#proper part

His fingers still grip the rifle, the knuckles white on the dark surface of the gun, and he still stares into dark crimson eyes. The last words reverberate between them – him and the Beast – the talk of ashes and charred bones left in their collective wake somehow does not sound like merely a pretty metaphor anymore. Jack swallows back another question and slowly lifts himself off the floor.

The walker is gone in the minutes that had trickled by and he tries somehow to justify its lack of awareness of his own position – was he shielded by the structure or was a single signature not worth the hassle, or, maybe, the interference had messed with the mech’s systems?

There is also a different possibility, one that now is not as far-fetched as one would imagine otherwise, and he knows it’s the morphine talking as he glances back to the Beast.

"I’m dead, aren’t I?"

"Now, what makes you say such a thing, Sunshine?" The Beast tilts its maw to the side, playfully contrarian – yet under the light timbre something darker lurks with the intensity of razor-sharp fangs biting into the nape of his neck.

"This is limbo. Tartarus. The ceaseless punishment," Jack shakes his head, picks up the pace.

"Do tell me, Sunshine, how does one escape from such a predicament?" The Beast now keeps his stride slinking forward at his side, the words simultaneously mocking and paternalistic.

"One doesn’t."

"One doesn’t unless one has their own guide," the Beast chortles.

"I don’t remember ever being so goddamn fucking vague."

"You’re learning yet, Sunshine. You're learning yet."

"Goddamn fucking morphine," Jack murmurs. His vision is focused and swimming at the same time. His breath coils around his tongue with a taste of rusted iron. "If you're my guide, I'm fucking lost."

"Oh, Sunshine, did I ever aspire to such a title?" The barbwire lull of the laughter pierces his ears together with the roar of the fire, and the smell of burning plastic and artificial fabrics suddenly becomes dominant. The plane.

One wing is broken off and missing, the other is buried deep in a collapsed building. The fuselage is smashed into three neat pieces - the tail rests sideways on the street.

The inside of the craft is still on fire and the asphalt is soaked by fuel. No bodies. No blood. The luggage is strewn around. No body parts. Nothing. There's a ripped in half pink suitcase in front of him with a small plastic hand sticking out of the bundled clothes.

"Who's there? Please!" A woman. Jack turns towards the voice and a greenish silhouette swivels there with its hands outstretched as if fumbling in the darkness. A child cries. "Please, say something!"

"They're all dead," Jack whispers taking a step back.

"Yes, they are, and it was us who killed them, Sunshine, or did you so conveniently forget?" The Beast seethes with smug satisfaction. "Only ash and charred bones, no evidence and no witnesses," it hisses as it focuses the glare of its crimson eyes on him, like he is a mere insect under its scrutiny, "this is what remains in our wake. This is," it bares its fangs in a feral growl as it punctuates every word, "what we are, what we were, and what we are to become yet again."

"No," Jack backs further, a stumbling step after a stumbling step, away from the encroaching darkness that swallows him only to spit him out in a green-lit hell. "No."

His fingers move over the panel covered with a delicate synthetic mesh designed to evaporate on blast. A child cries. The explosive arms without a sound. The goggles give him fleeting vertigo with a split-second delay of the processed image.

"Please, say something!" The woman moves in his direction, slightly off to the side, and Jack evades her. The carpet muffles his steps. "I know someone's here!"

The child is still crying. A man screams in anger somewhere down the corridor.

"One. Two. Three. Boom," the Beast intones with a static of bad reception raising in the background - its voice morphs into that of a newscaster, "...that Mehdi Benjelloun has just claimed the responsibility for the bombing for..."

White noise. Everything drowns in white noise. The clock is ticking. The hands do not move, do not even strain, and the room is white.

"Mr. Morrison," the psychiatrist whose name he cannot recall smiles, the kind of impersonal smile one could expect from a professional detached from the situation. "Did the change in the prescription have any adversarial effects? Any notable differences you have experienced regarding your frame of mind?"

The Beast stings behind his teeth, scrapes the sides of his throat, looks through his eyes.

"No. Can’t think of any. Can’t…" Jack turns his gaze to the tree in the painting hanging above the vibrant ficus to his left, to the maelstrom of the painted sky behind it. The rapid strokes of the brush give it an illusion of a slow deliberate motion. "Felt worse for the first week but I don’t think I really thought about killing myself since then."

"That’s good to hear," the man types something on the keyboard.

"You redecorated."

"Excuse me?"

"This picture, it’s new. It’s different from the one before."

The doctor looks at him quizzically, maybe even slightly alarmed. The Beast whispers of danger, a hissing kind of murmur seeping into his thoughts.

"And what do you see in the picture, Mr. Morrison?"

"Morbid landscape with a tree," Jack swallows, eyes darting to the other side, searching for a route of escape from some undefined peril that now sits heavy on his shoulders. Its claws dig deep enough below his collarbone to draw blood that seeps through and stains the fabric.

"Visual hallucinations. This merits additional evaluation." The man extends his hand under the desk and the Beast roars in fury, it roars as everything is white noise again.

The white room. The chair is covered in dark rust, no - not rust - old dried blood, cracking and flaking off. The infernal ticking thunders louder and louder until he wants to scream just to drown it away.

"Getting lost in your own head again, Sunshine? We can't have that, not yet," the Beast whispers. "Inhale." Inhale. "Count." Count to five. Count against the ticking. Don't lose focus. "Exhale." He exhales, slowly pushes the air out of his lungs. "Remember..."

"Remember my training," Jack repeats opening his eyes - when had he closed them? The plane is yet again in front of him but in the meantime, he must have passed it. The cockpit looks almost intact - if not for the missing panes of glass and something still sparking inside.

He's hunched behind a concrete barrier - it seems the street had been closed off to the traffic before. Jack leans to the side to observe the plaza. There are several cars and a bus, one unmarked APC lying on its side. Recreational area primarily. He can see a bright red restaurant umbrella halfway thrown through a display window. A lot of bodies on the ground he can safely identify as Blackwatch personnel.  

Jack grimaces when from behind the APC a figure shambles out, a man in a stained dress shirt with a suitcase held in his right hand. Something unsettling in how strangely his neck twists to the left.

"I wonder, Sunshine," the Beast teases, "fight or flight?"

The man turns away and Jack mentally reconstructs the area mapping the best route. He licks his lips, runs his tongue over the chapped skin. Changes the grip on the Patten and moves hunched - eyes darting between the man and the ground - trying to find safe footing. Seconds he measures in breaths trickle by as he makes his way towards an overturned cart painted with happy pastels now greyed with settled ash.  

Jack stops to take another look at his surroundings. Crumbled building blocks the nearest street - he could climb over the rubble but the prospect is risky especially if he wants to avoid meeting the civilian or whatever else the man with the suitcase actually is.

Slowly, as the figure disappears behind the APC, Jack raises. Maybe he can circle him. A blink, and the man stands before him in a cloud of swirling black ash. No. Not a man anymore. Something that used to be human. The lower jaw is missing, the eyes are white, the broiled skin sloughs off the meat.

The creature shrieks with an unearthly tone; the wave of sound hits with a multitude of stabs and knocks the breath out of him. Jack falters and almost drops the rifle, scrambles to regain his composure.

Twisting tendrils of purplish light lash out but not towards him, no, to the side, and with growing dread he sees a body dragged upwards with the entrails flopping from under the vest, and limbs swinging in disjointed tugs like a ragdoll shaken erratically by attached strings. It raises the gun and turns towards him. Jack ducks behind the collapsed decorative gazebo. Bullets thunder against the cement.

A shriek again, his vision darkness for a second, and another body joins in the puppet dance. Shots spray wildly in a wide swipe rising clusters of dust where they hit.

Jack emerges quickly from the side and aims at the closest enemy. Two shots send the helmet flying, the third one shatters the brow, and the glowing tethers snap as the body hits the ground.

It’s not enough, the strings spring out from the creature anew and latch onto the fallen cadaver, sink and dig into the flesh, and bring it upright again.

"A resourceful abomination, isn’t she?" The Beast rumbles with glee, its presence growing, enveloping him, and mucous darkness shifting against his skin. The taste of mildew and rot steals into his mouth. "She tests our patience. We will kill her."

"We will kill her," Jack echoes as yet another puppet joins the fray.

"We will grind down her bones between our teeth," the Beast purrs. Claws rest over his hands, and then he runs between the bullets sailing with deadly grace through the air.

The Beast keeps his pace; the loud empty thumps explode in the sudden eerie silence as its paws hit against the pavement rising up clouds of ash. It bares its fangs, its maw low to the ground, and then it jumps through the motionless air swamped in the iridescent afterglow.

