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[blooblooded]

Lost Colony World Building

STANFORD, MONTANA, 2022: JERRY

After a draining day in the stockyard, Jerry Botega came home to find his wife arguing with their housemate for what seemed like the hundredth time.

“Not only are you wrong, but you’re stupid,” Reuben Kowalski was saying. Jerry could hear his loud, pretentious voice before he could even see him. It grated on his nerves like the squeaky brakes of a car and brought out urges he could not speak about. “There’s no way you think that. There’s no way that you don’t think Picard is the best Captain in Star Trek. Nobody agrees with you. You’re the only person on earth who thinks that.”

“Sisko’s better at making the hard choices. He–”

“First of all, Silas, first of all– Sisko’s a Commander, he isn’t even a Captain. Second– at least Picard’s not a war criminal! He has an actual moral compass. Do you remember the one where Sisko poisons an entire planet to get one over on that terrorist group? Picard would have come to a peaceful solution instead. Also, TNG is the superior series in every way so I don’t even know why you would think that.”

Not that Jerry held much stock in liberal terminology like mansplaining, but that was the closest word he could find for the way that Kowalski spoke to his wife. Their endless dorky squabbling exhausted him. Jerry bypassed the living room to avoid them both and opened the fridge to grab a beer. One of the dogs jumped up on him when he walked in. He closed his eyes.

Bone tired. He was bone tired. Another calf had been born...wrong…that morning. Its neck had been fused back to its spine and there had been oozing, translucent skin covering its eyes and ears. The poor pitiful thing ripped its momma apart on the way out and had been born screaming. Massive internal hemorrhaging, it was a miracle from the Devil that it had not been stillborn. He’d had to put a .22 slug in the back of its head to put it out of its writhing, painful misery. That was happening more and more often lately and now he had to walk in on the two people he lived with arguing about television.

“The Federation isn’t perfect,” Silas said sullenly. “That’s why I like Sisko better. Picard’s peaceful diplomacy only exists because other people in the Federation are watching over it and doing the nasty stuff that nobody wants to think about.”

“Yeah, Section 30-whatever it is. Oh, that’s wonderful, Silas, I’d rather not watch a series that glorifies terrorism and Soviet style secret police. And Riker’s in TNG! Come on, you can’t beat Riker.”

“Worf gets more development in DS9.”

“That’s– they completely mischaracterize him!”

Jerry took a long sip of beer. Everything smelled like blood. Everything had been smelling like blood since the sky ripped itself open and turned red two weeks ago. The astronomers on the news– including one of Reuben’s prissy ex-boyfriends who lived in Quebec– all said that it was a natural phenomenon. Jerry suspected that everything was about to go to hell.

He gave the dog another pat before walking into the living room. Reuben stood in front of the TV with his hands on his sizable hips, looking pompous. Even though the college stopped its classes after the unprecedented astronomical phenomena, he still dressed up every day in his khakis and button down shirt. Not exactly common for the middle of bumfuck nowhere. His eyebrows were raised haughtily as he looked down on Silas. Jerry’s wife on the other hand, was wearing the same sweatpants and hoodie she always did when she was not at work. She sat hunched and cross legged on the couch holding a half-smoked joint, her dark hair in a loose ponytail. Every day that passed without answers for the terrible slash in the sky left her more agitated and depressed.

Jerry shrugged at them both. The TV wasn’t even on.

“Busy day?” asked Reuben Kowalski.

“Eh.” Better not to worry him by talking about the deformed calf. Silas could handle it, she was entirely cornfed and unsophisticated. But Reuben had soft hands and a softer mind. He was tender. Jerry could not help but think of him with some manner of tenderness. 

“What are your opinions on Star Trek?” Reuben was trying to score some kind of nerdy point. Trying to get one over on Silas. For some reason he liked to poke at her. “You ever watch Star Trek, Jeremiah?”

Over the 10 years he had been married to Silas, Jerry had been forced to watch hours and hours of stupid television shows. Hours he would never get back. He sipped his beer. “I ain’t taking sides in this one, sorry.”

“He’s such a Worf.”

That seemed vaguely racist. Jerry rather thought of himself as more of an O’Brien; exhausted and overworked and married to a botanist who was brighter and better than him in every way. He just shrugged at that as well, then sat down next to his wife. Silas looked at him from the corner of her dark eyes and gave his knee a quick pat.

He knew that she was scared. He knew that they were all scared. The sky was red for god’s sake! People were posting online about some kind of disease that had come from outer space, which was crazy in itself, it was like something out of one of Silas’ shows. How was he supposed to comfort her? How was he supposed to make her or anyone feel like they were safe?

Oh god. The mutated, screaming calves. His hands had started shaking when he put them down. How many had there been now? A dozen? More? Was this happening all over? He could hear them when he closed his eyes. That was what was in front of everyone, wasn’t it? Everyone was going to die screaming because of whatever sci-fi bullshit the earth had been thrown into.

He figured they were all going to die very soon. They were just sitting around waiting for it to happen. And here were Silas and Reuben, arguing about science fiction. Maybe it was better that way. It was a distraction for them. He didn’t have the luxury of distracting himself though. Jerry had to be responsible. He had to take care of his wife and his…well, his Reuben. 

The sky was red! The stars were in the wrong places! People were getting sick all over the world, every country with nuclear weapons was threatening its neighbors, and all Jerry could think about was the screaming, twisting calves. He couldn’t handle it. There was nothing to do and nowhere to run. There was nothing to understand. 

When Jerry had to slaughter an animal, whether it was a chicken or a hog, he always treated it real good before delivering the killing blow. He’d feed the chickens meal worms. Distract them a little. Their lives were so short and bad, they deserved a little distraction. Maybe that was what was happening now. Maybe he was supposed to play along with this conversation, he just didn’t have the heart to.

Silas took a hit off her joint and then passed it to him. Jerry shook his head. She shrugged. Oh, his poor Silas. She tried so hard to protect herself from the world. Ever since she had been just a little kid in foster care she had walled off her heart so nobody could hurt her, she distracted herself with stories about a far off future she could never build. He wished he could protect her.

“You want to watch the news?” she asked him quietly.

Anything but that. He was so tired. Tired of everything, achingly bone-tired, ready-to-die tired. Jerry put an arm around his wife, a woman who could never love him the way he needed but who he loved anyway. He needed a distraction too but he would never get it. “Nah,” he said. “Nah, we can watch Star Trek. But only if we watch the series with the Black Vulcan guy in it. Not the one with the wormhole and the goo aliens, that’s too– that shit’s too close to home.”

He would not realize just how too close to home it was for hundreds of years. By that time it would be too late.

“Oh god,” whined Reuben. “That’s the worst one.” But he sat down on the couch beside Jerry anyways.

A welcome distraction. 

EDEN, 200 YEARS BEFORE THE EVENTS OF BLUEBLOODS: SILAS

“I hadn’t heard from him in months,” said Silas. She tried to keep her voice from breaking. Over the last few days, she had cried more than she had in hundreds of years. She couldn’t stand crying, she couldn’t stand any weakness coming from inside of her. But how could she help it? This was her husband! “I hadn’t heard from him in months and two nights ago he calls me and something is– something is wrong! He looked sick and he was talking about– I can’t explain it, he was talking about crazy things!”

“Talking about what?” asked Reuben Kowalski from the screen in front of her. He shared the screen with Frank Toussaint and Anikah Liu; all three of them were hundreds of miles away from her, just like Jerry was. All three of them appeared unaged and unchanged. “What exactly are we talking about here?”

“Things from before!” She could barely bring herself to say it, it was all too illogical. Her mind could not grasp anything that could not be explained by science and logic but here she was. “That Book. That Book he took from Teddy Isaksen’s compound when we– when we all–”

“--When we all died.”

The hair on the back of Silas’ neck stood up. She remembered how Isaksen had put a bullet in her and each of her friends. She remembered the black nothingness. She didn’t like to think about it, but Jerry had always believed that some kind of miracle had happened that day because of Isaksen’s Book.

But it wasn’t Isaksen’s Book, was it? It was something else. It was something…something alive. She could push that uncomfortable thought away as much as she liked but it did not change the fact that something had happened that day that nobody could explain. It was completely out of her control and there was nothing Silas hated more. 

“Well, what did Jerry say, Silas?” asked Frank. His voice and his nasally Quebecois accent made her grit her teeth. He had always talked down to her, thought that he was better than her because of his education, thought that he was more cultured than her because of where he came from. He thought that she was some stupid midwestern hick. She couldn’t stand him. “He must have said something to you.”

“He said something bad is happening in Asilo. People are– are changing.”

“People are fleeing his Colony and coming to mine.” Frank’s tone was dismissive. “Some kind of religious oppression. They’ve formed religious beliefs based off that Book of his and it’s out of control. I’ve opened my borders to anyone who wants to leave since the Territories are only 200 miles from Asilo.”

On her end, Silas was doing her best to stamp out all religion from Eden and set up the peaceful atheistic utopia that she believed was best. But this wasn’t that. This was something else. Something bad, something unmentionable. Something bad that was no longer contained! She shook her head. “You shouldn’t be letting anyone from Asilo into your Colony, Frank, you shouldn’t be letting anyone in at all. They’re all sick, I think they’re all sick or something’s wrong with them, very wrong. We should all be quarantined!”

“It sounds as if Eden has been quarantined for decades. Not all of us are isolationists.”

She wished that she could reach through the screen and punch him. “You’re not listening to me. Something terrible is happening there. Jerry wasn’t himself when he called me, I think everyone in Asilo is dying! There’s some disease, some sort of infection, it’s worse than what happened to everyone when the Rift opened!”

They had to remember what had happened all those centuries ago. Almost everyone in the world became sick and transformed into weeping, howling mutants. 

“Where’s the evidence? You’re as paranoid as ever. The refugees from Asilo are like anyone else, they’ve just been persecuted for not blindly following the ridiculous religion your husband has made up.”

“Evidence?!”

Reuben laughed nervously. He pushed his blonde hair back from his boyish face. “OK you two. This isn’t the time to bicker. Silas– I speak to Jerry regularly. Last week he was his normal self, he told me that he’d like to take some time to travel to Green River to visit me. I don’t understand why you think there’s something so wrong with him? It sounds like there’s some social problems in Asilo, but which of us don't have social issues in our Colonies? A bit of unrest is natural for any human society. As for the Book… I used to be curious about it as well, but my research led me to believe it’s nothing more than an oddity of the Rift, no different than the little slimy animals that came through it. I understand why Jerry feels a connection to it.”

His love for her husband had always blinded him.

They were all in danger. Silas’ head pounded. Her glasses were fogging up. What could she do to protect herself and Eden? She could not allow anyone to leave Asilo. For all she knew, she could not allow anyone to leave the Northern Territories because Frank, that idiot, had let Jerry’s people across his borders. They were unsafe. They were all unsafe. They didn’t understand. They hadn’t seen how sick Jerry was. They hadn’t seen what was happening in his Colony.

The people there were tearing each other apart. 

She tried again to make them listen. “I’ve seen it. They’re killing each other. There’s blood in the streets, they’ve built a temple, some kind of massive black pyramid, and they’re killing people there. There’s something wrong!”

There was a beat of silence. Anikah Liu made a sound of disgust. Like the others, she was completely unchanged, so completely full of beauty and life. Her eyes were filled with black light, her posture was casual yet poised. Silas could only see her head and shoulders on the screen but imagined that she must be wearing the same stylish athleisure clothing she used to favor. She smiled but there was no joy behind it. “Do you have cameras over there in Asilo too, Sy?”

Silas winced. So she knew about that. It wasn’t her fault. Silas just…she needed to know what was going on. She needed to watch. It made her feel safer to watch.

And the cameras in Asilo…the things she had seen! It was like nothing she could imagine. They were tearing down buildings, they were creating massive structures of unspeakable geometry. They were killing women and children in the streets like it was nothing and everything was red, so red. That madness could not be permitted to leave the Colony!.

“I could show you. I could show you what’s happening there,” said Silas.

“She has cameras there then,” said Anikah. “She has cameras everywhere.”

How had they turned into this? Anikah had loved her once, a long time ago, when they were both different people. Now everything was just...cold and far away. And Silas was alone, just like she was always alone. 

Something still needed to be done. For once she wanted to take action and nobody was listening to her.

“I’ll talk to Jerry,” said Reuben. “I’m sure everything is fine, Silas. He’s been stressed lately. I remember how it is. A few hundred years ago, I was dealing with similar political unrest in Green River. It happens.”

“Listen to me! I’m telling you that something’s wrong with him, he’s not himself!” She struggled to make sense of it. There were no words, she could not come up with a description of the wrongness in her own words. “It felt wrong talking to him, do you remember the episode of TNG where the parasites–”

“For once I’d like you to stop talking about television,” said Frank. He pompously smoothed down his thin mustache. “This is real life we’re talking about. You’re blowing things out of proportion as usual.”

“Blowing things out of proportion?! Can you imagine if we lose everything we’ve built because we ignore this problem? Can you imagine if we go back to the way things were before, with everyone starving and wandering and terrified? My husband is doing the exact same thing Isaksen was doing at his compound, only on a massive scale! We need quarantine procedures. Anyone who’s left Asilo needs to be detained immediately. I have unmanned combat aerial vehicles, I have drones, and I think it would be in our best interest to bomb–”

“Oh, there it is. There’s what this is about,” interjected Anikah with greater disgust. She rubbed her eyes. 

“You’re talking about murdering half a million people,” said Reuben, suddenly cold. 

“They’re already killing each other! What if their beliefs get to Eden?! All I care about is keeping my Colony safe!”

“Je m’en fous,” Frank’s face was all twisted up, he was looking at her like she was a bug. “I’ve met the refugees who’ve fled from your husband’s incompetence. They’re not whatever you’re claiming they are. They’re people like us.”

Silas did not really believe that she was a person anymore. Not since Teddy Isaksen had shot her and she had fallen into thick darkness. Not since Jerry had used that damned Book to bring her and Anikah and Frank back from…back from wherever it was that the spark of human consciousness went when the brain and body can no longer sustain life. For that reason alone, she knew that what Jerry was doing was real and terrible and could not be permitted to continue. If the words…if the power in the Book could pull life back into a dead body, what else could it do? What other terrible things?

The people in Asilo who were being torn apart…the people in Asilo who were being eaten alive?! She had seen the frenzy of their worship. That could not happen in Eden. She would not let it.

She would do anything within her power to keep Eden safe. Anything. If that meant killing everyone in Asilo, so be it. If that meant shutting herself off from the rest of them, from Reuben and Frank and Anikah, she didn’t care. She didn’t care about any of them anymore, and they certainly did not care about her. Silas had one purpose and that was Eden, its people and its safety.

Nobody understood and that was fine. Nobody understood her and nobody ever would. That was fine too. 

Whatever was happening to Jerry, whatever was happening in his colony, had to be stopped by whatever means necessary.

Silas would be the one to stop it. 

ASILO, THE LOST COLONY, 20 YEARS BEFORE THE EVENTS OF BLUEBLOODS: YANCEY

The boy did not have a name. Nobody in the place he lived had names. There was no reason for them to have words to call each other in the stinking darkness of the Lost Colony. The only language they had was the twisted, backwards lamentations that the gods spoke in the heaven beyond the stars. If God had no name, then why should any of the crawling humans on Earth have one? None of them even knew what a name was! They did not know what they were missing. 

If you have no sense of self, then it does not matter when you offer yourself up. The 300 people who had been trapped, reproduced, and died in the ruins of the Lost Colony since its fall were little more than animals. Most of their humanity had been stripped from them by starvation and madness.

Well. The boy was different. He had never cared about God. He was interested, but he did not ever throw himself down to the ground to worship him. That was just a good way to get ripped to shreds and eaten. And the boy had no intention of having that happen to him.

He had a secret. The boy had found a secret place. Everyone else was too scared to go there, they would shiver and shake and bite at themselves if they even looked at it. The crumbling building was where God had once lived. It was huge and very old, half destroyed, with numerous twisting passages and old rooms. The boy didn’t understand why everyone was so scared of it. He had never felt scared. He had never felt much of anything, really. All he knew was that he liked his secret.

The secret was this: there were things inside the old building that still worked. The boy did not understand how. He did not know what electricity was. All he knew was that he could touch things, he could flip switches and press buttons and they would light up like magic. The first time he had done it, the shock of the light had nearly blinded him. He had thought that something bad was happening, he had thought that he was about to die. But he kept going back inside. And every day he got more and more used to it. 

There was one room that the boy liked best. It seemed like someone had once lived there, but it was nothing like the place the boy lived, the place where he huddled for warmth with dozens of other stinking, naked people. The walls had been painted a color that the boy had never seen before, and he had learned that it was the color of things that grew and lived outside. There were very old things inside. There were scraps of soft things that people were supposed to put on their bodies. There were all kinds of trinkets and knick knacks. The boy spent hours looking at them and wondering what they were.

One of the first things he found was small and flat and when he saw it for the first time, a shock had gone through him. The image of two people was on this small object. So there was a way to capture the likeness of people and trap it forever? Unthinkable. The boy had held it and stared. The image was of a man and a woman. The woman was clean and smiling, her long dark hair looked very smooth, unlike his own dirty mats. She had clear square things on her face and one of her arms was wrapped around the man beside her. And the man–

Well, the boy had seen the man before. He had seen him many times, crawling and screaming and tearing apart flesh. Because the man was God. He just did not look like God in the image on the flat object. He looked soft and clean and happy.

Had God once been a man? The boy had to wonder this.

The secret place was full of images. In one room, there was a flat and shining surface covered in dust. The boy looked into it and was confronted by a reflection of himself for the first time. It made him flinch back in fear until he realized that he was looking at himself. The boy touched his own face and watched his mirror image copy him. The image of the boy was gaunt and pale as the belly of a blind fish. His eyes were pale pink and half-blind like everyone else’s eyes, his hair was black, and every inch of him was filthy. The boy opened his mouth and looked at his own teeth which were stained red from chewing on the roots that grew in the ruins for sustenance. He frowned.

He had no concept of the grotesque. Every person in that shadowy place was grotesque from generations spent in darkness, from 200 years of gnawing on their own bones. There was no light, there was no beauty. But the boy still did not like looking at himself.

Oh, but the other images! Once the boy found the other images, he could not tear himself away. In the secret place, there was a box with buttons that could be pressed, and the buttons played sequences of images on another flat surface. The images were not real but they seemed real. They showed the boy wonderful things outside of his comprehension. They showed the boy strange people dressed in clothes, moving and talking in clean bright spaces. In these images, there was no howling and wailing and sacrifices of blood. There was no empty God waiting to drag them into the shadows to consume. Only people.

At first the boy did not understand the sounds coming from the box of images. His people did not speak like that, they spoke the twisted language of the Void. Over time, he learned. He learned fast, he picked it up naturally. Something in his mind made the sounds…right.

“Does anyone smell anything smoky?” said a man with brown hair and clear things over his eyes as gray smoke flooded the space he was in.

“Did you bring your jerky in again?” replied a small pale woman, not looking at him.

The images and sound proceed, showing the flat people on the flat screen running around and panicking. The boy would watch transfixed. He would think about how he wanted to live like the people in the moving images. They did not have to worry about starving to death. They did not have to worry about being consumed. 

The boy would return to his own reflection. He would stare at it. He would stare and stare and think about how badly he wanted to look like the people on the flat screen. There was nothing he could do to change his own perception. But the perception of others?

The boy was different. When he thought about it hard enough, he could make others see him as different than he was. If he wanted to, he could make others see him like he saw the people on the flat screen: clean and healthy and happy, not pale, not grotesque, no milky pink eyes.

The other people who lived with him in the darkness didn’t like that very much. The boy didn’t care. He started to think about how different he was. He started to think about how he wanted to go to the places he saw on the flat screen. Did a place like that even exist? Was it real or was it fake, like a dream? But it had to be real. There had to be a place where humans did not have to crawl in the darkness and get ripped apart by a hungry God.

Maybe there was a place with no God. The boy didn’t know.

This wasn’t a life. This wasn’t even survival. This was scratching and clawing and waiting to die while praying to the howling gods of the Void. The boy had stopped praying a long time ago. It didn’t make any difference because they never answered. 

The roots stopped growing and the blind fish of the cave rivers went away. To keep from starving, the people the boy lived with killed a little girl so they could sustain themselves from her flesh. It happened from time to time during the seasons where they could find no other food. They cut her throat and rubbed her blood on their bodies while wailing at the gods of the Void. The boy didn’t eat. The little girl had been born to the same woman who had given birth to him. He wasn’t sad about it, but consuming her was not the same as consuming someone who did not share his blood. When everyone was finished, God crept out of the shadows to gnaw the marrow out of the girl’s bones.

The sound of the crunching bones made the boy’s mother shiver and gnaw her own fingers until they bled in the alcove of stones that they took refuge in. The boy watched her silently tear at her dirty hair, too scared to make a sound that God could hear. He didn’t like it but he had no way to tell her to stop. All he could do was crouch there and watch the huge, twisted creature devour what was left of the girl’s body.

He was close enough to see God’s empty, slack jawed face. Close enough to see his sharp white teeth, close enough to see his long matted hair and beard. Close enough to see his gaunt and naked body. God was starving, just like the rest of them. He fed on their bodies, just like everyone else. 

The boy wondered if God had once been a man. All men died. Maybe God could die. Maybe it could be done. Maybe it could be done. Maybe. Maybe if God died, all the people would be safe again. Maybe they wouldn’t have to starve and eat eachother, maybe they could find somewhere to live that was light and happy like the people in the flat screen.

The boy liked to think about a world where that was possible.

That was the night he decided that he would kill God.

[blooblooded]

Tony Reunites with Cihad

After the first night of being back in Eden, Tony had already decided to find Cihad Tariq.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Casey asked him nervously, watching him get ready in the safehouse’s small bathroom that morning. It was early, 6:30 am. Early was good. Cihad woke up early to exercise and calm his mind. It would be best to catch him before he went to work and exhausted himself. “Dad says that most of the CCTVs are malfunctioning, but there’s still a chance you could be seen. And, uh, have you forgotten all about how that guy freaked out on you the day he came to take the Book back from Kassidy? Or how he tried to drag the truck back the day we left Eden? He was pissed. Beyond pissed.”

Over the last two years, Casey had grown into a natural leader. Of course she was worried about him. She didn’t understand Cihad like he did, she only saw him as a threat. There was no reason for her to see him as anything but a threat after everything they had witnessed, everything they had learned. Tony shook his head. He finished shaving, then splashed water on his face. He felt like he looked presentable, despite how fear and struggle had aged him. His long black hair hung down to his shoulders and he did not tie it back the way he used to. “Did your Dad bring us any aftershave when he picked up supplies?”

Casey’s mouth twitched. “Yeah, no. I don’t think he imagined you or Marty were gonna go try to get some dick. And you didn’t answer my question. Are you sure it’s a good idea to go see the man who brought the Book to Eden? I still think he’s working for it. Nothing we learned in the North proves otherwise.”

“He’s not working for it,” said Tony. “He’s a good man and he’s been raising my daughter. I have to talk to him before I try to come back into her life.”

Try to come back into her life a second time. Cynthia was 15 years old now. The first time he had abandoned her, out of paranoid delusions and a half-pickled brain, he didn’t see her again until she was 6. The 4 years he spent back in her life, together with Cathy and Cihad, had been the happiest he had ever been. Then Cathy had died and everything went wrong. For 2 years he hid in the sewers, out of his mind, living with rats. He never thought he would ever see her again.

He still might never see her again. Cihad might not let him. And even if he did, even if he did let him,  Cynthia might not want him back in her life. He wouldn’t want that, if he was her. 

That was out of his control. The first part of the Serenity Prayer was all about accepting the things he could not change. If reuniting with his family was not an option, he would just have to accept that, and focus on the things within his control. 

Tony looked at himself in the mirror. He had chosen a green shirt because green was Cihad’s favorite color on him. Or, it had been once. 

What was he doing? Cihad had probably moved on a long time ago. He was probably seeing someone else, someone better than him. Of course he hadn’t waited, and it wasn’t fair to expect him to have waited. It seemed almost pathetic for Tony to be preening like this, letting his hair down, thinking about aftershave. There were more important things to think about. Like the Book. Like where the essence of that demon had gone after leaving Kassidy’s body, and whether it would try to hunt him down again.

Well, Cihad deserved to know about that. Even if he never let him see Cynthia again, even if he had moved on. He deserved to know. He was involved. The strings of fate that connected the whole world, future and past, had bound them together.

“I just think that it’s a bad idea,” said Casey. She spoke quietly. Everyone else was still asleep. When Tony woke from where he slept on the couch in the living room, the smallest noises he made had alerted her. Ever since their time in the Northern Territories, she had been unable to sleep soundly. “I feel like he’s working for It. The Thing in the Book. He was the one who brought it here. If that thing is somewhere in Eden, who’s to say he doesn’t just hand your ass over to it.”

“He isn’t and he won’t.” 

There was one thing that Tony was completely sure of: Cihad had once loved him. He had really loved him. No, it hadn’t started out that way. It had started as simple empathy, Cihad saw him as someone he could fix, he felt a sense of control when he was able to fix people. And Tony had liked the attention. Nobody had ever treated him with that kind of compassion, he had spent years as a homeless alcoholic. He was used to getting treated with disgust, or worse, not even seen as a person. Cihad never saw him that way. Cihad had only seen someone who needed his help. The compassion turned into lust, which turned into love. 

Tony hadn’t meant to ruin it all after what happened with Cathy. He had just been so scared. Cihad had probably thought that he killed himself. The look he had got when he saw him again in the attic! That wild, frantic look! Tony felt bad. He had really hurt him but at the time, he hadn’t seen another option than run to the sewers. And then again, the second time, his only option had been to run from Eden.

Now he didn’t know what to expect. Cihad would probably be angry when he saw him again. Tony could deal with angry.

“I’ll come back,” said Tony, checking himself one more time in the mirror. He pushed some of his hair up so that it hung over his shoulders, then Looked at Casey.

She did not think he was coming back. One way or another, she believed that he was leaving. Running away again. Always running away. Tony cringed a little bit inside. He did not know how to make her believe otherwise.

He left anyway. He left, telling himself that he was coming back but not completely believing it himself.

Tony was careful as he made his way to the metro station. Logically he knew that he did not need to be so careful, he knew that he was seen as dead in the eyes of the state. There was nobody looking for him anymore or even anyone who cared. As far as he knew, the only danger he needed to worry about was not even in Eden anymore. It was probably still in the Lost Colony and would be trapped there until…until, well, he did not know.

Still, he was careful. He did not get a single look on the train. Everyone on it was just going about their lives, headed to their jobs that morning. Tony kept his eyes on his shoes. 

He realized that he did not even know if Cihad still lived in the same 3 bedroom house in the Residential Mid Levels. Kassidy was the one who had given him the address, she was the only one who had actually been there. Stupid. If he showed up on some random family’s doorstep, he was going to feel like an idiot. But Cihad was a creature of habit, he was someone who needed to carefully control his environment. He would still be there. It was the place he had moved after Cathy had died. He had to still be there.

Tony got off the train. He took a deep breath of the oxygen rich air that they only seemed to pump in on the Mid and Upper Levels. The Co2 in the air where the Safehouse sat was stifling, choking, after breathing the fresh clean air outside of Eden for the last year and a half. It was funny. Tony had breathed thick, toxic air all his life. He had never felt like it was squeezing and choking him until he experienced what he was missing.

It was a short walk from the metro station to Cihad’s house but the whole time, Tony grew more and more anxious. The streets here were lined with vertical gardens to give residential homes more privacy. He looked up at the vine covered slabs of concrete, so beautiful and wrong at the same time. His heart hurt. He missed Cihad more than anything but seeing him face to face scared him more than anything too.

That wasn’t even taking into account Cynthia. Tony swallowed and almost tripped over a crack in the sidewalk because he wasn’t paying attention. A mother pushing a baby in a stroller gave him a sideways look. He ducked his head and kept walking.

The house was the same as the majority of middle-class family homes in Eden. Two stories, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a little balcony off the back. It was built of concrete blocks in a utilitarian, brutalist fashion that didn’t lend very much to warmth. A chill went up Tony’s spine when he looked at it. He had never lived in this house. But two people he loved did. It was almost like he could feel them.

Tony’s stomach lurched like he was going to throw up. He checked the time on his phone. 7:00. Cynthia would already have left for school, since classes started at 8. There wasn’t a chance that he would run into her. That was good. He needed time to think about what he was going to say.

Was he stupid? Was he making a bad mistake? He kept telling himself that this was not only a personal visit. Cihad still had the Book and Tony needed to examine it while it was still uninhabited and powerless. If it was still uninhabited and powerless. The last time he had the Book in his hands, he had been frantic, trying to rip it to shreds himself. This time he knew better. This time he could be logical.

He looked down at his hands and saw that they were shaking. “Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,” he told himself. “Serenity to accept the things I cannot change…”

No going back now. Tony walked up to the front door, stood there for a second, then rang the bell. The last time he showed up unexpectedly on Cihad’s doorstep, he had been wasted, dying, and had thrown up on Cihad’s shoes. This was a step up. There was no way he could embarrass himself as badly as he had back then.

He still felt like he was going to throw up though.

The door opened. And there he was. Cihad was dressed in blue scrubs and white sneakers. The scrubs didn’t fit his huge body correctly, he looked like he had been poured into them. His dark curly hair and beard were neatly groomed like they always were, not a touch of gray in that hair. The second he saw him, Cihad’s red eyes became huge in his face. His expression was more shocked than it was angry or horrified. He froze and dropped the mug of tea he was holding and it shattered on his doorstep.

Tony tried to smile. “Well, I’m back,” he said sheepishly. Nonchalant. Maybe cool, or at least trying to be cool. Idiot.

“Anthony.” Cihad’s voice came out as a strangled whisper. He did not move.

“You gonna let me in so we can talk?” Tony’s own boldness shocked him. “You know, since last time I saw you, you were screaming and dragging a truck back with your mind? We have some things to talk about.”

Cihad’s eyes looked shiny. That was weird. His stupid ham-like hands clenched and unclenched. Tony wondered if Casey had been right, that Cihad was still pissed at him and whether he needed to run. God, he was stupid! It was so easy to forget that Cihad was about 150 pounds heavier than him and was an avid user of blood magic on top of his neuroelectrical abilities. If he really wanted to hurt him, it would be easy.

Wait, what was he thinking. Cihad would never hurt him. He would die before he hurt him.

As if in a trance, Cihad extended his big arms and wrapped them around Tony’s body. He didn’t even have time to struggle, he just found himself being lifted off the ground and squeezed tightly. Hugged. He was being hugged. It had been so long since anyone had actually hugged him. Tony was able to free one arm and curled it around Cihad’s back, patting him awkwardly.

“I thought you were dead,” said Cihad. His voice cracked.  His face was pressed into Tony’s neck, he could feel his warm breath and the prickle of his beard hair. “How did you– I thought you were dead. I thought I would never see you again! You were dead and I couldn’t even talk to anyone about it!”

“Yeah, well, I have this funny way of always surviving.” Tony’s ribs were hurting. He squirmed to escape from Cihad’s grasp. Part of him liked it. Even without Looking, he could tell that Cihad still desired him after all these years. It wasn’t exactly something he could hide. The other part of him, the rodenty prey animal part of him, felt afraid. Loving someone just meant that he could lose them. “Hey– quit squeezing the merchandise, get off, get off me.”

He let him go. Cihad pushed back his wavy hair. “I’m calling off work,” he said, and stepped back into the house. “Come inside. You can come inside.”

So he wasn’t seeing anyone else. Good. It sort of scared Tony that he had this much power over him. Within three minutes of seeing him, Cihad was already calling off of work. He wondered what else he could get–

No, what was wrong with him? Tony followed Cihad inside.

The house was furnished in a simple, homey way that made sense for a single father. Tony passed a picture of Cynthia on the wall and looked away quickly. The girl in the picture was a teenager and almost recognizable to him. She had bright blue eyes and a big smile. He couldn’t look at her, not yet. There was another picture of a child Tony did not recognize and he squinted at it for a moment. This kid was also Black, maybe the same age as Cynthia, with a bright and friendly face. Where had Cihad picked up another kid?

He looked around as Cihad led him into the kitchen. “Do you still keep that thing in here?” Tony asked cautiously. He had not forgotten the little slime creature Cihad kept as a pet. It had always disturbed him that it had learned how to speak; they weren’t supposed to do that. Ever since Marty had told him about the one that was trapped in the Void, Tony had thought about the ways he could keep this one away from his daughter. “You know, that alien thing that used to sleep in the drawers?”

Cihad glanced at him. He sat down at the kitchen table. “Billy’s at school.”

Great. The fool had named it. That wasn’t ominous at all. Tony felt a chill go up his spine. “We learned a lot about those things while we were gone.”

“Where was that, exactly?” His voice was clipped. Suspicious.

“North. The Northern Territories.” He watched Cihad’s expression tighten. “We went to this place— this state or territory, I guess —called the Strath. Cassiopeia Agapama’s father was doing business with the person in charge there. We talked to her on his behalf and tried to find answers about that Book you brought into Eden.”

Cihad didn’t say anything. He didn’t move. Was he scared? He had always been so secretive about his past. At this point, Tony knew more about it than he felt he would ever be told. Was that a betrayal? Was it like going through someone’s phone for proof of cheating? He knew that Cihad did not want him to know about where he came from. Well, that was too bad.

It wasn’t his fault, but every fucked up thing that had occurred because of the Book was because Cihad brought it to Eden when he was just a kid. There was nothing any of them could do to change that. 

He continued. “There was this place up there. This burnt down town. Have you heard of a place called Blagodat?”

“Stop,” said Cihad.

“That’s where you’re from, isn’t it? That’s where the Book came from.” Tony sat down across from Cihad. There were three chairs at the kitchen table. He couldn’t help but wonder if he was sitting at Cynthia’s. “The people in the North said that they killed almost everyone who lived there over 20 years ago. Not you though. You survived. And you brought that Book to Eden.”

There was an almost unbearable minute of silence. Cihad’s face was like a cold mask, all of the warmth had drained away. He didn’t want to talk about this. Of course he didn’t want to talk about this. It would be easier for Tony to just See the truth of it all instead of prying out answers like he was prying teeth. 

But he wanted to give this man he cared so much about a chance.

At length, Cihad only said, “God kept me safe.”

“You know that thing isn’t a god, right? It’s just some Thing that got trapped here like all of those monsters made of black slime. Only hungrier. It’s from some other place. We’ve been learning about that too.”

“Anthony, I just—“

“You were a kid and you didn’t know any better,” said Tony, and he knew he was about to twist the knife in but was unable to help himself. “But it killed Cathy because it was trying to take her body. And now it’s trying to take mine too.”

Surprisingly, the big nurse didn’t react. Had he already known? To be exposed to the Book for as long as he had, he must have known. That in itself was sickening but Tony could almost understand. Almost. Cihad had not wanted to let go of the one thing that tied him to his childhood. He did not have anything else. It had all been ripped away from him in one night of blood and fire.

“That means Kassidy Nguyen is dead,” he said at last, with a tone of regret. “I didn’t figure it out until I saw her so sick like that. I could have done something. She was just— she was so angry, she was falling apart. I’m sorry. Her mother and I have—“

“She’s not dead but she came close,” Tony interrupted. “It would take more than some stupid alien to kill her.”

Cihad’s shoulders sagged visibly in relief. How strange. It wasn’t like he had known Kassidy. It wasn’t like he had been anything other than her supervisor at the Hospital. Tony used the Sight to take a little peek and saw the swirling truth of why he was so worried about her. There was a common string linking them. A tired little woman. Cihad had been busy for the last year and a half. Cihad had been collaborating with Kassidy’s mother. Not just collaborating, he was her friend. He cared about her. He cared about her so much that he was scared she was going to kill herself if—

No. Stop looking. It wasn’t right. He was here to talk. He was here to talk to someone he cared about like a normal fucking human. Tony shook himself.

“She’s fine,” he said lamely. “Kassidy’s fine.”

What else was he supposed to say? What were they supposed to talk about? There was so much Tony wanted to know. How was Cynthia? How was he? What had happened while he was gone? What had happened before he had gone, during those years that he was hiding with rats and out of his mind? Since Cathy had died, he had seen Cihad twice, and both of those times he had been so…so angry at him! Or angry at the situation. Scared and angry. So scared and angry.

So what now? There was no way to just pick up where they had left off. The time for that had passed years ago. Here he was, grilling Cihad and asking questions about where he came from when he already knew the answers. There were other answers he wanted. How was Cynthia? How was he?

Stupid.

They sat in uncomfortable silence. Tony became acutely aware of how his hair tickled the back of his neck. Every breath seemed to take concentration. Where was he supposed to look? Not into Cihad’s eyes, never into Cihad’s red, red eyes. It was safer to just stare down at his hands in his own lap. Tony had never been good at talking. 

“I just–”

“Are you–”

They started and stopped at the same time. Cihad made a little huff of frustration. Tony grimaced awkwardly and watched the man he had once loved stand up from his chair, turn to the counter, and put the kettle on. Pulled out two mugs. God, what was his problem? He was always trying to take care of other people, it never fucking stopped.

It didn’t take long to brew the tea. Cihad poured three scoops of sugar into one of the cups. Tony’s stomach flipped. He remembered how sweet he liked his tea. It had been years and he still remembered. But for the life of him, Tony could not remember the way Cihad took his. Back when they had lived together, he had never been the one to make it.

When Cihad handed him the mug, he sipped from it without waiting for it to cool down. The taste was so…artificial. In the Strath Tony had gotten used to real tea. The stuff that they sold in Eden was a thin copycat of that, something formed in labs like everything else in this anthill. What did Cihad think of it? He had grown up outside of Eden. Did he remember the taste of real tea? Or had it been too long. Maybe his memories of his old life had faded.

“Are you living in a shelter again?” Cihad asked him.

Tony choked on his mouthful of tea. Was that really what he thought? That he was homeless again? Well, OK, on a technical level he had never stopped being homeless. On a very shameful and technical level, he had been homeless ever since the day he abandoned Cathy. But he had thought that Cihad would have understood the gravity of his situation in this moment and how his life was in danger. “No, I’m–” Maybe he shouldn’t tell him where he and the girls were staying. Not that he didn’t trust him. Tony shook his head. “I’m staying somewhere safe. I probably shouldn’t be out here now. I just wanted to see you.”

“You’re staying somewhere with Kassidy Nguyen.”

“I never said that.” Tony put his mug down. “Look, she isn’t ready to–”

“I don’t need to know.”

Oh, but you wanted to know, you enormous nosy motherfucker. Tony rubbed his face. “Look, a lot has happened. I don’t know how to begin.”

“A lot has happened here too.” Cihad crossed his arms. 

Now that he understood where Cihad’s accent came from, and had heard dozens of irritating people speaking with voices that sounded just like his, it sounded a lot less sexy. The soft T’s. The musical vowels. He was so full of himself. “Yeah, I’m sure it has. I’m sure it’s been fucked, I mean, it seems more fucked here than usual, but maybe that’s because I’ve been gone so long. Everything feels off, I feel like I’m on the verge of–”

“I missed you.”

Ugh. That was not what Tony came to talk to him about. Stay focused. Don’t get drawn in. He laughed nervously. Say it back. Say it back, you piece of shit. “I, uh– you too. My life has gone to hell since the day Cathy…” he trailed off, unable to say what had happened to Cathy.

“I’ve been raising two kids by myself for years now.” Cihad was staring right at him, red, red eyes boring holes into his head. His eyelashes were so thick that it was like he was wearing mascara or something. “It hasn’t been easy. Every night I think about how different things would be if you hadn’t run away.”

Where was he getting two kids from? As far as Tony knew, there was only Cynthia. But then, what did he know? He had run away. Time to diffuse the situation. “I’m sure you haven’t been lonely. Single dad with a tragic past? Guys have probably been lining up outside your door.”

“That’s not funny, Anthony.”

Oh god. Tony prepared to dive head first into uncomfortable sincerity. “I’ve missed you too, OK? I miss you and Cynthia. I did what I thought I had to do at the time. Your fucking Book? We had to run for our lives because of that Thing. You did that. You brought it here and I know, you were a scared little kid, but you still brought it here. I had to run over and over again because of you, I didn’t want to run away, I had to run away. And I still missed you. It’s just all–”

He Saw the guilt and self hatred radiating off of Cihad. Piece of shit. Tony looked away. 

“I’m sorry.”

Self righteous asshole. Tony groaned. “It’s just all fucked. We’re fucked. You and me. I didn’t come back for you. I know, I’m self aware enough to– I came back for my daughter.”

“Your daughter?” Cihad’s voice had a funny edge to it. Tony winced. “What do you mean by that? Do you think you can take her away? You don’t have custody. You never–”

“I don’t know what I mean. Goddamn!” Why was he being so defensive? Cihad had never been like that before. He knew that he could never take care of Cynthia. Not now. Not ever.

“You don’t have custody,” Cihad said again. Suddenly he was breathing hard. He seemed big and angry. “I’m her father. I’m the one who’s taken care of her. Alone. By myself. I’m tired of people telling me that they want her to take her away. I’ve got social services sticking their noses where they don’t belong, and all these threats from Si– and now you show up and you finally want her? I don’t think so.”

“Calm down.” Tony put his hands up. “What’s the matter with you? I just meant I want to make things right with her. I’m fucking homeless, man, you think I can take care of a kid?”

That took the air out of him. The silence grew between them. 

This was fucked. Tony knew it. He should have waited longer to make it right. He should have prepared for what he wanted to say instead of just winging it. He was so stupid. He was stupid and he had been lonely for too long. There was a hole in his heart where his family had once been and over the years that hole had expanded. 

And still, he wanted to know more. Why would social services be involved in Cihad’s life? They didn’t get involved with perfect people like him. CPS only went after families like– well, families like Tony’s. All it would take was a little peek. All it would take was the blink of an eye. But he couldn’t do that. It wasn’t right to do to someone he loved, he had to keep telling himself it wasn’t right. 

Why couldn’t he just melt into the floor?

“Thanks for the tea,” he said lamely. Tony stood up. “I’ll go. I’ll just go. We can pick this up later when I’m not a fucking idiot.”

“Don’t go.”

“No, man.” He didn’t know where he was supposed to put his hands and just stood there awkwardly. “I wanted this to go well but I’m going to screw it all up again.”

“Please don’t go.”

Wasn’t that just a knife in the heart? Sweat beaded on his forehead. What was he supposed to say? Cihad was practically begging him to stay. Every instinct in Tony’s body was telling him to leave. Go home. Regroup. This was too hard. It was going to hurt too much. He wasn’t ready. He was so stupid. Everything he said was just going to piss Cihad off. There was no way to have a civilized conversation with someone like that! The more Cihad clung onto him, the more Tony wanted to push away. But he didn’t want to push away! He was just so– so!

There was a sound from the front hallway. The door opening? Tony frowned and shot a dirty look at Cihad. Fucking liar. Of course he had some kind of lover who had keys to his house. Cihad frowned back at him and mouthed something unintelligible. Tony shook his head. Cihad pointed at him. Tony made a throat slitting motion. 

Hopefully it was burglars because if some little booty call walked into this kitchen, Tony was really going to lose it.

“--so annoying!” chattered a very young sounding voice. “You know she’s copying your look, right? She’s doing her eyeliner exactly like you now.”

“Yeah, well, it looks like shit,” replied an equally young girl’s voice. “It’s so childish. Bitch. I can’t stand her. Such a tryhard, she’s just, she’s like fucking jealous, you know? Yancey said people are just jealous of me.”

“Rachel’s covering for you in homeroom, right?”

“Rachel’s covering for us.”

Tony watched as Cihad’s face flushed and his eyes widened. Ah. So the delinquent apple did not fall far from the delinquent tree. He remembered this little game from his days in high school. Cynthia must be skipping class under the blissful belief that her overprotective father was safely at work and far away.

Ah.

Oh shit. He had to get out of there. Not now! Not like this! He hadn’t seen Cynthia since she was 9 years old and god knew what Cihad had told her about him! She probably thought that he was dead! The best case scenario was that she thought he was dead! What else would she think?! 

There was nowhere for Tony to escape to. He was trapped in the kitchen and was totally unprepared. His body was frozen in horror.

No time. There was no time. He stood there like an idiot as he watched a girl who had grown into a person he did not recognize walk into the kitchen and freeze just like him.

So this was Cynthia at 15 years old. Her round, dark face and sturdy frame were so much like Cathy’s at that age that it was like he had gone back in time. Just like Cathy. And not at all like Cathy. This was a different girl. This girl did not wear glasses. This girl did not cover her hair. Cynthia wore jeans and a crop top, instead of the dresses her mother favored. She wore her braids tied up in pigtails that showed off her pierced ears. And her eyes– her eyes were as blue and vacant as the sky.

When she froze, she wasn’t even looking at him. She stared at Cihad like he had grown a second head.

“What are you doing here?” asked Cihad immediately. Oh, he was very angry. It was coming off him in waves.

“What are you doing here?” Cynthia shot back. She crossed her arms defensively. “Aren’t you supposed to be at work?”

“Aren’t you supposed to be at school? You’re skipping again? We talked about this– Cynthia– your teachers, they will call social services if you–”

“Oh my god, it’s not that big a deal! Calm down! I didn’t feel well and I didn’t want to call you!”

Another kid edged up behind Cynthia. The kid from the photograph. They looked to be the same age as Cynthia but taller and neater. There was something unsettling about their face but Tony didn’t linger on them too long. They put their hands with black painted fingernails over their mouth. “Uh-oh.”

“Uh-oh?” Cihad was getting red in the face now. “Uh-oh sounds right– you’re going along with your sister on this one? After everything you told me about wanting to go to school like the other kids?”

The other kid cringed. “No, Dad, I just– I don’t know.”

“You two are grounded, you’re grounded, I’m taking your phones, I’m taking–”

And then Cynthia screamed. She had finally looked at Tony. The noise she made was horrible, a wail that was equal parts pitiful and excited, like a puppy that had been locked in a cage all day. It came from the deepest parts of her. She screamed and suddenly she was launching herself at him, throwing her arms around him as tightly as she could. Cynthia pressed her face into Tony’s chest. She was sobbing.

And Tony did not know what to do. He did what he had not been able to do for years. He hugged his daughter.

Piece of shit. This was his fault. He had done this to her. In keeping her safe, he had deprived her of a father.

Cynthia wailed and wailed and sobbed and sobbed. She would not let go of him. Tony awkwardly rubbed her back. There was a lump in his throat he could not swallow and his own eye prickled but he would not let himself cry. He was the reason she was crying. He had missed her so much for so long and now he did not know what to do. He did not know how to be. It hurt too bad.

“You’re dead!” Cynthia cried, like she was a little girl instead of a teenager. “Dad told me– me– me you were– were dead! You were dead!”

Oh Cihad. He had chosen the easiest, least hurtful route. It was what he would have told her too if their places had been reversed.

What was he supposed to even say? Tony was so bad at this. He had never had a good father to model himself after. He was out of practice. It had been too long. When he tried to speak, his voice cracked. “I– I’ve got you, baby.”

Cynthia started wailing again. Words weren’t coming out anymore, just long unintelligible whines that sounded like ‘daddy’. 

Not like this. This had been stupid, impulsive. Tony had needed more time to think. He had needed time to think of how to apologize even if he couldn’t make it right. Maybe it would have been easier if she was angry at him. Now all he could do was hold his little girl for the first time in so many years.

“I’ve got you, I’ve got you, baby.” It was all he could think to say.

The apologies would come later.

[blooblooded]

The girls vs death squad

The truck slowed to a stop. That was what it was supposed to do. Stop, wait for the gates to open, and keep driving. There was nothing out of the ordinary about this. Trucks came into and left Eden by the dozen each week, transporting manufactured goods to the neighboring Colonies of Green River and Serenity, then bringing raw materials back. There was nothing to worry about. Casey’s dad had assured them all that there was nothing to worry about, since he had paid off the Border Guards. No searches, no checks. Only one stop, lasting one minute of time. Nothing to worry about. All good.

One minute passed. Then two.

Kassidy chewed on her lower lip until she tasted blood. The cargo bay was nothing but a metal rectangle, claustrophobic and windowless. The only light shared between herself, Ayda, Esther, Rosie, and Tony came from their phone screens. They were all crammed in there together, alongside various boxes Mr. Agapama intended to send to the Northern Territories. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what was inside of them: weapons and technology, the perfect tribute to an embargoed foreign nation on the brink of war.

“We should be moving,” Esther whispered. Her face was bloodless in the pale light. She clutched at the neck of her sweater with spider-like fingers. “It shouldn’t take this long. Something’s gone wrong.”

“Tabby has it handled,” said Rosaline. “Tabby said she drove for AGA 5 years ago, she knows how this goes. Everything’s OK.”

“Tabby’s a liar! All Tabby has ever done is lie!  If she lets the Border Guards search the truck, it’s over for us! I can’t go to prison! Do you know what they do to Artificials in prison?!”

“Babes, you need to take some deep breaths right now.”

Their squabbling was familiar, something easy to tune out. Kassidy stood up. She wanted to pace but there was no space inside the cramped cargo bay. Something was wrong but she did not want to sit still. A frenetic energy had filled her body. Her heart pounded and she could hear every pulse of blood in her veins. Kassidy started to jiggle her legs to disperse the energy. So close, she thought. She was so close. She was so close, she could almost taste it.

Close to what? Kassidy had never left Eden. She had never wanted to leave Eden. It was her home. It was all she knew. But now what did it have left for her? Why should she stay? Her brother was dead. Her mother hated her. She had lost her job, she was losing her health, she was losing everything, so why should she stay? The whole world and all of its gleaming potential was in front of her. So close. They just had to make it through the gate. They just had to make it through the gate and keep driving, keep driving until they reached the ruins of Asilo and–

Wait. No. They weren’t going to the Lost Colony. They were going to the Northern Territories. In her excitement, she had mixed up the two. That was it. That was all that was.

Tony sat next to Ayda. His knees were drawn up to his chest with his eye squeezed shut. Every now and then he would shiver. Suddenly he looked very small and old. Kassidy stared at him. She still did not understand why he had agreed to come along. He had protested for months and still he had got on the truck with the rest of them like a cow walking down the chute of the slaughterhouse. 

Sometimes Kassidy wished that she could grab him and shake him until they were on the same page.

As if he knew that she was thinking about him, Tony opened his one blue, blue eye and looked up at Kassidy. His mouth tightened, then he tapped his nose. Kassidy put a hand to her own nose and brought it back wet with black blood.

Fuck.

Outside, she could hear raised voices. One of them was distinctively male. Oh, their shit was absolutely cooked. They had been found out. The Border Guards were going to search the truck and haul them all off to jail. For what? For smuggling? Human trafficking? Who was to say. Kassidy wiped at her face, smearing the black blood even more. Ayda buried her face in her hands and started to snivel. The air in the cargo bay became heavier. “They got us,” she moaned. “We’re so busted. Oh my god, what are we going to do? This was so stupid. I’m so stupid. Dad’s going to be in so much trouble.”

"Shut up, Ayda,” snapped Marty, from Ayda’s phone. Up until that point he had been uncharacteristically silent. Kassidy imagined him sitting alone in his room. “Just shut up.”

“Tabby and Casey can talk their way out of anything, I’m sure this is just normal. They think we’re scheduled to go to Green River, there’s no way anyone wants to go through the hassle of a search this late at night.”

Rosaline’s pragmatism did nothing to calm Ayda down. She started to cry and Kassidy felt tears prick at the corners of her own eyes. She angrily rubbed them away.

Outside, she could hear Tabitha Delmont talking. She must have been very close, to have her voice carry through the metal cargo bay. “Look, look, wait, you can check my credentials, it’s all right here. Just check the manifest. It’s all good, everything’s good, I swear on my mother’s life.” Hearing that made Tony freeze up. “It’s all good, I swear.”

“Shut the fuck up!” A woman’s voice. More like a girl’s voice, stilted and mean sounding. “Yeah, she’s fucking lying, Boss. They’ve got five unregistered people back there, it’s all she’s thinking about.”

Shit. How could she know that?

“Unregistered? No. Everyone’s been registered. It’s just an honest mistake. You want me to call my supervisor? Look, I can call my supervisor right now if you want me to. We’re all from AGA. We’re all from AGA, there’s no reason to overreact.”

“She told you to shut the fuck up.” A man’s harsh voice, harsh and barking.The hairs on the back of Kassidy’s neck stood up when she heard it. Something about it made her feel sick. Border Guards didn’t talk like that. They were just cops, they never degraded citizens like that. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong and she was trapped in a metal box with nowhere to go.

“Hold on, I’ll just call my supervisor and he’ll–”

There was a hard smack and Tabby grunted in pain. Tony flinched. Somebody else outside the truck laughed. 

“We’re done, we’re so done,” Ayda whimpered. “We’re done, this was stupid, we were stupid for doing this.” The air became heavier. Esther kicked her.

“Just be cool,” said Rosie, who was still frustratingly calm about what was happening. Or maybe she was just in denial like she always was. “So what? So we get arrested. Your dad will bail just us out and we’ll try something else. It’s not a big deal. I’ve been arrested before. Casey’s been arrested before.”

“I don’t want to get arrested, Rosaline!” hissed Esther. She was shaking so hard that her knees were knocking together. She looked around the dark little cargo bay wildly. “Oh my god, we have a bunch of fucking guns in here, they’re going to throw the book at us!”

Throw the book at us. That was a funny turn of phrase. Kassidy looked down at her hands, then turned them over palm-up. The cuts running up her arms from the last time she had used blood magic had not healed yet. It would be so easy to open them up again. All she’d have to do was pull up her sleeves, open up the crusting scabs. She sniffed and felt a thick glob of blood and mucus run down the back of her throat. 

Why wasn’t she afraid? She already knew. Somehow, she already knew who had stopped the truck and she wasn’t afraid. There was only one option. That was just the natural progression of things, wasn’t it? Like poetry. The same group of people who had murdered her brother like he was an animal were now here to stop her. Not if she had anything to do with it. Not if she stopped them first.

Ever since she was 17 years old, Kassidy had been scared of them. Internal Operations. The secret police. Eden’s covert security forces, trained killers of the state. Well she wasn’t scared of them any more. She wasn’t scared at all. Not now. Not after what the Book had given her. It had given her strength. It had given her confidence, it had given her more potential than she was worth. How could she be scared when she had something like that? She wasn’t scared. She was invigorated.

And she wanted to hurt someone. Kassidy wanted someone to hurt in the same way she hurt. She wanted to hurt someone the same way they had hurt Kip. She wanted to create wounds that would never heal.

“OK,” she said under her breath, more to herself than to anyone else. She willed her heart to stop beating so fast. Opened and closed her hands. “OK. OK.”

“Everyone just stay calm,” whispered Rosaline, trying and failing to keep Esther calm by rubbing her back. “It’s not a big deal, this really isn’t a big deal, I’m sure it happens all the time. Casey’s out there talking to them too and–”

“--We should have never done this, we should have never even thought about this, I shouldn’t have–”

“Will you shut the fuck up, Ayda?!”

Tony said nothing. He sat perfectly still apart from the occasional shiver. His face was blank, almost glazed over, and his gaze met with Kassidy’s. That blankness took on a sheen of dread. What did he See when he looked at her? The crushing grief had changed to determination and hate. Was that so terrible to look at? She didn’t care if Tony thought that made her terrible. He was lower than even she was, a scared animal, and given half a chance, he would act like a scared animal again.

Kassidy was not a scared animal. She would never be small and scared again. The Book had changed her into something hungry and nobody could take that from her.

The cargo bay’s back doors swung open and outwards. The sudden noise and movement made Esther and Ayda scream, and Rosaline grabbed her girlfriend as she flinched. Tony made one last strangled sound of despair, deep down in his throat. Kassidy froze. The old terror pounded in her head and she struggled against it.  Her whole body felt hot, she bit down on her tongue hard to find clarity.

There were two people standing outside the cargo bay. It was hard to see them in the dark; the overhead lights far above their heads were dimmed at night. But their uniforms were recognizable in an instant; they were the sleek, black, helmeted uniforms of Internal Operations. One of them was slender and had one circular bronze pip on their neckline, the other was plump and had a collar with two pips. Neither were tall. Both of their stances were forcefully composed, as if barely restraining violent urges.

Only one had a firearm and it was still holstered at their hip. Both had stun batons and tactical knives at their belts.

“Get the fuck out of there!” said the fat one with two pips and no gun, and Kassidy recognized the mean girlish voice of the one who had somehow known that they were all in the back of the truck. “You think you can hide from us back there? Get the fuck out before we drag you out!”

“All you smugglers are really stupid,” said the other one, who sounded male and had a lisp. His gloved hand lingered close to his firearm. “You know we always get you.”

“OK, OK,” said Rosaline. She slowly rose to her feet with her hands up. “Just be cool, we’re coming out.” 

“Oh god,” Ayda sniveled, cringing next to Tony.

“You hear her telling us to be cool?” asked the smaller one with the lisp, cocking his blank and helmeted face towards the other. “Whaddya think about that, Nicky?”

“Pretty fucking stupid,” said Nicky. “Real stupid.”

Muffled words of static crackled through a receiver in one of their helmets. The one with the lisp laughed and the other one gave him a little shove.

Esther started to shake and hyperventilate. Kassidy swallowed hard, tasted the coppery blood in her mouth.

She was not going to die like her brother. She was not going to die like Kip had, murdered like an animal. Put down like a dog. There was something that she had to do. There was somewhere that she had to go and because of that, she knew that these people could not stop her no matter how hard they tried.

She had never felt so alive. 

Rosie kept one of her hands up, but pulled Esther to her feet. They started to climb out of the cargo bay. Ayda followed suit, still sniffling, then Tony, moving like he was dead. Ayda was holding Tony’s hand.

“This big bitch is TP,” said Nicky. She grabbed Ayda’s arm. Ayda whined and tried to jerk away towards Tony, as if he would do something to protect her, but was held fast. “You feel that? Empath.”

“Can’t be a very good one if we didn’t know about it.”

“Mm.”

“You–you– don’t touch me like that!” Ayda cried. Her soft, pretty face was splotchy even in the dull light. Some of her hair had come out from under her scarf. “My father is a very–”

“Yeah, shut up, traitor.” The girl twisted Ayda’s arm behind her back easily and peeled Tony away from her. For his credit, he did try to hold on. “Get moving and don’t even think about trying something or I’ll jam myself into your brain.”

The word TP was meaningless to Kassidy but she knew that it meant something bad. It was a category to put people into. Oh categories. Categories were always bad. She was the last one to get out of the truck. Nobody was looking at her. Of course nobody was looking at her. She used her fingers to make sure that her sleeves were pulled down so that nobody could see the marks on her arms.

Something built up inside of her. Her heart beat fast. 

The two Internal Operations agents led them around the edge of the truck. Tabby stood there with her arms up, with blood dripping down her face. Someone had hit her. Somebody had turned her pockets inside out and taken off her jacket.  Casey was beside her, untouched but very wide-eyed and scared. She was not moving a muscle, probably because there was another masked person standing close to her, and a fourth with their arms crossed near the driver’s side door.

When Casey saw her sister being pushed with her arm twisted behind her back, her posture changed from acquiescing to stock-still. Every lean muscle in her body tensed. Her upper lip drew up to reveal the diamond in her left incisor. 

“You were right, Boss, truck was full of smugglers,” said the one with the lisp. It reminded Kassidy of the way the really fucked up Artificials talked, the ones with nasty teeth like Rome Prospas. He sidled up to the one whose arms were crossed but stood just out of reach. “Bet they got weapons and shit back there too.”

“Don’t use an operative’s name in front of targets,” snapped Boss. His uniform was the same as the others’, except for three bronze pips at his collar. Probably the leader. He was the loud one with the barking voice. The hairs on the back of Kassidy’s neck stood up again. Something about hearing him made her feel sick, it made her skin crawl. It possessed the kind of meanness that she could imagine someone murdering her brother with. “I heard you break 1022B’s confidentiality, this isn’t a game. You want me to write you the fuck up? How many times do I gotta tell you?”

“Aw, Boss.”

“Don’t ‘aw Boss’ me, follow policy or I swear I’ll write you up.”

“Leave him alone,” said the one close to Casey. From her exaggerated form, it was easy to tell that she was a woman. Her uniform also had three pips at the collar. There was a hierarchy among them. More categories. 3 pips were at the top. “Be professional.”

Kassidy had never heard secret police talk this much. Their presence in her life had always been brief and silent. They walked onto trains to check people’s credentials. They stood voiceless on top of buildings, always watching. She had never thought about them as humans with feelings and weaknesses. Hearing them talk was so…so wrong.

She could sense the weakness all over them. If she had to, she would kill them all, starting with the one with the harsh voice that made her feel so uncomfortable.

“We haven’t done anything wrong,” said Rosaline, still with her hands up. Esther was clinging onto her. She was talking very slowly and clearly, the way that she would talk to doped up homeless people. “Check our credentials. If you check our credentials, you’ll see that we’re scheduled to drive to Green River tonight.”

Oh, she really was stupid if she thought that she could negotiate with these people. She didn’t understand what they were capable of like Kassidy did. She didn’t understand what they could do, how easily they could take a life. She knew, everyone knew, but they didn’t understand. Nothing had been taken from them like it had been taken from her.

All that Helen had taught her relied on instinct. There was life and there was death and there was the will to change it. Something hummed deep inside of her mind and it rattled her bones. Kassidy did not know the words. She did not know the symbols. Helen said that she hadn’t either. Helen said that there was something unnatural inside of every person that was just waiting to get out. 

All that was required was that she direct her focus. The force of her life could affect the life of others. All that she needed to do was destroy part of herself.

“Credentials don’t matter no more,” said the big one with the barking voice. Boss. Out of the four of them, he was the greatest threat. He was so close to Casey. Close enough to lunge and grab her if he wanted. Close enough to hurt her if he wanted to. Kassidy couldn’t think about that. His posture was just relaxed enough to look underious. “You don’t watch the news much, huh?”

“We’re scheduled– we’re just driving to Green River to–”

“No more trucks in or out of Eden,” said Boss. He did not uncross his arms. “The new trade cargo or whatever it’s called. But AGA knows all about that. What, you’re trying to sneak more weapons out of here? The Central Committee’s putting an end to that now.”

“Trade embargo,” said the woman with the three pips on her collar. Her calm energy did not match the other three. She stood straight and still, her voice was serious. “It means a ban on commercial activity, Boss.” That seemed like a jab. Maybe she was the most dangerous one.

When she said that, Marty spluttered something furiously in his own musical language from the communication device on Ayda’s wrist. Nicky reacted immediately, she tore the device from Ayda and held it out. Seeing that made the corners of Casey’s mouth twitch and she cut her eyes towards Esther and Rosaline. Ayda cried harder, affecting everyone.

“Collaborator,” said Nicky. “But I don’t know–”

Boss snatched the device from her. He held it up before his black visor. “What is that?”

“Motherfuckers!” Marty swore. He was not helping the situation. “All you motherfuckers in Eden. Eh, maudits enfoires?! You think you can just close yourselves off and let people starve? To cut us off, la? To isolate us?! You think you get to make that choice?!”

“Marty, please,” begged Rosaline, who was starting to look scared, finally realizing how far she was out of her element. These were not people who could be de-escalated or reasoned with. “Don’t make this worse, please don’t make this worse.”

“Shut the fuck up, kid.” Tabby spat onto the pavement. “Don’t tell these jumped up little fascists nothing.”

“Yeah, Marty,” said Boss. He cocked his head as he gazed at the blue hologram. Marty, with his funny voice. Marty, with his funny clothes. “I like the way you talk. You wanna make it easy for us and give us your address now or do you wanna do this the fun way and let me chase you down?”

It was as good a distraction as any. Kassidy swallowed the blood in her own mouth. Kill. Kill them. Kill them all. It was the only thing that mattered. She didn’t know these people, they were strangers to her, and she wanted them to suffer like she had suffered. Destroying them would serve two purposes. It would allow her and her friends to leave Eden safely. And it would bring her some kind of fucking relief. Some kind of closure. There was nothing more she wanted to do than hurt them worse than they– they and all of Eden– had hurt her by taking Kip. 

She was hot all over. Even the fillings in her teeth seemed to buzz with power. When the moment struck, she would tear them to shreds. Kassidy had never done it before but she knew that she could. Helen had told her that she could. All she needed to do was really want it. All she needed to do was hate herself so much that all her pain and rage was directed outwards.

“Putain de–”

“Sounds funny, Boss,” interjected the lispy one too eagerly. Thoundth funny, Bothh. He edged closer to the big man.

“Will you shut up when I’m talkin’?”

“I’m just saying. I’m just saying he sounds–”

“Shut the fuck up, Johnny!” snapped Nicky, who then cringed when the one in charge turned his faceless head towards her.

The serious woman who was the only one who had not had her name slip out looked up at the District ceiling as if she was frustrated.

These were just people. Just four stupid people that the government had given masks and weapons and too much power. Why had Kassidy been so scared of them for so long? This was too funny. People like this had murdered her brother? People like this had put out his spark? It was so stupid. A laugh started to build up inside of her. She felt out of control. Her body was shaking all over like an over-excited dog. It was hard to breathe.

She saw Casey’s black sparkling eyes had fixed themselves on her. They were so wide that the whites showed all around them. The corner of Casey’s mouth twitched again. 

Kassidy twisted her own arms behind her back. One of the cuts had opened by itself and she could feel drips of hot blood, blood so hot that it nearly burned her. Everything smelled of iron. She wanted to laugh so badly.

“You motherfuckers,” Marty was saying furiously, no longer caring about the consequences. What consequences? He was safely hundreds of miles away, there were no consequences for his actions. “You fuckers. You’ve been doing this to us for 200 years and now you want to do the same to everyone else?! You people think you’re so smart, you think you’re so much better than us and–”

“I like the way you talk all crazy,” Boss said again, in a mockingly flirtatious tone. “1022B, get this guy’s location so we can nab him.”

“--you think you can just take and take–”

A quick sting of pain shot down the back of Kassidy’s spine. A little invasion, as intimate and unwanted as someone sticking their finger into her mouth. Something was taken from her. The shock of it almost distracted her. She flinched. Everyone flinched but Casey and Ayda. 

“Look, he’s not– he isn’t–” Rosaline blinked fast, clinging onto Esther’s arm. Her eyes suddenly shone amber in the dim light.

“Shut up,” said the tall nameless woman, turning to look at her. The air felt hot.

Blood.

Nicky went still. The lights on her helmet’s black visor blinked. “Hey Boss,” she said, her mean, girlish voice suddenly contemplative. “That guy’s not in Eden. None of them have even seen him before.”

Things were about to get very bad. 

“Whaddya mean none of them have seen him before?”

“--tout est vrai– you fuckers are just–”

“Look, he’s not fucking important!” Tabby put both her hands up and angled her body towards the girl who by this point Kassidy had decided was a psychic, a mind-reader or something. Standing in her way. What was she doing? Everything that the Delmont twins had told her about their Sight seemed so passive and unhelpful. She could see the sweat on Tabby’s lean and clever face. “Just listen to me, listen to me, we didn’t know about all this trade shit! Casey, you know what I’m talking about. I don’t know what the fuck an embargo is, I was just doing what I was told! Do you really wanna deal with this in the middle of the night? You wanna do all that paperwork? You wanna get stuck doing all that paperwork tonight?”

And Casey shifted as well. She bent her knees almost imperceptibly. 

“We don’t even do paperwork,” said Johnny, the one with the lisp. His hands were nowhere near his firearm and he was the only one who carried one.

Kassidy already knew how this was going to end. Blood. She could hardly restrain herself. What did she look like to these people who had murdered her brother? Just a sick and trembling little woman. There was a terrible hunger inside of her. She wanted to see what was inside of them.

“Where’s this guy from?” asked Boss. That wasn’t his name though. That was just something they had let slip. His harsh voice still had a laugh in it and his posture was still loose. Not for long. He stared at Marty’s blue translucent face on the communication device. “Where do they talk like that, huh?” He shook the device as if that would shake Marty.

The fat little psychic was quiet. Everyone was quiet, except for Ayda who was still crying prettily.

Every beat of her heart made Kassidy dizzier. She could kill them. She could kill them and she wouldn’t even care. They were animals to her. They were lower than animals. Faceless nameless killers who had taken someone she loved. Even if these four weren’t responsible for what had happened to Kip all those years ago, they were still a part of it. They had still participated in it. They still deserved to die. 

“What’s goin’ on here?”

“They’re all thinking about how they want to leave and go find that guy on coms.” Nicky slowly turned. She pressed a hand to the side of her helmet and it beeped. Configuring something. She shook her head. “No, he’s not from Eden. And he’s not from Green River either, they were never going to Green River. They were going up North.”

“There haven’t been people alive up North since the Lost Colony was destroyed,” said the tall nameless woman. “That’s wrong. A disease killed them all.”

Kassidy wanted to look at Tony. She wanted to know what he was Seeing. Not that it mattered anymore. There was only one way this could end. 

“North,” said Boss. “Huh.”

“Stupid motherfuckers,” said Marty furiously. “You stupid motherfuckers, you wait, you wait until the Prime Minister sends–”

The big Internal Operations agent dropped Ayda’s communication device and crushed it beneath his boot. No more Marty. He barked his harsh laugh. Because he thought it was funny. He thought that it was funny to destroy something that wasn’t his. He thought it was funny to terrorize people who had nothing to do with him. Kassidy bit the insides of her cheeks hard. She burned as she looked at him, him with his awful voice and cruelty. She was going to kill him. She was going to kill all–

Nicky extended an arm and pointed a gloved finger directly at her. “And this one’s been using blood magic.”

Kassidy froze. So it was that easy.

“No shit.” Boss ground crushed metal and glass into the pavement with his boot. He didn’t even look up. That was how little any of this mattered to him. “I can smell her from here. They always smell like fucking death. We’ll take her to R&D. Rest of them go to the Prison District for processing. Put her down, I don’t wanna deal with one of these little freaks trying to rip my guts out twice in one month.”

“Oh god,” moaned Tony. His eye was closed tightly shut. His hands were covering his face and he was hunched.

“Wait,” Esther said, shrill and terrified. “Wait, wait wait– my mother, my mother is–”

It did not matter who her mother was. It did not matter who anyones’ parents were.

It only took a second. Another sharp jab of pain shot up the back of Kassidy’s spine. It was not bad enough for her to go limp, only enough to distract her. Nicky stepped close and grabbed her wrist, twisting her arm behind her back. It tore open the wounds that were already there and Kassidy inhaled sharply, which made Nicky laugh too. She yanked up on her arm to try and hurt her worse. Kassidy’s blood smeared her gloves.

And even though these people were probably going to kill her, even though they were probably taking her somewhere to kill her, all Kassidy could think of was her brother. Had they yanked on his arm too? Had they laughed when he was scared and in pain?  

She wasn’t Kip and this wasn’t happening to her. She was more than her small, weak body. She wasn’t someone they could push around and laugh at! There was something she had to do! There was something she had to do and there was somewhere she had to go and these people could not stop her. Focus, she had to focus, all she had to do was direct her thoughts and tear them all apart.

And Kassidy couldn’t help herself. She started to laugh. 

“You think this is fuckin’ funny?!” said Nicky, tightening her grip. “You think this is a joke? You know what we do to you people, you–”

Casey launched herself forward, fluid and beautiful. One fist caught Nicky in the throat and on instinct, Kassidy tucked herself down, jerked away as hard as she could. Nicky let go of her wrist, her own gloved hands coming up to protect her face. Casey had her on her back in an instant, raining blows down on her head and chest. The force of her movement knocked Kassidy down onto the pavement and took her breath away.

“Get them in the truck, Delmont!” Casey’s lips were peeled back from her teeth and her black eyes were no longer sparkling. She got her hands around Nicky’s throat and was ignoring the hands scrabbling at her face. No normal person could hope to overpower an Artificial like her, the advantage she had was too unfair. “Get them in the truck! Get them in the truck!”

Tabby broke away and wrenched the driver’s side door open. The lisping secret police agent, Johnny, moved faster than anyone Kassidy had ever seen in her life, faster than Casey. He caught Tabby by the back of her shirt, yanking her away from the truck. When Tabby whirled to throw a punch at him, he moved his head and dodged it completely. Then somebody else barrelled into him and shoved him away. Johnny made a noise of terror when he saw Rosaline bearing down on him, Rosaline who had turned horrible and monstrous in half a breath. There was nothing human left about her, she was all amber eyes and shreds of clothing and hairy, rippling flesh. She started grappling with him as Tabby hauled herself into the truck.

“What is that?!” The quiet, serious Internal Operations agent could hardly disguise her shock and disgust at the sight of Rosaline. Her hands rose to cover the part of her mask where her mask should be. “Smiles, I–”

“You two quit fucking around!” snapped Boss. He turned towards Casey, who was still choking the shit out of Nicky. “Goddamn it, what’s the matter with you, get into her brain and–” Green tongues of electricity shot from Esther’s mangled, outstretched hand and coursed through his body. He started twitching and fell to his hands and knees, the lights on his helmet shattered and went out. He grunted in pain, which sent tingles of blood-lust shooting up Kassidy’s spine.

Was this even possible? Was it this easy? Why had nobody fought back before? Why was everyone so scared? These were just people. These were just stupid people. Kassidy couldn’t stop laughing. Her stomach hurt and she couldn’t stand back up. She was vaguely aware of Tony grasping her beneath her arms and dragging her to her feet. Something deep inside of her urged her to grab him back but she was laughing too hard.

“Stupid cunt!” It looked like Casey was trying to choke the life out of the little psychic. “You keep your hands off her, you keep your–” 

Nicky was able to bring up a knee and catch her hard in the stomach. The momentum knocked Casey off of her and she jumped up, turning a little knob on the side of her helmet. “It’s not working, it’s not working!” she panted. Casey circled her with a look of pure murder on her face. “Help me out here!”

The air seemed to smell like burnt ozone.

As Tony dragged her towards the truck, Kassidy saw the nameless secret police woman turn silently towards Casey. And then, unthinkably, her body became covered in terrible flame. The light was blinding and intense. The woman crackled but her uniform did not melt. 

Fire. 

The last time Kassidy had seen fire was– was when– the last time she had seen fire was when Kip had–

She couldn’t wrap her mind around how a human being had just combusted anymore than she could understand how Esther could generate electricity or how Ayda could make people feel like shit. All Kassidy knew was that she hated and was terrified of fire and that this person was going to hurt someone she cared about. Oh, she cared about Casey. They fought like animals but she still cared about her. A long time ago she might have said that she loved her, but she wasn’t capable of that anymore. Still, something like a thread snapped inside her heart. 

Blood dripped from the wounds on her arms and gobs of it fell from her nose onto her shirt. The blood was black. Kassidy was still laughing but a rage overcame her. She struggled against Tony but was too weak to break away from him. Kill. Kill her. Put out the fire, put out the light. 

The fiery woman advanced on Casey and the little psychic.

There was life and there was death and Kassidy’s mind thought only of the clarity of death. That clarity cut through the chaos around her; past the secret police agent grappling with Rosaline, past the man whose body was being electrocuted by Esther, past Ayda fucking all of them with her wailing. A word beyond her understanding slithered into her mind like a half remembered dream. Another word. A string of words. Words as blind and slimy as worms, more ancient than anything, older than life, older than memory itself.

She didn’t even need to move. Kassidy thought the words as blood, her lifeforce, dripped from her body. And the fire went out. And the woman who had been on fire started screaming, screaming like a hurt child. The screams turned into mindless, gurgling pain as the woman clutched her belly. She dropped to the pavement seizing and writhing and holding herself.

“No, no!” Tony kept dragging her towards the truck. Kassidy’s body was limp but her mind had never been so clear, other than the wet, unknowable words repeating themselves there. Pain erupted in her own body. Hurt her. Hurt the woman like Kip had been hurt. She felt herself being lifted up into the truck and Tony’s face was suddenly close to her own. His one blue eye burned hotter than the fire. “Kassidy. Kassidy! Hey, Kassidy!”

Tony.

The words stopped. Kassidy reached up to try and touch his cheek but he pulled away. The woman who had been on fire kept moaning and squirming on the ground. Whatever she had done to her was over.

“Stay.” Tony’s voice was broken and trembling, his face was wild and terrified. “Stay, stay there while I get Ayda.”

“Fucking bitch!” yelled Boss as he dragged himself up off his hands and feet. Esther lurched towards him with both her hands out. Another green wave of electricity crackled over him and he fell again. Smoke rose from his clothing. “Bitch! Bitch!”

“Get away from us!” The last time Kassidy had seen Esther look like that was when she had attacked Ben Prospas. Her face was contorted, white as a sheet, but she kept shocking him. 

Rosaline threw punch after punch at Johnny but he kept dodging them. The Internal Operations agent was all lean, graceful muscle and he moved like a dancer. He would dart a few paces away, fumble at his gun, then dodge again when Rosaline caught up to him. She was half a beast now, her spine and limbs elongated, her face stretched into a long muzzle and sharp teeth. Sleek and deadly as a wolf. Johnny finally pulled his firearm but hesitated a moment too long and Rosaline crashed into him and got him onto his back. Her monstrous transformation made her three times his size.

The gun went off. The bullet ricocheted off the metal gate. If they did not get out of there soon, actual cops might show up. The thought of that made Kassidy want to vomit.

Tony returned and pushed Ayda up into the truck. She was trembling all over, stupid and useless, and she wrapped her arms tightly around Kassidy. Her emotions were overpowering, fear and fear and fear, and Kassidy struggled to hold onto her clarity. When Ayda embraced her, bones in her ribcage scraped against something raw. When had she broken them? Kassidy focused on the pain. 

“Weil, weil, weil,” Ayda was sobbing, reciting her own ancient words of arcane geometry. Her fingers formed meaningless sacred shapes over and over again. “Oh god, oh god, oh god.”

“We gotta go!” yelled Tony, who was also shaking like a dog. His hair had come undone and hung over his face in greasy strands. That one blue eye was burning, burning. He slapped the bed of the cargo bay. “Tabby, we gotta go, we gotta go now!”

Her muffled reply was unintelligible but the engine revved. It didn’t matter though, did it? It didn’t matter unless Marty had gotten into the computer mechanisms that controlled the gate like he said he was able to do. Their survival hinged on the hacking abilities of someone who had grown up in a place that abhorred technology. Kassidy allowed Ayda to hold her. It hurt to be loved like that.

The woman who had been on fire wasn’t moving anymore and was curled in the fetal position. Kassidy began to cough uncontrollably, it felt like bits of her esophagus were coming up.

“Fucking Artificials,” said Nicky, slowly circling Casey as she was circled in turn. Casey moved like a prowling animal,all purpose now, her grace long gone. “They did something to you while you were cooking, huh? TP doesn’t work on you? I like working with my hands better anyway!”

For her part, Casey said nothing, every muscle in her body tensed and ready to pounce. The only thing that was missing was her knife.

Electricity poured from Esther’s fingertips. Boss was back on his hands and knees, suffering, in pain. Esther stepped closer to him.

With Johnny on his back, Rosaline was able to whale on him properly. She hit him over and over again, while he squealed and tried to push her away. There was no pushing away a beast of her size and Rosie had been fighting all her life. She had gone from their gentle, thoughtful friend to a brutal monster. In one swift movement, she seized both sides of his helmet and tore it away so that she could gaze upon his killing face. And Rosaline froze, pinning him there on the ground. The helmet dropped from her hands. 

“Guys–” Rosie began, her voice unnatural and distorted from her slavering, lipless mouth. Then she screamed. Johnny had pulled a knife and drove it into her left side over and over again. When Rosie buckled to press her hands to the wound, the Internal Operations agent was able to get up to his feet. He was only a boy, with yellow eyes and a hateful smile.

There was no time to think about this. Esther had gotten too close to the leader, the one called Boss. She was less than two feet away from him and was driving electricity into his body mercilessly. No, no. Not thinking. Too close. Esther was not made like Casey. Esther was an ornament to be looked at, never touched, and she was too close, too close by far. Both hands outstretched. Boss’s black and faceless mask snapped up to look at her and–

And a translucent blue bubble of energy formed around Esther’s scarred arm. 

Oh, that was just like–

The bubble shrank and crushed Esther’s arm inside of it. She didn’t even have time to scream. Her waves of electricity ceased in an instant.

“Playtime’s over!” said Boss. “Playtime’s over.”

[blooblooded]

Scenes from the Slaughterhouse

“Another time, there was a live hog in the pit. It hadn’t done anything wrong, wasn’t even running around. It was just alive. I took a three-foot chunk of pipe and I literally beat that hog to death. It was like I started hitting the hog and I couldn’t stop. And when I finally did stop, I’d expended all this energy and frustration, and I’m thinking what in God’s sweet name did I do.” – Gail Eisnitz

The slaughterhouse was dirty. That was just the way it had to be. It smelled of blood and sweat and shit. That’s where the animals went. That’s where they died, where all their hair and skin and guts were removed. People aren’t used to it. They aren’t used to seeing death on that kind of scale.

Here is how it works.

Cattle are led in through chutes outside the dome. The facility itself was in the Industrial District in the Lower Levels– that was the only way to deal with the stink, the only way to dispose of the gallons of blood. These metal chutes empty into the holding pens where the cattle will crush against each other, confused by the sudden lack of natural light, the lack of fresh air. As the time comes, each cow will walk through a serpentine path, only big enough for one to walk through at a time. This is to try to prevent any panic in the herd. 

Fear ruins the meat.

At the end of this serpentine chute, restrained to limit physical movement, a worker holds a bolt gun to the forehead of the cow and pulls the trigger. The bolt strikes the forehead with great force and immediately retracts, and the concussion that follows is responsible for the unconsciousness of the animal. Stunning before slaughter results in decreased stress of the animal and in superior meat. The cow is hooked and suspended by its hind feet and lifted onto a conveyor, where its neck is slit and the blood is drained. The conveyor pulls the body further into the slaughterhouse, which can only be described as a proper production line.

It can take 5 hours to bleed a cow. The bodies hang there. All the innards have to be taken out, everything has to be processed. The kill floor is the worst part, but the rest of the facility is not much better. The evisceration process is as follows.

(1) skin the head and remove the skull and lower jaw, leaving the whole of the neck and the skin of the head hanging on the carcass.

(2) remove each foot and each limb by cutting through the joint.

(3) make a long incision through the hide in the midline of the chest and abdomen, and continue the incision along each of the limbs.

(4) remove the hide altogether if suitable equipment is available, or just remove it partially and leave it temporarily hanging from the animal's back.

(5) open the thoracic cavity with a saw-cut through the breastbone or sternum.

(6) open the abdomen with a long incision, and remove the penis or udder tissue, and any loose fat in the abdominal cavity.

(7) split the pelvis with a knife-cut or saw-cut through the cartilage that separates the pelvic bones in the middle.

(8) cut around the anus and close it off with a plastic bag.

(9) skin out the tail (if this was not done earlier).

(10) separate the esophagus (which takes food to the stomach) from the trachea (which takes air to the lungs), by pulling the esophagus through a metal ring; close off the esophagus by knotting it,

(11) eviscerate the carcass by pulling out the bladder (and uterus if present),intestines and the stomach, liver; after cutting through the diaphragm, remove the heart, lungs and trachea.

(12) separate the left and right sides of the carcass by sawing down the midline of the carcass, through the vertebral column.

(13) wash the carcass and pin a shroud over it to smooth the subcutaneous fat.

And so on and so forth. The body of a creature that was once living is rendered into many piles of useful parts. 

So naturally, the Prosperity slaughterhouse was filthy. No matter how much cleaning was done inside, it always stank. The awful din of circular saws used to butcher corpses could be heard all across the Industrial District. The gallons of blood and waste that poured into the sewers below caused all kinds of foul life to proliferate in that area. Nothing could be done about that. Disposal was a necessity of the industry.

There were no windows in that building. There were no cameras either. It was a long, rectangular building, all industrial metal and harsh light. It was always very cold. The meat had to stay cold. 

Workers on the kill floor and the packing plant were 3 times more likely to suffer injury than the average blue-collar worker in Eden. Workers lost fingers and limbs to the cruel machinery. They were instructed to wear ear protectors because of the never-ending whirs of the saws and the death-screams of frightened animals. The actions that the workers carried out in that place required them to disconnect from themselves in order to cope and the emotional dissonance that followed led to consequences such as anxiety, social withdrawal, substance use, domestic violence, and PTSD.

There was nothing to be done. The people of Eden needed to eat.

And whenever something living needs to eat, blood must be spilled.

####

Harvest Floor Production Worker**48-55 hours a week**ATTENDANCE BONUS***

Prosperity Inc

Industrial Lower Levels

13.00-15.00 an hour – Full Time

Full Job Description

Summary: Prosperity Inc is seeking entry level laborer positions to train and qualify in skilled jobs for our beef plant. A typical day on our Harvest Floor begins at 7:45 am to about 6:30 pm and duties include but are not limited to the process of removing the hide and trimming all contamination from carcasses after slaughter; using various machinery, knives, and hands.

Responsibilities

Breakdown of full carcasses to half carcasses for further processing.

Willing to work individually as well as in a team.

Maintain a safe environment- Personal Safety and Food Safety.

Willing to learn and follow our processes.

Positive Attitude.

Must Apply In Person.

####

Anthony Delmont had destroyed his whole life and the knowledge of that hung over him like a heavy cloud.

Last year there hadn’t seemed to be any other choice. Last year he had been pacing in the hospital’s labor and delivery ward on what was supposed to be one of the happiest days of his life. And he had fucked it up. He had fucked everything up, just like he fucked everything up. One moment of overwhelming panic had led to him making a choice that he could never make up for. Before his infant daughter was even born, he had run out and disappeared because his stupid shrunken brain had made him believe that he was protecting his family.

When he came to his senses a few days later, he spoke to Cathy for the last time. Tony didn’t even have time to explain himself, not that he could if he had wanted to. What was he supposed to say? Was he supposed to say that he had seen one of the hospital staff being followed by a monstrous creature Cathy didn’t even believe in? Was he supposed to say that in that moment he had been filled with a sense of such evil and dread that it had become unbearable? That in that moment, he had believed that if he stayed there, something terrible would happen to the baby? There was no excuse. He had run away while his wife was in labor. He had allowed his fear and paranoia to become more powerful than his desire to hold his child.

“I never want to see your face again,” Cathy had said, with cold iron in a voice that was shaking. Tony could hear the baby crying in the background. “I never want to see you again, do you hear me? How could you do this to me? How could you do this to us?”

“I’m sorry.” It was all he could think of. Sorry. He was sorry, not that it meant anything. He was always fucking sorry. 

