Chapter Twenty-six
Pathetic Fallacy
Islands had been an instinctive choice after the Fall. Big or small, long or round, size or shape frankly hadn't mattered. Have water. Have a natural barrier. Get colonized.
Except nothing was ever that easy. Food liked to run out. Room liked to run out if you took on more bodies than the spot of land could support. Or another pack of survivors swung by and kicked you out. Or there was a flood. Or a storm. Or something as simple as complacency and impatience came knocking, meaning at one point or the other most anyone grew tired of taking a boat and decided to either repair a broken bridge or build an entirely new one. Which ruined the point just a little.
Worst of all though? In a very curve-ball kinda way? The virus and its unexpected ability to dot its little is and cross its little ts. Because amphibian zombies? What the hell? Who'd ordered those up?
To get to the point, yeah, islands had been popular, but Kyle had seen more of them wash away, be overrun, or burnt to the ground than he'd seen them last. Inland, anyway. What happened out on the Big Blue was beyond him.
So it was nice seeing an island that'd done better than most and which'd lasted a good long while. It was a generous wedge of land surrounded by a manmade canal and connected to Villedor's streets by a single rope bridge. The canal had high vertical walls, and they'd capped off the bridge with a small labyrinth made from scrap. The walls meant no amphibian jerks climbing onto any shores and the chokepoint meant Biters were more likely to get turned around or trapped if they tried to get onto the bridge. Plus, there'd probably been someone assigned to guard the swaying thing twenty-four-seven.
Maybe the guy they'd found stuck to one of the bridge posts. He'd had a bolt rammed through his neck and been eaten from the chest down.
The island itself was one of Central Villedor's dedicated farmholds.
According to Lawan, it'd been run by a commune of four families, who'd lived crammed into two stacked homes built on the narrower section of the wedge. A space they'd shared with a rotation of three PK watchdogs.
To the PKs credit, those three men had died outside the homes, their remains scattered over patches of trampled pumpkins and rolled over snapped-off tomato plant supports. Villedor's nightly first responders had done a real number on them. Shit, they hadn't even taken the time to put on all their armor. (Meaning they'd not expected anyone to try and fuck with them in the middle of the night.)
The homes still stood. Intact.
Kyle stood in the bottom-floor doorway, his left hand idly picking at the door jamb. Risk for splinters? High. Care level? Low.
He looked up.
Once upon a night, the island had boasted a set of strategically placed UV light clusters. They'd been independently powered from the rest of Villedor's non-existent grid, running off a small wind turbine catching the wind funneling along the water, a bunch of solar panels layered onto the home's roof, and a backup generator for when their batteries ran out.
A solid, if fucking useless, setup. Especially against Church Hounds.
The clusters on the doorframe above Kyle had been reduced to nothing but jagged glass and bent metal. Smashed to literal bits. Like the generator. And the turbine, which'd come down like a tree and now hung halfway down the canal walls.
Not only had the Church steamrolled the place and opened it up like a banquet, they'd also taken the time to prevent anyone from easily resettling here.
Jerks.
Gravel crunched. Carefully.
"You find the kids Lawan mentioned?" Aiden asked, sneaking up on Kyle's back, one hesitating step after the other. Probably not all too ready to hear 'yeah, all little dead bodies accounted for'.
They weren't though. "Nah. Just the adults. The Hounds probably took 'em."
There was a heavy, unhappy sigh before Aiden leaned around him, peering into the dark.
Four half-eaten bodies were laid out on the ground floor. Plus the Biters Kyle had put down a few minutes ago. (Or five? Or ten? For how long had he been standing here, useless?)
There were more upstairs.
"So, uh—" went the kid, "you hauled ass over here like you were expecting to find Zofia. Were you worried she'd done this?"
Kyle puffed out his cheeks and dropped his eyes to Aiden.
He didn't want to talk about it. But if anyone deserved an answer, then it was this here kid who stood with one foot in the same precarious grave as Kyle and Fi did. "Remember when I told you about Theo? The Volakid?"
"Yeah. The 'You deserve a life' speech. I remember."
"That's the one. He and his brother spent weeks attacking safe zones back in Harran. At night. They'd crack them open for their cognitively challenged Volatile buddies." Kyle pressed his tongue to his teeth and grimaced. Much as he'd grown to love Theo, the attack at the Sunset Yard (and finding those kids and their tied-up mom) was never going to get any easier to remember. "It was their whole thing," he concluded. "Meaning when—" Kyle gestured at nothing in particular. His words failed him. They dropped off a ledge, his heart going with them.
"I get it," said Aiden. "I think. You worried if she's gone far enough she'd do the same?"
Shame slammed into Kyle.
He had. For the entire trip over here, he'd downright turned Fi into a monster in his head.
"I don't know what I'm thinking," he finally admitted. "I have nothing. I don't have a fucking lead. I don't have a trail. I just—" Shit. His voice was getting wobbly. His throat constricted. Sighing, Kyle shoved off the door and stuck himself back onto a well-tended path made from wooden slats and small pebbles. It was drenched in blood.
"Makes two of us, huh?" Folding his arms, Aiden fell in step with him. The gesture wasn't stubborn but guarded, his fingers clenching and unclenching in a nervous tick. "I've gone from wanting nothing more than to find Mia because the alternative was that I'd either given up on her or that she's dead… to dreading it because all of a sudden there's this third option. And I don't even know exactly what that third option means. If she's with that Lady, with Waltz, what does that mean for me? How do I deal with that? Do I really still want to know?"