The Beast’s jaws close around the creature’s neck with a nauseating crunch. It turns and twists thrashing its head from side to side until meat, tendons, and bones separate. Mutilated head rips off and freezes midflight in the air.

With a snap, the movement resumes. Hunks of meat hit the ground with wet squelches, the violet tendrils dissipate, and the risen corpses fall over once again.

“We seek the passage to the cockatrice, to retrieve what it guards,” Jack answers before Gabriel has his chance to speak.

“The cockatrice? The old wyrm is long gone doddering mad to the singing whispers, and shriveled,” the wolf growls backing slowly into the shadows. “So be it. Let the wyrm bring you to your doom sooner than later, Destroyer. I will take from you what you stole from me, and then I will eat the sun and plunge the world into eternal darkness.”

 Sometime later

Herald of the Lost slithers forth from the womb of the void with a silent scream of singing whispers – and nothingness clings to his form in mucous strands of ripped membranes as he thrashes gasping for breath. Then, he raises slowly, his movements sharp and broken, like something that only wears flesh and bone for a fleeting moment and cannot fathom how it bends and flexes.

Herald speaks in the language of angels and around each syllable reality fractures and bleeds the void to seal itself with sluggish urgency – for it should not be uttered, and left to the singing whispers of the void.

Yet, Akande steps forward as Herald regards him with a smile that splits his face in a macabre gash – for this is the day of his vindication, and his is the reward to be reaped – the boon for his toils awaits him.

Fingers brush against his cheekbone in a caress, words curl around his senses, and his skin molts of his frame to reveal moist scales shimmering underneath. With each violent jerk of bones adjusting and slurping muscle shifting, with each unimaginable stab of pain and down on his knees, Akande has time to reflect on the nature of the recompense he had not expected – and to regret his pride with what remains.

When he stands, he is the first of the new race. He will sire the Lost back into the world ripe for the picking, and Herald leads him back into the darkness.

 Sometime later

The Sabbath murmurs, and Queen of Spiders presiding over her subjects stands proud and indignant, the dark crown wrought out of bog iron and betrayal sitting atop her head.

“You, a man, you dare to challenge me for my right to rule?”

“I come to you with the moon in my belly. I come to you with my brow adorned by the Lord of the Hunt and the blessings of Herne on my thighs. I come to you bedded by the Seven Year King. What have you to show for yourself, Queen of Spiders, but a crown forged with the still hearts of your dead lovers?”

 Sometime later

Jack can feel the void encroaching – the tendrils slowly climbing up his body – the searing cold and the freezing heat peeling the skin off his flesh and wriggling into his very existence – the hungry angels fighting in their frenzied avarice, the starvation and the desperation urging them onward.

Still, the calm descends upon him, for he can see the same darkness in Gabriel clutching his wrist with fraught strength, and understands this is the moment of the choice because Gabriel is not ready, not yet, and to call forth his nature is a war lost.

“Listen to me,” Jack smiles, “just listen, the mask, you don’t really need it, you never did, you never will.”

“This is really not the time,” Gabriel shouts back at him, his teeth bared and eyes red with smolder of hot coals.

“No, listen, you only think you need the mask but you don’t, but because you think you need it, you need it,” Jack uncurls his fingers and releases his grip, “so you have to find the missing pieces. Two more, just two more, Gabe.”

“Don’t! Don’t let go, I can get you out!”

“I made you a promise, once, long ago, and time to keep it has come. A life for a life.” It is easy, easier than ever before, to focus, and the pain of his blistering wrist is nothing – nothing at all – as are nothing the writhing claws of the Lost dug under his skin, into the very essence of what he is. “I’m sorry. Please, forgive me.”

And Gabriel lets go, his hand burned, screaming until all sounds are drowned out by the singing whispers. In the void, Jack curls around the last remnants of what is him lingering, and the smell of freshly tilled earth and lush growth assaults his senses. He looks to the sky where the stars sprawl in the shape of long-forgotten constellations and galaxies in memory of universes long gone and just waiting to be born again in violent explosions, each birth a cruel end and a hopeful beginning. Insects buzz a melodious cadence and fireflies dance a hypnotic ballet in the air.

He steps forward, his toes sink in the damp soft soil as he brushes away the cornstalks – the hushed rustling continuing when a light breeze stirs in the fields.

He knows he is alone, save for the one waiting for him in the small clearing full of broken bleached bones.

Reaper reaches out and Jack accepts, twines his fingers with black claws – dark and sharp like jagged obsidian. The question in a strange tilt and trill carries a sound of an accusation.

“I know. I’m sorry,” Jack smiles as Reaper pulls him close and its face nuzzles into his neck. “I won’t be here for it to end. A life for a life,” he gasps at claws traveling the length of his back. “Suffering for suffering. It’s a selfish wish born out of a selfish love.”

Reaper croons in a language that should never be spoken for it belongs to a different place and time, to singing whispers vibrating in the void, and around each syllable the reality bends.

“Forgive me my selfishness,” Jack traces the ridges of the skull with his fingertips – observing every little bump and irregularity – and as he is slowly laid down on the damp soft soil among broken bleached bones he knows Reaper’s face will feel like warm living flesh if he closes his eyes – but this time he will keep his them open as his world dies. Maybe this is the last act of kindness the cruel fate allows him.

Elsewhere, out of the womb of the void, Herald of the Lost slithers into the reality, to foretell the coming of those who were forgotten many a turn of the world ago.

 Sometime later

The rent is paid for another year. Gabriel closes the door behind himself and stops in place, unsure, observing the private mausoleum bereft of a body – in its place dust and remnants of life, all left almost like the day he had set his foot inside for the first time – the open cd case, the book thrown haphazardly on the table, the half-empty pack of cigarettes and the blue lighter, the shirt kicked in under the desk.

Pictures in the frames, of people he knows, and even one or two of his own, and a ghost of a conversation they once had.

Gabriel slowly slips off his gloves – it feels only right here, inside, in a place that is still Jack’s, still carries his memory – to accept himself as he is, just as Jack had accepted him. The tips of his claws trace stark lines in the dust gathered on the low wooden cupboard, his coat hangs on the back of a chair, his steps lead him to the bedroom, the bed unmade as it had been left that one morning.

He lies down between the covers and maybe he can imagine that some indescribable smell still lingers, remains to be found. And sometimes, when he dreams, in the little clearing among the stalks of corn Jack waits for him with fireflies dancing at the tips of his fingers, changed – alien – familiar, and Gabriel feels welcomed with every touch and word spoken in the intelligible cadence of the void.

The bed trembles under the added weight and he looks at what stirred him from his slumber, smiles as Dizzy, glaring, curls up beside him.

“You miss him too?” Gabriel asks, half-asleep, wondering, fingers reaching to pet her translucent fur, and may it be because of their shared predicament that she lets him, this one time. “She told me not to…”

In a moment, he scrambles frantically for his phone as Dizzy hisses at him. When Adawe picks up, he almost screams.

“He’s alive. She’s here, this dumb cat is here, Dizzy is here!”

 Sometime later

Some nights Jack sings to him, the other they spend lying curled together on the soft soil – yet sometimes Jack takes him somewhere else, beyond the fields of the corn.

The mountains crumble and fall apart revealing hidden underneath gargantuan shapes raising in clouds of dust and rock with misleading slowness owing to the distance as the sound of a bone-chilling thunder rolls over the plain.

The Unseen War.

Queen of Spiders collects her debts.

“What even was that place?” Winston asks, his voice betraying his uneasiness, and Jack has to wonder how much had he seen of the site itself to shake him up enough to drop his go-to mission persona even for a moment. “There was nothing in any reports that a facility of this kind was located in Ilium, and I don’t like not knowing.”

“Talon blacksite. Probably for their Replica project,” Jack grabs the rifle and with a wince shoulders it. The platform is still slowly climbing. “I don’t think…”

“Wrong. The whole facility has been devoted to Harbinger,” Shrike unceremoniously invades their communications. Lena mutters something in the background, most likely stopping Winston from saying anything. “Creating so-called commanders and Reaper containment failsafe. The procedure all three of you underwent was to attune you to Reaper’s telesthetic footprint but Sergeant Morrison can probably attest to how well it went,” she continues, the sarcasm dripping even from the electronically modulated voice, “since he managed to synchronize with it.”

“Oh, it went very well, didn’t it, Sunshine?” The Beast’s chuckle resonates in his throat.

“Nevertheless, Lacroix thinks she can control it, and she is mistaken. It can’t be controlled, not once had they managed it during the nine years they had it sealed. One cannot claim control of a force of nature.”

