With the jaguar now out of sight, Tasìa returned to her normal stride down the path. Her casual manner as she did so was all deception on her part. She started to feel ill-at-ease again. A dread sense of being watched unnerved her.

As Tasìa sorted her thoughts, she practiced controlled breathing, and she counted her steps.

Troubling to her sense of composure, however, was the creature she had fought.

Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

No. He that made the atom bomb made thee.

God had no part in your creation. The demons that drive mankind made you.

Tasìa pictured the creature in her mind's eye.

She judged it was shorter than herself by a few inches, even more slender than herself, at least ten pounds lighter. It did possess hands, and no tail, like a hominid.

However, its head was so weird and its body so misshapen in appearance that as she fought it, she did not even once consider that it could have been human in its origins.

So, if human, Manifested then? She doubted it fit the definition. It seemed more feral than psychotic.

Tasìa shook her head in frustration that she was so severely limited in her speculations to mere guess-work.

It was time for her to shrug it off and put it to the side as a question for another day. There were more pressing matters to disturb her at the moment.

As Tasìa walked forward, she thought about her visual exposure and vulnerability. She eyed the surrounding ridgeline.

The path ahead began to widen, to her relief. Though she was not out of danger, now at the edge of a field of tall grass, the enlarged area expanded her means of evasion, if it proved to be necessary.

It would be much more difficult to corner her here.

When the count in her head reached sixty, Tasìa grabbed the nearest set of vines. She scurried to a cliff overhang, twenty-two feet up.

It was one of the quickest vertical climbs she had ever made in her life even with the outthrust jump to grab on to the overhang side at the end.

Seven seconds.

Damn Tasìa! Giving herself a mental pat on the back.

Peering up the pathway, she spotted a stalker caught completely by surprise. Fifty-five yards out from her, a small man crouched down before he turned away from where he spied upon her former position. Retreating cautiously, he dipped his head down as he scanned the area around himself.

In a uniform of dark, olive camouflage, he carried a Kalashnikov carbine in his hands. She recognized it as a late-twentieth-century model. A more compact assault rifle than its infamous AK-47 cousin.

Tasìa eyed the tall weeds and brambles nearby to spot any movement from his comrades. She knew they normally patrolled in threes. Nothing stirred the field below her but the one man.

If there were any other guerillas in the vicinity, they were further up the path by at least a few hundred yards.

She slipped the .32 semi-auto pistol out of its holster, and flipped the laser sight on.

Tasìa found the back of the guerilla's head as he steadily moved away in a vain effort not to disturb the surrounding grass and give away his position. With the gun held steadily in place, Tasìa centered the red dot on an odd crimson birthmark; she drilled away at it with a three-round burst.

With a sudden jerk forward, the guerilla disappeared. Blue smoke curled up from where he had crouched.

Segunda Madré! Well, that was certainly unexpected.

She had no doubt of the success of the shot. She saw the guerilla's reaction, but immediately after his head jerked, he vanished into thin air.

Poof!

With her body pressed into the vines, Tasìa crouched low. She doubted anyone had spotted her position. It was highly improbable that they could have anticipated her sudden climbing maneuver.

That the guerilla retreated so slowly, not realizing his low-ground disadvantage in the first place, meant he had lost his visual on her.

Tasìa did not like what the presence of the guerillas meant. She had her meet-up, and she needed the back valley clear of everyone. She had no idea the number of them she would need to kill to secure the site.

So God blessédly screwed.

When Annebél told her the story of the guerilla insurgency, Tasìa assumed the ascospores finished them off. The kind of energy burst necessary to cause this freak environment was not conducive to human survival.

As well, Annebél would have warned her if she knew that the guerillas still inhabited the back valley.

Then there was the blue smoke.

This prompted Tasìa to recall what Annebél said.

I'm best at punching things the fuck out. Especially ghosts.

So, Annebél did warn her. Tasìa shook her head, she had not taken the words seriously given the light tone in which Annebél delivered them.

Ghosts were much more common in the early days of the Cull Spore Invasion. Their spooky behavior most resembled the ghosts of folklore as they tended to show up at the most inexplicable times and scare the fuck out of everyone.

However, they were nothing more than the recordings of events collected by the nanospores, much like virtual reality capture.

In those early days, events heavy in emotional density were recorded and projected on members of the Quadra populace as if they were subjects in a psychological experiment.

When still quite young, Tasìa bathed in an old, iron tub only to find herself surrounded by black-dressed attendees while a funeral was in progress.

Oh, how she screamed. Even still, she tended to take quick baths and showers.

Fortunately, the ghost phenomenon mostly disappeared with mass inoculation. Why this correlation, no one knew.

The immediate question on her mind was whether or not the bullets from any of their return fire could be real. Why would a pre-recorded event be spotting her?

Why did his head not burst? Why did he not collapse to the ground? No such event had been previously recorded for that effect, so poof instead?

And, did it really matter?

The spores could go well beyond mere visual projection in the entities they created. Why assume the ghost would remain immaterial?

She swung her head up in a sweeping motion that ended when she pulled back down to her original position. Her feint did indeed draw fire from a pair of rifles.

Tasìa glanced up at a grouping of leaves behind her where the bullets should have hit.

They went untouched by any bullet round. The big, wide leaves simply drooped, unmoved.

Even given this, how much was she willing to gamble these were mere audio-visual phenomenon on display?

Tasìa rolled over on her back and stared at the moon for a moment before closing her eyes to concentrate.

The feeling of being watched returned. Something was up there. This wasn't some inexplicable, intuition-level magic she was perceiving.

