“PHANTRANA!” Thomas shouted. They were both so close to the door Dominic was trying to get to. Suddenly, several phantom bones appeared around Thomas and Dominic, the shards embedding themselves inside Thomas’s makeshift shield before Thomas rolled off the couch and followed Dominic into the room, slamming the door behind them, panting in fear and exhaustion. Thomas looked around to see a large home gym full of exercise balls and dumbbells.

“I don’t like to look at myself or have anyone look at me while I exercise. And I keep that door locked too for the same reason.” Dominic panted, struggling to speak. “This body doesn’t just happen, after all.”

“Okay, Dominic, walk to the other side of the room and close your eyes, now. And do you have any reflective materials on you, like your glasses?” Thomas said, looking at the doorway in fear as he prayed to God this would work.

“What? No, I don’t. What’s your plan here?”

“Just trust me. I can handle this,” Thomas snapped. He was visibly worried. He knew the price.

Dominic did as Thomas asked, running over to the edge of the room and shutting his eyes while facing the home gym. He suddenly heard Thomas shout in pain and fall to the floor. He heard squelching. “Thomas?” No answer. He could hear the machine crawling out of somewhere. Did Thomas fail? “Unit, run vital checks on Thomas Finn!” he shouted, and projecting onto the inside of his eyelids was “0 BPM.” Thomas was dead. The Glass Assassin agreed, placing its hand on Thomas’s chest as it slowly crawled out of Thomas’s right eye. First, only its hand was outside. A second later, its shoulder appeared. I have to help Thomas. I can’t just sit here or it’s going to kill me too! Its head started to appear in the outside world. No. He said to trust him. Its head and torso were beginning to appear. It made a robotic whirring noise as it slowly dragged Thomas’s corpse over to Dominic. I TRUST THOMAS FINN!

Suddenly, Thomas’s chest began to glow purple, as his vitals jumped from zero to two hundred BPM. And he heard Thomas speak. “Phantrana, destroy my eye.” Suddenly, hundreds of phantom eyes appeared around the room, the damage of which caused Thomas’s eye to melt into a puddle as he screamed in agony. An action that cut off the Glass Assassin’s top half from its bottom, telefragging it into two halves, trapped in two worlds. Thomas stood up as it let out a mechanical shriek and flailed for some sort of escape but ceased a few moments later, powering down. “I slowed my heart and reignited it, and then cut you off from your other half when you had no other options to kill Dominic than to crawl through my eye.” Thomas looked up from the electronic corpse, and over to Dominic. “You can open your eyes now.” Thomas smiled.

Dominic had tears streaming down his face, although he could still only open one eye as he ran towards Thomas, wrapping his arms around him. The two looked into each other’s one good eye and smiled. “We’re matching!” the two said in unison. And they both laughed.

Thomas woke up on Dominic’s couch. He felt better. His wounds had vanished, and somehow, his eye had returned as well. He sat up groggily to see Dominic chatting with a woman who was far paler than dark-skinned Dominic. She had short pink hair and a bubbly voice. She waved with a smile when the two looked over to Thomas.

“Thomas! You’re awake!” Dominic exclaimed, walking over to him. Thomas felt like he recognized the woman. “Thomas, this is my sister!”

* * *

Pepper Morgan sat in a jail cell, her usual clothing having been replaced with a bright orange prison uniform, which she didn’t seem to mind, as it matched her usual clothing anyways. Her hands were not only cuffed but had metallic coverings placed over them in order to avoid her touching anything. She had gotten careless and murdered one of the detectives investigating her. It was a stupid move tactically, but she couldn’t ignore how good it felt. Every time she took a person’s life with her Civ was like a thousand years of pleasure condensed into a single moment—a single explosion of raw feeling. It was almost sexual, she thought. She was playing the moment back in her hand: the touch of her hand against the man’s shoulder as she broke into his home, the panic in his eyes, watching the whites of them come into view. Her eyes were rolling back in satisfaction as she stirred alone in her cell. And then the heat of the man’s body disappearing away into the night—ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

The trial would be a hassle, no doubt. But this is why she had a gang. There were people who could handle this. Civ users who could manipulate the jury and defend her from others doing the same. She didn’t know who would be prosecuting. She had her hopes up for one specific man, a lawyer in his mid-twenties, small and dark with thick glasses. What was his name? It didn’t matter anyways. She had sent someone to take care of his death. And he would be dead.

Unless someone very powerful intervened.