Nine years. Sealed in darkness. Alone. A different kind of dread is what Jack feels when the elevator stops, the memory of someone howling in the darkness beyond the frosted glass door – the pain and the anguish forced into each and every of the animalistic sounds uttered – it still evokes a sympathetic response and threatens to cut away his breath with how his throat constricts.

He has no will left to argue with Shrike as something suffocating settles on his shoulders. White light. White room. Nothing changes. The clock is broken, it ticks but the hands do not move.

“Breathe,” the Beast’s whisper forces itself into his ear and he shakily lets the air into his lungs. With the way Lena’s voice has a note of concern to it he realizes he must have made some sort of noise to alert her.

“Jack, you right there?”

“Caught a bullet to the side, made do with a field kit. I’ll manage,” Jack winces pulling the needle out of his arm. A small drop of blood forms over the puncture site.

“Bloody hell, Jack, luv,” Lena lets out a frustrated sigh, “try to pin your position and we will try to get you…”

“This is no time to…”

“Shut it, Papa,” she sharply cuts Winston off. “We’re not bloody leaving him.” She had seen his files. She should know better. She should get as far away from him as possible.

“Good. Because now your best chance of survival and succeeding in destroying Reaper is in you all keeping together and making it to Still Island. I’ll contact you again if the need arises,” Shrike finishes.

“I’ll manage it to the stadium, Lena, worry about yourself and Winston,” Jack, turning around, inspects the area for the first time; the dilapidated warehouse is seemingly abandoned – the broken wooden crates stand alone by the walls, some of them even touched by rot and mold. A good cover for a hidden entrance, especially if it makes an impression something illicit of a mundane sort is being conducted in here.

“Feck off, you old sod, because when I get my hands on ya bloody arse…”

If Lena has any other choice words to add, they all drown in the rising static followed by a wave of something washing over him with an inaudible pop accompanied by a monstrous giggle the Beast lets out, its bulk vibrating against his side. Every surface emits sickly red glow with intensity increasing over the edges.

“You hear it, Sunshine, don’t you?” The buzzing in his communicator is voices garbled beyond recognition, incessant and changing in pitch ever so often. Jack glances at the Beast keeping to his side, his fingers idly buried in its viscous substance. He – no, they – have to hurry. There is an invisible clock ticking away in a white room. He approaches the rusted staircase and slowly starts to climb up, left palm instinctively flying to his side to brace against the pain in a furtive gesture, but the external pressure on the wound still somehow alleviates the tug and tear inside.

“I do,” Jack stops at the top to catch his breath. The roof of the warehouse is covered with corrugated sheets, some of them askew, some missing. The sky, it looks like a dawn is breaking, the light tinted with the same shade of red as everything else.

“He is calling for him but they all hear it, just as you do,” the woman with the tattoo under her eye lays a hand on his shoulder. The warmth of her touch helps to push the pain to the back of his awareness and lock it away where it does not bother him so much. “You need to be careful, rafeeq,” she whispers when the receding tide washes over them again and she melts away into black ash floating away on the air currents.

Jack moves towards the metal walkway and finally catches a glimpse of a car stuck in the wall, crashed in from the outside. The headlights are still working and flickering on and off but what stirs his attention is a skeleton half-thrust through the windshield as if it were driving the vehicle at the very moment it was thrown at the building. The sight is bizarre, maybe even more than anything he had witnessed inside the facility. Jack raises the rifle and advances, foot after foot.

Overhead, there is an incoming sound of a roar, of a burning engine, and as he snaps his head up he sees the sleek shape of a plane moving across the sky, the right jet trailing flames and smoke behind, fire licking alongside the surface of the wing. A liner. It shouldn’t be here, not after all this time. He had seen some of the coverage in the facility.

It is flying too low. Descending too rapidly. Wobbling from right to left. The pilot won’t be able to pull it up, and if he does try, he will break the plane in half. At this speed, when it touches down, no-one will survive, not in the urban environment, and the fuel...

The engine blast from the craft blows the rest of metal sheets off the roof and in seconds the shape disappears from his view only to be soon followed by torturous sounds of a crash and then, an explosion. The whole frame of the warehouse vibrates, and the car jostles forward dangerously but stays suspended. The headlights switch off after two another flashes.

Jack clenches his teeth and follows the walkway to the door on the left. He can’t dwell on it now because the clock is ticking. The hands don’t move. It measures the time that does not pass.

Inside the small darkened room his overhead display starts to act up and he holds his finger on the trigger. Nothing. It passes. Yet the feeling of a presence – of something other with him in that room – stays as he forces the door open and descends to the ground floor. The air grows colder and he can swear he sees his own breath coming out in white puffs.

“Come out, come out,” the Beast intones while curling around his legs. Prints made out of black grease mark its dance on the ground.

“Whoever you are,” Jack finishes for it, eyes searching. “Come out, come out…”

“Wherever you are,” the dark laughter runs down his back in peals and ripples in his throat. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack notices a movement and turns shooting. Bullets pierce the air and embed in the wall. “They do leave such a foul aftertaste, Sunshine.”

The door to his right creaks and then tilts back, finally falling off the hinges into the world outside. The nagging feeling of not being alone passes far too slowly to be comforting.

“The ghosts, or the living?” Jack asks himself, eyes trained on the exit, and the alleyway he sees beyond the doorframe.

“Is there a difference, Sunshine?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“No. No, you wouldn’t,” with a somber note the Beast returns to him. Past the threshold the asphalt of the street is ripped up, he can see where the water pipes running below it exploded when the pressure of boiling water tore through them. The fact he’s probably dying of a radiation poisoning is an afterthought.

The rubble is everywhere and there is no intact window in sight. The burnt out frame of a bus stands half-crushed under the pile of concrete.

The unnatural quiet is what unnerves him, the overwhelming silence punctuated only by the crackling of the fires. Jack cautiously eyes the dead end where a side of a building collapsed and, after a short pause, sidles to the opposite wall and glances past the corner.

He pulls the trigger before his other senses catch up with the instinct guiding his hands; the grey figure – frozen in motion while running with hands raised above their head – explodes into ash gently whirling in the air until it slowly settles into a pile on the cracked asphalt.

The facility. The numerous piles of ash inside. The screaming woman that shriveled and splintered, and then crumpled into ash. Reaper will consume until he consumes all. The apocalypse. The end of the world.

Down the street there are two more ash silhouettes, one on all fours, the other standing – twisted to the side, lunging away, trying to hide, escape? It is the futility of the action that gets to him, for one cannot outrun their death.

With a thundering heart, Jack moves closer – the rifle heavier with each step he takes, claws biting into his shoulders in apprehension – his eyes never leave the figures. He licks his lips, unprepared for the sudden howl pushing another unseen tide of force tinting everything with a brownish sort of red.

The shapes made out of ash change and stir, grey transforming into flesh, cracked and sickly. The one on the ground, a woman, screaming, crawling, the skin on her exposed arms and legs bubbling and melting off, smearing wet splotches on the asphalt with each uncoordinated jerk of her body. Chunks of meat fall off her frame.

The standing one, a man, stumbling, hands outstretched – fingertips ending in dark charcoal, his face is seared into unreadable expression, lips charred and blackened, eyes oozing out of their sockets and down his cheeks like ghastly milky tears.

His communicator is screeching at him, the cacophony dizzying, and now he knows with a certainty raising bile in his throat those are voices of all suspended between life and death in the agony of their final moments here, a residue of some sort, a fleeting memory of being clinging to the crumbling reality.

“Not much more than you,” the scornful laugh comes from the doppelganger standing on top of the pile of rubble behind the tortured twitching shapes, his silhouette embraced by embers circling around him. The wraith weighs the knife in his hand, then throws it up to catch it effortlessly when it falls. “You are the same as they are, blind and stumbling, trying to grasp at something that’s not yours. Do you think he cares about you any more than he does for all the others?” He points the blade at him in his outstretched hand. “He has so many to choose from but in the end, I will make him see me, only me, and you, you will be devoured like all the rest.”

“I don’t mind,” Jack lowers the rifle, the barrel pointing towards the ground, and he smiles at the bloody apparition sneering at him over the nightmarish landscape. “As long as he needs me.”

“He doesn’t. He never will. Not you.”

The wave comes back and the pale-faced wraith fades along with the writhing screaming shapes that again solidify into bodies of ash as the change spills over them, and the myriad of voices in his comm quiets down.

“Not me,” Jack swallows back the bitter admission.

The mechanical hiss makes him glance over the makeshift cover – one of the hatches in the ground opens giving way to the rising black matte container – big enough to contain a human, barely. The coffin. That’s how they call it. He can feel the visceral knowledge claw at his insides, the acidic panic, the claustrophobic pressure on his mind.

It stops with a jerk. Jack tightens his grip on the Seegert.