Something had tagged her for a continual subdermal relay. Literally, she was being pinged.

And, she could feel it!

Tasìa thought of Mel's oddly formed squawks as he spoke to her. That was the means nightwings delivered their micro-needle tags. Of course, he would tag her. She was in the early stages of Manifestation.

It was what he did in his role of being a guardian of humanity; he tagged those that needed inoculation.

Thus, Mel, the nightwing with the modified high intelligence made it his business to keep track of her.

She spun her head around searching for the nightwing in the vines and brambles above her position with no success. Too many niches and crannies for a smart crow to disappear in.

Tasìa grabbed the NeoPalm, and she texted Felicité. At this time of night, the girl was likely tapping away on her TRS-80

Where's the nightwing?

Seconds later, she got a text back.

Hey there, you. Where have you been? I thought you may have joined the Batshit People.

She had heard Felicité use that phrase coming off her shift in the Spore Isolation Unit before. One needed a thick skin to work so near the Manifested.

Her other favorite phrase, fucking Cthulhu worshipping rayos-de-luna*. Tasìa smiled as she thought of Felicité's Buenos Aires accent when delivering that phrase.

Nope. I'm cured. Such a weird, weird night. Sorry, I did not get back to you earlier, but the LSD, not very conducive to communication.

She decided not to mention her adventures with Annebél, nor Bajamutté and Alex. She recognized, though it held a grain of truth, blaming it on the LSD was a deflection.

Tasìa, you lying little spook wannabe, she admonished herself. She realized that she did so only half-heartedly.

Felicité texted back to her.

Very interesting surroundings you find yourself in.

Tasìa answered.

So, is Mel nearby?

She looked around again. The nightwing was a better master of stealth than she was herself.

I doubt if he ever strayed very far the entire night from you, going by the recorded flight pattern. He definitely stayed near someone.

A sharp and warm tingle of embarrassment flushed through Tasìa's cheeks. Recorded. If Felicité had access to the visual recordings she could see Tasìa sitting beside Bajamutté. It was one of the most uninhibited moments in her life. The lust she had felt and let be shown would be on full display to anyone who cared to watch.

Felicité continued.

You need to see this. I'll key you into the nightwing's visual display.

She saw herself lying on the cliff overhang from the vantage point of thirty yards up on the opposite ridgeline.

Okay?, Tasìa answered back.

Just a sec, little smarty-tushy. I need to prompt the bird to look in the right direction again.

Mel raised his eyes away from Tasìa's position, and he started to stare straight ahead. Sitting above her, at the top of the ridgeline, were three sets of eyes that constantly moved in motions consisting of jabs and pokes.

His vision grew clear, revealing nasty, monstrous-looking buzzards.

Oh, sweet Mary of mine, that is creepy, and they are just normal, big-ass buzzards from the look of them, she wrote back to Felicité. Tasìa continued, I need to ask another favor. Could you test something -

Tasìa stopped typing when she heard a noise coming from beneath her. Someone was trying to climb up the ridge.

Something is up. I'll have to text you back later.

She put her neoPalm away and grabbed her gun. Tasìa waited patiently. The guerilla would be too inconvenienced by his climb to engage in any effective combat.

His companion, however, must have been covering the guerilla's assent with his rifle readied to nail her if she poked her head up.

Tasìa shifted down the overhang she lay on to minimize the sharpshooter's effective angle.

What kind of counter-attack did they have in mind?

She waited several more minutes before he came in sight, fifteen feet in front of her.

To her astonishment, the guerilla did not try to climb up onto the overhang.

He kept climbing still further up using the vines. He ignored her entirely.

That face! Tasìa thought in revulsion. It was impossibly emaciated. More skull-like than fleshy. A grimace set like stone on his lips.

When he reached the top of the ridge, the man began to yell at the buzzards.

"You are impossible monstrosities," the guerilla shouted. "You cannot be."

The buzzards squawked out their miserable sounding yelp in protest.

The man fired his gun. The buzzards yelled even louder. A mad tussle insued.

From the guerilla came a fearful shout. Tasìa caught sight of him once more. His legs and arms flailed as he descended right above her.

Tasìa leaned in quickly just before he skidded off the overhang. He attempted to grab on to something to no avail.

The guerilla slipped and he continued to fall. She did not hear the thud that would have brought his fall to a satisfying closure.

"Mani! Mani!"

The remaining guerilla yelled. He continued speaking in a near soliloquy.

"All is lost, Mani. We were wrong. We kept saying none of this is real. But no, it's real. We are not.

"Mani, I'm so sorry I recruited you. None of this was worth believing in. You could have had a nice life in Lima. Nice house, family, loving wife, wonderful children. A life. A career. You would have made it. You had so much talent. You could have had it all, but I convinced you that life was just so much bullshit because I am a smug, arrogant, simpleton fool."

Tasìa peaked up and back down. No shots came. She peaked out again. The last guerilla stood facing away from her. He stared at a spot on the ground but there was not a body lying there.

He clutched at a .357 magnum revolver in his right hand.

He continued to speak.

"This? What is this? It defies everything El Poco Rojo taught. We are not real, Mani. I wish we never left Lima and discovered this for ourselves. We could have remained oblivious to this illusion our entire lives, Mani."

He looked up to the stars before he continued speaking.

"There is no God, so how can this be? We are not real, we are like spirits floating around in a world that cannot be. But it is, and it is we who are not."

The guerilla grew silent for several seconds. He nodded his head several times as he whispered.

"Yes. Yes. The one way out."

When he put the gun to his head he dissipated into blue smoke before he even fired a shot.

* Rayos-de-lunas - moonbeams