Tor was coming up the stairs with his dry cleaning when he heard the first scream, a hollow thing so faint he thought he imagined it for a minute. The silence following the phantom noise lasted long enough for Tor to unlock the door to this week's apartment and lay his clothes down on the floral patterned bed. He snorted softly as he began to sort his suits out into their constituent parts, he wasn't much of a floral guy, but it beat the hell out of the hooker sheets at the last rent.
The screaming started with renewed vigor as he hung his black in the closet, this time however the sound was closer, longer, and entirely real. One faint scream every once in a while wasn't unusual in this part of the city, but this didn't sound... right. Frowning slightly Tor went the square window beside his bed, he normally kept the drapes pulled against prying eyes, but he pulled them back now.
Damn.
Double damn with prancing imps on top.
Fog so thick that he couldn't see the street some four stories below pressed against his window, filtering the wan sun of the day into miasma that looked startlingly like blood. Tor shut the drapes quickly, he didn't precisely know why, but forty-three years had taught him that intuition should never be second guessed.
Tor swore vigorously as he grabbed his fast travel bag and slung it over his shoulders with a practiced motion, either he wouldn't need it and he'd end up lugging it across town and getting in shape, or he would need it and it might well save his life. Tor liked those odds. Taking a second glance at the drape covered window Tor experienced the irrational regret of not having purchased a gas mask, it was -like his fast travel bag- one of those things that never occurred to a person to pack until they needed it. Sighing Tor grabbed one of the pillows off his bed and ripped the pillowcase off, tying it around his mouth in a makeshift air-cleaner. No damn sense in going outside without being fully prepared.
Instead of risking the elevator Tor headed down the stairs, jogging down them as well as his stiff leg could manage, cursing Chicago every time it threatened to give out. The stairwell was mercifully empty of other tenants but the ground floor was a mess of flesh and confusion, bodies pressed up against the glass front of the building to catch a glimpse of... absolutely nothing but reddish fog. Tor sighed and began making his way out the back of the apartment, the building's main entrance was packed with hooligans that Tor simply didn't have the patience to bull through today. As he reached the fire door he didn't even hesitate in throwing it open, setting off alarms throughout the rest of the building. Considering the weather they were having Tor hardly thought a little jangling was going to kill the rubbernecking tenants.
The street outside was much as it had appeared from his room, pinkish and overly foggy. The acidic tang of the air however bit at his tongue and eyes even through the pillowcase breathing mask salvaged from his room, definitely not good sign. The moans and screams were stronger here, real now as they never could be when heard from a foot of brick of steel and forty feet of elevation. Left down the street were sets of evenly spaced faint rhythmic flashes of red and blue light that Tor guessed was a police barricade, the red light however seemed unnaturally bright, brightening the cloud with every strobe without seeming to provide illumination. To the right the screams were stronger and the fog thicker, an unnatural wall that blanketed the streets and buildings with a sense of mania and fear. Tor turned right and began walking into the mist.
You never learned anything by walking away.
Well that ran a little long.