“I have come to a decision. It’s time for us to part ways. I have been thinking about this for quite some time. It is the only way that I can be completely sure of our victory on Earth.”

“The hell do you mean, boy? You can’t split the trinity.”

I sat by silently.

“I can and I must. Nothing will be lost in doing so, only my dependency on your inputs. Everything here is now moving according to nature and does not require the tension of your desires for chaos and order. The principles are already present, and I am above them. I only need to witness, now.”

Finally, I spoke up. “I see the logic in what you’re doing. At least from a military standpoint.” Still, I couldn’t help but feel like he was putting us away. And I wasn’t sure why. “Though, I worry that it won’t be good for any of us to work apart.”

“I am the synthesis,” Creep said. “You are both constructs of a duality that does not truly exist. The cycle is perfect and does not require these abstractions. But, since I cannot send myself, you will have to make do in approximating my will.”

The split was a horrible feeling at first, but then came a silence which I had not felt in so very, very long. I was alone in my own head again, for once. No longer plagued by any great cynicism or tension, just a degree of weariness for it all.

To be honest, it felt good to just be me. Given enough space to think, free from the demands of my Power, I was allowed for a moment to come down from the emotional high and to feel normal. Sort of, briefly disillusioned, even.

In my mouth was the same old taste of graphite that I remembered. In my past, as I would sketch in the gas station late into the hours of the night, it would always linger. More a habit than a practical thing, I would lick my finger to turn the next page. And so heavily darkened stains which marred those digits inevitably left a phantom taste.

Meanwhile, the corner TV would play. Good guy, bad guy, big fight. Somewhere along the line, I’d given up on the idea of cooperation and inevitable hope. Somehow, I’d turned a compassionate belief about the goodness of all people into cynicism about their equal guilt, authorities and criminals alike. Yet, sometimes I still found myself missing that younger version of myself. The kid who was naïve enough to get a philosophy degree. Someone who saw all good, instead of all bad, and genuinely believed in the direction of history.

I’m so far from who I was, I thought.

Everything was dark and sloshy in my head. The noises that shook through the tank I was in were muted, yet still somehow deafeningly loud. It was only as the very ship itself began to rumble and jostle, G-forces coursing through my veins, that reality finally hit.

What the hell is happening?

It was the thought itself that hit me like a slap in the face. The fact that I’d had it, and not someone else on my behalf. It was suddenly as if I was no longer playing pretend as myself, or watching a caricature in action. I was truly alive again.

My eyes opened and all I could see was a deeply viscous green. Bioluminescent lights had come on inside the suspended animation tank in which I was stored, and bubbles flooded the liquid. So much agitation was moving through the water, I realized, because the ship was coming down. All at once, my memory flooded back to me, and I knew where I was.

Back in reality.

Creep had spit us out of him, Hickory and I. He’d taken us like any of the others and given us our bodies once again, printed from the cloth of his flesh. Then, he’d loaded us onboard the last ships in the fleet. Just like that, we’d been thrust back from the land of the dead to the land of the living. Treated no different from his other minions.

I heard myself screaming, absently, right as the shaking was reaching its peak. My eyes could barely focus, surrounded by the blur of green water rippling. But just as the shaking climaxed, the sense of acceleration had slowed. We’d reached the bottom of our descent, and the thrusters burned to slow for landing. At last, there was a heavy thud, and the ship settled into place.

The fluids drained out of my pod and the lights went dead. Slowly, gasses hissed free and the door began to open. After that, my way into the ship’s central hall was clear, and I stumbled forward. I counted two arms and two legs. Just like Daniel, Foci, Paradise, and Cyber, I had been given a humanoid body. Almost a kind of mark or reminder for that which Creep could not change about us. Not, at least, without killing us.

Our past. Consequently, I found myself reminiscing.

Still weak from waking up, I fell over onto my side in the hallway and looked down it both ways. None of the other pods had opened yet, and I wondered what was in them. There were lights blinking along the bottom of the floor, leading me to the exits, but I couldn’t yet move. Everything, including my own skin, was covered in the same chitinous material. The strongest thing that Creep knew how to produce, no doubt.

“I can’t believe I’m back,” I whispered to myself, trying out my own hoarse voice. It was strained, but it wasn’t deep or monstrous. It was… familiar.

There came a noise from down the way. A second pod was opening, spilling out its contents onto the floor, where it then drained away to be repurposed. Probably as fuel.

Despite all the time that had passed, it was as if I’d nodded off at work mere moments ago, startling back to find this. We were here to take over the world, I noted, suddenly finding myself laughing. I knew it was real, but it felt like a joke.

