vervaceous | (no subject)

Title: Vector
Fandom: Harsh Realm
Rating: NC-17 for language, violence, and explicit adult situations
Wordcount: 60,155
Summary: Three years after his entry into the Realm, Tom Hobbes finds his stagnant day-to-day existence disrupted by the worst threat he's ever faced--and the entire Realm faces it as well.

And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.

-17-

Later, Tom isn't sure how he'd found out. Someone had told him, somehow he'd found Florence. Somehow they'd gotten down to Containment. There's guards with them now, he realizes, though he doesn't much care. Apparently they're not as free as they had been. Maybe there's a general feeling that they no longer have as much to lose.

He glances out a window before they descend. It's another beautiful day.

He stands in that disgustingly pristine white tiled room and stares. The Guardsman behind him is a different man, looking at both him and Florence with obvious distrust. He doesn't even spare the man a glance. He's staring ahead at the newly occupied cell. In the next cell over, Kiana lies on her cot, her breathing rough and labored. But for the moment he doesn't even have a look to spare for her.

“Just tell me one thing,” he says finally, his voice flat and dead. “Tell me why you didn't just eat a fucking bullet.”

From his place on the floor, Mike shrugs. He's sitting with his back to the clear wall, picking at something on the plain white scrubs they've given him. “They took our guns.”

Tom snorts a laugh, looks down and shakes his head, looks at Florence. She's standing next to him with her arms crossed over her chest and her head bowed, and suddenly he's angry for her, more than anything. That she's being put through this. That Mike would be so fucking selfish. “You're an asshole.”

“That's what she said.” Mike leans his head back against the wall, looking briefly towards Kiana's cell, though he can't possibly see her from where he is. “She's not doing so hot.”

“She's dying, Mike.”

“Yeah, I get that.” He lowers his head again. “And you get this. Don't you fucking pretend you don't. You're not that stupid.”

“Yeah, I get it.” Tom laughs again, rough and short, raking both hands through his hair. “I gotta say, Pinocchio, I never had you pegged as the big dramatic suicide type.”

“You think that's what this is.”

“I think you're killing yourself and you're making us watch, Mike. You're making her watch.” And that finally makes Mike turn, though the look is only sidelong, his eyes widening slightly and very blue. Blue for now. “So I don't fucking know what else I'm supposed to think it is.”

“How about you don't think anything?” Mike turns completely, staring at him through the wall, and Tom finds himself searching his face for any signs of the infection racing through his bloodstream. Pallor. Tiny red spots, evidence of broken capillaries. That sagging, dead look to his skin. The redness in his eyes. The coughing.

None of it is there. Of course, it's still far too early.

Mike puts a hand against the wall and Tom fights back the sudden urge to go to him, put his own hand against the wall, try to will it away and reach through. It's not true, you're not... look at you, you're fine. Last night, the heat of him, the desperate life surging through both of them. He wants to feel that again. The idea that he's touched Mike for the last time is impossible to conceive, let alone accept.

“Don't think,” Mike says again. “Take Florence. Get her outta here. No one's making you watch anything.”

Tom shakes his head, and there's a tightness in his throat that he doesn't want to be there. He doesn't want to grieve for Mike Pinocchio, not when it's happening like this, not when he's not even dead. Yet. “I'm not leaving.”

Mike snorts. “Then you got no one to blame but yourself, dick.”

He feels the air pushed aside as Florence steps past him, her head still bowed. She steps up to the glass, drops into a crouch and lays her hand against it, close to Mike's on the other side, and she looks at him. He looks back, and Tom watches his face slowly twist, churn, almost sickening. Finally he drops his head, and Tom is filled with the sense of having seen something intensely private, something he was never meant to see.

It might have been a goodbye. It seems too soon for it to be that simple, though. Something else. A kind of acceptance. But she's shaking her head as she gets to her feet and steps back again, and while he can't see any anger on her face, there's a fierce sadness there like a blade to the gut. She glances at him, and he can almost hear the words, they're so clear in her eyes.

It wasn't supposed to be like this.

He knows. If there ever were rails, if they were ever on them, they're far off now. He gives Mike one more hard stare and turns away from him. The sensation of betrayal is too great. Last night... so what the fuck did any of it mean, if this is how Mike tops off the evening?

And he had wanted it to mean something. He doesn't know what. Not love, not a fucking relationship, but something. Something that isn't dying.

So he turns away and he follows Florence out, and though he can feel Mike's eyes on his back, practically burning through his skin, he ignores it.

* * *

The mess hall takes him back, in some ways he hadn't exactly been ready for, back to hundred of days crowded into a loud room with his friends and with people he didn't even know, wolfing down pork chops and chicken and mashed potatoes with thin gravy and any number of other foods that might have dropped right out of a high school cafeteria. But it's mostly empty now. Maybe after the breakfast rush, the soldiers and administrators who make a temporary home here. One wall is lined with windows that look out on the long terrace and the city and Tom takes a seat by them, bending over cold cereal, trying to work up a desire to eat. Florence had left him and he wishes she hadn't. But he gets it. He would hide.

But then he'd be alone with himself.

“Hey.” He looks up at the familiar voice; Hitchins, sliding into the seat across from him, his eyes wide and concerned, and he looks about twice as young as he normally does. “Mind if I sit here?”

Tom shrugs.

“It's just... look, I won't bug you, I just heard...” Hitchins pulls off his beret, rakes fingers through his hair, staring into Tom's cereal. “Pinocchio. Mike. I heard he was--”

“He is.” Tom breaks in flatly. It feels like putting a sick animal down. “This morning.”

“Oh.” Hitchins goes quiet and pale for a moment, still looking down, beret in his hands. “How did it happen?”

Tom lifts the spoon in the bowl but none of the cereal actually makes it out of the milk and into his mouth. It's just getting soggy. He always used to let it do that when he was a kid. He used to like it like that. “He did it to himself, Hitchins.”

“I don't understand. Why would he do that?” Hitchins shakes his head, looking up at Tom again with the confusion so horribly plain in his eyes. Fuck, Pinocchio, fuck you. Fuck you so fucking hard. “I mean... he basically killed himself. Right?” He stops himself, flushing briefly, and ducks his head again. “Sorry. I didn't mean...”

“Yeah, that's basically what he did.” Tom drops the spoon back into the milk with a splosh and leans back in his seat. “Hitchins, do you know what he did before this?”

