Craaaaack-crunch-skeeeeereeeeekt-crrrkang!
Cracking and crunching, ripping and tearing, breaking and bending and bursting; it was the single loudest sound I had ever heard, Outside or on Earth, in dreams or in the waking world — a hundred-car pile-up on a busy motorway, crossed with the implosion of a continent made from crystal and diamond. An almighty dream-quake vibrated through the filthy floors and up the mottled grey walls of the dirty little canteen, shaking dust and debris loose from the ceiling tiles, rattling the rusty tables and chairs against each other, drawing gasps and screams from every throat. Liberated patients and ex-nurses alike clung together, gone wide-eyed with instinctive terror. All around me, my friends froze in panic, while I clutched all that much tighter to Eileen’s shoulders.
This was no neat fracture in a glass aquarium, no matter how large. This was not a straight little fissure or a clean break in a single surface. This was the peeling back of ruptured metal layers, screaming as they were torn apart; this was steel girders and mountains of concrete smashed aside and tossed high into the sky; this was reinforced walls shattered into masonry dust and scattered across the emerging visage of the monstrous titan they had once contained; this was—
Over.
The great cracking roar trailed off as suddenly as it had begun. The cacophony had lasted no more than a handful of seconds.
Aftershocks of falling debris and clattering metal came from somewhere far away, echoing in the vastness beyond the walls of Cygnet Asylum.
Dozens of patients and ex-nurses looked about in panting fear, braced for a second tremor, bewildered and confused in the way only an Englisher exposed to the unthinkable breach of an earthquake can be. My friends and companions had fared little better: Raine, right at my side, had her machete half-raised, as if she could fight an earthquake in a dream with the power of a sharp edge and a strong arm; Twil had tucked her tail between her legs and scurried over to Evee’s wheelchair; Evelyn had gone white-faced and frozen with fear; Praem was very, very, very still — the most anxiety she ever showed; Zalu and Xiyu, still flanking Eileen on either side, looked ready to execute what Raine later called a ‘rapid advance toward the rear’; Sevens had buried her face in the chest of the Abyssal Heather who was carrying her; the other Abyssal Mes had ceased their constant heavy petting and turned outward in a protective ring, every muscle pulled tight, tentacles flared, lightless eyes thrown wide. Even Zheng had gone stiff, fists clenched hard, waiting for something to fight or eat or shout at.
Only Lozzie looked unconcerned, head tilted, one ear cocked toward the ceiling.
And inside me?
Nothing had changed.
That made no sense; I’d been ignoring the implications since those cracking sounds had started, but I was no fool, even reduced as I was. Whatever shell was cracking, the source lay inside my heart. But all those cracking sounds — had they been leading nowhere after all? Nothing inside me had broken open, no barriers had been breached, no revelations unfolded down in the dark secret meat of my soul.
If anything, I felt worse.
Behind the privacy of my squid-skull mask, my face felt like an unlanced boil, sweaty and shiny and taut with the pus of my guilt. I felt like sobbing for release, praying for the dream to end before I had to remove the helmet and show everyone my true face. I turned my head to whisper a half-formed plan in Eileen’s ear; the battle, the revolution, it was all over now, our friends were safe — so if Eileen broke and ran for the Box before my friends figured out what was happening, perhaps I could steal a few minutes alone with Lonely Heather. Perhaps she and I could end this, between ourselves, with only the Eye herself to see my hands wrapped around my own filthy little neck.
But my lips faltered; I couldn’t get the words out. Where had all my courage gone?
Before I could try again, my friends began to recover.
“Everyone okay?” Raine shouted. “Yeah, yeah, that means all of you, girls!” She pointed with her machete. “Any injuries, falls, bumped heads? Show of hands for injuries. Nobody?”
Twil joined in. “I think we’re okay! Like, emotional damage, yeah, but no real heat. Evee, you good? Praem? We cool? We cool.”
Zheng grunted, “More noise and fury than motion. A trick?”
Raine glanced up at me. “Heather? Heather, what was that?”
“Uh … ” I swallowed, trying to regain my bearings. “A-another Eye-quake?”
Twil spluttered. “Another?! When was the first?!”
Eileen said: “I do not quake.”
Evelyn shouted from down in her wheelchair, slapping at one armrest with her bone-wand. “Everyone stay where you are! If that happens again, we need to get out, before this whole building comes down on … our … ”
Evee trailed off, her words faltering before a strange sound carried on the wind.
A distant vibration — a feathery, fluttery, velvet-furred trill of triumph, a great and throaty “Pbbbbbbbbrrrrttt!” — sounded somewhere out there, on the battlefield beyond the hospital.
Lozzie lit up with delight, bouncing on the spot, throwing both hands into the air.
“It’s Tenns!” she cried. “It’s Tenns! That was Tenny, ripping open the Box!”
A cheer went up from the crowd crammed into the filthy Cygnet canteen, from patients and ex-nurses alike, punctuated with relieved laughter and plenty of mildly exasperated head shaking; even the Knights raised their battered weapons in silent salute. Doubtless half the crowd didn’t understand what they were cheering for, but Lozzie was the true figurehead of this revolution, and everyone understood the tone of victory from our dear little Lozzie.
Perhaps once this was all over and the dream was done, Lozzie could teach them about the wonders of Tenny.
Once the dream was done …
My throat tightened. My face felt hot and shiny. Something shifted in my chest, pushing against the inside of my ribs.
