"AGHH—!!!"
I could hear Kyra scream horridly from within the crowd of tenants. Instant, bloodshot, red pain had just struck her straining eyes. As blood itself began to tear from its corners, there was an immediate wake to reality in Kyra's mind.
"I can see everything."
She swung, and with one, single, slice of the knife, she serrated through all the tenants surrounding her in a circle. This momentarily cleared the space between us of tenants, and I was able to catch a glimpse of her face for a second.
"Kyra…?"
Her eyes flared a gleaming red, as thin trickles of blood spread down across her face like the roots of a tree spreading deep into the earth. Her irises stared forward as if she glared heavily at one single thing, but simultaneously, they looked zoned-out as if she did not focus on what she watched. This was to say that she looked directly at me, but I couldn't truly feel her gaze focused on me.
Tenants instantly jumped at her to follow-up their bisected colleagues from a variety of directions, heights, and speeds. Some would strike her at the same time, while others would be in consecution. Kyra was in the prime position to be obliterated, as even anticipating to defend one of the attacks would lead into suffering from another.
"No—!!!"
I screamed aloud, unready to witness another comrade become a victim before my very eyes.
Shlrk—!!!
Kyra stabbed the first tenant that was to come into contact with her, instantly defending against the attack of the next, accounting for the ones that struck in unison and even the ones that were consecutive. I watched as she amazingly avoided every single attack without struggle, while countering every tenant with a fatal blow. In just a mere few seconds, the second wave of tenants that had pounced on her had fallen to her feet.
"How the…?"
I was witnessing feats impossible by the regular human. Even with Kyra's adaptability of her Fractal, Panorama, she shouldn't have been able to anticipate every single attack that came her way. The majority of them were in her blind spots, even for someone who could see 180 degrees like her, yet she moved in a way that suggested she'd predicted every single one of their moves.
With the group of tenants that had come from downstairs now cleared away on my side, there were seconds to spare before the following group of tenants from the hole in the ceiling reached us.
"How did you do all of that?" I asked Kyra, still shocked that she stood alive before me.
She stared at me with her bloody red eyes, completely void of white. "I can see everything right now."
"What do you mean?"
"I've exceeded Panorama. I can see with a 360 degree field of view."
"What?!" I was speechless. Kyra was telling me that she could see everything around her in a circle, as if she had eyes plastered around the circumference of her head. Her Panorama had doubled its efficiency, going from an already incredible 180 degree field of view to now 360 degrees.
"How… How?!"
"The only explanation can be that I had a Fractal Activation." Kyra turned to face the incoming tenants. "But there's no time to ponder on it right now."
I gasped. There were very few cases of a Fractal Activation being documented in Melysia history. It was known to be the rarest possible occurrence associated with Fractals. A Fractal Activation was a one in one billion chance of an individual having their Fractal exceed its limits and transcend into what could be described as an 'upgraded version' of their original Fractal. But there wasn't enough coherency among the few documented cases that could explain why Fractal Activations occurred at all, so Kyra's current event was a mystery.
"Go." Kyra's back faced me. She spoke as if she could see me, and now, I knew she could. "Go, Klyson."
"Go? Where?"
"Downstairs, through the stairwell. The tenants that came from there must've been the ones blocking the entrance at the lobby. The exit should be open right now. Take Cynthia and Emanuel and go."
"B-But what about you?"
She continued to face the incoming tenants. They were getting closer.
"I've just recently decided that I would not let any more of my friends get hurt under my watch. And with how my Panorama has improved, I have no excuse but to keep that word. Everyone and everything is under my watch right now."
"But you've done enough already, Kyra. You're pushing your limits. You need to save yourself too!"
"Celeste and Sav are still back there. I won't leave them behind. And I won't let these tenants catch up to you either, Klyson. I already almost lost you when they overwhelmed us. I don't ever want to experience that fear again."
I struggled to say more. I could feel her sense of righteousness overflowing.
"I care so much about you, Klyson. You don't understand. I want you to get out of this building alive and untouched, and right now, I have the ability to do that for you. So please, go now!"
I wanted to fight back against her words, but at the same time, it reassured the thoughts I had before this all happened. The idea in my head was that my position as a Fractless was to let the ones with Fractals do the heavy work since they had the power to do so. And Kyra was proving to me right now that she could fulfill that very duty.
"But I shouldn't be leaving you behind…"
I saw the corner of Kyra's mouth as she grinned. "Just let me fulfill the promise I made to you."
"Promise…?" I recalled what she'd told me in that one moment with sudden affection. "Oh…"
"I've got this. So, go."
The tenants would soon come into contact with Kyra. I saw her grip her knife tightly. As action was about to ensue, my body finally moved, but away from her. My feet had finally stepped forward, but in the direction of the stairwell. Now my back faced her, as I began to quickly pace myself towards the open door, fully conscious of the decision I was making.
I had chosen to leave Kyra to defend me, while I escaped on my own.
As I was about to walk through the door into the stairwell, all noise and commotion in the hall had suddenly ceased. It were as if my ears had just been muted. Confused, I turned around, dumbfounded to find the hall completely empty, save for Kyra, and Celeste and Sav at the very end.
All the tenants had disappeared.
Besides the bodies on the floor of the tenants Kyra had already killed, all the ones rampaging towards her just seconds ago were nowhere to be found. It were as if they all retreated back up to the fifth floor through the hole in the ceiling, but in instant time.
Realizing the opportunity in the clear, Kyra dashed towards the other end of the hall to reunite with Celeste and Sav who had been separated from us ever since the ambush. Once all together, they noticed me at my end of the hall.
"I thought you left already!" Kyra said to me.
"I was about to, until all of the tenants disappeared! What's up with that?!"
Kyra shrugged in the distance. "I don't know! As I was about to engage in contact with them, they vanished out of thin air!"
"Vanished…?" I scrunched my face with confusion. If Kyra could see everything with her current state of Panorama, she should have easily seen where the tenants retreated when they disappeared. For her to say they completely vanished from her sight was an unsettling statement.
"I'm disappointed."
A deep voice spoke across the hall. None of us recognized it. I realized it was coming from behind me, at the end of the hall opposite to Kyra, Celeste, and Sav. When I turned around to see who it was, I was met with the confrontation of a tall man dawning a suit, with wavy blonde hair streaking down his shoulders. He wore a fedora that nearly covered his eyes, yet I could see him looking at me with an unsettling grin.
"You've disappointed me, Klyson."