I thought Daniel would be happy to hear we had a solution to the scratching at his door. I mean, Maria certainly was. She was acting like the problem was already over and done with once I explained what I’d found out. I left out how I got my answers - I just said something vague about having connections in the folklore department. I didn’t need to worry. She was so focused on the solution that she didn’t even care about where it came from. I barely stopped her from texting Daniel right there.

“I should tell him in person,” I said. “This is not an easy thing we’re asking him to do.”

She considered for a moment, her enthusiasm slightly dampened.

“I suppose so,” she said reluctantly. “But he shouldn’t have any trouble doing it, right?”

“Do you think you could kill a monster?”

Of course, she said. If it was her life on the line. Hadn’t she managed to throw the insecticide on that thing with no problems? I mean, she did, but I feel like Daniel’s trial wouldn’t be so simple. I doubted he could just walk up to that larva without it noticing him. It wouldn’t be a trial otherwise.

Also Maria is, uh, not exactly a realist about anything, but especially her own capabilities. I’d tell him myself, I insisted.

(if you’re new, start here, and if you’re totally lost, this might help)

I texted Daniel and asked if he’d meet me at the student union. I’d found a solution to the scratching problem, I said.

He made time to meet me immediately after my text. I hustled over to the union and found him already there, waiting for me at one of the small tables against the wall in the cafeteria area.

“So?” he demanded as I slid into the chair and dropped my backpack on the ground. “What do I do?”

I told him. He had to kill it, I said. It likely didn’t matter how, but I couldn’t be certain of that. We’d figure out how to get him a weapon of some kind - fire, maybe, or something blunt. Heck, we could probably even drive to the nearest large town and find an outdoorsy store and get him a gun if he wanted to try that. I was talking fast, trying to think of ideas to make this whole situation sound better, because Daniel’s face was turning ugly the longer I talked. He was breathing in short, angry huffs and I began to feel like the situation was spiraling out of my hands.

I expected him to be upset. I did not expect him to be angry.

“I just, go in there,” he said, his words clipped, “with that - that thing - and kill it?”

“Yeah. That’s it,” I said hopefully.

“That’s it? You said it was ignoring you and Maria because you weren’t its prey. But I am.”

“It’s probably best to assume it’s going to notice you.”

I was trying to be careful with my words. I didn’t want to spook him by speaking in absolutes. I think we were long past that point, though, because he stood up, throwing his chair back as he did and it toppled to the ground. He stood there, towering over me, and I shrank in my seat.

People were staring. Weren’t they staring? They heard the chair fall. I didn’t want to look.

“That’s it?” he shouted. “That’s all you’re going to do?”

His yelling was starting to attract attention. I gestured for him to sit back down and hopefully lower his voice in the process. He did neither.

“You say you want to help but then you just foist something like this off on me and that’s it? I bet you’re just going to go back to your dorm, congratulate yourself on a job well done, and sleep soundly while I’m off having to deal with this - this bullshit!”

Then he glanced around, perhaps realizing that he was making a scene. He teetered for a moment and I tried to think of something I could say to salvage this situation for him. But the words were caught in my throat, I was frozen in place, and then he was turning and walking away and the moment was lost.

The room was unnaturally still for a moment. I could hear whispering all around me. I wanted to sink into the earth and die. That wasn’t an option, so instead I grabbed my backpack and bolted for the door, keeping my head down and trying to pretend all those stares and all that whispering wasn’t about me.

I cried as I walked. I could send him a text, I thought. Apologize. But what would I even apologize for? There wasn’t anything I could do. These creatures didn’t follow the rules I was familiar with but there were rules and this was one of them.

He had to be the one to kill it.

I called Maria. Yes, this is how upset I was. I called her. Speaking. Over the phone.

She was his friend before I was (if I ever counted as a friend), after all, and ran the Rain Chasers for a year which meant she had some kind of leadership skills, right? Maybe she could talk him down and we’d figure out how we could support him.

It took a little bit to get the whole story out, on account of the crying and general incoherence. Maria was patient and eventually she had a rough understanding of what happened.

“Okay, I’ll talk to him,” she finally said. “I figured he’d be excited by the news but I guess I should have thought about how he’s really freaked out by all this and he’s not sleeping hardly at all.”

Of course. He’s trying to stay up so he hears the scratching and then he’s probably having trouble falling asleep after that, considering he’s facing a horrific death and all. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat.

“Tell him I’m sorry,” I said.

“I am not doing that. He shouldn’t have yelled at you. You’re trying to help. We both are. Don’t contact him and let me take care of this first, okay?”