"Yeah." Kyle yanked himself out of the pit he'd been tumbling into. For a second anyway. Just long enough to drop a hand on the kid's shoulder and give it a light squeeze. "Yeah, you do. Which is why we'll both keep looking."
Aiden nodded. "Until they turn up."
"Until they turn up."
Guess what.
Nothing turned up. Zero. Zip. Zilch.
But the kids (Aiden and Lawan) stayed out with him anyway, performing about the saddest grid search ever known to man. Street by street. Building by building. They stirred up Biter groups. Flattened a handful of Speedsters. Skirted around a playground stomped to rubble by a Hulk heaving and grunting in the remains of a sand pit. Ran into a gang of run-of-the-mil bandits to top it all off, who were quickly discouraged when Kyle grabbed the first dude's baseball bat mid-swing and broke his nose with it.
And they found nothing.
Who're you kidding? he thought about every second minute. He wasn't going to find her like this. He knew that. Aiden knew it, too. So did Lawan. He'd had a better chance when the Church'd still had her. And everyone present—even the birds with their shitty afternoon ditties—fucking knew that.
Yet here they were, wasting daylight, while the tightly packed ball of knowing that'd begun to live in Kyle's stomach grew denser with every hour crawling by.
By the time evening came, the fucking ball must have picked up its very own gravitational field and started sucking his soul away. There was—quite fucking frankly—just no other way to explain what he felt when he squinted at the sun sinking between Villedor's skyscrapers, painting the sky a shitty hue of red.
"Let's head back," he said, relenting.
Maybe tomorrow'd give him another red circle to add to his map.
Being a Pilgrim typically came with a very particular advantage over most anyone else. Mobility. If a place turned sour—dwindling food, rivaling groups shoving and pulling—a Pilgrim had the means to pick up and leave. Granted, first, the Pilgrim had to learn how to spot the signs of flaring tensions and then they had to grow the sense to follow through with it.
Aiden had acquired both.
Which meant he had to work double as hard not to listen to them from the second they'd returned to the Fish Eye. He honestly felt as if he'd carried a bell into the center of a ring of sleeping Biter and one he had the strange compulsion to ring. While naked.
Urgh—
Pensive, Aiden had endured. He'd made it through what'd been left of the evening. He'd made it through the night. He'd even made it through the early morning, all while the Fish Eye chaffed itself bloody on fear and uncertainty.
Urgh, he thought again, followed by an annoyed "Ouch," as he managed to prick his finger with a needle. He'd been idly working away on darning one of his socks, his attention anywhere but on the work. His eyes kept wandering away from the task at (literal) hand.
He'd claimed a tarp-covered crate as his perch. It afforded him a decent view of the Fish Eye's main entrance and exit, while still allowing him a measure of privacy. Plus, he could keep an eye on Crane, who'd been leaning on a nearby railing and staring out across Villedor like that'd suddenly make Zofia wave a big Here I am flag in the air.
Aiden understood him.
Deeply.
He'd done a lot of staring himself. It never amounted to much of anything, but, sometimes, staring was genuinely all you had left.
Now, why Aiden felt the need to keep a watchful eye on a man about double (or, like, triple, he honestly didn't know) his age, that he had yet to figure out.
A careless crunch of footsteps coming up to his perch made him set the sock down on his lap. Every thought of keeping a close eye on the man who only recently had almost killed him was set aside, too.
"Aiden," Lawan said. She grabbed the edge of the crate, pulled herself up, and sat on its edge. The whole thing creaked. "You know we have seamsters here who'll do this for you, don't you?"
"No."
"Now you do." She smiled at him; a short-lived pull of her lips that quickly died once her attention was drawn to wherever she'd just come from. She looked straight-up pissed.
Aiden tracked wherever she'd looked.
Ah. A duo of Peacekeepers. They were making their way past them, following some endless patrolling pattern that'd take them around the entire hold.
"God I wish they'd all just fuck off again," she said. Loudly.
Aiden committed a quiet, one-shouldered shrug. He got the sentiment. The PK had turned themselves into something of a new fixture at the Fish Eye after the Church's attack, leaving behind men in blue posted at every possible entrance and exit.
They were better armed than the Fish Eye's people and while maybe their intention had been straight-forward and honest at the start, their attitude was broadcasting an entirely different message.
Everyone, behave.
Now what could ever possibly go wrong with that?
"Anyway." Returning her focus to Aiden, Lawan lifted herself an inch closer. "Come clean. There's no way you've only just met them."
"Who?"
"Crane and his wife."
Okay.
His socks were going to keep their holes for now, weren't they?
"About two weeks ago." He snapped the thread, returned both thread and needle to their tin, and folded up the sock.
"And yet you're risking your neck for him?"
He shrugged. "They saved my life. Twice." He blinked. "No, three times. The first time was right after I got bitten." A wince, and then all of a sudden he kept talking, like admitting to being an idiot was just the kind of thing you did these days. "I, ah— I ran into a Volatile nest."
"You did what?" She spared him a small laugh.
"I know, I know. Stupid." Leaning his head in Crane's direction, Aiden scratched at a suddenly rather warm ear. "They came after me and pulled me out."
"They followed you into the nest?"
