As I readied myself to face the infantry and Chudo, stepping into the entry hall, I heard a ding behind me and turned around, taking another bump of black powder into my nose. The metal casing slid off of the neighboring glass elevator, and I saw the giant Dead God lying on its back, floating on a hovering plate, blue Sachilight glowing underneath, keeping it up. In front of the enormous body was a face that haunted me in my sleep and all through my days.

His brown hair spilled to his shoulders in a greasy tangle. He looked at me with green eyes—not sane. His nose was long and pointed. He had a hairlip and a scar on his right cheek. He smiled at me, a smile that didn’t move his eyes, eyes like a bird of prey, a smile that only curved up on the left side, twisting up like Andy Andalaf’s. Over the top of his black Sachiarmor, he wore a black cloak. He did not carry a sword. Morfran. And standing next to him was …

“Asahi,” I breathed out, trembling. He was older. A bit … too much older than he was the last time I saw him. When he died.

I heard the guards approaching from behind but could not rip my eyes away from Morfran’s twisted face and the impossibility of Asahi’s. Another elevator dinged, and I saw the descending metal shell. The metal peeled back to reveal Ai, Hinote, and Rin. I was unsure how we beat them down. Morfran stepped out of his elevator as Ai and the others stepped out of theirs. The footsteps behind me stopped. I chanced a look at the guards. They were confused, looking back and forth between Morfran and Ai, no doubt having trouble deciding who to go for first—the Dead God, in the hands of the most dangerous man on the planet? Or the Sallis-Faint? They couldn’t shoot at either, or at me and Shun, because they might hit the Dead God or the Sallis-Faint.

Morfran’s one-sided grin twisted further up his face, and he said in a soft voice: “Move.”

“Just kill her, father,” Asahi said. Father? Who is he talking to? I thought. He was looking at Morfran. And he seemed … calm, not like a boy in the clutches of an evil man.

The guards did not move, and neither did I. Morfran still stared at me for a moment, then shrugged his left shoulder. He snorted something off of his black, gloved left hand, then pulled out a black gem, not the swirling, shining black of a summon Sachi, but a solid black illusion Sachi gem. I screamed, dipping my whole nose into my bag of summon Sachi, and everything slowed as I sped up. I was filled with rage, with the need to kill this man, to avenge my boy, to hold my boy, to save Ai, to save Shun, to stop him. Illusion Sachi gems are usually only good for a small amount of time, considering the pull on one’s energy and the Sachi they’ve snorted, but Morfran was extremely powerful. If he used it before I got to him …

Still smiling, speaking out of the left side of his face, Morfran said, “Like a puppet on a string.” I rushed him faster than I’d ever moved before, filled with a need to get to my boy and save him, get him away from this psychopath. Just as I approached, knowing I could slip my knife under Morfran’s chin, something hard as steel crushed into my skull, cutting across my torso and into my arm.

I dropped at Morfran’s feet and saw his hand above me as if he just chopped me with it.

“Asahi,” I said, trying to sit up, though I only managed to lift my head up enough to see my maimed flesh and … yellow liquid pouring out of a large gash across my stomach through my suit. My suit looked like a broken crab shell, and there, in between the cracks, underneath raw, red flesh, was something silver, and the yellow liquid wasn’t coming out of my suit but out of my stomach. There were wires. It had to be the summon Sachi, making me see things. Asahi wasn’t there; he was dead, and there were no wires sticking out of me.

Right? Right?!

“Don’t come any closer, Shun,” Morfran said in that quiet way. “I don’t want the boy to have to see his mother in a similar state as the puppet.”

“She broke the agreement, father,” Asahi said to Morfran. “Do what you want with her.”

“Asahi, please,” Shun begged. “Please. Don’t hurt her. Morfran is insane, Asahi. That’s why. Oh my god. What have you done to Ningyo? Why is she … what’s coming out of her?”

“This is not Ningyo, Mother,” Asahi said.

“Morfran, you piece of shit!” I shouted, and it hurt, it hurt so bad, and the Sachi was wearing off.

