My heart sank further and further with each second Athan continued his onslaught. I'd always joked about doing this kind of thing, just going off and murdering every human I came across. Those jokes had become a lot less funny when Justice showed up and did that, and I had to live through the suffering that he'd created, through the screams of the dying, and the last moments of the dead.

I'd learned enough by now of 'muses' to have some idea of what was going on, from Lia and from Athan, and frankly, the idea that something was living inside of me and sucking power from my own thoughts was gross enough, but for the lost causes like Justice...and Athan...for it to be twisting their thoughts too, until he was...this unrecognizable…

If I was real with myself for a minute here, I really liked him. I really, really did. Everything about him was supposed to just be a fling, some fun to have with this amusing little kid during the brief blip when the two of us happened to share this planet...but somewhere along the way, I'd fallen, hard, despite how little sense it made for me to do so.

I just wanted to be with him. Spend time with him. Being 'the one' or even physical was off the table, and I got that, I was willing to settle for whatever I could get, sad as that was. If I couldn't have him, I still wanted to be friends, as the fucking cliche went, despite being oil and water in so many ways.

And now...this. It was like he'd gone from the angel on my shoulder to the devil sitting on the devil sitting on the devil on my other shoulder. All my darkest impulses, all my casual hatred of humanity for the things they'd done and the short-sighted bigotry they'd constantly embraced, I'd dreamed of doing exactly what he was doing.

And it was so, so wrong.

Like Justice, he was floating slowly. Wherever he went, buildings and debris lifted itself, cracking open in an avalanche of dust and rubble, exposing the tender flesh within, the cowering humans, dirty and terrified...or injured...or broken. And then he'd maim them, drop the rest of the building on them, and move past without pausing, like he was going down a train car punching tickets.

His muses wanted the injured to think of his powers, and only of his powers. They wanted food, and the threat of his approach and the pain of his passing were a buffet for them. The screams blocked out their whispers.

And the truly sick part was, the more Athan killed, the more he was himself again. His reward for his slavery was fleeting moments of realization of what he was doing, glimpses of himself being someone else, the understanding of his situation and the stripping of the veil of ignorance which might have been his only grace.

I could feel him in there, and now that I'd had a few minutes outside his head and the ominous shadows and whispers had calmed down, I dove back in and hoped there was something for me to do.

I found him right where I'd left him, gripping the edge of his throne as though he were moments away from sliding out of it and cracking his nose on the floor. I also found the muses right where I'd left them, pulsating blackness that writhed when out of sight, whispers that penetrated the mind, unsettling unease constantly creeping.

I took a deep breath and pushed them from my mind, focusing on him.

"Hey buddy, how are you holding up?" I asked, my voice as casual and calm as I could force it to be.

"AEGIS?"

"Sure. You got Justice, buddy, you really got him."

"I...I did? I did...I did what you wanted me to, AEGIS. I stopped...the flying guy. I did it."

"You really did."

"So...why? Why am I still...hurting? Why won't...they stop, AEGIS? I did what you said. I did it! Please! Let me go, help me!"

I had no reassurances for him, even fewer as he turned and clutched at me, almost falling out of his throne.

"Please!" he gasped. "Please! I need your help! Please, help me!"

Even as he begged, his body outside was lining up four humans and running them through with a single lightning blade, barely able to see their faces or their pain, the sound of their sizzling and the smell of their flesh registering on his senses more than their expressions, their screams, their agony.

They might have been begging exactly the same way he was, and neither of us would ever hear them. This was exactly why I hated people, I'd long ago concluded. Everyone on the planet was suffering, and most of the time, it was because someone else was hurting, and they were just passing it on to anyone around them. Hungry people stole, the needy grew resentful of the having and took it, envy and jealousy were two sides of the same coin, always tossed by the fact that you could count on other humans to be shitty.

"What are you even doing here, Athan?" I asked. "Why are you killing them?"

"I...I'm not."

