From a distance I could see the hotel had been abandoned, spires of flesh and bone covered the street, as cop cars were now gathering around the perimeter. The nano chips danced in the air there, like thick fungal growths they clumped together, waiting.

For their master or for me, who’s to say.

My heart fluttered for a second, the same sort of thing when I was with a friend. I guess that’s the feeling you get when things turn out better than you expect.

Feoli had done it, she’d gotten Clover and the others out of there. I knew where they were going, she’d given me the general location of their hideout, but I went down to the street anyway.

The police saw me, perhaps ignoring the fact that I'd jumped down from a roof, they called out to me through gas masks, “Get out of their! This area has been contaminated with an unknown biological agent!”

They seemed to have already made a story around the scene they were ignoring.

I quickly made my own up as I approached, “Listen to me! The substance is a biological weapon designed to bypass any safety procedures! It eats through the respirators on hazmat suits!” I pointed, “There are people in there, the company that owns this building is directly involved in human trafficking, and there is a subcomplex where they test drugs and weapons on people, even children!”

I was about to suggest something dangerous, stopping as I thought it over. To hell with it, it was these guys’ job to risk their lives, and it was a minor risk compared to the alternative.

“I tunnelled a hole through the ground to escape, it’s in the storage closet north of the reception. The executives have rigged the building to explode in exactly 2 hours. Now listen to me! You need to go in there, save those people, and get everyone out of here, evacuate for a few streets.”

With that I turned to run away, they called after me, but I brushed them off, “Just listen to me! You must do this or twice as many people will die! Announce that you are entering for aid, there are armed men in there.”

I jumped away, but I was sure none of them would pick up on the strangeness of that.

That building was becoming a centre for our conflict, and as time went on, it was becoming clearer to me that this area needed to be evacuated, the victims in there needed to be free. I knew that it was risky to send those cops to go in, but it needed to be done fast.

I would join them as soon as the storm in the north was dealt with. After I was done.

I soon came crashing through the growing cloud over the city, searching for the building Feoli had shown me or one of the vehicles that Clover had listed under the Mountain.

I found the latter, speeding down the right road, and quickly made myself visible.

The van only slowed as I ran up behind its sliding door. I hopped in and first saw Sruthan.

She was seated but just as imposing. I nearly slammed my fist into her until I looked around, seeing everyone packed together all around me. Clover, Feoli, Mullet, Izzy, the Mountain troops, and even one of Feoli’s monsters, a large fish like the one that had swallowed Isaac.

Half hesitant I asked, “So you convinced the fomorians.”

Clover coldly asked, “Where is he?”

I nodded, “He’s coming after you, he’ll be directed by Sea-threw Gurl. Feoli, give me your communicator.”

She nodded to the side, “I dumped mine, but you can have Bea’s.”

I breathed heavily. Things were improving drastically. This is what it feels like to do this with friends, to have people you can trust fighting with you. It was a taste of the Mountain, but I would make it my own.

As she handed me the earpiece, I put it to the side of my mask, and realised what I'd have to do next.

I took no pride or joy in it. I simply did what I had to.

“How the fuck did you get out of that one! I’d be impressed if it seemed planned, but you lucked out somehow, didn’t you? Your girlfriend saved you by praying or something? Some hero you are, getting rag dolled and pushed around by some fat old guy-”

“It’s not your fault. I’m sorry I couldn’t stop him.”

She was saying something else, but I continued, “I wasn’t good enough. He told me you were the best thing in his life. It was never the money, or this job- that was all just smoke and mirrors. Belfast blinded you guys with it all-”

She screamed through the other end, “Right, try and talk me out of this, that’s sort of cliché, isn’t it?”

I looked up, and around. Wherever she was she could see me now.

“You need to listen. He killed Adonis. For no reason other than to fuck with me.” Mullet rose for a second, “Wow, wait, what the hell are you saying?”

“Look for him.”

The other end went quiet then. I closed my eyes as it dragged on.

