After a treacherous journey back to their hideout, the gang and their newest member, Lucien get up to speed. Junker is still vehemently skeptical of Lucien’s motives, so Hypatia is doing most of the talking. She and Yume explain the essential details and for the better part of thirty minutes, Lucien is just grinning and nodding at the information.

He seems to be comprehending it all well, aside from some immediate questions about the giant spiders and Rosie. You can’t really blame him, their appearance and even their mere existence is enough to send a shiver down your spine.

Once Hypatia finishes her dissertation on current events, Lucien begins to laugh a bit.

“They thought I was crazy!” He nudges Yume’s shoulder. “All of our classmates, they told me I was a lunatic. I knew that those old stories weren’t all folklore.”

Yume and Hypatia nod their heads.

“Yeah, I’ll admit I thought you were a little crazy myself. I guess I couldn’t think they’d actually be doing these things to people.” Yume replies.

“This shit is crazy! I thought I’d be seeing my mom and dad again…” He trails off in a solemn thought.

Yume and Hypatia put an arm on him, trying to console his racing thoughts.

“They got my mom too. I know how it feels.” Yume says.

“Ah, they got a lot of people I suppose. I’ve got people of my own now too.” Lucien says.

“What do you mean?” Asks Yume.

“I mean I have a family. I’ve got a wife and a baby girl. We have another on the way as well.” He responds.

Yume’s face lights up for a moment, and then flickers as she fights feelings of jealousy. She realizes that these feelings aren’t necessarily directed towards him, but rather a frustration with the systemic treatment of trans individuals within The Rung. While she understands that these circumstances are not his doing, she can’t help but feel bitter resentment at his success in finding love. She powers through with a smile on her face.

“Oh, wow! That’s amazing, Lucien, I’m really happy you found someone.” She speaks.

He shrugs his shoulders with a slight grimace.

“Not really the happiest of thoughts after what you all just told me.”

He walks away from Hypatia and Yume and clenches his fists.

“I won’t let them take this from me. I am coming with you guys.”

Off in the corner of the room, Junker slides into the conversation. He walks over to Lucien and gives him a firm smack on his back.

“That’s the spirit!” Junker says to Lucien.

Yume cracks a smile at the sight of Junker seemingly accepting Lucien. It was so great for her to find him again, let alone get him to come along with them on their journey. She finds herself getting wrapped up in their old memories, quickly setting aside her jealousy. Resurfacing feelings of comradery and comfort within such an abysmal environment for childhood.

He was her only childhood friend after all. If anyone knew her struggles and discomforts with society, it was him. Having him on her team truly means the world to her. For a moment, she feels an inner peace. Hypatia is quick to bring her back to reality.

“We will leave tonight. Lucien, I realize that you may have just woken up for your day, so my apologies, but we have all been up for longer than I’d like. I think it would benefit all of us if we got some sleep before we set off to the pinnacle.”

Lucien smiles and laughs. “Hy-Hypatia, right? Well, I work in the metal mill. I could always use some extra sleep!”

Hypatia smiles and searches through her supply caches. She pulls out some dusty pillows and blankets that she then hands out to the members of the group. They all form up in a tight row, with Rosie and the spiders nestled around them.

After they all get settled in and cozy up, Yume whispers to Lucien.

“I’m so glad you’re alive, Lucy. I never thought I’d see you again.”

He turns towards her. “I missed you, Yume. It’s great to see you after all these years. Felt like losing a sibling when we got separated.”

She smiles and after a brief pause, asks him a question.

“Aren’t you scared?”

“Terrified, actually. It’s a lot. Hearing that my life has been a lie. It’s not even a cool lie either, it’s been a miserable fate.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. This is what they do to people. We’re just part of an agenda. All the more reason we have to take this fight to them.”

Lucien stretches his arms out, trying to get more comfortable against the concrete floor.

“I can’t say I’m not nervous or scared. I most certainly am. Not because I’m scared to die, but because I’m scared of what happens if we fail.” He says.

“Well, we’re just going to have to not fail.”

“I think you’re on to somethin’!” He laughs, “I think we better get some sleep.”

“Yeah, you’re right.”

Yume turns around and pulls the blanket up to her shoulders and tightens it around her feet. The sleep setup isn’t exactly ideal, being on a concrete floor and all, but she feels the weight of the many hours that she’s been awake hit her at once.

She goes out like a light. The first few hours of her sleep are serene and hard, she doesn’t move or twitch at all. Towards the end of the fifth hour, things begin to take a turn.

She enters a dream. Not quite a splendid or cute dream, but one of anger and terror. It starts out as just the raw emotions. She feels constricted by something, as if there are weights laid upon her chest. Soon, the sensation of pulsating and wriggling is felt across her sternum and down her spine.