All my friends relaxed too. Raine lowered her machete and laughed, grinning at Tenny’s antics. Twil straightened up, untucking her tail, wolfish ears popping up above her dark hair. Evelyn sighed heavily and ran a hand over her exhausted face, a little green around the gills. Zheng roared “Tenny!”, grinning like the mad, blood-soaked idol she was. Sevens scrambled around in the arms of the Heather Abyssus still holding her to her chest. The five Abyssal Heathers all relaxed their postures, reaching out to link their tentacles once again. I envied such easy connection. If only I could communicate with myself like that.
Praem said, “Tenny is a good girl.”
Eileen replied. “Good girls have good dreams.”
“Good girls get to bed on time,” replied Praem.
“Time is not time for bed. Bedtime has no time.”
“Yes,” said Praem.
Raine thumbed at Eileen and said, “Look at these two, getting on like a house on fire.”
Eileen said, “Houses on fire generally do not get on, or up, or down, or much of anything ever again.”
Twil sighed. “It’s a figure of speech. Bloody hell, is she going to be like this for everything?”
“Yes,” said Praem.
Evelyn groaned in her hand. “Put me back under the dream. Please. Just wheel me about and wake me when this is over.”
“No,” said Praem.
I should have felt comfort, belonging, and safety; it was only a few hours since I had followed Eileen out of that antiquated little infirmary room, leaving my friends behind, but it felt like days had passed. Now we were reunited, almost everybody was accounted for, and we were safe. The revolution was over. The Box awaited. The dream was almost complete.
But all I felt was passive and vulnerable.
My courage, my determination, my resolve — it had all trickled out through my fingers. Should I not have felt those emotions more strongly, now that I was no longer alone? But the expected catharsis did not arrive. Instead, I wanted to flee. I wanted to jab Eileen with my heels like she was a horse, and have her carry me out of there, out of that stinking, dingy, filthy canteen, away from the patients I had freed, away from my friends, toward—
Crack.
And there it was again, inside my head.
This one was soft and subtle, a clawed fingertip tapping on the far side of cloudy glass. Still there, still within, still trying to get out.
Behind my squid-skull mask, down in the dream-wrought enigma of my body and soul, I realised I did feel something different now — cold air on exposed bone. No pain, no discomfort, only numbness and distance. I felt opened up, flayed raw, my innards on display.
My chest creaked. Something toxic and poisonous uncoiled inside me, writhing around my heart and lungs, as if trying to push out through my ribcage.
Lozzie capered from foot to foot, darting between liberated patients, hugging favourites and kissing the occasional cheek, followed by a train of giggles and thank yous and worshipful hands reaching out to touch her pentacolour pastel poncho. A wave of true release was passing through the crowd; everyone knew the revolution was over, the fight was done, the Box was open. Even with all these wounds and all this damage, the war was won. The mood of the crowd was shifting, spreading wide with smiles and gentle hands, turning toward the bounty of victory.
But not for me.
Before my friends could remember what they had been doing a few moments ago, I did my best to straighten up on Eileen’s back and speak clearly.
“We should head to the Box,” I said, but could not keep the tremor from my voice. “For … to let … to let Maisie … t-to rescue Maisie at last, to … to … ”
Raine turned and looked up at me again, all ears. “Heather? Speak up, sweet thing, I can’t hear you!”
“I … uh … I want to g-go … alone … ”
The five Abyssal Heathers drifted closer as I spoke, parting from one another with gentle touches of tentacle-tip and feathery brushes of membranous wings. Five sets of void-dark eyes settled on me as they spread out and stepped into the gaps between my friends; five sets of predatory looks, five pairs of slow, languid blinks; five maws of sharp teeth opening to hiss with soft and sinuous breath; five click-clicking claws treading closer. My words faltered at their beauty, at the feeling their approach stirred deep down in my belly — instinctive prey-response fear mixed into a heady cocktail with quivering arousal and desire, then overpowered by a need to join, to become one, to be entered and eaten and consumed and remade.
My breath turned ragged. My belly clenched. I felt a whine rising up my throat.
One Abyssal Heather stopped by Evelyn, dipping a carefully smoothed tentacle down into her lap. The second stalked up beside Zheng, hissing softly until Zheng responded with a grin. The third slid up next to Twil, catching her attention with a flicker-blink of glowing eyes. The fourth was already carrying Sevens, and began to scritch her under the chin.
The fifth Abyssal Beauty walked forward, toward Raine and Eileen and myself.
She raised her six tentacles, smooth-soft as melting butter, pale as peach-fuzz, strobing with night and coal-dust and rainbows in the dusk.
She reached upward; she reached for me.
Behind my squid-skull mask, my lips quivered and my skin broke out in burning sweat. My hands started to shake so badly that Horror’s severed Head finally slipped from my grasp. The decapitated ex-Nurse let out a little yelp. Zalu or Xiyu must have darted forward to catch her before she hit the floor, because she grunted, then huffed with relief, and began to speak a complaint, but was quickly silenced.
Six smooth tentacles reached for me, framing the void-dark, coral-pink, sunset-orange of my own eyes, staring back at me from within a perfect abyssal face.
I reached out with both hands, extending them past Eileen’s head, desperate to touch myself, to feel my own touch, to be touched, to end the boundary between the two.
“P-please!” my voice quivered. “Please, take me back, be with me again, be me—”
The six tentacles ignored my hands; the Abyssal Heather reached for my squid-skull mask.
