Continuance

Posted on Tue Aug 18th, 2026 @ 1:03pm by Kyleigh Arynson & Glitch & Ombretta del Carlo

3,690 words; about a 18 minute read

It wasn't long before the group was back where Pyra and Breaker were and the big bald man looked at the others and saw that Elixir was back with them.

"Good to see ya got them back," he said gruffly.

"Oh, it was our bloody pleasure," Tremors said with heavy sarcasm as she went to get a canteen for a drink.

Johnny simply slumped down on a rock after brushing it off and shook his head.

"We only had to go to hell and back," Ombretta remarked, finding a mossy log to sit on. "I had no idea such horrors existed."

Kyleigh lived life on the outside traveling from one place to the next. She knew what horrors existed beyond the Hometowns, but Lobe and those atrocities were new to her. "That was a first for me," she said as she checked her gear. "Sadly, the longer you're out here, the more you see. It's not really for the faint of heart."

"Let's get the hell out of here," Pyra said as she looked around. "Sorry we picked this place to camp."

Tremors agreed with that. "I'd rather sleep anywhere but here."

Breaker looked at the others. "What the hell happened?"

"We found them in some sort of building," Ombretta answered. "Someone's been experimenting on people with gifts like us. Dozens of corpses. But it doesn't look like they'll be doing that anymore."

"I'm all for moving locations," Kyleigh stated. "The farther, the better. This place is tainted."

Pyra gave a nod. "Then load up and let's get out of here," she said as she headed for her bus.

===

Breaker looked at Johnny and Ombretta. "You two ridin' with me again?"

Johnny looked at Flora. "I'm okay with it if you are."

"Let's get the hell out of here," Flora calmly said, standing to her feet.

Elixir looked at Sparky. "You and me again?"

"You know it? Are you sure you're okay?" Kyleigh asked. "If either of you needs to, you can stretch out in the fifth wheel."

Once it had been decided who was riding with who, the small convoy headed off into the darkening night with no avalable campsite nearby.

In Breaker's vehicle with Ombretta, Johnny looked at her. "Are you okay?"

If Flora was honest with herself, she would have known that she was far from okay. Only twice had her life been turned upside down. The first was the Glitch, and the second was... well, whatever this was. "I don't think there's anything in my life that could have prepared me for today," she admitted.

"Me, either," Johnny said. He hadn't been an active part of the fighting and was still shocked at what had happened. "Do...do you need some sun?"

Flora shook her head. "I can't ask you to do that," she told him honestly. "I know it hurts you to use your gift, and after today, I can't bear to see someone in pain. The things back there... I had no idea people could be so cruel."

"I'll do it for aloe," Johnny joked, but he was more than willing to take a trade of that for using his power. "It'll always hurt me, Flora, but friendship and aloe makes it better."

Flora offered a hollow smile, one that was designed to act as a veil to cover her true feelings. She was scared, frightened, and horrified at what she'd seen. Part of her screamed to go back to the hometown and hide back in her garden. But she also knew that that was not a life worth living, and if those horrors existed out here, then it was only a matter of time before they crept into the hometown.

A melody appeared in her head, and shortly thereafter an aloe leaf began to grow from the moss around her wrist. Its growth was weak, and while she couldn't bear to say it, a pleading glance at Johnny asked for him to shine light on it to help it grow.

The young boy smiled and watched it grow, then looked up at the look on her face. He called on his power gently and held his hand out over her wrist, the glow slowly intensifying as he let his power out. "It's okay."

Flora's hollow smile brightened, though it was only slightly so. Somehow, she felt as though she could finally relax, an emotion demonstrated by laying her head on Johnny's shoulder. "Thank you," she whispered.

"You're welcome," the young boy said with a smile as he gently crushed the aloe she had given him and applied it to the worst of his burns while she rested against him. It felt nice. Like family.

===The Bike===

"Thank you for saving us, Kyleigh," Cordelia said over the rumble of the road as she rode on the back of the bike.

Kyleigh followed behind Breaker and Ombretta. She couldn't leave Cordelia to suffer at the hands of that psychopath and whatever that monstrosity was. Hell, she really hoped someone would do the same for her if she needed help. "You're welcome," she said. "There's no way I would have left you, Cordelia. You've become one of very few friends I have." In fact, the others were well on their way, too.

"I'm happy to call you friend, too, Sparky," Cordelia said. "I think we could make a great team out here."

"Oh, definitely," Kyleigh agreed with a smile. "But, life out here comes with adventure, too. I hope everyone is up for that."