“Well...” Hitchins shifts in his seat, looking even more uncomfortable. “I mean... I know he used to work here. I know he used to be pretty high up. But it was mostly before... I was still really young. I think I saw him on TV a few times. Back when things were still getting put back together.”

“But you know he used to work here.”

“Yeah.” Hitchins nods, giving Tom a look like that's a fairly silly question. “Everyone knows that.”

“You know he was on the team that developed the virus?”

“I--” Hitchins hesitates, mouth twisting. “I heard it. He never said anything about it to me.” He pauses again, clearly trying to work up the guts to say something more. “Hobbes... I know we're supposed to be enemies. And I know the Guard does a lot of bad shit out there. But there's a lot of us... we're just trying to do the best we can, y'know? We're just trying to make a life. But something like Pale Horse...” He shakes his head, brow furrowed. “I dunno. I think about that and I just... I dunno. It's not good.”

“No,” Tom says, and there's a ghost of a smile working its way across his face. Not warm, barely even there. But it's not sour or wry. “It's really not.”

“Not now.”

“No. A couple years ago.”

“Why didn't you join him?” Some of the discomfort has bled out of Hitchins's face and he's looking at Tom with a perfectly open expression on his young face, curious but unjudging. “The General, I mean. He probably gave you a good deal. I've seen lots of men take it. Why did you turn him down?

Tom is silent for a few seconds before he shakes his head. “I couldn't.” He smiles faintly. “It just wasn't where I was supposed to be.”

“You were supposed to be out there?” Hitchins's eyes flick away to the windows and the terrace outside, the neatly potted plants in the sun and the bright city beyond. And then past that, the fence. And past that... “With her. And him.”

“I thought so.” Tom swallows. “Now I don't know.”

“I thought I was supposed to wear this fucking uniform,” says Hitchins, looking down at himself with an even deeper furrow to his brow. “Now I don't know either. I can't desert, but... there's my sister. And I have to think... what if things get worse?”

“Do you think you would ever desert?”

“Shit, no, they... they shoot you on sight if you do.” Hitchins blanches slightly. “And that's if they like you. But if I could get away with my sister, be safe somewhere...” He glances around the largely deserted hall, as if afraid they might be overheard, and leans forward slightly, dropping his voice. “Yeah, I think maybe I would.”

Tom nods slowly. If he could get somewhere safe. It's a stupid hope, now. Where's safe? Mike had said to leave as well, but where is he expecting them to go?

Even if they somehow escape infection, they can't escape what's coming. The end of the world.

And Hitchins can't, either. Hitchins and his little sister.

“You should get out, if you can,” Tom says quietly. “I have to warn you, though, it's bad out there. And it's just going to get worse.” He laughs humorlessly and shakes his head, leaning it down against his palm. “Maybe you'd be safer here, I have no idea.”

“And what're you gonna do, Hobbes?” Hitchins's voice is still low and quiet, but not as though he's trying to hide his words. As though he can sense what Tom isn't saying.

“I don't know.” Tom turns, looks out the bright windows. “Die, probably.”

* * *

Things settle into a cold, dry limbo of waiting. That evening he and Florence walk out on the terrace and stare out at the lights of the city, close and impossibly distant. Their chips have been reprogrammed again. They can't leave the building. They haven't seen Santiago, haven't seen Waters, don't know anyone who has. If there was a feeling of statelessness before, now it's doubled, trebled. They have no purpose. There's no mission to advise on, no project to oversee. Mike is locked in containment. Already twice today Tom has heard him referenced in the past tense. Everyone seems to feel it's just a matter of time. No one seems sure who's in charge.

“What're they gonna do with us?” Tom asks softly. Dexter snuffles at his feet. Florence shrugs. There isn't any answer beyond that, even for her, and he knows it. Whatever usefulness they had is rapidly disappearing, and once Mike's gone they won't have any left at all. Might be gone before that. The city out past the lip of the terrace looks pristine, perfect and glistening, but there's a feeling of unease in the air, like the change in pressure before a storm. In the little bit of TV news he's watched he's seen no mention of any disease, but that doesn't mean a thing, and it certainly doesn't mean that people won't talk, to their wives and children and siblings and parents behind closed doors, where not even Santiago can hear them.

Unease, unrest eventually, and unrest looks for something to rally around. A symbol. A banner. Maybe a person. Maybe a simple man.

He realizes it immediately and without any fear or surprise. He's dangerous now, and Santiago will know it.

“They're going to kill me,” he says, leaning over the stone rail, looking out at the sun winking off the buildings. “Probably soon.”

Florence looks sharply at him, but he can see in her eyes that she isn't surprised either. Maybe she'd already known it was coming. She lays a hand on his arm, her eyes searching his face, and she nods out at the city.

We can run. He said to go, we can just go.

“Could you leave him?” he asks, and he knows it's a cruel question before it's even out, but he has to ask it anyway. For so long the three of them have been together, fought and bled and lived together, and not once has any one of them left anyone else behind. Even when it seemed hopeless. Tom shakes his head and looks away. “'Cause I'm not sure I could.”

It's not about sex. It's not even really about love. He's not sure there's a name for this kind of bond.

Florence exhales slowly, ducks her head and then crouches, scooping Dexter up in her arms and stroking his head. He's thought sometimes that she finds more comfort in the dog than even he does. After a few moments she looks at him again and shakes her head, her face twisting miserably.

“I'm sorry,” he says quietly. Fuck. “You know it probably doesn't matter anyway. Even if we go...” He lets out a heavy breath and leans his forehead against his folded hands. “We'll stay. Until it's over. Then we'll go.” And even as he says the words he knows how empty they are. Mike might well outlive him. And then...

Florence. Alone. The thought of it brings up a stinging behind his eyes.

Though, maybe she'll have Dexter. For a while, anyway.

* * *

He finds that he can't sleep, lying on the living room floor with his pack as a pillow and Dexter snoring quietly at his side. He's waiting for a bullet, for a needle in his arm, for the chip in his flesh to release a final lethal dose of neurotoxin. There's really no reason they even have to come near him to kill him. It's not fear, not at all. It's just the sensation of waiting, expectant, wondering when and how it might be.

Really, it's like coming home.

But home is a thing that he's not sure even exists anymore, and so after an hour, two, lying in the dark and staring up and into it, he gets to his feet and heads out into the quiet building, traveling down and down. The underworld, he thinks with a wry smile. Orpheus descending to rescue his beloved.

