"The tenants—?!?"
We all stumbled backwards in shock. Approaching us with hostility written in their movement, the tenants from the rooms we'd previously opened now filled the halls. It was a complete contrast of a view to what we'd expected of them, which was to remain docile inside their rooms without commotion.
"They're all moving outside of their rooms!?" Emanuel screamed.
"What's happening?!" I asked.
"I don't know but we need to fall back! There's too many of them!" Kyra tried retreating us back into room 560. As we all pulled backwards in panic, there was only one of us who remained still at the front.
The Man in Black.
"J!" Kyra called out to him. He was unresponsive. Unphased by the flood of hostiles rushing towards us, he pulled a beam sheathed behind his back.
"Primary form: Akimbo."
J suddenly dashed forwards. As he sprinted towards the tenants in an oncoming clash, he pulled apart the beam and divided it into two separate swords, now bearing one in each hand. He held each blade in front of his chest, signaling an X-formation, clearly ready to strike his foes.
"Stop!!!" Cynthia shouted for him to hear. "We're supposed to be saving the tenants! Not killing them!"
In that moment, J placed his swords back together, reconstructing them into the original form of a beam it had been in. As he finally came face-to-face with the raging tenants, he first avoided a flurry of punches thrown his way, dodging each attack with ease. I felt like I was watching water flow through and past each tenant, as he gracefully moved in between them all. Then, once he'd found himself shrouded in the center, in a place where to us he was covered completely by the tenants, he raised his beam and began to aim.
Down the hall from where we stood, we could only hear the sounds of heavy hits, followed by the sight of the tenants dropping to the floor. One after the other, soon enough, all the tenants had fallen to J's feet, who stood in the middle staring down at all of them.
"Holy shit…" I couldn't believe my eyes. J had just cleared 60 people untouched.
"Are they dead?" Cynthia asked, worried. She ran over and checked the pulse for one of the floored tenants. "They're alive…"
"He just knocked them out unconscious. Most likely targeted all the pressure points he could hit," Celeste said.
"Skilled one aren'tcha, J?" Sav went over to pat him on the shoulder. Right before he could, he hesitated, then retracted. "Nevermind that. I don't wanna end up like all these others here."
I came over and joined the rest of them, observing the piles of unconscious tenants. "Why were they acting like that? They were clearly trying to hurt J."
"I don't know. First, there was the tenant in room 560 who kept moving away from Sav's wormholes. Then all of a sudden, every single tenant on this floor is moving around strangely." Kyra couldn't make sense of it. "What happened to being constantly docile?"
"It's like something triggered all of them," Emanuel said. "They were all normal before we went into room 560. Do you think what we did in 560 had to do with activating something in all of them?"
"My wormholes? Is that what you're sayin'?" Sav scratched his head. "That single one didn't wanna go into my wormhole. Maybe all of 'em don't wanna?"
"Wait, you might actually be right," I told him. "There's something weird going on here…"
I was getting deja vu from my first visit to this apartment. It was the same feeling of uncertainty I felt when I first noticed I was stuck in the loop on the fourth floor.
"Even if the tenants act absent-minded and unresponsive to our social cues, they move according to a certain mindset. They all act under the same mindset."
"Like a collective mind," Celeste added-on. "It's just like the Angels…"
That was the piece of context I needed to hear. It bridged together my originally segmented thoughts.
"I think the tenants are being controlled," I said. Everyone looked at me with uncertainty, like they tried to make sense of it. It was only Celeste who viewed me with a similar look of understanding in his eyes.
"Come on, now. Besides J, all of you here have controlled an infantry of Angels using the hive mind before. Isn't this all familiar to you? These tenants move like they're being given certain commands, just like the Angels."
I tried building off of Celeste to prove our point. "But they're even more absent than the Angels. It doesn't look like they're just being commanded. They're being straight-up controlled."
Everyone began to understand. They all realized how much it made sense.
Cynthia asked the prime question. "Then someone's controlling all of them?"
Suddenly, the ground beneath us shook. Being on the top floor, the commotion of hundreds of steps could be felt rumbling on the floors below.
"What's that…?"
The sounds got heavier and louder. We slowly realized that its origin was heading our way, up the stairs towards the top floor where we stood. Down the hall, the door to the emergency stair case suddenly burst open, and out came tumbling even more tenants than before. They moved with the exact same aggression as the ones who lay unconscious beneath our feet
My ankle was then abruptly snatched by the grip of a hand. I looked down with shock, seeing that all the eyes of the tenants on the floor were suddenly shot open. They were quickly regathering themselves and standing up among us.
We'd found ourselves dead center in danger.
"Primary form: Akimbo." J drew his two swords by his sides.
There were tenants rushing towards us, and tenants between us who began to twitch with an unnerving tenacity.
"We're going to—!"
In the blink of an eye, my cry was cut off. I was suddenly standing next to room 560 again, looking at the crowd of tenants rushing in the direction I was just previously standing at. By my side was everyone else, all besides J.
"Just in the nick of time!" Sav said, clenching his palm. I realized he'd used Gateway at the last second to help all of us escape the encirclement of threats in that moment. We'd narrowly missed peril if it weren't for his spontaneous wormhole.
"Where's J?" Emanuel asked.
Sav pointed ahead, back at the other end of the hall that was already piled with dangerous tenants.
"I left him there."
"Why?"
I heard the sound of energy raising the pressure in the room, followed by J's words.
"Secondary form: Akimbo Amplified."
Surrounded by aggressors, J's swords suddenly glowed a hue of blue. His weapons had been imbued with plasma.
"Sorry, Cynthia," Celeste said.
She was confused. "For what…?"
"I don't think there's any saving those tenants over there."