Maria can actually be really insightful when she stops a moment to think. She’s kind of like my opposite in that regard, I think. I overthink to the point of paralysis, she doesn’t stop to think to the point of recklessness. But I can keep from making stupid decisions in the moment and Maria can handle things when she’s given the space to think it through.

I guess that’s teamwork.

I know I sound all rational while I’m writing this, but I promise you, that was not the case in the moment. I was still a mess when I hung up the phone. That whole overthinking things bit? Yeah. It felt like my brain was working overtime to come up with every horrible scenario, mostly about Daniel’s gruesome death after he peeled all his skin off with his fingernails and how Maria and Cassie and the like four other people I vaguely know on campus all hate me for not saving him.

I wasn’t so preoccupied with my thoughts to not notice that it was starting to sprinkle. The damn rain. Feels like it falls every other day now. I immediately turned and started walking briskly back towards my dorm. I didn’t care to return to the student union, not after Daniel caused a scene. I could surely get back home before the rain turned dangerous.

“You’re pathetic,” a voice whispered from all around me.

My heart skipped a beat. I broke into a jog, holding onto my backpack straps to keep it from bouncing around on my back. My dorm was on the other side of campus. I didn’t know how long I had before the flickering man could attack me without breaking the rules.

“I got away from you twice now,” I replied, panting. “What’s that say about you?”

“An infuriating situation.”

The voice sounded like it was right next to me. A raindrop fell on my cheek.

“One I intend to remedy.”

If I couldn’t make it to the dorm in time, there were always the steam tunnels. Those could get me all the way to my dorm without being out in the rain. I only needed to find an open building, of which there were many to choose from. I veered to the nearest door. I didn’t know what building this was, but it was a flat one-story building that looked like it might be a mixture of offices, administrative, and perhaps a few classrooms judging by what I could see through the darkened windows. The door was unlocked and I ducked inside, pulling it shut behind me.

I waited there a few minutes, clutching the handle to hold it shut, waiting to make sure that the flickering man hadn’t gotten inside with me.

He hadn’t.

His fists slammed against the glass. His face was mere inches from the pane, leering down at me with a broad, malicious smile. He clenched his fists, spreading his fingers out and sliding them down until his palms were opposite mine, separated only by the thin sheet of glass.

“You can’t avoid me forever,” he murmured. “You’ll slip up at some point. You’re only human, after all.”

I swallowed nervously and stepped away from the door. He wasn’t trying to get in. Didn’t it hurt him to leave the rain? He seemed content to taunt me from outside, where he was close to the rain. He stood under an overhang, but he only needed to take one step back to return to it.

Except.

Except the laundry lady said I needed to make him angry enough to break the rules.

Okay. I could do this.

I kicked the door. Kicked it open right into his face.

I heard a crunch that I can only hope was his nose. I certainly didn’t stick around to find out. I was already off and running through the building in search of the stairs into the basement while he howled with pain and rage behind me.

The door to the building banged open. I skidded around a corner. These buildings tended to have similar layouts on the inside. Stairs leading up or down were usually in the middle or the far ends. Sure enough, at the end of the hallway, I saw a battered metal door, a stark contrast from the rest of the doors in the hallway. That had to be it. I hit it at a run and plummeted down the stairs, running down them as fast as I dared. At the bottom of the stairwell was another door. No basement. Just the steam tunnels. I took a breath and shoved it open.

The dim fluorescent lights greeted me. The tunnel was silent save for my ragged breathing and the faint hiss of steam in the pipes. I carefully pulled the door shut behind me, heart pounding, hoping that the flickering man was still searching for me upstairs.

A hand shot through the gap. Fingers closed over my wrist and then he shouldered the door open and stepped through.

“That was rude,” he hissed.

Blood coated his face. I had broken his nose. I can feel satisfied about that now. I broke his damn nose! Go. Me.

But at the time, I was nothing but pure panic, jerking in his grip like a rabbit trapped in a snare.

“I can’t kill you right here and now,” he said grimly, “but maybe I can bend the rules a bit. What do you think? Worth a try?”

His grip tightened. He turned, holding the door in front of him open, and he tugged at my arm. He was going to drag me out there. Out into the rain. Force whatever condition that constituted a violation of the rules to occur so that he could kill me without getting in trouble with the administration.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I went limp. Just let my knees buckle and I collapsed to the ground, my legs weak and my shoulders trembling. The flickering man retained hold of my wrist, but he turned back and stared down at me in exasperation. I stared dumbly up at him, pushed past the point of being able to think. I just… sat there… not able to cooperate, not able to fight.

“I am not above carrying you out there,” he threatened. “Don’t think I’m not.”

