1

They were in the air, now.

There were only five people inside, but it wasn't a helicopter, it was a whole plane. The five were Sylvester, Cynthia and Ryan. And the pilot and his co-pilot, of course. None of them knew how to fly a plane.

Sylvester could perhaps manage in an emergency, but he hoped things wouldn't get to that point. He had hoped to be able to leave things in the hands of the syndicate's clean-up crews. However, the remaining work had turned out to be bigger than expected. But nothing needed to happen while they were going from point A to point B.

He was paranoid, though. As usual. As he had to be, with the job he had and the life he led.

If he got any sleep at all in all the hours of travel, he'd do it with one eye open.

"I hope you know how lucky you are. You are only here, on this plane and in this world, because I said so." Sylvester had a lot of influence with the syndicate. Naturally, since it had formed around him and not the other way around.

"I got it, yes. I'll be sure to thank you too when you send me to hell with your bare hands."

Like the mad scientist he was, it turned out that Andrew hadn't just been counting on warehouses and subterranean bases. The heart of his operation was an island in the Pacific. His favourite victims were children. Orphans and homeless, that is, the most vulnerable of the most vulnerable.

That horrible monster was dead, but that didn't mean there were no people to continue his work. The whole operation was bigger than they had first thought. The syndicate had really made some serious mistakes with this, but oh well. They had their hands full with the disease coming from the moon, the Remnants and saving the world.

Kids, well, they disappeared all the time.

And this seemed like more work for the police at first. In short, he couldn't complain too much, angry as he was. He understood. That the mind understood wasn't the same as his heart accepting it, but that was all he could offer at the moment.

"Do you trust him?" Cynthia asked him that, not for the first time. It was the first time she had asked it in front of Ryan himself, though.

"You saw the same thing I did."

"That's not what I'm asking you. Boss, we should just kill him, period. You know I respect you, but this is a mistake."

"Maybe it will turn out to be, but I'm prepared to correct it if I have to."

Ryan shook his head.

"It's my fault, I know. But it's a little frustrating that you guys talk as if I'm not here."

"You said yourself that you don't deserve to live after being complicit in this monstrosity," Sylvester said. "Why should you have any other rights?"

"Like I said, it's my fault. Fuck, I'll shut up."

Peace and quiet returned to the plane. It wasn't likely to last long, but Sylvester would enjoy it while he could. They still had many hours ahead of them. At least he could be sure that the island existed and he had told them the right place. He didn't have to doubt the basic premise of the trip. Then he would be uneasy as well as tired.

A few hours passed without the peace being broken, much to his surprise.

Ryan had started out meditating in his seat, but by the end he seemed to have fallen asleep. So much anguish and regret had not been able to overcome exhaustion. Or the natural result, rather, of spending so much time with his eyes closed doing nothing.

Sylvester and Cynthia had talked occasionally, but about unimportant things. Everything was fine. Too good, so of course things had to get fucked up.

They went through some turbulence. The plane shook quite a bit and for a few seconds Sylvester felt as if his stomach had turned into a lead ball. But this was normal, nothing to worry about. The first sign of the shit that was coming was the appearance of a flying beetle.

"How did it...?"

How, indeed. There was no way such a thing could have snuck onto the plane. At the very least if it had been there before, he would have heard it at least once in all the hours of travel. It hadn't snuck in before the plane took off, but it couldn't have come in mid-air either. So...

"Cynthia, get ready."

She drew her pistols. He reached for his katana as usual. He knew how to shoot, naturally, but he had his preferences. He didn't need bullets for this anyway.

There was only one possible explanation for an unnatural, seemingly impossible event. Something that was not of this world in the first place.

"What's wrong?" Ryan asked, rudely awakened.

They ignored him and followed the flying beetle into the bathroom. There it landed on the ceramic sink and died. It couldn't be that simple, of course. The bug's back opened and not to let its wings out.

A hand. Purple and transparent, like the hand of a ghost. The hand emerged violently from its pupa, a corpse, and lunged for its neck. No. He didn't even have to dodge it.

