When Atoy Muzazi awoke, he was surrounded by the wounded, the dying, and the dead.

The warehouse had been cleared of dust and rubble, rows upon rows of makeshift beds instead placed to house the casualties of the battle. Some sheets had been pulled up to cover the faces of the deceased, others merely muffled the moans of the people beneath. Muzazi's sheet slipped off him as he sat up in his own sickbed, a low groan escaping his throat as he clutched his pulsing head.

The memory of what had happened to him came back quickly.

Ranavalona, masquerading as Marie, had attacked and nearly killed him. Luminescence had been shattered -- destroyed. He quickly ran his hands over his body, searching for the sword's hilt, but nothing. He'd lost it.

It felt like he'd lost a limb.

What had happened after that? He'd been knocked into a wall, Ranavalona had begun to transform, and then…

…and then he'd woken up here. Had he missed it? Had he missed the entire battle? A pang of guilt struck at him: he'd promised that he'd come back to aid Dragan Hadrien. Had circumstance made him a liar?

"Are you well?" asked a droll voice from above him.

He looked up. A doctor, clad all in red, was standing above him, holding a script in her hands. A surgical mask covered the bottom half of her face, but the tired light in her eyes was enough to show that she'd been doing this for a while.

The words felt foggy, slow to come out of Muzazi's mouth at first, but he quickly pulled himself together. "Am I well?" he repeated. "What do you mean?"

"Can you stand?" the doctor said, her voice harsh. "There are people who need these beds. If you can leave, do so."

Hardly the bedside manner he'd expect from a medical professional, but Muzazi supposed pragmatism won over courtesy in times like these. He staggered to his feet, head spinning for a moment before he stabilized.

"What happened?" he asked the doctor as she slid a finger across her script. "The battle -- tell me, did we win?"

The doctor's eyes swept over the crowd of humanity around them. "Mm-hmm," she muttered. "You won." With that, she turned to oversee the transport of another patient.

Muzazi stood there for a moment, knees shaking.

You won? They spoke as if they weren't involved with this situation. Who were they? Looking around, he could see more of the red-clad doctors, making their way from patient to patient with as much of the brusqueness as he'd just observed.

At the back of the room, by some ramshackle tents, Muzazi could see several of the doctors quietly deliberating with the turtle-Scurrant. Were they with him, perhaps?

No matter. Muzazi shook his head to clear the cobwebs before beginning his march out of the room. Staying here was not an option: if the situation was resolved, then investigators from the Supremacy and the UAP would no doubt be arriving before long.

When that happened, it would be highly suspect for two Special Officers to be hanging around the scene. If taken the wrong way by the UAP, it could be disastrous. The best thing to do would be for Muzazi to get back to his ship and fly off ahead of them.

But before he could do that, he had to find his partner.

Ansem del Day Away followed the Special Officer with his eyes as he left the room, getting into one of the elevators. He breathed a sigh of relief as the doors closed.

Good to see that one of the Supremacy's lapdogs wouldn't be sticking around -- the Coalition of Three wouldn't want anyone reporting back about their activities here, and Ansem did so dislike arranging accidents. Ideally, that swordsman would leave before seeing something sensitive.

"Sir?" Doctor Mordecai asked from behind his medical mask, leaning into his field of vision. "Is that all?"

Ansem nodded sagely. "Copy everything on Hessiah's records onto hard storage. I want to know all of ExoCorp's dirty little secrets." His eyes narrowed. "And make sure to arrange that Panacea transport as we discussed."

Mordecai nodded and skittered off, still tap-tapping away at his script. If he had any questions about those orders, he was dutiful enough to squash them down.

Still…

Elysian Fields, hm? He couldn't help but wonder what Skipper had planned at that ghost of a planet.

Dragan leaned against the window, looking out at the desert beyond. They'd really done a number on this place.

The carcass of the Panacea Walker (Skipper had insisted on the name) had decomposed back into raw Panacea, but that still meant there was a mountain of the stuff just laying there -- surrounded by the corpses of the Repurposed. The trail the Walker had created still lingered as well, a great indentation in the ground, not to mention the crevice that now occupied White Village's former location.

The face of the planet had been changed by what they'd done here. In more ways than one.

He glanced at Pan, stood alongside him in the observation deck. She looked different from before -- ever since they'd defeated the red Panacea, she'd seemed more… substantial, somehow, more real.

Like the difference between looking at a ghost and a real person, he supposed.

She looked back at him. "What's wrong, dead boy? Do you have something to say?" Her grammar had improved, too.

Dragan sighed, looking back at the desert. "I suppose this is it, then, huh?"

Pan cocked her head. "What do you mean, dead boy?"