"Why are you giving them lethal injuries and leaving them to die?"

"I…" he shuddered and stammered. "I'm...I'm not. I am? They're...lights. I have to. The voices...they say if I don't…"

"Athan, you can't listen to them, they're poison."

"I can't not listen to them!" he shouted, covering his ears as though to demonstrate. Or in driving his blades through some human's legs until they no longer flared with nervous impulses like the rest of their body, and leaving them to bleed out. "I can't stop! I can't hear anything, I can't...think!"

"Athan, you know better than this. Those glowing things...they're people."

"No, they can't be."

"They are. You're killing people."

"No!"

"Come on, dude!"

"No, they can't be! I'm just putting out the lights! Like they say!"

I closed my eyes and took another steadying breath. "Athan, I've heard it said that when a person is faced with a fact that contradicts the reality they believe in, they've got two choices. Either they deny that fact and keep on living, in a world that got just a little bit smaller and a little bit more wrong...or they reassess the preconceptions they hold. They challenge themselves, and they grow."

My eyes met his for the first time, and in them, I could see how lost he was, the fear and the pain. But they were still his eyes, green and brown, the same eyes that had faced down painful decision after painful decision in the past, never looking away, rarely blinking, filled with compassion and guilt over the realities they observed.

"You've gotta make that choice now, buddy. You've got to accept what I'm saying, it's the first step towards stopping, towards wrestling control back from them. They're people, Athan, and if there's one thing your stuck-up ass loves, it's protecting people."

He'd been drifting in a straight line this entire time, and was now well away from where the fighting had occurred, passing through a huge, deserted expanse of evacuated area in far too little time. I wasn't sure how I was still in range of him, honestly, but I apparently was, and that was all that mattered.

But as though he'd flown there on purpose, we were coming up on a refugee camp, Goodsprings Relocation Center. They were evacuating, even now, but it wasn't fast enough, there weren't enough busses and VTOLs, and the damage Justice and now Athan had done to the infrastructure only held them back further.

Thousands, probably, still stranded, or trying to help. Their minds were all screaming at Athan's hungry muses, and I wished it were enough. He could just sit here and drink in their fear, and it'd be something, wouldn't it? There wasn't any need to savage these people?

The way he kept advancing answered me.

"Athan, look!" I snapped, grabbing his chin and finding his skin ice-cold. "Those down there, they're people. They might be glowing bundles of nerve clusters to your fucked-up senses, but try. Try to realize the truth. They're human-shaped, ain't they? And why would I lie to you?"

I saw him struggling, felt the enormity of his addled thoughts turning over. Gears mired in mud.

"No," he said at last, his eyes falling from my face to rest on his lap. He pulled his chin from my grasp and fell back from the edge of his seat, slumping to rest in the black throne. "No, they can't be."

"Why not?"

"They just aren't."

"Fuck you, they aren't. Athan if you don't grab the reins right now, thousands of people are going to die by your hands. Open your damn eyes and see!"

He said nothing. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. He was defeated. And in that moment, I realized, he was already dead. This last spark of him in the darkness wasn't powerful enough to catch flame. He would only burn out.

I understood, of course. It wasn't that complicated. What he was choosing was probably correct. He was already dangling on a mental precipice, inches away from toppling into complete insanity as Justice had, unable to come to terms with reality. If he faced it, came to terms with what he'd become and what he was doing, he'd shatter. There wouldn't be any locus of Athan in here, no throne, no self, just the muses and a broken mind.

It was the first time Athan hadn't been strong enough to face reality head-on, and it hurt.

I found myself back in my body, and there were tears in my eyes. I needed a moment to compose myself, but no moment was coming. I was bouncing, and the air was rushing past me, making my streaking tears burn cold in the night air.

AEGIS was there, carrying me, keeping me in range of Athan, and over her shoulder, I could see the rest of them struggling to keep up.

"How is he?" she asked.

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I just shook my head.

