A young man stood on the roof of a skyscraper; his legs were cradled within his arms as he looked across the Seattle skyline. He stood up and stepped towards the edge, gazing down. Seeing the ground from so high up is a strange thing, it can awaken a compulsion to jump and rejoin the land below. The boy on the roof felt no such thing, only resignation.
“Noe…” A word escaped his lips and drifted across the sky. No one else heard his near-silent call, deafened by the howling of the turbulent winds.
He stepped forward once more, only barely a few inches from the edge. He breathed in, preparing for his fall.
Suddenly, someone grabbed him from behind, wrapping their arms around his neck. “Ash… I’ve missed you…” Their voice, unlike his, was heard. The boy stood silently, contemplating his situation.
He knew that voice, but he couldn’t figure out from where. It wasn’t that he didn’t remember, but that he was confused. He never realized just how similar their voices were. Their faces, their touch, he came to a realization that he had ignored for so long. He didn’t want to think about it, but he couldn’t ignore the truth. Only one person called him by that name, but that voice was unmistakable.
A tear fell down his face, he had finally been reunited with her, the girl that haunted his dreams.
[ cut ]
>339444: Hello
>JIMmy221: Who is this?
>339444: (attached image)
>JIMmy221: I’m not clicking on that
>JIMmy221: is this some kind of scam? I’m not interested in shipping money from a foreign prince
>339444: There’s no money. Sorry, I got a new account, my old one got hacked
>JIMmy221: Who is this?
>339444: does Cardman59 ring any bells?
>JIMmy221: Oh, Daniel, why didn’t you just say that earlier?
>339444: just doing a bit of trolling
>JIMmy221: figures, what’s the image then?
>339444: that’s a surprise
>JIMmy221: ok, I’ll open it in
> JIMmy221: 3
> JIMmy221: 2
> JIMmy221: 1
>339444 has left the chat
[ cut ]
I must have passed out, what happened? The last thing I remember seeing was…
“Noe!” I shouted, reaching upwards.
I was on a hospital bed, surrounded by faces I recognized. My wounds were being tended to by Eden, and Scarlet was watching me intently. He jumped back as I shouted, surprised. Eden didn’t seem to move a muscle.
I sat up.
“Noe… Where’s Noe?!” I asked Scarlet. Surely, he would know.
“I… We don’t know,” Scarlet said. “She disappeared just like Brooklyn did.”
“She’s still out there, I know it! I saw her!” I tried to jump off of the hospital bed, but Eden grabbed my arm. I winced in pain.
“Your arm isn’t fully healed yet. It’s difficult for me to work with severed limbs,” Eden said. “You’ll be staying here until you’re fully healed.”
“Let me go! I can still save her! I can still save Noe!”
“She’s dead!” Scarlet said. “You watched her die. Noe didn’t survive having her head and limbs chopped off, you know that don’t you?!”
I stared at Scarlet for a moment as those words sank in. No, it’s impossible. Noe isn’t dead, I saw her. She was the one who killed Ronin, I’m sure of it. Scarlet is lying. Why are there tears running down my face, why am I crying? Scarlet is lying to me, and I’m crying. Nothing makes sense anymore, why does everyone hate me so much? Why does the world hate me so much?
“No… That’s not it… Noe is alive, right? You saw her kill Ronin, right?” I said.
“I don’t know how, but it looks like you were the one who killed Ronin. Right after you fell to the ground his head just fell off. It was just like how his ability worked; I think. I didn’t know you could do that,” Scarlet explained.
“No! Noe is the one who killed him! I saw her appear and cut his head off!”
“You need to calm down! Noe is a demon; we all know that. You shouldn’t be so upset that she died, she never cared about you!” Scarlet replied. “All demons do is ruin people’s lives, no exception.”
“Noe isn’t a demon, she’s different.”
“You really think she’s that different? You really think that you’re the only person who’s found a demon that they can be friends with? I thought that too, you know, and look what he did to me,” Scarlet said. “I can’t deal with this right now; I need to go get a drink,” Scarlet walked out of the room.
Maybe the world hates me because I hate it? No, it’s the other way around. The world has always been against me, so I decided that I hated that world that hated me. It’s a little too simple, but there’s no point in denying it. I liked Noe because she wasn’t just another part in the disgusting, sickening, revolting world. Noe was an outsider, a force that could be my friend. Scarlet is wrong about Noe, he’s just like everyone else.
“We’re meeting in the conference room in 15 minutes,” Eden said, letting go of my arm. “You should be good to go, but you’re probably going to want to stick around.”
“Why would I want to stay around you people?”