"Well…" he raised an eyebrow. "You can't just stay in my head forever, you know. And I can’t stick around here forever. It seems to me… it seems to me that we need to part ways." A sliver of caution ran through him. "That is something we can do, right?"

Pan smiled sadly to herself, following his gaze out to the landscape. "It is something we can do, dead boy. The Panacea that's me will turn into your flesh and bone and brainy bits and stay that way. I wouldn't be there anymore."

He nodded subtly. "I see."

Her eyes flicked over to him again. "And that's what you want, dead boy?"

"What do you mean?"

"You could stay here," she said hopefully, turning to him. "We could stay together. You would be part of me, and I would be part of you. Friends."

Her big orange eyes blinked, almost sparkling, and Dragan found a definite sense of guilt brewing in his gut. It wasn't bad enough that it would change his mind, though.

He shook his head. "I'm sorry, but… there's things that I need to do."

Pan raised both her eyebrows. "Things you need to do? Things the Skipper man wants to do. There's a word… Supreme? What is this Supreme, dead boy?"

"You've been looking through my memories?"

"They're very loud, dead boy."

Dragan sighed, planting his hand against the pleasantly cool glass of the window. "Yeah, then. I promised myself I'd see that through to the end -- or as close as I'm willing to get, anyway. Maybe… maybe once that's done, I can come back to visit?"

He looked back at her, a faint smile on his face. It was matched by Pan's frown.

"You promise, dead boy?" she growled.

"Yeah," Dragan said truthfully. "I promise."

That was all the girl needed. She nodded to herself, satisfied, her fists firmly on her hips and her nose pointed up at the sky. "Knew you could not resist this place, dead boy. I can see right through you."

Dragan looked out at the endless sand and rubble. Yeah. Really picturesque.

As Dragan stepped back, Pan turned to leave -- in the direction of the window. She stepped right through the glass, phasing through it as if it wasn't even there, her body turning transparent as she strolled off on empty air. In the corner of his eye, Dragan saw a figure down on the bridge.

"See you around!" Dragan called after Pan's fading figure.

She turned to look back at him -- and even with the translucency and the distance, he could make out the big grin on her face.

"See you around, dead boy."

And then, with the slightest breeze, she was gone.

Muzazi searched the tower for his partner, but she was nowhere to be found. Not in the lobby, not in the lab, not even on the roof. To be perfectly honest, at one point he'd even begun to panic -- she had survived the battle, hadn't she?

In the end, though, a cooler mood had prevailed. A glance through one of the windows, and there she was… sitting on the side of the massive bridge that connected the ExoCorp building to the surrounding landscape, her legs limp over the sides.

Muzazi clicked his tongue as he hurried through the entrance, reflexively going to put his hand on a sword that was no longer there. It would take a long time to get used to the loss of Luminescence. When he thought about it, he felt a dull pain in the back of his skull, like someone was slowly drilling through his brain.

The warm air was as uncomfortable as ever as he stepped out of the building, and as Muzazi swept his hair out of his face with a hand, he could feel that it was already moist with sweat. He strode forward, tying his dark locks back into their usual ponytail.

"Officer Hazzard!" he called out to her, smiling. "I see events have concluded. Are you ready to depart?"

Marie looked up at him, a thin smile on her face. "Yeah," she said quietly.

She looked different from the last time he'd seen her.

White-feathered wings were sprouting from her shoulders, wrapped around her body like some kind of blanket. He couldn't help but feel it was a little risky to be showing such alterations so close to the building, but he supposed any observers would naturally think her a Scurrant of some kind.

He stopped next to her, shielding his eyes with one hand as he looked off into the desert. That massive pile of Panacea was still there, slowly sloughing away in the harsh sunlight. It would be quite the task to clear that away.

"Atoy," Marie said. "Do you know where Renstan is?"

Muzazi thought for a second, before shaking his head. "I'm afraid I don't. Is it a planet?"

She nodded. "A resort world, all waterfalls and jungles. There are these jellyfish things there, big as houses, and you can swim around inside them. That's incredible, isn't it? We should go there next."

Muzazi smiled ruefully to himself. Marie Hazzard always had her eyes on the next port.

"We'll have to report back to headquarters for a debriefing first, given the circumstances," he said, cracking his neck. "But after that… well, I suppose it could be interesting."

Marie continued to stare forward, her eyes distant, as if she was looking at a dream. "Jellyfish just flying through the sky," she murmured. "I mean… can you imagine? This world we live in. It's beautiful, isn't it?"

Muzazi frowned as he looked back down at her. This kind of talk wasn't like her at all. Was something --

Was something…

His eyes drifted past her wings, and finally he saw it. He saw what he should have noticed from the beginning. He saw Marie's legs.

They were crumbling at the knees, turning grey, the dust spilling from them slowly falling into the chasm below. Long, jagged cracks were spreading up Marie's thighs even as he looked, chunks disintegrating.

