shatterverse | (no subject)

Current Location: Gotham City

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It had begun during rush hour, in the very centre of Gotham. Blinding circles of white, opening above the heads of the people, sending waves of terror and fear through the commuters and the businessmen.

Blinding openings, the sky itself tearing apart --

-- but nothing had come through.

Nothing, save a wave of cold air and a damp, cold, spreading sense of fear.

The first case had been only moments later. A woman in the street had screamed, seized up, jerked convulsively -- and fallen.

It had been reported on every station. Famous actress fallen into unbreakable coma -- actress in vegetative state -- family mourns --

The second and third cases, the same. The tenth, just a name. The twentieth, just a number.

The hundredth, just a statistic.

The eight hundredth -- the fifteen hundredth -- the four thousandth --

The rate of infection grew exponentially, and rapidly. The streets of Gotham fell quiet. People were afraid to leave their homes. There were those who tried to run.

The sickness struck them in their cars as they left.

And everywhere, the mist grew thicker and thicker, until even in the height of noon the streets were shrouded in damp white fog.

"It's a town of the living dead," Ariella had said, clinging to Jim's shoulder. "They're all alive still, Jim, that's what makes it so bad..."

He'd held her and patted her shoulder, mourned with her, and then -- on the ninth day, when he went in to wake her and found her hanging from her ceiling, lost to despair -- he buried her.

And moved on.

The city still needed him; the city still needed everyone it could get.

On the twelfth day he made a feeble attempt at rounding up a group to escape. They met pale-faced and shaking, and two more seized and jerked and fell into comas while they stood talking; that was the end of that.

Everything stopped. The city was silent, except sometimes for a scream, or the sound of sobbing.

Holed up in the clocktower, Jim had entirely given up hope.

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Jim shakes his head, despairing.

"There isn't one."

The cold is coming back, the enervating distressing cold that eats at his bones.

Erin self consciously began to pull her coat tight around her. "Have you tried recently? The car out there can go pretty fast."

"Fast enough to outrace a disease?" Jim asks, and shakes his head. "Look ... it's just not going to work."

SADFACE, says Jim.

Erin felt the cold getting stronger and tried to shake her head. He was probably right but... Screw it.

She grabbed him by the arm and started heading for the door.

"C'mon. If we can get out of here maybe we can find a doctor or... anything. I don't know. It beats waiting here to die."

"You'd rather rush off into death?" he asks, gruff and bleak.

There's no point in anything, obviously, Erin! Why bother.

(But he lets her pull him.)

"I'd rather not die at all," Erin feeling glum but doing her best to fight against it.

She pushed open the door and hit the remote to the car. "Get in."

Jim is shivering.

"All right."

But he won't be much help. He's just going to sit there like a big wet blanket. (And he should be excited! It's a FLYING CAR, JIM! It's the most exciting thing he's ever seen! It's just ... there's this cold and damp and he's so D:.)

The cold is increasing, slowly but noticeably; the fog seems almost alive. Jim forces himself to lift an apathetic hand.

"The harbour's that way. Mainland the other way. Gotham's on an island, see."

Erin was doing her best to keep her wits about her as she powered on the car and it went into hover mode. Her initial panic and adrenaline at getting here was slowly ebbing away and being replaced by lethargy and the crushing idea that she may never get back home again.

"Which is closer?" She asked pulling back on the controls and away from the fog.

"Not sure."

He pulls his coat around him, slumping.

"Harbour, I guess."

Erin gunned the engine and the car flew off like a shot. Weaving through a couple of buildings it was only a few moments later that they were over the harbor. "Outside of the city what's the closest place we can find a doctor?"

Jim gives a half-hearted shrug.

"Doctors can't do anythin'."

Oh, he's just a bundle of joy. Even his moustache is drooping and shivering.

Something looms ahead that isn't a building. The bulk is indistinguishable through the fog.

"Maybe you're right," Erin replied, "but... what is that up ahead?"

Erin adjusted the spotlight on the car to the bulk up ahead.

From Jim, who's sunken and shivering in the corner of the seat, there's no answer.

Up ahead, the bulky thing shifts, emitting a vast and terrifying groan. It's vaguely brown; not a colour that's at home in the steel-and-stone of Gotham City. Unfortunately, it's too big for Erin's spotlight to see what exactly it is; it's shrouded by the fog that's everywhere.

What she can see, though, is the way the ground cracks and splinters under the thing's movement, the way those cracks rapidly grow and multiply, racing directly towards the hovering car -- and beneath it, passing it to crackle up the side of the buildings all around.

Three buildings ahead, a wall shivers and falls, crashing unnaturally loudly in the silent streets.

Across the plaza, the same.

Right beside them, about to come down on top of them ...

...move quick, Erin.

Erin yanked hard on the controls and punched hard on the accelerator, veering off like an insane veering thing. If Broder was in the car he'd probably start yelling about her insane driving.

"Rutting hell! What was that?" Erin yelled as she continued an evasive pattern.

"I don't know!"

Jim's shocked out of his apathy, staring blankly.

"I don't know, but it's alive -- run!"

"What do you think I'm doing?" Erin said with an eerie calmness as she floored the accelerator and punched up the targeting system. Since Bob disappeared along with Broder it meant they'd have to fire the laser cannon themselves.

Erin pointed at the trigger mechanism to Jim. "Point it directly behind us and just pull the trigger. Maybe whatever it is will back off."

Jim grabs for it with shaking hands, but he takes a deep breath, forcing himself under control, and his shots are steady.

Not that they seem to have any effect on the bulk of the -- the whatever-it-is behind them.

"...it's not moving any more."

That wasn't stopping Erin from slowing down. "Nice shooting. You feeling better?" she asked as she headed to what appeared to be more of the outskirts of town.

Jim takes a moment to take stock of himself, frowning.

"...yeah. Is it just me, or is it warmer in here, too?"

He cranes to look behind them.

The mist appears to be following them.

Erin thought about it for a second and continued pushing the speed on the car. "Maybe it's an environmental thing. Like slow acting nerve gas or something. What's the fastest way out of here?"

Jim nods, craning back, frowning in thought.

"That doesn't explain why it'd attack people trying to use major roads. Fastest way out is over the Trigate bridge, but look, I've seen too many people try that way. If we're gonna make it out, we've gotta be fast, but we can't go the major roads."

He's startlingly animated, now, gruff and furious and fast-spoken while he tries to work out the problem.

"And if there's anyone still -- well, still conscious -- we need to get them out of here, too. Now we know that it can be outrun."

"I don't have anything that would track people still concious," Erin said frowning at the scanners. "Any idea where we could start?"

"Make noise," Jim suggests, still frowning. "That's what brought me out. I don't think anyone's still ... God, I hope there's something we can do for the -- sleeping people. It's horrific."

"Then let's pick a spot and see what we can do," Erin said taking the car down lower. "That thing over there? It's the PA for the car. Crank the dial all the way to the right and you'd have to be deaf to hear us."

Jim leans over to inspect it, and grins.

"Wonder what I've gotta do to get a setup like this in my patrol car?"