The wind whistles around her, whips at her skirt, updrafts in cyclones through her hair. Tousles it. Blows strands into eyes that gaze straight ahead, unblinking. She does not make any effort to brush them aside. She just keeps staring, fixated, at the beach beneath her.

There are no cars on top of the parking garage at noon. The Belle Chere Biloxi may have been the only casino to survive the last big storm, but that was likely because even the hurricane recognized it wasn't worth the effort. Not even the geriatric tour buses stopped here. The slot machines might as well be bank deposit drop boxes. The random number generators weren't set right. Also, the owner traded in child pornography. She didn't know how she knew that. But she did. She'd seen it in him and the sickly black swirls in his aura.

The guard would be on his cigarette break on the ground floor, behind the main entrance pillar, out of the stiff ocean breeze. Or fooling around in the freight elevator with that one cocktail waitress. Melanie. The one with the implants. And lung cancer. Melanie doesn't know that yet though. Neither does her husband, about the cheating or the cancer. She doesn't know why she knows. But she does. She's seen it in her, and the green malformations in her aura.

The tourists have all gone home. The winds have shifted, the cold mist off the water mixing with the gray days on the shore. Even the staunchest of metal detector wielding retirees have flown the nest. She is alone with the creeping onset of winter. But still not alone. Never alone.

The heavy door behind her scrapes open with a harsh, metal on concrete sound. The wind gusts against it, and there is a grunt as the person on the other side struggles to gain purchase. She turns, catches glimpses of her guest through the gaps in her auburn hair as it billows in front of her face. He, a young man of 19, tousled brown hair, green eyes, face panic-stricken. She, a tattered mess of faded clothing, bloodshot eyes, and track marks.

“I knew you’d come.”

The young man heaves the rest of his body through the doorway and pauses, hands on his knees, face a mess of exasperation and terror.

“Glad…you waited…” he manages between gasps. The sprint up the stairs has not been kind to his chain-smoker lungs.

“I had to. And now, you have to take me back there.” A childlike smile splits her gaunt face. She twirls, pirouettes, dances dangerously close to the edge.

“I can’t do that, Morgan. You know I can’t.”

“Yes, you can, silly!” she taunts in a sing song voice, blissful expression disquieting against the grey vista of infinite ocean. “I’ve seen you do it!”

“I know, I know, but I can’t take you back there anymore, love. We’ve talked about this.”

The dancing slows. The smile fades.

“But you weren’t serious, Pad. That’s home. I have to go home.”

Padraig shakes his head.

“No, this is your home. I…I can be your home. That place isn’t for you. That place…that place isn’t real. You have to accept that.”

The joy drains from her face. The dancing stops.

“Don’t say that Padraig. Don’t you ever say that. Don’t you lie to me!”

The young man takes a step towards her. She takes a step back in turn, left heel touching only the open sea air.

“Morgan…Morgan, you need to come down now, we have to--“

“No!” she screams, dragging her other foot back forcibly, as though compelled, pulled towards the edge by some unseen force. Protruding edges of the seashell-riddled concrete cut through her bare feet. Rivulets of blood drip down the ledge, down her heels, down to the sand far below. “You will not take me back to that fucking prison, you will take me home! They hurt me there, they find me there. You said you could stop them, but you lied to me! You always lie to me! I need to go home, Padraig…please…”

Tears stream down her cheeks, drip off her chin, mingle with the blood on the concrete. Desperation, manic and feral, fills her eyes. Padraig takes another step towards her. She slides back once more, perched on toes now white with effort.

“Morgan. Morgan, you know I love you and would never lie to you and would never let them hurt you--"

"But they do!"

"Don't you think I know that?!" His voice is harsher, angrier, more frustrated than he intends. Morgan stares, as though struck, his admission cutting deeper than the encroaching cold. "I know. I know they keep finding you. But I'm trying, I keep asking the Others for a way to fix this, but I can only--"

The color leaves her face.

"--do so much because they don't quite trust me after--"

She begins to tilt backwards, ever so slowly.

"--what happened with…Morgan don't you OH SHIT!"

This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

A desperate scramble, a lunge, a knee braced against the inside of the safety barrier and a hand that barely catches her outstretched wrist. Their center of gravity is working against him, and the wall his weight rests against is slick with her blood.

He stares down, against better judgment, at Morgan, at the sand and driftwood and water-smoothed stones below. And then her eyes, calm, rational, sane once more, meet his. And she braces her own foot against the wall. And pushes.

Suddenly his feet are above him. The barrier is below. Beside. Above. And as they begin their descent, a self-satisfied smile returns to her face, along with a rare expression of peace.

"Now you have to," she mouths over the deafening rush of air.

And she's right. Padraig closes his eyes. Grips her hand tight. Relaxes his senses. Disappears. She along with him.

Instead of the sickening thud of impact, there is only a pop like that of a champagne bottle, as air rushes to fill a vacuum where two teenagers used to be.

And then only the sound of waves, and the forlorn cries of seagulls.

The gulls faded, both the echoes of memories and the very real and present ones overhead, as Padraig barreled through the front doors of the university's medical center. The trail had led here, growing weaker by the step despite his cold certainty that he was getting closer to the source. Its path had wound behind the building, into emergency personnel only territory. His focus had shifted to finding a way to intersect with it again.

