The Isolation Effect (Inside Out Fanfic) Ch. 1

Chapter 1: Fifteen Days

As Riley Andersen sat at the kitchen table, she tensely watched the door. It hadn't moved, not an inch or a jiggle of the doorknob, but she wished more than anything that she'd soon be met with her parents' relieved faces.

They'd race in and apologize for being gone so long. Scoop her up in their arms and explain everything that happened. Just rejoice that their little family was finally back together...

But Riley accepted that it was a futile hope at this point.

She had held onto that hope for days. Weeks. Why think it would suddenly come true now?

She cautiously crept over to the window, her blue eyes peeking out. Searching for someone, anyone.

But there was nothing. No regular people she recognized, no indication of the ones who had somehow lost an essential part of what made them human, assuming those people weren't illusions. Just the houses on the block and the dusty San Francisco skyline.

It was like a ghost town these days, a ghost world. One in which Riley was the only survivor.

She tried to hold on to that day in her mind, fighting to grasp all the details and hold them close to her memory, painful and yet comforting all at once. Somehow she thought and hoped that if she called up that memory, again and again, somehow whatever forces were at work in the universe—forces that weren't the Gloom, that is—would somehow manipulate time and allow her parents to keep their promise, the last words they had said...
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"I don't want you to go!" Riley found herself clinging to her mom's arm like a scared young child. "Why do you guys have to leave?"

Mr. and Mrs. Andersen looked down at their daughter with heartbroken faces.

"There may be a way we can fight off the Gloom," her mother said softly. "We have to go and check it out based on our findings. You'll be safest here, the Gloom hasn't been shown to enter houses—"

"How do you know? No one's actually gotten a good look at it!" Riley's pleas grew more desperate. "Just Skype them or something! Or take me with you, I can run fast!"

"Oh sweetie..." Mrs. Andersen knelt down beside her daughter, and it was only then that Riley could see the tears that threatened to spill over from her mother's eyes. "You know they don't allow children into the lab. We've tried to let them make an exception for you, but..." she shook her head sadly.

Riley, shaking a little, suddenly threw her arms around her mom and hugged her tightly, feeling her dad's arms wrap around her as well.

Why couldn't they stay like this? They had been so happy before everything started changing. Before that thing came...

"Stay safe," her dad said, stroking her hair. "We'll be back tonight."

Riley fought to dry the tears that threatened to pour from her own eyes as her parents stood. "Do you promise?"

"We promise."

She trusted them. They were brave, and resourceful, and they had survived this far. If they had first discovered the Gloom, they knew most about it. If anyone could defeat it, they could.

If her parents said they would return tonight, then they would.

They had to...

They promised...
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What should have been that "tonight" passed. No sign of them.

The first night, her conviction that they would soon return gave way to unease.

As much as she tried to entertain herself, getting sleepier, she kept glancing at the clock. The hours waned. Soon midnight had passed.

She tried calling them each once. Twice. Several times more ten minutes later. Always the same busy signal.

Nothing by the next morning. Just silence. An empty, piercing silence.

Again and again, she tried calling them throughout the day. Even their offices at the lab. Nothing.

By the second night, a panicked desperation had overtaken her hope.

Their phones got a "no service" tone whenever she tried to contact them. As if their phones had been destroyed somehow. Or those numbers never existed. Hearing that tone was like a series of needles to the 12-year-old's heart, sounding to her like a heart monitor in a hospital going flatline.

But she clung on to even a shred of their promise. They had to be just held up. They had to, they had to...

But what was two nights then became three.

Then five.

Seven.

Ten.

Thirteen.

And now it had been exactly 15 days since she had last seen her parents. Half a month without them. No word from them, the team, or anyone else she knew.

She knew it was unpredictable, who was taken, who the Gloom decided to come for next. But she never thought it would be them. Never her parents.

Getting up from the table, Riley scooted the chair in just to make some sort of noise, something to break the static-like haze that plunged through her brain. She put a hand to her head as flashing lights danced before her eyes. Even when she shut her eyes tight, for a moment the lights lingered.

Was it because she had stood up too fast, desperate for any sound to be heard, to move somewhere, anywhere? Or was it yet another product of her mind?

Probably the latter. They had been getting worse over the past few days.

Riley managed to go over to the couch, shakily sitting down. She stared up dully at the ceiling, wrapping her blanket around herself. It had been days since she had seen the sun's light poke through the dusty sky, and she was running low on food. If she stayed shut in her house, even if it was safe from Gloom, she would eventually starve.

She'd have to risk going to the store to get some food, even though the thought filled her with unease. After all, going out meant potentially running into one of the Gone. Or becoming one herself.

"Gone" was her chosen name for them, not thinking of letting the z-word cross her mind. After all, when they were seen, they weren't zombies, necessarily, they didn't seem to be dead corpses that had risen from the graves. They weren't dead at all. From what she had heard, those people, those who had once been people like her, looked mostly the same as when their families had known them. But their skin grew more pale, and there was a certain cold, glass-like expression to their faces that harbored no recognition of the people they had known before. Like they couldn't feel anything and their minds were just... well, gone. Or at least their emotions.

Some people claimed it was hysteria, a desperation of family members to see their loved ones again. No one Riley heard of had ever touched one, they moved without a sound, and they seemed to vanish without a trace.

And Riley herself had never seen one. She only saw the part of her block of San Francisco, they sky darkening every day, the lights images that danced before her eyes and sounds that were nothing more than an attempt to ease the silence at the edge of her hearing.

The silence aside from her own voice and movements that she wished something, anything, would just break...

"Are you okay?"

Riley gasped, nearly falling off the couch, whipping her head around as her heart pounded in her chest, hearing a thump as it seemed the speaker had fallen to the other side of the couch as well. After being alone with the silence for so long, it was good to hear a voice addressing her. But at the same time, much more prominently, it filled her with dread.

A voice.

Here.

In her house.

The voice was female, but it wasn't her mom...

Riley thought she saw one of those lights before her eyes again, but this one seemed to be constant. And it seemed to be coming from behind the couch.

Could be too risky to just peek over the top of the couch. Whatever it was might sock her in the face.

Crouching on all fours, Riley snuck around to the side, holding her breath and mentally preparing herself to fight. Whatever she heard, whoever had gotten in...

When she did peek around to the back of the couch, however, her eyes widened.

The being, whatever it was, looked almost like a little person. The little creature had golden skin, bright blue hair that matched her eyes, and an apple-green dress adorned with blue flowers. The creature sat there behind the couch and tilted its head up at her, looking just as surprised to see Riley as Riley was to see it.

"Hi, Riley."

"H-How do you know my name?" Riley gasped, crawling back a bit just in case. "Who are you? What are you?"

"I'm Joy."