She opens her eyes and sees a wall of flesh. Giant veins gurgle and twitch across its surface. Something is holding her up right to the surface. Upon looking down, she realizes she is being suspended by a giant tentacle. The wall in front of her is the surface of the giant cocoon.

The flesh before her grows a slit several feet long and then splits itself open. Strands of congealed blood and pus try to stay connected to both sides, but they rip and fall as the opening grows larger.

The edges of the slice move further back and reveal rows of pointed teeth leading to a fleshy hole. The vein holding her up slowly moves her closer to the teeth. She tries her hardest to slip out of its grasp, but her body is immobile.

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All she can do is watch as the appendage inches her closer and closer to her death. She fights and fights but still her body does not budge. Just as she’s about to feel the teeth clench upon her skin, the vein stops moving her.

She scans around the surface, frantically searching for a reason why it has stopped. She stares down the gullet of the mouth. From the darkness a slender, black, cord shoots out.

There isn’t a moment to react before it latches onto her face. All her vision and sensation vanish. It reminds her of entering one of her father’s memories, or strangely enough, when the spiders communicate.

There is nothing to be sensed, except the feeling of a presence within her mind. Something is occupying her thoughts. Eventually, she has no thoughts. There is an eerie stillness, a calming emptiness.

It is not expressed through words, but rather through an understanding. The presence communicates its will to her very core. A few select emotions are triggered by it. Sadness, betrayal, contempt, anger, and disgust. These feelings flood her head and through this, thousands of related memories flood her mind.

The memories themselves are torturous. This thing is finding her most repressed traumas and bringing them to the surface. Snippets of her betrayals, mistakes, disciplines, and self-image struggles.

The presence uses her old memories to burn its message into her head. They begin to flash before her so fast that she can only pick out faces. Her father, her mother, Hypatia, Junker, her dormitory nurse, and Lucien. It chops and slices hundreds of visions and images to create a sentence.

“Yume, give up.”

It replays this loop repeatedly. Thousands and thousands of times, trying to convert it into reality. It is pure agony; all she wants to do is escape. She tries to move her body once more. This time, her fingers wiggle slightly.

She tries again, with more might. She regains control of her hands. After several more attempts, she has movement out of both arms. She reaches one hand over to the other and grabs her bracelet off her wrist. She plucks her special node from it and shoves it into her hand.

She lets its power ripple throughout her body. Suddenly, she can take her mind off the loop and returns to the darkness from before. It’s not entirely vacant, there are strands of brilliant blue flowing a few feet from her.

Yume runs towards it and clenches the strands in her fist. These strands hold immense energy, it feels heavy. Without much thought, she shoves her fist forward in a punch.

The darkness surrounding her explodes with a blue burst. The cloud dissipates and she is back in front of the king’s cocoon. Her hand is smoldering, and the mouth is no longer full of teeth. The blast from her node reduced it to a cauterized crater.

A deafening screech fills the room around her, and she slips abruptly back into reality. Standing above her are Junker, Hypatia, and Lucien. All of them have a look of pure confusion and shock.

“Girl! What! The! Hell!” Junker exclaims.

“I-I…What did I do?!” Yume shouts.

She realizes that the ceiling above them has been torn to pieces and the room is shrouded in a cloud of dust. Her heroic blast within her dream seems to have materialized in the real world.

“I was having a horrible dream. The king connected to me. He shot me with his tentacle thing. The one they used on Shingetsu.” She says, sheepishly.

Hypatia puts her arm on her shoulder. “Oh, dear. What did it do to you?”

Yume gets up off the floor and shakes the dust off her clothes.

“It told me to give up. It showed me my worst memories and then chopped them into bits and pieces. It used the voices of my family to tell me to give up.”

She sighs and looks up at the damage again.

“The reason I blew my hand up was because I was being held up to a mouth by one of its veins. I thought it was going to eat me afterwards.”

“I’d prob’ly a done the same! Don’t beat yourself up too hard” Junker says and motions to the group around them. “We’re all still alive! Just don’t go doing that to any of our faces and we’ll be alright.”

Hypatia cuts him off before he can chuckle at his own words.

“While it is great that we’re still here, we need to get a move on. Urgently. The Sleekers are already on high alert, and we just gave them a location.”

The group quickly starts assembling their gear and then loads it onto Mygal. Hypatia heaves two sets of ascension lines onto him and then begins to dig through one of the packs on Mygal’s legs.

“Here you go, dear!” She says and then hands Lucien a purple node.

“What do I do with…this?” he asks with an eyebrow raised in confusion.

“We owe you one. Ya’ know, after what Yume did back there.” Junker says.

Lucien remembers his node was destroyed earlier and slides his hand over his forehead, feeling the now vacant slot. He goes to put the node in his forehead and Hypatia grabs his hand before it reaches his port.