"Mhm. Right after that, the Bazaar back in Old Villedor tried hanging me." The fingers picking at his ear fell to his throat. "It felt like the whole damn place was there, stringing me up, but Zofia got in their way anyway and cut me down. She wouldn't let them get to me. Even though she was outnumbered by a lot to one." Aiden sighed. "I guess what I'm trying to get at is that they both took a lot of chances on my behalf without once needing to. They didn't have to go into the nest. They didn't have to stop the mob from hanging me." Or use an Inhibitor on me when I literally fucking turned. He left that bit unsaid. "Which isn't exactly how things generally work out."
"Guess not."
"Shit." Aiden leaned back and glared at a blanket of grey clouds. "I bet none of this would have happened to begin with if I hadn't fucked up and walked into the damn nest."
She scoffed. "That's bullshit. There's no way to tell, Aiden. What's done is done, and the best you can do now is make sure you keep standing. Both of you. I mean, considering all the shit you've been through since you came here, two out of three is pretty damn impressive. Try and keep it that way."
His chin fell to his chest and he regarded her flatly.
"What?" Lawan cocked her head up. "Look, I know you're hoping his wife will turn up alive and well, but do you genuinely think that's what'll happen? Do you believe it? Deep down?"
He couldn't summon more than a shrug. Even though he'd have loved to say, with confidence, how wrong she was.
"And if he does find her and she's dead, or worse, what do you think he'll do next?"
Now this one wasn't to guess. "He'll go after Waltz."
"Exactly. And it'd majorly suck if you went with him."
"Come on—"
"No, I mean it," she said. "It would. I like the dude. Crane, I mean. He seems to get a lot of shit done, but that doesn't mean you need to die for him. I mean, it's not like you're going to have a lot of luck finding your sister if he gets you killed first."
Bristling, Aiden snapped his pack shut. "Okay, that's not fair."
"I'm just telling you there's going to be a time very soon when you're going to have to choose if you're going to throw your life away because you feel like you owe him, or if you're going to use whatever time he's bought you to actually keep living." Her eyes cut away from Aiden. "And speaking of," she added while holding a grim smile and indicating Crane with a nod of her head.
He'd started walking their way, a radio was pressed to his ear. His steps were full of a purpose Aiden recognized too damn well.
It was the same purpose that—a little over two weeks ago—had hurried Aiden into a dark tunnel at the base of Villedor's walls. The same purpose that might—or might not—have doomed all three of them.
Kyle's fourth red circle had come by radio. It took him in the opposite direction of where he'd spent all of yesterday searching, going as far southeast as the Church's territory could reach before it hit a literal wall.
And if Aitor's spy was to be trusted, then Kyle had about no time whatsoever to beat the Church to it. All the better for him then that he had great lungs, long legs, and a Villedor local who'd never much cared for borders.
Unfortunately, the Church had wheels.
Fucking unfair.
The address Aitor had come up with was in a postal code suffering something of an identity crisis, where an otherwise (once) homely neighborhood made from one- or two-story homes had come to compete with offices popping up in their backyard. Once they'd hit the area, Lawan navigated them through a maze of narrow streets Kyle would have gotten hopelessly lost in, picked one house out of many, and led them inside and up where they parked themselves on a balcony at the back.
Had there been Biters and screeching Speedsters on the way?
Plenty.
Had there been annoying rain turning the roof slick?
Absolutely.
But nothing those aforementioned long legs and a stubborn forward momentum could not handle. And now here he stood, wet and thoroughly out of breath while he stared through a swaying tree line offering itself up for cover.
Across the street—literally straight in front of him—stood a black van. It was parked badly at the front of a five-storied building, its backwheels sitting on the stairs going up to the entrance. The entire ground floor was wrapped in shutters, safe for a double-winged glass door (without the glass) smack in the middle. That was wide open, with the shutters pulled right off and reduced to shreds littering the steps.
Kyle's eyes flicked up.
A large neon sign reading Walgiddy Studios marked the building. The WAL and DIO on the signs were lit.
That meant electricity inside.
And the van covered in zombie proofing—along with the dead Biters lying sprawled on the street and steps—meant Church inside.
He couldn't tell for how long they'd been there.
Or how many there were.
As-a-matter-of-very-annoying-fact, he couldn't tell shit between the covered windows, the blocked-out entrance, and on account of how he didn't have x-ray vision.
"What now?" Aiden asked. "We go in?"
"Into a five-floor dark zone?" Lawan countered. "With Hounds crawling all over it? Are you nuts?"
Aiden scoffed. "So what do you suggest? We wait until they come out?"
Kyle's eyes cut from one corner of the building to the other. There was no way in from the roof. A parking lot separated it from the one on the left (long his legs may be, flying, he could not) and the building on the right only reached up three floors. There weren't any windows facing the narrow gap between them.
"Why not? Let them do the work for you," Lawan said.
"What, and give them a chance to—"
—Kill her, was probably how this one was supposed to end but Kyle cut Aiden off before he had a chance to say the words out loud. "She's right."
"She's— what?"
"You two are staying here. Keep an eye on the front and the truck. I'll go in and see about finding Fi before they do."
"Alone." Aiden's voice was flat. "Are you nuts?"
"Yes and yes again. We don't even know if Fi is in there, let alone how many Church thugs we'll find. If I go in by myself I have a better chance at staying out of sight. Plus, I'll move faster if I don't have to worry about tagalongs."