He nearly lost his footing on the slick linoleum as he juked around startled patients and annoyed nurses alike. He skidded to a halt in the center of the expansive, glass-ceilinged main atrium, using the front of the horseshoe-shaped admissions desk to break the rest of his momentum.

Clutching the edge of the polished marble counter, doubled over, he wished he had quit smoking sooner. Or stuck to it when he had. The admissions clerk barely looked up from her folder.

"Can I help you, sir?"

"A girl, just brought in. Attempted suicide from a parking garage on Commerce?"

"Do you have a name?" Her expression of jaded disinterest as she rolled to her patient information console began to yank on the parts of Padraig's mind that frequently got him in trouble. He bit his tongue, tried to stay in the moment.

"Morgan. Morgan Sheehy."

"Any relation to the patient?"

"Yes…no, but--" Padraig stopped. The way the clerk's lips had pursed when she finished typing, the way the carefully crafted apathy slipped for a moment, indicated the information she had pulled up said time was not on his side.

"I'm sorry sir, her family is already with her, and they’ve indicated no further visitors." Compassion had crept into her tone, and Padraig's blood ran cold.

"Thank you," he conceded, shoulders slumped in defeat, and wandered away from her desk, hands in pockets. She watched him go for a moment before returning to her filing with a sigh. Padraig, watching her in the reflection of a silvered pillar by the door, ducked sideways into the alcove where the restrooms were housed and waited.

Before long, a large family laden with balloons and oversized bouquets came through the doors, en route to wishing a loved one a speedy recovery. Padraig slipped in diagonally behind them, keeping their adornments in between him and the admissions clerk to avoid suspicion, and in this manner reached the elevator. Now was not the time to get wrapped around the axel of bureaucracy and proof of identity, of which he had none.

A cheerful balloon-wielding child asked him which floor he was headed to. The directories all indicated the ICU was on three, which he requested on his second attempt, his voice cracking too badly on the first to be intelligible. The adults exchanged concerned glances, attempting, subtly, to curtail the joy of their children until he was gone. As the elevator began its ascent, he felt it. A static in the air, his hair standing on end, and a thin voice, more a sensation than a sound, saying his name. Over and over again.

This was the place.

The elevator chimed its arrival. Padraig stepped out and, with a cursory glance at the signs overhead, hung a right, making a beeline down the fluorescent hallway to critical care. The corridor seemed to grow longer at each step, hurried doctors, the smells of sick and antiseptic, cries in the distance, tumultuous energies and emotions swirling all around him. And always, the ever-growing sound of that voice on the edge of hearing.

He rounded the corner into the ICU waiting area. A tall, nearly skeletal woman stood catty-corner to him, speaking with a man in a ratty brown trench coat, a collection of family members scattered in the chairs around her, faces locked in various stages of shock. Her black hair, black dress, and deep brown irises stood in stark contrast to her pallid skin, save for the red, puffy circles around her eyes. She carried herself with a quiet stoicism, speaking in measured tones and gestures, a quiet dignity belied by the immense sadness that emanated off her.

Until Padraig spotted her, he had been able to hope that this was all a bad dream, a cosmic misunderstanding.

Until she had spotted Padraig, she had felt at least vaguely in control of the situation. But now they had locked gazes, and all the airs fell away.

She strode away from her conversation mid-sentence. Brushed past the man in the coat, shoulder checked him, not bothering to apologize. Her face began to contort, carefully contained emotions rushing for the door all at once.

An older woman, bearing many of her same physical characteristics, looked up from where she had been comforting a child and saw what was happening. She put the child down as quickly as she dared and began crossing the waiting room, nipping at the heels of the woman in black. She did not reach her in time.

"Catherine, what's going on, is she--"

"You killed my daughter you son of a bitch!"

Padraig saw her tense to lunge with just enough time to half-dodge, half-stagger backwards, poorly, clipping a potted plant and sprawling to the floor. The woman in black was on top of him instantly. He grabbed at wrists that reached for his throat, twisted away from nails made sharp and serrated by uneven gnawing as they searched for the skin of his neck, slender fingers eventually reaching their destination.

Rage made her stronger than he’d accounted for, and his vision was beginning to bloom shades of purple by the time a rush of orderlies, nurses, and sobbing family members managed to pull her off. Incoherent screams and obscenities bounced off the walls, echoed down past rooms where inquisitive heads peeked out to see what was going on. Padraig could only lay on the cold tile, wincing and trying to catch his breath, listening as her voice faded down the hall while hospital staff found a place to isolate her to calm her down.

The older woman's face appeared in his field of vision now, sullen eyes and wrinkled face managing to find a half-hearted smile for him.

"Hello, Padraig."

"Hello, Evelyn," he said, returning the smile as best he could through the soreness already permeating his neck.

A rather large orderly appeared, gazing down at him with far less sympathy.

"We've got your daughter down in the vending area getting her some coffee. What about this guy? He have any right to be here?"

Evelyn turned a more sorrowful eye to Padraig now, all the light leaving her face.

"I would assume so. This is her husband."