Tsukiko ran to the elevator, the sound of Ishikawa's revolver still ringing in the air, over and over. She quickly reached for the buttons and the carriage started moving down with a shudder, watching as he approached Masahiro, who'd fallen unconscious on the ground. When Ishikawa turned to look at her, she hid her face, closing her eyes.

She held the button down hard, her eyes shut tight. The elevator shook violently under her feet and the sound of steel scraping and machinery moaning finally got her to look. The elevator'd taken her somewhere beneath the ground floor, and when she let go, it didn't stop. Panicked, she tried fighting with the machine, mashing the buttons to no avail.

A deep, dark blackness enveloped her, so she reached into her jacket for her phone. Its flash was just enough to light the elevator's space, and just beyond the door she could see scuffed stone as the elevator kept going down an impossible depth.

After an uncomfortably long time in the dark, the elevator opened to a clearing, a dim red light coming through and allowing Tsukiko to see. The elevator whined and screeched as it neared the floor, finally slowing down.

The place was a large red room with vague structures resembling basic furniture like chairs and tables and the like, all the same hue. A few warm colored wall lamps lit the place, but anything outside of their glow was alarmingly dark. Tsuki started pressing the buttons on the elevator to no avail.

"Fucking work, work, work, work, work, work!" Tsukiko nearly punched the elevator's button panel in a desperate bid but nothing changed.

Tsukiko stepped out of the elevator, angry. Once she'd gotten out, she heard another strange sound behind her, like something being tightly wound. She turned and watched the elevator finally let out a mechanical sigh, then launch upward, as if it had been fighting against a spring. It let out a squeal as it flew away, the Knight watching in disbelief.

"Aurelia?" Tsuki called out, but only her echo returned. "Oi, Aurelia!"

No answer.

The place was red. It was very, very red. The floors were red, the walls were red, the ceiling was red, the furniture was red. The only things that weren't red were the lights, all a warm, yellowish color.

Their glow was weak, the lamps only bright enough to truly illuminate what was next to them. Beyond their light, the reds turned to murky crimsons quickly.

Wherever Tsuki was, it smelled sweet. Something about it was even more unpleasant than if the place had smelled like mold or mildew. It was an odd, unnatural scent, something nice and discordant where it shouldn't be. The air was warm and dry, but not uncomfortably so. It was the same feeling one got after stepping into a warm room in the winter. Despite the place's size, there wasn't a draft or current of any kind, everything kept stagnant and quiet.

Tsuki sat down at one of the red tables, angry and completely unwilling to deal with yet another one of Aurelia's sudden and forced excursions.

"Aurelia!" Tsukiko could barely muster a shout. "Come get me outta here, I'm not in the mood for your bullshit!"

No reply.

The place was disgustingly quiet, the kind of quiet that made Tsuki aware of the natural, infinitesimally quiet ringing in her ears. If it had gotten any quieter, she'd probably hear the blood rushing in her head.

"Claudia!" Tsuki let out another shout.

The Knight looked around, knowing Claudia wouldn't shout back. What she found instead were holes in the walls, like openings to walking paths and halls that went deeper into the place, each of them leading to a deep, bold black.

Her eyes were drawn to them, standing out from the fact that despite there being lamps next to each passageway, they led into an abyss. She stared long enough she thought she saw something, not entirely sure what it was, just past the threshold. With that, she quickly hopped to her feet.

One of the passages led to a lit hallway, being the only passage that was red instead of black from the light within. Her heels echoed as she walked as fast as she could to the passage, eventually making it into the hallway. She swore she felt something chasing her, but when she turned around, there was nothing, leaving her a bit embarrassed.

Her hand reached out to the wall to steady herself. The way it felt, even through her glove, was strange, not quite smooth, like everything had been covered in red eggshell paint. There was another lamp to her side, attached near a small glassless window to another red and black space. At the far end of the passage was a T-shaped fork in the path with a chair facing her.

Tsuki called out. "Hello?"

No answer.

Caution slowing her, Tsukiko stepped forward into the fork, looking to her left and finding the redness quickly receding into deep, deep blackness and no obvious light at the end. Quickly, she turned to her right, finding a dimly lit stairway with a bright red spot at the end.

The Knight went down the steps and arrived at a hairpin curve that led back down to the steps with another black passage in the middle. She stopped for a moment, letting herself look into the abyss and she swore she could feel something looking back at her.

"Hey!" Tsuki called out, knowing damn sure whatever it was would kill her.

She waited. Nothing happened. For a moment, she considered stepping in.

Tsuki reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone, turning on the flash on the back. Instantly, the black abyss was filled with a cold, bluish light. To her relief, nothing was watching her.

A sense of confidence filled her as she stepped forward into the blackness, looking around the place and finding that just behind the corner was a lit room filled with tables and benches and a counter along a wall with shelves. It looked like some sort of unfinished eatery, with no food or appliances.

"What is this place? A mall?" Tsuki muttered under her breath as she looked around for any signs of life. "Goddamnit, Aurelia."

The places where the light started to lose its glow were all vague shapes and blobs, like smeared, uneven watercolor. The shadows stretched from underneath the tables and chairs were like black stains on the ground, devouring the light. Tsuki's eyes couldn't make any sense of it, seeing it all as nothing but dark noise.

