I actually grew angry with myself for having all of these random thoughts at such a time. I couldn’t control my mind, and felt I needed to focus solely on Lex. Still, I think as a protection mechanism from the weight of the grave situation, in a way, my brain was trying to protect me from some sort of mental breakdown, throwing out random distractions. Yes, that had to be it. Sold.
Coming to the end of this loosely five foot in length machine, really more of a rectangular box than anything, when the rest of the room came into view, we saw that at the far corner stood the steps. As predicted, these looked like a maze of thin strips of metal. They went up in a narrow line you could see right through, only strips for your feet, before there was a landing and another set, turned in the opposite direction. They seemed hung from the ceiling or something, just to take one up higher, but I couldn’t really get a good, full look at them from here. Seemingly suspended in front of rows of broken windows, shadows swallowed as much of them as the moon lit, causing a very fragmented image.
Once we stood close to them, our backs pressed to a machine, in a dark spot to hide ourselves, I could see all the way to the top floor. There was no protection there, nothing but more piping that served as handrails to prevent a fall to one’s death. Looked like a lot of fun. I could only envision getting half way up them before a wolf came bounding down them at me.
Actually, with the distance we still were from the steps, I found it questionable that the body of fur beside me could even get up them. But, obviously others had, the true wolves that is. Unless they had climbed as humans and then turned here. I admonished myself again for slipping from looking on the bright side, a phrase that would have brought a chuckle in different circumstances, given how dark it was in this place.
My mind at this point went more to a house of horrors that appeared every Halloween around these parts, a haunted warehouse. I’d never been myself. No desire. But, I had friends that had told me all about it, and I’d dared to look at the pictures online once to ensure I would never let myself be talked into going. That warehouse had an elevator, but I wasn’t sure being in a box suspended from a cable with a large wolf beside me would have made me feel any safer, if he could have even fit in such a thing. At the Halloween haunted warehouse, things were expected to jump out at you. All the years I’d refused to go with Chloe, and look at me now.
Now, here I stood in a true abandoned warehouse, or factory or whatever, with real dangers waiting to jump out at me. How that had happened, I’d no idea. For a fleeting instant, I grew inclined to run the other way, a self-preservation instinct soon squelched by feeling my Lex again.
A wash of agony seeped into my mind, gaining reality with an empathetic feel of pain that seemed to seep into my bones, and make each step rickety, agonizing. With this, a rush of panic came, a clinging to life, a desire strong and fierce to see the ones you love before you die. He wanted me, he wanted all of his wolves. He wanted to say goodbye. My heart dropped from my chest to my stomach. I grimaced, fixing my stare into the dark and seeing only Lex in my mind. Chains, cuts or scratches, so much blood, nearly unconscious – the vision stopped me in my tracks.
My hand scrambled for purchase on Nira, who’d been taking a minute to peer around us. We could only speak with our eyes, but as mine filled with tears, they probably only spoke of sadness rather than my true paranoid state. As she took her hand to rub my back, I had to wonder what part of what I was getting of him was truly sent from him, or whether it was just my fears adding in. Regardless, as we maintained our cover, waited for Nira to give us our next move, I kept a tight hold on her jacket.
She tapped me and gestured toward what lay ahead of us. The machines gave way to rows of holes in the floor. Each were rectangular, about three feet deep, and lined with wood. I could only assume a dirt floor in this light. They must have at one time served to stabilize other machines that had been sold off when the factory closed. Still, we needed to navigate them while out in the open on our way to the stairs.
Not that the openings served any more danger than maybe a twisted ankle if one landed wrong, but they did serve as just another obstacle between me and the man I loved. I tried desperately to hold onto what I felt of him, but it often left as fast as it came. Maybe he could feel me, too. I hoped so, though I had to hope that the wolves who had captured him couldn’t. I swore I buzzed like an old street light.