“I’ve learned not to play with my food,” Eight-Steps Killer Sam taunted in his gruff voice as he appeared behind Kieran. The younger Cartwright sibling looked down at his stomach for a moment, then his organs exploded outwards in a fine red mist. Mackenzie was prone on the ground, her face frozen in shock as Kieran collapsed to his knees; it had happened so fast. Only now did Isaac realize that Sam had targeted Mackenzie first, but Kieran had pushed her out of the way at the cost of his own body.

During their first confrontation in the park, Sam had toyed with them, giving them the necessary time and space for a fighting chance. It seemed like a game to him back then - but now, he was playing for keeps. Mackenzie still remained frozen at the sight of Kieran's injuries; Isaac moved, but Sam moved faster. He disappeared, and Isaac felt the rustling blow right past him. When Sam rematerialized, Isaac himself was no worse for the wear, but then there was a terrible gurgling sound as a red streak sprayed out of Kieran’s throat. As he fell face first onto the lobby floor, Mackenzie, so overwhelmed by the sudden bisection, now roared into action. A |Twilight Sphere| exploded around her while a |Twilight Beam| dashed off in Sam’s direction; he disappeared up the staircase at the back of lobby he presumably came down from. Mackenzie fired several more Beams, her bleeding eyes filled with both sorrow and sadness. The Beams struck the walls and ceiling near the staircase until everything collapsed; the smoke and rubble covered the only way into the lobby from upstairs.

The pool of blood reached Isaac’s shoes. With trembling hands, he flipped Kieran over as gently as he could; his organs were actually in slightly better shape than Reed’s back on the Melusine. But the real issue was the throat - Isaac could still remember Panama’s expression of utter shock as his lifeforce left him. Cultivators could come back from a lot of things - but not from a slit throat. But Sam’s strike on Kieran’s neck wasn’t as clean as Reed’s strike on Panama - perhaps Kieran had a chance.

“This hurts like hell,” Kieran mumbled, his voice sounding coarse, red Rddhi lights sparking through the skin and bone so he could speak. Isaac held him on the shoulder and raised the back of his head. He looked down into Kieran’s face - he never realized his eyes were brown.

“You’re a tough son of a bitch,” Isaac told him, trying to keep his voice calm.

“I really am, aren’t I? A son of a bitch.” Kieran almost sounded happy.

“No, no, you know what I meant. And it’s not that bad.”

“You’re an awful liar.” Kieran coughed up blood, but then he relaxed. Mackenzied had placed her palms on the wound across his neck; both of them glowed blue. Isaac recognized it as a Healing Art, more powerful than any bandage or gauze. Babs placed her stockpile of supplies next to Mackenzie anyway. She shifted uncomfortably as she stood there, slowly dragging a foot across the lobby floor, then turned her eyes away.

“C’mon,” she offered to Lynn and Reed. “Let’s secure Harburg and make sure nobody comes out and attacks us again."

With sullen, plodding footsteps, Lynn followed her towards the unconscious Harburg, but Reed shook her head. She instead arrived next to Mackenzie and knelt next to her; she placed a hand on Mackenzie’s shoulder in support. The elder Cartwright sibling's hands crackled in power as energy transferred out of her palms and into Kieran’s wounds. Isaac couldn’t tell if he was improving or not.

“Your mother was a nice woman,” Mackenzie told her brother softly. “She’d want you to live right now. I do too. Just hang in there.”

“I didn’t mean my mother,” Kieran mumbled. “I meant our father.”

It took Mackenzie a few seconds to process that. Then she cracked a broken smile. “The more I think about it…the more I realize that maybe you’re right.”

“This whole time, I wanted to match you,” Kieran admitted. “I wanted to prove to Father that I was truly his son. Why? Why did I spend so much time chasing a dream I never really wanted in the first place? Why did I only realize it this week? A week’s too short - there’s so much I still want to do.”

From the look of frustration on Mackenzie’s face, as well as the sorrow on Reed’s, the healing process couldn’t have been going well. “You’ll have time,” Isaac encouraged.