Tsuki turned away, and there was another window, or something like a window, over one of the booths. She shined a light through and found a bit more of a red floor but her phone's flash wasn't anywhere near bright enough to see anything other than pitch dark beyond that.

Satisfied, Tsukiko stepped back out into the stairwell and wondered what was in those other dark places. She wasn't brave enough to look, that she knew, so she kept to the light as she followed the stairs down.

As she descended, a cold draft washed over her from below, running over her body strong enough to move her hair. The stairway was deceptively long, but Tsuki could see the lit red floor at the bottom, albeit very dimly. She moved faster and faster to get to the bottom, following the lights and ignoring the dark passages to the sides of the stairway.

At the end of the stairs was another large room with a tall ceiling and several tall, dark holes in the walls. Taking in her surroundings, Tsuki realized that she'd arrived at some sort of subway platform, with rails at the far end.

"...now what?" Tsuki muttered to herself.

There was a distant rumbling that Tsuki hoped was some sort of train that'd take her home. Tsukiko stepped forward, toward the edge of the subway platform, hoping to get a better read on where the sound was coming from.

Tsuki froze. In the corner of her eye, she could see a long shadow, cast from something tall. Whatever it was, it wasn't moving and god knew she wasn't going to move either.

She felt a pair of eyes boring two holes into the back of her head, a sensation of extreme fear that she couldn't shake. Her flesh writhed under her skin like a sack full of snakes and a cold sweat wet her forehead.

The train's rumbling got louder, turning into scraping and squealing, echoing through the place louder and louder. Tsuki couldn't tell if the thing behind her was getting closer or moving or looking at her, and the cacophony made it impossible to hear its approach. The noise became deafening as a subway train car, clean white in color, came to a stop and opened its doors.

Tsukiko finally craned her head around to look at whatever it was strangling her from a distance, the fear crushing her throat. When she moved, the shadow moved and there was nothing there. She moved again and the shadow returned. She raised a hand and brought back the invisible monster that'd almost brought her to tears, her own shadow.

Despite Tsuki's discovery, the feeling of being watched didn't fade, her fear waxing into dread as she turned and walked to the subway train, doing her best to leave as soon as possible. She sat down at the far end, looking back to the great red room and staring into the dark openings in the walls that led to nothing but a black abyss.

There was no source of light in the train's interior, with only the dim glow of the same hung yellow lights outside of it weakly illuminating the floor and seats. Beyond that, it looked like any old subway train, at least from what Tsukiko could see through the dark.

The rumbling returned as the train started to move into the tunnel, plunging Tsukiko back into an inky, black darkness. Weak overhead lights suddenly snapped on a few seconds later, letting out a very quiet electrical buzz.

"Fuck." Tsuki cursed to herself. "What am I gonna do?"

Adrenaline or fear, whichever it was holding Tsukiko together, started snapping apart like rotting ropes finally breaking one by one. A dense, powerful sorrow weighed upon her heart and she found herself staring at the floor of the train cab, her eyes starting to water.

Finally, Tsuki lowered her head and her face twisted as tears began to fall from her eyes and she began to sob. It was the first time she was able to really cry in a long, long while and she'd forced it away so long she felt ashamed of it. She let out a horrible moan as she broke down.

Tsukiko was scared. She was in no state to think about why, but she was. She'd been scared long enough, scared of everything. It only ever got worse and she couldn't take it anymore. Everything'd caught up and there was no more running. By the time Tsuki'd let it all out, She'd forgotten where she was, forgotten her name, forgotten what she'd been doing, she only remembered that she'd done something terribly wrong and it hurt.

All the lights around her took on a blue hue as the train moved further and further through the tunnel. Tsuki suddenly felt very cold, like she'd fallen into an icy pool, and the air around her grew immensely thick. For some reason, it smelled like coconuts and lime.

Tsukiko raised her head, drying the tears under her eyes on her sleeve. There was something comforting in the cold, the cool air washing over her, yet her jacket kept her warm. She reached into her pocket for her phone, looking to see if she'd gotten any sort of response, but there was no service.

Tsuki almost laughed at the realization. "Of course."

Sitting up, Tsuki looked around to see why the place had gone all blue. Half of her felt curious enough to get up and look for a conductor or any other passengers, but another half of her was too angry at Aurelia to even humor the thought. Her third half was too scared to get out of her seat, only wanting to curl up on the floor and pray. All these emotions tugging on her at once kept her numb in the middle.

There was another dreaded mechanical squeal as the train started to slow down alarmingly quickly. The Knight nearly fell over in her seat as the subway train came screaming to a halt.

With a thud, the doors launched open, inviting Tsukiko to a brightly lit and very blue place, with walls of ultramarine blue tile and a black granite floor. She stood up, knowing that she had to get off the train. Once she'd exited, the doors closed behind her and the subway train started moving down the tunnel again.

Looking around, the subway station she'd found herself in was remarkably clean and modern. There were railings and light fixtures with stainless steel accents and clean marble benches. The ceiling had the lit reflection of water waving high above, though Tsuki wasn't sure how it was projected up there.

Opposite the train platform was a wide open path with what looked like a dozen or more working escalators, half going up, half going down. Tsukiko was hesitant, but eventually, she stepped onto an escalator and started moving higher and higher. She found herself at another floor, abandoned and mundane, lined with shops and the like.

There was another two way escalator at the far end and she quickly hopped on, catching a glimpse of Tokyo on the way up.