The both of you eventually make it to your destination, your goal. And thanks to the blade floating behind the both of you, you arrive practically unmolested. The very existence of it allows the both of you to go where you please. Every strange otherworldly creature you come across veers out of your way at the sight of it.
And over the course of the one-hour trek, the clear noon sky above you shifted slowly from a light blue to a light red. The sun also deepened into a reddish-orange at the same time. A fact you only truly notice now that you’ve arrived here.
But you quickly shake it aside - the sky's the very last of your worries.
In front of you is your Dad’s ten-story walk-up apartment. It’s in a shambles, with numerous long cracks spread across its concrete facade. Luckily, there aren’t any crystal shards protruding through it.
“Dad!” you shout up to the apartment building. “We’re on our way up!”
Not that he can hear you, but it doesn’t stop you from hoping anyway.
The two of you run into the building, and up the stairs. Stairs which you have always hated - Dad lives up on the seventh floor, and those are way too many steps to take. Not that you’re caring in the slightest right now.
Right now, you’re flying up those same steps as fast as you can, heart beating heavily in your chest.
It’s moments later that you burst through the door to your Dad’s apartment. The inside is in shambles, just like the outside. Everything has fallen to the floor, and every window has shattered, no doubt a result of all those earthquakes at the start of it all.
A massive crack splits across the wall ahead of you, somewhat opening up the room to the outside world.
“Dad!” you shout out. “You in here?! You alright?”
But no answers come, save for a light pained groaning that you just barely hear.
You run towards the bathroom, where the groaning is coming from, and immediately find your father splayed out on the floor. Unconscious.
He’s wearing his usual daily outfit, but with his faded sand camo army jacket as well. And he’s even wearing a holster with his pistol in it.
A section of his all-white head of hair is matted down with dark red blood. Alarm shoots through you as your eyes go wide as saucers.
“Ohshit oshit!” you shout out. “Dad! What happened?”
Kaja puts a hand on your shoulder to help ease you and comfort you. When you turn to look at her, she gestures towards a towel rack with a bit of blood smeared on the metal rod.
“He must’ve accidentally hit it during all the shaking,” she says. “Help me get him out to the living room - we’ll take a look at him there.”
You nod in approval, then pick up your father by his shoulders. At the same time, Kaja picks him up by his ankles. Then you both carry him out to the living room, where you set him down on the soft carpet.
While you find a pillow to place under your Dad’s head to make him more comfortable, Kaja goes back into the bathroom to rummage for a first aid kit. She’s back even as you slip one under his head.
You both take a better look at your Dad’s wound, and part his wet, matted hair aside.
A shiver runs through you as you look at the two-inch gash on your Dad’s head. Although it’s a relatively clean laceration, you can’t tell if anything else is wrong beneath. If the bone is fractured, for example. You just don’t know anything about medical stuff to be of any real use.
You can definitely see that blood is seeping out regularly, and if you can’t stop it…
Kaja reaches down with a hand towel and soaks up what she can that’s coming out of his wound. She lifts it for a moment, just enough to spray both saline and antibiotic solutions, then goes back in to try to stop the bleeding.
She sops up some more blood, then applies tissue adhesive while holding the laceration closed as much as possible. Afterwards, she places down some gauze, then bandages it down as tight as she can. She then wraps his head with some more gauze to keep the bandage in place for as long as possible.
“It’s not great,” Kaja says as she finishes up. “But it’s better than nothing.”
“If he’s been like this for an hour, well…” you say, the worry clear in your voice. “What if… if…”
“He’s still alive. That’s all you need to think about.”
“Right now, sure. But what about five minutes from now? An hour from now?”
Kaja purses her lips as though frustrated, a sign that she doesn’t exactly know the answer. It’s a face you don’t get to see very often.
“Maybe we get him to a hospital,” she says.
“How?” you protest. “All the cars are dead. The nearest hospital is what… fifteen blocks away?”
Kaja purses her lips again, though this time in thought.
“Urgent care?” she replies. “Any clinic, really. Vet clinic if we have to. We just need a doctor who knows how to stitch him up the right way.”
Your Dad stirs even as the two of you talk, which cause the two of you to leap back into action.
“Dad?!” you say to him. “Wake up, Dad. It’s me. And Kaja. We’ve got you.”
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He groans, loudly, then reaches up to the side of his head where his wound is.
“Urgh, that really hurts,” he says, throat dry.
He tries to push himself up into a seated position, but you try to hold him back.
“Wait, careful,” you say.
But he really doesn’t heed what you say, and keeps going anyway.
“I’m fine,” he grumbles.
Just as he gets back to a seated position, Kaja hands him a cup of water. He gladly takes it, drinks it empty, then sets the glass aside.
“I think I mighta had a stroke,” he eventually confesses. “Gotta huge headache there for a minute, blacked out. And I’m guessin’ by this wrap on my head that I musta hit something, huh?”
“A lot more than a stroke hit you,” you say. “A whole lot more.”
“Wassat supposed to mean?”
You wave a hand towards the split in the wall, or more specifically to the scene outside. There, one of the building across the street has been utterly torn down to rubble. In its place is a ridiculously large and thick purple crystal.
The bodies of numerous people lie scattered among the building’s detritus. Some screams can still be heard out in the distance.
On top of it all is the light red sky, which only seems to deepen as time passes.
