"Run."
That was the only word I could manage. My lungs felt like they were filled with crushed glass, and the metallic taste of blood was coating the back of my throat.
I didn't wait for Elara to agree. I grabbed her wrist—her actual wrist this time, not a ghostly hallucination—and yanked her away from the center of the gymnasium. Behind us, the chaos was absolute. The Principal was shouting through a megaphone that wasn't working, paramedics were swarming over the students who had "fainted," and the shattered windows were whistling a mournful tune as the wind rushed in.
"Ren! Stop!" Elara dug her heels in, her loafers skidding on the polished wood. "The paramedics are right there! You need a doctor!"
"Doctors can't fix this," I wheezed, pulling her toward the emergency exit stairwell. "And if we stay down here, we’re going to be reformatted."
"Reformatted? You're talking nonsense again!"
But she followed me. Maybe it was the panic in my eyes, or maybe it was the fact that the green fog I had just dispersed was already starting to coalesce again in the corners of the room, darker and angrier than before.
We burst into the stairwell. The air here was freezing.
"Up," I commanded.
"The exit is down, Ren!"
"The pressure is rising," I said, pointing a shaking finger at the ceiling. My Spirit Sight was painting the air with warning signs. Red arrows were flowing upward, like heat rising from a fire. "Whatever was in that gym... I didn't kill it. I just made it mad. And it’s heading for the path of least resistance."
We scrambled up the concrete stairs, our footsteps echoing like gunshots. My legs burned. My thirty-five-year-old soul was screaming at me to sit down and write a strongly worded email to management, but my seventeen-year-old adrenaline kept me moving.
We hit the third-floor landing. Then the fourth.
Finally, we reached the heavy metal door to the roof. It was vibrating.
I slammed my shoulder against the crash bar. The door flew open, and we stumbled out into the twilight.
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Closing Note：I’m stuck on a plot point! Help me decide the Heroine's next move on our Discord: unplot_joshua.
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