He doesn't think Orpheus was ever quite this pissed off. And there's not going to be any rescuing.

Mike is lying on his back on the low cot, one arm over his eyes, but Tom can tell, from years of long experience, that he isn't sleeping. Kiana is on her cot as well, but she's not awake in any real sense of the term. Tom can barely look at her. She's tiny, emaciated, half curled on the thin mattress with her skinny arms drawn up against her chest. Her fingers are stained with blood, more sinister red stains around her mouth, her nose, her eyes. Now and then she frowns slightly and twitches, as if troubled by some problem for which she can't find the solution.

Tom turns away from her, steps close to the clear wall that separates him from the little room that's become Mike's world, taps lightly on the glass. Mike drops his arm and lifts his head, his face twisting into an unidentifiable expression when he sees who it is.

“Fuck're you doing here?” he sits up, swinging his feet onto the floor. “Thought I told you to get the fuck outta here.”

“And you really thought I would?” Tom laughs slightly, looks down. “When have I ever done what you told me to do?”

He's expecting a snide remark, a sneer or some sarcasm, but instead Mike smiles faintly and shakes his head. “Yeah, I guess not. Guess I shoulda known.” He lifts his hand and coughs into it, delicately, but he's clearly trying to make it seem less severe than it is. Tom pulls in a shuddering sigh. “So why're you down here?”

Tom looks up again. “Couldn't sleep. I wanted to see you.”

“You and wanting to see people.”

“I know. I know, it's a bad habit.” Down here, like this, he's discovering that all his anger is beginning to evaporate, and in its place is a desperate kind of warmth, and a deep sadness. Maybe this is what Florence had been feeling. The sensation of touching something that won't ever happen now. He reaches out and lays a hand on the glass. “Mike...”

“Don't.” Mike shakes his head slowly. “Look, it's just...” He drops his face into his hands for a moment or two, drags in a long breath, and again Tom thinks it, though with no rage. He's killing himself and we're watching it happen. “You know, it doesn't matter anymore what we do. You were there with me. You saw it.”

“Is that why you came to my room?” Tom looks down at him, hand on the glass, and all he wants to do in that moment is reach through and touch him, one more time. He doesn't care that they aren't alone, doesn't care what kind of look the Guardsman must be giving him right now. “Because it doesn't matter what we do?”

“No, it was...” Mike's face twists, something anguished flashing briefly over it. “Hobbes, I just needed... I don't know. I didn't mean for it to happen like that.”

“You didn't.” It's not what he'd wanted to hear. It's not what he'd hoped for. He's not sure how much of it he believes. But it's not like he hadn't expected it. “Okay, Pinocchio. Well, maybe I did mean for it to happen. So you can blame me if you want.”

Mike stares at him. “You...” He laughs quickly, disbelievingly, and looks away at the wall. “But aren't you, like... straight?”

“Well, I dunno, Mike.” Tom slips his heads into his pockets. Suddenly he's tired. So this worked after all. “Maybe people are just more complicated than that.”

Mike doesn't say anything else. Tom turns and leaves, not even bothering to spare the Guardsman a glance, and when Kiana groans softly from behind him he walks a little faster.

-18-

He doesn't see Waters until the end of the next day. It might seem like a chance meeting, just two people bumping into each other, but Waters grasps him by the front of his shirt and tugs him through a door, into a small, empty briefing room, pushing him towards the table and shutting the door behind them. Tom stumbles, almost falls, turns and glares. If this is the assassination he's been waiting for, there could be a little less shoving involved.

“What the fuck do you want, Waters?”

Waters waves his hand in a shushing gesture. “You saved my life, Hobbes. You remember that.”

Tom's eyes narrow, and he crosses his arms over his chest, leaning back against the edge of the table. “Yeah, I remember.” He smirks faintly, unpleasantly. “Thought maybe you didn't.”

“Fuck you, Hobbes.” But Waters seems impatient more than anything else—impatient and afraid. “You have any idea how many times I coulda killed you by now? And here you are. You think there might be a reason for that?”

“Yeah.” Tom cocks his head to the side. “I thought maybe you were an incompetent fuck who could never shoot straight.”

“I'm gonna let that go,” Waters says, “because I do owe you. And I know you're pissed at me and you probably have a right to be. But look, Hobbes, you have to get out of here. Soon as you can. If you wanna live.”

“They're going to have me killed, aren't they?” Tom asks, utterly calm. Seeing the look that overtakes Waters's face, he knows. “You don't have to tell me. It's pretty obvious. When?”

“They aren't sure yet.” Waters looks down and away, almost as if he's ashamed. “Soon. Maybe next week. They're still hashing out the details.” He looks up again, and for the first time Tom sees how drained he is, how hollowed out. It's been hard to connect this face with the man he used to know because in a very real way, the two are no longer connected. And he thinks of Mike again, and he understands a little more. “They're scared out of their minds, Hobbes. They can't stop this. There's people dying out there in waves. A few of them made it through the fence last night.”

Tom's eyes widen slightly. “What?”

“Infected people. They're trying to get in past the fence, all along the border. They think we have a cure. They think we released Pale Horse just to wipe them all out, get the land.”

“And that wasn't the plan?”

“Hobbes...”

“What do you want, Waters?” He lifts a hand, scrubs it down his face. He almost wishes this had been the assassination. He's so tired of waiting. “You trying to save me? You really think there's any point to that? Do you really give a shit about what happens to me, or is this you just trying to salve your conscience? 'Cause I won't help you do that. Not after what you did to her.” Her blond hair flying as she'd fallen and faded, and it doesn't matter that it hadn't really been Sophie. It had been Sophie. Just not his Sophie. But he'd loved her all the same.

Waters's face darkens. “You wait till you're in my place, Hobbes. Then you can judge me.” He turns, opens the door and looks back. “And your buddy, Pinocchio... you think I'm bad, I guess you don't know him as well as you think.”

“He's dying, Waters,” Tom says simply. “I know him as well as I need to.”

* * *

He goes to see Mike. He doesn't really want to, but he's drawn, pulled by that bond for which he can't find a name. A different guard in containment, an older man, who gives him a suspicious look when he walks in but who otherwise doesn't try to stop him. Doesn't speak to him at all. Tom stares at Kiana, who doesn't even look like she's moved, and Mike, sitting with his back to the wall that divides his and Kiana's cells, slowly unraveling one sleeve of his white scrubs. He looks up at Tom, smiles thinly.

