Dead Man Walking - SCP Foundation

In the finale to DEAD RECKONING, Quinn Law and the UIU race against time to stop the Lighthouse Mafia from breaking Hamilton Burke out of Paramax. Will they stop them in time, or will all of their sacrifices have come too late?

Anorrack

Dead Man Walking (11994 words)

Author: Anorrack

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Florence, Colorado, 07:45

A dark mist draped across the Florence Administrative Maximum Facility, and Quinn Law could taste ozone and citrus. The orange of dawn bled over the craggy slopes of central Colorado, barely penetrating a red-shifted pink through the fog bank that shrouded Florence. Mobile Occult Operations Team vans from the Denver office piled haphazardly into the parking lot, disgorging their contents of grim-faced agents armed to the teeth with wriggling occult weaponry poorly concealed under dusters and heavy Kevlar. The large “FBI” emblazoned on the back of the jackets was imbued with enough coghaz cross-stitch to fry any punk’s brain through a scope at two hundred yards. At least, that’s what they were told in training.

Quinn Law had swapped out her navy blue jacket for a similar leather duster and plates, which warded off the morning chill but did nothing to stop her blackened, withered fingers from trembling as they lit a cigarette. Smoking and stress had killed her mother in the end, but if that was the only thing she was threatened by she would count her lucky stars.

The gate blocking the road a half-mile back had already been shunted aside by some previous visitors, and either the guards didn’t care to move it back, or they were in no position to do so. The parking lot was empty of employees, and you didn’t have to be a wizard to feel the sense of unease — dread, even — that came with heavy, reality-altering workings.

A shadow fell over Quinn, and she looked up to see Jackie Carpenter, Denver SAC — surprisingly quiet given steel-shod combat boots and a conservative 280 pounds — towering over her. Her voice was soft despite her size and demeanor, though it was easy to be quiet when the heavy six-shooter at her hip did most of the talking. “Came as soon as we could. Hope we didn’t keep you waiting long.”

“Hell of a call to make, getting slack-jaws like these up at this ungodly hour.”

Carpenter smirked. “I told them to sleep light last night just in case.” Carpenter had a knack for these things, and everyone was faintly surprised she hadn’t retired to the Office of Prophecy yet. But the SAC had always hated desk jobs. “Though I’d rather hear again from the horse’s mouth just what exactly is the shit we’re stepping in with both feet.”

Law blew at the curl of hair perpetually in her face, coughing from the exhale of smoke. “Bunch of drugged-up mafiosos trying to break into Paramax with a little human sacrifice, that’s what we’re stepping into.”

“And they want to bust out Hamilton Burke. Got that much from skimming your packet. But how?”

“This is all guesswork, but I pretty much pieced it together by following their trail for months. So, Paramax is pretty much impossible to break out of, right? Outside of local spacetime and all that. But it’s not completely isolated. Similar places… resonate with each other? So it’s the same with prisons. All prisons, on a fundamental level, are connected.”

Carpenter nodded. “Yeah, Al Capone ended up in a Siberian gulag for six months after trying to break out of Alcatraz.”

“So, Florence is the most prison you can be in in the Western Hemisphere without visiting Gitmo, and is the most likely spot you could pipe a Way into Paramax. Of course you need a little bit more oomph to cross the finish line.” She muttered the last part under her breath. “Like the sacrifice of a Florida governor.”

Carpenter’s head swiveled on a dime to meet Quinn’s, her face a mixture of perplexity and a gradual creeping realization of horror. “They got Jeb in there?”

Quinn took another drag, half-heartedly wondering if lung cancer could be mitigated by necromancy. “They won’t kill him yet. Would be a waste to do so before noon.”

Although, she thought as she brushed a finger against the cold crystal dangling from her neck, casting her mind to the bag of bones stashed in the trunk of her car. He wouldn’t have been the first to die today.

The only thing Cristobal could feel was the cold. A mind-numbing, biting cold that ached the bones and chapped the lips cracked and bloody. A change from the full-body numbness of being undead, but not an improvement. Different hell, same demon.

He couldn’t see anything. Couldn’t hear anything or even feel anything else but the cold, for that matter. It was like the temperature had a texture, the sandpaper of crusted snow, the smell of frozen petrichor. The white malaise of a psych ward. Oh God, it was just like being trapped in the morgue again, the bound soul felt the edges of white-hot panic. A person could go mad in here. He almost had once before God he couldn’t move-

Cristobal tried to do what he had seen Law do and steady his racing thoughts, reaching outwards not with his incorporeal hand, but with his mind. Immediately he was psychically rocked by something hard, sharp, and twisted. The brain of a man, he supposed, as the sensations of a musty church storeroom and baritone gospel swept the blizzard from his mindscape.

A new lost sheep has joined our gracious body? One of Canvera’s flock perhaps? Or a Judas goat sent by three-fingered and two-eyed wolves to offset the balance, certainly? The querulous, worming thought tunneled through Cristobal’s brain-pan unwelcomed.

Just a carpenter. Cristobal attempted to keep his mental voice calm, focused. Just like coming down from a bad high.

Another voice joined the first, a spitting snake rather than a worm. Oh, has Jesus himself come to save us? Has Rapture come so soon?

A third, the shaky, uncontrolled thoughts of a child. i told you he wouldn’t leave us forever. he wouldn’t he wouldn’t he wouldn’t he wouldn-

The thoughts crowded around Cristobal, squeezing him out of himself. He would go mad in here. But he couldn’t, he had a job to do. How many of “us” are there?

The first, Pastor, came closer, buffeting the Child and Doubter away. Two sets of five sets of five parenthetical adding five. The greatest holy number only succeeded by five thrice. But with you… our numbers are off, we must correct.

As Pastor spoke, Cristobal became dimly, and then painfully aware of the rest of the minds —suffocating in their density — investing Cristobal, his mind squeezed and battered and tore at by mindless, hungry souls. Fifty-six souls trapped in a crystal pendant around Quinn’s neck, alone, trapped, driven insane by their time inside. Cristobal prayed to God that Quinn’s plan worked and she didn’t die like an idiot, and he didn’t become like his fellow inmates.

The MOOT squad did their final spot checks, clicking the safeties off of their weapons and dissipating the dampeners on their staffs. The candleman, taking point with the scout, withdrew a Hand of Glory-96 from their duster, the ensouled-chimp fingers still lively twitching a hangman’s jig. Through the fog, the squad looked like shadows of men, grim specters of death ready for their last pale ride.

The fog bank began to disperse with the rise of the morning sun, slowly unveiling the fences and foreboding walls of the complex, institutional gray. The front doors were off their hinges, a broken card scanner throwing sparks. Quinn gratefully took a coffee from a skittering aide and downed it in one gulp. It had already been a long day and it wasn’t even noon.

With a click of Carpenter’s tongue, the power was cut and the prison went dark. No one would see them coming.

The hair on the back of Quinn’s arms prickled and rose, her body pimpling with gooseflesh. Her eyes darted around, noting the frowns and murmurs of the other law enforcement sorcerers, also sensing a bad vibe in the air.

Squawk on the radio. “Carpenter, check VERITAS. In the basement, lighting up sensors like a Christmas tree.”

Carpenter’s frown deepened, worry lines like canyons forming on her face. “What are those bastards up to? It’s hours until noon.”

Quinn shifted, and picked a defensive spell from her mental rolodex just in case. “Unless they aren’t waiting for noon.”

Just then, the world plunged into night. Distant birds screeched and chattered, prison guard dogs bayed in their kennels, and something blotted out the sun.