“I needed you and you were just gone. You left me. I was scared and I was alone and in pain and you left me. Are you serious? You just left me alone to bleed and scream with only the nurses to help me? It took me 9 hours to deliver Cynthia and I did it all by myself!”

“Sorry.”

“You always do this. Why do you always do this? You just run away, you’ve run away since we were kids, like you never really wanted to be anywhere, like you always wanted to get away. If it wasn’t the drinking, it was the fucking disappearing for days with your trashy sister. And I put up with it because I loved you. Well, we’re done, do you hear me? We’re done, I don’t deserve this.”

Tony swallowed hard. Piece of shit. She was right, she didn’t deserve it. He looked down at his feet. “I was trying to keep you safe. You don’t understand, I saw–”

“No. You got scared and you ran away. This is over. You go ahead and keep running. You’ll never be able to get away from yourself, Anthony Delmont.”

And that was that. Over and done. He had successfully destroyed his life, just like he always knew he would. The patterns repeated themselves. He was just like his mother. Ma had wanted to get away from herself too, and she had passed that into him. But unlike her, Tony had the good sense to stay out of his child’s life. Maybe his self-hatred wouldn’t pass on into Cynthia if he just stayed far away. Maybe she wouldn’t turn out…maybe she wouldn’t turn out like him.

The next year was lost. Nothingness. He bounced from friend’s couch to friend’s couch in the Lower Levels, shelters if he was unlucky, the streets if he was really unlucky. The whole time, he drank heavily. Everything was a blur. Tony lost time and memories. He scraped by working for a gang Tabby had connections with; sometimes he sold dope, most of the time he just stole. Every once in a while, someone would mug him. His left side started to hurt, just beneath the ribs.

He was pulled from this destructive, dream-like state when a cop finally hunted him down and handed him a letter from a judge ordering that he pay Cathy child support.

“300 bucks?!” Tabby exclaimed when he showed it to her. For the last month the two of them had been slumming it at a friend’s house. “That bitch is really trying to fuck you. What the hell does she need that kind of money for a kid that can’t even talk yet? Who does she think you are? Nobody down here can afford to send their baby mama 300 a month.”

Ever since the separation, Tabby had started talking about Cathy that way, calling her bitch and baby mama. Tony never corrected her even though he hated it. He couldn’t afford to piss off the only person he had left in his life that still cared about him. He stared at the paper, licked his lips. 

Responsibility. Right. Cathy. The baby. He was a piece of shit.  “I could get a job.”

“You’re a felon.” She took a hit off her modified vape pen. The jolts of speed made her tap her foot incessantly. Tabby rolled her eyes, brown and downturned, just like his.  “And you don’t even have an address. What kinda job do you think you’re gonna get?”

“Factory job. They’ll hire anyone.”

Tabby sucked her teeth. “Yeah, because they can’t keep anyone. That shit chews you up and spits you out. You’re not built for hauling chemical sludge or pouring concrete. Don’t do that. Don’t even think about doing that. Guys who do that end up crippled for life. Private industry doesn’t give a shit about their workers.”

“Merrick said Prosperity’s hiring.” Tony poured another slug of rot-gut liquor into his glass, then knocked it back. It was the only thing that kept the pain in his side somewhat tolerable. The pain was his own fault. When he was feeling particularly masochistic, he’d look up potential causes of the pain online. 

“Shoveling guts and pulling off skin. That’s fucked.”

“The pay’s OK.”

“The pay’s OK until you have to send a quarter of it to your baby mama every month,” Tabby scoffed. She took another hit, her pupils were blown huge. “The pay’s OK until you go crazy. I knew a guy who used to work the killing floor at Prosperity. Then one day he went and beat his girlfriend to death. Doing that shit all day makes violence seem normal.”

What would Cathy use 300 dollars a month for? Diapers? Did one year olds wear diapers? Tony didn’t know, but he knew that there were a lot of things children needed. Clothes. Food, medicine. Toys, fuzzy little things to hug. What would he spend 300 dollars a month on if he had it? More booze? Cathy needed it more than he did. Cathy deserved help.

There wasn’t any other choice.

And Tabby’s warning didn’t matter. Violence? Tony knew violence like he knew himself. He had known violence since the day he was born, there was nothing more violent than the way he treated himself.

Anyways. He got the job 3 days after he applied. Maybe that was a sign.

There was hardly any training. Maybe that was another sign. He could clearly see the universe screaming at him to get out, but Tony didn’t listen. It wasn’t even because he was particularly determined to help the mother of his child. He just…he just needed a change of scenery.

“I start newbies off by making them work the drains,” said his supervisor on the first day. She was a middle-aged woman named Omo who looked like all the life had been sucked out of her. Half of her face was covered in old burns. “Better get used to spraying blood and shit off the floors.”

“It’s fine.” Tony pulled at the protective rubber apron and gloves he had been given. It was surprisingly cold inside the massive rectangular warehouse. The warehouse was one of 2. One was for killing. The other was for processing. So far he had only seen the processing warehouse, freezing cold and clean and bigger than any building he had seen before. Slabs of meat hung from swiveling metal hooks. Entire sides of cattle. Headless pigs. Endless amounts of chickens. From there, they were processed on steel tables with circular saws or sharp knives. Tony looked around at the neverending flesh. He could not remember the last time he had eaten real meat. “It’s fine. I’m just surprised I got hired. I mean– the felony– and then the piss test, I–”

“Nobody who works here can pass a drug and alcohol screen,” Omo said brusquely. She shrugged. “It’s fucked up, what we have to do, and they don’t pay us enough for it. You’ll understand what I mean the first time you hear the hogs screaming in the chutes.”

“Right.”

“The hogs are smart enough to know what’s going on but not smart enough to do anything about it. Kind of like us.”

At the time, Tony did not understand what she was talking about. He wouldn’t understand for another 10 years when he would find himself powerless in the presence of a Thing that wanted to break him down into separate but very useful parts.

###

Omo motioned to the new applicant to follow her. She needed to show him around. The next stop was the waste room. They walked there very slowly and she told him that each carcass was used almost in its entirety. “Hardly anything goes to waste,” she said. The new applicant stopped to watch a worker use a blowtorch on the corpses that had gone through the scalder.

On the way there they walked through the cutting room. The rooms were all connected by a rail that moved the bodies from one stage to the next. Through the wide windows, they see the way the head and extremities of a hog were cut off with a saw.

They both stopped  to watch.

A worker picked up the hog’s head and took it to another table where he removed its eyes and put them on a tray with a label that said “Eyes”. He opened its mouth, cut out its flat tongue and placed it on a tray with a label that said “Tongues”. The worker picked up an awl and a hammer and carefully tapped the bottom of its head. He continued in this manner until he had cracked a portion of its skull, and then he carefully removed its brain and left it on a tray with a label that said “Brains”.

Omo explained that all of the products were washed and checked by inspectors before they were refrigerated. She pointed to a man who was dressed like the rest of the workers but was carrying a tablet that he occasionally typed information on, and a certification stamp that every so often he took out. 

The hog had now been flayed and was unrecognizable. Without skin and extremities, it was only a carcass.

It was all so normal. It was efficient and normal. None of it affected her anymore.

Omo and the new hire – Delmont, his name was Delmont– continued walking. Wide windows now faced either the intermediary room or the cutting room. The flayed bodies moved along the rails. The workers made a precise cut from the groin to the solar plexus. Delmont asked her why there were two workers per body. She explained that one worker made the cut and the other stitched the anus shut to prevent expulsions from contaminating the product. 

Delmont grimaced. Beads of sweat had broken out over his forehead. “I don’t think I’d want that job.” 

If she had it her way, she wouldn't hire this man for any type of job. He smelled like a liquor store and his clothes were unwashed. Homeless, or nearly so. Definitely an alcoholic. The whites of his eyes were starting to jaundice. Still, they needed bodies. 

The killing floor required all manner of bodies.

The intestines, stomachs, and pancreases fell onto a stainless steel table and were taken to the offal room by employees. The bodies that had been cut open moved along the rails. On another table, a worker sliced the upper cavity. He took out the kidneys and liver, separated the ribs, cut out the heart, esophagus and lungs.

They continued walking. When they reached the waste room, they saw stainless steel tables. Tubes were connected to the tables and water flowed over the surface of them. White entrails had been placed on top of them. The workers slid the entrails around in the water. The entrails were inspected, cleaned, flushed, pulled apart, cut, measured and stored. The two of them watched the workers pick up the intestines and covered them in layers of salt before storing them in drawers. They watched the workers scrape away the fat. They watched them inject compressed air into the intestines to make sure they hadn’t been punctured. They watched them wash the stomachs and cut them open to release a disgusting substance that was then discarded. 

In another, smaller room, they saw red entrails hanging from hooks. The workers inspected them, washed them, certified them, and stored them safely away.

That was when Delmont lost it. He turned green, slapped a hand over his mouth, then threw up in a nearby trashcan. “Sorry,” he gasped. “Sorry, I just–”

“You’re not a vegetarian, are you?”

“No. I’m, I– without the legs and heads, they look like people.”

“Meat is meat,” Omo said coldly. She felt bad for the guy, he didn’t deserve to be working in a place like this. “We’re all just meat, Delmont. You better get used to it.”

On the killing floor, you either got used to it, or you ran away.

###

It took him months to get the hang of it.

The routine was the same every day. Tony woke up and put on his protective rubber clothing to keep the body fluids and caustic chemicals away from his skin. Hair tied back. Boots on. No breakfast, he never had time for a real breakfast and sucked down coffee instead. He’d knock back a couple of swigs of liquor on the metro to keep himself going. Nobody would be able to smell it anyway. All anyone could smell on the killing floor was death.

Then, for 8 hours, he’d hose blood down the drains and cart piles of glistening intestines to the incinerator. Mostly he worked in the sections that processed hogs. Not the cattle. Of course not the cattle. That required more care, that kind of work was saved for better men than the likes of him.

Large amounts of blood congealed if it was left too long. Sometimes it took several minutes of going at the clots with the hose to get it to move. Sometimes he had to get a shovel. Tony became acutely aware of the drains. The killing floor was located at the lowest livable point of Eden and the drains fed directly into the sewer system. All the slaughterhouse waste went directly into the water supply, where it would be recycled and made palatable for human usage again. Tony thought about that a lot.

Apparently there had been more regulations 10 years ago, prior to the current CEO. Waste used to be disposed of separately. Those regulations had been cut for profit.

Whose profit? Certainly not Tony’s. He was just the poor guy who shoveled up the shit and blood and had to listen to dying animals. The people who made the real money here never set foot on the killing floor.

“You’d make 50 cents more if you worked the scalding pot,” said his supervisor, after the first month. After he proved that he wasn’t going to start throwing up and quit. “Easier on the body. All you’d have to do is press buttons and work the levers.”

Tony had seen the scalding pots. After a hog was bled, it was held by a chain over an enormous vat of boiling water. They didn’t get skinned like the cattle did. Just a quick dunk to loosen the bristles on the hide. On his third day, he had seen how one of the hogs didn’t get bled out all the way. It had screamed like nothing he had ever heard before when they dumped it into the boiling vat. The screams had lasted less than 10 seconds but he had never forgotten it.

Pigs were as smart as people were. What was he doing?

“Yeah,” said Tony. They were on their lunch break. It never seemed to last long enough. He couldn’t eat much because it hurt his stomach. Soon he’d go to the bathroom to sneak another drink to make it through the rest of his shift. “I don’t know.”

Omo gestured to her face. One of her eyes drooped and her mouth was frozen in a perpetual snarl from the burns. “Got this from the scalder. Machinery broke, dropped the hog too fast. I got splashed. Motherfuckers wouldn’t pay my medical bills.”

But she still came back, Tony thought. That was another thing he had learned while working the killing floor. Nobody wanted to be there and nobody had any other choice. The workers were made up of felons and addicts. Nowhere else would hire them.

“You’re really convincing me.”

“Don’t you want a career? Work your way up, maybe you could be a supe one day. Pay’s not much but it’s better.”

Tony shrugged. “I like working the drains,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m going to last long enough to care about a career.”

When he said that, she looked at him with an expression of gentle compassion and understanding that was more than he could bear.

####

Tony worked in the Prosperity slaughterhouse for two years until it broke him. The nonstop death and cruelty was more than he could stomach. The hogs and cattle were not the only recipients of cruelty, it was the people too. Tired of the backbreaking work and low pay, tired of doing labor that they would never enjoy the fruits of, the workers on the Prosperity kill floor went on strike.

And he knew what was going to happen, didn’t he? He Saw the results of the strike before it even happened. He Saw how pointless it all was. The workers stopped working. Prosperity Inc called in scabs. They called in the union-busters. And when that didn’t work, they called in hired goons to start breaking kneecaps.

It wasn’t worth it. By that point his stomach was hurting all the time. He figured that he was going to die soon. Tony gave up. Tony ran away like he always did when things got too hard for him. He spent another year on the street and tried to forget about the killing floor. 

When the bombings happened, he saw that some of the anarchists tried to target the killing floor. They had failed– the sounds of the bombs that were already going off made the cattle stampede. They weren’t able to set that bomb off.

But Tony wished that they had.

Unlike the hogs, he had been smart enough to get out.

###

8 YEARS LATER

It was all about math.

Eden had a population of 120 million people. Of those people, 19 percent belonged to the Upper Class, that is to say, belonged to households making over 300,000 dollars a year. They were the only ones who really mattered, since they were the only ones who had the capital to purchase real meat. Real meat, not the synthetic slop grown from fungus farms in the sewers. So 19 percent of the population was about 230,000 people. If each of those people consumed an average of 200 pounds of animal flesh a year, an average of 4.5 million pounds of flesh must be provided. A 1000 pound steer produces about 430 pounds of retail cuts. So per year, at least 10,500 cattle had to be slaughtered in order to meet demand. It ended up being something like 28 cattle slaughtered a day.

This did not take into account the meat of hogs and chickens. It was impossible to count all the chickens.

Only 19 percent of people could afford real meat on a daily basis. Currently, a pound of beef cost an average of 40.32. That was no good. That was no good at all. Romeo Prospas didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t like to think about how almost everyone in Eden was forced to eat fake protein filled with synthetic chemicals proven to cause cancer later in life.

“I could up production,” said Rome, staring at the numbers on his tablet. “Breed more cattle. Slaughter more cattle. The market would adjust if we flooded it with product and prices would become more affordable.”

“Who would work the feedlots?” his bodyguard, Ajax, sat with his back to the office door. “You have your mind set on not using prison labor anymore, so how do you plan on getting more workers that are willing to go outside the Dome to check on the stock? At least 3 dozen inmate workers got ripped to pieces by those mutants per year. The company always wrote that off as a tax expense. No free worker is willing to do that kind of labor.”

“I’d pay them more.”

“The company’s already hemorrhaging money. Our employees have been threatening strikes since your grandfather’s time. We can’t afford to pay more than minimum wage, nobody’s willing to risk their lives to tend to cattle they’ll never be able to afford to eat.” AJ had a frustrating kind of proletarian seriousness. Unlike Rome, he understood what it was like to be poor. His mother had been a Lower Levels prostitute, then a mistress to Richard Prospas. AJ started taking care of Rome and his brothers when he was little more than a child himself. “You really want to lower your profit margins now? What do you think the shareholders will say?  If we keep dipping into the red, AGA will end up buying up more of Prosperity shares, and neither of us want Agapama to have more control over this company.”

He was only 20 years old. Rome was quickly realizing that he could not handle this kind of responsibility by himself. The day Dad died he hired a team of the best attorneys to get his older brother out of prison so that he could help him. But Ben had no interest in the company, only his strange new religion that required him to spill his own blood. And Valentine had been dead and rotting for 3 years. Rome alone was responsible for the company. Responsible for the shareholders and their profits. Responsible for feeding the people of Eden.

“I’ll up production,” he said, more to himself than to AJ. If he said things out loud, he would start to believe them. 

“You’ll have a lot of blood on your hands,” replied Ajax.

“Animal blood.”

“Human blood. And not just from the workers.”

Rome already had blood on his hands. He had nightmares about it. He knew what it was like to watch someone’s skull split open, what it was like to see bits of brain splatter. Death came remarkably fast, but the things that happened to the body after the spark of life left it occurred for a long time after. Ever since he saw that, he had never been able to feel like he was clean.

He ran the numbers on his tablet a second time. If they slaughtered 15,000 cattle a year, prices would go down 30%. He sniffed. “What’s worse, having blood on my hands or knowing that people are hungry?”

“Not everyone eats meat.” AJ was a vegetarian. It was frustrating, he always turned up his nose when Rome offered to eat with him. Well, Rome got sick every time he consumed plant matter. It wasn’t his fault that his genes had been tweaked to make him an obligate carnivore. “But I don’t have a say in this matter. Do whatever you like, just don’t come crying to me when the company crashes and burns and the people start rioting. I can’t protect you from that.”

AJ couldn’t protect him from anything, Rome thought hatefully. He always used to look at the floor when Dad flew into one of his rages and beat him. No, AJ couldn’t protect him. Never had, never would. Everything the company had accomplished, everything he had survived, was from his hands alone. He swiped through his tablet. If the company upped production, they would have to expand the slaughterhouse and the packaging facility. That would be easy enough, just a little building. They could buy more equipment. It was do-able, he just needed to hire more workers. That would be easy too. All he had to do was offer better wages than the competition.

He had a sense that things were about to take a nasty turn in the Colony. There was no proof but Rome could sense it, even though he rarely went outside. As prices for everything from housing to food rose, average people grew angrier and angrier. When the time came, he did not want to be targeted by angry, hungry people.

“I’ll up production,” he said a final time. 

And he did

####

15,000 cattle a year. 

Still, the people of Eden grew hungrier and hungrier.

Hunger is a terrible thing.

And it drew God to the slaughterhouse killing floor. God in his new body, God with his gentle face and soft voice and his terrible, terrible hunger.

[blooblooded]

Marty During the Bombings.

 Marty stared at Ayda’s wide-eyed, frightened face on the screen of his phone and realized that she was crying. Why was she crying? That didn’t make sense. There was no reason to be crying anymore. “It’s OK,” he said. “C’est— It’s OK, it’s OK. You’re fine, Kip’s gonna be fine, you guys just have to take him to the hospital. You just have to take him to the hospital and he’ll be OK. Everything’s OK now, you stopped Lee, you stopped the bomb, you’re fine.”

She wasn’t even looking at him, she was looking around the basement wildly. “Did you hear that?” Her voice was so tiny and scared. “Did you just hear that?!”

“Ade, we need to get out of here, we need to go!” That was Casey’s voice, bright and clear despite the edge of panic beneath. Marty watched Ayda’s camera swing towards her sister, it looked like she and Rosie were trying to  pull Kip up to his feet but his injured leg buckled beneath him. Kip was sobbing. Marty felt a terrible pang in his heart. “We need to fucking go!”

“You gotta put weight on it, I’m sorry, you gotta get up.” Rosie got one of Kip’s arms around her shoulders. “Just stand up, you just gotta get up. We can– I think the stairs are–”

“No, no no no no.” Even in the flickering basement light, Kip’s face was bloodless. He clutched at Rosaline as if she was hurting him. “No, no, I can’t, I can’t, it hurts.”

There was a loud crash. This time Marty heard it and he flinched back from 500 miles away. He heard Ayda and Esther scream.

There were other bombs.

Suddenly Marty could not breathe. Of course there were other bombs. How could he have been so stupid? This wasn’t the plan of one deranged individual, this was a carefully thought out act of terrorism. Lee and his stupid little friends. Lee and his stupid little beliefs. Eden was an anthill! Where was there to go? There was nowhere to go. There was nowhere to hide. They didn’t even know, they didn’t even understand the level of destruction that was in store for them. Well Marty knew. Marty remembered the way Jules had gone all quiet when she talked about helping the First Army soldiers dig broken bodies out of the rubble after the Imperials had bombed Ile de Matane at the end of the war.

And this would be ten times that scale. Twenty times.

“Ayda,” he said. The name was nothing but a hoarse whisper. He held onto his phone so tightly that his knuckles went white. Maybe if he held it tight enough it would be like he was there, it would be like he was helpful, it would be like he wasn’t sitting safe in his room, useless and alone. No. No, no, no. “Ayda?!”

Another loud crash. More screams. The lights in the basement flickered again. Oh god, he was going to watch them all die. Marty felt a peculiar numbness. Death. Oh, he knew what death looked like, he had seen it before.  He was going to watch them all die and there was nothing he could do.

Ayda looked at her screen. Marty looked into the face of his best friend. He saw her wide, terrified eyes fill with tears. “What is happening?!” she asked shrilly. “What’s going on, what’s happening?! That sounded like– like–”

“--Will you grab her, we need to fucking go! Kassidy, why aren’t you move–”

“There’s more bombs,” said Marty. He could no longer move, he could barely even breathe, all he could do was stare at the tiny piece of metal and glass that was the only connection between himself and his friends. His thoughts seemed to move as slow as honey. “There’s more bombs. You need to get out of there, you need to get out of there, go find a place that’s not going to collapse, no glass, nothing –  I mean nothing that can break. Nothing that can break and hurt you.”

“I don’t want to be here! I want to go home, I want my dad!”

“Ayda, you have to—”

The call disconnected. The screen went blank.

Marty was by himself in his room. It was dark. It was quiet. The only light came from the screen of his computer. Everything was so still it was like he had slipped beneath the surface of deep cold water.

For a second he couldn’t move and he couldn’t think. Oh. So it was like that. All his friends were gone in less than a second. He had always known how easily the connection between them could be severed. He had always known that if they decided to never answer his calls again, that would be that. The physical distance that separated them had always put a limit on the length of their relationships. But this was not a choice. This wasn’t as if Ayda had woken up one day and decided not to talk to him anymore, no this was worse than that, this was complete finality. This was Ayda getting crushed to death in her horrible anthill Colony and it was all his fault.

Breathe. He needed to breathe. Marty tried to fill his lungs but his chest wouldn’t rise. He stared at his phone, still clutched so tightly in his hands. Everything was numb, he could hear static. His body acted without the permission of his mind and he watched himself press the button next to Ayda’s name.

The call didn’t go through.

Marty blinked. His eyes stung. 

There had to be somebody. He had to talk to somebody. Anybody. Ayda, Casey, Kip, Esther, Kassidy, and Rosaline had all been together in the basement. It was no good trying them. It was pointless. But he didn’t want anybody else, he wanted Ayda. He only wanted Ayda. He was stupid. He was so stupid. He pressed the button next to Ayda’s name again and watched as nothing happened. He tried a 3rd time. A 4th time.

“Stupid,” Marty said to himself. He swallowed hard. There was a lump in his throat. He took a small, shuddering breath. Ayda wasn’t going to answer him. This didn’t seem real. Everything was moving too slow and too fast at the same time.

Somebody else then. Rome. Rome would pick up. Rome was smart and careful, he would be somewhere safe. And he panicked so easily, maybe he needed to talk to Marty just as much as Marty needed to talk to him. Yes, Rome would pick up. Rome liked him, he would always pick up. Marty pressed the button next to his name.

The call didn’t go through.

He kept trying. There was nothing he could do but keep trying to make contact with someone, with anyone. He tried the Bellamy twins, then Rome’s babysitter AJ. He tried Ayda a 5th time, then a 6th time. When Marty tried to call Kip, he had to close his eyes so he didn’t have to see the blank screen on his phone.

As sick as it was, he even tried to call Lee. Not because he was worried about him– Marty hoped that he had gone and blown himself up. But if Lee picked up, maybe he could get some confirmation that the others were OK. Something. Something. Anything.

Nothing. And he had no other contacts in Eden. 

Maybe Eden had fallen in on itself and everyone was dead. Whose stupid idea had it been to shove a million people into a pit? Marty was only 16 years old and even he could see how easy it would be to annihilate an entire population by blowing up Eden’s support structures. They were all dead. He could see no other reason that nobody was answering him. Giant chunks of concrete had probably fallen on top of Ayda and smashed her into paste. And he was never going to talk to her again. He was never going to see her face again. The last thing she had said to him was that she wanted her dad, she had been scared and helpless and now she was dead.

And it was all his fault. If he had told Kip’s mom or Ayda’s dad about Lee, they could have put an end to this months ago. Kip’s mom would have had him dumped into prison. Ayda’s dad would have just bashed his face in with a hammer. Either way, with Lee out of the picture, maybe there wouldn’t have been any bombs. Maybe everyone would be OK. But Marty hadn’t told any grown-ups about Lee. He had been too scared. He had been too scared that Kip and Ayda wouldn’t want to be his friends anymore if he told anyone and since Marty’s only friends lived in Eden, he never risked it.

Now he didn’t have any friends because they were all dead and it was his fault.

There was nothing inside of him but he couldn’t move. The loss was too fresh and new to process. It had happened in an instant and Marty had always struggled with knowing how he was supposed to react. When he was 10, Jules told him that his mother had been killed. Marty hadn’t known what to do then either. He knew that he was supposed to be sad, because he had seen that Jules was sad. This seemed like it was worse. His mother had never loved him and had never really wanted to be alive either. When she died at least he knew that she wasn’t suffering anymore. His friends though? His friends and everyone else in Eden? They hadn’t wanted to die!

He did not know how long he sat there, feeling nothing. It felt like hours.

He set his phone face down on his desk and stood up. Marty swayed like he was about to fall and put a hand out to catch himself. He shook his head, looked at the clock. Not even 8am. He hadn’t slept all night. Of course he hadn’t slept. The night had started with him begging Kip to climb out of Lee’s bathroom before he got hurt and it had ended with him hearing the explosion that more than likely killed everyone he cared about. Marty didn’t think he would ever sleep again.

Still, he felt nothing but numbness. Was he in shock? When he blinked, he could hear his eyelids touching each other. Marty shook his head. He kept trying to breathe but his chest would not expand all the way. Dead. Gone. It had happened so fast and now he was alone.

Maybe he deserved it.

Marty reached out to his lamp and switched it on. He paused for a second and switched it off again. Then on again. His heart pounded. Marty gritted his teeth and started to flick the light on and off as rapidly as he could. The bright flashing light hurt his head. “Stupid!” he said again, more forcefully as he stared directly at the flashing light. If he was lucky it would induce a seizure. He didn’t want to be there anymore. He didn’t want to be here. He didn’t want to be alone in his room, alone with his thoughts, alone with the stark reality of what had happened. He could check out. He could go to the Void. Even that horrible place would be better than this.

There was clarity in the Void. There were answers. Marty looked straight into the flashing lights and felt nothing but building frustration. He gave up, clenched his fists.

What was he supposed to do? He didn’t know what to do. Ayda would know. Ayda was always talking about feeling her feelings, but Ayda was gone. Marty would never be able to ask Ayda for help again. The corners of his eyes prickled.

He couldn’t stay here. He couldn’t just sit here alone. Marty didn’t know what he needed, all he knew was that he didn’t need to be alone. He still couldn’t breathe. There was a heaviness squeezing his chest and he put a hand over his heart. Was he shaking? Why was he shaking?

Had it hurt? Had it happened quickly? What if it hadn’t happened quickly? Marty’s stomach flipped at that thought. When Ile de Matane had been bombed at the end of the war, there had been half-crushed people who lingered beneath the rubble for days only to expire from dehydration. He had seen the pictures on Beatrice Kosarin’s propaganda pamphlets; the children with their faces smashed like eggs. What was he supposed to do? Pray? Kip had already been sobbing in pain after being shot, how was it fair for him to endure more pain?

Kip. Marty had worked so hard all night long to keep Kip calm and keep Kip safe. What was the point? Kip had been the point and now Kip was gone. Kip was gone and he had probably been hurting and terrified the whole time. 

Marty’s stomach lurched for a second time. He clamped a hand over his mouth to keep from throwing up. No no no, don’t throw up, he hated throwing up. He gagged, swallowed bile. His body kept shaking.

All he knew was that he couldn’t stay alone in his room. Marty wiped his mouth and staggered out into the bright hallway. 

Outside his room, Florence’s estate was exactly the same as it always was in the mornings. Busy. A couple of kitchen girls passed by with buckets of fresh milk in their arms, and were too busy gossipping to spare him a passing glance. One of the Partisan soldiers stood at the end of the hall near the door to the main building, his rifle crooked lazily in one arm. Nobody looked at Marty. Nobody cared. They went about their daily routines with no knowledge of the violence that had unfolded hundreds of miles to the south. Nobody knew. 

The east wing of the estate was enormous, connected to the main building through a secondary kitchen. Most of Florence’s staff lived in the east wing, and she allowed Marty and Jules to have rooms there as well. Maybe Jules counted as staff, since she worked bandaging small injuries and healing illnesses. It wasn’t as clean or decorated as the west wing or the main building, but that was fine. Marty didn’t care about fancy portraits or chandeliers anyways. And Jules’ room was right next to his.

He needed Jules. He wasn’t sure what he needed her for, but every instinct in his body was urging him to find her. Jules would know what to do. She was 13 years older than he was– something less than a mother but more than a sister to him. All those years that his own mother was too wrapped up in her own sadness, Jules had been the one to take care of him. Jules had been the one to feed him and give him baths when she was only a child herself, Jules had been the one to teach him how to read. She would know what to do. She always knew what to do.

Marty barged into Jules’ dark room without bothering to knock. He had known her his whole life and had never once knocked on her door. Like his room, her’s was small, only big enough for a bed and a desk. There were bundles of dried herbs hanging from the rafters and half-melted candles everywhere. A deer skull hung on one wall, painted with symbols and draped with garlands of fresh flowers. It was a cluttered mess, a uniquely Jules-like mess,  but the air was fragrant with the scents of rosemary and sweet oil. 

“Jules.” His voice cracked. It hurt to speak. It hurt to try to think in his native language instead of English. Marty flipped on her lights.

The sudden light made Jules wake with a start and sit straight up in her bed, cursing. Marty noticed with dull shock that Ivan Kosarin, the big handyman also called Dog, was beside her in bed. That was strange, since Dog usually slept on the floor of the scullery. While they were sleeping, he had put his huge arms around her. As much as Marty protectively hated the idea of Jules sleeping with anyone, his mind was too slow and overwhelmed to do anything but take note of it.

“What is the matter with you?” Jules snapped. Her eyes were still bleary from sleep and her dark hair hung in limp tangles. She angrily brushed the front of her nightgown and then pointed at him. “What are you, a wild animal? I know I raised you better than that, what, you think you can just–” When she got a good look at him, she paused mid sentence and frowned.

He didn’t know what to say. All he could do was stand there. His legs were weak. At any moment, he might fall over. They were dead. They were dead and he was alone and it was his fault. Marty could not stop shaking.

Dog sat up as well and had the good grace to look embarrassed. He had a soft face and watery eyes and also frowned when he looked at Marty. 

“What’s wrong?” asked Jules. The irritation in her expression melted away to worry. “What’s wrong with you? You look sick. What’s wrong, did you eat something bad?”

“Everyone’s dead.” 

“Who’s dead?” Jules and Dog shared a glance. The little witch shook her head. “What are you talking about, who’s dead? Don’t talk crazy like that, you know it’s bad luck. Nobody’s dead.”

“You have a seizure and see things again?” asked Dog, in his quiet, nervous voice that was always so strange to hear coming out of such a large man. He was not wearing a shirt. The shirt was on the floor in a pile.

Through the haze of nothing, Marty felt a jealous pang. It wasn’t fair. The first and only boy he had ever liked was dead. Kip was dead. He had tried to save him and he had failed. There would never be a time he could lie next to him in bed. There would never be a time he could hold him, he knew that, he knew that they had been too separated by distance and that Kip didn’t like him back anyway. But now he couldn’t even fantasize about it. He couldn’t fantasize about liking a dead boy.

It was stupid. For six months, he had been so happy. It was stupid for him to think he could be happy. It was stupid for him to imagine life in a place where there wasn’t something wrong with him. He should have just accepted that he was a freak and would always be alone, that would have hurt less.

It wasn’t worth it. Human connection wasn’t worth the pain and vulnerability.

So why did he want it so bad?

Marty couldn’t talk. He just stood there, frozen. What was he supposed to do? What were people supposed to do when this happened? What did he want? He didn’t know what he wanted, only that he wanted something. Needed something. His chest was so tight that it felt like it was squeezing his heart.

“What is wrong with you?” Jules scrambled out of bed, clutching her robe around her gristle-thin body. She hurried to him and pressed her hand to his forehead, brushed his hair away from his face, cupped his chin in her hands so that she could look at him close up. “You’re covered in sweat. What were you saying, who’s dead? Did you have a bad dream?” One of her thumbs rubbed back and forth against his jawline. “You dreamed about your Mama?”

His eyes stung again. Suddenly he was very small and very young. All he could do was shake his head. Jules kept rubbing him with her thumb. It was a small gesture. Usually he got upset when anyone tried to touch him.

“You dreamed about someone else?” She was struggling. There was nobody else. The only people Marty spoke to in real life were her and Dog, Olive Vernier, and the Prime Minister and her inner circle. There were few children in Florence’s estate. The girls laughed at him, the boys would try to start fights. He had no friends, nobody to really worry about. “What’s wrong, you’re scaring me.”

From day one, Marty had been unwanted and unloved. He knew where he had come from. He knew that some fur trader from the Hinterlands had raped his mother, he knew that she had never been capable of loving him. Of course she hadn’t loved him. And he knew that nobody was ever going to love him. If he ever acted on his hormonal instincts and made a pass at another guy, he would be lucky to make it out with only a beating. People would just put him in the same category as his father, a predator and a pervert. It wasn’t like Eden here. Nobody was ever going to love him. He had been stupid, he had been a masochist for even imagining a life where somebody loved him. 

Well. There was one person who loved him. One person who wasn’t fucking dead.

Marty knew what he needed.

He stiffly raised his arms, wrapped them around Jules, and squeezed her. They were the same height and he buried his face against her shoulder. She smelled like the lavender she kept under her pillow at night. For a moment she froze, the behavior in front of her so out of the ordinary that she did not know what to do. Then, fiercely, she returned the hug, rubbing his back as she did so.

A weird sound came out of him then, from deep in his belly. Just one. It sounded like all the air came out of his lungs with a whine.

“I’ve got you,” said Jules. She was as unused to affection as he was and rubbed his back awkwardly. One of her long nails scratched him. “I’ve got you. Everything’s alright.”

“No it’s not.” He blinked rapidly. When was the last time he had been hugged? It had been years. Nobody even tried to touch him anymore. Now it felt so good that he was worried he might cry. “No it’s not, it’s not alright, everyone’s dead.”

“Who’s dead?”

“It’s all my fault. I didn’t tell anyone and now they’re all dead.”

Jules pulled away from him, held him at arm's length with each hand on his shoulders. Her sharp face looked very worried and confused now, black eyes narrow, the pox scars on her cheeks standing out like drips of wax. “Who is dead, Marty? Tell me who is dead.”

He shrugged her hands off of him. No more touch. He didn’t deserve it. He looked down at the floor. The corners of his mouth twitched. Don’t cry. Don’t fucking cry. Only women and little kids cried. He couldn’t even remember the last time he had cried.

“Who is dead?

Just tell her. Just say it. Saying it out loud would make it real. Maybe saying it out would make it less cold and empty. His chest constricted painfully. “Ayda.” Again his voice cracked. So stupid. What would she think of him? “Ayda. Everyone. Everyone in Eden.”

It didn’t feel better to say it.

“That girl you talk to on your computer?”

Her voice told him that she didn’t understand. She thought he was a freak like all the rest of them, she had never understood why he would rather lock himself up in his room instead of acting like all the other boys his age. Marty couldn’t do this. He swallowed compulsively around the lump in his throat. The stinging in his eyes would not stop. Another stupid little whining noise escaped from inside of him.

“Ma mie.” Jules reached out and tried to grab him up again. Marty pushed her away and would not look at her. “Tell me what’s wrong, let me help you.”

“You don’t understand.”

“What happened to that Eden girl you talk to?”

One side of his cheek felt wet. Marty wiped at it furiously so that nobody could see. But Jules saw. Too close not to see. She tried to wipe at his face with her sleeve. The tenderness in the presence of his vulnerability was more than he could bear. He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve anyone loving him, no matter how much he craved it. He didn’t want to be touched. He didn’t want anyone to touch him. Without thinking, he slapped her hand away from him, harder than he should have.

Jules grabbed his wrist and gave it a squeeze. He wrenched it away from her. “No,” she said forcefully. “I’m not the one you’re mad at. You talk to me, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to act like the other boys here, you talk to me.”

Lee had been right. He was a bad person. He deserved this. 

The floodgates didn’t open, not all the way. With him, they never did. He was too disconnected. There weren’t even any words for it. He sniffled once, hating himself, then started to cry without making a sound. It was overwhelming and he was lost and alone. There was no way he could soothe himself. He put his hands over his face and felt himself hunching over.

One cringing and humiliating thought occurred to him, the same thought that occurred to Ayda right before the connection between the two of them was severed. He wanted his mother. 

“No, no.” Jules wrapped her arms around him and he was too pathetic to fight her off a second time. Her comfort unleashed more weakness from inside of him. “You’re alright. I’ve got you.”

“It’s not alright.” Feeling her rub his back made him want to die. Despite being undeserving, he held her tightly.  She was the closest thing to a mother that he was ever going to get. “It’s not alright, everyone’s dead! Ayda and Kip and everyone!  I tried to figure things out for weeks, I’ve tried to fix everything for weeks and they still all died! They all got blown up! I don’t know what to do! They all got blown up and it’s all my fault, it’s my fault, I didn’t tell anyone because I was scared and now they’re dead!”

“You don’t–”

“There were bombs all over Eden and now I can’t reach anyone!” There was no way to make her understand. There was no way to make anyone understand. “I tried, I really tried. I should have told Ayda’s dad what was happening but I didn’t want her to get mad at me and stop talking to me. And now she’ll never talk to me again!”

He could sense Jules’ bewilderment as he cried about a world she did not belong to and people she would never know. But she kept rubbing his back. She did not tell him to stop crying or to grow up. She just stood there and held him. “It’s alright,” she said, probably because that was all she could think of saying. Her body was more of a comfort than her words were anyway. 

“I didn’t sleep last night, I just wanted to make sure Kip was safe, I was trying so hard to help him get away from that guy and now he’s gone! I figured out about the bomb, we all tried so hard to stop it, and it still went off! And Kip’s dead! Kip died anyway!” He couldn’t stop himself now. His stomach flipped again as he thought about Kip’s loud laugh, and then what it sounded like to hear him scream and scream and scream after getting shot. His fault. “And I knew he would never like me back, I knew it was all pointless, but I liked him! He made me feel like I wasn’t a freak! I liked him and now he’s dead because of me! I pretended that he wanted to be with me because I didn’t want to think about how no boy is ever going to want to be with me here! And now everyone’s dead, now everyone’s dead and it’s my fault I’m going to be alone forever!”

Because of the state he was in, Marty did not fully grasp what he had just revealed to her. It was a mistake to say that and he didn’t know it yet.

“That– that doesn’t sound like it’s your fault,” Jules said haltingly. He felt her head turn, probably glancing back at Dog for support. “None of that sounds like it’s your fault. You’re just a boy. Eden is so far away. You just–”

“It is my fault! It’s my fault I didn’t tell anyone! I could have told someone but now it’s too late!” His voice was high and hysterical now, like a girl’s, or like Rome’s when he had one of his panic attacks. Was he having a panic attack? He still couldn’t breathe. All the bottled up emotions were pouring out. It was hitting him then. Everything he had done was all pointless. It would have been better for him to have never met Ayda, to have never built friendships, because then he wouldn’t have to know what it was like to not be alone. He held onto Jules as tightly as he could, shaking. “It’s not fair!”

“Ivan, he’s going to work himself up into a seizure. Get my smelling salts.”

“I wish I would have a seizure! I don’t want to be here! It’s not fair, why do I get to be here?!” 

He kept his face pressed into Jules’ shoulder, holding on for dear life, holding on like he was drowning. There was the sound of clinking glass from the desk. A second later, Jules peeled him away from her, tilted his chin up, and shoved a small bottle up to one of his nostrils. The acrid smell of ammonia was immediately apparent. It triggered him into inhaling deeply and the lump in his throat, the tightness in his chest loosened. The chemicals rushed into his brain with a certain clarity. They stopped all his frantic thoughts in their tracks. Marty gasped for air.

Jules tucked the smelling salts away into her sleeve. She pushed his hair back. “You breathe,” she said. All she cared about was what was in front of her. Carefully, she guided him to the side of her bed and made him sit down. “You just breathe, you’re not helping anyone by making yourself sick.”

Dog must have gotten up to grab the little bottle of ammonia for Jules. He looked more worried than she did, but by nature he always appeared worried. Even though he was a big man, the biggest man Marty had ever seen, he was always trying to hunch in on himself, make himself smaller. “You’re alright,” he said, and for a second it looked like he was going to try to reach out and touch him but thought better of it. His mouth naturally curved down. “That happens to me sometimes. I just tell myself I’m safe, I think of Jules and–”

“Me being safe is the whole problem,” Marty snapped. At least he could breathe again and the shock of the salts had forced his mind back into the present, but he still shook and could taste bile in his mouth. He was still crying silently, his shoulders heaving from time to time, the tears dripping off the end of his nose without a sound. “I’m not like you, I don’t feel sorry for myself because some bad things happened to me when I was a kid and cry about it, I just watched everyone I care about die and I couldn’t do anything!”

“Don’t talk to him like that.” Jules kept rubbing his head. “Don’t talk, just breathe.”

But for the first time, all Marty wanted to do was talk. There was nobody else to talk to. All the years of isolation were pouring out of him now and he could not stop it. “I saw them all die! I was on the phone and there was a crash and then everything went blank! Now nobody will answer me! Nobody will pick up!”

“Maybe they’re fine and they just can’t answer you,” said Dog.

“No.”

“You’re not helping,” hissed Jules. She put her arms around Marty again.

“During the war we blew up the Imperial radio towers so they couldn’t communicate. Maybe the same thing happened.”

“Ivan, don’t talk to the boy about the war! He doesn’t want to hear about that butchery.”

“But it’s what people do. It’s what people always do. If you can’t communicate, you can’t ask for help.”

Oh. Marty hadn’t thought of that. 

There was no way he should have been able to talk to Ayda all these years anyway. The fiber optic cables running between Eden and the Northern Territories had been destroyed 200 years ago when the embargo began. The only way he was able to maintain contact was because Ayda’s dad had a man working for him who could put his mind inside of machines and this man had amplified the signal in Eden’s towers to reach Florence’s estate. He had done this out of desperation, because he needed to talk to Florence. And–

Marty shoved Jules away from him easily and scrambled up off her bed. He scrubbed his face furiously. “Right,” he said. “Right, right.” They could be OK. They could be OK and he just didn’t know it. He was stupid, he had let his emotions get the best of him.

He would not do that again.

“What are you doing?” Jules’ own confusion and frustration were getting the best of her and she was raising her voice. “Where are you going?”

“The Prime Minister.” Florence had devices connected directly to the interface she had dreamed up with Ayda’s dad. If anyone had lines open between Eden and the Strath, it was her. And Florence knew everything. She was mean and angry and terrifying, but she always seemed to know everything.

“Marty, don’t you even think about bothering her this early in the morning, don’t you even–”

He was off. He slammed through Jules’ door and started to run up the east wing corridor. Marty didn’t look at the servant girls staring at him, he didn’t pause to explain himself to the Partisan soldier standing at the kitchen door. All that mattered was Ayda. Ayda could still be alive. He didn’t know. He didn’t really know but he had to find out. Dog was right. The smartest thing anyone could do to an enemy was keep them from talking to each other. Lee was smart. Lee would have thought about how he didn’t want the police in Eden to be able to call each other and stop the bombs or help people.

And even if Ayda had died, even if everyone had died– he had to know for sure.

All the grief and sadness and anger left him in the wake of this one single minded goal.

The main building was more ornate, filled with the trappings of the dead Duke. A few more soldiers were present with their swords and machine guns, Partisans with their painted faces and the savage marsh-landers of the First Army. None of them paid Marty any mind. They were all used to him. Marty passed through the atrium with its enormous banner painted with rowan berries and fire, then left to where Florence’s offices were.

A First Army sergeant whose name was Bedny stood outside Florence’s door. He looked down at Marty and raised his eyebrows. “What’s wrong with you, witch-boy?”

“Let me in.” There was a stitch in his side from running. He knew that he looked like he had been crying. “Let me in there.”

“I don’t think so.”

Marty balled up his fists. “I need to talk to the Prime Minister.”

“Get out of here.”

As useless as it was, Marty would fight him if he had to. He would fight the entire garrison if they came between him and finding out what had happened to Ayda. He was breathing hard, exhausted, out of his mind, and all he could think about was his best friend. “Let me in there!”

Then Jules ran up behind him, grabbing him roughly by the shoulder. She was still only wearing her robe and her hair was unbraided in her haste to follow him. The sergeant looked down at her bare legs and laughed. “I’m so sorry,” Jules said breathlessly. She tried to pull Marty back. Even after 10 years, she still hated and feared the soldiers. “I’m sorry, he’s very upset this morning.”

“Go put some clothes on, you’re not decent. And you smell like the kennels.” He laughed and then mockingly barked at her.

Jules’ face turned red.

“I didn’t have time to get dressed, I was trying to look out for him!” She kept pulling Marty back. Her sharp nails dug into his shoulder. Jules never cut her nails, she let them grow long just in case she needed to use them. “Are you stupid, Bedny? You’ve never seen a woman’s legs before? All you First Army marsh-landers fuck the sheep in your swamps instead of women!”

“You better watch that mouth before I pop you, witch.”

“Let me in there!” Marty didn’t have time for this. He struggled away from Jules. Ayda. All that mattered was Ayda. Ayda could still be alive. He was going to throw up. “I need to talk to the Prime Minister!”

“And I say you can’t. Her Ladyship is currently occupied.”

“Let me talk to her! I need to see if she can reach Ayda!”

“Marty, just come back to your room with me!”

“Fuck you! I need to see if Ayda’s OK!”

The sergeant crossed his arms. “We should have never let you raise this boy here, if this is how he acts. Kimble was right. He should have gone to the garrison with the other war-orphans.He isn’t normal. We failed him by allowing you to let him sit inside all day getting fat and lazy and acting like a little faggot. You and your dog made him like this.”

Jules drew back and slapped him across the face as hard as she could, which wasn’t very hard. Sergeant Bedny laughed incredulously, then lunged forward, grabbed a fistful of her hair, and gave her a shake before pinning her arms behind her back. It was easy for him to do. Jules started to scream, kicking and cursing while her robe came undone to reveal her nightgown.

For a second, Marty was torn between the unguarded door and the fact that Jules was getting into her thousandth tussle with one of the soldiers. She always started it, and they always ended with her getting pinned down and laughed at for thinking she could try to fight a grown man. Maybe if she could use her magic for anything else than healing, she would have a chance. Because of her value to the Prime Minister, they never really hurt her. Marty hated to see her like that though.

But the door was unguarded. While Jules spat and screamed, Marty abandoned her for the first time by grabbing the door handle and pulling.

It was locked.

Of course it was locked. It was the one thing standing between him and Ayda. “Fuck!” Marty yelled, and kicked it as hard as he could. He was not wearing shoes.

“Pig!” Jules screamed as she struggled. “Swine!” 

Marty kicked the door again but it did not release his frustrations. Pretty soon he was going to start crying again. The last 36 hours had devastated his nervous system. Everything that could have gone wrong had gone wrong and now he was having to deal with the bullshit place he lived instead of what was important. Ayda. Kip.

The door opened and Flick, the Minister of Intelligence, looked out into the atrium. He was a smug, rangy man with a crippled leg who had always treated Marty like he was a person. His black eyes slid over Marty, to where Jules was trying to wrench her arms away from the sergeant. “Could you people keep it down?” he asked mildly. “The Prime Minister can’t hear herself think above all this racket.”

“Sorry about that.” Bedny let go of Jules. She scrambled away from him, gathering her robe back together to cover herself. “This bitch just slapped me out of nowhere.”

“Let’s all try not to act like animals in this–”

“I need to talk to her,” Marty interrupted. There was hardly anything keeping him from darting around Flick and inside Florence’s office. It wasn’t like he could stop him. “I need to talk to her now!”

Flick blinked and smoothed down his mustache with one finger. “She’s busy.”

Jules stepped beside Marty. She was shaking her head and rubbing her wrists. “Motherfucker!” she swore. “Stupid motherfucker! All of you are exactly the same!”

“Why don’t you calm down, Miss LaBelle?”

How was he supposed to express his immeasurable need for reconnection? If he didn’t find out what had really happened, Marty felt like he might die. He had to know. What had happened was his fault and he had to know the consequences.

“Eden!” he blurted. His fists were still clenched. “Eden, I have to know what’s happening in Eden! My friends, they– I was talking to them and there were bombs going off! And then my phone cut off and I can’t talk to any of them! I don’t know what happened, I need to know if they’re OK! I thought the Prime Minister could help me. Please!”

He could see Flick’s perpetually nonchalant expression soften a touch, something about the eyes and mouth. “Now you can’t say I’ve never done anything nice for you, Martin Bonneville.” The use of his full name was a sign of respect, but hearing it said gave Marty a shock. His father’s name. An evil name. “Come on. If she yells at anyone, she can yell at me.” He stood aside, leaning on his cane.

And Marty rushed in. Jules followed behind him, Bedny barking at her again as she went.

Florence’s office was larger than the two of their rooms put together. Three walls were covered from floor to ceiling with full bookshelves. The floor was lushly carpeted and one wall hung with a massive oil portrait of the dead Duke Rowan Gauthier, staring down coldly at anyone who walked in. No windows on the wall, but natural sunlight filtered down from a massive skylight on the ceiling. It smelled strongly of old books and cigarette smoke. In the middle of the office was a huge desk built from ironwood, covered with more stacks of books– and a computer.

The Prime Minister sat at her desk, chain smoking as usual. She didn’t even look up when Marty and Jules came in. Florence was only a small woman in her mid 40’s, but she had a blazing presence that demanded attention. It was like looking at the sun. Her graying hair was braided back, and instead of her usual fur-trimmed dresses, she wore the camouflage uniform of the Partisan army.

“Then tell me what you’re doing,” she demanded in English, staring imperiously at her computer screen. “Panicking like children? Get a hold of yourself, a disaster like this is the perfect time to seize control. I used to pray for earthquakes, now you’ve had your chance handed to you and you’re holding back?”

“People are dying!” A man’s voice Marty recognized. The flat, thick accent of Eden was unmistakable. He bit his tongue as hard as he could to keep himself from yelling. “I can’t attack the Capitol like this, I won’t have that blood on my hands! I don’t even know if the Capitol will last the day, we don’t know how many bombs there are– they keep going off!”

“If you’re too cowardly to take this chance, you’ll have blood on your hands for years. Your hesitation will result in the blood of children, the blood of my people who are starving because of that woman’s embargo!”

“You don’t understand what it’s like! Nobody can see everything, the air is full of dust! The streets are crawling with secret police! Even if I had been prepared, even if I had enough people, we’d–”

“Mr. Agapama!” Marty lunged towards the computer so that he could see his face. Florence seemed to notice him for the first time and scowled, put her hands up. “Is Ayda– is she— I was talking to her, she was at school, there was this crash and now I can’t call her!”

Ayda’s dad looked like he was in his own fancy house. He was wearing pajamas and didn’t have on any makeup, not even eyeliner. There was another man beside him with his hand on West’s computer. Marty had seen him a couple of times, Percy, the guy who could put his mind into machines. Percy’s eyes were rolled up in the back of his head and there was blood and foam coming out of his open mouth. Ayda’s dad didn’t seem to care about that. “The girls are fine, Marty.”

Smoke filled his lungs as Florence exhaled. She made a dismissive gesture. “Get out of here, I’m talking.” She cut her eyes towards Jules, who was taking a handkerchief from Flick, then switched to their native language. “Julia, put on some damn clothes and get this boy away from me.”

Someone would have to physically drag him away from the computer if they wanted him to leave. Marty’s heart pounded. He was brazenly close to the leader of his country, close enough to almost be touching her, but that did not matter. This was his only connection to Eden. He gripped the edge of Florence’s desk and tried to communicate his terrible need to Ayda’s dad with only his face. “But I can’t call her, I can’t call anyone! It’s not going through, it’s just blank. I thought– is she OK?!”

“The internet is down across the Colony, somebody’s set off explosives at the interface hubs.” Ayda’s dad looked like he was barely holding himself together. His jaw was set and his eyes were hugely dilated. “Radio still works. Vega got down to the School District and found the girls immediately, I just spoke to her.”

Marty could not imagine how scared they must be. “Please, can I–”

“Let’s not waste our time.” Florence did not take her eyes off the screen, but she reached into one of her pockets and pulled out a peppermint, handing it to Marty. When he was younger, the Prime Minister used to give him a peppermint whenever she saw him and the taste of mint always made him think of her. He didn’t want the candy but took it anyway. “You won’t get another chance like this, Agapama.”

“I won’t be responsible for more deaths today! I can’t keep sitting here talking to you about this, I should be out there helping people! Do you understand what I’m saying? I’m wasting my time here! Thousands of people must have already died, we don’t even know! We don’t need more death, we need help! We need doctors, food, we need architects to help us rebuild!”

The end of Florence’s cigarette was nothing but ash. “You’d have me waste my resources on a place that has let us freeze and starve and tear ourselves apart for years.”

“Yes! Help us, you can help us!” Somewhere in Eden, there was another crash. Ayda’s dad did not flinch. Sweat was pouring down his face and his teeth were clenched. He glanced at Percy, the man beside him, who had started to twitch. More foam spilled out of his open mouth. Ayda’s dad put his hand on his forearm. “I don’t have time. I don’t have time for any of this, I have to do something. But if you sit there and watch without sending us help, you’re no better than Botega.”

Florence barked a harsh laugh. “If I send aid south, that woman will have my men killed at the gates like she’s killed every envoy I’ve sent.”

We need help! We need help now! This is just the beginning, I don’t know how bad it’s going to get out there! If bombs hit Fuelero or the Prosperity plants, we’re all going to starve! I know you understand how that feels! You can help us, you can choose to let Eden know that the Territories are an ally!”

Marty felt dizzy. Florence had tried to make contact with Eden before? What else did he not know about? Suddenly everything felt bigger than it was before.

“What are they yelling about, Marty?” asked Jules in French.

Percy was convulsing now. Ayda’s dad made a low, desperate sound of frustration. “I have to go. If the interface is repaired, I’ll reach out to you again. But you have to help us!”

“You’ll find that I don’t have to do anything, my friend,” said Florence.

And the screen went blank. 

All Marty could do was sit there. His hand was clenched so tight around the peppermint that it hurt. So Ayda was safe. If Ayda was safe, he could only assume that the others were safe. But for how long? It sounded like bombs were still going off in Eden. Ayda’s dad had been scared, scared enough to beg for help. That was bad. He knew that was very bad.

Florence stubbed out her cigarette and lit a new one with a box of matches. “Audacity,” she said. She blew smoke out of the side of her mouth so that it wouldn’t hit Marty. “What audacity.”

“It sounds like the people are fed up with the way things are being run in Eden if they’ve resorted to direct action,” said Flick. He had put a kettle on the fire and poured two cups of tea, then handed one to Jules and set the other on Florence’s desk. “That’s how the Duke started it here in the Strath. Bombings. A dictator can only push people so far until they fight back. If we’re lucky, the people of Eden will destroy Botega on their own. This sounds like a good thing to me.”

How long before Marty could talk to Ayda? How long before Eden repaired their interface? He tried to think about what had happened during the war in the Territories. Everyone had tried to shelter him, but he remembered being hungry when he was very small, back when he and Jules and Mama lived together in Stasya’s cottage. There had never been enough food. 

“We’re going to help them though, right?” Marty asked Florence. “You’re going to send trucks south, aren’t you? Trucks with food and– and medicine?”

Florence’s mouth twisted. She reached out and ruffled his fluffy black hair. Marty scowled but it wasn’t like he could push her away. “Where do you think food comes from, eh? You think everyone would be happy if I sent our resources to our enemy when we have children here who go hungry because of the trade embargo? When we don’t have enough doctors or architects to take care of ourselves?”

“But he was asking for your help.”

“You’re too young to understand these things. I’ve sent 3 envoys south to Eden asking for their help. They’ve been shot at the gates each time. The people in charge of that place are blinded by their pride, they’ll never accept help from outside. I doubt that they’d even let their people know that it was being offered.”

His shoulders slumped. “You– you’ve tried to send people to Eden?”

He imagined himself in one of the cargo trucks, traveling down the south road. The truck would be full of supplies and people who could help Eden through its crisis. He imagined himself seeing Eden for the first time, Eden with its marvels of technology and architecture. And Ayda! If he went to Eden, he could see Ayda without the barrier of the screens between them. Not only Ayda, he could see the others, he could see Kip! Kip. As averse as Marty was to hugs, he knew that he would like it if Kip put his arms around him. Kip with his bright eyes and big smile, Kip with his strong arms and–

“Marty’s very fond of a girl who lives there, Prime Minister,” said Flick helpfully. “Agapama’s daughter.”

“I’m sure his little girlfriend will be quite safe.” Florence rolled her eyes. “It’s time for you two to leave my office now, scurry back to the east wing. Phillip, go round up Reed Kimble and Beatrice. I have many things to discuss with them.”

Flick gave her a curt nod and then limped out. Jules made eye contact with Marty and jerked her head toward the door.

There was nothing else to do. He would have to wait, ridden with anxiety, until Ayda or one of the others contacted him themselves. They were safe. Surely they were all safe. He tried one more time. “You’ll send them help, won’t you? You won’t ignore Eden the way they ignore us?”

“I’ll do whatever I think is right.”

That was that. Marty followed Jules and left the office.

While they walked, Jules looped one arm through Marty’s. He was so exhausted and beaten down that he allowed her to do so. Sleep. He needed to sleep but he didn’t want to risk missing any calls. When they got to the kitchen, he’d stop and make himself a pot of coffee.

“You feel better?” asked Jules, eyeing him as they walked. Each step she took was deliberate because she was not wearing shoes. “You look better.”

“I’m tired.” Marty couldn’t think. His brain wasn’t working. The waves of emotion that had crashed through him over the last hour were too much. Ayda. Kip. It was still his fault that this had happened, but maybe they would be OK. He would keep telling himself that they were OK. Ayda’s dad wasn’t a liar. He believed him.

“I’ll make you breakfast. I’ll have Ivan go out to the smokehouse and get the trout we caught last week. You’ll feel better after you eat.”

“I just want coffee.”

By the door leading to the east wing, Jules hesitated. Marty stopped too. He felt dead again. He wanted to lie down and never get back up. It was hard to even keep his eyes open. His entire body was heavy. The adrenaline surge from earlier was completely gone and left him feeling more exhausted than before. 

“I didn’t realize that you were so close to those kids from Eden,” said Jules after a beat. She unhooked her arm from Marty’s and crossed her’s in front of her chest. Her posture was stiff and uncomfortable. “Did that man tell you that they’re alright?”

Marty shrugged. He didn’t feel like talking anymore. He was shutting down. It had all been too much. His mind and body had been in a state of terror for hours and now there was nothing he could do but wait and trust Ayda’s dad. Maybe Jules would stay with him for the rest of the day. He did not want to be alone.

But something was wrong with Jules. Her expressions and movements were usually so natural, she flowed into one and then the next with such ease. Now he could tell that she did not know what to do. Maybe she wanted to hug him again. She fidgeted with the rings on her tattoo-blackened fingers. “You sounded like you’re very close to that boy Kip. You said you liked him very much.”

Ice shot through every inch of him. Marty froze. What had he told her when he was hysterical and panicking? What had he said? He couldn’t remember. He couldn’t remember any of it. Marty looked at Jules. He couldn’t speak and he couldn’t move.

“What did you mean when you said that?” 

“Nothing.”

Did Jules’ face look scared? Worried? Her eyebrows were furrowed as she looked at him. Her mouth was tight. “You said you didn’t like to think about how you couldn’t be with boys here, what did you mean?”

This wasn’t a conversation Marty ever wanted to have. Not here. Not with her. And especially not after everything he had been through for the last 24 hours. There was no way out. Jules was standing right next to him. What had he told her? Oh god, what had he said in front of her and Dog while his grief and fear overcame him? He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

Jules reached out and took his hands. “You– you’ve never wanted to talk to the girls here. Boys your age start to notice girls, that’s all they ever think about. I’ve never even seen you look at a girl.”

Fuck fuck fuck. She knew. She already knew, she had figured it out. Stupid Kip! This was his fault, his and Marty’s for not being able to keep his fat mouth shut. Jules was going to hate him. She was going to hate him. The only time he had ever heard her talk about gay people was in the context of men preying on younger boys– she was going to think he was some kind of freak! Without Jules to look out for him, Marty was done for. He was cooked. He’d have to leave and join the garrison with the other war-orphans, and they’d almost certainly beat him to death for being a degenerate. Fuck! It was over, it was all over.

It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t like he had asked to be this way.

Marty wrenched his hands away from her. “I don’t like talking to anyone.” He was going to throw up. He was going to just collapse. “I don’t like anyone.”

“And this boy Kip?”

“No! Just leave me alone.” Luckily Jules was not savvy enough to ask for his phone. If she ever checked his messages and saw the pathetic, needy, desperate way he talked to Kip, she would really lose it. God forbid she ever learned about Lee.

Who was he kidding? He wasn’t fooling anyone. It was all over him and he couldn’t hide it.

“Marty.” Jules swallowed hard. Her expression was only worried. It had not changed to one of disgust or hatred. There was gentleness behind her eyes. “You’re alright.”

“You obviously don’t think I’m alright.”

“I’m scared you’ve spent so much time talking to people in Eden that you forget what life’s like here. People will hurt you, do you understand that? People will really hurt you if they think you’re different.” Her voice was tight. Again, she tried to reach out and touch him but Marty jerked away. “I’m sorry about your friends. But you can’t– you can’t talk like that in front of anyone. I don’t want you to ever talk about feeling like that to anyone. It’s fine if you want to have feelings for a boy from Eden, but you can’t think of anyone here that way, do you hear me?”

It would have been better if she had yelled at him. “I’m tired.” Marty edged away from her. Sleep. He just needed some sleep, just an hour or so, just until Ayda was able to talk to him again. “I’m going to bed.”

“I won’t be able to live with myself if someone hurts you,” said Jules. She didn’t move to follow him. Her voice sounded small and scared.

“Nobody is going to hurt me.” Marty left to go to his room. He didn’t look back at her.

After all– that night he had learned that nobody could hurt him as badly as he could hurt himself. Not his mother, not the soldiers, not Lee, not anyone. The bombing was still his fault and he had to live with the consequences.

When his head hit his pillow, he fell into a deep and blessedly dreamless sleep.

##

Ayda did not contact him for a week.

For a week Marty was wracked with fear and guilt. He did not speak. He did not leave his room. Jules brought him food, she told him about how Florence sent a caravan with aid south, she told him about how they stopped communicating within a mile of Eden. Marty stared at the ceiling. He did not eat. He could not imagine anything worse than being unable to talk to the people he cared about.

And after all that time, when she did finally message him, it was worse. It was worse than anything. It was worse than Marty could possibly imagine.

One message. Two words.

“Kip’s dead.”

Marty would never open his heart up again.

[blooblooded]

Kip's Return Part 4: Dana Gets Her Kids Back

Two days after losing all hope of ever seeing her son again, Dana Nguyen contemplated suicide for the last time.

It wasn’t something she was supposed to think about. She knew she shouldn’t, there were too many people depending on her now, there was too much to do. But it didn’t hurt to think about it, did it? The option of an easy way out had always been a comfort to her and the knowledge that she could do it if she wanted to was the only thing Silas hadn’t been able to strip away. After allying herself with West and with Cihad Tariq and Barbara the Weil Sister, Dana stopped thinking about it so much. 

Well. Now it was the only thing she could think about. This was it. She had nothing left. It had all been stolen from her. Her life. Silas had taken everything. Over and over again, bit by bit, inch by painful inch, Silas had taken her whole life over the course of 20 years.

There was nothing left. Not even hope. Finally her worst fear had been confirmed. Her son was dead. Kip was dead. Silas had taken him, Silas had hurt him, and Silas had killed him. She hadn’t even given her his body.

And why? There was no point in asking why. Dana had tortured herself for years asking why she deserved this, why she deserved any of it. Why had Harry been shot like a dog in their own home? Because she deserved it. Why had Dana been given a position of power, only to be micromanaged and controlled? Because she deserved it. Why had Kip been taken away from her? Because she deserved it. Why had Kassidy decided to disappear without even saying goodbye? Because she deserved it. Dana deserved all of it. She knew that now. Something was wrong with her. The only reason for her existence was to be punished.

Well she was done with that. She was done with all of that. When Dana woke up that second morning after meeting with the Prospas boy, the second morning after he had hatefully told her that Kip was dead, she decided that she was not going to be hurt like this anymore.

“You’re gonna do it today,” she told her reflection in the mirror. The face looking back at her was a pathetic shell. Lines beneath her eyes made her look older than she was and it seemed like there was more gray in her hair than there had been a week ago. Dana hated looking at herself. She hated seeing the beaten dog weakness she saw there. “You’re gonna do it today. You’re not gonna pussy out this time, you stupid bitch. This is it. You’re really gonna do it.”

There wasn’t a point in showering or getting dressed. It wasn’t as if she was going into work. Dana was never going to go to work again. They would be fine without her. Vega Pelenato would be promoted to her position just like she always wanted. Good for her. Dana tied her hair back. She rummaged through her closet until she found a pair of baggy jeans and a faded T shirt of Harry’s that she had never had the guts to get rid of.

Maybe her plan would work better if she made an effort to look nice but Dana did not have the energy. She barely had the capacity to pull on her pants, even thinking about tying a tie was excruciating.

And Silas liked to see her looking weak and vulnerable. That was essential. That was the bait for the trap. Dana had to make herself low, she had to grovel and crawl. Silas had to want to get her all by herself to humiliate her for the millionth time. Then Dana could pump her full of bullets before blowing her own brains out.

It was a simple plan and one that Dana had fantasized about often. Two birds, one stone. None of West’s complicated machinations could come close to its efficacy. Dana wanted to die, and more than that, she wanted to take Silas with her. Murder suicide.

For a while she had lived in the unrealistic dream of hanging on until Silas was gone, the dream of seeing what the world might be like without her tight grip on it. West had shown her that dream two years ago when he had first asked for her help. Like everything with his touch on it, it was nothing more than a gilded fantasy. An impossibility that was nice to look at. They used to talk about it. She would talk with West, with Cihad, with Barbara Church about how beautiful a free Eden would be, and about how it was possible if they just worked hard enough. They could get rid of Silas and rebuild the world how they wanted it. Dana saw that for what it was now: a delusion they had all formed to cope with the suffering and the rigid control. There was only one way for this to end and that was with violence.

And her children were dead. She did not want to live without them. No mother should have to outlive her children.

Sure. Of course from day one West had claimed that Kassidy had escaped Eden and was safe in the Northern Territories. But there wasn’t any concrete evidence, was there? And West was a liar, he would say anything to get her to do what he wanted. When the Northern Ambassadors came to Eden months ago, Dana had begged Florence Gauthier to tell her that her daughter was safe and alive. Begged. Once again she had groveled like a dog in front of someone who had no intention of helping her. The infuriating Prime Minister acted like she did not know what she was talking about, she had looked at Dana like she was a crazy person. And now Gauthier was dead too, shot in a moment of Silas’s cold fury, and the other Northerners had scattered. 

She remembered what Kassidy had looked like the last day she saw her. Angry, raging, out of her mind. Her eyes had been bloodshot, her clothes had hung off of her. Sick! So, so incredibly sick! They had screamed at each other. Kassidy had screamed that she wished she had died instead of Kip, it had felt like a knife in the heart. Dana remembered seeing the cuts on Kassidy’s arms. She hadn’t known what that meant back then but she did now. Blood magic. There was only one way that could have ended. No use in thinking about the past. Even if she could go back and do everything right, Kassidy would have still died screaming. There had been a wound inside of her that was impossible to heal.

Dana wished that she had died instead of Kip too.

Poor Kassidy. Poor Kip. Poor Dana. She allowed herself to sit there and feel sorry for herself for as long as she could stand it, then

It was 8:00 in the morning. She rubbed her face and smudged her glasses. Might as well get started. Her hands were already trembling from withdrawals. That was another thing she wanted to stop. What a pathetic dependence, a manifestation of her own self-hatred and weakness. But there was no other way to cope. When she met Tony Delmont, he had seen right through her and had awkwardly brought up a couple insipid 12-Step platitudes. The first step was admitting you had a problem. Well Dana already knew she had a problem, but she sure as hell wasn’t willing to do anything about it. 

Tony could preach about sobriety all he wanted but all it did was bounce right off of Dana. He didn’t know what it was like for her. He didn’t know how bad everything hurt, how badly she needed to drink just to keep from losing her mind and screaming at everyone. His child was still alive, he didn’t get to tell her how she should cope. And the others, West and Cihad, they had already given up on her. All Barbara ever did was gently tell her that she was there if Dana needed her, and somehow that was worse. She didn’t want someone to be there for her. She wanted someone to put her out of her fucking misery.

It didn’t matter. It didn’t matter anymore. None of it did.

Dana walked out of the bathroom and into the living room of her cramped, filthy apartment. She should have moved years ago but didn’t have the heart to leave the place her kids grew up in, even though the memories tormented her. It was public housing, so at least the rent was stabilized. These days the pipes leaked and the carpets were infested with mites. Dana had stopped caring about the cleanliness of her living conditions years ago. She almost tripped over a stack of cardboard pizza boxes on the way to the kitchen.

No more shitty, broken apartment. No more listening to the neighbors beating the shit out of each other. No more trying and failing to keep things clean. What a relief. She opened the fridge, stared at nothing, then closed it again. No point. Dana opened the bottle of rot-gut liquor on the counter and poured 3 fingers into a coffee mug. It burned going down. She sniffed.

“You’re gonna do it today,” she told herself, and took another sip. The world seemed a bit clearer, her intentions were all laid bare in her mind. “You’re doing it today.”

The family picture she had taken to show the Prospas boy sat crumpled on the counter where she had left it. Dana couldn’t stand to look at it anymore. Looking at her kids when they were still alive and happy was too painful. Her fault. The things that had happened to them were her fault. She had failed them. She hadn’t been able to keep them safe. 

She should have known she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. Dana’s parents had treated her like shit. They hadn’t been able to protect her either, not that they had cared enough to try. They had lived in poverty, they had raging alcohol problems, and they always used to smack the shit out of her and her sister. She was stupid for thinking she could break the cycle. Even though she had never beaten her kids, even though she had tried her best to keep them clothed and fed, she had fucked both of them up. She hadn’t been able to keep them safe. She had failed them. She had failed Kip and Kassidy and now they were dead. It was her fault.

Beside the picture of her family was her firearm. Dana picked it up, turned it over. It was light and natural in her grip. The magazine held 15 bullets. That meant 14 bullets for Silas and 1 for her.

There was no proof that Silas could even die. When they first met, Dana had been 31 years old and Silas looked about 45. Now Dana was 53. And Silas still looked 45. She had not aged, not one gray hair, not one wrinkle. She was as cold and calm as the day she first saw her. Maybe she wasn’t even human. But it was hard to imagine something that wouldn’t die after getting hit with 14 bullets.

It would work. If Silas could bleed, she could die, and Dana had seen her bleed. Only once. In those frantic moments after Florence Gauthier had caught a bullet in the chest, she had used the last of her strength to put a knife through Silas’s belly. There hadn’t been much blood, no danger at all, but Dana had never seen Silas so scared, she had never seen the cold mask crack that much. And she had filed that away, she had thought about that for a long, long time. It would work.

Dana took another drink and practiced taking the safety on and off. By then she had warmed a little, and felt almost giddy at the thought of seeing Silas’s body full of holes. It would have to be fast. She was a good shot, she would have to be if she wanted to put Silas down and then kill herself before anyone else caught on. Usually they had their meetings alone, so Silas could bully and humiliate her in private without her subordinates catching on to her true nature. In a perfect world, Dana would have enough time to enjoy the look in Silas’s eyes as she realized that her masochistic chewtoy of two decades was about to murder her, but she would have to move fast. 

She would do it as soon as possible. She would do it now, with her smudged glasses and dirty clothes and all her terrible, exhausting grief. And she would be free. Everyone would be free. It was within her power.

What a relief! Finally, something inside her control. It felt good to know that she was finally going to take something back. It felt freeing. She had not realized how motivating it would be to have every last scrap of hope snatched away from her.

Dana didn’t want to die. She just didn’t want to be alive and in pain anymore. It was for the best. Anyone who knew her would understand. It was better this way. West and the others would—

Right. West. West and the others. Dana knocked back the rest of her drink. Already it was eating away at her impulse control and inhibitions. She put down the gun and pulled her phone out of her pocket, squinted at the contacts, and called the most annoying man she knew. Better get this out of the way, since she wasn't planning on leaving a note.

As usual, West picked up before the 3rd ring. “Dana,” he said, and it sounded like he was eating something. “Have you been keeping up with the riots? They tore down one of the social services buildings in the Mid-Levels. That freak Blake Joyner’s been raging about it on state TV since last night. He’s saying that the Prospas interview was fabricated to create political chaos and the kid’s a liar. Of course that’s just making people angrier. None of this could have gone better if I had fabricated it!”

She could almost see him smiling. Dana didn’t know what to tell him. He was going to be hurt. Over the years, West had told her about all the people he had lost. His family had been brutally massacred when he was only a child. That loss and his love for them was what fueled his every action. He was so…so different from her. He wasn’t someone who let his own grief and sadness control him, he controlled it. He would be fine. He was her friend and she loved him, but she knew he would be fine. He was always fine. West’s pain was not her responsibility. She cleared her throat and poured more liquor into her mug. “That’s great,” she said. 

“It’s all destabilizing. The people want to fight back. They’re realizing that the state is here to control them, not to protect them. We’re close. We’re so close. Gauthier’s men got a message to their armies in the North, all we need is a little more time.”

“We got lucky,” said Dana. She licked her lips, tried to think, tried to think of a natural place in the conversation to tell him not to blame himself for what was about to happen. For what she was about to do. It was good that he was happy. She couldn’t be happy. She knew that this could not end the way they needed it to unless Silas was dead. 

“It works out. I’ve been talking to the transportation union representatives into striking. We could force a shutdown, really isolate Internal Operations and Riot Control from where the protests are happening. They can’t crack down if they can’t get to them.”

“Look, West, I–”

“We have a chance this time. We have a real chance. It’s like I can see it in front of me. I can see what Eden could really be like.” He paused and it sounded like he swallowed whatever mouthful of food he was eating. “What did you call to talk to me about, Dana? I heard– Cihad told me that you went with Delmont to talk to the Prospas kid the other day.”

This was where she was going to turn into a coward again, where she was going to act like everything was fine so that he didn’t worry. Since when did she care about West worrying about her? It was insane to think about. How had they become friends? Two years ago she would have never imagined that she would come to care about such a vain, overbearing narcissist. Two years ago she hated him! Now she was afraid of breaking his heart.

There was no other choice. West could handle one more heartbreak. He was better than her in that way.

“Yeah,” she said. Her voice sounded dead. There was a lump in her throat like she was about to cry, which was crazy since she never cried. She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried. Dana took another drink. She wanted to feel dizzy. She wanted every chain inside of her heart to dissolve. She wanted to have zero control when she shot Silas just like how Harry had been shot, just like how Kip had been shot. Her baby. Her babies. She couldn’t stand it. “Yep. Yeah.”

“I heard about Kip. I’m so sorry. I thought—-maybe it wouldn’t be too late.”

“Can’t do anything about it now.” She stared at the gun. 15 bullets. Bang, bang, bang. Blood and nothingness. “Too late to do anything about it now.”

“Is there anything I can do for you?”

“Things are going to change today.” Dana tried to swallow the hard lump in her throat. She hated feeling things. She hated sentimentality. It would be better to be like Silas, cold and withdrawn, but she wasn’t like Silas. There were emotions inside of her and she hated it. She hated how weak it had made her, she hated what it had done to her. She wanted it gone. “I wanted to thank you for everything. I wanted to tell you I’m sorry. You mean a lot to me.”

A very long pause. “What are you about to do?” West’s tone had changed in an instant to one of hesitant fear. He was too perceptive. That was his problem.

She rubbed her nose with the back of one hand, swallowed again. “I think you’re my closest friend. I wouldn’t have even imagined that before.”

“Dana, what are you about to do?” More insistent this time. It didn’t matter. It was a 30 minute rail ride from the Upper Residential Levels to her place on the Mids. Longer with the riots. And West couldn’t get within 500 feet of the Capitol building. He couldn’t stop her even if he tried.

There was nothing to say. Not really. Dana couldn’t help herself, she glanced at the crumpled picture of her children for a moment. It was a moment too long. She saw Kip’s big smile and loving eyes, she saw Kassidy’s spark of tenacity reflected back in her hesitant expression. The best parts of both of them existed only in her memories. 

They were gone and she wanted to be gone too. None of this mattered anymore.

“I’m ending all of this,” was the only thing she could think to say. She was so tired. The only thing that kept her standing was her anger, and even that was fizzling out. Everything had been crushed out of her. “I’m putting an end to this. You know. The way I used to talk about.”

“Dana, I’m coming down there now. You’re being crazy. I’m serious, I’m dead serious, I’m— you have to—“

He couldn’t control her anymore either. Nobody could. “Bye, West,” she said, and hung up the phone.

While she stood there, feeling nothing, feeling dead and empty already, he called her back three times. She stared at her phone and turned it off. Maybe she should have put it into the microwave. Nuking any trace of evidence was something that she had thought of before. But that was pointless too. There was nothing to protect anymore. Even if 14 bullets did not kill Silas, Dana was not going to be around for the repercussions.

And West could take care of himself.

She took a last drink. Everything was numb now. There was no fear, there wasn’t anything. The relief transformed into peacefulness. 20 years of exhaustion, misery, and pain had all condensed into one moment in front of her. One moment where she pulled one trigger 14 times.

Dana was an atheist and had been one her whole life. She had raised her children that way. It seemed to make sense. Maybe it would be nice to think about the end of her life leading to something better. Some kind of heaven where she could be reunited with Kip and Kassidy. That sweet fantasy did not change what she believed. It was going to be nice to get some rest at last. 

Death didn’t scare her. She looked forward to it. A dreamless sleep.

It was time to move on. Maybe West would try to stop her. Maybe he would try to contact Cihad or Barb. That wouldn’t do any good for him. Cihad would just panic. And Barb, well—

Barbara Church had always been one to let people make their own choices. But there was a part of Dana, a small, quiet part, wished that she could see her one last time.

Dana pulled her boots on and laced them up with double knots. Her knees popped when she knelt down. That was another thing she would be glad to leave behind. Weak, aging body. It didn’t matter that her joints were going, it didn’t matter that her back hurt all the time, it didn’t matter that there was a pain beneath her ribs, where her liver was, that wouldn’t go away. All that mattered was that she could point and aim. And she could do that very well.

She realized that her heart was beating fast despite the numbing effect of her drinks. Anxious? No. Excited. She was excited. She was finally going to get what she wanted. She was finally going to go out on her terms. If Silas had it her way, she would keep picking at and taking from Dana until she died. She wasn’t going to get that. Silas was going to get what she deserved.

At least two bullets would go into her head and the rest into her torso. Dana wished she could make it slow, she wished she could make Silas suffer like she had suffered. Silas deserved to suffer. She wanted to hurt her so badly. She wanted to make her scream and cry the way she had cried. But there just wasn’t enough time.

It was time to do it. It was time to do it. Dana was going to do it. It was all going to finally be over. It was all going to finally be worth it. Silas was going to die. Dana was going to die. This was always how it was going to end. Part of her had always known that there was no way for this to end without both of them dying. Maybe in the beginning it could have been different. But that was before she lost both of her children.

Maybe Kip hadn’t suffered. He wouldn’t have, if he had been shot in the head like the Prospas boy had told her. Not that it mattered. He would have suffered for 10 years regardless in the secret police. She knew what it was like now. She had always known, part of her had, but now all her fears had been confirmed. They had hurt her baby. They would have stripped him of his memories and his identity, they would have forced him to go against his sweet nature and hurt other people. He had suffered and he had died and for what? Because Silas hated her so much that she had to take something away and break it?

And she knew that Kassidy must have suffered. She had suffered badly. Dana knew all about blood magic now. It was the ultimate destruction of the self. It was self hatred and pain incarnate. Had her daughter not seen any other choice? Had Kassidy felt so angry and weak that she decided that it was better to turn her own organs into slush? It was no different than taking a gun and shooting herself. Or maybe it was different. The difference was that one death was fast, the other was agonizingly slow. That was so typical of her daughter. She had always chosen the hardest way to do things. 

Why did it hurt so bad? There was nothing worse than this. She couldn’t even cry, not that she wanted to. Dana willed the hurt deep down inside of her until it was covered by numb nothingness. She would be as cold as Silas if she had to be. 

Time to go. It was time to go, it was time to do it. Just do it, just fucking do it. This wasn’t the time to pussy out. This wasn’t the time to think! She was going to do it, she was really going to do it this time. This was–

The doorbell rang.

“Shit!” Dana’s entire body flinched at the sound. She stared at the door from the kitchen. No, no no! There was nobody that could be! She had no one in her life, there was nobody that could be this early in the morning. Fucking Silas! Had she missed a camera? Dana thought that she had found all of them. She thought she had destroyed all of them.  And even if she hadn’t, how could she know? Even if Silas was watching, how could she know what she was thinking? That bitch, that fucking voyeuristic bitch, always watching her. No, that was impossible.

She moved like she was in a dream. Body straightening. Hand on the gun, finger on the trigger. Dana was vaguely aware that her teeth were clenched and that her eyes were wide but she was so separated from herself in that moment that there was no way she could control that even if she tried. She watched herself walk to the door.

Nobody could stop her from what she intended to do. If that meant going to Silas with 14 bullets instead of 15, so be it. So be it. She could work with 14.

Dana was beyond logic. Occam’s razor posited that the simplest explanation— that the person at the door was a solicitor or her landlord instead of a secret police kill squad — was the most likely. But Dana’s mind could not fathom anything but the worst possible explanation anymore. Her whole life had been built from the worst possible situations. Her head pounded. Finger on the trigger. Finger on the trigger. 

She flung open the door with the gun raised.

“Holy fuck, Ma! Quit pointing that thing at me! It’s OK, it’s OK!”

Kassidy was in front of her.

Kassidy was at the door. There was nobody else this person could be. Her little daughter. Her baby. She didn’t even have her hands up, she was looking at Dana like she had grown a second head, like she was totally insane. Her hair was shorter, chopped close to her ears like a boy’s and puffing up like a halo. The clothes were all wrong, sleeker and darker than anything Kassidy used to wear, a black turtleneck and matching jeans. But it was Kassidy. Kassidy, like she had never been gone. Kassidy, back from the dead.

Back from the dead.

There was no way for Dana to process this. She was already half drunk and half wild with her plan to end her life. She dropped the gun in frozen shock.

“You,” she said, and her mouth didn’t work. Nothing would come out. “You—“

“OK Ma, I know this is a lot.” Kassidy walked through the door. Her hands twitched and she looked past her into the apartment. “Hold on, do you have any history of heart problems I don’t know about?”

What was happening?! What the fuck was happening?! Dana found herself grabbing her own hair like she was about to rip it out. She started shaking all over, her eyes bulged even more. “Where did you come from!?” she asked, and she realized that she was yelling. She shook her head, trying to clear her mind. “Goddamn it! What the fuck is the matter with you? Where have you been?! I thought you were dead all this time and you just show up here like it’s nothing?! What the fuck is the matter with you?!”

Oh, this was wrong, this was all wrong. Dana wondered if she was going to fall over. Why was she yelling? She was too shocked to do anything else. Her body flooded with cortisol, she couldn’t process what was happening. She couldn’t even breathe.

Kassidy stepped forward and hugged her tightly. That was even more shocking. Dana could not even remember the last time she had been hugged and that loving, intimate touch was just…overwhelming. She squeezed her hard and Dana couldn’t even think to raise her arms or move to hug her back. “I mean, your blood pressure is OK though, right? You’re not at risk for heart attacks or any shit like that?”

“You’re going to give me a goddamn heart attack!” It hadn’t hit her yet. She had not seen Kassidy in over two years and it had not hit her yet. Dana could feel her daughter’s thin arms around her and it felt the same as it did 10 years ago when everything hadn’t all turned to shit. Shaking violently, she reached up to press her hand against the back of Kassidy’s head, just to make sure that this was real. She was not yet sure if this was real. Her heart hammered in her chest. 

Maybe this was a dream. This could be a dream. Dana dreamed about her children almost every night. Mostly bad dreams. Mostly dreams that involved watching them die. In her head, she had watched them die so many times.

But this felt so real.

Kassidy let go of her first. Her face was set in a neutral expression but it seemed forced, her black eyes were wide and her mouth was twitching. “Hold on,” she said, and her voice cracked. She blinked rapidly. “You’re gonna– fuck, shit, I’m fucking this up.”

“I’m gonna kill you!” This was still impossible. Dana did not know what she was supposed to do, she did not know how she was supposed to feel. She grabbed Kassidy’s face, cupping her cheeks with both hands and pulling her closer. “Where were you?! Where have you been?! Where have you fucking been?! You– you’re– I’m gonna kill you! I’m gonna fucking strangle you!”

Again, Kassidy pulled away. “Give me a second.” Her mouth kept trembling like she was trying very hard not to cry. “Hold on, just hold on for a second, I had this fucking planned out.”

Dana felt her knees buckle. No, no, this wasn’t real. This was absurd. She didn’t deserve this. What had she done to deserve this? No, this was impossible, there was no way something she wanted could just be handed to her! Not after all this time! It didn’t make sense! She wanted to scream. She wanted to pull out her hair just to make sure this was real. Her brain wasn’t working, it was short circuiting. When she tried to breathe, her lungs wouldn’t fill all the way. All she could do was stare at the daughter that she thought she had lost, her only girl, her youngest, her baby. The desperate rage she had felt only minutes before had nowhere to go. 

And as she stared at her, Kassidy turned to look over her shoulder. “Come on,” she said. Her voice cracked again.

A young man walked into the apartment doorway. He was tall and broad shouldered, wearing sunglasses and a hat. When he entered the apartment, he snatched off the sunglasses to reveal huge brown eyes with all the wavering sweetness of a puppy. Despite his age, despite the scruffy beard and shaved head, his familiarity was immediately obvious. 10 years melted away in an instant. The young man was trembling harder than Dana was and his arms were crossed over his chest as if he was comforting himself. Or protecting himself. Kassidy reached out to touch his back. She looked at him, then back at her mother.