The container opens slowly, agonizingly so, and from the inside stumbles out a masked figure dressed in a strangely familiar uniform yet nondescript enough he cannot place the affiliation. There is an ‘S114’ printed on his left breast in bold white letters. The man almost trips and then straightens, his posture undergoing a complete shift in the split second between the actions.

Jack has his eyes on the rifle held ready in the enemy’s hands, waits for the barrel to swing away from his position as the man scans the room. There is only a slim window for action, growing even smaller with two other hatches activating.

He climbs over the wall in one fluid movement and launches himself at the enemy, sending them both sprawling to the ground, twisting his pistol to the man’s neck and firing several times, lets go of the grip and grasps for the rifle, tears it away from the twitching fingers.

“Enemy sighted.”

Shit. Jack clenches his teeth and ducks behind the coffin offering close to no protection. They will flank him, it’s the basic maneuver. Any movement will put him in the line of fire, and even this cover is fleeting, the whole container shudders when the lid closes, and it starts to sink back underneath the surface of the training range. Inhale.

He dashes to the right, not bothering with blind cover fire, to lean against the concrete partition. Ignoring such risks as negligible is well within the usually calculated simulation parameters. Soldiers like this are expendable. Exhale.

The rifle, Patten – he smirks, lines of it fluid under his touch, not their usual loadout, but he’s familiar with it – should have the full magazine in. Thirty rounds. Good stopping power, moderate armor piercing capability. Bad news if the others are armed with those, still more of a fighting chance for him.

Inhale. Listen. A crunch to the left. Around ten paces back. His hands are wet with sweat. Visualize the height and the posture. Reconstruct the room. A sound of fabric from the right side. Build the replica in your mind. Exhale.

Inhale, prepare, rise up. Hold your breath. Shoot. The man jerks back and breaks in half when the bullets from the short burst impact with his mask. Chips from the concrete brush Jack’s cheek. Duck behind the cover. Exhale.

His heart is thudding in his chest. Close, too close. Again, the whirr of the machinery, two more coffins. He won’t last here long. There is a touch of hysteria to those thoughts, he knows, but knowing is different from managing. His fingers are becoming jittery, spasming on their own without control. The Beast grips his left wrist. Grounds him.

“Remember, Sunshine,” the oily sound coils itself around his mind. Inhale. The magazine should have around twenty-six bullets now. Three targets. Exhale. Accumulate the tension in the muscles. Prepare. The sound of the coffins popping open simultaneously. Inhale.

“Flanking.”

Jack springs out of the cover to the left, keeping low. The sound of the gunfire chases him as he moves in a semicircle. He passes the body on the ground and flings himself behind another partition. The dead soldier lies halfway out of the cover, he grabs his leg and hauls him closer with a strong jerk of his arms. He snags the two grenades, pulls the pin on one, counts down, and throws it over the cover blindly. The other one follows just as the dust brought up by the first explosion flows over the concrete to his side.

“Compromised. Need reinforcements.”

This gives him the time to eject the magazine from the dead man’s rifle. Around fifty-six bullets now. Two targets. Inhale. Jack leans out of the cover. He can see one enemy, crawling on the ground, one leg torn off above the knee, the other just a bloody mess under the ragged fabric. Lucky throw. The second soldier is hidden from his view now.

The man manages to lift his gun with one hand, the other bracing for purchase on the ground. Fuck. Do they even feel pain? Do they even register it? Jack cannot wrap his mind around the concept. Exhale. Shoot. One bullet through the mask. Fifty-five left, rough estimate. He notices three more black shapes in the gaps between the obstacles, at least two of them already open. No time to panic. Need to change position. Four targets now, minimum. Inhale.

He maps out the layout, the explosions still ringing in his ears. Exhale. Move on the outer rim of the range, sprint along the wall, pass the car. Inhale. He moves with the purpose, changing position, in the open…

“Target sighted.”

With the electronic voice comes the impact. It feels like a jackhammer to his side, then a short blackout as he topples down. Desperately, he drags himself forward. Hyperventilating. He rips off the helmet – his head is buzzing, his vision swims – the thing is dented where the bullet hit.

Every breath hurts. The vest held on the chest. His left side is numb and cold. Don’t look. He traces his fingers over the hole, its ridges already wet. He’s going to die here. Jack cranes his neck down.

“Don’t look, Sunshine,” the voice stops him, ghostly fingers rest over his hand. Don’t look. Might stave off the shock. It’s still numb, does not bode well. He’s behind the damned burned out car frame, it offers little protection. He grasps for the dropped rifle. His hand is slick with blood. “Hold your breath.”

He can hear them converging on his position. He’s going to die here.

The screen on the wall, he can see it from here, and there is a movement that catches his eye, a swath of color, purple, violet, pink? The person – woman – stops before the nightmarish chair holding the misshapen twitching human. There is a snap of neon lines in the air and the creature is literally ripped apart into pieces that fall separately around the contraption raining blood.

His lungs begin to burn.

“Exhale,” the Beast orders and Jack does as he is told to do. The next breath comes slowly, unfurls in his chest at the same time the pain in his side slowly comes into focus, stabbing, living. Good. Pain means time.

“My Los Muertos, they dared, they dared to belittle them with… with this!?” The woman’s voice booms over the speakers. Jack pulls himself up a bit, to look back through the window of the frame. No, he won’t question why the soldiers now just stand in place, swaying lightly, like dormant hanging marionettes with no-one to pull their strings. “This fake?”

“Feeling obsolete, bitch?” Another voice, thick with the accent, joins in. His head snaps to the side, searching against reason. McCree.

“Oh. I’ll show you obsolete and shove it up your ass, dear brother. But first,” she turns to the screen, her movements somehow birdlike in how her limbs snap into place viciously, “you killed them, but now you will die because they are with me as they should be.”

“Proceed,” comes from behind before the hail of bullets rips into the car. Jack curls on himself. Bullets perforate the brittle metal, something singes his cheek. Metal shavings bite into his skin. He’s going to die here, there’s too many of them. There is a new side of aggression in their offense. No space to act.

“Do you remember your training, Sunshine?” The Beast whispers insistently, but the training won’t help him now. Only the rifle, almost two magazines. Last stand. Force down the panic. You’re going to die, take them down with you. All soldiers are is lambs led to slaughter. A future banquet for worms. “Remember your training, Sunshine,” the Beast paces restlessly along the old gnarled tree. “Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not.” Jack feels the calm descend upon him, like a blanket, his breath slowing. His heart stills inside his chest. “You will take me with you when you go, won’t you?”

“It makes it easier, Sunshine,” the Beast smiles with all its fanged mouths, dark tongues lolling out in mirth. Clawed hand cups his bleeding cheek and for a moment Jack looks into crimson eyes. “You are always with me, and I, I am always with you.”

He glances to the side, at the bullet slowly sailing by his head, the air behind it stretching the prismatic luminosity in its wake, metal fragments exploding in points of unexpected brightness. All sounds distort and dampen. Jack inhales even as the wet stringy darkness tugs at the corners of his vision. He stands up with Patten braced against his shoulder.

Six targets total. Two shots per each, accuracy and precision. Watching the impact, the strange whiplash as he hits the targets – their bodies jerked violently with enough force to rip them apart at seams – is strangely satisfying. He feels the passing bullet ruffle his hair.

“This is it, Sunshine, this is how we are together, this is how we were meant to be, always,” the Beast coils between his fingers, nips at his neck, breathes the words into his ear, and he listens. “The hatch on the left,” its voice points out and Jack turns, runs, slides over the gravel and slips into the opening, his back contorting when he hits the lowering coffin. When he tumbles to the cold floor, the time and reality slam back into existence. Jack curls over the rifle, hands clutching at his side, the vicious stabs of pain bringing tears to his eyes. He feels saliva gathering in his mouth in reaction, and whimpers. No. Swallow even if it hurts only to think. He is dehydrated and bleeding. He cannot afford to… “I know, Sunshine,” claws rest on the nape of his neck almost non-threateningly, but the points dig into his skin deep, “you can’t rest here. You have to go.”

Yes. He can’t stay here, there are black coffins stacked on one another along the sides of the corridor, one of them actually being moved along the transportation line above him. It snaps into place below the hatch he used to escape the training range.

Jack moves to his knees, his grasp on the rifle faltering, and small whines of pain making it past the clenched teeth. With difficulty, he heaves himself up, left hand clasped over the bullet hole, and unsteadily follows forward. Each step burns. His breath shortens.

“You… you will take me with you… won’t you?” The darkness creeps into his vision as his right leg almost sinks under him. He manages to stabilize himself, leaning on the wall.