“Because that’s what Noe would have wanted,” Eden said. He didn’t know her. I was the only one who knew anything about Noe, Eden was just a fake.
“You don’t know that.”
“I know about how you, in your own words, hate the entire world around you. I also know that you were telling the truth when you said you saw Noe, it just doesn’t matter, she’s dead,” Eden replied.
“How do you know all of that? Can you read my mind or something?”
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“Pretty much, yeah,” Eden was sitting on a metal folding chair backwards, leaning forward against the chair’s back. “The demon I had a pact with was a demon of rot and decay, I have relatively keen control and awareness of anything susceptible to deterioration.”
“If you can control decay, how come you can heal people?”
Eden put one of his arms on his leg. “It’s how I got my pact in the first place. I was born with a condition that causes my body to have difficulty regenerating living tissue, it causes pretty much any wound I get to go necrotic. I wanted my legs back, so a demon offered me a trade. I accepted, and my mom lost her legs.”
“You… That’s… How could you do that?”
“The first thing I did after Fr. Joseph showed us how to deal with demons was give my mom her legs back. I’ve been in a wheelchair ever since, well, until now,” Eden continued. “Desperate times call for desperate measures, I decided it would be best to be at peak performance until the new pentagram situation calms down.”
“That still doesn’t explain how you can heal people.”
“I can trade life for decay. I can sacrifice my own life to give it to another or take someone else’s for myself. It works on plants and animals as well, even stuff like dead wood can be susceptible to rot. It isn’t bound so much by the scientific, literal idea of decay, more the primordial concept it embodies.”
“So that’s how you heal people, by taking life from something else?”
“Correct.”
I paused before pursuing my previous inquiry once again. “You’re just lying to me about what Noe would have wanted so that I cooperate. Why should I listen to you?”
“I read her mind. She wanted me to repair her own memories, since I told her that was something I could do. It turns out that she never had amnesia in the first place, she just never had memories of her own.”
“What does that mean?”
“Noe was born sometime pretty recently. Given how old her brain is, I’d guess it was about two years ago. It lines up a little too well with the pentagram killings,” Eden said.
[ cut ]
“Is there any more info you’ve gathered on potential sites for the 4th killing?” Scarlet asked. Him and Blaise were in the conference room discussing something as Eden and I walked in.
“No,” Blaise replied. “But we might have something a little more complicated to deal with.”
Blaise set his phone down on the table. On it was a screenshot from some kind of group messaging app.
“What’s so important about this image?” Scarlet asked. “It just looks like any ordinary meme.”
“I’ve taken the liberty of converting the image from its original format to a PNG for reasons I’ll explain when everyone is here, speaking of which,” Blaise turned to Eden and I as we stepped out through the elevator. “I have a lead on the pentagram killings, but it might just be me grasping on strings.”
“What did you find?” Eden said in reply.
“There’s been reports of strange activity centered in the New York area. People are calling it ‘Zombie Syndrome’, though the name is mostly just a fearmongering tactic,” Blaise explained. “The symptoms are general unresponsiveness to outside stimuli, reduced brain functions, and inability to speak.”
“What does this image have to do with it?” Scarlet asked. “That sounds more like a disease than anything else.”
“The symptoms have been observed only in two groups, those who upon investigation were revealed to be on chatgroups this image has been posted in, and those for which the data is still unavailable,” Blaise said.
“So, what you’re saying is that the only people exhibiting Zombie Syndrome are the people who have seen this image posted online?” Scarlet said.
“What does that have to do with the pentagram killings?” Eden asked.
“The demon that attacked near Pike Place manipulated the minds of anyone who ate fish caught nearby, it seems possible that an image could be cursed in the same way,” Scarlet pondered. “That’s what you’re trying to say, right Blaise?”
“Something like that,” Blaise replied. “I figured it was important information. I’ve seen the original image and it didn’t have an effect on me, so it seems to those with demonic pacts are unaffected.”
“Do you have any insight into the situation, Ashton?” Scarlet asked me. I don’t know what to say to that. No? Why? None of the words I could think of could describe how utterly dejected I was.
“I don’t care,” I said. “What does this have to do with Noe?” As soon as those words came out of my mouth, I knew I was in for an unwanted lecture.
Instead of being reprimanded for dwelling too much on Noe, however, the people around the table just stared at me. I wasn’t looking at them, so I couldn’t tell what expressions were on their faces, but I knew that they were staring at me. Why else would they stop talking? Next thing I know they’ll be telling me to leave.
“Ashton, I know what you’re going through, I’m sorry,” A voice spoke from across the table. It was Scarlet, the only feminine-sounding person in the room. It didn’t matter who said it though, it was all a lie. Nobody else knows how I feel, they don’t understand.