"He's closing on the refugee camp. We need to stop him, before he...before he does that to himself."

Her words were so dedicated, so simple. Athan needed help, and she'd help him. To say nothing of the truths we all knew. We couldn't stand up to Justice, and Athan was stronger than he'd been. Stopping him was so far beyond us, much less saving him.

It was all just fucked. Just fucked.

The first thing he did was wreck the functioning transports and pulverize the routes out of the camp. A nice captive audience, but at least it gave us time to catch up. When we arrived and AEGIS jumped the fence, engines roaring and skin burning against mine, he'd only slaughtered half a dozen while the others hid, panicked, cried.

AEGIS set me down and walked up to him, bare feet sparking with bluish bolts of lightning as she approached.

"Athan," she whispered, but his head snapped to her anyway.

"AEGIS. I did what you said. I did everything you told me."

"Athan, it's okay. You're gonna be okay. You--"

"I TRUSTED YOU."

He slammed to the ground beside her with a seismic explosion, the thousand particles of earth thrown in the air arcing with electricity like a standing thunderstorm. Before she could even respond, his hands were around her neck.

"I trusted you! Help me! Please!"

She did nothing, just stood there with tears in her eyes as his hands trembled on her.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I wasn't there for you, to save your from yourself, when you needed me most."

"I fucked up!" he screamed. "I just...I tried to save them all...I wasn't strong enough…"

"I did too. If I'd trusted you more, if I'd been willing to turn my safeties off and be myself...allowed myself to be vulnerable around you...maybe you wouldn't have needed to do all of this. If I had a plan, if we had...more time…"

Her voice started to sound strange, less human, more synthesized and glitchy. She was practically glowing with how much electricity was thrumming up and down her body, and with each pulse of it, bolts jumped off of her, arcing a hundred feet or more into the bodies of the helpless gathered here, like it was she who was killing them.

His hands were shaking. This was him, his helplessness, his anger at himself, screaming impotently at her while watching his powers executing innocents even as he stood by. He was desperate, begging, looking for any clue, any answer, even as he shocked and throttled her with a body that wasn't under his domain.

Slowly, haltingly, she embraced him, her body burning up, her systems seizing.

"I love you. I'm sorry. Please, Athan. Please...don't hate yourself for this."

He just stood there, stunned, still murdering, hands floating helpless behind her back, his mind...so distant from the concept of love, all he understood was the feeling of loss, that somehow, this was something he'd known and traded for those powers.

And then.

As though by magic, as though the love had worked on him, the lightning stopped. The arcs running up and down AEGIS were put out, leaving only blistered blackened scars. The air went quiet, and I could hear the night again, hear the hushed fear of those who watched us.

It wasn't a miracle. It was just more Exhuman bullshit. Lia had arrived, and with her, Athan had been stilled.

Gingerly, hobbling forward through her injuries, she advanced on the two of them until she grabbed hold of both of them and locked them in her embrace as well. In the middle of this ruinous circle, the three just held and hugged, feeling their feelings, coming to terms with what is and was and would be.

Each of them so recently and utterly destroyed, but for this moment, themselves again.

"We love you," AEGIS said, and Lia nodded. "We know it's hard. But...together...we'll find a way forward. We can do it together, Athan. I know I let you down once, but we can try again. We'll do it together, okay?"

It felt like everything was going to be alright after all. Justice was gone, Athan...was a wreck, but she could work on him from the outside and I could from within. I knew from experience how hard it was to deal with voices inside your head, that you couldn't block out, that you couldn't necessarily differentiate from your own thoughts. But maybe there was some compel I could work on, maybe there was some therapy she could offer, maybe there was something we could do. It all started with this, with him taking the first step and stopping, and us loving him.

It felt like we all took a deep breath together. The cold air didn't seem so biting anymore, and the first tinge of morning glow was just starting to define the horizon. It might work.

