"...so yeah, they had finished the album just before he died in a car accident. The album was still released before the band disbanded since he was the creative force behind the project. Go figure it would be their best-selling one." Lauren walks beside me while we round the large arched pathway that loops the mall. We are on the second floor, where the center of the hall is open to the floor below, glass railings keeping safety regulators happy. The undercurrents of nervousness are still there, but I am now moving with the flow and letting it take me wherever it went. She switches between looking towards me with a small smile and looking around at the sparse few others walking through the mall as well. I can tell that she enjoyed having someone to talk to about these things, obviously unable to at school.

"It's funny how that works, huh?" I don't want to stop her from talking, letting Lauren lead the conversation. We move at a meandering pace, moving by storefront after storefront trying to reach out and pluck my attention away from Lauren. Whatever fancy things they had aren't enough though.

"Exactly," she leans into her smile, head tilted towards me. She leans slightly over the railing next to us and looks down at the floor below as we walk. "The strangest part though? One of the last songs on the album talks about him dying on the side of a highway. It's almost like he knew ahead of time." She turns back to me, her eyes betraying something in her mind for a moment before returning to the smile they had before.

Did her tone just shift slightly down at the end there? I took a moment to really look at her face, running my hands through my hair. A small click of Doc Martens on the mall-tile accentuated a half-twirl as Lauren spun on her heels to look at me. Wait, she isn't walking anymore and is in fro- oh I had stopped walking. She is poring into me, eyebrows scrunched inquisitively, half of her face dimpled with a smirk.

Your PC ran into a problem and needs to restart. Just collecting some error info, and then it'll restart. (01% complete)

You can search for the error online: SYS_OVERLOAD

"Is there something on my face, or what?" echo through my rebooting brain. That face is dangerous. What was I thinking about? She's looking right at me. Something about her expression? She's looking right at me. Christ, she's pretty.

"I love your pretty face." Wow, I am not smart. Did I really just say that? She's going to think I'm a creep. I look away in shame, blush on my face betraying to her how true that it is.

A silence falls, like the wisps of snow falling on a field, blown by the twists in the wind before falling on my pride. She isn't saying anything, did that make her mad? Despite my fears, I peek up from under my brow up at Lauren. Her mouth is open like the words she is about to say catch in the back of her throat. There is a distinct confusion in her eyes. They dart between looking at me and through me while she just sits there ruminating.

"I think-" she bites her lip, the decision of what to say next screwing her face tightly, "you're-"

She takes my hand in hers, forcing me to look at her fully.

"Thank you," she smiles at me, "let's keep going. There is something cool a few stores down I want to show you."

So we continue to move forward, the movement signaling my agreement rather than any words being shared. Probably a good thing because I'm not sure I would be able to make a coherent sentence anyway.  For the first time since the Mall cafeteria, Lauren isn't the attention singularity for me she had been previously, my own awkward embarrassment keeping me from looking straight at her. My heart is beating hard and at such a pace that it is beyond being able to just feel it in my ears; it hurts. I feel entirely out of my depth, and every second I could make a mistake and for all of this to come tumbling down. Whatever flow I was floating on before became turbulent. I can feel my cool being thrown through the rapids, struggling to breathe. I need to relax, and get the flow to calm down too.

"So we are going to ignore that awkward moment, that's cool with me," I self-deprecate to the effect of a small giggle from Lauren. There. My cool has been restored. "What store are you going to show me?"

"No, no. Not a store. It's between these two stores up ahead."

I look for what is so special that she felt the need to take me to it and am blown away by what I saw. It is a completely normal double-door maintenance access door, unmarked beside an Authorized Personnel Only sign on each door. So I’m not blown away, but am incredibly curious.

Lauren must have noticed my inquisitive expression. "There are a few access hallways that lead to a tucked-away break area that they stopped using after a recent remodeling. It's perfect to 'be teenagers' without someone watching. A lot of kids use it to smoke weed."

"I didn't think you'd smoke," I take another moment to size her up, trying to imagine her smoking and managing to just make myself flush again.

"Oh, I don't. I like to draw there on slow days actually. We could go there and talk about stuff. How's that sound?"

My 'yes' catches in my throat when suddenly the ground shakes hard enough for me to nearly lose my footing.

The metal support beams running the length of where we stood groans, metal and concrete fighting each other for freedom. I am able to feel the floor beneath me wobble, as if to remind me that I am indeed on the second floor, and it could fall whenever it pleases. The groaning grew louder as specs of drywall and concrete fell from the ceiling. My eyes follow the noise, up where the support beam met the ceiling to one end of the hallway straight to a group of four men, wearing all-black military outfits, gear and all, but with no emblem or badge. Who are they and where did everyone else go? How are we suddenly alone? 

