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Chapter 9 by Myocastor_Coypus Myocastor_Coypus

Do you attempt to go inside?

Yes

The doors are open and you let yourself in. You go through the small atrium and enter the hemicycle. It is deserted. The lights are out, and you can only see around because of the enormous windows in the roof.

There's something very wrong. There are days where basically everyone slacks off, unofficial traditional holidays and such. But they are usually clustered together. If you have one official day off, often the day after will become one as well. Everybody just does that sometimes. To your knowledge, there has been no official day off lately, and the normal holiday seasons are weeks away. And even on a day off, there is someone from Admin running things at the residence, and there are at least a dozen or so unfortunate buggers who have work to do regardless, who you expect to see evidence of in the streets, be it in their cars, or on foot. This is on another level of weirdness to any unexpected slacking off, mass strike, or whatever might have almost everybody stay at home and show no sign of themselves. You can feel it, viscerally, there's something not right. Inevitably the question of time freezing comes up, because that is the previous impossible thing you've encountered so far. The question being whether there is a link with the absolute dearth of activity in the city other than your aimless wandering. You can't see it, and doubt you could work it out. There have been no convenient indicators of rules. No warnings, no explanations. Suddenly you could halt the passage of time for all except yourself. Suddenly all except yourself seem to have ceased to give signs of existing.

Speaking of which, can you still do that? Halt the passage of time?

Strangely, it's the thought of not being able to it anymore that gets your heart beating hard. The idea of losing your superpower is seeminlgy more terrible than the prospect of being totally alone in the city. You must know, does it still work?

Holding your breath, you mentally snap your fingers.

At first you hear a distant rumble. You can't place the source, it feels like it's coming from all around you, far away to begin with, then closer and louder. Soon you hear the sound of shattering glass and crumbling rubble, still relatively far away. And then an ear splitting crash as the three windows up above explode outwards. You barely have time to react as the walls of the lecture hall fill with cracks, and begin to buckle inwards. You only manage a few running steps away toward the center before the ceiling caves in. Stone, concrete, wood, glass all tumble out of the sky and bury you completely.

I don't think you did, but I'll ask anyway, did you survive?

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