Zombies and Stalkers (Oseike) Thursday, Oct 8 2009

The day dawned bright and clear.  Which was unusual, given how close to the nexus they were.  For a moment, to the young man shaded by a grungy-looking hoodie, it was a day one could forget that hum of power that vibrated throughout the ground and sky, skipping between person and person like a rock across water, to sink out of sight leaving nary a ripple.

No one else would see that, anyway.

And that wasn’t what the young man was looking at, at any rate.

Fifty yards ahead, a group of three walked nonchalantly through the streets of the smaller city, blending in with an ease that belied practice.  Would anyone remember their passage?  Would they wonder what their purpose was?  Why they sought to go unseen?  Even if they did, though, the chances of them guessing correctly would be phenomenally low…

The group suddenly changed course, angling and entering through the doors of one of the three or four hotels the city had.  It was a high-rise with a restaurant that spread between two floors, more than a little famous in the city.

The young man considered a moment, eye following a current of energy idly, then suddenly sat down underneath a tree outside.  He lifted a foot and peeled off a shoe, flipping it over and shaking it.

“What are you doing?”

A small smile stretched his lips.  “I’m not quite sure I understand the question,” he said lightly.  His peered into the depths of the shoe.

Behind him, a woman, black hair barely long enough for its ponytail, stood with hands braced on hips.

“You keep this up and they’re bound to notice you.  Alex may already have.”

“Well, then, I’ll just have to rely on the help of an insider,” the young man quipped, starting to dig into the shoe.

She smacked him on the back of the head.

“Depend on me, and they’ll just suspect us both.  I can’t cover for you, so just stop being so obvious!”  She made a face.  “A hair-cut and a dye-job aren’t going to keep you hidden.”

The young man reached into the hood and rubbed blue hair.  After a moment, the silence stretched too thin, and the young woman sighed.

“I don’t understand why you don’t just tell them.”

“Tell them what?  That I’ve been following them towards the nexus for the past three weeks?”  There was a short laugh, somehow light.  “I don’t know, they might think I’m a stalker.”

“They’re going to anyway.”

“Then don’t you think it’ll be fun to be found out?”

“Stop joking with it!”

Silence echoed between them again, the young man toying with a shoelace.

“…You don’t know…you can’t know how it’s been since then, Hamel.”

“Don’t.”

“They think you’re dead!”

His hands froze.

“Arran’s been withdrawing more and more.  He hardly talks at all anymore – it’s like his spirit is just draining away.  And Alex-“

“Shen.”

“No, you don’t know this, you can’t know this!  Alex has-“

“Shen!”

“-he’s been a wreck!  I wake up at night and I hear him cry!  He blames himself for your death, you know – he blames himself and if this keeps up I fear he’ll break apart!”

His gaze sank to his hands.  They stayed there, as if seeking some answer from them, from the wrinkles and calluses.

“…And you, Shen?”

She hugged herself.  “I can’t take it much longer, to see their pain and not do anything.”  Her gaze settled on the back of the hoodie, not three feet from her.  “You’re our leader, Hamel.  Our mission was our glue, but without you, they have no hope.  There’s nothing to bind together anymore.  I fear we’ll just…splinter apart.”

“Neither you nor Arran nor Alex would quit on the mission.”

She made a soft noise, half in disgust, half in dark humor.  “As if you know.”

“I know.”

Again, silence gaped between them.  Her hand shook on her arm.  What of us? She wanted to scream at him.  Have you abandoned us?  Are we nothing to you?  Why do you insist on breaking us, on putting us through all this pain? Yet he was there, wasn’t he?  He hadn’t left them, not yet…

“…I have to get back to the others.  They think I’m in the bathroom.”

“Shen…”

“I won’t talk to you again.”  She turned on her heel, refusing to look at that back, at those shoulders, knowing who was under that sweater.  “If you want to see me, you’ll have to talk to us all.”

He sat very still as she left, like a statue left behind by the artist, abandoned.  Then he leaned forward, clasping hands between knees and pressing them into his forehead.

“…tell me.”  His words were soft, betraying none of the emotion behind them.  “Tell me, Shen, how do I face him?  What kind of expression, what words can I possibly use against him?”  His head bowed.  “What do you say to a friend who tried to kill you?”

—————-

“Miss Shen Binxi?  Your party is at table twelve, on the balcony.  If you’ll follow me.”

The atmosphere at the table was dark enough Shen could practically see it.  Still, she took her place primly and picked up a menu.

“Why are we actually eating here, again?”

“Don’t start,” Alex snarled softly.  “We’re already seated.”

“Anything to drink?”

“Just water for now,” Shen said.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes to take your order.”

Shen observed the other two occupants of the table – Alex, tightly muscled, tightly wound, looking ready to burst apart at the seams at any given moment, green eyes flickering restlessly behind rectangular lenses.  Being near him gave her a feeling of urgency.  It always had.  That was probably the number one reason she stayed with them – because otherwise, she had nothing urgent to do, nothing important in her life.

To her left, Arran.  Large, solid.  He was the rock, the grounding force that you could always depend on being there, doing what was supposed to be done.  His dark hair had been dyed with a shade of red, making the low Mohawk glisten oddly in the light.

Shen glanced down at the menu, picked randomly – hey, Alex was buying, so fine, let him worry about price – and set it down again.  “We’re what, hardly a day away from it, aren’t we?”

She watched shoulders tense, as they always did when she brought it up.  “Yes,” Alex answered.

“Got a way in, yet?”

She could practically see the frustration build in him, fingers grip the menu just a bit tighter.  “I said I’ll find it when I get in there.”

Best to not press him further than what was needed.  “Just checking.”

They sat in edgy silence for a couple moments.  She let her gaze wander to the front door, clearly visible from where they sat, huge windows letting in the day sun.  Was Hamel still outside, or had he come in by now?  She’d been too angry to follow his movements.

Angry?  No, afraid.  Afraid that he was leaving her, too.  That the reason he hadn’t come back openly was because he was having second thoughts about her, them, the mission.  Would he fade away, now?  Just…leave?

A familiar shock of blue hair under a hoodie caught her attention.

He was seated right under them.

The hell…?

Before that absurd fact could fully register, Alex suddenly closed his menu and set it down.  “It’s him.”

Arran’s gaze lifted from his menu for the first time since Shen had shown up.  “Which table?”

“Straight out from under us, by the window.  He couldn’t be more obvious!”  Alex was on the edge of his seat, now, like a hound on a scent.  “I swear that’s him!”

Alex had found out?  He’d surmised who was under the hood?  Was everything going to be revealed now?  But…no, Alex wouldn’t act like that if he knew who was under that hood.  “Him who?”

“I don’t know!”  He looked positively frazzled.  “All I know is that this guy’s been following us for the past few days, at least.  I see him, far off, practically all the time.  Same lame blue hair and hoodie.  He must be a tail!”

Shen glanced down at Hamel.  “You think the cops sent him?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”  He started to get up.  “I’m going to talk to him.  If need be…”  A hand slipped down to his belt, to the sword charm that hung there.

Shen lunged, grabbed his wrist before the young man could take off, frantically thinking of how she could stop him and wondering why?  Why stop him, when she had just said she wouldn’t help that stupid fool?  When this is exactly what she wanted?

But suddenly, it didn’t matter.

She didn’t catch exactly where they came in first, but suddenly they were crawling over the tables, and people were shrieking and running and getting overtaken and bitten and torn.  Her hands flew to her own gun charms, peppering the first of the ranks to swell over the balcony rail, and they screamed and fell, dead from holy water rounds.

“Shit, they let loose another swarm against us?  In such a public place?”  Arran withdrew a handful of cross-shaped charms and tossing them to cover their flank with a barrier.  “They must be getting desperate.”

Alex didn’t seem to notice.  Longsword in hand, he leaned a foot against the railing, surveying the ground below and laughing.

“Alex?”

“They’ve got him!  They’ve got him now!”  His laugh was practically hysterical.  “How could one man escape from so many?  Let him rot in their care!”

A stab of fear spurred Shen to the rail herself, eyes searching for that familiar form darting through the masses… “There!  See him?”

“Eh?”

Sure enough, there he was, blue hair visible in sudden, piercing flashes as he weaved an impossible path through homicidal undead.  First he was surrounded, then he was on the edge of the wave, and then suddenly he was climbing the decorative wall beside the balcony, ahead of the majority of the wave.

“What the hell?!”  Alex swung at a zombie as the head became within range.  “Dammit!”  He turned, seemed to notice the horde coming up the stairs behind them, and snarled in frustration.  “Fine!  Come on, we have to retreat, anyway.”

The balcony was connected to the inner body of the hotel, with entrances that led up to the rooms.  The three of them backed their way in, and Arran hurriedly scratched a cross into the sides and floor.  “It’ll only hold them for five minutes or so,” he reminded them as he stood.  “We’d best find the next exit.”

Alex led the way, his sword out and ready.  Shen hugged close behind, ready to cover Arran as he scratched more crosses into the walls and floors behind them.  Had the residents already evacuated?  Or was this entire building already swept clean before the horde had reached them?  Had this whole place been a trap from the start?  No, they couldn’t have known which place to set up.

Stairs were thirty feet from the entrance from the balcony and swarming with undead.

“Up or down?”  Shen watched the mass.

Alex’s sword cut the next zombie in half.  “Trap?”

“Not preset.”

“Up, then.”