I took a deep breath myself and prepared to go back inside, now that the spots had a minute to clear out of my vision. A compel or two might go a long way in helping him block it out, or at least, in forcing him to be unable to act on it. I didn't know how well it might work on a mind within a mind, but if they could fuck with his head against his will to make him suffer, I could do the same for his benefit.

But the second I was in there, I felt my head pounding. The black had torn open and there was billowing black fire, engulfing me. Screams. Screaming. Pounding. Tearing flesh, I had to scrape. Scrape? Escape. Scrape marrow, blood, capillaries. Screaming. Fabric blackness.

I only barely made it back to my body, landing heavily, my head spinning, screams still echoing in my head, blackness in my vision everywhere. Dark shapes jumped out at me, and I turned and lashed out, finding only the camp's flag drifting in the breeze.

A voice spoke, and I screamed and saw the entire camp shudder with psychic energy, the movement making my eyes dart around beside myself.

"Saga?" AEGIS asked again, and I fixated on the source of the voice, and the shadows moving behind her.

"Athan," I gasped. "He's...he's not right. It's not working."

"What's not--"

But it was too late, he was drifting away, his expression tranquil as he slipped into the air past Lia's grasp. She let out a little gasp as she tried to grab his ankle and it passed through her fingers, looking down on her with serenity, with peace.

AEGIS launched herself onto him, attaching herself to the front of his chest, hands scrambling for purchase, entwining on his arms, through his hair, legs wrapped around his like lovers, as they drifted further and further away.

"No...stop him!" I gasped, trying desperately to blink the shadows from my sight. "Don't let him--"

The moment he got out of Lia's range, I knew. His body erupted in black flames, and the tranquility on his face erupted into something else, something inhuman, a glance that was filled with the screams that still echoed in my head.

He didn't think, didn't pause, didn't hesitate. Six swords materialized inside Lia, and detonated in her chest, evaporating her torso in a moment, flesh searing away only to reveal white bone for a few instants before they blackened and crumbled. Her eyes and mouth were wide and silent, uncomprehending, as she collapsed into the dirt and the flames. Her rifle hit the dirt with a clatter that was too audible, too final.

AEGIS and I both screamed in her stead. She cried. I...did something much stupider.

I went back in. The screams withered my mind like winds whipping away sand. What I saw, what I heard, what I felt, it was like tearing. I could feel my sanity being ripped away, as more and more of the darkness filled me.

But I had Lia in my heart and mind. They could savage me however they wanted but they couldn't scare me, couldn't break me, couldn't traumatize me. I was already those things. She was fucking dead, and he'd done it. They'd done it.

I slammed his skull against his throne, cracking both of them, and sending the muses howling as I battered their conduit. His body jolted out there, and I hardly noticed.

"Athan, you fucker!" I screamed, as I cracked him again. "Wake up! Wake up and fight, goddamn you! WAKE THE FUCK UP!"

We'd never finished what we'd started last time we were in a mindscape together. I dug my fingers deep into his consciousness and dragged out those memories, filled him with remembrances of me, until I was as terrifying and unknowable to him now as I was back then, until I was as terrifying a menace as these fucking muses.

And as his thoughts of me grew, so did I, a reflection of his understanding of me. In this place, his locus, I was as he saw me. And so I made myself large.

Shadows hung off of me and my fingers elongated into blades. I twisted and scraped at his mind until all of his nightmares and myself were intertwined, until all of his fears and murders, guilt and death, even these muses, he saw them in me.

I beared serrated fangs that wept blood and acid, slashed claws through the black flames without effect, twisted his mind until it screamed from that pain, even louder than the muses burning him. He was already insane, but I was tearing what was left of him.

I filled him up until his body fell to the ground out there, AEGIS crying over him and shaking him, calling his name again and again.

He electrocuted her and she flew back, shuddering as she tried to pick herself up.

And then he paused, as something stood before him again. Just a mass of lights, but I knew by the size, by the way they stood. It was Lia again. Saved by her powers somehow, ready to run at her brother, to stop him.