"I'm not a tagalong. You took me into a Hunter's nest, how's this any different?"
"Yeah and you almost died. Stay here. That way you can give me a headsup if anyone else joins the party." He tapped his radio. "If more Hounds roll up, give me two clicks. If they do get Fi before me and come out with her, give me three." He spared a short look at Aiden. The kid stared at him. "Got it?"
"Alone," Aiden repeated.
"Yeah."
Just him equipped with his brittle sanity, his machete, a bulky UV rod, and his very last dose of Windfall.
"It was nice knowing you," Lawan had told Kyle before he'd hauled himself over the balcony railing.
Expressway down. Destination: a bed of scratchy biodiversity.
He landed with a grunt, ignored the four Biters stuck in the overgrown yard, and crossed the street trailing twigs and leaves while he dodged one water-filled pothole after the other.
Please.
Please be in there.
He left everything beyond that simple wish behind, and by the time he'd made it across, his mind had settled with a practiced calm, pinning him to the eye of a storm. Anything else, jitters, doubt, or anything less, simply would not do.
Kyle hit the steps. Reached the front, his heart pounding angrily. He'd go around. Find a backdoor or a garage entrance or whatever, and then he'd—
—a muffled boom ripped straight through his paper-thin excuse for a plan.
Someone screamed.
Glass shattered. A window gave way above him, with two bodies exploding outwards from the first floor. One of the bodies was a shrink-wrapped Speedster, its skin pulled taught over sinew and bone. The other was a Hound with large spiked pads on his shoulders. Those very same spikes were impaled in the Speedster's chest, though that didn't put an end to the clawing, the biting, or them both rolling down the steps while simultaneously trying to out-scream each other.
Well, okay—?
No stealthy insertion then?
The entrance on Kyle's right spat out another Hound; a lanky dude who leaned more towards some weird rockerboy, slash, goth combo than red on black Church aesthetic but who was nevertheless armed and eagerto come at Kyle the second he spotted him standing out there in the rain.
Nope. No stealth.
With his machete ready and waiting, Kyle closed the distance, ready to meet the Rocker Hound halfway.
Lawan's bolt beat him to it.
It smacked into the Hound with a meaty thunk. The dude was thrown slightly off course, coughed up a manic laugh that sprayed blood from his lips, and managed two more steps before Kyle's blade tore out his throat and dropped him for good.
Kyle snapped a finger to his temple in quiet thanks and ducked inside.
The lobby was a wide open space, its walls crowded with award plaques and kept lit by giant, low-hanging fixtures resembling dangling eggs. A cage—narrow, low, and just about the size to fit a Fi—stood surrounded by portable UV lamps and stacks of gear the Hound from a second ago had been guarding.
He'd found the Hound's base camp, so to speak.
Kyle's eyes snapped through the hall.
Elevator doors divided the room. They were closed. Front desk on the right. Two sets of stairs. One on the right (blocked by a pile of strapped-together furniture). One on the right (cleared, the barrier smashed to pieces). And above him, shouts, screams, and shrieks, all the tell-tale sounds of the Church clashing with whatever had made this place home.
The lack of choice was almost a relief.
Kyle went up to the left. He slipped past floor number one, leaving the Church and Infected to duke it out by themselves, and ignored number two on account of its door having been replaced by a stack of desks and shelves.
Good enough. No, amazing, really. It gave him a headstart and now all he had to do was clear each floor before they got to it, then find Fi standing out in the open, expecting him like he was picking her up for a night at the movies, take her hand, and bail before anyone saw them.
Easy. See?
. . .
Floor number three announced itself by means of a large, hand-painted 3. It was surrounded by small glass-covered signs, all pointing to different departments scattered across the studio. He didn't bother reading them or even to catch his breath once he hit the landing and yanked on the door. It parted for an open floor plan still lit by a handful of stark white lights. He saw drafting tables. Wheeled whiteboards covered in scribbles and papers fastened to them with magnets. Funky beanbags. A shotgun's wide barrel pointed at his face—
Kyle threw himself back into the stairwell.
A deafening roar followed him.
Shrapnel tore into the doorframe. More ripped open the hand-painted 3 and cracked all the small signs around it.
"Are you fucking kidding me?" Kyle wheezed and flattened himself against the wall, his ears ringing from the blast.
The Hound around the corner cackled and followed him, the shotgun's barrell bobbing carelessly into the open stairwell. Kyle—equally carelessly—threw himself at it. He knocked the barrel up with his palm—another shot rang, spat shrapnel at the ceiling, filled Kyle's nose with a biting, musty smell—and rammed his elbow into the Hounds throat. Something crunched (it wasn't his elbow). The shotgun traded hands. It was a stubby, handmade mess (at best), giving Kyle the impression it was about to come apart in his hand as he turned it on the choking Hound.
He tapped the trigger. The blast caught the Hound straight in the face. His mask did absolutely nothing to help.
Good.
But there were more Hounds behind him. At least two of them carried the same stubby boom sticks Kyle had just shot their pal with. They also had nets, his filter informed him. And one carried a steel rod, a noose hanging from its tip.
Kyle's imagination put two and two together. The math was ugly, made his blood boil, and had him squeeze the trigger with a lot less restraint than the first time.
Nothing.
Not so good.
