This wasn't a class five entity. This thing didn't exist on a scale. The four women watch in stunned horror as the chalk markings on the warehouse floor flex and become membrane-thin. Something colossal writhes under the earth, pushing outward in a grotesque mockery of embryonic birth.

"This is some Hellboy shit right here," Abby hears Holtzmann mutter. For once the blonde wasn't smiling her customary mad-scientist grin, and that was almost more terrifying than the creature rising before them.

Creature. More like a monster. Nothing they'd faced yet compared to the being ripping its way out of one plane of existence and squeezing into another. This was quickly becoming biblically scary.

"We are so screwed," Patty whispers, gun hanging slack in her hands. Two years ago, a ten story, man-baby-ghost went on a rampage through Time Square with a posy of ghouls in tow, and Patty had hardly been able to wrap her head around that. But this? She signed up to hunt and trap ghosts, not battle Godzilla.

"If we close the portal before it manifests, it won't solidify in our realm," Erin says, adjusting the straps of her proton pack until the machine sits flush against her jumpsuit. Out of the four, she was the only one who seemed genuinely excited. Or at the very least eager. She'd been tracking the whereabouts of the Ether Cult for the better part of six months. To arrive just as they started their summons was a stroke of sublime luck, but somewhere between Ecto-1 and the warehouse Erin began to realize she and her friends might be stepping into something far beyond them.

"Scuff the markings," Holtzmann suggests with a nonchalant shrug. As always, her gun rests across her shoulders. "Pretty straight forward magical summons. No marks, no portal." Patty, Erin, and Abby all turn to look at her, eyebrows simultaneously cocking. "What? No one experimented in college?"

"Holtzmann, no one experimented like you in college," Patty snorts.

The blonde does a small hip thrust and winks. "Well, you're not wrong."

Abby was about to retort with something sharp when a pulse of energy rocks the area, blowing out windows within a block radius. The sound is deafening. Tremors shaking the ground, concrete and steel rippling and buckling against the force of something pushing through the earth. The warehouse floor takes on the texture of a cracking egg, bowing outward around the portal.

Retreating to a safer distance, the Ghostbusters watch the impossible happen. The chalk outlining the portal glow a sizzling red seconds before a clawed hand bigger than a city bus slashes through the thin membrane separating worlds and sinks into the concrete, hooked nails gouging furrows in the floor.

"Ah shit," Erin winces, scrunching her eyes closed. "It's an Ether Whale."

"A what?" Patty snaps, hands going vice-tight around the barrel of her gun.

"That."

The Whale fills the warehouse like bubbling tar, one grotesque foot at a time. It was like something out of an H.R. Giger painting. Scales, claws, pincers, tentacles, this thing had them all in some way, shape, or form. Slimy and reptilian, it possessed the body of a salamander with six vaguely canine legs capped with claws of the raptor variety. Four separate faces, one for each direction and all eerily human, sit below a twitching crown of spines that divert down its back and explode into a mass of spikes around a thrashing, prehensile tail. Along its underbelly—like the sturdy legs of a centipede—writhe human-sized hair-like tentacles.

Put plainly, the creature was hideously terrifying. And what was worse, it became quickly apparently the Whale wasn't content remaining penned in a brick and mortar building. With a well-placed swing of its tail, the left side of the warehouse explodes outward in a thunderous crash and out rolls the newest nightmare to grace New York.

"We can't let it reach the city!" Erin shouts, taking chase, cult members forgotten. If they were smart, they would have been miles away by now. If she was smart, she and her friends would have been too.

"What the hell do you think we're going to do against that?" Abby barks, snagging the brunette by the arm and pulling her to a stop. Ahead of them, the Whale buckles and tips into a building. For a creature so massive, it's uncoordinated, clearly unused to the differences between this plane and the one it had birthed from.

"Catch or slime, that's what we do," Erin bites back.

"No, we," Abby gestures to the rest of the team, "hunt and trap ghosts. We don't take on fricken Pacific Rim Kaiju who just crawled out of an interdimensional portal!"

"We fought Rowan!"

"Who was a ghost! A powerful one, but still a dead man walking! That's not a ghost, Erin, and I don't have a Jaeger we can pilot!"

"Dude, I'd be totally drift compatible with you," Holtzmann winks at Patty who makes a noise in the back of her throat as if to say 'yeah, okay, I can see that'.

