The Desert is Cold in the Dark [Dark Data]

[Jim Raynor]

Jim turned around, ensuring that Somerled still trailed behind, carrying their dazed monkey-boy companion. He hid his crumpled hand from Raynor's view.
 
"You know next time," Jim shouted over the crackling and rumbling of the temple as it crumbled and flowed in swirls into the abyss above them, "I can punch through the wall without breakin'  a bone. Just a tip." Somerled didn't react. His voice probably didn't reach him.
 
The metal clanging of his feet faded beneath the roar of ceiling and wall tearing from their foundations and being sucked upwards. Jim didn't know how long it would be until that unstoppable force seized them and dragged them inside oblivion, and he ran with no sense of direction. They had been turned upside down, battled creatures that should not exist, and then they had run blindly through walls on Somerled's hunch. Jim just hoped there was a way out still. It could very well have been obliterated by the collapse of this pocket universe, but as long as there was hope, Jim would keep moving.
 
A clear, chattering laugh sliced through the grumble of complaining stone walls. Jim shot a glance over his rounded shoulder. The skeletal gunslinger, still somehow alive, sprinted emphatically after him, his jaw flapping wildly. His four hands plunged into holsters and whipped out a quartet of revolvers aimed squarely at Jim's back.
 
Jim spun and skidded backwards on flat feet as he trained his rifle on his undead rival. "We're runnin' for our lives and you still gotta be doin' this shit?"
 
His finger coiled around the trigger.
 
"Stop! Jim! What the hell?"
 
Jim dropped the barrel of his rifle. The skeleton was gone. In his place stood Somerled clutching Sun Ogong, gesturing frantically at him.
 
"I ... did you see that skeleton?" A quake coursed through the temple floor. "Uh, never mind. Let's get outta here!"
 
They dashed off again, down a long and straight hallway. Above them, a storm of stone and sand ascended in spirals, sucking upwards in some unseen vacuum. Jim tried not to look too long at the nothing above him; unlike even the darkest, unlit regions of space, the void above him signalled the absence of anything. Even staring up at its uniform, unceremonious emptiness felt like it somehow penetrated his skull and started extracting his thoughts from his mind with long, oily fingers. He caught himself a few times with blank eyes, staring into that bland horror with an ever blanker mind. Shaking off its frightful nature, Jim focused on barrelling down the corridor.
 
An almighty crack jolted Jim in his marine suit. He chanced a look over his shoulder, past Somerled and Sun Ogong. The voraciousness of the void above had apparently grown. No longer satisfied with the ceiling or nibbling at the apex of the walls, its hunger lashed out and splintered the floor behind them. Crunching booms like thunder somehow made it to Jim's ears as huge slabs of sandstone ground tumbled upwards. He fought the urge to watch them ascend into oblivion, and stamped down the thought that the ground they had yet to trample on could do the same.
 
A speck in the distance grew larger, and Jim knew his friend had come back to piss him off again. The spotlights on his suit chest flashed over the pistols locked and loaded in each one of the skeleton's bony hands. Jim raised his left arm parallel to the ground and out flipped his arm-mounted shield. Pops of light matched the pinging of bullets against his bulwark as Jim ran blindly forward, trying to count the number of shots the undead cowboy had fired. As soon as the collision of metal projectiles on metal plate finished, Jim collapsed the barrier. The skeleton threw all four pistols, but they bounced harmlessly off Jim's armour.
 
"Gettin' real sick of this," Jim murmured.
 
He reached out a robotic hand and seized the gunslinger by his exposed throat, running all the while. His first action was to clobber the pain in the arse, and then to pummel him into the quickly eradicating hallway wall, but something changed to stop his vengeful thoughts.
 
He carried himself by the throat.
 
"Oh no," Jim said, fingers tightening around the hallucinatory flesh of his doppelganger's throat. "You ain't trickin' me outta this one."
 
Jim went to hurl his captured foe into the wall like an egg against brick, but as he let go, the skeleton simply vanished. An echo of mocking laughter trailed in its wake.
 
"Oh, you slippery son of a bitch," Jim said. "Keep movin', guys! We gotta be close!"