"So do I. Right now, I just want to take a shower and get some sleep."

Sparky gave a wistful sigh. "A shower sounds so good, and so does sleeping. I can settle for sleeping, though."

"Me, too and preferably not strapped down to a wooden table by an evil fucking brain," Elixir said.

"I've seen some stuff living a life on the road, but that was definitely a first for me. And, if I'm lucky, it will be the last."

"I hear that!"

====

As the vehicles headed into the night, the stars lit the night sky above them and others began to move from under the cover of darkness.

After another hour, the two vehicles came to a stop in a area with seven or eight abandoned, broken down and rusted out vehicles. There was a single entrance going into an old factory complex, this one mostly obscured by large piles of rocks around the area the vehicles were in.

Breaker came to a stop and got out, signaled to Pyra and waited for her to stop as well. He motioned to Sparky to stop as well and waited for them.

Pyra came to a stop with a grunt and got out.

Flora lifted her head and looked at everyone who was starting to pile out of the vehicles. "Oh, not this again," she muttered. "Where are we now?"

Kyleigh brought her bike to a halt and waited for Cordelia to dismount before she did. She approached the others as she took in their surroundings. "Anyone getting an eerie feeling?"

Pyra gave a nod. "Let's scout in pairs. Any objections?" she asked.

"Splittin' up is dumb," Breaker said. "We were in a group before and they separated us, but we weren't ready. We are this time."

Tremors gave a nod. "Let's see what's going on and then set up a quick camp between the vehicles. We can drag or push the rusted out heaps here on either end and give us a safe spot."

"Sounds like an accident waiting to happen," Ombretta muttered, taking a look at their surroundings. "We should check out the inside of the building too," she spoke up. After all, no one wanted to deal with another surprise attack and kidnapping.

"Let's check out our surroundings first, that way if something doesn't sit well, all we have to do is load up and move out," Kyleigh suggested.

Pyra gathered several sturdy branches and set fire to the ends with her hair before she started handing them out. "It's too dark out here."

Breaker took one and gave a nod. "Eyes forward, eyes backwards and eyes up."

Johnny took a torch. "Up?"

"Yeah," Celia said as took a torch. "Things fly."

"Oh," Johnny said as he accepted a torch.

Cordelia took one as well, but she was still feeling a bit dehydrated since the encounter with the brain mutant thing. "This whole thing stinks."

"Smell has nothing to do with it," Flora remarked, taking a branch and heading towards the building. She stopped just outside the door. Unlike the last facility, she was thankful that she didn't have to crawl into a bathroom. This time, it was a door that separated her from the familiar and the unexpected.

The plant manipulator took in a deep breath, Then she turned the knob and hoped for the best.

Johnny stepped up beside of Flora with his torch held away from her but high enough to see. "At least it isn't bloody and nasty," he commented.

Ombretta's eyes scanned the room, looking for anything out of the ordinary. "Yeah, looks kind of... normal? This reminds me of one of the loading docks back at hometown where scavengers would bring in their discoveries."

"What is normal?" the young boy asked. He was born after the Glitch and this was all that he knew.

"Cinderblock, wood, steel," Ombretta said, pointing out different structures. "Things that existed before hometowns." She looked at the boy and smiled, "Plus, no visible blood or distress outside of lack of use. Our hometown has a lot of these elements under the surface. Everything had to come from something."

"We just lost how to make most of it," the young boy lamented. "Now we reuse it."

Breaker looked at Pyra. "The things we do to restart society," he said.

"No, the things we do to get rich," Pyra retorted.

Cordelia looked at Sparky. "What are you in it for?"

Kyleigh looked toward Cordelia. That was a question she'd never been asked before, and it was one she had no problems answering. "I do it for the adventure, and to help those who haven't been as fortunate as I have been," she replied. "I also wouldn't mind trying to make this world a safer place for those that live in it. I know that's unrealistic."

"All I wanted to do was see the new world from up above," Cordelia said. "And it almost got me killed on the land."

"I'm sorry that happened, but we're going to do our best to see to it that it doesn't happen again," Kyleigh said, hoping to reassure her friend a bit.

"Thanks," Cordelia said with a smile.

"We ready to go in?" Breaker asked the group.

"I am," Tremors said as she adjusted her arm devices that regulated how much pressure they took when she used her power.

"No, but, I'm still going to," Kyleigh answered honestly.

Breaker grabbed a piece of old rebar and used his power to extend it into more of a spear shape and looked at Pyra. "Heat this up for me?"