Again, he reached for an absent sword. "Marie," he said urgently, his mouth dry. "What is this?" A thought occurred far too late. "Where is Ranavalona? What happened?"

She looked back up at him, and her eyes were cloudy -- as if she had gone blind. Her hands, flat against the surface of the bridge, began to turn grey as well.

"Marie!" Muzazi cried, throwing himself to the ground next to her. "What happened?!"

"Don't shout…" Marie winced, raising her hand slightly towards her head -- only for it to fall again when she couldn't summon the strength. "I took care of it, Atoy."

White-hot panic was slicing through his veins, squeezing at his heart, running its acrid fingers over the back of his eyes. No, no, no. This was not a thing that should be happening.

When he spoke, his voice was deathly quiet, as if afraid she'd hear and answer. "Marie… what did you do?"

Cracks spread across her lips. "There was only one way I could kill him, Atoy. And you know I had to kill him. Or else… he'd keep coming after us forever. He'd keep coming after you forever."

Muzazi shook his head, his eyes wide. "No…"

Marie nodded. "The Needle."

"No!"

She swayed on the spot, and Muzazi lunged forward, grabbing her -- but where his fingers touched, he felt matter giving way like wet sand. No matter how gentle he was, he was destroying her.

This was a sculpture on the beach, and the tide was coming in.

No. This was not what was happening. Surely, surely not. Marie was a Gene Tyrant -- she could adapt against this, expel it from her body with some kind of clever trick. He stared at her, eyes bulging, as if willing her to shrug this sickness away, to get up, to do something. When she didn't, he looked up instead, head swinging around for anything that could stop this from happening.

"Help!" he roared, spittle flying from his lips. "Someone help us! Please!"

His voice echoed uselessly through the desert. He would have gone on shouting, gone on screaming, if Marie hadn't reached up and cupped his cheek with a hand. It must have taken all her strength. He looked down at her, his teeth bared, tears streaming down his face.

"It's fine," she said, a rasp entering her tone as her vocal cords deteriorated. "It's okay. I've had so much time already, Atoy… this isn't so bad. I had fun. Didn't you?"

The wind whistled, and Muzazi felt his body trembling violently. Her hand was so cold, so grainy…

"Don't die," he begged. "Please, just… I… there's nobody else…"

His selfish request was impossible, and it went unanswered.

Her hair turned brittle, falling away in clumps, shards of Marie Hazzard falling into the chasm. Muzazi tracked them with his eyes. There must be something they could do. The lab upstairs, perhaps? Surely Ranavalona would have concocted some way to avoid Gene Tyrant venom?

Every delusional pathway he followed ended in a brick wall.

Marie closed her eyes, her smile widening into a grin. "Don't blame yourself for this… okay, Atoy?" she asked almost as beseechingly as he had. "You're already… way too serious…" Her voice trailed away into nothing.

The panic that had brewed inside Muzazi's body escaped through his mouth. "Marie!" he screamed.

"█ ████ ███."

Her mouth moved thrice, but no words came out. And then, as Muzazi went to squeeze her tighter, to desperately keep hold, to preserve her in the here and now…

…with the slightest breeze, she was gone. All Atoy Muzazi held in his hands was cold and empty dust.

The scream that erupted from his throat shamed every fear he'd ever experienced, every sorrow he'd ever suffered through. His throat was torn like sandpaper. His eyes burned like matches had been jabbed into them.

And the desert answered only with his own echo.

Atoy Muzazi stayed there for a long time, crouched down on the ground, staring at the grey dust that still coated his hands. It flaked away onto the ground even as he looked at it. Not even her absence was allowed to remain.

He had to get out of here. Yes, he had to get out of here. Atoy Muzazi needed to get back to headquarters for his debriefing. Yes, nothing else mattered, that was what he had to --

Muzazi turned his head.

There, standing in the entrance of the ExoCorp building, looking right at him, was Dragan Hadrien. His face was pale, and his expression was shocked. It was impossible to know how long he had been there, but his eyes told the story.

If only…

Muzazi had dragged Marie to this planet Panacea to seek out this boy.

If only…

Muzazi had been abandoned by this boy on Taldan, left to follow in search of answers he was denied.

If only…

Muzazi had been shot by this boy, betrayed for his own altruism, and set on that path that ended with grey cold dust.

If only…

If only…

If only…

The anger and despair that had germinated within him left his body through his mouth.

"If only you'd never existed," Muzazi snarled at Dragan.

A shadow fell over the Cogitant’s face, the result of a passing cloud. He said nothing. His shocked mouth closed. His eyes turned cold.

And without another word, he stalked away.

Guilt joined the odium broiling in Muzazi's stomach, and he collapsed back to his knees. He knew with curious certainty that he had just done something terrible. His own weakness had led him to act disgracefully.