“Oh my god,” Her voice was meek and quivering, it was like the ringing of a mouses throat. “Oh god!” I pushed at my eyes, and then tried to bring her back to business. “Listen to me, hey, stay with me.”

I prepared myself, the excitement was cold and black.

“I’m going to kill him.”

The only noise I could hear was the bumping of the wheels on the road. Nobody said a word, Gurl’s side went quiet.

“Did you hear me? I’m going to put him down. I’ll need your cooperation, ok? I swear that I'm going to keep you safe. The Mountain isn’t going to come after you for retribution-”

“Shut up!” Her tone had changed back to normal, as the sound came through on her end. She was crying.

I knew that the longer this took, the harder it would be to get Belfast away from the city.

I let her work through it anyway, even taking the device away from my ear. Mullet was looking up at me, silently waiting for an explanation.

He deserved one, more than the girl from my art class who’d gotten so deep in these games that she forgot that it was anything but. She never truly understood the danger. She might have excepted the risk to her life, but not this.

“Listen. The- the last thing Adonis wanted me to do was to keep you safe, and to avenge him. You don’t need to do anything. Just tell me where the closest body of water is to that monster.”

It was quiet again as the sound cut out.

“-west, the river is a couple kilometres west. Hes on your twelve.”

I sighed and thanked her. She must have been watching me at that moment, “Can you even do it?”

I bit my lip, “I don’t know. But I can guarantee, that if he isn’t dead in the next ten minutes, he’ll wish he was.”

I reopened the door of the van, but before I left, I remembered, “I’m going to pass you over to Clover now. Tell her the truth, that Emmett is alive.”

I checked back on them all as I left.

Feoli, Sruthan and Izzy looked at me with surprise, Mullet kept the same expression as when I'd said Adonis was gone. Clover didn’t emote. Though when I threw the earpiece to her, she lunged at the small thing as if her life depended on it. Mullet’s eyes tracked it.

As an isolated event it would have made me cry with joy, that if I did die, a handful of people would care.

I dropped out of the van, then went for Belfast. I knew where he was instantly, the cloud helped.

With a scream, I slammed right through it, missing him and colliding with a building.

I imagined a laugh, as the storm turned against me.

I had given him time, and with all the resources at his disposal his cloud had quintupled in size, blocking the sun above me.

A hail of spears rained down, and I stood still, slapping any that came at me while always watching the cloud, and always keeping my bearings straight.

I caught glimpses of him in sporadic showings, baiting me into jumping at him as he moved through the dark. It was formulaic, robotic, and I soon understood that there was a point he frequented. I learned the patterns and jumped again, smashing into pikes with my face.

The metal was harder and sharper than before, it managed to slice into my face, and tore at my mask, but nothing more.

One eye was blinded and stinging as I entered the cloud, the other a lot less. But I did hit the target. I rugby tackled into him, catching his torso under my arm.

The storm raged after me as I stole their king, biting at my heels as a went by. I landed, and then re triangulated myself, rocketing towards the lake.

Belfast was durable, only because he had the bots within him bolstering and repairing his flesh. There was nothing special about his biology as far as I knew.

Even if they could provide him with nutrients, there was little chance the bots moved underwater. They were moved by air easily enough.

Belfast didn’t have the strength to fight my grip on him, but he did have a shiv.

I don’t know if it was made of sub-terrainium or what, but he first stabbed it into my leg, then he went again at my stomach.

I had to sacrifice the trajectory to wrestle it from him, and he crashed just off the bank of the River Lagan. He landed sorely on the ground, but like me he was only bothered by it.

“You dirty cunt! You really let them fall? All so you could kill me? Ha! We... We are on the same side, aye? Just two horrible little cocksuckers who are so far up their asses. That they can’t make the right choice-”

I threw myself at him with a scream My leg was limping as I kicked up wet dirt to get to him. He beat me with his fists as I grabbed him by the throat.

