Something clattered loudly as my clones stepped into the room. A painful thud and a muffled, agonizing scream.

“Get the fuck away from me!”

It was a wide-eyed man, sitting on the floor with bloodied bandages around him. He had his hand up, facing me. Not in warning, but in threat.

His hand was glowing ominously. Other people have powers too. I remembered thinking about it. Seeing it now, my mind backpedaled.

He had black hair, brown eyes, and an honest face twisted with something between fear, horror, and pain. His leg was bleeding, a lot.

His hand came down to grip his thigh. “Fuck.” He whispered, eyes squeezing tears as he hunched over. “Leave man, I could blow you to pieces. I got nothing so fuck off.” He groaned, trying to lift his hand.

I moved without thinking, my clones were expendable and he had no idea how to wrap a proper tourniquet. Or bandage himself. He needed both. One of me ripped the sheets from one of the beds until I realized they had sterile cloth here. The other found the bandages.

He watched me hesitantly and I realized I hadn’t said anything. My mind had been working overdrive, I’d been in emergency mode. “Relax, I—we’re not here to hurt you,” I said.

The other me spoke from the other side of the room, rummaging through the cabinets. “You need to stop the bleeding.”

I found the materials and paused. “Can we come closer?” I asked, eyeing his hand.

With everything I’d seen, actually getting blown to pieces, even pseudo-second-hand, wasn’t an unbelievable prospect, nor was it attractive.

He wavered for a moment and then groaned, cursing, before readjusting himself. “Fine. Anything sketchy and I blow your heads off.”

I helped him to the bed, my other self moving to stand watch outside. He was heavier than he had any right to be. It only took a moment to realize that wasn’t it. I was weaker, half of what I should’ve been. An effect of [Never Alone].

I got him there regardless, him eyeing my other self who had left out the door. “Is he gonna be okay out there?”

I secured his leg, wrapping his thigh tight, right above the blood flow. “He’ll be fine,” I said distractedly.

“He got some kind of power too?”

“You could say that—”

“Fucking hell!” He hissed, spittle flying.

“Sorry.”

It was a gruesome sight. It was a jagged flesh wound, sharp… claws, or teeth, had raked against his thigh, taking flesh along with it.

Something about being there but not actually being there, let me keep my head. The line between controller and observer blurred, and I was unsure if I was either when looking at my clones—looking through them. Perhaps I was both.

First, Second, Third, or just me?

I couldn’t find myself to care at the moment. I wrapped his wound after cleaning it with a bowl of water, much to his swearing. The sink here worked too. He was holding himself together well by the time I finished.

He was sweating, breathing hard, and… currently unconscious.

I still needed to explore the building. There could be others and I needed to see the state of the university from a higher vantage. I needed to see exactly how my world had changed. I shut the door and left that clone with him.

The other me ascended the building. I managed to make it to the roof without any problems. And there I found my sense of reality shattered. It was, to put it lightly, absolutely insane. The campus I knew was gone. There was a forest where the rest of campus should’ve been. Trees where the neighboring building was supposed to be.

It was like a line was drawn right in front of the science building and everything past that was something between a swamp and a forest. I looked down, past the plaza which had been included up until that invisible line, and found murky waters and muddy ground. Vines hung from trees that would’ve loomed over the campus.

I hadn’t noticed it earlier, but it was humid. Wet.

After taking a complete look around, I went back inside and swept the building again.

On the fourth floor, I came upon a gruesome sight, the girl from lecture. I’d seen her everyday for the past six weeks. Her eyes were lifeless, dull, dead. Half of her torso was just gone.

I suppressed…whatever it was I was feeling. I pushed it down. Forced it down. There were bodies everywhere, gored and killed. Eaten more often than not. No one else was alive except him, not in the building at least.

I took his wallet and found his driver’s license. Then his student I.D. I paused at that, it reminded me that we were the same—students caught up in this hell. I could’ve passed him countless times on campus, but now we were strangers fighting for our lives.

Surrounded by the dead.

I sat there, simultaneously securing the building, watching the unconscious man, and hiding away in one of the underground laboratories. I found the humor in that absurd sentence and realized… I couldn’t stay here.

I would need food eventually. That simple, frustrating, basic necessity would force my hand and propel me into danger unknown. I would have to leave, strike out, and possibly die.

“Not without a fight.” I muttered downstairs.

Hours passed and I sent Third exploring in the forest. Scavenging, exploring, foraging. Another stream of information, invaluable with everything going on.

I learned a few things.

My clones didn’t seem to have a range on them. They could be as far from as I wanted and would still retain this connection to me. They didn’t experience hunger or thirst, but they could eat and drink.

The forest was lush with berries and fruits, hanging near the water or high in the branches. I managed to grab some as a shadow darted from under the water, just missing me and subsequently retreating. It made my heart race.

I ate some and it had been a few hours without any side effects. It was a tentative source of food, no matter how unreliable.

I explored longer, testing berries and fruits as I went. I had climbed a large root, tall enough to oversee the campus. The entire forest was full of them, snaking through the waters they served as footholds and dry spots to traverse the forest.

My elevated position allowed me to see the threat as it descended on the building.

I found it to be a group of those ugly green humanoids. That thing I had found underground in the hallway. They spilled onto the campus, moving around in pairs, scavenging and picking at the remains.

Third was my eyes, Second was my feet on the ground. The unconscious man stirred, groaning. Outside, I saw them move towards the science building. In minutes, this would get extremely messy.

I’d handled one, just barely, but this much?

All of me grimaced.