Kieran just gave a slight shake of his head. “If only we could’ve stayed in that movie theater forever. Or that bar or that park or even the training fields. If only I could do things over again. But at least I had this past week.”

He smiled at his friends. “Reed, you’re not a black sheep. Isaac, I’m glad we’re friends. And Mackenzie…I really, really don’t want to die, so thank you for trying to save me.”

Red energy raced up and down Mackenzie’s body as she put everything into the Healing Art. But it must not have been enough, since the lights in Kieran’s eyes started to dim.

“I’ll miss you all…”

As Kieran mumbled out what seemed like his final remarks, Isaac wracked his brain for a miracle. Instead, he found himself thinking of all those months ago, when Kieran first shushed at the morning reveille. Kieran was ahead of Isaac in everything, especially physical strength and close combat ability. Did Kieran at least contribute to Isaac growing stronger, even if he was a pompous ass about it? Perhaps he did. But then he turned out to not be such a pompous ass, or he had at least more going on under the hood than at first glance. He was a bastard kid with no friends pursuing a dream he knew he never could achieve. And then things reversed - Isaac contributed to Kieran growing stronger. Despite all the initial antagonism, they were both just people at the end of the day. Kieran at least realized that before Sam took him.

Blood continued to pool underneath Kieran. Isaac was growing tired of people dying before his eyes. If only they could live in a world with no death. If only they could put the good moments in a bottle so they could relive peaceful memories forever.

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But they lived in the real world. Kieran was dead.

Isaac slowly let go of Kieran’s corpse and rose back to his feet. Mackenzie slowly deactivated her Healing Art; before the glow completely disappeared, Isaac noticed a few tears falling past her hands and onto Kieran’s face. At least he looked as peaceful as a bloodstained corpse could be.

Mackenzie shifted backwards, then slowly stood back up. She wiped her eyes with a sleeve, stains of both blood and water appearing on it. “Reed,” she mumbled. “You got a cigarette?”

After a moment, a dazed Reed nodded and retrieved her pack from the inside of her greatcoat. She chose one labeled A VAGUE MEMORY OF SUMMER’S END and handed it over; Mackenzie used her own finger to light the cigarette. Smoke trailed from the corner of her mouth as she just sighed and shook her head.

The cigarette, most of it still unsmoked, dropped to the floor as Mackenzie let it fall from her fingers. She took off her jacket, revealing the white undershirt beneath it, and draped it over Kieran’s body. She hesitated for a moment, then covered his face.

“We have a job to do,” she reminded everybody, perhaps herself most of all. “Reed and Lynn, can you still fight-”

“DIE! DIE! DIE!”

Blood sprayed across the floor as Lynn rammed one of the coffee mug shards into Harburg’s chest over and over. His eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets, but she kept going, droplets sprinkling across her face, below wide eyes full of hate. Babs, who had been investigating the covered staircase, lunged over and dragged Lynn away; even when separated from the body, she continued to swing the shard into the air.

“W-what?” Lynn gasped out, finally letting go of the shard. “I…but she…what?” She saw the damage she had done to Harburg and went pale as a sheet.

When Isaac arrived next to Harburg, he knew he was dead. Harburg’s chest caved in from the repeated strikes, and he no longer breathed. The remaining cultivators looked down upon Harburg. Reed gave his lifeless corpse a slight kick to confirm his death. "Serves him right," she muttered.

Lynn fell to her knees behind them. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know what happened there, he, she spoke to me, I, I-?”

“Calm down,” Mackenzie ordered stoically. Isaac recognized the look on her face from the night of Greg's death in Patuxet - it’s the same dazed look that kept the body attached to it grounded with something tangible. For Isaac, that was heading to the cinema and watching a movie. For Mackenzie, it was leading the mission to completion.

“Reed, take Lynn and Kieran with you back outside and keep an eye on them. Tell Squad 1 to reinforce us.” She looked over Babs and Isaac. “We’re not done yet.”