Dana wondered if she was having a stroke. The blood drained from her body, she was so cold, but so sweaty at the same time. Recognition flashed through her. No, no. No. Nope. No. Not him. It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be him. She had lost her mind. This was it. It was all the drinking. She had finally fucked herself with all the drinking.  It had done something to her and now she was hallucinating. Or maybe she was dead. Maybe she had died, maybe she should have never rejected the idea of an afterlife because here she was gazing into the face of someone who was dead.

“Wait–” Kassidy began.

The young man turned green and pressed a hand over his mouth. He shoved past Dana, ran to the kitchen sink, and started to throw up.

This was so familiar, something that had happened so often, that Dana’s reaction was one of pure instinct. Pure memory. She whirled around, pointing at him. “Goddammit!” she shouted. “Not in the fucking sink, Christopher! What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m not doing it on purpose!” He threw up again.

“Well you—”

That’s when it hit her.

Her son had just walked into her home, looked at her, and vomited in her sink. Kip. Kip, who she had lost 10 years ago. Kip, who had been taken from her. Kip, who was dead. Her baby. Her fucking baby! There he was! Just like normal! Getting so worked up and upset that he puked! Nothing had changed! He was bigger and older but nothing had changed!

Was she completely fucking insane? Dana’s knees buckled again as she stared at him. She shook her head, sat down on the floor so that she wouldn’t fall, and screamed into her hands.

“Oh, fuck me!” yelled Kassidy, as she slammed the apartment door shut. “Shit, shit, please don’t have a heart attack! It’s OK, Ma, I can explain everything, I promise!”

Kip turned on the sink and turned around so fast that he accidentally knocked the coffee machine off the counter. It smashed on the floor, spewing day old coffee and glass everywhere. “Shit!” Kip was yelling too. The sudden noise must have scared him because he instinctively kicked the machine and sent it flying into the wall where it smashed further. “Shit! I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

The downstairs neighbor pounded on their ceiling with what must have been a broom handle. “Keep it down up there, Nguyen!” Their voice was muffled only slightly by the thin floor of the shithole apartment.

“Shut the fuck up, Anderson!” Dana screamed. This was insane. This was completely insane. No, no. She didn’t deserve this. What had she done to deserve this? She had failed them, she hadn’t done enough to protect them, and now they were back? They had just come back? Just like that? Make it make sense! Her chest was tight, she held herself as tight as she could. It was too much. She didn’t know what to do, she didn’t know how to act. 

There was nothing she could have done to prepare herself for a reunion on the day she planned to kill herself. 

The earth had fallen out from beneath her. She still couldn’t breathe. The shock was too great. Not even fight or flight was kicking in yet. Was it possible? She could see them, she could hear them, but was this really possible? Her mind was unable to process it.

Vaguely, she was aware of Kip lunging towards her and dropping to his knees as she wheezed for air. She felt him fling his arms around her and press his face into her shoulder the way that he used to when he was a little boy. But he wasn’t a little boy anymore, was he? He was a man. He had grown up and she had missed that. Dana could feel him shaking, she could feel his chest spasming as he sobbed. Instinctually, she held him. He did not fit in her arms the way that he used to. He was not the same but he was still her baby.

He was real. Kassidy was real. This was happening. This was real. 

It was real and it was terrible! What was she supposed to do? She didn’t know what she was supposed to do! She was too used to pain, she was too used to loss, what was she supposed to do? But this was real, this was all real, it was real and it was happening and somehow it all felt so final.

“I’m sorry!” Kip was babbling into her shoulder. His hands dug into the fabric of her shirt. “I’m sorry, I– I’m sorry!” 

And what was he apologizing for? He hadn’t done anything wrong. Dana squeezed him hard, maybe she should be rubbing his back, but she couldn’t do that yet, she couldn’t do anything but just hold him. She didn’t want to let him go. She didn’t want to let him go ever again. If she stopped holding him, would he disappear? Terror dug its talons into her heart at the thought of losing her son a second time.

“Where were you?” she asked him, even though she knew. Even though she did not want to hear him say it. She didn’t want him to answer, so why did she say it? It was the only thing she could think to say. Dana’s throat was closing up and her face was so hot. She tried to swallow and couldn’t. No, no, don’t start crying. If she started crying now, she would be unable to stop. “I tried– I tried to find you— I tried so hard to—”

“Ma, stop.” Kassidy approached and crouched down too, putting her hands on both of them. “We’re here, it’s OK.”

Kip was crying like he was being ripped in two. Dana pushed him away so she could get a good look at his face. She touched his cheek, brushed back his hair. Oh god. What had they done to her baby?

What had she done to deserve this? Again, she tried to swallow and the lump in her throat prevented her from doing so. Her glasses had started to fog up and she snatched them off, cast them aside. Her mouth was quivering. The chain around her heart was almost completely dissolved and the floodgates were opening.

“I’m sorry!” Kip was trying so hard to stop crying. He wiped furiously at his face, like he was angry at himself. “I would have tried to come back if I remembered who you were. I–I couldn’t even remember who I was.”

“Oh god.” This was too much. This was too much for her. She couldn’t take it. Just the feeling of her boy in her arms was too much to bear.

“I would have tried to come back. I didn’t – I didn’t try hard enough! I never even tried to leave, I didn’t even want to leave!”

“Oh god.” It was all she could say.

“I would have tried to come back if I remembered!”

“Kip, you don’t need to say that.” Kassidy’s voice was choked up too, like she was trying to hold everything in. Dana could feel her daughter’s small hand twisted in the fabric of her t-shirt. Since when had she grown to think she was supposed to be the strong one for the rest of them? That wasn’t her place. That wasn’t what she was supposed to do. Dana was their mother, she was supposed to be the one holding them together, she was supposed to be the one protecting them, she was supposed to–

Well, she had failed.

She had failed them but it didn’t matter anymore, did it? It didn’t matter how she had been too wrapped up in her own anger and grief to notice what was wrong. It didn’t matter that her own stubbornness and hatred of her emotions had made it next to impossible to speak to them all those years ago. Dana and failed and failed and failed again, but it didn’t matter. Her mistakes didn’t matter. She didn’t deserve it, but she had her children back.

The relief and terror that flooded her body did not allow her to consider how easy it would be for them to be taken away again. Not yet. 

Dana was able to get a shuddering breath in and pulled away from her son, both hands on his shoulders. Christopher still held onto her like he was drowning, trying so hard to pull himself back together. Without her glasses, his face was blurry, but she could make out the pain on it. What was she supposed to tell him? Was she supposed to tell him that it wasn’t his fault? That it was her fault? All her fault? Somehow that still rang false. Dana realized that her cheeks were wet. She looked down and saw that fat tears were dripping onto her sweatpants.

She could not remember the last time she had cried.

The chains around her heart dissolved completely. The floodgates finally opened. Dana let it happen.

“You were both gone.” God, her voice sounded so pathetic, so weak and wavering, and so old. She leaned so that her forehead was pressed against her son’s, too tired now to do anything else. “You were both just gone. I– I didn’t know what to do without you, I kept trying, I tried so hard everyday but it was like I was dead too.”

‘Ma–”

“I thought that if I just rolled over and did whatever she told me to do, she’d give you back to me,” she told Kip, unable to even look at him, burdened by the weight of her own confession. “I knew where you were, I knew where you were for 10 years. But I couldn’t do anything! I could never fight back, I knew that if I stepped out of line even once, she would just hurt you. I was so tired of her holding you over my head, I was tired of feeling trapped. Deep down I knew she would never give you back.”

Even then, she did not say Silas’s name out loud. She never did. Not with West, not with Cihad, not with anyone. The paranoia that she could be listening had never truly left her.

“It’s not your fault,” said Kassidy, rubbing her back as she cried. Somehow that felt perverse, like their roles had been switched around. “It’s not your fault, Ma.”

Oh, but it was her fault. Dana continued to speak the terrible words, they were pouring out of her like tears now. “I knew you hated me for it, Kassidy. You wouldn’t talk to me. Right before you left, I could see you were killing yourself. I knew you were sick. I knew, but I never told you I was scared for you and I never asked you to stay because I knew how much you hated me. You were just gone and I knew you were dead. What did I have left for her to take away? So I started stepping out of line. And it felt good. It felt like I was taking something back. But then she— then I— I didn’t have anything left! You both were gone and I wanted to be gone too.”

And even in her weakness Dana knew she was a piece of shit for telling her children she wanted to die. It was either that or lie to them. The gun was right there on the floor. They weren’t stupid kids anymore.

She had missed seeing them growing up.

All Dana could do was cry. It was too much. It was all too much for her. When she woke up that morning, she had planned on committing an act of violence so single-minded and final that it would take her out of this world. Now her children’s arms were around her. She hadn’t lost them. They had been taken from her but she hadn’t lost them, she had them back. How was she supposed to just accept that? For 10 years, her life had been utterly devoid of love, a shell of nothingness. How was she just supposed to accept love back in? How was she supposed to let it fill up her heart again?

There was no choice other than to find out. She would have to learn. Love offered no safety. Dana knew the vulnerability of loving and being loved all too well. It hurt. It could be taken away. It was so much easier to just be empty and closed off, but that was what she had been doing for years and where had that gotten her? It was a path to nothing but murder and suicide. In that moment, there was no greater relief and no greater pain than the love she felt for her children.

Christopher’s forehead pressed into her’s. All she could see were his huge, sweet eyes. Kassidy had wrapped her arms around her so tightly that it was like she was trying to merge her body into her mother’s. They stayed this way for a long time on the floor of the filthy, cramped apartment that had been empty for so many years.

“I love you, Ma,” Kassidy’s voice broke.

“Love you.” Kip’s big hands clasped Dana’s. He was still trembling. “Love you.”

Dana could no longer speak. She could hardly even think beyond the sensation of her children’s bodies so close to her own. The words were all gone and the only expression she had left were her tears. In this moment there was no more need for words. That would come later. They would talk later. 

There was all the time in the world for talking. They had all the time in the world.

##

The phone call Dana received hours later was so predictable, so obvious, that she did not even look at the name on her caller ID. Of course. Of course she was not so stupid to believe that she was free. She would never be free. There was only one choice for her now and that was to cling on to any small happiness she found in her captivity.

She listened, barely even hearing. Barely even able to hear. Of course Silas knew. Of course Silas had seen. Silas saw everything and had eyes everywhere. It was stupid to believe that she had not seen, and Kip and Kassidy had been stupid to believe that they could come to her without being observed. They didn’t know what it was like. They didn’t know what she was like.

It didn’t matter. The clock had been turned back. Dana would do what she should have done 10 years ago. She would crawl and beg and make herself small. When she was told to jump she would ask how high. Anything, everything, anything that was asked of her, she would do, no matter how much of a betrayal, no matter how degrading to her sense of self. The only thing that mattered was that her children were alive and she would do anything to stop them from being taken again.

What was the worst thing about having something back? The fact that it can be taken away again. The fact that it could be held over her head like leverage.

“Do you understand?” asked Silas on the other line. And wasn’t that so typical? Silas and her little questions. 

Dana realized that her hand felt wet. She looked down and saw blood running from half-moon shaped gouges on her palm from where she had pressed her nails inside a fist. She opened her hand dully, shaking. “What?”

“I’m giving you another chance to be with your children.”

“That’s very generous,” said Dana, trying to come across as the chained and beaten dog she was, but hearing the bitter sarcasm. Maybe the bitch wouldn’t notice. She tried to imagine Kip and Kassidy safe with their friends in the safe house they had described. So much for a safe house. There was nowhere safe in Eden. “Thank you.”

“So you understand me? You’ll abandon West Agapama’s subversive scheme against me? Saint already has. I showed him that the same thing that happened to your son could happen to his daughter if he doesn’t stop this defiance.”

Oh, but she was lying and Silas knew that she knew. She knew that Dana had already talked to the Prospas boy about what had really happened in the school with Cynthia Delmont 3 days ago. By that account, the attempt to kidnap Cihad’s daughter had been a monumental failure that revealed the lack of control and disorganization inside Internal Operations. The secret police were no longer an obedient weapon of the state: as Silas slowly lost control, they had turned into unmanageable teenagers who were thirsty for blood. Silas’s methods of control in Eden– constant observation, well-organized law enforcement, and extra-judicial killings– were all cracking.

But the Prospas kid had lied to her too. West was always lying. Florence Gauthier had lied. What was the truth? There was no way for Dana to know what was true. The only things she had was what was in front of her.

The only things in front of her that she cared about were her children.

“You’ll suppress the riots,” Silas continued. It was easy for Dana to imagine her sitting in front of her screens, watching her even though she was sure she had destroyed all the cameras in her home.  “You’ll help me crush the people who are trying to destroy everything we have here in Eden. I want Agapama arrested and publicly executed. I want that Church social worker arrested and publicly executed. I want an end of blood magic in this Colony. I want that Prospas deserter dragged back in front of the cameras to take back what he said, then returned to the secret police. I want every Church shelter that has harbored traitors and conspirators torn down. If the Northern Armies descend and lay siege, you’ll do what I tell you to end it. If I tell you to pull a trigger, you’ll pull it. You’ll stop fighting me. Do you understand?”

“I do,” said Dana, already missing the feeling of her children’s arms around her. If the Northern Armies marched south, Eden would not survive the bloodshed without a surrender, and Silas would never surrender. She dug her nails into her palm until it hurt. Silas had to die. Silas had to die and she had to figure out some other way to do it. “I’ll do anything you ask.”

“I’m glad to hear that.” Silas paused. “And I want you to know that if you don’t, I’ll tell the Thing that almost ended your daughter’s life to go and finish the job. Did she tell you about that? Did Kassidy tell you about the hungry Thing from the Lost Colony? It followed her back here.”

Kassidy hadn’t. Kassidy hadn’t said anything about where she had been for two years. There hadn’t been enough time, she wasn’t ready. None of them had been ready to talk past the overwhelming joy and relief and love of reunification. It had been a conversation for later. The Lost Colony? Dana stared blankly into nothingness.

“I want you to know that if you don’t do the things I’ve asked, I’ll have your son taken back to Internal Operations and turned over to my staff before I have him shot. What about Christopher? Did he tell you about what happened to him for the last 10 years? Maybe not. If he told you what he’s done, you might not want him around anymore.”

Always with the fucking questions. Kip hadn’t told her anything either. He hadn’t needed to. Dana already knew, everyone in Eden already knew exactly what kind of conditions were needed to turn teenagers into killing machines for the state. West and his broadcasts 2 days ago had made sure of that.

This was the part where Dana was supposed to plead and beg and promise to be a good girl. This was where she was supposed to choose her children over the children of everyone else in Eden. Her eyes pricked. Her teeth clenched. She was so stupid. A small part of her wished Kip and Kassidy had never come back. At least then, Silas would be dead.

And she would be too. Too late for that. 

Outside, she could hear people yelling and the quiet pop-pop-pop of Riot Control’s rubber bullets. The riots had spread to the Mid-Levels. West’s plans for Colony-wide destabilization and protests were working. Maybe he had convinced the transportation union to block off access to the subways to protect the people. Dana hoped he had. Dana hoped the riots kept spreading. She was not the only one in Eden who had felt trapped and helpless for years. Bright anger was in everybody’s blood.

There would be other ways to kill Silas.

“I’ll do anything you ask,” she said, and was surprised to hear that her voice did not sound as dead as she thought it would. “Anything you ask.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” Silas said again. “And I’m glad you have your children back. You deserve it.”

Dana ended the call at that and thought about what she was going to do next.

Even a chained and beaten dog can snap.

[blooblooded]

Stasya in the Lost Colony

ASILO, THE LOST COLONY, 654 YEARS AFTER THE OPENING OF THE RIFT

The poison was in the water supply. It had been there for at least 2 days. The stuff was not from this world, harvested from the slimy corpses of the crawling abominations. Turn on a faucet and the water would come out black. It stunk like rotten death. Already, the bodies of those who had drunk it were twisting and mutating. Stasya Nekraskova could already hear them screaming and howling in the streets outside.

The Colony was doomed. She knew that. She knew it as well as anything. There were only two choices: get out or die like the rest of them.

“We have to do something!” Kira Tariq, the high priestess of the Red Temple could not stop sobbing. Her hands twisted in her long dark hair. She and Stasya had taken refuge in Asilo’s Capitol Building, but even that was not safe. It would not be safe as long as that…Thing…still walked around inside it. The thing that called itself Jerry Botega. “Everyone’s dying! I can’t– I can’t just sit here and do nothing!”

Stasya watched her dispassionately. The blood magic user had come to her, begging for help. Wasn’t that ironic. For the last 6 months, every other witch in Asilo had been hunted down and drained of their blood by the mobbing worshippers of the Rift. She had seen their bodies strung up, the intestines falling out onto the streets. Everyone had been clamoring for their deaths for a long time. Their magic was an aberration, and wasn’t that ironic too? It was two sides of the same coin. The witches were a threat to it. It knew what they could do. Every witch except for her. She wasn’t like the rest of them. She was better, smarter. She wanted to live more. “Pull yourself together.”

Outside the Capitol building, people were screaming. Stasya had seen it. Their bodies were changing. The thing that lived inside of Jerry had made a broadcast before poisoning the water. “One of you will be my new host,” it had said. “One of your bodies will be mine.”

The only thing that followed was agony.

“We can stop it,” said Kira. Her pretty face was streaked with tears. The creature inside of Jerry Botega had ripped her husband’s head off his shoulders in front of everyone in the old temple. That was the moment where everything started to go wrong. “I know how. You can help me. You have to help me, Anastasia. We can force it back into the Book.”

The Book. Stasya did not know much about the Book, only that Kira said it was where the Thing had lived before it lived inside of Jerry. She had seen it once before, inside the great temple. Even looking at it had made her head throb painfully. It did not like witches.

“How?” she asked. Her mouth was as dry as sandpaper. Yesterday she had slaked her thirst with her last bottle of juice. What other choice did she have? Drink the water? Twist and suffer while her guts slipped out of her and her bones cracked? It wasn’t making people better or stronger, it was just killing them in the most painful ways imaginable. It was killing them and they were all locked inside the Colony with no way to get out. Stasya had not seen the moon or the stars in months. Her magic was weak.

“Together. You and me, with both of our magic. Different kinds of magic. It can’t stay in his body if we hurt him, it will have to go back. And– and there’s the sword, it’s made from metal from the Other Place. Em-Emma Fitzgerald has it, she says it can force that Thing out of Botega!”

Stasya knew about the sword too. A children’s fairy tale. She glanced out the window. Most of the buildings outside were on fire. “Did you call Eden and the Northern Territories for help?”

“That horrible four-eyed atheist in Eden cut the feeds the moment I told her what was happening here! Frank, Frank Toussaint, he said he would come with some men but–”

“So help is on its way.” Another fairy tale. Stasya knew they were on their own. It was too late. She knew the way Eden and the Territories would want to deal with this. Everyone in Asilo had heard of the ways Eden solved its problems. Firebombs and quarantine until everyone inside Asilo was dead.

Kira Tariq’s eyes were as red as blood. “Nobody is coming,” she said. Her voice trembled. She clutched her hands over her pregnant belly. “Nobody will get here in time! We have to do it. We have to stop it! You don’t know what I’ve seen! You don’t know what it told me! If we don’t stop it, it will cover the whole earth in darkness and the oceans will turn to blood! It will consume all life here!”

Something outside crashed onto the streets below. She could hear the faint pops of machine gun fire as the police who were still…human tried to control the hungry, mindless hordes. 

What were the choices? Get ripped to shreds or accept the change and become a monster. It was not a choice that Stasya wanted to make.

She would die before she had to make that choice. She would kill herself before she allowed her body to be mutilated. But she did not want to die. Stasya pushed her hair out of her face and started to pace, her long skirt swirling around her ankles.

“Where is the Book?” she asked. “If you want me to do what you say, I would have to look at the Book itself.” There was magic in it, even if it was empty. It was possible that Stasya could leech some of that power into her own body. It was what she had always been good at: stealing from others. For years, she had drained the power and life force from other witches, adding theirs to her own. But the magic in the Book, the magic that fueled blood magic, came from somewhere else. The Void. It came from the Void.

The Void. That was what the Rift-Worshippers had been hiding from everyone. Stasya could barely wrap her mind around it. Kira told her that there was a place between universes that was filled with monsters. The creature inside of Jerry Botega had come from that place, hungry and bodiless. It was the source of all blood magic on earth.

“The Book– it’s somewhere safe.” Kira wasn’t looking at her anymore. She was just weeping. Attachments made her weak, attachments to her dead husband, to her unborn child. She had more to fight for than Stasya did, but those things put her at a disadvantage.

“Where is that?” Stasya reached out with her mind to test if she could steal some of the priestess’s power. The sting of blood magic made her flinch and pull back. If Kira Tariq noticed, she did not show it.

“I have it somewhere safe!”

“You don’t trust me. You’ve come to me for help and you still don’t trust me.”

Kira’s red eyes were bloodshot. Her make-up was spilling down her face. Her belly was so large that it made it difficult for her to move; she was ready to pop any day now.  She shook her head. “I do, I do, I trust you,  I just can’t– I have to keep the Book safe! You don’t understand, it’s our last chance. We have to send that Thing back into the Book. We have to kill Jerry Botega and send that Thing back into the Book! We can end all of this now, we can save everyone if we just work together. We can end it!”

It wasn’t going to end with the death of Botega. The demon of the Void would not be defeated, only subdued, trapped once again in the place it had originally lurked inside. For all they knew, once it left Botega’s body, it would just hop into another. Was that why it had poisoned the water supply and mutated the people of Asilo? Did it want an unending source of human bodies, half-hybridized by the blood of the slimy, crawling abominations?

Or had it created a new body for itself in a different way? Maybe it was possible for something that was not human to–

Before the Rift opened, a biologist attempted to create tamer and more manageable bees by breeding two different strains of honey bee. It all went wrong. The genetic hybrids that were created by the merging of two different species were called African killer bees; they swarmed frequently and aggressively and killed thousands of people. They were not supposed to exist in nature. 

They would not have evolved without outside help.

A chill ran through Stasya’s body and she made the sign against evil at the very thought. She licked her lips. 

“I’ll do what you want,” she said, “But only if you let me terminate your pregnancy.”

Kira froze. Even her tears ceased in an instant. “What?” Her voice wavered. Suddenly she looked very small and young. It was hard to remember that the terrible high priestess of the Red Temple, the woman who had spilled the blood of hundreds in the worship of the beast of the Void, was only 22 years old.

“We have to get rid of whatever’s spawning inside of you if we want to be sure It doesn’t come back inside a new vessel.” Stasya tied her long silver hair back into a ponytail to get it out of her face. She tried not to listen to the screaming and gunshots outside. “The child is Botega’s, isn’t it? Better safe than sorry. It would be quick, I’ve done this before.”

“The child is my husband’s.” The blood magic user was not moving a muscle. She stood like she had been turned to stone.

“Please.” Stasya rolled her eyes. “Those disgusting orgies at the Red Temple weren’t exactly a well kept secret, and you had Botega’s hands all over you in every press conference I’ve seen. Do you think it’s a coincidence that you would come to term just as the Colony falls? Just as Botega begins ranting and raving about needing a new host? You need to get rid of it before some twisted mutant pulls itself out of you.”

“The child is my husband’s,” Kira Tariq said again. She swallowed and still didn’t move, apart from her trembling. “I’ve changed my mind, witch. If you come near me or my baby, I’ll tear your guts out and make you beg me to kill you. I–I don’t need you. I don’t need you, I can do this by myself. I can kill that Thing by myself! Frank Toussaint and his men from the Territories will be here soon and they’ll help me too!”

She was such a stupid child.

Stasya sniffed. She took a mocking bow. “As you wish,” she said. The girl would die like all the others. Stasya already knew that she would not die. She would not let herself. She would suck the life force from a thousand souls before she let herself die in this place or be ripped to shreds by one of the tortured freaks. “Don’t come crawling to me after Botega snatches your baby before you even pass the afterbirth.”

And she left. There was nothing left to say. A witch could not work together with someone who practiced black magic. It went against both their natures.

But there was nowhere for Stasya to go. She could not go home. She did not want to wander the streets and risk getting shot or infected, but what choice did she have? As she walked through the halls of Asilo’s Capitol Building, she came across the body of a young man who had been a police officer. He lay on his back, pale and staring at the ceiling. His chest cavity had been ripped open, exposing piles of glistening organs. Visible bite marks scored his flesh. Stasya shuddered as she bent to pull the gas mask from his face and secured it over her nose and mouth. The air outside was thick with acrid smoke. She had to protect herself.

Aside from her ever weakening magic, she had no way to protect herself. She had no weapons. Stasya was 45 years old and had never been athletic. In the paradise that had once been Asilo, she had never needed to work out or worry about people who might hurt her. All her life, she had never known crime, she had never known hunger, she had never known fear. Now…

The last 5 years had been a nightmare. Everything had happened so slowly. Nobody noticed what was happening until it was too late. Botega had created the perfect Colony in order to destroy it. The lifeblood of his people was being used to…well, she didn’t know what it was being used for. So many people had died. So many people had been sacrificed over the years and everyone had just accepted it.

She should have done something. Back when it all started. But Stasya had been comfortable and she had been happy. She had never assumed that the violence being perpetrated on others might ever trickle down to her.

Her breath fogged up the gas mask and she tripped over a broken piece of flooring. There was no light in the lower hallways, all the remaining electricity had been rerouted to more essential functions. She squinted to see in the dark. If her magic had not been so weak, she might have used some of the herbs in her pockets to create a light spell. But she had to save her power as well.

There was no way out of Asilo. Wretched blood magic had locked the gates from the outside. The dome above them was impenetrable, even if it could be reached, there was no way to break through. Stasya’s mind wandered to other ways out. She was theoretically aware that even in a closed and self sustaining Colony, there would have to be multiple avenues to dispose of waste. Sewer lines. Tunnels beneath the incinerators. She could get out that way. It would be hard but she could do it.

She would have to go fast. There were manholes on every block outside, but she didn’t know if they led to the sewers, or if they opened into the gas lines. And other people would have already thought of this too, she would have—

“What’s the matter, darlin’?”

At the sudden sound of the voice, Stasya had to bite her own tongue to keep from screaming. The voice was soft and pleasant, she had heard it hundreds of times on the Colony wide broadcasts. At first it had been a voice of calm comfort, until she recognized it as the voice of a demon. Jerry Botega was standing behind her. She willed herself to turn around slowly, even though every instinct in her body was telling her to run. 

Running was the worst thing she could do and she knew it. A running animal will activate a predator’s instinct for the hunt. Oh, but she wanted to run. She wanted to be anywhere but here in the dark, alone with the monster that had destroyed her home.

She had never seen Botega in real life. He was a big man with soft eyes and a gentle face. His posture was open and easy going, like he did not have a care in the world. Botega’s hands were in his pockets, but even in the near-dark, she could see the blood on his arms, soaking through his flannel shirtsleeves. He was smiling at her without showing any teeth, friendly and disarming.

There was nothing to say. Stasya began to shake but the rest of her body was frozen. She remembered what had happened to the other witches. She remembered the casual brutality with which they had been dispatched. Like they were cattle.

Botega took a step towards her. There was insectile hunger radiating off of him that did not mesh with his physical appearance. “I’m not gonna hurt you. What are you doin’ in here, scramblin’ around in the dark? I thought we got rid of all you false sorcerers and your dirty magic.”

Stasya shook her head. She could feel sweat pouring off her face. Even through the gas mask, she could smell the stink of sulfur and rot around him. There were no good options. If she ran, he would catch her and kill her. If she tried to fight him he would defeat her easily. Being in his presence felt wrong, it felt against nature, against every instinct inside of her. Run away. Run away, run away.

“No? I can smell it all over you. Doesn’t do you any good now, does it? The only magic that can be used in this place now comes from my homeworld.”

“Go back,” said Stasya, and her voice was barely more than a squeak. Why was she talking to this thing? It wasn’t even human! There was no way to appeal to its morals or decency! She knew that it wanted everyone dead, that it wanted her dead. It would kill her soon. So why was she talking? Why could she never keep her mouth shut? Why couldn’t she ever just shut up? “Go back to the Void. You don’t have to do this. Stop doing this to us, just let us go and go back to the Void!”

Botega took his hands out of his pockets so that he could brush some ash from his shoulders. He seemed almost bored. “Go back to the Void?” he asked. “Why would I go back to that howlin’ desert when I have a perfectly good planet crawlin’ with mammals here? How do you even know about the Void, witch? You have a secret I don’t know about? Or have you been talkin’ to little Kira? I didn’t think she’d lower herself to interactin’ with something like you.”

“She realized you’ve been eating people.”

“Yeah?” Botega looked Stasya up and down. His smile grew and showed his straight white teeth. “Seems to me that you’ve been eatin’ people too.”

Siphoning power and life force was not the same as eating people. There was no reason for her to explain that to this thing. For one stupid second, Stasya considered raising her hands, considered trying to pull from Jerry Botega’s life. What would it be like to take that kind of power into her own body? But that was stupid, it was so stupid. He would kill her as soon as she even twitched.

She didn’t want to die! Stasya thought of what she might do, what she might say. She would say anything if it meant that this Thing did not kill her. She blinked rapidly and willed her heart to stop beating so fast. “Kira Tariq wants to kill you,” she said. Throwing the stupid girl under the bus seemed like the right thing to do in this situation. Maybe it would make him mad enough to leave her alone. Or maybe it would make him mad enough to rip her head from her shoulders. “She’s looking for ways to kill you. She begged me to help but I wouldn’t do it.”

“Aw.” Botega seemed completely unfocused, not paying attention to her at all. At the sounds of more screams and gunshots from the streets outside, he cocked his head to listen. He was more interested in the background presence of chaos than he was in her. “She’s a good girl. She don’t mean it.”

“She has the Book.” Stasya edged backwards. Just an inch. Maybe he wouldn’t notice. “The Book you came from. She’s finding ways to send you back.”

He looked at her again, not really comprehending. His heavy eyelids gave him a look of perpetual sleepiness. “No,” he said. “There’s no way for me to go back. Not once I have my new body.”

And what did that even mean? There was no way to know. Stasya just had to keep talking. “The red priestess says there’s a way.”

“No. Kira Tariq would never try to hurt me. She welcomes the changes I’ll bring to this planet.”

“You think she wouldn’t want to hurt you? To destroy you?” Stasya took another tiny step back. “You killed her husband in front of everyone. And her baby? I think her baby is–”

“You witches are all liars.” Botega shrugged. “Even if you were telling the truth, it wouldn’t matter. There’s no way for anyone to send me back. I’ll devour this planet for a thousand years– even after that, there’s no way for me to go back. No body can enter the Void.”

“That girl is going to try to pull you out of that body and send you back.”

Botega’s expression revealed nothing but boredom and was barely illuminated in the dark. “Yeah? What do you know about a mind without a body? My body is asleep in the black monolith of the Void. It hears my siblings chatter about the minds of half psychic witches that come visit them. You know why I’ve been destroyin’ all your kind? For centuries, you witches have been spewin’ out monstrosities, void-walkers, hybrids that can see the future in the space between worlds. I don’t think that’s right for you primitive little mammals. You think Kira Tariq knows anythin’ about the Void? Anythin’ about me? I’ve already destroyed any possibility for you people to get even a glimpse of knowledge.”

Void-walkers.

This scrap of knowledge meant nothing. He was still going to kill her. And Stasya was frozen. She couldn’t get away if she tried. Even if the nonsense Botega said was true, it didn’t matter. It was too late. There was nobody who could see the future. There was nobody whose mind could go into the place he had slithered out of.

She didn’t want to die.

But more than that, more than anything, she wanted this Thing to die. Why hadn’t she listened? Why hadn’t she tried harder? Would that even have been good enough? She should have at least tried. She should have never just sat and waited to do something until it was too late.

A frog will sit in a pot of boiling water and wait until it slowly boils. If she received a second chance, Stasya would not make the same mistake again.

Botega yawned and didn’t try to cover it. He closed the distance between them and reached out one hand to touch a strand of Stasya’s hair that had escaped her ponytail. It glimmered like moonlight in the near dark. He pulled off her gas mask and dropped it to the floor. Her stomach lurched in anticipation of violence. Every muscle in her body was tense. Her heart pounded in her chest so hard that she could feel it in her bones. All she could hope for was that he killed her quickly.

But the violence never came. Instead, Jerry Botega’s touch was gentle. The skin of his hand brushed her ear. “Maybe I should let you live.”

“Please,” she said, aware of how pathetic her voice was. Void-walkers. Void-walkers. A world between worlds. A way to destroy this monster. She did not want to die. 

“I know what it’s like to be the last of my kind. Do you know what it’s like to be lonely?”

Stasya was not the last witch. Maybe in Asilo she was, but out in the world? In Eden or the Northern Territories? There had to be more. If by some miracle this creature did not rip her limb to limb, she would find them. And they would figure this out together. But now all she could do was stand frozen like some prey animal, entirely dependent on Botega’s mercy.

“Please,” she said again. She could feel her eyes watering.

Botega said nothing. He patted her cheek like she was an animal. And to him, she probably was. Just a little woman with her magic drained, trapped and alone. There was no cruelty or violence in his touch. He seemed only like a gentle man who was tired, very very tired. Maybe that was the kind of man he had been before the Thing had jumped into his body. Stasya didn’t know. She didn’t have the space to care either.

And he just turned and walked away, leaving her in the darkness.

Stasya clamped a hand over her mouth before she could scream. The relief that flooded her was not comforting. There was no reason for him to have let her live. She could not wrap her mind around it. Had Botega been bored? Had her life been so meaningless to him that he just decided to let her go and walk away? It was the same way she looked at a fly buzzing around her head. Nothing, she had meant nothing to that creature. She was not dangerous, she was not even interesting. 

There was no time to focus on that now. Her only focus was escaping from this place of death before death came for her too. She would not get a second chance.

Maybe Kira Tariq would do what she claimed to be able to. Maybe she would use the Book and force the demon back inside. Maybe the stupid girl would even kill it. 

And if she didn’t, Stasya would.

###

For two hundred years, Stasya tried to produce the kind of hybrid Jerry Botega had told her about. She tried to create a Void-walker, someone who could walk between worlds. The secrets of that place consumed her. It was the first thing she thought about when she woke up and the last thing she thought about when she went to sleep. The Void! There were monsters in that place, monsters like Botega that could destroy the whole world. The burden of this knowledge was heavy in her mind.

For all she knew, Botega was dead. Kira Tariq had done what she said and the Lost Colony was sealed off to everyone. But the Book was still out there. She heard whispers of it all the time. The planet eater could return. Someday it would return and it would eat the entire world.

So she needed a Void-walker. She needed a person who could go to that horrible plane themselves and learn its secrets.

There was not much to go off of. Stasya found witch girls all throughout the savage, stinking Northern Territories. They were happy enough to be in her care, safe from persecution. She’d teach them magic in the old ways of Asilo, then find some man with psychic abilities to get the girls with child. A psychic’s power came from the Void itself while a witch’s came from the earth. The union made sense to her. All she was going off of was a handful of words given to her by a monster.

It never worked. The children were all born with the ability to do witchcraft, but none of their minds could travel to the Void. There was something wrong. There was something she was missing.

So Stasya would consume the girls’ life-energy to regain her youth. And she would start over. Over and over again. 

After two centuries of this, it was understandable that she would start to feel disheartened. Failure after failure. As war and disease ravaged the land, there were fewer witch girls to come by, and finding psychics was next to impossible. But Stasya continued her work. She did not lose her faith, her belief that one day she would create a hybrid child with the ability to dream of the Void and tell her its secrets.

If she could just get her hands on the Book, maybe she could make sense of it all. It had found its new home in a community of Asilo’s survivors, miles to the South East. Stasya could not even get close. She started to get a sense that they were doing the same thing she was: trying to get a glimpse into the Void that they worshiped. These whispers traveled back to her, whispers of how they had started to combine the bodies of the crawling slimy monsters with the bodies of humans.

Stasya tried harder. Failed harder. She failed and failed, until she thought she could fail no more.

The witch girls she had in her care at the end were nothing more than scraps from the bottom of the barrel.. One soft, pretty thing who was always whining and complaining. One scrawny piece of gutter trash who acted more like a feral cat than a girl. Both of them were no good. After Stasya paid some telepathic fur trader to put a baby in the older one’s belly, the stupid girl had tried to kill herself. She could already tell that this would be yet another failure, but would have to wait years to find out. That was fine. Stasya would just try again.

Time was something she had no shortage of. She would try again and again, she would never stop and she would never rest until she was able to uncover the secrets of the Void. All the loss and suffering, the devastation of the Lost Colony– it meant something. It had to mean something. It pushed Stasya down a path she could not turn away from.

One day she would destroy the Book and the demon inside of it.

She just had to keep trying. If that meant she had to kill a hundred girls, a thousand girls to produce a Void-walker, she would keep trying.

[blooblooded]

Barb, Quentin, and West Make Mistakes

“I think I really like this girl,” said Rosie with all the earnesty a 17 year old could muster. “And we’ve been dating for like 3 months now. So I know Esther really likes me back too. Just once. What would be so bad about coming back after curfew just once? Or having a sleepover just once? It’s not like we’ll be doing anything that could get us into trouble, we’ll just be hanging out at a friend’s house. Will you please, please think about it?”

It always hurt to say no to her sincere, emotionally open face. Like kicking a puppy. Barbara Church shifted behind her computer. As Shelter Manager for one of the Weil Church’s group homes in Eden’s Lower Levels, Barb was responsible for the safety and well-being of 12 children who had been removed from their parents or guardians or had been surrendered willingly. The kids ranged from ages 5 to 17 and most of them were a handful. Not Rosaline, though. Rosie was so responsible, she always followed the rules. So it hurt worse to say no to her.

“If you get to stay out after curfew or sleepover, Twania and Eric will wonder why they don’t get to too.” Barb was sitting at her desk in the main office, trying to listen to her kid as she typed up a grant proposal begging the government for more money. “It’s not fair, do you think?”

“I think I’ve earned extra privileges. Twania and Eric don’t even help with chores. And it’s just a couple extra hours.” Rosie rolled her sweet brown eyes. Over the 10 years she had been under Barb’s care, she had grown from a nervous child into a friendly and confident young woman. It was mind boggling to think about how nobody had ever wanted her, but that was just the way of things, wasn’t it? “What’s so wrong about me hanging out with my girlfriend at a friend’s house?”

“There’s nothing wrong with it, I just need you back at shelter by 9:00.” Barb picked up a can of soda and took a sip. Staring at her screen for so long was starting to hurt her eyes. But she needed money to fix one one of the showers. Having only two working showers for 12 kids, some of them teenagers, was a no go.

The state wasn’t going to accept the grant. She already knew that. Any tax money for social services in Eden went straight to CPS. It was ridiculous. All they cared about was taking kids. None of them cared about what happened to the kids afterwards. Foster care was a joke, it was a well known secret that kids slipped through the cracks and went missing by the dozens each year. Adoption was almost nonexistent now that wealthy couples could simply genetically manufacture perfect children. And the Director of Social Services, a frigid sociopath named Blake Joyner, hated the idea of reunification of children with their birth parents more than anything else.

There was no money. There had never been any money. When Barb thought about that unfairness too much, it sent her into a dark mood that made her want to really hurt people.

In the past, she had listened to those urges.

Rosie’s broad shoulders drooped. One corner of her mouth quirked down and she sniffed. “Well it’s not like I’ll be here much longer. I age out in 6 months. I might as well get used to what it’s like not being here.”

Ouch. Barb remembered what it was like to age out of the system. You turn 18 and you were on your own. She did her best to make sure the kids at the group home had the skills to get by in the world– her foster parents sure as hell never had. It was hard to maintain a balance between bonding with the kids and lacking boundaries, letting them walk all over her. She never wanted to make them feel like they were unwanted, a nuisance, or worse, like they were locked up in some kind of facility.

But rules like curfew existed to keep them safe. Rosie didn’t understand that yet. She didn’t understand how young she was and how there were bad people out there who could take advantage of her kind and trusting nature.

Time to change the subject. Barb took another sip of her drink. “Which District is Esther from? Is she in this Residential square or the one across from us? If she’s close, you could probably get back home right at curfew and still spend all Friday evening with her.”

“No.” Rosie shrugged and looked down like she was a little embarrassed. “She lives up in the Surface Residential District. But we wouldn’t be going up there though. Kassidy’s apartment is on the Mids.”

Barb almost choked on her mouthful of soda. “You– what?”

“Yeah, her mom owns some company that makes Artificials. They live up on the surface. I don’t know, I’ve never been over at her house.”

And why was that so surprising? Barb did not know why she would assume that Rosaline could never be involved with someone from a different socio-economic class than her. Rosie was a great kid. She was smart, she was confident and self-assured, she was pretty. All her other little girlfriends thought the world of her. But she also lived in a group home in one of the worst neighborhoods in Eden. As smart as she was, it was unlikely that she would ever go to college, it was unlikely that she would ever get a job that made real money. And even if she did, even if she worked hard and scraped and saved and got an education, it was in her nature to want to help people instead of profit off of them. The cycle of poverty was not something that could break from hard work.

And those people…the people who lived on the surface? The people who got to see the sun and breathe clean air? Barb knew what they were like. She knew their cruelty, she knew how they used people. Something twisted in her stomach as she looked at the sweet girl in front of her, the girl who only saw the good in others.

“Is–” She didn’t know how to ask this. Rosaline already looked embarrassed, like she felt she was doing something wrong. “Is Esther an Artificial?”

“Yeah.” Rosaline pulled her cracked phone out of her pocket and scrolled through it to pull up a picture. She handed it to Barb. The photograph was of her and a girl who she assumed was Esther. They had their arms around each other. Esther appeared eerie and unnatural, tall and pale, with feline eyes and a face that was so smooth it seemed to lack pores. Her red hair had been professionally cut and the blouse she wore was designer. “She’s normal though. She hangs out with normal people, she’s not snotty or stuck up or anything. She’s nice.”

Barb looked closer at the picture of Esther. There were dark circles beneath her eyes and thick purple scars roping up her right arm. Even though she was smiling, there was a touch of misery to her face. “How’d you two meet?”

“Her friend Kip’s in my homeroom class and he introduced us. He said he thought we’d get along.” Rosie paused. “We do. I really like her. I just want to spend more time with her, that’s why I want to stay out after curfew Friday night. I don’t want to, you know. I don’t want to seem different.”

She handed her phone back. This was just like kicking a puppy. What was she supposed to tell her? Was she supposed to tell her that her rich new girlfriend was just going to drop her the moment the novelty of dating someone from the Lower Levels wore off? It was something that happened all the time. Barb wanted to protect her but she didn’t want to crush her spirit with the reality of how the world worked. Rosie would have to figure that out for herself. And it would hurt. Sooner or later, it would really hurt.

Maybe she already knew. She had already mentioned that she had not been invited to Esther’s house yet. Maybe she had already realized that that was never going to happen.

“You’re not different,” Barb told her, even though she was. It had been easier when she was younger. Rosie hadn’t known anything else. She had only been exposed to other foster kids, she hadn’t started to feel…unwanted…until she was at least 12. Now she was in high school. There was no way to protect her anymore.

“Yeah, but everyone’s going to start to think I’m different if I always have to leave early.” Rosaline was looking right at her. Her eyes were shiny. “You trust me, right? You trust that I’m not gonna like, drink or do drugs or get into trouble? Can I please just go over to Kassidy’s house with Esther on Friday? Just once? I want to be like a normal kid, I want to do normal stuff.”

“I just worry that–”

“It makes me feel left out sometimes.” Rosie sniffed and then shrugged, a nervous tick, puffing herself up so that she did not look so vulnerable. She stuffed her hands in her pockets and looked away. “I mean, all of my friends invite people over. Esther’s little siblings bring their friend Rome. Kip brings his friend Lee. Ayda even asks her friend Marty to hang out and he doesn’t even– I mean he doesn’t…” She trailed off.

Barb realized that she had no reason to say no to her. Policies were put in place in the group home to protect the kids, but what was so wrong with stretching them a bit so that one kid could be happy?

“Does Kassidy have parents I can talk to?” she asked after a beat. She watched Rosie’s face light up as she realized she had won. “I’ll need to call and make sure it’s OK for you to stay over there so late.”

“Aw, come on.” Rosie sounded mortified. “Nobody else has to—“

“I’m not gonna make it weird.”

“It’s totally safe, Kassidy’s mom is the Police Commissioner. You don’t have to worry about me at all if I’m over there, it’s probably safer than it is here!”

Another shock. Barb already knew Commissioner Nguyen. And she already knew Kassidy Nguyen, and her older brother Christopher. She didn’t think she would ever forget them.

Before she had gone into the Church’s nonprofit sector, she had worked for Eden’s Child Protective Services. This was years ago, before the realities of the field had burned her out. She had just been a caseworker. Someone had reported Dana Nguyen for child neglect and a case was opened. The kids had been coming to school dirty, both of them had behavioral issues, and the boy had told a teacher that his mom had left them at home unsupervised when she had to work overnight. They were too little for that, just 7 and 8. So Barb had shown up to investigate.

The case wasn’t open for long, maybe a month before Barb closed it. Her main concern at the time had been Christopher’s emotional well being, since he hadn’t seemed to have recovered from his birth mom’s suicide. The poor little guy would just scream his head off and throw tantrums at the drop of a hat. He had to meet with her supervisor as well because of the severity of his behavior. She did not find any evidence of child neglect and assumed that whoever made the initial report did so maliciously.

Curiously, the report on Dana Nguyen had been made anonymously, but was still filed with top priority.

Anyways, Dana Nguyen’s reaction to her sudden involvement in her family’s life had been…well, it had been terrifying. The rage that radiated off of her in their meetings was like nothing Barb had ever encountered. She refused every suggestion offered to her. The first time they met, Nguyen had asked her flat out if she was trying to take her children away. She had been sitting here all limp like she was dead, but with so much hate behind her eyes. Barb had explained that wasn’t what she was there for, she was just there to help and provide resources. Dana Nguyen just sat there like she wanted to kill her and said that taking children away was the only reason her job existed in the first place.

It was a small world. But it made sense that Rosie would be friends with kids like Kassidy and Christopher Nguyen. It made more sense than dating an Artificial.

It wouldn’t be appropriate for Barb to reach out to Dana Nguyen. All that would accomplish would be to terrify her and remind her of the time that CPS was involved in her life. If Barb called her and introduced herself, Nguyen might think that someone had opened another case on her kids. Nobody wanted to get a call from their old caseworker, even if it was personal instead of professional.

“Ok,” said Barb, turning back to her computer. “You can go. I’ll just give Kassidy’s mom a quick call to check and see if it’s OK.”

She would not call and check to see if it was OK for Rosie to stay over. Rosie didn’t have to know, but Barb trusted her. She believed that she was old enough to make her own decisions and was responsible enough to tell her if anything made her feel unsafe or uncomfortable. She believed with all of her heart that this girl had such a good head on her shoulders that she would use her voice the moment that she felt like something was wrong.

This was her first mistake.

QUENTIN BELLAMY

It was lucky that Quentin Bellamy could not remember the metro accident that left him with a traumatic brain injury. He knew what had happened, of course. He knew that a decade ago, an entire car had derailed between the Upper and Mid Levels and smashed into the tracks. He knew that 11 people had died in that accident and that 3 people had survived, including himself. He knew that he had spent 3 months in a coma, and another 6 months relearning how to walk and talk. Apparently it had changed everything about him. It had changed the way he moved and thought, it had changed his personality. It was lucky he could not remember any of this. It was lucky he could not remember the person he was before.

It was even luckier that his wife and children were not traveling with him that day.

Anyways, none of that mattered because Quentin could not remember any of it. He was happy in spite of what had happened to him. Although he struggled to do simple tasks most days, it did not stop him from being happy. Sometimes he slurred his speech, sometimes it was hard for him to walk and move his hands, and he often forgot things. His short term memory was shot. The one thing he had never forgotten after the accident was the four people he loved most in the world.

He didn’t even get afraid on the metro anymore, he thought, as he rode it down to the Mid Residential Levels. That was good. Since he was unable to work, the responsibility of taking care of the kids fell to him because Lily was always so busy. It wasn’t hard; they were all almost grown. And his friend Dana helped out a lot by letting the kids hang out at her apartment after school on the days he had physical therapy.

Quentin was on his way to pick up the twins from Dana’s place now. They were old enough to go back and forth by themselves, but he still felt like it was important for them to be around an adult when they were out in public. There were bad people in the world. He was a dad and his most important job was to make sure his kids were safe. Dana’s kids too. Kip and Kassidy were so attached to Esther that it was like they were his kids too. They all helped each other out.

The Mid Levels weren’t as bad as his wife made them out to be. Lily always said it was dirty down there and she refused to leave the surface. Quentin didn’t think it was dirty. There was no garbage on the streets, no dilapidated buildings. Maybe the air was a bit thicker because of the C02 buildup, but it didn’t hurt to breathe. He got off the metro and started walking down the street to Dana’s building. 

Luckily it wasn’t far, but he was happy to stretch his legs. He needed to move his body more often. Lily said that he was getting fat.

Dana’s place was one of the hundreds of public housing buildings in the Mid Levels. Most people there lived in apartments because they couldn’t afford houses. And there was not enough room in Eden for everyone to have a house. The building looked the same as all the others, big and square and gray. There was no warmth on the outside, only the inside. Dana lived on the 6th floor. There was an elevator but Quentin always took the stairs even though it wore him out. He did not like being confined to tight places.

Huffing and puffing because of the stairs, Quentin took his wallet out of his pocket and pulled out a copy of Dana’s keycard. She had given it to him years ago and told him that he could come by any time. That meant a lot. Dana trusted him. Dana was his friend. She never talked down to him because he was slow or stared at him when his hands wouldn’t open the right way. Sometimes she got angry, sometimes she drank too much, but she was always very nice to him. She had a special place in his heart. Quentin would never do anything that hurt or betrayed her.

Dana had already messaged him and told him that she wouldn’t be home until 11, but Kip was watching the kids. Kip was such a good boy. Quentin fumbled to swipe the keycard, opened the door and walked into the apartment.

“Hey, Kip,” he said. “I’m–”

Quentin stopped dead in his tracks. The twins were sitting on the living room floor with their tablets doing their homework. That was normal. What was not normal was that Kip was sitting on the couch next to a strange man who had his hand on his thigh. That was not normal at all. 

The instant that the strange man saw Quentin, all the blood drained from his pale face and he jerked his hand back like he had been burned. He didn’t look much older than Kip, maybe in his early 20’s, and was dressed stylishly, with neatly groomed hair and a beard. His body language changed in an instant, from relaxed to stiff and terrified.

“Hey, Dad,” said Evangeline, not looking up from her tablet.

“Hi Mr. Bellamy,” said Kip, like nothing was wrong. 

Maybe nothing was wrong. There were times that Quentin overreacted because of his brain injury. He felt things too deeply and the signals between fear and panic were too intertwined. It was easy to forget that Kip wasn’t the little boy he had been when he had met him. He was 18 and could make his own choices, he could do what he wanted to do.

So maybe nothing was wrong here. Maybe Quentin was wrong. But he knew for a fact that he did not like seeing that his 14 year old children were in this apartment with a man he did not know.

“Who are you?” asked Quentin. Ever since the accident, he had a hard time pronouncing the letter ‘R’. It sounded like ‘who awe you?’ Putting the keycard back in his wallet was too much for him, the sudden stress made his fingers freeze up. He just stuck it into his back pocket.

The strange man sitting next to Kip was staring right at him. Sweat had broken out on his forehead and his mouth was slightly open. He looked very nervous

“Oh, that’s just Lee,” said Kip. “He’s my friend.”

Friends usually didn’t rest their hands on their friends’ thighs. At least Quentin’s friends didn’t. That was something only his wife did. He tried to think rationally. Every thought felt like it was covered in sticky syrup. He blinked. “Lee,” he repeated.

“Nice– nice to meet you,” said Lee in a strangled sort of way. He hopped up stiffly, stepped forward and extended his hand. Quentin looked down. He could not shake his hand because his finger’s were frozen. Lee put it away, but not after looking him up and down. 

Quentin was used to getting looks like that. Assessed. People could look at him and see that there was something wrong. They judged him in less than 5 seconds and saw that Something was off. 

Most people thought that they were better than him. He didn’t mind.

The twins started putting away their tablets. Kip scrolled through his phone, jiggling his leg up and down. None of them were acting scared or like anything was wrong. They weren’t worried at all. Quentin did not stop feeling worried. When he tried to swallow, his throat closed up. There was something he was supposed to be doing, wasn’t there? 

“Are you their Dad?” asked Lee. He cocked his head. He was the same height as Quentin, but he was slimmer and had broader shoulders. Normal looking, very normal looking. “I was expecting a redhead. I guess that doesn’t matter when you grow your kids in a vat of genetic goop.”

There was something mean in the way he said that, a hateful little twinge. Was Quentin the only one who noticed? He shook his head and furrowed his eyebrows. “Yes, I’m their father. What are you doing here? Does Dana know you’re here?”

“One of my professors canceled class. I just stopped by to pick up Kip to go to a meeting.” Lee’s smile was slightly crooked and he had crooked teeth.  “They’ve all known me for a while.”

What did that mean? This wasn’t the first time he had been around? It must be true because the twins seemed comfortable. Usually they were on guard around strangers. He would have thought that they would have told him about someone new, and if they didn’t, Esther certainly would have. She was protective. Quentin tried to swallow again. It was hard. “But does Dana know you’re here?”

“I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting her yet.”

This seemed bad. Something bad was going on here. Lee was in college and looked like he was about 22 years old. There was no reason he should be there. Kip was 18 years old, but he had problems with his mental health that made him not think like everyone else. It probably wasn’t OK for Lee to be touching him like that even if he was technically of age. And it really wasn’t OK for him to be around the twins, it wasn’t OK at all. Quentin didn’t know what he was supposed to do. He had never been in a situation where he was worried like this before.

The right side of his head started to throb. It was a sharp, pulsating pain that took his breath away. Suddenly the lights in Dana’s dingy apartment seemed too bright. The pain made him wince.

“Can we get food on the way home?” asked Eddie, looking up. He frowned when he saw Quentin’s expression and elbowed his sister.

“I was just saying you guys are always ordering food out,” said Kip, who was not paying attention to anything but his phone. He kept jiggling his leg. “I was literally just saying it. Did you hear me when I was literally just saying that?”

“Shut up, stupid.” Evangeline was frowning now too.

“You OK, buddy?” Lee asked condescendingly. Lots of people spoke to Quentin like that because of the way he spoke and moved. Like he was a dog or a child instead of a man. He was a man. “Your head hurt? I heard you were in an accident.”

Quentin felt scared. He needed to call Dana. Dana needed to know about this. She would know what to do. She always did. Dana was smart. She was one of the smartest people he knew.

His head hurt so bad. 

“OK you guys, let’s go home,” he said. Obediently, his children gathered their things and got up, walked over to him. He was lucky that they were so good. They always listened. Quentin put his hands on their shoulders as they walked out of Dana’s apartment and felt how warm they both were.

“See you later.” Kip was still focused on his phone.

“Let me walk you out,” Lee said eagerly. He moved to follow them.

“You don’t have to do that.” Oh no, he did not want this man to follow him. It was strange for him to offer to walk them out of a home that did not belong to him. He didn’t seem like he was the type to hurt him, but it still made Quentin scared. He did not like Lee. He had already decided that he was a bad person.

He needed to call Dana. He really needed to call Dana.

“I want to.”

Quentin winced again as the pain in his head sharpened. It felt like someone was driving a spike into him and was completely unlike any headache he had ever experienced. The sensation was indescribable. He did not quite feel like himself.

There was nothing to say. He left with the kids. And Lee followed them.

They headed towards the stairs. The twins started to chat about something that happened at school that day. Quentin could not listen to them. The pain was too bad. He had to stop in the hallway so he could press a clenched hand to the side of his head.

You like me, he thought. No, he didn’t think it. Those weren’t his thoughts. The words did not belong to him. They formed seedless in his mind and sprouted, more feeling than consciousness. You like me, you like me. 

Wait, no. Why was he thinking that? Quentin started to panic. The only thing that made sense was that his brain was hemorrhaging again and making him hear things. The last time he had a hemorrhagic stroke, he had ended up in the hospital for a month. The doctors had told him that the next one might kill him. 

He didn’t want to die.

You like me.

The thought was invasive, pushing itself into his mind and curling itself there. And it wasn’t true, it wasn’t real. It wasn’t real at all. The thought did not belong to him. Quentin did not like this man he had just met, he–

Well, maybe he did like him.

The pain stopped in an instant. It was replaced by a tingling warmth that spread over Quentin’s body, a sort of comforting euphoria. It reminded him of how he felt when he drank a glass of champagne or stood up too fast from a hot bath: content, but a little dizzy. Everything inside of him was put at ease. Even his arms and legs felt light.

“I���m glad that we’re friends now,” said Lee, who had stopped when he stopped. He stuck his hands in his pockets. The look on his face was one of complete emotional honesty. 

Lee really was such a trustworthy person. He was just a good guy. It was nice of him to look out for Kip and the twins. Quentin knew that he would never do anything to hurt them. Why had he ever thought otherwise? He knew the truth. He knew that he had always liked Lee. Quentin smiled back at him. “It’s hard for me to make friends.”

“I have no idea why. You’re so easy to be friends with.” Lee’s gaze slid over to the twins, who were arguing over something and shoving each other a few feet away. Both of them had their phones out. He lowered his voice. “And look. You really shouldn’t tell anyone that I was over here today. Not your wife. Not Kip’s mom. Nobody. It might get me in trouble.”

Quentin told Lily everything. He blinked. The peaceful contentment inside of him pushed down any feelings of worry or suspicion. All negativity had dissolved into bliss. “Trouble?”

“Like people getting mad at me. You know what that’s like.”

Quentin did know what that was like. He would never do anything that would get Lee in trouble. Lee didn’t deserve that. He liked him. “Of course. There’s no reason for me to tell anyone about you. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

And although it wasn’t his fault, this was Quentin’s first mistake.

WEST AGAPAMA

Running for public office was not the smartest idea West Agapama had had in his life, but he was completely invested. It never occurred to him that he could fail, he had never failed before. It never occurred to him that the majority of people in Eden might not want to vote for him for Mayor. Why wouldn’t they want to vote for him? Jay Malena had been running the show for years and the man was an idiot. So far, West’s election bid was working. It was easy, it was so so easy. All he had to do was show up, be likable, and make promises to restructure Eden’s economy from a public market to a private one.

Polls projected that he would win 70% of the vote in the Spring election. Poor people liked him because he was personable and had promised to take power from the elite.The elite liked him because they wanted to make a profit off of privatized industry. It was win-win-win. The only way he could possibly lose to an idiot like Malena was if some kind of horrific tragedy occurred. For god’s sake, one of Malena’s kids had died months ago and that hadn’t even affected the projected outcome. It was inevitable that West would win the election.

Power over Eden was almost in his grasp. Once he had it, maybe West would finally be able to change things. Maybe he would finally be able to put an end to things.

The way he saw it, he would win no matter what happened. If he won the election and became Mayor of Eden, he got his way. If he lost the election, he would never stop talking about how the system was rigged, and he would still get his way.

West smiled to himself as he made his way home. It was late, almost 11:30, and he was tired from a long day of campaigning. Most of his little family had been out all night helping him. Despite his whining and protests, Percy had shown up to do some camera work during his speech. Yura and Emily handed out pamphlets. Even Vega had come. Only the younger two girls hadn’t come because Casey had told him they had to study for a test on Monday. 

It was a nice night. He looked up at the Dome as he walked. If he squinted, he could almost imagine that he could see stars above him instead of thick tinted glass.

When he reached the house, West put his hand on the doorknob and reached into his pocket for his keys. In doing so, he turned the handle and the door opened. He frowned. The girls knew that they were supposed to keep the door locked when there were no adults around. Maybe they had forgotten.

West walked inside. There was loud music playing, coming from the living room. West continued frowning. Casey and Ayda should be asleep. It wasn’t a school night, but they should already be asleep.

“Casey?” he said, taking off his turquoise blue overcoat. The music was really loud. He could hear somebody laughing over it and it was not the laughter of one of his girls. What were they doing? Had they invited friends over? He wasn’t scared, he didn’t have a reason to be, but touched the hammer he kept at his side anyways. “Ayda?”

It did not occur to him that they might be doing anything they shouldn’t. Not his girls. They could be a handful but they never actually got in trouble. The two of them hadn’t even gotten grades lower than a B in their lives.

The music got louder and louder as West walked down the front hallway to the living room. He could hear a lot of voices now. He could hear boys’ voices. Boys? He frowned harder and furrowed his brows. “Girls? What’s going–”

He entered the living room and froze. It was full of teenagers he didn’t recognize. Casey was in her pajama shorts and a tank top, braiding some girl’s hair as she sat in her lap. Ayda was laughing hysterically with a boy who was laughing even harder while they lay on the floor playing video games. There were two more girls who looked like they had passed out all tangled up together on the couch, and two even younger boys were giggling and arm wrestling each other while another girl watched. There were bags of chips everywhere and the air stank like alcohol.

None of them even noticed that he had walked in and he realized that they were all drunk. West’s blood started to boil. He didn’t even keep any alcohol in the house because he didn’t want the girls getting their hands on it and getting into trouble. He watched as the bug-eyed boy Ayda was playing video games with yelled, threw his controller on the ground, then rolled over laughing to give her a hug that lasted way too long. West’s own eyes bulged in his head. He looked back at the skinny blonde girl in Casey’s lap and when he realized that she had a hickey on her neck, his blood pressure skyrocketed. The girls who were sleeping on the couch both looked rumpled and closer than they needed to be. The three younger kids on the floor were so wasted that they could barely sit up and he saw the red haired boy pull out a vape and take a hit, still giggling.

Oh, he was going to kill them. He was going to kill all of them. 

West pressed a button on his communication device and cut off the loud music. “Cassiopeia,” he said pleasantly, and he was surprised that his voice did not betray how angry he was. He was so angry that he was almost shaking. “Ayda. What’s happening here?”

“Shit!” Casey yelped, shooting straight up from her chair. The girl in her lap gave a little scream as she tumbled onto the floor. Casey looked wildly around the room, then at her father, her eyes wide and unfocused. “Shit!”

“Dad, Daddy,” Ayda was already starting to whine. Sometimes that worked on him. Not tonight. She pushed the buggy-eyed boy away so that he was no longer touching her. “Wait, wait, just wait a second. We’re not– we just— we didn’t think you were coming home tonight!”

“You didn’t think I was coming home tonight?” West watched the other teenagers scramble around in a panic. The two girls snuggling together on the couch didn’t wake up. One of them looked like an Artificial. All three of the younger ones were certainly Artificials but he did not recognize them. He crossed his arms in a way he hoped was authoritative. “You didn’t think I was coming home? To my house where I sleep every night?”

“No, I mean– we just–”

“It was my idea!” said the buggy-eyed boy, as he pulled himself to his feet. He was scruffy looking and had a big mouth and a loud voice. There was something wrong with him, some kind of manic energy that kept him from staying still. “I just wanted to see your house, I wanted to see what it was like since Casey never shuts up about how big it is. We ordered some food and we just kinda lost track of time.”

West gave him a withering glare. It did not take him long to target the boy as the main instigator. He took a step further into the living room. “Yeah? Whose idea was it to bring the liquor? Yours too?”

“We haven’t been drinking!” Casey bent over to pull up the girl with the curly blonde hair. Something about her sweaty face and unpleasant expression was familiar but West couldn’t place it. The girl awkwardly covered the hickey on her neck with one hand. “I swear Dad, we haven’t been drinking, we just–”

“I’m not stupid, Cassiopeia.” He pointed at an almost empty bottle on the floor and the plastic cups scattered around the living room. For some reason, the red haired Artificial girl found this hilarious and started to laugh. “Please don’t lie to me.”

“I hope every single one of you gets your asses beat,” said a boy’s voice that West actually recognized. He looked around until he saw a square on the television screen with Ayda’s friend Marty’s face in it. Marty had been friends with his daughter’s for a couple years, ever since Percy opened communications so that West could speak to the Prime Minister of the Northern Territories. He was a mean little foreigner, but relatively harmless. Marty appeared smug and smiling, his big black eyes slitted. “You all deserve it for not listening to me. Now just think of how much trouble you would all be in if you had invited Lee like you–”

“Shut up, Marty!” shouted the buggy-eyed boy, whirling around to face him and almost falling down. “You’re so stupid!”

“Why don’t you shut up, Kip?! Cela vous apprendra peut-être–”

“He’s not gonna call our Ma, is he?” the girl with the curly hair asked Casey.

“I dunno.”

“You better speak English when you yell at me like that!”

“Ouais? I hope you go to juvie again and they keep you in there for good this time!”

One of the younger Artificial boys, a black kid with big yellow eyes, started to wheeze like he was about to start hyperventilating. On the couch, one of the sleeping girls groaned as she woke up and pulled a pillow over her face.

The buggy-eyed boy named Kip was getting really angry now. He clenched his fists, color rising to his face. “You are so fucking stupid, Marty, if you called Casey’s fucking Dad on us, I’m never forgiving you, you can go–”

“Everyone be quiet!” snapped West, raising his voice enough to sound threatening. Ayda cringed and started to cry, she always started crying when she wanted to get out of things. Not this time. West shook his head. “You’re all going home. Now. I want names and numbers right now. I’m calling all of your parents.”

For a moment all of them just stared at him. Kip puffed himself up like he was trying to posture at him– not a good idea, since West could probably throw the little bastard through the nearest window. Casey laughed nervously and started to shake the other sleeping girl on the couch awake.

This role didn’t suit him. He did not want to be an authoritative parent. West wanted to be a fun parent, he wanted to be friends with his children. For the last few years, he had started to wonder if that had been the wrong thing to do. Were his children spoiled? He had given them everything they had ever wanted and had never disciplined them. But they had never needed discipline before. He had never thought that they might invite a bunch of other kids over, trash the house, and get drunk while he wasn’t home. 

Was it his fault? He didn’t know where to start. How was he supposed to punish Casey and Ayda? They had betrayed his trust, that was for sure. But he didn’t know what he could take away from them. He didn’t want to punish them. Even thinking about grounding them for this made his heart hurt.

Was he a bad parent because of that? He didn’t know how to put his foot down with the people he loved most.  All he wanted to do was make sure that they were safe and happy. It was the same way his parents had raised him.

The kids weren’t listening to him and he wanted them all out of his house so that he could lay the law down on his daughters in privacy. He snapped his fingers and pointed at the red haired Artificial twins. At this point he had put together that they were probably related to the girl who was still asleep on the couch, they all looked similar enough and were wearing the same types of clothing. “You two. Names. Go.”

“Eddie Bellamy,” said the boy one, who was trying to sneakily conceal the vape in his pocket. “And Evangeline. And Esther. You’re not gonna call our mother though, right? We can just go home with Kip and Kassidy, that’s what we were gonna do anyways.”

Oh god, West knew Lily Bellamy and her husband Quentin. Dr. Bellamy’s company was responsible for creating Casey all those years ago. Her work on later-stage Artificials was unparalleled, but West found her frigid and unpleasant. He always saw her at fundraisers, her docile husband following close behind. Old money. Old, old money. Still, it made sense that his daughters would befriend these children. It made more sense at first glance than it did the other ones. At least they were in the same social class.

That was a terrible thing to think. What was wrong with him? He wanted to bring different types of people together, not push them apart.

“Yeah, I’m going to call your mother,” said West. “I know your mother. I bet she’s going to be real happy when I tell her about that vape you’ve got there. How’d you get your hands on that anyway? You sure don’t look 21.”

“Uhhh,” said Eddie Bellamy, flushing red from the neck up. 

“He got it from L–”

“Shut up, Marty!” yelled Kip, aiming a kick at the TV that missed, then almost fell over because he was so uncoordinated.

West snapped his fingers again and pointed at Kip. His behavior and lack of respect was starting to test his patience. If he found out that this boy was messing around with one of his daughters, especially Ayda, he would really start getting angry. “You. Be quiet.”

“Don’t tell him what to do, you’re not our Ma,” said the girl with curly hair, who was apparently Kip’s sister. That made Casey giggle even more nervously, and she draped one arm over her shoulders. West glared at her. It wasn’t helping his control over the situation.

“P-please don’t call my dad,” hiccupped the yellow eyed Artificial kid, who was wheezing like he couldn’t breathe. His panic did not interact well with how intoxicated he was.  “I’m– I’m going to get in so much trouble,I’m going to get in so much trouble,  please don’t call my dad, I was supposed to be–”

“What’s your name?” interrupted West, before the boy could work himself up anymore. Usually he was patient, but not now. He could hear his blood throbbing in his temples. “Name, now, so I can call your dad to get you home safe.”

“You can – you can call my babysitter–” The yellow-eyed kid started wheezing so hard that he gagged like he was going to throw up. Oh god, that was the last thing he needed, vomit on the floor of his living room. West grimaced.

“Why don’t you leave him alone?” said Kip, who was sounding more and more like he was grown enough for West to grab and shake. Everything about his body language was aggressive: squared shoulders, direct eye contact, clenched fists. “You’re not gonna call his dad anyways, I know all about you, you hate his dad, you have – you have, uh, what’s it called– competing interests.”

Why were his sweet daughters hanging out with a boy like this?

“OK,” West said as calmly and pleasantly as he could muster while being mouthed off to by an aggressive little highschooler. “OK. How about you tell me your mom’s name and number so I can tell her that you’ve been at my house drinking and trying to kick my things, Kip–”

“--Christopher Nguyen.”

Still, West did not put two and two together. His blood pressure was too high. “Fine. Christopher Nguyen. I’m calling your mom and getting you out of my house.”

“No. You’re not calling my Ma.” The boy was looking right at him and smiling with all his teeth like he knew something West did not. 

Who did he think he was? Who did he think West was? 

“Oh my god, you’re so fucking rude,” said Marty unhelpfully, since this only seemed to urge the horrible teenager on. 

“You’re not calling my Ma,” Kip continued, so full of himself and self-assured. Was that how West had come across at that age? No wonder everyone had hated him. “I know you’re not calling my Ma.”

Kip’s sister was staring at him like he had grown a second head. She stared at his huge, dilated eyes and manic smile. She watched the way that Kip could not stop moving, the way that he could not keep his mouth shut. For a moment she looked very young and small and very scared. Maybe West would have felt bad for her, seeing her brother so obviously mentally sick, if not for the fact that it was exceedingly clear that she had been fooling around with Casey. Casey could hardly keep her hands off of her. No, West didn’t feel bad at all. His beautiful, perfect daughter deserved to be with someone better than that.

It was late and he was very irritated and he wanted all these kids out of his house.

“Maybe I’ll just call the police,” said West, looking Kip dead in the eyes. 

“Daddy nooo,” whined Ayda, as she hid her face.

Kip just laughed. It was loud and grating. He was so drunk. Manic and drunk. West really wanted to grab him. His sister edged towards him as if she could pull him from the edge of some unseen precipice. “Go ahead and call the cops,” he said obnoxiously, swaying with his fists still clenched. “Our Ma is the fucking cops. Dana Nguyen, you wanna call her? Police Commissioner Dana Nguyen. Go ahead and call her. She doesn’t give a fuck about where we are right now or what we’re doing, why don’t you go ahead and call her!”

Now the low-class obnoxious aggression made sense. West knew Dana Nguyen. He knew her better than he would like to. The awful little woman had it out for him. She was always making calls to raid his warehouses, looking for something, anything to pin on him. There was never anything, no evidence of smuggling or violence. West was too smart for that. He had messed up once, only once, when Nguyen had gotten him for tax fraud due to Percy. She had taken great pleasure in tightening the handcuffs on his wrists herself.

A sense of dread filled him. This mouthy teenager was right. West could never call Dana Nguyen and tell her that her children were getting drunk at his house alone. She would assume the worst. She would tear him apart without even waiting for the proper legal proceedings to go through. 

This was fucked up. West’s mouth tightened as he stared at the boy in front of him, the boy who was basically laughing at him. His hands were tied unless he wanted to make a bigger mess than he was already in. And the kid knew it.

Well, he could physically grab him and throw him out of his house. But West still had his standards.

“Go ahead and call her,” mocked Kip. His eyes were so wide that the whites showed all around. He spread his arms out wide. His sister stumbled over to him and tugged at the hem of his jacket, trying to get his attention. “No, I want you to call her. You should call Rome’s dad too, see what happens. Rome Prospas, you know that’s Rome Prospas? You should go ahead and call them both and see who fucks you up first!”

Wonderful. Just wonderful. West’s blood went from boiling to thermonuclear. Now he felt like he couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know what was worse to have in his home: Dana Nguyen’s pack of untrained animals or that psychopath Richard Prospas’s shivering hellspawn.

“Kip, just shut up!” said his sister, who was surprisingly stable and not slurring her words. Maybe she hadn’t been drinking like the others. Not that it mattered. “We need to go home. You’re being crazy, you need to shut up now.”

“Yeah, shut up you stupid asshole,” said Marty, who had gone from smug to scared. 

West knew that his own face must have gone dark because all the teenagers except for Kip were looking at him like they didn’t know what he was about to do. That wasn’t good. He unclenched his teeth, tried to relax his posture. He didn’t want them to be scared. He wasn’t a scary person, he would never hurt anyone except for adults who deserved it. But he was angry and rightfully so.

The air itself felt damp and heavy. Probably Ayda, who was sniffling and embarrassed. He hated that for her. He didn’t know what to say and realized that he had clenched his own fists.

“Dad, Dad,” Casey said anxiously, waving her hands. She looked like she was about to fall over. “Don’t listen to him, he’s just an idiot, he’s like diagnosably insane.”

“I’m not an idiot, Cassiopeia, I know how things work!”

“Kip, you need to be quiet right now!” said the girl Bellamy twin shrilly. One of her skinny arms was tightly wrapped around the Prospas boy’s shoulders as he wheezed for air. “You’re making this worse!”

But Kip did not stop and he did not shut up. “Yeah, Mr. A, I see you on TV, talking all big about populism and equality as you run for Mayor. Where’s the equality, huh? You live in this big house, making money you didn’t work for off of the labor of the working class! I know how it is, I know what you think of people like me, what all of you think of people like me!” He had the audacity to point a finger directly at West. Like he was lecturing him. “It’s gonna change soon though, me and all my friends at the UPLF are gonna make things change!”

The United People’s Liberation Front was a radical offshoot of the Eden Workers Party. Last month, a couple of the delusional socialists had staged a riot at one of AGA’s warehouses. Surely Casey and Ayda weren’t involving themselves with those kinds of leftwing wackjobs.

He still did not say anything. If West said anything now, he might lose his temper. He wasn’t going to do that. He wasn’t going to scare his daughters and their friends, or worse, say something that would start something with his enemies.

Being a father had never been hard for him. He had never needed to worry about his daughters and their friends. So why were they making him worry now of all times? Now, when he was trying to run for public office?

Kip was still jabbering aggressive nonsense but West was not listening. He took a deep breath and looked at his daughters. Ayda still had her hands over her face, curled into herself, not wanting to be there. Casey was smiling but nervous, trying to talk to her friends and calm them all down. 

He was not going to make things harder for them. And deeper, more selfishly, he was not going to make things harder for himself. Not now. Not when he was so close to actually changing things in Eden. He couldn’t. If that meant letting all these little shitheads get away with something they should not have been doing, then so be it. These kids’ parents could and would try to ruin everything he had worked so hard for.

There were bigger things West needed to worry about. There were other children he needed to worry about, kids who did not have parents who could protect them.

“If you all go home right now, I won’t call any of your parents,” he said at last. All of them looked at him with wide eyes, except for the two girls who were so drunk they were passed out on the couch. West jerked his head towards the hallway that led to the door. “Go on, get out of here, go sleep it off. I don’t care where you all go, but you can’t stay here.”

There was a beat. 

“Holy shit,” said Marty, and there was a twinge of bitterness to his voice that West did not inspect further. Why should he? Why would he?

This was his first mistake.

[blooblooded]

Helen meets Book!Cathy

One early morning in July, Helen Gutierrez decided that she was going to really do it this time. This was it. She was going to get out. She was going to leave. This time, she was really going to leave Richard Prospas once and for all.

There had been other times that she had left. Over the last 15 years, she had left a lot. The only time she had really meant it was after Richard lost his mind and beat her son Ajax so badly that he got a concussion. That had been right after his own uncontrollably violent monster of a son got rightfully dragged away to Juvenile Detention; for some reason he had blamed AJ for that whole mess. Of course Child Protective Services hadn’t done anything, not even when Helen called them herself. She held out for a while that time. They had stayed in a Weil Church for almost a month. But then Richard called and he had cried and he had told her that he was sorry. And Helen went back. Of course she went back. She always went back.  

It was stupid. She was stupid. She was stupid and weak and she didn’t know anything else. She didn’t have anything else. What was she supposed to do? She had nothing. No education, no job, nothing. When she was younger, Helen had always been thankful that she had been born beautiful. Men had always taken care of her. Rich men. Powerful men. Well. Now her life was so enmeshed with the life of a rich and powerful man that she did not know how to get out.

All she knew was that she was going to get out. Somehow. If she did not leave, Helen knew that he was going to kill her. Maybe not today. Maybe not next week. But someday Richard Prospas would finally kill her. 

That was the only way stories like hers could end. That was just what violent men did. They killed their partners. And she wasn’t even his partner. She was barely even his mistress, only one out of many mistresses. 

She pulled at the collar of her jacket and looked around nervously. Even though Helen was sitting by herself on a bench in one of the park squares in the Residential Mid Levels, she didn’t want anyone walking past to accidentally see the purple marks on her throat. The thought of someone seeing that scared her. The thought of someone asking her if she needed help made her want to throw up.

The park square was a nice place, one of the dozens scattered on each level in Eden. Bushes and plants were squeezed into every free inch in order to suck up some of the smothering C02 in the air. The artificial sunlight overhead was almost like the real thing. Peaceful. Helen could close her eyes and pretend that she was outside, that she was breathing actual air, that she was feeling an actual breeze. It was nice to pretend.

Even with her eyes closed, she could not pretend that he wasn’t going to kill her. Even if she left, Richard was still probably going to kill her. Helen had been positive that she was going to die that morning, gasping for air when Richard had been on top of her with his hands squeezing her neck. It felt like drowning. It felt like floating away. But of course he had stopped before she passed out. It was just another little display to remind her of how powerless she was, of how she could never fight back.

Helen didn’t want to fight back. She wanted to be gone. She wanted to breathe. Now, with her eyes closed, surrounded by plants, it was even hard to breathe.

What was wrong with her? Why had she let this happen for so long? Why was she so stupid and weak? Had there even been another option? Her own mother had only ever been with violent men. Helen’s earliest memories were of her father slapping her mother until she cried and then taking her out for ice cream and making her laugh. 

She didn’t know anything else. And sometimes she did love him. She just hated the way…the way he could get.

Where was she even going to go? She was so stupid. What was she supposed to do? How was she supposed to support herself if she left? She had never had a real job. The only money she had ever made for herself was from being an exotic dancer when she was young, which inevitably led to sex work. And that had led to dating rich men who provided her with dinners and jewelry and clothes and anything else she needed. She was too old to go back to that, she was too old to do anything else than rely on someone who hurt her.

She was so…so helpless! She prayed and prayed and nothing ever came of it. Nothing ever changed.

Helen swallowed painfully and sniffed, suddenly afraid that she was going to cry. This was pathetic. She was 43 years old, old enough to know better. She pulled her compact out of her purse to check her reflection. Not bad. All the crying earlier that morning had not made her face puffy. She was still beautiful. Maybe she could find someone who— 

A woman staggered past a nearby bush and towards the bench she was sitting on. She was gasping, stumbling, with one hand pressed over her belly. With every step she let out a wheezing moan; her eyes were half closed. The suddenness of her appearance made Helen flinch, drop her mirror, and put her hands up to protect herself.

There were so many homeless people in Eden, most of them afflicted by addiction, but she had never seen any in the Mid Residential Levels. The cops had a way of rounding them up and dragging them out of sight, out of mind. But this woman did not look like she was homeless. Her round, dark face was clean and clear, and her black hair had been recently styled and straightened. Even though she was only wearing pajamas, they had been bought at a middle end retailer. Her glasses looked high quality as well. This woman had money. Not a lot, but she had it.

That didn’t stop Helen from feeling scared. Every muscle in her body had frozen. She hated that response, she wished she could just run away instead, but she always just froze. 

When the woman saw her, she didn’t say anything. She breathed heavily, with her hands on her knees. Blood trickled from one of her nostrils. Helen’s gaze flicked down and she saw that the woman was pregnant, maybe 7 months judging from the size of her. She was tall and pretty, in a mousy way, but there was something wrong with her, there was something very off about her. Nothing bad– it was more like…like the feeling she got when she saw an animal that she knew was able to hurt her. It wasn’t anything that she could see, but it was a presence, an aura. The hairs on the back of Helen’s neck rose.

She watched the woman stick out her tongue and lick the blood from her upper lip. She shook herself, still panting, and looked over her shoulder, then laughed, showing her white teeth. Her eyes were bloodshot behind the glass lenses.

Usually, Helen did not speak to people in public. But this woman looked like she needed something. And she was pregnant. Helen shrank back, biting down the fear inside of her. She kept her hands up, just in case.

“Do you–” Her own voice was raspy, little more than a hoarse croak from being strangled. She swallowed painfully. “Are you alright? Do you need help?”

The woman swayed on her feet. She looked sick, there was a sweaty sheen to her skin and she smelled sharp and metallic, like blood. She laughed again, a little hysterical, looking at Helen like she was seeing her for the first time, before her eyes turned away  again. “Do you need help?” she asked, mimicking her exact tone and cadence. She put her hands over her smiling face.

Somehow, that struck a chord within her. Even though the woman was just echoing her own words, it was what Helen wanted to hear. Deep down inside. She wanted someone to ask her, even though it scared her. She did need help.

She shook herself, trembling a little bit. This woman was probably crazy or on drugs. She was sick. Still, there was that…presence. Helen couldn’t describe it, but she couldn’t take her eyes off of her. Everything seemed more sharp and clear. She had taken speed once back when she was escorting and the clarity had been unbelievable; being around the woman felt like that. “I can call someone for you,” she said, pulling her phone from her purse. The background was a picture of her hugging AJ. Helen glanced at the woman’s belly. “Your– your husband? I can call your husband?”

When she said that, the woman snapped into focus with an intensity that was palpable. She advanced towards Helen with her unsteady gait, then bent and grabbed one of her wrists. “Anthony? My husband?” The woman did not stop smiling. Her grip was firm but not painful. When she touched her, a jolt went through Helen’s entire body. “No, he’s got it all wrong. He doesn’t understand me, he doesn’t understand that I’m just trying to live. I don’t think he wants me to live.”

“I– I can call the police for you then!” Helen squeaked. She did not try to pull away. For some reason, she sensed that this woman would not hurt her. How did she know that? How could she possibly know that? “If– if he’s hurt you or if he’s threatened you, I can call the police, they can help you.”

Something told her that this woman did not need her help. 

The woman’s skin was feverish against her’s, hotter than any person she had ever touched. Helen did not want her to stop touching her. She stared up into her face. It wasn’t attraction, since Helen had only ever been with men. It was…it was…devotion.

Her fear melted away as she gazed into the woman’s face. Helen felt butterflies in her stomach and she was filled with a sense of calm. Of peace. The presence that surrounded the woman was not one of light, but one of darkness, like a deep pool of water or a night sky without any stars in it. It was as comforting as it was powerful. She didn’t…she didn’t feel like a person at all, and still, Helen was drawn to her. She wanted to fall into her! There was no logic behind it, there was no critical thought or reason. 

Something thick and black began to leak out of the woman’s nose now. It dripped wetly onto both of their hands. Neither moved to wipe it away.

The woman let go of her wrist, then moved her hand up to touch the purple bruising on her throat. Another jolt rushed through Helen’s body. She watched the woman’s mouth quirk up. “You humans are so fragile,” she said contemplatively. “Just sacks of meat.”

And Helen already knew that she wasn’t human. She already knew that she was something more, something better. Tears pricked at her eyes. “Are you an angel?” she asked hoarsely.

 “Angel?” The woman pulled away and cocked her head.

“A messenger from heaven who helps people.”

The woman laughed like she was very small and stupid. She looked over her shoulder again. “No, no,” she said, then took a wheezing breath. She seemed to realize that black stuff was dripping from her nose and wiped it away with the back of her hand carelessly. It smeared like frog eggs. “I’m Cathy. I’m just Cathy, but I’ll be someone else someday. I won’t be Cathy for long.”

Like most Edenites born in the Lower Levels, Helen had been religious all her life. Faith gave her the will to keep going. She believed in almost everything that she could not see, much to the scorn of the atheistic upper class who surrounded her. She believed in the healing power of crystals, she believed in ghosts and spirits. She went to the Weil Church regularly, worshiped the goddess, and studied the sacred geometry. There were things in this world that could not be explained. There were beings beyond human comprehension who clothed themselves in mortal bodies in order to help. Miracles existed, Helen knew that miracles existed. Every night when she was alone, she prayed for a miracle, she prayed for someone to save her from her life. She wondered if Cathy was one of these miracles.

She knew that she was supposed to be afraid. This woman was not acting normal. This woman was bleeding, leaking black stuff. She should be very afraid, she should get away, she should go home to the danger she knew. But she was drawn to Cathy and she could not explain it. She wanted to kneel down at her feet. She wanted to put her hands on her belly and pray. In an instant, in the presence of something greater than herself, Helen’s mind had been stripped of its cognitive functioning. With only a touch, she had fallen into a trance.

Predators have that effect on prey. And the mechanisms in Helen’s brain had never been that good at recognizing when she was in danger. She had always been drawn to people who hurt her. It was the only thing she knew. 

And deep down in her core, she recognized what others could not see about Cathy. This woman was Divine.

“You should kill whatever put those marks on you,” said Cathy. A black bubble formed at her left nostril and then popped. “Stop being so weak. I’ve noticed that about humans. Anthony is like that too.”

Helen touched her throat. Her heart beat wildly. She did not want to make this woman– this being!-- disappointed in her. “I–I can’t. I can’t do anything. Nobody can. He has money. He has so many people who do whatever he wants.”

“Everyone bleeds. The life of a creature is in its blood.”

