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His head was pounding, like someone had hit him with a sledgehammer, his mouth was thick and dry, and god, he was so hungry. What the hell had happened to him? Why was he on the couch? Had he gone out and gotten drunk, or worse? No hangover had ever felt quite this bad, though, not even when he was on the Utopium.

Major couldn't believe how hungry he was. He hadn't eaten much yesterday, but this was over the top, a gnawing, aching, sharp pain in his stomach that only one thing could satisfy.

Brains.

Oh, god. He was a zombie.

Then it all came rushing back to him. Coming home to find all his Chaos Killer supplies laid out on the counter, the argument with Ravi, and then the sudden change from living to undead. He remembered, too, that he had never had a chance to explain the truth to Ravi, so his roommate still thought he was a serial killer. Given all that, it was a surprise that he was neatly laid out on the couch and not trapped in a locker in the morgue or something, he thought.

As he stirred, Ravi came into the living room. He was tense and wary, eyeing Major as if he thought he might become the next victim of the Chaos Killer.

"What happened?" Major asked the question to buy himself some time and to hear what was going on in Ravi's head—but also a little bit to hope that maybe he was entirely wrong about the whole situation and he wasn't really a zombie and Ravi didn't really know.

Yeah, nice try, Lilywhite.

Ravi pretended to think. "Let's see, what was it? Oh, yeah! Um, I accused you of being the Chaos Killer, you turned into a raging zombie, I tranquilized you."

Major sighed. Well, there went that last-ditch desperate hope.

"How do you feel?"

"Honestly? Hungry." He didn't want to admit how tempting Ravi's shiny pink brains sounded right now, but he figured he probably should. "Like, zombie hungry."

"I can help with that," Ravi said quietly. He clearly had decided to deal with the more present, more imminent danger first. "We'll head down to the morgue soon, but let's not bury the lede." It was obvious he was trying really hard to control his voice, and his emotions. "You're the Chaos Killer."

Major drew a breath and released it, preparing himself to come clean. Funny, for how much he had dreaded this moment, how little prepared he was to find it actually here. "Well, technically, I'm the Chaos Kidnapper. No one's dead; they're frozen."

"In preparation for their long-haul interstellar journey?" Ravi spread his hands out, giving Major a hard look that indicated he was going to need a lot more details.

All right, so he wasn't going to be able to hold any of it back. It should have been a relief to finally be able to tell his roommate everything, but it really wasn't. The whole thing sounded so unbelievable, he wouldn't blame Ravi if he didn't buy a word. But there was no help for it. "Okay, Max Rager knows about zombies. And they know that they're at least partly to blame for them. They want to get rid of the evidence."

Ravi was still staring at him as though he didn't quite believe what he was hearing, and Major couldn't blame him.

He went on, "They've identified potential zombies through purchases. Okay? So, hot sauce, tanning, hair dye." He enumerated them on his fingers.

That detail seemed to have sparked Ravi's interest. For the first time since Major had come home tonight, there was more curiosity in his face than anger or suspicion.

"There are hundreds of names," Major continued. "They learned that I can detect zombies. So now they have me going down the list, taking out anyone who sets off my zombie sense."

Ravi frowned, shaking his head. "Did you consider turning down their offer?"

Well, duh. Did Ravi think it was that easy? Clearly he had never met Vaughn du Clark if he thought that was a man you could just say no to and then go on your merry way. "They said they'd murder everyone on the list, starting with Liv."

"I see." Ravi nodded, if a bit grudgingly, accepting that Major at least believed he hadn't had a choice. "That's a … tough first offer."

"I mean, I thought that if I could make Max Rager think that I was killing them, freeze them instead, you would come up with a cure and there would be a big happy ending for everyone."

Ravi winced and sighed at that one, sitting down on the stool on the other side of the coffee table. Major was glad that at least his roommate was no longer keeping a careful safe distance between them, but damn, that brain smelled good. "We have to tell Liv."

"We can't."

"I'm going to tell her, then."

"Okay, look, everything I have done has been to protect her."

"Not to be funny, but that's what she said," Ravi pointed out.

He wasn't wrong, but Liv had broken up with Major for a reason. "You see more of Liv than anyone. Just answer this question honestly: Has she or has she not decided the only way she can make herself feel vital is to be some crusader for justice?"

It took a moment for Ravi to be willing to admit it. At last, he nodded. "It's brought some meaning into her life, to be sure."

"Okay, then ask yourself: If we tell Liv the truth, do you think this new version of Liv is liable to do something that'll get herself killed?"

Ravi couldn't argue with that one. "All right. I won't tell her. For now. But we have to figure out a way to get you out of this."

"Dude, I've been trying! Don't you think I've been trying? And god, what do you put on your brain? It smells amazing."

"O-kay." Ravi got up. "Let's get you to the morgue. I like my divine-smelling brain right where it is, thank you very much." He looked sideways at Major. "I don't have to handcuff you or anything, do I?"

"No, I think I can hold it together long enough to get to the morgue. And please, don't ever tell me why you have handcuffs."

"They're yours."

"Oh. Right."

At the morgue, Major watched with a mix of starvation and disgust as Ravi stuck some pieces of brain in a blender with hot sauce and whirled it all into a red mess. This was his life now. He ate brains. People's actual brains. But he was so hungry, he could easily have cracked open his best friend's skull and eaten his brains raw, so it was hard to get too high and mighty about the blended brain of someone who was already dead. He took the jar off the blender and chugged down the contents.

He couldn't believe how instantly everything turned around. From desperate hunger to a feeling of power and vitality like the end of a really great workout. "Mm! Tastes nasty, but feels great! Whew!'

Ravi turned away and threw his gloves into the hazardous waste bin.

"So, how close are you to a new cure?"

"Yeah … about that. Um … I've been successful turning a zombie rat back into a normal rat."

"So now it's time to try it on a two-legged zombie."

"A two-legged zombie has already taken it."

"Blaine?"

Ravi twisted his face up in pained confirmation. "He injected himself before I could do proper testing. He thought he was dying."

"I know I should want you to say that the cure worked perfectly …" The idea of Blaine dying a horrible death from an improperly tested zombie cure would almost be worth knowing that there wasn't a cure.

"Well, he's no longer a zombie," Ravi offered.

"But?"

"Side effects may include complete memory loss. He's still functional, still Blaine in many ways, just can't recall anything he did or anyone he met prior to taking the cure."

Well. Wasn't that a kick in the head. Literally, he supposed. Live as Major Lilywhite, zombie, or live as a human who was no longer Major Lilywhite. Not remember the day he met Liv, or the first time they kissed … No.

"Unless, of course, he's faking it," Ravi added.

That was always a consideration. With Blaine, you never knew. But Major wasn't willing to gamble his memory on the possibility. At least, not yet.