>> Interruption

Six weeks ago.....

An echo of Kami explodes through the wall of rain and smoke and shadow in the doorway. A memory. A shard of what was, and will never be again. Pacing the hollow worker's shack, as we breach the storm behind her.

Tinsheet walls hammering and shaking as if barely attached, weeping blackened waters onto rusted tools. Screwdrivers and drills, lost to the passage of time. Metal tables caging us into a narrow strip of roughened floor, inch deep with cool water.

"You let it inside." She whispers, as if about to kill. Planting many hands on a machine-shop table, bent and rusted by time. "You....LET..... THAT.... THING INSIDE!!!"

"His name. Is Tufty." I whisper, death lurking in the rumble of my words.

"Not anymore." Her voice cracks with hoarse breath as long-gone lightening crashes across the barren rooftop. Flashing in the gaps of our rattling, rust-dripping, shelter. "Spook. You KNOW what they do to the 'Special Kids' at that freaking 'School'. You. Know."

"No I don't, and neither do bloody you!!!! Nothin' is real in that place!" I snarl at her heaving back, while the rain beats against my own. Slickening my brand-new armour. "You think I'm gonna trust a bloody rumour?? I don't even trust my bloody eyes in that place!"

"Oh god, you don't understand....." She clutches herself, and shakes. Other hands fixed to the pitted counter. "Spook. It's not a rumour. The real Tufty.... is dead..... He's actually dead."

I slam forward, almost grabbing her. "He ain't DEAD, you bitch! He's RIGHT FRIGGIN' THERE!"

"YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND!" She shrieks back. "Please listen! Please! I just want to protect you! Please! The THING in there is manipulating you-"

"HIS NAME!" I scream back. "IS TUFTY!!!"

"NO! THAT'S JUST HIS BODY!" She cries into the water, and The City weeps with her. "The body is Tufty, but the brain is GONE. They RIPPED IT OUT OF HIM!!" A choking gasp, as she turns her haunted eyes toward me. "Spook. They scraped out his skull. I saw it. They ripped his brain into mush, and stuck something else inside it......"

"YOU'RE LYING!" I howl.

"LISTEN TO ME!! That's Tufty's body, but it's not Tufty inside it! Not anymore! It's an AI personality core! It's meant to trick you! But it's a skinsuit! A hollowed out husk! It isn't Tufty anymore!"

I snarl and turn away. "No."

"Spook! COME ON!"

"HE AIN'T A BLOODY PUPPET!" I slam back at her, over the endless noise. My voice turning brittle and desperate as I add "No matter....." I steal a breath from the heart of terror. "no matter how much them bastards wanted him to be....."

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The waters of the torn-open doorway ringing with dancing droplets in the sudden silence as Zipper splashes in beside me. Quiet, and quietly wrung out. His eyes flashing wide and reflective-blue in the stark light. Metallic, and shining, like a GMO.

Two days without sleep. Two days on the run.

"Do you even know how that sounds?" Kami's voice is barely a whisper against the torrents smashing our shelter. Breaking it down, atom by atom. "Spook! Please! I've seen this again and again! They take them away, and they come back WRONG. Just like Freakshow. Just like that thing you let in the ship."

"HIS BLOODY NAME IS TUFTY!!" I scream. "CAUSE THAT'S WHAT I NAMED HIM, WHEN-"

"Please, Spook! Don't fall for this! Not after everything he's done! Everything we've seen." Her shoulders are sagging. Her head a lump of lead between her shoulders.

"He's....." Mine. My little brother. A precious link to my father. "Please.... Y'don't gotta bloody do this t'me....."

"I wish..... I wish I didn't....." Her voice starting to crack. Her breath choking on grief, as her too-many shoulders shake. Guttering out a quiet little sob. "Oh, god. I really don't. I don't want to do this..... I...."

"Then don't." I falter.

"No. I HAVE TO." Kami sobs, Broken, deeper than I've ever seen her. "Oh god. Spook. I loved him. I really loved him. He used to hug me, and tell me things. Stupid little baby things. It...."

"Me too....." I whisper.

"But..... that....." A jerk of pain slams through her. "That thing you brought with us-"

"Don't call him a 'THING'!" I roar out as the plates of the shed hammer with Typhoon's fury.

"Spook! Stop! Please stop! You've got to know by now!" She begs me, finally turning her rough-wrought face. The sockets of her skull so hollow, and dark, and full of pain. Her sunken eyes so red they're almost bloodied. "That isn't him. That isn't Tufty. I'm sure of it. It's his body. It's his face. But there's something else....." A low swallow. "Has he ever shown you.... what's under that fringe?"

"Stop..... Please..... He’s our friend…" I choke on the trauma clamping my throat. Reaching out to Zipper for support. "Our lil baby b-b-b…." I shut my eyes, and they go red with surging light as the metal roof slams against its bolts.

"You still can't say it..... even now." She stares at nothing. At the clashing metal.

"It hurts. It hurts too much...." to call him my brother. "But even if he's messed up...." I whisper, every word lost to the flashing dark. "Even if we're all broken, we gotta try….”

For a long while, the storm is the only sound.

The ripping wind. The rain, fierce as falling knives. Rushing in through gaps and holes to stir the inky water against bare skin. Lapping between toes, and up against ankles. Washing armour worn for days. The ghost of my sodden tail dredged behind my legs. My eyes fixated on the busted everLight above. The tools. The fallen shelves. And the droplets plinking from Zipper's toes as he sits, in silence, on a busted metal-shop table.

And, slowly, Kami's eyes soften. Her face burning with shame and sympathy. Swallowing, quietly, as she stares out at the steaming hulk of The Night Tyrant - still waiting in the dark. To Tufty's bound body, guarded only, by Demon and the internal guns - inside.

Its shape shimmering in the downfall of the sky, as the remembered echo of the little barefoot black kid blurs madly about in the storm. Jumping, joyfully, through thick puddles as heavy walls of rain slam down upon him. Battering him this way and that as a doll-like thing with ginger hair sits, perfectly and sweetly, in the limited shelter of a Monolith engine.

Smiling, very nicely, instead of rocking and crying.

"I'm scared." Kami whispers as the old walls clang with speeding drops. Startling me back. "Spook, I'm scared. and I'm alone. And I'm a long way from home.... I don't even know which way to go......"

"You're never....." I start.

"You think I like admitting it?" Her voice rises, and then chokes once more.

I step forward, into the dark shell of the old room. Templates plates shivering with every breath of the howling night.

A night that will never, ever, end.

"What now, mate?" Zipper whispers.

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