"It's a paranormal entity. Abby," Erin moves into her friend's personal space, clasping her forearm, "this is bigger than us."

"No shit!" the short woman laughs cynically. "It's probably bigger than the Chrysler Building!"

"You know what I mean," the brunette pleads. "Interdimensional entity. An alien in the flesh. If we bring that thing down, we're set for life. Think of the research. Think of what we can learn."

"Think of the smear you'll make on the concrete when it steps on you!"

"Think of the lives we're gonna have to save if that thing gets even within a mile of Time Square," Patty adds. Abby gives her a cutting look. "This is kind of on us, Abby. It's what we do. And besides, we were here when it crossed over. Kind of our responsibility to put it back or put it under."

"You're going to get us killed," Abby growls, but even she can tell when to pick her battles.

"We're Ghostbusters. It's what we do," Holtzmann grins, mad-scientist once again. "I'm in. Plus, if things go south, got a backup surprise I've been working on." She pats her Buster-bag affectionately but gently. No telling what would set off her newest toy.

Decision made the four power up and take chase. The plan was simple. Get it down, get it under control, and then get it boxed, but seldom do things go as planned.

Chasing down the Whale wasn't hard. Firing at it wasn't either—big entities made good targets—but what it lacked in speed it made up for in resilience. Proton beams had little effect on it save for tangling its legs and sending it toppling into more real estate. Grenades and Abby's proton fist had the greatest effect of pissing the Whale off more than harming it.

But two blocks into the skirmish the tables turn from an attempted wrangling into a proper yet unwanted battle.

Acclimating to its surroundings, the Whale begins gaining both speed and dexterity. It counters attacks with swipes of claw and tail, tearing through buildings, shops, and fleeing civilians with frightening ease. And like any good monster, it feeds off the fear created by its presence, cutting a red trail of terror through the city, one street at a time, until it realized its true obstacles reside in four determined yet equally terrified women. That was when the hunters become the hunted.

"This going about how you pictured it?!" Abby shouts, keeping pace with Erin as they sprint hard down a deserted street, the Ether Whale hot on their heels.

"A setback!"

"Just admit you fucked up!" Abby yelps when a car whizzes past, taking out the front of an old dinner. She prays there was no one inside but knows better.

The four take a hard right and run into a doughnut shop for cover and a chance to regroup. Outside, the Whale searches for them, roaring and thrashing about like a toddler throwing a tantrum. Every so many seconds the cacophonous boom of falling buildings and explosions is punctuated by the shrieks of the terrorized, the trapped, and the dying.

"We can still catch it," Erin wheezes, raking a hand through her unbound hair. She lost her scrunchy somewhere between the warehouse exploding and the Ether Whale making it into the Lower East Side.

"I think we're beyond that point," Patty points out, sucking in air just as hard. "Our packs aren't doing shit. How do you plan on catching it if we can't even stop it?"

"That's because this thing has no psychokinetic energy." Holtzmann supplies, sliding heavily into a deserted booth. "It's a living entity. Our packs won't do much other than burn it."

"You couldn't have told us that a little sooner?!" Abby snaps, stemming the steady flow of sweat stinging her eyes and matting her hair flat with a rag from her pocket.

"I didn't' realize until just a bit ago. The beams burn and tangle its legs, but they won't stick like with ghosts because they aren't sucking away the psychokinetic energy."

"Great!" Abby throws her sweat-rag away, almost angry beyond words. "Now what do we do?"

"Crank up the power and combine the streams."

Everyone looks at Holtzmann, stunned. Outside, a car erupts into flames under one of the Whale's clawed feet.

"And risk blowing us all up?" Abby sputters. "You said yourself that's what would happen if we ever did that."

"Only if we cross them," Holtzmann says carefully, working out the math in her head. "If we stand close enough and angle the barrels so they almost touch, the combined energy would be like a laser beam to big boy. Maximum damage."

"How long can we keep the packs cranked that high?" Erin eases herself away from the counter.

"Five…maybe seven minutes?"

"That's not long enough to get it back to the warehouse."

"No, but it's long enough to hit it with this." Holtzmann sets her Buster-bag down and eases out a small silver box no bigger than a toaster. Judging by how gingerly she holds it, it's not a new toy the ladies would find tacked on to their weapons supply.

"What is it?" Patty asks dubiously, well aware of what Jillian Holtzmann could create in that mad-scientist lab of hers.

