While Saheel waited for the lift, he examined the contents of his wardrobe and found little in the way of secular, so he buttoned up his funeral suit and straightened out the sleeves on the blazer, making sure to wrap a black tie tight around his neck. He tucked the remote and the stone into his pockets, while he fashioned a makeshift holster for the Fallen Water Pistol out of a fanny pack. For a finishing touch, he donned a pair of aviators — he wouldn't miss seeing the explosion for the world.

A ding announced the lift's arrival. Connie was in there waiting for him. Her eyes looked red and sore, as though she'd been crying her way through a therapy session, and she was dressed in a jumper and sleek pyjama bottoms. The net at her side emitted the same emerald hue as his pistol.

"I need your help," she said, studying him, not taking a hand off her weapon.

"You've come to terms," he said, cocking his pistol. "Good, sister, very good. Is it just us?"

"No. Faust's trapped in the flesh mound. I tried to break through, but I couldn't make a dent. We have to get him back before he kills himself. I don't know what the fuck's left to try, but I remembered you came up with the whole 'reliving our past' idea way back when... hello?"

Saheel stepped into the elevator. A pair of moths swirled around the light in the ceiling. He pressed the button to go to the democracy chamber, where Sean would surely be waiting. Slowly, they rose, through an endless and dark vertical shaft, the g-force placing an uncanny feeling in Saheel's feet.

"Please," said Connie. "I don't know what I can do except ask you for help. The flesh mound is massive, now — biggest fucker I've ever seen. It's gonna be some fight."

"You have to understand, sister," said Saheel. "I'm only interested in revenge."

She looked at him and shuddered. Nobody had ever shuddered at him before, and he didn't like how it felt.

But he grit his teeth. He took out the rock and showed her how it floated in midair.

"This is Eirlys's superweapon," he explained. "Her legacy that she passed under their noses. It wouldn't matter if the flesh mound was the size of the planet. We unpause this — kaboom. No more flesh mound."

"Fuck yeah," said Connie. "We can punch past the barrier, no sweat."

The elevator jolted to a stop alongside the sound of a squelch, but the doors remained stuck — it hadn't lined up with anywhere to step out. Fingers drummed on the roof, punching holes in the metal.

Saheel blasted upright, and managed to disintegrate about half of the fingers. Connie was slightly slower, but the wide area of her net snagged the rest of them, cracking them out of their joints so that they gathered in piles on the floor.

"Fuck! Use the rock," said Connie.

"We'd be blown to kingdom come! Just keep fighting!"

More fingers came. They tried to keep up. Still, the elevator refused to move. There was something — some incredible, pendulum like mass — lowering itself in the darkness above them.

"We're stuck," cried Connie, jabbing the layer 6 button fruitlessly in between lashes of the net. "We've got to vote! If we teleport on top of the tower, we could fire the rock and blast through the whole thing!"

"...This Faust. Do you trust him?"

"With my life." And her eyes said that she meant it.

"That's not enough," he said, hosing off a mandible that had cut into his shoulder. "You go around trusting people with your life, sister, then you're just asking for them to rip your heart out!"

"Dude!" She threw up the net to stop a gigantic tooth from caving in the elevator, but she was struggling to stop it from slipping further down. Bony spears jabbed at her through the elevator walls, and although she tried to squirm out the way of each one, she soon had blood trailing down her and holes riddled through her pyjama bottoms. "We need to vote!"

"Vote?" he spat. "Is he or is he not the one who's both the flesh mound and a contestant?"

"What does that matter?"

"How do you know he's not working with them?"

That caught her out. She failed to stammer an adequate reply, instead lowering the net to clear away the built up spears. Overhead, the elevator roof bucked under the weight of the tooth.

Saheel blasted it, to no effect. "You can't trust him. He disappears behind a barrier which only his weapon can break, then puts pressure on us to vote. But his flesh mound counterpart can deny us permission, meaning we fail to pass anything, but they still get the energy — and then they're strong enough to crush us, weapons or no weapons!"

"That's bullshit!" she shouted. "He'd never do that! He's gone to fucking kill himself to try and give me a better chance of winning!"

"How do you know for sure? You can't trust him!"

"I know, man! I just know! Take this one leap of faith on me here — we can trust him!"

A bone speared him through the foot, and he fell to his knees, still blasting away madly, pumping away at his gun. The tooth above them was making the roof sag down to such an extent that it was now pressing up against his head, and he knew that this would likely be the end of his life.

How could he possibly trust Faust not to decline the vote? And yet, if he didn't make this one leap of faith, his chances of getting close to Sean were nil.

"Fine," he said. "And if your misplaced trust kills us, then let me die as a martyr!"

"Teleport us onto a magic carpet above the tower!" shouted Connie. "All those in favour?"

Their thumbs lit up with such a dazzling glow that Saheel would have been blinded had he not worn his aviators. Instead, he got to watch torrents of energy surge into the tooth overhead, and it bulged bigger and bigger, finally capsizing the elevator, and they fell down...

2Y 1N ; MAJORITY REACHED

Ice spiked into his lungs as he breathed in. They were up in the sky, surrounded by a swirling vortex of clouds that orbited a tower made of ivory. Underneath them was a fetching cashmere rug with gilded tassels. He looked down into the endless void around the tower, but felt only resolve.

"See?" said Connie. "I told you we could trust him! Woohoo! We're flying!"

"It came at a price."

Indeed, cracks ran along the immaculate white surface of the tower, chipping along various fault lines, like an egg, and then with a tremendous burst, the entire exterior shattered, sending out a wave of shrapnel in every direction. But Connie was ready, standing with her arms out for balance, and she weaved them in and out of the debris until they'd cleared it totally.

Saheel could just about make out the floorplan of his PhD dorm in amongst the writhing mass of flesh, which was rising like yeast. No longer held in by the walls, it stretched out its eldritch muscles, its leathery skin glistening in the sunlight. It was like looking at a cardbox box full of snakes, except every second the snakes got bigger until there was nothing left in the universe but snakes. The flesh mound didn't pursue them, but instead knitted itself up into the sky, thinning out at the top as it reached higher and higher, and Saheel realised its destination with horror.

"It's heading for the sun," he said.

"Fuck," said Connie. "What? Seriously? And why? Can we stop it?"

"So you want the sun, do you, Sean?" bellowed Saheel, barely audible over the rush of the wind. "Get ready to forgive me, cause I'll never let you reach it, brother!"

"Get us above the mound," he whispered.

Connie seemed a natural pilot, whizzing them through the air at such speed that ice crystals flaked into their hair, and their wounds froze over rather than scabbed. It was bitingly cold, and all Saheel could do was focus on keeping the rock and the remote held in warm, steady hands. In no time at all, they were casting their own shadow on the highest tendrils of the flesh mound.

"One liner, sister?" said Saheel, angling the rock so that the chalk mark pointed downwards.

"Fuck off and die," said Connie. "What? That's not good enough for you?"

"It'll do. For Sean, it’ll do. We'll shout it on 3."

"1..."

Saheel shivered. He tried to identify any parts of anatomy that he recognised as vaguely human in the monster.

"2..."

Connie clenched her fists. She spat on the flesh mound, then hit the dab.

"3!"

Voting will close at 9:00 UTC on the 26th May