Shen glanced at Arran, who gave a brief thumbs-up, then trained her guns at the staircase, spraying the upper level with holy rounds.  Immediately, there was a wave of motion along the masses, but Alex was already moving, dragging his sword in huge arcs before him, sending spiritual shockwaves before him that cleared their path in an instant.

Arran sprinted passed, pulling more crosses from his charm and planting them across the staircase, blocking the bottom.  Shen came next, guns trained upwards, taking out the ones that had already ascended, slowing down the wave that was coming towards them for Alex, who surged passed the moment her feet were on the staircase, flinging more of his devastating arcs before him.  Arran stood the moment it was calm.  There was an effective barrier cutting them off from both sides and the downstairs, for the moment all the open areas of the staircase free from undead.

“Hey, Alex?”

Alex, panting, turned, brushing sweat from his cheek.  “Yeah?”

Arran nodded below them, to the swarming mass beneath them.  “That guy’s coming up here.”

“HAAH?”  Alex spun and looked downwards with Shen.  Her breath caught.  There he was, sprinting free of the last of the horde and just reaching the bottom of the stairs.

That’s it, he’s actually coming…

Alex took a step forward, and suddenly Shen could see it in her mind.  Hamel looking up, Alex looking down, Alex finally realizing who it was, the shock and recognition paralyzing him as he saw a man who should be dead…

There was a loud crunch, and the bottom part of the staircase started to crumple.

Arran took a few steps back, pulling Shen with him.  Shen could only stare at that sword, still held out from the swing that had hewn the boards before Alex apart.  Then it came back, and again there was that sickening crunch as wood and metal were torn apart.  Like a tired dog, the lower part of the staircase fell.

“No!”

Hamel stumbled and leapt.  For a moment, Shen thought he might crazily actually make it, but no, he was sinking below her sight, and even though he was close he was too short to reach…

She struggled out of Arran’s arms and rushed to the edge by Alex, and for a moment could only see dust and a mass of undead as they poured over the edge like lemmings from a cliff.  Then she caught a shock of blue hair, a bent form…

Then all she saw were undead.

“…Hey, Alex…”

“Take that, stalker!”  A hand jerked obscenely at the mass below them.  “Try and get out from them, eh?!  That’s what you get for following us!  Take that back to the government when they retrieve your soul!”   The young man turned.  “Come on, let’s find a map so we can figure out how to get back down.”

“Down?”  There was no way he would be killed so quickly…

“Of course.  If we can get down during this confusion, we’ll probably be able to enter the tunnels.  There should be a service entrance below this building.”

Tunnels.  That led to the nexus.  She stared at him, suddenly seeing him as though through a crystal, perfectly clear yet unreal, far away, nothing but a reflection.  Blindly following instinct, not even asking questions anymore…  She opened her mouth, ready to say it all, to expose the horror of his actions right then, who he’d just condemned…

There was a ripple below them, and she snapped back to herself with the realization that the motion of the masses had abruptly stopped.  She spun, heart leaping, and there he was, hood down and exposing bright blue hair.

None of the zombies near him moved.

“What the hell?!”  Alex’s voice cut through the air.  “He’s the controller?”

“If he were, he wouldn’t have killed those right now.”  Arran’s logical voice cut Alex short.  “He’s probably just got some talent.  Come on, there’s no point in watching.  We gotta move.”

Alex grimaced, but the frustrated rage melted off him and they both turned.  Shen stared down at that form for a moment more, and suddenly-

-an elevator, metal grates painted white.  She rode down it, down down down five floors or more, and then suddenly flew out through a door that led to gaping deep darkness.  There was a cart, a railway, and the walls were covered in cables that seemed to almost-glow in eerie light blue-

-eyes that suddenly turned away, dimming from that unnatural hue back to the neutral dark gray they’d always been.  She saw shoulders slump, but then Hamel was moving, climbing over the bodies before him and heading away across the carnage.

Had he gotten stronger?

“Shen, come on!”

Frowning, she climbed to her feet once more and shook off the chill trying to seep into her bones.  She sprinted up the stairs to them, then passed them and turned left.

“How much time do we have?” she asked Arran.

The big man shrugged, scratching the bottom of his goatee.  “I don’t think many got up here, and the ones below will have to use the service stairs with the stairs here gone.  If we can find that elevator before they swarm up, we’ll be golden.”

“Alright, let’s go.”  She checked her guns, made sure she still had plenty of time left with them summoned, and pointed herself towards the hallway.

The same direction Hamel had just run.

——————

It was impossible to ignore the energy running around him right now.  Its shimmering, inviting beauty caressed Hamel, and it took effort for the young man not to get sucked into that crystalline call.  He sprinted through it, letting it flow through and out of him, leaving no trace of his passing.

The hordes were everywhere, but now that he was channeling that energy, he was invisible to them, a ghost among ghosts.  He could feel their sorrow, their rage, their torment, but did nothing to touch them, to assuage them.  Soon, soon, he thought, letting his path lead him away from them.

The elevator was cold, and he was glad once more for the sweater and scarf he’d picked up along the way.  It would only be chillier down below…

The Terrestrial Underground Nether-world Network Electric Lineway.  TUNNEL.  Literally a network of hundreds of thousands of tunnels that snaked through the country, feeding energy to and from the nexus core, where all that energy was processed and redistributed by the Nexus Command Center employees.  NCC workers could see or sense that special energy, measure it, and sometimes even manipulate it, either there or in the field as it was supplied to them.  It was estimated only about three percent of the population had that ability, and thus everyone who could was automatically groomed for their NCC careers.

Just like him.

There was the disorientation of stopping, and the doors slid open before him.  The power beyond was practically overwhelming to him, with his eyes open to see it, but he stepped out anyway, feeling connected through it to the shapes around him, the ones that should be dead and weren’t.

A moment later, he pulled out a couple travel carts from their shed and got them hooked to the track.  Then, casting one last glance at the elevator, he leapt into one and sent it onwards through the glowing darkness.

—————–

Hardly a minute later, the elevator dinged open again, and the three exited into the darkness.  Alex was the first out, eyes flying over the cavern, finding nothing but shadows.

“Did they really leave it empty?”

“No.”  Arran moved to the side, just out of the dome of light from the elevator’s open doors.  There lay the rotting body of an undead, already starting to crumble into dust.  “Someone got here before us.”

Alex stared, then turned.  “Who?”

“An ally?”

“The blue-haired guy,” Shen said.

Alex swung his sword in irritation.  “What the hell is that guy, then?!  Some kind of psychic?”

“Well, he is a controller of some sort,” Arran said slowly.

“Like I can’t tell that!”  The young man tossed his sword away, and it disappeared before it hit the ground.  “What I’m asking is why the hell is he following us?  And why the hell would he be helping us?  The bastard…”

“Why are you so angry with him?  Maybe Arran’s right, he is an ally and not someone sent to tail us.”  If he would accept that…

“Yeah, right!  You know how controllers are raised in that blasted NCC program!  They haven’t a free thought in their head, not an independent inkling.  All they know is to maintain and control the nexus.”

“You found Hamel, didn’t you?”

“Hamel was…” The voice faded away, momentum spent, and suddenly Alex spun towards the track.

“…special,” Arran finished.  “Even within the NCC.”

“I never knew,” Shen suddenly said.  “How did you meet?”

“…An accident,” Alex said shortly from over his shoulder.

“You hit his car?”

“No.” His voice told her to stop.

Arran cut in anyway.  “Not that kind of accident.  It was before we even learned of the nexus’s existence.  All we knew were the tunnels, and even of those, we only knew of the ones that came above ground.”

“That’s enough, Arran.”  Alex warned.  “We need to keep moving.”

“What kind of accident, then?”

“We thought maybe destroying those tunnels would start disrupting the system…”

“Enough.”

Sharp enough to cut ice.  The two looked up at Alex’s back, and after a moment he turned once more, hand on the cart.

“He’s not Hamel, so there’s no point.  We have to assume he’s not an ally.”  In a fluid moment, the young man boarded the cart.  “Let’s go.”

—————–

As he expected, they’d laid traps along the tunnels.  This only confirmed it – the government still viewed them as a threat.  Not as large a one as before – otherwise, there would be controllers down here, too, trying to suppress Hamel while the undead took on the other three.  Instead, there was just undead.  It was nothing to him to let the energy around him ride ahead of him, releasing the spirits and sending them on their way.  In fact, it was almost too easy.

It was when his eyes suddenly sparked with sharp pain that he realized he was overusing it.  He let the energy roll before him for a ways, then sat down, letting his eyes close and the world sink into pitch-black.  He rubbed them slowly, suddenly cold.

Listen, Hamel.  The energy is beautiful, yes, and can do amazing things, but it cuts both ways always.  The price for witnessing such beauty is being drawn a little closer to death.  That is why our eyes cannot be open at all times.  Be sure to know your limits, lest you find yourself unable to look away.

No, teacher, we aren’t paying for its beauty.  We’re paying for the atrocities we’re forcing on this country’s spirits.  And it isn’t enough.

As he sat, waiting for the next way-station, his mind wandered over his young years, when the energy was just energy, and the jobs were merely reallocating it, making patterns, keeping the balance.  For some reason he seemed to have some knack for it, finding new methods to make everything more efficient, and suddenly it was as though he was some kind of prodigy, everyone coming to him with questions, problems, looking for advice.

He hadn’t minded, either.  In fact, he enjoyed it, even.  He’d found his place in the world, he thought.  Something he was good at and enjoyed, to boot.

His father had been so proud…

No, that’s a lie, too. The young man closed a hand into a fist and stood again, leaning against the rail of the cart.  I made his political career all the better.  He never cared for me or my work, just how I benefited him. It wasn’t as if he’d ever come to visit the nexus once Hamel had moved there permanently for work.