Wait. The hair stands on the back of my neck. They are pointing assault rifles at us. Out of fear or to protect her, I don't know, I grab onto Lauren as tight as I could, and huddle close to her. One man, flanked by the others and all wearing black tactical-style masks came to scream for us to stay still and get onto the ground. My heart is trying to leap out of my chest, my skin tingling with fear. We both cower against the employee-access door.

Each second ticks with the beat of their boots getting closer and closer. I can still feel the barrel of a loaded gun pointed at me, while I try to make sense of the armored men's screaming. It comes at me like the sound waves are trapped in molasses, by the time it reaches my brain, it is wholly snuffed by my own panic. They are closer, five steps away. 

"Onto the ground!” Four steps away. The fear had fully set it and every muscle tenses and freezes. Three steps away. I hug Lauren closer to me, putting myself between them and her. Two steps away. 

There is a rush of heat like the air had been violated and burned in protest, followed by a momentary nothing. Two bodies landed with a sickly beat of their own. Their chests are caved-in and smoking, the carbonized remains of flesh peeking out of seared-through clothing. Immediately, my lunch decided it wanted to run away too. My urge to puke is cut short by several loud cracks that I felt more than I heard. My hands instinctively ran to my ears as I came to my senses while everything rang. Only as the sounds of gunfire shook through my chest did I realize I am holding my breath.

By the time I look up, there are two more smoking bodies, twisted in whatever way they fell, and another man wearing nothing but a hoodie and jeans, littered with bullet holes bleeding and motionless on the ground yards away. Everything around him is scorched black.

We needed to get away. I look down the hallway of the mall further into the chaos. A few hundred feet away, a man is firing god damn lasers from rings around his hands while he floats through the air, being shot at by over ten others in the same gear as the dead men at our feet. An explosion billows out from a storefront nearby, enveloping them in smoke. We really need to get away.

I grab Lauren's hand and barge through the employee access door behind us. The hallway is just about two peoples in width, the walls a drab grey of backrooms. At the end of the hallway, below a tantalizing red-illuminated exit sign, stood two more black-outfited men as the entire building shook again. The lights flicker, then abate. Bathed in darkness and a sickly red color one man points at us then lifts his gun while the other spoke into his radio. I gave them no time for anything else. With the smallest protest from my unfit body, I torsion to my left and sprint away, straight into an offshoot hallway, Lauren right beside me with her hands till tightly clutched in mine. 

We weave through the back rooms and hallways. A right, a left, two more rights, then another left and through another set of doors. With each step the walls seem to inch closer and closer as everything shakes. Everything is closing in.  Dust fell from above, covering us while another loud boom signaled another explosion. One last left, and we both skid to a stop, nearly falling onto our asses to keep from falling forward.

In front of us emanated a wall of emerald green. It undulates and shimmers gracefully like it is unaware the world is ending all around it. It is translucent and I could see the scattered dust floating freely on the other side. On the walls small crystals of the same color poked through, pushing the drywall out of its way as they grew.

"What the fuck is this," is all I am able to say before my senses returned. I finally let go of Lauren's hand and turn to her. Echoing in the distance I could hear the footfalls of combat boots, slowly winding their way towards us.

"There is no way that we're going to go back that direction with everyone shooting each other-"

"Ethan-"

"-like crazy people and then there's this crazy shit right here that could disintegrate us-"

"Ethan-"

"-for all we know but there's no other place to go it's either green doom or bullet doom and we're just stuck in the middle. Once they get down this hallway we're fucked."

"Ethan-"

"Totally fucked. We're going to die. Die!"

"Ethan!" Lauren yells into my face, her hands gripping the collar of my shirt. My eyes dart to hers in panic and she looks me hard in the eyes. She leans her head towards mine and kisses me softly on the lips. This moment is my entire world and everything else just falls away. My worries, the bullets, the green. And just like that, she's leaning her head back again, the kiss is over. I don't understand why she did that, nor do I want to try, but so much is happening right now.

"What was that?" I look at her with a scared expression.

She simply looks up into my eyes again, a solemness to them that was not there before.

"I'm sorry."

She pushes me backward. Hard. The world shifts and becomes emerald. In slow motion I watch as she moves farther and farther away from me, tears running down her cheeks. I should probably be screaming at this point or dying but I'm too shocked to do either. With a muted curiosity, I note that I can no longer feel the effects of gravity as my mind fades into the emerald oblivion.