“There is nothing, absolutely nothing, that stops you from being better. You choose to be this.”

I checked the position of the cloud, through one masked eye. It was a quick and painful struggle as I threw him into the river, the two of us getting swept away by the current. I couldn’t see anything, it was toomirky and polluted. He still clawed against me as he rolled against the river’s bottom.

I unclasped one hand and smashed it into his lungs. Bubbles erupted from his mouth.

It wasn’t long until my body was screaming out for air, and I too was breathing in the water. We were drowning together. I couldn’t remove the water from my lungs, it was a far too important component in my body to be lessened by SP2.

Under water, he was only a slightly more durable human, I looked up to the shifting lights above us, nothing but limp pieces of metal fell on us.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

The atomic things couldn’t work underwater, if a hard shockwave could blow them back, then a fast river would serve as a perfect shield.

It was taking longer than I expected, and it was even more terrifying than I'd imagined. There was no sound down there, no sign of human spirit except a few limp pulls at my arm that could have just as easily been the waves.

I checked back with the surface, and what I saw did not bode any better.

There was complete darkness above us, and then a ripple that reached the depths. As the object got closer, I first felt the weight of the water sandwiched between me and the floor. It pulled my hands up from Belfast to catch at it and try to topple it away.

It was a very, very big ball. The nano machines had pooled their resources together to create one giant weight to crush me. In the wave that swept through the water, Belfast’s body flushed out and away from me. Noticing that, I quickly followed, throwing the massive weight away with the last of my inhuman strength.

My eyes were adjusting to the muck, and as I looked for him, I say a body rising to the surface, movement in its arms.

I had to jump up with my one good leg. That got me up to him, but that was as far as I could go anymore. I grabbed and pulled at him with my best arm, but he didn’t struggle.

I honestly had no strength left to fight. Neither of us did.

Without a second thought, I grabbed him, trudged along the sediment, rising up the bank. Every sane instinct in my body was saying to dump him and run. But I couldn’t. I pushed him over the water’s surface first.

My body gave up then, I couldn’t move at all as the water choked up and out of me.

The buzz of the storm had died away, the same stagnant clumps that I'd seen at the hotel were idly floating, mostly on the water’s surface. I heard water bubble out of Belfast’s mouth, and was sane again.

I grabbed at his chest, and tried, honestly tried to put him under water again.

Instead, I pushed down on his chest pumping the water out of him. That was all I could manage.

I heard air whistle through his nose for a slight moment.

I laughed, realising I couldn’t kill someone, no that wasn’t possible.

He didn’t get up or move.

Eventually, the flesh around his nose twitched, but not naturally. It was like something was pushing against it from the inside. The flesh stretched and broke as a pill shaped object the size of a mouse floated out of his head, glowing an iridescent white.

I hadn’t a clue what was happening, then, as the clumps in the air magnetised towards it. Metal cables and legs formed with the same glow as it.

I quickly grabbed at it, the thing itself was soft, like a paper mache, with little weight to it.

I realised it was his power, whatever the true nature of it was.

It made me think of Schism. Thinking about the whole affair since then I've concluded that the best outcome for him was for us to just kill each other. He knew that Feoli was going to betray Belfast eventually, he just thought I should be thrown into the fray to handle everything.

I guess I did. I was still alive, but when I looked down at Belfast then, I realised he was never going to yammer horrible shit ever again.

I felt nothing. I wasn’t sorry, and I wasn’t happy. It was a complete and utter emptiness. That scares me more than anything else.

I looked to the light orb once again. Whatever it was, it had lived symbiotically with him, it was symbolic of and responsible for all the evil he had done.

It floated with its own upward pull.

I formed a fist around it, clutching it tightly.

Then I just threw it. It was gone within seconds.

For a while after I was worried that I'd be split apart by China’s shadow ruler, but I wasn’t.

