( Ian's seen plenty of incomprehensible things. The first is absolutely ridiculous to compare to the ones that came later, but at the time a normal human corpse in a normal human hospital bed was absolutely beyond his ability to reconcile. The second was far larger — the landing, the sheer maddening size of them. After that, the definition started to get blurry. The future, another reality, and monsters not dissimilar to the one he's looking at now.
When they flooded the streets of New Amsterdam, it wasn't the bodies or the carnage that made him falter. It wasn't even the monsters, though they were startling and terrifying things to look at. It was the striking, vibrant thought that sounded a little like: oh no, not again.
It's the same thing here. He doesn't falter because there's a rat the size of a doberman slinging acidic tentacles around. He doesn't falter because they're underground in close quarters with it. He falters because he's abruptly confronted with that striking realization that this is life again. This is how things are now. This is what they'll be living with.
It's like being back.
In a place like this, there's no life, there's just living. There's no Starbucks, no teaching, no job, no stability. No security. For long stretches of time, there's just surviving — almost always one or two steps out of his own body, piloting from a place of detachment, running on adrenaline and problem-solving because he learned he wasn't allowed to be afraid anymore.
(That comes later, or he drinks and doesn't let it come at all.)
Slow down and problem solve.
That tentacle whips around, and a blue glow comes from somewhere that isn't Lance's shoes. His shield stretches out to one side, pinning the tentacle into the dirt wall beside them. It can still move, but its range of motion is limited to six or eight inches, back and forth, easy enough to avoid while he aims over Lance's shoulder and fires — mostly blind, because he can't see the goddam thing from this vantage point. He's just sort of shooting where he approximates tentacle to meet body. )
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When they flooded the streets of New Amsterdam, it wasn't the bodies or the carnage that made him falter. It wasn't even the monsters, though they were startling and terrifying things to look at. It was the striking, vibrant thought that sounded a little like: oh no, not again.
It's the same thing here. He doesn't falter because there's a rat the size of a doberman slinging acidic tentacles around. He doesn't falter because they're underground in close quarters with it. He falters because he's abruptly confronted with that striking realization that this is life again. This is how things are now. This is what they'll be living with.
It's like being back.
In a place like this, there's no life, there's just living. There's no Starbucks, no teaching, no job, no stability. No security. For long stretches of time, there's just surviving — almost always one or two steps out of his own body, piloting from a place of detachment, running on adrenaline and problem-solving because he learned he wasn't allowed to be afraid anymore.
(That comes later, or he drinks and doesn't let it come at all.)
Slow down and problem solve.
That tentacle whips around, and a blue glow comes from somewhere that isn't Lance's shoes. His shield stretches out to one side, pinning the tentacle into the dirt wall beside them. It can still move, but its range of motion is limited to six or eight inches, back and forth, easy enough to avoid while he aims over Lance's shoulder and fires — mostly blind, because he can't see the goddam thing from this vantage point. He's just sort of shooting where he approximates tentacle to meet body. )