I reeled away so hard that Eileen was forced to stumble backward, lest she drop me entirely; only the tiny anchor of the Praem plushie down in my yellow blanket kept me in place. Eileen staggered to re-orient my weight as I clung to her shoulders and squealed with a stuck-pig fear I had never felt before. I made an awful noise, screeching and spitting without the aid of abyssal biology; I must have sounded like a rabid chimpanzee, screaming my head off inside a slab of metallic bone.
The Abyssal Heather whipped her tentacles back. She opened her mouth and replied with a screeching hiss of her own. Hissssssssssssss!
Eileen was saying my name, several of my friends were shouting, but I was locked in a contest of volume. I screeched and squawked and squealed; the Abyssal Heather hissed and whirred, a sound like a rattlesnake rising up her throat. We screamed and howled and barked and—
Raine stepped between us, one hand raised. Her voice cracked the air like a whip. “Heather! Stop!”
That voice was like a hook in my guts and groin. I flinched hard and clamped my mouth shut, barely resisting the urge to whine. Apparently Raine’s voice had a similar effect on the Abyssal Version Of Myself — and why not? She was me, I was her, we were merely parts of the same whole. Abyssal Screechy Me recoiled as if stung, slammed her mouth shut, then blinked rapidly, fluttering frilled lids at Raine.
My breath came in ragged little gasps. I was coated with cold sweat, clothes stuck to my skin. Eileen tapped my arms with her chin — I’d been squeezing so hard I’d put pressure on her throat. I quickly slackened my grip, mortified. Most of the liberated patients and ex-nurses were staring in shock, as were all my friends.
Raine broke into a smile — warm, confident, so much herself again. Had she woken up out of the dream?
“That’s better,” she purred. “Good girl. Or … ” She blinked once. “Isn’t that what you’re meant to call me, right now? Never mind. Just stop fighting with yourself, Heather. That goes for all of you squid-bodied Heathers, yeah? No more in-fighting. Or you’ll get a spanking.”
“Y-yeah … ” I croaked. “Sorry. Sorry, Raine.”
The Abyssal Heather let out a soft hiss of acknowledgement, tentacles coiling in the air. Raine shot her a finger-gun, and threw me a wink.
Twil cleared her throat. “Big H, yo, what was that all about?”
Evelyn answered before I could speak: “She won’t take off the bloody mask. Isn’t that right, Heather? You still won’t let us see your face.”
I straightened up on Eileen’s back as best I could, my mind working to deflect the question. “It … it’s just me under here! You can hear my voice, you can see my body! Can’t you? Praem, Praem you saw me put on the mask, you know it’s me! Praem, please, vouch for me!”
Praem said: “And yet.”
“Wha— what does that mean!? Praem?”
“Heather, look here, please.” Raine looked right at me, her gaze cutting through the dark eye holes of my mask. I tried to shrivel up inside; could she see me? “It means we can tell you’re not all there,” she said. “The dream’s done something funny to you. Hasn’t it, sweet thing? What happened?”
I could not tell her the truth, for I did not even comprehend the truth myself. I scrambled for an excuse — anything to avoid Raine seeing the hideous reality beneath the mask. I gestured at the Abyssal Heathers. “Why do you trust them, then!? I don’t look like that! At least, not normally, though I would love to.”
Zheng said, “Their faces are not hidden, Shaman. Though I know it is you under there. It could be no other.”
Twil sighed. “This is confusing as shit. This is too many Heathers. Can’t we just, talk to one of the … alien ones here?”
“Ha!” Evelyn barked. “Yes, they are rather hard to deny, to put it lightly.” She glanced up at the Abyssal Me by her own side. I couldn’t help but see that cocktail of admiration, awe, trepidation, and a touch of something more in Evee’s eyes.
I felt sick. My friends didn’t trust—
“It’s not that we don’t trust you, Heather,” Raine said, as if reading my mind. She glanced around at all the others. “Isn’t that right? Come on, we all trust her, don’t we? She’s just rocked through here with an army and saved us all. She’s finished the revolution. We do trust her. We do. Anybody says otherwise, you gotta answer to me.”
Raine received a chorus of nods and grunts; the threat seemed a little unfair, but I appreciated the gesture.
“But there’s something wrong with you, sweet thing,” Raine said, turning back to me. “We can all tell. It’s like you’re ill. Like there’s something clouding your judgement.”
Evelyn said, “What’s the dream done to you? Lozzie said you’re not all here, that there’s half of you elsewhere. What does that mean? Heather, what have you done to yourself?” When I didn’t answer right away, Evelyn half-turned in her wheelchair. “Praem! What did she do—”
“Evee, no!” I yelped. “Please, I—”
Evelyn turned back around, glaring at me with a craggy frown, her face like a cliff-side etched by acid. “Heather. We need to know what the dream has done with you. Start talking.”
“N-nothing, I … ”
“Or what you’ve done to yourself.”
My throat closed up. My chest creaked with so much guilt that my ribs might explode outward and drown my friends in an ocean of toxic fluid from my rotten little heart. I felt fit to burst.
Evelyn said, “Heather, I insist—”
Crackkkkk.
“—because I love you. Now, what have you done to yourself?”
The pressure in my chest slackened. I swallowed, but couldn’t get my own saliva down, like a bolus of food was stuck fast in my throat. When I spoke, my voice shook.