He dove back around the corner. Dropped the (quite literally) smoking gun. Took to the stairs, two, then three steps at a time, and reached a 4 crushed together from thick, bold rainbows.
He'd barely had time to hit the landing and throw himself at the door when a pile of gnarly shapes came rushing down the stairs from above.
Speedsters.
They still wore their suits. One'd even hung on to its tie. He didn't bother counting them, just tore a sharp right, through an open door, and pulled the thing closed behind him. The Speedsters kept going. Not a single one went after him, leaving Kyle staring at the door with his jaw set tight while they hurtled down the stairs.
And that was when he first felt it.
A deep, profound silence pressed against his back; as if the space beyond the stairwell didn't anything to do with the fighting below. It squeezed at his ears, almost painful.
Kyle turned and met it with his metaphorical hackles raised.
A wide, empty and dimply lit corridor fell away ahead of him. Nothing moved. He took a shaky breath. Okay, this was one out of two levels left. One out of two chances. She was either going to be here or right above him (or, you know, on the second floor, which he'd skipped, but let's not go there). With the fingers on his left hand opening and closing, the motion mimicking him rolling a pair of dice between them, Kyle pushed on forward, hoping.
She'd be here.
She had to be.
Because where else was he going to find her? Where else but here, in a place covered floor to ceiling in a mess of dizzying colors trying to turn his head wherever he stepped? Comic book panels, Kyle registered unnecessarily. Literal kids-stuff comics, dominated by big fluffy critters and packs of six-year-olds for heroes. They were everywhere. Some crossed ajar office doors, making him nearly miss them, others flowed right over his head, with chains of characters holding hands as they danced from wall to wall.
It was disorientating in the half-arsed light.
He stopped at every door, nudged it open with his foot, and peered inside, mapping every inch. What he found in each was an image of time having come to a sudden halt. There weren't any Biters here. No bodies, mummified or otherwise. Granted, the dust level was off the charts, making his nose itch, but where were the crusted-over bodily fluids? The post-Fall abstract expressionism?
Nothing had been torn down, either, and each office he took a gander into still had a perfectly arranged desk. If it hadn't been for the smell of whatever had rotten away in the trash bins and the noise from downstairs, Kyle could have been led to believe this place hadn't ever felt the touch of an apocalypse.
Which was weird.
Much like whatever tension kept gnawing at his ears.
Okay, buddy. Here goes nothing.
"Fi?" he whispered during a lull in the fighting, not expecting a reply.
Meaning when he did get one, Kyle froze mid-step. His mouth ran dry.
Clicks. Subtle, throaty clicks. They had half a second at best to get his attention before the ruckus downstairs picked up again. He had no idea what direction they'd come from.
"Alright." Back to whispering to himself, Kyle unclipped the UV rod. No Fi, then. Got it. "I'm just passing through, guys…"
A quiet squeak answered him. An office chair, probably. A lonesome, spinning office chair going round and round after some chunky Volatile ass had bumped into it.
"There's snacks downstairs?"
The UV rod held at the ready, Kyle followed the corridor out onto a four-way junction. More of those small plaques on the corners told him where to find the break room, a sound studio, and about a dozen other offices and meeting rooms. Two fat arrows sat above and below the signs. One pointed behind him, another pointed straight ahead. Each arrow ended in a short set of bulky stairs with chubby blue elephants climbing them.
His eyes focused forward.
He could see the exit from here. It was tucked behind a row of wilted indoor shrubs at the mouth of the corridor. If he hurried, maybe—
A series of inquisitive chitters pinched at him from both sides. They told him what he'd find before he'd gotten around to glancing left and right.
Volatiles. Four of them. And not the fresh-baked raisins either, but the old guard, their battle-marked skin warped into gnarly armor and holding on to a distinct sheen beneath the corridor's lights.
Right.
Four against one.
He'd beaten worse odds, but fighting them here wasn't going to end well. Not with how the Hounds could catch up any second, ready to lay into everything in their path with fucking homemade firearms.
He set his mouth in a thin line. Kyle was a lot of things. Bullet or shrapnel-proof was not one of them.
However—how-fucking-ever—the thing strolling out ahead of him? Putting itself between Kyle and the exit he'd begun to consider? Where it stepped on whatever measly plan Kyle might have been building up to and crushed it under its dinner plates for feet?
Now that looked like it could eat a few blasts and laugh it off.
It was covered in a mass of plates and warped spines, protecting wide shoulders, thick arms, and forming honest-to-god guards over thickly muscled thighs. Scores of scars raked over it from head to toe; deep gauges that'd overgrown and hardened over the years. Like the one where something had cracked its face open, leading to spines sprouting from the gash. The spines travelled from its jaw up over where it'd had an ear once and then came together at the top to form an unevenly spiked crown.
Yikes.
The freak of a Volatile parted its mandibles and hissed.
Correction. Parted its one mandible. The other was a ragged stump.
Kyle snatched up all these details in the second it took all five Volatiles to lurch forward, their movements perfectly mirrored.
But before Kyle had a chance to experience life from the perspective of chum dropped into a shark tank, all five of them jerked to a halt. Their cracked chests shivered as they dragged a choir of inhuman, pitched growls from their throats.
Kyle's thumb hit the UV light.
Predictably, that stung.
Less predictably, none of the Volatiles reacted with the usual hissing and spitting and posturing when met with dinner boxed in by a wall of UV light. Because, yeah, the light wasn't fun, but they always tried.