“Never thought dying would be so goddamn boring.” He glances past Tom, as though he expects to see something that isn't there. “Where's Florence?”

“She hasn't come down?”

“Not since you were here.” Mike coughs into his hand, and it goes on for what seems like a long time, until Tom's closing his eyes and looking away. When it's over he leans back against the wall, breathing a little heavily, and takes a swallow from a bottle of water at his side. “Throat's fucking burning. 'S the worst part so far.”

“I don't know why she hasn't come to see you.”

“I think I do.” Mike looks down at his hands. “That was goodbye, the other day. Mostly. She'll probably pop in at the end, but she's...” He shrugs, and for an instant he looks sadder than Tom thinks he's ever seen him look. “She can't do anything about it. So it's like it's torture for her. I don't want her putting herself through that.”

The end. It's strange, to hear it talked about so matter-of-factly. But it's also true, so perhaps there's no point in sugar-coating it. And he's sure, and he's been sure for a while, that Mike Pinocchio is a man who's lived with the idea of his own death for a long time.

“I'll bring her down if you want,” he says softly, and Mike shakes his head.

“Don't. I'm serious, Hobbes. I don't want that.”

“Do you want anything?”

Mike smiles, almost dreamily. Since he's come here, entered the place where he'll probably die, Tom has seen anger and sadness on his face. But he also realizes, at once and abruptly, that he's never seen Mike look so at peace as he does now.

“I want a big fucking steak,” he says. “I want it so rare it's bloody. And a decent beer. They're feeding me shit down here.”

“I'll get you a steak,” Tom says, and the world blurs a little in front of his eyes. “I promise. I'll get it to you somehow.”

“Hobbes...” Mike slides over, closer to the glass, reaches up and lays his hand against it. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry about all of this. It wasn't supposed to happen this way.”

“How was it supposed to happen?” More blurring, a tightening in his throat, and he knows he's going to have to turn away. Mike looks up at him, fights back another cough, and through the blurring Tom can see the redness creeping into the whites of his eyes.

“You were supposed to go home.”

* * *

It feels as though he's picked up Mike's fever, the way the hours and then the days bleed together, and at some point it occurs to him that there's really no difference between Mike in his cell and himself sitting in his room. Both waiting. Both walking dead men.

It's comforting.

He wakes up. He showers. He feeds himself, feeds Dexter. He finds himself more and more in Florence's company, the two of them sitting in silence in her room or out on the terrace. They don't need to speak. There's nothing really to speak of. Even Dexter is silent more and more. The world immediately around them holding its breath.

And the world outside slowly going to pieces. There's nothing about it on the news, at least nothing directly, but over the next three days, the few times Tom turns the TV on to watch for any signs of Pale Horse's approach, he senses a kind of forced cheerfulness on the part of the pretty young news anchor, and that sense grows and grows with every broadcast. At night he stands by his open bedroom window and he hears sirens howling through the streets. Once he sees the distant bright flare of something exploding into flames. In the hallways there's whispering, increasingly worried, between soldiers and staff alike. He still hasn't seen Santiago. Down by the mess hall on the third morning, he overhears one older woman tell her younger friend that it's no longer clear whether or not Santiago is even still in the city.

He has a bunker somewhere, Tom's sure. A place to wait out anything. More than that, he has a portal, and while the Realm tears itself to pieces he can sneak out by the back way and close the world behind him.

And that, more than any other idea, still makes him angry.

“I dunno what he'd do,” Mike says when Tom asks him. “He's never had to deal with anything on this scale before.” He's leaning up against the glass again, face slack and bored, and more pale than when Tom had last seen him. He lifts his hand to his mouth and lets loose another long, hacking string of coughs, wiping at his mouth when he's done, and although he tries to keep his hand closed, turned away, Tom can see a flash of crimson on his fingers.

“You think he'd leave?”

“The Realm?” Mike swallows hard, leans his head back against the wall and lifts a hand to his temple as though it's paining him. “He might. I guess eventually he's gonna have to.”

There's a soft, muffled groan from the adjacent cell and Tom glances up, and so does Mike, though, still, there's no way he could see from where he is. Kiana, now on a respirator, almost hidden under tubes and blankets, immobile but still somehow fighting.

“They've got her on a transfusion,” Mike says, and he seems to shudder. “I don't even know why they're trying to keep her alive. They stopped treating her for anything days ago.” His face twists, half hidden by his hand. “It seems... cruel, I dunno.”

“You wanted that,” Tom says softly, and he knows Mike will know what he means, and he knows it'll sting.

“I didn't want it.” Mike drops his hand and stares out at Tom. The redness is creeping more and more into his eyes, crimson standing out in a pale face. “It's not like that. You don't get it.”

So they're back to this again. Tom shakes his head and looks away. He's tired of this fight. He doesn't want to have it anymore. “I don't think I get anything, Mike.” He turns, hands swinging uselessly at his sides, nodding to the guard as he heads for the door. He doesn't look at Kiana as he leaves. This time, as with every time, he feels as though he should be saying goodbye.

But he doesn't.

* * *

On the morning of the fourth day, everything explodes.

Tom wakes up to sirens. Not outside, inside the building itself, and the sound of running feet outside his door. He sits up from his pallet on the floor—the TV still droning inanely, left on again overnight—and blinks uncomprehendingly. Of all the unexpected things he'd started to anticipate, this doesn't even begin to come close. He goes to the window and looks out; a line of humvees and trucks, perhaps ten vehicles long, heading out towards the city center.

Something.

As he opens the door, ordering Dexter to stay, and heads out, he wishes all over again that they'd been allowed to keep their guns. Given something else. Anything. He feels infuriatingly helpless. Two Guardsmen hurry past him, then a third, bumping his shoulder as he passes and not bothering with an apology. Tom stares after them and heads towards Florence's room; he's halfway there when someone else hits him, stalking along with his head down, ramming him square in the chest and almost sending them tumbling to the floor together. He catches the man by the shoulders, trying to steady both of them, letting out a sound that manages to be exasperated, surprised, and relieved all at once.

“Hitchins. Jesus Christ, man, keep your head up.”

“Hobbes.” Hitchins seems to pull in a breath, straightening, reaching out and laying his own hands on Tom's arms. “You gotta... you should stay in your room now. Keep your head down.”

“Why? What's happening?”

“The fence.” Hitchins swallows, as if trying to get himself under a kind of control. “Huge breach, about ten miles away. People with cars, guns. Infected.” He shakes his head and glances back, almost like he expects to see them coming. We're trying to contain them, but I just... if they make it to the city... my sister...”