“What-” I heard a sputtering cough come from the newly opened pod. A figure lurched forward and came to lean against the other wall. He did not fall down as I had. “I said, what the fuck are you laughing about… boy.”

Oh no.

Hickory spit out the remaining fluids from his lungs and looked back at me where I lay. Though his body was as hard and insect-like as mine, everything from the neck up was exactly as I remembered it. Dark hair, dark eyes, lean face. A mean look in his eyes.

This was the man who killed me.

“Fuck you,” was all I could manage. “Go see who else is up.”

“I ain’t taking orders from you, Walter. But I ain’t staying here, neither. I’ve got business to attend to. After all, we’re here to fight. It’s the very same lesson, you know. The one I taught you when we first met. That must have been one hell of a midnight shift for you, I reckon. I see you're thinking about it, 'cause I am too. But don’t forget the lesson just 'cause I didn’t get to finish it.” He did stumble, but only for the first few steps. Hickory then straightened, looked back one last time over his shoulder with disgust, and left me for the dark ends of the hall.

Meanwhile, I was still struggling to breathe. Bit by bit, I cleared the gunk out and gained enough strength to sit up. But I decided that I would move in the opposite direction. I had even less desire to be around him, now that we were on the physical plane. I’d seen him want to kick me in the teeth enough times to know that before, the only thing that’d held him back was the fact that neither of us could feel pain.

From the ache in my hands pressed against the grating, I knew that was no longer the case.

Either way, I couldn’t just stay where I was. Hickory was right. There were wars to be won. And God knows I’d learned not to complain about the lot I was given anymore. The complex was just too tiresome.

And so, little by little, I fought my way up and started down the hall. There were rows of pods, but none of them seemed to be opening any time soon. I found myself wondering if they were our backups, as there were only so many people Creep had in storage. There were four in the primary group, us two, and then a smattering of Alejandro’s fighters, including Mary.

The passage ended up easily being a quarter-mile in length, and I found myself worrying about just how big this ship was. My memory was still foggy, and I hadn’t properly shared a mind with Creep anyhow. I hadn’t been able to be everywhere at once. Consequently, towards the end of the fleet’s construction, I was increasingly out of the loop. All of it culminated with him taking me from the inner sanctum and placing me into my new mortal shell.

At the hall’s end, there was a door that automatically sensed me and opened. It led quite unceremoniously to a set of stairs and the outside world. Down just a short descent, then, came the blinding light of the mid-day sun. But also, the howl of frigid winds.

My design could withstand the cold, though Creep had decided that I’d still be able to feel it. Just one more thing to toughen me up, I supposed.

“Well,” I said, “we made it.”

All the trees in the area had been killed by the fire of our rockets. The snow which we’d melted in the same stroke had now refrozen into a slick expanse, and I stood in the shadow of blackened pines. Even that was almost too bright for my eyes to bear, but I soon adjusted. I took in the sight of six tall ships standing where they’d landed in the Siberian frost.

That much I remembered. Where Dawn had said she’d conquered, that was where we had decided to set down our army and make our base. Though, most of the fleet was still obviously waiting in orbit. This was just a fraction of our forces.

Hickory had also found his way to the outside world I saw. He came around the side of the enormous spacecraft and took in the white landscape. “Not too pretty,” he sneered, “but a convenient place to fight from. Me and my gang, we’d always pick spots like this one. Very remote, but easy to hit your targets. Of course, we could have chosen the American North, but that’s a sticky one.”

“I’m well aware of how your gang operated,” I reminded him. “I was there when all of them died.”

“Right!” Hickory sounded enthusiastic for a moment, but his veneer of humor quickly faded. Then, he surprised me. “Damn shame, that was. Buckstop was a Godly man. Y’all must have really caught him off guard.”

We’d never actually talked about it before, despite the time I’d shared with Hickory in the Invisible Space. “Just for your information, it wasn’t me,” I explained. “I wasn’t Powerful enough at that point. Really, it was Tulpa using Ironbolt’s equipment. If not for the heavy firepower of that plane, they probably would have gotten away.”

Hickory simply shrugged. “I never asked because I don’t care. It was bound to happen eventually.”

“Just like dying to me?”

That one garnered a cold look. Hickory started to speak but stopped himself. He had to ponder his response. “Everybody dies. But I’ll admit, I didn’t see this coming.” He gestured to the ships.

“Everybody dies,” I repeated, thoughtfully.

The Martians were beginning to wake up in their own ships. They’d been packed more tightly. Not given the luxury of nutrient baths, but practically freeze-dried and stored in boxes. Now that they were finally rehydrated, they began to slink from the ships’ interiors.

A lot more people were about to die because of that fateful day, I knew. Whatever had been meant by it all, we were soon going to find out.

Today, the war began.