Jacob and Fenris appeared in another windowless chamber. Another facility somewhere. Men in gray uniforms arrived to lift them away, and they were separated. Jacob was brought to an all-white cuboid room with no furniture, just four walls and a ceiling.

His pistol and other equipment was taken. He was stripped out of the municipal jumpsuit and all the rest, dressed in a white shirt and white pants. It took them a while to get it done with his broken bones and mangled limbs, but they managed it. One of them looked him in the eye and was hit with the Death Glare, collapsing to the floor. He died. Heart attack, maybe.

More people were called in to take the dead man away. The next set of captors were more careful with where they laid their gaze. They clamped chainless metal cuffs down around his wrists, his ankles, and his neck. Then they left, closing the only door behind them, and it locked with a loud buzzing sound.

Jacob was alone. A failure notification popped up for the assignment, and he willed it away. He laid there for a long time, unable to move, before he finally fell asleep.

Only nightmares.

When he awoke, his body was healed enough that he was able to stand, but his bones still clicked and crunched when he put weight on them, and there was something broken inside his nose that made his breaths come out in a whistle.

He waited. And waited. He tried to call Director Thatch, tried to call the police, even tried to call Victor Sorenson. None of them went through. He kept trying.

With little else to do, Jacob wandered barefoot around the room. Around and around and around. It had to have been hours, maybe a day, but it was so hard to tell. The stark white lighting stung his eyes.

When he needed to use the bathroom he found a metal panel in the floor that slid away with the press of a button, revealing a hole in the floor that apparently served as a toilet.

Nothing to dispense drinking water, though. He kept walking in circles, walked until his injured legs gave out and he was forced to lay down.

Hungry. Thirsty.

He slept again.

When he woke up next, his body was more or less back to normal, just a few minor fractures remaining. Not that it gave him much comfort. He wandered around the room, pressing the same interface buttons on infinite repeat to call people who never picked up.

He had probably seen the words ‘Call failed’ ten thousand times. They were burned into his eyelids.

Becca, I’m sorry. I messed up.

I’ll come back. I’ll kill all these bastards and come back.

Jacob was sitting down against one wall, staring right at the light strip in the ceiling just to feel something, when the door slid open. He got to his feet, prepared to rip apart anyone who came in, but the cuffs suddenly pulled on him. He slammed back against the wall, magnetized to it by his wrists, ankles, and neck. Suspended a hand’s breadth off the floor. He yanked and pulled, growling until spit dribbled down his chin, but he wasn’t able to budge the cuffs.

A woman walked in. She was older; brown hair going gray, fine wrinkles around her eyes. She wore something like a lab coat but red, with the same drab gray uniform underneath as the others.

She read over a clipboard in her hand, flipping between pages. “Hello, Jacob Sorenson. My name is Doctor Sarah Moraine. I’m sorry about the wait. Honestly, I’ve been so caught up lately. Work, work, work.” She raised her eyebrows, pursed her lips, and gave a dramatic sigh. “You know how it is. But we’re here now, so let’s get started.”

Jacob growled at her, struggled against his bonds, stared right at her face so she’d get hit with the Death Glare the moment she looked up.

But she kept looking at her clipboard. “You know, I saw your records from the Heroes’ Guild. They keep meticulous records, it’s very convenient. Makes our work so much easier. Your Blessing, it interests me. I was hoping I’d get a chance to study it.”

She approached and stopped less than a meter from him, completely unfazed by his attempts to break free. “Cheat the Hangman. Such an ominous name. The ability itself is, well, hardly worth my time, but the aspect. Oh my, it’s getting me all sorts of excited. I can’t wait to begin. But first, the boring stuff.”

She set the clipboard down and pulled a cylindrical black device from a coat pocket. She prodded at his forearm with her free hand, humming to herself. “Hmm, not there. Not there… Ah, there!” She placed the device against that spot on his forearm, and there was a brief pulsing of electrical arcs. “There we are, that’s your System disabled. And now…” She kept her gaze just shy of his eyes as she placed the device against his temple, followed by another electric buzz. He snapped his teeth at her, but she pulled away with a laugh.

“It’s all right, you’re all done. That was to disable your Hidden System. Did you know that when a person Snaps, ambient nanites in the blood gathered from trace amounts in food and water make their way to the brain and form a new organ? It’s called the inner eye. We’ve tried to create artificial ones, and we’ve tried transplanting them, but neither method has shown any success. The Snapping process is vital somehow. Well, anyway, your inner eye has been disabled. It’s just a precaution. Of course, your Blessing still works. Can’t turn that off. Not that I would want to—with any luck, the Red Right Hand will learn a lot from it.”

