I braced myself for whatever had killed Mr. Henderson to open the door, but it never came. The growling and cheering only got quieter as the footsteps got moved away from me. Above us, there was shaking and screaming, muffled by the semi-broken walls and ceilings of concrete. More people were dying, and I could barely breathe as dust rained down on us. Us. I pushed past my panic to focus on the gurney beside me, where Zahra lay.

  Even lying down, you could tell she was a tall person. Her arms and leg were longer than you could expect, and I know when she wore her prosthetic she stood at around 5 '10. Before she got sick, she played a lot of sports, and told me some of her most competitive tournaments. She was great at storytelling, explaining what was needed and adding her own dramatic flair in the right moments. Although she had a shaved head, flowers were painted from the top growing down her neck.

  I watched as her eyes fluttered open, slowly focusing on the red light flashing in the room, quickly scanning around before meeting my gaze.

  “Levi?” Her voice was hoarse and hard to hear, but I strained my focus. “What’s going on? Where are we?” She propped herself up on her elbows, quickly dusting herself off from the ceiling debris.

  “We’re in another operating room. I don’t really know what’s happening, but they put you and I in here because a massive earthquake went off. And then a ton of explosions. And the-.” I was interrupted by a string of swear words, some in English and others in Arabic.

  “What is this box in front of me?” She swung her hand through the textbox, flinching as it passed right through. “Are we safe? Like, are the explosions getting closer?”

  “The box appeared in front of everyone after the earthquake and explosions from what I can tell. It delivered some sort of message talking about turning the Earth into a System or something. I’m not too sure either, I was unconscious when it started.”

  As I began to answer her second question, a loud howl from a few floors above us reverberated through the room. The floor shook as the demonic noise slowly died out, but I could still feel my pulse in my throat.

  “Okay, so not safe. Damn, that did not sound good. Did a giant bear somehow break into the hospital?”

  I grinned slightly at the joke, making sure not to laugh and aggravate my broken rib. She seemed to be mostly awake from the anesthesia. Her eyes still darted around, trying to understand what was going on. I wish I had a better explanation to give her.

  “I think it's worse than a big animal. I think we’re under attack by some kind of entity or aliens or something. I keep hearing some sort of animal above and below us, and one of them... killed Mr. Henderson in the hallway.”

  She looked at me incredulously, but then turned towards the door. Mr. Henderson’s blood still tinted the window with a dark, deep red. It was hard to make out in the red light flashing in the room, but I saw her take a slow, shaky breath in. She took a final look around the room at the chaos that had disturbed the once-pristine environment.

  “I can tell you aren’t joking. Same with this textbox thing, we both have one. I think I found a menu list? God this is so weird.” She was frazzled, staring at the blue box in front of her, reading the information and trying to figure out what was most important to understand first. The icon of the book appeared in a light blue outline in front of her. She was quick to understand things, so I wasn't totally surprised by how quickly she was adapting.

  “It says there's a message from Graxis about “Earth System Integration”, but it says we can’t play messages outside of a safe area. That's so convenient, thanks!” Her left leg kicked in the air in frustration. “At least I can see my… abilities? Stats? I’m not too sure what any of this means. But my luck should be way higher, I literally found a free bag of chips on the way back from chemo yesterday. It was well dressed too, which I feel should count for something.”

  She continued to grumble about her low stat, which turned out to be 3, the same as my intelligence. She had a similar debuff to mine, but her expectancy was way longer, 784 days. Her Dexterity was at 9 as well, the highest stat either of us had. I didn’t know if that was supposed to be good, but I didn't doubt Zahra’s speed. When she put on her prosthetic running blade, she was faster than most people, both legs or not. The only stat I had her beat in was Strength, although only by 2.

  I looked at my menu, focusing on the compass icon. A large blue grid laid itself out in front of me, making a top-down, zoomed out map in front of us. I saw the city of Los Angeles and the hospital, as well as a few other landmarks. The grid was pretty detailed and had multiple coloured lights everywhere, floating and interacting and moving around one another. Zahra stopped looking at her stats and scooted a bit closer to me to see. I focused on the 3D depiction of the hospital, and watched as the map transformed into a multi-level floor plan, showing all the different rooms and exits. Flashing lights littered floors, some moving and others staying stationary.

  I found the floor we were on, eventually finding a room containing a small white light and a small blue light beside it. We figured out that I was the white light, and the blue light was Zahra. We zoomed out to see the rest of the floor, where 3 small red dots floated around. Behind them, and further down the hallway towards the staircase leading town, was a large gold light, located in the operation room opposite the staircase exit. Before we could say anything, a blue light appeared at the entrance to the stairs, right in front of the 3 red ones.

  Oh shit. That's a person, and I’m betting the red lights are nothing good.

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  We both watched, stunned, as the blue light tried to move past the three red dots towards us, however the red dots converged, and the blue light stopped. A few seconds later, the blue light slowly faded from my map. The red lights seemed to glow brighter.

  Zahra covered her mouth in shock. “Do you… think that was a person?” Her voice faltered and she leaned forwards. I thought she was gonna puke, but she recited a quick prayer in Arabic instead. She quickly looked over to me, her brow furrowed and her eyes locked to mine.

  That was the second person I’ve seen die today. How many more are going to happen? When is it my turn?