“I am always with you,” the Beast whispers back when he sinks into the grass, into the smell of a warm sunny afternoon – the richness of the green and the earth soothing in their onslaught. Lips pressed against his back, just below his neck; a thumb lazily rubbing circles into his arm; their legs tangled together.

Something skitters on his palm and Jack flicks it off absentmindedly.

“Have you ever thought about later?”

“You’d miss it.”

“Wouldn’t you?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

Too broken and too intertwined to ever find another way, yet here, in this place, at this time, perfect and content, wrapped in each other, breathing in and out in symmetry to the music of the buzzing insects. Jack closes his eyes.

“Turn around.” The voice, it’s wrong, doesn’t belong here – wherever and whenever here is – sends shivers of cold down his spine. Nails sink into the skin of his arm. “Turn around.”

“…no,” he answers, the word breaking in half on the hitch of a breath.

“Remember your…”

“No, please, don’t make me do this, don’t take this from me,” Jack pleads with the inevitable. His fingers dig into the dirt, into the clumps of roots below, into things slithering under the surface. Cold hands close around his throat.

“This does not belong to you,” his doppelganger snarls at him spitting blood. “It never did! It never will!”

No, this is not his, and when the pressure lessens he opens his eyes to artificial light and the smell of cordite and ozone in the air along with the stink of burning plastic and circuitry, and something else he cannot place due to the strange haze that makes his fingertips tingle. Railing, he’s leaning against the railing, on a slightly raised platform over the rest of the chamber, and to the left, there is a half empty IV bag hanging, hooked to the metallic balustrade, the needle feeding its contents into his arm. By his side lies an emptied field kit, bandages and tape strewn around, some stained with blood.

Jack clenches his hand and starts. Morphine syringe. Used.

His vest is open. He lets go of the syringe and cautiously feels around the wound. It’s dressed. The touch makes him inhale sharply in pain. Past the threshold. Movement is going to be troublesome. Slowly, hissing under his breath and bracing against the railing, Jack stands up. The strange alien tug inside his stomach… the bullet is still in.

Now he can see the bodies below and still-smoking remnants of a powered armor.

“Do you understand now, Sunshine?” The Beast purrs snugly pressed against his chest. “Together, we are unstoppable. We will bring about the end.”

His hand hovers for a moment over the blinking console. No other time than now. He touches the prompt and looks up when he hears the grind of machinery. The enormous hatch in the ceiling opens raining dust and the platform starts, then laboriously moves upwards.

He can hear the feedback from his comm unit grow stronger.

“I’ll just find…” Lena. She stutters. “Jack!? That bloody you?”

“Yes. I think so.” He can’t keep the weary smile out of his voice.

“Bloody hell, you daft bugger, I was getting bloody worried…!”

“Lena.” It’s Winston, still calm and composed. “If anyone was going to get out of there on their own it was Morrison.”

“Bloody fucking right, Papa Winston.” Jack can hear the gears in her head turning. “I managed to hail Bunny, she’s working on bringing the meat wagon around but it’s the bloody apocalypse out there and traffic is killer. GPS is dead as fuck, but I dare say you’ll find the bloody stadium, right?”

“We will tear, we will rend, we will feast, together,” the Beast chortles, its maw pushing against his cheek in a needy way, and his hand pets it eliciting little whines of contentment. “Nothing will stand in our way.”

His fingers grip at the grating and he throws up again, this time the gunk is white and has the consistency of a jelly, flows in bursts, and trickles down into the drains below the grid that makes up the floor. His body hurts. The light that floods the room makes him clench his eyes shut in pain.

Someone is holding him, an arm bracing against his chest, a hand on his forehead.

“You have to get up, please, you have to get up now,” the voice is everywhere around him and Jack tries to answer that he cannot but his vocal chords refuse to cooperate, instead producing an anguished croak. The person holding him tugs him upwards so he fights against his protesting muscles. “Get up. There is no time, we have no time. Please.”

But as he finally hoists himself up and opens his eyes, Jack finds himself again among the swaying grass under swirling crimson sky against which a frozen flock of birds floats in the air – and by the tree, a shadow stands. Its hand brushes the letters carved into the bark. It turns and Jack involuntarily takes a step back.

The man’s pupils are blown wide, wide enough that there is not a sliver of color left yet Jack is sure they are that certain watery shade of blue, with every breath bloody bubbles burst on his lips, and when he opens his mouth dark red blood just flows lazily with clots breaking away and falling separately.

“Replica.” A single word that to his ears sounds like an accusation from the wraith that bears his own face, not yet scarred, younger.

A crack of a rifle. The man wavers on his legs and falls to the side, into the grass, and somehow, inexplicably, Jack follows, hitting the ground with a dull thud. Between the blades of the grass, he observes the birds flying against the sky, now in motion, majestic, uncaring. Claws card through his hair and with a blink he’s leaning on the wall, the acidic taste of vomit on his tongue, his throat burning.

With a groan, he steadies himself and wipes his face on the left sleeve, his eyes darting towards the body on the floor. He feels nothing. He does not care. Death is death, even if it plays favorites sometimes. Everybody knew what they were signing up for.

First few steps are shaky, like his legs have forgotten how to walk. Jack bends down to gather the shotgun he must have dropped earlier and continues on his path, instinctively knowing where he should go.

“Shrike.” There is a pause before she answers, a waver in her electronic voice betraying some uncertainty and disbelief.

“I see that you made it to the outer shell of the facility, Jack.”

“Replica. What is it?”

“How do you know it?” There is some insistence in her words, something nagging. Jack knows she won’t lie to him, but she is under no obligation to tell him anything.

“Someone mentioned it in passing.”

“Talon’s pet project. Genetically engineered soldiers. Operational. One company went rogue and tore through their headquarters earlier.”

“That’s Team One. Any in the immediate vicinity?”

“There is a testing facility outside of the complex, but all should be dormant without…” Shrike pauses, withholding the information. He doesn’t mind, not particularly, as long as she comes through in the end, and chuckles darkly. Should be. With his luck, they won’t be.

“And seventy-six in reference?”

“Always cutting to the chase. Obsolete model. The testing phase to work out the kinks out of the system,” she delays her answer. “But that doesn’t concern you, Jack. At least not yet.”

“I think our mutual friend might disagree,” Jack hisses through his teeth.

“Reaper. Reaper told you that?”

“It’s all because of what was done to them, isn’t it, to him and the person he’s looking for?” Another code lock, the same sequence, doors open with a whine, and in the corridor one light is shorting – bathing the area in unreality. For a split second, he can see a dark figure dissolving into smoke.

“It’s not ‘him’. Reaper is an ‘it’. It’s the apocalypse and death of all, and it would do you good, Jack, to remember it,” Shrike tersely interrupts. “It will move on if it’s not stopped, and consume until it consumes everything!”

“He’s not a thing,” Jack screams at her, “they treated him, them, like a thing, like their damn property, and no-one did anything, and that’s why everything went to shit now, why half of my unit is fucking dead, and everyone else is a dead man walking!”

“You will see for yourself it’s not a person, it is a force of nature that has to be reckoned with,” she cuts him off and closes the line. He knows that somehow he had hurt her. That he had intended to hurt her. Because… they… treated them… like things. Not human beings. And she was doing the same, the same damn thing, and somehow, somehow, it felt like a betrayal. He almost trips when she addresses him again. “They’ve accelerated the demolition schedule, you have to hurry!”

The deep rumble that resonates through the concrete structure starts him. The tremors and quakes come in waves that cap in a roaring thunder just under the edge of perception. They have detonated the charges. Soon, the whole place will go under burying its secrets beneath heaps of rubble and jagged steel. Shrike’s screaming at him – something that gets lost in the noise – but the Beast, the Beast speaks clearly.

“Run, Sunshine.” Jack grits his teeth and runs. He can’t be far from the exit, not after the hours he spent in here navigating the labyrinthine corridors of this nightmarish not-hospital. “Good call, Sunshine,” the Beast, coiled against his arm reassuringly, agrees. “Forward. Always forward, Sunshine.”

He pays no attention to terrified screams of someone dragged off into the darkness to the side as he passes them. He has no time to spare. He has no time to panic. His mind is empty – save for the immediate need for survival, to serve his purpose in full. Another tremor throws him against the wall and he drops the shotgun, it bounces and slides away. He doesn’t waste time stopping to retrieve it.

And then, just as the floor threatens to give up under him, he sees it, at the end of the hallway, the freight elevator. His ticket out.

Jack stops for a second to catch his breath. The pipes clinging to both sides of the corridor groan and whine under the pressure of applied tension – twisting, moving, setting.

He breaks into a run again. Behind him metal screeches, then gives, and with unearthly hiss a wave of heat hits him. No way back. Never back. Always forward.