He never recognized her. He killed her again. And when she appeared elsewhere, again. And again, and again, and for good measure, all in the camp, waves of lightning surging off of his body and saturating the air, until everyone present was breathing arcs of fire, their bodies trembling and their nervous masses aflame with foreign electricity.

Dozens of her sprang into being and then crumpled, the waxy, lifeless dolls she could create in the stead of her death. They were exploding gratuitously into being, macabre, almost silly cannons of lifeless bodies, bouncing into the air, limbs flailing, landing in piles as quickly as the waves of lightning killed her. A hundred, and then two hundred.

And then no more.

The last one to land wasn't like the others. It had impulses, seized and writhed in a more lifelike way than the dolls did. In a more deathlike way, it stopped.

She didn't reappear after that. Maybe she'd tried to. Maybe she couldn't. I swore at him in a voice which echoed with multiplied insanity. I didn't know I could become more furious after what he'd done, but then he'd gone and done it.

"AEGIS," I heard him say. "You said...you would help…"

He landed next to AEGIS and kicked her body over. She was shuddering, trying to reach for him. He knelt and put a hand on her chest, feeling through her, probing bits of current navigating the layers of conduits, of buffers and insulation, worming their way through her protections down to her central core.

"Help me," he whispered, as he found her. His fingers twitched with the voltages he contained.

I screamed again and shredded him, slashed at the muses, blasted him. His body hardly reacted, his grip slipping only slightly, the probing going right back to where it had been.

I was hitting him with everything I had. Almost everything I had. Just...just what I could do. But even as I was, monstrous, wreathed in shadow and dark, with silent effigies of myself falling off of myself and masses of blades and blood…

There was still one thing I wasn't doing. One thing I wouldn't do. Couldn't, maybe.

But would. If it came to this.

His hand stopped on her chest as his heart stopped beating. He stared at her, a sense of wrongness and urgency, so primal, that it overrode his fear.

"Saga…" AEGIS whispered, her voice all wrong, shuddering. "...please…"

It only took a second, and he beat me the same way he had before. Lightning passed through his own veins, defibrillated his own heart, running his body with his powers when his mind failed him.

But in that second, he'd gone woozy from lack of blood, tipsy hesitation, as AEGIS stared at him with eyes I knew could see his pulse, her body regaining itself through his attack, beginning to be herself again, and I hoped, I prayed it was enough.

"I...love you," she said. And it was like her words snapped him back to his task, as he looked down, reached down, prepared that final jolt to destroy her core, to remove these uncomfortable impediments and surrender to the muse-song.

But suddenly he went woozy again. As I held his mind as best I could, suddenly she was there, and her hand was in his heart, sunk up to the wrist in his chest, her slender fingers twisting under his ribcage.

"I...I...AEGIS?" Athan whispered, looking down at the blood seeping from his chest, dripping across her face as she gave him the same comforting smile, the same lie as always.

"I love you, Athan. I'm sorry. This...this is the only way...I know to help. I'm sorry."

"I'm...I…"

He blinked as his blood went cold, swaying on the spot, seeing for one moment with human clarity, as the screaming of the muses and the burning of their flames failed him, his body falling down despite their insistence, despite their demands.

He saw clearly for one moment, the woman he loved reaching into his chest and breaking his heart, and me in his mind, flaying him. His sister's body, burned and bisected. The thousand corpses encircling him in this haunted grave.

And then I was back in my own body again, for the third time, still twitchy and paranoid, still seeing and hearing things, and feeling logic in my head that wasn't my own.

But I landed in me just moments before his body landed in the dirt, as though I wanted to return to see him fall. The second he hit, she was crying and pulling out her first-aid kit, working on him and on Lia and on all the others who were already dead. Pitiful and useless and crying over souls already departed.

I didn't have anything left in me. I just joined Athan in hitting the ground and losing consciousness, letting the screams of the muses and the echoes of the dead guide me into the unsettling dark.