Carpenter reached for her revolver. “There wasn’t an eclipse on for today…”

Quinn heard the distant cackle of a crone up above, more twisted and monstrous than when Quinn met her proper. The dark sun glowered ominously overhead, a ball of darkness with a halo of harsh light. A tunnel in the sky. Team lead Charlie-1 screamed over the radio. “Timetable’s been moved up, boys. It’s do or die, right here, right now.”

Quinn pivoted on her heel and made for the armory. “This isn’t a normal eclipse. I know what this is.”

“What the hell did they do, Law?”

Quinn’s mouth outpaced her frantic brain. “It’s the Black Squirrel. She’s swallowed the sun.”

The necromancer didn’t know she was falling until her head hit the pavement, filling her vision with sparks and colors. The crone’s laugh grew in strength until it was inside of her ear. Oathbreaker Quinn Law. Funi snarled. A promise is a promise is a promise. I would have thought a pig would know.

“She’s seizing. Cuchulainn syndrome, someone get amnestics!”

I curse you, Quinn Law. She could feel the rancid crone’s breath against her neck as her mouth foamed and eyes rolled. I curse your name, and the name of those that come after you. May Hushtahli not recognize your footsteps in day, and may Impa Shilup darken your soul at night. May your fields be barren and children unseemly. Begone, foul shaman, with this bane I curse you.

Quinn felt the sharp twinge of a hypodermic needle and all faded to black.

One, two, three. One, two, three. One-

why are you counting? The Child’s thoughts were small, lumpen, premature. When Cristóbal received their thoughts it was accompanied by splashes of color and the feeling of warm blankets and fresh laundry.

Trying to focus. Remembering a place I felt comfortable. The pneumanite was pure soul, made out of the minds and spirits of others. So, he would create a mind palace. Slowly, Cristóbal found scraps of concepts and memories floating in his head and others, and began to build. A lawn damp with dew, a tall sycamore tree with well-climbed branches, an open window through which the sounds and smell of cooking burgers could be found. The half-recalled buzz of cicadas and a hazy cedar fence blocked out the thoughts of the other fifty-four, and Cristóbal could begin to relax.

now what? The Child was a ball of tangled energy, somehow everywhere at once. Picking at leaves, examining the grass, playing with a discarded toy in a weedy sandbox. Their thoughts were barely restrained, the hyperenergy of children almost infectious.

Cristóbal imagined leaning back in a deck chair, the sun warming his skin. Now we wait.

Wait for what? Boomed the voice of Pastor, shredding the memory of the cedar fence. His texture mingled with those of Doubter and another coherent entity Cristobal hadn’t met. Are you trying to tempt the Child with your fictitious Eden, Judas? There is nothing to wait for, nothing to do but embrace the Gestalt.

I have a friend on the outside. She put me in, she’ll get us out.

The thoughts of Doubter sneered, their soul a slinking smear of cynicism and suspicion. Afraid to say it, but your friend tricked you. Hoodwinked. Pranked. Yanked your chain. You’re just a nine-volt in her Game Boy now, pal.

Cristobal’s mind flashed with rage, a dark thunderhead of anger and malice. You have no right to talk about her like that. The clouds made to encircle Doubter, who scuttled away across the fractalizing lawn.

Face it, she used you. Like she uses all of us. Eating our souls one bite at a time. Soon there won’t be anything left of you to get out. The starved coyote shifted with half-hidden pain. Soon you won’t even remember your name.

Cristobal felt himself grow, his loose form of ideas unable to contain the expanding ball of righteous anger inside of him. Quinn Law is my friend. She dragged me out of hell once, and I walked into this hell to help her. She keeps her promises, and I will keep mine.

Pastor. Peace, friend. I can see in your soul you mean it. You are a believer, a good quality in any damned man. But anger will not serve you here. It will merely taint the Gestalt, and degrade our minds further. Peace, for the Child.

One. Two. Three. Cristobal tried to imagine a hot summer’s day, the taste of watermelon and ice cream, but couldn’t quite manage it. What is the Gestalt?

The fourth mind crept in, its presence that was just mumbling thoughts before was now ozone and pointed copper wire. That pain/peace that passes for death/release(?)/insanity here. When your mind/matrix loses all coherence. The Datastream.

heaven.

Hell.

Cristobal thought for a moment, and began to feel very afraid. That’s madness.

A memory of a genuine smile bared Doubter’s soul. And it’s still better than this.

Quinn came to in the armory van, and lunged upright before being tackled by a burly medic. Her throat was raw and acid reflux threatened to make it worse as starbursts danced across her vision.

“I need to help them God my head-“

Carpenter leaned over, her face blocking the bright light strip above. “They already went in two minutes ago, and you aren't going anywhere.”

“The eclipse makes this so much worse, don’t you get it? They need the backup!”

“That is the least of your worries, Agent Law.” Carpentered unloosed a balled leather cord, and let the pneumanite pendant dangle right over Quinn’s face. “You broke a geas-seal and have a stubborn curse latched onto you that we can't treat in the field. And you happened to have an illegal soul-amulet on your person to boot. Those weren’t in your reports.”

Quinn gasped for air, her side burning. “Hard to report a geas, innit?”

Carpenter punched the metal bulkhead, making the van shudder. “This is no time for jokes, Law. My men are on the line in there, and if you step one toe off of it so help me God I’m pulling you out of the blockade and kicking you back to Miami.”

Quinn was suddenly brimming with panic, which made her head pulse all the more. “No, God, please.”

The SAC sneered. “Best get to explaining then.”

In halting words, Quinn went over her time in the Rat’s Nest, her deal with Funi, and the pendant. As she described in vague detail her use of the pendant, Carpenter’s mouth twisted in revulsion. “Please, I’m telling you it was necessary to the investigation.”

An aide barged open the van door. “Agent Carpenter, it’s going tits-up."

Carpenter turned towards the door. “I’m of half a mind to arrest you for violation of the Grimoire Rule, desecrating the dead, and other charges I’ll figure out later. Don’t force my hand here, Law. Stay put.”

The SAC shot one more venom-filled glance at Law before stepping out of the van, the shocks groaning to compensate for the change in weight.

Quinn slowly sat up, every inch of her in some form of pain. The worst of the Cuchulainn syndrome had been mitigated by the field antimeme kit, but her hands still twitched spasmodically, blackened fingers tapping on her thigh. Her vibrant red hair was dark and dull, her body was covered in aching cuts and bruises, and she knew without looking she had hideous bags under the eyes. Quinn was on the thin edge of burnout, and the curse had nearly tipped her over. Probably still would.

Armory. Weapons. She scrambled as fast as she could to the weapon racks, holding staffs, guns, and all manner of occult and mundane weapons. Her M1911 was confiscated, but she’d make do. She grabbed a Colt Official Police revolver and a box of rounds, fumbling the bullets in the chamber as she looked for a staff. There. A custom-tooled extendable baton, inlaid with poplar, the tree of the underworld. She dispelled its bindings and saw the pre-carved workings glow as it attuned to her faint aura.

The eclipse was still ongoing as she stepped out of the van into a world of twilight. Carpenter and others were watching the screens of the intel van, the sound of gunshots and the stuck-pig bellows of the dying crackling over tinny bodycam speakers. Choppers screamed overhead carrying sniper teams and more units rolled out spike strips and sandbags on the main road. Reinforcements had arrived, but not soon enough.

“You don’t have a single necromancer or apothecary on that squad, now they’re down without a prayer.”

Carpenter didn’t look away from the monitors. “We aren't deploying you, Law.”

“Send me with the B team. I may not be the best at evocations, but I can summon protective spirits, shoot at them, please. Just let me help.”

“Are you even listening to yourself? You're cursed, you’re a loose cannon, we can’t allow you down there mucking it up.”