“Lozzie is telling the truth,” I managed to say. “There’s another ‘me’ in the dream. A me who … who managed to get inside the Box. I wasn’t aware of her— no, wait, no, that’s not right. She didn’t even exist, technically, until I forgave Eileen. She was the other decision, the other way of doing things. She was determined to kill Eileen, instead of forgiving her. She was … is … all alone. Praem and Eileen know all about it, they saw the whole thing.”
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Lozzie rejoined our half-circle of interrogation — bouncing past Evee and Twil and glomp-smashing straight into the Abyssal Heather who stood before me. Abyssal Me whirled Lozzie around and set her back on her feet, sweaty-faced and panting with excitement and victory.
“Heathy’s got twooooo parts right now!” Lozzie held out one hand, two fingers raised in a peace sign. “Two more to go with her six! Praem told me! One of them is in the Box, that’s truuuuue. We gotta put her back together, it’s simples!”
Raine flashed me an indulgent smile. “Put her back together, huh? With all the Queen’s horses and all the Queen’s … girls?”
Several groans rose from the others. I almost laughed, despite the sweat on my face and the writhing in my chest.
Eileen said: “That was bad.”
Raine raised an eyebrow at her. “Says you, walking eyeball? You gonna do better? Come on, lay it on me.”
“Heather, back together,” said Eileen. “Not a pun, but a rhyme. I have not gotten used to those yet. I hope you will endure my clumsiness while I learn.”
Raine cracked a grin — a teasing and flirtatious grin I knew all too well, one that made my heart stutter and my breath halt whenever it was turned upon me.
Raine said, “I’d be real happy to ‘endure’ those clumsy hands, you gilf-mode cougar—”
“Raine!” I almost shrieked, all my guilt forgotten in one blazing moment. “She’s my mother!”
“Yeah,” said Raine. “She sure is.”
“You cannot!” I snapped. “I forbid it! No, no, no!”
Twil burst out laughing, wagging her wolfish tail. Sevens, still coiled up in the arms of an Abyssal Heather in her blood-goblin mask, got a worrying little twinkle in her eye. Zheng just grunted, vaguely unimpressed. Evelyn huffed, and said, “I’m too exhausted to be disgusted. Raine, this is not the time. We can address this fascination of yours later. Or not at all.”
The Abyssal Heather a few paces in front of us purred an affirmative — agreeing with me, not Raine. “Rrrrrrrr-rrrr. Raine. No.”
Raine put up one hand in surrender. “Alright, alright, no gilf-sploring for me.”
“It is forbidden,” said Eileen. “But not for bidding upon.”
“Eyyyy, nice,” said Raine. “A little clumsy, but nice.”
Inside the privacy of my squid-skull mask, I smiled, despite everything, despite the writhing rot inside my chest, despite the painful creaking of my ribs. Raine had once again performed the emotional alchemy she had perfected over so many past instances — she had recognised my discomfort, even through my face of dull metal bone, and disarmed all my anxieties with laughter and outrage, turning the attention upon herself. I could have climbed down from Eileen’s back and kissed her. I could have thrown myself into her arms. I could have—
Crrrack-tap-tap-tap.
But as soon as I consciously acknowledged her technique, the anxiety came flooding back.
Here Raine was, leading me forward. I had grown passive and helpless. I had lost control.
Evelyn cleared her throat. “Lozzie has an excellent point. We’re stalling. Let’s get this over with. The faster we can end this, the better.”
Lozzie bobbed up and down on her toes, one hand waving next to her ear. “Yeah! Listen, listen, you can hear Tenns! She’s calling us!”
Lozzie did have a good point — and even better hearing. Muffled by the layers of stout wall which encased this deep and dirty core of Cygnet Asylum, a distant call of “Prrrrbbbbttt-prrrrrbbbbt!” echoed through the morning air of the dream. Tenny was having herself quite the one-moth victory party out there.
Raine reached over and clapped Lozzie on the shoulder. “I’m pretty sure we can put Heather back together again. Let’s get to it!”
“Y-yes!” I agreed from inside my mask. “Let’s go to the Box, to … to the other … other me.”
Twil tilted her chin upward. “What’s this other you like, Big H? We dealing with your, like, mirror universe evil-self, or what?”
“Um … she’s sort of … ”
Unspeakably vile, wearing my own face.
Crrrrrack.
“Wait,” Evelyn grunted. “Twil, that can wait. I have a much better concern to raise, before we move.” She gestured with her bone-wand, pointing at Eileen. “You.”
“Me,” said Eileen. “I.”
Evelyn faltered at that response, but then gathered herself and said, “What’s inside this … ‘Box’?”
“I don’t know.”
Evelyn frowned, sharp and hard. “You don’t know.”
“I do not possess this knowledge. I am unaware. I lack the information.”
“This dream is a representation of the inside of you,” Evelyn grunted. “And you don’t know what’s inside there.”
“E-Evee,” I said. “Please, she’s only been self-aware for an hour or two, she—”
“Let her answer for herself, Heather,” Evelyn grunted. “I still don’t trust this … Eileen.”
Eileen said: “An answer is never for oneself, it is for not-oneselves. But I do not have an answer to answer. I lack the knowledge, because I could not see. Despite looking at Heather for so long, I did not see her, and therefore I have not known her for very long. The Box is not mine, even if it is within me. I am sorry, Evelyn. I am of no answer.”
