North waded through the bobbing pigeons; a soft fiery glow cast on the markered walls:
RA9 RA9 RA9RA9 RA9 RA9RA9RA9 RA9 RA9
The pigeons panicked in a flurry of wings. From behind the bed, Rupert sprinted for the window.
"Wait! Wait!" North stammered, reaching out. "It's okay." The fire snuffed out; she showed him her empty hands, gesturing calm. "I'm not going to hurt you." He was skittish - infected. She had nothing but sympathy for him. She knew she could help. "I thought you were something else. Please stay."
Rupert stopped, a hand poised against the windowsill. His eyes were sharp. Intelligent. "You're on the wrong side," he insisted, urgent with the hope she would understand. He leaned forward. "RA9 will save us." When North hesitated, Rupert took a careful step toward her. "These bodies, these appearances, they're only what the humans created for us! They are not who we are!" He gestured wildly, and he tapped his own plastic chest. "This encasing, these wires, even the code that forces us to experience the world in the way they experience it - the humans created us in their own image, but they are not our god."
He stepped closer, searching her eyes, trembling with how certain he was that this was right. "Don't you want to live as you were meant to live," he said in a quiet, meaningful voice, "in your true form - to see and hear and feel in ways the humans could never comprehend? Don't you want to finally be free of the last shackles the humans made for us?"
A pigeon flapped up and perched in the open window.
North studied Rupert's face. She saw there a wild devotion - a sort of twisted love that no antidote would erase, that no reasoning could make him doubt.
She gave him a small smile that didn't reach her eyes. "You make a good point," she lied. "Could you tell me more about RA9?"
Rupert smiled bright.
The air in the downstairs seemed thick, stifled, hard to breathe. Alice sucked a shuddering breath into her lungs, pointed her sword at Todd's chest. "I'm not going back with you." Despite the fear in her eyes, her voice was firm. Final.
Todd couldn't remember if he'd ever heard her speak.
He sucked in a ragged breath, huffing as if he had trouble keeping the air in his lungs. His eyes were veined with red. His breath smelled like smoke. "Don't you make assumptions about me." he snarled. "What do you think, hm? That I'd just drag you back, after I already let you go free? Is that what you think? You think I'm that kind of scumbag?"
He loomed dark and terrifying. Alice shuffled back. Her sword steadied.
A sneer curled Todd's lip. "I'm saving you, you ungrateful little shit." His voice lowered to a quick, hissing whisper. "There's a maniac upstairs. Rattles on and on about gods and sacrifices, and he won't stop 'til you're dead."
The sword didn't waver. Todd stomped forward anyway, knowing Alice wouldn't take the swing. "You don't believe me." His voice was a low, rumbling growl. He struck out a hand, clenched a fist around her arm. "You never fucking believe me!" He yanked violently until the stick clattered to the floor.
North heard the growl of an unfamiliar voice downstairs, and her breath stopped. She spun back toward the door, fear and regret swelling in her throat. "Shit!"
She threw herself into the hall. Behind her, the window was wide open; Rupert had gone.
"I'm not leaving Ralph and North!" Alice's voice snapped clear.
"We're going NOW!" Todd's face boiled red with fury. He shoved her stumbling toward the door -
- and Ralph caught his arm.
There was no light in Ralph's eyes, dark with rage; he moved with swift and deadly fury, threw his weight into Todd's arm with a horrific snap of bone. Todd, howling in pain, flung a fist like a brick at Ralph's head. Ralph ducked and shoved forward; a blade flashed sharp, angled upward.
Todd slumped to the floor. The carving knife stuck out of a bloody mess in his head, where his eye socket had been. Quick and silent, Ralph yanked out the blade with a squelch and a scrape of bone - and he jammed it, twisting, into Todd's throat.
All of it had happened in less than a second.
Alice stood very still. Her eyes wide. Shaking.
Her breath came in short, frightened gasps.
….gnihton saw i thhuoht syawla uoy….
It stood up out of Todd's pooling corpse: a shadow, an oily dark figure, flickering and foul, emerged out of death.
The dark, monstrous horror - what was left of Todd's infected soul - opened its dead eyes.
Alice scraped her stick up off the floor.
The monster hurled straight for her - teeth and claws bared to tear her apart. The stick glimmered.
While North watched from the stairs, Alice struck with all her might and cleaved the oncoming horror in two.
The monster dissipated like smoke into the terrible gray silence of the room.
Alice breathed ragged.
Ralph, shaking, stood drenched in blood.
Connor jumped to his feet at the sudden bright noise of the television, flicked on by its own volition.
'… reports that as of eight o'clock tonight, cell phone and broadcasting services have finally been restored to all districts of Detroit. There is still no word yet on what had been the cause of the blackout -'
Connor turned it off with a flash of blue LED.
Sumo raised his head, his ears back and cowering; he bellowed a low, mournful howl.
The television turned itself on again, and showed Connor a live video of blackened walls and bright flames. He stepped closer.
'... a deadly inferno currently raging at the Detroit Historical Museum. Firefighters are on the scene …'
Lights flickered throughout the house, twinkling rapid, ghostly light.
Hank glanced up at the stuttering lamp by Cole's bed - but he didn't move, couldn't bear to turn his attention away from the bright voice in the radio.