Something wheezes past his head, a shrapnel hurled by the building up pressure reaching the critical point. The deafening hum of fire growing in strength nips at his heels.

Jack jumps inside and punches the button, then turns around, braced against the cabin’s back. To face the incoming inferno as under heat and stress pipes contort and splinter. The mechanism groans. The gate is closing too slow – the lattice offers no shelter against the fire.

And, in the flames, something grows out of the shadows, flies towards him with a wail of anger, like a demon, or a dragon, no, both, a cross between. Hanzo. Teeth bared. Fury.

“You killed him!” The apparition howls. Its claws rip the walls and floor as it closes in rapidly, its bulk impossibly fitting into the hall. Jack slides to the ground, legs forced against the gate that finally locks. His fingers grip the pistol and he raises it up just as the monstrous entity reaches the door grate. Claws rip at the wire.

Jack pulls the trigger. Hanzo rears back into the fire and dissipates in it. The elevator’s mechanism creaks and shudders. Then, the ascent starts.

Too little, too late.

Jack tucks into the corner, face away from the flames, curled. The heat descends upon him. He can feel the soles of his boots softening.

And then, after an eternity, a whiff of a cool air. Slowly, he opens his eyes, and then laughs through tears, again and again, an agonizing sound that shreds his tender throat in its wake. Laughter morphs into howls as he grips his head in his hands, kicking the side of the elevator repeatedly. He wants everything to stop. Ha wants to stop feeling. He wants to stop existing.

“Easy now, Sunshine. Do you remember…” The Beast whispers soothingly – threading itself around his fingers, its coils almost like a kiss against his knuckles. A constant. A pressure against his mind. He lets the Beast ride in his skin.

“…my training,” Jack finishes for it. He wipes his face with one hand and looks around, finally taking in the sights and sounds. The cavern is enormous, the portions where artificial light doesn’t reach bathed in shadows, but most importantly, the structure he escaped, it starts falling apart in places, the timed explosions still going off inside.

Alarms blare in the background. The orders for evacuation. Blackwatch running, some of them written off as acceptable loss – regular grunts. No-one notices him. He only has his knife and the pistol. It will be enough, for now.

Jack grips the edge of the gate and then forces it up. His steps don’t falter when he closes the distance to the closest enemy and puts the barrel to his face. Killing humans is easy, it’s the ghosts that hurt. The surprise is on his side. The other one, he grabs and pushes the pistol under his jaw, then drops the dead man and drags him behind a metal container, out of sight.

Efficiently, he strips his vest and jacket, exchanges them for Blackwatch uniform and a new vest. Quickly, he straps the knife to the side, the lighter and cigarettes go into a side pocket, he then flicks the helmet to dislodge the bigger chunks of gore and puts it on. The last one is the mask. He can pass in the commotion.

A usual morning, all things considered, the King surmised, at least until something fleshy-pink waddled slowly to the table. The Kind set down his cup and stared down the abomination. After closer inspection, it had a head of a black bird, an imposing beak, lacked a scaly tail, and one most certainly would be hardpressed to refer to it as cuddly or cute. The abomination tilted its head to the side and observed the King back with a peculiar kind of intellectual curiosity.

Then it cawed.

And, with a strange flowing melodic cadence, added, “fuck my finger.”

“My love,” the King addressed the Queen, “it seems we have some sort of a new infestation.”

“Is it trying to kill you?” The Queen did not look up from her embroidery. She was at the most stirring point right now and pitied be any fool that made her put away her needles.

“No, love, it told me to fuck its finger.”

“Maybe Gabi is finally taking his necromancy studies with the proper seriousness that befits his age.”

“Fuck my finger,” the abomination repeated waddling closer, much to the King’s chagrin. “Thread!”

“And now it wants thread.”

“There are some silk scraps in the basket I won’t be using, dear, help yourself,” the Queen nodded. After all, she should not be expected to do everything around here.

“Very well, my love,” the King acquiesced and, after choosing the right thread, lowered it towards the abomination. The creature happily clamped its beak on the prize and turned around, right in time for Gabriel to swoop running into its sight. It hopped gleefully in place. Gabriel grabbed it with bandaged fingers while swearing creatively under his breath. “Care to explain, Gabi?”

The young prince looked down at the abomination in his arms and shuffled on his feet.

“I needed feathers for my new cloak so I plucked Muninn and the scoundrel run away?” Gabriel explained fast, ready to bolt. The Queen sighed. There went all hope their offspring finally conformed with the generations-long family tradition of necromancy. Well, it couldn’t be worse than the impromptu interpretative dance recitals.

“Fuck my finger,” the raven agreed and then affectionately pecked one of the young prince’s bandaged fingers.

“Ow, you foul wretched beast, see if I rescue you from the felines again! I’ll put you on display in a cage for all your friends to see and ridicule!”

Suffice to say, the first real forays into the realm of the dedicated art of sewing did not entirely agree with Gabriel.

*

Gabriel also would first be caught dead than admit that he was looking forward to the promised next meeting with the blonde lout just to see his face now, after all the soul-crushing suffering he poured into his new coat adorned with raven feathers. To be frank, Muninn and Huginn were the first of many sacrifices after he decided one too many a time to change his design, and now he had a flock of quite naked ravens to look after back at home.

Alas, after several months of missing the blonde yokel and finding instead scraps of parchment nailed to his door written in illegible chicken scratch (all burned later) and maybe a time or two his bed looked slept in and there was some free chopped firewood (sometimes it did get cold in the woods), Gabriel lost all hope, at least until he heard the happy yipping of the traitorous Ripper mingled together with screeches of one of the wyvern chicks. And then…

“Good doggie, I got something for you!”

“Ha,” Gabriel opened the door to his hut with a bang, “this is you again, and this time I’m going to suck out your life!”

The blonde looked up from Ripper and Little Mean Fucker gorging themselves on some big slab of meat and whistled with appreciation – and no, Gabriel didn’t feel all warm inside, and even if he did, it was the anger, yes, definitely the anger, and maybe a tad extreme dislike.

“Now, this is so much better,” the boy nodded. “It’s almost stylish. And you got gloves. The mask still sucks, though,” he added, petting Ripper absentmindedly. “Besides, the sucking thing, you mean like a vampire? Vampires are not demons, and last time you said soul.”

“You won’t sway me with words this time, trespasser!” Gabriel, remembering their previous exchange, positively bristled. “Your end is coming and no force under the sky will stop me!”

“Right. Name’s Jack,” the blonde boy grinned, extending his hand. Gabriel regarded it with contempt. It was kind of dirty, but when he did look closer, it seemed more like blood, not just grime. There was also a horse standing at the edge of the clearing with a deer strapped to its back.

“Reaper,” Gabriel offered after a long pause, ignoring the hand.

“Right.” Jack squinted at him. “Not Death?”

“What?”

It was at that moment that Little Mean Fucker finally decided to live up to its moniker and chomped on the blonde’s hand.

*

Gabriel was just finishing wrapping up Jack’s hand (with his own linens that he had brought here himself, to boot!) when the simpleton, ignoring all subtle clues, decided it was time for another dim-witted attempt at conversation.

“She’s a feisty girl, ain’t she?”

“Girl?” Gabriel scrunched his face in distaste. “It is naught but a beast!”

“Well, no, she has girl ridges. It’s a girl,” the blonde patted Little Mean Fucker’s head with his left hand. The wyvern was sitting by the table, hunkered down, and visibly considering chomping on the other offending appendage. Silently, Gabriel was kind of, a little, cheering it on.

“Girls are a plague upon this world.”

“Yeah,” Jack squinted again at him which gave his face decidedly dumb expression, not that any other looked better on the blonde, Gabriel was sure. “But they have breasts?”

“The harpy I will not wed has no bosoms!”

“Arranged marriage, huh? I feel you.”

“And what could a lout such as you fathom about the curse that overshadows my desperate life as a prince!?” Gabriel tied off the bandage hard delighting in the wince it earned him.

“I’m a prince too,” Jack snickered, raising one of his eyebrows. “The gentry is everywhere.”

“Prince of yokels, I assume.”

“Meh. So how’s yours like?”

“She is a sniveling wretch that tried to murder me with poison,” Gabe muttered remembering ‘The Shrew, Her-Of-The-Toad-To-Face-Incident’. The prospective presence of possible bosoms was no redeeming quality in his mind.

“Mine is a screaming melodramatic harpy,” Jack sighed, remembering ‘The Bitch, The-One-That-Definitely-Deserved-A-Toad-To-Her-Face’. Nothing excused the hissy fit she threw. Nothing. Jack would never admit he was simply scared of her.

“And it interests me not so you can go now and never come back,” Gabriel narrowed his eyes at the blonde accusingly. “You slept in my bed and I had to air all my sheets to get rid of the smell and fleas!”