Anger cut through Quinn’s migraine. “And if I’m not down there, Bush will die, Paramax will be penetrated, and they’ll have enough excess energy to escape to anywhere in the world, without having to even go through us. It’s now or never. Either I go in there or you just shoot me and we both lose.”

Carpenter tore her eyes away from the screens to glare daggers into Quinn. “You’re insane.”

Quinn gritted her teeth. “No, I’m just a necromancer. One that has been fighting the Lighthouse Mafia for years. I have the experience to do this, which you need now no matter how much you deny it.”

They stared at each other, a vein throbbing on Carpenter's forehead, the tension sparking like a live wire. The SAC broke first and glanced at her subordinates, who were all varying states of pale, to the monitors showing injured agents holding out against an ambush, to the eclipse, a burning hole in the sky. She grimaced and tossed the pendant to Quinn. “Fine.”

Quinn turned to go, but Carpenter grabbed her by the duster and forced her back around. “There will be a reckoning, Law.”

Energy sang through Quinn’s soul as she donned the pendant. She could see her bones glowing green through her skin and felt like she could run a marathon. After running on fumes for so long it was like she had gotten a full tank of gas and nitrous to boot. Quinn grinned. “But not today.”

The suburbia flickered and died as an infinitesimal amount of energy was drained, destabilizing the small world. Cristobal tried his best to ignore it and focused on each of the spirits, studying them. In turn, they studied him. Inside the pendant, there were no lies, no deceit, just bare naked souls, stripped of all pretense and illusion.

The Pastor — a fractal thing of hands and eyes, holding incense and scales, blooming olive branches and bloodied knives. They had studied the stars on the slopes of a mountain range, eyes glittering with the endless possibilities of the cosmos, always arriving at solutions in fives.

The Doubter, a trickster, a con artist, an exploit-wielding street magician playing marks in alleys and bars. A mangy wolf looking for their next meal ticket, usually in the form of a shapely man or woman with money to burn.

The Machinist. Clanking gears and buzzing servos, sung in a machine language that was difficult to parse. It was worried/concerned/terrified that it would never sing in the choir again.

The Child. Cristobal almost wished he could still vomit gazing into their vague eddies of a soul. The ritual had left scars visible on all of their forms, a pulsating, fractal cirrus that dug its hooks deep to bind them, but on the Child it had left its mark the deepest. They didn’t have a form, only a homogenous, glowing star.

why don’t you have one? a scar? The Child’s voice whispered like singing glass.

I told you all, I did it willingly.

The Pastor billowed. A fool, a fool he is. Sent to judge our patience.

The Doubter paced. He is lying.

Cristobal grated, his thought-form becoming hazy. Look in me. Look in me and you’ll know you’re just in denial.

The Machinist cogitated. He is correct. Stupid/Naïve/Moron but correct. He does not lie.

why?

To get you out of here. It’s the Plan. Free the souls and kill the Spider.

The Doubter snarled, their hackles becoming twisted and animated. That is not a plan! There is no plan! Your friend left you here to rot!

Pastor tried to intervene. The plan has merit, children-

She didn’t want me to do this, it was my idea to help. Stop being pigheaded and listen to me for Crissakes.

language!

Typical/Figures/Classic.

Likely story, your friend the magic pig resurrecting a plumber for tea time. You’re a fucking pawn of the man, man.

Forgiveness is one of the greatest virtues, have you heard of the parable of the Three Brothers? Pastor tried to interpose themselves between the two, but was shunted aside by their bullrush towards each other.

They met in screeching unity, thoughts and emotions smoking and crashing against one another like the lashing tides. Cristobal’s anger crystallized into a venomous, cold intent. Say that again.

The Doubter could see into his soul, but they did not care. They were already dancing on the edge now, and were impulsive, risky. A twitching memory of a wolfish smile. Your friend is a murderer, and the only thing she’s planning is how best to consume our souls.

The crystal anger shot out of Cristobal’s thoughts like a bullet on a silken line, and hooked Doubter square. They struggled and fought against the taut line like a fish on a reel, but Cristobal was fresher, stronger, more coherent. He drew Doubter closer against him, until their folds morphed and molded and there was no separating the two. Cristobal suddenly realized he hadn’t eaten in a very, very long time. Doubter changed from snarking cynicism to frozen fear.

You should have listened to me.

And he pulled Doubter into himself and swallowed them whole.

Cristóbal was still hungry.

The MOOT organized by the entrance of the supermax, bunched up either side of the ajar double doors. A tentative hand confirmed the lack of traps, and with a nod, they silently crept inside, maintaining trigger discipline on firearms and arcane conduits alike as they swept the floor. Outside of the beam of daylight near the door, the lobby was shrouded in darkness. The team lead confirmed go, and they activated their MULTIs. The MULTI Universal Light Telescopic Interfaces were combination night-, thermal-, and EVE-vision device, capable of seeing every relevant spectrum and a few niche stragglers just in case, America’s answer to the Euro’s OCULUS. In the UIU’s eyes it was the greatest thing P-Labs invented since the HoG-96.

From Quinn’s perspective, the lobby went from pitch-black to bright as day, every detail highlighted and enhanced by the five-eyed goggles. As she looked down, the floor was entirely bathed in Cherenkov blue, like walking on top of a nuclear cooling pond. The light thrummed in an angry B-sharp heartbeat and bathed the landscape in its flickering, many-colored shadow. It wreaked havoc on the drones flying overhead, electromagnetic and ethereal sensors alike. The ritual had started, and it was proceeding at a rapid pace.

The radio crackled, Carpenter back in the intel van. “No backing out now, Law.”

“I don’t intend to,” she muttered back into the headpiece.

The top level of the prison was quiet, empty. The MOOT’s boots crunched over glass and chunks of concrete as they headed towards the stairwell. Statues in various poses of pain and pleading lined the corridor, and they were not man-made. Quinn realized with a sickened swallow that some of the blocks of concrete they stepped on had eyes and fingers, frozen in states of horror.

The scout Delta-3 whispered into the mic. “A gorgon or LTK, maybe two. Needs LOS, don’t step into the light.”

Five mics clicked in affirmation. Quinn’s skin prickled but she ignored the sensation for now. She would call them when need be.

After what felt like hours of prowling through the false day, the squad reached the emergency stairwell. After checking the door, the man on point jimmied open the card reader, and tapped a USB to the microchip inside. Even with the power cut, the USB’s resident silicon bug leapt at a chance to escape and raced into the wiring of the building. So fast was its egress that the hallway lights flickered on for a moment before dying back down again. The reader glowed green and the door unlocked with a heavy metal chunk.

They descended the stairwell, their rubber-soled combat boots whispering down the metal stairs. The stairs and walls were coated in thin sheets of webs, soft and as fine as human hair. Quinn touched a line dangling from the ceiling, and teased it between her fingers. Not silk. Polyester.

“Man plans, God laughs.” Carpenter murmured, and the team tensed. Bad time to be a Cassandra.

Delta-3 rolled his wrist and extended his diamondwood baton, unleashing a gout of black flame from its tip. The fire poured down the stairwell, licking the walls glassy, scorching the concrete, and melting the tangling webs into tar. Below them, through the thin slat that went all the way to the basement, they could see the stirring of a hundred eyes staring back from the abyss. Bunker spiders.

Surplus Soviet arachnoids skittered up the stairwell, their shutter eyes glowing white through the MULTIs. Metal legs tapped a cacophony of needles on concrete and their sensory pores whistled slightly as they moved, an orchestra of tiny death. The MOOT squad froze, eyes on the incoming threat. The flame of the team’s synthetic HoG flickered and fizzled in a faint breeze blowing up the stairs.

