Aissaba was starting to lose track of time. The secret door behind the cuckoo clock had deposited them in a dark forest days ago, maybe a full week. Since then, the Master World – or whatever it was called – had demonstrated that it had little to offer but darkness, mist, trees with embedded pebbles, and the distant howls of wildlife that Aissaba hoped never to meet face to face. If there was a sun, there was no evidence of this, no cycle of light and dark with which to mark the passage of time.

The bone collector spider nuzzled against her leg. Held loosely in its jaw was a clump of berries. “Uh, thanks, buddy,” she said. Tassadu had kept them both well fed by repurposing the plentiful life pebbles that grew embedded in the trees themselves. Still, the spider often disappeared into the forest and returned hours (or was it days?) later with gifts like these.

“Let me see,” said Tassadu. He sniffed the berries and sampled one of them, closing his eyes and contemplating the taste. Aissaba, in turn, contemplated his face, his scales shimmering in the firelight.

He opened his eyes, caught her staring, and looked away into the darkness. “They seem edible,” he said, handing most of them back to her and keeping just one, probably for the purposes of cloning it later.

“How’s Orion doing?” Aissaba asked. There hadn’t been much else to talk about lately, so they passed the time swapping blink stories about the Johnson twins – occasionally discussing what little information trickled across the link.

“Nothing since last time you asked,” said Tassadu.

Aissaba couldn’t shake the feeling that the link with the Johnsons was deteriorating – and that it was happening in parallel with the deterioration of her less arcane link with Tassadu. Although he was on speaking terms with her now that she’d put her self-modification quest on pause, he didn’t seem particularly interested in talking.

The bone spider nuzzled her. In its mouth was the mind pebble flashed with cat-Styxx’s personality model. She’d thrown it into the darkness in frustration several times since arriving, only to have it brought back to her hours (or was it days?) later.

Like someone caught in a loop, she tapped the pebble to her forehead and brought cat-Styxx’s ghost to life. Sometimes any companionship was better than nothing.

“Let me put it this way,” cat-Styxx said, throat not yet bleeding. “If you agree to meet with the other Masters of Rot, I’ll help you get a message to your mother. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you… Dammit…” As usual, he began to die again. This always made it hard for him to persist in whatever rhetoric he’d chosen.

“Thanks for the offer,” said Aissaba. “If you’re ready to give us some answers, I’ll happily take those. As for being the Rot’s chosen ones – I’m going to have to politely decline. For the millionth time.”

He sighed, trachea gurgling, and seemed to be resigned to his fate. Aissaba expected him to expire quietly, or perhaps – as he sometimes did – with a final dramatic proclamation about how they were Earth’s last hope. Cat-Styxx, or what was left of him, was pretty predictable these days.

But this time, as he died, he held out a small slip of paper. Aissaba read it and handed it to Tassadu, who seemed at least mildly interested. It read: Please, just make it stop. I’ll do anything.

He toppled into the fire and faded away, along with the slip of paper. In a few minutes, he would respawn, and the cycle would repeat.

“Must suck,” said Aissaba. “Being trapped in a loop like that.”

“Give me the pebble,” said Tassadu in his “nothing better to do” voice.

Aissaba handed it over and tried to sleep. Every now and then, though, she peeked through one eyelid to see what Tassadu was doing. Sometimes he sat motionless on the far side of the campfire. Other times, he was pacing in the shadows at the perimeter of their small slice of life on the dark planet. Always, he had the pebble to his forehead and an expression of deep concentration.

“It’s no good,” he finally announced, jarring Aissaba out of a moment of sleep. “This is the best I can do.”

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Cat-Styxx stood next to him, paws gently probing a bandage wrapped tightly around his neck. “A bandage?” rasped the cat – his seductive purr a thing of the past.

“I don’t know what cut you, but it cut deep,” said Tassadu. “I can’t fix the underlying model, but this patch should make your death cycles longer.”