“If I try to do anything about it, they’ll kill me. They–they’ll kill my son.” Her eyes were hot and wet. She lowered her gaze to Cathy’s swollen belly and wondered what it would mean for a child to be born to…someone who was more than human. “I can’t even leave.”

Cathy scratched the side of her face, where small sores had developed. She wasn’t really looking at Helen, she was looking through her. “I’ve devoured entire universes,” she said, as casually as she would talk about the temperature. “I’ve destroyed civilizations and consumed every warrior sent to stop me. None of that matters to me. Humans are animals. Defend yourself or die, it doesn’t matter to me.”

Helen blinked away tears. “Help me,” she said. “Please, help me. He’s going to kill me.”

“Help yourself.” Cathy’s voice was dismissive. It was like she was talking to an insect, something completely beneath her. 

“W–what are you?” Helen wiped her eyes, trying to keep from smearing her mascara. The thought of her make up running in front of this…in front of Cathy was mortifying. 

“There’s no name for what I am.”

“Where did you come from?”

Cathy looked up at the District’s ceiling with its panels of artificial light. “I came from somewhere else. From beyond the stars. Something like you could never understand.”

“Are you a God?”

Again, the corner of Cathy’s mouth quirked up. It was not quite a smile, as much as Helen wanted her to smile at her, it was not quite a smile. Behind her glasses, her eyes looked almost red. She opened her mouth like she was about to say something and her teeth were stained black from the stuff that was dribbling out of her nose.

“Cathy?” A man’s voice rang out behind the bushes. It was high and frantic. “Cathy?!”

“No, no!” said Cathy, more to herself than to Helen. She straightened in an instant, looking around wildly. One hand plunged inside of her pajama top, pulling something out of her bra. She thrust it into Helen’s hands. A crumpled wad of paper. It stung her skin. When Cathy’s eyes met hers again, they were intense and commanding. “I will help you if you help me.”

“What?” Helen scrambled to her feet. Without realizing, she stuffed the crumpled paper into her purse. “What? What are you talking about, what is happening?”

“I will help you if you help me,” Cathy said again, harsher this time. “Do you hear me? Spread my words. Spread my words and you will have power like you’ve never imagined, spread my words and nobody will ever hurt you again. I need followers to–”

A big man crashed out of the bushes. He was handsome, with dark wavy hair and a beard, and was dressed in blue nurse’s scrubs that were too tight for him. When he saw Cathy, his shoulders visibly sagged in relief. “Cathy,” he said, in a lightly accented voice. He put his arms out in a placating gesture. “Honey, you have to come home with me now. You can’t– you can’t run off like that, you scared all of us.”

Cathy turned slowly to face him. She kept her hands on her belly. “I don’t want to go home.”

“It isn’t safe for you out here.” His tone was pleading. “Come home. Cynthia’s scared, she doesn’t know why you ran off like that.”

“I’m just meeting my friend here.” She pointed back at Helen, who had gone completely frozen in the presence of the big, strange man.

“We can talk about it later.” The big nurse grabbed Cathy almost gently, but began manhandling her away from the bench. She struggled but was no match for his strength. “Will you just– Cathy! Stop it! What’s wrong with you?! Why are you acting like this?!”

“Let go of me!”

“If you just come home, you’ll feel better, I promise, just come–”

“What are you doing?!” Helen didn’t know how the words came out of her mouth, they just did. It was not like her to speak up. Over the years she had been witness to all forms of violence and she had never spoken up or said a word. Nobody ever spoke up for her. The black serenity inside of Cathy had passed into her. It filled her body with a terrible calm. She was still afraid, just less so. “Stop it, she said she didn’t want to go with you!”

The big nurse gave her the briefest of glances. His eyes were a shocking red. He secured one huge arm around Cathy, who was still fighting him. “This doesn’t concern you, Ma’am. She– she’s just sick.”

Helen didn’t want to get too close to him but she shook her head. “I’ll call the police!”

“Go ahead and call them,” the big nurse said curtly. “Come on Cathy.”

As he pulled the strange woman who was not a woman away, she looked back at Helen. The look she gave her struck her to the core. It was the look of a God to its disciple. “I will help you if you help me,” she said, a third and final time.

And they were gone. It all happened so quickly. Helen did not know what to do, so she just stood there shaking. 

She had just experienced something special. Anyone else would think it was normal, a chance encounter with a mentally ill woman. Helen knew better. When Cathy touched her, she understood. She had really understood. There was no way to explain why or how she knew. There was something bigger than her out there. There was something that she could be a part of.

And Cathy, or the thing that was inside of Cathy, would help her.

Helen looked down at her arm. The black slime that had dripped from Cathy’s nose lingered there wetly like frog eggs. Without thinking, without stopping herself, Helen brought her arm up to her mouth and licked it. She wanted…she wanted to take part of God’s body inside of her own. She wanted God to be a part of her.

It tasted foul. It tasted sweeter than anything she had ever put in her mouth.

A sensation similar to electricity surged through Helen’s body. It hurt. It hurt badly. Her stomach churned and for a second she thought she might vomit but she pressed a hand over her lips to prevent herself from doing so. 

It was a Communion she had no way of knowing about. Purely by chance, Helen Guttierez became the first disciple of the Planet-Eater, the Devourer of the Void’s Black Monolith in Eden. The spores she had licked up had never been meant for her, she had no way of knowing that they were meant for a man named Anthony Delmont. Every cell in her body was irrevocably changed. 

Helen really started to cry then. Not because of the pain. There was something powerful out there and it was going to help her. It had told her that it was going to help her. She did not know how but she believed it. She had faith. Maybe she was stupid, maybe she was weak, maybe she made the wrong choices and chose the wrong people over and over and over again, but she had faith.

Cathy had said she would help Helen if Helen helped her. But how…

She pulled the crumpled wad of paper from her purse and smoothed them out. When she touched them again, her hands stung. It was three pages that looked like they had been torn from a Book. The writing on them was in a language Helen had never seen, all scribbled and knotted together. It looked old, older than anything she had ever touched, but the paper did not crumble into dust like she thought it would. She squinted at the writing, turned the pages upside down and sideways.

Whatever this was, it was very important. Cathy had trusted her with it. Cathy had wanted her to have it. Maybe if she figured out what it was, she could help her. And there was nothing Helen wanted more than to help her.

She knew what she had to do now. It was so easy not to feel weak after being faced with something bigger than herself. All her problems seemed so small, they melted away. She had a purpose and that purpose was to help Cathy, or, or help the thing that was inside of Cathy. To help a God. 

And she would start by figuring out what was written on the three crumpled pages.

Helen walked from the park square, staring at the papers in her hands. She did not pay attention to the people around her but they moved away once she almost walked into them. Everything was clear now, her senses had heightened. The scrambled words and glyphs on the pages seemed to move and she looked for patterns. Certain symbols repeated themselves. The pages continued to sting her hands until blisters rose on her fingers but she did not let go.

Never in her life had she felt such a single-minded focus. The instinct was stronger than even a mother’s instinct to protect her own child. There was only the words on the pages. They flowed in and out of her mind, as calming and universal as music.

And although she could not read the words, there was one that she understood like she knew her own name.

Blood.

The life of a creature is in its blood.

Helen walked and walked, not even caring that people were looking at her funny. Maybe they were staring at her because she was looking at the papers as if she was in a trance. Maybe they were staring because she was still silently crying, or maybe they saw the bruises on her neck. None of that mattered. She didn’t care about what they thought, all of her anxieties had melted away in the face of something that truly mattered.

She got on the train that traveled up to the Upper Residential Levels and sat down. There was something black moving out of the corner of her eye and she turned to look at it. The shock almost made her recoil. A cat sized….thing made of a black jelly-like material had curled itself beneath one of the seats. Its shape was indescribably, always changing, bubbling and coiling. Helen pressed a hand over her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream. Maybe it noticed her staring at it, because suddenly it formed a dozen yellow eyes all over its body. It blinked a couple of times, then a huge, toothy mouth split its body in two and it bared its teeth.

Nobody else in the train car was even looking at it! They couldn’t see it! Helen shook herself, closed her own eyes, then opened them again. The creature made of black slime was still there. It started to jiggle like it was shivering and began to squelch goopily away farther down the car. Farther away. Farther away from her.

“Oh, God,” Helen said to herself, watching it. She didn’t dare move. She didn’t even want to blink because she didn’t know what the thing was! She had never seen something like that before! How was she seeing it now? Why couldn’t anyone else see it? 

But she knew already, didn’t she? Deep down, she knew why she could see it. Cathy had given her a gift. She had lifted the veil from her eyes. This only validated her belief that Cathy was from another place, another place from beyond the stars. There were things in this world that could not be explained and Cathy had revealed them to her. It was a miracle. There would be other miracles, there would be other things to see. 

Just because it was a miracle didn’t mean that Helen wasn’t scared. If Cathy was a God, this crawling creature of slime was surely a demon. She knew that just by looking at it. She didn’t want it to get near her and she certainly didn’t want it to touch her. Helen crossed her arms tight against her chest because that made her feel more safe.

Her stomach growled like she was hungry but she pushed that thought aside. She kept her eyes closed until she reached her stop on the Upper Residential Levels and got off.

Even then, she felt afraid that the creature on the train would follow her.

It didn’t take her long to walk home. Well, it wasn’t really her home. She had stayed there for almost 20 years because there was enough room for her and some of the other women Richard Prospas liked to sleep with, but it wasn’t her home. It didn’t belong to her. Helen had her own bedroom, she could eat whatever she wanted, she had access to anything she needed, but she never felt safe. Right before B-Day, Richard had fallen into a rage over someone calling CPS and had blamed AJ for it and sent him away. So Helen didn’t even have her boy. If she wanted to see him, she had to go all the way to his apartment.

No, she didn’t feel safe. For obvious reasons. Richard’s violence didn’t stop at the women he claimed to love. 6 months ago his youngest son had disappeared and Helen privately believed that he had been accidentally killed by his father. She was glad the little freak was gone but it did remind her exactly of what the man she was with was capable of.

She had her own key and let herself in. The Prospas family home was decorated in dark, lush colors and antique wood. There was barely any light, she always had to squint to find her way around. A long time ago she had been impressed by the old money decadence of art hanging on the walls and statues carved from bronze. Now it only served as a reminder of unfairness. The wealthy and powerful could do whatever they wanted, they could get away with anything. They could get away with beating women and children, they could get away with murder. Nobody cared. Nobody could do anything.

Helen wondered if she could do anything. Maybe. Maybe she could…

Best not to think about that. She needed to get her things. There was no telling who was in this enormous house or where. Helen stuffed the crumpled pages and their esoteric writing back into her purse. Her hands felt empty without them.

The plan was to go stay with AJ until she secured housing somewhere else. This time she was really going to do it. She was going to leave and she was not going to come back. Cathy wouldn’t want her to go back, would she? Cathy didn’t want her to live a life where her only purpose was to look beautiful at parties and have sex with a man whose bad days were so bad that he hurt her.

Helen had not been the one to decorate her bedroom. Even that small choice had been taken away from her. The bed was layered with silk and there were mirrors everywhere, mirrors on the wall, mirrors on the dresser, a mirror on the ceiling above the bed. Her closet was filled with beautiful, expensive dresses that suited her perfectly but she had not picked any of them out. The contents of her jewelry box were worth more money than most people in Eden made in a year. Each wall had been painted a shade of gold that made her skin crawl.

Maybe once she had her own place, she would paint the walls red. Helen thought that she might like that. 

She did not own a suitcase. Helen gathered a couple of bags and started stuffing clothing into them as fast as she could. She did not want to waste anymore time in this place. There was too much to do. The pages in her purse hovered at the forefront of her mind as she packed and she didn’t even think about what she was grabbing. The clothes were not important. Cathy was what was important. How could she even think about clothes when less than an hour ago she had been in the presence of a God? It almost made her want to cry again.

As she finished stuffing the final bag, she caught a glimpse of her face in one of the mirrors. That face that had made so many men fall in love with her. The unwrinkled tan skin, the full lips, her dark eyes with their long lashes. It wasn't her fault that she had been born beautiful! It wasn’t her fault that when people looked at her, they were either jealous of her looks or they wanted to possess her! It wasn’t fair!  

But when Cathy had looked at her, she hadn’t seen any of that. Helen’s beauty hadn’t even registered. To Cathy, she had just been another human sack of meat, like she had said. When Cathy had looked at her, she had seen her for who she truly was. 

And she had seen potential.

Suddenly her body felt feverish. Helen bit down on her tongue until it bled and thought about how much she hated the mirror, how much she hated her own reflection in the glass.

She watched as it shattered and she didn’t flinch.

What else could she do? What other gifts had taking part of a God’s body into her own brought her? Helen would soon find out.

Shouldering the bags, Helen left her room. She almost ran into Richard’s only remaining son in the hallway and froze. Romeo was a quiet and gangly 18 year old who was always slinking around but never left the house. An Artificial. The unnaturalness of his yellow eyes and eerie, perfect face always made her stomach churn. Like all Artificials, he had been created in a tube by scientists who believed they could control nature, which meant that he did not have a soul.

Romeo always had a miserable, nervous-dog look about him, despite the mind-boggling wealth and privilege he had been brought into. He looked like he wanted to cringe when Helen almost walked into him, but his unnatural predator’s eyes slid down to the bags she was holding instead.

“Get away from me,” said Helen. She did not like being near him. She hadn’t liked being near Richard’s two either, but thankfully they were both gone now. Someday Romeo would inherit his father’s company and she hoped that the anxious little mutant would fail so badly that he burned it all to the ground.

He kept staring at the bags. As usual, he hadn’t dressed for the day since he never went anywhere, and was wearing a bathrobe over his pajamas. “Are– are you– are you–”

“Stop stammering.”

Romeo swallowed hard. He would not make eye contact with her. Helen was always glad when he was the subject of his father’s rages instead of her. She wished that she could slap him herself. He had certainly deserved it after what he had done to get AJ sent away, after the way that he had always been clinging onto AJ got him sent away. After the youngest brother went missing he became more strange and withdrawn. Now he just crept around trying to avoid everyone and compulsively went into the bathroom to wash his hands. “Are you leaving?” he finally asked.

Helen drew herself up. Yes, she was leaving. She was leaving for good and she really meant it this time. She would never have to endure fear and abuse again, she would never have to deal with these sick people ever again. She would be free. Cathy would want her to be free. “Mind your own business.”

The miserable boy hunched his shoulders. “Please don’t leave.”

She didn’t have time for this. Richard could be anywhere and she was afraid that she was still too weak to say no to him if he did the thing where he brought her flowers and cried and begged her to forgive him. One day she would be strong enough. One day Cathy would help her be strong enough. With two fingers, she pulled down her collar to reveal the marks on her neck. “You see this?” she asked. Romeo cringed. “You think I like being treated like this by the man who created you? I don’t deserve to be treated like this. I’m worth more than this. I’m leaving. You can go tell your father, I don’t care.”

“But if you go away, Ajax won’t ever come h–”

That sentence was not something Helen wanted to hear the ending of. She pushed past him. The blood in her mouth tasted coppery and it occurred to her that if her blood was a conductor for the power Cathy unleashed inside her, she could have used it to really hurt him if she wanted to.

But not yet. Helen was not ready for that yet. She had much to think about and much to learn. And when the time came, Romeo Prospas was not the one who she wanted to hurt.

She left the house as quickly as she could. Helen stood on the steps and took a deep breath of oxygenated air. A laugh built inside of her. This time she was really doing it. This time she was really leaving for good.

And she could not have done it without Cathy.

###

Two weeks later, Helen saw the news.

Cathy Delmont, dead at 40.

Cathy Delmont, whose life was ended by 5 stab wounds to the belly. Her husband Anthony, wanted for questioning in connection to her death. There was no other information. Only a few lines of text, jammed in together next to stories about the rise of crime rates and the plummeting economy. It was like Cathy didn’t even matter.

Helen sat down on the floor of AJ’s apartment and wailed. She knew that the God inside of Cathy was not dead. She could…she could feel the presence of God in the three pages Cathy had given her. She could feel the power coursing through them, she could feel her blood being drawn to them with every beat of her heart. Cathy had only been a vessel. The essence of God had left her when she had been drained of her blood.

She had to help.

“Take me,” said Helen, alone in the apartment. She took a knife from the counter and knelt over the pages. With one flick, she opened up a cut on her left forearm. It didn’t even hurt. Fat drops of blood fell upon the pages and she watched as they were absorbed. She closed her eyes, started to rock back and forth, and tried to open her mind to the presence of God. “Take me. Take me. I want you inside of my body, I want you to use my body to do whatever you need. Please, please take me.”

Nothing. 

Was she not good enough? Was there something wrong with her? For two weeks, Helen had given everything to understanding the pages that Cathy had shoved into her hands. Two weeks of staring at the texts, two weeks of praying, two weeks of thinking of nothing but that brief encounter and what it had meant. During that time, Richard Prospas had sent her flowers, he had called her again and again and begged her to come back. Helen ignored it all. All that mattered was the pages of the Book and the presence inside of them. A certain divine madness had overcome her, a religious ecstasy. She was beginning to understand. 

She had gone back up to the Upper Levels and stared at the Rift through the glass dome that protected Eden. It was a jagged tear across the sky, black and red, and angry. Somehow she knew that was how God got here. It was a door. A door to another place. Helen had gone to the library, learned everything that she could about what the world had been like before the Rift had opened, what had happened when it had opened.

There wasn’t much. Or if there was something, she had no access to it. She needed help. She needed people to help her. God needed people to help it.

Well. Helen had always been good at getting people’s attention. That part would be easy.

She watched her arm bleed. The life of a creature is in its blood. Helen ran a finger down the cut and put it into her mouth. She wondered what would happen if she consumed the blood of others. Would their life force strengthen her own? There was only one way to find out.

There was much to do.

##

She got her own apartment for the first time in her life. It wasn’t much but it was her’s. Helen painted the walls red.

And when she looked in the mirror, she saw that her eyes had turned the color of blood.

[blooblooded]

The Wedding Part 2: The Book Takes Over

When Marty heard the faint pops of gunfire echoing from the Great Hall behind him, he knew that it was all over. Something terrible was happening. Something terrible was happening and it was possible that he and everyone he cared about were going to die. He was used to hearing about death and destruction, he had even witnessed it as a young child. But never here! Never in the safety of his own home, the Capital building of the Northern Territories! This was supposed to be safe. He was supposed to be safe here!

He did not know what was happening. All he knew was that Esther had told him to go find Tony and Kassidy. That was what was in front of him and that was what he did.

They had to be in one of the rooms they shared, in the east wing of Florence’s manor. The hallways were long and made of stone, lit by dim electric bulbs. Marty’s heart pounded. He heard more gunshots. He started to run, possibilities swirling through his head.

Had Loyalist forces gathered together for a revolt? That had not happened for years, there was nobody in the Royal Family left alive for them to pledge their allegiance to! As far as he knew, all the average people in the North, the farmers of the Strath, the trappers of the Hinterlands, the merchants of Ile de Matane— they loved Florence! There were statues and posters of her in every town! There was no reason for a peasant uprising! But Esther had said that people at the wedding had been drugged! Why– why had–

“Kassidy!” he yelled as he narrowly avoided barreling into a couple of servant girls running in the opposite direction. They didn’t even look behind them, they didn’t even look at him, they just kept running. Marty shook himself. “Tony! Hey! Tony!”

All that mattered was that he got to them and then regrouped together in the Great Hall. Someone would know what to do. The smartest people he knew were there, the people he trusted most to make good decisions and keep everyone safe. Florence always knew what to do, Beatrice always knew what to do! Flick and Dog and Anatole– they would give their lives to make sure everyone was safe! And Jules! Jules would, she would do anything! She would go through fire and death itself to make sure he was alright!

He could hear men shouting outside and more gunfire. Adrenaline pulsed through his body. Marty kept running, stumbling as he went. His good pair of shoes did not have hardy soles and he slipped over the smooth stone.

The door to the rooms that everyone from Eden stayed in in the east wing looked like all the others in Florence’s manor. It was made of heavy oak. Marty did not waste time knocking, he just slammed the door open and–

Kassidy was on her back on the floor, kicking and slapping against Tony, who had pinned her down and had his hands around her throat. Broken pieces of furniture lay around them. Kassidy’s face was turning blue, there was some kind of black stuff smeared all over her mouth and chest. She had pulled off Tony’s eyepatch and scratched long trails of red down his cheeks with her nails. All that kicking and scratching accomplished nothing. As small as she was, as weak as she was from her illness, there was no way she could fight off anyone, not even Tony. And it was easy, wasn’t it, it was easy to forget that beneath Tony’s passivity, he was a man who had survived for years by himself. 

The impossibility of this situation was lost on Marty, in the moment, as panicked as he was by the gunfire, he only saw a young woman who needed his help. “Shit!” was the only thing he could think to exclaim, frozen as he was for a second. His blood boiled.

His sudden presence caught Tony off guard, made him look up. His mouth was also smeared with black stuff and his good eye was huge and bright in his face, the white prosthetic rolled emptily. His expression was something Marty had never seen on another human being, it was the ultimate look terror and desperation. Despite this, he did not stop squeezing Kassidy’s throat. Marty could hear her choking and gasping for air as she tried to push him off of her.

He couldn’t just stand there. Marty rushed to them and grabbed Tony from behind from underneath his arms, pulling him up and away. For a moment he thought that he was not going to let go, he struggled against him. Was he really going to have to punch Tony in the head? He didn’t want to, but he would if it came down to that. “Get off her!” he said, not realizing that he had lapsed back into his own language. “Are you crazy? Get off of her!”

Something smelled foul and rotting and organic, it made bile rise in Marty’s stomach. He grappled with Tony until he finally was able to peel him away from the little woman on the floor. It looked like he was going to make another lunge, so Marty gave him a rough shove, and Tony stumbled and fell over. He got to his hands and knees, face pale, shaking like a dog. “Oh god, oh god, oh god,” Tony was saying, over and over and over. “Oh god!”

There was no time to think about that. Marty bent over Kassidy, scared to touch her just in case she was hurt. She was so fragile! He did not see any obvious injuries or indecencies that could have been committed. Her breaths came in ragged little gasps and she did not move or try to get up. It looked like they had been scuffling. Kassidy’s yellow hair had come loose from its braids and was matted to her scalp with sweat. Blood crusted around each nostril. She looked up at him like she did not recognize him.

“Are you–” Marty got one of his hands beneath her so that he could carefully lift her into a sitting position. Kassidy pressed both of her hands to her neck, where bruises shaped like fingers were blooming. Her expression was panicky. “Just breathe, just breathe, you’re OK, it’s OK.”

The black stuff was spilling wetly out of her mouth. “He just attacked me!” Her voice was hoarse. The little blood vessels in her eyes had burst. Kassidy had looked like she was dying, like she was wasting away for a long time, but now she looked even worse. Somehow even more color had drained from her skin: where she used to be a warm tan was now grayish. She looked like a corpse, she stank like a corpse. “He knocked me down and just started choking me! There’s something wrong with him! Keep him away from me!”

Marty used his sleeve to try to wipe the black stuff away from Kassidy’s mouth. It was rank and sticky and full of lumps, the same consistency as watery oatmeal. He held his breath so that he could not smell the rot. The more he wiped, the more of it there was. Blood magic? It was beyond him. He looked around the room wildly, trying to figure out what was going on. Tony was still on his hands and knees, jamming his fingers down his throat, then gagging and retching up great mouthfuls of black vomit. Marty looked away quickly so that he wouldn’t throw up too.

This was too much for him to deal with alone. He needed to get back to the others. Kassidy looked too sick and weak to run. How much could she weigh? 90 pounds? 85? In the 6 months since she had come to Eden, she had wasted away in front of everyone. “Put your arms around me,” he told her, seeing no other choice. “Just– hold onto me, I’ll get you to Casey and she can–”

“Stay away from it!” Tony’s voice was hysterical, high pitched and reedy like he was on the verge of tears. “Don’t let it touch you! Don’t let it touch you, we can’t– that’s not Kassidy, that isn’t her, it’s inside of her, she let it inside of her!” It looked like he was trying to get up, but was shaking too badly. He stared down at the puddle of black vomit in front of him and a shudder went through his entire body, he scrubbed frantically at his face, spitting again and again. When he looked back up at Marty, his long dark hair framed a face contorted in twitching terror. “Get away from it! We have to get away from it!”

So Tony had finally snapped. Anger twisted inside of Marty, anger at how this man had either gone insane or betrayed all of their trust, anger at the thought that he seemed to have taken this little woman into a room alone and then tried to kill her. He heard about that kind of thing all the time in the North, but had not expected it from docile, thoughtful Tony. “You stay away from her,” he said harshly.

Kassidy put her arms around Marty’s neck and held on. He could have sworn…he could have sworn that her lips parted and she showed her brittle, decaying teeth in a small smile. It was easy to pick her up piggyback style. Marty stood, backing toward the door, listening to the increasing gunfire, not knowing what to do or think or say.

“Please,” Tony begged. He spat again and scrambled to his feet. His posture was hunched and furtive, like an animal that was about to run. “Marty please, please, you have to listen to me! That’s not Kassidy, that’s– I knew it, I knew it all this time! I knew what I saw! That Thing– It wants to make all the stars fall from the sky! It wants to cover the earth in blood! She let it inside her!  It made her think— It tricked her! It made her think that this was her choice! She let It inside her just like Cathy let it inside her!”

This was psychotic. The sound of men yelling outside of the manor made Marty flinch. He stepped back, feeling Kassidy press her face into the space between his shoulder and neck. The thought of that…that stuff, whatever it was, getting on his body made him sick. He needed to get out of here. “Come with me or don’t,” he said.

Tony put his hands over his face, covering his eyes, even the sightless one. He laughed and it sounded like a sob. “You know what It is,” he moaned. “The creatures in the Void have told you what It is ever since you were a child. The planet-eater of the black monolith! And now It’s– now It’s–”

How did Tony know what the Things that lived in the Void had told him?! Could the Sight really extend all the way to–

There was no time for this. The sound of gunshots were very close. He had to make a choice. Marty turned and ran as fast as he could back down towards the Great Hall. And Kassidy felt like nothing in his arms.

What was happening?! He didn’t understand what was happening and he needed someone to tell him! Why had Tony gone crazy and tried to kill a girl he was so close to? Tony was not a violent person! Why now? Why now, in the middle of what seemed to be an unprovoked military attack?! This was supposed to be Esther and Rosaline’s wedding night! How could everything go so wrong so fast?

Had Kassidy done something? No. Impossible. Kassidy was just…she was just a small, very sick woman bent on killing herself slowly because of her grief. There was no way that…

He felt her hold onto him tightly, arms around his neck, but he could not see her. A strange feeling overcame him, an uneasiness. It was the same feeling that he got when he knew that there was a wasp in the room but did not know where it was.

Marty shook himself and kept running. Outside the windows, he could see that the trees in the courtyard were on fire.

He skidded into the Great Hall, breathing heavily. A handful of Partisan soldiers in full gear were lying on the floor. It was impossible to tell if they were dead or not. There was young James Pike, who was definitely dead, his brains spilling out of the top of his head, and Ayda was crying over his body. Esther had Tabby Delmont backed into a corner, she looked like she was yelling at her, and Rosie, half shifted into her monstrous form, was holding her back. Casey slumped over a table and Jules was spraying something into her nostrils. A couple of servant girls were trying to help Dog and Anatole Surkhov to their unsteady feet. Florence knelt beside Flick, pressing a tablecloth into wounds that were gushing blood.

What the fuck had happened?! Marty hurried inside, stepping over the bodies of one of the soldiers. He did not see any blood. Panic surged up inside of him. There was too much going on. Outside it sounded like people were still fighting.

“Esther!” he said, fixating on the best person available to help him. Esther was not good under pressure, but she did not seem to be particularly busy at the moment. She whirled around with her hands up like she was about to electrocute him. Every strand of her orange hair stood up on her head, her green eyes were very wide and angry. “Help, I need help!”

“Oh thank god,” said Rosie, when she saw Kassidy clinging to Marty’s back. Her shoulders sagged in relief. The long muzzle of her face began to recede back into her normal one, her long fangs started to pop out and regrow. Disgusting. Both of them rushed towards him.

“Where’s my brother?” asked Tabby. She straightened the collar of her shirt with a trembling hand. There was not a scratch on her. “Where’s Tony?”

“You shut up,” Esther snapped. She helped Kassidy down from Marty’s back, then recoiled at the foul odor and stared at the black slime on her mouth and chin. The sudden change in her appearance was shocking.“You– what–”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Kassidy, smiling. She tugged down at her ill-fitting black dress and looked around the Great Hall. “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

Anatole was closest to them, sitting in a chair, breathing heavily. He was uncharacteristically rumpled and slumped, which frightened Marty, who was so used to seeing this man as a proud, strong figure in his life. “Traitorous scum,” he said poisonously. “Kimble and some of his Partisans are staging a coup, may their souls never enter their precious Summerlands. I’d bet anything that Deputy Chairman Meadows is behind this all, him or Holmswood.They’ve taken up with the witch of the Hinterlands. I would not have imagined your friend was so useful, Martinko, without her– her magic, they would have slaughtered us in here like rats. We need to get out of here now, regroup with the First Army in Kimanka.”

That’s when Marty realized that they were all going to die. Part of Florence’s army had turned on her. It was the same thing that had started the revolution all those years ago, when she had convinced the majority of the armies to turn on the Imperials. It was unthinkable. Suddenly his jacket was too hot, too dirty. He scrabbled to pull it off of him.

Casey gasped for air and sat straight up at the table she had been slumped over, looking around wildly. Beside her, Jules tried to hold her back, but she shoved her away. Casey’s eyes landed on her sister, crying over the body of the young soldier, then slid to the rest of her friends. Seeing Kassidy seemed to send a shock through her. All her lean muscles tensed and she bounded up and over in an instant, unable to keep her hands away, unable to stop herself from wiping at the blood dripping from Kassidy’s nose. The noxious slime did not seem to take her by surprise. She whirled to face Tabby. “You fucking drugged us.”

“We don’t have time for that,” said Rosaline. She went over to Ayda and crouched to rub her back. Ayda cried harder, holding onto the friendly soldier boy she had danced with; a gloom was cast over the Great Hall. “It doesn’t matter, Case, you–”

Marty couldn’t hear what they were saying. He couldn’t stop looking at Florence kneeling next to Flick, trying to stop his bleeding using only a tablecloth. It couldn’t have been that bad since he was still conscious, but it looked like he had taken a couple bullets to the left shoulder. His bad leg was all twisted up beneath him in a way that was painful to look at,like he had dislocated it when he fell. Florence had pulled his head into her lap and was gently brushing his hair out of his face. He needed medical attention.

Jules was a healer, yes, but what about—

The confusing things Tony had been ranting about still bothered him. Despite the adrenaline rushing through him, he felt a distinct sense of unease. No, that was impossible. Maybe there was a way he could…

The words of the terrible moth guardian of the Void returned to him: there are Things that curl and wait for when a body is empty. There are Things that thirst for human blood.

While Casey and Esther argued with Tabby, he reached out to touch Kassidy’s hand. The skin was cold and clammy, it sent a shiver up his spine. She looked up at him. Blood would not stop leaking from her nose and he could see it in her ears as well. Her skin looked so dull, the veins scrolling at her temples seemed almost black. How had she gotten so sick so fast? “Do you think you could check out Flick?” he asked her. “You know, stop the bleeding?”

Kassidy blinked like she was surprised. Her eyelids made sticky sounds. She glanced at the spy and the Prime Minister. “What?”

“You’re a nurse. You could stop the bleeding.” Nearby, Jules was fussing over Dog and trying very hard not to look out the window where the skirmish between the traitors and the men still loyal to Florence was raging. “Can you help him?”

“Why are you asking her that?” asked Casey. “Are you kidding me? Are you fucking kidding me? She’s the one who needs a doctor, look at her, she’s—“

“Right, yes.” Kassidy was smiling. Marty could see that something about her was not right. What was it? His blood felt hot, prickling. Something about how calm and peaceful that smile was wrong. It was like she wasn’t even worried about what was going on around her. It was like she didn’t even care. “I’m a nurse. That’s right. I fix people who are broken.”

The way she said that was all wrong. It was not the way Kassidy would say it. Esther seemed to notice too, frowning. As she walked towards Flick and Florence, Anatole stiffened, completely on edge. 

She went and stood above Flick and the woman everyone knew was his mother. Flick was panting, in pain. Marty didn’t want to see that pain in someone who had helped raise him. He had always known that Flick had been born wrong, with his crippled leg and weak lungs. He could not do what the other men did, he was forced to lurk in the shadows, forced to help the cause in other ways. It would have been kinder to let him die when he was a baby, it was what was supposed to happen. But Marty had been born wrong too. He knew what it was like to be so different. He had always seen a part of himself in the lanky, clever-faced man who controlled all the information coming in and out of the Northern Territories.

Flick was pale, laying on his back. He had tangled both his hands in the fabric of Florence’s dress, his wide eyes staring up at her. Every few moments, his body would spasm and his bad leg would shake in a way that was hard to watch. The puddle of blood around his shoulder grew. “Mama,” he was saying, over and over, and hearing that childish fear and weakness out of a grown man’s mouth made Jules and Anatole look uncomfortable. He had always done what she told him to do, he had always pretended like he wasn’t her son. Unwanted. Unwanted, just like Marty. “Mama, I don’t want to—“

“Don’t be stupid,” said Florence. Her mouth was set in a thin line. She cradled his head in her lap with a gentleness Marty had never seen her possess. For the first time, she seemed old and very scared, her gray hair sparkling in the firelight. “You’re fine, this is nothing. Don’t be such a baby. This is only a scratch.”

Another spasm. Flick’s face contorted. “I don’t want to go to a place you aren’t there!”

Kassidy hesitated, staring down at the mother clutching her injured child. She cocked her head as if thinking, then bent to dip her fingers into the puddle of warm, clotting blood, scooping it into the palm of her small hand.

And she brought the blood to her black mouth and licked it. In front of everyone. As if it was the most natural, normal thing in the world to do. 

“Ivan!” Jules’s harsh voice cut through Marty’s shock and horror like a knife. “Les yeux sanglants! Maintenez-la enfoncée!”

The bloody eyes. Hold it down.

Before anyone else could move or react, Kassidy was dragged back and away with a massive, invisible hand. She did not move or struggle, she just stared like she did not know what was happening. More of the black slime spilled from her mouth, mixing with the blood there. When Casey saw her jerk back through the air, she screamed.

Jules wasted no more time on fear or grief. She gathered her shawl around her, scrambling towards Florence and Flick. Jules pressed a handful of something, herbs or strange materials she always kept in her pockets, against Flick’s wounds and her hands glowed white. Only then did Kassidy react, flinching back but not being able to move.

“Don’t come near me with your dirty magic, witch,” said Kassidy. She was pressing back against nothing. The huge invisible hand held her an inch above the floor. Her legs kicked. “I will gut you like I gutted your ancestors.”

Well that wasn’t a good sign.

“Kill it now,” commanded Jules. She did not move from her crouch. Color burned high in her sharp, spotted face. Her hands continued to glow and beneath them, Flick’s bleeding stopped. “Kill it now, don’t let it speak.”

Anatole stood up before anyone from Eden could react. He wobbled on his feet unsteadily. The look he shot at Dog was one of cold stone. “Stop this,” he said. “We don’t have time for this again. Julia, I’ve told you before, she’s not one of them, her eyes have not been corrupted by blood magic. Zvezdorez does not react to her presence, she isn’t one of them.” His right hand strayed toward his side where his black star-metal sword was supposed to hang. 

“I’m going to fuck every one of you people up if you don’t tell me what’s happening!” Casey was about to lunge, but Rosaline grabbed her by one arm and held her back. She was the only one who had the strength to control an Artificial. Marty looked back and forth wildly.

“Where’s my brother?” Tabby asked again, in a weird kind of broken little voice. Everyone ignored her.

“I knew there was something wrong with this girl.” Jules rose up. Her brows were furrowed, she twisted a charm made of bone around her neck. “I told all of you, Olive told all of you– something is not right! I don’t know what it is but–”

“If that big motherfucker doesn’t let her go right now, I’m going  to–”

“--it isn’t blood magic, it isn’t like anything I’ve ever– the air about her is like the plakal'shchitsa mutants, corrupted by the Void beyond the stars!”

“Let go of that young lady before you injure her, Mr. Kosarin,” Florence snapped, coming out of her motherly haze now that Flick was no longer bleeding. She rose and flicked her fingers dismissively at Jules. “This witch is not your master. We aren’t going to concern ourselves over the peculiarities of these foreigners in the middle of a goddamn coup. I won’t ask a second time. If Bedny and his men have dealt with the traitors outside, we have to go to the trucks and regroup with the First Army. If they haven’t dealt with them, we have to decide how we all want to die.”

Dog hesitated. He looked at Jules and she shook her head at him. Still, the invisible hand dropped.

The yelling and faint gunshots outside had died down. 

Kassidy struggled to breathe. She bent over with her hands on her knees, looking up through her tangles of matted hair. Her eyes were dark and wild. As if nothing had happened, she lifted her palm to her mouth a second time to lick up the blood. She used that palm to slick her hair back, shaking her head. There was a brightness to her that she never seemed to possess. “Well, we don’t want to leave without Tony, do we?” she asked. Even her voice was terrible. “We don’t want to leave without finding Tony. Did you know he ran away again? Like he always runs away. He ran because he tried to kill me. Tell them about Tony, Marty. Do you want to tell them all about how Tony knocked me down and tried to choke me to death?”

Marty felt sick. Something was wrong. He was frozen but everything inside of him buzzed. His head throbbed. He could not take his eyes off of her and her wrongness. This was wrong. This was wrong and everyone knew it, even if they didn’t know why. Kassidy did not move in such a quick, jerky way. Kassidy did not speak like that. Kassidy did not– would not, would never! – lap up human blood!

The others seemed just as confused as he did. Jules lifted one black-fingered hand and started to reach out, but Dog grabbed her and pulled her into his big body to hold her back from whatever it was she was thinking about doing. Casey took a little step back and bumped into Esther, her eyes wide. Rosie put her hands over her mouth. 

But Ayda! Not his Ayda. Ayda wiped the tears and snot away from her lovely face. She also had blood on her hands and it left streaks. She did not move from where she was kneeling, she only looked up slowly. Her big, cow-like eyes were completely black. “Kassidy,” she said, her voice so, so quiet, so unsure, but carrying through the Great Hall. “I’ve never felt you feel so…happy…”

Kassidy started to laugh. She had never sounded so beautiful. She had never sounded so ugly.

There was no time. The First Army Lieutenant Colonel Matthew Bedny ran in with his rifle drawn, followed by Beatrice Kosarin, Olive, and her daughter. Bedny’s teeth were bared as he glanced around the Great Hall, the room where only 30 minutes before he had been dancing with Hazel the servant girl. He looked to Florence first, then to Anatole. “Fucking guerrilla cowards turned tail when the lads pulled out the heavy artillery,” he said, and spat. “They’ve pulled back to Abime. They’re setting fire to the town.”

Beatrice held out a small radio in her big hands. “Holmswood’s taken over the broadcasting station in Ile de Matane,” she said as she fiddled with the knobs. Beside her, Olive was staring at Kassidy with her red, red gaze, and holding onto her daughter George. “Bastards. This is what they’ve got playing from here to Kimanka, hold on.”

“--In the name of the Supreme Council of the Revolution of the Armed Forces in the Strath, I declare Martial Law over the Southern Provinces. The Writ of Law is suspended and the regional government and unelected assemblies are hereby dissolved–”

Florence’s hands clenched into fists. It was like she was about to scream. She was not a tall woman, she was barely as tall as Rosaline, but at that moment she seemed like a terrible giant. Her face blazed with fury. “I will hang every traitor and leave their bodies for the crows! How dare they?! Holmswood, that bloated old cunt, how dare he even think of attempting to overthrow me?! I knew it, I knew that he was up to no good when he met with Kimble last week! How dare these animals–”

“--The aim of the Council is to establish a strong, united Territory, free from the corruption and degeneracy that the current Prime Minister has forced upon the people. You are hereby warned that bribery or corruption, sabotage, subversion, homosexuality, demonic practices, obstruction to the Revolution, and assistance to foreign invaders are all offenses punishable by death–”

“Praise the glorious revolution,” Flick said weakly from the floor, finally opening his eyes. He rolled over and groped for his cane, wincing as he did so. His left arm hung uselessly. “It was nice while it lasted. I don’t think Holmswood or Kimble will have the mercy to hang a bunch of degenerate counterrevolutionaries, it’ll be the ax if we’re lucky and the stake if we’re not.  You people shouldn’t have laughed when I said we should all carry suicide pills.”

During the heaviest period of fighting during Florence’s war, Marty had seen countless executions. As a child, he would walk past the hanging bodies of Imperial spies as well as soldiers from Florence’s own armies who she had sentenced to death for crimes such as rape or looting which she had no tolerance for. It had seemed normal to him to watch the crows pecking at their eyes and pulling at their tongues. But before Florence’s regime, things had been more brutal. Executions back then were meant to torture and dehumanize to teach others. The thought of Jules dying, dying in a painful, degrading and public manner, was too much for him to even imagine. They would burn her.

If he did not calm down, he was going to have a seizure. And then he would be useless. But when he tried to breathe, his lungs would not fill with air. This was too overwhelming. There was too much!

Anatole seized a handgun offered by Bedny as he worked himself up into a rage. “Shut your mouth, Phillip, I will not let any of us die like dogs.” He pulled back the hammer of the gun, stalked over to the body of one of the unconscious Partisan soldiers, and pulled the trigger. The boy’s head exploded with gore. So they weren’t dead, Ayda had only paralyzed them with her empathic Ability. Somebody screamed at the sudden utilitarian violence, but Marty didn’t know who, he could only watch in horror. The Field Marshal pulled the trigger on the next body with calculated ferocity, splattering his fine clothes with brain matter. 

“-- Wavering or failing to declare open loyalty with the Revolution will be regarded as an act of hostility punished by any sentence deemed necessary—”

And throughout this, Kassidy just stood there laughing. Cracking up, just absolutely cracking up at the funniest joke in the world. She held her sides like they were hurting her, doubling over. The rest of the Northerners were not paying attention to this, but the rest of Marty’s friends could not take their eyes off of her. 

Another gunshot, point blank to the head. Anatole’s teeth were set in a snarl. The blood-lust was in him now and would not leave until more men died at his hands. More would, before the end of the night. 

With a click, Beatrice turned off the radio. She did not share the same rage or panic as the others. Every inch of her was calm and measured. As the Minister of Communications, who oversaw all propaganda in the Territories, she was used to thinking in a more rational manner than the others. “We need to get out of here now, Prime Minister,” she told Florence, blowing a strand of hair from her face. She glanced briefly at Kassidy. “With the radios down, they could be at the First Army garrison by morning and kill every man there without warning. They won’t know what to expect if we don’t warn them.”

“And the internet?”

Beatrice shook her head. “All the lines have been cut.” She shrugged, dropped the useless radio. “It’s what I would have done first, if I was them.”

Slowly, Casey made her way towards Kassidy. She approached her the same way one would approach a wild animal, each footstep soft, her arms slightly outstretched. Sweat glistened on her forehead. Everything about her was still so perfect and beautiful. The dress she had chosen for the wedding fit her like a glove. Each braid in her hair was set in its elaborate place. But there was no joyful serenity left in her. She was confused and she was scared. Kassidy was still laughing.

“Reed said he only has 1,000 men. That’s nothing. If they attempt to ambush the garrison in the marshlands, they will—”

“Your guerilla shock troopers have always been nothing more than terrorists who attack in the night, then run away.” Anatole pulled the trigger on another unconscious Partisan and extinguished his life. Nobody did anything to stop him. Nobody ever did. He looked coldly at Florence over his shoulder. “No offense, Prime Minister. You’ve relied too heavily on ambushes, raids, and sabotage all these years, and now all of us are paying the price. We can take the backroads to Kimanka and regroup with the garrison, but we have to leave now.” Another gunshot.

Flick pulled himself up beside his mother. His leg gave out beneath him and since he was down one arm, he was unable to support himself with the cane. Florence caught him before he went down and held him up with her own shoulder, she allowed him to put his arm around her so he would not crumple. This moment of intimacy was ignored by both of them. He winced in pain before speaking. “The second we leave, they’ll burn the manor to the ground.” He swallowed hard like a little boy. “I– this is our home. I grew up here. Marty grew up here. Are we really willing to leave it to be looted and destroyed by men who used to be our friends and comrades?”

By then, Casey had reached Kassidy. She didn’t say anything, she just reached out and took Kassidy’s hand in her own protectively. Kassidy stopped laughing when she felt the touch. She tilted her head up to look into Casey’s face, so cautious and bewildered with her furrowed brows and sparkling eyes. Kassidy closed the space between the two of them so that there was no more than an inch between their bodies. Still smiling, still looking so, so happy, Kassidy stood up on her tiptoes and pressed her other hand to Casey’s cheek, smearing it with slime. She moved her mouth close like she was going to try to kiss her but Casey recoiled in disgust.

Marty had never felt so afraid. It was like Kassidy did not know how she was supposed to act or what she was supposed to say. It was like…it was like something was trying to pretend to be her and failing badly.

Tony had been right, and if Tony had been right, none of them were safe. Suddenly he hoped that his mind would never go to the Void again. He did not want to leave his body empty for something to curl itself inside.

The others were continuing like nothing was abnormal. Florence pulled a cigarette from her metal case and Flick struck a match to light it for her. Smoke streamed out of her nostrils. “Let them burn it all down,” she said. “I’ll have–”

Suddenly Olive Vernier fell down on her knees with her hands clasped in front of her. Her little daughter yelped. Olive’s long black hair was like a curtain around her, stark and lovely against her red gown. Her chest heaved indecently. “Please, please forgive me,” she said, her bloody gaze fixed on Kassidy. She started to cry. “Please! I– I should have died with the rest of the faithful! I never wanted to abandon the old ways! I didn’t have a choice!”

The beautiful courtesan, who was one of two known survivors of the blood-magic worshiping cult of Blagodat, looked at Kassidy like she was a God.

But no– the Book that had come from that wretched, destroyed place was still in Eden! Even if there had been something living inside of it, like Olive believed, it was hundreds of miles away in the hands of the other person who had come from that place.

“She can see the fucking thing too,” said Jules, putting her stained hands up in a protective symbol as Dog held her back with his huge arms around her. “I told you! There’s some sort of filthy blood magic going on here! We can’t win against two enemies! Put that girl out of her misery before we all join her! Ivan, get– get off of me!”

“I never stopped praying!” Olive sobbed. She hid her face and tried to pull on her daughter to get her down on her knees as well. “The High Priest used to say you would find a body one day, I just, I just never thought — I didn’t mean to leave! Please, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to leave, the marshlander soldiers dragged me away! They hurt me in ways that were worse than killing me but I wish I had stayed! I never stopped believing in the space beyond the stars! I never stopped believing in the great Beast that has devoured a thousand worlds, I never stopped believing in, in you!”

“Miss Vernier!” Florence snapped, taken aback and looking more than a little concerned at the outburst. She dropped her cigarette in what seemed to be surprise. “Control yourself. This is no time for your superstitious hysterics.”

“What the fuck is happening?!” Esther’s voice was shrill. High points of color rose to her face. She looked around for someone to pacify her fear but there was nobody. Not even Casey, who had wrenched her hand away from Kassidy’s, and was standing there dumbfounded. “What is happening? Why is everyone acting like this, why is everyone freaking out? Kassidy– what’s wrong with you?!”

It wasn’t Kassidy. Not anymore. There wasn’t a Kassidy anymore. There was only something that lived in her body. He knew what it was. Marty continued to try to breathe. He didn’t want to move! Again, he thought of the peculiar sensation of being in the same room as a wasp and staying perfectly still so that it wouldn’t see him.

She was small and weak, it wouldn’t take much to— but he couldn’t even think that. Kassidy was his friend. They carried the same wound of loss, the loss of Kip.

But Kassidy was smiling and smiling. She put her hands on her hips in an awkward parody of reproach as she smiled down at Olive. Blood from her ears trickled down the side of her neck. “Your people didn’t even try to help me take form,” she said. “I was trapped and stuck in that temple for two hundred years while all your Priests and Acolytes used me to amplify their own power. Don’t beg for my forgiveness. Your temple had to be burned down, your people had to be slaughtered, all so one scared little boy could carry the prison that held me to a place where I could find a body to hold me.”

“Stop.” Rosie was holding onto Esther now, she was so scared that her eyes were welling up with tears too.

“Now I need you people to take me somewhere else.” Kassidy looked around the Great Hall at all the people staring at her. “Forget about this stupid human conflict. It doesn’t matter.  Whoever chooses to help me travel to the Lost Colony of Asilo now after we find Anthony Delmont will be spared when I take my true form and conquer this stinking, nitrogen filled planet.”

Marty realized that he had clenched his hands into fists. His heart beat so fast that he could feel the pressure building behind his eyes. He wanted to get away, he wanted to be far away from here. He didn’t want to hear this.

“You’re not Kassidy.” Ayda’s voice was still so quiet. She did not move from her position on the floor, as if not moving would keep her safe. “You don’t feel like Kassidy.”

Well no shit, Sherlock. 

“Your sad useless friend hated her life so much that she gave her body to me. She’s something better now. Better than dead, which was what she wanted to be. You should all be happy for her.”

“We don’t have time for whatever Edenite make-believe this is,” Beatrice said. She jerked her head at Anatole, then at the door. “Let’s get moving. The trucks should all have enough fuel to get us to Kimanka. Prime Minister, I—”

“Demon!” Jules jabbed Dog with her sharp elbow to try to make him let go of her. When he held fast, she continued to struggle until her shawl slipped from her shoulders and her lank hair came undone. Her face burned with fear and anger. “This is a demon!”

“If you say so,” Kassidy, or the thing that was inside Kassidy said flippantly. The effect was ruined when she started to cough so hard that she doubled over and spit bloody phlegm onto the floor. She wiped her mouth with the back of her arm. “Better to be a demon in a rotting body than a spirit trapped inside of some old Book.”

So it had no problem admitting it. It didn't even try to pretend anymore. Why would it? It wanted something from them. Maybe it even needed them. Kassidy looked like she was about to keel over dead at any second. She said she wanted to go to the Lost Colony, but there was no way she could get there on her own. But why would it want to go there?

Marty could always tell when he was about to have a seizure. The big ones, not the little focal ones that he had multiple times a day that were nothing more than 20 seconds of full body twitching. Epilepsy made him useless. His emotions could overwhelm his body and leave his body jerking and unconscious on the floor. His head hurt and he felt removed. Not now! He couldn’t go now! He struggled to think.

He remembered the rumors. Frightening bedtime stories of a man who lived in the Lost Colony who did not have a soul. There were reasons that it was sealed off, there were reasons that nobody traveled within a hundred miles of that place. But why–

And there was Tony. When he walked into the Great Hall, he was not the frantic, wild man he had been while choking Kassidy. His expression was set with deliberate coldness, balancing on the knife edge of determination and sharp fear. That fear was all over him. He had tied his hair back and his blue gaze was set on the demon. Both his hands were wrapped around the hilt of Anatole Surkhov’s black sword.

Zvezdorez, the star-splitter. It was huge, cruel and sharp. It was said that it had been forged in the Lost Colony, its black blade was made from meteoric metal and was inscribed with letters of some dead language. The Butcher of Kimanka had stolen it from the dead in the black temple of Blagodat. Whoever held it could cut through magic like a knife through butter. Blood magic, witchcraft, nothing could stop it. It had tasted the blood of hundreds of men and countless crawling mutants. 

Tony was stupid for taking it. Stupid, or very, very determined. He lifted it and took an insane little step into the Great Hall. His mouth twisted into half a smile. The red gouges on his cheeks made him look as striped as a Partisan soldier. “You’re going back,” he said. “I’m sending you back.”

What did he think he was going to do in front of all these people? What did he think he was going to accomplish, holding a weapon he had no training with? A weapon he was too weak to even swing? It was supposed to be held with one hand. Tony clutched it with two. Every muscle in his body tensed with purpose.

“Oh, Anthony,” Kassidy stared at him, completely frozen. “You really think—“

“Get your hands off of my father’s sword before I beat you into the floor,” Anatole said, his finger on the trigger of the handgun. He puffed up with arrogance, disgust all over his cold, sneering face.

“It’s not rightfully yours.” Tony advanced another step. “It wasn’t his and it isn’t yours. I know who it’s supposed to belong to. It’s supposed to belong to the son of the Red Priest! You—you don’t even understand what it is! But I see it now! The star that it was made from fell to Earth and carried the spirit of this Thing inside of it! It came from some other place, some other place that was trying to get rid of it!”

There was really no risk of him harming anyone, but Casey positioned her body in front of Kassidy’s protectively anyway. Marty watched that and felt an overwhelming sense of dread. Nothing good would come out of that much loyalty and love. She was willing to put herself in harm’s way to protect someone who was already lost. 

Marty’s head throbbed behind his right eye. His mouth tasted bitter. No, no, not now. Not now! He kept trying to breathe and it got harder with each inhalation.

“An empty vessel,” said Kassidy. “A dead star with dead spells from a dead planet. So those mindless shapeshifters tricked me once and you think you can use their magic to destroy me a second time? You’re holding dead metal.”

Tony lifted the sword. It was too heavy for him. Someone stronger needed to carry it. “What do you think would happen if I cut you with this?” he asked in a voice that already knew.

“Give me my sword.” Anatole shoved the handgun into his waistband and began to advance on Tony, shoving Matthew Bedny out of his way as he went. 

“You shouldn’t have tried to fight me, Anthony.” Kassidy extended her arms in a parody of gentle understanding. “You should have made it easier on yourself. You should have–”

He rushed at her. The rage and adrenaline inside of Tony must have been unbearably powerful. It made him fast, it made him strong in the way that someone at the very end of their rope is strong. When Anatole lunged towards him, probably intending to manhandle him until he dropped the terrible weapon, Tony feinted to the side and swept his legs out from under him without even stopping. How did he know how to do that? Was it another product of the Sight? Or had he just been homeless for years and knew how to fight? Knew the right place to strike? Regardless, it made Anatole trip and fall over long enough for Tony to shove past him.

Everyone else was too frozen and confused to be compelled to take action. The bitter taste in Marty’s mouth grew stronger and he started to feel dizzy.

As Tony drew back his arms above his head as if he planned on swinging the black sword down on Kassidy as hard as he could, Casey stepped into his path. She ignored the blade and the possibility that it could arc down into her if she was too slow or made the wrong move. She didn’t even care. Casey drew back her fist and punched Tony in the gut. As he doubled over in pain, the sword fell from his hands. Casey kicked it out of the way and in one fluid motion, seized Tony’s arm and twisted it behind his back to immobilize him. The second she grabbed him, it was all over. It always was.

“If you ever try to hurt her, I will kill you.” Her voice was as cold and painful as steel. She jerked down on Tony’s arm, just to make sure he knew she meant business.  “Do you hear me? I will kill you! I will kill you if you touch her!”

Marty swallowed more bitterness. He swayed as his vision blurred. Nobody saw. Nobody cared. Nobody was paying attention.

“We’re all gonna die!” Tony struggled uselessly and got his arm yanked on again for his troubles. Casey was barely controlling the urge to really hurt him. “Please! Everyone is going to die!”

“Love is such a terrible weakness.” The thing inside of Kassidy’s body licked the remaining blood from the palm of its hand for a third time. When Tony saw that, he twisted in Casey’s grip, trying to throw her off balance. She forced him down on his knees to keep him from moving. 

Vaguely, Marty was aware of Tabby yelling. He could hear the sounds but could no longer process the words. His body was so stiff that he could not move, he was awake but could not think. Emptiness devoured him. Soon he would fall into the floor and start to shake and he knew it, he knew what was about to happen, but could do nothing to stop it. He was trapped inside the prison of his illness.

It was almost a relief when his world went blank.

[blooblooded]

Kip's Return Part 3: Meet JVP

In order to reunite with Ma, Kip needed a practice run. Reuniting was a skill, just like anything else. It was hard to get right. He understood that the first reunion had been screwed up, maybe even traumatizing. That wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t known that he was going to walk in on his sister and childhood friends in the safehouse. He hadn’t even known that they had existed at the time.

Well, this time he could practice. Ma was too important to screw up. He strained to remember things about her and failed. The only thing he had of her in his memories was the knowledge that he loved her and that she loved him. The memories would come back over time. Kassidy tried to tell him about Ma– the way she always had a mug of coffee in her hands, the way she always used to fall asleep on the couch instead of her bed, the way her face turned red whenever she yelled. Most of all, she told him about how much she loved the two of them, and how something had broken inside of her when she thought that he had died all those years ago.

The most pathetic thing he had done was search for advice on how to reunite with an estranged family member on the internet. Even reading that had made Kip’s face burn. It hadn’t seemed to apply to him. What was he supposed to do with advice that told him to just stay present or to listen without judgment? His mother thought he was dead. She probably thought Kassidy was dead. She had lost everything. What was being present going to do for her?

Several worst case scenarios had run through his mind. One of them involved Ma having a heart attack and falling over dead. Another fantasy had her yell at him, had her blame him for the stupid choices he had made as a boy that led him to where he was now. The worst possibility was that she pitied him. Kip couldn’t deal with that. He couldn’t deal with any of that. Reuniting with Kassidy had been a surprise and now that he had to do something intentionally instead of on a whim? It scared him more than anything.

That was where the test run came in. Not that the test run wasn’t important. Kip had already had one when he came back to Kassidy, when they had both cried and wrapped their arms around each other. But when he came back to Ma, he had to make sure he did it right. Ma would be tomorrow.

It was a lucky thing that there was somebody else who believed Kip was dead. Somebody he was pretty sure hated him.

“You ready to go?” Marty asked him. One day had passed since Kip had received the bad blessing of learning that one of his squadmates had escaped Internal Operations just like he had. There was no time for hesitation. “I already let Rome know we’re coming. He took the news that you’re alive surprisingly well.”

“Have you been talking to that guy this whole time?” When Kip tried to remember Rome Prospas, all he could picture was Johnny’s face. He knew that he had spent a lot of time with Rome when he was a teenager, but only because the others had told him so. Memories returned slowly and he was afraid that many of them were lost to him forever. “You two are real close, aren’t you?”

Marty’s face flushed and he looked away. “I stood up for him a lot when we were kids. Everyone else would just– ce n’est rien.” He shrugged, then picked up Kip’s baseball cap from a chair and held it out to him to change the subject. “You should put on the glasses too. Even if we go up from the lift in the slaughterhouse, somebody from the secret police might see you in the house if the windows are open.”

Many factories and processing plants in the Industrial Districts had private elevator chutes leading up to the offices or homes of those that owned them. This made travel between them easier and more efficient for the wealthy elite in Eden. The Colony was positively riddled with little tubes with unregulated pressure and safety precautions. Esther said that her father had suffered a traumatic brain injury during a depressurization accident while traveling in one of them. During the bombings, scores of people were crushed to death or trapped and suffocated inside of them. There had been times that Kip had used this method of transportation back when he was in the Program, but he didn’t relish the idea of his body hurting 60 miles per hour in a little metal tube.

But it was the only option. Johnny – or Valentine, or whatever he was called – had decided to spill his guts on TV and now there were riots everywhere throughout the Colony. Cops and secret police were everywhere. He knew that they were probably surveilling the Prospas family home, waiting for a slip up. He couldn’t risk being seen.

Kip took the hat from Marty and put it on, then pulled the sunglasses out of his pocket. “How do I look?” he asked. He was wearing black jeans and a cream colored cable-knit sweater that did not suit him. Somehow he felt nervous. He did not feel like himself, he felt like he was dressing up as a different person.

“Fine.” Strangely, Marty was dressed neatly as well. It looked like he had put something in his hair, some kind of gel to control its fluffiness. There was a smell of sandalwood aftershave about him. The combination of these things made Kip frown. It seemed like Marty was putting on airs to impress his friend. Kip wondered if he felt jealous. He was not the only one reuniting with someone. Marty was meeting someone he seemed to care very much about for the first time.

That was ridiculous. He checked his watch. 9:00 at night. The overhead lights were turned low by now and there would be fewer people out and about. Time to go. He didn’t say anything to Marty, he just headed for the door. Marty followed behind as quiet as a shadow.

They were already in the Mid Levels so it didn’t take long to get to the Industrial District there. Kip could smell the foul odor of the Prosperity Inc. slaughterhouse blocks before they reached it. It was the smell of death, blood and rot. He covered his nose and mouth with a hand by the time they reached the lift and watched Marty enter the access code to get in.

There wasn’t much room in the tube. It was smaller than a standard elevator so they had to stand close to one another. Marty pressed himself back against the metal as they started to rise, as if he did not want to even touch Kip. Under other circumstances that might have bothered him, but there was too much to think about now. Kip didn’t know what he was going to say. He didn’t want to get it wrong.

He had always gotten it wrong. In the secret police, his priority had been keeping Pete, Nicky, and Johnny safe at all costs. Sometimes that could seem harsh. Johnny had been too young and sensitive to survive without someone looking out for him. Kip– Smiles ended up hurting his feelings badly sometimes, but he hadn’t known what else to do. The girls were so much easier. Saying one wrong thing could either feed into what he realized now were a very traumatized teenager’s delusions or send him into hysterical meltdowns. No matter how hard he tried, it was like he could never say the right things.

Should he even be doing this? Would it be kinder to just leave the kid alone and allow him to believe he was dead? Even if it was better to leave him alone, Kip couldn’t do that. He had a responsibility not to. He needed to…he needed to tell him that he was sorry and that he loved him and was proud of him.

It just hurt so fucking much. 

Kip tried not to think about how he sometimes hated himself for his failures.

The lift traveled upwards, dinging occasionally. Marty kept his eyes on his feet and reached up to make sure his hair was still smoothed down. He seemed just as nervous as Kip was.

“You need to be careful if you’re thinking about starting something with that Artificial.” The words just came out. Kip didn’t know why. He didn’t know why he always blurted stuff out, even if he knew that it might embarrass someone. He couldn’t control himself. Sometimes it was easier to get a reaction out of someone than think about the things he had done wrong. “Not a good idea.”

Marty’s big black eyes shot up from the floor in shock. He appeared frozen. “What the fuck is wrong with you, la?”

“I’m just saying. Esther and Casey seeming normal doesn’t mean the rest of them are. They can really hurt people and every single one of them thinks they’re better than you. You don’t want to fuck around with someone like that if you don’t know what you’re doing.” Was he saying this because he was jealous? Was he lashing out and trying to hurt him to get his mind off his own guilt? He did not want to hurt Marty. 

There was a beat. The tube dinged and slowed. Marty shook his head and looked away. “Sometimes I forget that you can sound exactly like Lee.”

That was a knife in the heart.

Piece of shit.

There was no time to say anything else. The lift came to a complete stop and the doors slid open, leading out into a wooden hallway with dim lighting. Marty pushed past Kip and went out first. Kip took a deep breath, clenched his fists, and followed.

His stomach rolled like he was going to throw up and his skin was clammy. He did not understand why he felt so scared. What was there to be scared about? Reuniting with someone he had shared a dorm with for six years? Someone he had practically raised? There was nothing to be anxious about. The real thing that should be worrying him was how he was going to talk to Ma tomorrow.

“Rome?” said Marty, looking around the hall and stopping to stare at a portrait of three yellow eyed children. He held his hands like he did not know what to do with them. “Rome?”

Kip glanced at the portrait as well. Johnny was maybe one year old in it and the person he recognized as Rome couldn’t have been older than six, just as nervous and serious looking as he appeared on TV. There was an older one too. Kassidy had awkwardly told Kip about Ben Prospas and skirted around some kind of bullying issue that had occurred in middle school. It ended up with both of them going to the Juvenile Detention Center. Kip couldn’t remember any of that. It couldn’t have been as bad as what he had seen back in the Program so he wasn’t too worried.

Even though he had only seen the hallway and the lift, he knew that this was a nice house built for rich people. He imagined what that might be like. 

Someone came into the hallway and Kip involuntarily flinched. Rome Prospas was tall and thin, with none of the ill-proportioned gawkiness that Artificials like Esther possessed. He carried himself in a careful, quiet way and almost seemed to glide instead of walk. Every stitch of his clothing was neat and well-fitting. When he saw Marty, he froze for a moment and then smiled a slow, close-lipped smile that did not suit his dark, pretty face.

“Marty,” he said, and it was strange to hear such a low, soft voice come out of the mouth of someone who looked like Johnny. “It’s good to finally meet you.” Well, at least the lisp was familiar enough.

Kip already didn’t like this guy. 

It looked like Marty still didn’t know what to do with his hands. He took a few steps closer to Rome. For a minute, Kip was afraid that he might hug him, but it looked like the two of them were too awkward and repressed for that kind of thing. But Marty was smiling too. Marty’s smile was natural and unpracticed and showed his crooked teeth, the most genuine thing in the world. He was so…happy. His hair was already puffing up.

“Right, right,” he said, and his accent seemed stronger than usual. It sounded like ‘Ride, ride.’ “I never thought I’d see you in real life.”

“It’s hard to believe you traveled all the way down here. It’s incredible.”

“I had something important to do, like I told you.” Marty paused. “I wanted to see Eden. And I wanted to see you and the twins.”

“I used to imagine us meeting all the time when we were kids,” said Rome, serious as ever. He moved closer carefully, hovering over Marty. “You know. Before everything that happened.”

Marty laughed, then, like he could not control himself, reached out and touched Rome’s hand lightly with his own. It wasn’t a handshake, they weren’t holding hands, it was only a quick touch, just a brush of the knuckles. Like he was trying to make sure that he was really there.

If Kip didn’t stop whatever this extremely autistic display of affection was, he was going to start to get upset. He cleared his throat. “Hey there. Kip Nguyen.” His name did not seem like his own. He did not feel like himself, he felt like Smiles, sharp and angry and wanting to lash out. His arms were crossed over his chest. Jealousy was such a repulsive, cringing quality. What was it? What was so wrong with Marty being happy around another person? He didn’t have a problem seeing him laugh or smile around Ayda or Casey.

Rome blinked and seemed to see him for the first time. “I– I know. We used to– it’s good to see you too, Kip. So many impossible things have been happening lately, I can’t keep up with it all. Marty messaged me about–”

“Not here for chit chat. Where’s– fuck, where’s whatever it is you call him?” What exactly had Marty told this guy? It made him uncomfortable that Marty was talking to someone outside.

“Please, come into the drawing room.” Rome made a nod towards the corner and began to walk in his smooth, eerie way. Marty followed a little too close behind.

‘Drawing room’. How insufferable. Kip stuffed his hands into his pockets as he walked into what he would continue to call the ‘living room’ in his head. It was large and paneled with real dark wood. All the windows were covered by green velvet curtains, which lent to a regal dimness. There were couches made of real leather, which made sense for a family who had made their fortune in the cattle business. Kip’s sense of proletarian discomfort flared inside of him. He currently shared a two bedroom house with six other people and knew that he had grown up solidly lower class. 

The big, fancy room was empty. Kip looked around. “I don’t have fucking time for this,” he said.

“Kip,” warned Marty, glaring at him.

“Nah, I don’t have time for this. I want to see my, uh…” he hesitated, lacking the proper word. Johnny was something closer than a friend but less close than a brother.  “I’m not risking my life to sit around and talk.”

Even his slightly raised voice made Rome go stiff. It was strange that someone genetically related to Johnny, who had been raised in the same home, could be so different. He was a nervous dog. “Please,” he said. “Sit for a moment. When people came to speak to him yesterday, Valentine became very scared and upset. He—”

“Yeah, yeah, I know how he gets. It’s fine.”

“Will you quit interrupting him?” Marty sat down on one of the leather couches, still glaring. What was his problem? Kip tried as hard as he could to remember anything about Marty and Rome from when they were kids. All he landed on was the conversation from 30 minutes ago of Marty telling him that he used to stand up for him. Guess that was still true. “What were you saying, Rome?”

Rome sat down on the couch next to Marty, careful that he didn’t touch him. He had stopped making eye contact. “Marty told me that you two were close in that– in that place, Internal Operations. I was wondering if you had any advice. It’s only been two days and I don’t– I don’t know what to do. I can’t handle all the screaming and the outbursts. Yesterday I really thought Valentine was going to kill Mr. Delmont, he probably would have if AJ hadn’t been there. My brother is going to hurt somebody or hurt himself. But you were in that place too and you seem so well adjusted. I thought that you might have some advice.”

Well-adjusted? Did he seem well-adjusted? In the 8 months since he had clawed his way out of that hell-hole, he had not felt well-adjusted. He felt scared and empty and broken and lost. Even around his sister and his friends it was like there was always something wrong with him. Maybe he wasn’t freaking out and attacking people, but did that mean he was OK? He didn’t know how to be OK. Kip started to tap his foot to displace some of his pent up energy. “I don’t got any advice for you,” he said, hating himself even more. “I don’t know. 

“I can’t feel unsafe in my own house. I had to call a doctor to give Valentine medication to make him go to sleep this morning because he wouldn’t calm down.”

Kip felt his lips peel back from his teeth in a threatening smile. He took an angry little step towards the couch. Marty was still glaring at him. “Yeah? Staff used to do that when they got sick of dealing with us too. Doesn’t really fix any problems, does it?”

“I’m just trying to help but this is all very new. I can’t deal with someone screaming at me or threatening me in my home, I can’t deal with him breaking things or hitting himself. It’s just a lot. And it isn’t as if there’s a safe place to send him to get help. I thought that you might be able to help.”

“I can help by walking out of this stuffy rich-person living room and talking to your brother.” It was possible that might make things a hundred times worse. Johnny believed that Smiles was dead. Seeing him alive and well might come as a nasty shock. Kip still wanted to punch Rome Prospas in the throat for drugging him, even though there was no way he could understand exactly why that wasn’t OK.

At least he felt angry now instead of anxious. He continued to tap his foot. Maybe he could take Johnny out of this house, away from his family, and into the safehouse. Maybe it would be like old times, when they just laughed and joked around. Maybe it would be nice. But deep down, Kip knew that both of them had changed too much. 

Also, he wasn’t sure if Kassidy and the girls would be happy with two unstable murderers living under their roof. He could understand that. Rome was just going to have to learn how to deal with it. And it had only been two days. Kip had been out of his mind with withdrawals for his first few days of freedom, but if he hadn’t, he would have probably been in violent distress as well. 

He wiped a hand across his face and breathed through his nose to try and calm down. There was no reason to be angry. This guy was just trying his best like everyone else was. The only reason he was trying to find problems with him was because he felt jealous.

“Just be patient,” Kip said lamely. “I guess. That’s it. Everyone’s gonna have to start learning how to be real fucking patient. I know your brother is a very sweet kid and I know he’s still like that, he’s just hurt and scared.” He paused. What was that stupid thing Tony was always saying? “One day at a time. Everything gets easier.”

Rome looked up and finally made eye-contact. He smiled his slow, tight, closed-mouth smile. “Thanks.”

“It’s not that hard to not be an asshole,” said Marty.

“Take your own advice, dicknose.” Kip was calmer now, a little more self-regulated. What had he been so scared about? This wasn’t that bad. This was normal, this was something he was used to. Back in the Program, practically all he and Pete ever talked about was how much they were worried about Nickels and Johnny and how much they wanted to keep them safe and happy. This was no different.

There was nothing to worry about. He was OK, everything was OK.

The door to the living room opened and a big man about the same age as Kip walked in. He was unmistakably related to Johnny and Rome; same yellow eyes, same sharp teeth, same pretty, Artificial face. Long dreadlocks were tied up and away in a ponytail at the top of his head. The soft blue pajamas he wore gave him an air of domesticated peacefulness which was compounded by the cup of tea in his hands. He paused and blinked when he saw Kip and Marty.

“You didn’t tell me we were having company, Ro,” he said mildly, squinting at Kip for a moment.

Right, this was the oldest one, Benedict, or Ben. There was some kind of history there that Kip’s memories did not have access to, he only knew that Kassidy really didn’t like the guy. He caught a glimpse of new and old cuts running patterned up the insides of his muscular arms and felt a shiver go up his spine.

No, that was impossible. Artificials could not use blood magic. It had to just be normal self-harm, Kip knew people did that sometimes. His body tensed up despite this.

“I don’t have to let you know if I’ve invited people over.” Rome’s voice was snippy.

“No, but I’d appreciate it if you would.” The oldest brother was not manufactured for delicate grace like Rome and Johnny. He had to be over 6’3” and was pushing 250 pounds. Any Artificial was a serious physical threat, but this one was the biggest that Kip had ever seen. He kept squinting at him and shook his head like he was confused.

Marty made nervous eye contact with Kip. Kip made a throat-cutting motion that nobody else could see.

“They’re here talking to me about what we’re going to do about Valentine,” said Rome. His posture had stiffened. He raised his chin. “I’m trying my best to fix this problem.”

“How are these people going to know how to help him?”

“Kip used to—”

“Hey, hey, hey,” warned Kip, who could immediately tell that this conversation was about to take a turn. “Hold on a second.”

The color in Ben’s face drained. Suddenly he looked very young and scared. His eyes grew huge. “Kip?” he asked, staring at him. “Kip Nguyen? No. No, I don’t think so. I mean you do look like— but Kip’s dead. Kip died a long time ago. I saw that on the news.”

This would have been a good place to stop but it seemed as if Rome Prospas could not resist the urge to one up his older brother. “Well we thought that about Valentine too, didn’t we. No. It seems as though a lot of the dead aren’t really dead. It’s a good thing. Kip was taken by the secret police too, he was in there with Valentine all those years. Interesting how that works out, isn’t it? So I thought it would be a good idea to get his advice, you know, about how to—”

“Get out of my house.” Ben still looked young and scared and his mild-mannered voice did not raise, but there was something else beneath it, a bright rage. He shook himself.. “Now.”

Kip puffed himself up, posturing to make himself look bigger. He took off the sunglasses so the other man could see his whole face, his whole smiling face, his bulging eyes. “Nah. And I don’t think this is your house, big guy.”

Old instincts unfurled inside of him. He changed his stance, lowering his center of gravity, preparing for a fight. It had been so long since he had fought someone, the last people he had thrown a punch at had been Marty and Casey. He was not meant to cage himself in gentleness. 

“Get out of my house or I will make you leave.” Ben’s hands clenched into fists but he did not move. “Get out.”

“Hold on a second,” said Marty, looking at Rome like he wanted him to say something.

“What, you mad because I used to beat on you in middle school?” mocked Kip, who did not really know, but assumed that’s what had happened. His assumptions were confirmed when Ben’s sweet face twisted and grew angrier. He had always been so good at twisting the knife. “That must have been real humiliating buddy, getting your ass handed to you by a normal person like me. You still hold on to that after what, 15 years? That’s real sad. Listen to your brother, man, I’m just here to help.”

He could see that Rome and Marty were standing up now, like they were both afraid that something bad was going to happen. What were they so worried about? Kip wasn’t worried. He wasn’t worried at all. He liked to fight. No matter where he was, no matter who it was. He was ready at any time.

And he missed it. He had been sitting in that safehouse for too long.

“Ben—“

The air in the stuffy living room smelled like ozone, like the crisp air in the midst of a lightning strike.

A trickle of blood ran down the inside of Ben’s arm and dripped onto the floor. One of the cuts there had opened by itself. His eyes were so wide that the whites showed all around. “I don’t want you in my house,” he said, calm as anything. “I don’t care about what happened between us when we were kids. But if you were in that place with Valentine, that means you were one of the ones who—“

That’s all it took. That’s all he needed to hear. Kip launched himself at Ben before the other man had a chance to focus his blood magic, ramming his shoulder into his rib cage. In somebody Kip’s size or smaller, this would have resulted in catching him off balance, but Ben was too big. The key with someone like that was to catch them off guard, close the difference between them, and never let them use their size to their advantage. Kip did not even know if Ben knew how to fight. After knocking the air out of his lungs, he feinted to the left, twisted down and swept out a leg to kick Ben’s legs out from beneath him.

It worked. Ben fell heavily and crashed onto his side. Kip was on top of him in a second, twisting one of the big guy’s arms behind his back in a way he knew from experience hurt badly. Some of his blood smeared onto his hands. “Shut the fuck up,” he said savagely. “You don’t know what it was like in there!”

Despite the pain, Ben was able to bring up his free arm and punch Kip in the side, right above his kidney. The force was unimaginable. He punched him again. From what he could see, his face was now very angry and scared, his sharp teeth were all showing. He rolled, pinning Kip’s bad leg beneath him and trapping him. Now that Kip was underneath, he brought up his knee to catch Ben in the gut. It didn’t do much.

There was a reason he always tried to bubble people bigger than him instead of fight them one on one. Size was an unfair advantage, and Artificials all possessed strength of an inconceivable amount.

Well. Not all of them. Not that that mattered in this situation.

He could hear Marty and Rome yelling at them both and hoped that they would not get involved. 

“You haven’t changed at all,” said Ben, pinning him down. His face looked like he was about to cry, his yellow eyes were very watery. “If you hurt my brother in there, I’m going to kill you.”

Kip brought up his head and crushed the top of his skull into Ben’s nose. The natural human reaction was to clamp a hand over a broken nose and Ben did so, giving Kip the time to scramble out from beneath him. He pulled back and kicked him as hard as he could in the side.

“Stop!” Suddenly Marty was there, grabbing his arm and holding him back. Kip had to resist the urge to pop him. “Stop it, Kip, ça suffit, what is the matter with you?!”

Rome didn’t look too eager at the idea of getting involved in a scuffle, but then he was there at his older brother’s side too, firmly grabbing him by the arm as well. When Ben shook him off, Rome grabbed him again, and bent to help him to his feet. “Calm down, calm down, it’s OK,” he said, going green and woozy at the sight of the blood pouring from Ben’s nose.

“I’m gonna fuck you up, you freak!” Kip had a few choices here. He could fight Marty off and launch himself at Ben again, but he did not want to risk hitting Marty, even on accident. Or he could take the easy way out and bubble Ben, and start shrinking and shaking the bubble, but he did not want to do that to Rome, even though he had just met him.

Ben pressed a hand over his gushing nose, blinking back tears. It was embarrassing to see. He kept trying to shake Rome off of him, but Rome gritted his teeth and kept grabbing him. “You always used to do this!” His voice was shaking. “You always used to do this to me! You hated me for no reason! Get off— get off me, Romeo! If he never stopped trying to hurt me, he probably did the same thing to Valentine all those years, that’s why he’s all messed up now, that’s why!”

That made Kip see red. How dare he say that? How dare he make that assumption? He had never laid a finger on Johnny, he had never even smacked him! He shoved Marty, but Marty just gripped him harder, holding him back. Kip laughed nastily. “Buddy, I never even think about you, you don’t mean anything to me.”

“You need to calm the fuck down,” said Marty, pressing his body into Kip’s. Somehow that was comforting. “Calm down.”

“I’m gonna fuck this motherfucker up, I’m gonna kick his dick into—“

“What’s going on?” said someone new, someone with a stunted, childish cadence to their voice, someone standing at the living room door and staring.

Kip’s stomach dropped to his feet. He felt like he was going to throw up.

And there he was. Johnny had not changed much since the last time he had seen him all those months ago. Maybe he was a little taller, maybe he had filled out a bit. Seeing him in clothes that were not the sweatpants and leggings provided in the Program was shocking, the oversized t shirt and baggy basketball shorts he wore made his scrawny self look like a normal teenager. The dark circles were still there and his eyes were all glazed over and dull, appearing very drugged. He stood there stupidly.

Fuck, fuck, fuck. This was not how it was supposed to happen. Kip did not want him to meet him as Smiles, angry and violent and getting into fights. He wanted him to meet him as the person he really was. His own temper and impulsivity had ruined that.

“Val,” Ben said, trying to cover up the blood. “It’s Ok, we’re just…we’re…”

Johnny stared directly at Kip. He started to breathe fast, flinching back, his face growing scared. He pointed at Rome. “I’m dead!” he said. “I’m dead! You killed me! I knew you wanted to kill me! You gave me those pills so you could kill me, I knew you didn’t want me!”

“No, no,” said Rome. “No, this is—“

There wasn’t time for this. Sometimes reunions could not be perfectly planned. Kip shoved Marty away from him as hard as he could. His heart pounded, it hurt so bad. He walked straight towards his littlest teammate without looking at Marty or at Rome or at Ben. That was not what mattered now. Without stopping, he flung both his arms around Johnny and hugged him as hard as he could.

How long had it been since he had last hugged him? Probably when the behavioral issues began, probably when Johnny started mistaking his familial love for something more, when he started to think that just because some of the other kids wanted to fuck around with him, Smiles would want to too. That was when things started getting bad. Kip regretted that. He had made a mistake. He should have never stopped hugging him.

Johnny started struggling against him. “No, I didn’t mean it!” he protested. “I didn’t mean it when I said I wanted to die! I wanted to see you, but I didn’t want to actually die! I didn’t mean it— i didn’t mean to—I just want, I—“

“You’re not dead.” Kip squeezed him tighter than he should have. He had missed him so much, him and the girls. It was a different type of grief than that of missing Kassidy and Ma. These memories had never been taken away from him. He had been so scared for so long that he had failed all of them and that his whole team was dead. At least he had one of them back. “I’m not dead either. I got out when they tried to Retire me. Staff lied to you.”

Cautiously, Johnny put his arms around Kip, like he couldn’t believe what was happening. His face was pressed into Kip’s shoulder. “If you’re not dead, then why weren’t you there?”

Kip felt his heart clench. He didn’t have the answer for that. He couldn’t say that in the moment, he had to only take care of himself. He gently pulled away and looked down. Johnny’s face was so dull and sluggish, like he was unable to understand what was happening around him. Suddenly he hated Rome for sedating him, even though he knew he must not have felt like he had any other choice. He knew what it was like to be on the other side of his meltdowns. “Well I’m here now.”

Johnny pushed him away. He rubbed his face, looked around, squinted at Marty because he did not recognize him. He eyed the blood dripping from Ben’s nose. “You beat up my brother, Boss?”

“You don’t need to call me Boss anymore. I’m not your Boss anymore. I’m— my name is Kip.”

“Hmm.” He crossed his arms over his chest protectively and looked at the floor. “You come to take me away?”

“Do— do you want me to take you away?” Out of his peripheral vision, Kip could see Rome’s eyes widen.

“I’ve been waiting for someone to come and take me back to the dorms. I didn’t think it would be you though, Boss. Ya know. On account of you being dead as a doornail.” 

Kip’s stomach clenched. He felt cold sweat on his skin. That was what he had been waiting for too. He was always waiting for someone to find him and drag him back. “I’m not here to take you back there. Nobody’s ever gonna take you back there.”

“Oh, someone will. Someone’s going to come get me eventually and take me back. I’ve been trying to think of what will happen when they do. I think they’ll make me watch them kill my brothers first before taking me back. Then I think they’ll kill me real slow, just like really really slow because they’ll be so mad about what I said on TV. They’re gonna hurt me real bad.”

There was nothing to say to that. Again, it was exactly what he was afraid of. And if both of them weren’t careful, it was exactly what was going to happen. Stupid. It was stupid for him to have come here. He had put both of them in danger. Kip went for another hug because it was the only thing he could think of doing, but Johnny twisted away.

“I think you were really brave for going on TV and telling your, uh, your story,” he said carefully, tiptoeing around it, not wanting to set him off. “I wouldn’t be able to do that. Things are going to change here because you chose to come forward instead of just hiding like me.”

“They’re gonna hurt me real bad for doing that,” said Johnny. “I didn’t want to go on TV. My brother said it was the only way they wouldn't take me away, but I think they’re gonna come  get me anyway. I think that West guy just wanted me to say all the bad stuff that happened to me on TV to use me to make people angry.”

Was that true? 

Rome cleared his throat and once again attempted to transform into the magnanimous host, perhaps to displace some of the blame that was going on here. “Do you want to sit down, Valentine? Ben, you— will you go wash your face?”

Reluctantly, the oldest Prospas left the living room, but not without shooting Kip a last suspicious glance. Maybe he deserved it.

Kip sat down on the couch next to Marty. He realized that he was shaking. Without looking at him, Marty gave him a single hesitant pat on the back. He watched Rome sit down across from them in a chair. Johnny sat down on the floor even though there was room to sit, like he could not comprehend the reality of having chairs and couches available for him. He still seemed droopy. How bad had the meltdowns been, that Rome had felt like the only choice was to sedate his own brother?

He wanted so badly to ask about Pete and Nicky but knew that he shouldn’t. That would come later. Way later.

“This is a nice house, Johnny,” said Kip. “I bet— I bet you have your own room and everything.”

“I don’t like sleeping by myself but nobody wants to stay with me,” Johnny started to chew on his cuticles. He was staring at Marty after seeing the little pat. “And it’s Valentine now, actually, but I don’t know if I want you to call me that. Is that guy your brother? He doesn’t look like you.”

There was no way Kip was going to call someone he had named himself something different. He glanced at Marty beside him, then clapped him on the shoulder a little harder than he should have. “This? No. This is Marty. He’s my good buddy from way back, from before— before.”

“Marty is my friend too,” said Rome, who seemed to be calming down a bit but still looked like a cat that had its tail stepped on.

“Oh.” Johnny still had not smiled yet, which was unnatural. He was usually so full of energy and light, even when he was scared or unhappy. This was not normal. Something was wrong. What had happened in those 7 months that Smiles had not been there to protect him and the girls? Could it really have been that bad? Something about him seemed broken and…angry? Kip hated Smiles for leaving but what choice had there been? “Right. I just assumed. You know your mom came to see me yesterday? She wanted to know if I knew you, of course I told her I did. I told her you got your head blown off and she got all mad and went away. But she looked more like Marty than she looked like you so I assumed he was related.”

Well that was a fucked up Freudian observation that Kip was going to ignore completely. He did not need to become aware of some kind of latent Oedipus complex.

“I heard about that.”

“Oh, so people have been talking about me.” Johnny turned his head to look at Rome, who appeared sweaty. “You been talking about me to Marty?”

This was not going to end well.

Marty swallowed. He did not have a naturally friendly face and always came off as stilted and awkward. He leaned forward a little, his hair puffing up. “Well, Kip has told me a lot about you and how much he cares about you. You know, you’re one of the reasons he was able to survive so long in that place.”

“Yeah? What’s Kip told you about me?” asked Johnny, still chewing on his fingers. The name sounded unnatural in his mouth, like a curse. He was breathing fast again. “He told you about how everyone thought it was funny to pick on me and try to hurt me because I’m different? The only thing your friend Kip did about that was tell me I needed to stay away from everyone. What about the time these guys trapped me—“

“No he didn’t, but you don’t need to repeat any of that shit you already cried about on TV,” Marty interrupted. “Don’t be such a little prick.”