Their trigger fingers itched, but they held their ground without firing, following the steps of the last squad. The spider robots scuttled past underfoot without stopping. The rotted rat brains piloting the devices were just as susceptible to the Hand of Glory’s effect as any other creature.

The breeze intensified, threatening to extinguish the candle. They moved with renewed vigor, motivated by the knowledge that if the candle burnt out before they got to the bottom, they would be served on a plate to a horde of mechanical monsters.

They were halfway down the stairs when a pulse of bright blue blinded all optics and a howl of wind hurtled up the staircase. The HoG blew out like a match, leaving the squad in the dark. Quinn gritted her teeth and flicked her baton out to full length.

“Damn it all.”

The suburban paradise had long since faded from his mind’s eye. Cris felt sick. No one else in sight as the Gestalt gently whirled around him. God, he needed to smoke. He thought about his family in New York, his ex-boyfriend who long since parted ways with him…

New York?

He stirred, the Gestalt picking at his mass. Rogue memories and habits floated inside of him. God, he had eaten so much, but he was still so hungry…

Cris bit down on himself, carving away a memory of a family vacation. Was it even his? The psychic ache brought him back to clarity. Christ, he needed to focus, he needed to remember the plan.

The memory floated into view, the scraps of suburbia coalescing into a dirty motel in twilight, a corpse and necromancer perched on the precarious balcony. Quinn’s facial features were smeared and misshapen, and his were missing entirely. He never had a knack for faces. Hers had shiny tracks of tears, he couldn’t exactly remember why.

What’s the plan, Quinn? Cris had asked, his rotted mouth had a hard time parsing the words.

She hadn’t answered for a while, chewing on her cheek the way she did. I want to kill the Spider.

I thought you wanted to arrest her?

I do — well I did — I just… That’s not enough. That would never be enough. Her eyes had burned holes into his. Her voice carried power like nothing he could recall. Maybe it was because he was a corpse, but her voice was… commanding.

He was afraid of her.

But I can’t. She has- words. He couldn’t remember her phrasing. -protection. Criminals are like that. You can’t just shoot her like Jimmy Hoffa. She had touched her amulet. Or maybe she just adjusted her collar.

How, then?

The pneumantrix(?). It’s powerful, sure — What was that spark in her eyes? — but… corrosive. So much hate inside of it. Solitary confinement with no parole. So if it breaks…

The inmates come out? She had nodded, that he remembered. Her red hair rustled like wheat in a dry field.

But you’ve been using it too. So why wouldn’t they target you?

A chance I have to take. They had talked more, but it was all a blur.

Oh, they had talked about dying, before. She had tried to make him feel better. It didn’t work. That’s why.

A third voice that was neither Quinn’s nor Cris’ spoke up. you were telling the truth?

The memory dissolved as Cris lost focus. Yes… I was. I just wanted to help.

Brave/Loyal /Scared.

Stop talking.

You’re such a hero, aintcha?

Cris condensed himself, curling up into what might have been the fetal position. Stop it. You’re gone. You’re all gone.

God, I’m still so hungry.

The concrete shaft rang with the overwhelming chatter of gun- and spell-fire, the smell of brimstone singeing nose-hairs as hellfire melted arachnoids to slag. The gasman, Delta-6, threw a grenade up to the next landing, unleashing a pale, shimmering gas that trapped the spiders like amber, slowing down their movement to a crawl as the gas rusted them from the inside out.

Even with paratech it was a struggle to move through the metallic tide, the spiders carpeting the stairs underfoot. Delta-3 almost went down as needle-legs tore through his boots, shredding his Achilles’ tendon to burger meat. Quinn and Delta-2 hauled -3 down the stairs under covering fire, nestling him in an alcove while Delta-4 set up the Doc-torie, a clicking mass of eyes and morphine and medical sutures.

The apothecary’s mouth was a firm white line underneath the bug-eyed optics. “Wouldn’t usually set this up for one man, but with the other squad down here, I think we’re going to need both it and him.”

A final belch of flame from Delta-6’s baton heralded the last of the arachnoids, the Soviet wave tactics running out of cannon fodder. The rest of the squad descended to the final landing, staffs smoking and optics glowing. The landing was at the bottom of the stairwell, cramped with seven people piled within. There was a battered metal door near the alcove containing Delta-3 and the silently sussurating Doc-torie, the warning-festooned door pocketed with bullet holes and streaked with soot. The Lighthouse Mafia was holed up on the other side in the maintenance tunnels, doing God-knows-what to you-know-who.

Quinn to Delta-1. “This is the only way in or out?”

Delta-1 unfolded his ballistic shield, the emblazoned federal eagle shimmering with wards. “All eyes not on the working would be either on the Charlie members taken prisoner or the door. As soon as we open the damn thing they’d turn us into mincemeat.” He glanced at Quinn. “Ready to make a diversion, Law?”

Quinn set her jaw. “Ready as I’ll ever be.” She spun her baton in her grip, inching her hand up the cool wood until her palm centered on the engraved sigil needed for the working. Each staff had around a dozen of these sigils, each corresponding to a prepped spell for ease of use by a combat mage. Telekinesis and active wards were pretty much standard, but each staff also had a suite of other options depending on the caster’s speciality. Conjuration, evocation, and in Quinn’s case…

Quinn spread her feet and centered her stance, holding the extended baton as if sighting a rifle. She flicked up her optics so she could see without aid, and breathed, Opening her eyes.

Raw true-sight looked different than seen through a screen with filters and false colors. The beating heart of the portal being birthed in the other room wasn’t exactly blue, but a near-blue color tangential to the light spectrum. Lifesigns swam on the other side of the door, skittering things, leaping things, Constructs and humans of different colors and forms. And a large, hulking mass skulking behind everything. Seven-Legged Jenny.

Quinn tightened her grip on her staff, and continued to Look. She didn’t want to See them, she wanted to See… four splotches on the ground, their color cooler than the moving forms. Two to the left and two to the right, sprawled out in the pincer formation they had attempted to form when they had died. The downed agents. Murdered in cold blood. Corpses. But to pull off a big enough diversion, she couldn’t do what she did at the Rat’s Nest and just turn them into the undead. They would be shredded by tommygun fire and monster teeth. She would need their personalities intact, their skills unblemished. She thought about Cristobal.

The radio squelched, barely receiving a signal from this far underground. “Don-… it-… -aw.”

Quinn opened the channel, her voice terse and blunt. “I have to, Agent Carpenter. And it complies with the standard field manual, you know that as well as I do.”

A beat. “-ine. -Ur head… -ot mine.”

“What are you doing?” Delta-6 whispered, his voice growing concerned.

Quinn grew an ugly expression, more grimace than smile. “Buying us some time.” The wind whistling underneath the door grew in pitch. She unbuttoned her collar and found the ward on her left breast, still sticky with blood. After turning Cristobal to ash, the Pannypsycho responsible for cursing him had almost completely dissipated before Quinn picked it up and fiddled with it, making some edits to its Construct. She hated it, viscerally, existentially, on a moral level. But she needed it for what she wanted to do, even in its weakened state.

She had altered the ward on her breast to resemble those on the Door in Marquette Heights. Not perfect, but close. The alterations changed the tattoo from a ward into more of a container. Her flesh rippled like water as she pushed her fingers into the tattoo and pulled out the smoky, amorphous mass of the Pannypsycho, and pushed it against the wind underneath the door.

With her truesight she could See the gray, pustulous mass of the curse splitting and oozing over the four corpses, additional tendrils seeking and dragging struggling scraps of something along for the ride. It’s only temporary, it’s only temporary. Quinn exhaled, and channeled power from the pendant to the staff, gripping the baton hard enough the carved sigil dug into her skin. Her mouth contorted around seraphic syllables as she crafted the working.