Before leaving, Reed placed her hand on Mackenzie’s shoulder again. Neither of them said anything. The taller girl let it rest there for a moment, but then Reed was off, carrying Kieran through the front door bridal-style, a weeping Lynn following behind her. The empty sound of silence returned; Isaac found himself longing for the chaos of battle. In the middle of combat, everything else drifted away, leaving only the confrontation in front of him. All the worries and fears were pushed away for the time-being. Isaac needed that right now, and he could tell Mackenzie needed it as well.

“Only Sam and another cultivator are left,” Mackenzie said, striding towards the rubble covering the staircase. “I’ll kill Sam myself. You two make sure the other cultivator is taken into custody.”

“Hold on,” Isaac said, stepping next to her. “Sam’s dangerous. This might be something we’re better off doing together. None of us are in the right mindset currently.”

“I’m not getting personal feelings mixed in,” Mackenzie answered. “This is for the mission. Sam poses the greatest danger, so I’ll take him down. The other cultivator should prove easier to defeat and therefore a better candidate for capture.” She brushed past him and activated her |Twilight Sphere| in front of the rubble. “I know he was your friend, so you should be the one worrying about getting personal feelings mixed in.”

“I know, but-”

“Or should we examine your revolutionary thoughts a little more closely?”

Isaac didn’t have an answer to that, so he held his tongue. In the meantime, Babs had slowly separated herself from Isaac to keep her distance from him. He could only hang his head low and focus on completing the mission.

The |Twilight Sphere| moved through the rubble like they weren’t even there. When the Sphere retracted, it took the rubble with it. Blood leaked out of Mackenzie’s ear as she cleared away hundreds of pounds of concrete and wood in just a few seconds. The rubble deposited itself around her; she then stepped through and up the staircase. Babs and Isaac reactivated their cultivator powers, then followed her up; after taking one last look at the pool of Kieran's blood on the lobby floor, Isaac went first. Babs only trailed a few feet behind, but it felt like they were on the other sides of a vast ocean.

The smell of smoke burned Isaac’s nose as they arrived on the second floor. Dozens and dozens of cubicles and desks stretched across the entire floor, and the majority burned brightly, the fire licking at thousands of documents. Many had been dumped into barrels; infernos now raged inside them. Yet thousands of more documents remained untouched; the office workers must’ve started burning them right before the squad members arrived.

The eight civilians Oksana previously noticed hurriedly moved from cube to cube, office to office, torching everything they could. Isaac wasn’t sure how to handle them, but Mackenzie answered the quandary for him.

“Subdue the civilians! Sam will have his movements constricted by the tight layout of the office. I’m going to find him!”

With that, Mackenzie disappeared into the fire and flames in search of her prey. Isaac and Babs split up wordlessly, each taking their own row of cubes. The first civilian Isaac came across was a woman in her thirties panting in fear as she tried to stuff documents down a barrel. Her face was full of fright as Isaac grabbed her wrist. Having fought cultivators and gunmen, the slim wrist of a powerless civilian seemed so easy to twist or snap right in two. Just like that.

Isaac just tossed the wrist away and dragged her to the stairs. He gave her a shove and she stumbled down back towards the lobby. Squad 1 would take her into custody. Would she know as much as the cultivators? Probably not. The look of terror on her face suggested she had no idea why she was burning documents in the first place.

With one civilian captured, Isaac turned back to face the inferno once more. One person died today, but another person got to live. When he told himself something like that, things seemed a little better-

Blood covered Babs’ face. The bodies of three workers littered the ground at her feet, her fists shining with bright crimson. Isaac didn’t even know how to react; he just watched her inhale and exhale, her chest rising and falling amid the field of flames.

“They attacked me,” she mumbled as she noticed Isaac approaching. She didn’t look at him - she looked past him towards somewhere a thousand yards away.

A man cried out close by. An office worker stumbled towards the duo, collapsing suddenly to the ground, his pile of papers flying into the air all around him. Isaac knew it instinctively - an enemy cultivator was on their way.

Their fists raised in defense, Isaac and Babs stepped toward the fast-approaching enemy.