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It was a trump card, a last resort kind of deal... a contingency option if all else fails, a plan so strictly confidential that even I wasn’t allowed to know about it... hence the vagueness.

“You’ll see when we get there...” was all Amanda had to say on the matter, clenching hard on the steering wheel.

There wasn’t much chatter on the road forward, with only the jingle and chimes of Christmas tunes on the radio keeping the car away from being essentially a mobile library.

She kept her focus glued to the road, growing more angsty the deeper we drove right back into the bustling heart of the city. Meanwhile, I had my face propped up against the window, thoughts speedily adrift, much like the view of the outside.

My curiosity was starting to get the best of me, buzzwords just kept buzzing in my head like a swarm of bees nesting in, forming a colony on my frontal lobe.

Old Guard – buzzed one.

.....

Lazarus Stone – buzzed another.

Bringing back the dead, Ash, Lenora...

Buzz, buzz, buzz.

” – to play the role.”

Suddenly, I noticed Amanda’s face staring back at me through the reflection in a window, and I quickly twisted my head the other way, but before I could even respond on autopilot, her smirking lips beat me to the punch.

“If I had a dollar every time I’ve caught you drifting today, I could buy myself a pretty good burger.”

I hurriedly evicted the bees, firmly shutting the door behind lock and key, and said to my defense, “Burger’s not much, though...”

“Is there anything else you’d like to know, perhaps?” She suggested, raising a generous brow. “About Elves? About what happened to the Old Guard? Wanna know what the Lazarus Stone actually does, maybe?”

Guess I was buzzing a little bit too loudly. She must have heard it... it’s the only way she could be so right on the money.

“It was just a question,” I said, repeating myself.

“A curious question, considering the company you keep.”

“Your opinion...” I muttered back.

“Fine, if you say so...” Amanda said, parting back to the road with the corner of her lip retaining that ever dubious curve. “But for what it’s worth, I can be pretty good company too, you know? You don’t have to keep wandering away...”

“I’m not,” came my immediate assurance. “I just got a little distracted, is all.”

“No doubt,” She replied with a low chuckle. “Anyway, as I was saying, finding the location is the easy part. Finding someone to play the part – that’s the problem here. We still haven’t found the perfect Elidna to play the role.”

“This honestly feels like something you guys should have planned out long before we got to this point,” I said. “Who starts shooting a movie with only half the characters actually cast?”

“Well, the other half actually got fired halfway through production, that’s why things are the way they are,” She shrugged at that, like it wasn’t some kind of giant red flag about her work environment. “They had... creative differences, I guess. Didn’t see eye-to-eye with the director’s vision.”

That honestly sounds like a euphemism.

“The director has this sort of sixth sense, I guess you could say... he knows by instinct if someone is perfect for the role and when someone isn’t – and so far, he hasn’t been mistaken yet.”

I scoffed. “You really think so?”

“Oh, I know so,” She nodded, confident. “After all, he hasn’t gotten rid of you, has he?”

“He nearly did.”

“Lapse of judgment,” She said, shrugging it aside. “You’ll see – once we do find our perfect Elidna, you’d swear that she was born to play for that role.”

If skepticism had its own dedicated sound, it’d be the one I just made hearing her make that statement.

“And speaking of perfect...” Amanda made a hiss through puckered lips, slowing our speed to a crawl as she turned and stalled in an empty space next to an equally barren sidewalk. “We’re here.”

Here, she said... and not even a second later, realization struck. Before, back at the hotel, I needed a moment or two before I could recognize where we were. But here, I didn’t need a moment. Here, I could never forget.

Wordlessly, I shuffled out onto the pavement, feeling a shivering chill that had nothing to do with the cold crawling all over my body.

I looked up, way up, at an abandoned high-rise building casting a dark looming shadow over us – the musty grey of the concrete, the pitch darkness peeking ever so slightly out the fractured windows... it was like meeting an estranged friend, someone you know, and someone you know well... and someone you wish you’d never have to see again.

After everything that transpired behind the many walls of this building, the chaos, the terror, those long sleepless nights of trial and error – this place was that friend to me... and no doubt, hearing Amanda’s tense breath as she drew up beside me, and knowing what’s she been through, that especially goes double for her too.

“This place is your final option?” I asked her, more out of sheer disbelief than anything. “Seriously?”

“It’s close, it’s big, it’s messy, it’s gloomy...” Amanda said, gulping with a shudder. “It’s perfect.”

“So perfect... then why didn’t we go here first?”

“Because I was hoping the others would be better, alright! Do you honestly think I want to film in here? This place is my trauma given physical form!” She expelled out another audible breath, calming herself. “But it’s fine. I can handle it, I’ll bear with it. Hours, days, gotta suffer for art to make it art, right? Let’s just get this over with.”

“Are you sure?” I asked again, watching her take the first few steps forward, armed with nothing but a camera and her resolve. “You aren’t nervous or anything like that? Not scared?”

“Nervous? Scared?” She sound around, her dark hazel, eyes quivering wide with my confirmation, but staring back at me was a small tender smile defying it all. “I have you, don’t I?”

And with that, she further marched on, the darkness of the dilapidated entrance doors swallowing her whole, her footsteps fading deeper, and her voice turning into echoes as she called out to me, “Just don’t wander away from me, all right?”

Then I remembered the highest floor, in that big vast empty space of a room, a symbol of our own etched in the rubble-filled flooring. The summoning circle, It was still there, surely it has to be, the paint afresh, unblemished... even after all this time.

It’s just sitting there, without use, without purpose... I don’t know why we didn’t get rid of it in the first place. Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe I could...

Hmm, I wonder...

“Hey!” An echo blared out again. “Not wandering away again, are you?”

No, I don’t wonder.

I stopped thinking, and strode after her, saying right back in a confident assuring shout, “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’m not.”