In fact, no one visited him.

Perhaps that was what had drawn him to the two strangers who had broken into the tunnel he’d been traveling through on his way back from repairs.  Obviously not members of the NCC, obviously up to no good, completely in his care.  If he’d wanted to, all he had to do was say the word, and both of them would have been arrested, hauled away and punished, never seen in his world again.

Instead, he’d lied.

“Ah, they’re new controllers, obviously.”

“What?”  The escort guard glanced at him uncertainly through his goggles.

“Well, look, can’t you see?”  He indicated behind the two unconscious forms.  “They were trying to repair this conduit, but it must have backed up on them, flooded their own capacities and created this circle of backlash.  That’s why it’s so torn up here.”

The two armed men still looked uncertain, so he smiled at them.  “New members often get paired in case this happens, but if they’re not used to each other it won’t work very well.  Even I was paired once.”

“With whom?”

“Kanakin, of course.”

“Of course,” he’d said, but Kanakin was the head controller of the sector, and Hamel had been the first person to ever apprentice under the man.  And his “apprenticeship” really didn’t mean much other than he got some extra privileges and could access more of the nexus than other workers.  They’d never worked together.  However, mentioning the name seemed to work a kind of magic, and the escorts had helped him get the two strangers onto stretchers and brought back to the infirmary.  He’d does temporary repairs on the damage, reported it, and then gone to see his new charges.

They’d been fine, of course.  The energy in the conduits could shock a person, even knock them into a death-like coma, but it wasn’t fatal, and given time everyone recovered from it.  He could remember their expressions clearly, even now, and a small smile twitched at his lips.

“Who the hell’re you?!  What’d you do to us?  And where the fuck are we?!”

“The infirmary, of course.”  He smiled as he said it.

“’Of course’ my ass!  Let us outta here right now!”

His attitude was both refreshing…and annoying.  Besides, if they just walked out, the truth would be revealed in an instant.  So he picked up the clipboard at the end of the bed and looked at it, saying “It seems regrettable, but you’ll have to stay here for a while longer while we do a thorough check of all your vitals…”  He let his gaze rise to catch his.  “I apologize if you’re uncomfortable, but unless you start exhibiting normal behavior, I’ll have to suspect something strange entered your system.  The procedures to test it can be somewhat…invasive.”

“Why are you helping us?”  The big man with the deep red Mohawk spoke up for the first time, his voice rumbling deep but calm.

This time the smile that stretched his face was much more real.  If they could play along, then having two guys around all the time who weren’t supposed to be, thumbing a nose at the rules…suddenly his future looked a great deal more fun.  “Because I’m interested,” he answered.

“In what?”

“Something different.”

And with that, they temporarily moved into the NCC.  Hamel found space for them in his pad, found them uniforms, and even went so far as to give them tours, explaining to the few who asked he’d been shouldered with the task of “breaking in the newbies.”

“Where did it go wrong?”  The wind brushing his face gave no answer, and with a sigh he settled down into the cart again, memories of darkness and crushing weight and roaring cacophony ringing through his mind.

What could he say to the friend who had tried to kill him?

—————–

When the neared entrance 15NE, they found another cart, pushed off the tracks and left behind, light still on.  In its cone of light, they could see the last bits of undead forms, surrounded by the piles of dust they left behind.

The light pointed unobtrusively at a door.

“Subtle,” Alex muttered under his breath.  However, the track beyond it turned out to be mostly destroyed, so he pulled the cart to a stop, dragged it off to the side as well, and then flipped both of the carts’ lights off, letting Arran with his light lead the way.

Inside was a small rectangular room with piles of dust decorating the floor.  Alex kicked one with his shoe, frowning.

“This keeps up, and even if he’s an ally, he won’t be of any use.  Whoever this joker is, he’s expending too much energy.”

“Worried about him, now?”

“Yeah, right.”  He checked the door on the other side, found it open and empty beyond, and waved them through.  “After this, our plan is pretty straightforward – find a set of lab coats and name tags and try to get as far in as possible.”

“And?”

“Destroy stuff.”

“That’s…really vague.”

“Gotta problem with it?  Don’t do it.”  But he was smiling.

“Little late for that.”  She was smiling, too.

“Hallway’s clear.”  Arran moved out the door first, hand hovering near his chain of cross charms.

“Intruders!  Entry point 16NE!  All nearby personnel please respond.  Repeat…”  The lights around them flickered and suddenly turned red.

“Dammit, how did they know?!”  Alex’s hand grasped his sword charm and pulled it out, taking off at a run.

“Your plan sucks, leader,” Arran grumbled, his long strides easily keeping up with Alex.  He tossed a couple crosses behind them.  “How did you get to be leader, anyway?  I vote we kick you out of office.”

“It’d never work.  You’re not good-looking enough to take over.”

“Shen can take over.”

“Ah, not good!  She could actually pull that off…”

They hadn’t gotten thirty feet when the zombies hit.

Shen pulled out her pistols and worked their back, peppering the hallway and watching the horde disintegrate into dust.

“We need to get past this outer layer and farther in, where the zombies won’t be allowed!”  She backed up a little as Arran tossed another set of crosses to slow them down.  A huge form reared through the dusty smoke, and her eyes widened.  “Alex…!”

“Brute!”  Arran yelled it for her.

“Oh, shit-!”

Shen managed to roll to the side and spin, working her fingers at the huge mass that barreled passed her, missing her by inches.  She saw Alex take a swing at it, manage to cut it shallowly, and then it was past them, running ahead of them.

Ahead of them?

It wasn’t stopping.

“Alex!”  She turned and peppered the masses behind them once more.  “We’re not the targets!”

“I got that!”  He leapt up and sprinted in its wake, taking advantage of the space the huge undead’s form created.  “But that doesn’t make us any less in danger!”

“Here!”  Arran yelled, and Shen saw him duck into a door.  “There’s a staircase in here!  Going up a level might help!”

Shen sprinted after the two of them, hearing the Arran’s crosses spark and fizzle out behind her.  She flipped a gun around and shot without looking, hoping something would hit, keeping her eyes on the door.  Then she was in and on the staircase, taking them two at a time in her mad dash.  Images hit her eyes – concrete walls, metal stairs, fluorescent lights, white paint and stenciled letters.

It was empty.

Gasping for breath, she paused on the platform, keeping an eye on the closed door – but it appeared nothing was coming through.  She could see the dark forms on the other side streaking by, but none of them so much as paused at the doorway.

“Damnit, this pretty much cinches it.  That guy can’t be an ally.  He lures us in, destroys the track to force us to use this entrance, then alerts the rest of the place we’re here…”

“But those zombies weren’t after us.  They were after something up ahead of us.”  Arran checked his cross charms, seeing how many were full.

“Could be they knew we were in the vicinity, but not the exact place.  I mean, that voice said ‘intruders,’ right?  Not intruder.”

“We need to check on him.”  Shen straightened.

“Are you nuts?  There’s no way we can go back out there.  You saw those masses – and without a place to run to or properly defend…”

“Fine, then let’s keep going in.  In this chaos, we can probably get pretty far once we get ourselves some lab coats.”  And we’ll probably meet up along the way. There was no way Hamel would have any problem with anything the NCC threw at him.  In her mind’s eye, she saw him as he stood below the staircase, surrounded by the disappearing bodies – probably over a hundred right there – looking barely winded.  She could practically feel the freezing cold of his eyes.

He was a lot stronger.

What happened that day, Hamel?  That day you died…

—————–

It was so familiar here.  He strolled down the hallway, whistling to himself tunelessly, observing the walls and places he was passing by.  He’d exited the basement and their holding cells – a place he’d never really been before, so it had been interesting – and now he was walking through the corporeal research department.  Even if this, too, was a place he’d never been to, it looked a lot like everywhere else in the Center, with it’s white and green walls, the identifying numbers and letters on every corner that told you which section you were in, the silver doors and thick, holy glass windows.

And the energy.

It sparkled around him, danced, thrummed, purred, shook him at his core.  He’d been away for so long, but now he suddenly realized what he’d been missing this entire time.  This feeling of energy, open to his disposal should he wish it, just waiting for him in the pipelines all around him.

He felt it bend towards him, and didn’t stop it.  Felt it caress him, and didn’t dissuade it.  It curled around him like a loving embrace, disrupting him and calming him at the same time, making him feel its presence like the light brush of a lover’s hand, tingling and warm and cold.

Behind him, he felt the hordes of undead, but they didn’t matter anymore.  They hit the coil of energy around him and merely joined it, energy sucked from them, joining him, letting him feel for a moment the depth of their despair before melding into the whole, a giant cry of love and hate and joy.

Somewhere along the way, someone had pulled an alarm, and amidst the emergency warnings NCC employees started to show up, expecting…what?  They always looked so surprised to see him.  Did he know any of them?  Ah, not yet.  Right.  These people were in the corporeal section, one of the few places he’d never had clearance to see and never had the interest to bully his way into.

They shot at him.  The energy around him flicked back at them.  They missed.  The energy didn’t.

That’s right.  I’ll grant your wish.  I’ll set you free.  Just get me to the core…

It was like a rope, one thread of a giant spider’s web snapping itself free and moving of its own will.  The souls of the dead, the soul of the country – it had finally found for itself the one it had waited for, the one to set it free.

“HAMEL!!”

He turned the corner and saw them, arrayed before him, guns pointed at him.  Three ranks of NCC security patrol.