The ghostly hand, clenched into a fist, shattered the bathroom mirror. And then it kept coming out. A hand, an arm, a shoulder. It was a humanoid creature, but its head was all wrong. The mouth where the eyes should be, all in the wrong place, except for the ears. That's because it didn't even have ears.

Again, it didn't have a neck twisted to the point that its head had ended up upside down. It was simply that the features weren't in the right place. It was vaguely disturbing, but far from the worst thing he'd ever seen.

Far from the worst thing he'd ever fought either.

Before it emerged from its, shall we say, shell, Sylvester stepped up, dodged an attack and thrust the katana between its eyebrows. That creature fell limp and disappeared without a trace. Even the flying beetle had disappeared, now that he looked.

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

It couldn't be that easy.

There were two possibilities. That wasn't the Lunar Remnant, but an extension of itself. An ability of sorts. Or it was, but it had moved elsewhere.

Now he didn't need the scarab? Where and how? So many unanswered questions.

Ryan made it to the door just in time for Cynthia's attention to focus on him. The only thing deadlier than her gaze were the barrels of her pistols.

"What if he set us up?"

"Come on. Please. How could I have warned anyone? You've been watching me the whole time."

"He's right," Sylvester said.

"But..."

"He didn't even have any idea of Andrew's real job. We know that. We've seen it in his mind. Do you think he had the connections to do this, even if we'd taken our eye off him for a second? And even if it were otherwise, he's not interested in us being defeated. Not now. Because he'd go down with us and the plane."

"That's it. That's right. Listen to him."

"Shut your mouth."

Ryan shut his mouth. For the time being.

Sylvester walked down the corridor, with the other two behind him. Cynthia made sure to go last, of course. She would never turn her back on the prisoner, even if he wasn't her enemy right now. And even if she could easily handle him even if he became one, as she had done before, in the first place.

A hole opened up in the ceiling. It was purple, the same color as the being's energy, not that it could be otherwise. Two Lunar Remnants wouldn't go after them at the same time, it would be too much of a coincidence.

He'd said hole, but then it began to ripple as if it were the surface of some strange waters. Giving way to the thing that crawled out of there, floating upside down. Was it the same creature he had stabbed in the forehead or another, though in either case they could only be part of something bigger, an extension of the Lunar Remnant above them?

It was hard to tell. He saw that the thing had tentacles protruding from its back, but it might have gotten an upgrade when he had made it move.

In any case, the monstrosity lunged for them. Spinning in the air, fists clenched and mouth wide open, like someone with their jaw unhinged, nay, almost ripped out. Even though the monster had no teeth. Surely it had a different way of devouring him, but it wouldn't get that far.

And it didn't get there, but Cynthia interrupted the fun. Using the rope launcher to snag him, stopping and dragging it over to her. Close enough to get the pistols under its jaw and pull the trigger. Several times.

The first bullets hit the Remnant point-blank, the rest as it flew through the air again, but this time backwards. It never touched the ground. The creature disappeared before it could do that.

Again. After he'd stabbed him between the eyebrows, it had come back without a problem, so now it would come back as well, just like that.

"I doubt I did it," Cynthia said.

"Maybe there's only one way to hurt it, I've encountered a few like that. Or maybe it's just some kind of projection."

"And we need to find the real one. Okay. Where do we start?"

"I'm working on it."

No, maybe there was no need to find them, maybe they could just wait for them to come to them. They entered the cockpit. The pilot and co-pilot were nervous, sweating, but they hadn't moved from their seats. As soon as he entered, they locked eyes with him, desperate for a reassuring explanation to what they had heard.

Like maybe Cynthia had gotten bored and started firing shots for no apparent reason. If only he could tell them something like that.

"We have a Lunar Remnant on board," Sylvester said.

"Roger that, sir. What should we do?" the pilot asked. The co-pilot, who looked quite young now that he noticed, remained silent, shrinking in on himself.

"Stay the course. We'll handle it."

"Why are you still here, sir?" The pilot asked, slowly, and after a while.

"You know."

Just killing the pilots and watching them crash could be more effective than a straight fight. So, in a way, they were the main targets. Bad luck that they had run into a Lunar Remnant that could attack them at so many kilometres above with no problem. If they had only encountered problems after landing, they wouldn't have had to deal with any of this.