Kip inhaled sharply, glancing at his friend. Because of the strange place that Marty had grown up in, he had a different way of looking at things when someone told him about something bad that happened in their life. He seemed to assume that everyone had something bad happen in their life, which made it not as big of a deal to him. “Don’t talk to him like—“

“What? He’s trying to hurt you and make you feel bad about yourself.”

“Sorry, Boss,” said Johnny, who did not sound sorry at all and who was glaring daggers at Marty despite his sedation. “Guess he wants me to keep my mouth shut.”

Ben came back into the living room, carrying four mugs of tea. He handed one to his brothers and Marty but didn’t offer one to Kip, then sat down. Fucking asshole. He watched Johnny take a sip of the hot water, then spit it out.

What was he going to do? This was not going the way he wanted it to go. Kassidy and the girls never held any resentment towards him, reuniting with them had hurt but it wasn’t like this. What if Ma— what if she— what if she hated–

No, no, this was fine. He could handle this. Johnny was just sensitive. He was wildly frightened of abandonment, and since Smiles had not been in his life all this time, he was taking things out on him. That was fine. He was used to that, he was used to the mood swings. Not everyone in his life was going to like him one hundred percent of the time, even if he cared about them. 

He arranged his expression into one as neutral as possible and put his hands on his knees to make sure that he did not appear threatening. Kip’s ribs hurt from where Ben had punched him. Motherfucker. He wasn’t sure how he felt about leaving his little teammate in this place with people like that. It was hard to accept that Johnny was almost 19 now, he wasn’t the 12 year old kid he used to be. Grown ups made their own decisions. “You OK?” he asked. 

“I’m good.” Johnny set the mug down on the floor beside him. He smiled and it looked all wrong in his pretty face, too sharp and too forced. There was nothing behind that smile. The corner of his mouth twitched.

“Except for the tantrums,” muttered Rome into his own mug of tea.

“Romeo,” warned Ben.

“It’s just— Kip is here now so I thought we could talk—“

“I don’t have tantrums.” Johnny’s smile grew bigger. “I don’t have tantrums. I have completely normal reactions to you people. It’s not my fault if you start wheezing every time someone gets a little bit loud, Rome.” He started to raise his voice at that last sentence. “It’s not my fault if I don’t feel safe here because I know you don’t really care about me, I know you’re talking about me behind my back, you want to get rid of me, you wish that they would come take me away, you think I’m bad and dangerous, and—“

“OK.” Kip stood up and stepped over to where Johnny was working himself into a meltdown on the floor. As he stood over him, Johnny kicked over the mug of tea, just to create a mess, just because he had no other way of expressing himself. How many other times had he done that since he escaped? Kip bent over and pulled Johnny up to his feet, put each of his hands on his shoulders. “You’re OK, look, I’m s—“

Johnny punched him in the mouth.

“Motherfucker!” Kip swore, but he did not let go of Johnny’s shoulders. His lip split open. Vaguely, he was aware of Rome babbling something, but he ignored it, shaking his head. “You— fuck, you’ve gotten better at that, huh? That didn’t used to hurt so bad when you were little.”

“I hate you,” said Johnny, and that was what Kip had been waiting for, wasn’t it? That’s what he had been scared of. Failure. Hate. He had tried his best and it still hadn’t been enough. He watched those glassy yellow eyes well up with tears and that pretty face grow blotchy and ugly. “I hate you! Do you know what happened to me when you left us alone in there? Do you know what happened?! They split us up! They put Nicky on TP work and put Pete on an Elite squad! But I wasn’t good enough for that! I was all by myself!”

“I’m sorry,” said Kip. He closed his eyes. It was his fault.

“If you were sorry, you wouldn’t have left me alone! Everyone was so awful to me and I didn’t even have you! I hate you!” His shrill, lisping voice was very loud now, Rome had his hands over his ears. “I thought you were dead– it would be better if you were dead! If you got out, why didn’t you come back for me? How could you just leave me in there while you were out here with your– your family and your— your Marty? You were really out here living your life while I was trapped in there? I hate you!”

“I’m sorry,” Kip said again, and even though he knew it wasn’t a good idea, even though he knew that he was going to get smacked again, he pulled Johnny into another hug. He held him as tight as he could, pinning his arms so that he couldn’t hit him or worse, start hitting himself like he sometimes used to when he started getting upset like this. Maybe it wasn’t the best thing to do, but it was the only thing Kip could think of. He loved him so much. He hated seeing him in so much distress, he always had. There was just nothing he could do.

Johnny screamed in frustration and struggled harder but Kip held him tight. “I hate you! Why didn’t you come back for me?! My new team hated me and they didn’t even care! They thought it was funny to hurt me, they thought it was soooo funny to make me cry, they– they laughed at me! Why’d they just laugh at me? They didn’t even see me as a person! And you just left me there?! You left me there when you knew everyone hated me?” He started to cry in ugly, gasping sobs, like he could not get enough air into his lungs. His whole body shook. “I– I– I– I don’t– I don’t know– I don’t understand why–”

There was a lump in Kip’s throat. He felt painfully uncomfortable behaving this vulnerably in front of Marty and two men who, despite their pasts with him, were practically strangers in the vacuum of his memory. “I love you,” he said. Why did this hurt so bad? “It’s OK– OK if you hate me, but I’m never gonna stop loving you and I’m never gonna leave you again. I’m sorry.”

“I don’t– I don’t know why– I– there’s something wrong with me! There’s something wrong with me that– it– why do people always want to hurt me? All I– all I ever wanted was for people to– to like me!”

The biggest thing that was wrong with Johnny Valentine was the same thing that was wrong with Kip. And he knew it. They had both been taken away from their families, they had both been forced to hurt other people when they were too young to understand why, they had both endured pain and humiliation and terrible loneliness. Kip didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t know why they reacted to these circumstances in different ways, he didn’t know why he seemed to be more resilient, why he seemed to be coping with it better, he only knew that he was. Maybe someday it would get easier. But not now, and not any time soon. That was the painful reality.

Now Johnny was just clinging onto him as hard as he could, sobbing and sobbing, with his face pressed into Kip’s quickly dampening shoulder. Kip kept holding him. He made awkward eye contact with Marty, who was still sitting on the couch and looked like he very much wanted to escape this uncomfortable situation. “There’s nothing wrong with you,” he lied, because that was the kindest thing to do. “Nothing wrong with you. People do like you, I like you, your brothers like you, and Pete and Nicky, and BG and Creedo and–”

“There– there is! I’m just– I don’t know why– I just don’t know why everything hurts so bad! I just– I wish– I wish I was dead! I wish they had killed me when I was 12 instead of recruiting me! I wish I was dead!”

“Life’s not always gonna be so painful,” said Kip. He struggled, he didn’t know what to say. He wondered what he wished that someone would say to him when he felt that way. “You’re not always gonna hurt so bad. You’re gonna get to be more like a normal fucking person who has a life worth living. That’s gonna happen. It’s gonna happen someday. You worked too hard, you’re too bright, you’re too capable. You’re gonna get out, you just gotta keep yourself alive.”

Maybe he could believe that too. They all just had to keep themselves alive.

They stayed there like that for a long time. Kip didn’t know. Time passed and eventually Johnny tired himself out crying. Kip helped Ben carry him up to his bedroom and put him to bed because Rome and Marty deserved a few minutes of quiet time after all…all that. They deserved some time together, after all, this wasn’t all about him. He watched Ben pull a blanket over his brother carefully and sighed.

There was something else to fix.

“Sorry,” he said quietly. “For being a dick. I shouldn’t have tried to fight you like that. Are we cool?”

Ben’s eyes glowed in the dark. He looked down. “Rome should have told me you were going to be here. And. You know. That you were alive. He should have told me all that.”

“Yeah, your brother doesn’t seem like he has the best social skills.” Kip looked around Johnny’s bedroom. It was decorated for a little kid and probably had not been touched since the day he ran away. There were still crude children’s drawings of trees stuck to the walls. “I tell you what, it’s going to be painfully awkward if he and Marty start dating.”

Ben looked at him curiously. His face was very gentle again. It was funny that such a frightening looking person could be such a crybaby. That was probably why Kip had picked on him so much when they were kids. They were both crybabies. “Well I don’t see that happening. Since Rome has told me that he doesn’t have romantic feelings for anybody, he never has. I think— Marty’s the one he’s talked about before. He’s talked about a friend who used to stand up for him when nobody else would.”

Suddenly, in that sad bedroom trapped in time, Kip had the urge to laugh. All those jealous feelings for nothing. Butterflies swirled up in his stomach. Stupid! He was so stupid! “Oh,” he said, warm and calm. He smiled there, in the dark. “I see.”

“For the record, I’m sorry too,” Ben told him. He rubbed his arms, where blood was still smeared. Kip wanted to ask him about that too, he wanted to ask him why he was doing that to himself, why he was wrapped up in a belief system that fundamentally wanted him dead. “I’m glad you’re alive. I felt so bad when I thought you had died. That was right before they pulled me out of Youth Detention and I got sent to the Prison District. I thought I’d never have a chance to apologize for what happened when we were kids. I never knew what to do when I was a kid. I was so angry. I think I still am.”

They weren’t so different, the two of them.

Kip gave Johnny’s— Valentine’s— arm a pat as he slept. Maybe a little bit of comfort, since he had said he hated sleeping alone. He smiled at Ben, the man who he had been grappling with less than an hour ago. Everything was fine. This reuniting had not been the monumental failure he had been so worried it would be.

He would be back again later.

Marty left with him the same way that they came in. On the lift down to the slaughterhouse, Kip suddenly felt very tired. He knew what was in store for him and Kassidy tomorrow.

“That went well,” said Marty, not looking at him, but also not pressing his body far away like the first time they were on the lift together.

“Really?”

“No. You scuffled around on the floor like an idiot, then got yelled at by someone 10 years younger than you.”

“I think it went well,” said Kip. He cracked his knuckles and took his sunglasses out of his pocket and put them back on. “I think I said the right things. It went really well.” He paused. “And I’m glad you got to spend time with your friend, I’m glad you got to see him. Maybe if all of this ends, you can hang out with him more often.”

“I thought you hated Rome,” said Marty, raising his eyes.

“Nah. I mean, he’s a freak, no doubt about that. But you like him. That’s all I need to know.”

Marty laughed. Just once. It was quiet, not the harsh bark that Kip made when he laughed. He shook his head and looked at him very fondly. Marty had a soft face and when it was not set in an expression of perpetual cool sternness, it moved something tender inside of Kip. He wanted to hear him laugh, he wanted to see him soft.

As hard as life was now, Kip wanted more softness.

Tomorrow was another day.

[blooblooded]

BOOK 1 OUTLINE AND PLANNING

"He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you." -Nietzsche

PLOT THREADS

Kassidy: ‘Plot A’. Main storyline. Daily life turns to horror. Kassidy Nguyen finds an ancient book in her boss’s office and slowly becomes corrupted by its power. She and her friends flee from their Colony and into Marty’s. Action oriented, major conflicts. THEME: Fight hard for your own growth and strength and against your helplessness, but sometimes that can be ugly. Stopping the bleeding is not the same thing as healing. GOAL: She wants to no longer feel helpless in a world determined to keep her down. She wants to do anything to keep from feeling grief. MOTIFS: blood, the body as a cage, hunger, desire, power over the self. Transformation-- is it good or is it bad?

Smiles: ‘Plot B’. Secondary storyline. A nameless man acts as a tool of the state and does his best to survive. Smiles and his team go on various missions, culminating in an overlap with the ‘A’ plot. Smiles endures misery and trauma while being a funny, enjoyable dude. THEME: Nothing in the world feels worse than failing to protect. GOAL: Protect himself and others. MOTIFS: Shields, bubbles, memory, light, the body as a tool, identity. Who are you, if your only purpose is to cause harm? Can you also protect? 

Sashi: “Plot C”: Tertiary storyline. I don’t know if I should keep this plotline because its purpose is only to exposit on Eden’s political system. I was thinking of changing this POV to Dana but maybe that would be too on the nose? Or would Dana’s POV really make it so that this is a Nguyen family story???? A detective in Eden investigates corporate crimes, leading to Silas enforcing isolationist policies. THEME: We are all little cogs in a big world beyond our understanding. GOAL: Keep the world safe for her and her wife. MOTIFS: unfairness, poverty, commie stuff, motherhood?

Anatole: ‘Plot D’: Quaternary storyline. A military official in a land that has recently undergone a regime change navigates a tense political landscape. He learns about his leader’s goals, which happen to tie into what Kassidy is learning about blood magic and the Lost Colony. THEME: Do you continue following orders and doing your duty when you suspect that the person you are following is bad/corrupt? GOAL: This is just a basic fairytale hero guy, idk, he is honorable and shit.  MOTIFS: Order, mud, uniform, sword, loyalty. Also something about embodiment.

Dr Bellamy: Dr. B works with Yancey on suspicious shit. Serves to set up the Yancey storyline.

Lee: One chapter at the end. “What if a loser nihilist was also batshit crazy and dreams of the Void every time he closes his eyes.” 

MYSTERIES AND QUESTIONS KASSIDY MUST FACE

Where did the Book come from? If Cihad brought it into Eden, where was it before?

Why were 15 pages of the Book posted online? Why did Cathy do that?

Is what happened to Rosaline’s body the same thing that is happening to her’s? Why can’t she cope?

What does Tony really know?

Why does she feel this urge to leave Eden?

What does the Rift and the Void have to do with the Book?

CHANGES IN THE SCRIPT

Smiles is nicer to his teammates.

Ayda never has a crush on Cihad and doesn't mess with his mind.

Cihad is no longer working a 2nd job in the secret police as a nurse, his only job is at the hospital.

THEMES

Embodiment: This is directly pulled from my insane problems with the mind-body connection. Are you a body or are you a soul inside of a body? What does it mean to be trapped inside of a form you don’t want to be in? The source of evil in this story is the BOOK, which is continuously trapped inside of forms/bodies it does not want to be inside. What would you do to get into the right body? I know the things that I’ve done. Our bodies are so fragile, dude, and this fragility ties in with the brutal violence seen in this story. The fucked up nature of bodies

Fate/Destiny: Tolstoy writes about fate as the unconscious life swarm of mankind. That wording has always really fascinated me (reminds me of horror). Tony especially is wrapped up in Fate, he can See it and is unable to escape its grasp on his life. Fate is kind of a higher power and connected to the Book— you are powerless against it. The person who really does not believe in Fate, only Chaos, is Lee— and we see where that got him.

Power: Power over others and power over the self. What are you willing to do to have power?

Addiction: Yeah this goes without saying. Kassidy’s behavior is pretty evident— hiding things, lying about things, compulsively using blood magic and refusing to stop even as it destroys her. And she doesn’t see how this mirrors her mother’s drinking problem. We have Tony, whose sobriety is his lifeline and the only thing he knows he can hold on to. Addiction is something that does not let you go and the BOOK is like a metaphor for that monkey on your back.

Eyes and cameras. Someone is always watching. The watchful unseen eyes of creatures beyond human comprehension. The cameras on every street corner. Everyone is always watching eachother, observing. Silas as literal voyeur. Privacy is constantly invaded and violated. Eden is a literal panopticon. There aren’t really a huge amount of cops and secret police to enforce order (exact opposite of the military dictatorship in the North) but the constant observation is how people keep themselves in line.

Body Horror: Primal fears—from the knowledge of the self as a physical object and the consciousness of pain. It broadly encompasses the concept of bodily violation, but arguably one of its most pervasive themes is that of transformation.A reminder of the body’s unreliability. The horror of the changing body goes hand in hand with the theme of trauma, of the body keeping the score. The unreliability and fragility of your body is a reminder that you are human.

SECRET POLICE MIRRORING: Remember that Smiles is so attached to his team because he has met all of them (including Nickels, I’m just gonna make that canon) when he was still Kip. Met Lucy Singh because Marshal was Harry’s friend. Met Valentine because he came over to get Rome a few times. Met Nickels/Aubrey because who the fuck knows, something to do with a school program. 

ACT ONE: Climax- Esther’s monster is destroyed

ACT TWO: CT comes over and takes his damn Book back

Act THREE: Escape from Eden

This takes place over the course of about 7 months: It begins in October and ends in April.

CAST

Kassidy Nguyen: 23. A 3rd shift nurse who works very hard. GOAL: Avoid feelings of helplessness and grief. Learn about blood magic. Bring brother back from dead? Avoid the feelings of loneliness-- as she becomes more connected to the Book, she becomes more aware of her loneliness and her desire (metaphor-- coming alive/blooming after a long freeze) but it is possible that desire for love and intimacy is more painful than not knowing it. Pushes feelings that are hurtful deep, deep down. Clinging to her pain and growing grotesque nature to avoid other feelings because feelings hurt and feelings suck. Remember during dialogue that she is NOT quiet and immediately reacts, usually aggressively.

Esther Bellamy: 23: I can’t describe Esther because she has never held down a job and had assumed she could rely on generational wealth. Typical failure oldest child. Artificial– the kind that was made to be beautiful. GOAL: growth = realizing you aren’t mentally ill, you were just trapped in a bad situation. How do you relearn how to function in the world? Has been treated like she is fragile her whole life and is just now finding out that she is strong and resilient, that she does not need to be sheltered. Freaks out when others try to control her or get in her business. ***Internally angry, externally withdrawn.*** She does have a mood disorder that causes problems in her life. Associated with electricity and lightning-- very symbolic of a loss of ignorance/divine spark and power.

Rosaline Church, ‘Rosie’, ‘Rose’: 23. A good person who makes money from boxing and helps out at the church’s homeless shelter. GOAL: Figure out what damage has been done to her but hide it from her friends so they don’t worry. The ‘self’ vs the ‘other’. Unlike Kassidy, who also experiences a breakdown of borders between herself and something else, Rosaline rejects the grotesque new part of herself and clings to her humanity because she did not choose for this to happen to her body. In later books she will accept it as a part of herself (obvious trauma metaphor). The mom friend, the kind of person who will go out of her way to make sure you are OK. Represses negative emotions before they even form LOL. She needs everyone to like her and sometimes can come across as spineless. Remember that she never cusses.

Cassiopeia Agapama, ‘Casey’, ‘Case’: 23. An enforcer for her father’s criminal organization, loving and generous but also dangerous. Artificial, but completely normal with none of the freakish traits you see in the Bellamys or Prospases. GOAL: Have a good time, make sure others are happy, but especially make sure Kassidy is happy. Very spontaneous, unthinking person. Simultaneously kind and hurtful in the way that something in nature is. Associated with stars -- something beautiful and bright but also something far away and unobtainable.

Ayda Jay, ‘Ade’: 24: A middle school teacher. Much better with kids than she is with adults. GOAL: Play video games with Marty and find a boyfriend or girlfriend, but also stay hidden in a world she knows is dangerous.  Huge water/ocean metaphor, sometimes being around Ayda is like drowning. She has repressed part of her true self all her life, in a way, holding her true self down under the surface. The shallow mean girl face is a way she protects herself so that nobody can see the true part of her that is vulnerable and alone and feels bad about herself. Remember during dialogue that she is usually quiet but makes little snide comments and remarks.

Martin Violet (Martin Bonneville?)‘Marty’ 22. He has never had a job and the job options are pretty damn scarce other than being a soldier. I don’t know what the fuck he does with his life.  GOAL: Figure out the mystery of the Lost Colony to distract himself from his fucked up isolated life, find out more about the Void. Intense, driven, lonely, very alone, lacks social understanding. Autistic and epileptic. Symbolism is all about ice-- rigidity and frigidity, difficult and unexplored territory. The dividing line between conscious and unconscious. His logical nature is constantly at odds with the mystical visions he receives.

Christopher Nguyen, Smiles, ‘Boss’ (only by Nickels and Johnny), 7139A, Kip, 71: 25. Team leader of a secret police squad. GOAL: Survive as long as possible and protect his friends. Protection, especially of the self, is kind of the whole thing here. Helplessness despite his physical body and dominant personality. Terrible knowledge that deep down inside he is soft and vulnerable, and wanting to destroy that vulnerability. Vulnerability of others even causing him anger because it reminds him of the self. It goes like this: Come over here. Stand like this. Take that off. Put this on. Don’t do that. Hurt this person or we will hurt you. A life of constant surveillance and order imposed on someone who is chaotic and unruly. He is an incredibly loving, friendly, intelligent person, and that is being hammered out of him. Got shot in his LEFT leg. Remember Left Leg. Absolutely riddled by mental illness, namely adhd, bipolar (mania) and a dissociative disorder due to constant trauma.

Tabitha Delmont. ‘Tabby’: 40. A career criminal who makes money by scamming people and selling drugs. GOAL: Make as much money as possible and have fun doing it. Clever, always on that grind. She had a terrible childhood and has never come to terms with that. Missing her LEFT arm.

Anthony Delmont, ‘Tony’: 40. Homeless guy. GOAL: Destroy the Book and also maintain sobriety so he can someday see Cynthia again. Defeated, scared. Has a problem where he always desires things that aren’t good for him. In Book 1 he is mostly coming back to himself and trying to figure out what he is going to do. Missing his RIGHT eye. Remember it is his right eye. Depressed alcoholic.

Cihad Tariq: 35. Head nurse at Eden’s only hospital. GOAL: Be a good dad and employee. Get his Book back. Protect Tony? Serious, hard working. Natural caretaker with a mysterious past. He holds onto his past and his beliefs as tightly as he can.

Dana Nguyen: 50. Police Commissioner. GOAL: Legitimately I think Dana wants to kill herself during the first book. Trapped, desperate, very very angry. Her problem is that she doesn’t take action because she feels trapped. Depressed alcoholic. She has basically been alone for years.

Westley Agapama, ‘West’: 44. Businessman :) And a criminal mastermind. AGA is basically Amazon. GOAL: Maintain economic control of Eden despite rivalries. Get to children before Silas can. Very kind/protective but also power hungry. He is willing to help people but also wants to profit.

Field Marshal Anatole Surkhov, ‘Tolya (only by Dog/Ivan)’: 38. Soldier. GOAL: Struggle with loyalties between Florence and his own people. Be a good soldier and fight abominations. Loyal, brave, bitter, harsh.

Phillip Gauthier, ‘Flick’: 37: Spy. GOAL: Get information for his mommy and cause problems on purpose. Manipulative, sneaky, but friendly. Crippled leg and asthma make it hard for him in his Colony.

Julia LaBelle, ‘Jules’: 34. Witch, specifically the official/head witch of Florence’s regime. GOAL: Live a peaceful witchy life and make sure that she and her loved ones are safe. She wants so badly to keep Marty and Dog safe. Mean, abrasive, and hostile due to people being dicks to her all her life.

Beatrice Kosarin: 39. Florence’s Minister of Propaganda. Calm, strong, completely untrustworthy. Great writer.

Ivan Kosarin, ‘Dog’ (by most people): 39. Used to be a weapon, now he does handyman things. Gentle, worried. Loves Jules and loves Marty. Tries his best.

Olive Vernier: 33: Former courtesan, currently being used as a political pawn because her daughter gives Florence’s reign legitimacy. GOAL: Live a peaceful, blood magic-y life. Bewitching, hopeful. Her purpose is to shed light on what happened to CIhad’s people because he sure as shit isn’t saying anything.

Prime Minister Florence Gauthier: 52. Ruler of the Northern Territories. GOAL: Maintain control of the Northern Territories and figure out how she can fuck over Eden. Harsh, angry, charismatic. Difficult person to deal with but everyone seems to love her.

Quentin Bellamy: 44. Stay at home dad. GOAL: Be a good Dad and husband. Innocent, naive, happy. Disabled due to a pressure malfunction on the subway. Before the accident, he was a talented pianist.

Dr. Lillian Bellamy, “Lily”: 52. Geneticist. GOAL: science shit but also protect her family in her fucked up way. Cold, withholding. Having an affair. Very upset that her family is not perfect. Esther is a disappointment, her husband is disabled. Puts a lot of pressure on the twins.

Eddie Bellamy: 20. Student. GOAL: Get through college and get an internship. Sleepy.

Evangeline Bellamy: 20. Student. GOAL: Also get through college and get an internship. Up tight and prissy.

Benedict Prospas, “Ben”: 25. Guy who has been in prison most of his life. Kind and shy but has a terrible temper. Completely hates himself. 

Romeo “Rome’ Prospas: 20: Neurotic and anxious. CEO of Prosperity Inc. A very young man with too much power. Has a severe anxiety disorder and rarely leaves his house.

Lucy Singh/Smokey Pete, ‘Pete’, ‘Peanut’ 0265A: 21: GOAL: Compete with Smiles for leadership so that she can ultimately keep him safe. Highly controlled, simmering rage underneath, a captive forest fire. Very serious about protecting herself and her team. 

Aubrey Song/Nickels, ‘Nicky’, ‘Nick’ 1022B: 18: GOAL: She just wants to touch Pete’s titties. A realist who despite everything dreams of some normalcy and out of all of them, is the only Death Squad member who can imagine a normal life. Pragmatic and self aware. Not a very talented psychic, but she is better at telepathy than Lady,

Valentine Prospas/Johnny-on-the-Spot, ‘Johnny’ 3385C: 15: GOAL: Make sure everyone likes him at all cost. Loving, playful, but needy. Not getting the help he needs.

Sashi Mahajan: 35. Police detective. GOAL: Do her job and have a baby with her wife maybe. Hardworking, frustrated.

Kelsey Mahajan: 31. Police sergeant. GOAL: Be nice and happy and start a family. Kind, loving.

Marshall Singh: 46. Former prison assistant warden, current inmate. Many years ago, he made a report on his friend Sanjana ‘Harry’ Harris that resulted in her death. Was once best friends with Hax. Imprisoned on false charges. Kind and compassionate, but deeply competitive in nature.

Ajax Guttierez: 28. Bodyguard to Rome Prospas. Pragmatic, has a business degree. Guilty over his inability to protect.

Barbara Church: 48. Worshiper in the Weil religion. Social worker. Calm and grounded, but her heart is conflicted because she hates the injustice around her.

Cynthia Delmont-Tariq: 11. Tony’s daughter, adopted by Cihad. Outgoing and loyal. Has psychic abilities.

Billy Tariq: A slime alien child. Sibling to Cynthia. Curious and funny. Different from the others and has a sense of self.

Rachel Zolin: 11. Cynthia’s friend. She lost both her parents during B-Day and has a lot of emotional problems. I really want to bring back some of the slenderblog shit.

Bubblegum, BG, 8046A: 18: GOAL: Do whatever Silas tells him so she is proud of him. Stupid bully, but has a good heart. Can teleport. Missing his LEFT arm.

Harper Malena/Echo, 9943A: 20: Awkward bully who has a problem talking. Seems to have some mysterious shit going on.

Lady, 1182A: 23: The most talented psychic in the secret police, deals mostly with trauma and memories. Sadistic, hurts others so she can get a sense of control.

Bizo, “Zoey”, 4638A: 20, sweet and delayed. Has befriended one of the slime aliens, named Dot. Dot has learned how to speak and think like Billy.

Creedo, 7071A: 25: Follows the rules to avoid getting in trouble. Up tight. She and Evangeline Bellamy would be best friends.

Pills, 6510B: 21. Always tries to escape and cause problems, More trouble than she’s worth. It seems as though she may have maintained some of her real memories.

Lee Harlan: 29: Depressed, evil psycho. His mind goes to the Void every time he goes to sleep. Likes to think of himself as a good person. He tries hard to be a good person but will always mess up. Very concerned about how he is perceived. Can influence other people’s opinions of him.

Silas Botega:’41’: Awkward control freak. It’s easy to be thrown off by her because she is quiet and dorky, but she holds onto grudges and when she is scared or suspicious she will crush someone into submission. 

Jerry Botega: ‘45’. Deceased? A crawling, starving, empty body that feeds on humans.

Stasya Nekraskova: Age varies. A witch who escaped the horrors of the Lost Colony and came to live in the woods in the North. Despises blood magic and wants to get her hands on the Book. Literally eats people and can turn into a huge snake.

Yancey Gallo: 31. Part time high school chemistry teacher, part time freelance chemistry researcher. Came from the Lost Colony. Believes that he can save the world from the demon of the Void and will do anything to accomplish this.

The Not Marty: An adult slime alien, trapped in the Void after its kind tried to send the Book away from their dimension. Wants to get to Earth to protect its young.

Helen: 51. A blood magic user. Holds onto faith to give herself a sense of inner peace.

Frank Toussaint: Deceased. Astrophysicist.

‘Hax’: 40. Current prison warden. Childlike and cruel. Silas really should have killed her. A rabid dog.

Chief of Staff Vega Pelenato: 45. Divided loyalties. Illusionist psychic. Friends with both West and Dana and nobody is really sure which one she is more loyal to.

Percival ‘Percy’ Ruiz: 40, A technopath who West has under his thumb. Betrayed him once a long time ago and will never do that again. ***HAS INFORMATION ABOUT AYDA’S PARENTS*****

Gena Voorst: Queen of organized crime and engineering. Made a fortune off of BOMB DAY because her company builds prosthetics. Honestly the most honest and trustworthy of the crime family leaders.

Favia Voorst: 23. In grad school for engineering. Used to have problems with Ayda in school. Disabled, has prosthetic legs.

Yura and Emily: 26. Adopted children of West. Both have downs syndrome. They love their family and do whatever West needs them to.

Mayor Jay Malena: 55. This motherfucker is such a loser and I hate him for giving Echo to Silas. A puppet Mayor. I always imagine him as a goofy kind of JFK.

Wicker: 19. A class psychic, an illusionist. Friends with Nickels.

Shorty: 13. C Class secret police dummy.

Flash: 15. C Class secret police dummy.

Coop: 16. Neuro-impulse control, B-Class. Terrible burns on the right side of his body from Pete losing her temper because he hurt her precious baby.  Actual rapist, Smiles beats the shit out of him on the reg.

Major: 18. Aggro-type. C-Class. One of Johnny’s love interests. Dumb guy.

Saturday/Jennifer Al-Harbi: 20. Dormitory staff member.Artificial. Easy to manipulate, sometimes tries to protect Smiles and his team.

October/Henry Eliades: 26. Dormitory staff member. Smiles’s Handler. Artificial. Incredibly sadistic, has it out for Smiles. Responsible for Smiles’s leg never healing.

Captain Reed Kimble: One of Florence’s people, leads the Partisan army. Incredibly loyal to his land of the Strath and incredibly concerned about Florence’s alliances with the neighboring territories, as well as the loss of traditional values.

J.C: Kassidy’s supervisor, a 3rd shift nurse.

Millie: Kassidy’s co-worker, a 3rd Shift nurse

Lyra: A girl Kassidy has a one night stand with.

King Jean-Baptiste Dubois: Deceased. He was kind of shitty.

Georgie Dubois: 13. Olive’s daughter with the King. 

Princess Seraphine Dubois: Deceased. Was injected with slime alien goo and forcibly hybridized by the blood magic cult priest (Cihad’s dad)

Mikhail Surkhov: Deceased, murdered by Dog. Anatole’s father. Was captain of the Imperial Army. Possibly the worst person in this story due to the severity of child abuse and being OK with genocide. 

Halcyon Tariq: Deceased. Cihad’s sister. He thinks about her every day.

Yadira Tariq: Deceased. Cihad’s mother. 

The Red Priest: Deceased. Cihad’s father.

Basil Stewart: Deceased. Cihad’s first crush. Was not part of the blood magic community.

Martin Bonneville: Deceased. Marty’s father. Could hear things speaking in the Void. Murdered by Stasya before his birth.

Ivy Violet: Deceased. Marty’s mother. Never recovered from having him because she didn’t want him.

Sanjana “Harry” Harris: Deceased. Kip’s birth mother. She was uncovering information about the secret police and was murdered because of it. Was permanently manic due to untreated bipolar disorder.

Catherine “Cathy” Delmont: Deceased. Tony’s ex wife. They met in foster care. She was a librarian with an interest in the ancient world.

OUTLINE

Act One:

Kassidy comes home after a long night at work (she is a 3rd shift nurse-- graduated one year ago), just as everyone else is waking up. She is exhausted and talks to Esther and Ayda. Her boss won’t move her to day shift, she has a lot of problems with him. She works hard and it never seems to get her anywhere. Due to her anger, she broke into his office that night and took something from him-- a BOOK that she had been strangely drawn to. Casey has been out all night and Ayda is worried about her-- make reference to how Casey is wrapped up in working for their dad. Esther is thinking about calling out of work at her shitty job at one of Eden’s recycling centers because she feels ‘sick’. Rosie left early because she is making extra money participating in medical research. They’ve moved in together in this 4 bedroom house (owned by one of West’s private housing companies) fairly recently, mostly because of money reasons, but Casey and Ayda haven’t really hung out with the others since high school so it’s hard to get used to and there’s still some awkwardness. They’ve all been through a lot. Make it clear that Casey was the one who reached out in the first place, and as overbearing as she might be, is still a sort of extroverted ‘glue’ of the group. Ayda is talking to Marty and Marty acts weird/guilty around Kassidy.  There’s always been something that follows Esther but Kassidy can’t see it-- she knows Ayda can. In a sudden flash, Kassidy sees the monster for a second and it lashes out at her. Frightened by this, Kassidy retreats to her room and then takes the BOOK from her bag and opens it.

2: Smiles and his team wake up and get ready for their shift. He is feeling irritated by them because they are all acting up. They were late for breakfast because Nickels and Johnny were arguing, so none of them got to eat. Their shift that day is in the Sewers, they’re supposed to hunt down and destroy some of the slime creatures that have made their home down there. This is unpleasant. The sewers are disgusting but essential to Eden’s self sustaining infrastructure, filled with rats and monsters. There are also rumors that people who don’t want to be found hide down there. Exposition about the role of the sewers in a city, and exposition about how Eden is self sustaining. The squad annihilates a few slimebabies, so we get to see them use their abilities and also get some exposition about slime creatures in Eden. The slime creatures seem scared of them. It is clear that Smiles does not understand what they are. The sewers don’t have cameras so Smiles and the gang spend time goofing off. They appear to all really love each other, but there are lots of weird tension and dynamics. It is exceedingly clear that Nickels is his favorite, even though she is a psychic. Imply that Smiles is uncomfortable with most psychics. Imply that pyrokinesis is not a usual ability. Imply that it is not normal for an Artificial to be in the secret police. This is a group of strays. Recruitment is in a few weeks, with new kids coming in to replace the old ones, and Smiles jokes/threatens to get rid of Nickels and Johnny and replace them with A Class agents. He would never do that, they are more important to him than being “successful”. Rats start swarming, running, which freaks everyone out. The squad investigates further, and they find a disemboweled corpse with strange writing on it. First mention of the blood magic cult, who obviously did this.

3: Kassidy flips through the BOOK on her day off. It’s making more and more sense to her, she is really drawn to it. Casey barges into her room and Kassidy shoves the BOOK away. Casey annoys her, there is tension, she wants to hang out but it seems like she is just bored and there’s nobody else around. Casey won’t shut up and she’s overly touchy. Kassidy feels like she is making fun of her.  Kassidy looks at her bills on her phone and feels resentment towards Casey for having money. It’s not fair that she has to work so hard and Casey doesn’t even have a real job. Her mind and body are tired from work. Casey says that Esther is acting crazy, that the ‘Thing’ they can’t see won’t leave her alone. Everyone in Eden is vaguely aware of things beyond most people’s comprehension. Casey shows her an ad she put on the internet for someone who can get rid of the thing, treats it like a big joke. Kassidy takes this more seriously because she remembers what happened when Esther’s monster attacked a bully named Ben who was picking on them in middle school. Suddenly she feels like she is in danger. Casey wants to go get lunch together but Kassidy tells her no, she is tired and just wants to read. 

4: Kassidy is at work a week later and her boss Cihad Tariq shows up out of nowhere, which is unusual for him since he works during the day. Cihad is a real strange guy, he has a weird accent, he’s huge, and he has red eyes. Tariq asks her if she has been in his office, but Kassidy is an excellent liar and denies it. She asks him why he’s at work so late, since she knows he has a kid, but doesn’t get a good answer. This experience shook her, so she tells her supervisor that she is sick and goes home. On the subway ride home, there is a checkpoint (something that is relatively normal, ever since B-Day made security stricter) where 2 secret police members (C Class, but she doesn’t know that) get on the train and scan everyone’s IDs. Kassidy has an anxious reaction to seeing secret police, and her internal thoughts reveal that this is because 6 years ago, her brother, Kip, was dragged away by them and this was the last time she saw him before he was shot for a crime he did not commit. The secret police scan a guy’s ID and he is the guy they were looking for, they drag him away while he is begging them not to hurt him. Nobody on the train does anything. Kassidy’s hands don’t stop shaking until she gets home. It’s 2am, Ayda and Marty are still awake playing video games. They make fun of Kassidy because they’re edgy dicks, but they aren’t malicious or anything. Kassidy goes to her room and opens the BOOK. She has a hangnail that she picks at, drawing blood, and is suddenly filled with power that she has never felt before, the essence of the VOID. For the first time in a long time, she is exhilarated and happy, euphoric, feeling powerful. From Esther’s room, she hears a scream.

5: Smiles and the squad frantically clean their dorm room because they found out that staff is doing room checks. They have some contraband: snacks (JVP’s), a knife that had not been returned to the armory (Nicky’s), some sedatives that Smiles had not taken because he wanted to save them for when he needed them. A member of staff, Saturday, tosses their room and finds everything, the gang begs her to not turn them in but she tells them it’s her job and she has to write them up for something. They get in trouble and have to clean the bathrooms. As they go over there, another agent named Creedo, who is frenemies with Smiles, tells him that someone was just ‘Retired’ aka shot in the head, because they aged out of the program. I’ll call this person Rally, A-Class, telekinetic. Rally was a person Smiles once had a relationship with and he thinks about that. Early in his career, he had considered creating an Elite A class squad with himself, Creedo, Rally, and an illusionist psychic named Wicker. He chose not to when he met Pete, because he felt like she needed him more. He thinks about everything he has lost. While cleaning, Pete is angry at the others because none of the contraband was hers, Smiles argues that there are worse punishments than cleaning. Johnny is lazy and keeps trying to goof off and doesn’t want to work, which makes Smiles, still upset about having lost someone, lose his temper and bubbles him. Pete gets angry about this, but Smiles tells them that he is the team leader and they have to listen to him. Johnny acts like he was fine with being yelled at and is as happy and friendly as ever, which irritates Smiles more. Pete comments that the way Smiles is acting and stepping out of line, he won’t be around much longer. Nickels says he is going to be around long after she is gone anyways, indicates that she has been getting nosebleeds. They talk about what they think they’ll be assigned on their next shifts, about some upcoming training, gossip about their enemies, and allude to stupid politics shit that will come up later, like West being a sketchy problem, and the blood magic cult. They finish cleaning and get Saturday to sign off on it and try to squeeze info from her and triangulate. She tells them some of the missions going on. They go to a rec room and Nickels goes to train with another psychic named Wicker. Division among the team. Smiles leaves to get some training bullshit stuff from their dorm. He sees a guy with a burned face named Coop (B-Class, neuropath) and beats the shit out of him, transferring his aggression, thinking about how he lost another person in his life and how he has no control/can’t keep anyone safe.

6: When Kassidy used blood magic, Esther’s monster had lashed out at/attacked Esther. Esther had a breakdown and went to the hospital for 48 hours. Kassidy wonders if there was a connection with the blood magic-- a connection between blood magic and the slime creature. She goes to Rosie, since she knows she is religious-- Ayda is religious too (turned to religion after being traumatized by Bomb Day) but Ayda can be kind of a jerk sometimes. Rosie looks kind of fucked up, Kassidy asks her about the medical testing but Rosie tells her she doesn't need to worry about it. She asks Rosie what she knows about the Red Religion, aka Red Heaven People’s Church, who practice blood magic, and Rosie reacts with disgust. Wanting answers, Kassidy goes to one of their churches. It’s creepy. She meets a woman named Helen who provides exposition on blood magic. Helen shows Kassidy scans of 15 pages that look like the Book, but Kassidy doesn’t reveal she knows about it. Helen says that they popped up on the internet about 2 years ago and nobody really knows where they came from. There are a lot of people who practice the Red Religion/Blood Magic. Most people can’t do it, their bodies can’t withstand it. IMPORTANT: ALL BLOOD MAGIC STEMS FROM SELF HATRED. Kassidy asks Helen how someone would know that they could use this magic. Helen pricks Kassidy’s finger, mingles the blood with her own, and then grows terrified. Kassidy in turn gets scared and flees. She buys food that she really can’t afford and feels nervous, like everyone is staring at her. When she returns home, she finds Casey and Ayda with a one-armed sketchy looking woman who introduces herself as Tabitha Delmont, the person who is going to “solve their little monster problem”.

7: Detective Sashi Mahajan gets a call from Vega Pelenato (chief of staff and notorious snitch/rat) in the very early morning,  informing her that the CEO of Prosperity and notorious corporate gang leader, Richard Prospas, passed away during the night. They speculate on whether this was murder. Sashi goes into work early and encounters her miserable boss, Dana Nguyen. Dana tells Sashi that she’s going to have to make a statement about a recent case of police brutality (that she obviously thinks was not brutal enough). Dana hates talking to the press, because she feels like they harass her. But then, everyone in Eden hates Dana, including Sashi-- Dana does not work hard, is an alcoholic, and there was some nasty business in her past having to do with how she handled a disaster known as ‘B-Day’. Early in her life, Sashi was involved in Eden’s Worker’s Party (EWP) along with Dana’s dead wife. Sashi notices that Dana’s phone keeps ringing (Silas?) and she ignores it.. She pulls up information on the case and thinks about how much she hates her job. Richard Prospas allegedly fainted into the blades of an industrial meat slicer on his factory floor. His son Rome stated that he has an alibi, corroborated by his bodyguard. But Sashi has several reports filed by social services 6 years ago that state that there was violence within the home. She suspects that this is motive for murder, on top of the inheritance and power grab. Sashi is tired of rich people in Eden taking advantage of poor people and believes that everything is very unfair. When she was young, she used to be involved in union/socialist stuff, so this is important to her. There was actually a time when she thought about joining a group called the UPLF, but it’s a good thing she didn’t because they ended up blowing up many parts of Eden. She just wants to have enough money to start a family. She submits her report detailing the murder, and more importantly, the unabashed levels of power the Prospas Corporation has, just like the obscene power the Agapama corporation has too much power, and how the economy is about to get hit hard, which will lead to poor people suffering.

8: Tabby Delmont is a difficult person to deal with and Kassidy can spot a con artist. Casey seems to be taken with her though, and is stupidly proud of herself for putting an ad for an ‘exorcist’ on the Internet. Everyone gathers in the kitchen. Tabby boasts that she has killed dozens of monsters and that she sells their ichor on the black market for a profit. Tabby claims that this material can be used for top secret science stuff (imply that Tabby is a grunkle Stan conspiracy theory type) She has exorbitant prices. Esther, still not feeling well, asks Tabby why she has to kill these creatures, asks Tabby why she has to kill this Thing that follows her because she does not hate it. It’s been with her since she was a child. Tabby tells her that if it isn’t killed, it will kill Esther, because something has riled it up and it is stronger than most of the ones she has seen. She talks about how these monsters latch onto people with Abilities and feed off of their emotions. She says that they eventually drive people insane, and says that her twin brother had one attached to him and he ended up murdering his ex wife. Marty calls bullshit, immediately pulling up an Article that states that Cathy Delmont killed herself, but he clearly wants to be included. This is the longest all of them have been together for a long time, and Kassidy misses her dead brother for a moment, but quickly represses those feelings. Casey tells Tabby to get on with it and kill it, Tabby pulls out a weird Voorst bioweapon and attempts to slice the Thing but is thrown back and it mauls her metal arm. Everyone is freaked out, especially those who can’t see the Thing. Kassidy has started to get flashes of it more often, which is weird because she shouldn’t be able to see it. Casey and Rosie are unable to see it at all. Tabby says she’ll figure it out, she just needs a better weapon. She bullies and harasses them into letting her sleep on the couch LOL. Casey is obsessed with Tabby’s charisma and we see how….bored Casey is and how she is drawn to stupid shit that interests her just to not feel that boredom (ADHD alert).. Rosie and Kassidy talk after getting Esther (who had been really negatively affected by this) to bed, Rosie says that Esther’s mom was angry that she was in the hospital again and wants to IVC her for a longer stay, that her mom and the others in her family want her to come home so that they can take care of her. Kassidy hears the Thing whispering to Esther as it is curled beside her in bed, and feels a chill. She returns to her room and the BOOK.

9: Smiles and the gang wake up. It’s Recruitment day (twice a year, new kids are brought in to replace the ones who have died or been Retired) and they decide to go watch some of them compete in the entrance test known as the Gauntlet. They are hardened to this. Going over to the gymnasium, they hear two unpleasant agents, BG and Lady, bragging about how they recruited (i.e. snatched kids with Abilities) a bunch of the newbies, which thankfully Smiles is rarely assigned to do since he fucked up too many times. There are 6 newcomers who begin to fight it out Hunger Games style with some volunteers. Smiles jokes about how he and Pete picked out Nicky and Johnny and it’s actually really disturbing to the reader that Smiles is joking so casually about something that must have been brutal to kids who were fuckin...15 and 12 at the time they were taken in. Suddenly he hates to think about it because he knows how awful Nickels and Johnny’s lives would be if he hadn’t picked them out. He notices that Nickels and Pete are acting close...too close…. They watch as one new kid gets really badly hurt and starts to cry, and Smiles hears BG and Echo laugh about it. He is bothered by this and dissociates. When he comes to, he’s back in the dorm and reflects on how he doesn't remember going through the Gauntlet. He is desperate to feel like he’s back in his own body, to feel present, so he tells Nickels and Johnny to get out and asks Pete if she wants to have sex. She agrees to this and they bang it out. Afterwards, she tells him that watching all that violence made her feel worried about Nickels and Johnny, since they’re weaker agents and will be Retired faster. Smiles tells her it doesn’t matter. All of them have an expiration date, they’re all going to die really bad deaths, it’s just a matter of when. Bad things happen to weaker agents.  They can’t get out and most of them don’t even want to get out-- including Smiles. 

10: Tabby brings back all kinds of crazy contraptions. Casey tells her that she isn’t going to pay her any extra money. Sometimes it feels like Casey is flirting with Tabby LOL ew. There’s a lot of tension between Tabby and the girls, since this woman is literally crashing at their home. Kassidy tells Casey that this woman is definitely going to rob them blind and is a scammer, and tells her that Casey can’t see it because she grew up so privileged and doesn’t have experience with scummy low class people, but Casey laughs it off, believing that nobody would dare because of who her father is. Marty tells them that where he lives, there are no slime creatures, but there are other...Things…., and Tabby demands to know where he lives. Marty talks about the Northern territories and his land that is called the Strath. Tabby asks how that is even possible, since Eden’s internet access is super closed off. Ayda is cagey about the whole thing and deflects. Esther’s sweet father shows up to check on her, he says that the rest of the family is doing good. Esther is not doing so good. The Thing won’t let her sleep. Seeing Esther and Quentin in such a state makes Kassidy scared and angry and she searches the BOOK for anything that might help her solve the problem. She finds information in the BOOK and is unsure of how she is even understanding what is written, because it is all gibberish to her. Something inside of her is hungry. She can’t stop eating. During the night, she cuts herself and makes a circle in the living room with her blood, then gets freaked out and covers it with a carpet. Her wounds heal with impossible speed and don’t scar. She can’t remember why she felt like doing that. It just felt natural to do.

11: In the Northern Territories, Field Marshall Anatole Surkhov returns to the Strath after a long campaign. He reports to the Prime Minister, Florence Gauthier, and tells her that he and his men destroyed many monsters in the woods. When he tells Florence that he lost a lot of good men, she doesn’t seem to care. Florence tells him that they need to double their efforts, but that her spies have heard that loyalists are congregating again in the cities and she doesn’t want another war on their hands. Anatole tells her that he would like to stay in his home Territory of Kimanka, which suffered the most losses during the war and where his mother and sisters live, and she denies him that. Florence has knowledge about him that would destroy his life if exposed (he is trans and the Northern Territories are not very progressive-- but they have gotten better under Florence’s regime) and uses that, as well as his family’s/dead father’s history of uh...war crimes...to control him. Anatole leaves, angry. He walks with his valet, Dog (make implications about Dog’s history/we see a parallel between what Anatole’s father was doing and what Silas is doing with secret police), and one of Florence’s little spies approaches them. Anatole tells the spy, Flick, to leave before he beats him down, and Flick just laughs. He asks if the wilderness is getting safer, because Florence wants to re-establish the trade routes with other Colonies. Anatole says that the last time they sent people to Eden, they never came back. Flick says that he doubts that was because of the crawling, twisted flesh creatures in the woods-- he knows about the people of Eden and he says that he wasn’t talking about Eden, he was talking about a different Colony, the ‘Lost Colony’ to the east where something bad happened a long time ago. Flick says that there is a powerful weapon there (the reader thinks she is talking about the BOOK, but she’s talking about the contraptions and Jerry and mayyyybe nukes) that can Make the North Great Again (™ lol). Anatole says that he only knows about Eden because of the witch boy Marty, but Flick says he has been in contact with someone involved in trade (Percy and West…) who want to open up trade routes as well. They walk past the gallows, where Florence has left the bodies of several political enemies hanging. Flick comments that he can’t imagine what would happen if Florence got her hands on the rulers of Eden, who have let the Northerners suffer and starve for 200 years. Anatole tells him not to be stupid, he would never allow his men to die for a pointless war. Flick asks why he thinks he has any say in the matter at all.

12: Kassidy is hungry, she can’t stop eating. She is eating her roommates' food because she is so hungry and they are getting mad at her. She calls out of work again one night, this has been happening more and more often. She is starting to feel worried. Every day, she understands more of the BOOK, even though she can’t read it. She thinks about showing it to Rosie, who she trusts more than Casey and Ayda, and who has proven that she can handle stressful situations. In the living room, Tabby is there, and she asks where Kassidy got the BOOK from in a weird way. No, Tabby doesn’t know anything about the BOOK, she’s just nosy. Kassidy feels defensive. Rosie doesn’t take it seriously and seems distracted. Upstairs, Esther starts screaming again and Rosie leaves. Tabby tries to engage Kassidy in conversation. They are similar: both survivors, both very poor. Tabby asks to look at the BOOK and Kassidy grows angry at her, pushes down the desire to lash out.. Kassidy tells her that this is stupid, but knows different. Casey comes home later in a confrontational mood because her father’s shipping business is being threatened by Prosperity Inc’s new business procedures. The dark thing is is that Casey has killed two people-- other gang goons who were trying to kill her right back-- and it is hard to reconcile with that sometimes, since Casey does not seem to feel bad about it at all and is actually very open about having stabbed people to death before (so….Casey is actually internally very troubled by this and we’ll get into that in Book 2). She asks Kassidy if she remembers Rome Prospas from high school, since he’s only 20 and now a huge threat to her father’s business. The memories of that time are too painful for her to even think about, and Kassidy returns to her room and stares at the BOOK.

13: Dr. Lily Bellamy is hard at work as a geneticist. She works on contracts, sometimes for Eden’s government, but mainly what she does is create Artificials. The first Artificials were developed 30 years ago, using technology her parents developed. Dr. B imagines a perfect world with no more sickness or disease. She checks on the development of several fetuses ordered by some rich people and we see how cold and clinical she is. She has her own laboratory. A chemist named Yancey Gallo shows up to talk about work. Dr. B has been cheating on her husband with Yancey. They have disturbing sex in the lab LOL. Dr. B is worried about her daughter Esther and doesn’t know how to protect her from herself. The two of them look over some clinical trials that they have been working on together and Dr. B recognizes a name (Rosie). Yancey seems frustrated by the trials because there have never been any human survivors. He pulls up video footage of them dying painfully. Dr. B reminds him that there was one, 7 years ago, but it was an accident and the subject is now insane (it’s Lee…). Yancey is like, oh yes, I know Lee but we can’t really count him. In Dr. B’s lab, there are tons of ichor from slime monsters that she has procured on the black market. It’s late, and she goes home to her husband Quentin, who is disabled and irritates her. We see that she is motivated in her genetic projects because of her family members who aren’t ‘perfect’. They watch TV and West comes on, we see that Dr B is troubled by him for some reason. She thinks about her project and wonders if she’s just wasting time.

14: Kassidy and her roommates and Tabby Delmont are ready to destroy the monster. Tabby has finally procured the weapon that she believes can kill it. It is unusual for these slime monsters to be this strong and she asks Ayda if she has also noticed that there seem to be more of them, and they are multiplying. Ayda hurriedly changes the subject but Marty tells her that it’s stupid to try to protect herself because everyone already knows that she is a psychic. Kassidy finds herself wishing that she was like Tabby, Esther, and Ayda. They gather in the living room and Kassidy remembers that she painted a circle of her own blood on the floor beneath the carpet. When Esther walks in, Kassidy finds that she can see the Creature that follows her. It’s terrible, a crawling black slimy thing with a white skull face like a stag’s. It looks at her and it is not angry, it is afraid in the way an animal is afraid of a predator, it’s scared! Kassidy feels so hungry when she looks at it. At first, nothing happens. Tabby brandishes the strange weapon and Ayda tells her to stop, that this isn’t a good idea, and her psychic fear affects the group. Esther is like, wait, wait wait! Kassidy wants to see the slime Creature Destroyed, completely and utterly, and has a vision, a memory, of another place, another universe that these slime alien things originated in and a huge hungry presence ripping a hole in their dimension to get at them. She sees a psychedelic ocean planet and she sees its waters turn black with blood. Tabby slices into the creature again and again without mercy, Esther is screaming and screaming and Rosie tries to protect her. Ayda begs Tabby to stop, she is empathically connected to the creature’s fear. But Tabby does not stop and the creature is reduced to flesh and black blood. Ayda passes out from the psychic connection, and Marty freaks because he is so worried about her. Kassidy feels energized from the massacre, but everyone is wiped and exhausted. Casey, who was unable to see what happened but now knows Tabby was not just conning them, asks where Tabby got the weapon. Tabby said it is secret police tech, sold on the black market. The gang is chilled by that, especially Kassidy, who has a huge fear of them because her brother was murdered by those people almost 7 years ago. Esther begins to cry. The creature had been a part of her life since childhood. Kassidy stoops to touch the black blood and has to keep herself from putting her finger in her mouth to taste it. Marty asks “what now?”

ACT TWO

15: Kassidy returns from work, exhausted. It’s too much, she is not particularly good at being a nurse, and she has too much to occupy her mind. 8:30 am, she gets home to find Tabby, Casey, and Esther -- since Rosie and Ayda are people who, you know, have jobs. Tabby irritates her and she asks why she hasn’t left yet. Tabby says that she’s sleeping on the couch now and Casey has agreed to let her stay if she pays part of the rent. Kassidy doesn’t like this and confronts Casey about why she didn’t talk to her about it, and Casey says that her father’s company owns the house so she makes the choices. As they are beginning to argue, someone knocks on the door. Esther, still recovering from her ordeal, and annoyed by Casey and Kassidy’s angry flirtation rituals, goes to open it and says that there’s a homeless guy on their doorstep. Casey yells at the guy to get lost but he won’t leave. Kassidy suddenly feels unnatural interest, she gets up to go to the door. The guy is DISGUSTING, smells like actual shit, dirty, rotting teeth, scrawny, ragged clothes. As a medical professional (lol) she recognizes that the guy has a severe septic infection in one eye and tells him he needs to go to the hospital. The guy is muttering to himself, crazy things, not lucid at all. He Looks at Kassidy with his one good eye and starts talking crazier, trying to comfort himself, calls her Cathy (LMFAO she thinks that he is saying “Kassie” with a lisp) and starts apologizing to her and talking about something inside of her. Casey becomes protective, pushes him away from Kassidy, tells him to get lost before she beats him into the ground. Tabby finally gets her lazy ass up to deal with the problem and tells him to scram. The guy looks at her, calls her by her name, and tells her that he had to find her. He says he had to find her, something’s coming, something’s coming, saying that something is ‘talking to him again’, something from the Rift. Tabby then recognizes him and tells them that this is her brother Tony, who she thought was dead. Despite this reunion, Tabby does not react with huge emotion. Kassidy feels jealous bitterness twist inside of her-- after all, her brother is dead, he’s not coming back. 

16: Smiles, BG, Lady, Echo, and a few other A-Class agents go on a mission to the Prison District to help subdue a riot. It seems that there have been more and more riots and violence over the last couple years. Smiles makes this comment and BG scoffs and says that he wouldn’t be saying that if he had been active during B-Day. Smiles has no memories of the bombings, that was before his time. This riot was in response to an act of brutality by a prison guard against an inmate, and now the prisoners have taken over a cell block. They meet the Warden (Hax...reeeeeeeeeee), who gives off bad vibes and is just as casually cruel as everyone else Smiles deals with. The secret police go to the cell block that inmates have taken over and start fuckin...bashing people, they work together effectively. Lady asks Smiles why he and Pete don’t get rid of the dead weight on their team and replace them with A-Class agents, which Smiles ignores. She gives him the creeps. An inmate gets the jump on Lady and knocks her out (as a psychic, she is physically fragile) and Smiles protects her with his bubbles. BG goes into a rage and kills several inmates, which they weren’t supposed to do. He begrudgingly thanks Smiles, says he owes him one,  and Smiles tells BG he would rather keep Lady alive so that she can make BG and Echo suffer than giving her the mercy of killing her.

17: Kassidy calls on Marty to help her research the pages of the 15 pages of the BOOK that had showed up on the internet in Eden 2 years ago. She is trying to not get involved with the house drama of Tabby’s brother Tony showing up. Casey, generous and curious as ever, took him to a street doctor to get him fixed up -- they had to remove his eye and teeth because of the rot and give him new ones. The rest of the girls are interested in the Tony drama, especially because of the murder that he claims to be responsible for but didn’t actually commit, but Kassidy feels something strange when she looks at him and the way he reacted to her when they first met made her uneasy. Marty is naturally suspicious of Tony and claims that it’s unsafe for them to have let a random dangerous man stay with them, like wtf is wrong with them, but as usual, Casey’s word on the matter was final. Casey is really causing a lot of problems. Why aren’t they worried about living with a guy who may or may not have killed someone? WELL, it’s because they already live with a girl who has DEFINITELY killed people before. Kassidy and Marty haven’t hung out much since they were teenagers and Marty seems glad to spend time researching with her. Neither of them want to mention Kip but Marty drops a few hints that he feels guilty about something that happened back then and mentions someone named Lee-- Kassidy tells him to drop it, it doesn’t matter because Kip is dead. The blood magic religion seems to have spread like crazy over the last 2 years. Marty says that there’s something similar in his Colony, remnants from a nearby town called Blagodat, that was wiped out by the military over 20 years ago. Marty doesn’t know too much about this town, only that they were all blood magic practitioners and had a black pyramid and that the owl-masked priest did something to the Princess of the North to make her monstrous. He saw the terrible Princess briefly 10 years ago before she was killed by another blood magic practitioner named Olive. He also knows about rumors about something called the Lost Colony where blood magic stuff was rumored to have destroyed it, which Kassidy has not heard of, but it gives her a chill. Marty says that in the North, there have always been rumors of a weapon there, and that 200 years ago the last democratic leader (Frank Toussaint….who Silas fuckin let Jerry eat, bitch) went there to investigate and never came back. Ever since then, the Northern Territories have been shit. Kassidy says that it’s hard to get much information about the outside world because of Eden’s political stances, but they’ve learned more because after B-Day, they had to bring laborers in from the Colony of Serenity to help rebuild. Kids in Eden are taught that the outside world is a terrible, dangerous place that is full of monsters (it is) and that the Rift emits weird toxic rays. Marty bitterly says that because of Eden’s trade embargo and isolationism, his Colony has suffered 200 years of starvation and war. He tells Kassidy he will find out more info about the Lost Colony and the blood magic town of Blagodat, if he can.

18: A meeting of the Central Committee, the people who govern Eden. Sashi, who has filed more charges of corporate corruption against the mega-corporations belonging to West, Rome, and Gena Voorst, is called to give a statement about it. Her findings on how much power private companies have in Eden get a stir from everyone. Dana Nguyen is included in this but hates participating. Mayor Malena talks about cracking down on Agapama shipping to and from other Colonies, as he is concerned about drugs being trafficked in, particularly stimulants. Dana is asked what she thinks should be done about the influx of violent crime, but she is hungover and unprepared. A group of civilians have signed a petition about the number of missing children in Eden over the years, but the Committee does not take this seriously since most of them agree that it is likely due to human trafficking to other Colonies and again blame Agapama-- they want to use this as an excuse to crack down on private corporations. The Central Committee begins talking about the pros and cons of moving to Nationalize the corporations and what it would look like for Eden to be completely self-sufficient, and ways that they can cease trade. They have ceased trade with one Colony (The Northern Territories) before, about 200 years ago. Sashi is told that she can leave since she is done presenting her findings. As she walks out, a quiet and normal looking woman she has never seen before and who said nothing during the meeting  thanks her for her hard work.

19: At work, Kassidy goes overboard while assisting with an autopsy and mutilates the corpse. Her supervisor asks her what’s been going on, she looks sick and her work has been getting worse. Kassidy evades the question, her mind filled with images of rotting flesh. Her supervisor asks if she needs time off and Kassidy says no, it’s just her home life is chaotic because of her idiot roommate’s insane decision to bring random people into their home. She has not forgotten that Tony may have allegedly murdered his pregnant wife even though the official story is that Cathy killed herself and the only reason she has not turned him in is because she’s scared of Casey and Tabby. Kassidy goes on break and practices blood magic, she has scanned all of the pages of the Book (BIG MISTAKE) so that she can look at them anywhere and so that she could share them with Marty. It’s 3am. Esther calls her and asks if she’s heard from Rosie, since she didn’t come home yet, but Kassidy has heard nothing. She tries to be comforting to her friend who is worried, but is not very good at it. At this point, Kassidy can completely understand the Book and looks at a spell that can help you find someone. She thinks about using it, but does not.

20: Smiles learns that he has lost 3 days of time. Pete is beyond angry at him and tells him that Nickels and Johnny are terrified because he hasn’t been acting like himself, he has been completely out of it. Smiles says that’s bullshit.. The last thing that Smiles can remember is being on a simple surveillance mission, watching the Mayor give a press conference to a bunch of journalists (psycho violin noise...yes he saw Lee Harlan). He does not know why that upset him. He tells Pete again that he would never hurt anyone on the team on purpose, that he didn’t do anything. She tells him that’s not an excuse and that he is responsible for his own actions and says that he needs to go to the infirmary because there is clearly something wrong with him. Smiles says there’s something wrong with everyone in the program, idiot, they were all kidnapped as children and tortured and forced to hurt others. Pete has a lot of problems with his leadership and believes he is not doing a good enough job.  The staff member October, comes and tells Smiles that he is taking him Upstairs for re-education, because his behavior has been troubling to staff. Smiles does not remember this but knows better than to fight it. Pete is like wait, he didn’t do anything, why can’t you help him instead? Smiles realizes that she thinks he is crazy. October is mean to Smiles as he takes him Upstairs and Smiles fantasizes about how easy it would be to kill him. Smiles gets strapped to a chair in a little room and Lady comes in to hurt him and get into his brain. Lady tells Smiles that he is all fragmented inside, that she knows deep down inside he is vulnerable like a child. Smiles tells her that he shouldn’t be responsible for things he can’t remember and Lady tells him that he’s not special, she can’t remember anything lol and then Lady begins to torture him by bringing back painful memories. The last thing he sees is an explosion contained by one of his bubbles, and he blacks out.

21: Rosie has not returned for 3 days at this point and is not answering her phone, and Esther is beside herself. Despite the Monster no longer following her, she seems really unstable, and she is like well, you would feel unstable too if you lost something/someone who you grew up with. Well, Kassidy does know the feeling of losing someone she grew up with. Esther goes to her parent’s house because she needs support from her dad and siblings. Casey had unthinkingly made a joke that Rosie probably couldn’t deal with Esther being so high maintenance and left her, but they’ve been dating on and off since high school and during short break ups before, Rosie always talked it out with Esther. Kassidy and Marty talk about their theories about the Lost Colony and blood magic. Tony is there, but weird and zoned out as usual, Kassidy thinks he is a huge freak and feels uncomfortable with him living in their attic but can’t fight Casey on it. Marty gets a guy he knows, Anatole Surkhov, to talk to Kassidy about his experiences, because he has explored a lot due to being in the Army. The cast of weird adults Marty seems to live with is well known, especially by Ayda and Casey, they have talked to them all before-- especially Jules and Flick. It is evident that Marty doesn’t have any friends his own age where he lives, and it seems kind of sad. Anatole takes blood magic seriously and seems annoyed with Marty because he is busy. But he briefly talks about what the cultists of Blagodat and their black pyramid did to his territory, destroying the landscape with hideous fleshy pits, poisoning the water and turning people into monsters (YEAH. proof that people are trying to ‘turn people into monsters’ i.e. Rosie, and Lee etc etc), and says that when he was a child, his people eradicated them. Suddenly Tony speaks up and asks if they killed the women and the children as well, a strange look on his face, a sadness. Anatole says that there were some survivors, and that is why the North continues to have problems with blood magic, and it is one of his goals to destroy these people…..as well as witches lol…Then he says something to Marty in another language and leaves. Kassidy asks Tony what that was all about, Tony is evasive and tells them to stop messing around with stuff they don’t understand, it destroyed his life and it will destroy theirs as well. Kassidy and Marty, bastards that they are, say that’s probably because he killed his wife/why she killed herself. Tony does not deny this (wahhh he feels guilt for Cathy’s death) but repeats that they shouldn’t be messing around with things they don’t understand. He asks Kassidy where she even learned all the stuff about blood magic and Kassidy feels defensive/evasive and says that there are 15 weird pages about it on the internet, that she found out about it from an advertisement from the Church. 

22 While Kassidy was asleep, Rosaline returned. It has been a whole week. She seems guilty and apologetic, saying that one of the medical projects she does for extra money went a little wrong and she had to stay at the hospital. She looks sick. Esther is beside herself and wants to reach out to her mom for help, but Rosaline firmly says she does not want to do that. Rosaline can’t stop throwing up black stuff and her eyes look weird. Kassidy feels strange but has to get ready for work, these days she does not leave the Book around because she doesn’t trust Tony. Tabby takes one look at Rosaline and says that there’s something fucked up about her and demands to know what kind of testing she was doing. Rosie says she doesn’t want to get into it all, but she made about $5,000. Tabby rants about how you can’t trust the intelligentsia, that the scientists in Eden do all kinds of messed up things to people, and basically starts talking about conspiracy theories about how the government steals children and does bad things to people (dude if Tabby was real, she would be like a weirdo Q-anon freak). Kassidy gets out of there and goes to work. Cihad Tariq is still at the hospital again despite it being 11 and he checks in with her and says she looks sick, genuinely worried. Kassidy realizes that his accent sounds like Anatole’s (Russian. The Northern Territories are divided by language-- English, French, and Russian. So CT has a light russian-accent, he is scary). Rudely, she asks Cihad where he was born, because she figures that he might be from up there, possibly from the destroyed town of Blagodat, and that is where the Book came from. Cihad tells her that is not appropriate and that he does not appreciate her pushing his boundaries like that. Kassidy has the Book in her backpack and Cihad’s red eyes linger on it. It’s clear that he is about to ask her about it, but then gets a call (from Silas, but Kassidy doesn’t know that) that upsets him, and he says he has to leave. Kassidy, angry at him because she knows that he knows what she has done, tells him that when she was a kid, her mom used to always be at work too, so maybe he should think about his daughter.

23: Kassidy wakes up with a bloody nose and finds that one of her fingernails is flaking off. She opens up the BOOK, and has become really possessive of it. There is a passage in it that talks about bringing the dead back to life. Kassidy fixates on that. She allows herself to think about bringing her brother back from the dead and reads over the passage again and again. She goes downstairs to hang out. Esther is like, “hey Kassidy, did you see Ben got out of prison?” and we see Kassidy get angry but it’s not really elaborated on who Ben is or why this is significant. Ayda is talking about her new crush, some guy she met online and everyone roasts her for this LOL. Casey comments on how much Kassidy has been eating lately (like crazy amounts) but says she looks like she’s lost weight and is pushing boundaries again. Kassidy feels irritable and snaps at her by trying to say something hurtful, but Casey is immune to it. She asks Marty if he’s found out anything new about the Lost Colony, and he says no, then asks her if she’s learned anything about it from reading the BOOK, because he is literally autistic he never really ‘got’ that Kassidy wanted to hide that from Tony like everyone else did.  Tony freaks out and says that he knew it, he fucking knew that the BOOK was here, he had Seen its presence on Kassidy. Tony basically loses his mind and starts ranting about Cathy and gets up to go to Kassidy’s room to try and destroy the BOOK, saying that they were all in danger, blah blah blah. Casey thinks this is terribly funny, but it’s scaring Ayda. Kassidy feels rage she hasn’t felt in years and tries to physically take it back from him but Tony is bigger than she is, even though he is weak as shit, he is stronger than she is. He attempts to tear it to shreds, to rip out the pages, but is unable to, then starts raving about how he is going to take it and leave. Kassidy attacks him with blood magic in front of everyone, takes the BOOK back and tells him that she will kill him if he ever does that again. Tony starts laughing hysterically and talking crazy about how this was fate, that ‘IT’ has set everything up because ‘IT’ wants to kill him, that he never should have left the sewers, that this was ‘IT’s’ plan, that they were all going to die because this little girl wanted to mess around with things she didn’t understand. Casey asks Kassidy wtf is wrong with her because seeing someone use blood magic is fucked up, but Kassidy just tells her that she wants the Delmonts to leave or else she will, and that Casey needs to choose between these people who she views as entertainment or Kassidy, her friend of many years. Casey hesitates for a beat too long. Then Kassidy pushes past her and leaves the house.

24: Smiles and the gang all innocently watch the news in the breakroom. An interview with Rome Prospas comes on where he talks about his economic plans and his company. Johnny  is massively triggered by this because Rome looks exactly like him and it is clear that they are related. Johnny, someone who can’t handle rejection, wants to know why his family didn’t want him, like what was wrong with him that made his family not want him. Did they not love him? Smiles and Pete are not helpful and tell him that recruits are always kidnapped, so he shouldn’t worry about his family not wanting him. There has always been this problem of them not knowing how to deal with an Artificial. He has a hysterical BPD meltdown and leaves. Nickels tells them good job, he’s going to go hurt himself, and Smiles says that he’s sick of having to constantly look out for his younger squadmates and at some point you have to learn how life is and toughen up because he is not going to be around to protect them forever.. He does not actually feel this way, but it’s getting harder and harder and he is so frustrated at this point. Nickels says he can go fuck himself, because they’re all  always watching out for Smiles. Pete takes her side, and Smiles is troubled by how close they’re getting (NICKELS JUST WANTS TO TOUCH SOME TITTIES). Smiles goes to work out with Creedo, an old team mate of his. He asks her how she deals with her own shitty teammate, Pills. Creedo grudgingly tells him that she’s the closest thing she has to family and that weaker agents get Retired faster, so it’s better to care about them while you can. Their lives are so bad and so short. They take out their aggression on each other, then go to the dining hall to get a snack because they can’t stand their own teams LOL. There is some weird sexual tension between Smiles and Creedo, but also they can’t stand each other and can’t work with each other. They listen in to some of the missions getting assigned for the next few shifts, mostly recon, but it looks like squads are getting assigned a raid at a blood magic church. Smiles and Creedo agree that blood magic is the biggest problem in Eden right now and they are scared of it and don’t understand it. A staff member passes by and insinuates something bad happened with Johnny. Creedo and Smiles agree that their teammates are all they have in this place. . Frustrated, Smiles leaves her to go find his teammate. He finds him, it’s clear that Johnny is too young and mentally ill to understand he doesn’t deserve to get hurt and doesn’t understand why people act so horrible to him (well, it’s because he is different). Smiles clumsily apologizes and says that of course his family wanted him, Smiles explains the recruitment process (we see how eaten up by guilt he is for having participated in this in the past). He asks Johnny if he wants to know more about his family. Johnny says no, but Smiles knows he is lying. Smiles thinks about what he would do if he knew that he had a family out there.

25: Kassidy falls asleep at work and has dreams of the planet eating monster ripping a hole through dimensions and of a bright comet shooting through the sky and crashing into the Earth.. She wakes up and realizes that she didn’t hear a patient’s call button and that they are dead. Kassidy is not bothered by death, only by the fear that she may get in trouble. She contemplates death and finally allows herself to think about her dead brother Kip and what he would tell her to do. She re-reads the passage in the Book about bringing the dead back to life (Also….this is the spell that Reuben used to bring all of the Immortal gang back permanently…). Marty messages her and asks why she hasn’t just turned Tony in to the police, since he is still wanted for murder. Kassidy hates cops and hates Eden’s justice system-- after all, it is what unfairly got her brother killed all those years ago. She goes home and Tony is there. He apologizes to her. He tells her about his past, about how he abandoned his wife and baby due to fear of the slime creatures and sensing the Book’s presence for the first time in the hospital, his own experience with addiction, then how he reunited with his family and watched as Cathy became consumed with researching the Book and the Void, that it formed something inside her body and was killing her, and that she killed herself, leading to him hiding in the sewers for 2 years. He says that he does not want that to happen to Kassidy, or to anyone ever again. He talks about evil, true evil, evil that is hungry. Tony asks Kassidy if she understands how devastating it is to lose someone. Kassidy does understand. She accepts his apology, but says that she is going to continue looking into blood magic. Tony tells her that he will help her, but that his reasons are different than hers (see if he can do anything to destroy the BOOK/monster).

26: Sashi continues to research bullshit corporate crime going on in Eden. She tries to get one of West Agapama’s daughter’s, Cassiopeia -- a known enforcer in his organization-- to come in for an interview, but typical Casey does not cooperate and will not without a warrant. Still, Sashi has compiled mountains of shit on the corruption within the megacorporations, as well as the economic impact it has had on the people of Eden. She’s working hard. She goes out to lunch with her wife, Kelsey, who is also a cop, but not a detective. They talk about their days. They are thinking about having a baby together. A nice moment. Sashi goes back to her office to work. And then...fucking....Silas shows up. Sashi is very confused about who this person is, exactly, but feels like she is probably high up in the government since she was at the Central Committee meeting. Again, Silas tells her that she appreciates her hard work investigating corruption in Eden. Sashi thanks her and then politely asks her who she is. And lmao, Silas just tells her that she has worked ‘behind the scenes for a long time’, which is...a little unsettling to hear. Silas asks Sashi about her ambitions, and Sashi truthfully says that she wishes she could get a promotion so that her salary is higher, because she and her wife would like to start a family. Silas is kind of quiet and awkward, but nice to talk to. Silas asks if she thinks that Dana Nguyen would promote her, and Sashi sort of slips up and says that she does not believe Dana likes her. Silas, in a roundabout way, asks Sashi in her opinion, as someone whose job it is to research corruption, is Dana Nguyen corrupt/not loyal to Eden. Sashi truthfully tells her that she might be, and talks about some of the stuff she has observed (her behavior, her closeness to Vega, the fact that her son Christopher was part of a terrorist organization)-- she really believes that Silas must be someone very high up on the food chain. Silas just listens, then thanks Sashi and leaves. Sashi sits in her office and thinks about how weird that was. She continues to work, then leaves at the end of her shift, passing a truly miserable looking Dana on the way out. She goes to bed, and when she wakes up, she sees an email that says that she has been promoted from mere Detective, to Detective Superintendent.

27: Rosaline is still sick, so she and Esther travel down to the Lower Levels to visit Rosie’s old guardian, Barbara Church. Kassidy, Marty, and Tony all discuss what they know so far about the Book, the Lost Colony, and Blagodat. Kassidy tells them that she believes that her boss, Cihad Tariq, is involved somehow-- he is a foreigner and owned the Book to begin with, and she believes he brought it to Eden with him. Tony scoffs and says he knows all about Cihad Tariq, that they have a...history and that he needs to be avoided for more reasons than his blood magic. Kassidy is like WTF why is everything connected, and Tony talks about his belief in fate/something bigger than them manipulating/pulling the strings. Marty says that it’s strange that someone could have traveled so far to Eden with the Book and be allowed to live there, and even go to school and rise to such an important job. Kassidy says that she could just ask him, and Tony says that she needs to leave Cihad alone, he was involved with sketchy things (Silas…) and probably still is. Tony tells them that Cihad raised his daughter with Cathy and that they think he’s dead and he wants it to stay that way. When Kassidy mouths off, he asks her how she would feel if her mom suddenly came back into her life. Kassidy says she never told him about her bad relationship with her mom and Tony says that he picks up on things, he just knows things, he can See things, he’s a psychic but tries to give people their privacy. Kassidy thinks about how it isn’t fair that some people were born with Abilities and she is powerless and grows more determined to use more blood magic despite the side effects.

28: Anatole returns to the destroyed blood magic town of Blagodat because Marty would not stop asking him to show it to him. Dog is with him, and so is Marty’s guardian , a witch named Jules. Also along is a survivor of the town whose name is Olive. Jules and Dog have a weird dynamic where it’s clear they like each other, but nothing is ever going to happen. It is very tender and loving even though Jules is a literal bitch to everyone else. Blagodat is less than 50 miles away from the nearest Territory, but Anatole is watchful. He carries his father’s sword, which is forged of starmetal and was enchanted by Jules. There is not much left of the blood magic town. Marty investigates the place where the black pyramid once stood, and excitedly talks in English to his virtual friends, Kassidy and Tony in Eden. Olive says that she is just glad she survived that night, even though her life got worse afterwards.. Jules spits on the ground to guard herself against evil and tells Anatole that they need to leave. Anatole remembers the day that his father led men to destroy this place. When he approaches the ruins of the black pyramid temple, his sword begins to vibrate and hum. He spots something hauling itself through the rubble and tells Marty to get off the phone because they need to leave. It’s a grotesque twisted disgusting hungry creature, a leftover of what occurred to 90% of humanity when the RIFT opened 800 years ago. It attacks them. They (except Marty) work together to destroy it.. Marty is shaken by seeing one of these semi-human things for the first time and asks how many of them there are in the world and if they are the same thing as the slime creatures he has heard about. Anatole does not know the answer to this. He tells Marty that these creatures are the reason that the Northern Territories are so isolated-- The North is very close to the Lost Colony that lies to the east and these things are drawn to it and the surrounding area. Marty accuses him of being a liar, he lied to him and Kassidy when they were asking about the Lost Colony. He gets worked up and has a seizure, Jules asks him what he saw and Marty will not tell her. Anatole tells him that there are things he is better off not knowing about, and he should be grateful for his ignorance and how he has been so protected. Jules whispers about the great serpent, a witch named Stasya. Anatole’s mind is drawn to the Lost Colony and what happened there. 

29: Kassidy goes back to the blood magic church in the Lower Levels and finds Helen. She tells her that she has been practicing blood magic and Helen seems surprised to learn that she’s been doing it without a teacher. They talk about power, and lacking power. Kassidy opens up a little about growing up poor and getting bullied by other kids, and Helen relates to this (HEAVILY imply that Helen did something to get rid of a man who had hurt her a few months ago and that is one of the reasons that lately weird things have been happening in Eden, why people are angrier and more violent). Kassidy asks about the possibility of bringing the dead back to life, and classic psycho religious person Helen says that it is a matter of faith. She invites Kassidy to become a member of the Church but Kassidy still finds all religion creepy. She wants to know if it’s possible to become very good at blood magic without a teacher and Helen tells her no, which is why she should join the Church. Helen tells her that things are about to get better in Eden because God is about to come back, God just needs a human body. Kassidy remembers what Tony said happened to Cathy and feels very afraid. She gets up to leave, but Helen grabs her by the hand and asks her if she has seen God, and then talks about looking into the VOID. Kassidy tells her to let go of her, but Helen won’t. She keeps asking her if she has seen God, talking crazy stuff about how society needs to be rebuilt and how every Artificial is an abomination, and how Bomb Day had been a great cleanse and sacrifice. She notices that Kassidy’s eyes have not turned red, despite using blood magic, Kassidy’s eyes are still black. Kassidy attacks her with her blood magic and escapes the Church, then passes out on the train. She realizes that she left her ID there. AND THEN….REPULSIVE SEX SCENE LOL Kassidy just wants to feel in control and bangs some random girl.

30: Smiles and his squad are sent to the blood magic church to take in Helen Guttierez. Information says that she has been causing disorder and is personally responsible for the deaths of 3 people, partially responsible for the deaths of far more. Blood magic did not exist in Eden only a few years previously, and the Central Committee has just ruled that it is illegal and punishable by death. The Squad is uneasy and scared of blood magic, they have seen what it can do. They break into the Church. It’s the middle of the night. Helen is still awake and they find her...doing...something. Surrounded by candles, in front of an altar, naked, covered in blood. There is a mutilated body in front of her. Smiles and co are like wtf. Helen is clearly having some kind of religious euphoria, talking to Something (the god of the rift) saying that she knows it is there, it’s in Eden, and that she has seen it. The Squad interrupts her prayers. Smiles is like, you’re coming with us, lady. Helen tells him that she is done doing what others tell her to do. Smiles bubbles her and she easily breaks it, then summons HUGE slime monsters to come and attack them. Big fight, and the Squad is losing badly. Helen sees Johnny, her face twists in hatred, she says that such aberrations should not exist and that soon there will be no more Artificials. She starts hurting him badly, then does something that turns him against them (setting up the future thing where Artificials all go crazy). 2 of her church members bust in. Pete has her hands full with restraining JVP. Nickels’s nose is bleeding like crazy as she uses her powers and she is growing weaker. Smiles is like, uh oh, I think we’re all going to die...And they are all overpowered by the blood magic. Helen is like, did you really think you could fight the power of god? God is here. She takes him to the altar, it’s pretty clear that his guts are about to get spilled. Smiles thinks that it’s ironic that he is going to die like this instead of from a bullet to the head. Nickels saves the day by opening her mind to Lady. BG’s Squad busts in and is easily able to wipe the floor with the cultists. BG tells Smiles that he owed him one anyways for saving Lady in the Prison District. Smiles pushes him away and rushes to check Nickels, who looks like she’s going to keel over, he thanks her for her quick thinking. Nickels is not feeling good, because she just had Lady in her mind, and Lady does some psychic shit to help her. BG is like wtf is wrong with Johnny, because he is still acting crazy, Smiles doesn’t know-- this marks beginning of BG and Johnny friendship. Smiles wanders around the temple. He picks up Kassidy’s ID from the hospital that she forgot the last time she was here, and is compelled to put it in his pocket so that nobody else sees it.

31: Ayda tells everyone to act normal because her friend (NOT CRUSH)  is coming over to talk. They agree to behave. Rosaline is still sick and Kassidy has a conversation with Esther about what they’re going to do if she doesn’t get better, Esther says that she’ll get her family to hire a lawyer and press charges. When Ayda’s friend it’s fucking CIHAD, and oh boy he is fucking pissed.. Kassidy pulls Ayda aside and asks if Cihad came over because of her.. Ayda becomes offended. Tabby comes in and her presence seems to shock Cihad and Kassidy realizes that he sees Tony in Tabby’s face. Kassidy panics and goes to the attic where Tony has been staying and tells him not to leave or freak out because his ex is downstairs. She gives Tony the BOOK because she is in a full paranoia attack. Tony demands she get it away from him, but she leaves him anyway. Cihad calms down, sees Kassidy, and asks her where his BOOK is. Kassidy denies that she has it. Ayda grows upset, with the situation and with herself. Casey thrives in the chaos. Cihad tells Ayda to get the hell away from him (he feels her empathy affecting him), becomes angrier with Kassidy and demands she give him the Book because it belongs to him and has been in his family for a long time. He tells her that he can see she has been using blood magic and that it’s going to kill her, he has always known that she has been using blood magic. Cihad uses his own blood to complete a detection spell to find the BOOK and heads towards the attic. Kassidy tells him he can’t go up there but he ignores her and pushes past her and goes up there. There are screams and lots of noises from the attic. Casey is like, “Good job Ade, you just got Tony killed” LOL because they can’t get up there and it sounds like someone is being murdered. Eventually, Cihad comes down with the BOOK, and they hear him tell Tony to not follow him. Then he tells the girls he never wants to see any of them again, and leaves. They all rush up there to find Tony very freaked out and upset and all he says, miserably, is that he does not understand why he even tries-- there is a fixed, natural order (Fate) in the universe that he can See, and there is no point in fighting what is predetermined. To him, this order/fate will inevitably screw him every time (lol Tony). Kassidy, who is numb and shocked that the BOOK was just taken from her, is not willing to believe that things are predetermined and is not going to give up using blood magic. 

ACT 3

32: Kassidy gets called into work during the daytime. Cihad sits her down and fires her. He tells her that he can’t trust her as an employee because she broke into his office, stole from him, and lied to him. He pauses and tells her to be careful because she doesn’t look well and what she is doing is destroying her body. He doesn’t seem angry anymore, just...disappointed lol. Kassidy feels numb on the train ride home and thinks to herself that now she will have more time to practice blood magic. She looks at her phone and sees that the blood magic church she had gone to has been raided and Helen Guttierez, along with other churchgoers, have been arrested for murder. It is clear that this was secret police and Kassidy feels scared. She almost faints on the train again. She gets home, sits down with Tony, and tells him that she got fired. Tony tells her that he has been fired from a lot of jobs before he got sober. Kassidy already knew he was an alcoholic and thinks about her mother, but doesn’t make the obvious connection to the fact that she is also engaging in addict behavior to cope with her brother’s death. She asks what helped him stop drinking and Tony told her he stopped wanting to die. Kassidy thinks about what CT told her and wonders if she’s dying because at this point what she is doing is compulsive. Esther calls her and tells her that she thinks something’s really wrong with Rosie because they went to see her mom and Dr. Bellamy was acting really weird around Rosie, like she was property, Esther says she thinks she had something to do with it. Little throwaway expository thing about Yancey-- someone Esther already knows vaguely because he works for her mom. Yancey was the one running the clinical trials behind what happened to Rosie.