Tom's heart breaks a little. No way to tell him the truth, no way to do that to him. He squeezes Hitchins's shoulder and he thinks I wish I'd known you in a different time. I wish we could have been friends.

“Get her,” he says. “Get out of here, Hitchins. If there's anywhere you know of, anywhere remote... go for that.”

“I could go north...” Hitchins frowns hard, something twisting his face. “But there's people... I swore to protect these people, Hobbes. I can't--” He shakes his head again, steps away and at the same time pushes Tom gently back, and Tom can see something switch over in his brain as he moves into a different mode. A more distant one. “Go back to your room. Please. I have to insist.”

Tom sighs, strangely defeated. Then again, it's really not so strange. “I was going to find my friend. I'll stay with her, just let me get to her.”

Hitchins looks doubtful, but finally he sighs and nods. “All right. Just get to her quick. The next guy who stops you might not be as understanding.” He inclines his head down the hall. “I have to get out there.”

“Hitchins.” Tom reaches out, lays a hand on his shoulder again, and the stab of regret is fresh and strong. Whatever Mike saw in him... he wants to believe it wasn't just a fuck for its own sake. Part of him even does. “Take care of yourself.”

Hitchins nods. “And you. Get going.”

Racing down the hallways, more sirens in the distance. At one point he thinks he hears shooting, but it can't be, there's no way the fighting can be that close already. He's close to Florence, and then something changes, some decision is made behind the scenes in his own brain, and he finds his feet carrying him on a path he could now walk in his sleep, towards the elevators. But the elevators are packed with Guard, or at least the one he manages to call is, and he finds himself turning towards the stairs, descending and descending, his steps echoing on the concrete.

He'd thought it was only a few floors down, but somehow it seems to be a lot further than that, and as he heads downward the lights grow dimmer and begin to flicker, and in places the concrete itself seems to be crumbling. Now, he's seeing the skeleton behind the shiny facade of Santiago City. The ruin of the old building, half destroyed by war and simple neglect. A great deal of care paid to the things people are most likely to see. But there are fundamental weaknesses, cracks in the foundations.

It was madness to think a fence would ever really do the job.

Finally, counting floors as he goes, he reaches what he thinks must be the right one and tries the door, only to find it locked. To the left of the frame is a scanner, but not a scanner of any kind he's seen before, and he puzzles over it for a few seconds before something occurs to him, and he lifts the inside of his arm to its faint red light. There's a pause and then a soft beep, and he's almost smiling as the door unlocks with a hiss and he pulls it open.

Coming at containment from this angle is strange and he stands in the white corridor for a few moments, trying to get his bearings. He's been here so many times by now, but not like this, and in fact it might be the familiarity that's making things harder, like an image seen many hundreds of times, rendered unrecognizable by a slight alteration of angle. When he finally settles on a direction and begins walking again, it's freshly unnerving how quiet it is down here. The sound of his own footfalls and the soft hum of air vents and, somewhere, some unidentified machinery, but nothing else. Mysterious doors, and no idea what's behind any of them but one. Maybe he should have made a greater effort to find out.

When the airlock hisses open and discharges him into the main cell block, the first thing he notices is that there's no guard. The second thing he notices is that Kiana's cell is empty. The respirator, her blood-spattered sheets, the filthy floor, it's all still there. But she's gone. He steps closer to the clear partition and lays his hand against it. Part of him knows what's happened, is surprised it took this long. Part of him doesn't want to believe it at all.

A rough cough from the other cell, and the sound of something being spat onto the floor. Mike. “She went this morning.”

Tom turns, moves over to stand in front of him and looks down. Mike is curled on the floor, a sheet half tangled around him, white scrubs stained red here and there and his breath coming in slow, ragged inhalations. He rolls slightly to the side and looks up at Tom out of one eye, blue circle in a hell of red. Tom feels everything in him going cold bit by bit. It's so much worse than the day before, as if some crest has been reached and passed and now there's nothing ahead but an increasingly speedy decline.

“She had convulsions.” Mike coughs again, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, face screwing up in pain. “She fell on the floor. She was crying. No one helped her. I couldn't...” He makes a sound, a choked sob, and starts to move. After a second or two, Tom realizes with faint horror that he's trying to get up. “There's no one here. Where's everyone, Hobbes?”

“They're all gone outside.” The words move past his lips like numb things. “There's trouble out by the fence. People are getting in.”

Mike laughs raggedly. “So it's starting. Good. Took too fucking long.” He gives up and slumps back to the floor, loosing another long round of coughing. “This is taking too fucking long.” He looks up again out of that one baleful red eye, cheek pressed against the floor. “I guess you probably wouldn't shoot me if I asked you to.”

“I don't have a gun,” Tom whispers. You should have thought of that before you did this to yourself. To us.

“Fine.” Mike makes that awful sound again, the wrenching groan, and he coughs until he retches, and with a heave of his shoulders he turns and vomits blood and bile onto the white tile floor, not much of either but against all the terrible whiteness it's all Tom can see, and he takes a step backward, feeling a scream pressing against the inside of his throat.

“Get outta here.” Mike lifts his head and he's bleeding from his eyes, slow red droplets smearing down from the corners and Tom realizes that he's crying. “Get Florence. Go. Please.”

There's no point, he thinks, but he can't say anything. There's something solid and painful blocking his throat. He's been taking this so in stride, but Mike's been holding on, and seeing him like this makes it all real in a way he now realizes it hadn't been, before.

And he knows, if he had a gun, he'd put a bullet in Mike Pinocchio's head.

He turns and stumbles back, the knowledge like a spiked wheel rolling over his brain, blinding making his way out through the airlock and into the corridor. For a moment he stands there, looking around as if lost, before that behind-the-scenes brain kicks in again and he starts back towards the stairs. He has no idea if this is the right decision, has no idea if it even makes sense, but if there's one thing that can still help this... he has to try. Apathy isn't an option anymore.

He's ashamed that it ever was.

* * *

Finding his way to the right floor is harder this time, and once he's here he's not immediately sure where to go. He's been to containment countless times now, but he's been here only twice, and once again the angle is strange, and the entire place is as deserted and tomblike as everywhere else. He stands in the center of the corridor, closes his eyes and tries to remember through the panic and the horror churning through his mind, picturing the way he'd gone, the directions, trying to feel it.