Cat-Styxx’s ghost didn’t seem particularly pleased with this, but he crouched down next to the fire and began warming his hands. “This is not how things were supposed to go.”

“No prediction slip for this outcome?” said Aissaba. It was a low blow, but whatever.

He glared at her. “Something is very wrong,” he said. “Nothing should be able to destroy a Master of Rot – along with all his backups. Aren’t you concerned that the rules are being broken?” When no one answered, he insisted, “They’re called Laws of Pebble Magic for a reason.”

Aissaba ate berries and continued to watch. This was the most entertaining thing that had happened since escaping the Rot Fortress.

“As for the two of you,” said cat-Styxx, “I think I know your secret.”

“Oh?” said Tassadu, inspecting his own talons. “Carry on.”

“Remember, I spent most of my life connected to the man you used to call Styxx,” he said. “I also helped run the connected twin operation – so I know what the link between twins looks like. I’ve seen the symptoms. The glassy look in your eyes, the way you talk in your sleep. They way you’re both drifting apart.”

Aissaba stiffened and found that she couldn’t make eye contact with Tassadu. Ignoring this, cat-Styxx’s ghost began to pet the bone collector spider, causing it to clack its teeth in excitement. “The link changes you,” he said with a haunted look in his eyes. “Like one hemisphere of the brain coming to dominate the other, or one partner–”

“We’re not drifting apart,” said Aissaba, forcing herself to look at Tassadu. He, however, was looking into the shadows and mist.

“The early symptoms are frequent fugues,” said cat-Styxx. “For several years as a child, I found myself transported into young Styxx. I studied under your Masters, ate in your cafeteria, slept in your dormitories. For most, this period of strong connectivity lasts for several years…” He trailed off when he noticed that neither Aissaba nor Tassadu were looking at him. “But if you’ve progressed to the next stage, then the situation is more dire than I suspected.”

Aissaba could see Tassadu trying to make eye contact with her from the corner of her eye, but she couldn’t make herself look away from the embers of the campfire.

“What’s the next stage?” Tassadu finally asked.

“The fugues fade and the link seems almost to vanish for a time,” said cat-Styxx. “It’s as if the mind’s immune system kicks in, shoving the invasive perceptual phenomena down into the subconscious. But the problem with repression is that it changes you – like something rotting at the bottom of a deep well. It poisons the water, affecting everything from friendships to–”

“And then what?” said Tassadu. His eyes, too, had settled on the embers.

“When minds are linked, so are their fates,” said cat-Styxx. “Just as gravity causes the spiraling and eventual collision of celestial bodies, the link causes the two minds to spiral into one.”

“One twin eats the other,” muttered Aissaba.

“That’s a very different metaphor,” said cat-Styxx. “But you’re not wrong. So the question is – which of you wants to eat the other?”

Tassadu gave a gruff chuckle, and Aissaba found herself smiling. It was nice to have someone to laugh at.

Cat-Styxx frowned. “Okay, fine,” he said. “If you’re not linked to each other, then who?”

“Prediction,” said Aissaba. “The cat ghost will eventually realize he doesn’t know everything.”

“You have to write it down before it happens,” snapped cat-Styxx. “Otherwise it doesn’t count.” When Aissaba and Tassadu did nothing but calmly eat berries, he sighed a raspy sigh. His neck bandages were spotting with blood, but otherwise, he seemed to be doing well. “I promised I would help you if you helped me. So… your wish is my command.”

“If I had three wishes…” said Aissaba, beginning strong but faltering quickly as she realized she didn’t know. What would she wish for? To go home? To run recruitment tours again?

To see Tassadu smile?

Maybe cat-Styxx could sense what she was thinking because he said, “I think I know what you two need. And I think I’m starting to understand why the Rot chose you. Wait here.”

With that, the bone collector spider snatched the mind pebble from where it lay next to the campfire. Then, it skittered into the darkness, and cat-Styxx vanished, leaving Aissaba and Tassadu looking at each other for several seconds longer than usual.