“If you’re too busy worrying about Noe to help, we don’t need you here. Get lost,” Blaise said. I knew that I would be hearing this. It was all like I suspected. Nobody really cares about me; they only wanted me around so that they could use Noe’s power.
The sound of an impact bounced off of the thick metal walls.
“Knock it off, we don’t need this kind of infighting right now,” Scarlet said. “Remember, Ashton is just as much of an importance to the team as you are.”
“He got lucky with Ronin, that’s all,” Blaise replied, his hand resting on his face. “Any one of us could have dealt with him at that point.”
“Ronin is dead! I killed him! What else do you want from me!?” I shouted, still staring at the floor. “I solved all of your problems; the pentagram killings are over!”
The group paused again.
“But Ashton, you said Noe was the one who killed him,” Scarlet queried.
“I lied; Noe is gone. I’m the one who killed Ronin.” I said, pulling my knife out of my pocket. “Now let me go or I’ll do the same to you.”
Scarlet and Blaise looked shocked for a split second. I can avoid Scarlet’s attacks, but Blaise was much more of a problem; he could probably kill me from here. If I stuck fast enough, he wouldn’t be able to react.
Before I lunged for Blaise, however, I felt someone grab my arm. Eden was standing behind me, holding my wrist like he had done in the medical room. Reset. Reset! RESET! Why can’t I go back this time and try again?
“Don’t try anything stupid,” Eden said. “You might have been able to stop Ronin, but that’s because your ability is a direct counter to his. You wouldn’t stand a chance against any of us if you were to actually attempt to kill, you know that.”
You idiot. Why can’t you just die already? He had a point, but why did he have to be right?
“Ashton, it doesn’t have to be like this. You can help us stop more needless deaths; that’s what you want, right?” Scarlet asked.
“I don’t care, damnit! Let me go!”
Scarlet looked sad. Why? Why are you looking at me that way? Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Is this supposed to make me feel bad? To hell with that! You’ve kidnapped me, manipulated me, but worst of all, you let Noe die! If you had stepped in, you could have saved her. Why are you so pathetic and useless?!
“Ashton, calm down. I’m not letting you go until I can be sure you won’t try to kill us,” Eden said.
Damnit, why are you in my head?! I know that you’re in here, Eden, why can’t you just leave me alone?! I’m tired of everyone around me messing with me, just get away from me!
I broke my hand free of Eden’s grip and twisted my grip on the knife to stab him through the palm. I felt the knife sink into his flesh as blood dripped from within the wound.
-cut-
I blinked. I was back in Eden’s grip. My knife, however, was lying on the floor. What had happened? Why did time reset? Why can someone else do that?
I looked over at Scarlet, the prime suspect. Within his eye was that same reddish glow. It wasn’t as much of a developed shape as Ronin’s, but the two were certainly one and the same. It appeared very similar to how my eye did just after I received Noe’s power, but now he had it. Why? Why was he worthy of that power and not me?
“How? How can you do that?!” I shouted at him.
“I used my ability to take Ronin’s eye from him and integrate it into my own body,” Scarlet explained. “I was going to offer his power to you since you have a similar one already, but it appears that isn’t an option anymore.”
“You bastard! You can’t do this to me!”
“You can’t just lash out at the people around you because you’re in a bad situation, a young man like you should know that by now,” Scarlet said. “Senseless violence doesn’t solve problems; it only creates more.”
“Give Noe back you coward! It’s your fault she died in the first place!” I screamed. I was beyond reason at this point, there was nothing Scarlet or anyone else could do to calm me down.
Scarlet’s face twisted in both frustration and sorrow. Deep down, I knew that he was hurting just like I was. It didn’t matter to me, Noe was my friend, not his. Who does he think he is to be upset?
“Eden, get him out of here,” Blaise said. “He’s just going to be a problem from here on out.”
“No, you can’t do that!” Scarlet said. “Ashton isn’t just a burden, he’s our friend. We can’t just toss him out like this.”
“I’m not your friend!” I shouted. “I thought you would have gotten that by now!”
Scarlet was already on the verge of tears; I could tell he was holding them back. What a child. All of this talk about friendship is really driving me insane, who does he think he is? He’s so desperate to get with my sister that he’s willing to ignore everything I’ve told him and pretend he’s my friend. Pathetic. Simply pathetic. Now he’s sad that I won’t be his friend, what a loser.
“Alex, I’m sorry, we can’t deal with this right now,” Eden said. “You can talk things out with him after we stop the killings.”
I started growing increasingly drowsy. Hadn’t I just woken up? This was Eden’s doing, wasn’t it? Before long, I-
[ chapter end ]