"Let's just say it will take care of our problem. I can't be held responsible for any side-effects, though."

All eyes turn to Erin. Containing the creature had been her idea, but it was becoming painfully clear not only had she miscalculated the scale of escalation, she misjudged how powerful the Ether Whale would actually be.

"All right!" she blurts, massaging her temples. "I admit I was wrong. We can't contain it."

"If this wasn't a life or death situation, I'd record that admission and make it my new ringtone," Abby snorts, but even she sounds relieved.

"Excellent. All we have to do—"

The window behind Holtzmann explodes, throwing three of the four women back while something long and slimy snakes around the blonde's throat and rips her backward just as the roof is pried off and tossed aside.

"Hol-Holtzmann!" Erin chokes on mortar dust and pushes her way free of the rubble covering her, ignoring the searing pain radiating from her left knee. Patty's head pops up as she uncurls from around Abby, the two protected by the counter that had landed on top of them.

"It's got Holtzmann! It got Holtzman!" Erin repeats in a terrified tangle of words, staggering out into the street.

Suspended in the air like a hangman with a slimy noose around her neck, Holtzmann struggles to breathe around the tight muscle squeezing her windpipe closed, fingers fighting to get under the tentacle.

Taking a hard left, the Whale throws itself into a row of tall buildings to counter it's uncoordinated skittering. No doubt it would have continued along its predetermined path had the tentacle holding the blonde not exploded, showering her in slime and grayish-purple flesh. Holtzmann plummets like a stone a solid thirty feet before being caught again, this time by her leg, by another tentacle somewhere along the Whale's underbelly. She repeats the maneuver—shoot, fall, shoot again— in an effort to free herself but ultimately only slows the Whale down.

"Hang on, Holtz!" Patty's voice drifts up from the ground below. She clutches her gun the tightest, knuckles turning a milky caramel color.

"Not really any place to go!" she shouts back. "The view is kind of nice, though!"

Racing to get into position, Erin, Patty, and Abby crank their packs to max and loosed their intertwined proton streams at the Whale's legs and sensitive underbelly. The force almost blows them off their feet. The heat alone bores through the beast's tough hide, filling the air with steam and the stench of burning flesh. It screams in fury and retreats, stumbling over itself to be away from the plasma fire licking its skin.

Still hanging partially upside down and swinging like a pendulum, Holtzmann notices a gap in the Whale's hide just behind one of its six legs, and a plan snaps into place. A few turned dials and her pack hums to life behind her, heat pouring from the coils. She'd never maxed out her proton pack before, so this would be a learning experience.

"Sorry, big boy. But you kind of brought this on yourself." Using her body weight to swing herself into range, she wedges her gun in the breech, pulls the trigger, and lets her proton pistol do the talking.

Roaring in pain, the Whale dives into a summersault. Holtzmann holds her position and forced her gun further into the hole until the Whale's leg is sheered from its body. Enraged, the beast attempts to dislodge the human and thrashes into a hard corkscrew, sending Holtzmann flying. She's airborne long enough to get off two more shots to one of the creature's eight unprotected eyes, partially blinding it in one face, before gravity reinstates itself. Her horizontal flight is abruptly interrupted by fractured asphalt and finally a half-crumbled apartment wall. The sound her body makes upon impact is like a sandbag hitting concrete after being launched by a catapult. Crumpling into herself, she doesn't rise again.

"Holtzmann!" Patty attempts to twist around and race to her friend, but something in the atmosphere changes and she's ripped forward as if pulled by a powerful magnet. All three women are dragged a dozen or more yards behind the flailing Whale that now finds itself tangled in glowing red and white proton streams. How or why this happened matters to no one. All they can focus on is holding onto their weapons or risk being thrown about like a rodeo cowboy.

"I was wrong!" Erin screams over the roar of her proton stream. The barrel of her gun was starting to turn white hot, a sure sign overload was eminent. "We should have never done this! We have to destroy it!"

"With what?!" Abby couldn't think, couldn't stop long enough to assess the impossible situation she and her friends were in. Her mind kept drifting back to Holtzmann lying unconscious and bleeding—or worse—fifty yards behind them. She needed help, but if even one woman stopped their assault, the Whale would escape and reenter the city.

"Holtzmann had a plan!" Patty has to readjust her grip on her gun, juggling hands like a game of hot potato. The G10 handle was starting to melt. "Where's her Buster-bag?"

