"Get back, Dixy...stay completely behind my hips and do not trust a single syllable bleeding out of that mouth!"I thrust my left arm backward, hitting her collarbone to anchor her vibrating frame flush against my spine. The pitch...black transit concourse was a suffocating, freezing sensory isolation chamber, but her proximity was a searing, chaotic sun. I could hear the erratic, frantic fluttering of her heart against my back, her chest rising and falling in sharp, terrified drafts that mixed with the heavy concrete dust settling around our boots. The entity standing past the rusted iron turnstile line was a horrifying anomaly in my acoustic grid, a walking contradiction that made my skin crawl with primeval dread."Zyrus, what do you mean look at the way it is smiling at you?" she whispered, her voice cracking into a jagged, emotional splinter as her fingers twisted obsessively into the leather of my jacket. "I told you, I cannot see a single thing...it is completely pitch black. I

"Get your hands down and wrap your arms tightly around my knees, Dixy, because this roof isn't asking for permission before it caves!"I shifted my entire center of gravity forward, planting my boots into the gritty, shattered tile floor of the maintenance locker. The structural world above us was screaming in a language of tearing iron and groaning concrete. That horizontal girder Dixy had mapped for me was bucking under the weight of the collapsed street level, sending down a rain of jagged stone splinters that hissed through the darkness. But my immediate universe remained entirely locked onto the heavy, un...human footsteps charging straight through my acoustic perimeter."I am right here, I am not letting go of you," she cried out from the floorboards, her small hands locking around my calves with an obsessive, desperate grip that sent a sudden spike of protective heat roaring through my veins. "Zyrus, it is lunging from the right flank, its arms are thinning into literal blades!

"Smash the screen right now, Dixy, break the glass before that frequency locks your mind!"I surged up from the wooden bench, my right hand leaping out through the flickering amber glow to violently sweep her behind my hips. The small transit monitor was sparking a chaotic electronic hiss, its speakers puking out that elegant, chillingly smooth broadcast voice that carried absolutely zero human friction. A heavy, viscous sound...the unmistakable bubbling of dense, cold fluid...was beginning to drip from the television casing, spilling onto the transit worker's desk like pooling oil."I can't look away, Zyrus, my eyes are glued to the wings on that skyscraper," she gasped, her voice tightening into a high, frantic register that vibrated fiercely against the skin of my shoulder blades. "The transmission...it is pulling at my head. The people on the screen are just marching into the dark. They look like empty dolls.""They are empty, because they let the visual trap dictate their reality