He starts walking before he opens his eyes again, still not sure but surer of it than of anything else. Gradually things begin to look and feel familiar, as familiar as they can with everything a blinding white, but when he sees the little plaque with Defensive Technologies. Computer Division he feels something faintly hysterical jump in his chest. When he steps through the door there's the blue scan again but he ignores it, pushes on through into the empty office.

“Hello?” He turns in the middle of the floor, looking at abandoned cubicles, closed doors, everything with the look of having been left abruptly and in a great hurry. “Anyone there?”

“Hobbes?”

He jumps, inhaling sharply, and when he turns McDonald is standing there in the doorway of his office, looking utterly surrpised. “Jesus, I thought they would've killed you by now.” He steps forward, reaching for Tom's shoulders. “You're—you're okay?”

“I'm fine,” Tom says, blink a little bewildered. It occurs to him that he hadn't really expected to find the exact man he'd been looking for. “But Pinocchio is... he's sick, and there's a breach out by the fence...” He swallows hard, feeling suddenly foolish. “I thought... OSCAR... is there anything we can do?”

McDonald looks at him for a long moment, and then a strange kind of smile tugs at the corner of his lips. “There is. I'm glad you're all right, Hobbes. You're in a unique position to appreciate this.”

“I'm...” Tom stares at him. He's not sure what that smile is about, but there's a tickle of unease in the back of his mind. “Appreciate what?”

“I know you.” McDonald leans a little closer. “They haven't been hunting you for no reason. You're a threat to them. You want to bring them down.” The tugging curve takes over and he smiles, nodding slowly. “Like me.”

Tom takes a step back, shrugging off the man's hand. Somewhere, wheels are turning and things are being added up. Little disparate things, seemingly unconnected, and maybe he's crazy or maybe he's half blind with panic, but suddenly he feels sure.

“It was you,” he says, shaking his head slightly. “You stole the sample. Didn't you?”

“I didn't have to.” McDonald is still smiling, as though the accusation doesn't surprise him in the slightest. “I helped some others do it. They've been running the field tests for me.”

“Field tests?” Tom spits the words, feeling a surge of cold anger. All along... so close... “People are dying. How many have died already? For what? What the fuck are you even trying to do?”

“People?” McDonald's smile fades and his face twists in faint confusion. “Hobbes... they're VC. They're not people. They digitize, they go back to raw code. They're just part of the system.”

It's not the first time he's heard someone talk like that. It's not the first time someone has used that as an excuse. He thinks of Kiana, of Florence, of the people on their knees in the town square and the slow cold anger fires into rage.

“You were wrong about me,” he growls. “We don't want anything like the same thing. You were... you were so fucking wrong.”

McDonald's face goes from confused to something darker and he steps back, one hand slipping into his pocket. “I guess I was. Sorry to hear that.” He sighs and glances back into his office. “I was going to bring you with me, keep you safe while I release what I've been working on into the ventilation system. I was going to take care of Santiago and his lieutenants without even having to be in the same room with them.” His eyes narrow. “But I guess now you can go with the rest of them. I'm disappointed. I really expected you to be pleased.”

“Santiago... They're here?” In the midst of everything else, that still surprises him. “What have you been working on?”

“A special strain. It works much faster than the original.” McDonald smiles again, unpleasantly. “But I don't need to explain it to you. You'll get to find out pretty soon, right?”

“Wrong,” Tom growls, and lunges for him. He's a slight man, and Tom gets an arm around his neck without too much difficulty, ready to bring him down, when there's a fumble and he feels a pricking sensation in his arm, and the world goes first cloudy and then dark.

Fuck.

-19-

Waking up comes very slowly, and it's only a few minutes into the process that he realizes that he's exactly where he was. He sits up groggily, blinking, rubbing at his eyes; McDonald is nowhere to be seen and with the everpresent fluorescent light down here, it's impossible to say how long he's been out.

He might already be too late.

Florence. He has to find Florence. He stumbles out of the office and down the corridor towards the stairs, rubbing at the sore spot on his arm, wondering if with every breath he's pulling the virus into his lungs. Wondering, but no way to know. The new strain is supposed to work faster. How much faster? How long before he starts to bleed out of his eyes?

Up the stairs, up flight after flight until he's panting, gripping the railing as if he might fall, and he knows he's not this out of shape. What McDonald had stuck him with, maybe. Who knows.

He breaks out on the right floor after what seems like an age, stumbling down the hallway towards where he knows Florence must be, where she has to be, pounding on the door and leaning against it so that he almost falls when she opens it, staring at him in shock.

“McDonald,” he pants. “He's the one... has Pale Horse. He's gonna release it in the ventilation system. Infect anyone who's still in the building.”

On Florence's face, the shock darkens to cold horror, and a grim determination. She reaches out, takes his shoulder to steady him and as she touches him he feels strength flowing back into him.

We have to stop him.

“I will. I'll find him. You...” And an idea strikes him. It might already be too late for it, but if it isn't... “Get anyone you can find, get them down to containment. All the air down there is filtered. It might be the only safe place now.”

She looks at him, a hundred nameless things moving past the insides of her eyes, and she glances to the side as if she can see something he can't. He can hear her thought, almost as though she's spoken it aloud.

Mike.

“I'll go to him,” he says, even though he's not even sure what that means. “I'll... I'll take care of him. Just get the others.”

She looks at him unhappily for another few moments, before she nods and turns to go. He stands there for a minute or two. Dexter. But there's nothing to be done about Dexter right now, and anyway, he might be fine. Might be safer where he is. He starts off back towards the stairway again, only to freeze in the bright space of the main lobby when he hears his name called.

“Hobbes!” The voice is familiar, and he turns to see Hitchins running towards him. “Hobbes, come on, I thought I told you--”

“I need your gun.”

Hitchins stops and blinks at him. “You... what?”

“Your gun.” Tom nods down at the sidearm at Hitchins's hip. “I need it. I don't have time to explain why. And you need to get every man you can find and get down to containment.”

“Why? Hobbes, what--”

“Just do it.” He reaches out, grips Hitchins by the shoulder, maybe a little harder than he means to. “Hitchins... what's your first name?”

“It's...” Hitchins swallows, and, crazily, Tom thinks he looks almost like he might be about to cry, eyes glistening under the light of the ornate chandeliers. They're green, Tom realizes. He's never really noticed before. “It's Jonathan. Jon.”

“Jon.” Hobbes loosens his grip slightly, though he doesn't let go. “Please. I need you to trust me.”