One their backs and in their hands, proton guns and packs belched out sweet-smelling smoke as coolant discharges, bringing the glowing red coils back to a less critical level. They would be out of juice soon.

"I don't know! I don't know!" Has Abby ever felt this level of terror? No, not since being dragged into the portal two years ago and watching the world she knew cease to exist. "It was in the doughnut shop, wherever the hell that is now!"

Which meant impossible to get to in their current state. They needed a plan but nothing came to mind. Caught in a tug-of-war with a rampaging hell-beast, the situation was looking grimmer by the second. Provided they survived the proton pack overload, the three remaining Ghostbusters had nothing more to fight with until something moved behind them. A breath of wind washes over the three, raising goosebumps in its wake. The shock was so jarring two out of three heads turn to see what it was, but it was already flying past in a blur of tan and blonde.

"Holtzmann?" Patty and Erin gasp in unison.

Abby is a bit slower to redirect her attention from the monster tangled in her proton beam. When she does, she gasps too. "What are you doing?!" she shouts, fighting with the rest of her friends when the Whale rolls onto its side—dragging them closer by a dozen feet.

The blonde doesn't turn to address her friends. Her destination is clear. Head down, she bolts for the thrashing Ether Whale, a small device tucked under her arm. The creature shrieks and spits glowing blue and green slime from four mouths at once like an ectoplasmic fountain. Holtzmann somehow avoids most of it and continues her harried sprint. She doesn't bother setting a level to her machine once she's within range. It needs to max out, so instead she cranks the knobs until they break and gives the device a hard kick for good measure.

"Aim your beams at the box!" she shouts through cupped hands over the monster keening.

"Get out of the way!" Patty shouts back. "Or you're gonna be goo just like big boy!"

"Do it anyway!"

"Holtzmann, this isn't the time!" Erin snaps. She's beginning to lose her grip. The heat pouring from the pack on her back is starting to char her jumpsuit. "Get out of the way!"

"Shoot the box!"

"Move first!"

"I can't."

Holtzmann's words and the sad smile tugging up one corner of her lips take the women a second to register. Can't? Of course she could. She was right there…

The blonde points behind the three, filling in the blanks. Dread settles over the trio. No one wants to look. Abby does first and almost goes to her knees. Her world tips dangerously to one side. The keening of the Ether Whale is drowned out by the slamming of her pulse in her ears.

Behind her, still crumpled against the wall, is the body of one of her closest friends. Jillian's long, delicate fingers are still wrapped around her gun, index finger on the trigger. Blood has left two snaking red trails from her nostrils and cut across her cheek like a macabre checkmark. Her chest doesn't rise. Her body is still, eyes half-open in a glazed stare.

"Hello from the other side," Holtzmann—or her spirit anyway—says in a sing-song voice with another faint smile, attempting humor but not quite making it.

"No," Erin whimpers in shattered understanding. She's even paler when she turns around. A sob sticks in her throat, threatening to strangle her. "Please, no."

"Shoot the box," Holtzmann says softly, her voice carrying over the monster's cries. "Don't let it hurt anyone else. Be Ghostbusters and bust some ghosts. Catch or slime."

No one moves. The shock is too much, but stalling prolongs the inevitable and puts more lives at risk. Someone has to put the Whale back, and that person is Patty.

"I'm coming to get you," the tall woman snarls, holding her gun cocked against her shoulder like a marksman, training her sight along the barrel. There are tear stains on her cheeks, wet lines cutting through the mortar dust and grime. "You hear me, Holtzmann? I'm coming to get you, baby!"

"Got it, boss lady," the engineer nods and fires off a finger pistol. "Bend your knees when you shoot it. There's gonna be one hell of a blast."

Patty cuts the power to her gun. The Whale senses the breech and swings around to escape, but the human moves faster. Patty's proton beam hits the box dead-center. There's no delay in the explosion. The box goes up like a Roman candle.

One second the world is filled with keening and screaming and buildings falling like houses of cards and the next there's nothing but light. Erin, Patty, and Abby are kicked off their feet and thrown backward in a senseless tumble of flailing limbs and bouncing bodies. Eyes screwed shut on instinct, the trio don't witness the blazing arms of energy wrapping around the Whale like a sizzling plasma net. It cinches tight, dragging the creature down, down, down until its body can no longer take the pressure and explodes in a gory fountain of body parts, ecto-goo, and leftover pulses of residual ether. When the dust—and slime—finally settles there nothing but a smoking crater remaining.