She came closer, prodded at his body. His sides, his ribs. His legs, his knees. “I think you’re all healed up. That’s good. I wish your regeneration was a bit faster, but what can you do?”

Jacob went limp. He wasn’t going to budge those cuffs, so it was better to save his strength.

“I’m going to fucking kill you, bitch,” he hissed.

Moraine chuckled. “My my, such language! Do you talk to your mother like that? Oh, wait. Orphan, right? I read so many files, it’s hard to keep them straight.”

“Keep talking. When I get out of here, I’ll get you back for every word.”

“I’m sure you will.” Moraine retrieved her clipboard, read from it some more. “I’m very interested in this secondary ability you’ve developed from your aspect. Would you show it to me?”

She looked up into his eyes.

And became a bloated, rotting corpse, tufts of brittle hair clinging to the bits of ragged flesh atop her exposed skull. Then she was human again. She shifted between the two, flashing.

The frozen look of horror on her face was intensely satisfying.

“Oh my…” she breathed. “Oh my… Oh…”

She turned and ran from the room, tripping over her own feet. The door automatically slid open to let her through and closed behind her with a buzzing from the lock.

Jacob was released from the wall and stumbled forward. He straightened out, rubbed at his wrists.

Hope she has a heart attack, too.

He touched his forearm and swiped the air above it to bring up his interface, but nothing happened. He made several mental commands to his advanced interface, but nothing happened then, either.

She really did disable them.

How the fuck…?

*****

Jacob was left to his own devices again. At some point a man brought him a tube of nearly flavorless paste as well as a bottle of water, dropped through a slot in the door. Jacob finished it all and deposited the refuse back into the slot when prompted. When he asked for more, the man just left.

It was impossible to tell the time in that room. It had to have been more than two days. Right? Or…

All the white was starting to drive him insane. What he wouldn’t give for a spot of light beige.

Jacob snapped his thumbs so that he could slip his hands through the cuffs, but kept them on for the time being.

If that bitch comes back… Can’t use my hands, but I can still squeeze her to death.

Moraine did come back. Jacob slammed back into the wall a moment before the door opened. She was humming as she entered, once again focused on her clipboard. “Hello, Jacob. How are you today?”

Jacob didn’t answer.

She walked up to him. “I have a theory I’d like to test. Would you mind giving me your best stare?”

Come on. Just a bit closer.

Jacob kept his gaze downturned.

Moraine stepped forward and tapped him on the chin. “Come now. Eyes on me.”

That’s it.

Jacob looked her in the eye while slipping his hands from the restraints. His arms went to wrap around her while her eyes widened in fear.

But something shifted. He came off the wall and tipped forward, head slamming to the floor. He tried to get back up, but he was stuck in a prostrated position, like a peasant before a monarch. He’d been magnetized to the floor instead. His arms were still free, but he couldn’t do much with them except grab at her feet. He was too slow to capitalize and they slipped out of his grasp.

Moraine stumbled back, hands over her face. “Ohhh… That’s… quite something, Jacob. You have quite the ability.”

Jacob could just barely glance up at her from where he lay, head tilted sideways. She stood like that for the better part of a minute as her breathing evened out, then slowly let her hands fall. She smiled like a giddy schoolgirl. “It’s quite the ability, but it appears to be possible to acclimatize oneself to it.” She took notes on her clipboard. “Interesting, very interesting. Demands further study. But it’s not what I really came for. It’s not the reason why I brought you.”

“The wolf,” Jacob said. “The wolf, is he still alive?”

“He is,” Moraine said off-handedly. “Took some work to save him, too. That Starman, I swear.” She shook her head. “What a brute. Don’t ever trust that one, Jacob. He’s no good.”

“Do I seem like I’m in danger of making that mistake?”

She laughed. “No, I suppose not. How silly of me.”

Fenris is alive. Good.

And I guess not even the Red Right Hand likes Starman. Makes me happy to know he’s got no friends anywhere.