The light went straight up into the sky, with all the scattered clouds following it. There was no reassurance that destroying the orb wouldn’t cause some chain reaction where the rest of the particles eat away at everything in a frenzy, at least that was an educated thought swimming in my head.

I waited for it to come back down and ‘grey goo’ the planet, but it never happened.

I had forgot that I was sitting with a dead body beside me. People say it, but he really did look like he was just sleeping.

Eventually, a car pulled up and I quickly fixed my mask, pulling a black piece of fabric over my half-exposed face.

I heard them talk first, and then Feoli crouched down in front of me.

“I don’t get it,” is what I told here, and she seemed to understand.

There was a driver and a first aid guy. They gave me a blood transfusion through the leg Belfast had gouged a hole in, it was the only opening. They then sealed that up with an adhesive. He told me it was a crap job but it was the best they could do for me.

Infront of the soldiers I asked “Feoli, please don’t join the Mountain.”

She smiled from the front passenger, “It’s alright, I doubt we’ll have to fight. This is Clover’s land in their books. I’ll be sent somewhere else. I hear most recruits go to Egypt.”

We drove by near identical buildings, grey and three stories high. “That’s not what I mean, the Mountain are a bunch of... If you join them, they’ll make you killer and a pawn.”

Feoli sighed, feeling at a bandaged wound on her arm, “I don’t think they will.”

I snickered sorely, trying to straighten myself. “Explain your motives,” I advised.

“Right,” she remembered, “but you already know what I want. I want to live in a world like this, and I want this sort of life for all fomorians. I see now that it is not blood that makes a person unworthy, it is their actions.”

She turned around, smiling sadly, “I don’t think staying here with you will provide them with that. I’d be more than happy, but never content knowing I abandoned my people.”

I wanted to tell her she was wrong, that I was just getting started here-

I sensed however that was not the thing to say. “If you think this is truly the best thing to do, then I’ll support you, if from the other side of the line.”

Her smile then was almost freaky in its honesty. I don’t think I've ever seen her smile that toothily before.

After enjoying the drive for some time, I realised it was time for me to go, though she asked me to stay. I learned where Clover was and that was enough for me.

I first got changed, seeing how scored and bruised my body really was. Fresh blood poked through my scarred forearm, my eye swelled and sank at a cut, and there countless other parts of me in disorder.

With the same clothes I’d worn yesterday, I left to find Mullet.

He was at the hotel with Izzy and TGFMAC, arguing with a cop to be allowed in. The building had been swept for explosives and it came up clean. They were still weary of contamination, though that had cleared visibly. It seemed like their wasn’t much threat from the gun men after all. Maybe the guys who had always shadowed Belfast were playing things cool.

“Hey,” was the first thing I said to their backs. They turned, Gurl starred, Izzy continued the argument in Mullet’s stead as he walked over to me.

“How much did you know?”

I choked on my words, “Saoirse said she knew bad people, but I thought she meant small time shit, you know?”

Mullet looked like was going to punch me then collapse.

“I- Can you take me to her? I need to talk to her.”

Mullet was in disbelief, the life drained from his frame.

“Where is she?”

I told him and, he wasn’t happy about it, but he got me into his car once the cops wheeled it out for him after declaring it clean.

Gurl hung around me for a while, half lost, wanting to speak to Shamrock.

I just told her that I'd never fuck up like that again.

And then me and Mullet drove north in silence. I told him it would be okay if he left me off, then went back to the girls on his own. He didn’t have an issue with that, and we were quiet for the road.

He eventually told me, “She said yes.”

I thought about congratulating him, but I just said, “I heard about Adonis. From Feoli.”

“Fucking Christ Emmett. Doesn’t take a genius to know I don’t want to talk about it.” He was harsh, but not unwarranted.

He reached for the cars music, taking out the thing he played the ‘holiday songs’ on and put in a different one.

An Irish song came on, and then another, and then another. I couldn’t understand a word of them, but I knew they were old and sad.

Then one came on that seemed familiar. I asked what it was and he sighed, “Song of the books.”

