“Taking the train would be suicide, obviously,” I said. We sat inside of the old pipe that leads to Ai’s house, and it was comforting for some reason. It was dark, and not many would come this way, and if they did, they wouldn’t stay long. I liked it. A final moment of respite before we went topside.

“Endorphinbikes will be too magnanimous,” Shun said. “They’ll be watching for us at the ramps now and probably have a traffic stop. And they saw us in the Andalaf outfits, so I’m sure they’ll make people take off the hats to check.” We no longer held hands, but I felt a tingling sensation where her hand had been for that moment before leaving Ai’s house.

“What the fuck do we do, then?” Hinote said.

“Well … you did kill Keith Smith,” I said.

Shun shrugged. “Ai was also a part of that venture.”

“Shit,” Hinote said.

“We could try and take the elevator up. It goes straight into Andalaf Tower. Not sure how much could have changed in only twelve hours or so,” I said. To be honest, I had no fucking idea how long it had been. Since we flew those planes into the first Sachi tower, everything was a long, strung-out Sachi snort up to that moment. I could feel it, and using that goddamn fire Sachi was really working a number on me. I needed to snort more, but not fire-invested; the shit is good—too good—and it leaves too quickly. I always preferred a nice lightning-invested, though that’s rarer to come by. Nice high, good energy, powerful enough to give you an edge, lasts long enough to get you through a nice big chunk of whatever the fuck you have to do, then you can do some more. With fire, it’s just mania and chaos, then drop. There’s the rage, so I kind of lose a bit of clarity, and though it gives an edge physically and makes me resistant to one of the more commonly used Sachi gems, I crash hard and in a bad way.

The thing is, I feel deep feelings, like anyone, but back there at Ai’s house, when I was weeping on the floor … I just can’t really say whether that was the fire Sachi comedown or a true feeling. Of course, when Hinote said simply that his daughter was sick and that is why he bombed giant towers and killed people, it punched me in the gut because it was simple, but at the same time very honest, and it cut through to the core motivation I had for doing much of what I’d done since Asahi’s death; still, I don’t know if I would have collapsed to the floor. This is something that bothers me because while I do enjoy a Sachi high and the mental and physical benefits of using the drug, I do not enjoy being confused about whether I truly felt something or not.

Who—are—you, Judas?

I shook my head.

“I keep forgetting you were gone for five years,” Shun said. “Someone from one of the Onfidlack gangs will have taken his place by now. Things move even faster since you’ve gone. Everything we said in the house was true with Akio, but that’s another reason why we planned to bomb the towers. It seemed like things were heading … somewhere bad, faster. Another reason why I think they let us do it. How soon before the sky falls, and all that. People hated Andalaf, and the Meeks. It was chaos.”

“Yeah, no shit,” Hinote said. “If not for us signing up to do it for free, Andalaf would have staged the whole operation themselves. Everybody was becoming more hateful, more aware. Too much time to sit and stew and the people of the Meeks realized how hungry they truly was, and how many of they kids was dying. It’s human nature. When your kid dies, at some point, you blame somebody. Shit … I—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“It’s fine,” I said, “I know what you’re saying. So the more members of the Silence bringing flowers, the more people who were blaming Andalaf for it. So Keith Smith is dead, but probably somebody has moved in already, and we’ll have to deal with him or her without Ai’s summon Sachi.”

Shun nodded.

“Damn. I was getting used to having Caelziax around,” I said. “Now I’m spoiled.”

“Suppose we gotta try it with our fists,” Hinote said, raising his gun. “Or guns.”

“Yeah. I don’t have a blade now, so probably just fists for me as well.”

“Why don’t you get something in Onfidlack?” Shun said.

“Maybe I will, but I know I don’t have time to get a compatible suit. My back magnet was built to hold my blade and no other.”

“So after we get out this pipe, what? To Onfidlack, then we walk up to Keith Smith’s replacement and say, ‘Hey man, we killed the last guy, so can you do us a favor and send us on up in that golden elevator? Oh, by the way, we no longer have a three-dicked demon with us, so it’d be cool if you didn’t make us fight you 'cause we’d probably lose.’”

Shun laughed. I tapped my foot on the small stream of water in the middle of the pipe.

“I don’t know what else to do. That sounds like the best plan, Hinote. We don’t have”—I almost said her name—“an engineer with us anymore. We’re kind of on our own. And I just have knives I’m working with …”

“You’ll just have to let me protect you, Chudo-girl,” Shun said.

“I got yo back,” Hinote said. “Don’t you got some Sachi gems?”

“I only have earth. It’s fucking unpredictable. And I don’t have a blade to channel it with, so it will just basically destroy everything surrounding me.”

“I saw it happen,” Shun said, “multiple times.”

“Yeah, you don’t realize how good you had it ’til your summoner’s gone,” I said.

This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

“Well, we will just have to get her back,” Shun said. And did her voice sound a bit strained? But she’d agreed with Akio in the house: Ai had something that drew people and Shun was but another in the current now.

“And then get the fuck out of Man’naka,” Hinote said.

“And then get the fuck out,” I repeated. And I meant it. I’d forgotten all about Morfran—well, I’d at least put him in the back of my mind. What was most important then was getting Ai and escaping Andalaf. Because now that she’d been bait, I couldn’t believe I’d ever even considered using her in that way. I’d lost her. And I had to have her back—she who’d brought Asahi’s face swimming up from the depth to touch me, her father now having done the same with his own grief. Morfran could wait. Morfran had taken my son. Ai and Akio had brought him back to me.

She had drawn me in most of all, I think, of all of us that got spun into her web. I was at the center, right next to her. Until the end.

I started ahead, my feet pattering in the small stream of water.

