***

Each of the girls stirred awake, rising up with sluggishness. Bring with them the previous night of staying up, talking at length about their plan, and the paranoia of sleeping in the first place before passing out.

“Alright, girls—” Billie patted her ruined jeans. “Last Rites and all that--?”

Most of the girls groaned at that. Both the bad joke and the fact that she could be right.

“Let’s get going, I guess…” Jackie already sounded defeated. Putting herself in that mindset to avoid further hurt. “Lead the way, Billie.”

With a nod, she took point. Leading the girls over the roofs of these buried buildings. Stumbling, waiting to see if they were too weak to support their weight at this point, despite being made of brick or were relatively modern. It took time and patience, something they all sorely needed.

“Man. Just… Look at all of this.”

Billie’s words caused Jackie to take in the moving landscape. Buildings and houses of old, almost invoking the imagery of floating within a slurry at the bottom of a pit.

“Like… We grew up in all of this,” Billie mused. “We got mega screwed.”

Jackie pursed her lips together, feeling the trauma compress her chest.

“It’s… Something that I often think about, yeah.”

“Sucks too, when you think about all those lessons our parents tried to teach us,” Maddie had her hands in her pockets. “Well, I guess your parents, but anyways… Like. Be a good person and be selfless—even shit like staying calm in a disaster or whatever. It wasn’t Shift proof. All that shit blew up in our faces and is why we’re here now, right?”

“Yeah,” Billie agreed. “You’re harsh, but you’re pretty much right. Nothing could’ve prepared us for this regardless, but the fact that… Iunno, we were raised on normal stuff—like, I guess they hoped that all of this would just be something we’d conquer and live with. Like smartphones coming out the first time.”

She gestured out to the surreal horizon. “You can’t live with this…”

“But we have to try, right?” Aiko added in. “That’s the one thing I think Extant deserves credit for, despite me not really being into the news or whatever. They try because no one else would be willing to.”

“Yeah, the idea of laying down and letting the dark forces of the eldritch void we used to call outer space is uh…” Tracy trailed off. “…Not something I would like to do—”

Billie glanced at Tracy with a questioning expression.

“…Way of words, you got there, Red,” Billie then returned her gaze forward. “But still. Where do we run to?”

“It’s not gonna be easy…” River chimed in softly. “But there could be a chance. And we might just fail completely just before we get it. But at least we tried, I guess.”

“Yeah…” Billie sounded deep in her thoughts. Not necessarily or outright agreeing.

As they got closer to the edge of this makeshift biome, Billie continued to look out.

“It could’ve been like this, y’know? Like, without someone doing something about the Shifts. Fallen buildings, freaky alien version of Earth… And the survivors being like me. I say that, but I’m barely hanging on now.”

Jackie took note at the state of the girl. She noticed how she cannibalized her own clothing, covering up wounds she didn’t notice at first. How caked in dirt she is, how bruised her hands looked as she still held them as fists. Maybe it was just unconscious to her, at this point.

“But you have survived,” Jackie pointed out. “Been surviving.”

Billie turned on her heels, looking at Jackie. Everything she felt was completely written, etched all over her face that was tense and wary before Jackie said that.

“Says you guys…” her face immediately settled back. “I’m a loser.”

“You’re saying that managing to break your superpowers and constantly fail isn’t loser behavior?” Jackie asked, the pain in her voice.

“Well… You’re here, aren’t you? Sure, you fucked up and fucked up my shot in the process, but you went in here to save people. Why the hell are you trying to save people? N-not to like, start that argument last night to happen again, what I mean is… You’re not like that Damien fuck. He’s a loser. He gave up and now is making other people give up like he did. You guys? You’re all Charlie Brown. The man that created him spelled it out best—he’s not a loser because a loser completely gives up.”

Jackie was taken aback. But soon, she nodded, silently agreeing.

“Charlie Brown--?” Maddie needled.

“Look, it was one of the last things the family bonded on, Lil’ Peanuts is special to me,” Billie pouted vocally.

They stopped at the very edge. Where the houses have nearly been subsumed, only the top of them remaining, if not slanted. The layers audibly wear away at the structures.

They were looking forward. Seeing the field before them breathe with energies swirling about. And despite not being able to follow the flow completely, it was surging forth.

“Alright girls…” Jackie started to walk towards the back of this structure. “We really have to work together on this.”

They assembled into a line, with Billie being left behind at the front. Each of the girls allocates enough siVis on their respective legs.

“3—2—1—”

And they kicked. Jackie continued the trend, creating a rhythm. The roof was breaking apart with each thud, separating from the cluster of other settlements that it was stuck to for years.

It took a lot, but the house they stood on immediately snapped away from the biome, sliding away quickly due to the current of the land. Creating an improvised, massive bobsled.

The girls backed away from the back, as the splinters were firing outwards from the “wound”. They stood still, waiting for anything to complicate their plan, watching what was happening to the top half of this house. While the erosion process was upped, it was going to take a while until it is completely sanded down.

It wasn’t a straight, easy line. They zigged and zagged almost seconds apart. But they were still moving forward. And it wouldn’t be too long until they reached the lost Extant site.

“We help secure the abductees,” Jackie reuttered the information they knew, making sure that they remembered. “We rush into the site. We either find Darrius within it or we find something that can help us.”

“And we beat the shit outta him,” Billie added that on.

Jackie glanced that the poor girl. But looked forward. She figured the sole reason why Billie is still going is that rage against that man. It was dangerous, but Jackie needs her to keep going.

They were violently ripped upwards and jerked onto the side of the mines. Once they were slammed down onto the roof, they gripped at the holes it had, if not the shingles themselves.

They just climbed upwards and upwards, to the point that Jackie thought they were going to be flipped over with no effort.

But they swerved back down, making time twice as fast, but a cloud of debris shot out before their eyesight. Not that they could see that yet, they all instantly covered their eyes with their arms, shielding them from the wood, concrete, and metal shards.

Until she felt it was like enough time, Jackie unshielded her eyes to look ahead, still seeing haze.

But she saw multiple things, lagging within this smoke.

Jackie got up, “Looks like we got company…”

She swiped at the air, her attempts to waft the smoke away.

She wished she hadn’t.

It was five people. In front of the mining facility, in its courtyard.

It was the people they were supposed to save. They’ve become Shattered.

One man’s entire left side was broken into pieces and hung as if it was a full bag. A woman had a bulbous back of the neck and head, causing her to jut forward unevenly. Another man’s lower jaw was fused onto his expanded chest, another’s arms reached to the floor, and the final girl lost so many pieces, she was too slender with no back.

“Well, now what…?” Maddie said grimly.

Jackie balled her fists.

“We’re still gonna save them. They need help more than ever now.”

Jackie looked to her left, and then at her right. Taking in each of the others.

“Everybody—JUMP!”