Moraine came a little closer. Jacob swiped at her, but she stayed just out of his reach. “He’s quite the opportunist, Starman. We pay him to do little errands for us, but we can only be halfway confident he’ll keep up his end because we have some unsavory information on him. Personally, I don’t think it’s worth the risk, but does anyone listen to me? Nooo, they’d rather play world domination and twirl their mustaches. Pigs.”

The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

She blew a raspberry. “But enough diversions. I had hoped I would see something prophetic in those eyes of yours, but it was just boring old death. I want to see what lies beyond. That’s what your aspect says. ‘You glimpse the truth beyond death’. Well, I’m curious. So you’re going to show me. I fear we might have to get a little creative for that.”

She removed her red coat and folded it on the floor. Next, she rolled up the sleeves of her gray button-up, all the way past the elbows. Then she extended her arms.

Tiny little hands—dainty like doll’s hands—sprouted from her arms. They branched off into full arms of their own, many joints offering multiple points of articulation. There were so many of them. Hundreds. Her arms were almost wings made of flesh.

“As you no doubt anticipated, I am a User,” she said. “And this is my Blessing. It’s called Ties That Bind. Isn’t it beautiful?”

All the little hands waved at Jacob, a horde of wiggling digits, and the scientist smiled.

Jacob didn’t like where this was going at all, but he was able to muster a little bravado. “Nice freakshow. What are you, the handjob villain?”

She gave a shrill giggle, an oddly girlish sound coming from her. “Jacob, that potty mouth! You’re incorrigible. If only my other friends had as much personality as you.”

The arms extended towards Jacob, many-jointed appendages jerking back and forth as elbows bent this way and that. He swatted at them, but there were too many. Some wrapped around his arms, forced them out wide. Countless hands grasped his head, pulling at his hair, his ears, his eyelids, his nose, his lips. A thick rope of arms coiled around his head and constricted tight like a snake, putting pressure on his skull.

“No,” Jacob murmured. “Don’t.”

“I really hope you have sweet dreams, Jacob. For both our sakes.”

“Don’t!”

The arms pulled all at once.

Jacob felt the crunch of his neck snapping, and everything went black.

*****

At first, there was nothing. A deeper nothingness than Jacob had ever experienced. No consciousness. No feeling. No self. Not even the absence of self.

True annihilation.

Jacob only became aware of this feeling when it ended. One second he was a non-entity, the next he was just standing there. Himself again.

In a forest.

The trees were crooked and hunched over, with long, spidery branches covered in brown leaves and gray hanging moss. Dark soil beneath his feet, low bushes wrestling for space. It was dusk, day warring against night in the sky.

Jacob was wearing his Hanged Man costume. The coat, the boots, the noose. Even his sunglasses, he realized, taking them off and folding them into a pocket.

Is this a dream, or am I still dead?

He did a running jump at the nearest sturdiest tree, Dashing up into its crown. He caught a thick branch and used his momentum to swing up onto it, finding steady footing. He had a better view of his surroundings with the extra elevation.

Forest, forest, and more forest. All the way to the horizon whichever way he turned. The landscape rolled and billowed, with hills and valleys and maybe even some low mountains, but every single bit of it was covered in trees. The sky was split almost exactly down the middle, one side orange with an angry red sun, the other side a purplish blue, adorned by a huge full moon.

What the fuck is this?

Jacob leapt back to the ground. Seeing nothing better to do, he picked a direction and started walking. Whether he was dead or dreaming, it would end soon. Anything was better than sitting around and lingering on what memories he’d lost this time.

Nothing important.

Nothing’s important as long as I remember her.

It was useless trying to keep any sense of direction amid the dense twisted boughs. It was too thick, and there were no distinguishing landmarks. Just trees. The occasional rock. He gouged a line out of one in every few trees with a finger just to give himself some illusion that he was keeping track.

He called out every so often, asking if anyone was out there, but not even an echo replied. His own voice felt muted, somehow, as did his footsteps. It was as though the forest absorbed sound, soaking it up like a sponge.

There was no sign of any life other than trees and plants and moss. No birds or rodents, no droppings left by deer or elk. No tracks in the soft soil.

Then, amid all the dark and gray, Jacob spotted a sliver of red. He ran over to it, brushed some bushes out of the way to see what it was.

A single high-heeled shoe, cherry-red. Jacob picked it up, frowning, and turned it over in his hands. It was in good condition, but judging by the foot imprint in the sole it had clearly been worn before. The fact that the elements hadn’t gotten to it yet suggested that it had been left recently. If such things had any meaning in a place like this.