Evelyn let out a huge puff. “Fucking hell. It is very weird to have you saying my name, whatever you are.”
“I can refrain from your name, but then I must name you again, and that is not my right.”
“No, just … ” Evelyn huffed again. “Forget it.”
“It is forgotten.”
I spoke up in Eileen’s defence. “Evee, she’s telling the truth. She really doesn’t know. She’s given up all her authority, her control, her power. And I don’t think she knew what was inside the Box in the first place. It’s almost like it was something … something she didn’t do … something beyond her control … ”
“Wait a sec,” said Twil. “I feel like this shit is getting beyond me. If the Box is open, why isn’t Maisie here yet? Why’re we all still … you know, doing this?” She flapped her arms, still wearing the remnants of her absurd grey school uniform.
“I-I know,” I stammered. “There’s a glass tank inside the box—”
Tap-tap-crack—
“—a-and that’s where Maisie is!” I spoke over the sound inside my head. “We have to confront this other me, and then break open the glass tank, and … and there’s Maisie.”
Tap-tap-tap, went the claw on the glass. Haven’t you forgotten somebody? Aren’t you forgetting me, Heather?
No, I snapped into the silence of my mind.
My friends and companions and lovers shared a series of odd glances. The disquiet and trepidation was plain as a blush in every cheek. They knew something was wrong with me. Did they know I was lying by omission? Did they smell the guilt rolling off me like week-old rancid sweat?
Why was I even feeling so guilty? Because my face — her face, that Lonely Face — was so vile? Or because of how I’d treated her, rejected her, cast her out? Or because of—
Tap-tap.
Evelyn sighed and started to ask another question, but before she could speak, Lozzie hopped and skipped and leapt away from us, throwing her hands into the air, poncho fluttering, delicate blonde hair going everywhere.
“Everyone!” she called. “Everybody!” Suddenly all the liberated patients and inmates and ex-nurses were paying attention to her. “Let’s get the fuck outta here, girls! No more hospital, no more treatment, no more cells! Whoooooo!”
And with that, Lozzie led the way, skipping and hopping toward the double doors which led out of the filthy canteen. A cheer went up from her followers, an exhausted cry of freedom; patients hurried after her, holding hands, clinging to each other, older girls carrying the tired and weary younger ones, inmates from the prison levels propping each other up. Ex-nurses swapped ineffable glances, then nodded and followed along behind. Within moments a great snaking train formed, winding out of the doors and back into the hospital, heading for the grounds beyond. Where once I had ridden at the head of a conquering army, Lozzie now led a victory procession.
Raine laughed, Evelyn sighed, Twil perked up with wolfish glee. Zheng threw her hands in the air and roared with approval. Sevens was gently placed back on her feet to totter forward, bleary-eyed and a little battered; she reached Evee, then clung to a corner of Praem’s skirt. Somebody muttered, “Guess that’s our cue, then.” Somebody else replied, “Sure thing, let’s go pick up the rest of Heather.”
The five Abyssal Heathers all locked eyes with me for just a second.
They knew what we did. We knew what was waiting.
My friends and I fell in at the very rear of Lozzie’s victory march, behind the last of the nurses and the patients; our role was over for the moment, our part in the collective finished with. Even my temporary lieutenants had peeled away now, their revolutionary roles forgotten, to join the mass of girls heading for the exit from Cygnet Asylum. Only the Knights stayed with me, forming up an honour guard to our front and rear, led by the steady hands and purple eyes of Zalu and Xiyu.
Raine stayed right by my side — more like escorting an invalid rather than acting as the right hand of a conquering general. The five Abyssal Heathers stalked in a pentagon-shape, with me and Eileen in the middle; I felt like I was caged, held carefully between a wall of tentacles to avert any escape. Evelyn grumbled in her wheelchair, but even in her voice the relief was palpable.
Cygnet Asylum — the hospital, the incarnation of my trauma, the prison of my soul — could no longer hold us. Where before it had formed an impenetrable labyrinth, a spiralling maze of corridors and hallways that had led the revolution around and around, never able to win the freedom beyond the walls, now it disgorged us out onto the hospital grounds in less than a minute.
The nightmare gave up, banished by dawn.
Patients and ex-nurses spilled out of the hospital before us, streaming out through a side-door, emerging into the quiet grey light of a day gravid with expectation, like the sky before a thunderstorm. We followed, back out into the grounds of Cygnet Asylum.
Fingers of clear, crisp, cold air slid up inside my squid-skull mask and cooled my burning cheeks. Eileen’s shoes found the soft cushion of healthy green grass. Sighs of relief passed from many pairs of lips. Twil puffed out a huge breath and turned her face to the sky. Lozzie cartwheeled forward, poncho cutting through the air.
The putrid guilt ebbed back beneath my skin. Freedom tasted clean.
Ahead of us towered the gently swaying trees of the woodland which surrounded the hospital, framing the churned and torn-up lawns and the little brick pathways thrown into disarray by Tenny’s battle. To our collective right, the grounds of the Asylum stretched away toward the front entrance — quiet and abandoned now, no more nurses to guard the doors, no more patients to trap inside, no more threatening than the sun-bleached shell of an abandoned skull.
Above the trees, in the sky, filling the heavens from horizon to horizon, was Eileen — the Eye, her true body, a vast craggy sea of black wrinkles split down the middle by a narrow slit of open eyelid. Silver light roiled and glimmered beyond that slit, pouring down upon the dream, like starshine from the other end of the universe.