“Well, you weren’t there, and it’s your dog that has fleas. They are big bloodthirsty buggers, right.”

“And you ate from my dishes!”

“I washed them up. Your seasonings suck, by the way,” Jack pointed to the shelf. Gabriel looked to his reagents and then at the blonde, with a certain amount of aghast acknowledgment. “One made me burp bubbles for a week.”

“How are you even still alive, you daft imbecile?”

“I’m immortal?”

Any line of questioning Gabriel wanted to pursue was cut short by Mean Little Fucker when she finally decided to go for the prize dangled before her lizard eyes.

The corridor Jack steps into is unsettling, the long stretch of the polished marble with dark blue columns turned almost black in the dim red light that filters through an arched glass roof overhead. He knows it does not belong here, in this place, it has been ripped out from somewhere else – a memory, his own or Reaper’s – and put here for him to stumble in, purposefully, or by accident maybe.

He swallows and checks the shotgun’s chamber. Three more shots. His footsteps echo in the silence, the only other sounds his own breath and the rustle of his clothes. The door made out of the frosted glass on the other side of the corridor slowly crawls further away from him with every bit of advance made. The tall grass that tickles his palm does not surprise him in the least.

Psychic shock. Hallucinations. Withdrawal. Crazy or not.

“I know you’re here,” Jack stops and defiantly calls out, shotgun lowered, teeth clenched. “Come out. Tell me what do you want from me…”

“I’m always here, Sunshine,” the Beast laughs and with a rushing trickle, the grass drowns in rising liquid, black sludge slowly creeping up until he stands up to his hips in it. It’s warm, detestably so, steaming in the air turned unexpectedly cold. “Now more than ever because, let’s face it, Sunshine, you need me.”

It’s blood. A river of blood. Jack trudges forward against the strengthening current that threatens to take him with it.

“No. Not you. You’re… you’re a part of me. Him.”

“I was, and always be, a part of you, Sunshine,” the Beast’s whisper fades when a claw traces the scar on his face, with care, sadness maybe, and Reaper comes closer, the expression on the ever-changing face struggling to keep its shape inscrutable. Jack holds his breath. The skin is cold to touch, clammy, and the smell of decomposing flesh surrounds them.

“They will all pay for what they did to us. For what they did to him.” The voice changes, travels, sounds from different points in space.

In a way, it is reassuring, the knowledge that he is merely a surrogate for someone already gone, Jack thinks when the surging current, a wave of rolling darkness, knocks him over and dunks him under the surface. The whole world reorients itself along some axis, the turn of perception dizzying, and he presses his palm against the glass door.

Something in the darkness beyond the threshold screams, long anguished soundless wails reverberating in his chest like a sound wave underwater, more felt than heard. He cannot even start to imagine how anything – anyone – can produce sounds like these, with such suffering forced into each single tone, and still live. Still exist.

He pushes on the frosted glass. Vertigo makes him sway on his legs when the reality again stretches and crashes into his senses. Jack wipes the blood away from his nose with his wrist and duly notes that the open gash on his forearm is gone, and only an angry jagged – slightly raised – pink line is left behind.

He is standing next to the vent, the floor and the wall around it are littered with angry red scribbles, fingerpainted, manic, disjointed, but from that chaos, order emerges the longer he stares at it. Letters and numbers form amino-acid sequences and equations, organic reactions reimagining themselves into something living in his mind.

“The formula to create you, Sunshine,” the Beast purrs. “The recipe for making more of you.”

And above all of that, a question, meticulously formulated, blood still fresh and uncoagulated: ‘Can he truly see him?’.

“Well, ain’t that a bloody good question, at that, luv?” Lena snickers from the left and slides up her goggles. Each of her movements leaves electric blue lines fading slowly in the air. There are bullet holes in her throat, her right eye is missing from its socket, and her uniform is stained black at the midsection. “I reckon the knobhead really wants you to notice him, Jackie.”

Jack feels the inevitability weigh down on him, something constricts his throat. He shakes his head as if to clear his mind. His fingertips brush against the wall and smear the blood.

“Now, luv, don’t go shellshocked on my behalf, there’s still a lot of fecking ground to cover,” Lena rolls her remaining eye. “I could do without you going full nutter.”

“How?” Jack swallows, bending down to peer into the vent.

“Does it matter?” Her hand rests on his head. Fingers soothingly card through his hair. “All soldiers are is lambs led to slaughter. Future banquet for worms. Monsters bred to create monsters. A neverending cycle.”

“Yes. It matters. To me.” Jack crouches and almost balks at the stench of fresh viscera and its spilled contents coming from inside.

“Now, Sunshine,” the Beast hisses, “you’ve smelt worse.” Yes, yes, he had, so he slips inside. The light on his visor illuminates metallic lining of the duct. Jack tentatively moves forward on all fours. Lena is beside him.

“You tell me, luv. You ditched the meds, didn’t you? I’m just a bloody fidget of your broken mind, you duffer. What was that thing Shrike said? Psychic shock, luv.” She smiles, white teeth glinting from the corner of her mouth. “So, in all probability, I’m telling you what you want to hear. What you already believe. Or what the wankiest of them all wants you to believe.”

His hand lands with a squelch in something wet. He doesn’t look and sidles – as far as he can, pressed into aluminum wall – past the lower half of a body. Ripped intestines hang down over the ridges of torn muscle.

“So, Jack, luv,” Lena laughs, “don’t keep him waiting. Remember your training. See him for what he is,” she adds somberly, her nails dig into his scalp. “You need to see him. You need to forget your fear.”

An opening, down into another corridor, and now he does not need to wonder where the other half of the body went, it lays just below. Jack swallows and positions himself gripping the edge of the vent, then slowly lowers himself and swings.

He lands with a soft thump, crouched. Everything is silent. Too silent. He has the uncanny feeling that someone watches him through the eye of the camera on the wall, someone hostile, someone with an agenda differing from his own.

Jack looks back at the vent and Lena smiles at him. She pulls down her goggles and gives him thumbs-up, then disappears from his sight.

He inspects the shotgun again. Three shots. The knife is in its holster, the Seegert too. The vest seems to have the integrity intact. The closest exit is reinforced, the card reader again glaring red at him, so he passes it. Around the corner, another camera observes each his step.

“Yes, Sunshine,” the Beast walks with him. “Someone prepared the way for you. I wonder what was his intention.”

There are bodies in dark-colored hospital scrubs littering the floor. Red cross on the wall. He feels no compassion towards them, not anymore. There are singular piles of ash. He tries not to step on them.

The path leads him through another set of cubicles. The feeling of scrutiny makes him paranoid and he glances up at the camera in the corner of the ceiling, catching the briefest glint of movement. Why? He turns, inspecting the office space.

The PDA sitting precariously on the edge of the desk flickers in the dim of the room, the blue glow of the screen bathing immediate surroundings in an eerie light. Jack slowly approaches and takes a hold of it even if every shred of his instinct screams danger. It smells like an intricate trap he’s entering willingly.

The datapad still receives transmission and is logged into the secure network of the facility. He wonders how unlikely it is the little fact the whole infrastructure is still standing got overlooked by Gerard. There is always one position highlighted and he quickly swipes through several menus along the path left for him until his finger hesitates and slowly moves from ‘Blackwatch Personnel’ to ‘Replica Project’ – and then to ‘Subject 76 Field Test’.

“There is no need, Sunshine,” the Beast murmurs, “for you to read this.”

“Why?” It surges around his wrist yet remains silent except for a hushed hiss bubbling just under its surface, so Jack opens the file. The letters seem to quiver on the faintly glowing screen.

‘I’d like to recommend that the next time there is a need for Blackwatch personnel to supervise any kind of prototype testing, they are reminded of proper protocols for handling the test subjects. Proper handling would have prevented the unfortunate loss of several soft assets.

While most of the protocols were breached during the incident, we can deem the field test in its entirety as sufficiently successful, especially because of the issues revealed. There is a need to develop a more secure method of establishing and ending the connection of our subjects to Reaper as it seems that the incident was initiated rather spontaneously without prior activation of Subject 76, due to the physical trauma the specimen underwent.’

Something cold is crawling down his spine and his breath grows short. The letters on the screen start to swim, but that’s because his hands are trembling, Jack idly notices from somewhere beside himself.

‘During the five-minute twenty-two seconds long synchronization event, Subject 76 barehanded had dispatched four acting members of Blackwatch and gravely wounded another two (see attached footage). The specimen itself suffered several combat injuries, none lessening its combat eligibility in the long run after proper recuperation period. The other injuries that lead to the test subject’s activation correspond with…’

He cannot read anything else, the words run together and transform into smears on the screen. It does not matter because there are hands at his throat and his lungs burn when he tries to draw a breath. He drops the PDA and claws panicked at his neck trying to pry them off.

