Nobody saw it start.
One second the field was chaos and the Director was bleeding and Moon was holding the line on sheer refusal alone. Next second something changed underneath all of it. Not a sound. Not a movement. Just the world quietly making a new decision about direction.
Aaron noticed the dust first.
Moving in straight lines toward the portal. No wind. No reason. Just going like it had already accepted where it was headed and saw no point arguing about it.
He grabbed Rei's jacket before he knew why.
Then the girl in front slid.
Boots planted. Feet planted. But her spine curved toward the portal like gravity had changed its mind and Aaron watched it happen and felt his stomach go somewhere it couldn't come back from.
She grabbed the awakener next to her.
He slid too.
"WHAT IS HAPPENING!" someone screamed from behind them.
BOOM.
The pull doubled and Aaron's heels left the dirt and Rei grabbed him from behind before Aaron's brain caught up with what his feet were already doing.
It had real weight. Not wind weight. Not force weight. Something had decided on Aaron specifically and was leaning back on that decision with everything it had and Aaron dug in and got his heels back and grabbed Rei's arm and thought *oh that's bad that's really bad.*
Lena grabbed his other arm. Blood on his lip he hadn't noticed. Both her hands shaking.
"HOW LONG CAN YOU HOLD!" she screamed.
"DOESN'T MATTER!"
"AARON."
Squezzzz!
"NOT RIGHT NOW LENA!"
Moon got the barrier up. Wide and dark between the students and the portal. People who'd been sliding caught themselves. Grabbed each other. Thirty seconds where breathing felt almost possible again.
Then one of the watching creatures raised its hand slowly and pointed it at the barrier.
Moon threw everything she had left at stopping it. One person against something that didn't get tired and didn't feel the cost.
BOOM. CRACK. CRACK.
The barrier split top to bottom like it was nothing. The sound Moon made going to one knee was short and quiet and somehow worse than everything else in the field.
KABOOM.
The pull came back harder and Aaron's feet left the ground immediately and he thought *oh no oh no oh no* and Moon's hand shot out and grabbed his arm and they both nearly went down together.
"GET BACK!" she screamed directly into his face.
"THE TWO WATCHING THE DIRECTOR!" Aaron screamed back against the roar. "THEY'RE DRIVING THE PULL! IF HE COULD BREAK THEIR FOCUS FOR EVEN A SECOND!"
Crack. Crack. CRACK.
"I KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING!"
"THEN WHAT DO WE DO!"
She looked at him. Wind tearing sideways. Both arms shaking. Past empty and not hiding it anymore.
"I DON'T KNOW!"
Three words.
Three words he had never once heard from her.
The pull yanked him out of her grip and Rei caught him from behind and Aaron grabbed Rei's jacket with both fists.
"THE MAP!" Aaron shouted. "IN MY ROOM! THREE WEEKS OF DATA REI SOMEONE NEEDS TO—"
"DON'T!" Rei's boots carved long furrows in the dirt. Arms shaking from the weight of holding him. "DON'T YOU DARE!"
"PROMISE ME!"
"YOU PROMISE ME!" Rei's voice cracked wide open on it. "YOU PROMISE ME YOU FIGHT THIS THING!"
"I AM FIGHTING IT!"
BOOM.
The pull surged and Aaron went horizontal. Full body. Feet completely off the ground and parallel to the earth and the portal right there dragging at him and Rei took all of it with both arms and hauled Aaron back down.
"IT'S PULLING ME REI IT'S ACTUALLY PULLING ME RIGHT NOW."
"I KNOW!" Rei screamed back. "I'VE GOT YOU! I'VE GOT YOU!"
"THE MAP..."
"I HATE YOU!"
"I KNOW!"
"I GENUINELY ACTUALLY HATE YOU RIGHT NOW."
"I KNOW! THE MAP REI!"
Rei's jaw was shaking. Two long furrows carved in the dirt behind his boots. Eyes completely red and not hiding a single thing about any of it.
"The map," Rei said. Barely audible under the roar tearing through the field. "I promise. The stupid map."
The barrier came down fully.
BOOOOOOM.
Aaron went horizontal instantly and this time it was different. This time the pull had teeth. Both feet off the ground and the portal dragging him forward like he weighed nothing and Rei and Lena were the only reason he wasn't already inside it and both of them were losing ground by the second and all three of them knew exactly what that meant.
Rei's boots carved deeper. Face going red. Teeth grinding. Every muscle against something that didn't care about muscle.
"I'VE GOT YOU!" Lena screamed. Heels dragging backward through the dirt one centimeter at a time.
"LET GO!" Aaron screamed back.
"NO!"
"LENA THERE ARE PEOPLE BEHIND YOU WHO CAN STILL BE."
"SHUT UP!" Rei screamed. Every word between gasps between the cost of holding something the world had already decided to take. "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP."
CRACK.
Rei's boots left the ground.
All three of them airborne. Aaron horizontal. Rei and Lena behind him at angles. All three going and Rei's hands slipping finger by finger and Aaron felt each one leaving and there was nothing he could do about any of them and he knew it and Rei knew it and they both looked at each other knowing it.
"Rei," Aaron said. The wind swallowed most of it.
"No," Rei said.
"You have to."
"No."
"Rei."
Rei looked at him. Horizontal in the air with his whole face doing something it had never done before. Completely open. Completely honest. Not hiding anything at all.
His hands opened.
The sound he made had no shape to it. It came from somewhere too deep in a person to have a shape. From the place where someone had just done the hardest thing they'd ever done and already knew in the same moment that they'd never fully feel okay about it.
Lena held two more seconds. Her fingers left his jacket one by one and she turned her face away and her shoulders were shaking before the dark took everything.
Moon came forward with both hands out. Not fast enough. She knew she wasn't fast enough and came anyway.
Her face was the last thing Aaron saw.
Not scared. Something older and heavier than scared. Someone who had built everything around stopping this specific moment and was standing inside it anyway with nothing left to throw at it and nowhere left to go.
Then the dark.
Not falling. More final than falling.
And somewhere underneath all the fear in that last half second a part of Aaron noticed something that made no sense at all.
The darkness felt like it had been cut to fit him.
Patient.
Waiting.
Coming home to somewhere he had never been.