Your Dad picks himself up off the floor as he stares at the sight. It’s almost as though he’s completely entranced at the devastation he is seeing. He finds it a bit too much, and ends up going down on one knee as a result.
“We need to get you to a clinic as soon as we can,” Kaja says after a moment. “The wound on your head - it’s not quite good. I think you need stitches.”
“Alright, yeah,” your Dad replies, half-listening. “We’ll take the car.”
“Won’t work,” you say. “Every car, or at least every car on the way here, won’t do anything. Wont’ start, won’t move. They’re stuck out there.”
“No phone signals either,” Kaja adds. “Our phones shut off seconds after we turned them on.”
“We’ve got electric, right?” Dad asks, suddenly back in reality. “I mean, some of the lights are still on in here.”
He turns around to look at the both of you, or at least, away from whatever’s outside. He glances down at his watch, which has also gone still.
“A little bit,” Kaja replies. “I think certain kinds of batteries got drained out for some reason, others didn’t. I’m not any kind of expert on it though, just guessing.”
“I’m sure some power stations are still up and running,” you add. “Those oughta still be good, even if, um, their operators and engineers aren’t alive any more. Some stuff oughta still be up and running to be honest. At least for a little while.”
Silence fills the living room for a few moments as your oddly positive but somber note resonates. Eventually, you break the silence you made in the first place.
“Let’s head out,” you say. “We need to get going, before your apartment decides to open up all the way and join the first floor.”
“We oughta grab your meds too, just in case,” Kaja adds.
“They’re in the med cabinet in the bathroom,” your Dad says. “Lemme gather ‘em up.”
“No,” you say. “I’ll get ‘em. You two go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”
Kaja and your Dad head out while you go back into the bathroom. There, you go into your Dad’s medicine cabinet which is chock-full of various pills. Some of it script, some OTC. All way too much, at least in your opinion. There are little pill bottles on every shelf: antibiotics, antidepressants, anti-inflammatory, painkillers, vitamins, supplements, you name it.
You grimace at the sight of it all.
Your Dad grew up with way different values, and loves to present himself as that tough guy who doesn’t need much coddling or care. And it’s certainly true in many ways. The many decades he spent in the Army certainly helped cement that about him.
But no matter how much he might project being invincible, the reality is certainly far different. The proof is laid out plain right in front of your eyes.
Instead of sifting through his meds, you simply tighten their lids and dump them all into your messenger bag. You’ll have plenty of time to sort it all out when you get somewhere relatively safe.
You then head into your Dad’s bedroom, open up one of his duffels, and shove a bunch of his clothes inside. You grab a couple of his books and his tablet as well. If the apartment does fall apart, at least he’ll have some of his stuff with him.
A few minutes later, you meet back up with the two of them outside.
Kaja smiles at you as you get closer, then telekinetically lifts the translucent purple blade off the pavement, right where she left it. After all, there’s no way it would ever fit inside any building. Not unless she uses it to open it up first, anyway.
“What’s with the duffel?” your Dad asks.
“I brought some of your stuff,” you tell your Dad. “You know, in case your place falls apart.”
“You get my rifle outta the closet, too?”
“I don’t think it’s going to be much use out here.”
“You don’t know that.”
“We can always come back if we need to,” Kaja interjects diplomatically. “Right now, we gotta get your head stitched up.”
“There oughta be an urgent care one or two blocks over,” your Dad says. “Follow me.”
The three of you follow your father as he leads you down the street and around the corner. Along the way, you can’t help but notice just how much he’s soaking up the world that’s around him.
Everything’s in utter chaos - the buildings and streets are in shambles, crystal spikes protrude everywhere, cars and vehicles sit on the roads unattended. Worst of all, there are dead bodies everywhere.
Some are in cars, some in shops, some splayed out on the street. One moment, they’re going about their day. And in the next, oblivion.
“What in hell happened here?” your Dad mutters. “It’s like a damn war zone.”
The two of you take turns telling what you know - the blackout, the pain, the earthquakes, the insects, the stampede, the shadow creature. And the powers, too.
“Explains that thing,” he says, gesturing to the massive blade floating behind Kaja. He then turns towards you, a curious look in his eye.
“What can you do?”
“I see stuff,” you say sheepishly.
Using your Third Eye seems hardly as impressive as maneuvering a huge weapon around with your mind. And, truth be told, seeing stuff is what you do. Still, better than having nothing at all, right?
“Yeah, I see stuff too, all the time,” he teases. “No, really. What can you do? From what you both just told me, you fought off some crazy shadow thing. So enlighten your old man for a minute.”
“Alright, fine. I see more stuff than usual. And yeah, I pushed off whatever that creature was. Maybe I made it depressed, or not give a fuck. But I don’t know exactly what I did or how I did it. All I know is that the more I do it, the more my head hurts. Real bad.”
“Really?” Kaja says, somewhat shocked. “It hurts you to…”
She waves her hands at your head, unable to articulate what it is that’s happening to the both of you.
“Hurts to do your thing?”
“Wait. That doesn’t happen to you?” you ask her, with equal amounts of surprise.
She shakes her head resolutely.
A kind of malaise sinks into you on realizing the huge difference between the two of you, again. It doesn’t seem to matter what it is you do - you’re disadvantaged in every way possible. It doesn’t matter how high you seem to get, your life always comes with massive downsides.
It’s almost as though you’ve been born to suffer.