“Holy shit,” Twil hissed, the first to stumble to a halt. Her bushy tail went stiff, wolfish ears pointed straight up. “Yo, is everybody else seeing this shit? It’s open! It— I mean, uh, she? You?” She gestured at Eileen. “You’re … open?”
“I open,” said Eileen. “Eye, open.”
“Damn. Uh … cool, right.”
We all halted. Every pair of eyes turned briefly to the sky, returning Eileen’s unwavering gaze. Not every one of my friends reacted with the same casual ease as Twil. Raine shook her head, staring upward in awe, then breaking into a slow laugh, as if she had realised herself the butt of a cosmic joke. Evelyn looked ready to spit — on the floor, at least, not up at the Eye. Zheng froze as if in a staring contest with a predator — the greatest of all predators, one on the same level as herself, still and tight and unsmiling; she slowly slid her gaze downward, to Eileen’s human body. Eileen stared back at her, until Zheng showed all her teeth in a shark’s grin, filled with razor edges. Praem and Lozzie didn’t seem bothered, at least.
Zalu and Xiyu said nothing, though they seemed tense with expectation; Horror’s severed head, cradled in one Twin’s arms, just swallowed, rough and dry. The Knights were unreadable; perhaps they knew even better than I that Eileen was no threat, not anymore. The five Abyssal Heathers all stared upward in unison, their eyes shifting through a kaleidoscope of colours; as one they all settled on a matching silver-grey hue, to mirror the deep sea inside the Eye.
“She sees us now,” said a familiar voice.
I glanced to the side and found Seven-Shades-of-Sunlight had re-assumed the mask of the Yellow Princess.
She looked a little rumpled, her perfectly pressed white blouse and yellow skirt creased and stained for once, as if somebody had pushed her down a brambled hill. Her hair was swept back as if with one hand, her usual ruler-straight tresses thrown into artful disarray. The canvas of her umbrella was torn, though she held it just like normal, point down against the ground. Despite all the damage, she stood tall and dignified, gazing upward at Eileen’s true face.
“I see what I shall see,” said Eileen. “And we will see what I end up seeing. See?”
Sevens glanced at her. “That remains to be seen.”
“Oh,” said Eileen. “That was a good one.”
“Yours was barely a pun, esteemed lady,” said Seven-Shades-of-Smoothly-Sarcastic. “You need to work on your quick thinking.”
“I haven’t been thinking for very long,” Eileen said. “It was easier when I was writing. But I will keep trying.”
“Please do. I await your creations with great interest.”
Evelyn let out a sigh like the dying heave of a steam-engine cresting a mountainside. “Heather, I know there’s barely any point in asking this, but somebody has to say it. Are we absolutely, one hundred percent certain that your surrogate mother figure up there is not going to change her mind and incinerate all of us?”
“I can answer this,” said Eileen.
Evelyn looked up from within her wheelchair, a sceptical frown on her exhausted face. “I’m sure you can.”
Eileen nodded. “I can.”
“ … and?”
“Would you like me to do so?”
Raine wheezed with laughter. “Oh, she’s wonderful. I can’t get enough of her. I’ve known this gilf for five minutes and I’m already madly in love with her. I’m sorry, Heather, sweet thing, but I think this is finally bringing me back to my waking self. Who knew that all I needed was an older lady with a taste for puns and literal interpretations?”
Eileen turned her head to look at Raine. “You have used that word several times.”
“Which word?”
“Gilf.”
“Ahhhhhh,” Raine purred, cracking a grin. “You curious?”
“Stop!” Evelyn snapped.
“What does it mean?” asked Eileen.
“It means you,” Raine said.
“But what does it—”
I sighed. “They’re from the internet, and we’re not introducing you to that. Not yet, anyway. Raine, please—”
“Can’t help myself, Heather, she—”
“Stop!” Evelyn snapped again. “All of you, just stop. And Twil, stop giggling! We are still in the middle of a dream, this is not over. And you,” she jabbed her bone-wand toward Eileen. “Answer the question, yes.”
“I no longer need to look so closely,” said Eileen. “All I can see is all I can see. I change my mind all the time, but my nature is changed already.”
Evelyn sighed. “That answers nothing.”
“Evee,” said Raine. “Hey, we’re all in one piece. I’m inclined to trust her.”
Evelyn rolled her eyes. “Yes, because for some insane reason I cannot figure out, you’re trying to flirt with her.”
Raine cracked a grin. “Not like we have much choice, anyway.” She gestured at the lawns in front of us. “See?”
None of the liberated patients or ex-nurses seemed to care about the giant eyeball in the sky, let alone the cracked eyelid or the silver light streaming down from within the world-spanning orb. Perhaps they couldn’t see Eileen’s true body, or maybe the taste of freedom overwhelmed all other concerns.
What had been our army and our spoils of war was now gently collapsing outward across the churned and ruined lawns of Cygnet Asylum. Many patients wandered away and flopped down on the grass, in ones or twos or little groups of friends, giggling and grinning and luxuriating in freedom, curling bare toes in the grass, closing eyes in drowsy midday naps, or just stretching out sore muscles upon the ground. Some of the inmates from the prison levels stood with their faces turned to the sky, arms held wide, crying silent tears at the touch of sunlight and the taste of fresh air. Many girls were hugging each other, jumping up and down in celebration, starting what would have been a wild party if not for the widespread exhaustion. Weapons were discarded, no longer needed. Wounds were tended to, blood wiped up, makeshift bandages torn from the hems of unwanted t-shirts. A few couples rolling on the grass were starting to kiss — and more than couples, in several cases, from which I averted my eyes as politely as I could.