In front of them, Kanakin.

“Oh, Kanakin!  Long time, no see, right?  How’s the missus?”

The man’s face distorted.  “Have you gone insane!  Look at what you’re doing, Hamel!  You’re being used by your own power!  Cut yourself off from it, now, or we’ll be forced to shoot!”

“Used by it?”  He tilted his head and scratched under the scarf.  “Yeah, I guess I am, aren’t I?”

“Good!  Once you realize it, you can separate yourself.  It’s still not too late…!”

“Ah, but it’s fine like this.  It’s not making me do anything I haven’t already decided to do.”  He smiled at Kanakin.  “I haven’t killed any of the workers here, either.  Just knocked them out.”

“Hamel…”  The hopeful smile faded.  “Just what exactly are you here for…?”

He shrugged and stuck his hands in his pockets.  “To take out the core, I suppose..?”

“Impudent brat!  You forget what this place is, what it does for the country…!”

“No, I think you’re the one who’s doing that, aren’t you?”  His smile never wavered.

“Hamel…I didn’t want to have to do this…”  The section chief closed his eyes for a moment, as though collecting thoughts.  “Are you certain in your path?  That you won’t return to us?  Can you really not deny the madness?”

“Sorry, chief.”  He felt his smile turn sad.  “Someone’s gotta end this.”

“Yes.  Someone does.”  Kanakin’s eyes opened, and they were glowing blue.  “Fire!”

—————–

It wasn’t hard to figure out where Hamel was.  The next floor up had been relatively free, but within a few moments a pack of security patrol members hurried by, and suddenly the place was crawling with them and other controllers as they ran past, all in the same direction.  In the chaos, no one noticed the group of three that slipped past them and into a small office.

“Excuse me, you are…?”

“Sorry.”

A moment later, the two people in the office were knocked out and Shen and Alex were donning their coats.

“What about Arran?”

“I’ll just say I didn’t have time to put it on.  I just got here when the alarms went off.  No big.”

Alex picked up a paper from the desk, then set it back own.  “We’ll have to get somewhere else.  This place is nowhere.  We need more of the center of the nexus.”

“Is there a map?”

“Well…we should be able to follow the numbers, I suppose?”

Arran shrugged.  “I never got the system.  It seems random.  I suppose we can just try to head for smaller numbers?”

“Why don’t we just follow the crowd?”  Shen fiddled with a button.

“You think they’re heading in?”

“Well…if that guy really was an enemy, wouldn’t we have been found out?  Isn’t what he’s doing actually helping us?  He’s made himself into a distraction.  Wouldn’t it also make sense for him to lead us where we need to go, then?”

“There you go again, saying he’s an ally…”

“I agree with her,” Arran suddenly said.

Alex looked at him, then at Shen.  “Sheesh, you two…you serious?”

Arran nodded.  “Really, all his actions so far seem to be helping far more than hurting.  At a time like this, wouldn’t it make sense to take as much help as we can?”  Arran shrugged.  “Well, it’s not like I’d be ready to call him a comrade, but at the very least an ally would be fine, right?”

Alex considered a moment, then sighed.  “Very well, fine!  But we get caught, and I’m blaming you two.”

They left and melded into the crowd easily, hardly gaining any strange looks, finding themselves racing through a maze of corridors, passing office after lab after office.  She tried her best to remember the numbers – 16, 39, 20, 330 – but after a certain point they all jumbled together and she gave up, concentrating on merely keeping a decent pace.

“Excuse me,” she heard Arran say.  “I was taking a nap, and suddenly woke up to this…do you know what’s up with this intruder alert thing?”

He’s being too reckless! She glanced at him and saw him keeping pace with an older woman who looked like she’d just barely managed to toss on her lab coat.  However, the woman didn’t seem to be suspicious at all, so Shen drifted a little closer.

“Oh, apparently some unauthorized controller came in through the basement entrance and destroyed a whole lot of the corpse stock, and is now up here on this level making his way towards the core.”

“Scary.  Why hasn’t he been taken out, yet?  It’s just one guy, right?  Why so much fuss?”

“Well…this is just a rumor I heard on the way here myself, but…”

“But what?”

“Well…according to what I heard from the security personnel, this guy used to be Chief Kanakin’s partner.  Do you remember, how a few months ago that protégé suddenly up and disappeared?  They’re saying it’s the same guy.”

“Eh?  Huh?  But…wait, why would the chief’s partner want to do this?”

“Beats me.  Pretty weird, huh?  That’s why it’s probably just a rumor.  It can’t be true, right?  So who knows who this guy is.  I heard the chief himself is going to take care of it, though, so we’re probably not needed.  Still, procedure’s procedure…”

“Indeed.  Well, thanks anyway.”

Shen looked at Arran’s face carefully, but it didn’t look any different from before.  Did he believe her at all?  Would he think of Hamel?  She glanced at Alex, saw a tightness around his eyes, and knew he was thinking of Hamel, and suddenly it was as if time stopped, and she was looking at him, at all of them, from far away, through crystal, like a perfect image.   The world faded away – the flashing lights at the corners, the emergency warning droning on, the handful of NCC employees around them.  Everything just seemed so unimportant compared to the realization that was dawning within her.

From the very beginning, our amateur attempts – the bombs, the talks, the demonstrations…  We never stood a chance at all.  Even if back then we didn’t know the extent of it all, we still knew it.  There was no way a group of three or four or ten kids could take down this system.  It’s too big, too fundamental.  Too government.

But Hamel…he suddenly made it real.  He knew it all, the weaknesses, the structures, the strengths…and what’s more, he could use it.  He had the authority once, he could use all the procedures, he could make that dream, that unreal, stupid, arrogant goal something we could actually touch.

She looked up at them, then, looking at their backs and seeing them suddenly as though for the first time.  Arran, intelligent, peace-loving, a 4.0 high-school drop-out who somehow didn’t make you worry one bit about him, with his air of perfect control, solidarity, strength.  A man who for all his strength had no purpose to use it, no direction without someone to give it to him.  Alex, whose whole family joined the ranks of undead, who screamed at the world and didn’t wait for it to scream back, filling his own void with as much noise as possible, as much motion as possible.

And herself.  A girl whose grandfather showed her the perversion of life with the perversion of death, who had opened her eyes to that monstrosity the day before he’d passed on, his own shamanistic skills unable to save him any more than any other soul in the damned country.  Her, the only child of an only child who had seen more than most of her classmates, who just couldn’t seem to connect with anyone because they just didn’t understand.

Three people.

And one who had somehow answered all their needs.

Outside of this, none of us have a place to go to, nothing that is important to us.  Outside of this crazy, insane, dangerous life, there is no reason for us to do anything.

And Hamel gave us the hope that in the end, our pitiful lives would actually mean something.

They were coming up on a mass of people, all milling around what looked to be a blockade.  At a silent nod from Alex, they split off and took one of the side hallways, turning another corner quickly and pausing to catch their breath again, alone.

“Alex…why are we doing this?”

Alex stared at her a moment.  “Huh?”

“No, I know why I’m here.  What about you?  And you, Arran?  What keeps driving you on?  Why risk yourselves like this?”

“This…isn’t really the time, Shen.”

“No, it is.”  She looked up into his eyes.  “Tell me.”

“You know why I’m here.”

“I know why you started.  But nothing stays the same, no matter how strong the beginning conviction.  Please.  Why are you leading us on something that would normally be a suicide mission?  Arran, why are you following?”

“Are you having second thoughts, Shen?  It’s a little late for that…!”

“No, I’m not!”  She took a deep breath, then straightened.  “I just…don’t want any more secrets.”  She looked between them.  “Would you like to hear my theory?”

“By all means.”

“You’re here for Hamel.”

She could see them freeze, their expressions close off, their hearts turn away.

“Hamel’s dead.”

“But you don’t want it to end like that.  You don’t want the goal you worked with Hamel to accomplish to just disappear after his death.  It would make it all seem so meaningless, his death and life seem like nothing.  You’re here because you don’t want that.  And also,” she said, “because you don’t want to admit that he’s really gone.  You don’t want to move on, don’t want to believe he’s dead and gone.  Once you change course, you admit it.”

“That’s enough, Shen.”  Arran took a deep breath.  “Like Alex said, this isn’t really the time for this.  Our motivations don’t really matter at this point.  It’s too late to turn away.”

“No.”

They both met her gaze, startled.

“Like I said.  I don’t want any more secrets.”

They were frozen before her, staring statues.

“What I mean to say is…Hamel’s still alive.”

—————–

“You’re just being used by a mindless power!  Don’t forget, you aren’t the only controller able to channel as much as you are!”

Hamel tilted his head up from the temporary shelter of the metal door that had been blown off its hinges and now lay on its side, bent and broken, and watched the growing matrix of energy Kanakin was building.  It was good.  It was stable, able to take massive abuse before collapsing, and it was still growing, whipping out tentacles of energy meant to sap his own, or, if lucky, attach to him directly.

“Ah, that’s like you, Kanakin.  You certainly are chief for a reason.”  Hamel scratched under his hair, still reveling in how it felt so short.  “Well, I guess that just means I have to work harder…”

The energy around him wanted to surge out and bat the obstacle out of the way, but that wouldn’t work on this guy.  Hamel put a hand out, resting it on the coil, sending his feelings into it.  Relax, relax…

Tentacles were attaching to the coil around him, sucking it into itself like a leech, and Hamel sighed when the coil began to buck and resist.  Relax, I said…

For a moment, it listened to him, soothed by his voice, and without the resistance the energy suddenly surged up into the matrix Kanakin had made.

