Come on. Come on. Come on.
The refrain sounded stupid even inside her own head but she kept it up. Second floor'more offices, a little light from a window at the far end. Nothing she could use. Third floor identical to the second except that little stars were flashing before her eyes. Just how badly out of shape was she? She had gotten plenty of excercise while living with Ayaan. Could four flights of stairs really make her this desperate for a lungful of air?
No.
No, they couldn't. The mold was already in her. The dust she'd breathed in, down in the basement. It must have already been full of spores. And now the Fungal Freak was causing them to bloom inside her body, just by being near her.
A door slammed down in the basement. She had forgotten to lock it and now the monster was inside. C'mon c'mon c'mon. Sarah gasped for breath and pounded up the stairs, almost ran into a door with a metal release bar at hip-height. She pushed the bar and the door opened up on blue sky. Sarah's arms shot out to help her keep balance but the door wasn't just opening on empty space. She had come to the roof. She looked out across the tarpaper and gravel, stared at the clogged-up ventilation hoods like tiny minarets. The roof. Last stop.
There was nowhere to go. The buildings on either side were too low to leap to, she would break her legs. The fire escape didn't reach the roof.
Last stop. Sarah looked back and saw something drippy and wet on the stairs below her. She stepped out into the sunlight and tripped over a hidden step.
She fell forward, her hands outstretched to catch her but they just slid across loose gravel. Her chin smacked the tarpaper and she lost blood. Dark spots blobbed across her vision. She couldn't seem to get her breath, couldn't seem to move her arms, her legs, she felt like a dead spider with her limbs up in the air.
Slowly, very slowly she relaxed her body, her stiff limbs. Slowly, very slowly she sucked in breath through one nostril. She closed her eyes and saw green flashes. She opened them again and saw her fingernails had turned yellow. Faint black spots swam down there in the quick. As she watched her thumbnail creased down the middle'fungus underneath was pushing up against it. The nail turned white and started to split. Pain made her screech.
She heard a heavy tread on the stairs. Someone was coming up, coming after her.
She focused on the pain in her thumb. Used it. She saw it as a white sparkle, a sunburst in her hand. This wasn't her special sight, it was just pure visualization, but it worked. She used that energy to propel her back up to her feet. She drew her Makarov, flicked off the safety, assumed a firing stance with her arm outstretched and pointed at the doorway she'd just come through. She yanked breath into her filling lungs, fought her own body to stay upright long enough to put one bullet through whoever came through that door.
The tarpaper beneath her started to vibrate. It had to be a hallucination, she decided. Not enough oxygen was getting to her brain and it was starting to break down but she couldn't let that stay her hand, she couldn't...
It wasn't a hallucination. If it was it was the most convincing one she'd ever had. The whole roof was shaking, the whole building. She focused on the black rectangle of the doorway, she focused on the green splotches that were blossoming on her sweatshirt, anything to keep her mind steady.