"I think I ruptured my spleen," someone—Abby by the sound of it—grunts in obvious pain. A small chorus of displeased groans answer her—everyone is feeling their aches—until reality swings back into focus with all the gentility of a wrecking ball.

Three sets of eyes stare blankly at the decimation done to their beloved city. This wasn't like the last time when Rowan ransacked Time Square. New York City didn't reset and repair itself. The hole in the street where the Whale once thrashed had to be two hundred feet in diameter and at least six feet deep. Homes and shops were gone, blown backward with the force of the blast. It was a miracle the trio survived, being as close as they were, but none of them feel blessed. Staring in shell-shocked awe, it was hard to comprehend, especially what lie behind them.

It wasn't that anyone had forgotten. It just didn't feel real.

Hurried footfalls and the crunch of gravel draw Erin and Abby away from the apocalyptic destruction. Patty abandoned her pack and gun, throwing it off as she runs. Sliding to a stop on her knees, rubble digging into her jumpsuit, she rolls Holtzmann over with frantic care. Her hands are a blur, removing the blonde's pack and ripping open the front of her jumpsuit until her chest is exposed. Years of working at the MTA and doing mandatory, on-the-job training has taught her one very important thing. CPR.

"Don't think you're going to get away from us that quick. Nu-uh," Patty babbles, talking purely on terrified instinct, voice warbling. "Not gonna stick us with this mess to clean up all on our own."

Hand over hand, she starts compressions just like her instructor taught her. Patty doesn't have to pause to breathe. Throwing off her pack, Abby goes to her knees on the opposite side and pushes a breath into Holtzmann's lungs at the end of each compression set. She tastes blood and knows it's not hers. Her stomach rolls.

"Come on, Jillybean," Patty pants, using the nickname she knows Holtzmann hates most. "Come on, girl. I can do this all night. I will do this all night. Come on!"

"Holtzmann, I know you're around here!" Abby shouts from her knees, less in control of herself than Patty. "Get back in your body right now!"

She was starting to panic. How many minutes had passed? Abby was a scientist. She knew physics and machines and engineering. She also knew the basics about the human body and how long it took for the brain to deteriorate without oxygen. With each passing second, the gap between life and death grew that much wider. Addy felt this grim reality in her very core. Felt the tearing of her heart when she looked down at her listless best friend and realized there was a chance she wouldn't get to see her smile or laugh or dance or lip-sing to old 80's music in the lab again.

"This wasn't how it's supposed to be, man! I'm not burying you, Holtzmann. I'm not…" Patty faltered, breath catching on the lump in the back of her throat. "I'm not burying my friend. Not again. Not you. Come on, baby! Come back!"

Patty and Abby don't take notice of Erin's absence until she emerges from the rubble of a downed building limping hard on an injured leg and carrying a bright red medical box. She stumbles, blood trailing behind her in crimson droplets and heavily staining the thigh of her left leg, but doesn't stop her purposeful jog.

"Move," she barks roughly, her calm, careful demeanor gone. In its place stands a marble pillar of a woman, cold and calculating and fiercely determined. Her face betrays no emotion. That is reserved solely for her eyes and she's disintegrating inside.

Patty and Abby move back with the force of Erin's approach, understanding dawning on them. The slender brunette takes Abby's place. From her pocket, she pulls the Swiss Army knife Holtzmann gave her two years ago—the one that had saved her life on more than one occasion—and cuts open the front of the blonde's gray undershirt.

"Where did you find a defibrillator?" Abby gasps. She seems small now, deflated. Her whole body shakes.

"Saw it when we were running out of the doughnut shop," Erin replies, working in a mechanical rush. She was already freeing the palm-sized sticky pads and positioning them: one just above Holztmann's right breast and the other below her left. The machine whirs to life when she flips it on.

"There's nothing left of the doughnut shop."

"I dug it out." Which explained the cuts, both shallow and deep, marring her skin up to Erin's elbows.

"You're bleeding," Patty says as if Erin hadn't noticed the spreading crimson stain.

"I'm aware. Hands back."

It's the only warning she gives before deploying the machine. The defibrillator whirs once more before issuing a small pop. Holtzmann's body jolts slightly, rocked by the electricity. Patty checks for a pulse. None. She resumes compressions and breathing while the machine winds up again.

"How many more times can you do that?" Patty asks, eyes on her work. She's sweating now and her arms are cramping but stopping isn't an option.