These guys though? They held on a solid line.
Some ways behind Kyle, a door clapped open. Booted footfalls bounced through the floor, followed by the clink and swish of armor.
None of it mattered.
Not the steady breathing of heavy chests surrounding him. Not the Hounds catching up. Not the freak staring him down with yellow eyes.
None of it.
Without a warning, the whole world fucked off and left Kyle without sense or reason. Helpless. Adrift.
She'd pulled herself from the shadows like a ghost, dressed in blood, dirt, a torn top, and a pair of filthy sweats. Her steps were cautious. Light. They carried her into the open behind the freak of a Volatile and saw her pause with an arm raised. Her hand was poised as if she planned to land it on the thing's hunched back.
Kyle desperately needed to make sense of what he saw, but couldn't.
She didn't fear the Volatile. No, she put it right between them; a wall made of warped bone and flesh that wouldn't let him get more than a few, shy looks.
They were enough to seize him tight and crush his heart.
Dried blood covered her. It clung to her chin and throat like crusted-over paint, stuck to the front of her shirt, and smeared over almost every inch of her skin.
Ashen skin. Cracked skin, its surface alight with fissures of dirty amber.
Windfall had burnt through her. Fully. Wholly.
Most of its glow pooled where she might have hurt herself; at her elbows, her knuckles, at every scrape where gnarly patches of tissue had regrown grey and thick.
Had regrown wrong.
She wove to the side.
There was a tear in her top. Just above her hip. Her shirt had fused with a shapeless knot growing from her abdomen. Amber goop glued it all together.
"Fi," Kyle caught himself saying. His voice wasn't altogether steady. And her name was inadequate. No more than a pathetic echo of how he'd come undone. How he'd been pulled from his chest and thrown outwards.
Fi flinched. Her finger curled. Her head twitched with a violent tick.
"Fi?" he repeated. Louder this time and with every intention to be heard.
Her eyes narrowed. At him. Sharp. Clever. Present. Chiding him. Telling him—unmistakably—how only the dumbest of motherfuckers could ever read this situation wrong and think this trap had been meant for him.
No.
He'd only managed to get in the way.
In her way. In her pack's way. He'd put his stupid ass right between them and the Hounds racing up the corridor.
Without giving himself the chance to think it over, Kyle killed the UV rod. After all, she'd been right. He couldn't be the one to kill her. If this was it, if he was being delusional because his heart refused to accept the alternative, then he might as well...
Five Volatiles charged him.
Two on his left. Two on his right. And the mountain from the front, its shoulders ramming the wall with how little space it had.
Then they all swung past him to vanish from his life before they collided with two sharp booms and a cacophony of noise.
Fi had not moved. But Kyle had. He'd made it three steps from her. Then two. Then one, before her eyes grew wide and she fucking bolted.
She dove through the wilted plants. Dashed out the door. Kyle, jumping after her and hitting the ground running, almost had her before she'd ducked around the corner, his fingers catching the faintest whisper of cloth.
We don't run when we're gone, his sore leg moaned.
Well, we don't buddy up with Volatiles either, but what the fuck did he know, huh? He'd have time to freak out about that later. Pick it up like a proverbial rock and peek under it; except this rock was on fire and beneath it waited the Abyss.
For now?
Stairs.
Fi went up those steps at a speed qualifying as flying, her feet barely skimming the ground. Kyle? Kyle thrashed after her, his legs pumping overtime and his heart roaring in his ears.
"Fi! Come on! Stop!"
She did not, in fact, stop. She went up one floor. Then another, at which point the overhead light faded and was replaced by the dull work of a single, dim EXIT box mounted over a sturdy metal door.
Maybe it'd be locked. She'd hit a dead end, he'd pick her up, sling her over his shoulder, and then they'd bail.
The door was not locked.
She slipped through without throwing the entire thing open and had it closed in his face before he reached it. Kyle, unwilling to waste as much as a breath, threw himself against it, shoulder first.
There was a surprised gasp. A bit of resistance. But the door flew open anyway and by the time he'd surged through, a Fi-shaped bundle bounced off the side of an industrial air con.
Cold rain fell around him, hurried on by a gust of wind. They'd come out on the roof. And he'd just thrown her like nine feet, straight into a solid surface.
Kyle staggered to a stop, his shoes crunching over large, coarse gravel. The entire roof was carpeted in it, which was to say Fi had landed in a patch of it. Not moving. "Oh god," he blurted, rushing up to her. "I'm so sorry—"
He'd barely reached her before Fi twisted where she was laid out and straight up swiped his legs out from under him. The sky looked down on him, got into his eyes—wet and cold—and then, THUMP, the back of his head crushed against the gravel.
"… really?" he coughed and rolled to the side. One grab and he'd clamped his hand around her foot.
So she kicked him.
In the face.
Sharp pained lanced straight for his brain. A distinct, crunchy POP told him she'd broken his nose. None of which made him let go, but she yanked her foot out of his grip anyway. She'd always been slippery.
Why should that have changed?
Groaning, Kyle scrambled after her, his legs taking a moment to find out which one was supposed to go forward first. Then he chased her through a maze made from dead machinery and relentless rain, always a few steps behind her, never quite making a corner before she'd already flown around it.
That lasted until they cleared the machines and came out on a wide and empty stretch of roof. She'd already made it to the edge. Kyle slowed, a singular, icy fear gripping him by the neck.
