And the power of the people shall come to believe they do rule

[mickey-cops.livejournal.com]

((Continuing from this post.))

In the passageways beneath the park, where a group had gathered to break down a long-closed door, a laser beam was widening, and a broad circle began to blacken the surface of the wood, the locks melting and streaming down in shining rivulets, to puddle at the doorstep. The room was getting hot, now.

Outside, all at once, the rides all stopped. Animatronic figures jolted still; boats bumped each other confusedly; rollercoasters fell to the bottom of their tracks and did not continue up. The lights inside the buildings flickered off; the perpetual background noise of music and soundeffects went silent.

Below, the hole in the door began to crackle and spark around the edges, and for just a moment all the eyes trained on the door could see through it a fathomless darkness. An odd, organic silence filled the air; everyone's breathing and small movements were audible, but so too was a new absence of sound, as though the walls were all holding their breath.

And then the air around the door began to shimmer.

Comments

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

Psyche nodded in response, not quite trusting her voice, and smiled a you too kind of smile, then faced the door. Taking a deep breath, she held the lamp before her, and carefully climbed through.

The space around her, warm and resonant, felt more like bathwater than air, and she had a moment of almost-panic before she realized that yes, she could breathe perfectly well. There didn't seem to be anything under her feet, but then there didn't seem to not be anything there, either: it was only because she was trying to analyze it all that it seemed strange, and she thought if there hadn't been so much testing going on before that she just would have accepted it the way one accepts the odd rules of a dream.

She'd turned back round as she stepped through, and saw, as Cayce had (http://community.livejournal.com/dizzy_land/317246.html?thread=18311486#t18311486), the outside world hanging like a picture on a wall made of that living darkness, and the watching faces through it. The light of the lamp was stretching round her, through the door, like a golden bubble.

"Come on. It's all right," she told them. She thought there was at least a reasonable chance that this was the truth.

[ruined-mylife.livejournal.com]

Of course it was all right. Aeryn certainly wasn't scared of an unnamed, uncertain darkness. That would be incredibly unprofessional of her.

She switched her pulse pistol back to her better hand and, with a decisive set of her shoulders, ducked through the opening, looking around and down as she did so.

"That's rather... unnerving," she said, half-jokingly, but mostly entirely serious.

[always-confuzed.livejournal.com]

John followed without hesitation because he knew most experiences like this were just like getting into the pool; if you you did it one limb at a time, you would never make it all the way.

Of course, the fact that Aeryn had already dove in ahead of him might have made it just a tad easier to cannonball in after her.

His head twitched to one side, as though someone had dropped an ice cube down the back of his shirt. "Ooo... yeah, this is not my first choice for the family vacation. I think we should get our deposit back, honey."

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

"Shall we go on?" Psyche asked with eerie calm, and then, rather more uncertainly, "Should we...join hands, or something, do you think?"

She'd never done this except alone, before.

[ruined-mylife.livejournal.com]

Aeryn glanced at John and then back at Psyche, nodding once.

"Worst thing we can do is get separated, I think." She stepped behind John, letting her husband take the middle position; she trusted his aim implicitly, but given the choice she'd still rather be the one with one hand free for the pulse pistol.

She took John's hand in her free one.

[always-confuzed.livejournal.com]

And, being John, he always let Aeryn take her pick of the positions. Because it was no secret that his wife was the better shot. One of the many things that had started off scary and turned into a way of life. One of the many reasons to love her.

Which was weird, when he stopped to think about it.

He gave her hand a squeeze and reached out for Psyche's. "Any clues yet, Wings?"

[late-born-myth.livejournal.com]

She accepted his hand and shrugged with one shoulder. "Well. It would seem like the thing to do is to walk further in? Or out, I suppose, depending on how you're looking at it, but away from the door, in any case. I mean," she shuffled from one foot to another, looking at the door; it didn't seem to be moving with her, or anything. "It looks like we can move in relation to it. So since we don't have anything else to guide us," it was so odd to have to articulate all of this instead of just doing it, "we might as well keep going until we find something else."

"Or until we can't go any further, of course." (But really, even if they passed out from exhaustion she could keep going for a long, long time, and possibly could carry them. Though she'd have to decide whether it would be back to the door or further in. Well, she'd deal with that if and when she had to.)

"Unless either of you had an idea?"

[always-confuzed.livejournal.com]

"No special powers on my end, so I can't think of anything helpful that wouldn't just hold us up," John admitted. He chanced a glance in Aeryn's direction, curious about whether Kira and Setsuna had anything to say about it. "Are we pressing onward?"

[a-lonely-god.livejournal.com]

Just then, the Doctor reached out to her just then, hoping she could still hear him.

'...on our way over here, Daniel and I ran into Mickey, and he was completely flipping out. Something about people getting ... 'archived'. Or—or lost....'

'He said they went into the vault. And he really seemed more concerned about their safety than the fact that we've broken the park. ...a real representation of the figurative Disney Vault?'

'John's good with that pop culture stuff, maybe he'll have an idea.'