<Christeos zonrensgax teloc ge, bolp goholor od torzu!> The sigil burned white-hot against her necrotic palm, the door rusted into metal swiss cheese, and the dull lumps on the ground began to stir. The corpses brightened and glowed as the spell took hold and bound their souls to their bodies to rise again. The outlines of the mafiosos shifted, their lifesigns blurring with doubt and fear, and the sound of scattered gunfire leaked under the door.

Quinn nodded at Delta-1. “Move in.”

“You heard the agent, move!” Delta-1 kicked down the door in a shower of ferrous dust and Delta squad piled into the room, flanked by the undead.

Back at the Rat’s Nest, Quinn’s quick spell just used ghosts as living batteries, powering the corpses like mindless robots. Good for a horde, bad for tactics. Using the Pannypsycho though, Quinn could do a lot more than glorified electrical engineering. With the personality intact, a hot body as a source of EVE, and knowledge of magic, they could pack one hell of a punch.

One of Quinn’s creatures shakily raised its staff and unleashed a shotgun blast of piercing icicles, its face a gory crater. Another undead agent, a granite statue with a death mask of fury and broken joints of ectoplasm charged into melee, using wood baton and stone fist to cleave through mafia goons. The third and fourth used vanilla firearms, their broken limbs and ventilated torsos not affecting their aim in the slightest.

“Form up, boys!” Charlie-1 bellowed through shredded vocal cords.

Charlie and Delta linked up, a shield wall of ballistic-grade metal and reanimated flesh pushing forward against the onslaught of lead and hellfire. From behind cover Quinn could see and appreciate the mess that the mafia had made of the sub-basement with the appropriate amount of horror.

It had originally been an auxiliary power generator room, at least Quinn thought. The roof and walls had been modified by extensive demo-work and earth-shaping to expand the room’s footprint, and turn it from a drab industrial environment into a cavernous expanse. Obscure machines had been torn up by the bolts and piled into a junkyard ziggurat, with scrap pylons wrapped in platonic silver wire forming an unfinished ellipsoid at its zenith, crackling with electricity and blood magic. A Cray-1A spilling guts of multi-colored wires was fused to the assembly. The hulking computer ran a cracked version of Windows 98 and a dimensional triangulator demonic program, ontological coordinates blinking in confirmation green.

Between the pylons there was a yawning void, truesight just registering a repelling uncolor. The black hole was cloaked in a coruscating corona of blinding Cherenkov, mirroring the eclipse above Florence. Quinn’s ears popped from the wind, which grew in strength as the working tore the portal between dimensions open an inch wider and an inch deeper with each terrible thumping heartbeat of the machine.

The machine was being maintained by six trembling Maxwellists, clearly not in it for the dental plan, their hands streaked with blood and grease as they worked. In front of the cyborgs were mafia lackeys, in the business of being beaten to shit by the MOOT squads, both living and dead. And to cap it all off, standing on top of the pyramid of tetanus was a giant spider the size of a small car, with legs of discolored multi-jointed arms, holding a knife to the throat of a paunchy, pale politician.

Jenny masticated her pedipalps, green spit frothing. Her eight eyes locked onto Quinn, whose auburn hair whipped in the wind like a blazing torch in the night. Her voice was an inhuman screech that cut through the noise. “I remember you.”

Quinn had to scream to be heard over the carnage and hurricane wind. “Janneke Ganas, in the name of the US Government, I’m ordering you to desist and release your hostage or we will use lethal force against you.”

Quinn froze as her skin prickled. Too late. She felt the cold muzzle of a gun pressed up against the back of her head, and heard the smug chittering of one of Jenny’s retainers. The underling taunted her by waving Charlie’s discarded Hand of Glory in her peripheral vision. They had been flanked using their own weapons.

Jenny laughed, a horrible screeching sound, and flexed one of her arms and its many joints, glittering in cybernetic silver. “Too late, fed! Eleven years too late!” With that, she ripped her knife across Bush’s throat, and the portal flared red.

The Gestalt called him. Taunted him. The bliss of oblivion and all that jazz. Cris didn’t know what he wanted to do anymore, just as long as it was nothing.

Get up, Cristóbal.

No.

Child…

You aren’t my father, Pastor. You aren’t even here anymore Just digest already..

I am present enough to tell you that both your and our sacrifice will be in vain if you don’t get up, so quit skulking about like a lecherous sea urchin.

It’s my fault. I can’t do it.

There was a pause, and Pastor spoke again, softly this time. I was not able to tell you about the parable of the Three Brothers, child.

A Bible story? Really?

Pastor whispered like shuffling papers. It is apocrypha. There were once three brothers, mourning after the death of their father. The father owned five lots of property, and decreed before his death that three be given to the brothers, with the remaining two divided as they saw fit. The youngest two, jealous of the prosperous land of the eldest, argued that he didn’t need any more land, and that they be given the two lots. The eldest believed he was better educated to manage and grow the properties. The youngest two schemed and hatched a plot to murder the eldest and split his property as well. However, when the deed was done, the middle child realized that now there were three properties to split. Fearing the youngest would murder him as well and bereft with guilt, he flung himself into a river and drowned.

What happened to the youngest?

Pastor seemed peeved to have been interrupted. The youngest recognized the error of his ways and became a hermit scholar to study the holy works, forgoing the properties entirely in a vow of poverty.

…that’s a real shit Bible story, Father.

There are two points to the story, Cristóbal. We do stuff we regret, yes, and must stop ourselves before we do so. But the most important thing before salvation is self-forgiveness. To permit perfidious grief and self-pity within is to taint the soul, and you shalt be flung into a river by your own regret.

The hunger ebbed away and was replaced mostly by confusion. I don’t really see how that would make me feel better.

Pastor snapped, their many eyes rolling. Damnation, boy. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and finish your job. You killed yourself over this girl, and now you’re moping about because you cannibalized the only sane people in the asylum. Stars, everyone’s been a cannibal at one point or another.

Cristóbal’s confusion muddied into a mix of irritation and amusement, while his focus conversely sharpened. What denomination did you say you were in again, Father?

Never you mind. The only thing that matters is you get up again. You have been blessed with an eventful life, Cristóbal. Use it well.

Pastor’s booming voice faded into the remnants of Cristóbal’s gullet where the other three were laid, but their words left a mark on him, as real as the scars of their murders were on them.

Cris shook himself, as if he was waking up for the first time again. He didn’t have time to mourn for dead he intently only knew for a moment. He stirred and expanded, examining his surroundings.

The Gestalt whistled and moaned, the individual souls long since melded into one tortured mass. There was nothing else, nothing real, everything a psychic projection from within the tiny spirit crystal. There were no boundaries or borders, only an infinite blank mindscape to explore. His mind bled from the emptiness, so he returned to the memory of the Colorado dawn to think and wait.

Quinn was kneeling with a gun pressed against the back of her head execution-style when the portal opened. While all others were focused on its gaping maw, her eyes darted to where her pendant dangled from the fist of a chittering insect-man, one of Jenny’s goons.

Everything is moving too fast it’s all moving too fast. The body of the governor collapsed in a heap next to the pyramid of scrap, a thin strand of blood pumped out of his jugular to feed the Way one thready heartbeat at a time. Only his shallow breaths reassured Quinn that he was still alive. His breathing matched her own. Without the pendant, she was so tired. Her head sat like a rock on her neck and her lids were as heavy as lead.

The plasma ringing the portal flickered from blue to red to back again, and the hole in reality slowly resolved itself into pandemonium. The unblack colored into a vision of the Paramax cafeteria, and tinny screams and gunshots could be heard from the other end. A prison riot in full swing before the mafia had even set foot inside.