Something warm brushed over my ankles. I glanced down in instinct. It felt like every movement I made was sluggish. Like time was slowing down.

Steam. It was seeping up through the ground. It was already curling over my ankles and climbing to the top of my thighs.

But that shouldn’t be possible, some distant part of my mind was thinking. I was sitting on concrete.

Sharp pain lanced through my elbow. My body jolted in response, but my knees remained locked and my legs refused to cooperate, leaving me sitting sprawled on the ground as the flickering man tried unsuccessfully to pull me to my feet. He swore, torn between abandoning his prey and the temptation I presented, right there in front of him, so close to being rightfully his.

In the end, his anger won out. He swore at me. He called me some things that wouldn’t have felt like an insult - food, livestock - but the contempt he hurled them with felt like knives, all the way down to my bones. I stayed stubbornly silent, shaking with passive denial.

Finally, he stepped half over me, his back against the steam tunnel walls in his attempt to get behind me in this confined space. He stooped, hooked his hands under my armpits, and pulled.

Inhuman strength. I was unceremoniously hoisted into the air. This time, I fought back. I jabbed backwards with an elbow. He shifted and it went harmlessly past his head. A pity. I was hoping for the satisfying crunch of it landing in his already broken nose.

“I have never had to work this hard for a meal,” he said. “Never.”

He sounded more offended than angry. How dare I make this difficult for him. The nerve.

He looped his arms under my armpits and dragged me backwards towards the door. I remained dead weight, lifting my feet off the ground and kicking at his shins. The back of my heel impacted against his legs and he grunted at the impact, but otherwise seemed impervious to the pain.

Then the steam took form in front of us. A face peeled out of the vapor, mouth open, hair billowing around it to fill the hallway. It reached out with a hand, fingers sharp like needles, and it let out a screech like the whistling of a tea kettle.

Behind me, the flickering man shrieked. And in panic, he shoved me straight at the steam ghost.

Searing heat enveloped me. It stole the air out of my lungs. I couldn’t breathe.

The only way was through. I stumbled forward, covering my face with my hands. Tendrils of steam wrapped around my arms and legs like fingers, then slid off just as quickly, like ropes of hair. They tugged on me, pulling me this way and that, and I stumbled blindly in the steam. I didn’t dare open my eyes or take my hands away from my face. I could feel the heat searing into the back of my hands. I felt like I was drowning, my lungs aching for air.

Then the steam gripped my elbow, tugged, and slipped away just as quickly. I stumbled in the direction it had pulled and my head hit against one of the overhead pipes. There was a flash of heat, I jerked away, and staggered into the opposite wall.

There. Something to guide myself with. I kept one elbow against the wall and ran forwards, heart hammering, the roughness of the brick tearing into the cloth of my shirt. It didn’t matter. I barely felt it. I plunged through the heat and the damp, blind, suffocating, and then cool air struck my face. It enveloped me like a fall breeze and I knew I was through.

I removed my hands and opened my eyes. The tunnel ahead of me was clear. I whipped around to look behind me.

The steam was dissipating. It wafted across the floor like a morning mist, burning away with the rising sun. The door leading out of the tunnels was hanging wide open.

The flickering man was gone.

I didn’t wait around any longer. I turned and ran down the steam tunnels, as fast as I dared, until I found my way back to the basement of my dorms.

Yes, I’m okay. Keeping my face covered was the right move, because only the exposed parts of my skin got burned… which is just my hands. They look like I scalded them with hot water and I’m putting aloe on them and it should be fine.

The flickering man is being careful though. If the steam ghost hadn’t scared him off, he’d have carried me out into the rain just so that he could stay within the rules. I don’t think this is going to be as easy as the laundry lady made it sound. He’s not some stupid creature of instinct and hunger. We’re locked into this game now, waiting to see who slips up first.

I don’t feel good about my odds. I’m up against an inhuman creature, something that’s older than me, stronger in every way, and who has the advantage of knowledge on his side. I thought the laundry lady asking for me to do this with her meant that she believed I was capable of it, but now I’m wondering… what if she was just looking for someone convenient? The devil himself said there’s nothing special about me, I just happened to be someone with the right background and in the right place for him.

What if it's the same thing with the laundry lady? And if I fail, then she simply tries something else?

I can’t back out. The only thing I can do is keep going forward. That’s the only way left for me. But I’m not the only person with no options left.

I’m going to let Maria talk to Daniel first. He needs to calm down first. Then I’ll have a talk with him myself and tell him that it’s not right and it’s not fair what’s happening to him. But the only way he can go is forward and when he’s through, when it’s done and he’s out, we’ll be waiting for him on the other side. [x]

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