Hinote came out of nowhere, firing on Morfran, who dodged easily, tapping some Sachi gem I couldn’t see, and as the gun stopped working, Hinote looking confused, eyes wide, Morfran moved and slapped him away, the same way as me, like a fly, and Hinote crumpled to the ground, unconscious or dead, I wasn’t sure which.

Morfran looked down at me with that twisted grin. “You are Nejirita’s puppet. Nothing more. You were a Jonny named Judas, reprogrammed and re-engineered to look, act, and think like Ningyo. With reason enough to kill me, thinking I killed your son. But he’s not your son. Asahi wasn’t Ningyo’s either. Asahi is the product of Shun and me. An experiment. And Shun has been using you as well. Because she broke the contract. And I wanted to keep Asahi when it was time for me to take him. Ningyo only took care of Asahi. But she became attached. Tsk tsk. And so she tried to prevent Asahi from coming with me, even though Asahi wanted nothing more, nearly being a man—”

“He was six!”

“Another one of Nejirita’s alterations of Ningyo’s memories that he gave to you. The idea is that you would be more upset at the story if you thought he was still a young boy. And dead. So you’d kill me. Another of his failed experiments. Unlike his superior predecessor, Itzak Olimav. Ask Shun. She knows.”

It’s a goddamn lie. It has to be! But as I turned my head sluggishly, Shun only stared at me with tears in her wide eyes. I looked to Asahi and found no love there.

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“Kill her, father,” Asahi said to Morfran. “She’s only a metal puppet.”

“And yet, she has the cells of the Dead God within her. She still has a part to play, puppet or no. She will follow the cells of the Dead God within me. Even after I tell her the truth, she will follow. She cannot help but to do so. Let me show you, puppet, what you truly are.”

Morfran tapped his illusion Sachi gem, and as I looked at Shun, begging for her to tell me none of it was true, she only looked back with a sadness deeper than that of my memories of leaving her time and time again.

Morfran smiled and said, “How soon before the sky falls?” And then everything, for a moment, went black.

And then the mountain.

The grass below my feet was yellow in death, tainted by Sachi. We were on a strip of land high above pools of Sachi to either side. Shun stood beside me, Asahi, not six but almost a man, and … there was another woman there, standing close to Asahi and Shun, in a black Chudo suit with a large Sachiblade held in both hands, yellow veins glowing angrily. She had blonde hair and a long, hard face, serious eyes.

That’s me. Then … who am I?

I looked down. I wore a black suit and tie, and a white button-up shirt underneath. The feed from my eye cams was streaming to a mother brain for the eyes of the other Jonnys.

“You can’t have him!” Shun said. “You—you’re a monster! And he wants to stay with us now. We are his parents.”

Morfran stood ten feet away from us on the strip of land. The mountain, with its many gas-emitting drill towers, loomed in the background. The left side of his face twisted up in that smile.

“So you’ve decided to go back on your end of the agreement, Shun? Have you asked the boy how he feels? No—not a boy any longer. A man. He’s seen the drill tower. He understands, just as I do now, what we are—what runs through our veins: the blood, cells, and mind of a Dead God. Even now, he craves to come closer. He cannot control himself. And never will. So just let him come, and we will leave, and no one else will have to die here today.”

“Asahi,” Shun said, grabbing Asahi’s jacket. “Please. Let’s just go. Your father—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Asahi said. His voice was thin and quiet, like Morfran’s, and his hair was brown, not blonde, as I remembered. And his face was more pointed than mine, like the man who faced us across the strip of land. “That this man”—he pointed to Morfran, but he didn’t finish, biting into his fist until it drew blood.

“Asahi,” Ningyo said, “we are your parents. We always will be. You saw what he did in the tower. You don’t want to go with him. I—I’ll protect you from him.”

A thin, high laugh cut through the air. Morfran nearly bent over double, holding his chest. “I am sorry, old friend. But I trained you.”

“Kill him,” Shun said. I saw that she was shaking, wiping tears from her eyes furiously. “Kill him, Ningyo, or I swear to god, I will try to do it myself.”