Jenny clicked. “Three minutes. Go.”

A squad of harnessed underlings nodded and jumped into the portal. The clock was ticking for everyone in the room.

Jenny’s eyes turned towards Quinn and the MOOT squad in their position on the ground. If she had a face Quinn knew she would be grinning. “More flies to the web, aren’t you?”

Quinn had to resist the urge to spit, but her tired brain couldn’t stop her mouth from throwing out a quick jab. “You’re already on the hook for a dozen crimes and twenty to life, you would get the chair for killing us.”

Jenny’s third arm gestured to the reanimated agents. Even with guts on the floor and brain matter on the walls it had taken a gun to Quinn’s head and a curt command for the corpses to stop attacking the mafia’s henchmen. Even so, Quinn’s thralls were bound and watched by a few bruised and battered criminals. “Looks like there’s four life sentences right there. What’s a few more in comparison?”

Quinn popped her neck and smirked, her teeth red from a pistol whip to the mouth. “I don’t know, they can make a life sentence last a good while in Paramax, even after you’re long dead.”

Jenny let out a sound like an untuned violin. “Talking to you is punishment enough, Law.”

Quinn shifted, the uneven concrete hell on her knees. As she did so, she eyed the pendant again, and the shreds of a plan bubbled in her brain “So you do remember me. I thought after a decade you wouldn’t, but a missing arm is a hell of a memento.”

Jenny twitched and stalked forwards until her dripping mandibles were close enough for Quinn to touch, her domed eyes reflecting blood-red. Jenny flexed one of her arms, the prosthetic’s multiple joints whirring and clicking. “Oh, I could never forget, don’t you worry.”

One of the captive Maxwellists scurried to Jenny to give her a squelching radio, which she turned her attention to instead. As Jenny stalked away, Quinn lightly nudged Delta-6 to her right, and pushed a few words into his brain-pan. Distraction. Gun. Jeb.

She saw him cock his head slightly. Pyromancer and EOD specialist, he knew how to make a diversion. Roger. Doc-torie Y/N?

Y.

Plan?

Quinn motioned with her eyes. Break pendant. Sic souls on Mafia.

Loop D-1?

Y.

A short burst of psychic chatter on the brainwaves brought the other Deltas and the two surviving Charlies up to speed. Delta-1 poked Quinn. Go sig? Tele-K guns?

Affirm. My sig.

10-4.

The stone Charlie’s knuckles ground against the concrete like a boulder against granite. Quinn coughed and spat blood on the floor. No time like the present. She cranked her telepathy up to broadbeam, the effort making the edges of her vision gray.

GO.

It was a while before Cris spoke again, but he didn’t speak to the sane. Hello.

The Gestalt didn’t recognize his presence and just continued to murmur and swirl.

I’m, uh, not like any of you. I wasn’t murdered in cold blood, ritually sacrificed and torn apart to be in this… mess. It was a favor. A poorly thought out favor, but still one I have to keep.

Did it speed up? My friend is out there, and she needs my help. She needs our help. I didn’t come all of this way just to rot in here, and neither will you.

Delta-6 crooked his finger behind his back at his captor, exhaled, and a lance of flame shot behind and up to scorch the criminal’s neck, detonating on the roof in a shower of gravel. Delta-1 whispered something in Esperanto, and the guns pressed against their heads were ripped out of their captors’ hands and sent flying across the room. He also used the opportunity to grab a loose chunk of mortar and smashed the helmet of the nearest enemy in. Delta-4 scrambled to the politician and dragged him back to the door and the waiting Doc-torie.

Jenny swiveled around, bowling over the Mekhanite in the process. She snarled. “Bastards.”

Meanwhile, Quinn rolled out of the melee and tackled the goon with the pendant, ripping it from his grip. She was overwhelmed by the rush of energy, and the rush wasn’t able to avoid Jenny charging her like a freight train, Jenny picked her up and slammed her against a wall. Quinn let out an involuntary exhale of pain as a rib popped. Beads of venom grew on Jenny’s fangs. “You bitch.”

It was speeding up. Cris remembered what Pastor said about the Gestalt absorbing emotions. Aren’t you angry, because of what they did to you? What Jenny did to you? Don’t you want to make her pay for what she did to you? What she did to me?

He was getting angry himself, which was in turn feeding the Gestalt. I had a job. A family. A relationship. I had a life, a normal life, and it was taken away from me. I was happy, God damn it. It had picked up, the whistling wind growing in pitch until it sounded like the screams of the damned. It was working.

Just as she was about to bite, Jenny was tackled by the stone Charlie, pulling her down to the ground and away from Quinn. His rough hide gave Jenny road rash as they kicked and scraped, the red hourglass on her thorax becoming battered and blotched with sticky blood. Quinn ducked away and her gaze flicked around, but she couldn’t find the pendant. What had been a clean entry had devolved into an urban brawl, with bricks, batons, and riot shields being used more than the guns in their holsters. Twelve living and dead agents against twenty or so top picks of the Lighthouse Mafia made for a kinetic affair. The chaotic melee had spread to the entire room as each agent picked their own battle, flung spells on either side filling the air with the smell of ozone and tropical fruit.

“Law! The pendant!” Delta-6 held the pneumanite high, standing still in the middle of the room. His smile flash froze in an instant as his entire body turned to marble. Quinn dove to the ground as an invisible beam tracked over her head, nailing two mafiosos and one of her corpses and turning all three into ugly statuary. The source of the beam was a reedy, sharp-toothed twerp with sizzling bionic eye implants. Look-to-Kill paraweapons. His movements were bird-like as he searched for his next target, trying to get a clear shot in the frenetic action of the fight.

I was trapped! Stuck inside my own body, with not even other souls to keep me company. I could have gone insane! I almost did! And if that wasn’t bad, as soon as I was cured I died again. How many times will I have to go through this? How many times did you go through all this? How many deaths will I have until it’s done? It was growing but not enough. More, he needed more. He had to go further, push deeper.

Cris billowed and warped as he dug up memories of every negative emotion he recalled. His career-ending football injury, bad relationships, his supranatural hunger, and his many, many deaths disappeared into the gaping maw to feed the Gestalt’s bad diet of anger and resentment. The mass of ectoplasm grew and darkened into a roaring hurricane of violence, its growth self-sustaining. She took it from you! She took it away from all of you! She took your lives, your deaths, even your identities from you!

The glittering pendant still dangled from Delta-6’s stone fingers. Damn it all. Quinn crawled among the bodies of the injured, stifling a hacking cough from the stench of the dead and the dying. A low-lying backlash fog helped conceal her until she was right against the stone pillar legs of D-6. Her breath was ragged and wheezy. God, she was tired.

Quinn mustered the energy to stand, using Delta-6 as support and ripped the pendant from his cold, dead hands. Finally, the pointlessly prolonged hunt was over.

Cris was reaping the whirlwind now, the screaming legion blotting out his own memories and thoughts, leaving him with nothing but his hate. Just kill her! Just kill her! Rip her apart and blast her soul to bits! String up her corpse and damn her to perdition!

Someone else was at the wheel now, but Cris could care less as he was adrift on a raging sea of bloodlust and spite. Five pairs of hands unfurled from his thoughtform raised in supplication, five pairs of eyes rolling in sockets to gaze heavenward. Pastor’s voice bellowed from his lips, shepherding their flock. Damn the Eight-Eyed Queen! Damn her demonic servants and band of thieves! Her name has been struck from the holy ledger just as we have been struck! Consign her to Hell just as we have been consigned! Damnation to the Eight-Eyed Queen!