“All right.” Hitchins laughs a little, sounding close to a kind of quiet hysteria, reaching down and unholstering his pistol. “It's loaded. You're good to go. Hobbes.”

Tom takes the gun, feeling a powerful sense of relief at the weight of it in his hand. “What?”

“I wish... I wish everything was different.”

Tom manages a faint smile. “Me too.”

* * *

Containment is still empty, except for Mike, still curled on the floor. He doesn't move as Tom enters the main block, and for an instant Tom wonders if maybe he's dead, until he remembers that's impossible. If he were dead he wouldn't be here anymore.

No sign of McDonald. No sign of anyone else so far. He has a little time to do this. He turns and there's a locker set into the wall. He knows what's in it. He's seen it. He pulls it open and takes out a respirator, a pair of gloves. Not the best protection.

But maybe it doesn't matter anymore.

There are going to be people here. Crowded inside. It's better—better for everyone, maybe most of all Mike—if it happens this way. He steps to the airlock, taps in the code. He's seen that too, and committed it to memory. The door hisses open, shut, and then the door ahead of him opens and it's then that Mike stirs, lifts his head.

“Hobbes.”

“Hi.” His voice is muffled and processed by the respirator, and it feels wrong. He should be able to speak to Mike in his own voice, with nothing between them. He's not trying to hide the gun in his hand. Mike's gaze hits it, and raises to Tom's face again, and he looks relieved.

“I didn't think you'd really do it.”

“Hitchins loaned me his piece.” Tom drops into a crouch next to Mike, reaches out with his gloved hand and strokes his fingers through filthy hair. As far as he knows, they haven't even let Mike bathe. He hasn't shaved. His jaw and cheeks are dark with the beginnings of a beard, with blood crusted onto the skin.

“Hitchins.” Mike smiles weakly. “Good kid. I was... dreaming about a kid. Skinny. Dark hair. I didn't know him but I felt like I did. You ever have a dream like that?”

“All the time.” He has no idea if that's true or not. He flicks the safety off the gun. “Mike... are you sure you want this?”

“It hurts.” Mike coughs, but it's weak and shuddering, and blood trickles from the corner of his mouth, flowing over cracked lips. “Hurts everywhere. I'm so tired, Tom. Just... just want it to be over.”

“Okay.” It isn't until the goggles covering his eyes start to mist that he realizes he's crying. He lifts the gun, lays it against Mike's temple. “Won't be long for me, anyway. Probably not for any of us. It was McDonald the whole time. He's shoved some kind of new strain into the ventilation system. Or he will. Probably doesn't matter.”

“McDonald?” Mike's eyes widen and he lifts his head again, heedless of the gun barrel pressed against it. “Jesus...” He laughs shortly. “Fuck, I shoulda known it.”

“I don't see how.” Tom shakes his head. “I found him when I was trying to get to OSCAR.”

Something in Mike's eyes seems to switch on, some remnant of a light. He lifts his hand to the gun, pushes it gently away from his head. “You said... Help me sit up.”

“Pinocchio?”

“Just do it.” He grunts under Tom's hands as he's helped up, leaning heavily against the wall, shaking as the coughing takes him again, but now he only seems to half notice it. “OSCAR. I think...” He raises his hand into the air, two fingers up, as if conducting an invisible orchestra. Or bestowing some kind of blessing. “Holy shit, I think you had the right idea.”

“What?”

“I need you--” Mike breaks off again, coughing so hard that he ends up back on the floor, half braced on his hands, Tom's gloved hands on his back. “Fuck.” He spits blood onto the floor, but even in that action Tom can feel the life in him. He'd been ready to give up. Now, for whatever reason, he's fighting again.

Tom doesn't quite dare to hope.

“I need you to get me to OSCAR. Can you do that?” He lifts his head, red-blue eyes burning. “I think... if you can get me there, I think maybe I can make all this right again.”

“How?

“Never mind. Just get me there.” He struggles against the floor, trying to push himself up, and Tom gets to his feet, reaching down and lifting him bodily up. It's then that he truly realizes how much skinnier Mike is, how much he's been eaten away by the virus, no more substantial than Kiana had been at the end. Like he's half digitized already. Mike leans one hand against the wall, groping for breath, and then he takes one staggering step forward.

“Just get me outta the cell. You can leave me from there. Save yourself.”

Tom looks down at the gun in his hand, thinks about what's almost happened. Thinks about Sophie, such a distant vision now, thinks about this dying world that he's come to think of as home. Thinks about Florence's sad, determined face, thinks about Dexter, about Hitchins, about all the faces and names they've found and lost. Thinks about Mike, the taste of his lips and the strength in his rough hands.

He pulls off the respirator and lets it fall. Mike stares at him, wide-eyed.

“You're insane.”

“No more than you.”

Mike smiles weakly. “Touche. But you're also a dead man, Hobbes.”

Tom takes a step towards him. “I was that anyway.” He slides an arm under Mike's shoulders, leans down, gently kisses his bloody lips, and Mike seems to loosen and solidify at the touch, both at once.

“Come on. We do this together or we don't do it at all.”

One shaky step in front of the other, and they make it out of the cell, out of the block, out into the blinding white corridors beyond.

* * *

Every foot feels like a mile. Mike stumbles, coughs, twice bends and retches up blood, though his stomach should be long empty, but the blood is bright red and fresh, newly shed. The last time, there's bits of something semi-solid in the blood, and Tom realizes that it must be his stomach lining.

Even now, the bullet seems like a kindness.

Down the long corridors, up the stairs, Mike's gasping and soft groans of pain echoing up and up and down, bouncing off the concrete walls and stairs into a chorus of misery. Tom asks him if he needs to rest. Mike only shakes his head. Tom knows without having to be told: if they stop now that could be it. If he sits down he might not get up again.

Out and into the brightness again, so white it hurts his eyes, and this time he knows where he's going. Down the corridor, Mike's dragging steps eerily loud, and when he finds the right door he almost can't believe they've made it. He half expects to see McDonald again, but when they make it past the scan, the offices seem to be empty, and McDonald's door is standing open.

“That way.” Mike nods off down one of the hallways, and Tom follows the direction, remembering as he goes, close to dragging Mike with him. The door, ahead of them, the steel. The retinal scan on the wall. The door is shut, and Tom feels a heavy sinking sensation in his middle.

“It's locked.”