“I-” I didn’t know if I should mention it, not to Mullet and not to myself, “I had a friend who liked this song. She’s gone now. She’d rather die than stick around me.”

Mullet pulled over.

“Out. For a second.”

I did as he asked, standing by the roadside.

I tried to think of the distance to our destination, still twenty or fifteen minutes away. I tried to think of anything other than the fact Mullet was crying in his car.

The sky was red when we got there, to the sea.

There was a fenced in perimeter, that kept people away from the coast. Under normal circumstances it’d be closed at this time. There'd been an exception made for the two of us. Mullet was left at his car and would soon leave all together.

When I was alone and in silence, my mind looked back.

I killed a man. The waves moved against the coast in the distance.

It was a bit of a walk before I came close to the sea, I first saw the tourist booth and knew I was on the right track. I stumbled across hexagonal columns that looked like they’d been cut and fashioned by a person, when in reality, they weren’t forged by any such myth but volcanic activity.

Eventually the land was nothing but those structures, jutting and wet from the cliffs all the way down to the sea. Either way they were wet with rain.

It was at the edge of a cliff that I found her, sitting a little too close to the edge.

“Saoirse.”

She turned, slow and dreading. Like the others, she’d cried sometime after I last saw them in the van.

She came up quickly, slipping and stumbling to the point where I was afraid now too. I ran over to try and stop her from splitting her head. She went faster, colliding into me.

She was crying, loud and painfully. I pulled away from the edge and I asked, “Oh god, are you alright?” I pulled her head to me, like I would when saving someone.

She spat and sniffled, “W-what the fuck?? Of course I'm fine! Your fucking arm! Holy shit, your fucking face!”

I smiled, “You need to look in a mirror.” She roared out laughing, “It doesn’t matter! I look fine! I always do, always am, haha.”

She was breaking down. I crouched, and as she was still grabbing onto me, she followed.

“This shouldn’t have happened to you,” I said. She was about to say something, but I continued, “I heard about you friends, Saoirse you don’t deserve this.”

“No,” she stammered, pushing away, “No, it’s my fault. They’re dead now, and everyone wants me dead for what I did to them. I brought this on- And I know, you want to tell me I'm wrong, but I'm not Em, I didn’t kill you this time, but it’ll happen, and I'll have to watch when it does.”

She wiped at her tears, “Mullet was right. Broken clock is right once a day, huh. I’m stringing you on, where else are you gonna go? It’s mean but, you do rely on me, right, but you don’t even really know who I am, I’m a drug dealer, a terrorist, a murderer, a loan shark, a psycho who is completely incapable of standing on her own two feet without other people’s money, I’m unstable and you can’t help me!”

“You aren’t a psycho,” I tilted my head away, “Yep! I’m a total piece of shit! I only care about when my actions affect me poorly, I-”

“You are perfectly capable of extending your sympathy to others. I was an asshole to you when we met, and you still stuck by me.”

“That’s different, you don’t count, cause you don’t have a clue what I'm talking about!”

I smiled, “Well, if that’s not a back handed dehumanising insult than I don’t know what is.”

Saoirse chuckled at it, “That’s what I mean! Your bar is so low, that you haven’t got a clue what an actual healthy person looks like.”

I looked back at her, “This. I don’t know a lot of people, but I know myself. I know my mom. And the types of people on my street. You aren’t like us. Because they wouldn’t cry about something like this.”

I put my hand to the side of her face that wasn’t purple, “You are not set in stone. You’ve grown so much, that I know you're not that person, if you ever truly were. You made mistakes, and you're still going to, but I have enough faith to know you will make the changes you need to.”

She wasn’t convinced, “I can’t. I've tried. Really tried.”

“Alright,” I sighed, “You don’t have to believe in yourself, because I do.”

Looking back at her, I was half annoyed, “This is the second time you’ve cried for me, it’s sort of sickeningly sweet at this point.” She dried her eyes, “What, you’d actually rather I didn’t give a shit after you show up back from the grave with your arm flayed?”