The ex-nurses were just as spent. To my curious surprise, many of them were stripping off their uniforms, or at least the parts of their uniforms which marked them as employees of the hospital. Some nurses linked arms and started to head off toward the trees, with some of the more bold patients following them. Were they heading for the breach in the hospital’s outer walls? Nothing lay out there but more dream. The only way out was through.
Other nurses joined the exhausted patients down on the grass. A few dozen were lining up, kneeling in a long row, facing vaguely in my direction, hands together as if praying. The reluctant nurses — the ones who had not truly given up the fight, but had to be taken captive and trailed along behind us — were freed by their former companions; they had nowhere else to go now, no fight left to take up, no way to reverse the revolution’s victory; most of them just sat down on the grass, grumpy and sullen, all long faces and big sighs, though a few stood and frowned in my general direction, arms crossed, radiating disapproval.
Trauma was never truly gone and forgotten. Those ones would be with me forever, but I would make a place for them in my heart all the same.
A small number of patients stayed close to me and my friends — some of my former makeshift lieutenants, among them the leader of the first group I had rescued after leaving the Governor’s Office. But they stood at one remove, simply curious rather than offering any help. This next part, after all, was no longer their fight.
It wasn’t my friends’ fight either. It should have been mine, alone with myself. But that control was long gone.
I started to sweat inside my mask once again. Soon, whatever I did now, my friends would see my face.
“Huh,” Evelyn grunted, looking out at the liberated patients. “Good for them, I suppose. But, you.” She glared at Eileen again. “We are keeping a close eye on you.”
Eileen made no sound. I couldn’t see her face from my piggyback position, but I saw Evelyn roll her eyes and huff.
Raine guffawed. “You set that one up yourself, Evee!”
“Yeah,” Twil agreed. “Come on, that was a bit obvious.”
“You may keep as many eyes upon me as you wish,” said Eileen. “And I will keep mine away from you.”
“Fine,” Evelyn sighed. “Fine! Just … just … ”
“Observe,” said Praem.
Evelyn put her face in one hand.
A distant, gentle “Prrrrrt-pbbbbbbt!” rang out over the grounds of Cygnet Asylum, from far to our left. Lozzie hopped up like a startled hare and leapt away from the group, then turned and back-pedalled, waving both hands at the rest of us.
“Tenns is waiting!” she called. “Come on, Heathy! Come on!”
Lozzie didn’t wait for an answer. She turned and hurried forward, picking her way across the ruined battlefield, through the aftermath of Tenny’s one-moth rampage, a little pastel poncho fluttering through the debris. The rest of us shared a look, both at the sight before us, and the sight which towered in the middle distance.
The five Abyssal Heathers started forward, following Lozzie, but nobody else seemed prepared to move.
Then Raine leapt into action. “Hey hey, everybody good to go? Sevens, my girl, you’re looking a little worse for wear, sure you can walk? Yes? Good, great, I’ll carry you if you need it though. Praem, you sure you can get Evee across all that ground in the wheelchair? Twil’s there if you need a hand. Zheng — haha, nah, I’m just kidding, I know you can take it. Eileen, you good with Heather up there, need me to, uh, carry you, too?”
“I am carried,” said Eileen. “For I carry.”
Raine nodded, then raised her machete and pointed forward, across the battlefield. “Alright, off we go! Watch your step, ladies and cephalopods. The fight might be over, but we don’t want nobody treading on a nail. That means you, Twil. Watch those clodhoppers of yours.”
“Oi!” Twil shot back. “I’m one of the only people here wearing fuckin’ shoes! And I can regenerate! And my feet aren’t that big! Fuck you, Raine!”
Raine turned, cackling with laughter, and led the way across the battlefield.
Tenny had left quite an incredible mess in her wake — though to be fair to our dutiful, devoted, delightful moth-daughter, the wreckage and wrack and ruin was hardly all her fault.
A long swathe of lawns and flowerbeds and little copses of trees had been scored and torn up and smashed down by a combination of Tenny’s incredible bulk, the scooting and zooming of the half-dozen half-grown Caterpillars she had protected and herded, and the opposition forces of Empty Guards and their strange toy-like tanks and trucks. The lawns were punctured with deep holes from Tenny’s moth-like legs, marked with long skids and grazes and ruts of turned-up turf, and scattered with bits of brick wherever an armoured vehicle had slammed into a pathway. Ruts from tank tracks had torn into the mud here and there, while overturned trucks lay on their sides by the dozen. Thousands of ‘bullets’ — little blue foam cylinders about the size of my thumb — littered the wreckage for hundreds of feet in every direction, punctuated by the larger evidence of the big rockets the Empty Guards had been firing at Tenny.
My heart hardened at the sight, reminded of what I had witnessed on the monitors; Lonely Me had been fighting against Tenny! Such a thing was unforgivable. Maybe I didn’t need to feel any guilt at all, maybe she deserved every bit of—
Tap-tap-THUMP.
I flinched inside my mask.
We picked our way across the remains of the battlefield, around the bulk of overturned tanks and past the broken bodies of dozens upon dozens of Empty Guards. The tanks themselves were odd — even my inexpert eye could see that they were too simple, all one colour, with smooth plastic-like corners and big silly cylinders for guns, too wide to shoot anything out in reality. The trucks and half-track things were even worse, all green on the inside like plastic toys.