Pyra gave a nod and called on her fire power to heat the tip of it until it was almost glowing. "There you go."

"Thanks," The big bald man said as he hefted his new weapon.

Celia kept her torch and looked into the room beside of Ombretta and Breaker. "I don't see, smell or hear anything."

Ombretta stepped inside, her head cocking slightly to the left as if she could hear something in the distant. As she took a couple more steps forward, she could hear the choir, similar voices singing faintly in unison. "There's... there's life here," she whispered, a smile growing on her face.

Kyleigh looked toward Ombretta. "There is?"

Ombretta nodded, looking to meet Kyleigh's eyes. "I can hear their song. It's faint, but there."

Johnny listened but didn't hear anything. "I don't hear any songs."

Breaker shook his head. "It's in her power, kid. Let's go check it out." He went to move past Ombretta and Kyleigh with his spear in one hand and his torch in the other.

Pyra waited a moment and kept looking around behind them. "I don't like leaving the vehicle behind."

Cordelia gave a shrug. "I didn't feel like being kidnapped last time, but here we are."

Kyleigh shifted her weight, fingers twitching a bit. The faint song Ombretta mentioned wasn’t something they could hear, but the tension in the air was enough to make her skin prickle. She stepped forward, positioning herself just behind Breaker and Ombretta, eyes scanning the shadows ahead. "I can disable the vehicles so no one can take them should anyone come across them, but it also affects us should we need to make a fast getaway."

"Every place we visit can't be waiting to kill us," Flora remarked. "Right?" she asked, turning to face the group.

"Are we going in or are we going to sleep in the vehicles tonight?" Breaker asked. "I'm tired of waiting around and it's getting darker."

Kyleigh shifted. “We’re going in,” she said, voice low but steady. “Standing around in the dark wondering what might be waiting for us is worse than actually finding out.”

She glanced toward the vehicles, then back at the yawning doorway ahead. “We’ve already survived one nightmare today. Whatever’s in there… we face it together, and we stay sharp. No wandering off, no heroics.”

Her fingers twitched again—habit, nerves, or readiness, even she wasn’t sure. “Let’s move before my imagination makes this place worse than it is.”

Ombretta stepped forward, her eyes fixed on the only interior door before them. "Who said anything about wandering off?" she muttered as her hand gripped the door handle. Ombretta took in a deep breath, her chest rising slightly as she did so. Then, before exhaling, her hand twisted in a rapid motion. The door was now open.

Breaker gave a nod. "I like you, Flora. You got backbone." He hefted his homemade metal spear and gave another nod.

Johnny intensified his light output to reveal old rusted machinery that he couldn't identify the purpose of. "This looks inviting."

"Relax," Tremors said as she scanned the room for any robotic monstrosities or mutants that wanted to harm them.

"I hope there's no brains in here," Elixir said.

Pyra gave a shudder. "I can't imagine there'd be more than one per continent at the very least," she said as she lit a torch with her hair.

"What's a continent?" Flora asked, stepping into the hallway. It was not unlike the one they'd been in hours earlier, but at least there was some soft illumination coming from the end of the hall. "There's a room up ahead," she informed the group. The song she was hearing wasn't coming from there, and had to be coming from elsewhere inside the facility.

Kyleigh moved up beside Flora, her posture shifting into something more guarded. Her eyes flicked toward the softly lit hall. Nothing bad ever waited in a room with the creepy glow at the end of a hallway. There was no telling what it was, either. "A continent is… well, it’s a huge piece of land. Bigger than any hometown, bigger than any territory we’ve crossed. Before the Glitch, the world was divided into several of them—massive land masses separated by oceans.”

"I keep forgetting this world is bigger than I can imagine," Flora remarked. For a woman who was very confident with plant life and missing the comfort of her hometown, she still was very much a young mind that hadn't been opened to the larger world since the event.

"It sounds huge," Johnny said as he listened to the two women talked.

"It's a big world, kid," Pyra said.

Tremors gave a nod. "I'm from England, originally. It's on the other side of the world."

"I'm from Colorado. It's where most of my family is," Kyleigh said.

It didn't take long to reach the end of the hall. Amazingly, the building didn't carry the same sense of death or dread or despair that the last structure possessed. Or perhaps Flora was just cracking out of her shell. Either way, when she reached a door with a knob, the plant-manipulator didn't hesitate. She simply turned the knob and carefully opened the door.