So there are people here, Jacob thought. Maybe. Unless some cruel god put this here as a funny little prank.

He discarded the shoe and kept walking. He was becoming more certain that this wasn’t a dream. It was often difficult to question even the most absurd events inside a dream, but once you were awake, you could tell the difference. He felt like that. This felt real.

So… this is it, huh?

I expected something a little grander.

He walked for what felt like hours, but the sky didn’t change at all. It remained in a state of surreal twilight, a warm blanket of orange and purple over the anemic forest canopy.

Jacob rounded a thick trunk and found himself at the edge of a bowl-shaped hollow in the ground, a rare bit of ground that lacked any trees, only covered in a scraggly layer of undergrowth.

At the bottom of the hollow, a small fire crackled, spilling warm light over the ground and the nearest trees. A man sat hunched before the fire, staring into it. He put a bottle to his lips and took a swig from it.

“Hello,” Jacob said, almost sheepishly. He wasn’t sure if he was interrupting something.

The man looked up, and it took Jacob a second to recognize him. The resemblance was only passing at first, but it was definitely him.

Sonny. Except younger and more handsome, his hair a brilliant, curly blonde rather than dirty, stripy yellowish-brown. Eyes blue and bright. He was sleek with lean muscle, clad in a loose-fitting green tee that slipped off one shoulder and a pair of black jeans. Even his revolver looked shiny and new, stuck down the front of his pants

“Oh, it’s you,” Sonny said. His voice was clearer, less incoherent, even though he was clearly drinking. “I was wondering if I’d see you here sooner or later.”

Sonny patted the ground next to him, so Jacob descended the shallow slope and sat down beside the dead S-Rank. He wasn’t cold, but the warmth of the fire was still nice. It crackled and popped, the flames dancing around black and ashen branches.

They just looked at the fire for a while in silence. Sonny offered Jacob the bottle, which contained amber-colored liquid. He took a swig and grimaced at the burn. Whiskey. Strong. He gave it back.

Jacob cleared his throat. “So, uh, I don’t know how to say this…”

“I’m dead. Yeah, I know.”

They glanced at each other.

Sonny gave a sad smile. “It’s not so bad here. I mean, it was at first, but now I feel… at home.”

“Fenway. Do you know about her?”

“Is she dead too?” He shook his head and rested the bottle against his cheek, propped up on one knee. “I suspected it. I haven’t seen her, but I’ve felt her presence, somehow. At least I thought it was her. Like an echo of an echo.”

“Is this the truth beyond death? Is this… it?”

Sonny shrugged one shoulder, his shirt slipping down further. “How the fuck should I know, man? I just live here.”

“Well, do you know what this place is? Is it like Purgatory or something?”

“I will refer to my previous statement.”

“Is there anything you do know?”

“I know this is some good whiskey.” He shook the bottle to slosh around its contents.

Jacob inspected the label. It was no brand he’d ever seen. High Ambrosia. “Where’d you get that, anyway? You sure didn’t die with it on you.”

“I just found it. You can find things here if you look. All sorts. People, too. I’ve only seen a few so far, but they weren’t so chatty.”

That’s interesting.

“Hey, didn’t you quit?”

Another shrug. “Things turned out how they turned out. Nothing left to save. If I have to while away eternity, I might as well have my best friend with me. Besides, I reckon I don’t have to worry about my liver anymore.”

Jacob realized this was probably the longest conversation he’d had with Sonny. “We never really got to know each other, did we? You were always drunk, and then…”

“Yeah, I guess we didn’t.”

“Your actual name is Tom, right? Tom Farraday?”

“That’s right. Didn’t use that name for a long time. It made me feel like too much of a person. Eventually, I forgot I was ever a person to begin with.”

“That’s depressing.”

“Yeah, well, we’re in hell. What do you want me to say?”

It was Jacob’s turn to shrug.

Sonny took another swig of whiskey, smacked his lips. “You and that girl, the uh…” He snapped his fingers, looking for something on the tip of his tongue. “Becca? That her name?”

“Yeah, Becca.”

“You and her, you’re a thing, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

Sonny grabbed Jacob by the shoulder, whiskey sloshing. “Don’t ever let her go, man. Don’t do the fucking shit I did. Life ain’t worth a thing without a woman beside you.”

Jacob had to smile at that corny bit of wisdom. “I won’t.”

“Good,” Sonny said with a firm nod, like that settled everything.

