For some period of time, there were only fragments of consciousness, bursts of images indistinct from memory. She was dragging herself through the shards, skin on fire, lungs burning, bright daylight all around.

…. waking up again, the world spinning, the skin on her faced pulled by the dried blood, the sides of her mouth scratched and torn, teeth and jaws aching….

…. crawling again over dirt. Somehow, she woke up for a moment in Night’s Safety, the darkness total, the smell familiar and comforting….

…. bouncing, each jolt sending waves of agony through her dangling arm. Then, somehow, she was back in the shards, rolling her head over to see the destroyed head of her enemy, a gaping cavern where half of its face used to be. Then she was back to bouncing, her face bumping into something warm, wet and salty. She could hear the rhythmic crunch of footsteps…

She heard a voice.

“I’m sorry little one.”

She was lying on the ground, face to the sky, although no light entered her open eyes. It was Grabby’s voice, oddly high-pitched and gentle.

She tried to form words, to ask, “Sorry for what?” but her mouth and jaws were swollen shut, and she couldn’t seem to find the air even for a moan. Then the sound of receding footsteps, and then she was alone.

All was still, but for the thrumming of the factory mine. Her eyes refused to see, and great waves of fever and tremors shook her frail body. Odd shapes and lines etched themselves through the darkness of her failed sight, and she once again fell into oblivion.

***

Two men drove a hovercraft over the sharp blades of hardened grass. The driver looked out over the wastes as if tracking something visible only to him, and his companion was doing the same.

“What’s it going to be this time,” the passenger asked, “another child’s toy?”

“Don’t ask me,” said the driver. “There ain’t shit out here. I bet it’s a fucking rock, bouncing a fucking signal from a fucking satellite that some fucking asshole put into fucking orbit a hundred fucking years ago for no particular reason other to mess with our fucking lives.”

“At least we’re getting some fresh air,” the passenger said through his gas mask.

“Fuck off.”

“Look,” said the passenger, “I don’t like these wild goose chases any more than you do. It was our turn and that’s that. No point in taking it out on me.”

“What the hell’s a wild goose, anyway?”

They drove in silence for a while after that. Either one could have looked up the answer with a thought, but if one of them did, they kept it to themselves.

After another minute, the passenger said, “It should be right around here. You getting anything?”

“Nope. Might be a one and done.”

Just as the driver spoke, both of their eyes widened in surprise.

“Holy shitballs,” said the driver, “That’s a new one.”

“Priority One, uncategorized!” the passenger said, excitement edging his voice.

“This might be worth something for once,” said the driver “I knew a guy who found some legacy bugs sheltering in a propane tank that had just rusted through. That bastard got a finder’s fee bigger than what we make in a year. Fucker might’ve gotten a blood pill too!”

With renewed vigor, the two men scanned the terrain in front of the hovercraft, looking for the origin of the signal they had been tracking for the past couple hours.

They were both troubleshooters who lived on the Consolidated Refining and Accelerated Reclamation Production Platform Excavator #7494, or as they fondly called the factory mine, The Crapper.

“Fuck! Shit-fuck on a fucking crackerjack! What the fuck is this shit?” inquired the driver.

Alarmed by this outburst, his companion started to say “You know, Mo, I know a creative cursing module you can get for cheap from...” His voice tailed off. “Shit, is that….?”

“It’s a fucking Gob is what.”

***

Lilijoy heard the voices as if from a distance. First there had been a wind, with a noise like the fiercest gale blowing through the Piles. Then silence, then the voices. She opened her eyes, and instead of darkness, there was light again.

Unfortunately, the good news seemed to end there; her vision was marred by scratches, hundreds of them, arranged in lines and shapes, glowing with a faint white light. Some areas in her vision were blinking on and off.

She quickly closed her eyes, and the scratches dimmed, but did not disappear. She rubbed her eyes with her good arm in a panic, ignoring the sounds she had just encountered, too concerned that something was wrong with her ability to see. She knew that some of the older members of her community would develop fog eye and be unable to scavenge. If that was the case, she might as well have died in the Piles!

Still rubbing at her eyes, she started to rock back and forth, whimpering to herself. Soon after, she heard a voice again, this time quite close and loud. The voice was very low, even lower than Mooster’s, and oddly muffled.

“Hey! Hey Gob! What the fuck ate you and spat you out?”

“What do we do now?” asked another low, muffled voice.

“We find the fucking bugs, and we let this fucker go back to dying, or sleeping or whatever the fuck Gob thing it was doing! It probably found the bugs somewhere and activated them by moving them around. Look for a container or a gem or a fucking propane tank or something.”

“I don’t see anything – do you think it’s under-” said the second voice.

“It sure as hell ain’t in its pockets. Ugly naked mofo… I don’t need to see this shit! I knew these guys who lived out here were fucked up, but this is all kinds of wrong.”

“Mo, you don’t think...” the second voice faltered.

“Don’t even think it, Anda! I don’t want to get my hands dirty on this. Who even knows what diseases that thing is carrying.”

Throughout this conversation, Lilijoy became, in turns, alarmed, confused, relieved, confused, and finished in a state of alarmed confusion only matched by the horror of her blindness and the residual aches and pains of her body.

Which, come to think of it, were not as bad as she expected.

She glanced down at her mangled arm, looked out of the corner of her eye where she could see a little. Her arm was shredded layers of fat and meat, with the bone shyly poking out in several places. It was by far the worst injury she had seen, and she felt it should be producing agony beyond imagination.

Instead, she felt a detached strangeness, like the arm belonged to someone else. Out of curiosity, she poked the injury with her other hand.

Still nothing.

She tried to clench the hand of her injured arm. Again nothing. It was as if her arm was truly detached from her mind.

During this experimentation the conversation between the two men lapsed as they witnessed her grotesque actions. They stared with jaws dropped for a moment, and then simultaneously began to speak.

“Almost looks like there's a pain block in,” said Anda, while Mo began to almost whimper, “No, no, no, fucking no, no, shit, no, crap...”

Anda looked over at Mo, who was shaking his head while continuing to mutter a long string of obscenities.

“What...” he began, then stopped as Mo gave him a look indicating his utter contempt for Anda’s reasoning abilities. Slowly, an expression of dawning enlightenment grew over Anda’s face.

“Oh no. It bonded with her.”