Nobody saw it start.
One second the field was chaos and the Director was bleeding and Moon was holding the line. Next second something changed underneath all of it. Not a sound. Not a movement. Just the world quietly reprioritizing.
Aaron noticed the dust first.
Moving in straight lines. Slow. Patient. Like it had already accepted where it was going.
He grabbed Rei's jacket before he knew why.
Then the girl in front of them slid.
Boots planted. Feet planted. But her whole body curved toward the portal like gravity had changed its mind about direction and Aaron watched her spine do it and his stomach fell through the floor.
She grabbed the awakener next to her.
He slid too.
"What's happening!" someone screamed. "WHAT IS HAPPENING!"
Then everybody was screaming and the pull doubled and Aaron's heels left the dirt.
Rei grabbed him before Aaron registered his feet were gone.
The pull had real weight. Not like wind had weight. Like something had looped a rope around Aaron's ribs and was leaning back on it with everything it had. He dug in and got his heels back and grabbed Rei's arm.
"It's following me!" Aaron had to shout it. The air was going somewhere now, a low roar building that pressed against his ears from the inside out. "It's not pulling everyone the same, it's pulling toward me specifically!"
"You're null!" Rei shouted back. "You don't have anything for it to."
"I KNOW!"
Lena grabbed Aaron's jacket from the other side. Blood on his lip he hadn't noticed. She wiped it with her sleeve and her hand was shaking and she was doing a bad job of hiding it.
"How long!" she shouted over the roar.
"Doesn't matter!"
"Aaron."
"Not right now, Lena!"
Moon got the barrier up and thirty seconds felt almost survivable.
Wide and dark between the students and the portal. People who'd been sliding caught themselves. Grabbed each other.
Then one of the watching creatures raised its hand slowly and pointed it at the barrier.
Moon saw it. Threw everything she had left at stopping it. Her feet slid back from the output.
She was one person.
The barrier split top to bottom. Moon went to one knee. The sound she made was short and quiet and ten times worse than a scream.
The pull came back like a door blowing off its hinges.
Aaron's feet left the ground and the roar of the air going sideways hit a level that made thinking difficult and he was dragged forward scrambling and Moon's hand shot out and grabbed his arm and yanked him sideways and he swung around and crashed into her and they both nearly went down.
"GET BACK!" she screamed directly into his face.
"THE TWO WATCHING THE DIRECTOR!" Aaron screamed back. The wind was tearing at both of them. "THEY'RE DRIVING THE PULL! IF HE COULD BREAK THEIR FOCUS FOR EVEN AND BOOM!"
"I KNOW WHAT THEY'RE DOING!"
"THEN WHAT DO WE DO!"
She looked at him. The wind was pulling her hair sideways. Both arms shaking. Past empty and choosing not to show it and showing it completely.
"I DON'T KNOW!" she shouted.
Three words he'd never heard from her.
The pull yanked him out of her grip and Rei caught him from behind and hauled him back and Aaron grabbed Rei's jacket with both fists.
"THE MAP!" Aaron shouted over the roar. "IN MY ROOM! THREE WEEKS OF DATA! SOMEONE NEEDS TO SEE IT!"
"DON'T!" Rei's boots were carving trenches in the dirt. Aaron could feel Rei's arms shaking from the weight of holding him. "DON'T YOU DARE!"
"PROMISE ME!"
"YOU PROMISE ME!" Rei's voice cracked on it. "YOU PROMISE ME YOU FIGHT THIS!"
"I AM FIGHTING IT! I'M JUST—" The pull surged and Aaron went horizontal for a second, full body, feet off the ground and parallel to the earth, and Rei's shoulders screamed with the weight of him and he hauled Aaron back down with both arms. "I'M JUST LOSING!"
Lena grabbed Aaron's other arm. Both of them planting and hauling and Aaron's feet found the ground again for three seconds.
"THE MAP REI."
"I HATE YOU!"
"I KNOW!"
"I GENUINELY ACTUALLY HATE YOU RIGHT NOW."
"I KNOW! THE MAP!"
Rei's jaw was shaking. His boots had carved two long furrows in the dirt behind him.
"The map," Rei said. Barely audible under the roar. "I promise. The stupid map."
The barrier came down fully.
The pull became something with no word for it. A wall falling inward. Aaron's body went horizontal instantly, both feet off the ground, parallel to the dirt, the portal dragging him like a flag in a hurricane and the only things keeping him were Rei's hands on one arm and Lena's on the other and both of them were losing ground.
Rei's boots carved deeper. His face was going red with the strain of it, teeth grinding, arms shaking with a weight that was trying to dislocate something.
"I've got you!" Lena screamed. Her heels dragged backward through the dirt. "DON'T MOVE! I'VE GOT YOU!"
"LET GO!" Aaron screamed back.
"NO!"
"THERE ARE PEOPLE BEHIND YOU WHO CAN STILL BE HELPED! LET GO!"
"SHUT UP!" Rei screamed. Every word coming out between gasps, between the physical cost of holding something the world had decided to take. "SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP." KABOOM!
The pull hit a level that made the air taste like something burning.
Rei's boots left the ground.
Both of them were airborne now, Aaron horizontal and Rei and Lena behind him at angles, all three of them suspended and going and Rei's hands were slipping finger by finger and Aaron could feel each one and couldn't do anything about any of it.
"Rei," Aaron said. The wind took most of it.
"No," Rei said.
"Rei you have to."
Rei looked at him. Horizontal in the air. Eyes red. Doing that thing with his face he'd never done before and was doing completely openly.
His hands opened.
The sound he made wasn't a word. It was just a sound from somewhere deep in a person who had just done the hardest thing they'd ever done and already knew they'd never feel okay about it.
Lena held two more seconds. Her fingers left his jacket one by one and she turned her face away and Aaron saw her shoulders shaking before the dark took him.
Marcus went. Six awakeners went.
The Director, bleeding through his jacket, fighting two creatures at once, turned and saw and screamed something at Moon.
Moon came forward with both hands out. Not fast enough. She knew she wasn't fast enough and kept coming anyway.
Her face was the last thing Aaron saw.
Not scared. Something older. The face of a person who had built everything she had around stopping this specific moment and was standing in it anyway with nothing left to throw at it and nowhere left to go.
Then the dark.
Not falling. More final than falling.
And underneath the fear, in that last second before everything went away, a part of Aaron noticed the darkness felt like it had been cut to fit him.
Like it had been waiting a very long time.
Like coming home to somewhere he'd never been.