, the street that runs alongside the length of the stadium, with its entrance at the middle of it.
The moment the soldiers see you approach, a number of them run out towards you. All are armed with rifles and wearing ballistic armor on top of their urban camo fatigues.
Some immediately go to physically support everyone who's wounded, while the rest dutifully escort you towards safety. They walk in a protective formation around the group as a whole, with their rifles pointed outward in every direction.
As you approach the entrance, you get a better sense of what had actually happened with the gunfire from earlier.
The corpses of numerous large insects are laid out everywhere in front of the stadium entrance. Their blue-black blood seeps out of their cracked and punctured bone-like chitin, and drips down to the searing asphalt below.
Not only that, but the wide street that runs perpendicular to the one you’re on, the one that leads straight towards the entrance - it’s also filled with countless insectoid corpses. Each and every single one of them has been riddled by dozens of bullets.
A sharp sulfuric smell invades your nostrils the closer you get to the massive slaughter. Some of you gag at how overwhelming it becomes.
All of you rush as best you can, not just because of that smell, or the sight of all those corpses. But because a sense of urgency fills all of you nearly at the same time - the insects could return at any time and relaunch their assault.
Though you all push yourselves to your absolute maximum, it takes only a few moments to get to the entrance. There, you find it heavily protected by army soldiers wielding their rifles and wearing their standard issue body armor. Piled up in front of them are large Hesco barriers and regular sand bags. And laid down in front of those are loosely-coiled razor wire.
There’s just enough of a gap in the middle of it all for one or two of you to pass through without getting snagged or hurt. But you all go through as quickly as you can, patients first, then the nurses and orderlies. You and the others go in last.
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It occurs to you how calculated that is - who gets to safety first. Someone must have decided for it to happen in a certain way. Like there’s some kind of hierarchy. Then you wonder if whoever that person is, do they make their decisions based on what’s socially acceptable? Do they consult a committee? Is it based on human nature? Or does that one person just deem themselves the authority on the matter, and that’s the end of it?
Your brow furrows as you wonder what the truth of it is, and if that’s even the right call to make. And also - who chose the person who decided those rules?
“Hey, snap out of it,” says Kaja. “You’re doing that thing again, and, well, you’re up next. So get ready.”
You emerge from the waters of your wandering thoughts, only to come to realize that you’re now sitting in a massive medical tent. The tent itself appears to be deep inside the stadium, right on the grounds itself, as there’s grass under your feet.
All around you in this section of the tent are a number of folding chairs, which most of you are seated on. The rest are presumably in the section adjacent to you, which has dozens of beds in numerous rows and columns.
Army medics are all over the place, taking care of everyone around them. And there are plenty that need help, beyond just your group. As far as you can tell, some are suffering heat stroke and exhaustion, others are bleeding and bruised, and others far worse.
There’s so many others in need of dire help that your group only has one of the medics between all of you.
When he gets to you, he gets you to loosen your top a bit, then applies a soaking-wet hand towel to the back of your neck and shoulders. The relief is instantaneous, and you can’t help but sigh in relief. You feel water trickle down your back, even as your skin cools faster and faster.
He then hands you a canteen with what smells like an electrolyte drink inside, then moves on to help Kaja.
You greedily take a swig of your drink, which tastes indeterminately fruity. But unlike the usual store bought brand, this mix is a little salty. A part of you wants to cough at the oddness of it, but the better part of you welcomes it.
You all sit there in silence as you cool down and rehydrate, and as the chaos of the field clinic swirls all around you.
It’s about then that you realize that this entire place is noisy as hell. There’s just all kinds of moaning and groaning from those in the beds. And there’s all sorts of chatter from everywhere all around you, from what you perceive to be from the stands.
You imagine that most everyone else is up around there, which makes sense.
So what do you two think about all this? asks one of your companions, Telepathically.
Before either of you can answer, a chorus of replies comes from around you. Some thoughts are shaped well, like your companions, but most are messy and somewhat incongruous, like yours used to be. And what they all say is some mix of relief in the present and fear for the future.