“I don’t want you to cry for me.”

I leaned forward, “I want you to-” I searched for the words, “I want you to...”

She wrapped her arms around my neck.

...

I don’t want to type about it.

It wasn’t a lot, and I certainly wasn’t ashamed of it, but it was something that should be between us.

It was something that made everything so much more painful for the both of us.

After she said, “I want you too.”

My arms fell to the side.

“Saoirse-”

She grabbed my hand, “Call me Clover.”

I was despondent until she said, “That’s who I really am. It’s the name I use when... It’s my real name.” She smiled, and I felt it could wait an hour or two.

We talked about all her problems; she went into as much detail as she could concerning Ae and the war with Belfast, I made up a story around how I escaped from Sruthan. I told Clover the truth, mostly, that I'd punched her out and ran after she got hit by a car.

Eventually we came back around to what started this whole ‘trip’ obsession of hers.

“Honestly, seeing this place for the first time, it’s a fuckin shit hole. Garbage litters the whole walk here.”

I shrugged, “I didn’t really notice. I was looking at the rocks.”

Clover laughed, “God, I just can’t believe they market this place as the tenth wonder of the world or whatever, it’s just another tourist trap. Except this one's somehow bigger in the brochure.”

I liked it enough, “It beats Belfast though, right?”

“Ireland’s still Ireland.”

I thought about it, “Yeah, I guess it’s all the same really, it’s the same people in the end just from different perspectives, but that’s what makes it different, and good, I guess.”

“How poetic,” she teased.

I tried again, “I mean, obviously this isn’t the same part of Ireland as Belfast or Tralee, this place has a real ancient history to it, where Belfast is the epitome of all the modern problems with Ireland. Theeres a social divide, prejudice, ignorance, and worst of all... they’re so vicious in that city.”

“Here there’s a whole load of trash and just as much ignorance, but at least it’s quiet. Peaceful.”

Clover looked back up at me, “It’s just us.”

“Saoirse,” something about the phrase made me sick, “Clover, we have to talk.”

“That’s what we’ve been doing, isn’t it?”

I breathed in, “Clover, I like you, I really like you, but-” She was still grinning, but her eyes told a different story, “But I don’t think we should be together. Not right now, not after everything that’s happened.”

I quickly cleared up what I meant, “I’m not even talking about you risking everyone’s life, that’s something you have to work on, and if it was just that, I'd be there with you.”

I slowly shook my head, “This is about me.”

I finally admitted, “When I... heard about what happened to your friends, a large part of me, most of me, thought, ‘that’s horrible! Is she alright?’ but then there was something else.” I tried to put it as best I could, “When I saw how happy and carefree you were with them, I was jealous, envious. I wanted you to myself. So when they were gone...”

There was a half look of horror on her face. To that I just nodded.

“I think, we need to grow as people before we can... hang out. You know? I just don’t want to feel like I'm being rewarded for-”

For the deaths I’d witnessed, allowed. The murder.

This has been a golden oppurtunity for me, and it would be wrong of me to squander it on personal wants. Belfast was dead. I'd have a lot of work with the coming power vacuum.

She nodded, “Yeah, I get it, I do.”

She flapped an arm, “I uh, actually, I have to go over to England for a bit. For a family thing.”

I was taken a little off guard by that, “Oh.”

“Yeah, now that you mention it, I think it’ll be a good opportunity for me to get away from... all this. To be someone different.”

“Right,” something about the phrase echoed in my head.

'To be someone different.'

“But, we’ll stay in touch. I’ll be back.”

I smiled, “I’m not going anywhere.”

For a second I thought that was the end. Clover must have feared the same. “Can we sit for a little while longer?”

“Yes. But I'll have to go soon, or else I won’t be able to get back home.”

“I can get you a car.”

“No thanks. I'll manage on my own somehow.”