We pulled our hoods tight over our Andalaf hats, leaving a small amount of slack to dangle over our faces and create a shadow. According to Andalaf’s press, I was dead, and so were the rest of the Sun-Seekers. The endorphinscreens at the Sachitronic store showed me at the final bomb on repeat, then the burning Meek Alfrendil from above.

The only way this plan could work for them is if the Sun-Seekers were dead at the end of it, so whether they knew where we were or not, the people had to believe we were no longer a threat and big daddy Andalaf had taken care of us. We walked through Meek Pox, past the large telescope, and then through a few more plazas that branched into residences bordering the trash. There were refugees lining the road to Onfidlack, some soot-faced, some injured. Most would probably end up in Onfidlack. Though its streets were arguably the most dangerous in all the Meeks, that’s where the money was. The lights were always on, and there was more space to spread out and more people to beg from.

“Back again,” I said as we rounded the last curve in the road and could see the rising hill leading up to the golden mansion that was Keith Smith’s before Caelziax ripped him apart.

“‘And isn’t it so grand,’” Shun sang quietly. One of our favorite songs was a swinging number with brass and lots of girls kicking long legs in the air during the performance. I smiled at her, though she likely couldn’t see underneath my hood. It was about a pair of lovers who had broken up time and time again, and their favorite part of fighting and breaking up is coming back together, so they end up staging fights, agreeing to have them in advance, and then break up because of them, then get back together and have that mind-blowing post-breakup stuff. I laughed then because dealing with Onfidlack did feel like that kind of abusive relationship, but also because that wasn’t too far from mine and Shun’s story. We never had the conversation like the couple in the song, but we sure had an agreement, an unspoken one that I could feel still rang true to us. I wondered if she had ventured outward like me, though, or if she just waited patiently for my return. It would be like her to wait in that way, never craving something else, ready for me when I was ready to come back. I felt a little ashamed. What if she wasn’t at some point? What if she ended the agreement? What would I do then? Forget about Ai and pine for Shun for the rest of my life? Still, these thoughts couldn’t tear me away from what had dug its sweet, thick claws within me, almost as if she summoned Caelziax and had the demon do it for her, ripping some kind of dimensional hole.

“‘And isn’t it so grand,’” I whispered back. “Straight up to the top?

“I don’t see any other way to do it. It’s not like we can rally the Meeks to our cause. They all think we’re dead or that we’ll try and destroy their homes,” Shun said.

“It ain’t like we beginners at this shit. Let’s fuckin’ go,” Hinote said, tightening his gun receptor cable in his ear. “Maybe no one’s taken Keith’s place yet. Besides”—he loaded up the gun with a string of Sachibullets—“we’re already dead.”

One nice thing about Meek Onfidlack was if you wore something like a cloak, you were generally ignored. These people were used to all sorts of shady shit happening—they had display cases filled with men and women on sale, for fucks sake, and hooded figures were weak Sachi to their desensitized brains. No one paid us any mind. I agreed with Hinote in my mind. We were already dead. The people of the Meeks would want to believe the story, even if they did not. The threat is over, the Sun-Seekers are dead, and Andalaf really does care after all. I could almost feel the thoughts itching at my own beliefs, attempting to creep in. I grew up here, I knew how these people thought, and I guarantee that’s what they went through now. They probably all thought Morfran was some kind of God back then as well, back before he started agreeing with them.

We passed the weapons shop with all the junk spilling out the back. I wondered if the man suffered from some mental clusterfuck, and he couldn’t bear to throw a piece of it away. Get a few of those guys together, and they could start their very own Twelve Meeks’ worth of trash. I wanted to go in before we left, see if—I knew it was a long shot, but—maybe he had a suit and blade set. But I decided against it. I didn’t think digging through junk was a worthy use of such little time and rarely did a Chudo part with both blade and suit.

At the top of the hill, I started to see the damage that my earth Sachi caused: cracked earth sticking up in jagged, triangular fragments. The steps leading up to the mansion were still unharmed, as well as the mansion itself, though the glass was cracked out of several windows.

“All the dead are gone,” Shun said. I nodded.

“I think you’re right about a new boss taking up residence here,” I said, and as if in response to my speculation, I saw Stu, the man who took us into Virginia’s lair.

“Hey! Who the fuck are you? What business you got at the mansion tonight?” Stu said.

I removed my hood and Andalaf hat.

“Oh, holy fuck. It’s you!” he said, laughing. “You fucking … oh, shit. Jesse! Come look who it is!”

The onion yellow hair of Jesse, the door man who had let us into their lair before, peaked out from the inside.

“Oh, shit,” Jesse said in a deep voice, flicking his newspaper closed. “Boss’ll wanna see this.”

“Come on up! Who’da thought the girl trading Sachi for information would be the girl who blew up a whole Meek! Wait. Who’re your friends, Sun-Seeker?” Stu said.

I nodded to Hinote and Shun, and they removed their hoods.

I said, “They—”

“Oh, I know. I remember them from the video. You guys … well, I’ll just let you talk to the boss. Come on up, but keep your hands up, will ya?”

We raised our hands and walked up the steps to where Stu was. He held an automatic endorphingun in one hand as he patted us down.

“The only things in there are some apples and meat, but feel free to look,” I said as he touched my bag and looked at me skeptically. To be fair, in his mind, I was an expert bomb woman, blowing up drill towers and Meeks. I shrugged the bag off my shoulder and, keeping my hands raised, shook the bag in his direction. He looked in it hesitantly, poking the food around.

“She’s good, Jesse. But maybe you should keep the bag with you,” Stu said. Jesse rolled his eyes, eyes that looked like no amount of sleep could make them look anything but tired.

“You can keep it, Jesse. Help yourself,” I said. Stu handed the bag to Jesse, then gestured us into the mansion.