Yes, now.

His own energy mixed into the group, letting him manipulate it just ever so slightly – his mind was suddenly filled with the shapes and corners, the support and interlocking patterns that made up the energy.  He could feel it, through and through, a huge, terrifyingly solid machine meant to take and take and strengthen itself with every breath.

It took but a second to tear it apart.

There was a strangled yell, and there was a flare of backlash as the energy was let forth.  It knocked out the guard around Kanakin despite their armor, and Hamel allowed himself to stand, surveying the scattered bodies.

Kanakin was still standing, though barely.

“Hamel…you…”

“I’ve been spending the last four months working on my techniques, you know.  I mean, I know before I was generally working on them, but that was to make it all more efficient, not break it down.  Turns out, when you’re focusing on it, it’s rather easy to destroy what we’ve all done.”

“Don’t you realize what will happen if you take out the core?  Hamel…why would you…throw out what we’ve worked together on for five years?!”

“You know full well.  You have to, don’t you?”

The section chief put a hand on the wall, energy trying to build around him.  “I don’t know what you mean.”
“You’ve seen it, haven’t you?  Felt it?  The agony of those souls?”  He toyed with the end of his scarf.  “Well, it’s not like I ever asked what the energy came from, before, but you should know if you’re section chief of the nexus itself.”

“Yeah, I know.  I also know what will happen if the core is destroyed.  Think about it a moment, Hamel.  You should know, too.  You’ve worked on the core.  What will happen the moment you disconnect it?”  The energy around him drifted like a cloud, solidifying into a more solid pattern, forming the start of an attack.

Hamel smiled at him again.  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too.  It’s too bad we can’t dismantle this thing properly.  It would save a lot of pain.”

Rage, despair, disbelief chased across the chief’s face.  “You would destroy us all?  Is that really how far you’ve fallen?”

“I’ll do nothing of the sort, chief.  Besides,” he started to walk forward, “from where I stand, I’m not the one who has fallen.”
“You think I’ll stand beside and idly watch you destroy us from the inside!  I’d rather die than see that massacre!”  Like a serpent striking, that deadly energy behind him suddenly exploded forward, concentrated and intent.

Hamel ducked, feeling that coil slide along beside him, bright and smooth and filled with the sorrow and rage of his mentor, and saw it clearly – the moment of weakness, a flaw, the opening that led straight to his mentor’s heart.

Dust settled around them, and Hamel sighed and put a hand on the other man’s unconscious form.

“Sorry, Kanakin, but I don’t want to take your life so easily, even if you open the way for me to do so.”  He stood, clutching his scarf.  “Even if you want me to.”

A sharp pain suddenly brought him to his knees, and he snapped his eyes closed, pressing a hand to his forehead.  Not good, for him to be reaching this kind of limit…  He still had that far to go, yet…

“HAMEL..!!”

For a moment, he believe it some kind of memory, a hallucination brought on by too much energy wafting around him, but he looked up anyway, and in the wavering dust and energy there came a figure.  A familiar figure.

So Shen talked. He felt a strange urge to laugh.  Well, I guess that’s not surprising… He looked down, saw the sword in the other man’s hand, and thought, Ah, I see.  Well, if it’s like this, would I mind dying..? He shook his head and pushed to his feet, already feeling the strain fade.

Alex…how do I face you, now?

—————–

“Traitor!”

Hamel stared back at Alex, standing at the bottom of the tunnel where it bottomed out, his face distorted by rage.

“I always wondered how they always knew where we are, how they always knew where and when to send their next wave.  You’ve been with them all along, telling them!”

“Alex..?  No, this-”

“None of it!  I’ll have none of your lies!  Traitor!”

—————–

There was dust everywhere, cables and dirt and rock and metal forming a pile of debris that completely closed off the tunnel.  Alex stared at it, trembling at the betrayal, seeing it all over again over and over in his mind.  Hamel, always so flippant, always so easy-going, always so cheerful, talking face-to-face with an NCC employee.  In the tunnel.  After he said he’d be right back, that he wanted to check something and to just wait for him.

How could he?!  How could he travel with them, act like their friend for three months, and yet still just be another lackey of the NCC?  How could he sell them out?  How could he have been with them for so long, and yet still…

How could that same guy who had taken them in, who had been nothing but a source of information, turn into so much hope?

How dare he?!

“Aaah…that’s quite unfortunate.”

Alex turned his head, then stared.

The man in the white coat, the NCC employee that had been standing with Hamel, who should have been buried under as much rock, was standing next to him.

“Now the pathway to the short-cut is quite thoroughly blocked…”

Alex stared at him, his brain suddenly blank.  “Path…way?”

“Yes, well, he asked about the service entrances around here.  Then again, I guess he won’t be needing them, anyway.”

“You…should be buried.”

“Who, me?”  The man turned to him, and suddenly Alex understood.

Too-dark eyes bored into his soul.   “I’m already dead, so a little stone won’t really stop me…”

—————–

Dust was everywhere.  No one had followed them far, not after Arran had thrown up a different kind of shield from the crosses that would stop anything physical for a brief period of time.  Good thing, too, since the moment they’d gone ten feet after that they were suddenly assaulted with gunfire.  It made vague ripples in the energy of the shield, but none got through.

Far ahead, they could hear gunshots and other noises, and Alex pulled out his sword again.  Shen checked her guns – damn, down to half-time left – and sprinted after.

There was a line of gunners waiting at a corner, attention down the hall, where most of the noise was coming from.  They were too intent, however, and didn’t even notice them until they were already on top of them.

I always wondered if it would feel different to shoot a living person than a zombie, Shen thought abstractly as they turned the corner.  I guess it’s too much alike to make any.

Arran paused, raised a hand at the bodies in quick prayer, then followed after them.  He caught up at the next corner, where Alex had paused, listening to the fight up ahead and trying to figure out the direction it was coming from.

The gunshots suddenly ceased.

The moment Shen noticed, Alex took off at a sprint, not even bothering to hide anymore.  Arran followed, and Shen was behind them once more, glancing to the back just in case, but this area was completely deserted.

“HAMEL..!!”

Shen’s gaze snapped back to Alex, who was far ahead of them, as he skidded to a halt and turned, all his attention on whatever was around that corner.  Shen ran after, then slowed down.  She had already known.  This was their time to meet again.  She reached the corner at a walk and stopped to watch.

Alex was walking, his movements both hesitant and full of suppressed energy.  Before him, just getting up from a crouch beside someone, was Hamel, his hood down, facing them straightforward.  His expression was remote, perhaps even sad.  Around him were still bodies of security patrol members.  The walls and floor around him were riddled with bullet holes, and from where she stood Shen could see blood on his arm, though it wasn’t enough to mean anything serious.

Suddenly Alex was running.  For a brief second, fear and doubt chased their way through Hamel’s eyes, but then they were gone.

What?

Alex’s hand rose, the sword flew into the air and disappeared, and the hand came crashing down again.  Shen’s hands rose to her mouth, but she didn’t make a noise as Hamel fell to the ground.  Then Alex was on his knees and embracing Hamel, burying his face in Hamel’s shirt, yelling “you idiot!” over an over.  Hamel looked shocked for a moment, and during that time Arran drew up to them, fell to his knees and locked both of them in his huge arms.

Shen glanced once more back on their path, then walked up slowly, considerately looking away from the three, giving them the privacy she could.

“We thought you were dead.  You let us believe you were dead!”

“I’m sorry.  I’m sorry…”

“Fool..!”

Shen felt her own eyes pricking, and immediately blinked them away.  I have to cover us.  I have to be able to see. She took a couple steps away, hoping the distance would help, trying to close her ears and succeeding enough to keep her vision clear.

After a few moments, they broke up, suddenly awkward.

“Your…arm okay?”

“Oh, yeah, it’s just a scratch, really.  Bullet ricochet.”

“Here, I’ll tie it up for you…”

“Wow, your hair is so different when it’s not below your shoulder…it’s really fuzzy.”

“No kidding, right?  I keep touching it and thinking it’s weird…”

“Why blue?!”

“Uh…it was the cheapest color at the store…”

“I can see why.”

“Hamel…I’m sorry.”

Shen glanced back at Alex.  He wasn’t looking at Hamel, but rather at his hand.  Hamel watched Alex a moment, and then suddenly smiled that sad smile.

“It’s okay.  It didn’t really hurt.”

Liar. But what about?

Arran finished tying off the arm and pulled Hamel to his feet.  “Well, we should keep moving while we have the advantage.  We probably don’t have much time.  Where are we headed, Hamel?”

Hamel’s smile changed to the familiar mischievous one Shen knew so well, and he put a finger to his lips.

“We’re headed in and down to the core of it all.”

—————–

They were able to use the security card from the guy Hamel had beaten to over-ride the system.  Hamel poked at a console in a room for a few moments, and suddenly the alarms stopped making noise.  They pulled a few of the people Hamel had knocked out into the room and made them vaguely comfortable while Hamel worked on it.

“There.  That should have unlocked the elevators again.  Not to mention made it a bit easier for us to move about.”  Hamel paused, then made a face.  “Right.  Sorry, chief, I’ll be borrowing this…”  In a moment, he had the lab coat off the controller and was pulling it on.  “Arran, why don’t you grab a shirt from that security guy?  No one would think it strange to see you in one right now, and your pants are close enough to pass.  Grab a gun charm, too.”  Hamel grabbed a visor from the desk and pulled it over his face.