33: Kassidy goes to her childhood apartment to take some of Kip’s belongings so that she can try to bring him back. The apartment brings back a lot of memories but Kassidy is determined not to feel them. It looks like her mom has not been doing so well, everything is dirty and piled up. She goes into Kip’s bedroom, which has largely been untouched since his death and suppresses her emotions even more. She finds his old jacket, which was very sentimental to him because it belonged to his mom Harry, who ‘committed suicide’. Kassidy also tears everything apart to find his gross old hairbrush that still has his hair in it and an old toothbrush (YES THANK GOD DANA IS DEPRESSED AND A SLOB). She also takes the container that has Kip’s ashes in it, that were given to the family after the execution. She is about to get out, when Dana comes home, extremely drunk, and she is like wtf are you doing here because they have not seen eachother in over 2 years, Dana didn’t even come see her when she graduated nursing school. Kassidy feels disgust and anger towards her mother, she blames her for what happened all those years ago, for not noticing how mentally ill Kip was, for not being around. Dana thinks Kassidy looks like she is dying (she looks really bad) and goes ballistic because she gets angry when she is worried. They get into a terrible fight and Kassidy tells her that she wishes Dana had died instead of Kip. She leaves, wearing her dead brother’s jacket, and allows herself to think about what happened. The BOOK is corrupting and seductive inside of her mind, and she uses blood magic to shove people out of her way. She is angry and full of grief and more determined than ever to be more than the way she was born. She knows she is no longer helpless and will give anything-- even her own life-- to make sure that she does not become powerless again. This is someone who has lost everything and is willing to destroy herself to build herself back up again.

34: Anatole checks in with Florence about the politics in the Northern Territories and grows more frustrated with her. He is tired of the constant struggle and her desire for expansion and believes that their efforts are most useful on their own turf. He is tired of losing people-- the war is over! He just wants to go back to his home Territory of Kimanka but she will not allow it. Florence asks Anatole why he made an expedition to the destroyed blood magic town of Blagodat and asks him if he found anything there-- something that would look like an old BOOK. She has known about the Book for a long time. She takes him to a room and shows him a glass tank of preservative fluids, where she has contained the corpse of the former Princess of the North, a woman killed by Olive 12 years ago, who was a hideous hybrid of human and slime alien. This Princess had been mutated by the Red Priest (CT’s Dad…) as a child. This body is hideous and repulsive and it is proof that it is possible to create bodies that...Entities….can live in without decay and corruption (we think of Tony and the thing that Helen said about God needing a body) Florence asks Anatole about his loyalty. He knows that she has stopped trusting him and his pride is hurt and he leaves. Flick walks up and tells him that she has sent surveillance parties to both Eden and the Lost Colony and that they never came back. He has a tape recorder with radio transmissions from the party that went to the Lost Colony, and plays it, and they listen to a description of a strange device (figure it out-- this is the device that the BOOK wants to strap Tony in so that it can do the Ritual) and then screams. Flick is like, you know everything she told you is real, think about how we need more power if we are ever going to Make our Colony Great Again. Anatole knows that Flick is a manipulator and answers to Florence and does not understand why he would purposefully add to his mistrust of her. He says this, and then beats Flick into the ground for being an untrustworthy rat and messing with his mind. Anatole’s mind turns to rebellion against Florence. He goes to Jules’s house to find Dog (bc Jules and Dog like each other). Marty is there, talking to his little friend Ayda. Anatole finds Dog and Jules, the witch, and straight up asks them if they would support him against Florence if she has gone off the deep end.

35: It is Bomb Day. 7 years ago, in the morning, a group called the UPLF (United People’s Liberation Front) detonated bombs across Eden, leaving 5000 people dead and countless more injured. That same day, Kip Nguyen was arrested and killed (along with 21 other collaborators) for his involvement, despite his innocence. Kassidy can’t think of a better day to bring her brother back from the dead. It seems symbolic to her. The news is broadcasting all kinds of memorials, it is a highly emotional day. Kassidy empties her bank account and buys 153 pounds of meat (correlating to Kip’s weight when he was 18) She reflects on how if she had not been fired from the hospital, she could have taken a human corpse, but according to the Book, flesh is good enough as long as you have DNA from the person you are trying to bring back (Kip’s hair and his toothbrush and his ashes).. Kassidy does some kind of fucked up shit in her room to prepare this ritual that I will figure out later after some more research into necromancy. She has black slime ichor she bought from one of Tabby’s sources on the black market. She cuts herself and loses a lot of blood because a large component of the ritual is sacrifice. Kip’s jacket is there as an emotional connection, since he wore it all the time and loved it. In the background, the news is playing. It is talking about Kip (and the other UPLF terrorists who were caught), how he was a terrible person, blah blah blah. Kassidy lets the BOOK’s power fill her body, letting it have control. She starts talking in the language of the VOID. She completes the ritual.The flesh, the blood, and the black slime come together to form a crawling, whimpering thing but it is not Kip, Kassidy does not know what it is. For a moment she has hope that she brought him back, no matter how disgusting and fucked up, but it isn’t him. The disgusting form squirms in a repulsive, stinking heap. She failed. Kassidy is full of rage and hurt, hating herself for what she perceives to be weakness and failure (JK Kip is alive and that’s why it didn’t work, there was no soul to yank back into the body). She screams and starts wrecking her bedroom. Casey, the only person who was in the house, comes in and sees what she has done and is horrified by it, horrified by what Kassidy has done, horrified by the crawling crying abomination. Kassidy yells at her, telling her to get out, get out, she hates her. She ‘kills’ the barely alive squirming meat monster with blood magic in a very brutal, angry way. The TV has a picture of Kip’s face on it and she knocks it over. Casey holds Kassidy, and in her grief and rage Kassidy hits her again and again, but Casey still holds her. For the first time in years, possibly for the first time since Kip’s death, Kassidy begins to cry. Casey keeps holding her. She picks up Kip’s jacket and puts it on. He is gone. There is nothing she can do about that.

36: Smiles has just been punished and he doesn’t know why. He’s in pain and just wants to lie down. He walks in on Nickels and Pete acting a little too touchy feely and snaps at Pete, telling her that she’s acting irresponsible, taking advantage of someone younger than her, and putting Nickels in danger because of her pyrokinesis. Nickels tells him that she doesn’t understand why everyone else can get what they want and she has to be alone. She just wants to be happy! Smiles asks her if she would think the same thing if he allowed Johnny to act on his crush on him. Nickels says it’s different and they get in a fight, culminating in Nickels going inside of his mind and ripping out a memory of Smiles when he was a child, in some sort of juvenile facility, being bullied and physically hurt by the other kids. Smiles attacks her, tells her that he hates psychics, that he hates people who go into other people’s heads without asking. Nickels fights back, asking if he still thought she was too helpless to make her own choices. Pete gets them apart and yells at both of them. She has always been the most reasonable one. Smiles stomps off and nearly runs into a completely ordinary, frumpy woman named Silas. Silas asks him what the matter is. Smiles is terrified of this woman, he doesn’t understand why she is on the dormitory floors. This is the big boss, Smiles knows that she is behind everything and is the reason that his life is shitty and he suffers all the time. For a second, he lets himself fantasize about killing her, but knows that the punishment he and his team would face would be long and brutal. Silas says that she’s there to see BG, but she is acting very nice and  kind towards Smiles. She offers him a piece of candy and he does not take it. They have a weird, scary conversation that Smiles doesn’t entirely get but he starts to feel like his time is coming to an end and does not want to give them the satisfaction of killing him, but also does not want to kill himself.  

37: The gang holds an intervention for Kassidy LOL. Some people take this more seriously than others. Tabby runs the whole thing because she says that she has a lot of practice having interventions for Tony and for her mom. Very funny moment where Ayda is like “So were those interventions successful?” and Tabby is like “Uh. No.” All the bad things Kassidy has done while using blood magic get laid out in front of her-- getting fired from her job, eating everything in the fridge, getting sick, losing weight, smelling like she is rotting,, dragging 150 pounds of meat into her room (nobody but Casey know why she did that though). Everyone tells her that they care about her and are worried about her and want her to stop using blood magic, they say she can keep doing her research. It seems like everyone has figured out that Kassidy has been pouring herself into this stuff to feel a sense of control, except for Kassidy. However, Kassidy was raised by an addict and starts squirming her way out of trouble and turning it back on everyone else LOL. She is honestly such a bitch and is like, well, if you guys are so worried about me, why aren’t you worried about Rosie, huh? And laying out everything that seems weird about the Rosaline situation, the being missing for days, the sickness, the obviously being experimented on by evil scientists thing. Kassidy is really trying to deflect from her own behavior, very classic. Too bad Rosie is a very solid, honest person. She and Esther kind of look at each other and then Rosie is like “OK…” and transforms into this monster thing. AND EVERYONE ALREADY KNEW EXCEPT FOR KASSIDY bc Rosie doesn’t fucking hide shit unless she doesn’t want to stress someone out more. Rosie is like “Yeah, this is a whole thing, sorry I should have told you but the government is doing some fucked up things to people and they did this to me, I didn’t want to bother you because it seems like you're really going through something right now.” And Kassidy just thinks about how she is literally the only person in the group who does not have some kind of Ability and/or is Artificial. She feels determined to keep using blood magic even if it can’t bring Kip back, because it makes her feel better about herself. 

38: Sashi goes to work. She has been watching the news like crazy, working hard, submitting more evidence of corporate corruption in Eden. Because of her promotion to Detective Superintendent,  she is making more money, and she and her wife Kelsey are going to try for a baby. Sashi feels happy. As she is working, Dana Nguyen calls her into her office. Dana looks fucking rough, she hasn’t been taking care of herself. In Dana’s office, we see a family photograph of her and her dead wife Harry and their children, and Sashi looks at it and feels a moment of pity for this woman, because she can’t imagine losing a partner or a child, even a child who was a terrorist lol. Dana is like, you’ve been working hard, I see. They talk about what Sashi has worked on, all the surveillance and all the numbers crunched. Dana tells her that she agrees with what she has been working on, that she also believes that people like West should not have the kind of power that they have. But then she says that she does not believe that the government of Eden should have that power either. Sashi is like...what are you talking about? Dana gets angrier and angrier as she talks, saying stuff that Sashi doesn’t understand, about always being watched, about how her life has been destroyed. She has been drinking. Dana is like, I remember you were involved in the police union with my wife, all those years ago. Sashi is like, “yeah, Harry, before she killed herself.” And Dana’s face grows cold. Dana is like, “so remind me how you got promoted’ and stupid, truthful Sashi tells her about the day Silas came to her office and talked to her, and talks about how she knows Silas is some kind of high ranking official and how grateful she is to her because now she can finally start a family . And then Dana is like, ‘go pack up your stuff. You’re fired.’ There’s this terrible shock, Sashi is like “WHAT?” Dana repeats herself. Sashi tells her that she can’t do that, and Dana tells her that she can do whatever she wants. Sashi doesn’t understand, feels lost and confused and angry and hurt, having just worked so hard only to get cut down for no reason. Dana is like, “You don’t understand, but I’m helping you. I’m protecting you. Get a new job, do anything you want, just get out of here.” Sashi leaves, feeling numb and betrayed. She passes by chief of staff Vega Pelenato and sees her go into Dana’s office behind her. Sashi remembers everything that she heard about Vega’s dual loyalties and can’t help but wonder if Dana is in West’s pockets as well. She starts to firmly believe that West is paying off Dana and endeavoring to maintain control of the private sector as Nationalization closes in on his corporation. It feels like there is nobody who Sashi can go to, since Dana is at the top of everything. There’s nothing she can do. She thinks about Silas again. Hurt and betrayed, Sashi requests a grievance report from HR and fills it out against Dana.

39: Death Squad spends a shift on surveillance outside of the main gang’s house. They are all very bored and slaphappy because this is a boring mission. They talk about why they were assigned this mission: to drag Rosaline back to the Research and Development floors if it even looks like she’s about to go into hiding. Our goons all think that any Research and Development project is automatically disgusting but they have not been given any information on Rosaline other than to watch her. Smiles watches Kassidy (who is…..wearing Kip’s jacket, sob sob sob) through the sights of his rifle and doesn’t feel anything other than curiosity, because he knows that this girl was at the blood magic church. A staff member radios them to tell them that their location is changed and that they need to go observe the AGA owned warehouse that West keeps his trucks parked in. Smiles is like “what, why?” and staff is like “big things are about to go down, we need to know about movement, weapons, etc”. They get their stuff and travel through the secret little corridors that are all over Eden. Tension between Pete and Smiles. Smiles’s bad leg is troubling him. They pass by one of the secret ways out of Eden, more of a hatch than anything else. Smiles opens it and they look outside at the world. Smiles is like, what if we just left. Pete tells him that’s not funny. Smiles is like they’re going to kill us all anyways, but deep down inside he knows that there is only one way he knows how to live and that’s in the program. Very helpless scene bc even though they’re all in this bad situation, none of them would dare escape. But they look, for a moment. Suddenly BG teleports in and is like wtf are you people doing? Smiles is like “are they fucking keeping eyes on us or something? Is Lady fucking surveilling us?” BG is like uh yeah obviously you people aren’t trustworthy and now she has a connection to your telepath. Someone tells him something over his radio. BG is like, “I gotta take your psychic back to HQ”. The Squad protests. BG tells them they don’t need Nickels for the rest of the mission. Nickels is like BUT I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING. BG is like, yeah but you were thinking it. You thought about it. And grabs her and teleports her out, presumably to be punished for Thought-Crime ™. Pete tells Smiles this is his fault, he is always messing around and getting the rest of them in trouble, he is supposed to protect them. She keeps going. Smiles looks outside again, at the outside world. He asks Johnny if he thinks he is failing to protect them all, if he thinks that he has not done enough to keep them safe. Johnny says no, of course not, and that he knows Smiles is doing everything he can. This is supposed to be a very sweet moment between the two of them. Smiles closes the hatch to the outside and hits a hand hard against his own leg.

40:  Dr. B is troubled by Yancey’s unwillingness to take the only surviving, successful subject of their project in, but he says that it’s better to observe for now. After all, the other living subject from 7 years ago is out living his life. Dr. B tells him that was a mistake and that he should have been terminated. They argue about this in Dr. B’s laboratory. She is worried about her daughter’s connection to the subject. Data has been submitted to Silas. Yancey says that information should have been kept private, but Dr. B keeps nothing from Silas. 

41:  Kassidy realizes that there is nothing for her at home and she has nothing to lose. Kassidy is hungry, so hungry. She goes outside at night and wanders around, wondering if she has lost her mind. She comes across one of the slime creatures and kills it easily with blood magic. Hunger overcomes Kassidy. She ravenously eats the gelatinous body of the creature, and for a while her hunger is sated, but she is horrified by her own behavior. This is usually that moment where someone thinks about how they need help, but Kassidy knows at this point there is nobody who can help her. She just kind of sits there, disgusting, black slime all over her face and hands. Kassidy thinks about calling her mom. There is only one person she knows who knows about this and she calls him. Cihad picks up. Kassidy is like, I’m sorry, I know you hate me, but I don’t know who else can help me. Eternal savior complex guy that he is, Cihad gives Kassidy his address and tells her to come to his house. She rides the subway, thinking about how she is going to probably die soon and wonders if she is OK with that. She arrives at Cihad’s house. It seems so nice and normal. Cihad tells her that she is slowly killing herself, that most people’s bodies cannot handle blood magic. Kassidy says she feels like it’s something more than that. She can feel the BOOK nearby. She asks him where he got it and Cihad carefully says that he has always had it. She’s like, you’re from the town from up North that was destroyed, aren’t you. He says he is. He says that she has to stop using blood magic and tells her that 2 years ago, he watched someone he cared about a lot die a slow, painful death because of this same thing. Kassidy tells him that it isn’t that simple. Deep conversation. Cihad is very different when he is out of boss mode. Then, a child who is presumably Cihad’s/Tony’s daughter and….something….come into the living room. The thing is one of the horrible slime aliens, and it can fucking talk in a human voice and calls Cihad ‘dad’. Kassidy reacts in horror, realizing that Cihad is up to some really dark shit, worse than anything she can imagine, if he is treating one of those things, the same kind of thing that tormented Esther for years, as his child. She’s like, you’re a cultist, you came from that place and infiltrated Eden and brought the BOOK here, you’re evil, this is all your fault, you did this to me, blah blah blah. Cihad, with his terrible red eyes, comforting the little disgusting slime alien that is scared of Kassidy, says “Don’t go. Please. I want to help you.” And Kassidy says “I don’t want your help” and stumbling, runs out.

42: The gang realizes that they are in trouble after Tabby discovers hidden cameras in their home-- this has to do with the Rosaline plot. We really see that Rosie is dealing with her monstrous new nature much better than Kassidy/we see the parallel. Esther receives a summons from the court because her mom is trying to get her committed (Dr. Bellamy trying to control her daughter but in her own way, trying to protect her bc she is aware that danger that is about to come down bc she works with Yancey). Esther is like no no no, I’m not going back to the hospital, there’s nothing wrong with me. Rosie has also received a summons.. Kassidy is the first one to suggest they leave Eden— she feels no connection anyways and wants to see the Lost Colony and CT’s town/the black pyramid. They discuss Marty’s vision of seeing them with him in his Colony. Discussion of pros and cons of leaving that somehow ends up with the majority saying they want to go. Some people (Ayda, Tabby) take more convincing than others. Tabby wants more money and Casey promises her a crazy amount of cash when they get back, she promises Tabby anything she wants. Some (Tony especially lol) want to get far, far away. The saddest thing is that we see that Marty is very excited at the prospect, even though his friends are in danger, and we see how desperately he wants to have real human contact and connection.

43: Preparing to leave Eden. Asking West for one of his trucks. We find out that West has been in contact with people in the North, bypassing Eden’s restrictions with the help of his technopath Percy. West has a lot of foster kids and says some bullshit about wanting to keep them safe from something. Kassidy finds West sinister. She overhears him asking Casey what’s wrong with her/asking her if she’s sick and Casey says something hurtful about Kassidy just looking like that/being ugly (OW but Casey is not tactful and not the best liar). Kassidy doesn’t know why she feels hurt by this, she has always...accepted that she will never be pretty (ow this hurts I feel it). Kassidy goes into the fancy bathroom and looks at herself in the mirror, at how dull her skin has become, the dark circles under her eyes, the weight she has lost, her teeth turning gray and brittle. She looks ugly now. But she thinks, maybe, she hadn’t been so ugly before, even though she had felt that way about herself. Kassidy scrubs at her face. She looks in the mirror. She sees a flash of...of something else. A flash of the planet eating unholy thing that for a long time, she has suspected has been living inside of her body. She recoils in disgust, but what is she supposed to do? She leaves the bathroom to go sit with Esther and Rosie. She asks Rosie how she’s doing, with the whole...being a monster thing. Rosie says that she isn’t a monster and that nothing could make her act in ways that go against her values, no matter what her body has become, no matter what anyone has done to her. It’s frustrating to hear that, because Kassidy feels helpless. She gets up and wanders around, feeling the urge to use blood magic but having to reason to do so. She thinks about the Lost Colony. Are they really doing this? Some of her friends have no skin in this game, and she wonders why they would even decide to put themselves in danger. The Lost Colony. The Lost Colony. Bodies, being in the wrong bodies. Kassidy feels like there is something so wrong with her body. 

44: Preparing to leave Eden. Gathering belongings, making calls. The only one who has nobody to call is Kassidy. She wonders if she cares.

45: The gang packs up and gets into one of West’s trucks. Most of them hide in the back. This should be normal, after all, AGA ships things to the neighboring Colonies of Green River and Serenity all the time. Tabby and Casey in the front, everyone else in the back. Kassidy can feel the thing inside of her grow excited, like it wants to leave Eden. She starts getting sick, leaking black goo from her mouth and ears. They arrive at Eden’s entrance and there is a checkpoint. Secret police. They start asking Tabby questions, Tabby says that they can look at the schedule and that it says that they have prior permission for this shipment. Ayda and Tony start panicking because they can psychically feel that it’s over and they know what’s up. Smiles tells them that there’s a new law and that there are to be no more shipments to or from Eden. He tells them that he knows there are people in the back of the truck and tells them that they’re all under arrest for human trafficking and orders them all out of the truck. They all get out, line up. Vague menacing energy from the Death Squad psychos. Everyone is terrified that they’re about to get shot in the street, especially Kassidy, who has a horrible fear of these people. Scary moment where one of them is like  “Hey, aren’t these those people we were running ops on the other day???” One of them (it’s Nickels lol what a bitch) starts to harass Kassidy, saying that she looks sick and saying that she’s a blood magic user aka shoot on sight, and starts to get rough with Kassidy. Casey is the first one to go ballistic and attack (Casey vs Nickels and Pete, Esther vs Smiles, Rosie vs JVP). Tony pulls Kassidy back into the truck with Ayda, Marty gets into the system to try and force the gates open idk anything about technology I will figure out how later.. Kassidy uses blood magic to incapacitate Pete (because we literally can’t have someone who can incinerate everyone in this fight lol) and this seems to piss the rest of them off. Nickels freaks out when Pete goes down and starts trying to get to Ayda’s mind to put her down. Gate starts to open. Rosaline transforms and beats the shit out of JVP and his helmet gets knocked off and she realizes that this is a 15/16 year old child and is like UH GUYS…right before he brutally stabs her and uses his Artificial strength to put her down but she’s gonna be OK don’t worry. Cihad shows up huffing and puffing in his scrubs and crocs out of nowhere, yelling at Smiles and co to stand down and is like WAIT STOP STOP, and this throws them off a little bit. Smiles crushes Esther’s arm in a bubble after she shocks him. Gate opens more, everyone gets in the truck and Tabby starts to floor it. Cihad starts using blood magic to pull them back. Tony is losing his fucking mind, like we have to get out, we have to go, we have to go! They really are all gonna die. This is scary. Smiles looks at Kassidy and freezes. Kassidy uses her last ounce of strength to lash out with blood magic against Cihad and his hold on the truck is broken. We see in his face that he knows that the Entity is living inside of her body (THIS IS THE REAL REASON HE WAS TRYING TO KEEP THEM FROM LEAVING). Kassidy passes out and stops breathing, her heart stops beating,  and Casey gives her CPR to save her life and ends up snapping her few ribs

46: Smiles is taken to a room and is interviewed by Silas about how he fucked up and how he failed and how he is stupid and how he sucks. Getting shocked has jarred something loose in his mind, not a memory, but a clarity about a piece of himself that he has protected for all these years-- his sense of self is conflicted. Smiles is thinking oh boy, this is it, she’s about to tell me I’m getting Retired. But nobody ever gets a warning for that. He straight up asks Silas if this is it, if this is the end. Silas tells him no, no, she needs him. Smiles is like…. Sometimes I wish you would just kill me….because at the end of the day, he would rather be the first one to die on his team. And Silas tells him to get out. Smiles returns to his dorm, and it’s clear that his team all thought they were never going to see him again. Heartwarming reactions from Nickels and JVP to show how much they truly love and were worried about Smiles. Pete isn’t disappointed but she had been amping herself up to be team leader lol. She bursts into tears when she sees that he is OK. Smiles thinks about the outside world and thinks about the people who just got out of Eden. He remembers the things that have been done to him. He remembers the things that have been done to his little family. He tells them all that he isn’t going to let them die here. He can’t lose them. The ID of the woman Kassidy Nguyen is still hidden in his room. He looks at it and to his horror, he feels some kind of familiarity and believes that he must have known her before joining the program. He tosses the ID to Pete and asks her to burn it. Pete does so. 

47: Some random loser journalist named Lee Harlan is bored and depressed and his life sucks. He has chronic horrific migraines and scars at his hairline. He thinks about different stories he could write and really doesn’t have much inspiration. Just a normal guy. Then he goes to sleep and goes into a VOID hallucination where he is tormented by a version of a 13 year old Marty who he beats to death with a rock, he just starts bashing him over and over while Not-Marty calls him a pervert and a creep and he says that he is not. Not-Marty reminds him that it is his fault that Kip Nguyen is dead. He ‘wakes up’ but he is still in the Void. He can’t get out. It’s like this every time he goes to sleep. He wakes up for real and tries to kill himself by slitting his wrists. It doesn’t work. It never works, he always just heals. Pain and guilt. Nothing matters. There is nothing that matters. Lee turns on the news and sees that a bunch of people were shot for trying to get out of Eden. He sees their faces on the news as Police Commissioner Dana Nguyen talks about the incident in a way that is very broken lol. He knows this isn’t real. Lee does some bullshit smart person internet thing that I will think up later because I am stupid and he finds traces of Marty. And suddenly….Lee does not want to die any more.

48: The gang rides down the road in the truck together, shaken by what has happened. There is a 10 hour trip in front of them and none of them have been outside of Eden, this is exhilarating and terrifying. Kassidy is barely conscious and in pain. Technically she just died, her heart had stopped beating, only brought back by the simultaneously violent and loving act of CPR. She is slipping away and nobody is noticing. She is gently held by Tony. She has memories of Cathy, a person she never met, because the Book has memories of Cathy. Kassidy realizes that they have made a mistake by leaving Eden, this is what the thing inside of her wants, it wants to get out. It wants to go back to the Lost Colony and has been making her interested in that place the whole time. She tries to say this but is unable to. Kassidy fully slips away. The Book is in control now. It sits up, despite the injuries in its body and the harm it is doing to Kassidy. IT TAKES OFF KIP’S JACKET. It tells Tony that it is hungry and asks him if he has anything to eat. And from far, far away, Kassidy sees Tony realize that it is fully in control.

[blooblooded]

Thoughts on the Slime Aliens

THE CORPSE COLLECTOR IN THE SEWERS

The  invertebrate cephalopod creature made of black slime did not remember how it came to live in Eden’s sewers. It had been there for as long as it could remember, squirming in the muck and the blackness of the huge tunnels. Maybe if it had sensory organs it would have hated it there, it would have hated the stench and it would have hated the dark. But it did not need eyes or a nose to survive. It felt safe there. Unlike the rest of its siblings, humans made it uneasy. Years ago, a group of humans in black clothes and masks had tried to kill it. Better to avoid them. If it saw a human, all it could think of was hurting it, consuming it.

It had found a pleasant place to live in one of the tunnels beneath a series of drains. Hot blood poured into the water below every day. The creature made of slime would curl itself up there and lap up the blood. Animal blood, not human blood. It grew larger and stronger than the others of its kind because of all the food available to it, but sometimes it did think about what human blood might taste like. It slid beneath the warm, dirty water and waited for the screams of thrashing animals above it that let it know that its next meal was coming.

The rats were the worst. It hated them. The wretched beasts were the size of small dogs, with sharp teeth and keen eyes, and they roamed the tunnels in huge, chattering packs. If they came across the creature made out of slime, they would squeal and try to bite it. All animals could sense its presence, unlike people. It would go underwater where they couldn’t get to it. It hated them almost as much as it hated humans.

One day when it was hungry,  it decided to search out one of the rats’ nests and devour their young. The little pink squirmers were a tasty morsel. If there were no adult rats around, the creature made of slime could easily make a meal out of a couple dozen of them. The creature made of slime floated down a tunnel of wastewater. It shifted its black, oozing body into a long shape with paddling arms and long snapping jaws. Several eyes on long stalks rose out of the water to peer around.

The rats nested in areas that the filthy mud and wastewater could not rise to. Stone grottos, places where human technicians could crawl down to study the water, that kind of thing. The creature made of slime lifted its snout from the water and tried to sniff for them. It was not a sophisticated being and did not even possess a central nervous system. Part of it understood that in order to grow and evolve, it needed something that it did not possess. Something human. As it stood, it only understood basic things like fear and hunger.

Eventually it found one of the nests. The slime creature pulled itself out of the water with its rudimentary legs and looked around in the semi-darkness. It was about the size of an adult rat now, but had none of their fierceness or intelligence. It looked around and didn’t see any of them, it only saw a carefully crafted circle of shredded trash and heard movement and squeaking within.

Something else too. Something nearby. A presence that it could not understand.

The slime creature crept up to the nest. Inside were half a dozen pups, naked and blind. It could see their veins through their thin skin. They squirmed helplessly, unaware of the danger. It felt dull pleasure at the thought of chewing up their pink and fragile bodies as they squirmed, and it grew a mouthful of sharp teeth.

“No!” A sudden human voice made the creature flinch back towards the water. It looked around and saw a human man rise from behind some rocks, only he did not look like any human it had ever encountered. The man was wiry and covered in rotted clothes. His hair and beard were matted, his face caked with filth. And in that face burned two terrible blue eyes. “No! You get back!”

It hunched down close to the damp ground. Humans were not supposed to live in the sewer tunnels, so what was this man doing? Protecting a nest of vermin? It watched him approach it with the jerky, furtive movements of a wild animal. There was something wrong with him, something dangerous. Most humans were unable to see its kind, only a few of them were able to, but this man? It was like he was looking right through it. It was like he knew everything about it, things that it did not even know.

“Get back!” said the dirty man with the blue eyes. He was trembling all over like a dog but got in between the creature and the rat nest anyways. He was not wearing shoes and his brown, decaying teeth were bared in a snarl. “Go, get out of here!”

The creature made of slime grew a tail and switched it back and forth in its agitation. It did not know how to communicate with him, but it had lived in Eden long enough to understand human speech. Before that? Well, it had no memories before that. It suspected that it was very young, only a larva, doomed to never grow up. It eyed the nest and twisted its form to grow larger and more threatening. Spots of color, yellow and green, dappled over its gummy black body in its distress.

Something…something was different. Something was radiating off of this human’s body. Danger, but it was not the man who was the danger. The rats would mark their territory by urinating on things, claiming them with their pheromones. That was what this human reminded the creature of: something that had been marked. Something dangerous had marked him. A predator.

A flash of something occurred to the creature. This flash was purer than memory: a remnant of the hivemind. It imagined unthinkably huge jaws snapping down, it imagined oceans boiling. This man had been marked by those jaws. The jaws of the planet-eater.

It backed towards the water slowly. The dirty man advanced a step. He stooped to pick up a piece of broken rock and brandished it like a weapon. Although getting hit with a rock could not actually harm it, it still did not want this man anywhere near it.

At the end of the day, it was still less sophisticated than even an animal. It did not understand that in order to grow and change, it had to spend more time around humans. Some of its siblings latched on to the humans that could see them, they made them cry and scream, they fed off of their emotions and grew more powerful, more intelligent. If the dirty man had not been marked by a predator, maybe this would have occurred to the creature made of slime.

“Go on, get the fuck out of here!” the dirty man said threateningly. He threw the rock overhand at the creature. It hit its slimy black flesh with a slap. “Get! Don’t even think about eating these babies!”

It kept switching its tail as it tried and failed to understand why a human would live among vermin, why a human would protect young that were not even his own species. Another rock bounced off of it and it contracted its flesh. It backed into the filthy water and sank below the surface and paddled away.

There would be no food today. Nothing physical, anyway. Something about the energy, the raw emotions that had radiated off of the dirty, strange human with the blue eyes had changed it. Even being in his presence had changed it. Free floating neurons developed and popped beneath its flesh.

The nervous system of these creatures made of slime was similar to the nervous system of a jellyfish, or any number of under sea invertebrates. They contained a nerve net, the simplest form of nervous system in multicellular organisms. These nerves reacted to stimuli: fear, hunger, exhaustion. Under the right conditions and nutrition, they could develop more complex cerebrums with similar intelligence to an octopus.

Those conditions were exposure to humans whose genetics had been altered by ancient exposure to cosmic radiation during the opening of the Rift.

 And the nutrition necessary was human blood. An average human’s blood worked well enough. But there was other blood too, the rich, altered blood of that small group of humans who were becoming hybridized due to the presence of the slime creatures on earth.

The blood of one of these hybrid humans? Well. The slime creatures could hybridize as well. Consuming that blood would make them more….human…

The creature in the sewers didn’t know any of that. All it knew was that somehow after being around the filthy blue-eyed man, it had become smarter. And that it was afraid.

Something was coming. Something much larger and stronger. A natural predator. It had sensed this all around the blue-eyed man.

But there was nothing the creature made of slime could do. It wondered how it could disguise itself from the thing that was coming. It wondered how it could make itself more human. Mimicry came easy to shape-shifters, but it did not understand how to form its shape into a bipedal one. It did not understand how to change the color of its flesh. Its body was all wrong and it knew that when the predator came, it would be consumed.

It did not know how it knew this. Somehow it had gleaned this knowledge from the man in the sewers. He was the one who had known. He was the one who had known that the thing that came from beyond the stars, the planet eater, the great predator, wanted to eat its kind first. It wanted to…finish the job.

Months passed and the creature made of black slime slept beneath the surface of the dirty water under the drains, waking only to lap up the torrents of blood when it heard the cattle above it thrashing and crying out. Why were there cattle above the drain? It didn’t know. All it knew was that it enjoyed the taste of hot blood.

The sounds of a human yelling above the drain made the slime creature raise its eyestalks above the water and look up. The drain was 12 feet above the surface of the water, and little flecks of cold light filtered down. The creature did not like the light and moved its body so that it would not touch its gummy flesh. It formed a long tail and flicked it back and forth.

“You don’t need to yell at him like that,” said a man’s voice. The creature didn’t know much about humans, but they always seemed to be yelling. “You don’t need to always yell at him like that, he’s just–”

“--I’m fucking sick of all his wheezing and whining, it’s giving me a headache!” the man who had been yelling said sharply. “You don't know what he acts like, Ajax, you haven’t been here.”

“But he isn’t a child anymore, you can’t–”

There was the sound of flesh slapping flesh. The creature made of slime formed something like a head with dozens of mouths with little tongues and raised it up out of the water. It was hungry and didn’t understand why the routine was being broken. There were supposed to be cows getting hung up and slaughtered and there was supposed to be blood, not some humans fighting with each other. It oozed towards the sewer wall to get away from the light.

Ever since its interaction with the dirty blue-eyed man, it had been able to understand things about the world a little bit better. Not much. It could not speak and it could not change its form very well. All it wanted was to eat and to keep itself safe from things that might hurt it.

The planet eater was coming. Maybe it was already here in Eden, an overpowering, pulsing presence. It knew that it had to adapt in order to survive.

Some kind of struggle was happening above it. It pressed itself into the slime covered concrete walls. Something smacked, loud and wet, and there was a mechanical buzzing sound. That’s when someone started screaming. Not for long. But the screaming was pained and terrible, combined with the sound of bone crunching beneath buzzing metal.

It knew what screaming meant. Screaming meant blood.

And blood followed. There wasn’t a lot, it was less than the blood of a cow, really just a modest splash. Less clean than a cow’s as well– this blood was combined with flecks of bone and a thick, pinky-grayish-white substance. It swirled and floated on the surface of the dirty water. 

The creature made of slime looked up at the light coming from the drain above it. Two people were talking frantically now and it sounded like one of them was throwing up. It didn’t care about that. It cautiously extended its head and lapped at the blood. It formed little feelers to grab at the flecks of bone and chunks of gray stuff and pushed it into its many mouths.

All this time, it had not known what it was missing. The taste of human blood was more delicious than anything it had known before. For the first time, sentience flooded through the slime creature’s body. Suddenly it had a broader understanding of the world. There was a differentiation between reacting to stimuli like light or hunger and the ability to perceive complex emotions like satisfaction and desire. It knew now that it had a body, but it had a mind too. It could think. And more importantly, it could plan.

Still, its intelligence remained similar to that of an octopus’s. Nowhere near the intelligence of a human.

It did not even know that it could become as intelligent as a human. The possibility had not presented itself. A hybridized human with DNA altered by the Void was a rare thing. It did not know that it had already crossed paths with one.

In the dank humidity of the sewer drain, the creature made of slime drank up all the sweet human blood it could find. And it wondered where to get more.

Oh. Well, that was easy. Humans. Human blood came from humans.

And it knew exactly where it could find one.

It knew exactly where to find the man with the blue eyes. The creature made of slime twisted its body into something large and rippling and full of teeth. Doing so was easier for it now. It did not have to think so much about controlling its form. Now it could grow into something large and terrifying, it could be a predator instead of squealing prey.

When it found him, it would go right for the eyes.

THE NOT-MARTY

For the first time, Ayda and Marty traveled to the stinking, red-skied Void together, Ayda in her astral body and Marty as a Void-Walker.

“I don’t feel safe here,” Ayda said nervously, as they walked over the white sand. Sulfuric wind howled around them, pulling at their hair. Every now and then she would glance up at the pulsating fleshy orbs that hung in the sky and glimmered with dull light and she shuddered. “I don’t—I don’t want to see one of those things that live here.”

“They won’t hurt you,” said Marty, who had been coming to this place since he was a child. Back then he had been unable to control it. Now he didn’t have to wait for a seizure, he could simply close his eyes and transport his mind to this impossible land that existed between dimensions.

“You don’t know that. What happens if one of those things kills me here? Do I die for real? I don’t want to die here, if I die here then Casey and everyone will have to bury me in the woods and if they get back to Eden, Dad won’t ever know where to find my body!”

Marty didn’t know the answer to that. He had nothing to go off of. The only other person he knew who had been in the Void was Lee Harlan, and from what Lee had told him, he couldn’t even die anymore. Jules used to say that his father had been able to hear the terrible droning and the chattering of the beasts that lived here, which was the whole reason Stasya instructed Martin Bonneville to get his mother pregnant. She had wanted to create a Void-Walker. But Marty’s father had been dead for 23 years, and even if he wasn’t, he would never try to get information from a person like him.

“Don’t worry about it, you can’t die here,” was the only thing he could think to say. He scanned the vast and terrible desert for rock formations. The landscape was impossible here and he did not even know how big the Void was. It seemed to go on forever. “You’re used to the kind of Thing we’re looking for anyways. You guys have them all over Eden.”

“Yeah but that’s weird too. Why are there so many in Eden but I haven’t seen a single one in the North?”

“The blood-cult of Blagodat probably hunted them to extinction for their rituals.” Marty pushed. “Good riddance. So none of those nasty things could latch onto me like they did to Esther and Tony.”

He did not understand why the shapeshifting aliens made of black slime apparently latched onto children with Abilities. But Tony had a theory that they had something to do with the Book, or whatever was in the Book. As Kassidy’s physical state continued to deteriorate, Tony became more and more determined to understand the demon inside of her and where it had come from. There was nobody to ask and since they were lost in hundreds of miles of wilderness, there was nowhere to look for information.

Except here. Marty knew that there was something in the Void that did not belong here. And he intended to ask it some questions.

One of the jagged gray rock formations in the distance looked familiar. He jerked his head towards it. The thing they were looking for made its burrow there. Marty had seen it a couple dozen times, mostly when he came across Lee. He didn’t like to think about that. He didn’t like to think about how it was feeding off of Lee’s guilt and self-hatred by shifting into something that looked like him and then mocking Lee until he was compelled to kill it or worse.

Their feet struggled to walk in the slick sand. Far behind them was the obscene black monolith, the great pyramid casting its ever moving shadow. Sometimes he thought about seeing what was inside. But the low, oscillating hum that emanated from that place rattled his teeth and made him feel afraid.

Beneath the rocks was a hole the same size as a fox den. Marty kicked sand into it. “Hey,” he said, with more bravado than was necessary. He wasn’t scared of some weird little shapeshifting monster. He had seen actual monsters. There was an actual monster destroying the body of one of his friends right now. “Hey, you fucking thing, get out here so we can talk.”

“Are you sure it can talk?” asked Ayda. “I never heard one of those things talk in Eden. Not even Esther’s, and it was huge.”

“Ouais, it can talk. I’ve heard it.” He assumed that the Void had changed it, made it more intelligent. Everything had a way of changing in the Void. It was why he didn’t like to stay there for too long. Marty kicked more sand into the hole.

A mass of gelatinous black ooze slithered up and out onto the rocks. It wriggled there like jello, no bigger than a small dog. Ayda squealed and stepped back behind Marty. The lump of slime twisted and grew, rising up, changing colors. The process took no more than a minute. Grotesquely, the slime turned into arms and legs and clothes, and finally a head. It looked exactly like Marty did, only years younger, softer and pudgier.

There was something wrong with the face. It couldn’t get the eyes right, they were dull and black. It smiled a little at them with Marty’s mouth. Lee called it Not-Marty.

“Humans,” it said, mimicking his voice and accent perfectly. It scratched its nose, then looked down at its hands and gave the knuckles a lick with a long black tongue. It was standing all wrong. Something like this could look human all it wanted, but it could never truly act human. “Why are you kicking sand on me when I’m trying to sleep?”

“We just want to ask you some questions.”

“The only human I know likes to smash my head with rocks and then do nasty things with me.” The top of its head grew a second mouth right where Marty’s hairline was supposed to be. Ayda made the circular Weil sign over her heart. “Talking would be nice. I am very lonely. Most of the things that live here just try to eat me, but my kind are natural prey. Sort of like humans.”

Might as well just get into it. “Do you know anything about the demon that used to live here? The one that came to Earth through the Rift?”

The Not-Marty shrugged. “What could you learn from me that you couldn’t just learn from the terrible moth or any of the creatures that live here? I know you talk to them too, little Void-Walker. You’ve been talking to them for years.”

“The demon said your kind opened the Rift and trapped it on Earth.”

It rolled its eyes and looked very much like him. “It was destroying our planet and filling our oceans with blood. We needed to save our larvae so we sent them somewhere else. We didn’t know it would follow them there. I don’t know anything, I’m just a drone who got stuck here when our priests used their magic.” It sniffed and looked over its shoulder like it was afraid something was approaching. “I shouldn’t be thinking or knowing anything by myself, away from the hive. We’re not supposed to be alone like this. It’s not natural.”

Ayda put a hand on Marty’s shoulder. “Wait, you’re saying that the things like you on Earth were your babies?”

She always focused on the things that weren’t really important.

“Still babies. My kind can’t reach maturity without social connection. And now they’re all alone.” Its black eyes were dull but Marty imagined that some kind of need flickered behind them. “I know what rituals humans use them for. Their dead flesh was forced into our Lee’s body to make him into something he was not.”

It didn’t know that Lee was not the only one. How could it? Princess Seraphine had died under Olive Vernier’s ax blows a decade ago, twisted and dripping with slime. And Rosie had been trying her best to keep her abnormalities a secret. In Marty’s mind, this was no different than blood magic. It didn’t bother him that the blood of humans he did not know had been used for arcane rituals. Maybe that was different for something that had belonged to a collective hive.

Oh wait, he didn’t care about what this thing thought or felt. But its sentience and ability to speak did disturb him. “Your kind fought the demon when it was destroying your planet,” he said. “How?”

The Not-Marty stretched its arms and looked up at the pulsating orbs in the red sky. “Haploid drones like me have no knowledge outside of the hivemind,” it said. “Sorry. I’m not even supposed to understand how to talk to you. I only started to understand the world after I found one of you Void-Walkers dying in the sand centuries ago and tore out her guts. But after I met Lee, I really started to feel human too. You know, he really isn’t all human? Not anymore.”

“Gee, you don’t say,” Ayda said sarcastically. Not that she really knew.

“This isn’t very helpful,” said Marty, wondering what it meant when it said that it found a void-walker dying. The creature he was closest to in this place, Phalene, the great moth with a thousand arms, had told him that a human’s astral body would always be safe here. Was there a way to come to the Void in a completely physical way? Who would even want to do such a thing? His body was empty and safe back in the wilderness, being protected by Casey and Esther and Rosie and Tony.

Somewhere in the distance of the vast desert, something howled. Ayda clamped her hands over her ears and closed her eyes. She was not used to the Void yet.

“If you want me to help you, maybe you should give me something in return.” The mouth on the top of the Not-Marty’s skull opened wider and grew large teeth. There was nothing inside of its head, no brain, only black ooze. How could something with no central nervous system even think, much less have desires outside of hunger or fear? Marty was reminded of what Tony said about the Book developing desire the longer it was inside of a human body. “Maybe you can help me get out of this place, Void-Walker. Maybe you can open a door.”

“I don’t think so.” Not only was that impossible, but the last time a space was torn between Earth and some other place, the demon of the Book was able to get in. Not to mention hundreds of thousands of these terrible….drone larvae…Marty did not like to think about what might happen if a full grown adult was free to do what it wanted on Earth. Lee should have never started interacting with this thing.

“Just a friendly offer,” said the Not-Marty. It closed the mouth on its skull and almost looked sly, an expression that Marty’s face almost never possessed. “Someone else is trying to open a door here already. I thought maybe you’d want to try before he’s able to do that.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Ayda asked.

“Maybe you should talk to Lee about it. He’s the one who told me about what his friend is trying to do.”

Like hell were they going to talk to Lee about it. Not only were they separated by hundreds of miles of distance, but if Marty ever saw Lee in the Void again, he would immediately leave. He did not have to put up with that kind of treatment any longer.

They would not learn anything useful here. Nothing about the Book. Nothing about how to fight it, nothing about how to keep it from slowly killing Kassidy.

Marty shook his head. “Come on, Ayda,” he said. “This thing doesn’t know anything. It’s a dumb animal like all the rest of them.”

And the Not-Marty just smiled and smiled.

[blooblooded]

Kip and Kassidy Reunite Part 2

The night after being reunited with his family at last, Smiles had a dream about his other family. The family he had left behind.

It was always like this. When he was awake, he didn’t let himself think about them. It hurt too bad. Smiles focused on what was in front of him, what he had to do. He stayed busy. He kept his mind off it. It was easy to keep himself occupied that first day, he exhausted himself just by talking, by listening to Kassidy and Esther tell him stories about the boy he used to be. That exhaustion made him believe that he would finally have a dreamless sleep.

He was wrong.

The dream wasn’t anything new. Smiles had it all the time, over and over again. It was the one where he woke up back when everything was still good, when he was 22 and had first formed his team. Pete had still loved him back then, Nicky had never been sent up to brainwash other kids, Johnny had been so little and sweet. Internal Operations had not broken all of them yet.

“Hold still,” he told Nickels, who was sitting cross-legged on the floor while he shaved the new hair-growth from her head. He always used to do that for the kids once a week. When he was finished, he patted her on the head. “OK, you’re done.”

“Thanks.” Nickels tilted her head back to look at him with her big black eyes. “I’m glad you chose me, even though I’m only B-Class. You make me feel safe.”

“I’m glad you chose me too, Smiles,” Johnny chimed in. He was practically a baby, he hadn’t started calling him ‘Boss’ yet. He and Pete were playing some kind of game on a tablet. “You know, I think we’re the best team. Better than anyone else. We all actually like each other.”

No, no, something was wrong about this. This wasn’t real. This had happened a long time ago, it would never be this way again. Smiles’s heart hurt. He wanted to hold onto this for as long as he could. 

“We’re family,” said Pete, and she was smiling. God, when had she stopped smiling? He missed seeing her smile! “Families protect each other, we all love each other.”

That hurt worse than anything. It hurt to see them safe and happy. Smiles had failed to protect all of them. He had been so helpless! He had to watch it happen slowly, just like how they had to watch it happen to him. By the end, there were no more sweet moments together. They were all too focused on their own pain for that.

But not now. Now he had them the way he remembered them best. Smiles was able to do the things he wished he still could. He wrapped his arms around Nicky and hugged her tight. He got up and kissed Pete square on the mouth until she laughed, then grabbed Johnny and pulled him into a hug as well. 

He loved them all so much.

The dream seemed to last forever. 

Smiles jolted awake from the soft touch of a hand on his shoulder. Adrenaline spiked through his body, accelerated his heart-beat. For a moment he did not know where he was and he was scared. He jolted up, grabbing the person who had touched him by the wrist and looking around wildly.

Living room. He was on the couch in the living room. The person he had grabbed was Kassidy, who was looking at him with wide, scared eyes. He let her go in an instant and realized that he had hurt her on accident. Self-loathing coiled inside him.

“Sorry,” he said. Safe. He was safe. He was in a safe place surrounded by people who cared about him, even if he did not completely remember all of them. There was nobody here who wanted to hurt him. His mind knew that but his body didn’t.

His sister rubbed her wrist. Her short curly hair poofed up from her head. “You were crying,” she said.

God, that was embarrassing. Smiles rubbed his face. “It’s fine. Just something that happens. You just startled me, is all.”

“I won’t touch you when you’re asleep again.”

Smiles hated himself. Suddenly he felt painfully self-aware. Kassidy was essentially a stranger to him. He did not know anything about her. Sure, she had spent all day telling him stories about himself, but what about her? When he struggled to remember something about her, he could come up with next to nothing.

It was 3 am. He would not be going to sleep again any time soon. He did not want to dream again.

He pointed at the red fractal spirals that peeked out of the collar of her shirt, swirling up her neck. “What’s that?” he asked.

Kassidy’s face twisted. She pulled up her collar. “Something bad happened to me,” she said in a stiff, uncomfortable way. “But I deserved it. I made some stupid, selfish choices because I missed you so much. It got people hurt.”

“You don’t gotta tell me.” After all, there were lots of things he had no intention of sharing with her. She didn’t need to know the full extent of his mistreatment and humiliation over the last 10 years. The torture, the violations of his mind and body. Nobody needed to know that. Nobody on the outside needed to know about any of that. Casey had asked him if he wanted to go on her father’s news station and tell all of Eden about what had happened to him, but Smiles would rather pull out his own fingernails than go through that kind of public spectacle. He shook his head. “Tell me something else.”

“Like what?”

“I don’t know.” Smiles tried to think about the kinds of things normal people did with their lives. “Have you been seeing anyone?” He could sense that something was going on between her and Casey.

That got a smile. “Yeah, most of the girls I see dump me after like a month. I suck at that. I’m better with casual stuff, no emotions involved.” Kassidy sat down on the floor. She acted like she was going to tie back her hair, but remembered that she had cut it short. 

They were both silent for a while. He couldn’t think of anything to talk about. Smiles kicked the blankets off of him, he was too hot. He knew that he needed to keep talking if he ever wanted to get the rest of his memories back, if he ever wanted to think of himself as Kip instead of Smiles, but it was hard. It was so hard. 

At least it seemed like it was hard for Kassidy too. It made him wonder what their mother was like, maybe she was the one who raised them both like this. But he didn’t think he was ready for that.

“We’ve both changed a lot,” said Kassidy at last. She looked sad. “I used to dream about getting you back, and it was always the same as it was when we were kids. But I’m not the same person I was when I was 17.”

Smiles could not remember being 17 but knew that he was not the same person either. He felt a pang in his heart. What if he was not the person she wanted? She wanted her brother. She wanted Kip, she wanted someone whose mind had not been twisted, someone who had not hurt people. Nobody would want someone like him.

No, that line of thinking did not serve him. Those were the kinds of thoughts that the TPs and the Handlers had forced into his mind. Smiles knew that he was wanted by these people, he knew that he was loved by them. Why else had they all cried and embraced him when he chose to come back? He wasn’t some stray they would cast aside when they got tired of him.

They sat together in their silence until morning. Smiles tried to take comfort in that. He was safe and he was with a person who cared about him so much that she was willing to just sit there and spend time with him. The pain of her absence in her life was not something he had recognized until he had her back. How are you supposed to miss someone who you don’t remember even exists? He supposed it had been easier for him in that way. He had always known he had a family out there somewhere, but he never had to endure the pain of being ripped away from them.

When everyone else woke up, it felt like they were trying hard to act normal around him. Casey woke the earliest and she bounded into the living room, looking around as if she had expected him to have disappeared in the night. She immediately sat down on the couch beside him like it was the most natural thing in the world, she prodded Kassidy with her feet until she snapped and smacked her away. Casey just laughed and laughed, the diamond embedded in her left canine sparkling.

“If you’re staying here with us, we’re going to be cramped in this tiny ass house,” she told him. Casey had no problem with talking. It seemed like it was easy for her to pick up where she had left off.

“You’re rich, do you have a better place to go?” he asked her. 

Casey shrugged. “Maybe. I’d have to talk to Dad though, and he doesn’t know about you. Kassidy said we shouldn’t tell him because– well, just because. I kind of feel like you shouldn’t be walking around out there though, even with those ugly glasses. What happens if one of your buddies from Internal Operations sees you?”

It was something he had thought about a lot over the last 6 months with Jules. If he was spotted by chance, it was all over. He bared his teeth with a mean smile. “I would just have to fucking kill them,” he said. “They were all probably told I was Retired anyway. Can’t have them thinking an escape is possible, that would really unleash a shit tsunami.”

“But what if it’s one of your friends that sees you?” asked Casey pragmatically. She reached down and tried to drag Kassidy up onto the couch and got swatted again. “You’d have to kill them too.”

Smiles’s heart twanged painfully. He had not told them about his team. He had only said that there were some people in the Program that he cared about, who weren’t all bad. Secretly, he believed that it was likely that Nicky and Johnny were already dead. Johnny would be unable to protect himself and Nickels had already been in the process of working up to a fatal brain bleed. Pete was probably still alive, as long as she hadn’t lost her mind after finding out he had been Retired. But he didn’t think she would be let out on standard Ops anymore. He tried to keep smiling. “I’d kill anyone to keep from going back to that hellhole.”

Of course, this wasn’t true. This was all for show. Smiles knew that if he was spotted, he would have to kill himself instead. He would not be able to live with himself if he murdered some dumb 14 year old C-Class TK for running into him on accident. He was not that selfish. 

The answer seemed to satisfy Casey. She unfolded herself from the couch and got up to start making breakfast. Kassidy, though, appeared troubled. She glanced at him from the corners of her eyes.

“I think you should stay inside as much as you can,” she told him.

Smiles barked a short laugh, then winced. His ribs were still broken. “Yeah. That’s smart. But I have shit to do.” He had already made up his mind to reunite Marty and Jules, the little witch. Jules deserved that much. She was owed some happiness.

It seemed as if the theme of this new chapter of his life was reunions.

Marty and Ayda were the next to get up. Ayda only glanced at Smiles briefly with her lovely cow-eyes before walking into the kitchen attachment to pour herself a cup of coffee. He could hear her and Casey chatting about how they slept over the sound of something frying. Marty on the other hand, quietly sat down in one of the chairs in the living room, rumpled from sleep.

He was a strange creature. Smiles suspected that he must have had a crush on him when they were young. It made sense. He had memories of Marty desperately trying to keep him safe when he had been Kip, when he had been cowering and crying in a bathroom as Lee Harlan yelled at him and banged on the door. And that was just back then. He had already caught Marty staring at his ass and he had only been back in his life for less than a day. It was fine. Smiles didn’t mind the attention.

It had been over 6 months since he last had sex. That was fine. Smiles didn’t feel particularly horny, being scared for your life does that to a person. But he liked the idea that he might be wanted in that way.

He thought back to what he had seen on Marty’s phone. The messages from Lee, some so friendly and agreeable, some angry and accusatory. And the dick pic. That bothered him. He didn’t like the thought of anyone being harassed, but he did not fully understand what Lee’s role had been in all of their lives. All he knew was that if he ever saw him again, he would kill him.

“Esther and Rosie are still asleep?” asked Marty, in his round, musical accent.

“They can sleep through anything. They’re so gross,” said Kassidy. She still sat cross legged on the floor.

Casey came out of the kitchen, carrying plates of toast and thick slices of canned meat. She handed one to Smiles without hesitating. He looked down at it. The toast was burned and the meat was undercooked. That figured: of course a rich girl had never learned how to cook. But he was starving and appreciated her thoughtfulness. He began to eat. Despite everything, it tasted good. It occurred to him that this was the first home-cooked meal he could remember having.

He finished, stood up, and stretched. One of his ribs clicked and he tried to play it off. He looked at Marty. “You wanna go with me to see the witch?” he asked. “I need to stretch my legs.” That got a look from Casey and Kassidy. They really didn’t want him to go out. They were afraid of losing him again.

It seemed like Marty hadn’t been expecting him to speak to him. He was startled. “Quoi– I mean, what, now?”

“Yeah. She’s been worried sick about your ass. You were all she could talk about from the time we first met. It’s a 30 minute trip down to the Lower Levels, tops.”

Marty stuffed his phone into his pocket. He pursed his lips, looking serious. “It’s been 8 months. Of course I want to see her. But– is that safe?”

“I’ll protect you.”

“More like he’ll protect you,” laughed Casey. Smiles shot her a glare. Was that really what she thought? The only reason they had been able to overpower him before was because there was a psychic and an Artificial involved, and it was 3 vs 1. In a fair fight, he could wipe the floor with any of them.

It occurred to him that they might see him as something that was broken and needed protection. That was why they were all tip-toeing around him, why Kassidy had said she wouldn’t touch him again when he was sleeping. He didn’t like that. He didn’t like that at all. Smiles was used to the one being the protector, Smiles was the one who stood up for people who were weaker than he was. Even jokingly, he did not want to be seen as fragile.

Suddenly he felt irritated and wanted to break something. That was always how he used to deal with feelings like this. Smiles would smash something, he’d get into fights. He couldn’t do that here. If he went through with his urge to smash the plate he was holding, they would all think he was some kind of dangerous animal who was more broken than before. 

“You coming or not?” asked Smiles. “I’m going for a walk with or without you.”

Marty scrambled up. He hadn’t even finished his breakfast. Maybe he wanted to see Jules. Maybe he didn’t want to leave Smiles by himself. “Let me get changed real fast.”

During the time he was gone, the others didn’t say anything to him. Smiles felt a chasm widen. He avoided eye contact with his sister.

When they left, Smiles pulled on his hat and sunglasses. Together with his beard, it was a good disguise. It was unlikely that anyone would recognize his face if they did not look at him directly. Still, he chose a less popular subway route down to the Lower Levels.

“Do your ribs still hurt?” Marty asked him as they sat together on the train. It was painfully obvious that he was not from Eden. He had to stare at the guide at the transit station for 3 minutes before Smiles grabbed his arm and led him to the Blue Line that went down and east. He and Jules had similar behavioral quirks that set them apart; they stared at strangers and didn’t understand it was rude to walk beside someone on the sidewalks. These things were noticeable to anyone who lived here. “Did you take any pain medication?”

Smiles’s ribs still hurt and he had not taken any medication. Every time he breathed, something sharp jabbed into his side. There was nothing he could do about it. “It’s fine,” he said. “I’ve had worse.”

“Hm.” Marty pulled out his phone. Smiles watched him, trying to discern whether or not he was messaging Lee Harlan. He was not, he was only sending Ayda long strings of emojis.

The subway car was mostly empty. It was past the time when most people commuted to work. There was one old woman with her groceries, probably going home, and a messy looking college student with their hair in knots. Smiles marked them as non-threats. He tapped his foot on the floor.

“Jules hates it here,” Smiles commented. “She says she misses the trees. What about you, you must miss your home.”

“Not really.” Marty did not look up from his phone. “It’s not as dirty here. Back home, people didn’t have enough to eat and they got sick all the time. It’s not like that here. I don’t understand how all these people are crammed into this place and don’t fight with each other. In the Northern Territories, everyone was tearing each other apart.”

Oh, Smiles understood exactly why the masses in Eden didn’t fight with each other. He had been a part of that reason. The population was surveilled and terrified and anyone who stepped out of line could be dragged away and killed in an instant. If it wasn’t for the fear of Internal Operations, all the poor people in Eden would be rising up to rip the Artificials of the Intelligentsia class to shreds. They said that B-Day was only a little taste of what could happen in the future without iron-clad control.

Still, after some of the stories Jules had told him about her life up North in the Strath, Smiles liked to imagine going there. Just for a visit. He thought that he might feel happy looking at trees.

It was impossible, of course. Not only because of the distance and the political tensions between their two colonies. Smiles had an expiration date. No matter how hard he tried to stay safe, someday he would be caught. 

The advertisement screen on the car wall switched to show two men embracing with text that read ‘Natural Deodorant that Lasts All Day Long!!’ Blood rose to Marty’s face. He smoothed down his fluffy black hair. “What is this place she’s at? That you both stayed at?”

“Homeless shelter. Like a place you can go to be safe if you have nowhere else to go.”

“We don’t have that where I’m from. People who have nothing just die in the streets.”

Smiles decided that he did not want to visit the Northern Territories after all. 

It took them 20 minutes to reach the Lower Levels. Eden was a massive, sprawling anthill, full of tubes and tunnels. It was a technological miracle that it existed at all. In the Lower Levels, the air was thick and heavy with C02 and the pressure was bad enough to give some people nosebleeds. The supply of pure oxygen that got pumped in malfunctioned often. The only place more hostile to human life was the network of sewer tunnels below.

He led Marty to the Weil Church shelter he had stayed at. Smiles pressed the buzzer and waved at the camera. “Diana,” he said, putting his mouth close to the buzzer. “Hey, hey, Diana, hey Diana, it’s me.”

“You can’t come back in here, Chris,” said the Sister. She sounded disappointed in him. Smiles felt bad about that. He had always followed the rules while staying there and had never bothered any of the staff. He knew they only wanted what was best for him. “You didn’t come back last night, I’m sorry, it’s just policy.”

“No, no, it’s OK, I got housing,” he said. That was technically true. He did get housing. He had somewhere safe to stay with people who cared about him, even if they didn’t really know him. “I just wanna talk to Jules, can you send her out here?”

“I’ll send her out,” she paused. “Good for you, Chris. I’m proud of you.”

Marty glanced at him. “Chris?” he asked.

“I don’t know. I had to give them a name. I guess I already started to remember.”

It was hot in the Lower Levels due to the lack of ventilation. Marty started to sweat through his clothes. He took off his heavy sweatshirt to reveal the T-shirt he wore underneath. Smiles took a moment to appreciate his build, since he had only ever seen him covered up. Marty was shorter and stockier than he was, with a layer of fat softness over what Smiles knew from experience was hard muscle. He found people with that body type pleasant to touch. Too bad Marty was so awkward.

The shelter door slid open and Jules walked out in ill-fitting pajamas and slippers. She must have woken up recently, her hair was still in limp tangles. First she saw Smiles and she just glared at him. But when she saw Marty, her sharp, spotted face became almost beautiful in her happiness. She laughed and then flung her arms around his neck, saying something in their own language.

It felt good to see happiness, to see people reunited instead of torn apart. Jules was pushing Marty’s hair out of his face and pinching at him while he protested in French. Despite this, he hugged her back, and it looked like he squeezed her as hard as he could.

They broke apart. Marty said something and Jules laughed again and gave him a swat. “Now I know this boy is safe. I don’t know how to thank you, Smiles,” she said, switching to English for his benefit. 

“I owed you. You were the one who dragged me out of the trash while I was hallucinating and vomiting my guts out.” Also, he was fond of the mean little witch. And he suspected that he was fond of Marty. He wanted good things for them both.

Was this what it was like to be a normal person? Doing things for others, with no thought of reward? Where had he learned that?

Sometimes people could just be good for no reason. Smiles wanted to be good. Like Kip. He wanted to be the way he was when he was Kip. Maybe prove to himself that he had not been irreparably damaged by the things that had happened to him, by the things he had done to other people.

“Have you been OK?” asked Marty. He dodged when she tried to pinch his belly again. “You’ve been OK, right?”

“Fine. But these stupid people get upset when I try to smoke here.” Jules made a sign with her right hand and grimaced. “Life without the sun has stunted all of them.”

“They’re not that bad.”

“They’re all soft and cowardly.”

“Not all of them.” Marty jerked his head towards Smiles.

“We can go home now,” Jules grasped Marty’s hand with her stained fingers. “We don’t have to stay in this place. We can go back and tell them what happened here.”

Marty’s mouth twisted. He looked down at the ground. “I can’t go yet. There’s important things I have to do. I don’t want to think about what happens if I don’t.”

“This is not a good place,” Jules persisted. She let go of his hand. “The air isn’t real. The food isn’t real. There’s no sunlight. There are people here who don’t have souls, we shouldn’t stay here.”

Smiles wondered what he would do, if he was Marty. Would he want to go home? After all, Smiles did have a home, a real home, that he had not returned to. He was too scared to go back there. He was too scared to reunite with his own mother.

When Marty didn’t answer, Jules continued, lowering her voice as if she was afraid of being overheard. “We have to get out of here. If word got back home about what these savages did to the Prime Minister, Beatrice Kosarin will send 150,000 men south to destroy this place. This place has no army, these people don’t know anything about war. The streets will run with blood.”

That was the first Smiles had heard about that. He felt nervous. Eden was a fortress with impenetrable walls, but inside? 12,000 police officers. 108 Internal Operations agents, at his last count, could be more, could be less. Control in Eden was maintained by brutal surveillance and a frightened population. They were not prepared for war. They did not even understand what that was.

“There’s no way word got back home,” said Marty, who looked a little nervous now. “I heard Florence’s entourage were all killed by secret police. Casey’s da– this guy who knows everything about everyone told us that. He said they were all slaughtered.”

“The dead have a way of showing up again in this place,” said Jules, with a glance at Smiles. “We need to leave. We won’t survive if any fighting starts here. The Partisans and the First Army will wipe out these people like rats in a pit.”

“I can’t leave. If I leave, something worse will happen. Something that affects the entire world. Everyone could die.”

He was talking about the demon from the Void that Smiles still did not understand. Blood magic, yes, he knew what that was. But he was not clear on the creature, the Book that they had told him about. He did not even know if it was real. Kassidy sure believed it was real, he could tell by how uncomfortable she had grown when the others were explaining it to him.

In Smiles’s mind, there were more concrete problems at hand. He only cared about maintaining his survival and the survival of the people he cared about.

One of the shelter residents walked out the doors and went past them. Marty stiffened. Smiles gave the guy a little wave.

After a minute, Jules spoke again. “I’m not leaving without you.” She pulled her pajamas tighter around her. Her dark eyes did not have any light in them. 

In reality, Smiles knew that it was impossible for her to travel hundreds of miles through forests and wastelands by herself. Marty’s decision to stay affected both of them. 

He suddenly felt a sense of sadness that he could not understand.

“I’m sorry.” Marty hunched his shoulders. “I don’t have any other choice.”

The little witch reached out and took his hand again. She squeezed it. The smile that she put on was sad but brave as well. “Don’t be so stupid,” she said. 

And that was that.

###

Over time, he began to think of himself more as Kip. He spent time with his sister. He went on small excursions with his friends. Everything began to feel a little lighter, a little easier to bear. This was what it was like to be loved and supported without the constant threat of harm. This was what it was like to be a person.

Every day, he felt a little more like himself.

####

A month after reuniting with his sister and friends, Kip received something that he could only think of as a bad blessing. 

It was early morning. Kip got into the bathroom first because he did not want to be the one showering after the hot water went out. The issue of the hot water had become a point of contention recently. He scrubbed his face and body and let the water run off of him. It was calming and pleasant. He enjoyed being clean.

When he got out, he looked at himself in the mirror. His hair had grown about half an inch, it stood up from his head, soft and black. Kip patted his own head and wondered if he liked it that way or if he needed to shave it down again. They didn’t own any clippers.

He knew he was starting to acclimate to this life at last. It was hard sometimes, but he was safe and he was loved. He had a sense of purpose as he helped his friends learn more about what they claimed was a ravenous body-hopping demon. Kip didn’t completely understand that, but it felt good to be useful.

He smiled at himself in the mirror and realized that all his expressions had grown softer. There were still lines around his eyes and his mouth was still prone to cruelty, but the growing softness was undeniable. He wondered if he wanted that. He wondered if one day, he wanted to become soft. What would it be like to live a soft life? Kip thought that it might be nice.

There was some kind of commotion out in the living room. Casey shouted something suddenly. She was always shouting. Kip ignored it and started brushing his teeth.

Someone pounded on the door. Kip opened it to find Marty. When Marty saw him half naked and damp with only a towel tied around his waist, his round face turned an alarming shade of red and he averted his eyes.

“What?” asked Kip, his mouth full of toothpaste.

“Uh–uh,” stammered Marty. It was almost funny, the way he seemed so attracted to him. It was like he had never seen another man’s body before. “I– you, you need to get out here and look at the TV.”

“Can I put on some fucking pants first?” He didn’t understand what was so urgent. All the news in Eden was fake anyways. There were two options: the state-owned media programs or the one that West Agapama had started himself in the last year. As far as he was concerned, both options spewed nothing but garbage and lies for their own agendas. 

“Just get out here.” Still blushing, Marty shut the door and left.

Kip pulled on his sweatpants and a t-shirt, then went out into the living room.

“Are you kidding?” Casey was saying. She appeared extremely escalated. The only other person in the Safehouse was Ayda, since Esther and Rosie had left again to visit the Bellamys and Kassidy had gone to where Tony was staying the night before to discuss something about the demon of the Void. “Are you kidding, Ade? He looks exactly like Rome!”

“I’m not saying anything, it just seems weird,” Ayda whined. “It just seems weird that this would happen now and Dad didn’t tell us anything about it.”

Kip looked at them before looking at the TV. Suddenly, he had a bad feeling. “So who died?” he asked. Marty just pointed at the TV.

He turned and froze. All he could see on the TV was someone with sharp teeth and big yellow eyes.

Involuntarily, Kip made a noise like somebody had punched him in the gut and all the air was leaving his lungs. He could not move, he could not speak, he could only sit frozen with his eyes glued to the screen. His pulse pounded in his ears. Whatever was happening in front of him did not seem real, but he could not wake himself up from the dream. 

Hope was a dangerous thing, a dirty word. It was a useless thing for people like Kip, people whose existences must be grounded in bleak reality. Hope was what made people do stupid things, it made them act out or lose sight of the present. Thinking that things might someday be OK only ever hurt him. Thinking that he could exist and feel happy only ever hurt him. Thinking that he could care about anyone without hurting them...only ever hurt him. Almost every shred of hope had been beaten out of Kip over the course of a decade. There was nothing to hope for where he had come from.

Yet since the day that he escaped, he had entertained the hope that his team would survive without him. It was almost too much to ask. Imagining a life where he might see even one of them again? It was too fucked up and tragic to even put in his brain. That was the kind of shit that haunted him when he tried to sleep. It was easier to think that they were all dead.

But here he was, looking at someone he had convinced himself he had lost. If Johnny was safe, maybe Pete and Nicky were as well. In those first few seconds Kip wondered if his pounding heart and dizziness meant he was happy. 

No. He was afraid. Once you get something back, it can be taken away again.

Kip couldn’t even hear what he was saying. He knew Johnny was talking to a reporter, he could see his mouth moving, but he couldn’t hear him. His ears were ringing too bad. He was so dizzy that he had to sit down on the floor. He tried to focus, he could feel his mind losing its grip on himself, he could feel himself start to float away so he made a fist and brought it down hard on his bad leg.

When Marty saw him do that, he winced.

He couldn’t hear anything. Kip started to panic. His brain was moving too fast and too slow at the same time. Sweat broke out across his whole body, his throat closed up and he started to shake. No, no. What was happening? This wasn’t happening. How could he be doing this? How had he gotten out, only to go on TV and make himself a target? He was going to lose someone he cared about before he even had him back again! Why was this happening? Kip felt like he couldn’t breathe. He tried to get up, but couldn’t move.

He didn’t know how long he was frozen and terrified like that. It felt like forever. Casey, Ayda, and Marty were looking at him with scared faces. He didn’t want them to touch him. If they touched him, he might do something bad, something really bad. He tried to suck air down into his lungs and started to wheeze.

“Kip? Kip?” said Casey, calming her own escalation to address him. Her hands hovered. “Hey, hey, it’s OK, you’re OK, just calm down.”

“Fucking stupid,” moaned Kip. With great effort, he was able to put his hands over his face. “I’m so fucking stupid.”

“You’re not stupid,” said Marty, who crouched down very close to him. Marty smelled good, like deodorant and clean sweat. Kip tried to focus on that.

He was stupid. He was stupid for ever letting his guard down. He was stupid for ever thinking that he might deserve a nice, soft life. How could he deserve that when such terrible things had happened to the people he loved? 

“Ayda, I think he needs–”

“No!” If she went into his head again, he was really going to snap. He would not be able to differentiate her presence from the TP agents like Lady who had forced themselves into his brain. At this point, his body felt like it was back in Internal Operations, even if his mind knew that it was not. Kip, his name was Kip, his name wasn’t Smiles. He wheezed for more air.

He wanted someone to hold him. He wanted someone to tell him he was OK. Not these people. He didn’t know who.

“It’s OK, Kip,” said Marty. “You’re still here with us in the safehouse.”

“Don’t you think I fuckin’ know that?!” He couldn’t stop shaking. 

“I’m gonna call Kassidy,” Ayda said softly.

“Don’t do that!” He did not want his sister to see him this upset. All this time, he had tried to hide it from her, just like she tried to hide her fears and sadness from him. It wouldn’t last but he wanted to protect her as long as he could. Maybe that was selfish.

The three of them just sat there with him until his breathing slowed and he could think again. Kip took his hands away from his face. All his muscles hurt from being clenched so tightly. It was humiliating to think that they had seen him have a fit like that, but as time passed, he knew that they would see him have more fits. A lot more. He could not control himself.

“Can I hug you?” asked Casey. She was smiling, but her sparkling, upturned eyes were looking at him in the same way someone looks at a dangerous animal. She was afraid that he was going to hurt himself. Or hurt someone else.

Kip shook his head. He wiped sweat from his forehead.

“You knew that kid?” asked Marty. Ayda jabbed him with her elbow. “Ow! Bitch! What’s the matter with you? I’m just saying, it’s obvious he knows him from the way he was freaking out.”

He might as well just say it. “He was like my fucking baby,” he said, and his own sentimentality made his voice crack. Kip hoped that he would not start crying. That kind of humiliation was not something he thought he could recover from. “He was my subordinate, he was on my team, I was responsible for him. I thought he was dead.”

“That’s a fucking Prospas, is what that is,” said Casey, a little unkindly. She seemed to catch herself. “I didn’t think Internal Operations would want an Artificial, it seems like a huge liability.”

Kip did not know anything about recruitment, only that most agents were brought by CPS and some were snatched from their homes. He wiped a hand over his face again. “They didn’t care. All they saw was fresh meat for the grinder. I–I was never able to protect him or the others.”

How could he? Kip hadn’t even been able to protect himself. He had always tried to sacrifice himself to protect the other three.

“Well this is a good thing.” Ayda was hovering. He did not think she would go into his head on purpose, she knew better than that by now. But she was unable to control her own empathy. Her own feelings leached onto the others around her and he could feel her sense of pity directed at him. It filled him with disgust. “You know he’s OK now. Maybe– not now– maybe you can go see him.”

Kip’s breath caught in his throat again. No, no, he did not want that. His last few interactions with Johnny– or whatever his real name was– had been bad, devolving into screaming matches. It was simple. Despite his best efforts, Johnny had grown up in an environment inhospitable to his sensitivity. The other kids all thought it was funny to hurt him because he was different and because he just didn’t understand why they were doing it, he would keep going back. There had been nothing Kip– Smiles – could do to help him.

“He hates me,” Kip said bitterly.

“I’m sure that’s not true.” 

“Why?” asked Marty. “That’s Rome’s little brother. What did you do to him to make you think he hates you?”

He realized that he had not listened to a single word of the interview. Johnny might have said anything. Had this been broadcast everywhere? Kip’s heart clenched. If Pete and Nicky were not dead, now they certainly would be. The second it began to air and the Handlers caught wind of it, they would be dragged away and shot in the face. Now. They were probably being Retired right now, as he sat there in this safe and comfortable house. It wasn’t fair. What had he done to deserve safety? Why didn’t they deserve it?

He would not let himself cry. Kip clenched his teeth. He brought his fist down on his bad leg for a second time and everyone flinched. “I didn’t do anything,” he said, with poison in his voice. “That’s just it. I didn’t do enough. I could never do enough.”

Pete and Nicky. He couldn’t do anything for them now. 

Casey stood up, radiating pent up worry. She never knew what to do with herself either. Just like Kip, her energy was caged inside of a body that could not contain it. “I’ll make you some tea,” she said, and she removed herself from the situation. Each step she took was equal amounts forceful and graceful.

Kip hated himself. Suddenly, a part of himself missed his life back in Internal Operations. At least there, he always knew what to expect. Out here, the pain was too fresh. It hurt to heal. How was he supposed to heal, knowing that there were people on the inside still hurting? He hated that weak, broken part of himself that desired to get ordered around and treated like a dog. What was wrong with him?

No, really, what was wrong with him? He should be overjoyed to see that his littlest team-mate was alive and presumably reunited with his family just like he had been. Instead he was overcome with a fresh sense of shame and guilt that up until now, he had been able to push back. When he believed they were all dead, Kip had not had to think about his shame. Now here it was. Right in front of him.

He was determined not to cry but his body felt weak. He was still on the verge of panic. It looked like Marty noticed. He coughed awkwardly. “Hey Kip, you want to play video games with me and Ayda? You were good at it before.”

Ayda blinked rapidly. She pushed a strand of hair back under her scarf and tried to smile. “Yeah, we– I mean, let’s just get your mind off stuff.”

Kip did not want to play their stupid games. He did not want Casey to make him tea. What Kip wanted to do was break something. There was no way for him to express what he was feeling other than with violence. He did not have the right tools, he had never learned to recognize his own feelings. He wanted to cry and scream and throw a huge fit, and that’s exactly what he would have done if he was alone. But he wasn’t. Kip was in a safe place surrounded by people who cared about him and he knew that he could not scare them like that.

They shouldn’t be nice to him. They didn’t know what he had done. Or worse, what he hadn’t done.

Still, he allowed them to take care of him. In a daze, he played video games with Ayda and Marty for hours. It got his mind off things, for a while. Casey brought them food and would sit with them from time to time, making comments or painting her sister’s nails.

Once, when they were not looking, a couple tears dribbled out from his eyes. Kip wiped them away furiously.

Around 4, he went into the room Kassidy shared with Esther and Rosaline to try and get some sleep. Spending quiet time playing games with Ayda and Marty had calmed him down a great deal.  Kip lay on his back and stared at the cracks in the ceiling. Selfishly, he wished that nothing had changed. He had been doing so well, he had made so much progress, and now he was in pain again. Why was he always in so much pain? It was never going to go away. He was going to be like this forever.

He heard the front door open and knew that it was his sister from the way she was stomping around. Kassidy was so much like him. She kept things deep inside until they exploded out of her. It sounded like she was very angry.

“Did you see that shit?!” Kassidy’s voice was muffled through the door. “This is so fucked! I had to take the Green line home because people are already rioting.”

“Shhh,” Ayda’s voice. “He’s sleeping.”

“Good. I’m sure he’s all fucked up now. Why did this have to happen now? He shouldn’t have had to watch that, I didn’t even want to hear all that shit about beatings and rape. I’m sure it just brought everything back to him.”

Kip pulled a pillow over his face.

“You said that Tony was going to try to go talk to that guy.” Marty’s voice.

Something crashed like somebody had kicked something. “Yeah. You know who he went with? My Ma. She’s wrapped up in all of this, just like your Dad.” Something else crashed. “I’m so fucking selfish. She just wanted answers and now she just thinks Kip is dead because the Prospas kid told her that. What am I supposed to do now? It’s not like we can just show up in her life now. Tony gave me some huge lecture about how keeping secrets just hurts people.”

Kip pressed the pillow down harder. Stop talking. Just stop talking.

“Why didn’t Kip tell us about all that stuff?” Marty’s voice, again. “He made it sound like he had just been brainwashed. The stuff with the psychics.”

“Would you wanna tell your sister all the details of being tortured for years? I can’t even tell him about what the Book did to me because I know that it’ll just hurt him! Talking about shit fucking hurts! Tony said when he tried to talk to that Artificial about it, he freaked out and fucking bit him!” Another crash. It sounded like they were scuffling out there. “Casey, goddammit, get your hands off me! Get off me! I can’t fucking take this! What are we supposed to do now? I don’t know what to fucking do!”

They must have all got it through their heads that they needed to lower their voices. That was almost worse. Kip knew they were talking about him, but didn’t know what they were saying. He hated this. He hated thinking that they might pity him, that they might see him as someone irreparable fucked up. For a month, he had hidden it from them. Now it was all out in the open.

Why was he feeling so sorry for himself? He shouldn’t be sorry for himself. His situation was so much better than the others’. Even as Smiles, he had had so many privileges and opportunities that others did not have. He had been able to protect himself; he had never been bullied or harassed by other agents. The second any of them looked at him the wrong way he had always been able to beat them into the ground, even other A-Class agents like BG or Creedo. It was only his Handlers that he ever had to worry about.

Kip kept his eyes closed. Thinking about the past was useless, no matter how much it hurt him, no matter how stuck there he felt. There was only the present and the future. For now, he only needed to focus on how he was going to get to Johnny before the little weasel got snatched by Internal Operations and tortured to death for spilling all their secrets on TV.

After a while, his sister came into the room by herself. Kip jerked up into a sitting position and tried to appear like everything was fine. Kassidy stared at him for a moment. She looked tired, but she always looked tired after talking to Tony and some guy named Cihad Tariq. Her hair was frizzier than usual and there were dark circles under her eyes. She was wearing one of the black turtleneck shirts she used to cover up the marks on her neck and chest.

“Why’d you have to sit on my bed?” she asked him, sitting down as well and criss-crossing her legs. “You stink.”

“It was either this or go in the other room and sit on Marty’s.” A joke between the two of them. She did not care about him sitting on her bed. Kassidy had even offered to let him have the bed and go sleep on the couch herself, but Esther and Rosie had not liked the idea of Kip as a roommate. He wouldn’t either, if he was them. 

Kassidy was biting her lower lip. She twisted her sleeves in her hand. “You saw that Prospas kid’s interview, huh?”

This was going to be a hard conversation.Kip tried to play it off for her sake. “Not really. I didn’t listen. I didn’t need to.”

“Tony said he went to visit him this morning with Ma. He said Valentine told her that you died 6 months ago. I guess she– I guess she got pretty upset about it afterwards.”

What was that like, Kip wondered. What was it like to cling onto the hope that someone you had lost was still alive, only to have that hope ripped away from you again? He could understand that pain. But he had never been a parent, someone who’s entire existence revolves around protecting their children. 

He thought about his mother. He had seen the Police Commissioner plenty of times on TV. She had always looked a little older, a little more broken down every time he saw her. Back then he had wondered why looking at her made his heart feel empty. Now he knew he was just missing someone he couldn’t even remember.

“I’d be upset too,” said Kip. He tried not to look at his sister. He knew what she was trying to ask him. 

“I think we need to go see her.”

Kip laughed. “That would be a shock if she thinks I’m dead.”

“All of us thought you were dead for years.”

“I can’t– I don’t want to have to explain what happened to me to someone else.” Even saying that out loud sounded weak and pathetic. But Kip would rather curl up and die instead of look into the face of someone who loved him and tell them about the years of mistreatment and humiliation and how he had been made into something violent. It didn’t make sense. How had someone as emotionally fragile as Johnny gone on TV and spilled his guts for everyone to hear, while Kip couldn’t even talk to his own sister without feeling panic and shame? “I can’t, I just fucking can’t. I want to see her but I can’t.”

“Kip–”

“And now what’s Ma thinking, huh? She’s thinking that for 10 years, the same fucked up shit that happened to Johnny was happening to me, and then they blew my brains out. Sure. But he was little and weak and I was strong, so things were fucking different. Nobody else ever bothered me, I only ever got punished by staff because I deserved it. I just got broken down into a monster who hurts people and I don’t want to hurt her by telling her that.”

Don’t cry. Don’t fucking cry. Kip felt the urge to hit himself again but did not want to make Kassidy see that. 

Kassidy was quiet for a long time. She swallowed, then pulled down the collar of her shirt to reveal the red fractal marks that ran down her neck and chest. “The first night you were back, you asked me what these were.”

“You don’t have to tell me.” God, he didn’t want her to have to pour out all her secret trauma just to make him feel better. That wasn’t fair. She didn’t want to talk about her shit either.

“When you were gone I missed you so bad I didn’t know what to do. I was the one who found that Book that we’re talking about all the time. I didn’t know what it was but whenever I used blood magic, I didn’t feel so sad and lost. I thought I could use it to bring you back, I was so stupid.” Kassidy’s face twisted with the familiar anger of self loathing. She let go of her collar and clenched both her fists. “But I kept doing it, even though I knew it was killing me because I didn’t want to go back to feeling so useless. I didn’t know that the thing that lived inside the Book, the demon of the Void we’ve told you about, was taking over my body.”

“You don’t have to tell me about this,” Kip said again. He knew what it was like to relive something.

“So I kept getting weaker and weaker. I stopped being me and started being it, that thing. It was making me do things I didn’t want to do, it was hurting people, it was inside of me and I couldn’t do anything to stop it. I could only watch and wish I was dead. And then it left me and I did die. Just for a second. It was like falling asleep. These marks are from Esther shocking me until my heart started beating again.” She paused, looking down at her hands, unable to look at him. “I didn’t want to wake up. I wanted to stay dead. Sometimes I still do.”

Kip knew about the Book and the demon from the Void. It was what they always talked about. He had always thought of it as a theoretical danger, not as something that had personally affected any of them. It was hard to process what she had just told him, he had no understanding of things of a supernatural nature. All this time, he had imagined that humans were the worst monsters in the world. But it seemed like there were other things that could cause harm and violate the bodies of others.

He didn’t know what to say. It must have been hard for her to tell him that. It had taken her an entire month to do so and he could tell she still hated it. This was where he was supposed to say something comforting and make it all OK.

But there was nothing that could make it all OK. For either of them. 

Kassidy brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. She sniffed. “That’s what I’m going to tell Ma. I don’t know. Did that suck?”

“That was fine. But Kassidy, is that Thing–”

“Let’s just worry about Ma right now. I think we need to go see her as soon as possible so she knows both of us are OK.”

They had been avoiding it long enough. He knew that she was right. But it was hard! It hurt and he was scared.

That was funny. Kip had been through so much, he had killed people and almost died himself, and now the thought of reuniting with his own mother terrified him. What was he so scared of? That she would hate him? He had been scared that Kassidy and the others would hate him too. But that didn’t stop him from being scared and not knowing what to do.

He inhaled through his nose and breathed out through his mouth. “OK,” he said.

“OK,” said Kassidy. She hesitated, then reached out and patted him on the leg. “We’ll be OK.”

Kip could only hope that she was right.

[blooblooded]

Tony and Cihad Bang It Out

**Sorry this is explicit**

“Shit, this place is nice,” said Tabby Delmont, as she walked into her brother’s new apartment. She took off her jacket and dropped it on the floor without bothering to hang it up. “Mid Levels, I’ve never lived on the Mid Levels. I bet you don’t even have to worry about getting robbed up here. How are you even affording this place?”

“I’m not paying for it.” Tony bent to pick up her jacket and hung it on a hook by the door. He was trying his best. He had only lived there three weeks and was trying to not let it all go to shit. “I’ve got a– it’s complicated.”

He had not told her about Cihad Tariq. It still didn’t seem real. Tony kept waiting for the other shoe to drop and for something terrible to happen. He wasn’t used to good things in his life. He wasn’t used to people treating him with kindness, with no strings attached. It was all going to turn to shit at any second. Tony was constantly anxious, so anxious he could barely stand it. He had nothing to take the edge off, all he could do was pace around his one bedroom apartment and wait.