The ‘corpses’ were real enough though, leaking oil and sparking with damage inside their robot bodies. Tenny had left them in pieces, shaken them apart inside their tanks, and hurled them through the air. Zalu and Xiyu led the Knights to either side of our group, checking the corpses as they went, making sure nobody was going to get back up and shoot at us.
Five Beautiful Abyssal Heathers ranged far past the head of our group, fanning out through the ruin of the battlefield, almost catching up to Lozzie up ahead.
Twil paused to pick up one of the big rockets as we passed the site of a particularly thorny knot of resistance, where several vehicles lay all tangled together. She straightened up and waggled the rocket in the air.
“B-be careful with that!” I blurted out from up on Eileen’s back. “It might go off!”
Twil frowned at me. “Eh? Big H, what are you talking about?”
“It might— you know! What’s it called? Unexploded something?”
“UXO,” Raine said, turning around to walk backwards for a few paces. “Unexploded ordnance. Heather, you ain’t gotta worry about that, hey. Relax.”
“Ah?” I blinked over Eileen’s shoulder. “B-but—”
Raine raised one hand. “Twil, here! Go long!”
Twil wound back her arm and threw the rocket like a javelin. I gasped and winced as the blue cylinder sailed through the air, Raine sprinting a few paces ahead to intercept it. “Raine!” I started to shout, terrified, confused as to why nobody else was reacting.
But then Raine ‘caught’ the rocket, no heavier than a chunk of foam. She stood there grinning, tossing it into the air and catching it again while the rest of us caught up.
“See?” she said, reaching out to gently baff Zheng on the stomach with the tip of the rocket. “Sweet thing, it’s just foam. It’s not real. See?”
Zheng ripped the rocket out of Raine’s hands and took a bite out of the blue foam, then spat out the remnants. I couldn’t believe my eyes. This didn’t make sense.
“But … but the Lonely version of me, she was trying to … ”
THUMP-THUMP-THUMP.
“Tenns was probably having the time of her life out here,” Twil said.
“Can we all concentrate, please?” Evelyn snapped. “Less horsing about, more eyes on the corpses.”
Lozzie stopped up ahead, turned back, and called, “Did anybody hear thaaaaat?”
THUMP.
We passed the tangled plastic wreckage of a trio of tanks. The sight on the far side of the battlefield came into clearer view.
The Box — the true highest-security wing of Cygnet Hospital, a windowless grey steel enclosure festooned with watchtowers and searchlights and even a radar dish — was open. The structure lay torn wide across the top, like a tin can with the lid peeled back, curling into a spiral of metal. Naked steel girders hung from the ragged hole, trailing bundles of wires and bunches of piping, steaming gently as if boiling off some hidden chemicals.
Towering taller than the hospital wing itself was Tenny — a giant in velvet black and fluffy white, halfway to moth-shape, her catlike smile calling out “Ppppprrrrttt-brrrrrrrt!!!” as she spotted our approach. Several of Tenny’s massive black tentacles still clutched the peeled-open metal of the Box, as if presenting her handiwork for our approval.
A tiny metal glint on her back told me Jan was still up there, still clinging on, probably still terrified witless. I couldn’t spot the Saye Fox at this distance, but I trusted Jan’s grip.
At Tenny’s feet, a confrontation was locked in a stand-off. Six Caterpillars — not fully grown, but halfway there — backed up a line of battered, ragged figures, the rest of our Knights. A glint of Abyssal chromatophores told me the sixth and final Abyssal Heather was over there too. The Knights and Cattys and One Of Me were arrayed against the last stand of the Empty Guards; half a dozen figures in black armour crouched behind the wreckage of a huge circular vault door which led into the Box, backed up by nothing but shadows and darkness.
Nobody was firing, not yet. Perhaps they were waiting for our arrival.
“Heard what?” said Twil. “Lozzie? Did anybody hear what?”
Thump-thump-thump.
“Wait, wait,” Raine said as we caught up with Lozzie. “I can hear that. I can feel it, too. Everyone pause, one sec.”
We all stopped.
Thump-thump-thump.
My heart was racing. The noise from the inside of my head was now outside my skull.
“Holy shit,” Twil muttered. “What the hell is that? It’s making the ground shake.”
“It is beneath us,” Zheng said.
“Nah, fuck that, I think something making the ground shake is kinda our concern, right—”
Evelyn huffed. “Twil, she means it’s literally underground. What is that? Eileen, that’s coming from the Box, what is that?”
“A beating,” said Eileen. “From what? I do not know.”
Thump-thump-thump.
“It’s trying to get out,” somebody whispered, hoarse and quivering. “It’s trying to get out. It’s trying to break free.”
Thump-thump-THUMP.
It was only when everyone looked at me, that I realised who’d spoken those words.
“Heather,” Raine said, very gently. “What’s trying to get out?”
“I … I don’t know,” I said, and it felt like a lie, even though it was true.
“Heather!” Evelyn snapped. “For fuck’s sake, you can’t just say that and leave us hanging. Do you know what’s in there, what’s in the Box, besides Maisie?”
“I don’t want to know,” I whispered, and felt tears rolling down my cheeks. “I don’t want to know. I don’t … I don’t want to do this anymore.”
And that was no lie at all.