Inside was what looked like a greenhouses with plant beds and irrigation set up on three sides. A food production area with soil plots and grow lights sat dormant and empty, but waiting for soil and plants to be put in and power to supply the lights.

Large but empty water tanks and composting units were under the benches, but everything had a slight film of dust and disuse.

"This looks exciting," Breaker said. "We can take this stuff back to the Hometown with ease!"

"It would help out with the farms," Johnny agreed.

"Or bring a pretty price to a homestead," Cordelia said as she looked around.

Tremors chose to keep quiet while Pyra moved in behind the others to look around.

"One can't put a price on this," Flora remarked, entering the room. Her right hand was raised in front of her and her mossy index and middle finger were slowly moving as if she were a conductor leading an orchestra.

"The pieces are here," the plant manipulator added shortly thereafter, but the song does not call from here. Though it looks as though someone never got to get this started."

Kyleigh stepped inside after Flora, her eyes sweeping over the dormant grow beds and irrigation lines. “Whoever built this knew what they were doing,” she murmured. “This isn’t scrap. This is infrastructure. Real, old‑world planning.”

She crouched beside one of the empty soil plots, brushing dust from the edge. “Flora’s right. You can’t put a price on something like this. A setup like this could feed an entire homestead if we got it running again.”

She straightened, glancing toward Flora’s moving fingers. “The way this was left, it feels like they were forced to.”

"Forced, coerced or mutated," Breaker said with a yawn. "I'm tired."

"I could use a bit of sleep myself," Tremors agreed.

Johnny continued to look at all the old supplies and run his fingers over everything, leaving dusty trails. "It's old."

Flora nodded, still slowly working her way around the room. "I know we just got in here, but perhaps this would work for an overnight stay?"

“I think this could work,” Kyleigh said, brushing dust from her palms. “It’s sheltered and seems safe enough. "

She glanced around at the tired faces of those around her. “But just because it feels safe doesn’t mean it actually is,” she added, her tone firm but not harsh. “We should sleep in shifts. One or two of us awake at a time, rotating through the night. If anything decides to wander in, we’ll know before it can get too close.”

She lifted her hand slightly, and since it was her idea to keep watch, it only made sense she volunteer herself. “I’ll take first shift. You all can get settled.”

"Thanks, Sparky," Johnny said with a smile.

Breaker yawned and headed for a corner and balled up his jacket to use as a pillow. "Wake me up for next shift," he said.

"I'll take the one after that," Pyra offered.

"I can stay up with you on the first watch," Elixir said. "It would help us keep each other awake."

"I agree with that," Tremors said. "I'll take third with Pyra."

"I'll stay with the first watch as well," Ombretta volunteered. Even as she said it, she was still looking around the room. She wasn't tired, rather she wanted to dig around and learn more about what was in here.

“Alright,” Kyleigh said, voice steady but warm as she looked around at all of them. “Go ahead and get settled. Pick a spot, get comfortable. We’ve earned a quiet night, even if we have to keep one eye open.”

She then turned her attention to Flora. The plant‑manipulator was still moving with that slow, deliberate grace, fingers conducting a melody only she could hear.

Kyleigh stepped closer to Flora, lowering her voice just a touch. “I wouldn't mind taking a look around, either,” she told her. “There’s more to this place than dust and old equipment. Feels like it’s keeping secrets.”

Flora hoped that the secrets were nothing like the last location they had found. They did not need another mind reader or visual manipulator. What they needed was…

Ombretta’s head tilted to the right, hearing something different. Something unique. A cracked window let in the moonlight, highlighting a small purple flower. Its petals had closed tight, conserving its energy for the morning sun. She approached the flower without caution, without reservation, Mossy fingers stretched outward before a single thought considered the action. When the fingers were inches away, the lilac opened, spreading its pale petals as if to welcome Flora to this place. The color also became slightly more vibrant, at least as vibrant as one could see in the night sky.

“Quite a few secrets indeed,” Flora muttered.

"Are you picking up something?" Kyleigh found herself asking as she made her way over to her.

"When was a last time you saw a flower like this?" Flora whispered, reaching gently towards the small plant.

Kyleigh crouched beside the flower, eyes drifting over its beauty. "Honestly?" She began, letting out a quiet, almost disbelieving breath. "It's been a while. So long, actually, I can't even remember the last time."

While the ladies talked and explored, Elixir started a small fire near the doorway to let the smoke out, then put on a pot she filled with water and set it to boil after adding dehydrated vegetables.

The others settled down to sleep until their watch and the only other sound was animals out in the night.

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