Barriers don't have to be physical.

Boundaries between countries are marked on maps and little desk globes. A person's personal space is an imagined sphere around them that is only announced when it's encroached upon. Marks in blood on loft boards are nothing more than the smears of someone so entwined in their pseudo family, they would inflict wounds on themselves to say they were there.

Except, such a mark didn't only say that. It was a wordless proclamation that the area belonged to someone. Someones. Thomas knew little of them. His father refused to speak about them and, though rumours abounded at school, no one really knew anything.

The gang didn't particularly need to show their presence or strength. The threat was enough. The knowledge that superpowered individuals were roaming as a group, and thought nothing of self harm, shook many without their being any follow up.

But, they had. On more than one occasion. Faceless, those who crossed them by merely being where they shouldn't, or carrying out illegal activities on their ground, were reprimanded.

A throat cut. Eyes gouged out. Three tears through the torso, imitating all too well their sign.

Thomas looked around, though he already had. The shadows were thick but still. Apart from his own pulse thudding in his ears, there was silence. Holding his breath, he moved around the lines. They were directly in the middle of the two holes, so a straight line meant he'd cross them, but he wasn't prepared to do so. He might end up touching and scuffing one or all of them. He didn't want to be responsible for defacing them.

He crawled slowly, careful not to touch the marks, and was only just past them when his lungs forced him to explosively exhale the held breath and suck in another. The blown out air raised a swirl of dust into the air that seemed to his eyes to the loft space. Thomas blinked rapidly, rubbing his eyes with his fist – fists that had been on the floor so had a coating of dust themselves. Temporarily blinded, he continued in the direction of the exit, hoping to be able to find something that he could wash his eyes with.

He pulled his top out from his jeans and used the hem to wipe his eyes. Though they weren't entirely cleaned, it gave him enough vision to be able to climb down from the exit hole and drop to the floor.

It also allowed him to see that, no matter how careful he had been, the three lines were now two and a broken one. He looked at his hand. It was red, the blood sticking to his palm. Some had transferred to his top so, even if he could wash his hands, the evidence was on his clothes for all to see.

He was in a room much like the last. One door led out, and the cable was fed through a hole beside it. Finding a sudden sense of urgency, he hurried out through it.

A long corridor ran with the doorway he'd just stepped through being at one end. Openings to either side, doorless doorways, stood invitingly, hoping for him to favour them with a visit. He wouldn't. He'd followed the cable thus far and had to see its destination. He didn't know what it did, or if that destination would lead to his doom, but it was a point of pride now. Whether misguided or not, he found he couldn't turn away.

He did, however, look into each of the rooms as he went. The first had badly stacked tables lining the back wall, each table balanced precariously on the one beneath due to missing a leg or having only a partial top. In the centre of the room, facing the tables, was a single office swivel chair. Two opposing wheels where missing and it stood at an awkward angle, as if it would have like to fall over, but didn't want to risk the attention it might bring. The next was completely bare apart from a strip of missing wallpaper that showed the old, peeling paint of an intricate design. Thomas could determine what it might have been of, but he wished he could have seen the full design. The segment promised a further mural that would have stood as a testament to the lost creativity of a world where destruction was the new art form.

The third door opened to what had once been a bathroom. Three toilets stood with their cubicles dismantled to have no separating panels remaining. None of the three cisterns or toilet bowls were still usable, however the floor was dry to show whatever had happened to them must have been done some time previously. There was, to Thomas's delight, a basin that was still untouched. He ran to it and turned the taps. From the hot, there was a blast of air and then nothing., From the cold, there was a similar exhalation, then a sputter of water that managed to increase to a steady drip, but nothing more. He let it run over his hands, washing away the blood and making the sink appear stained. The flow wasn't enough to make the liquid in the sink run clear, so Thomas tried to fill his hands with enough to rinse it.

A sound from somewhere in the building stopped him. He wiped his hands on his jeans and stepped to the doorway, listening.

The noise had been a scuff or scrape of something against a floor or wall. It wasn't loud and didn't sound artificial, as if a piece of crumbling plaster had given up trying to cling to its wall and submitted to gravity's pull. It was, most definitely, movement.

Thomas waited for the sound to be repeated, to gauge its direction, but whoever made it must have realised their mistake and were taking more care. He realised he was trapped. Had two hours passed already? Were the Spotters already on his scent? He couldn't go back the way he'd come. He wanted to go on. Go forward. He felt as if he'd been floating for the past two years. Although his ten year old mind couldn't put it into words, he felt Time had been dangling him like a carrot waiting for Life to come along and eat him whole. The years were a shadow, consuming his youth, swallowing it like the night devouring the world after day had retired.

He could only continue and hope he didn't encounter anyone who might have designs against him – which meant almost everyone.

Thomas quickly shook then wiped his hands on his jeans. He preferred to dry them properly, but there was nothing resembling a towel, either paper or cloth, for him to do so, so his clothes would suffice. There wasn't time to be fastidious. And this wasn't the time. He would have to lower his standards. He'd already been reduced to swearing. How much further would he have to go?

He left the room and hurried further along the corridor. The other rooms he passed, after a quick glance inside to ensure they weren't occupied, were empty apart from the remnants of their original contents. Broken chairs. Shattered glass. A human hand. A room covered, floor to ceiling, in smears of what looked, and smelled, like excrement.

At the end of the hallway was the only closed door. It was large, wider and taller than a normal room door, and had a heavily frosted pane of glass in its upper section. The glass was only small, allowing meagre light to filter in and no view of what might lay beyond. Thomas had to stand on tiptoe to look through, but he could see nothing, not even the blur of shapes. A horizontal bar was fixed across its middle, and he pushed it, expecting it to open. There was a faint click and the sound or whirring, but the door remained shut. He tried again, but it refused to budge, the bar moving freely with nothing to indicate pushing it activated any locking mechanism.

He pushed it again and again, his efforts growing in equal measure to the panic in him. If he couldn't go through, he would have to go back, a prospect that terrified him. If the door didn't open, it meant whoever made the sound had to be in the part of the building he'd already explored. It meant there was no way he'd be able to retrace his steps without being seen.

And caught.

And killed.