Cold fingers cover his eyes and something – someone – physical stands behind him, the other hand guiding his wrists down away from his bared bloodied throat.

“I’m here,” the voice is distant and distorted, hoarse. “You don’t need to know this. You shouldn’t know this.”

The glass starts to give up under the fire, spider web cracks splintering slowly through the entire surface. Jack jerks when something bites into his forearm, pinpricks of claws feeling as if they broke the skin.

“Remember your training, Sunshine,” the Beast hisses with urgency and he scurries back and then up, towards the exit, turning back in the doorway only to open fire on the extinguisher mounted on the wall. A cloud of dense white dust spreads wide just as the glass shatters, covering his escape.

Two concussion grenades he had found earlier follow in short succession, two seconds apart, and Jack darts down the corridor, almost blindly. The first explosion blows the dust into the hallway behind him as he barrels through the door to the side, almost tripping on the steps when he stops on the barrier securing the staircase. The way up is blocked by the debris. Down is a risky jump, almost an entire flight of stairs is missing, and Jack does not hesitate to take a running start. He lands with a slight roll. Closes his eyes for a few calming breaths before he stands up and ducks into another corridor.

“Morrison,” Shrike calls him over the radio. “You need to hurry up. Blackwatch is going to bury this facility one way or the other. They are setting charges in the lower levels right now.”

Lena is not answering.

“The closest route?”

“Go forward then cut to your left. Some of the feeds are dead in the archives but that is to be expected after Fawkes’ group went through.” The mere mention of the name sends again phantom flashes of something crawling up his arm. “You are reading off the charts. With any luck, it will follow you.”

“It?” Jack spits out the question even if he knows the answer.

“Reaper.” Shrike disconnects.

“But then, Sunshine, she did always try our patience, didn’t she?” The Beast murmurs, its voice too tangible, and Jack stumbles, sight focused on his left palm where between his fingers weaves something black and oily, glistening – a pulsing mass of tendrils that split and come together like a living creature – yet cold and damp to touch. A slight lump is forming in the mass and ever so slowly it breaks up down the middle giving way to red – crimson – a strange eye gaping back at him. “Long time no see, Sunshine.”

“You are not real,” Jack whispers, continuing on the route given to him by Shrike. He feels like laughing. Like screaming. Like crying.

“Only as real as you yourself are, Sunshine.” A part of it travels up and coils around his neck once, twice, and then slithers to his cheek in a mockery of tender gesture – almost akin to a hand cupping his face. “Which isn’t saying much these days, is it?” A whimper escapes his lips.

“No, I guess it isn’t,” Jack answers through clenched teeth, all his muscles locking momentarily. Each step feels like he drags behind a dead weight above his limit. “Fuck. The pills…”

“Yes, Sunshine, your medication that you threw away so frivolously. Or did you?” With the next step, he hears a distinct rattle and panicked, leans on the wall, fingers frantically reaching for the pocket in his pants as he digs out the white plastic bottle. Jack unscrews the lid and shakes it over his sweating palm. Nothing. It’s empty. “I hear the withdrawal’s a bitch, Sunshine,” the Beast laughs derisively. Jack throws the bottle away, it bounces off the floor once, twice, and then rolls into a corner.

“What the fuck are you?”

The black mass recedes and slowly slides back under his collar, but Jack can still feel its invading presence.

“The question you should ask, Sunshine, is,” the Beast murmurs into his ear, “are you even still alive in there, under all those layers of lies you call yourself?”

Claws slowly ghost over his cheek and Jack turns, trepidation stabbing his insides, to stare into red eyes set in a discolored face of a dead body, the tissue shifting with the indiscernible soft sound of something crawling – like a chitinous whisper of an anthill swarming in the early spring sun. His teeth are chattering and his vision swims, capillaries bursting and then constricting with each thundering beat of his heart.

“Remember your training,” the Beast chuckles from afar.

His hands are coated in blood, fingers hurt where they grip the handle of the knife. He smells of smoke, soot, and ash. He stands before a body crumpled under the wall, almost mangled, face and throat torn up in a fashion that reminds him of a wild rabid animal.

And yet… and yet Jack knows it could not have been him because on the wall there is a bloody imprint where the body was thrown into it with enough strength to pulp it internally and force the blood out in showers where the flesh burst - skin stretched and torn like an old suit coming apart at the seams. Up, above, there are rusty red tracks on the plaster, almost like smeared and rushed handprints, leading up, into the pitch-black gap between the ceiling paneling.

His teeth are chattering and the blood on his hands refuses to crust mingled together with his own sweat he’s drenched in. He lacks the frame of reference to account for the missing time.

Down the corridor, in the gloom, something shuffles and howls.

“Run,” the Beast orders and Jack obeys. The creature follows, the meaty thuds of bare flesh on polished floors marking its impending progress with obscene slapping behind him. “Left.”

He dashes accordingly along the wall, the thing behind him closer and closer, its ragged breath joining his own in unison. Jack grips over his shoulder for the rifle and feels a momentary panic bubbling up when the shape is just wrong in his hands.

“Right now, Sunshine.”A shotgun. He checks the chamber, loaded, and then looks up, the creature just steps away from him. Dead end, reinforced door bolted shut. Too little space to maneuver. On the side, there are slanted windows behind a metal railing, angled like an observation dome. One is broken, jagged splinters glinting with each sway of his head.

Jack feels joints in his leg crunch with violent protest when in the middle of the run he plants the foot forcefully on the ground and then launches himself to the side, turning in the air, right through the hole. One of the crystalline edges grazes his arm leaving angry pain in its wake.

The creature rounds the turn and leaps after him. He fires falling. Its head bucks back, bits and pieces of flesh and bone flying to the side and up, the muscles tense for a fraction of a second and then it goes flaccid.

He hits something with his back hard enough to drive the air from his lungs and tumbles to the ground gracelessly. The monstrosity lands halfway between his legs with a wet meaty squelch, one hand on his shin, and he kicks it off. It’s vaguely human, emaciated – ribs visible under taut skin, arms strangely long and fingers curled like claws. Jack inhales slowly. Doesn’t feel like anything broken, the pain in his spine blunted to a dull ache, not a hot point of suffering it was immediately after the impact.

There are charts and screens all over the room, several of them still working, information displayed demanding immediate attention judging by blinking red. Something sparks above. A wet drop hits his cheek and Jack wipes it off with fingers, sticky substance slightly brighter than the blood already on his hands.

Slowly, he lifts himself off the ground. An operating theatre. He knows instinctively he doesn’t want to turn around. The edge of the stainless steel table digs into his back, aggravating the already forming bruise. His hands are trembling, lax on the shotgun.

Then, with a low growl, something tackles him from the side, and he slides on the broken glass, twisting, bringing the gun up braced sideways in both arms to serve as a guard as teeth crack together audibly in front of his eyes.

It’s the same type of creature, but now Jack can see all the different details. Its face is bloodied, the lips and eyelids are cut or torn off. It snarls clawing for his face and he bucks under it kicking, left hand reaching for its neck and the dark sludge surges upwards like a gravity-defying trickling stream of oil from under his cuff. The creature howls flinching back when it touches its bared skin.

It was – it is – human, Jack realizes. And if there is one thing Jack knows, it is that killing humans is easy.

His right hand goes for the knife and he stabs the blade under its chin, then twists it to the side and drags it down through its trachea. Hot blood pours on his face as it convulses over him and Jack casts it off to the side with a jerk, then crawls to a safe distance away.

It stills soon. The glass crunches under his soles when he comes closer to admire his work.

A large hand comes to rest on his shoulder.

“Good job, my friend,” Reinhardt agrees. “But this is not the end, you know it.”

“No. Just the beginning.” Jack nods. There is a sink in the corner. He can use it.

“He needs you for his vengeance, and it is indeed righteous. You have to help him have it.” The man laughs lightly.

“Probably because I’m batshit crazy already.”

“That I do not know, my friend.”

Jack closes the distance to the operating table that now seems more like a butcher’s slab and slides closed the eyelids over Reinhardt’s glassy eyes staring emptily into space above. He feels nothing. It must be shock.

His reflection drenched in blood in the mirror above the sink stares back at him, eyes almost shining, and the black pulsing tendrils creep out from under his collar, join together and form a wriggling mass that gives way to a single crimson eyeball set snuggly within it.

“This look suits you, Sunshine,” the Beast hisses affectionately. Jack turns on the tap and with gratitude splashes cold water on his face, washing off the blood. He scrubs his hands, and the knife.