"Fi— please. Look at me."
She did. She twisted around and stared at him, her hands clenched into fists and her shoulders rising and falling in a rapid, jerky rhythm.
"I know you can hear me. And you know me." Kyle raised his hands in a desperate plea for surrender. There was blood on his lips, getting into his mouth. He wiped it away and added, "I'd be dead if you didn't. You'd have let them kill me down there." He swung an arm out and gestured back across the roof.
Pain shuttled across her features.
Not pain from him fucking flinging her. Not whatever pain she might feel from her skin covered in lesions and tumors. No, this was a familiar beast. One he'd read on her way too many times; one he'd vowed—over and over again—he'd fight tooth and nail for her.
It was the anguish that'd followed her out of Harran. The look she'd worn every time the demons in her head had grown too loud.
She squeezed her eyes shut tight, the gesture scrunching up her face, and tilted her head sharply sideways. Almost as if she wanted to shake a thought from her skull. Then she bent forward, scooped up a handful of wet gravel, and threw it at him.
Well aware of her mean throwing arm, Kyle turned away to let the rocks pepper his arm. But she wasn't done with one scoop. She kept grabbing more. Kept flinging it at him, handfuls at a time, until—with an irritated, clipped shout—she turned around and went for the ledge.
"No-nonono, WAIT!"
Kyle made it to the edge of a roof in a desperate sprint, but all his fingers caught was air. She'd jumped — straight down to the next roof over.
Why had he listened to Crane? Why the hell hadn't he gone with him? They'd fought Hounds together. They'd gone at a Night Hunter together (kind of). They'd even made it through the ambush at the Fish Eye, fighting off two of the Church's Hands.
So then why had he not told Crane he could shove his plan of going in alone up his ass and let him help?
Why… the answer was embarassingly simple and Aiden knew it. But knowing didn't exactly mean he was also willing to face it.
You were scared, was—put mildly—unacceptable.
And then the fighting had started and he'd made one—only one—move forward before Lawan had grabbed his arm and stared him down. It hadn't been a hard grab. He could have pulled away from her. Easily.
But he'd been scared. Petrified. It'd only taken that one heartbeat of him hesitating when she'd pulled him back before the fear had completely overwhelmed him. Because, yeah, they'd fought Hounds together, but hadn't he spent a good portion of that fight on his back, filed teeth snapping at his throat? And, yeah, they'd gone against a Night Hunter, which had seen Aiden face-to-face with a Volatile intent on ripping him to shreds and nearly succeeding.
What had ended up seeing Aiden through most of it had been luck.
Dumb. Luck.
Today he might not have any.
The fighting across the street carried on and Aiden watched it from afar, safe and sound on his little balcony, his teeth clenched. Then Lawan tried to give him a heart attack.
"Aiden!" She knocked her hand against his shoulder. "Look, up there."
"Up where—" he started, but then he saw them: two figures up on the roof. One short and slight, the other much taller.
Crane and Zofia.
He leaned against the railing. "That's them!"
"I figured, what are they doing?"
"I— I don't know? Arguing? I think she's throwing rocks at him."
"Huh."
Remembering how he'd first met them—when life had been far less complex if a little dull, comparatively—and how she'd done very much the same, made him almost want to laugh. Almost. But then Zofia turned around and jumped, landing on the roof below.
She kept running.
Crane, not hesitating for a second, followed her.
Except when he landed there was a muffled crack and then he was gone.
"Shit—"
This time, Aiden didn't give himself the time to think. Or Lawan the moment she'd need to grab a hold of him. He snapped his knees over the railing before the fear had time to catch up, and ran.
The roof below him had a hole, Kyle noted—distantly—before he threw himself after her, all thoughts of distance versus weight versus you have a shit leg buried in the backyard of wherever he kept all his other reasonable thoughts.
By the time he landed, she'd run halfway across.
And he landed badly, by the way. Right at the edge of the hole. CRACK, said the roof, and before Kyle managed to entertain the thought of getting up, the outcropping he'd landed on gave a quiet, muted moan. It snapped.
Kyle hit the ground to a shock of bright light and a quick, hard clap of darkness. Once the darkness cleared—how long that'd taken he had no idea—he wasn't entirely sure where he was or how he'd gotten here, but he did know the why. Fi. His bright-lit arrow in the dark.
Groaning, Kyle fumbled for the murky light, where he found copious amounts of rain. A thought chased after him. Something about What the hell? You made it through four floors full of Church thugs and Infected without a scratch and then you fall down a fucking hole? and how he should get his stupid ass up.
He tried.
Easier said than done. He'd come down on a debris pile smack in the middle of a moldy, mossy pit two floors down. Thorny shrubs grew from between cracks in the pile. They snagged on his shirt, his pants, and his skin. None of which was helpful. It took one effort to steady himself and he lost his footing again, leading to a pointless flail, another shitty attempt to regain his balance, and down he went again, his foot slipping on a floor slick with moss.
His right knee hit the ground.
It hurt.
Though not as much as the quiet resignation of, She's gone.
Yeah, sure, he'd found her. But she'd run. From him. Kyle closed his eyes. Of all the possible outcomes he'd relived in his head every single day since he'd lost her—the majority of which he'd dreaded more than his very own death—this one hadn't crossed his mind. Not once.
So— Where'd he fuck up?