“Don’t put this in unless you’re prepared to fight. This isn’t like your old node. This is a weapon.” She snaps.

Lucien pulls his hand away and nods in agreement.

The four of them hop onto their respective spiders, with Yume and Lucien now sharing Weaver. They are on a brisk pace and make it to the exit within seconds. Hypatia has Morphae peek his head out and they scan the alley for motion. She turns behind and signals the rest to follow her out. Weaver is next out of the hole, with Mygal behind him and Junker riding Rosie on the tail end.

Yume cautiously proceeds down the alley, scanning the surroundings herself. It feels as if something is watching her. There is no movement or noise aside from the scuttling of spider legs against the concrete.

They are about to reach the end of the alley when Junker abruptly stops in his tracks.

“Guys…we have company!” He shouts.

Hypatia whips her head around, staring past Yume, and gasps.

“Mygal!” She screams.

Yume, now feeling the hairs on the back of her neck prick up, turns her head around. Mygal is completely limp against the concrete, with his bright blue blood pooling around his body. Yume shrieks out at the sight.

“No! No! Mygal come down!” She sobs and pleads.

His body then lifts into the air, and something tightens around it, making certain pieces of him vanish behind a veil. His body is now being crushed, and the equipment attached to him destroyed. A steady stream of his bodily fluids rains down upon the group.

“EVERYONE FOLLOW ME!” Hypatia yells.

The crew immediately picks up a rapid speed and follows Hypatia through several alleys and under bridges. She turns her head to face the back of the line.

“Junker! I need your eyes. Tell me when you see Sleekers!”

“Will do!” He yells back at her.

They make their way through the city, dodging and weaving around the invisible adversaries. It took a while to figure out, as they are moving at such a speed, but they are heading vaguely towards one of the massive pillars that lead up to the middle.

They make it to just about a few blocks away from the base of it when all hell breaks loose. Yume feels a sudden grip around her throat, and she is lifted off Weaver into the air. Something long and sharp pierces through her left thigh, and then another into her right.

She has been caught within the grasps of a Sleeker, unable to see its form. She has no ability to anticipate its attacks, and feels its claws penetrate her skin. She yelps out each time a new hole is added to her. It has been centralized on her legs thus far, but can feel it slide further up her body, heading towards her abdomen.

Following the pattern so far, she realizes that it’s just going to keep moving up. The pain is driving her mad, alongside the sensation of being trapped in its grasp. In a moment of desperation, she reaches for her bracelet.

She looks down at her hands and realizes the node is still in her hand from earlier. The node isn’t fully in place, so she clicks it into the socket. From the corner of her eye, she can see the rest of the team staring at Junker. He is pointing up towards the corner of another building, and then towards another one.

There’s more she thinks. The last thing she needs right now is to lose more of her companions. Mygal’s death still rests unsettled for her. A rage boils up and blinds her vision.

The next few moments are essentially out of her control. The rage coupled with the power of the node breaks her limbs free from the Sleeker’s constriction. Her hands smolder and glow a familiar hue of blue.

She flattens her hands and holds them together. In a swift motion, she positions her hands in front of her stomach and then slices them upwards. Electricity and hydraulic fluid spark and spray everything around her.

She and the husk of the Sleeker crash to the ground with its entrails pouring all over her. The Sleeker’s corpse is now visible. It is a giant centipede, similar to Rosie. Except this creature is more machine than biological. It is heavily armored, and its legs are serrated and sharp.

Yume yelps out in pain as her body is covered in gaping wounds. The other members of the group assemble around her. Junker reaches into his pocket and pulls out a vial.

“Jesus, girl! Good job!” He grabs her face to ensure that she is lucid.

“Yume, holy shit! I thought you were dead!” Lucien exclaims.

Yume gives a pained smile and a thumbs up, as she’s in too much pain to speak.

“Alright, open the hatch!” Says Junker.

He pops the top off the vial and pries Yume’s jaw open. He pours the whole vial down her throat and then shuts her mouth. She swallows it and can feel her surroundings slip away from her.

The voices of the other members swirl and fade away along with her vision. She can feel that a spider has picked her up and after a few minutes, is carrying her up something incredibly steep.

As the fixer works its magic, she continues to fade in and out of sleep. Every now and then she gets a glimpse of what’s happening around her. Weaver is carrying her up the giant pillar. Around her is Rosie and Junker, and Lucien and Hypatia atop Morphae.

What’s concerning her is that they aren’t alone. There are masses of bodies being lifted with them as well. Huge spherical mounds of bodies piled atop what can only be Sleekers, as they appear to be floating.

Yume chooses to believe that this is a hallucination, and keeps her eyes shut as the fixer closes her wounds. Somehow during the uncomfortable sensation of having her body healed, she is able to enter a blissful slumber. Entirely free of intrusion this time.