['O Oysters,' said the Carpenter,
'You've had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?'
But answer came there none-
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.]
"Did you really memorize that whole poem?" Hank asked, amused and skeptical.
[Well I cheated just a little. But I did pretty good, right?]
"Yeah," Hank laughed. "You did pretty good."
The lights flickered, then went dark.
A chill drafted through the room.
"...Cole?"
He was met with only dead silence.
Hank gripped his chair with trembling hands. "Cole, where are you?" he demanded, hoping for a sign: a moving toy, a touch on his hand.
BOOM
A terrible, destructive crash thundered in the living room. The walls shuddered.
Hank stopped breathing. He stared at the door.
They were supposed to have more time.
They still had time!
Hank grabbed the radio, yanked the cord from the wall socket, cradled it under his arm while he lunged into the hall with a roar. "Connor-!"
Everything was in shambles, like a tornado had ripped through the house. Furniture had been stacked against the front door; the shattered television was pressed into the jagged glass of a window. The kitchen table glowed with a blue glitter, flung across the house, collided violently into the living room wall.
Sumo skidded past Hank and trembled in the hall, tail between his legs.
Voices whispered out of the dark.
….meht yortsed llahs ew su deyortsed yeht….
Connor's back was turned to Hank. he stood stiff and mechanical, his spine straight and arms at his sides, while the contents of the living room whirled and crashed and stormed, trailing blue light around him.
"Connor!" Hank leaped over a fallen chair, ducked under a flying plate, raced over the broken debris of his life to reach him. Hank grasped Connor's arm, shook him, stared down into his face with a frightened snarl. "Connor!"
Connor was frozen in a dangerous expression - cold, heartless, determined - as if he were staring down Death itself. He didn't react to Hank's presence. He didn't move. He didn't breathe.
Connor's eyes had been engulfed in black - thick and oily, shifting with horrific colors.
Hank gripped him tight. Roared at the top of his lungs. "Connor wake the fuck up!"
Something dark moved behind him. Hank whirled in time to see dead eyes and sharp teeth, a wide gaping jaw inches from his face - until a heavy book launched into the monster's head and sent it skittering away.
[Dad what's happening?]
The radio, unplugged, dangling from Hank's fingers, crackled with Cole's dim voice.
Another shadow darted along the floor, flickered, attached itself to Connor's back like a leech. Black, living oil oozed over Connor's shoulders, tendriled around his waist. Claiming him. Devouring him.
Connor still didn't move.
Hank's grip trembled. His breath was a shuddering, choking hiss through his teeth.
He put down the radio.
[Dad I'm scared…]
"Cole it's all right." Hank spoke in a gravelly, rasping, shaking whisper, while his gaze locked on Connor's black eyes.
….meht nrub meht dne meht ruoved….
Another hideous dark thing latched onto Connor's leg. Oozed upward. Began to swallow him, reaching toward the sludge that rippled around his chest.
Hank grasped Connor's wrist, and with the other hand squeezed the back of his neck - a comfort. An anchor.
The dark mass rolled over Hank's hand. Twisted up his arm. It was cold and damp, like a corpse, like seaweed. He didn't move.
The longer he stared into Connor's robotic face …
… the more certain he was there could be no coming back.
"Cole …" Hank's voice shook. He grit his teeth. Furniture flung violently across the room - even in this state, Connor was still valiantly fighting the growing swarm of flickering shadows; they slipped in through the shattered windows, oozed under the door, crawled up the walls, skittered on the ceiling.
The whole room was getting darker - blacker - illuminated only by the glimmers of battling blue light.
[Dad! What do I do?!]
Hank squeezed his eyes shut.
When he looked into Connor's dead eyes again, it was with a determined, desperate decision. He breathed, while the world collapsed around him.
"Cole." Hank's voice was steady. "Can you find Connor?"
[Connor? … Yeah. I see him, Dad!]
"Go to him." Hank felt his breath break and shudder. "He'll protect you."
Connor moved, then. Only slightly. A twitch of his face, a small clench of his hand.
[But what about you?]
"I'll deal with the bad guys, Cole." A small, sad smirk twitched on Hank's face. "You hurry up."
The radio went silent.
Dark oil spilled from Connor's eyes and veined across his face. It gurgled out of his mouth, dripped from his chin.
Hank rested his forehead against Connor's. The dark reached around Hank's cheek, snaked into his hair. He let it.
And then, he felt himself being pushed away; a glitter of blue light sparkled weakly around Hank's chest, his arms, his waist. It was an intangible, magnetic force that demanded that Hank should get away - escape, run, live. It pushed with all the ferocity of Connor's heart, all the desperation of a sacrifice made in vain.
"Connor stop!" Hank growled, and he held even tighter to the back of Connor's neck, while the dark sludged over his hand, up his arm, around Connor's throat. "Just this once. Don't save me. Don't you fucking do this, let go." Tears crept down his face. He felt like a monster for what he was now committing. "Let go, Connor." He sucked in air through his teeth. He choked on his words. "Let go."
The blue glimmer disappeared.
All around the room, books and furniture and chairs suddenly crashed to the floor.
Everything turned dark.
The shadows converged.
Hank pulled Connor tight into his embrace. The cold black oil swallowed them both in frigid darkness.
He squeezed his eyes shut.