Ningyo turned to Shun, sadness in her eyes.

“I want to go with him,” Asahi said. “And you can’t stop me.”

Asahi took a step forward, but before he could move much further, I saw Ningyo snort something from a bag and run straight at Morfran, smoother than I ever moved as myself, as … her.

She reached Morfran and won a small cut on his left cheek just before Morfran could dodge the full blow.

“I’ll allow you that. Out of respect, Ningyo,” Morfran said, and the smile disappeared from his face, turning into something like sadness. And then I saw Morfran’s thin, curved blade poke out the back of Ningyo’s Sachiarmor, and Morfran threw her off the side. I watched the black-armored figure fall, long blonde hair whipping her face the whole way down into the yellow expanse of pure Sachi below. “How soon before the sky falls?” Morfran bellowed down after Ningyo, screaming a laugh.

Asahi ran to Morfran then, and the man embraced him, the smile returning to his face as he turned to walk away, back toward the mountain.

Shun ran after, but I was too fast for her. I felt the Sachitronics in my legs—my bones—react to my adrenaline, much in the way my suit did as Ningyo.

As a puppet.

She thrashed in my grip.

“Let me go!” she screamed, and she bit my hand, but I didn’t feel it. I was built to feel less than human, and though the pain was strong, my awareness of the task and the need to complete it was stronger.

“He will kill you. I will not let you go. I will not let you go,” I said, with words that weren’t mine. They just spilled out of me.

The illusion Sachi wore off, and I saw a green glow around me. I could hardly move, and my stomach hurt, though not so badly as when the illusion started. I moved my head around. Ai stood above me in a green haze, singing softly. I turned to look for Morfran and Asahi and the Dead God, but they were gone. I met Shun’s eyes.

“It’s not true,” I said through my heavy breathing. “I saw him die. I saw our boy die!”

“Nin …” Shun said, face in her hands. “This whole time … I knew Asahi wasn’t dead. When you said your son was dead at Akio’s… I thought you meant he was gone because he left us. Left me, and … Ningyo.” She raised her head and looked at my open stomach, her expression morose. Ai’s healing was working slowly, and there were still those god-awful wires exposed. “Did … Morfran show you?”

“Shun, it’s a lie. You know it is. It’s me. After that fall, I …” What happened after the fall? I stayed away because I couldn’t deal with my son’s death. I nearly went mad. Then I decided to avenge him, find Morfran, and kill him.

What Nejirita programmed you for, Judas.

“No,” Shun said. “What we just saw is exactly what happened. And I thought you were dead until you came back. I thought she was dead. And I suppose she is. And you’re… I don’t know what you are.” She turned away from me then, and her shoulders trembled. “He wouldn’t even look at me.”

“Nin, we have to leave,” Ai said, and I noticed her singing had stopped, the green glow around her receding. “I’ve managed to wake everyone up from the illusion Sachi, but the infantrymen and Chudo are still down, and I don’t know how much longer that will last. I have to follow the Dead God.”

My vision went red, and the ringing filled my ears. I reached my hands up to my head to grab my hair. “It’s not true! I am Ningyo! I am!”

Ai shook me then. “Nin! I don’t know what you or Shun saw, but I’m not going to let you just lie here on the floor until—oh, fuck it. Hinote, can you lift her?”

“Havin’ one of those fuckin’ fits? At a time like this? Shit. Yeah, I can carry her,” Hinote said, and he lifted me off the ground. “Your boy ain’t gonna get himself back, Shun. That’s you. And whether what the creepy fuck said is true or not, this one”—he nodded his head to where I laid across his shoulders, pulling my hair and breathing in gasps—“well, we fuckin’ owe her for a lot. Who cares who she is?”

I didn’t see Shun, but as Hinote carried me through the large entry hall, and we passed all of the collapsed infantrymen, still in some sort of psychosis state from Morfran’s illusion Sachi, I heard her familiar footsteps behind us. But they were no longer a comfort to me. The only comfort I found in that moment was the tangible feeling that Ai seemed to breathe into the air as she walked ahead of us.