"Three," Erin answers back after reading the flashing display. "It's an old machine."

"We need the paramedics."

"I tried. My cell's dead. I think the blast fried it."

"Shit…shit!"

It seems like the machine takes hours to recharge. Time slows to the singularity of compress, breathe, listen, compress, breathe, listen over and over again. When Erin deploys the defibrillator the women watch in anxious silence as the machine pushes electricity into Holtzmann's still chest cavity. They wait for something to change. It doesn't. There was enough juice for one more go. One more try. One more opportunity to save the life of a friend.

Erin wouldn't show it yet— it took time for her to fracture outwardly—but she was cracking. Had been since seeing two Holtzmanns, one dead and the other…well the other dead in an alive kind of way. She couldn't stop running scenarios. Could this have been avoided? Yes, it could have had she not been the one calling the shots. What had gone wrong…what had she done wrong? Easy. It had been her idea to investigate the warehouse. It had been her tripping on slime that tipped off the cult to her and her friend's position. She had been the one running into the street like a naïve, overeager child when the Ether Whale broke loose, forcing her friends to chase after her. Guilt crushed her slowly, squeezing hope and light from her body, but seeing Holztmann dead, because of her, succeeded in breaking her. Erin's mind was flying apart. Any minute now she would disintegrate. It was too much. It was all too much.

Third shock.

Jillian's chest comes partially off the ground. All three women wait until the defibrillator gives the all clear, breath held, teetering on a knife's edge. This time, something's different. It's small, almost too small to catch. There's a jump in Holtzmann's chest that has nothing to do with electricity. Patty sees it, and her fingers fly to Jillian's neck. At first, she thinks it's her imagination until…there! Her trembling fingers detect the faintest flutter of a pulse, and it's like finding water in the desert after a year-long drought.

"I got her!" Patty repositions herself, putting an ear against Holtzmann's chest. Erin and Abby are on the opposite side immediately, the latter of the two gripping the blonde's hand while Erin tucks into herself. Sure enough, Patty can hear a heartbeat and feel the slight expansion of the woman's chest. "That's right, baby girl," she grins in teary relief. "That's right. Come on back."

It takes a minute for her heartbeat and breathing to grow steady enough, but eventually Holtzmann jerks awake with a tight gasp, hazy eyes cracking open. She's slow to comprehend the world around her, but eventually, the haziness fades.

"Who's been tangoing on my chest?" she croaks, frowning at the discomfort. It felt like a truck decided to use her body as its personal parking spot. The tip of her tongue darts out, wetting her lips. "Why do I taste mango and iron?"

The trio dissolves into relieved exhalations. Erin can only manage to sink forward and rest her forehead atop Holtzmann's hip, the hot coil of terror in her chest turning to water that quickly finds itself leaking out her tear ducts. Abby won't drop Holtzmann's hand, clinging to it like it'll anchor her in the event she tries to leave them again.

Sliding her leg under the blonde's head, Patty puffs out her cheeks in a shaky exhale. "Don't you ever scare me like that again," she chokes, trying her best not to dissolve into tears.

"Not going anywhere, Mama Bear," she promises. "You're all stuck with me for a bit longer."

"Damn straight."

"I saw Elvis," she informs weakly, like its common news, lips quirking in an oh-so-familiar grin. "He wasn't all that cool. Prince was, though."

"You saw Prince?" Abby laughs tearfully, wiping at her eyes. "Not God or angels or heaven? That's kind of a rip-off. Get your money back."

"Watch your tongue, Missy." Holtzmann fake-scolds. "Prince is all of those things and more. Bowie danced with me, so that might have been heaven….or just the residual energy left over from plane jumping. Still cried. You okay down there, Gilbert?"

Erin was most definitely not okay, but she manages a smile. "Good to see you back. Don't ever do that again."

Patty eyes Erin closely. She's too pale, and the way she keeps swaying isn't reassuring.

"I love you too," Holtzmann winks. "But…if it's not too much trouble…please call an ambulance." As if to emphasize her point, she coughs up a foamy mixture of blood and saliva, wincing in pain as she does. "Yep, broken ribs," she grunts out, holding her side. "Maybe a ruptured stomach. Is it normal not to feel my feet?"