“Of course it's locked.” Mike is hardly walking on his own at all now, Tom supporting almost all of his wait, but he reaches out as if he could touch the wall from where he is. “Get me to the scanner. I think I can get us in.”

They make it to the door, and Mike leans heavily against it, Tom taking the second to breathe, wondering if the virus is already eating away at his cells, his code. If it hadn't already been. He can't feel anything.

Mike is peering at the scanner, and finally he presses a tiny panel at the side and a larger panel slips open, revealing a number pad. Mike starts punching in a code. Starts and doesn't stop. It goes on and on, and after a few moments Tom realizes that Mike's eyes are shut and his lips are moving slightly, as if dreaming or recalling the words to a poem or song. Finally it ends, there's a pause, and the door whooshes open.

“Give me the gun.”

Tom hands it over without question or protest. This isn't the time for that now. He takes Mike under the shoulders again and they step through into OSCAR's chamber, and McDonald is bent over the console. He turns with a start, his eyes wide. “You--”

Mike shoots him. There's no buildup, no fanfare, no supervillain exposition. A gunshot and a flicker, and then just the ghost of McDonald's shocked face left behind in the empty air where he had been. Tom stares. He hadn't thought anything could really surprise him anymore.

Mike pulls away from him, stumbling over to the console and leaning heavily against it, reaching for the keyboard and starting to type. “He was... Jesus.” He lets out a long breath, a breath that turns into another barrage of coughing. “He's released it. It's already out.”

“Fuck,” Tom breathes, but he's not even that surprised. Not even that upset. Too much time. He hadn't been fast enough. “How long do we have?”

“I don't know.” Mike's fingers are flying over the keyboard, page after page of text flashing onto the screen. He can hear Mike muttering to himself, hardly any of it intelligible, and he doesn't really care. He leans back against the wall, scrubbing his hands over his face. They're bloody. Mike's blood. It seems fitting.

But Mike isn't dead yet. Mike's muttering is getting louder, more excited.

“This isn't just for analyzing code. This is tied to every computer in the city. Computers back east. Everything.” Mike gasps lightly. “It's... Jesus Christ.” He lifts a hand to his mouth, rocks a little on his heels. “I can't believe... I wonder if anyone knew.”

Tom lifts his head wearily. “What?”

“Nothing.” More typing. “Nothing. Hobbes, you remember when he was talking about how you could hook someone up to this?”

“Yeah.” Tom frowns. “But that was just a theory. And he said it would kill whoever tried it.”

“Yeah.” Mike turns, aims faster than Tom would have thought he could, and there's a sharp crack and Tom's leg explodes with agony.

“Shit.” He fumbles for it, hands covering a hole in his thigh, a hole that's pumping blood out between his fingers. He stares up at Mike, lips numb and moving. “What the fuck?”

“I know you, Tom.” Mike is tuning back to the keyboard, typing again, this time more slowly. More deliberately. With purpose. “You weren't really gonna shoot me. You wouldn't let me do this now. We're all walking corpses but I bet you'd still try to stop me.” He turns back to Tom, and he looks small and exhausted and sad. “I can't take that chance.”

“You... you shot me.”

“Oh, you noticed?” Mike laughs roughly, falling back into weak, shuddering coughing, making his way to the table over which hovers the white sphere. Tom stares at it, wondering how something so innocuous and small could suddenly look so sinister. With an effort, Mike pulls himself up onto the table and lies back, knees drawn up. Whatever he's doing, the table clearly wasn't built for it. Tom looks down at his leg, at the blood still pouring out through his fingers. There's a lot of blood. It's not spurting the way it would if Mike had hit the artery, but it's still a worrying amount.

“Mike...”

“You'll be fine.” Mike turns his head, looks at Tom with his red eyes, and Tom almost wants to scream at the sight of the bloody tears gathering at the corners. “I'm really sorry, Tom. Really. I wish this had all been different.”

Tom shakes his head, the pain in his leg suddenly distant. He knows what this is. “No...”

“Tell Florence what happened. Tell her I'm sorry, too.”

“Mike, don't.”

“I have to.” He closes his eyes, turns to face up, face the sphere again, the blood running down the sides of his face.

“Upload.”

The little soccer ball panels open on the sphere again, the same as last time, and for a moment nothing happens. Then the beams of light extend and brighten, brighten beyond anything Tom would have expected of them, brighten until he can no longer look directly at them and he raises a bloody hand to shield his eyes. There's a scream—long and rough and bizarrely triumphant—and then all the light seems to compress, the light of the beams, the light of Mike's digitizing body, folding into a bright singularity, a star in the room, and Tom has to close his eyes. He thinks he might be shouting. The brightness is a torment, lasering through his eyelids and into his brain, and he covers his face with his hands to try to escape it, pleading incoherently to something he's sure can't hear him.

And the light expands.

He feels it like something solid, washing warmly over him, everything slowing and stopping though he can still move, but it isn't like any movement he's ever felt before. It's like moving in water, slow and graceful, and as he watches the hole in his leg shrinks, the blood seems to run backwards, and through the tear in his pants he can see new skin, pink and flawless. Not even a scar.

I will remake you.

He lifts his head, and it's Mike's voice but it's not, and it's Mike's face but it's not. The light, the screen, the white sphere and the beams radiating out from every possible point, bright enough to pierce the universe.

Who are you?

I am the Construct. A rumble of musical laughter. I am the ghost in the machine.

Mike?

No. And yes. He feels a soft touch, like a breeze on his face, a breeze shaped like fingers. You are all remade. You are all free. The Realm will subsist.

I don't understand. Somewhere, he can feel the warm wave of light moving through corridors, up through rooms, washing over shocked faces, out into the streets and over the fields and through the forests. Washing over a frozen scene of combat, turning the weapons to ash, turning the broken fence into cobwebs. Over ruined cities and towns, countless refugee camps, over the starving and the sick and the desperate and the mad. Soothing. Healing. Making whole. Rearranging the code of everything. This is Florence, he thinks. This is the voice of her power.

You do not need to understand. There is only one thing you must do.

“What?” he gasps, down on his knees in the wash of light, trying to see. Trying to see the face of the bright thing standing in front of him. It seems to bend towards him, and through the light he sees a pair of very blue eyes.

Get your ass home, dick.

When the light recedes it leaves him stranded, and he sags back against the wall, staring down at the place on his leg where the wound had been, staring at the empty table, the quiet sphere. After a few moments he starts to cry. He's still crying when Florence finds him.