  She opened her own map. “It isn’t safe here. We have to figure something out and see if we can escape. I looked at the other floors, but I couldn't see any more lights. Well, there's a huge red light a few floors above us I can see, which is probably worse than the smaller ones.”

  Zahra was right. The large red light was on floor 4, going through each room, sometimes ignoring doors entirely. As the light moved, the ceiling shook and the faint reverberation of howls echoed towards us. As we watched, it seemed to move towards the staircase, showing up again on floor 3. It was moving down, towards us. We both looked up at the same moment as the light reappeared, a harsh chill running down my spine. Whatever that thing was, we could feel it getting closer somehow.

  “We need to go now. But we shouldn’t run out there defenseless. See if you can find anything, weapons or whatever we can use.” I was consciously aware of how little protection these hospital gowns would give us, but our rooms (and clothing) had been on the fourth floor, a basically unreachable area at this point. I took a look around the room, focusing on the equipment strewn about the floor. It was going to be hard to move around, but I had a better shot than Zahra at the moment. There had to be something around here we could use.

  I pushed myself up and used the gurney as a walker as I moved around the room. It took me a few minutes, but by the end I had grabbed a cylinder labeled ‘Entonox’ from the anesthesia machine, along with a few medical tools like a scalpel and a few syringes from the drug cart that weren’t smashed. I even found a key card from one of the nurses, left in the scramble to escape. I also grabbed a pair of crutches for Zahra, I doubted there were any functioning elevators in the building after those explosions.

  Zahra scooted back over, the gurney supporting her. She had a large chunk of glass with a plastic handle, as well as a few different tools. She also had 3 white bottles of 99% alcohol, a few white rags, and the first aid kit off the wall. She took a look at what we had both collected, crossing her arms.

  “I was kind’ve hoping they would have kept a nail gun or a big mechanical saw, but I didn't see anything. I did, however, find these little bottles of fun. We just have to prepare them a bit.” I watched as she began to stuff the rags near the tops of the bottles, leaving a little trail out the top.

  She was creating a goddamn molotov cocktail! I looked around for anything we could use to light the rags, but I wasn't able to.

  I was thankful to Zhara, if not a bit surprised at her MacGyver skills. She didn’t talk about her past much, but I knew she was from somewhere in the Middle East. I didn’t talk much about my past either, so it was no skin off my back. I still wondered sometimes how she got these skills, or what else she may know.

  My thoughts were interrupted by a large rumbling. Dust and pieces of the ceiling fell around us as I quickly switched over to the map. The large red dot had made it halfway through the third floor, and it was moving fast. We could hear large footsteps and the people screaming which accompanied it. Noticeably fewer voices than the last time. Zahra took the opportunity to move all the items to her gurney. She looked around with a bit of panic in her eyes.

  “We need to move, now! Can you push me towards the door? We need to see what we’re dealing with.” She lifted the piece of glass and smirked. “I figured I could use this to see what's further down the hallway.” I nodded, my heart pounding in my ears as I moved us closer towards the door, slowly pushing the gurney with my body and arm. It was heavy even on wheels, and the physical exertion was taking more of a toll than I expected. Whatever was going on with the world hadn’t impacted how sick I was, and the injuries from the day were starting to pile up. I felt my legs shaking a bit but used the gurney to help carry our weight. Zahra placed her hand on my shoulder as I pushed us over. It was comforting, if not a little awkward.

  We made it up to the doorway, Zahra lifting the makeshift mirror up, trying to see down the hallway.

  “I can’t quite make out anything, we may need to open the door a bit to see”. I double checked my map, noting the 3 red dots were at the end of the hallway, besides the stairs and the room with the golden light. I nodded, it was better to be prepared. I flashed the keycard across the door lock, hearing it click up. I gently pushed the door open as Zahra lifted the mirror in place, giving us a full view down the hallway.

  I had trouble understanding what I was looking at first, blaming the dirty glass. However as the creatures slowly moved, I realized I was looking at a monster straight out of a fantasy RPG. There were 3 individuals, only as tall as the door handles, but they wielded fierce-looking spears. Their faces were comically similar to the animated auto-insurance lizard I saw watching TV. Large eyes, tongues hanging out of their open, razor filled jaws. They wore rough leathers with no pants, and their tails swiped through the air as their scales reflected the flashing red light in the hallway.

  “Holy shit, those are… lizardmen?. What the hell is going on?! What the fuck are we supposed to now?”

  Were Sadye and Christian okay? The children’s unit was on the first floor, and most of those kids were basically defenseless. If we could barely manage this, how the hell were they going to survive?

  Between the two of us, we were missing two limbs, an eye, and a messed up spine. The situation seemed hopeless, and I could barely think with my head pounding. I could feel it starting to slowly creep in again, freezing me in place. It was always there, like I could take a step too far in the pool towards the deep end. It had started when I was a kid, but it came in waves. Sometimes like a warm beach, sometimes like a massive tsunami.

  The Sinking.

  Zahra squeezed my shoulder, keeping me focused back on the task at hand. Her menu had the map open, where the large red dot was nearly at the staircase to our level.

  “We do what we always do. We fuck their shits up. Or whatever the phrase is. Either way, I think our chance of survival staying in the room with falling concrete and no escape is basically zero. So, here's what we’re going to do.”

  If Zahra’s plan didn’t kill us, whatever was about to climb down those stairs would. So, I prepared the items, helped Zhara get on the gurney, and pushed us into the hallway.