He didn't know how long he stayed there, but eventually he got up and staggered, thoughtless, into the desert…

…fading from view like a ghost.

After everything that had happened, it was strange to leave Panacea. Dragan watched the orange dustball shrink through the viewpoint of the Slipstream #4, a morose feeling washing over him. After what he'd just seen, it was no surprise he felt disconcerted… but the feeling he got from the planet itself was unexpected. It was almost like homesickness. Something left over from Pan, maybe?

Whatever deal Skipper had obviously made with this Coalition of Three had come with a new ship, too, it seemed. The Slipstream #4 was a boxy cargo runner, suited for smaller crews with ‘sensitive’ inventory. He supposed that description suited them perfectly when it came down to it.

It was much roomier than the last rustbucket, anyway. Seemed they were going up in the world.

"Hey, Dragan," Skipper poked his head through the open door, his dark hair hanging loose. "Wanna talk to everyone in the conference room real quick. See ya in thirty?"

Dragan raised an eyebrow. "Thirty minutes?"

"Thirty seconds. C'mon, pick up the pace."

Dragan rolled his eyes as he followed Skipper down the corridor, both of them bathed in blue by the lights built into the floor and ceiling. None of the Slipstreams thus far had had a conference room, either. Things really were getting fancy.

Ruth was already there, biting down on a cheeseburger with her boots up on the long metal table. Bruno had pushed his own chair into the corner of the room, where he sat stoically, his arms crossed. Dragan couldn't help but notice the pink and kitschy game console hanging from his hip, though -- doubtless Serena had been playing it before they'd come in.

Skipper cracked his shoulders as he strolled into the room, taking up position at the head of the table.

"Well," he said, lightly tapping his metal fingers against the furniture. "I think we can all agree that was a pretty wild trip, all things considered."

Dragan sat himself down next to Bruno, pulling his chair up to the table. He rested his arms against the cold metal. "Any sign of North?" he asked.

Skipper waved a dismissive hand. "He made himself scarce after the fighting was over. No way we're gonna find him if he doesn't wanna be found. Categorically impossible." He paused for a moment. "Besides, the cops are kinda on their way, so we really gotta get outta here."

"So what?" Bruno grunted. "We're just leaving empty handed?"

"Not empty handed, nah," Skipper grinned. "We've got a hefty pile of Panacea out of this whole thing. It'll come in handy when we take on the Supreme."

Dragan leaned forward. "And when's that happening?"

Skipper opened his mouth to answer -- but before he did, his confident demeanor seemed to deflate somewhat. His firm shoulders sagged, and his eyes took on a deep sadness.

"Soon," he said quietly. "Real soon. We're almost at the end of our little odyssey, guys."

"What do you mean?" Ruth asked, her face worried. She took her feet off the table.

The moment passed just as quickly, and that old wide grin spread across Skipper's face. He snapped his steel fingers. "Well, nothing lasts forever, we all know that. All I'm saying is that we're at the tail-end of our journey here. But that doesn't mean it's over yet."

He slammed his hands against the table.

"So… anyone up to visit the Final Church?"

The navigation console had exploded shortly after Muzazi left the atmosphere. The heating had started to fail shortly after that. For the moment, the temperature aboard the Arrowhead was still survivable, but that wouldn't last forever.

Atoy Muzazi couldn't really bring himself to care.

He lay there, slumped against the smoking console, staring into an absent distance. Outside the windows, the black void was visible. The engines had shut off around half an hour ago, so now the ship was just drifting at the same speed.

He was in a corpse of a vessel. It seemed that the Dead Hand group had managed to get to the ship after all. Most likely they'd scavenged it for parts. He should have just checked before he'd set off. Too late now.

What would become of him, now, in this slowly freezing tomb? Would he die here, like this? He could only muster the slightest bit of interest in the result.

When he'd spoken to Dragan Hadrien, the Cogitant had said something, hadn't he? Something that now echoed through Muzazi's mind like a death bell.

You never know if you were happy until it's over.

At the time, Muzazi had just quietly accepted that sentiment. But now, mere hours later, he could fully appreciate it.

He had definitely been happy.

And it was certainly over.

"On your feet."

Doubtless he should stand. He should make some effort to repair the ship, to start the engines back up. At the very least, he should get up and send out a distress signal. Take some tiny step to preserve his own life.

But when he tried to muster any effort at all, the only thing that came back was the cold.

"On your feet."

Muzazi looked up.

There, standing above him, was a man. A man in a traditional black-and-gold robe, with a dark mask covering his face. Golden light glowed from within his cyclopean visor. Kneeling down, he extended an open hand.

"On your feet, Atoy Muzazi," said Nigen Rush. "There is much work to be done."

END OF ARC 8