As if summoned from the ether by that feeling of relief, something tackled her to the ground, making her ribs and skull sing in tortuous harmony, the pneumanite falling to the ground. The young man sat on top of her, his hair tousled and greasy, a shark-toothed grin on his face. His eyes buzzed and began to glow, warming up to fire. “I fought the Law and I won.”

Quinn wheezed. “I wouldn’t be too sure about that.” The kid’s smile faded as he felt the sensation of a cold barrel against his chin. Quinn thumbed the hammer back.

His mechanical eyes dilated. “Please don’t.”

Quinn grimaced, changed her target at the last millisecond, and fired. Not at the kid, but at the pneumanite on the floor.

The flux was so great that the melded spirits of the Gestalt seemed to almost solidify, turning into a solid, oscillating glass. The Legion reached out with a hand to brush against it. Solid pneumanite. The border.

Damnation! The host of spirits gathered all of its energy, and with Machinist’s calculating claws and Doubter’s savage teeth and Child’s blinding light and Pastor’s golden gavel, Cristobal struck the weakest facet of the crystal.

The youth was hurled off of Quinn from the blast, trailing blood and ectoplasm as he hit the wall with a meaty thud. The fog blew back from the shockwave and Quinn’s upraised wrist shattered from the backblast as the pressure from fifty-six souls condensed into the crystal were released all at once. The howling wind from the Way had died with the connection to Paramax established, but now it began to pick up again in the other direction. The screeching returned, but instead of being the screech of the wind, it was the screech of the damned.

This wind was as thick as molasses, pitching over anyone that dared to stand. The superstructure of the Way rattled and quaked from the strain. The silver-tipped pylons wicked away into liquid metal that joined the magical tornado, the ontological friction between the screaming ectoplasm and the platonic metal generating flashes of white lightning. Without the sympathetic silver anchors, the red-hued portal shivered and quaked, its very existence on the brink of collapse.

Jenny darted to the portal, still covered in rock dust from the pulverized Charlie. “No!”

The ectoplasmic hurricane screamed in one, all-powerful voice. “Perdition!”

Delta-1 to Quinn. Take shelter, now! He and Delta-4 and -5 were hiding behind his riot shield, the eagle seal blazing radiant white under the flickering white lightning and sparking lights.

Quinn’s wards felt as though they were on fire even with all the juiced-up artifacts the UIU could bring to bear. The weaker ones began to bend and warp under the force of the sentient whirlwind. If she remained for much longer, there would’ve been a cascading failure, and a body wasn’t designed to survive in a magical environment like this unprotected.

The agent stood, braced against the whirling, gibbering spirtual flux that suffused the cavern, revolver in her good hand, duster flapping in the gale. She bellowed to be heard over the screams. “Seven-Legged Jenny!”

How Jenny was protected, Quinn didn’t know, maybe her godforsaken body held up under the supernatural strain out of sheer malice and spite. Her mutated carapace was battered and cracked and the supersonic silver lacerated her uncovered skin, but she didn’t seem to care. She looked down from her scrapyard ziggurat, backlit by the pulsating, scarlet Way. All of Jenny’s eyes were locked onto Quinn, and a twisted snarl spat a word that somehow came to Quinn through the howling gale.

“You.”

Quinn smiled weakly. “Me.”

She didn’t know what she had planned to do here, hadn’t really gotten that far. No pendant, so no magic. She only had one good hand, so she was screwed if she had to reload or shoot straight. She was weak enough that she could barely stand up normally, much less leaning into a magical tornado. But Quinn was doing it regardless, fuelled by an intense desire to get this damn bitch. So she had to try.

Quinn grounded herself, and reached out to the source of the screaming wind. The rarefied ectoplasm was full of souls, intermixed, melded together into a horrifying amalgamation. She searched until she found a calm in the storm, the most coherent soul left. Cristobal!

She felt his attention turn to her. Quinn!

Are you ready?

His voice doubled and tripled on itself, a chorus of screaming men, women, and children. We can’t see! We can’t find her!

Silver splashed against her thinning wards, close enough that it seared her skin. Use my eyes, I’ll guide you.

It was the opposite of using a familiar. Instead of using someone else’s vision, it was lending them your own. The back of her skull froze like it was dipped in ice water, and her vision faded slightly as someone jacked into her optic nerve. The wind bubbled and solidified as too-long limbs of corpse wax formed out of thin air and grasped for the Spider.

Quinn squinted one eye, aiming down the barrel of her revolver. “Goodbye, Jenny.” Her parting words were obscured by the wind and a gunshot.

The bullet left a vapor trail of superheated ectoplasm through the air as it missed its mark. The shot was off. There was a spray of gore in Jenny’s first shoulder instead of hitting center-mass. The scores of hands were quick to follow, grabbing hold of the arm hit by the bullet. All eight of Jenny’s eyes bugged out of their sockets. “No!”

Mouths gaping and eyes burning with hate, the malignant dead grew bloated on the unfiltered magic emanating from the vortex leading to Paramax. Their faces were unrecognizable, dripping and smearing from amnesia and ego death, but their focus was on one thing.

With their countless hands they grappled, twisted, and pulled at Jenny’s arm, trying to suck her into their mass so they could tear her apart. Her carapace moaned with the wind and buckled. Jenny screamed, unloading rounds from her guns into the legion of spirits to no avail. She pulled against the mob and their grasping hands and with her titanic strength, there was a final crack and a spray of blue blood as her shoulder separated from her body. She wrenched herself free and tumbled into the Way to Paramax, first Eight-, then Seven-, now Six-Legged Jenny.

The host screamed, and tried to chase after her into the shaking vortex. The influx of matter was the last straw for the unstable Way and it finally collapsed with a subsonic boom, disintegrating the ghosts that remained. As the last lights flickered out and the wind faded away, Quinn’s vision started to blur, and she decided it was a good time to sit down.

Quinn was unconscious before she hit the ground.

Quinn floated in a place between somewhere and nowhere for an unknown amount of time, her delirious brain unable to grasp basic concepts like time or space or people. Finally she came to a bit, emerging into the blurry world and started to drown again.

Quinn’s memory was fuzzy. Her body was equal parts pained and numbed, her hand screaming for attention and her face feeling like a dull mask. Every jostle elicited a prickle of needles, and she couldn’t move her legs. She saw flashes of legs, stretchers, strobing police lights. The sound of gurgling tubes and heartbeat monitors. Then nothing for a while.

She thought she was dead, but was slightly disappointed by the whole affair. She had hoped there would be angels.

Quinn found herself staring at the pea-green ceiling of a hospital room, hearing muffled voices in the background. Eventually a doctor came into view, concern written across his face.

“Ah you’re awake. It was a little touch and go for a bit there, but we were able to put you back together. Mostly.” The doctor pushed his glasses up. “The necrosis and general damage was too severe to save your hand, but your employers have a generous health insurance policy. Now, which model would you like? Some people like to go with cybernetic for ethical reasons, but mages like yourself often go for the biological replacement because the tech can be… fiddly with magic.”

Quinn slumped her head now, and looked at the brochure, with the blurry laundry lists of complications that went with each option, as well as the specification and warranty for each optional add-on or modification. She used her stump to point at the baseline biological, and the doctor disappeared with a flourish of his lab coat.

Quinn laid her head back down, and wasn’t quite sure if it was a dream before fading away again.

It was a while before she regained consciousness again, but this time she felt more solid in her footing. Quinn just laid there, listening to the muffled foot traffic outside of her window, before she heard a muffled cough. She had visitors.

SACs Carpenter and Carter sat in the visitor’s chairs, Carpenter dwarfing Quinn’s boss by a foot and a hundred pounds. Carter coughed again and shifted in his chair. “Good to see you’re recovering well.”

