The Witching Hour Part I

The room they were in suddenly turned dark. All the whirring and beeping from the terrible Odradek was now silenced, Hannah could only hear a faint ringing resulted from it.

"Fuck!" Kasha cursed from across the room. Hannah couldn't see her.

She struggled to remember what her father said about facing terrible danger. She couldn't remember any. All of his father's advice never prepared her to fight somebody, or some…thing from using her womb to bring about a monster in this world. She had to think about it herself, and quick. She tried to breathe deeply and slowly, to soothe herself and hopefully clear her mind just a little bit.

"We are so close! Goddessdamnit!" Kasha cursed, "after all these years, now is the time for power failure? What a load of bullshit!"

Power failure. That never happened before. Hannah's mind immediately focused on the patients in the hospital. Those who needed the electricity to support them, after being exposed to the terrible gas. She wanted to stand up and yell to whomever responsible for the blackout that they needed to get their act together immediately because there were people lives on the line. But she was not in that position right now. She had nobody to order around or being angry with. She had to think about it herself.

She thought she has to save herself first, before saving others.

She instinctively took off her heels slowly, one by one. Tried to make as little noise as possible, although she didn't yet know why she had to be discreet about it. She ran her palms on the floor, tried to find something to defend herself with, something hard and could be used as a hitting weapon, although she was sure if push came to shove, she wouldn't be able to swing it. Never mind. She couldn't find anything.

"Don't ever think you can run away from me, Hannah. I can hear you," Kasha threatened.

"I'm not trying to," she answered. She finally settled with grabbing one of her heels. She felt she could use the thin heel to injure someone. She scoffed at the thought. She never learned to fight, and if she had to fight Kasha, a fighting machine, she definitely would lose the fight in seconds, "it's just," she paused, "I'm thinking about all of the patients here. If the power won't restore soon…"

She was hoping that Kasha would finish her sentence there, but she only heard silence. She couldn't guess what Kasha was thinking without seeing her face. She wondered if Kasha shared her concern.

"There should be some sort of emergency generator," she finally heard Kasha said.

"Yes. There should be. Why doesn't it work?" she thought aloud.

"Don't ask me," Kasha said, "you're the one who owns the facility."

She's right, "yeah, but it's not my job to supervise all of the infrastructures…"

"You only inject your money and hope for the best, aren't you?"

Was that a jab? As much as she wanted to tell Kasha that it was an oversimplification, she wasn't sure that being defensive was the right course of action.

"My dad's money, not mine," she decided to just joke it around. Respond, don't react.

Kasha didn't seem to be humored, anyway, "but, are you sure the facility has a backup generator?"

"I'm pretty sure," she answered. She wasn't sure, "we can't make any public facility if we don't meet the standardized protocol."

"So somebody tampered with it," Kasha concluded.

"You're reaching," Hannah said, "if anything, you and Julian probably did that since you guys managed to build an office with a secret path underneath the hospital without me ever knowing about it."

There was a pause, then Kasha answered, "it was for the greater good."

"Right," Hannah said, "by propping me high up as whoever incarnate to then using my womb to birth whatever. Can't you see that I won't see that as a good thing?"

"The Goddess incarnate," Kasha argued.

"Yeah. That," her eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness. She located a silhouette of the Odradek some steps in front of her. She could hear a faint noise far from where they were, she used the sound as a mask for her own bare footsteps, inching in towards the Odradek. An idea came to her, and she could only hope that Kasha would be unaware of it. She gripped one of her heels in front of her chest. It made her feel more confident, somehow.

"Step away from the Odradek," Kasha said. She knew anyway.

"Why," Hannah suddenly felt mischievous, "shouldn't I be close to it, considering my womb would be a part of this… Aster's Hero?" she paused, "oh what's this?" she felt some sort of tube behind the monstrosities. Funny how in the dark now, she finally able to get close to it. Then she thought maybe because it was dark. She gripped hard on the tube and pull it as hard as she could. It gave way.

"Whoops!" she said.

"You bitch!" Kasha yelled, "step away from Him! You don't know what you're doing!"

"Ooooh! So many cables and tubes… I wonder what would happen if I pull them all," Hannah said while randomly pulling away the cables and tubes connecting to the back of the Odradek. She could hear Kasha shuffling about towards her.

Strength came to her. She pushed the damn thing forward. Without much of its connecting cables pulled off, it seemed easier to be toppled over. The things that happened next felt like a rush through time. Hannah felt like she was only watching what happened being shown to her. She heard Kasha yelling, as the weight of the Odradek crushed her.

She could feel herself being drifted from where she was to the door, which to her surprise could be easily opened, then the dark corridors, then back to the room with the secret door. It all happened so fast it was like flying. The room also basked in darkness, but somehow she could see the silhouettes of the furniture. She slammed the secret door behind her, faintly hoping that it would lock itself and couldn't be opened from the inside.

Another silly wishful thinking, she thought. That would be a terrible design choice.

She wondered if she killed Kasha. No time to think about it. She had to run, it's the only thing that mattered for her now. Away from this building, away from this nonsense. She froze in her place, trying to remember the front door's position in relation to the furniture. The rush was slowly dissipated, and other feelings started to appear inside of her: fear, sadness, anger. Mostly desperation.

She located the handles of the door and started to run for it before it exploded. She yelped as she was ducking to avoid the flying metal door handle. It hit the wooden wall behind her hard. She realized she lost her previously gripped heel somewhere between her toppling of the Odradek and her arrival to the room. She ran her hands on the big desk in front of her and grabbed anything else she deemed enough to hit somebody with. What was it? Was it a wooden nameplate? It felt like it. She wondered who would be pounding on the door. If it was the androids dispatched to guard her in, why would they try to break the door?

The door broke. Hannah held her breath. She could feel the warmth of her tears on her cheek. She immediately wiped them away. She'd be going to cry later, she decided.

Three figures barged in. She could only see red light shone from the top of their forehead. It wasn't much, but enough to told her that they had rifles on them.

"Who are you!" she asked.

The figures snapped their attention in her direction. She was sure this would be her end, and she could only hope that rifle's bullets would not put her in so much pain before she could finally pass away.

But they were only standing there, not doing or say anything. After some uncomfortable silence, one of them moved one arm to his/her ear and said, "Ticho. We found her."