Arran made a face, but complied, and after a moment, they exited the room and walked off.  The small amount of people in the hallway didn’t seem to notice them.

“Say, that intruder should already be in the detention center, right?  Man, I kind of wanted to see him just once.  An idiot who actually invaded the NCC…”

Hamel hummed to himself as he walked, leading them at a brisk pace.  Shen had no idea how he knew where they were.  Even pulling those people around a few corners had made her lost.  She wasn’t sure she’d be able to find that corridor again even if she tried.

“It’s the numbers.”

“Huh?”

Hamel looked at her and grinned.  “They don’t make sense to you, do they?  The corridor number system.”

Shen shook her head.  “They’re not in any order.  How can they?”

Hamel gestured at the number they were passing.  “It corresponds with the pipeline being fed into that area.  In order to really understand it, you have to know how the place was built, in what order the conduits were installed.”

“You remember all that?”

“Of course!  I grew up with this matrix on every single one of my exams.  I think I know it better than my own face.”  He gestured around them vaguely.  “The same goes for everyone here, really.”

“There’s no way for me to figure it out, basically,” Shen sighed.  “Well, you’re here, so I guess it’s okay.  If we have to run, though, you better know your path darn well.  I don’t want to run in circles.”

“Ah, don’t worry about that.  We shouldn’t have to run after this.”

After what seemed like an eternity of walking – how large WAS this place, anyway?  How was something so huge kept such a secret? – they finally arrived at the elevator Hamel wanted.  They boarded, and Hamel pushed a couple buttons.

“Hmmm…”

“What is it?”

Hamel slid the card into the reader and pressed a few more buttons, then sighed.

“Right.  Brace yourselves, guys, this is going to be kind of a rough trip.”

“Huh?”

He suddenly pulled a gun from a gun charm he’d taken from one of the guards and pointed it up, aimed, and fired a few select shots at the ceiling.  The lights went out, there was a horrifying squeal, and then they were suddenly falling.

“Hamel!  What have you done?!”

The blue-haired man was clinging to the console, dimly seen in the glow of some kind of emergency lighting.  “Well, they changed the codes, so I couldn’t actually just bring us down…  So I took secondary action.”

“The hell!  You trying to kill us all?!”

“Oh, don’t worry, there’s a safety catch…”  He paused, counting.  “Ah, we’ll be hitting it probably…ten more seconds.”

“Ten?!  How far down are we falling?!”

“Um…ten stories?  I think?”

“Damnit Hamel…!!!”

“Just brace yourself!”  Arran was in the middle, and grabbed Shen, pulling her close.

“Chauvinistic pig,” Shen accused.

She didn’t move, though.

Then they suddenly hit something, and her world became chaos.

A lifetime later, they pried open the doors and spilled out onto a platform – no, a reception hall – no, a huge…lobby?  She stood and looked around her, feeling bruises starting to form, and stared at the room.

No, that was it.  This was it.

She stared at the walls, hardly believing it.  There were no more doors, no hallways leading away from this one room.  She stared at the walls, the gigantic tubes that lead into the center, the mass of metal and wire that was supported by a structure in the middle that she suddenly realized was a lot larger than it seemed.  They all met in the center, high off the floor, like the center of a ball.  Huge pillars rose from the ground up to meet it, connecting with the conduits, supporting them.

Shen shivered.  It was cold.

“It’s not really cold.  It’s just the power.  Can you see it?”

Hamel appeared at her elbow, eyes fixed on that ball above them.  She followed his gaze up to the mass of cords, then suddenly gasped.

“I…I can…”

Hamel nodded.  “That is because right here is the most concentrated spot in all the world of this power.  It’s so dense that it even hits the visual range, so concentrated it actually starts to affect people around it who are just standing there, even as far as we are.”  He took a step forward, then turned back to them.

“So just blowing it up would cause a bit of a problem,” he said.  “Sooo…I’m going to need a bit of help, so I can unravel it and ground it out…”

—————–

“This is insane!”

Hamel grinned down at him, his feet swinging free a moment as he swung around on the cable he was holding.  “Just relax into it!  If you fight it you’ll miss your target!”

“Why the hell are we swinging to begin with?!  I thought you said there were stairs!  Stairs!”

Hamel reached up and pulled up onto a huge cable, scrambling a moment with his feet to get them up onto the metal surface.  “It’s faster!”

Arran swung past Alex and pulled himself up to the coil beside Hamel’s.

“If you keep lying there, you’ll get left behind,” Shen said.  “Here, I’ll help you.”

“AAH!”  With her sudden kick, Alex flew from the coil they’d climbed to and starting a slow swing out and around.

“Relax, Alex, relax…!”

“SHEN, I’LL KILL YOU…!!”  His feet hit a new coil, but he hit it oddly and started to fall back.

“Dammiiiitt..!”  He dropped one hand and jerked out his sword.  He swung down and managed, miraculously, to imbed it in the side of the coil.

Now what?

Hamel left him to figure it out, his eyes rising up to the coils above him.  There were three layers of coil, and inside those would be the core itself…

He’d worked here before, yes, but he’d never actually been all the way inside.  The most he and Kanakin had done was work on the coils leading in.

You would destroy us all?  Is that really how far you’ve fallen?

No, chief, that’s not my plan…but… He stared up at the mass in front of him.  …In the end, I still have no idea how to do this quickly.

The coil of energy that had followed him through the building had dissipated the moment Hamel had turned his eyes off, unable to follow him when he wasn’t channeling it.  Now that he was here, though, the overwhelming energy, the very heart of it throbbing and rushing and swirling, was crashing against his channels, practically trying to break its way in.

So familiar.

“Listen, Hamel.  While there, it is more important than ever to keep your distance from your power.  The moment you feel like it’s sucking you in, cut yourself off and request a return to the top.  No showing off, here.  I chose you for your capacity, yes, but your skill remains to be seen.  Any funny tricks, and you’ll get us both killed.”

Get more than just us, Hamel thought, tilting his head at the just-invisible energy crackling around him.   “Hey, Shen!  Arran!”  The two looked over at him from their coils.  “Can you two get some kind of barrier around me?”

Arran stared back.  “Against the kind of energy I can feel around here?  You nuts?”

“Only recently.  I just need something to decrease the amount getting through, not stop it or deflect it.”

“Sure!  I can probably get something like that going,” Shen called.  “Of course, it probably won’t make much difference even if I do.  It’d be like holding up a fishing net to control the amount of sea water coming in.”

“Just do what you can.”

Arran looked skeptical.  “I’ll try.  You’re physically going in there?”

“Yeah.”

“What about me?”  Alex called from around the corner.

“I need you to go in a little bit further.  Don’t pass by the final set of coils, but get to a spot where you can see within the middle area.  Keep your sword out – I may need you to cut something.”  He glanced back at them.  “Actually, why don’t you all group together?  Arran, if anything funny happens, lay down as many crosses as you can, try disrupting the flow around you.”

“Sure thing.”

“Hey, you guys up there!  State your names and cease your movements!”

Far below, looking like ants, a group of security patrol members stood grouped around the base of one of the pillars, guns pointed upwards.

“Hamel?”

Hamel skipped over the end of his coil and leaned over, hand on his ear.

“WHAAT?  SORRY, CANNOT HEAR YOU UP HERE, VERY LOUD ENERGY ALL AROUND!  DOING MAINTENANCE NO DISTURB FIFTEEN MINUTES PLEASE!!!”

“State your name and section!”

“THANK YOU!”  Hamel waved cheerfully down at them and spun back around.  “Okay, guys, we need to get a move on.  Change of plans.  Shen, Arran, set up whatever barriers you can, then Arran, you get ready with your crosses.  Shen, cover that pillar’s entrance.  Alex, you be ready to cut either direction, either inside at something or outwards at them.  You’ll all have to come in towards the middle…”

“I knew you should have let me take out the stairs.”

“That would have been too suspicious,” Hamel said.  “This way we’ve bought another few minutes before they fire.  They still have to get up here.”

They were moving while they spoke, Arran making the motions and casting some kind of barrier around Hamel, Shen chanting lowly, pulling energy from the earth up to loosely twine around him.  Alex cursed and skipped across the coils to get to them, disappearing behind a few on his way over.

“Hey!  Stop!”

“You’re good, Hamel.”

“Be careful, guys.”

He stepped into the void.

The energy around him was an ocean, was a storm, was the bang of a gun, was the sound of the world, was the silence of a blooming flower.  It blew into him and threw him, leaving him worthless and breathless, in awe of its overwhelming, ignorant force.  Without him wanting it to, his eyes switched on, and it was suddenly nothing but an extreme display of light so intense he wished he could claw them out, wished any amount of cover would block it, but nothing would nothing would move he was frozen…

:YOU:

There was a whoosh, a feeling of withdrawal, and suddenly it was as if he could breathe again.  He gasped, found himself on his knees, and looked up into the blinding light.  Impossibly, somehow, he felt his eyes shift, dim, and suddenly he could see, could see the eddies and swirls and the rushing, intense energy as it spiraled and divided and spun around…

…the shape of a girl.

He stared, realizing she wasn’t corporeal but unable to get over how incredibly solid she looked nonetheless.  Her arms, her hair, her body was made of light, the energy of that very nexus, but she turned, her arms waving lightly and opening a path for him, her hair floating lightly on the eddies.

:I’VE BEEN WAITING FOR YOU.:

Somehow Hamel pushed his hands down, himself up, and got to his feet.  He could see his breath in front of him. “Who…are you?”  His voice was pitifully tiny, like a child yelling from somewhere far away.