Quinn played with the blankets, her stitched Frankenstein’s hand feeling stiff and twitchy. She didn’t know if it was lab-grown or taken from a donor, and she didn’t really want to think about it. “I think it will take some getting used to.”

“You had a visitor, a Ms. McDoyle, but she went to grab something from the vending machine just before you woke up.”

“Good. She’ll be mad that she missed me waking up, though.” A thought occurred to Quinn and she shot upright. “What about the governor? Is he alive?”

Carpenter waved her concern away. “He’s fine. Delta and the Doc-torie were able to replace what little was left of his blood with a saline solution to keep him stable until he could be medevaced. He is experiencing a touch of hypoxia due to full-body exsaungination, but nothing too severe. At least the doctors tell me.”

Quinn’s head fell back on her pillow, a smile playing on her lips. “Good. And Jenny?”

“Paramax didn’t report anything unusual happening today.”

Quinn knitted her eyebrows. “But I saw the portal, I saw the riot.”

Carpenter repeated herself. “I said they didn’t report anything happening today.”

What did the guy say in Illinois? Slight margin of error? “Time shenanigans?”

Carpenter shrugged. “Turns out Jenny had an outstanding bench warrant for her since ‘99 for a petty theft, so they will just remand her in Paramax when she lands sometime in the 2020s.” Her mouth contorted into something approaching a smile. “She’s going to be in there for a while.”

Carter swallowed another cough, the scar on his forehead twisting. “Ah, now we are done with the niceties and you’re all caught up, I think it’s time to talk about the matter of your suspension.”

Quinn’s smile disappeared. “Suspension?”

“Administrative leave,” Carter hastened to clarify. “Two months. Typical for agents cursed in the line of duty so you can be cured — hopefully — but also…”

Carpenter hopped in. “From what little you told me of your investigation, you were unorthodox, destructive, invasive, and you used an occult item of power made from conscious human souls, which I personally can only describe as unethical.”

Carter butted back, it almost seemed like he was arguing with Carpenter. “However, we will still need to conduct an investigation, a debriefing, talk to character witnesses…”

Carpenter gritted her teeth. “Yes, yes, according to procedure. You are innocent until proven guilty, Law. But here are the facts I know.” She stabbed a finger at Quinn. “Five good men lost their lives last week. There is evidence you conducted an illegal ritual the night before the raid involving the pneumanite pendant. You conducted an under-the-table trade agreement with a renegade power to receive said illicit pendant. And something went down in Illinois. I don’t need to be a prophet to see consequences coming your way, Law.”

Quinn opened her mouth and almost uttered the phrase ’How did you know…’ but clapped her jaw shut. Stupid question to ask a clairvoyant. Wouldn’t be good for the report to admit to anything, anyhow.

Carter stood. “What she is trying to say here is that there are some concerns with how you handled the case, and there will be questioning regarding some of your… decisions. A bit of a shitshow, actually. It will be under the table, nothing officially on your record, but still. I blame myself really, for putting you on the case, so. Apologies.” He placed a bouquet of wilting roses on the table. “Sorry to be a bearer of bad news. Good luck on your recovery again.” He eyed Carpenter, and shuffled out the door.

Carpenter and Quinn were alone now. Carpenter leaned forward, slowly rubbing her hands together. “The amulet, did it really break?”

Quinn’s voice was even. “I dropped it in the scuffle and it shattered. I think the energies in the basement were too much for it to handle.” Quinn set her jaw. “No one can use them anymore.”

Carpenter looked like she was going to say something, but stopped herself. There was a long pause, finally a sigh. “Alright. I will note that in my report.”

The SAC got up to leave before another thought occurred to her. “Also, a visitor should show up anytime now.”

“Oh. Good.”

A knock at the door. “Washington figured until the investigation was completed, you’ll need someone to babysit you. Even with your leave, it will take months for the investigation to resolve. They’re your new partner for the time being. Make sure to give them a warm welcome.”

Carpenter paused at the door. “Good luck, Law.” She opened the door to slip out, just holding it open for the new visitor, face hidden by a hat and turned up trenchcoat-lapels. The stranger sidled into the room without saying a word, sitting in the visitor’s chair and gaze pointed at the ground. Their hands were covered by leather gloves, not an inch of skin showing.

Quinn managed a weak smile. “My new partner, eh? Got a name?”

The stranger looked up at her, and Quinn had to stifle a scream. Under the brim of the hat was a rictus grin and a pair of empty, dark eyesockets. A skull stared at her, blackened with soot and dripping with ectoplasm and terribly familiar. Its jaw worked for a second before spitting out a rasping voice.

“Cristóbal Gonzalez.”

There was a long, pregnant pause. Quinn worked her mouth for a few seconds before words came spilling out. “God, Cris. What happened to you?”

The brim of his hat shadowed his jutting features as he reached into his pocket and pulled out a cigarette and lighter. He offered a smoke to Quinn, which she gladly accepted, before taking one himself. A small part of her wondered how he was able to use a cigarette as he gently puffed an o-ring in the air.

“I tried smoking in high school, never really understood it. Guess it’s an acquired habit.”

“Cris. What happened?”

He ignored her. “I suppose most stuff is, though. I don’t know anyone who likes the taste of beer, but people still drink it.”

“Cris!”

The empty eye-sockets bored into her. Quinn swallowed, rolling the unlit cigarette between her fingers. “What happened, man?”

He tapped his finger to his thigh, an empty, hollow sound. “I thought I died. For the third time this week, I thought I was finally free, finally out, one good thing to happen to me after doing a favor for a friend.”

“You wanted to help me, I didn’t ask.”

“No, you didn’t. I offered. I was stupid enough to go on a suicide mission because I had nothing left in the tank, and look where that got us.” He took a drag. “All of us.”

“‘All of us’?”

Something black and stained wriggled inside his mouth and eye-sockets, something alive, or something that had been. “Five of us survived the pendant. I carry them with me for what I did, for what…” He clenched his fist, leather creaking. “I’m not the same person anymore. None of us are. We changed. We feel… hungry. In a way we never felt before.”

Quinn slowly sat up in her bed and glanced at her crutches. “Hungry for what?”

Cris was silent, and took one last drag before dropping the cigarette in an empty cup. “I woke up in a body bag. Agent Carmichael, his name was. That was my first. I hopped bodies a couple more times before landing in my corpse you stored in your car. Was confused for a bit before the UIU picked me up and debriefed me.

“They all died violent deaths, they all were magic users. You told me that they would have ghosts, dying like that.” He stood up to pace, his hand repetitively flexing. His voice was softer, and there were layers underneath, as if more than one person was talking. “Why weren’t there ghosts, Quinn?”

Psychopomp. Ectovore. Soul-eater. “I don’t know.”

Cris looked out through the Venetian blinds, the ruddy sunset painting his skull scarlet. He clicked his jaw shut. “I believe you.” The silence afterwards hurt Quinn more than if Cris had gotten angry.

Quinn opened her mouth to explain, to calm, to comfort, but nothing came. Tears came to her eyes. “Cris…”

Cris adjusted his hat down, covering his eyes once more. He made to leave, but paused at the door. “It was nice to see you again. We’ll talk to you tomorrow, partner.”

Cris shut the door behind him. Quinn stared at the closed door with a ragged hand upraised. She wanted to call him back, but she couldn’t, only managing a small whisper.

“I’m so sorry.”

Quinn tried sleeping, but it didn’t take. She was awake for good this time, and she had to deal with the loss whether she wanted to or not. The tears swelled and broke free, and it was a while before she could do anything but produce body-wracking sobs, with only the quiet to comfort her.

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