Where, between the moment she'd pointed her stupid bow at him and the moment she'd stared at him while hiding behind a goddamn Volatile had he fucked up so bad, she'd need to run from him?
And now he was down here with no hope of catching up with her.
Yeah. She was long gone.
Rain drummed on his head. Ran down his collar. Soaked his shirt. And nearly washed away the whisper of movement nearby. Kyle cracked his eyes open. He expected a Biter. A Volatile. Hell, why not a tiny indoor Hulk to beat the shit out of him.
Instead, he caught a smudge of amber drift by in the dark. Tears and rain turned the light into a smeared mess, and for a little while, Kyle wondered if he'd hit his head hard enough he'd suffer a late onset of seeing stars.
Except then the amber moved closer.
Grew a shape.
Fi.
Kyle blinked his eyes until she'd grown more solid. His other knee hit the deck with a thump.
Down here in the darkness, the amber under her skin was given every excuse to pulse with a muddy glow. Her eyes shone along with them, their dull silver coated by a bright sheen.
Kyle couldn't bring himself to do anything but stare.
She crept closer. Slowly. Steadily. With every step he watched her take, he realized: her movements were her own. Her posture was familiar. There was nothing feral about the way she set one foot in front of the other and nothing inhuman or hungry about how she wouldn't pull her eyes off him.
Even the pain from earlier was gone. A curiosity had replaced it, alert as it rummaged in his eyes, looking for something.
She didn't even stop at the light. All it did was make her shoulders jump in irritation before she went back taking her careful steps until she'd come close enough to grab.
If he'd wanted to.
And, god, did he want to. But Kyle didn't.
What'd he used to tell himself? You don't catch a Paper Tiger by chasing her? You caught her slow. With care. Without hurry. Anything else, she'd always spook.
He'd learned that years ago.
"Hey," Kyle croaked. Between the lump-filled mess of his throat and his nose swelling up, the word came up exceedingly miserable.
Her forehead creased with a frown. First, he'd thought maybe he'd startled her. Or she'd felt sorry for him. But then her eyes cut upwards, finding a spot on the wall that'd align with the building they'd just left behind.
They grew distant. Distracted.
Kyle's urge to wrap his arms around her flared. He tempered it, opting to instead give himself a true champion heartache over all the patches of scabbed skin she'd grown. Every cut. Every scrape. Every single scratch was healing over to form a similar hard, unyielding layer.
That way, the next time someone tried to cut her they'd have a much harder time.
So.
He forced a bit of reason to the surface. Made himself think. Put the pieces together.
She'd changed.
She'd turned, but it'd gone beyond the fury-stoked, scratching Fi she'd been the last few times she'd slipped; the spitfire who'd have scratched his eyes out without blinking.
She'd turned and yet she hadn't lost herself, because the woman who stood in front of him right now wasn't a Viral. She wasn't Theo in his darkest days and darkest nights. She wasn't Theo's brother.
She was Theo, after.
She was Jasmine with the sun up high, resigned to her cage and the rage that'd eat her up at night.
Kyle didn't know what it meant. For her. For him. Or if there was anything at all he could do. If he could bring her back. Fully. (Or if trying to would kill her.)
He choked the life out of that last thought.
Careful, Kyle allowed his right hand to slowly slide upwards until it found the Windfall injector and its sheath's velcro latch.
Pulling at it made her head snap back to him. Her eyes turned to slits.
"Are we going to fight?" he asked. "Beat each other up? Down in this hole, in the rain? A bit of pathetic fallacy one-o-one?" His left hand rose, his fingers lightly extended. Waiting for hers. Needing hers.
She didn't take the offer. Falling back on her heels, Fi cocked her head, puzzled.
"Trust me, babe, if you want a fight then I'll give you one. It'll be mean though. I'll cheat." He fought his clenching heart and tugged the syringe free. "Because there's no way—no way in hell—I'm letting you out of this hole unless it's on my shoulders. You hear me?"
Her cracked lips shaped muted words he couldn't read.
"What I'm trying to say—" he added, his voice beyond repair, "is that I need you back, okay? Can you do this for me? Come back to me? Please?"
The words she'd mouthed grew to a whisper. "—ying," he heard.
God, he didn't know what was going to kill him first: his heart snapping in half or the self-control it took to convince himself not to lunge at her.
"You're trying?" he asked. That's what she'd said, right? She was trying? Trying to come back to him?
Her head shook.
No?
Then, with a subtle stomp of her foot like she'd grown impatient with herself, Fi took a tiny step forward. "You," she said, hoarse. She pointed at him. "You're crying."
"Yeah?" he choked up. "And why's that?"
Skin whispered against his fingertips. Her palm slid into his. Kyle closed his fingers around her hand. He had no intention to ever let go again.
"Me?" she asked and all he had to offer for that was a senseless, pitiful noise as he pulled himself forward and slung his arms around her.
She was a feverish heat burning against his chest. A wildly rabbiting heart against his ear. But she didn't fight. Or pull away. All she gave him was a long, pained sigh and a sharp scratch at his back once he'd set the injector against her skin.
Her legs gave out. Her weight fell against his shoulder. Kyle's hands turned to uselessly fumbling, searching things. They cradled her head. Squeezed her neck. Got fistfuls of her tattered shirt. They clutched at her so tight, she stopped being there and he stopped being here, and the void in his chest finally collapsed.