That was it.

There was nothing more to say, no other discussions or negotiations to be had. I’d consulted both Kinsley, and afterwards Talia. Talia hadn’t known anything of the Eldritch, her advice remarkably neutral, as Kinsley’s had been.

It’s ironic, in a way. When you’re conditioned to take the selfish option for the sake of survival it’s easy to make decisions. Everything is binary. Plus or minus. Positive or negative. Black, or white. It’s when you have to think outside yourself, consider multiple factors, that the colors begin to bleed.

A movie played on repeat in my mind.

Scene after scene of the people beneath my feet, losing their minds in a never-ending haze of pain and confusion, losing consciousness as their neurons extended, merging with muscle tissue, nerve-endings, and violently twisting organs.

Then, slowly, some sort of amalgam of consciousness and sanity emerging as they realized—through a lens of endless agony—what they needed to do to make it stop. Painstakingly, they learned to move their form, coordinate, struggling against their senseless transformation, slowly moving the fuel to end their suffering, working tirelessly to fill the receptacle as their cruel reality of their body fought against them.

And after they finally filled it, a wave of transcendent blue-and-green magic descended on the scene like the aurora borealis. Slowly, painfully, the sea of flesh separated, dividing up as bodies mended over the course of hours. Given the size difference, the baby who dropped their pacifier would be first, along with any other children in the region. Wails and cries of the young and abandoned would rise over the region, quieting slowly, one at a time, as their parents came to claim them. Desecrated families, restored.

A hundred-thousand people. Potentially more. All with a second chance at life.

I wasn’t going to kid myself. Pretend this fate was better than living out whatever the next few months in the dome would be like.

Anything was better than this.

A ball of lux approached the doorway. I watched it, impassively. The flesh and ground had thinned out around me, so it was difficult going, a single, finger-like protrusion propelling the lux forward in a series of slow, ineffectual taps.

I went down on one knee and reached out, stopping the globe in place.

Another finger formed, emerging from the pool of flesh, prodding at the lux, as if unsure what had stopped it. An eye opened on the ground a few inches, blinking several times before it squinted at the lux. The fingers prodded at the lux again.

My hand shook as I held it firm.

Something whispered in my ear. “Phliiithe…”

I searched for the source of the voice, finding a half formed hole in the doorway, a protrusion hanging beneath it that vaguely resembled a lung.

“Pleeeeess…” another voice said, the source vaguely off to my left.

“Pleaaaase…”

“Save usss…”

“So… cold…”

“Is… someone there… anyone…”

“Please…”

There was a possibility this was all just a shadow-play. Manipulation by an entity that wanted nothing more than to devour and spread. Still, I forced myself to look. To listen to their mewling, desperate voices. That felt important, though I couldn’t begin to justify the reasoning.

A frail, skeleton-like hand shot out from the ground, fingers closing around my wrist. It was the most intact portion of a human I’d found, besides the wall-monster loading the receptacle. It flinched at the sensation as the flesh bubbled where it made contact with my armor. I nearly grabbed it to wrench it free, when a skinless face emerged from the ground beside it. It stared up at me with an eternal grimace, the pain in its expression all too clear. Its head was too small to be an adult’s.

Does the entity know I have siblings?

Does it even matter?

“Why…” Its voice was middle-pitched and raw, riddled with vocal cord damage.

“If you fill the container, whatever happened here might spread to others.”

“My name… is… Joshua… Denbrough…”

“We’re not organized enough to stop it, if that happens.”

“I live… at … three… zero… four… five… Oakwood… Avenue… Apartment five… eight… two…”

“Countless people will die.” My voice cracked.

“I want… to go… home. Take… me… home?” It stared up at me, hand still disintegrating on my arm. For just a moment, I could see the boy he once was. High cheek-bones, a tight-lipped mouth that rarely smiled, and deep-sunk eyes.

In another life, he could have so easily been me.

I said the words. The most useless words in the English language. The same words I hated more than anything. Words I’d heard so many times they’d lost all meaning.

They were all I had to offer.

“I’m sorry.”

Gently, I pulled the brittle fingers loose one at a time, and removed his hand from my arm. He didn’t fight me. None of them did. I think it would have been simpler if they had, rising and shrieking, wailing against me, the monster showing its true face.

But no. Nothing’s ever that easy. All they did was watch.

I picked up the Illuminating Lux and loaded it in my bag. Eventually, I released my summons to help with the work. The flesh facsimile had done well, organizing all the cores and moving them out onto the main thoroughfare, but there were just too many for me to gather alone.