Luckily, someone was already a step ahead. Probably a lot of someones' judging by how far the Ether Whale rampaged. Within minutes the area is swarming with emergency response teams and army reserves. A trio of blue-clad paramedics take over for the standing Ghostbusters, settling Holtzmann onto a stretcher and tending to the remaining three.

Patty and Abby sustained minor cuts and contusions. Nothing antiseptic and bandaging wouldn't cure. Erin is a different story and is taken to the hospital alongside Holtzmann—who suffered a wide variety of breaks and fractures to her pelvis, ribs, shoulders, and right arm. By some miracle, her pack protected most of her spine, and she didn't sustain more than internal bruising. Erin's left knee was partially dislocated when the doughnut shop went down and she lost enough blood from a deep gash to the inside of her thigh and the bend of her wrist to worry the paramedics.

It's only when the quartet reach the hospital and the mayor's office stops calling that things start to settle down. Grouped together in a room away from the general public, the women take a moment to let what happened sink in. There aren't many words passed around. Someone tries to crack a joke, but the mood remains somber, even after a smuggled-in meal of pizza and Chinese food, courtesy of Benny and a very confused and concerned Kevin.

Eventually, three out of the four succumb to restless sleep, save for Holtzmann who was dosed with enough painkillers to stun a horse and had been snoring softly for the past half hour. Only Erin remains awake, watching the people who have, inexplicably, become her family doze. The guilt hasn't left her in peace and likely wouldn't. If anything, it had grown worse in the silence. Silence meant reflection, and that was the last thing Erin Gilbert wanted to do. Battered, bruised, bloody, and broken, her family made it out of this scrape by the skin of their teeth, but had it not been for her none of it would have happened.

Sitting up in bed, Erin picks absently at the logo patch on her jumpsuit. She needs something to do with her hands. An edge peels up, worn glue no longer adhering it to the fabric. She picks some more until it rips free and settles onto her blankets. Whether it was a sign or just her overactive mind, Erin takes the symbology to heart. Removal. Distance. Exile.

Gingerly she scoots to the end of the bed and sets her bare feet on the cold floor. Heart monitors beep around her—her own close by—until she flips the switch and removed the finder clap. Standing makes her wince in pain. The stitches in her leg pull tight under the gauze, but she can still walk and goes to the door after wrapping herself in a thin blue hospital robe. Her fingers are on the doorframe when a voice calls out.

"Going somewhere, Gilbert?"

Erin freezes. Her heart drops into her stomach and nests in the ice forming there. She's slow to turn around, schooling her face as she does so her emotions are hidden. "I'm sorry," she winces with a fake apology. "I didn't mean to wake you."

"That's not what I asked." Holtzmann's not smiling tonight, merely watching with those sharp eyes of hers. Erin feels them pierce her and fights not to fidget. Can she see the guilt too? Or can she see the decision the brunette has clenched tightly in her right hand?

"I just need some fresh air," she says a little more convincingly. "I've got…there's a lot to process."

"Mmm…" the blonde rumbles, still watching. She doesn't look nearly as fragile now. Bruised and beaten up but there's a fire in her eyes that won't be quenched. Eventually, Holtzmann shifts with a fair amount of effort into a semi-sitting position and puts out her hand, palm up. The gesture is small. The implications and gravity behind it aren't.

Erin feels herself shrinking away. Not out of disgust but out of something far more primal. Her left hand grips the door frame to the point her fingers turn white. Holtzmann holds her gaze, fierceness setting the angular planes of her face until she recognizes the fear leaking out of Erin like a fractured dam.

"Stay," she pleads softly, hand still outstretched. It's an olive branch, a gesture of peace and acceptance and love. Holtzmann's body says stay. Her eyes plead for something else: forgiveness. How? Why? After everything…

"I can't," Erin hiccups, tears sliding down her cheeks. She backs into the hallway, physically dragging herself away from the magnetic pull of what Holtzmann offers freely and willingly.

"Erin, stay with us," she says gently like she's coaxing back a frightened rabbit. Then more quietly, "Stay with me. Please."

Back nearly to the wall, Erin feels the broken shards inside herself fracture into billions of sharp fragments. The pain is too much. She's running before she realizes it, her feet moving on instinct. Behind her, she can hear Holtzmann's cries quickly picked up by Patty and Abby. Would they take chase? Would they care? Was that anger in their voices or pain? She didn't know as she fled out of the hospital and into the rainy October night. Just inside the hospital's automatic door a Ghostbusters patch drifts mournfully to the ground