Jason staggered to the front door and fumbled with the knob until he was out in the hallway. The emergency exit sign gave off enough light for him to see roughly where the floor ended and the walls started, but aside from that and a small red light over the elevator, the hall was dark. He could see nothing through the windows—not even street lights. Blackness enveloped everything.

"Do you realize what you've done?" yapped something near Jason's feet, and he stumbled backward into the apartment.

"What have I done?" he asked, bewildered, searching for the source of the voice in the darkness.

"Not you, idiot boy. I'm talking to El there."

"What are you?" asked Jason, hoping that whatever it was, it wouldn't kill him if he was trying to communicate with it.

"Hmph, human eyes too dull to see?"

Jason could discern a fuzzy contour in the dim light. About a foot tall, and maybe a bit longer than that... he squinted and frowned but couldn't make anything else of the creature in front of him.

"Well, this isn't our first meeting, boy," grinned the thing, and Jason could see its grin. Its canine maw. Jason was aware of: the girl's dachshund friend. Jason pieced it together: this was the dachshund. "Judging by the inanely stupid look of 'recognition' in your face I'd say you'd figured it out." A pause, and then the dachshund squeaked, "Congratulations!"

"What do you want with me?" asked Jason, holding his newly acquired book out in front of him as if it were a shield and brandishing his laptop as if it were a discus.

"Nothing," replied the dachshund. "Like I already said, I was talking to El. Now if only he would be kind enough to respond."

"We should leave, my master," said the book, and Jason carefully sidestepped around the dog into the hall. 

"Do you understand what you've done?" asked the dog again, angrily.

"Let's go, my master."

"A-alright, but is it okay—"

"It's fine."

Jason looked from the tome in his hands to the dachshund's form and then back, and then scurried down the hallway, leaving his laptop bag behind.

"<i>Why</i> is that <i>stupid</i> thing only programmed to talk to its master?" seethed the dog. "<i>DAMN</i> it, Doctor!"

"Looks like he's mad," commented Jason as he hammered the elevator buttons to no avail.

"Let him be," advised the book. It added, "take the stairs."

"Good idea," agreed Jason, dashing across the hallway to the stairway door. "Man, a blackout at this time..."

"Is he following us?" asked the book as Jason rushed down the dark stairwell.

"You tell me, God," grunted Jason, making a note to himself that he needed to start exercising regularly.

"It seems as though he isn't," decided the book.

"Why didn't you talk to him?"

"I can only talk to my master," it answered.

"And that's me?" asked Jason as he exited the stairwell and strode into the lobby.

"Am I talking to you?" asked the book haughtily as if the answer should be obvious. Jason sighed—too many things that weren't supposed to talk to him had been talking to him today.

"Well great—I'm the master of God," laughed Jason. He opened the lobby doors and stepped out into a pitch black world, and suddenly he didn't feel like laughing anymore. "Um, El? What the hell is going on here?"

"You said that you have nothing to protect, my master. You will soon find that that is incorrect."