“What happened to Bob, by the way? He dead, too?”

“Yuuup. Starman smashed him to bits. What about you? Make it out of there? Well, I mean, you’re dead, so I guess not.”

“I did not. Starman got me too. And the wolf. And Fenway. Took me and the wolf to some other place, I have no idea where. That’s where I died.”

“Fucking Starman.”

“Fucking Starman,” Jacob agreed.

They both drank to that.

“You think you’ll see the robot around here?” Jacob asked.

Sonny shook his head. “Nah. He’s a robot, man. Robots don’t have souls.”

“I dunno. Bet you a hundred flora you’re wrong.”

“I would, but it appears I’m flat broke.”

Sonny corked his bottle and laid down, a lump of moss for a pillow. After a while, Jacob let himself fall back, too. Looked up at that topsy-turvy sky through a spiderweb of branches.

“Did you love her?” Jacob asked, turning his head towards the dead hero. “That’s why you tried to get sober, right? For her?”

Sonny blew his cheeks out into a sigh. “You know, I have no idea. It just felt like the right thing to do. I was tired of doing everything wrong. And I thought, y’know, maybe…” A long pause. “Maybe I did hope she’d let me suck on those titties just one more time.”

Jacob laughed. “If things had gone different, I think we could’ve gotten along.”

“You’re not coming back to visit? That hurts, man.”

They both laughed.

“What does it feel like, being dead?” Jacob asked. “Permanently, I mean.”

Sonny hugged his bottle close to his chest. “It’s strange. I don’t think I can explain it well. It’s like… It’s like if you take a sheet of paper and cut a little man out of the middle with some scissors. While you’re alive, you’re that little paper man. But when you die, that paper man goes away. The thing that gets left behind is just the negative space in the original sheet of paper. A vague shape of you that stays after you’re gone. Like a memory. And I don’t know, but I think…” His voice lowered to almost a whisper. “I think, eventually, that shape disappears, too. Does all that make sense?”

“Not really. Eh, kind of. I think I see what you mean.”

He flipped over on his side. His eyes were wide with emotion. “I’m afraid, Jacob. I’m afraid of what happens when the shape of me dies, too. I don’t mind being here as long as I don’t disappear.”

Jacob didn’t know what to say to that. He had no comfort to offer. So he pointed to the bottle, and Sonny drank until he’d drained the last of it. He threw the empty vessel into the fire, where it smashed and threw up a whirling pillar of sparks.

Sonny settled on his back again. “Thanks. You’re good with advice.”

Jacob chuckled. “Don’t mention it.”

He only had one question left to ask, and it was a big one, but he wasn’t quite sure how to broach it. He knew it would probably be a sensitive topic.

Eventually, he decided to just ask.

“What is the void?” he asked. “I mean, I know what they say it is. But you saw it. What happened there?”

Sonny was silent for so long that Jacob started to think he’d either not heard the question or fallen asleep. Then he licked his lips and said: “Take this advice from me. You don’t want to know about the void. That’s how it creeps into you. The idea of it clings to you like oil. I tried to knock that outta my head with drink. Didn’t work.”

For some reason, that only made Jacob want to know more. “But what is it?”

“Don’t ask.”

“C’mon.”

“Fuck. It’s everything you ever feared. It’s a universe without stars. It’s a thousand layers of darkness nested inside itself, each blacker than the last. It’s the null that existed before there was anything. It’s a worm that hates all light and life. It’s anti-life. And it’s growing. Always growing.” He stared up at the sky, his face gone cold, all emotion drained from him.

Then he blinked. “I shouldn’t have said that. Please forget I said that.”

“I…”

Sonny sat up and scrambled over to Jacob, grabbed at his clothes. “Forget I said that! Please!”

Jacob shoved him off. “Okay, man! I’ll forget about it. Jesus.”

They laid back down, but it took a while before Sonny’s breathing slowed. They didn’t speak after that.

Jacob suddenly felt tired.

The sky started turning. Slowly, at first. Then faster, accelerating until it wheeled around in a crazy trail of colors and lights. Moon, sun, moon, sun.

He wanted to say something, wanted to ask if Sonny was seeing it too, but his mouth wouldn’t open.

He blinked. Tried to keep his eyes open, but they flickered shut anyway. He could still see shifting lights through his eyelids.

Then the lights faded.

And he dreamed about a dark god with a thousand faces.