:I AM THE WORLD.  I AM THE PEOPLE.  I AM RAGE, I AM SORROW, I AM DESPAIR.  I AM LOVE.  I AM WHAT WAS, WHAT IS.:

“How…what are you doing here?”

:I…HAVE BEEN TRAPPED HERE FOR MANY YEARS, GROWING IN MIND AND BODY AS I HAVE BEEN FED FROM MY MANY PARTS, UNABLE TO FREE MYSELF.: Suddenly her gaze moved, turned to him, pinned him in place with its infinity.  :THUS I CREATED YOU.  THUS I SENT THE ABILITY, THE CAPACITY TO ENTER MY DOMAIN INTO THE WORLD.:

“…Kanakin was the same, wasn’t he?”

:I CREATED MANY BEFORE YOU.  HAD I NOT REACHED YOU, THERE WOULD BE MORE BEHIND YOU.:

Hamel coughed a small laugh, unable to tear eyes away from that form before him.  A goddess, he thought.  We created and then imprisoned a goddess.

:YOU MUST FREE ME.  YOU MUST UNDO THE BONDS THAT KEEP ME AND MINE CAPTIVE.  I WILL SHOW YOU THE WAY.  OPEN YOURSELF TO ME.:

Without him wanting it, his mind split open, and the universe poured in.

—————–

A bullet ricocheted off the coil, repelled by the barrier Arran was holding up.

“Oi!  This won’t stay up that much longer – do something about them, Shen!  Alex!”

“Working on it!”  Alex sent another wave of energy out at them, noting the scarring of the metal around them.  “Uuh…I can’t puncture these conduits, can I?  That would be bad, right?”

“Asking the wrong person!”

Shen sent a few more bullets back at them.  “They’re firing hollow-points.  I don’t have those set up for my guns, but we can assume the metal is relatively thick nonethe-less.”

“How’s Hamel doing?!”

Alex turned.  “Uuuh…”

Hamel was on a knee, looking up, his back rigid behind him.  Before him, that strange almost-light of energy pulsed and wavered.

“Well, he’s doing something!”

“Something that isn’t stopping these men!”  Alex spun around.  “Oi!  Hamel!  Am I cutting something over by you or not, yet?!”

Hamel slumped a little, then pushed, rising from his knee with what looked like great difficulty.  He turned, a dark form flickering within a flickering field, two blue eyes burning with inhuman light.

“Ha…mel?”

“…prisoners.”

A wave of energy suddenly lashed out, passed by Alex before he even saw it start.  He flinched and dove to the side.

“Hamel?”  He turned and looked, eyes taking in the fallen, lifeless forms of the security guards, checking both Arran and Shen were alright, looking back up at Hamel.

“…must free the prisoners.”

“I don’t get what you’re saying, but hell, man, quit messing around!”

“Hamel!”  Shen grabbed Alex’s arm.  “Hamel, no!  Let him go!”

“Eh?”  Alex glanced at Arran, whose brow was getting furrowed.  “What do you see?”

“Here, I’ll lend you my sight a moment-”  Shen placed her hand over his eyes and chanted. “Look!”

The image flared in his mind.  Hamel, limp and yet tense, standing between rusted and corroded coils of metal.  The world was filled with darkness, dirty and corrupted, and behind him stood a vague, ever-shifting form, gigantic, heavy with power, bound by chains.  Multiple cords emanated from it, striking through the air like rusted blades, some whipping free in the ever-shifting darkness, some anchored to the ground.

Three of them pierced through Hamel’s heart.  One pierced through his head.  Two trapped his hands.  One more twined around his throat.

“Hamel!”

One of his hands rose and flicked upwards, and with Shen’s shamanistic sight turned on, Alex could see the amazing surge of darkness, so small and insignificant-looking, buck against the coils around them.  It was like watching a wave crash into a sand castle.  That was when he realized the corroded coils around the thing were actually the bars of a cage.  He looked up at it, horrified, and realized that it was the only thing keeping that thing at bay now that it could use Hamel as a puppet to control that darkness around it.

“Damnit, Hamel…!”  He grasped his sword with two hands.  “Shen, I need to get to a place with a better angle at those cords on Hamel so I can cut him loose, but I’m going to also need your sight to see where to cut.”

Arran suddenly jumped to the side as a small wave leaked from between the bars of the cage.  “If this goes on, that barrier’s going to break.  I’ll try to reinforce it while you two move.  Hurry it up, though.  If it notices me, I’m toast on a Sunday morning.”

“Gotcha.”  He got up, blinking as the world returned to cool metal and white light.  “Find me a good spot, Shen.”

The woman skipped across coils, eyes never moving from the center of the open space beyond the coils, where she was no doubt staring at that corrupted darkness.  Inside, Hamel looked up and waved another hand, moving like a marionette on a string, and even Alex could feel the power that shuddered the apparatus around them.

“Just what is that thing?”

Shen paused, then motioned him over.  “You think it has a name?  The center of it all.  Evil.  Here, this is a good angle.”

Alex jumped and stopped before her, sword in hand.  “Okay, sight me up.”

The world flickered into darkness again.  He sighted through the coil in front of him, judging the distance between himself and the edge of the roiling darkness.  Screw that thing, I’m using my strongest wave.

He struck.

It swerved.

Miraculously, it still managed to hit those coils, separate a few of them…

“Too shallow.  Dammit, again!”

“Alex, look out!”

A pulse of darkness flashed by him, leaving a trail of stank air, missing him by a hair.  Below and behind him, Shen suddenly jerked his legs out from him, making him drop below another spurt.  On his way down, he looked, his eyes drawn into the darkness, and his vision, flickering between light and dark, saw Hamel, his eyes pools of light/dark, staring at him expressionlessly, his face slack, a mask.

“HAMEL!  IDIOT!  WAKE UP!”

He hit the metal hard, coughed for a moment trying to get his breath, then rolled, getting himself behind a coil beside Shen where the darkness, the power didn’t seem to be able to reach him.

“Dammit!  What the hell is that?  Did Hamel know it was there?!”

“I don’t know.”  Shen glanced around them, then pulled out her guns.  “Well, maybe shooting it will do something.  I think your cutting would be more effective, but at least it’s something.”

“I’ll cut, too, but you’ll have to warn me to jump.  I can’t see much, but guessing is an option.  Not like missing it entirely is even possible…”

“Arran!  How’s the shield doing?”

“Not good!  You guys going to do something?”

“Working on it!  Give us a little more protection on this side!”

Shen suddenly disappeared from his side, sprinting across the cables and giant conduits, guns up and shooting inwards as she ran, then stopped and waited behind another cable.  Nodding, Alex jumped up and prepared to strike…

“S-stop!”

Alex paused, uncertain, looking at Hamel as he stood, a hand outstretched, another hand up on his forehead.

A ripple surged through the space around Hamel, and he turned, looking backwards at what Alex would only assume was the spirit, the…  What?  What is it? His eyes flared with the power, more power than Alex was used to seeing in him.  It seemed to be spreading, bleeding from his eyes, creating an after-image behind his movements.

“Yes!  Yes, but not like this!  We have to…”

There was some kind of shift again, and Hamel suddenly dropped to his knees.

“Hamel!”

“Alex!  Cut straight in!  There!”

Without a thought, Alex lifted and fed energy into his sword, swung down, shot it out.

The moment it passed by Hamel, he moved, running behind the wake of the wave, the air smarting behind him.  “Shen!  Now!  Shoot the center!”

There were several rapports from Shen’s gun, and behind them a kind of grinding shudder rippled outwards.  Hamel jumped behind those ripples, his feet somehow light, practically skipping over the coils beneath him.

Is he going to hit it…?

His hands touched that thick haze, the distortion, and suddenly disappeared in light.

With it, the place suddenly trembled.  “Alex!  Shen!  The barrier’s almost gone, and with it it’s starting to actually make these coils break apart.  We gotta get out of here!”

“What about Hamel?”  Shen was running back already.

“Nothing we can do!  We can’t touch him, even get remotely near him at this point!  We’ll have to assume he’s gonna find his own way down.  He knows this place better than we do, after all.”

Alex bit a lip, staring at the wild energy surging outwards from where Hamel was, then yelped and skipped back a bit as a bit of it slapped against the edge of the coil near him.

“Fine!  Coming!”  He turned and ran towards the nearest pillar.

As he ran, he took one last glance back, and seemed to see Hamel, hands imbedded into the light, his body made of light, surrounded by light.

How can something so beautiful be so corrupt?

—————–

The world recoalesced, snapped back into place, split in two.  One side was the infinite side of the universe, knowledge and feeling and being, the other reality, grounded, the structures that defined his life so much in the past.

This wasn’t right.

He could feel, through the other side, the feeling of the universe, the pain, the disconnection from the goddess.  Could see, out of the corner of his eye, Alex as he ducked to the side, avoiding a surge of energy as it flared against the constraints.  Could see him, Shen, both coming out again, as though in slow motion that moved too fast, trying again to sever the goddess.  Could feel the goddess recoiling, attention turning to them, readying to act against them.

“S-stop!”

The goddess’s mind turned back to him.

“Why do you resist?  You are here to free me.  You are here to free them all.”

“Yes!  Yes, but not like this!  We have to…”

“Presumptuous!  You are my vessel!  You are ME!”

The power slammed into him, and the world wavered, tried to disappear around him.  He felt the drag, like the crashing force of a waterfall, and finally knew enough to push back.

“HAMEL!”

