1

Cynthia wasn't sure if the last thing she had tried was what had worked, another of the hundreds of things with a delayed effect, or something completely unrelated. In any case, the strange space they had been trapped in, the mirror image of the ruins of Kaleidoscope, disappeared at last.

First the same bluish light they saw when that creature led them here, following Sylvester's orders (which he hadn't quite processed yet), then she discovered they were back where they were supposed to be.

Back to the real world.

Full of blood, guts and corpses.

Only the seemingly endless sea of black had been reduced to black blobs. A bunch of black spots, everywhere, but only spots, after all. It had turned out to be not a sea but a river that had dried up. And at the center of that devastation was its source: the tentacled creature had died.

He supposed that was why they were out now.

"I knew Sylvester would make it," Ryan said, relieved.

They hadn't seen what had happened, but he had still assumed Sylvester had taken care of that monster. Well, it made sense. It was only fair.

"Yeah. But did he make it? I mean, where the hell is he?"

"Good question."

Cynthia couldn't see him anywhere and she had a bad feeling, but she did see the Lunar Princess, who at least for the moment was fighting on the side of humanity. On their side. It was hard to accept, but she'd have to swallow the urge to blow her brains out. Cynthia approached her, and Ryan followed close behind. Still transformed, of course. The fight wasn't even close to being over yet with that thing dead.

"What happened to Sylvester?"

The inhuman creature turned its head slowly and looked at him with those slitted, feline-like eyes long enough to make her nervous. To make her wonder what she would do instead of answering her question.

Fortunately, the moment passed without further ado.

"It occurred to him that the best idea to end this was to propel himself into that beast's mouth. To wound it from the inside. He didn't give me time to protest, but I can't even tell him it was fucking crazy, seeing the results. And that he might not get out."

"Don't talk like that."

The creature shrugged, as if it didn't give a damn.

As if? Of course it didn't give a damn, and she'd never thought anything different, so she wasn't sure why she was so angry.

"I hope he doesn't die, but I'm not sure if I could have survived in there myself. And I'm not human. He's nothing but a human, deep down. So it's a possibility."

She said it so calmly. Analytical.

She supposed she didn't need any more reason for that to make her fists and teeth clench.

But she wasn't going to let her anger get the better of her. That wouldn't do anyone any good. Not her, not Sylvester.

And it was he who was in the most danger, now, even though the battle inside had ended with the death of this thing and the one outside was still going on. Shots flying everywhere, from all sorts of weapons that were not of this world, alien limbs slicing through the air. Mostly tentacles. A little bit of everything. Real chaos.

"It's not. I know it isn't."

"Are you in love with him?"

Cynthia was surprised that an inhuman creature believed it knew anything about love. Believed was the key word, for to suggest that she felt that way about Sylvester was utter folly. So the surprise didn't last long and she laughed quite naturally, as if she wasn't on the verge of death on the strangest battlefield in the long history of planet Earth.

Well, it didn't hurt to laugh once in a while. Lately she didn't have much reason to, after all.

"That would be like falling in love with my brother." Not that it mattered, but she was an only child. "I know it's weird to say that about someone I haven't even known for half a year, but friend doesn't seem like a good enough word. It's just, how do I explain it? It's like you're telling me that the sun won't rise in the morning."

She was pleased that she had hit the nail on the head. She, at least, couldn't have put it better.

"I hope you're right." But the creature said it in the same empty voice with which it had expressed doubts about his chances of survival. If it couldn't even empathize with the only person in this world who was its equal in power (at least for the moment), then how would it view the rest of them?

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

Like ants. As nothing more than insects to crush under her metaphorical boots.

Of course.

Had she ever thought the so-called Princess would feel any other way?

“While you wait, I'll act," Cynthia replied.

"It was a figure of speech. Or so I think. I'm but four days old."vv

Cynthia ignored her, but inwardly wondered if that had been a joke or something that had just come out of her relative innocence. As much as it disgusted her to use that word to refer to a monster like that, she had indeed only been born four days ago.

Anyway, it had been funny to her. A little.

But it didn't matter.

Cynthia and Ryan broke into a run at the same time, without needing to communicate verbally. That was further proof that they really had become closer. That kind of rapport couldn't be practiced, only cultivated naturally, in and out of battlefields over and over again. And this time, she promised herself, it would be no different. They would both go out.

They demonstrated their rapport in more ways than one as they traversed the field, heading, of course, for the carcass of the beast made of nothing but tentacles. To where Sylvester awaited them.

The enemies should still be too busy killing each other, but they caught the attention of some who shot at them or threw themselves at them, producing from inhuman throats sounds no human had heard to this day.