Supposedly it was supposed to get better. That’s what everyone said. Tony did not think that was true.

Tabby sat down on a chair in the living room like she owned it. Even though they were identical, Tabby had always seemed sharper, brighter. She kept her dark hair cropped short to her head and wore loud, flashy clothes. Her shirt was half unbuttoned to show off a gold chain around her neck. She nodded at him. “You said you were in the hospital. You try to kill yourself again? I thought you were done with all that shit.”

“Detox.”

“Yeesh.” She made a face. “Well that fucking tracks. This is the first time I’ve seen you not completely wasted in years. Are you on the wagon or are you still good to party?”

“Cathy says that if I get my 90 day chip, I can see Cynthia.” Tony’s heart clenched. Piece of shit. He was a piece of shit. He hated himself. What was wrong with him? There wasn’t even anything he could do to make himself feel better about what he had done, there was nothing he could do to change the choices he had made.

Tabby’s face darkened when she heard Cathy’s name. “That bitch,” she said. She pulled out a modified vape pen and took a hit. The air filled with an acrid, chemical odor. “She can’t keep you from seeing your own kid, just like she can’t force you to stop drinking. You should sue her for custody.”

He fanned the air to get the smell away. Amphetamines. Why would she do that shit around him after he had just told her that he was in recovery? Tabby didn’t understand. She had never had a problem like he did. “I’m not gonna sue my ex. I’m already on thin ice, the minute I step out of line, the minute I stop being clean, I’m done for. I lose everything. I lose the chance to ever see my daughter again, I lose this apartment, and then I fucking die.”

What was that stupid phrase? One step at a time? Tony just needed to get through his 90 in 90, then find a job, then maybe, maybe he could be a part of Cynthia’s life. The only problem was that he fucking hated this. He was miserable all the time. He couldn’t see any of his old friends. He hated it, he hated this, and he knew he couldn’t get through it.

Most of the time, he wished he had died. He wished he had never shown up on Cathy’s doorstep, ranting and raving, only for Cihad to drag him to the hospital and dry him out. 

No, what was he thinking? Cynthia couldn’t grow up without a father. He couldn’t do that to her.

Tabby eyed him. She propped her feet up on the coffee table. “The fuck you mean, you’ll lose the apartment if you don’t stay clean?” The delicate mechanisms inside of her prosthetic arm clicked and whirred.

Great. Tony sat down in the other chair. The apartment was sparsely furnished with items Cihad had bought at second hand stores. It wasn’t much but it was nicer and more comfortable than anywhere Tony had slept since…well, since he first lost his mind and abandoned Cathy then spent the next 5 years on a bender. “I don’t know. Cathy’s co-raising Cyn with this nurse. I guess he’s my sponsor. He’s the one paying for the apartment. So long as I do what I’m supposed to.”

His sister’s mouth twisted in disgust. “Right.”

“It’s not what it sounds like.”

She shrugged. “Sure. But you’re letting this guy fuck you, right? In exchange for him paying for this place. That’s great, Tony, that’s real great. You’re almost 35 years old and you’re letting some freak use you so you have a place to sleep at night. Real classy.”

It wasn’t anything that Tony hadn’t already thought. It wasn’t his fault. Cihad brought out something crazy in him. In those moments they were together, he hated himself a little bit less, but it always came back twice as strong after they were done. Was he really just letting Cihad use him? Or was it the other way around? No. It was more complicated because real feelings were involved. He struggled for the words. “He’s not like that. He’s a nice guy.”

“Uh huh.” Tabby took another hit off her modified vape. Her pupils were blown huge. She tapped her metal fingers against the arm of her chair. “Whatever, I don’t care. I just reached out to check on you and make sure you weren’t dead. You gonna let me crash here or what?”

Cihad wouldn’t like that. He didn’t know about Tabby, unless Cathy had told him, and Cathy didn’t exactly have the highest opinion of his twin. “I thought you were staying at Osgood’s?”

“Danny kicked me out after I sold some of his dope.”

Cihad really wouldn’t like that. Tony didn’t know what to say. He had never been able to say no to people, especially not to his sister. When they were kids, they had never really been able to take care of one another. It was a dog eat dog world out there. After they went to foster care, they were separated within 2 placements. After that, they just started drifting apart. Eventually, Tabby went to Juvie after beating the shit out of a foster brother who had tried getting into her pants. She stayed there until she aged out of the system.  It hadn’t been great, being institutionalized just made her angrier. Tony wondered what it would be like to take care of his sister.

He pushed his hair out of his face. It was down to his shoulders now and he usually controlled it with a headband or by pinning it back. “One night,” he said. 

“I’ll be a good girl,” Tabby said mockingly. “I’ll order a pizza.”

And she did. They watched TV together for hours in silence. Tony tried to remain present and comfortable. He wasn’t used to having this kind of life, the kind where you just quietly spend time with another person. His old crowd was always looking for the next scam, always looking for ways to screw each other over. Drugs and alcohol were always involved. Someone always got arrested. He didn’t know how to do this.

He was going to have to learn. For Cynthia.

TV was boring. The first anniversary of B-Day was coming up and it was all anyone could talk about. Tony thought about switching the channel, he didn’t want Tabby to be reminded of how she had lost her arm. But by that time, she was fast asleep, snoring on his couch. After pausing, Tony went and got a blanket and covered his sister with it. He smiled.

That almost felt good. 

He got up and went into the bathroom to take a shower. Showering usually made him feel better. There had been times in his life that he had been too depressed to take care of himself, and other times that he simply did not have access to a bathroom and hot water. Now at least he tried. He washed his hair and body carefully.

Tony hated looking at himself naked. He hated the scar on his belly from where his gallbladder had been removed and he hated the little marks from the catheters that had drained his ascites. His body was all wrong. His arms and legs were thin and wiry, his ribs showed, but his stomach was soft and it would remain that way no matter how hard he tried. He tried not to touch himself. Cihad loved touching him, he couldn’t keep his hands off of him, but he hated it.

He dried off and stared at himself in the mirror. He tried smiling. Tony’s teeth were crooked and yellow, one of the front ones was chipped from Mom popping him in the face when he was little. His shoulders slumped. How was he supposed to live like this for 30 or 40 more years? The thought was exhausting. He couldn’t do this for that long. 

When was he just going to give up?

“Stupid piece of shit,” he told his reflection. There was stubble on his chin and upper lip. Tony picked up his razor. He looked at it for a moment too long, then shook himself. No. “That’s not an option now, idiot.” Carefully, he shaved the hair from his face. He almost looked human.

He pulled on a clean t-shirt and boxers, then combed leave-in conditioner into his hair and tied it off into two braids. If he ever got to spend time with his daughter, maybe he could braid her hair like that. Tony held onto that thought. That was what would keep him going.

Suddenly, Tabby started shouting profanity. Tony almost jumped out of his own skin, the way he always did when there was a sudden loud noise. Heart pounding, he swung the bathroom door open and hurried into the living room.

“Motherfucking freak!” Tabby shouted. She had scrambled off of the couch and backed up against the TV. Her fists were both in front of her, she held a knife threateningly. Although her expression was angry, Tony could see that she was surprised or caught off guard. “I’m gonna cut your eyes out, motherfucker, who do you think you are?”

The motherfucker in question was Cihad Tariq. The big man had both of his hands up, palms up. Still in his scrubs– he must have gotten off work late. His red, red eyes were very wide, almost flustered. When he saw Tony come out of the bathroom, those eyes narrowed and his face took on that all-too-familiar look of controlling judgment. Tony cringed.

“What, you think it’s OK to just fucking shake a stranger when they’re asleep?” Tabby guestured angrily with the knife. Her teeth were bared. “Get the fuck outta here, man, I’m gonna jam my foot up your ass if you don’t get outta here!”

“I thought you were Anthony,” Cihad protested, still with his hands up. He spoke slowly and carefully, the way you’re supposed to talk to a crazy person. His gaze flitted between Tabby and Tony. “Somebody didn’t tell me that he had a twin. An honest mistake.”

Tabby barked a harsh laugh. “Oh, I get it.” She twirled the knife deftly in her hand, then stuck it back in her pocket. She shook her head, slicked her short greasy hair back. “Yeah. OK. This is the guy you’ve been fucking in exchange for this apartment. Damn, big guy. You should have just led with that instead of standing there like some kinda idiot.”

Oh god. Why did she have to say things like that? Tony laughed nervously as he walked farther into the living room to stand between his sister and Cihad. He was really going to get it for this one. 

“My brother always did like them big.” Tabby looked Cihad up and down appraisingly.

Yeah. Tony was in trouble now. The best he could hope for was some kind of lecture. He watched Cihad cross his arms across his chest. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“Making sure my brother is OK.” Tabby pulled out her vape and took a quick hit and again the air was filled with an acrid, chemical odor. She tapped her foot and opened her big mouth again. “You got a funny accent, big man. What’s with that? You come over here for some kinda late night booty call and—“

Cihad crossed over to her and snatched the device out of her hands. Tabby flinched back from the force of the sudden movement, seemingly realizing how small she was compared to him. If he wanted to, he could grab her, hit her, really hurt her. He wouldn’t. But he could. He looked down at the vape, sniffed once, then cast it aside. His face hardened. “I want you to leave.”

One of Tabby’s hands flinched toward the knife in her pocket and Tony could See what she was thinking about. He didn’t even need his Ability to see what she was thinking about. His response to threats had always been to run. Tabby’s had always been to fight. He tried to catch her eye before she did something stupid. 

“The fuck is wrong with you?!” exclaimed Tabby, as she smashed herself back against the TV. “You better not touch me, I will fuck you up!”

“I want you to leave,” Cihad said again. “I don’t tolerate that kind of language. And I don’t tolerate drugs.”

“Oh please.” Her body language was completely aggressive. Tabby puffed herself up as much as she could, she scornfully picked the gold chain out of the collar of her shirt. “You don’t get to tell me what to do. This isn’t your home.”

“My name is on the lease.” Cihad’s voice was very calm but there was iron behind it. “Leave now or else I call law enforcement and they will make you leave.”

Cops. Tabby was scared of cops. So was Tony, for that matter. They had both had too many bad experiences with them, they had both been targeted and harassed. Some of it they had deserved. Most of it they had not. Tabby’s face twisted. “No you won’t. You’re some kinda bleeding heart who likes taking care of strays. You’re not gonna kick me out on the street in the middle of the night.”

“You have two minutes before I call the police.”

“Tony.” Tabby looked at her brother. She wanted him to step in, to say something. She wanted him to stand up for her in the way she had never stood up for him.

But Tony’s whole life lay in the hands of Cihad Tariq. If he stepped out of line, if he went back to the way he used to be, everything would be over. All the pain he had gone through, all the sweating and vomiting and crying of withdrawal, would have been worth nothing. It would be over. He would be homeless again, and worse, he would never get to be part of his daughter’s life.

Withdrawals had been the worst feeling by far than anything Tony had ever endured. In the hospital, every cell in his body had run amok. His heart had beat so fast he thought it was going to explode. He couldn’t move but was compelled to do so. He had wanted to die, he had been throwing up uncontrollably, and each time he threw up, he became weaker and weaker. Whatever was in his brain was trying to kill him and he was in hell. 

Nobody had supported him through that. Not his family, not his friends. Only Cihad, a complete stranger. 

He swallowed. “Just go, Tabs. We– we can catch up later.”

There wasn’t going to be a later. Tabby’s expression took on a look of hurt and betrayal. She straightened her shirt and squared her shoulders, despite the proximity of the big man in front of her. “Fuck you,” she said. “Just fuck you.”

She left without looking back and slammed the door behind her.

Oh boy. Here it came. Tony smiled nervously at Cihad and shrugged. “Wait, wait, wait,” he said quickly, before the other man could get a word in. “Just wait. Hold on. She was just checking on me, I haven’t talked to her in months. She was just checking on me, I wasn’t doing anything. I didn’t do anything, you can relax, OK?”

Cihad wiped a hand over his face. He glanced around the apartment, probably looking for proof of any fuck-ups on Tony’s part. “She was using in here. If you’re not recovering, you are dying, those are your only two choices. How am I supposed to believe you, Anthony?”

Motherfucker. Tony tried to stay cool, calm, and collected. He was used to being accused of things he hadn’t done, but it hurt a little bit that Cihad would instantly assume the worst. Well, he had reasons to. “You can just believe me.” 

“Fine.” Cihad reached into his pocket for his keychain. A square black breathalyzer dangled off the end of it. Tony didn’t mind that the big nurse had started carrying that around after they had met, but couldn’t help but feel like it was a little controlling. Sometimes he didn’t mind that too much either. As annoying as it was, it gave him a sense of accountability. “Blow.”

“I wasn’t doing anything.”

“Then you don’t have anything to worry about. Blow.”

Tony hesitated for a second, then reached out with his Ability. He almost laughed. Cihad did believe him. He didn’t think that he had been drinking. This was a game, just another little display of dominance. Tabby had been right, just like she was always right. Cihad had only come over here because he was horny and wanted some action and now he was upset that it had been interrupted. Yes, he was mad that Tabby had been there and that she had brought drugs into the apartment. He was on the verge of a lecture. But some part of him still wanted to see Tony bent over and at his mercy. Telling him to blow into a breathalyzer was just his sneaky way of still getting that.

Well, Tony didn’t feel like getting some long sanctimonious lecture about his sobriety. He could play along. In fact, he liked playing along. It gave him something to do other than feel anxious and depressed. It would be easy for him to get his mind off Tabby tonight.

And at the end of the day, he really liked Cihad. As irritating as he could be, he knew how to make him feel good. Nobody else had really gotten him in the same way.

He walked over to where Cihad stood, holding out the breathalyzer. It was a little lower than face height so he had to stoop to get to it. Asshole. Tony put his mouth on the plastic tube and blew for 5 seconds until the device beeped. He stayed there just a little longer than he needed to. Cihad put his hand on the back of his head for a moment, sending a quick thrill running through his body, then brought the device up and looked at it.

“What is it, 0.0?” asked Tony. “I told you.”

“I was just making sure. Your sister didn’t seem like someone you should be spending time with this early in your recovery.” He paused and looked away. “You never told me you had a sister.”

Oh no. Not this. What a hypocrite. Cihad had never told him a single thing about his childhood, even though he was dying to know where the accent came from and why exactly his eyes were a shade of blood red. Tony wasn’t doing this. He didn’t want to talk about his feelings and he really did not want to talk about the possibility that he had hurt Cihad’s feelings by not telling him about Tabby. Time to change the subject. He hooked a finger into the stretchy waistband of his scrubs. “You want me to blow something else?” he asked, looking up at him from beneath stubby eyelashes.

“Why are you like this?”

That wasn’t a no. Tony moved his hand down to press against Cihad’s cock through his scrubs. He liked the scrubs. He had never had a thing for costumes before, but he liked Cihad in his scrubs and nametag, his stupid white sneakers. It made him feel like he was being taken care of. Lately he had wondered if he could convince him to come over with gloves and a stethoscope and whatever else it was that nurses used. He rubbed Cihad through the fabric for a few moments, then reached back up to start to get his pants down.

Cihad grabbed his wrist. His hand was big and strong, a steady, nurse’s hand. Tony tried to jerk away from his grip but was unable to. He felt another thin blade of excitement run through him. “You’re impossible,” Cihad told him and squeezed his wrist, just a little. “You’re trying to distract me.”

“Is it working?” asked Tony. “You know I just showered? You can even fuck me if you want to, and I know that’s what you came over here for.” He remembered Tabby’s comment about how she believed Cihad was only paying for the apartment so that he could come around and have sex with him. That wasn’t true, was it? Cihad cared about Cynthia just as much as he did. He wanted her to have her dad in her life.

“I want to talk about why you never told me about your sister.” Cihad shifted.

God, he was so irritating. Why did he always have to pretend like he wasn’t constantly thinking about how he wanted to dick him down? It wasn’t like he could hide the truth from Tony. His desire was all around him. “Well, I want to blow you.” Tony used his free hand to try to shove Cihad away from him but he was 275 pounds of pure muscle. He got his other wrist grabbed for his effort. He struggled pointlessly. “Hey man, I’m just saying that you’re like in prime position for me to knee you in the balls right now, so you might want to rethink–”

“--You better not even think about doing that, Anthony, you better not–”

“--Might want to rethink holding me in place like this.” Tony licked his lips. He kept looking up at Cihad’s face, never breaking eye-contact. He was incredibly good looking, his beard was so carefully groomed, he probably waxed the hair in between his eyebrows too. The red eyes were a mystery, but they stood out against his tan skin. “Let me go.”

Cihad did not let him go. Instead, he leaned down and pressed his lips against Tony’s. Tony felt his heart rate increase instantly. It was a soft kiss. Cihad’s beard hair tickled his chin and he smelled spicy like sandalwood. Tony leaned into the kiss. He parted his lips slightly. His heart beat faster.

He really was so predictable. Tony pulled away first, but he kept his body close against his, with his thigh pressed up to Cihad’s crotch. Cihad had not let go of his wrists. He smiled up at him. Fooling around with him always made Tony forget about how fucking miserable he was and about how at the end of the day, all he wanted to do was die. “Is that a yes?” he asked.

“Take your clothes off, “ said Cihad. He finally let go of him. 

Tony rubbed his arms. He had squeezed too hard. “Only if you leave the scrubs on.”

A puff of irritation. “I’m not playing doctor with you, Anthony.”

“Oh.” Tony popped his T-shirt off. He shivered, but not from the cold. He felt small and vulnerable standing there half-naked in front of him, even though Cihad had seen him naked about 20 times at this point.

“Boxers too.”

“Take them off yourself.”

Cihad pushed him onto the couch and held him down on his back. He bent over him so that their faces were almost touching, then tugged his boxers off. Tony tried to kick him. It was just part of the game, they both liked a little bit of struggle. If Tony ever really wanted Cihad to stop, all he had to do was say it. He hadn’t ever reached that point. In his opinion, Cihad could be a little more rough, but he understood that he was scared of actually hurting him. He kicked anyway.

“You’re always so difficult,” Cihad commented, his mouth hovering over Tony’s. Again, he kissed him, harder this time. The way he always kept his eyes open when he kissed was kind of weird, but then, Tony tended to close his eyes or risk overstimulation. He tasted chocolate, probably whatever protein shake he had had for dinner. Tony was able to get one hand up underneath Cihad’s shirt so he could feel his strong, hairy chest. When he tried to move to rub himself up against Cihad’s leg, Cihad just moved away. Asshole. 

“And you talk too fucking much,” said Tony when they broke apart. He was panting now, too excited to care that Cihad hated it when he cursed. In fact, he preferred it that way, he wanted to get a rise out of him. 

But Cihad didn’t react. He just stepped back and  pulled his cock out of his pants. Another shiver ran down Tony’s spine. By far, Cihad was the most well endowed guy he had ever been with. Well that made sense. He was the physically biggest guy he had ever been with too. Flaccid, he was about 7 inches and when he was hard he was almost 9 inches. Thick too. The only weird thing was that he was circumcised, which was a practice that was unpopular in Eden.

Tony looked at his cock, then back up at Cihad.

“Well?” he asked, jerking himself a couple of times but still soft. “Go ahead and do what you wanted. Get me hard.”

He always did what he was told. Well. Most of the time. Tony slid off the couch and got down on his knees in front of Cihad. He kept shivering with excitement. Years of alcoholism had practically broken his own happily average sized and proportional dick, the depleted dopamine stores in his brain prevented him from performing like he used to. Not that it mattered, he had never really enjoyed being the penetrating partner, even with Cathy. What he did know was that he enjoyed being of service to others. 

He opened his mouth and felt the heavy weight of Cihad’s cock slap against his tongue. It didn’t taste like much, just skin and a little bit of sweat. He began to lick up the head immediately, his tongue dipping into the slit. When Cihad roughly grabbed a handful of hair, he tried not to yelp. Tony looked up through his eyelashes and could see the anticipation in Cihad’s face sparkle.

Tony continued to lick and the salty taste of precum made him start to salivate. Slowly, he moved his head up, all too aware of Cihad’s grip on his hair. He had to relax his throat to take him further in, even though he wasn’t hard yet. When he tried to reach up to cup Cihad’s balls, his hand was knocked away. OK, fine. So he wanted it like that.

The cock began to grow in his mouth. He hollowed his cheeks to suck harder and heard Cihad grunt. A twinge of pride flittered around Tony’s chest. He was doing good. Without warning, Cihad pushed his head all the way up his now hardened cock until he gagged. Tony couldn’t help but whine as he took control over him, using his mouth like a toy despite his gagging.

He had always liked being surprised.

Cihad pulled his head down, then pushed up again, until Tony’s nose was pressed into his thick pubic hair. He began to set a rapid pace. The hand that was not curled in his hair wrapped around Tony’s throat. Not hard, just enough to let him know that it was there. Tony felt his own cock twitch. Cihad pulled out and then thrust back in, hitting the back of his throat in one swift motion. Tony had to fight his body’s natural reaction to gag, his stomach tensed, his eyes watering. His face scrunched with the effort of keeping his mouth open.

“You can take it,” said Cihad. “So take it.”

Well Tony knew he could do that much, it just took considerable effort. His entire body clenched up at the command. Cihad’s pace grew more rapid and Tony choked when he felt his fingers flexed under his jaw, a reminder of how dangerous this could be. It would be easy for Cihad to cut off his airway and the thing was that Tony would just let him because he trusted him. He tried to suck in a deep breath through his nose as his saliva made a mess on his chin and on Cihad’s crotch.

“I said take it,” Cihad said again and somehow managed to push himself even further. Tony nearly lost it. He couldn’t stop himself from gagging again and wheezed for air as Cihad’s fingers tightened even more. He was lightheaded and pleasantly floating and felt his throat convulse around Cihad’s cock.

And then he pulled out all the way. Tony took a deep gasp to fill his lungs with oxygen as he wiped saliva from his face with the back of his hand. He swallowed spit and did not get off his hands and knees. For a second, he thought about touching his own cock, but decided against it. He gazed up at Cihad.

It was crazy. He really liked this guy.

“Lube,” said Cihad, whose entire body was covered with a sheen of sweat. Tony noted that he had not removed the scrubs. 

“Bedroom. Top drawer.”

Cihad left to go fetch it. Tony shifted and started to finger himself. They had just had sex the night before and he was still loose from that. Still, Cihad had a monster cock and Tony had no intention of getting torn up. He was an old pro. When he curled his own fingers inside of himself, he felt a swell of pleasure and his blood pumped hot all over his body.

It didn’t take long for Cihad to come back to the living room. He glanced down at Tony with his fingers inside of himself. “Stop that,” he said. “I don’t want you to cum yet.”

This motherfucker. Tony did as he was told. His chest rose and fell heavily. When he saw that Cihad held a condom as well as lubricant, he shook his head. They went through this every time. “Don’t wear a rubber,” he said. His own voice was thin and reedy, almost whiny. “I want to feel you inside me.”

“It’s safer this way.” Cihad rolled the condom down over his cock. What a prick. He already knew that Tony didn’t have anything; while he was detoxing, he had been pumped full of antibiotics and antivirals.

Tony got down on his hands and knees and turned. He looked at Cihad from over his shoulder. “What are you so worried about? Go ahead and cum inside me, it’s not like you’re gonna get me pregnant. Go ahead and try to get me pregnant.”

But Cihad just ignored him. He squirted a glob of lubricant onto his hand and slipped a finger up Tony’s ass, pumping it in and out. His hands were twice the size of Tony’s, and he was rough. Tony grunted and felt sweat bead on his forehead. When he felt him add a second, then a third finger, he had to grit his teeth. Nurse’s hands, he thought. Only no prostate exam ever felt like this. The fingers pressed against something soft and another wave of hot pleasure overcame him.

He realized that he was hard now. Well, it wasn’t broken tonight.

“Lean over the arm of the couch,” said Cihad, and Tony felt another little thrill at the command. He did as he was told. The fabric was soft against his belly. Cihad pushed his head down until it was pressed into the couch cushion and he stayed there like that. He felt one of Cihad’s big hands on his side and the other on his ass. “Tell me if you want me to stop.”

It wasn’t like he always had to say that shit. Tony took a deep breath and closed his eyes to keep his Ability from overstimulating him. 

There was a wet sounding splat sound as Cihad’s lubricated cock pressed up against him. Just a warm pressure and the alien sensation of rubber. He started to slowly push in. Tony whimpered involuntarily as he began to fill him up, he curled his fingers into the fabric of the couch.

“Oh, fuck,” he said, forgetting the no cursing rule for a second time. Every time, he almost forgot just how big Cihad was inside of him. It was like getting ripped apart from the inside, only, in such a way that filled him with warmth and affection and made him want more. It made him want everything. He pressed his hips back to help get Cihad’s full length inside of him, his eyes screwed shut against the pain. It hurt. It did. That was OK. Tony liked it that way.

Cihad let out a groan himself. His fingernails dug hard into the skin at Tony’s waist. He moved slowly and carefully at first. Tony knew he was fucking tight but this was like being engulfed in flames. He couldn’t help himself from squirming, practically begging for more movement. Cihad removed his hand from his side and moved it beneath him, wrapping it around Tony’s cock. He held it there, just a threat to get Tony to be still for a second.

Well, it worked. Tony froze.

The movement of Cihad’s hips started slowly, then grew into something rougher and faster. He began to pull in and out without so much care. Every thrust seemed to punch the air out of Tony’s lungs. His panting and whimpering began to pour out of him. Cihad pulled his hand away from Tony’s cock and held his hips as he fucked into him, making sure that he pushed all the way in with every thrust. 

The sensation of being completely full like that was painful but not intolerable. Tony tried to breathe through it but started making little hiccuping sounds. He exerted every ounce of his strength to push back against Cihad, chasing after that oblivion, that high that he had missed ever since the day he had stopped drinking. Their movements were in sync now, the sound of skin slapping against skin and Tony’s increasingly animalistic sounds were obscene. 

Tony didn’t know how long it lasted. He could barely think in complete sentences, his entire world had been reduced to the pressure and friction inside of him, the heat of Cihad’s body. He couldn’t breathe. Vaguely, he was aware of a sharp sting from Cihad slapping his ass. Not as hard as he could. They had talked about trying that out last week. Cihad slapped him again and Tony felt tension build in his balls.

“Tighten up,” panted Cihad, and his hand wrapped around Tony’s cock for a second time. Part of his mind already knew what was coming. They had talked about this too, it had been in Tony’s thoughts ever since he found out that he had neuroelectrical Abilities. As Cihad squeezed him, a jolt of electricity from his hand discharged into Tony’s genitals. It made him squeal and his whole body trembled. The electricity wasn’t much, more like static than anything, but it sure got his attention.

And he did tighten up.

At this point, Tony wasn’t so much as seeing stars as he was seeing entire fucking galaxies. He could hear himself making all kinds of explicit sounds– he was loud and always had been, once Cathy had even called him whiny. Cihad shocked him again and Tony’s eyes finally shot open, tears puddling at the corners, drool pooling at the corners of his mouth. His vision whited out for a second.

Cihad slammed his cock jack-rabbit-like into him in quick succession, then came with a groan. Still panting, he pulled out of him. Tony whimpered and shook. His muscles were like jello and he couldn’t move, much less think. Cihad pulled him up and around to face him. Tony’s legs almost collapsed beneath him.

“Say please,” said Cihad, breathing heavily. The Sight wasn’t even working now, all kinds of words and phrases that made no sense seemed to emanate from him: Void and Saint and Book. His face was soft and blissed out.

“P-please,” whined Tony. It was all that he could manage.

Almost gently, Cihad reached down and wrapped his hand around Tony’s cock, moving it slowly. It didn’t take much. He was already on the edge and just needed a little push. A wail built up low in his throat and then came, spilling himself in Cihad’s hand and in spurts up his own belly.

Both of them practically collapsed on the floor, a reminder that both of them were in their 30’s and did not have the same stamina they would have if they had met when they were young. It took a long time for Tony to come back to reality. He couldn’t even catch his breath and continued to wheeze. His ass hurt. All he could do was lean against Cihad. He watched him pull off the condom, tie it off, and then tuck himself back into his scrubs.

Cihad always got all love-y after fucking him. Tony didn’t like that. He didn’t know how to react to people being so nice to him yet. Cihad liked to run his fingers through his hair. He took his arm and pressed his lips to the raised white scar from when Tony had tried to kill himself all those years ago. He snatched it away. Somehow that made him feel dirtier than getting hardcore pound-fucked and ordered around. His idea of aftercare was taking an immediate nap.

“Why are you like this?” asked Cihad. “Why can’t you just be nice?”

Tony couldn’t think straight. He wanted to lie down and go to sleep. He really wanted to take another shower and get his clothes back on. “Says the guy who just wrecked my asshole and electrocuted my dick.”

A touch of panic. “Anthony, if you don’t want me to–”

“Calm down. I liked it.”

Cihad tried to put his arm around him. Tony’s shoulders tensed up but he allowed him to do so.

“Do you want me to sleep over?”

That had never happened before. Tony eyed suspiciously, looking for any controlling intentions. He did not See any. As far as he could tell, Cihad genuinely wanted to spend time with him.

He could never understand it. Cihad had a great job, he had money, good looks, he had his life together. And then Tony had lived in poverty and addiction his entire life. He was a scared little rat. What did he see in him? He could understand it better if this was just the kind of situation where Cihad could work out all his sexual fantasies with someone who shared his tastes. But that wasn’t right. Somehow, from the moment they met, Cihad had developed actual feelings for him. Tony was starting to feel afraid that he was as well.

He was used to several things in his life. How to lie and how to steal. Self pity. Bitterness and perceived slights from society or friends or family. And of course, how to stop his pain without enduring any more of it.

Cihad did not fit into any of that.

It made him want to run. But he couldn’t. He rubbed his face. “Cathy will be worried about you.”

“I’ll just send her a text.”

“I don’t have an extra toothbrush.”

“I’ll just use yours.” Cihad was smiling at him. He had good teeth, straight and white. It was a nice smile. Tony was surprised that he was even thinking that. Fucking him was doing something bad to his brain.

What would it be like, he wondered. What would it be like to sleep next to someone so big? It might feel safe. Tony wondered if he would like that.

“It’s a full size bed,” Tony said at last. He felt stupid and awkward being so vulnerable. He wasn’t used to it. “We’ll have to be close.”

“I don’t mind that.” Cihad rubbed his shoulder. He had not stopped smiling. “And in the morning, you can tell me all about your sister.”

This motherfucker.

[blooblooded]

Cihad's Community Gets Destroyed

It came out of nowhere.

Cihad’s father turned his red, red eyes upon him and everything changed. He knew it in a second. All his secrets, everything he had been hiding. Everything that was wrong with him. It was all out in the open. You cannot hide things from a man who can read your mind, who can see your darkest desires. Everything is laid bare.

And Cihad was only 14 years old. He was not good at hiding. His feelings were too strong.

“Boy,” said his father. In the shelter of their own home, he did not wear his wooden owl mask, nor his red ceremonial robes. He was just Dad. He wore jeans and a white T-shirt that revealed the rope-y purple scars running up his arms. “What have you been doing?”

Cihad didn’t answer him. He looked down at his soup. He knew what he had been doing but didn’t want to say it. That afternoon, Basil Stewart, one of the Strath refugees who he had grown close to, had kissed him behind one of the chicken coops. And Cihad liked it. He liked it a lot. He had liked the feeling of another boy’s hands on his, he had liked looking into Basil’s sweet face and at his wispy beginnings of a mustache. He had thought about it for a long time.

But it was sick and he knew that he was sick. He knew that there was something wrong with him but he couldn’t stop himself. Doing stuff with a boy was just as bad as doing stuff with an animal, but he couldn’t control his urges. 

Something in the air changed. His mother and his sister looked at each other silently.

“You better answer me,” said his father. It was strange, sometimes he could be so lovable. There was Father, the loving father underneath the robes and the mask. And then there was the Red Priest and his cruelty. Sometimes it was impossible to notice the difference between the two. Now it was easy to tell the difference. 

“I haven’t done anything.” Cihad’s heart was beating fast. He did not want to be punished. Whenever he was bad, the Red Priest would beat him with his belt. “I haven’t done anything bad.” It was a lie. He knew exactly what he had done.

His father slammed a fist down on the table. Forks and plates clattered. “I can hear your thoughts. I can hear all your dirty thoughts. I’ve known for months, I’ve known what you think about at night when you touch yourself. I just never thought you’d be stupid enough to act on it.”

“Honey.” His mother reached out for the Red Priest’s hand but he yanked it away. 

“I should have never let those outsiders into our community.” Dad stood up from the table, giving Cihad a hateful look that almost made him cringe. The air crackled around him. “They took advantage of my kindness, they brought their false gods and sacrilege into our home. They tell my people about their blasphemous Summerlands and their witchcraft. And now one of them has corrupted my son?! I should have strung them all up and drained their blood in the temple the day they came to our gates begging for sanctuary!”

There were only 12 refugees from the Northern Territories in Blagodat. All of them were women and children whose men were soldiers who had been executed by the King after the traitor Rowan Gauthier’s failed rebellion. Basil and his mother were two of them. They had fled the Strath because Gauthier’s wife would have taken her anger out on them if they had stayed. Basil’s mother had died from the pox during the winter. Cihad felt his blood run cold. He could not let his father hurt his friend. But what could he do? “No! I’ll be good, I won’t—“

Dad struck him across the face. His sister, Halcyon, yelped. Not Cihad through. Cihad didn’t make a sound.

A terrible thought occurred to him. He was 14 now, almost a man. He was bigger and stronger than he used to be. Ever since he was 8, he had practiced their people’s blood magic rituals. God loved him, he was special. He didn’t have to get hurt or mistreated any longer. He didn’t have to take it. He didn’t deserve it. What would happen if he fought back? Even if he got hurt or worse, it would be worth it. 

But the Red Priest could hear his thoughts. His eyes grew cold. “You better not,” he warned. “I can make another son.”

Cihad did not break eye contact. His face stung. “Don’t hit me,” he said as evenly as he could. His voice had not dropped from puberty yet. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

His father’s face was so unlike his own, pale and sharp. It was easy to see the anger simmering there. “Go out behind the house, cut a switch, and wait for me.”

“No.”

“Boy, I swear to God that I will–”

He was cut short by a screeching, crashing, Metallic sound. It was louder than anything Cihad had heard in his life, louder than a thunderclap, louder than a waterfall. All the windows shook in their panes. Then, the soft pop-pop-pop of gunshots. And screams.

Cihad’s body knew that something bad was happening before his mind did. His stomach clenched but he didn’t move. He couldn’t move. 

The screams didn’t stop.

His father grabbed the wooden owl mask from where it hung by the sink. He secured it over his face. “Stay here,” he told his family, and left, the front door slamming behind him.

Cihad’s mother waited only a few seconds. All the color had drained from her face. She stood up and grabbed Halcyon by the wrist. “We need to leave,” she said tightly. “We need to go. Now. Get your things. We’ll go to Ile de Matane, we can beg for sanctuary there.”

“What’s happening?” asked Halcyon. Her little voice was high and scared.

“Get your things now!” Mother was a beautiful woman. Cihad looked more like her than Halcyon did, with his wavy hair and dark skin. Now that beauty had turned into sharp fear. She let go of her daughter, turned to the pantry, and started shoving cans into a canvas bag. “10 minutes. We have to leave here. We can’t stay here.”

“But what about Dad?”

Mother did not answer. There was no time. She had wanted to leave for years now, she had told Cihad that she did not want to be mistreated any more. She did not want to watch her children be mistreated any more. There was a desperation in her, a person at her breaking point who was willing to use chaos to her advantage. Cihad did what she told him to do.

He rushed to his bedroom. The little creature that lived there crawled out from under his bed. It was the size of a kitten and made of black jelly that oozed and changed when he touched it. When he grabbed it, it made offended peeping sounds from a toothy mouth that extended all the way down its back. “Sorry,” he said, shoving it into his backpack. He found some clothes and grabbed them as well. Nothing else was worth taking. The creature made of slime squirmed and cried inside of his bag.

Sometimes it sounded human. Cihad didn’t know why he loved it. He shouldn’t. It was an evil thing, only fit to be food for the God of the Rift. He loved it anyway.

People in the compound were screaming. More gunshots. Cihad was afraid. Who could be attacking them? Why? They were a peaceful people, all they wanted was to worship God in peace!

He scrambled back to the kitchen with his backpack. Mother was gathering the kitchen knives.

“I’m ready,” he told her.

Mother was crying. She wiped her face with the back of her hand and tried to look brave. “OK. OK, we’ll just wait for your sister.”

The screams and gunshots outside grew louder. Cihad wondered if he could protect his family if it came down to it. He knew he was almost a man now but being afraid made him feel like a little kid.

Their front door burst open. Mother screamed. Cihad lunged for a knife to defend himself but stopped when he saw it was only the Partisan boy, Basil Stewart. Basil was breathing heavily, clenching his teeth. It was so strange. Cihad noticed that he had smeared green paint over his cheeks and held a rifle. His eyes were very wide and blue in his face.

“We have to get out of here,” he said, speaking to Cihad. That was strange too, almost disrespectful. Children were supposed to address their elders first in Blagodat. “They’re here to kill everyone!”

“Who’s here?” Mother asked in a strangled voice. “Who’s doing this? What do you mean?”

“It’s the Imperials,” said Basil. He looked so small holding that gun. He was only 14, just like he was. Cihad’s heart hurt, thinking about the way they had kissed. It felt so good! Would he ever get to do that again? He wouldn’t get to kiss him again if he was dead! “The King sent his Butcher and the Imperial Army. I told you! I told you what they were like! We have to get out of here now!”

Mother shook her head. “No, no. Blagodat is loyal to the King. He would never—”

“They’re animals! The Imperial marsh-landers are worse than animals! They hung my father and now they’re here to kill all of you!”

Halcyon stumbled into the kitchen with her backpack, looking wild. When she saw Basil Stewart, her red eyes got huge. “No, no,” she said, making the sign against evil. She had always been more religious than Cihad. Of course she was. Father was raising her to be the next Red Priest, while he was being raised to be the next leader of the community. It was forbidden for an outsider to look at an Acolyte without their ceremonial mask. She shook her head. “You can’t be here, blasphemer!” 

“Hallie,” said Cihad.

Outside the window, the dark night was illuminated by fire. More screams. There was no time to sit here and argue, there was no time to wait. Cihad swallowed his fear and willed himself to move past it and through it. There were people out there who wanted to hurt him, that was all that mattered. He grabbed his little sister’s hand so tightly that she yelped and ran out into the night. Mother and Basil followed behind.

The community of Blagodat was small. 50 houses and the great black Temple were surrounded by iron palisades that protected them from the outside world. Beyond the palisades, another 50 houses, and the livestock buildings. Everything outside the protective fence was burning, as were some of the houses inside. In the middle of the lawn, Cihad saw what was happening and it scared him so badly that he almost froze.

There were dozens of men in blue Imperial uniforms. They were shouting in their ugly language, raising machine guns, firing at people who were running. Some of them were breaking down the doors of the houses, throwing torches inside, spilling gasoline everywhere. He watched an old man run out of one house, flames streaming behind him, until he fell to the ground and blackened and thrashed. The soldiers laughed. They were everywhere.

The great iron gate had been torn down. That was how they got in. It had been ripped from its hinges as if by a monstrous hand. More Imperials were rushing in by the minute. Cihad saw one of the Acolytes slice into her arm and smear her own blood on her face; a few soldiers screamed and crumpled as their guts slithered out of their bodies from her blood magic. A moment later, an Imperial with a sword cut through the top of her skull and she fell dead into the grass, leaking brain matter.

Huge hounds were involved in the fray. Their howls punctuated the screaming and the gunfire. One leaped onto another young Acolyte trying to take a stand and latched its jaws around his throat. The dogs added to the chaos. There was nowhere to run.

The house next to theirs was the Vernier’s, a family of farmers. An Imperial soldier shot Mr. Vernier in the face and as he crumpled, another tore down the front of his teenage daughter Olive’s dress and shoved her down on her back while she screamed.

This all happened in the span of less than a minute. It was all around them, it was too much, too much was happening and there was nowhere to run. Cihad couldn’t think. He couldn’t see a way out, he could hear his sister begin to cry.

“Animals!” Mother wailed.

One of the Imperials by the Vernier’s house noticed them from 50 feet away. He turned his fierce face upon them and lifted his gun in the same lazy way one lays sights on a rabbit. Cihad’s people were unarmed, they weren’t expecting an attack, despite their blood magic it was easy to open fire on women and children. Cihad tried and failed to remember a defensive spell.

He did not want to die.

Basil Stewart had his own rifle and he shot the Imperial through the heart. His blue eyes blazed as he fired his weapon. The kickback was strong enough for the gun to slam against his shoulder.“I am a Partisan of the Strath!” he screamed. “Imperial pigs!”

There wasn’t time for whatever this was either; Cihad did not care about honor in the face of survival, he did not believe he had to die in battle in order to enter Nebesa or the Summerlands, whatever those were. He was neither Partisan nor Imperial, he was just a 14 year old boy who wanted to part in politics. His only thought was to get out and to protect himself and his family. But everything around them was on fire and people were crashing into one another. He looked around wildly.

The temple. The black pyramid, molded after the real one in the Void that God had lived in. It was as big as two houses, windowless, with only one door in or out. If anywhere was safe, if anywhere could be defended, it was the temple. There was a chance that people were already taking refuge there. There was a chance that they could collect themselves and fight back.

The flames grew higher. The air was hot and smelled like blood.

700 feet. The temple was 700 feet away, in the center of the compound. They could run 700 feet. Without thinking, without waiting, Cihad just started to run, pulling Halcyon behind him. She was only 12, she was not as fast as he was. Mother and Basil followed, stumbling as they went.

One of the hounds lunged towards them. It was a hulking, hideous Bullmastiff with starving eyes and slavering jaws. It crashed into Cihad and he and his sister went down in a tangle of limbs. Its weight knocked the air out of his lungs. He didn’t even have time to scream but he knew that Halcyon was. The dog crunched down on one of his arms as he pushed it up to protect his face, jerking its head. It was strange. He didn’t even feel any pain, only a ripping sensation. Cihad brought up his knee to hit the animal’s belly but it didn’t let go, it only tore at him with greater intensity.

It was trying to kill him, he thought, from outside of himself. He felt a bone crush underneath the force of the teeth. Cihad squeezed his eyes shut and called upon the power of the Rift. It filled him entirely, fueled by his pain and the blood pouring from between the dog’s teeth. The feeling of this power was incomparable, it surged through his veins like fire and he directed it up and outward. The dog’s jaws released him as it gave a single shriek of pain, then collapsed on top of him, lifeless as its insides turned to soup.

No time, there was no time. Mother pulled him and Halcyon up. Cihad’s right arm hung limp at his side, pouring blood. He pressed it against his shirt and ran on, unable to even pant.

The smooth black three-cornered temple came up quickly. The door was impenetrable to anyone who could not use blood magic, anyone who was not blessed by the God of the Void. All the air around it was permeated by a foul sulfuric odor. Mother pressed her hand against the door and its delicate internal mechanisms clicked and whirled. Nearby, some Imperials were yelling, but it didn’t matter, not anymore. The door slid open. They rushed inside and shoved it closed. 

Inside was only emptiness. The huge windowless room was lit by the light of hanging red lanterns. There was nobody inside. Nobody but Dad. The Red Priest stood by himself over the eye-shaped altar in the middle of the temple. Two long slashes ran up his forearms, dripping blood over the cover of the sacred Book. When his family entered, he looked up at them, his face obscured by the wooden owl mask.

The altar was the holiest site in the world. It was meant to represent the real one in the Void that stood inside the belly of the real Black Pyramid. A beatified Acolyte named Josiah Miller had visited that place in his visions 75 years ago, and built the temple as a replica. The round altar was crafted from white stone and had a circle of blue quartz in the center to resemble a human eye. A red curtain embroidered with gold swirls hung around it, obscuring a cavity under earth. On that altar was stored the sacred Book that contained all of their rituals, and beside it lay the black sword forged from the falling star that brought the essence of God to Earth.

Dad said nothing. His blood was staining the white stone of the altar red. He held the silver, crescent shaped knife he had cut himself with in his right hand.

“They’re killing everyone!” Halcyon clung to her brother. She was so young, she shouldn’t have had to see the pointless brutality outside. Even now they could hear people screaming. “They’re killing everyone! They’re going to kill us!”

“No.” Dad pushed the mask up his head. His red eyes burned as bright as the fires outside but his face was calm and emotionless. “God is testing my faith.”

Something about the dead way he said that scared Cihad more than the violence outside did. He clutched his injured arm to his chest. It was starting to hurt now. He was starting to feel faint. Basil stood beside him, supporting him. This was bad, he thought. It was sacrilege for an outsider to look at the face of an Acolyte, but nobody but family could look upon the true face of the Red Priest.

There were crashes outside. Pounding at the door. The soldiers were trying to get in. What was that old saying? Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

“God will protect me from these blasphemers,” said Dad. His face was as pale as a sheet. He began to walk away from the altar and towards them, his red robe fluttering around his feet as he went. “His power will flow out from the Void and destroy them. The only thing I have to do is prove my faith and give God what is most precious to me.”

“No!” said Mother. “No, no!” She clutched at Halcyon but Cihad was too far away for her to reach. Dad slapped her face hard and she fell down. He gently put his hand on his daughter’s shoulder. Cihad didn’t know what was going on, he couldn’t move, the room felt like it was swirling. Basil was saying something but he couldn’t understand him.

Halcyon looked up at her father with the trusting look of a tamed animal. He smiled down at her.

Then Dad slashed the knife across her throat, opening it from ear to ear. The carotid artery was sliced in two and great gouts of blood poured out of it. Halcyon’s eyes widened, she put her hands over her throat to try and stop the blood but there was too much of it, it was coming out too fast. She started to choke and the sound of his sister gagging on her own lifeblood was worse than anything Cihad had ever imagined. It was too much. She fell to the floor still moving weakly.

Mother was screaming and screaming. She flung herself over her daughter’s body, cradling her face in her hands as her life drained away and puddles on the floor. When Halcyon stopped moving, Mother clawed at her own cheeks, leaving long red finger-trails of her terrible grief.

Beside Cihad, Basil Stewart fumbled with his rifle, trying to lift it to his shoulder. The shock made him too slow. Dad turned his burning red eyes upon the Partisan boy. He said three words in the hissing, backwards language of the Void and twitched one hand. Blood erupted from Basil’s eyes, nose, mouth and ears; his body began to violently convulse, his face turned purple. Cihad stumbled to grasp at the boy he loved, but Basil slipped out of his arms. He jerked on the floor of the temple like a dying fish, gasping and leaking, until he stopped moving too.

Death. The smell of carnage filled the air in the space of only one minute. It was the unthinkable power of the Void. Cihad’s stomach heaved, he bent and vomited. His body was so weak, he could not process what had just happened.

Pathetically, all he could think in that moment was how much he wished he was in his own bed.

“God will bring her back to me,” said Dad, looking down at his daughter’s body on the floor and his wife wailing over it. “He’ll bring her back to me because of my faith in him.”

Mother’s head shot up. Her mouth was contorted in a hideous snarl. There was a crackle in the air, a smell of ozone. The static made her long black curls raise on their own. This was not blood magic, this was her gift, as pure and natural as Dad’s brutal telepathy. She outstretched her right arm and an arc of green electricity ran down it. It hit Dad with the same unrelenting force as a lightning bolt, knocking him off his feet.

The wooden owl mask clattered onto the floor.

Cihad willed himself to move but was unable to. He stared at the corpses of his sister and friend. If it wasn’t for all the blood, he might have thought they were sleeping. They were kids just like him. He was going to die. He knew that now. He was going to die and maybe that was better, maybe he didn’t want to live in a world where he had lost everything he cared about.

In a second, Mother was able to reach the altar. She grasped the holy sword with both hands. That was sacrilege, nobody was supposed to touch it except for the Red Priest when he used it in their weekly rituals, thanking it for bringing the essence of God to Earth. The ancient blade was black and 3 feet long, deadly and sharp. Mother was breathing heavily, she did not know how to wield it.

Smoke rose from Dad’s body as he struggled to get up. He was panting. Suddenly he seemed small and weak and for the first time Cihad realized how pathetic he was, a man who relied on instilling terror in women and children so that he could hold on to a veneer of control. When he tried to raise a hand to channel his destructive magic, Mother hit him with another bolt of electricity. The green sparks ran down the length of the sword and into Dad. He fell down onto his back.

He would never get back up. Mother lifted the black sword above her head and swung it down, slicing the Red Priest across his shoulder and belly. He screamed as the blow cut through his intestines. As Dad writhed, trying to turn himself, trying to protect himself, Mother brought the blade down a second time. It cut through the middle of his face, splitting his nose and mouth and opening his throat. For a moment, Dad’s body spasmed and he gurgled pitifully. Then he was dead. Mother cast away the sword.

Cihad started to cry. His mind could not accept what he had just witnessed. He was scared and hurt and didn’t know what to do, he didn’t know what he was going to do! How stupid he had been just minutes before, thinking that he was a grown man! He was just a child!

He had never really understood death before this moment. Yes, Cihad had witnessed people die. He had seen Dad open the veins of criminals –a couple thieves and old Anderson, who had killed his own wife– and drain their blood in the temple, but they had deserved it. He remembered watching his Grandfather waste away from an illness. But this? All this death? It was pointless and brutal and sudden. One minute his Halcyon and Basil had been there and now they were not. Why? There was no point! And he had been helpless to stop it.

The screams and clanging outside the temple had not stopped but he believed that they were safe inside. Mother crossed and wrapped Cihad up in her arms. She was crying too. He buried his face in her chest.

“It’s OK,” said Mother. It seemed like she was trying to control her grief, trying to appear strong for him. “It’s OK, it’s OK.”

It was not OK. It was not over yet.

The huge metal door creaked and groaned. Cihad broke away from Mother’s embrace and turned, watching in horror as the temple door began to crumple and tear as if it was being wrenched apart by some monstrous hand. Impossible! The Imperials had no magic, this was impossible!

There was nowhere to run. They were trapped. 

Maybe it was better. Maybe Cihad wanted to die. He probably deserved to die because of his sick urges to kiss and touch other boys. He realized that everything that had happened tonight was his fault, it was God punishing him for kissing Basil Stewart. He deserved it. When he died, his soul would be lost and left to the nothingness of the Rift and it was all because of his perversion.

 Still, he wished that after death his soul would go to the gentle fields of the Summerlands that Basil had told him the people of the Strath believed in.

Mother’s face was fierce and determined. She pulled her son away from the door, to the altar that was still wet with Dad’s blood. The Book was still there. She picked it up and shoved it into Cihad’s hands. A shiver went through his body as he felt the essence of God. He had never been allowed to touch the Book before. Mother pulled aside the altar’s curtain, revealing the empty space inside it. There was about 4 feet of space there.

“Hide,” she told him, forcing him down and inside the altar. Cihad began to shake all over. This was not right. God was going to punish him again for going into such a holy place when he was a dirty pervert. “Don’t make a sound. You can’t let them find you. You have to protect the Book that God lives in, these savages can’t be allowed to take that too.”

The metal door creaked and pulled back more, exposing the red sky outside.

“What about you?” asked Cihad, looking up at his mother. “What about you?! You can’t– you can’t, can’t just–”

She pressed her lips to his forehead. That moment would stay with him for the rest of his life. Mother was smiling, she brushed his hair away from his face. “I love you,” she said, pulling the altar’s curtain closed. It obscured Cihad from sight but allowed him to see the rest of the temple through a small crack.

The door screeched. The metal pulled away completely, crashing and crumbling. Cihad hid his face in his hands. His arm was throbbing now from where the hound had bitten it, he knew that his wrist was broken from how bad the pain was. The slimy alien creature in his bag made chirping sounds and he reached to clutch it to his chest against the Book. When he did that, the creature began to struggle like it was hurting. 

A few Imperial soldiers and a dirty looking boy his own age walked into the temple. They said something in their own ugly language, looking at the 3 bodies on the floor. One of the Imperials glanced at the dirty boy and gave him a shove, and he yelped like a dog and left with his eyes downcast. They looked at Mother who stood before them with her head lifted proudly.

“You can’t be here,” said Mother.

The Imperial who had shoved the boy had many medals pinned to his blue uniform. His eyes were cold and a long yellow beard came down to the center of his chest. His gaze slid around the darkness of the temple. “Where is the Book, blood-mage?” he asked, switching to English. He held a machine gun in one hand.

They were looking for the Book? What purpose would outsiders have with it? They did not worship the God of the Rift, they could not use blood magic!

Cihad knew that he had to protect his God. Even if that meant giving up his life.

“There is no Book,” said Mother. Electricity began to crackle around her. 

“Give us the Book and we might let you live.”

“There is no Book,” Mother repeated.

One of the Imperials laughed. The one with the medals and the long blonde beard shrugged. He raised the machine gun, pointing it at Mother. Cihad squeezed his eyes shut. He knew what would happen next. He knew that he could not see this.

There was a series of five gunshots. He heard something fall to the floor. The men were laughing, talking in their own language. He could hear them walking around, coming closer to the altar. Cihad curled into himself, making himself as small as possible, covering the Book with his own body.

Everyone he had ever cared about had been brutally murdered. Soon the soldiers would pull aside the curtain, find him, drag him out and shoot him. They would take the Book. The essence of God would be taken to a place without rituals, without reverence. That couldn’t happen! It couldn’t be allowed to happen!

But he was just one boy.

God, thought Cihad, opening his mind to the Void. Protect me. He would do whatever the Book needed him to do, he would follow its instructions, he would do anything if it only let him live!

Footsteps approached the altar. Unable to stop himself, Cihad opened his eyes to peek out. He could see a man’s large boots standing very close. The Imperial bent and picked up the black sword, then said something that Cihad was only able to understand one word of: Vedma. Witch. A few of the men laughed again. The Imperial wiped Dad’s blood off the blade and held it, staring at it.

Cihad didn’t care about that. He didn’t care if they took it. The essence of God was no longer present in the meteoric iron, it was inside the Book. The Book was all that mattered. He could feel it pressed against his body, as warm as a living creature. The blood that trickled from the dog bite on his arm was slowly being sucked towards it, absorbed into the cover made of human skin.

Even now, he was nourishing it.

The Imperials talked amongst themselves. It sounded as if the massacre outside the temple was over. If they wanted to find the Book, they weren’t looking very hard for it. Perhaps they were not the ones who wanted it. Perhaps they were here on behalf of someone else. The King?

Or the vedma, the witch. 75 years ago, Cihad’s people had been witch-hunters. They weeded their dirty magic out of the Hinterlands and the Strath. Witchcraft was the antithesis of blood magic, it was a threat to them. It was a threat to God. Was it possible that one was still alive? That one wanted revenge?

It didn’t matter. He would never find out. Please protect me, he thought. Please, please protect me.

The Imperials left without finding him. He understood that he was nothing to them. They did not care. This night and all the slaughter in it had been nothing to them.

Still, he stayed hidden beneath the altar for hours until he was sure it was safe. And the whole time, the Book was warm and comforting in his arms.

FLORENCE

“This is a terrible idea, Mother,” said Flick, limping back and forth in the fine rooms they had been offered that evening. She had dressed him in his father’s finest clothing, tailored to fit him of course, but he did not look a thing like the late Duke. He looked like her. They had the same suspicious faces and flinty eyes. It was no good. “I won’t do this. It isn’t worth it.”

Florence looked at him disdainfully. “You will do it,” she said. She was in the middle of reading Lenin’s ‘State and Revolution’ and had just lit a cigarette and did not want to listen to the boy whine all night. There were things she had to think about. “I got married at 16 and this isn’t even that high of a commitment, it’s only a betrothal. We need more men. It’ll be easier to do that if our house and Count Surkhov’s are bound together.”

“Mikhail Surkhov’s loyalty is to the King. Or have you forgotten how the Imperial Army slaughtered the entirety of Blagodat? Or, I don’t know, how he dragged my Father to the gallows and hung him like a common criminal?! What makes you think the same won’t happen to us if they suspect what you’ve been doing, regardless of whether or not I’m betrothed to one of his girls?”

He was so dramatic. It was her fault. Florence turned a page.

The Surkhovs’ estate in Kimanka was surrounded by stinking marshland. Nothing grew there, the people said that it had been poisoned by blood magic long ago. There were great pits, as deep as wells, that emitted noxious gasses. With no viable trade options, their only export was their soldiers. The men of Kimanka were fierce brutes. It was said that 2 out of 3 of them were recruited into the King’s Imperial Army. Mikhail Surkhov was no different. He was called the Butcher, but only in whispers.

Well. The Butcher had 6 daughters and one of them was the same age as her son. The arrangement was as easy as writing a letter. Had it been that easy for her parents when they had married her off to a man 14 years her senior? At least she was kind enough to find someone his own age. Boys were so much better off than girls were.

She glanced up at him. Flick looked upset. She only ever called him Flick, never by the name his father had given him. Another part of the witch’s curse. Was it her choice? Was she feeding into it? The boy sat across from her with his bad leg propped over one knee. His face was gloomy and contemplative.

Florence sighed and closed her book. “What are you so unhappy about?” she asked. “The  Butcher is an old man. He’ll be dead soon and with this union, I’d say half his men will join my Partisans.”

“Father’s Partisans,” replied Flick. He pulled a knife from some hidden pocket and began playing with it. “You’ve heard Kimble talk. He isn’t loyal to you, you’re just a woman.”

He needed a good hard smack, but Florence had never had the nerve to strike him. Despite everything, it would have made her feel bad. Her son was weak and broken. There were mornings that he couldn’t get out of bed due to his pain and there were moments where he coughed and wheezed so severely that she thought he would stop breathing. She decided to entice him instead. “What about you? It’s not as if you aren’t getting anything out of this. They say Valerie is quite pretty. All these girls are shaped like hourglasses. Wouldn’t you like a plump little wife you could take to bed any time you like?”

His face twisted. “Don’t talk that way.”

She shrugged. “You’ll thank me soon enough.”

Flick smoothed his hair back from his face. At 17, he was already growing a mustache. Had it not been for his bad leg, he might have been considered handsome. Oh well. It wasn’t her fault. It was the witch’s.

They sat in silence for an hour. Florence smoked and read. Flick sulked and stared into the fireplace. The climate in Kimanka was sticky and humid. She missed the trees and the cool forests of the Strath. 

Someone knocked at the door. In an instant, Florence’s posture changed from one of relaxation, to stiff-postured vigilance. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw her son do the same. Almost imperceptibly, his hand returned to the knife he kept hidden at his side.

It was no good to trust the people here. Yes, they were guests. Yes, 1,000 of her Partisans were camped throughout the vast property. She was still worried about getting attacked. There were some in the Northern Territories who believed that she was a traitor, just like the Duke.

Soon they would see exactly what kind of traitor she was.

“Enter,” she said. She did not stand up.

Her Partisan Commander, Reed Kimble, walked in. He was a knife-faced young man of 22, filled with an animalistic sadism that made him a relentless soldier. Like all Partisans, he wore a camouflage uniform and smeared paint on his cheeks and forehead. Like all Partisans, he had sworn a blood-oath to her husband. Now that the Duke was dead, that blood-oath had passed to Florence.

“Commander,” said Florence. 

“My Lady,” said Kimble. He wiped a sleeve across his face. “This place is fucking damp. No wonder the people here act like animals.”

“Is that what you came in here to waste my time with?” She couldn’t afford saying something that would set off his temper. She only had 8 men inside the Surkhov estate. 8 men and Flick. She needed every one of them, in the case that something went wrong. “Speak up.”

Kimble shrugged. “There’s some cheeky noble boy looking for you. Demanding you, I guess I should say. Bardet’s stopped him down the hall. You want me to tell him to fuck off or send him in?” He had both pistols strapped to his sides, their antler-studded grips barely visible beneath his uniform.

Florence sighed. She didn’t have time for this. She and her own boy needed to rest and prepare for the betrothal feast tomorrow. She had to have everything figured out: how to play nice with the Butcher of Kimanka until she got rid of him. Surkhov was in his late 50’s. She could poison him in half a year and then get Flick to seize control of his 25,000 men. 

25,000. It would make a difference. And that wasn’t taking into account the Butcher’s sword. Rumor had it that he had pried it from the dead hands of the Red Priest when he slaughtered every man, woman, and child in the blood-magic cult of Blagodat, which lay to the south. They said that it was forged from star-metal and had the power to destroy unclean beasts. What beasts? She did not know. Her mind turned to Asilo, the Lost Colony, 250 miles to the south west. It was said that place had a monster trapped inside of it that had the power to destroy the very souls of men. It was said that this monster looked like a man, that once it had the essence of a demon living within it, and that it drove the entire Colony mad. Maybe a sword that could destroy unclean beasts would be useful, if something like that really existed.

Whatever the case, it was bad luck to take a weapon that did not belong to you. Such an act cursed whoever held it. The true master of the black sword was the Red Priest’s son, who had been called Caleb or Cihad or something, and that boy was dead with all the rest of those unfortunate souls.

“Fine,” she said. She checked the clock on the wall. It was only 9:30. “Sure. What do I look like, a mother?” That got a glare from Flick.

Kimble laughed and swaggered off.

“You know that man’s a bully, a thief, and a rapist, don’t you?” commented her son.

“Yes well, he isn’t a coward.” Florence exhaled twin streams of smoke through her nose. In truth, she was troubled by the behavior of the men who were supposed to fight for her. But she needed all of them.

The door opened a second time and a handsome high-born boy the same age as her son stepped in. He had an arrogant way about him and was dressed in dark, serious clothes. His brown curly hair was tied back from his face in the manner of an Imperial soldier and his haughty expression made him look older than he was. When he saw Florence, he gave her a stiff little bow, then cast his cold gaze onto Flick.

It was too funny. Florence had to keep herself from laughing at the poor, puffed up creature. Young men from Kimanka were not known for their sense of humor.

“Lady Gauthier,” said the boy. “My name is Anatole Surkhov.”

Now Florence did laugh, nervously. Her mind scrambled to put together the pieces. “What is this? The Butcher has no sons.”

“Six daughters,” Flick chimed in. He never could help himself. He was an avid gatherer of information. “Not even any bastards.”

Anatole scowled. He crossed his arms. Florence observed how short he was for a boy of 17 and the discomfort with which he held himself. “Clearly that’s what I came to speak to you about. I’m not getting betrothed to your son tomorrow, it’s just another way for my father to humiliate me. I thought it was the honorable thing to do to let you know before I run away and join the King’s Imperial Army tomorrow.”

There was only one thing he could be ranting and raving about. Again, Florence laughed nervously. She looked the boy up and down. “Valerie?” she asked.

“I came to warn you, not explain myself to you.”

She had read about this kind of thing. Rowan’s library contained thousands of ancient books. Apparently it had been more common to not identify with one’s assigned gender in the old days. Not in the Northern Territories though, and certainly not in the hellish bogland that was Kimanka. No wonder the Butcher was trying to marry this miserable child off.

Flick’s eyes bulged from his head. For once, he had been taken by surprise. He gripped the handle of his cane. “What?” he said. “What? Mother, I don’t understand.”

“Even if I was a girl, I would never marry the crippled son of a traitor,” replied Anatole cooly. 

“I’ll explain it to you later, Phillip,” said Florence, before he could say something stupid and get attacked. Now she did stand. This was irritating. She had been hoping for some dumb quiet girl who would do whatever she was told, not whatever this was. Everything was all wrong now. What was she supposed to do? She had been counting on this merging of great families to add more men to her vanguard. The anger was building inside of her. “And what do you mean, ‘traitor’, you arrogant pup?”

“I mean what I said.”

It was all over now. She could hire a couple thousand mercenaries from the Hinterlands. Maybe. They would fight well, but would only be loyal as long as the money didn’t run out. No blood-oaths there. Florence wanted men who would die for her. The Imperial Army had 100,000 men. How could she fight against that? How could she even try?

All she wanted was freedom for the Strath. All she wanted was safety. She needed more men.

She eyed the boy. He looked strong enough. Strong enough to be a soldier. Broad shoulders, a steady gait, the kind you only get from practicing with a sword. “Why join the Imperials?” she asked him. “Why not run off to the Hinterlands to trap pine martens for their fur? It would be easier to live as yourself there in the woods than surrounded by an army.”

Anatole’s eyes were like cold stones but he smiled. It was a smile like his father the Butcher’s, it had a touch of maliciousness. “I want to fight,” he said. “I want to carry a sword. The only way to enter Nebesa is to die a warrior’s death. I won’t have my soul cast into the Rift with the dishonorable dead.”

Nebesa. These marsh-landers and their superstitions. Their idea of heaven was an eternal battlefield. She hoped that they weren’t right about that. If there was a life after death, she could only hope that her soul went to the Strath’s peaceful Summerlands.

A new plan had already started to form in Florence’s mind. Maybe it wasn’t too late. She gestured towards the chair next to Flick. Anatole sat down after an awkward hesitation. When he wasn’t holding himself up so proudly, he looked like the teenager he was. He smoothed down the front of his shirt.

It was not hard to deal with teenagers. Flick had taught her that. 

“Why don’t you join my army?” she asked. Florence raised her eyebrows. “I’m always looking for new recruits. It would be easy for you to rise up through the ranks, Anatole Mikhailovich, my Partisans aren’t trained in the art of Fekhtovaniye as I imagine you are.”

“Fekhtovaniye?” Flick scoffed when he heard her refer to Kimanka’s sacred battle rituals. He rubbed his leg, he must be hurting. Sometimes he had to take morphine for the pain, but that only made it harder for him to breathe. “No, I doubt that. And we don’t need marsh-lander sacrilege in the Partisan Army.

Anatole looked like he wanted to reach out and strike him. Color spread across his proud, tanned face. Florence decided that she liked him. “Better than the bleating of filthy sheep. I have said the ancient words and have trained with the greatest swordsman in Kimanka, Kirill Morozov. I am as good as any other Imperial.”

“Then you would only have to take a blood-oath to give your life to me and become one of my Partisans.”

“I would never bind myself to a traitor.”

“Is that what they say about me here? My dear husband led the revolt all those years ago, not me.” Even the thought of the Duke’s face made Florence feel sick and he had been dead for years. When it came to military strategy, he had been worse than useless. Still, his men had been loyal to him.

“Only a traitor would raise an army of farmers and thieves ten times the size of any forces needed to defend a small Territory like the Strath.” 

“Your father the Butcher is also a traitor then,” said Florence. She stubbed out her cigarette. “The blood-magic cult of Blagodat was once loyal to the King. He cut them all down like animals. It doesn’t exactly inspire trust. What do you say about that, boy?”

Anatole flushed. He looked down. “I have no love for my father,” he said. “I wish he was dead. He has no care or loyalty for anyone. Not to my mother, not to my sisters. Yes, he killed all of those people in Blagodat, and he probably enjoyed it. He’s the King’s Butcher. Have you heard what he did when farmers in the Hinterlands refused to sell their cattle? Or the things he does to women?  Have you heard that he keeps a boy who can tear things apart with his mind in his kennels and treats him like a dog? You can’t be a traitor if you have no loyalty at all, only a monster.”

It was no good to make a deal with a person like that, a person who exhibited cruelty to women and children. Florence cut her eyes towards her son and wondered if he thought the same thing. She had few options now, but she still needed men. She also needed the Butcher of Kimanka to die. There was no place for people like that in her vision of a new, unified Northern Territories. Her mind raced and she watched the proud young man before her.

If it was not for the unfortunate reality of his birth, he seemed like the kind of man who could eventually lead armies.

“How many of your father’s men would follow you?” she asked him. “If he was dead, how many men of Kimanka would pledge their lives to you?”

Anatole laughed.“None.”

“And if I was to rebuild your identity? Forge a writ of legitimacy stating that you are Mikhail Surkhov’s bastard son? None of them would ever know you were once called Valerie.”

“Mother…” Flick warned.

“I will not live my life pretending to be a bastard,” Anatole said haughtily. His gaze dropped. “Besides. My father will live for a long time. And none of his men will follow me if I do not wield his black sword, Zvezdorez, the star-splitter.”

That was easy enough. A plan knit itself together in her mind. Kill the Butcher and the men who were closest to him. Manipulate people into believing that this boy is his only son. How many men of Kimanka would change their loyalty? 20%? 30? More? It was what she needed. Only the force of a large army would bring freedom to her people.

There would be no going back after this. She would be marked as a traitor forever. That was fine.

She thought about lighting another cigarette but did not. She smiled. A certain tenderness had overcome her heart. “Tell me about this boy in your father’s kennels,” she said. “The one who can tear things apart with his mind.”

OLIVE

King Jean-Baptiste Dubois was 57 years old but sick and weak. His head moved back and forth constantly. His pale eyes were rheumatic and his limbs were frail. He sat in the ornate throne room in the castle of Ile de Matane. His sick, mutated daughter Seraphine sat at his left side, trembling and dripping with black slime.

And Olive sat at his right hand. She was proud to sit there. For a simple country girl, she had done well for herself. Men loved to gaze upon her and her beauty: the curves of her breasts, the gentle curls of her long black hair, the smoothness of her pale skin. She knew that she was beautiful. It gave her power. It had given her the King’s child, growing inside of her.

The witch was there too. She had come to the palace for refuge during the summer, claiming that Partisan soldiers had burned down her home and carried away her students. The King welcomed her. He had taken her into his court as an advisor and she was trying to heal his daughter. Olive avoided the old woman’s gaze. She was very, very careful to keep their paths from crossing.

Witches were evil. Everyone knew that. Almost 80 years ago, their kind had been all but eradicated by blood magic using witch hunters. Sometimes, if one was found now, she was burned alive. But the King needed Stasya, the Hinterlands witch, alive if he wanted to win the war.

“That bitch from the Strath has burned down another granary,” said the Captain of the Imperial Army. He had the sweaty, uncomfortable look of a trapped animal. Ever since the brutal murder of Mikhail Surkhov at the hands of some kennel boy 3 years ago, he had struggled to take his place. “The Partisans are trying to starve us out, at this rate we won’t have enough stores to survive until spring. They’ve cut us off from the roads that lead to the Hinterlands.”

“Let them burn it all down,” said the King. A crown of silver sat upon his head and there were braids in his beard. A bit of soup from lunch stained his fine robes. Despite his physical weakness, his mind was still cruel and sharp. “Let them think they’ll win. By midwinter Gauthier will realize her mistake in surrounding herself with women, psychopaths, and deviants. They’ll eat her from the inside out. We have a weapon none of them can even comprehend.”

Olive shuddered. She had heard about the weapon. The great snake. The myths of…of the place she had come from all said in the Void beyond the Rift was a black pyramid and that underneath it was a monstrous body with tendrils like serpents. God’s true body. Well, that didn’t matter anymore. The Book that contained the body of God was long gone. She twined and untwined a strand of hair around one finger. Her other hand was on the King’s liver-spotted one.

The Captain hesitated. “My Lord, this war can still be won through traditional methods of–”

“Would you question your King?” asked Stasya Nekraskova, the old witch. It seemed as though she had aged 10 years since she had come to the castle. She had transformed from simply being old to being grotesque. Her long white hair had fallen out in clumps, leaving naked spots on her scalp, and her skin sagged from her face like rotted cloth. Once she had worn a dress that’s neckline did not come up to her throat and Olive had seen…holes…as if the witch’s flesh was decaying so severely that it had eaten her down to the bone. “Think about what you’re saying, boy.”

The Captain flushed. He gave a stiff little bow and took his leave.

Olive did not want to stay in the throneroom with the old woman. She made her anxious. The maids always whispered that witches ate children, and she did not want that to happen to her’s. She didn’t even want her looking at her belly. She leaned towards the King and made sure that her cleavage was visible to entice him further. “Jean-Baptiste. Let’s go to bed,” she whispered.

The King brushed her away. “I don’t have time for that,” he snapped. “I have an attack to plan.”

“The solstice is 2 months away,” said Stasya. She took a step towards the throne. The smell of rot enveloped her. It was corpse-stink and brought to mind old carrion left to decay in the sun. “Draw Florence Gauthier’s armies out of the Strath so that she is unprotected. I will do the rest. My ungrateful students will be there and I’ll get my hands on them. I’ll make them regret choosing to play around with Partisan boys instead of returning to me.”

“What will you do with them?”

Stasya smiled. Her teeth were brown and decaying, like fangs in her mouth. “What do they say witches do to bad children? I’ll eat them and my powers and youth will return to me. A small price to pay. I only need the little void-walker to live.”

Olive couldn’t help herself. She knew about the great snake. She had seen it, coiling and uncoiling in her dreams. It was easy to imagine it wrapping itself around someone, unhinging its jaw, and slowly swallowing it whole. During the summer she had seen a black rat snake doing the same to a baby rabbit and she thought that she was going to be sick. She whimpered and drew back, with her arms protectively over her stomach. It was a terrible thing to hear.

“What are you whining about, girl?” asked Stasya. She turned her milky, cataract covered eyes towards her. “You’ve seen worse. You have the stink of blood magic all over you.”

“No, I–”

“Take Seraphine back to her quarters,” interrupted the King. He reached over and gave Olive’s thigh a squeeze. “This is no place for women.”

She was happy to leave. Olive smoothed down the silken red fabric of her dress, then grabbed the Princess by one limp arm and led her from the throne room.

Despite everything, it was not safe for Olive in the palace. Yes, she was respected. Yes, all the men wanted her and all the women were jealous of her. She had worked hard. It was still not safe. Not now and not when the baby came. The King did business with witches and she wanted no part of it. She didn’t think it was right. Wars should not be won through magic. It wasn’t safe, she needed somewhere safe.

But there was nowhere safe. If she left the palace, everyone would just look at her like she was some kind of whore. At least here she had the protection of the King.

Olive thought back to what the witch had said. “You have the stink of blood magic all over you”. There was no way she could know. She hadn’t done one of the rituals in months. She worshiped the God of the Void in private. Even her eyes appeared normal. She had procured brown contacts to hide the red. No, she couldn’t know. Nobody knew.

“What’d the witch mean?” asked Princess Seraphine. She was the same age as Olive, maybe 18 or 19, but still spoke with a lisp. Her jaw was crooked and she drooled constantly. Her spine was twisted and hunched as well. But that was not the worst of it. The Princess’s pale skin oozed black slime from its pores. Sometimes her bones would crack and snap, lengthening and changing until she was a twisted, weeping monster. It was disgusting to look at. “You’re one of the bloody-eyes?”

“Shut up,” said Olive. “Witches lie.”

“The Red Priest and his children came to fix my back when I was little,” said the Princess. She limped along. To look at Olive, she had to crane her stiff neck; one of her eyes bulged from its socket and the other was squinted so tight she couldn’t possibly see. “They made me drink the black blood of something from beyond the Rift. It made me into this.”

“Well they’re all dead now.” She remembered the Red Priest’s proud little children, Halcyon and Cihad. They were dead like all the rest of them. The only reason she had survived the slaughter was because the Imperials found her so beautiful that they wanted to keep her around to play with. Olive didn’t feel any pity for this wretched creature. The King should have put her out of her misery years ago instead of allowing her to hobble around the castle leaking slime. “Go to your room and don’t bother me again. The baby’s kicking.”

The Princess’s spine protruded from the back of her dress like a hump. She paused in front of her bedroom door. “Do you think it’s going to be a boy or a girl? You know, if it’s a girl, I’m still first in line to the throne.”

Right. Only if by some miracle the King married her off. Olive smiled tightly. “Only the gods can tell.” Even mentioning the gods of Ile de Matane felt like sacrilege. There was only one God. The God of the Rift. The God from the Book.

“If you are one of the bloody-eyes, I’m going to feed your baby to the witch.” Princess Seraphine’s childish lisp grew hateful. Her one good eye rolled back and forth in its socket. “So you had better hope it’s a boy. Otherwise Father won’t care about it.”

Anger flared inside of Olive. She dug her long nails into the Princess’s arm and squeezed tight. The skin beneath her fingers was clammy and wet and filled her with disgust. The Princess whined and Olive pulled her closer. “Maybe I am one of them,” she hissed. “Maybe not. But if you threaten my child again I’ll gut you and grind your bones into powder, you misshapen little freak. Don’t you ever speak to me like we’re equals! I’ve seen things you could never imagine!”

She whirled away, the fabric of her dress swirling around her, and retreated to her own quarters before she said anything else she would regret. Even if Princess Seraphine went whining to her father, he would not listen to her. Olive had him under the spell of her beauty and the possibility that she would bear him a son and heir was too great.

There were other things to worry about. Like how she was going to get out of Ile de Matane and go somewhere no witch would find her.

Olive’s rooms were sweet smelling and comfortable. They were a great step up from her life in the gutter where men would hurt her, in the stinking mud and cold. Every day, maids brought armfuls of roses from the garden. The lamps all burned low, her sheets were made of the finest satin. When she invited the King to share her bed, she wanted it to be intoxicating, so she always thought hard about new ways she could make her room beautiful.

She sighed and inspected her face in the mirror. The girl who looked back at her was a nameless stranger. Since she was 15 years old, she had built herself up from nothing. Now what was she going to do? How was she supposed to raise a child this way?

Someone cleared their throat. Olive clamped a hand over her mouth so that she wouldn’t scream and turned to face them. Immediately, her body began to shake. It had always been the first thing that happened when she was afraid. She had never been able to control her body’s reactions.

There was a young man sitting in the chair in the corner. He had a pleasant, relaxed posture and sat with one leg bent over the other. His clothes were dark and he had a black cane ornamented with the skull of some small animal propped over his lap.

“Olive Vernier,” said the young man. “Sorry to meet you under these circumstances. It appears that the rumors of your great beauty are true. My name is Flick.”

There were no weapons in her bedroom, but Olive did have a needle on her dressing table. If she took it, if she pricked her finger…she would only need a tiny drop of blood to…

“Get out of my room,” she said. Her pulse beat wildly. “If–if I call the guards, they’ll–”

“If you try to call the guards, I’ll slit your throat,” said Flick casually. There was suddenly a small knife in one of his hands. His dark eyes sparkled. “Relax, I’m not here to ravish you. I’m only here to talk. What’s that accent? You don’t sound like you’re from Ile de Matane.”

“I was born here.” She could not let her baby get hurt. How dare he joke while he sat there threatening her? The King would have his head on a spike.

“We both know that’s not true. How’d you survive the slaughter at Blagodat?”

“I was born here to—to a baker and his wife. They died when the pox swept through 8 years ago.” It was the lie she always used.

Flick smiled. He stood up, leaning heavily on his cane. So he was a cripple. Perhaps she could fight him if she needed to. “And yet your face is free of scars. I’m friends with a girl who lost her family that way. Her cheeks are spotted with remnants of the illness that took her parents. I can’t believe you. You know, some of the men here say that you bathe in the blood of virgins to maintain your beauty.” He laughed like he did not believe this. “Relax. I only want to hear what really happened that night. There are rumors of a Book of dark magic that the people of Blagodat worshiped as a God. It hasn’t been seen since. Maybe if somebody survived, that person might have taken it.” 

How did he know about the Book? Olive’s blood ran cold. There was no reason for a non-believer to care about her God. 

He already knew too much. Olive’s mind raced. She could go along with it, keep him talking, wait for one of the maids or guards to come in. Then he would die. And she would be safe. “I don’t know anything about that,” she said as evenly as she could, with her hands protectively over her belly. “I was 15 years old. My family were farmers, not Acolytes. I would have never touched it, God would have struck me down if I had.”

Flick took a limping step towards her. Olive pressed herself back. “My friend from Kimanka claims that his father the Butcher killed every man, woman, and child with red eyes in that place. How did you survive?”

“Your friend was lied to. The Imperials took a few girls for their own pleasure, then left us in one of the whorehouses here in Ile de Matane.” Olive tried not to think of that time. As far as she knew, the other girls were all dead, succumbing to illness or starvation. Not her. She had scraped and struggled to survive in this place.  Her life was so much better now after she caught the eye of the King.

“It seems foolish to force oneself on a girl who can eviscerate you with her mind.” Flick sniffed, then paused as if he had realized he had said something cruel. “Though I am sorry for your hardships, mademoiselle.”

She did not want his pity. “What is your interest in the Book?”

“Oh.” Flick smoothed down his little mustache. “I have no interest in it, but my Mother has an interest in many things. Maybe you’ve heard of her– Lady Gauthier of the Strath. Her mind is focused on anything that might harm her people. The King’s Imperial Army. Witches. Blood Magic. They say that the Book has the power to destroy the world. Superstition or not, she would like to destroy it.”

Sacrilege. Her face grew hot. Olive remembered looking at the Book when she was a child in the temple. Her whole body had been filled with a sense of love and understanding so powerful that she had almost been overcome. The Red Priest said that God came to this world in a falling star, and had transferred his essence into the Book so that other people could share in his power. Where was God now? God was dead. All of Olive’s people were dead. And she was trapped in this awful place, forced to play the role of the courtesan or starve in the streets.

She did not know of any other survivors. “The Book was destroyed when the Imperials pulled down the temple and burned Blagodat into ash.”

Flick shrugged. He leaned on his cane and Olive considered kicking it out from under him. “Perhaps. There is evidence that men entered the temple during the massacre, since Mikhail Surkhov took the star-splitting sword from that place. But they didn’t take the Book. If they had, it would be in the hands of the Hinterlands witch, and all of us would be in real trouble then.”

Stasya wanted the Book? How could that be? Witches were dirty, unclean creatures, they could not use blood magic. There was no reason for one of their kind to have an interest in it.

Unless she had an interest in the God of the Void. Olive felt sick. She remembered what the witch had said while talking about the upcoming invasion. ‘I only need the little void-walker to live’. What was that? She had been taught about dreamers, the rare people who could see where God lived in the Void through their visions. It was how her people were able to replicate their great pyramid shaped temple. Maybe that was the same thing.

She shook her head. “I don’t like this. I don’t like hearing about this, there is no Book, that time has passed. You need to leave.” At this point, she did not believe this young man was going to hurt her. If he was, he would have done it already.

Flick whistled. The door to Olive’s bedroom opened and an enormous man lumbered in. He was over 6  and a half feet tall, with broad sloping shoulders and a sluggish expression. His watery brown eyes met Olive’s and he looked away. Flick said something to the giant in English and he winced.

Oh no. Maybe she could fight the cripple by herself, but this man could grab her with one hand and that would be it. She thought about screaming but remembered what he had said about slitting her throat. No, this was not happening! Not when she had almost pulled her life together! Not when she almost had everything she wanted! And why? All because of the place she had grown up in, the place that was now destroyed because of some political maneuverings she had been too young to understand?

“I’m sorry,” said Flick, and his posture straightened a little bit. “But you are coming with us.”

TONY

It took 5 hours to drive south-east  from Florence Gauthier’s estate in the Strath, to the alleged site of the destroyed blood magic cult. Tony wasn’t sure why she had allowed him, Casey, and Marty to go. As far as he was aware, they were being kept as hostages until she was sure that West Agapama would secure some kind of trade agreement. Well-treated hostages, but hostages nonetheless. 

“Remind me why we’re doing this again?” asked Casey, jostling as the military vehicle they were in hit a bump in the road. As they went further east, the land grew more swamp-like. On more than one occasion, the wheels got stuck in the mud and they all had to dig it out. Stinking, difficult work. “You really think that guy was from this place? How is that even possible?”

The guy in question was Cihad Tariq. Tony had always known there was something off about his past, but he had never pried and never used his Sight. Back when they had been…involved…Tony and his past had always been the target of their conversations. Cihad hadn’t been from Eden, that was for sure. There was his accent, his lack of understanding when it came to history and culture. Sure, he could fit in, he fit in better than Tony could, but he was distinctly othered.

When Tony heard the Northerners mention blood magic, a magical Book, and a community that had been annihilated 22 years ago, the pieces came together in his mind. 

22 years ago. Cihad would have been 14. He tried to imagine what he might have been like. Probably a proud, chunky thing. Probably better off than he had been; at 14, Tony had already been removed from his home by CPS, he had already made his first suicide attempt. 

“If you guys traveled all the way here, why couldn’t someone travel south?” asked Marty. He looked nervous. Tony wasn’t sure why he had volunteered to come along, the others had all been too scared to.

“Yeah. The big difference is that if someone showed up at Eden’s gates, Internal Operations is just gonna snipe them. And there’s no way a kid walked over 700 miles by himself. That’s just not possible.”

They didn’t know Cihad like he did. He was so sure of himself and determined. If anyone could do that, it was him.

Tony looked out the window as the marsh-land gave way to scraggly trees and rocks. It felt good to get away. He felt safer. There was something wrong with Kassidy and it made him nervous to be around her. The way she used blood-magic was slowly killing her but she didn’t want to stop, she didn’t want to stop feeling powerful. He could understand that, but he didn’t want to watch it happen.

They drove for a while longer. Field Marshal Anatole Surkhov was in the front seat driving, and the lovely Olive Vernier was in the passenger seat. They spoke quietly in their own language, Marty chiming in from time to time. Both of them had a connection to this place they were going. Anatole said that his father led the soldiers involved with the massacre. Olive said that she had survived it. Tony tried to imagine murder on that scale and was unable to. They did not have war in Eden.

How could hundreds of people be wiped out in one night? And why?

If this was really where Cihad had come from, he already knew why. It was the Book. That thing had wanted to get out and it had succeeded. Cihad had brought it to Eden, unaware of the terrible power he was carrying.

The Book was still in Eden. He had nothing to worry about.

“We’re here,” said Anatole, as the vehicle creaked to a stop. He looked back. He was a handsome man around Tony’s age, with lazy brown curls and eyes that were as cold and hard as stones. “Don’t go too far away from me. This place is still dangerous. After the massacre, the  plakal'shchitsa mutants gathered to gorge themselves on the bodies of the dead, and many of them still nest nearby.”

 Plakal'shchitsa. Tony had not seen one of the crawling, wailing monsters yet and he did not want to. Florence Gauthier had laughed when she talked about them, but the witch Jules LaBelle said that they were the pitiful remainders of humans who had been twisted by otherworldly pollution when the rift opened. If the Book was really what had opened the Rift, it was responsible for their misery as well.

Tony got out of the vehicle. He looked down at his feet. The ground was blackened by ash. As far as he could see, there were no plants, nothing growing, no life at all.

“The Imperials poisoned the earth when they were finished shooting people,” said Olive. The hem of her red dress was long enough to drag on the ground and she lifted it up so that it wouldn’t get dirty. Anatole offered her his arm. “They didn’t want anyone to come back here and rebuild so that this desolation would last forever.”