The voice was like a slap in the face.  Alex.

“Alex!  Cut straight in!  There!”  He pointed to the coils that wavered in the air around him, coiling around him, suffocating him, and a moment later they were cut, severed, and the world settled a little bit more.  He ran behind it, using the moment of clear space to get closer.

Not enough…

“Shen!  Now!  Shoot the center!”

The shocks of the holy rounds shuddered through the goddess, made her falter a moment, and the world became clear, became for a moment nothing but open space.  He ran through it, seeing the path, seeing where it all had to end.

He grabbed onto the goddess, felt her power shock through him, felt it do something to him, but knew he couldn’t stop it.  He dug deeper, deeper, feeling her slip through his fingers and through him, felt her despair, felt her rage, and kept taking, grasping, kneading, undoing, unraveling.

He was barely conscious of the world around him.  Was that world the reality?  Or was it the other?  It was crumbling, shattering around him, becoming light and dark and movement and sound.  Still he let his fingers, his arms, his being sink into the power of the goddess, reaching down into the very core.

And it all stopped.

He was standing in darkness.  It vaulted around him, a huge empty space.  He looked at it, turning around, seeing nothing.

When he turned back to the front, a small light flickered before him.

The goddess?

He reached out, feeling the warmth before he even touched it, and the floor beneath him suddenly blossomed in light.  Then one by one, the sky too lit with small flames, candles that flickered and wavered, lighting and dying and ever-changing, a curtain that fell and rose from the curtain below him.

Save none of them were allowed to return to the ocean.  As they started to fall, they were caught, a huge net that fed into itself, refusing to let them touch the surface of the ocean.  And that ocean, always sending its drops upwards, was slowly getting smaller and smaller, filled with the grief of loneliness.

:They must be freed.:

Hamel back at the light that pulsed before him, the light of the goddess.

“Yes, but not all at once.  Only those…only the ones that are being kept back.”

:This travesty must be punished.:  As her voice echoed through the space, the candles above flickered and trembled.

“But…it isn’t everyone’s fault.  They allowed themselves to be blinded, but they didn’t pluck their own eyes.”  He stared at that soft light.  “Please, have some mercy.”

:Mercy…:

Hamel reached up, feeling that net that imprisoned the souls, felt how it was already connected to all that were still living.  “You’re a goddess.  Can you separate it all?”

A tremble, small and simple, ran through all the lines of the net, just once, and suddenly it was shattered, breaking into pieces smaller than a single soul, splintering and splintering until it was like a fine mist.  Then, slowly, it disappeared, leaving behind the flowing energy of the already dead.  Free of constraints, they started to drift free, expanding-

Hamel immediately grasped them and started to pull them in, wincing as he saw them accidentally brush against a few of the still-living, sucking them into itself.  He couldn’t hold them – he dropped one hand, pushing them at the ocean beneath him, pulling and dropping like jerking on a rope.  But he was too slow, he could only hold so much-

The goddess was with him, reaching through him and seizing the lines, grasping all at once and pulling downwards.  It was like watching a web fall in perfect shape, flowing in a breeze he couldn’t feel…

: it is done, mortal.  Return.:

—————–

“…Minister of Economy said today that while he had been aware of its existence, he hadn’t been told what it was for, despite the heavy funding required to keep it in progress.  Officials are still keeping quiet about this state secret, stating that all will be made clear during the investigation of the employees who worked in the various facilities.  Eyewitnesses at several of the tunnels state they saw…”

The voice that cracked from the television faded as the door to the diner swung shut.  The person who exited glanced at the sky, held out a hand, then shifted the bag in his arms to pull open the umbrella at his side.

“So now they’re saying that the manual labor forces were all manufactured humans?  And that’s why they would go berserk every now and then?  Because they weren’t really human?”

“I heard from some protest group they were stealing the souls of the dead to do stuff.  Isn’t that weird?”

“Some kind of rebel force had to have bombed all the tunnels at once.  Otherwise how would all the tunnels have collapsed like that?”

“I want to talk to one of those employees myself.  I mean, they kept this a secret for how many years?  Even from the other Ministers!  What’s to say they’re not going to lie in their reports?”

“Aren’t they doing a live interview today?”

“I had a cousin near one of those tunnels…  My uncle said she suddenly just collapsed and died when it went down…”

The man wandered down the street, broad shoulders clearing an easy path through the afternoon flow.  A few blocks down, he stopped besides a building and leaned against the wall.

“How much time is left?”

“Eeeh…we’ve got another few minutes, anyway.  Where were you?”  The woman picked a tooth with a fingernail, sandwich in the other hand, drink by her feet.

“Eh, boss had me redo the figures for him before he let me out for lunch.  Waiting long?”

“Couple of customers wanted to talk too much, so no, actually.”  She waved the sandwich.  “Well, they paid for lunch, though, so I can’t complain.”

“Business is going well?”

“…well enough,” she muttered around a bite of food.  She chewed awkwardly.  “A lot of people are more interested in the spirit realm with all this hubbub about it, so even if I’m still just apprenticing, I see a lot of different people in a day.”

They ate in silence a moment, the people on the street passing by, a general murmur of speech and movement that flowed by.

“It’s been…a week already.”

“What, since you got a job?”  The woman laughed.  “Yeah, no kidding, right?  I never would have actually thought you could settle in so seriously!”

The man turned red, just slightly, and looked out to the street.  “Well…that… that’s because…”

A light sparkled in the woman’s eyes, and she suddenly skipped next to the man and leaned in, leaving a light kiss on his cheek.  Immediately the man jerked and backed up, hand rising as though in defense.

“Shen…  What was that for?!”

“Reward, of course.”

The man stared at her, then looked away again, staring down at the concrete before him.  “Shen…I…”

“Mean.”

“Definitely mean.”

“They haven’t mentioned either of us even once…”

“And to go so far as to have a situation like this…!”

“I wonder…have they abandoned us so easily…?”

“Don’t…don’t say any more, Alex, my heart is heavy enough.”

“Alex!  Hamel!”  The large man pushed away from the wall, staring up at the stairs above where he had been leaning, the two other men crouching by the railing and staring back down in return.  “Since…since when-”

“Horrible!  He didn’t even notice us, Alex!”

“Even though we’ve been here the entire time…”

“Indeed, we even came a good fifteen minutes early today…!”

Arran paused, then slumped in defeat.  “Shen…”

Shen was doubled up before him, grasping her stomach as she attempted to hold her own laughter in.  “No, no, don’t stop, we were….that was a great spot…keep going… what about me?”

Arran glared.  “You put up a spell or something for them, didn’t you.”

Shen gulped a few breaths of air and straightened as the pair came down the stairs.  “Well, you can’t blame me.  It’s our little experiment – I mean, with Hamel like he is, they can’t very well walk around normally…”

Alex walked over to the larger man and smacked his shoulder.  “See?  No harm done.  So?  What were you going to say right then?  Don’t let us interfere!”

“Like I can say it now!”

“Why not?”  Hamel leaned against the wall, covered head to toe with coat, sunglasses, gloves, even a face-mask.  “I mean, shouldn’t we get the right to know when you two finally get a move on it?  We’re family at this point, anyway…”

Arran paused, then suddenly heaved a long sigh.  “That’s it, I just can’t win against you, Hamel…”

Even without seeing, they could all feel the smile that radiated from that covered face.

Arran suddenly turned to Shen, his whole bearing completely tense.  “Shen!”

“Yes?”

“I love you!”

All four of them froze in place.

Unconsciously, he felt his eyes drop, focusing on her worn, well-loved brown shoes.  “…I… Every day, I go into work thinking about you, about how I’m going to support you, us, our future.  To me, even at the worst of moments, when I hate my job or I want to just quit, all I do is just think of you, and the most boring of statistics sheets will suddenly be more important than my life!  So…so, Shen…would you…”  His eyes rose, heart in them, pleading, imploring.

“Would you marry me?”

Shen’s face stared back at him.  Was she going to say no?  That was it, wasn’t it – they were too close, too much like siblings at this point, so she would just say those words – she was just trying to think of a kind way of saying it…

Her face lit up, like a light turned on, a Christmas tree being lit for the first time.  Time seemed to slow down, his breath disappearing in his lungs, squeezed out by an invisible hand, taking life with it and leaving him dead, dead, dead.

Then she was in his arms, staring up at his face, hands in his.

“Of course, dummy.”

His life started again.

“Celebrations are in order!  So, where shall it be, Mr. I’m-Going-To-Be-Married-Soon?  Shall we hit up a pub or two?”

Arran looked over his love’s head, his head spinning like a top.  “Pub?  What’s that?”  He felt a grin, a silly, goofy, too-large grin spreading over his face.  “Why go somewhere so small?  I’m going to proclaim this somewhere much, much more public!”

He felt a sharp pain in his chest, and looked down at his chest where Shen had punched him.

“Hey, if you embarrass me I’ll null the engagement…”

Hamel scratched at his hood.  “Come to think of it, isn’t this kind of a lame way to propose?  Isn’t there supposed to be candlelight and roses or something?”

Arran threw a napkin from his lunch at him.  “No more from the peanut gallery!”

“Oh, my, he’s retaliating…!  Alex, if this keeps up, he’ll become immune to our jabs!”

“NO!  Shen, don’t marry him!  It’s all because of you…!”

But even as they talked, they were packing up, grabbing possessions and, without speaking a word, heading to the same place, the same destination.  Above them, the dense clouds finally relaxed, and a gentle rain slid free, flowing down to wash the earth and make everything, once more, anew.

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