Lie down and die. That's it. It's over.

God, you wish.

Instead you say, "Awesome!" For some reason you even do a brisk jog so you can be a disgusting mess slightly sooner.

You end up by the foot of one of those sad buildings with exactly two windows so it looks even more human. You're pretty sure it was Emalie calling you, but you can't see her anywhere. Perfect. You can slink right off, never confront anyone about the fact that you haven't confronted your dad yet and eventually have a stroke in your fathers’ workshop, dying alone and unloved.

For some reason, an image of a huge closet crosses your mind. Metal - probably once painted green - its paint peeling and revealing rust underneath. Compared to the cold, grey cement floor in your fathers workshop, this thing might as well be an unkept promise, held in remembrance only by one - the rift between them and the other growing imme--

Crap!

It's not a closet. It's THE CLOSET! You forgot to activate PR073-C70R.

It's going to be fine... right? The damage was recent, so surely the wolves must be lurking somewhere else. Keeping a low profile to get their numbers back up. It's going to be fine. It's totally fine.

It's so fine you say, "Hey, uh, you guy's go on without me. I'll be right back!"

"Oh no, you don't!" Emalie shout's at you - from somewhere inside the building - "We waited at the meeting point for hours! Don't skimp out on us now!"

True. That's true. It's going to be fine. Hey, what's difficult about being responsible for the preventable **** of random people. Random people with families, kids, friends, pets, jobs, tabl--

Another voice calls out, "Shiv, do you see it?" Jorrel always manage to carry such flair with his voice. Emalie likes to describe it as, A perpetual state of acting syndrome.

You don't. Not here at least. Looking around, you still don't see it. You also ask, "What is it?" Still not entirely defeated, you take a couple of steps back and look into the window from another angle to hopefully see it.

Looking through the window now, you see something, alright. You see the top of Jorrel's head. Like you're looking straight down at him - or that if Jorrel is standing on the wall. Jorrel swings a rope, something tied to the end of it.

"Right," He swings it faster, ready to throw, "Watch out!"

You can see the flashlight heading straight for the window, but as it crosses the sill, it doesn't. Everything beyond the window is gone.

"Guys?" Your voice is timid and quiet. They probably heard that. Or maybe They did. Nervously, you eye the buildings for gross mutants menacing innocent girls from above.

Suddenly, a voice. Sounds like Emalie's but it's small and far away.

Out in the distance, you see a flashlight twirling mid air from a tree. It's root entwined throughout the building so that it cracked it open like a walnut. For the second time today, you jog lightly. At least of what you remember. Sometimes you go on these long thought trips that seems to last seconds, but always conveniently manage to take just long enough so that you don't get bored from menial tasks.

Like right now, you think, standing by the foot of said ruined building with smothering tree accessory. Your train of thought lasted the exact amount of time it took for you to jog over here. Here’s another one: Nature is amazingly cold and uncaring. We say it provides, but it really doesn’t intentionally – it’s incidental. Man is gone and there’s really nothing poetic about how this tree has entwined itself through a ruined building. How it is precariously holding a segment of a wall suspended above ground. You almost thought – as if an explosion happened and the tree caught the bits and pieces of the building as it happened. But it’s not as if an explosion happened. It did. The tree happened. Slowly, over time, it stubbornly moved things so it could grow.

There are many buildings like this in the old ruins. Not really reclaimed by nature, but rather subjected to inevitable change, like all things are. You’re holding an internal monologue for this one because the flashlight you say twirling isn’t coming from the tree, but a window in that suspended segment. Nothing running through. Nothing on one side, but extending towards the street below, is a rope and a flashlight.

Carefully, you move underneath the – totally safely and securely held, not going to fall, wall. Looking up, you can see Jorrel and Emalie. They’re standing on the ceiling, holding the rope. Or maybe they’re standing on the floor but gravity is weird?

“Shiv,” Emalie looks down at you. She looks up, but from your persp- “I need you to stop doing a think and start doing a grab. On the rope, sweetie,” Emalie’s voice is kind but certain, making it clear that you should stop thinking and start doing! A lesson she has tried to impart on you fo- “Grab the goddamn rope Shiv!”

Right!