Creatures out of the shadows behind nightmares, too terrible to even dream of.

And they tore them apart.

They destroyed them along the way as if it was nothing. Returning the blows, the shots from the alien weapons, ensuring total destruction with no way back. Nor any possibility of repair. Many of those armored giants left nothing more than that: empty armor, scorched, smoking like a chimney. As if the person who had been inside had become a ghost and disappeared like the morning mist.

That way, at any rate, they opened a bloody path to the corpse at the top of the hill. The source of the black sea and even worse nightmares than the ones they had left scattered in pieces over the field, which had little green left, but rather red and black. Especially red and black.

"You have to be alive, asshole. You have to be," she muttered to herself, barely aware that she was saying it out loud.

She let Ryan get to work.

She could also help by using her revolvers, but it was dangerous, she could accidentally reach Sylvester. Under normal circumstances that wouldn't be enough to kill him by a long shot, it would be like being tickled, but she had no idea how he was like in there. For all he knew he could be on the verge of death and her bullets (or gusts of wind) could be what pushed him over the cliff.

Plus, Ryan could cut through the corpse faster with his huge claws. A more efficient and safer job.

Cynthia wanted to help, certainly, but there was no reason not to step back and to the side. And just wait. Crossing her fingers that everything would work out.

That wasn't her style and in fact no one liked it, who was going to like that? But since she had no other choice, she could accept it.

Since she was doing nothing, couldn't do anything, it seemed longer than it really was, of course. But in the end they got results. Sylvester came sliding out of the corpse, accompanied by more of that black water, which flowed out of the wound like blood.

For a moment she thought the worst.

But only for a moment.

"He's just unconscious. Good. Good."

Cynthia took a deep breath. Okay, she, like all agents, had received some first aid training. Nothing that could have prepared her to help a man survive after he had the genius idea to jump down the throat of a monster from outer space and kill it from the inside, but something. It would have to be enough.

Assuming he would have swallowed quite a bit of that black water along the way, Cynthia crouched down beside him and tried to revive him mouth-to-mouth.

A simple cycle of rhythmically pressing on his chest and blowing air through his mouth. But having his life in her hands, or at least the feeling that she had it, was a terrible weight that made it difficult and prolonged everything. Being involved wasn't easier than watching and hoping for the best, but it wasn't any harder either. She had discovered that it was just as terrible and she supposed that was the only truth. Whatever you did, everything was terrible in a situation like this, with shit up to your neck.

Sylvester turned his head, coughed, and spit out several black gobs like mud or tar. And finally, finally, he opened his eyes.

The man smiled.

"Happy to see you guys again. So I was closer to the exit than I thought. I'm glad I followed the objective marker."

"I beg your pardon?" She hadn't heard that last one right. Or at least hadn't understood it.

"It's nothing."

It was. Sure it was, but she'd let it go for the moment. They had bigger problems.

They were under attack. Or maybe they didn't intend to, but either way the plasma shots from those giants' weapons flew too close, so Cynthia and the rest were quick to dodge, leaping over the tentacles and using the corpse as a shield. It was so big that Ryan didn't even have to get down on his knees to use it as cover.

"This has only just begun," Ryan said, raising his voice just to make himself heard over the nearby gunfire.

"True, but we will win. It's as if I can see it written on the tablets of destiny. We will win."

It was an odd response, and not just because it was unlike him to talk that way-he didn't have the stick up his ass that deep-but because of that metaphor. Sylvester wasn't a big fan of fate. Or at least of the idea that it was something inevitable, something to submit to.

But then again, they had bigger problems. That and other issues could wait until the battle was over.

It would probably be nothing, anyway.

He had every right in the world to act a little weird after surviving that shit.

2

Sylvester had been born again.

In that fetid darkness filled with crawling legions, he had been born again. He had crawled through the birth canal and come out clean on the other side. He really felt like a new man. And maybe he really was.

Strength: 35 (+3)

Stamina: 31 (+2)

Health: 17 (+1)

He had received more experience points than the mission reward had promised him. He wasn't sure why, but you can't look a gift horse in the mouth. The objective marker had disappeared, but now that he had managed to get out he really didn't need it. Besides, he was almost relieved to have seen it disappear. In the rational light of day, it had only made him uncomfortable for reasons he couldn't explain. Or perhaps reasons he didn't even want to explain to himself.

Nor was a new mission unlocked, but that was of even less importance.

He knew very well what he had to do.

He knew very well what his mission was.

Kill all those sons of bitches. This world is ours.