Understandably so, after everything all of you have experienced.
You project your own thoughts and emotions outward and allow them to mix in with the rest swirling around you. As you do so, a sense of ease fills everyone’s thoughts, if only for a moment. It’s as though all you Telepaths are joined together in your shared fate, your shared trauma, which eases the burden a great degree.
As though all of you are now carrying that tremendous weight equally amongst yourselves.
It’s the first time you’ve personally ever experienced any kind of community like this. Not just this otherworldly thought swarm thing, but the simple act of belonging.
A bit like a guild, honestly. Sorta like a bunch of random people in a game all working together to help each other out. Except, of course, none of this is a game. You’ve almost died a handful of times just getting here, and you’re certain that it won’t be the last.
Your thoughts are interrupted by the sound of rifle bursts coming from the stadium entrance. They’re muted by the thick stadium walls and everything in between you, but certainly still loud enough to grasp your attention.
You feel each of the other Telepaths’ minds shut off whatever they’re broadcasting, and settle back down to more private states of mind. Some much faster than others, of course.
Not that it matters much in the big picture of things - you feel the emotional energy of the entire stadium shift. Everyone’s anxiety spikes up sharply with every burst, and it diffuses out for everyone to feel. The raw emotion swirls around and through you, strong enough that you fear it could sweep you away.
Next to you, Kaja stands up so suddenly that you jump a bit in your seat.
“I need to go see what’s happening,” she says resolutely.
“What the fuck for?!” you cry out. “Let the soldiers do their thing!”
“I don’t wanna stop ‘em! I set the blade out front and told ‘em it helps keep things away. I wanna know if it’s helping. ‘Coz if it’s not, then I need to do something about it!”
You hop up after her, snapping up all of the bags the both of you have been carrying.
“What, you think you’re the only one who can use Telekinesis around here?” you say as you chase after her. “You don’t think any one of those soldiers could use it better than you?”
“Yeah, maybe,” Kaja replies. “You called me a what - Level Seven Telekineticist?”
“Level Five. And you called yourself that, not me.”
“What would you rank me, then?”
“S Tier.”
“Think about that again,” she says with a scoff. “The shadow creature thing’s definitely stronger than me at it. I just barely held it off.”
“Fine, A Tier.”
“Great, A Tier. Sure. What if everyone else out there’s only a B Tier? And no-one else but me can lift it out? Plus if there’s another A Tier out there swinging it around already, then we can just go right back. But right now, I gotta know.”
You grit your teeth as the two of you run down the hallways and past the stands towards the entrance. The sounds of gunfire become deafeningly loud, enough to make your head spin. Not only that, but you can feel raw kinetic energy pass through you, almost as though you’re shooting the guns themselves.
It’s a visceral feeling that shakes you from inside.
The soldiers themselves are laser-focused on what’s in front of them, as they gun down insectoid after insectoid with ceaseless determination.
Ahead of them is the massive purple blade, partially embedded in the middle of the T-intersection in front of the stadium entrance.
The bone insects do their best to move around and away from it, but most simply can’t. Some spill off to the sides and run away, down the highway. Some climb up on the buildings on both sides of their street, and end up going upwards along the building faces.
But most are still pushed forward, right towards the stadium entrance. Some are unable to get away from the blade, and are cut apart ruthlessly. The sheer mass of insects behind them shove them right into the blade itself.
Kaja immediately reaches out with her Telekinesis and yanks the blade out of the ground.
The act of it surprises some of the soldiers around you, but they quickly refocus on their task - they’ve more pressing matters to attend to. You sense that the commanding officer is about to shout at Kaja, to tell her to go back inside, but he stops himself when he sees her cut down rows of insects with a swipe of the blade.
The weapon itself slices right through them with incredible ease, as though it’s cutting through them at an atomic level. But it hardly matters how many she and the soldiers tear apart with their weapons - the insects simply don’t stop coming. Instead, it seems as though they push forward with even more intensity.