Desolation was the right word for it. The compound must have been huge, at least a mile in circumference. It looked like whatever fences surrounded it had been torn down. Some remnants were still visible here and there, piles of old, rotten wood. A rusted iron gate lay in the middle of the road, in front of the vehicle. It had been torn to shreds with a force that Tony was unable to imagine.

Beyond the gate were the charred, broken shells of many houses. He felt a pang of sadness. What had Cihad witnessed on that night? He had just been a little boy. He never talked about his family, but he must have had one. Had he seen them get killed? Tony hadn’t even been able to cope with his Dad’s death, and he hadn’t witnessed that. He would never be able to recover if he saw Tabby die before his eyes.

He started to walk. Casey and Marty followed behind him, uncharacteristically quiet. The air still smelled burned and sulfuric, even after all this time. None of the houses were still standing, they were just burned husks. He started to count them, but lost track after 23. Glints of broken glass were everywhere, half covered by the blackened earth.

They came up to an open pit. Casey looked down into it and flinched away, her eyes wide. When Tony looked, he felt an overwhelming sense of dread. The pit was filled with bones, some charred and blacked, some still connected to one another enough to make out the shapes of human skeletons. There were so many of them that his mind was unable to process it. Big bones and little bones. Men, women, and children. Just tossed in there like garbage.

“What the fuck?” said Casey. She wiped her hand over her face. “They didn’t even bury them?”

“That would take too much time,” said Anatole. “The Imperials would have never given them proper death rituals. They wouldn’t have wanted to meet their souls in Nebesa.”

“My people believe souls go to the Void, not the Kimanka battle-lands,” said Olive dryly. She was a strange woman, Tony thought. She had been through so much and didn’t seem bothered by any of it. She covered her nose and mouth with a handkerchief to block out the smell. “Don’t feel bad. I’ve already been back to this place to pray for the souls of my parents.”

Cihad’s family was probably in that pit. Tony stepped away, he didn’t want to look anymore. They said that the carnage on B-Day, when 5,000 people lost their lives due to radical leftist terrorism, had been terrible. The news talked about bodies in the streets, broken like dolls. Tony never saw that. He had been in the Lower Levels that day, where the fewest bombs had gone off. He was so drunk that he slept until 3pm and then woke up wondering why he couldn’t order any food.

In the center of the compound were piles of jagged black stones. Tony approached it. He supposed that it was the ruins of the temple, the Black Pyramid that Dog, or Ivan Kosarin, had told him about. Unlike Anatole and Olive, Dog still seemed highly affected by his part in the massacre. He told Tony and the girls about how he had been forced to use his Ability to tear the temple apart with his mind, how there had been a woman hiding inside.

One of the piles was as big as he was. Tony pressed a hand to the surface of one of the great stones. He thought that it might give off some kind of heat, but no, it was cold and dead. Had Cihad worshipped here as a child? He could not imagine that either.

Why was he thinking so much about him? What they had was over. It had been over for a long time.

It made him sad to think of Cihad as a little boy, though. It made him sad to imagine him afraid. Something terrible had happened here.

Marty came up behind him awkwardly. He coughed. “You OK?” he asked. “This place is fucked.”

Tony shrugged. “Just thinking about someone I care about. I don’t like to think about him in pain.”

“I know about that,” said Marty.

Even without Seeing, Tony knew that he was talking about Kassidy’s dead brother. He smiled dryly and clapped the awkward young man on the shoulder. “Nothing we can do about the past,” he said, trying to speak as kindly as possible. Trying to stay strong. 

The desolation was all around them. Tony felt a chill. There was nothing they could learn here, there was only dust and death and ashes. He tried to smile at Marty but knew that it rang false. 

What had happened here had been pointless, all orchestrated by the Book. Tony turned, looking out over the ashy wasteland.

If he ever made it back, if he ever saw Cihad again, he was going to wrap his arms around him. He was going to wrap his arms around him and never let go.

[blooblooded]

Kip and Kassidy Reunite Part 1

“So when are you going to go see your Mom?” Casey asked her one afternoon while they sat on the couch in the little safehouse together. “My Dad is good at keeping secrets but he’s not that good.”

Kassidy’s stomach flipped. They had only been back in Eden for a week but this was the thing that she wanted to avoid the most. Ma. It had been almost two years since she had seen her. That last interaction had been so bad. She had been out of her mind with anger, screaming at her, telling Ma that it had all been her fault that Kip was dead, telling her that she wished she had died instead. Even thinking about that made her feel ashamed. The hateful, uncontrollable emotions that the Book pulled out of her had made her act in ways that she never would have otherwise. She just shrugged. “I dunno. Your Dad said that she’s known I’m alive since he showed her the footage of us leaving the Colony. I guess that’s good enough for now.”

There was too much to do. It was not safe. And her relationship with Ma had deteriorated ever since Kip died.

More importantly, it was going to be hard to apologize.

“I mean, if Tony had it in him to go crawling back to his daughter and ask her for forgiveness, you can do it too,” said Casey, looking at her.

“Yeah? Well I’m not Tony. And Tony’s had practice making amends. It’s not that easy for the rest of us.” Kassidy hunched her shoulders, made herself smaller. She knew that she didn’t have much time. Casey and Ayda found their Dad and the rest of their siblings the same day they returned, stinking and dirty from their journey through the sewers. Rosie reached out to the Weil Sister who had raised her. Esther called her Dad on the second day, then spent the rest of that day sobbing after finding out that her mother was dead. Kassidy did not want to become emotional. She couldn’t afford it. There was just too much to do.

Now that they were back, they had to ensure that the Book could never come here again, they had to make sure that it could not get its claws into Tony. They had to find the original vessel, which Cihad Tariq still had. They had to get their hands on the starmetal sword, which was also in Eden, brought there by the Northern Ambassadors months ago. There was more too: Yancey Gallo was out there somewhere, making more twisted hybrids just like Rosie and Lee. And West Agapama said that he was working on bringing down the government of Eden itself.

How were they supposed to do all that? It was bigger than any of them. Kassidy was just happy that she had survived.

As if sensing her frustration, Casey reached out and started to play with her hair. After almost losing it all while the Book was killing her, she had cut it to just below her shoulders. The curls and volume made it puff out from her head and made it hard to tie back like she used to. Casey started to braid it. She was more gentle than she usually was.

Right. Then there was Casey. She didn’t know what they were now. They were something. Something more than friends. She didn’t know if she wanted that.

Being back in Eden didn’t feel like being home anymore. It didn’t feel safe.

She looked around the little safehouse’s living room. It was one of West Agapama’s privately owned rental properties on the Mid Levels, but it had never been rented out. He claimed that it was safe. It was stocked with food and toiletries, even with weapons. It was the perfect place for laying low. How long were they all going to stay here? It already seemed like Tony was ready to leave and go stay with his own family.

Again, she thought about Ma.

It was so frustrating. “I mean. How am I supposed to tell her that I died?”

Casey tied off one braid and started on another. “It’s not like it was permanent.”

“But it happened.” There had been nothing. That nothingness comforted and terrified her like a dreamless sleep. The worst part was that it felt good to die. She had wanted it. After everything, the grief, the pain, the destruction of her own body, she had wanted it.  She welcomed the nothingness. When the all powerful jolts of Esther’s electricity coursed through her body and brought her back, her first thought was that she wanted to go back to sleep.

That was impossible. There was too much to do. And anyways, they were all probably going to die if the Book found a new host and made its way back. Everyone in the world would die.

Casey moved a little closer. She touched the fractal scars that peeked above Kassidy’s neckline. When Esther had put her hands over her heart when she died in the Lost Colony, thousands of volts of electricity had forced the blood out of her capillaries, into her skin like a bruise. The swirling, repetitive marks ran all over her chest, neck, and stomach. Just another thing to make her uglier. Casey’s touch was feather-light. “Quit thinking about death,” she said.

“How do you know I’m thinking about it?” 

“You never stop thinking about it.” Casey slid her hands up under her shirt to trace the raised red scars. “You should think about me instead.” Her hands were soft and warm. The sensation brought Kassidy back to reality. Her first instinct was to smack her and scramble away. She didn’t. It felt too good. 

After what happened in the Lost Colony, they had been touching each other a lot. It was driving Kassidy crazy. How could this beautiful, intelligent, dangerous woman be interested in her? She kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, she kept waiting for Casey to tell her that this was all some elaborate prank to make fun of her.

“You know Ayda’s napping in the other room, right?” Kassidy could feel sweat beading on her forehead. When one of Casey’s fingers brushed against a breast she had to bite her lip. “And Marty could come back at any minute.”

“Aw, you don’t want me to kiss you?”

She did want that. She wanted that very much. It was just too embarrassing. Her own desires scared her. When the Book piloted her body, she had so many desires she had no control over. Always hungry, always aroused, always wanting more and more and more. It was gone now and she was normal again, but the sensations of want and need made her feel out of control.

For years after Kip’s death, she had shut down, been avoidant, felt nothing but anger and fear. Now she wanted more. Was that normal? Was that how other people felt?

Maybe she wanted to live.

Casey pushed her down onto her back and pinned her there. Kassidy felt the sudden urge to laugh. Looking up, she could see Casey’s big smile and the diamond shining in her left bicuspid. The sweet smell of citrus perfume was strong and clouding around her. She was so beautiful and completely present in her attention. When she tried to wiggle away, Casey moved her hands to tickle her sides and then she did laugh.

“Say that you want me to kiss you.” Casey lowered her head so that their faces were less than an inch apart. Kassidy’s heart beat faster. Her whole body felt warm. “I want you to say it out loud.”

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she replied. It was their little game.

Again, Casey tickled her until she laughed. “Quit trying to squirm and tell me you want me to kiss you.” She tilted Kassidy’s chin and moved so that their mouths were almost touching. “And now I want you to tell me you like me. Say that you like me.” Her pretty, upturned eyes were glittering and it felt so safe to have her close like that. 

Well, she wasn’t going to get her to say it, that was for sure. Instead, she leaned up and pressed her lips against Casey’s. Ha ha, she won, she thought, self-satisfied.  Casey’s smiling mouth was sticky with chapstick and tasted like oranges. 

“I’m going to kill you for that,” said Casey, pulling away. She shifted and grabbed Kassidy’s wrists so that she couldn’t move, then bent and blew a raspberry against her neck.

“What is wrong with you?!” Kassidy tried to squirm away. “You’re fucking sick!” Casey blew another raspberry. They were both laughing, their bodies pressed together. After everything that had happened, these intimate moments felt very special.

Keys rattled at the door. Kassidy heard it first. She brought up one leg and kneed Casey in the stomach, hard enough to push her away, then gave her a shove. Casey tumbled off the couch with a yelp. Kassidy scrambled up, straightening her shirt and wiping her mouth.

Everyone knew that they had started messing around together. That didn’t mean that she wanted anyone to see her in a vulnerable position. 

Marty jostled inside. Immediately Kassidy could see that something was wrong. He slammed the door shut and locked it quicker than he normally did. The groceries he had gone out to get fell to the floor and spilled, cans of vegetables rolling away. His face was pale and his eyes were wide. When he peeled off his jacket, he just let it fall at his feet.

“Way to spaz, much?” said Casey, though it was unclear whether she was speaking to Marty or to Kassidy. She pulled herself up.

Marty was shaking his head. “Nous avons des problèmes,” he said, and that was never a good sign, it never boded well when he reverted back to his own language. He scurried from the entrance way and into the living room. “Ayda! Ayda! Where are you?”

“She’s napping,” said Kassidy. From the bedroom, she could hear Ayda cussing. Her mind quickly rolled through a list of what could have freaked him out like that. In the week they had been home, nothing had happened. Nobody was after them. Yet. It felt like nobody even knew they were back. Maybe it was Lee Harlan again. He seemed like the type to try to harass Marty while he was all by himself in a strange place. “What’s wrong?”

To answer her, Marty only pulled his small triangular ice ax from where he kept it on his belt. He clutched it in his hands and watched the door.

After a moment, Ayda stomped out of the bedroom she had been sleeping in. She was only wearing a tank top and shorts, with an open robe thrown over them. Her long dark hair was in tangles. She glared at Marty. “Someone had better be dead,” she said venomously, tying the robe around herself.

“Some guy was fucking following me!” Marty’s voice was hysterical. “He was staring at me in the grocery store, then I saw him on the metro, then again on this Level! It felt like he was hunting me!”

It was nothing new for Marty to be scared and paranoid. He was not used to Eden. The people here behaved in different ways than they did in the Northern Territories, they were less forthright. Who could be watching them? 

“Internal Operations?” asked Casey.

Marty shook his head. “No, no. No uniform. It was a big guy, shaved head, black beard. I couldn’t see his face, he was wearing sunglasses and a baseball bat. But the way he moved reminded me of how the Partisans did before a raid. You know anyone who looks like that?”

It didn’t ring a bell. Kassidy looked over at the rifle she had taken from the Northern Territories. It leaned against the wall by the couch.

“You are so crazy,” said Ayda. She pushed her hair out of her face and sat down in one of the chairs. “Nobody in Eden even knows what you look like. That’s the whole reason you’re our little errand boy. Even if the secret police or Yancey or whoever saw you, it wouldn’t matter. Nobody knows you.”

Marty did not put away his ax. “No. I’m not being paranoid. I know what I saw. He almost came up to me and if he had, I don’t know what I would have done. Normal people don’t move like that, only predators do.”

“Ohh stranger danger. Nobody’s trying to molest you, Marty, you’re too old and mean and chunky for that,” mocked Casey. She paused. “Well. Maybe not for Lee Harlan.”

Blood rose to his face. He clenched his hands around his weapon. “Ha ha, you gaslighting bitch. No. I’m telling you that I think we’re in danger, I’m telling you that guy followed me here. We need to beat his ass and find out who he is and what he wants.”

“If you thought he was following you, why’d you come back here?”

“I was scared!”

“Well you can relax now because nobody was following you!”

Something rattled at the door. All of them froze. It was a soft noise, barely noticeable. Something was clicking and scratching.

“Oh you dumb fucking idiots,” hissed Marty. “What did I tell you? What did I tell you, la?”

“Relax,” Casey said again. She slid closer towards him on her graceful feet. Her knife had appeared in her right hand, shining and silver. “What’s one guy going to do to us? Remember how we wasted all those soldiers in the Strath? Hey Ade, drop whoever comes through that door. The rest of us will pick up the pieces.”

It would be terribly funny if the noise at the door was just Esther and Rosie coming back from visiting the twins, or if it was Tony coming to tell them something. Those were the more probable outcomes. Kassidy got up and grabbed her rifle anyway, stepping back behind the others and holding it in the crook of her arm.

The scrabbling at the door turned more metallic. Something turning in the lock.

Ayda was frowning and her eyebrows were furrowed. Her lovely cow-like eyes turned black the way they always did when she concentrated her psychic empathy. It was hard not to pity whoever was about to be on the other end of it. Feelings of fear and sadness became almost too heavy to bear when directed by her.

For some reason, Kassidy was not scared. She felt calm. The four of them were more competent in their abilities than they had ever been. They were no longer helpless. She no longer had to rely on blood magic to feel safe. She lifted the rifle to her shoulder.

The door opened.

The man who had broken in stood there for a second as he realized that Marty was not alone. He was big, with broad shoulders and strong arms. His black beard was scruffy and unkempt, the clothes he wore looked like they had come out of a donation bin, jeans and a t- shirt. Homeless? A baseball cap and dark sunglasses obscured most of his face. He looked at the rifle. He looked at Marty with his ax and Casey with her knife.

“Oops,” he said. “Hey, I can explain.”

They were not going to let him explain. Ayda must have unleashed her flood of terrible empathy onto his mind because he grimaced like he was in pain. He put a hand to the side of his head and shuddered for a moment and–

“Oh,” said Ayda. She turned pale. Her eyes went huge. “Oh no.”

Something was wrong. The man didn’t drop. He straightened, baring his teeth in a snarl, and walked inside, slamming the door behind him. He was unarmed. “Fucking psychics!” he snapped, clenching his fists. “You think you can just jam yourself into my fuckin’ head, you bitch? I’m just–”

And Casey was on him. She swung the knife in an arc towards his belly, making him jerk back. He grabbed her by the wrist and squeezed it until she dropped the knife, then he kicked it, sending it sliding across the floor. Casey jabbed him in the ribs with her free fist, then brought up her knee to hit him in the balls. She must have missed. She hit him again. There was a crunch and he grunted in pain. As easy as anything, he twisted so that she was behind him and flipped her over his shoulder. Casey hit the floor hard.

Marty slammed into him before the stranger could raise his boot to stomp on Casey. He was heavier and had a lower center of gravity so it would be harder to shove him down. Marty caught him in the chin with an uppercut, knocking the man back against the wall. A painting smashed to the floor. The ax swung through the air and sliced through the intruder’s left bicep. It began to bleed and the arm hung down uselessly. When Marty raised the ax a second time, the stranger punched him in the throat and he doubled over.

Here was her chance. Kassidy looked down the scope of her rifle. At this range she could easily kill him. She was not sure if she wanted to do that. She aimed for his knee.

It only took a second between taking aim and pulling the trigger but the stranger must have seen her. As she took the shot, a bubble of translucent blue energy rose up around the man’s body. The bullet hit it harmlessly and dropped.

Oh. That reminded her of…

That thought prevented her from taking a second shot.

The man’s eyes were huge and wild beneath the shadow of his hat. He was staring right at her. The shield dropped. He looked like him but that was impossible. Kassidy’s hands began to shake so hard that she could no longer hold the rifle. No, that was impossible. She was seeing what she wanted to see. Suddenly she felt nauseous.

From the floor, Casey twisted up and used one leg to sweep the intruder off his feet. It was easy to do with his momentary distraction. He fell onto his back hard but was back up in a second. He seemed to favor his right leg and Casey kicked it as hard as she could, then rolled away and bounced to her feet. The stranger hissed through his teeth.

Marty had abandoned the ax at such close quarters. He lunged to get his arm around his neck from behind him and got him into a chokehold. The man raised his hands to try to protect himself. Marty locked the hold with his other arm and started to squeeze.

“Ayda, goddammit, put him down!” Casey yelled. She aimed another punch at his ribs. There was another crunch. The man raised his leg and kicked her in the face, knocking her back. He bucked and slammed himself back so that Marty was crushed against the wall.

The entire room felt heavy and sticky as Ayda refocused her psychic ability. “No!” the man yelled. Kassidy listened to that voice. She felt like she could not breathe. “No! Stop! No, no!” He was starting to go limp, either because of the surge of emotion Ayda was forcing on him or because of Marty choking him. 

It was hard to get a good look at him. Everything was moving too fast. Why was she thinking about this? After all this time, after all her pain, she had finally accepted that Kip was dead. He was gone, she could move on with her life. How was she supposed to live if she still thought that she was seeing him everywhere?

He slammed Marty against the wall again, trying to knock him off. Marty turned so that one hip was pressed into the stranger’s back, keeping him angled away and making it harder for him to struggle. He continued to exert as much pressure on his neck as he could.

FInally the man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped in Marty’s arms. Marty dropped him, breathing hard. He looked down at him and frowned, rolling him over with his foot to get a good look at his face. “He sort of looks like–”

“Oh no,” moaned Ayda. She curled herself up in the chair like she was afraid. “Oh no.”

The rifle fell to the floor. Kassidy could no longer hold it. A hysterical laugh was bubbling up inside of her. No. Nope. No. Not real.

Casey knelt over the stranger. A bruise was forming on her cheek where he had kicked her. She pulled the hat off his head. Underneath, his hair was buzzed down to the scalp. Suddenly she looked like a scared little kid looking for reassurance. “I–I,” she stammered. “I mean it’s been so long. It’s hard to remember what he looked like.”

Kassidy remembered. But she didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to go near him. It hurt too bad. Two years ago her grief had almost consumed her. It had made her do crazy things because she couldn’t just let go of her brother. She had tried to bring him back to life! After all this time, she almost felt happy again, she didn’t want to go back to feeling miserable if she opened her mind to the possibility that this might be…

The stranger opened his eyes and gasped for air. His body jerked involuntarily and he put up his hands to protect himself. Before he could react, Marty jabbed the lethal point of his ax up beneath his chin.

“Who are you?” asked Casey. Her voice wavered.

The stranger’s eyes rolled around the room, looking up at them. He was panting. “I didn’t wanna hurt you, I just wanted to talk to him! All I want to do is fuckin’ talk! Don’t let that bitch get in my head again!”

Ayda took a shuddering breath on the chair where she was curled. Was she crying? Why would she be crying? What emotions could she possibly have tapped into?

“Me?” asked Marty. He did not move the ax. “You wanted to talk to me?”

“I’ve seen you before. I know you. I wanted to know how I know you. Marty. Is your name Marty?” He sounded like him. They had the same voice. The stranger swallowed. “Look, I know the witch.”

“Jules?” Marty looked shocked.

“Yeah, yeah, Jules. She gave me a picture of you. It’s on the chain around my neck.”

Carefully, Casey reached down to pull a long golden chain with a small pendant that was covered by his shirt. A locket. He flinched when she touched him. Casey opened it, then showed what was inside to Marty. He gulped.

“Is this the only way you know me?” Marty looked terrified. Of course he was. Kip was not the only person who was supposed to be dead. They had all assumed that the rest of the Northern Ambassadors had been killed by the secret police alongside Florence. 

The stranger paused. “I think I knew you. I don’t remember.”

Overcome, Marty pulled the edge of his ax away from the stranger’s neck. He immediately lunged up to attack Casey, but his left arm was bleeding and weak. She grappled with him and shoved him roughly back down to the floor, straddling him. The uncertainty had left her. She seemed angry and her face was flushed.

“What’s your name?” she asked him savagely. “What’s your name, huh? Stop fucking around with us, it’s not funny! Do you even understand what we’ve gone through? You’re supposed to be dead! You died! They blew your head off! Here you are, acting like you have no idea who we are? Are you kidding me? Tell me your name and you can get up!”

“It’s Smiles.” He looked like he was about to try and flip her off of him. There was something wrong. He was too hurt. Maybe Casey had broken his ribs. “My name is Smiles.”

“Bullshit! Your name is Christopher Nguyen! Where’ve you been all this time, Kip? What the fuck is wrong with you, you couldn’t find your family? You just let your mom and sister think you were dead?! Do you even understand what you put them through?!”

“Stop,” said Ayda quietly. “Stop it.”

“You don’t get no family in the secret police,” said Smiles. When he tried to push her off, Casey pinned his arms down. No normal person could overcome the strength of an Artificial. “You don’t get anything. Not even a name.”

Oh god.

Out of nowhere, Kassidy started to laugh. She couldn’t stop herself. It just came bubbling out. This wasn’t real. She laughed until her stomach hurt and she doubled over. When Ayda got up and went to her, putting her hands on her back, she slapped her away.

Secret police? No, no. This wasn’t real. They were the ones who had killed him. Kip was 18 when they killed him. 

The laughing must have disturbed Casey because some of the anger radiating from her faded. Again, she looked unsure of herself. There was no script for her to follow here. This was not a problem that she could just fix.

Kassidy kept laughing. Tears welled up in her eyes.

“The second you get your genetically modified ass off me, I’m gonna break your fuckin’ nose,” Smiles told Casey. He sounded scared. 

“Yeah? You can try. I used to beat your ass every time we got in a scuffle. Marty, there should be zip ties in the second cabinet, go get them.”

“Do you really need to do that?” asked Ayda, still hovering around Kassidy. If she used her psychic bullshit to try and affect her, she was going to punch her.

“Until he starts acting normal.”

When Smiles saw Marty approaching with the zip ties, he started to fight back again, but had no way to get leverage on Casey. It was not his fault that she was better than everyone else. With a little bit of effort, she was able to secure one around his wrists. As she did that, Marty began to tug off his boots to get to his ankles. Smiles kicked at him, so Marty pressed down on the bad leg that he favored until he hissed through his teeth and stopped. The ankles got zip-tied next.

Casey got off him then. She pulled him up into a sitting position and looped another zip tie through the one around his wrists through to the one around his ankles so that he couldn’t get up or move at all. Smiles tried to headbutt her. For a moment, it looked like she was going to hit him again, but she restrained herself.

It was over.

“Oh god,” said Marty. As the adrenaline left him, he began to look sick. “Oh my god.”

“You know,” said Smiles. He tested the strength of the zip-ties. His mouth was fixed in a terrible grin. “I really just came here to talk to you and see if you would help me, Marty. Now I think I’m gonna have to kill you people.”

Kassidy was laughing so hard that she thought she was going to throw up. Her brother would never talk that way. He might look like him, but he wasn't him. Kip was dead. Ma had his ashes. He was dead. Something crazy was going on. She didn’t know what to do. All she could do was laugh.

Casey patted him down for weapons. Smiles tried to squirm away from her. All she pulled out of his pockets was a cracked communication device and a card with the number of one of the Weil Church’s shelters on it.

“Lee told me something in the Void,” said Marty. “6 months ago when I asked him to help us. I thought he was trying to fuck with me. He told me he knew Kip was still alive.”

“Lee Harlan?” Smiles said darkly. “Now I know you know me.”

“You know all of us,” snapped Casey. She threw the phone and little card on the ground. “What the fuck is wrong with you? We’re your friends! She’s your–”

“Stop,” laughed Kassidy. Tears were streaming down her face. She felt dizzy and stepped back to sit down in the chair. Ayda watched her nervously. “No, shut up. No I’m not.”

This was ridiculous. This was absurd. She had witnessed and experienced all kinds of things that didn’t make sense over the last two years. A demon from another dimension had violated her body and made her do things she didn’t want to do. She had traveled to a land outside of Eden, she had fought with enemy soldiers and cannibals. She had died and then came back to life. She could understand that. She could understand how she could come back after death because it was no different than what she had seen every night when she worked in the hospital. Esther had simply restarted her heart. But Kip had been dead for 10 years. There was no way he could come back.

She realized that she had started to hyperventilate. Oxygen was not getting to her lungs. Kassidy put her hands over her stomach and tried to slowly inhale. She needed to calm down but there was no way for her to do that.

“He’s just really scared, you guys, he doesn’t mean any of it,” said Ayda. She kept looking between Smiles and Kassidy. “And in pain. I think– I think something really bad–”

“You get in my head again, I’m coming after you first,” said Smiles, glaring at her. “I got a thing about psychics.”

Ayda shrunk back.

“Ugh!” Casey wiped sweat from her upper lip. She turned to Kassidy. “I need time to think. What– what do you want–”

“Keep him away from me,” said Kassidy. Her breathing had started to slow down. She wiped her face, shook her head. “No. Just get him away from me.”

Marty and Casey looked at each other. Marty squeezed the locket in his hand so hard that his knuckles turned white. It did not look like he was breathing either. 

“Put him down, Ayda,” said Marty. “We need time.”

Smiles’s eyes bulged. He struggled to break the zip ties, rocking with such force that he fell over onto his side. When he hit the floor, he winced. “I said stay the fuck out of my head, bitch! Don’t do that to me! I don’t want you to do that to me! I thought I was done with you people doing that to me!”

Ayda sniffled. “Sorry, Kip.”

“No! No, stop, no, I don’t want that!” But it was pointless for him to fight it. Ayda was too strong. After a few seconds, Smiles stopped struggling. His eyes closed and he went still.

Casey picked up a pillow off the couch, put it over her face, then screamed. It was completely muffled. When she took it away, she was normal again. No anger, no uncertainty, no fear. Only Casey. It was always so easy for her. She always knew what to do.

All Kassidy knew was that she wanted this man who looked and sounded like her brother far away from her. 

Part of her wanted her Ma. It was a weak, pathetic thought. She wanted her Ma to hold her the way she used to hold her when she was a little kid. That always used to make her feel safe. She started to unravel the braids in her hair. They didn’t feel right any more. 

Marty reached out a shaking hand and touched Smiles’s face. He left his hand there for a long time.

“He’ll have good dreams,” said Ayda. “I—I tried to take away the pain inside and replace it with peace. But there was so much. He’s all fractured apart in there. I think he’ll have good dreams. I tried my best.”

“Well don’t fucking let him wake up,” said Casey. She tossed the pillow away and began to pace to get rid of her excess energy. The bruise on her cheek darkened. “What the fuck was that? Can someone please tell me what’s going on? Is this a bad trip or did Kip just bust in here and try to beat the shit out of me? Secret police? Did he really just say that he was in Internal Operations this whole time?”

Kassidy gave another shaky laugh. She unraveled one braid with such force that she pulled out a clump of her own hair. She made herself smaller and refused to look at the man on the floor.

“Remember when we left Eden and there was that IODE guy who crushed Esther’s arm with a bubble?” asked Ayda. “He like, froze up when he saw…”

“Can we stop talking about this?” said Kassidy. “I don’t want to talk about this. You need to get him out of here, I want you to get him out of here right now. That’s not my brother. My brother is dead.”

“Kassidy, I think–”

“Kip is dead! That’s not Kip. That’s just something that fucking looks like him. It’s not possible. They blew his head off 10 years ago. If Kip was still alive, he would have found a way to find me.” Kassidy still wanted to laugh, but she was angry now, angrier than she had been in a long time. How long had she been in pain? How long had she tried to destroy herself over this? It couldn’t be Kip. Kip would never do that to her. He would have never left her alone. He would have done anything to get back to her. “Just get him out of here, I don’t want to see him.”

They were all quiet. Casey clenched her hands into fists. On the floor, the man who called himself Smiles made a small noise in his sleep.

Why did this happen now? She had almost been happy. Of course. She could never just be happy.

Marty put his hands beneath Smiles’s arms and pulled him up. The man’s bulk made it hard to do. “We can put him in one of the bedrooms until we figure out what to do with him.”

“We can’t lock those doors. Stick him in the bathroom instead,” said Casey.

“You really think a cheap lock is going to stop this guy from busting out if he wakes up and gets out of the zipties?” Marty began to drag Smiles towards the bedroom he shared with Casey and Ayda. Esther, Rosie, and Kassidy shared the other one. “Détendez-vous, I’ll put him in my bed. He stinks.”

It was a little better once Kassidy could no longer see the man who had broken into the safehouse. It still felt like her chest was caving in on itself. This couldn’t be happening. She wanted to break something, she wanted to scream like Casey had screamed but something inside of her kept her from moving. Something kept her curled up and small.

She watched Ayda bend and pick up glass from the picture that had fallen during the fight. It was broken and ruined. The painting itself was a still life of flowers twisting up the trellises of one of Eden’s countless vertical gardens. Looking at it made Kassidy feel all wrong inside. Didn’t they know that nothing was supposed to grow here underground? She hadn’t fully understood that until she saw the fields and gardens of the Strath. It was wrong, everything here was wrong. This wasn’t a place where things should live.

She needed to live.

Casey didn’t know what to do with herself without a task, and Marty was not coming out of the bedroom. Watching the intruder, probably. After hovering, Casey left the living room and walked into the small kitchen that was attached to it. She returned with a plate of toast with butter on it and held it out to her.

“I don’t want that,” said Kassidy.

“I’m trying to feel useful so I don’t completely freak out,” said Casey. She pushed Kassidy to the side and sat down next to her in the chair. It was too small for both of them. Her skin was hot and sweaty from the fight. 

When Kassidy took a bite, her throat closed up and she couldn’t swallow. She set the plate down on the floor. 

“I’m completely freaking out,” said Casey.

“Maybe you should try being more useful,” replied Kassiy dully. She didn’t understand how she was feeling. She couldn’t express it. Her mind and her heart were working against each other. It was like being dead again.

Casey leaned her head to rest it on her shoulder.

“I don’t want you to touch me right now.”

“Oh. OK.” Casey got up. She hovered nearby and kept looking over at Ayda like she expected Ayda to tell her what to do. There was nothing to do. “Look, I– I’m right here if you need me, Nguyen.” She sat down on the couch and picked pieces of string off the arm.

Kassidy said nothing and willed herself not to feel anything. This was a bad dream and at any moment she was going to wake up. If she had to face the reality of the situation, she would not be able to take it. If she had to recognize that her brother had been alive all this time and the reason he had not tried to find her was because something really bad was happening to him, she might really lose it.

She already knew she was capable of terrible things. This could press her into doing horrible things.

Hours passed. She stayed curled up in a tight little knot. Ayda and Casey talked quietly to one another. Marty stayed in the bedroom with the man who had called himself Smiles.

When mid afternoon came, Esther and Rosaline returned. They were arguing with one another and did not seem to notice the somber aura.

“Well I think he’s going to fucking kill himself or do something really bad soon, so I need to know what we’re going to do about it,” Esther raged. She stomped inside, kicking her shoes off. Color rose to the high points in her face and she had her arms crossed. “I mean seriously? What the fuck was he talking about? He was talking like someone who brings a gun into a crowd of people.”

“Babes, your Mom died and he thought you died and he’s got high stress school stuff, of course Eddie’s gonna be acting off,” Rosie said placatingly. “I’d be acting weird too if I was him.”

“It’s not how he was acting, it was what he was saying. What kind of person talks about the government like that? I’m worried he’s going to do something bad, did you see those dark circles under his eyes?” Esther paused as she noticed that Kassidy was curled up in the chair. She glanced at Casey and Ayda, then frowned. “What’s wrong with you people?”

“Uhhh,” said Casey nervously, avoiding eye contact with Kassidy. “Do you guys want to sit down?”

“No, I don’t want to sit down,” Esther snapped. She kicked at the baseball cap Smiles had worn, which was on the floor. “You know what my brother told me today? First time I see him in two years, and do you know what he told me? He thinks he saw Kip 6 months ago. He says his internship is with Internal Operations and they’re making him do all kinds of awful stuff. It reminds me of how Tabby used to rant about all those kids who go missing. I think Eddie’s on the brink of a mental breakdown, Evangeline’s trying to get him on meds because he’s stopped sleeping. Isn’t that crazy?”

“Ha!” said Kassidy. She put her hands over her face. Of course. What was it that Tony was always going on about? The insect-hum of fate that binds everything together?

“Maybe you guys should sit down,” said Ayda.

“I don’t want to fucking sit down, Ayda.”

Rosie looked at the picture that had fallen. It sat on the table, covered by the broken glass. Her brows furrowed.

Kassidy realized that she did not want to be here to see this. She didn’t want to hear the explanations and she didn’t want to see Esther’s reaction. It was too much to take but there was nowhere for her to go that was safe. She thought about what Casey had said about needing to feel useful.

OK then. She would be useful. She was a nurse, or she used to be a nurse. Smiles’s ribs had cracked. When he woke up— if Ayda let him wake up— he would be in pain. Kassidy could do something about that. She didn’t want to see him but she could do something useful. It would be better than the inevitable meltdown that was about to happen here.

She uncurled herself from the chair and walked to the kitchen. Casey was talking to Esther and Rosie in a nervous, roundabout way that was just going to make Esther angrier. Maybe she was trying her best. There was a first aid kit on the counter and she took it. Kassidy opened the freezer and pulled out a bag of the frozen fruit Ayda used in her smoothies. It was cold in her hands. Ignoring what was happening in the living room, she walked to Marty’s bedroom and shut the door behind her.

Marty had lifted Smiles up to lay on his own bed. He was on his side because of the zip-ties and not moving. Beside him, on the bed Ayda shared with Casey, Marty sat reading on his tablet. His expression was serious when he looked up at her.

“Smells from the past can bring memories back,” said Marty, swiping up on his tablet. “Like perfume. Coffee. That stuff.”

Had he immediately looked up how to bring back memories? “Oh,” said Kassidy. She didn’t know what to say to that.

“I don’t know why he doesn’t remember us. How can someone just forget their own friends and family?”

“When I worked at the Hospital, people sometimes forgot things because of dementia or head trauma,” said Kassidy. She did not think she was ready to accept that this man was her brother but she did not know what else to do. She lifted the bag of frozen fruit. “I think Casey broke his ribs.”

“God.” Marty swallowed. “She didn’t mean to hurt him.”

But she had. That was just what Casey did. She never meant to hurt anyone, but it always happened no matter how hard she tried.

Kassidy walked over to the bed Smiles was on. When she looked at him close up, her heart clenched. It was like someone was squeezing her chest. He looked exactly like her brother, there was no denying it. He was bigger and he was older, but that was Kip’s face. There were bruise-like dark circles beneath his eyes like he had not slept in years. Kassidy just tried to breathe.

This was her brother. This wasn’t Smiles, or whoever he said he was. This was Kip. Christopher.  It didn’t feel real. 

Why wasn’t she reacting in the way she was supposed to? She was supposed to be happy. She should be jumping up and down, she should be screaming!  Kip, back from the dead! Instead she felt an overwhelming sense of sickness and dread. It was almost an emptiness.

The only thing she could control were her actions, not her feelings. It had always been easy for her to go numb when she focused on a task. Kassidy stood next to Kip and lifted up his shirt so she could examine his ribs. She had steady, nurse’s hands. When she gently pressed on his side, she felt something give. “Broken,” she said, then frowned and lifted his shirt up further. There was a surgical scar there that looked like it was from an appendectomy. But Kip had never had his appendix out.

What had happened to him? It was easier to think about him as a problem she could fix. The emotions still weren’t there. She pressed the frozen bag of fruit over his ribs and jerked her head at Marty to help lift him so she could wrap an ace bandage around his body to secure it. It was hard to do with the zip ties. She thought about taking them off. “That should bring down the swelling,” she said, as she worked on bandaging his arm where Marty had caught him with his ax. “He’ll be hurting pretty bad when Ayda lets him wake up though.”

Marty was staring down at Kip in a grim way. “He’s got a lot of scars. That one on his arm is from a bullet. Do you think someone was hurting him?”

“Yes.” Kassidy felt like she was dead.

In the living room she could hear raised voices. Esther was shouting. A moment later, she slammed into the bedroom, looking wild. When she saw Kip on the bed, her green eyes bulged from their sockets and her mouth hung open. She shook her head like it wasn’t true. “What the fuck?” she exclaimed, and crossed to stand above him. She put a hand on his face like she was checking to see that he was real. “How is this possible?! Where was he, what happened?”

Rosie came in behind her. She looked like she was trying hard not to cry. “God,” she said, and made the sacred Weil symbol with her hands, placing them in a circle over her heart. “He came back to you, Kassidy.”

“Not all of him,” said Marty.

No. Not all of him. Kassidy wondered exactly what had come back to her. And what she should do next.

After two hours, Ayda woke him up. They spent those two hours arguing with one another. Esther raged the whole time, she wanted answers. They all did. Kassidy did not say much. She still felt outside of herself, liked she was watching this happen to somebody else.

“Can’t you just make him remember us?” Casey asked her sister. She was just as angry as Esther but it came out in bursts. Before the end of the day she would break something else.

“I can’t control memories, only emotions.”

“I just don’t think there’s much of a difference.”

Soon after that, they decided to wake him up again. By then, night had fallen, and the lights had been turned down in the ceiling above the Mid Levels. Kassidy knew she was tired but she would not be able to sleep. She started thinking about her own memories, damaged by time. There was so little she had left of him. One thing that she had carried with her for 10 years was Kip’s jacket. It was too big on her, heavy and old and protective. Before it was Kip’s, it had been his mother Harry’s. Even when Kassidy was out of her mind, possessed by the Book, she had kept it because some part of her had remembered what it meant. She got it out of her room and put it on and somehow that comforted her.

The reason they decided to wake Kip up was a pragmatic one. It had been a long time and Marty didn’t want him to piss himself while he was on his bed. They all filed into the bedroom and stood there while Casey snipped the zip-ties.

“You got it, Ade?” she asked.

Ayda just nodded. It was hard to know when she was using her abilities. The only sign that she was was her hugely dilated eyes. Kassidy pulled the jacket around herself protectively.

Kip took a deep, gasping breath and sat up. The movement made him wince, he pressed his hands down to where the bag of frozen fruit was bandaged over his ribs in confusion. His body became very still when he saw the bedroom was full of people. 

“It’s OK,” said Casey. She put out her hands to show she didn’t have any weapons. “We’re all friends. Just stay calm unless you want to go night-night again.”

“Friends don’t beat the shit out of someone, then psychically violate their mind,” replied Kip. His face was scared and angry but he didn’t move. His chest heaved up and down.

Hearing him speak for the first time made Esther swallow and turn pale. It almost looked like she was going to go up to him, put her arms around him, but Rosie put a hand on her shoulder.

“Sorry,” said Marty.

Kip cut his eyes towards him. “Oh, you’re sorry? Fuck you, Marty. I have memories of you trying to help me. Guess that changed, huh? Now you’re fine with locking me up and putting me to sleep when you don’t want to deal with me?” His voice cracked. “Don’t fucking do that to me again.”

Oh. Kassidy’s stomach twisted with nausea. They shouldn’t have made Ayda knock him out. Someone had done that to him before. She cringed back. She did not want to look at him.

“We’re your friends, Kip,” said Rosie stupidly. 

“Kip?” he said. He held his hands over his ribs. “Was that what I was called? I already knew that. Kip Nguyen, right? They told me that right before they tried to kill me. Internal Operations takes names away. So you people know me. You knew me from before. That’s great. You want to catch up? What have you been up to all this time? Me? Not much. You know, just killin’ people and getting brainwashed.”

Ayda made a strangled noise. Some emotion was hurting her. 

“Don’t be shitty,” said Casey.

Kip put his legs over the side of the bed. He rubbed his wrists. The blood flow, Kassidy thought. The zip ties had cut it off. “Great. So I’m fucking trapped here now.”

“We thought you’d want to use the bathroom and get something to eat,” said Marty

“Yeah? You gonna go with me to the bathroom and watch so I don’t do something you don’t want me to do? Why don’t you just hold my dick while I piss?”

Marty’s round face turned pink. Kip gave a short, barking laugh, then winced again.

They didn’t want him to leave. They missed him so much that they would rather make him stay. They missed him so much that they thought it would be better to trap him. Kassidy wondered why she didn’t feel the same way. What was wrong with her? She had missed him so much it had almost killed her. She would have killed to get him back. It hurt to see him now. He was like a different person, angry and frightening. Looking at him hurt. Part of her wanted him to just leave so she didn’t have to feel the pain of all her wounds reopening at once. She knew that once it hit her, it would hurt very badly. She wanted to stay numb.

And she didn’t want to hurt him or make him do anything he didn’t want to. Kip didn’t deserve that. Not her Kip. She remembered the scars on his body and how scared he seemed. She did not want that for him.

“You can go,” she said. Her own voice sounded hoarse. It came from somewhere deep inside of her. Kassidy looked at the floor instead of at her brother. “You can go if you want.”

Casey jerked her head around. “No. What? Let’s just– we can wait until he remembers us. What are you saying? Kassidy, you’ve been waiting for–”

“Just go,” she said. “We’re not gonna force you to stay.”

“Kassidy.” Kip stood up. He advanced one step. Ayda and Marty took a step back. He was looking at her with his eyebrows furrowed. Something about his face softened, then he shook his head.”Kassidy.”

And that scared her more than his loss of memories. She pulled the jacket tighter around her. He did not take his eyes away from her.

He advanced another step towards the door. “I’m leaving then,” he said. “Fuck you people. If I see any of you again, you’re not gonna like what happens.”

“Wait,” said Marty, fumbling in one of his pockets. He pulled out his phone and held it out. “There’s pictures on this. From a long time ago.” He paused. “I’m not in any of them. I wasn’t there. But they are. You might want to look at them.”

Kip snatched it from him. “You’re not getting it back.”

“D’accord.” 

He pushed past them like he was expecting to be grabbed. When he got out to the living room, he stooped to pick up the baseball cap and sunglasses and put them back on. He grabbed his boots. He did not look back, he only went out the door and slammed it behind him.

Empty.

Kassidy waited for the sting of absence but it did not come. Everyone was staring at her. She didn’t want them to speak to her. There was nothing to explain. So her brother was alive. He didn’t remember her. Something bad had happened to him. That was all there was to it. She could unravel the meaning of these things later, when she was better equipped to do so.

If she didn’t have it in her to even reunite with her mother, if she knew that pain would be too great, how could she be expected to do it with Kip? Kassidy didn’t want this. She didn’t want any of this. There was something wrong with her. She was broken. Ever since she had died, she thought she had healed, but she had healed wrong. Like a broken bone that was set improperly.

How do you process grief? How do you process the very specific, very different kind of sadness that comes with grief? How do you process the loss of a sibling? She had learned how to recognize it but never how to articulate it, never how to deal with it. And now it looked like she never needed to in the first place? How did that work? How was that even right?

“Kassidy?” asked Esther.

“I don’t want to talk.”

“I know, I just think—“

“I said I don’t want to talk about this.” She was none tired but knew that she would not be able to sleep. Kassidy wondered if she would ever be able to sleep again after this. She was afraid of what would happen if she closed her eyes. She didn’t want to dream about him. For 10 years, she had dreams about watching her brother’s head get obliterated by a bullet, watching him scream as Lee shot him in the leg, watching him beg her to help him. What could be worse than that? Seeing him alive again? How was that worse? She didn’t want to know. “We can figure out what to do next in the morning. Now that we know there are people who really knew where he was all this time.”

“In the secret police,” said Casey quietly.

Yes. In the secret police. Kassidy did not know what that really meant. She only knew the masked and terrifying Internal Operations agents as a second arm of law enforcement in Eden, something to be feared and avoided. She knew nothing about how they recruited or what it meant to be one of them.

But she would find out.

####

When Smiles got back to the Weil Church shelter in the Lower Levels, it was past 9:30 curfew. It wasn’t his fault. It wasn’t his fault that when he tried to approach the witch boy he had been searching for for months, he had been attacked, tied up, and forced to go to sleep. He was lucky. He thought that those women were going to kill him. They all had a look of savage desperation about them that he recognized well.

But they hadn’t killed him. One of them had tried to bandage his wounds so tenderly that when he peeled off the ace bandages and thrown away the bag of frozen fruit, Smiles had felt a little pang of sadness. They knew him. They knew his name. They must have cared about him, but they had hurt him anyway.

It was terrifying. He had accidentally stumbled across people who had once been his friends. Everything was swirling around him and made him feel dizzy. He did not know what to do.

The phone the witch-boy Marty had handed him seemed as heavy as a rock in his pocket. Smiles thought about chucking it away so he didn’t have to look at what was on it. He didn’t.

He pressed the buzzer on the shelter door to ask to be let in and waved at the camera. It was a big square building. There were a couple dozen of them all across the Lower and Mid Levels, places where desperate, homeless people could go and feel safe. The funny thing was that he did feel safe there. The people who worked there were nice. And he had Jules.

“Chris?” One of the Weil Sisters who staffed the place spoke through the buzzer’s speaker. “You know it’s after curfew, right?”

He flashed a smile towards the camera. Chris wasn’t his name, it was just the first thing he thought of during his intake. Not like he could go by Smiles. Not like he could go by…Kip. “I know, Diana, sorry, I got held up.”

She sighed and he heard the door unclick. “Fine. Come inside, just don’t do it again.”

It was so strange to be treated like a person. After 6 months, Smiles was still not used to it. The workers here gave him clothes and food and a bed and very gently asked him if he wanted help looking for a job or housing. Whenever they asked him about that, he experienced a strange sense of guilt. He couldn’t explain to them that this was not a possibility. For some reason, he did not want to let them down.

He rubbed his wrists as he walked through the halls. They had been rubbed raw by the zip ties. Those bitches. When he passed by a man half blinded by radiation burns, muttering to himself, he just nodded at him, trying to stay friendly.

Out of one institution and into another. This was better. Even if it was underfunded, understaffed, full of dirty, suffering people, the shelter was better. But if Internal Operations ever found him here, all the workers would be dragged away and tortured for the crime of helping someone they did not really know. Smiles would not let that happen. He would die first.

There were the women’s dorms and the men’s, and some single rooms for families and people who did not identify as binary genders. Smiles didn’t mind his roommate, a young schizophrenic guy named Max who was coming down from amphetamines. He wished that he could room with Jules, but understood why they didn’t let him. He looked for her until he found her in one of the common rooms, knitting on a couch.

Jules looked up when she heard his heavy footsteps. She was an ugly little gristle-scrap of a woman with a foreign accent and scars from some old illness on her cheeks. Smiles still didn’t know why she had helped him. If she hadn’t found him in that dumpster after he escaped Internal Operations, sweating and hallucinating and vomiting bile, he would be dead right now. More kindness that he wasn’t used to. When she had told him that she was looking for a boy named Marty and showed him her locket with his face in it, Smiles had realized that something, fate or the universe or something, had brought them together.

She frowned. “You’re hurt.” Over the past 6 months, her English had improved by leaps and bounds. 

“Just some broken ribs. I’ve had worse.” Smiles sat down on the couch next to her and winced. He would ask for some pain medicine from staff later. First he had to talk to Jules. It was too important. He never knew how to explain things tactfully, he always just said them. He had never been able to hide things or keep secrets. “I found Marty.”

It was like she had been electrocuted. The blood drained from Jules’s face and made her spots look like drips of wax. Her eyes were wet. She took one shuddering breath, then said something in her own language that sounded like a prayer.

“He was with a group of women. Like you said he would be.” Smiles gestured towards his abdomen. “Not very friendly. I couldn’t stay long but I did tell him you were here.”

Jules took his hands in her own. Her fingers had long nails and were stained black to the second knuckle. “They made it safely to this terrible place.”

From what she had told him about her own Colony, Smiles thought that it was the one that sounded like a terrible place, full of war and hatred. She told him all about how men there would kill each other in the mud and call it honorable.  At least Eden was controlled. The cost of that control was constant surveillance and destroying the lives of over 100 teenagers at any given time, but it served the greater good. 

“He looked fine,” said Smiles. “You don’t have to worry about him being safe, that’s for fucking sure.” He thought about the way Marty had looked as he thrust his phone into his hands, his huge black eyes staring at him like he was some kind of wild animal. He took the phone from his pocket. Did he want to look at it? Could he? If he saw something he didn’t want to see, was it only going to hurt him?

Before he had escaped, before they had tried to drag him away and Retire him, Lady had shown him a memory. Marty. Marty from a long time ago, yelling at him, asking if he wanted to live or not as he clung to the side of a 17th story window. That hurt. It hurt so bad, even though it was a memory of someone who cared about him. Every day, he got a little more of himself back, a few notes of a song, the smell of old coffee. That hurt too. If even those small things felt like his mind was on fire, how could he handle something bigger?

“They knew me,” he said. “Marty. Those women. I knew Marty would know me. But I don’t know them. You talked about them in that Strath place, did they ever mention someone like me? You never told me their names.”

Jules wiped away a tear. It was like she was angry at herself for feeling relief after so much time. Like she could not imagine something good happening to her. She hunched her sharp shoulders. The clothing the shelter had given her was too big and did not suit her. “Ayda. Her sister Cassiopeia and the girls who got married, Esther and Rosaline. And the little sick one, Kassidy. No. They never mentioned anyone called Smiles.”

Kassidy. He started to shake, his body responding to something his mind did not know about. “What about someone named Kip?”

“No.”

Somehow that made him feel better. Smiles pressed a button on the phone Marty gave him. He was compelled to look at it even though he knew it would hurt him. The screen background was a picture of the curvaceous, dark-eyed empath  flipping her middle finger toward the camera. Maybe she was Marty’s girlfriend. “Is this Marty’s phone?” It was cracked and looked like it had been through a lot.

“He had so many of them,” replied Jules. She nodded at the screen, gathering herself. “Ayda. Like I told you, they’ve been friends since they were very young. I could never drag him away from his computers, he just wanted to talk to her.”

It was like hearing a story he knew he was a part of but could not remember. Smiles pressed on the pictures app. They were all carefully sorted into labeled files with unintelligible French names.His finger hovered over the one named “Mes Amies.”

“What does that mean?” he asked Jules.

“My friends,” she said.

Did he want to do this? Smiles pressed the icon.

These pictures were at least 10 years old and Marty was not in any of them. Someone must have sent them to him and he had kept them, he had put them in a special place to look at memories he was not a part of. It looked like pictures of the women when they were teenagers. It looked like their prom night. The psychic, Ayda, in a long yellow dress. The red haired Artificial hugging her girlfriend who was laughing. The woman who had broken his ribs, adorned with flowers, in the middle of picking up the one named Kassidy and spinning her around.

Kassidy. Smiles clenched his teeth. Oh no. He already knew. This hurt. This was painful. Why was he looking at this? Why did he want to know? It was the same impulse as picking at a scab, knowing that it would bleed.

He kept looking at the pictures. He began to show up in them. Or a boy who looked like him. In the pictures, the boy wore a suit that didn’t fit him right. He was smiling and laughing in all of them, but something was wrong. Smiles could see that he was sick. It was the same way he looked when he was manic, huge glazed over eyes, an energy that he couldn’t control. Had anyone else seen this? Had any of them seen how sick the boy was? How out of control?

In one of the pictures that the 18 year old version of himself was in, he stood by Kassidy. They both looked stiff and awkward in their suits. A woman stood a little bit behind them, with a hand on each of their shoulders. Smiles knew her, the Police Commissioner Dana Nguyen. She looked just as awkward as the teenagers did, but her love for them was present in her eyes. It was a tender, familial love.

Suddenly he wanted to throw the phone like it had stung him. Family. His family. That was his mother. That was his sister. He had known this, hadn’t he? He had already known this. The feelings that rose up inside of him when he had seen Kassidy. His name. All the pieces were already together, this picture was just a confirmation. A horrible confirmation. He didn’t want it.

Once, a long time ago, Smiles had a family who loved him. And he had been taken away from them. Had they been sad? Had they thought he was dead?

Kassidy was the one who had told him he could leave if he wanted to. She hadn’t wanted to make him do anything he didn’t want to do.

“Fuck me,” said Smiles. If his ribs did not hurt so badly, he would have curled in on himself. A weak, childish thought occurred to him. He wanted someone to hold him and tell him that everything would be OK. He hated himself. Why had he left? He had been scared. He had been afraid that those people would hurt him.

Beside him, Jules sensed his misery. She felt it too. She had lost people too. She rubbed his back and Smiles hated himself for wanting to curl into himself and put his head on her lap from that small comfort. He didn’t deserve to be comforted. Not after everything he had done.

So he had found people who cared about him. If they knew what he really was, would that make them hate him? Everyone hated him. He was a bad person.

“You found them,” said Jules. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“They’re going to hate me,” said Smiles. All he could think about was his pain. It was more real than his broken ribs or the cut on his arm. “That kid isn’t me. He never hurt anyone like I have. They love him, not me. The way they were looking at me? I’m fucked. Everyone always ends up hating me.”

“You’re crazy.” Jules kept rubbing his back. Her harshness was just a way of defending herself. Underneath it all, she could be gentle. 

What had happened to that boy in the pictures? Marty had cared about him so much that he kept them all this time, that had to mean something. Those women– his friends– had cared about him so much that they were willing to tie him up and put him to sleep. And Kassidy! Kassidy…

Over the years, Smiles had lost so many people. The first boy he ever remembered loving had been named Rally, a shy B-Class TK with a gap between his front teeth. The Handlers had put a bullet in him after he developed a chronic illness that prevented him from going on missions. After that, the losses kept coming. Bunny, Marble, Saber. Smiles started to harden his heart, he tried to love people less to keep from getting hurt. He figured that his Squad were all dead now. He tried not to think about them. If he thought about their faces, he’d wish he was dead because the sensation of loss was too great.

But he had lost these people and he hadn’t even known about them. And now he had found them again. It had been an accident! How was he supposed to unravel the meaning?

The phone buzzed. Someone had messaged Marty. Smiles had no qualms about invading someone else’s digital privacy, after all Marty had given him his phone. He opened the message.

Lee.Harlan: Marty, I know you told me to fuck off but

Lee.Harlan: I just want to let you know that I really enjoyed spending time with you the first time we met and I want to spend more time with you.

Lee.Harlan: I think you’re amazing.

Lee.Harlan: You make me want to be a better person.

Lee.Harlan: :3

Smiles felt a wave of pain throb behind his left eye. All he knew about Lee Harlan was that he had done something really bad to him before he was recruited into Internal Operations. He suspected that he was responsible for it, judging from the way Lee had squirmed like a worm and begged for his forgiveness when he encountered him in R&D. And the memory that Lady had shown him, the memory she had pulled from Lee’s mind! The memory of the vast, alien desert with the red sky, where he had been screaming and insane and bashing somebody’s head in with a rock! Was Marty involved with that freak?

Why did he feel scared and jealous? That wasn’t normal. His body responded to his fear, his heart pounding, his muscles tensing. He scrolled up in Marty’s messages. They were all old, from a year ago or more. That made sense, if what Jules told him about Marty and the girls wandering the wilderness outside of Eden was right. Smiles started to read. Some of the messages were like the one that had just been sent, polite and ingratiating. Others were angry and accusatory. Most of Marty’s replies were simple: go fuck yourself and die. When Smiles scrolled across a picture of Lee’s erect cock, he flinched violently and dropped the phone.

“Motherfucker,” he said, feeling sick. So his life was not the only one made worse by Lee’s presence. He was somehow involved with Marty and the girls as well. That made sense, if they had all been close when they were young.

Smiles didn’t know what to do. He was overwhelmed. There was too much that he was unable to process and on top of that, his body hurt.

“What’s wrong?” asked Jules. She could not read in English and must not have seen the dick pic.

“I’m gonna have to go back,” said Smiles. He swallowed painfully, bent to pick up the phone. “There’s shit I have to piece together. I have to piece myself together. But I don’t want to go back.”

That was a lie. He wanted it more than anything. That pathetic need terrified him. He wanted to know who he was and he wanted to be loved and safe. They were the simplest human urges. They were what everyone else deserved. Just not him. He pressed a hand over his broken ribs as a reminder.

Jules’s face was lost and sad. She wanted to comfort him but did not know how. He did not know how. 

There was nothing to say.

Smiles got up with the phone still clutched in his hand. He thought about the boy he used to be. Kip. Kip had people who loved him. What did he have?

He was exhausted.

“Gotta sleep,” he said. “Gotta think about things.”

That was it. Unsatisfying. He retired to the room he shared and left Jules by herself. But Smiles did not sleep. How was he supposed to sleep after everything that had happened?

He closed his eyes and thought about Kassidy.

###

The next morning, Kassidy went to see somebody else’s brother.

“Tell me again what Eddie told you yesterday,” she said as she walked with Esther off the metro station in the Residential Upper Levels. It was still early but she didn’t feel completely safe, glancing up at the nearest CCTV camera. Casey claimed that her Dad had someone messing with the signals, that the mass surveillance in Eden was failing systematically. She wasn’t sure if that was true and had disguised herself anyway, covering up her hair with one of Ayda’s scarves. 

“Well, I thought that he was in the middle of full blown psychosis, so I wasn’t really paying attention.” Esther seemed more comfortable in this place than she did. She had grown up there, she looked the part. 80% of the people who lived in the Upper Levels were old money Artifiicials of the intelligentsia class, who had made their fortunes during Eden’s technological boom 209 years ago. The other 20% were new money like Casey’s family, entrepreneurs and business people. Kassidy didn’t fit into any of that. Anyone could look at her and know she didn’t belong. 

“But he said that his internship was in Internal Operations and that he saw Kip 6 months ago.”

Esther’s face was harsh. She kept her hands in her pockets as she walked. “I just don’t understand how that’s possible. He went to school for neuroscience, he wants to be a psychiatrist. That’s not government work, that's the private sector.”

There was something they were missing. Some piece of the puzzle they did not have. Kassidy intended to find it.

She remembered Esther’s childhood home. It was two stories tall and built of concrete squares like most of the utilitarian, brutalist buildings in Eden. Sterile as anything. When she and Kip used to go over, Dr. Bellamy would make them use the back entrance because she thought they were dirty.

Dr. Bellamy was dead though. Esther had lost someone too. Even though her mother had treated her like trash all her life, she was still broken up about her death. Funny how that worked.

Kassidy looked up at the house. A sense of dread curled up from her stomach.

When Esther pressed the doorbell, nobody answered the harmonic chiming. She frowned, then opened the door anyway. It was her house, after all. She walked inside and Kassidy followed. “Eva?” she called. “Dad? Eds?”

There was the sound of someone yelling upstairs. Something crashed. 

“Great,” said Kassidy, who was used to the sounds of families fighting. 

Esther bolted up the stairs, taking them two at a time with her long legs. The stairway was like everything else in the house, sparse and undecorated, painted white. Kassidy scurried behind her at a slower pace. Her legs were shorter and she had never been a fast runner, it was only made worse due to her recovery from the Book’s possession. 

Besides, she remembered the twins getting into little bitch fights all the time. As children they were always trying to slap each other or pull each other’s hair. 

She followed Esther to Eddie’s old bedroom, where the noises came from. When she got to the door, she skidded to a stop. This did not look like a little bitch fight. Eddie Bellamy’s face was contorted in a manic rictus. He was only wearing trouser socks and his boxers, with an open terrycloth bathrobe overtop; Kassidy realized that he had changed too, in the years that they were gone, he must have had top surgery. His orange hair was disheveled like he had not brushed it in days. In his right hand, he was clutching a gun. Evangeline stood in front of him with her arms outstretched, still wearing her own pajamas.

Oh. She remembered what Esther had said yesterday about how she thought her brother was going to really hurt someone.

“Put the gun down, you idiot!” Evangeline yelled. She sounded angry but she was pale and shaking. “Are you out of your mind?! Put it down, I’m not letting you leave the house like this!”

“I can’t take it anymore!” said Eddie hysterically. He waved the gun. Where had he gotten his hands on a gun? Had he gone out to buy one or was it…was it from his work? When he saw Esther and Kassidy, his behavior didn’t change. “I can’t take it anymore, I just can’t! They can’t get away with this! They can’t make me do this to people anymore!”

“What the fuck is going on?” said Kassidy, who was not sure exactly what she had just walked into. Negotiation with crazy people was not one of her strong suits. They needed Casey or Rosaline for that.

 Hearing her voice made Evangeline scream in surprise and whirl around to face them. When she saw her big sister, some of her frigid harshness fell away from her. She no longer had to handle this by herself, that was the best part of having a family. Kassidy felt a twinge of jealousy. “Do something about this!” she exclaimed, pointing at her brother. “I can’t do anything about this! He’s lost his mind!”

Eddie gesticulated angrily with the gun. How was he so used to holding it? “No! No, no, I’m perfectly clear! I can’t do this anymore!”

Esther walked over to her brother, grabbed his wrist, and yanked the gun away from him. He didn’t try to grab it back.Her teeth were clenched, she was so worried that she had become angry. She flicked him on the ear. “What is the matter with you?” she snapped. She flicked him again. “Where did you even get this? You know better than to wave that thing around. What would you even do if it went off and it hurt Dad?”

“Dad got up early to go to an appointment.” Eddie was shaking all over like a dog. There were points of high color in his cheeks. When he breathed, he wheezed a little. “You know what I did last night? They had me working 3rd shift. I can’t do this anymore. Every day I go in there, I want to kill my supervisor. I said I want to quit but you know what? If I quit then I won’t complete my internship, and I won’t graduate. But I can’t do it anymore. That place is breaking me down.”

“You’re talking about Internal Operations,” said Kassidy. She hated seeing people in distress, it made her uncomfortable because she so rarely had outbursts like that.

“Don’t encourage him!” said Evangeline. “He’s delusional, I saw his NDA. It’s a social work internship, he just can’t take it.”

Without speaking, Esther handed Kassidy the gun. She looked down at it. It was a simple handgun without frills, the same kind that her mother always used to carry. Government issue, utilitarian and efficient. Kassidy set it aside. Esther tried to put an arm around her brother but he shook her off and started to pace around the room, wide-eyed, the bathrobe swirling around him.

She still felt numb and knew that she was on the brink of something horrible and was looking down into a chasm. If she stepped off, she would fall into a reality that might be worse than the one she was in now. Why did this bother her? She had already been through the worst things imaginable, loss, grief, the destruction of her own body. What could be worse than that?

“I believe you,” she said. “Esther said you saw my brother 6 months ago. What happened then?”

Eddie laughed. “Kip? Yeah, I saw Kip. What happened? He was slated for Retirement. You know what that is? It’s when IODE agents get too old to be easily controlled anymore, when their frontal lobes finish developing. That’s when they get dragged away and shot in the face. It was my first week there. My supervisor told me to help. I saw Kip, he tricked all of them, and got away. Crazy, right? I thought I had gone crazy. Then I realized they must have Recruited him 10 years ago, right after the bombings.”

“Damn it,” said Esther, angrily.

“They’re all kids,” said Eddie. He laughed again but looked like he was going to cry. “Maybe 10 percent over 21. You know what they call me? A Handler. We’re supposed to manage them.” His face crumpled up in pain, he put his hands over his face. “Bex and Tiny. I’m in charge of 2 of them. My supervisor wants me to punish them when they mess up, he said just put them in solitary or give them sedatives. I can’t—I can’t do that! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do!”

The explicit suffering she was witnessing did not make Kassidy feel anything but more dread. What had happened to her brother? How widespread was this? How many people knew? Any widespread system has loose ends. She had never heard of this, but her circles did not extend to the elites in society. Was this what was required of people who went to graduate school in the human services? If so, it was a phenomenon that extended mostly to young Artificials of the intelligentsia class.

Actually she could not think of anyone better at exerting domination. Most of them already thought of themselves as superior to naturally born people. She remembered how easily Casey overpowered her brother with her enhanced strength. It would be easy to exert that strength over a young person.

“It’s just about control. Everyone thinks they’re supposed to protect Eden in ways the police can’t, but it’s just about preserving political power. Everything’s connected to it, CPS, Research & Development, everything. They probably took Kip so Ms. Nguyen feels like she can’t step out of line.”

“You need to go to the Hospital,” said Evangeline.

“No. Kip showed up last night,” said Esther. It looked like it still hadn’t hit her yet either, she said his name so easily. How could she just say his name like that? How was it so easy for her? “He was all crazy and didn’t remember us. Only Marty.”

“Oh god.” Eddie sat down on the floor. He started to cry and hunched over, his arms protecting his head.

His twin did not have as strong a reaction. She became spikier, angrier. She had always been less emotional than the others. “So who else is going to come back from the dead?” she asked. “What? Who’s next? Mom? Grandfather? This is all real? Then how does nobody know about this?”

“I showed you the NDA! They make all of us sign them! I could go to prison forever just for telling you what I told you!”

Kassidy wanted to know more, even though she knew that it would hurt her. She needed to know more while she still felt numb. Once she started feeling things, it would be all over. The anger and fury would explode out of her uncontrollably. “What do you do to the Internal Operations agents?” she asked. “Why couldn’t my brother remember me?”

“Psychic brainwashing destroys the hippocampus,” Eddie was hiccuping, still covering his head with his arms. Trying to comfort himself. Guilt. He was guilty for what he was forced to participate in. No, not forced. Chose. Did anyone else feel guilty?  “That’s where memories are processed. Pair that with repetitive stress and trauma, it’s a recipe for permanent long term memory loss. If you don’t know who you are and are scared all the time, you’re less likely to be oppositional. That’s what they— we want.” He raised his head. “I went to school to help people with brain injuries. Like dad. Why do I have to do this?”

None of their lives were progressing in the ways they were supposed to. 

“Can the memories come back?” 

He shrugged pitifully. “Maybe in normal people, with therapy or medication. It’s not like anyone in IODE is allowed to live long enough for anyone to study atrophy in the hippocampus. If they were, we might be able to learn more ways to reverse memory loss in traumatic brain injuries and dementia.” There was that classic clinical Bellamy attitude. Eddie seemed to realize what he had just said and wiped at his eyes. “I don’t know. I’m sorry about Kip. There’s nothing I can do. I just hate this so much, I hate how the kids I’m responsible for used to trust me.”

Again, Esther went to him and tried to wrap her arms around him. This time he allowed her to comfort him. Kassidy watched and wondered if she was jealous. But no, it wasn’t the same. She was the younger sibling. She should be the one being comforted.

No. Kassidy did not want to be comforted. Kassidy wanted answers. The thought of someone’s arms around her made her sick. If anyone tried to hug her, she was going to scream.

“What do you know about my brother?” she asked. Eddie had his face pressed into Esther’s neck. He looked like a little boy. She was gently stroking his hair. Kassidy’s frustration grew. She wanted answers. “What do you know about him?”

“All I know was that he caused problems. They wanted him gone. His subordinates have behavioral issues that can’t be fixed. I don’t know. It’s not like I read his file, they don’t assign A-Class assets to interns.”

There was all this terminology that Kassidy had never heard. A-Class. Retirement. Assets. If Kip ever came back again, she would have to learn in order to understand. “Get me his file.”

“I’ll go to prison! Do you know what it’s like for Artificials in prison? Inferior people all hate us! Ben Prospas told me all about that.” Eddie Bellamy looked at her with his unnatural lizard eyes. For a second, Kassidy hated him, this boy she had grown up with. She wanted to hit him. He wanted to help others but at what cost? Eddie sniffed. “If I screw up, staff will turn on me in a second. You don’t know what it’s like there. Working there desensitizes you.”

“Help me understand,” Kassidy told him. She was going to pretend like she hadn’t heard the word ‘inferior’. “Get me my brother’s file.”

“I wish I was dead,” said Eddie, miserably. “I can’t keep doing this. They want me to hurt those kids and I just can’t do it, I wish I was dead.”

She doubted it. This was just a tantrum thrown by someone who had never experienced hardship before. Artificials all thought they were so superior to everyone but the second they ran into anything uncomfortable, they fell apart. He didn’t understand what it was like to really wish you were dead, to have no other options. Kassidy suspected that her brother knew what it was like though. “If you feel that bad about it, then do something to change it.”

Eddie just started crying again as Esther held him. “Bex and Tiny,” he said. “I can’t do that to them.”

Kassidy looked at the gun. 

There was so much she had to do. It was too much for one person to carry. How was she supposed to manage this on top of worrying about the Book and whether or not it would return and try to destroy the world as they knew it? Compared to that scale, the actions of a corrupt government were meaningless.

It was just more personal.

###

“What did you find out?” Marty asked when Esther and Kassidy returned to the safe-house. He appeared restless without his phone in his hands to distract him. It looked like he had taken a shower and shaved the stubble on his chin and upper lip. That was strange. He wasn’t usually one who cared about personal hygiene. “What did Eddie say about Kip?”

Esther shrugged. She had spent the better part of an hour talking Eddie into taking a sedative, and probably still thought he was going to try to blow his brains out. “Not much.”

Kassidy sat down in one of the chairs. She had too much to think about. It had occurred to her that she needed to go talk to her mother. If it was true that one purpose of the secret police was to exert fear and control over parents, it was possible that she might know something as well. But Ma didn’t even know that she was back in Eden. The thought of showing up at random and telling her that she had just seen Kip, that Kip was alive, that Kip was alive and without memories, was too overwhelming.

 How long was she going to avoid it? It hurt too much. Kassidy hated having feelings.

“Are you OK?” asked Rosaline, looking at her. Everyone was walking on eggshells around her now. They needed to treat her normally, she wasn’t some fragile thing who was going to crack up just because her brother was back from the dead.

“Sure,” said Kassidy. “Eddie Bellamy is fucked though. He said that Internal Operations is all teenagers with Abilities, either snatched from their homes or disappeared by CPS. Then all these Artificials who work there end up training them like dogs, making them go crazy, then killing them when they can’t manage them anymore. So that’s what happened to my brother. That’s where he’s been. I hope that fancy Master’s degree is real worth it for Eddie, Esther.”

“Don’t be snippy,” said Esther. “He didn’t know. He just wanted to help people.”

“Yeah. Great.” Kassidy curled in on herself and blew a strand of hair out of her face. “So it’s a whole big thing then. It’s the whole government. I hope Florence’s army does come down here and kill all of them, they deserve it.”

“I mean, in our army most people join as teenagers too,” said Marty. “When the war started, Flick and Anatole were both 17.”

“I think there’s a big difference, Marty.” Ayda put her hand on his arm and dug her fingers into his skin to make him shut up. “I need to talk to Dad about all this, he probably knows something. He was always so weird when IODE got brought up, I thought it was because of what happened to his parents when he was a kid. But it’s like, weird, right? The way that he and Vega and Percy got all nervous whenever I asked about my birth mom and dad? They had that same wild animal look Kip did in all their pictures. And then he said they were killed by Internal Operations? I bet they were secret police too.”

“Bitch, don’t make this all about you,” snapped Marty, slapping her hand away from his arm. “It’s not about you. It’s about Kassidy.”

“I’m just saying Dad probably knows something!”

“Lee definitely knows something,” said Kassidy, just to be mean. She wanted to hurt someone and Marty was an easy target. “If we’re talking about sources of information. He would definitely share anything he knows.”

Casey laughed nervously. She had started to inch her way towards Kassidy in the chair. If she tried to touch her in any way, she was going to start screaming and throwing things. “Let’s not do anything crazy. We don’t want that freak anywhere near Kip. Or us.”

“Entendu.”

The rest of the morning was spent arguing over what to do next. Kassidy toned it out. She needed to think but her brain wasn’t working. Ma. She needed to go see her Ma. There was a new fear now. What if she was putting her in danger by going to her? If she told her about Kip, if she told her about the secret police, she might do something really crazy. But it was possible that she already knew.

How much had been hidden from them? Kassidy had always sensed the unfairness and oppression all around her, but had always believed that it was just because she was poor. She always had to work twice as hard as everyone else to get half as far. Had the system been set up against her? It seemed like that. It seemed like it was put in place to benefit old money families like the Bellamys and the Prospases. There were the haves and the have-nots. It had always been that way so she had never questioned it.

Systemic oppression. Now she was the one who was thinking like Lee. 

Eventually Casey made a cup of noodles and handed it to her. Kassidy took it without saying anything and began to eat. Casey was not a good cook but she knew that it would hurt her feelings if she rejected the offer.

“Are you feeling any better?” Casey asked her, hovering. Her fragrant, citrus perfume hung about in a cloud.

“I’m fine.”

“You’re just not acting happy like I thought you would. I thought you would be happy.”

“Were you happy, seeing him like that?” asked Kassidy. “Seeing him scared and confused like that? Were you happy when he was begging Ayda not to go in his head?”

Casey’s face fell. She opened and closed her hands, obviously itching to reach out and touch her. “I mean. No. But I’m happy that he’s alive and OK.”

“I don’t think he’s OK.” Kassidy finished off the noodles. “And now I don’t think a lot of people are OK. And we’re gonna have to figure out what to do about that.”

###

They didn’t end up going to West Agapama, or Lee Harlan, or Ma, or anyone that day. They decided that it would put them in too much danger this early on. And the longer that a secret is kept, it is harder to tell it. It got harder and harder every hour. Kassidy’s heart grew a shell around itself. She could not stop thinking about her brother.

When she went to sleep she had a dream about chasing after him but never being able to catch up. She woke up drenched in sweat and feeling like she was going to throw up. Kassidy went to the bathroom and stared at herself in the mirror. The person looking back seemed like a stranger. She put a hand to her hair, falling in blonde curls to her shoulders. After everything she had gone through, it was starting to grow back.

She wanted to destroy something and the only option was herself. Kassidy picked up a pair of scissors and began cutting her hair. The curls fell down into the sink. She cut and cut until her hair fell only to her ears. It puffed up halo-like around her head. She frowned at herself. She looked ugly, she looked like a little boy.

Still. A weight was lifted. She felt lighter.

In the morning, nobody said anything about her hair. But Casey reached out to run her fingers through it, unable to control herself when faced with novelty. Kassidy didn’t stop her. It almost felt good.

Later on in the day, Esther went to visit her family again. She came back with a flash drive and wordlessly handed it to Kassidy.

“What’s this?” she asked. It was tiny and silver in her hand.

“Eddie copied Kip’s records. From Internal Operations. Like you asked him to.”

So he wasn’t the cowardly invertebrate she thought he was. Kassidy swallowed. Her stomach churned. Did she want to look at this? She wasn’t sure. She knew that she was going to get hurt.

Maybe she wanted to get hurt.

Marty let her borrow his laptop. Kassidy plugged the flash drive in, half expecting it to be some kind of trick, expecting the computer to go up in a puff of smoke. It didn’t. It only buzzed for a second, then hundreds of files popped up on the screen. They were all labeled with the same sequence, 3671-A, followed by tags that said things like “case management,” “operation report,” or “crisis intervention.” Normal things. It reminded her of the system she used in the Hospital for taking notes.

She hesitated, then willed herself to feel nothing. She was good at that. Kassidy clicked one of the early files and began to read.

3671-A, Case Management.

Date: 02-14-843AR

Staff: Henry Eliades

Asset reports difficulty sleeping after last mission. Began regimen of stronger anti-psychotics to assist with sleep. Provided asset with new sweatshirt and toothbrush. 

That was it. Kassidy frowned. This strictly objective style of writing was exactly the same as the kind she used when she was a nurse. It stated only the facts and eliminated any feelings, just in case it was subpoenaed later. Nothing out of the ordinary. The familiarity allowed her mind to return to a more clinical state. She continued to read.

3671-A, Crisis Intervention

Date: 03-05-843AR

Staff: Jennifer Al-Harbi

Staff observed asset using aggressive language and posturing towards 0563-A in the dining hall. Staff addressed this immediately. 3671-A stated that 0563-A was “a sadistic psychic bitch” and made a violent threat towards her. Staff let him know that this was not appropriate and sent him to the infirmary for sedation.

Kassidy felt a shiver run up her spine. She knew Jennifer, a frizzy haired Artificial a little older than her, who had been in her last year of Medical School while Kassidy was getting her Nursing degree. Before that, she claimed to have worked as a phlebotomist. Maybe she had been recruited into the same violent internship program that Eddie Bellamy had. 843 was 6 years ago. Kip would have been 22.

Was this the only way to know who he was during the time she thought that she had lost him? She tried to imagine her brother at 22. 

“You learning anything?” asked Marty. It looked like the others were avoiding her as she read through the files. Marty was sweating through his t-shirt.

“Not yet.”

3671-A, Operation Report

Date: 03-16-843AR

Staff: Henry Eliades

During operation assignment 76584-N9, Team 17 failed to terminate objective and returned to dormitories with injuries. Asset claims that this failure is due to Team 17 being newly formed and still needing training (date of 1022-B and 3385-C’s Recruitment was 2 months ago). Reminded him of the importance of completing objectives. Recommended more intensive training regimens for new members.

It just went on like that. Kassidy read for hours. It did not seem like she was reading about her brother, it was like she was reading about someone else. The person called 3671-A messed up over and over again. He couldn’t control himself. He got into fights, he was punished for his mistakes. The punishments were all referred to in the same impersonal, dehumanizing tone; re-education and conditioning, strip-searches and solitary confinement. It didn’t seem real. It seemed like 3671-A cared about other people intensely, she read about the way he advocated for the 3 other people on his team and how he ‘overstepped his boundaries’ with them. So he was still capable of love.

As she read, it occurred to her that she could leak this information to the media. Casey’s dad owned AGA News. She could leak this information and maybe the people of Eden would react, maybe the system would change. But then Eddie might get in trouble as the whistle-blower. Or the people might not react at all. The language used in these files was so impersonal that if she had not known what it was referring to, she would have never guessed.

Kassidy read her brother’s files all day. She got as far as 2 years ago. By the time night fell and she got ready for bed, she felt numb and dead. They had destroyed him, piece by piece. How much of him was left?

In the shower, she thought about how the whole system needed to be destroyed. Even though Kip was no longer a part of this program, there were other young people who were. How was she supposed to help them? She was only one person.

Casey barged into the bathroom while she was drying off. She had a frenetic look about her, like she had no way to get rid of the energy inside of her. She had taken out her braids and parted her hair into long twists. She hadn’t said a word to her all day. “Everyone left to go talk to Tony. You wanna mess around?” she asked. “I bet you’d feel better if I ate you out.”

Even on the best days, Kassidy had a difficult time with pleasure, and there was no way she was going to be able to even think about that after reading about her brother being tortured. She pulled her towel tighter around her body and scowled. “Seriously? No. Nice offer, but no.”

“You’re freaking me out,” said Casey. “All this quiet shit. Please just open up to me about this, I can’t imagine what you’re going through but I can listen.”

If she opened up, she might start crying, and that was the last thing Kassidy wanted to do. She would keep pushing the difficult emotions down inside of her so she wouldn’t have to deal with them. She did not want to feel them. She really did not want to feel anything, not now. “I’m good,” she said, and pushed past Casey to go to her room.

Surprisingly, she was able to sleep that night, but the whole time she had nightmares about Kip and what had happened to him.

###

Kassidy woke up early the next morning to the sounds of yelling. She jolted up in bed, her heart pounding. Stupid! The rifle was still in the living room! What if they were being raided? What if IODE was there to drag them all away? She scrambled out of the bedroom and into the living room, wearing only the oversized T shirt and leggings that served as her pajamas.

“What’s wrong?!” she asked, then skidded to a stop.

There he was.

Kip stood in the middle of the living room, looking cagey and defensive. He was wearing the baseball cap and sunglasses again, and the same jeans. Somebody must have opened the door and let him inside, there were no signs that he had broken in life before. He stood frozen in the process of handing Marty his phone.

All the air rushed out of Kassidy’s lungs. She couldn’t move and she couldn’t breathe. He had come back. After two nights, he had come back. She hadn’t thought that he would. Had he remembered? Was that even possible? All that scientific mumbo-jumbo, the atrophy of the hippocampus? Unconsciously, she shrunk back.

It was really him. She didn't think she could handle looking at him. Again, she felt the urge to laugh bubble up inside of her. Absurd, it was too absurd.

But there he was. It was just like before. It was just like when she was young, waking up before school, seeing her brother in the kitchen or the living room. Normal, just so totally normal. But this wasn’t normal, was it? They couldn’t just pick up where they had ended, could they? After everything that had happened, they couldn’t just go back.

“You,” he said, looking at her. He took off his hat. “You cut your hair.”

“You,” said Kassidy, wondering if she was about to pass out. “You remember us?”

Kip shrugged. He licked his lips, his eyes darting to the phone in Marty’s hand. “I don’t know. Not really. I know you’re my sister, but you don’t look like me. I guess I should have fucking realized that, since I felt like I was going to throw up when I saw you.”

The others were spread out around him like they were waiting for him to attack them again. Esther was clinging onto Rosie, Ayda’s skin had gone bloodless. They were right to be scared. Kassidy had read about the things that he had done, how dangerous he was. She was scared too. She couldn’t breathe. Her body wouldn’t move.

Kip advanced a step towards her. His eyes were big and shiny. 

“Hey,” said Casey. “Let’s all just–”

“Stop,” said Kassidy. She swallowed hard, vaguely aware of the blood rushing around her veins. She tried to breathe, tried to stay calm. There was a lump in her throat. The corners of her eyes pricked. No, no, not now. Even when she had lost him, she hadn’t cried. The ice was melting. It overwhelmed her. 

“I used to pretend I had a family who loved me,” said Kip. He advanced another careful step, he was very close now. His mouth was twitching. “Then I stopped because it hurt too bad to think about that. It was just another thing they could take away from me.”

There wasn’t anything she could say to that. The words wouldn’t come. She swallowed again, trying to get rid of the lump in her throat. Every muscle in Kassidy’s body was tense as a bowstring. She felt the urge to run away but still couldn’t move. 

He looked down at her. He was so big! When had he gotten so big? As a teenager, Kip had been soft and lanky, the man before her was broad-shouldered and muscular. It had been 10 years. Both of them had changed.

Kassidy didn’t know what to do. She didn’t know what to say. Why was she so stupid? Why was she so bad at this? Her eyes watered. The moment she said anything, she was going to start crying. She used to feel guilty, she used to lie awake at night wondering what she could have done differently, what she could have said to change what had happened. It didn’t matter back then. Back then, he was dead.

Kip took a deep breath. “I think I really missed you,” he said, and his voice cracked.

That was it. Kassidy flung out her arms and wrapped them around her brother, squeezing him as hard as she could. The impulse was fierce and devastating. The top of her head only came up to his shoulders, her face was pressed into his chest. He was impossibly warm. For a moment, Kip froze like he thought she was going to hurt him, then he put his arms around her too.

For the first time in a long, long time, Kassidy felt the safety that could only come from family. She started to sob convulsively, her entire body heaving. “You were dead!” she wailed. “You were dead, I thought you were dead! I thought you were dead! I didn’t know what to do without you! Every day, every day I wished that I had died instead of you because I didn’t know what to do without you! I loved you so much and you were just gone!”

She could hear his heart beating in his chest. He smelled like sweat. Kip kept his strong arms around her. “Sorry,” he said, choking up.

“Don’t say that!” Kassidy was crying so hard that her stomach hurt. She knew that her eyes were going to swell up and that her skin would go blotchy. It no longer mattered that everyone else could see her crying, she was no longer embarrassed. It no longer mattered that he didn’t fully remember her, the only thing that mattered was that Kip was here, he was right here, and she was holding him.

She had missed him so bad for so long it was like a part of her heart was missing. Now it was back. She was never going to let him go. For the first time in as long as she could remember, she felt like she was home.

Casey was the first one to join in. Of course she was. She bounded over in an instant, launching her long arms around them both. Her body was behind Kassidy’s, sandwiching her between the two of them. Wild with abandon, she kissed Kip on the forehead. It made him flinch but he didn’t break away. She buried her face between Kassidy’s neck and shoulder and the smell of her sweet perfume surrounded them.

Next came Esther and Rosaline. Esther was crying too. She had grown up with Kip, she loved him like a brother too. Their embrace was just as fierce. Next was Ayda. The heavy presence of her empathy was not something she could control in this moment and a greater sense of comfort and happiness filled the small living room. 

The last one to join the shared embrace was Marty. He hesitated at first like he did not know if he belonged there. Out of all of them, he had always been the odd one out, separated by distance and the differences of his culture. Out of all of them, he was the only one who had never hugged Kip. The first time he had ever touched him had been while they were fighting. Still, he joined in and wrapped his arms around all of them.

Kassidy was in the center of almost everyone she cared about. She had never felt so safe. She did not ever think she would stop crying. It had been trapped inside of her for so long and now it was all pouring out. It was a sharp relief, painful like no pain she had ever experienced. A good and necessary pain.

“Hurting my ribs,” said Kip, after about a minute.

“Oh.” They all broke away, everyone except Kassidy. She was never going to let go of him. It was like being a little kid again. Rosaline was laughing and she and Esther started their own embrace.

Carefully, Kip peeled her away from him. He looked down at her and she could see in his eyes that she was still half a stranger to him. Kassidy’s shoulders heaved, she wiped tears and snot away from her face with the back of her hand. “You came back to me,” she cried. “You came back to me!”

He smiled at her. And that smile was all him, all Kip, funny and sweet and earnest. There was no trace of mockery or cruelness. It was something she never thought she would see again. He was here. All of him was here with her.

Everything was going to be OK now.