Sylvester waited, tense as a bow, for the slightest sign of the Lunar Remnant's appearance. The first time it had appeared from inside the carcass of the flying beetle. The second had been different, a hole in the plane rippling like the surface of water.

They seemed unrelated, but there had to be a connection. He just had to find it. He could do it.

Could he before it was too late?

That was the point. The reality was that the creature didn't even give him time to react.

It came out of the co-pilot’s chest, the poor bastard's ribs opening in its wake like a heavy iron fence. It wasn't the only thing that came out explosively. Blood and other fluids sprayed at them. Sylvester sprang into action without wasting a single millisecond, not even blinking as the victim's blood hit him in the face, nearly blinding him.

Too late.

Too late even for Cynthia, who opened fire with one of her revolvers while with the other hand she used the rope launcher to try to catch the pilot and pull him away.

It all happened too fast, but it wasn't as if they had reacted too late or made a mistake. They had risen to the occasion. They just hadn't been able to stop the disaster from the beginning. Perhaps, if they had known that the enemy could hide inside human bodies as well, biding its time, things might have turned out differently. But they hadn't known. And it was already too late.

The ghost punched the pilot in the neck, causing a chunk of it to explode.

Screaming, he fell backwards, his head hitting the ground hard. And he continued to scream as he writhed, out of his mind. He hadn't been remotely prepared for this. But he hadn't had to be, that was their job. They had failed him, and they had simply been unlucky. They, he and the co-pilot.

Cynthia's exploding bullets pushed the Lunar Remnant against the cockpit, preventing it from finishing off the pilot, though there was nothing they could do for him anyway. Not anymore. It charged again, and Cynthia pushed it back the same way. When its back hit the wall, the spirit went through it, fleeing again, rather than continuing to attack.

Rather, its attack was already over. Both men were dead. The only reason the plane wasn't going down was that the autopilot was still engaged. However, that wasn't going to help them land.

Or stay in the air. Not with that thing still out there.

"What do we do?"

"I know I said I wanted to die, but not like this," Ryan said. "Not with the job unfinished."

Sylvester ignored the prisoner completely.

"I wish I knew."

He didn't have time to think about that either.

The ghostly hand grabbed him by one shoulder, slamming him against the wall... And through it. When it threw him, he went toward the night sky.

Sylvester was propelled by a wind with a pressure like thousands of tons of steel away from the plane. He had bigger worries, but all he could think of was the image of the plane getting smaller at blinding speed. Before he knew it, it would disappear and then he would be lost.

He hadn't exactly expected this, but he had the tools to deal with it. He hoped. Sylvester manifested a hook of darkness in his hand. Fortunately, he didn't have to waste time spinning it to make it go far. With a thought, the hook shot out and stuck into the side of the plane.

It probably wouldn't hold long, but he hoped it would be enough to get close. He would do the rest on his own.

Sylvester grabbed the rope and climbed up it, against the wind that seemed to be alive, seemed to want to crush him and reduce him to nothing. The climb was taking forever, but he was making progress and that was what mattered at the end of the day. Slowly, but surely (as fast as he could, but slowly after all).

Nothing could be that easy, or at least not a complete disaster for long. So, as he approached one of the wings, he saw several circles appear on the surface. Naturally, not different parts of the same creature emerged from the circle, but several complete copies.

Only, during his absence, they had improved again.

These didn't have tentacles on their backs, but on their open chests in a way that was vaguely grotesque even though they were hollow like dolls.

On their backs they had dark wings that blended with the night sky and grey clouds.

Wings appeared on Sylvester's back as well. Large and grotesque, separated into pieces by membrane, like the wings of a giant bat. He had activated one of his many abilities, [Infernal Wings]. He didn't understand why his power was rendered like the mechanics of some role-playing game, nor why some of the names (okay, quite a few) were a bit embarrassing.

Good thing only he could see those notifications. In any case, he had bigger problems.

Sylvester unsheathed his katana as the winged creatures, which had him surrounded, descended upon him.