Audrey and Talia took to the work grimly, seeming to sense the wrongness of the place. Audrey was able to carry multiple cores and lux in her vines, while Talia picked up a maximum of two at a time in her mouth, making up for the smaller number with speed.

Even with the three of us working side-by-side, it took nearly an hour to ensure we’d scoured everywhere, surrounded by constant whispering

After a certain number, the system began updating me by the amount of the human cores, popping up from time to time to notify me.

There wasn’t a notification for it, but I also found three Illuminating Lux.

Some distant, detached part of me was curious about the Legendary User Core. The rest of me couldn’t be bothered to care. I’d need to look at it eventually, maybe it held some clue to the greater mechanics of what was happening, but now wasn’t the time.

I grabbed a bottle of bright-orange spray paint from a small hardware store and took one more loop around the region, checking for any missed cores as I drew a skull and crossbones on all the main thoroughfares, with arrows signaling to detour. Considering the breadth of what was happening in the rest of the city, it was possible most people wouldn’t notice. But some would. And if I could mitigate the chances that the wrong person stumbled into the region, it was worth the extra time.

The more-complete bodies had become more common the longer I’d lingered. They didn’t seem to do much. Perhaps if I’d waited another hour for the musculature to fully form, they would have.

I called Sara as I sped away, pointedly not looking at my rearview mirrors. There was a wetness on my cheeks, likely perspiration from how long I’d been wearing the mask.

“Myrddin?” Sara said. “Why the hell did you hang up? I thought you died.”

“Everyone in Region Six is gone.”

“Everyone?” Sara asked, stunned.

“Did you not hear me?” I was yelling over the sound of the engine, probably louder than I needed to. “They’re gone. It’s bad, Sara. Chernobyl bad.”

“Jesus.”

“I saved your life, and your guild master’s life. You fucking owe me.”

“Uh. Yeah, you did. What’s with the hard sell?”

“I did what I could. It screwed with my head and I can’t think straight. There’s still room for human error. Think Pandora’s box, but worse. You need to get everyone in the network to stay clear, especially people with relatives or friends there. Lie. Bullshit. Whatever you have to do.”

“Zombies?” Her voice was tinged with disbelief.

“Way fucking worse.”

“God, worse than zombies, why am I not surprised. I’ll handle it. You don't have to call in favors to get me to keep people out of harm's way.” Sara hesitated. “Myrddin, how much off-time have you had since this whole thing started?”

“There’s no paid lunch in the fucking apocalypse, Sara.”

“You’re swearing more—“

“Really!”

“—And you literally screamed at me when I asked you to repeat yourself.”

Had I? I didn’t remember it being that explosive, but now that she mentioned it, my throat was raw.

“When was the last time you took a breather?” Sara reiterated, emphasizing every word.

“Do inter-region negotiations and pondering existential horror count?” I snapped.

“No. I don’t think they do,” Sara said quietly.

“Then—“ I had to think about it. I’d been running on high alert ever since I sprinted out of the tunnel Jinny died in. Even then, in the chaos, it was hard to say. “I don’t know.”

“We’re six hours in, Myrddin. It doesn’t even have to be a long break. Just take five.”

“I’m holding lux, I can’t exactly pull over.”

“I’ll guide you to a safe zone, there’s not many, but they’re well spaced out and more are cropping up as time goes on. Tell me where you are.”

I nearly told her. That alone spoke to the fact that she was right about how tired I was. I bit my tongue before I could rattle off the cross-streets. When we’d met, she’d let me keep one lux. Nine was a different thing. Five dollars on the street versus a bank-bag stuffed with cash.

Sara seemed to realize why I was hesitating. “You don’t trust me.”

“It’s—I don’t trust easy.”

“No, that’s smart. Other Users are getting more problematic as time moves on, I don’t blame you. Just take five minutes for yourself when you drop off the lux? We’ve already lost enough good people today.” From the unsteadiness in her voice, I gathered that she wasn’t just talking about the scout.

I forced myself to stop gripping the motorcycle like I was choking the life out of it.

“Okay. I will. Stay safe.”

“You too.”

////

I flew by my apartment complex, pushing seventy. The last thing I wanted to do was open myself up to a last-second ambush and interception. There were a few Users milling around near the receptacle, decked out guys I recognized from both the gear and self-important airs as being from Roderick’s lodge.

And just beyond them, in a small clearing, was the region two receptacle.