Al looked down at the notebook before it and ran its fingers through its hair. It had to admit, it was not a good look, the pattern that Red had spotted.

It sighed and swirled green energy around its fingertips, was the weird green energy which built around it some kind of cosmic justice for starting this all?

Al waved its hand towards Bitey carelessly directing the loose energy into the waiting reptilian’s maw and turned back to the first page. As with all of Red’s notebooks it was splattered and smudged with flecks of ink, but readable despite the mess: The original incident – Al and Sai Contact that London’s government.

It bugged Al that its trust in the government had been a bad thing, it liked being safe, it liked government owned healthcare. It liked funding all those things through taxes, and it liked being recognised as a citizen, even by a morally bankrupt system. It didn’t however like the enforcers Lord and Dame, or for that matter the weird smart bot, which was doing all sorts of stuff, though it reflected at least whatever that was had dealt with the Lords and Dames.

Al shook its head, it was getting distracted again, the important thing was that it had read the breakdown Red had made, and it both made sense, and explained why it was probably at least partially Al’s fault. It looked over at the distracted Red who was now attempting to measure the squirming Bitey.

Al cocked its head and waved to try and get Reds attention, and she dropped the lizard to the floor with a dull skittering thud as they noticed the gesturing Al.

She looked at Al expectantly and made a small gesture as it stood there confused.

“Well, do tell! Which plan are we implementing! One, A, Alpha or Prime? – Oh, you look concerned, don’t worry so much, it was just that I didn’t want to sway your opinion by using some kind of numerical system.”

Al sighed and pushed its fingers into its eye sockets as it tried to refocus its wandering thoughts.

“Not what I meant Red, not what I meant. I mean, that all these options suck.”

Red nodded absently and made a couple of notes in their notebook and Al attempted to explain with growing exasperation.

“Red, one of your suggestions is that I FUCKING DIE. How does that solve anything!”

Al watched as clarity dawned on her face and she launched into an explanation.

“Oh! That’s quite simple, honestly, it’s probably the best option! The theory is that as the only Citizen of that London on the street, you are how they are getting permission from their whoever’s in charge to come here so if you die it’s no longer an issue!” She beamed at Al, grabbed the notebook, and began flipping through it.

“If you turn to appendix three, you’ll see that I have managed to narrow down the options of who that is through.”

Al paused for a second as it tried to process Red’s pre-tangent commentary, and let Red’s explanation fade into background noise as it considered if it would be willing to sacrifice itself for the good of the street – what even was death now that it was able to reinvigorate dead plants, and had even met a ghost raised from the dead at the streets own infinitely large graveyard.

Al shrugged at Red and moved towards the door.

“I need to think about this, I’m going to go for a walk, I’ll err drop you a message on which plan I think we should do I guess…”

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Red smiled and clasped its shoulder, pressing the book into its hand as they ushered it out the door.

“Totally understandable, each of the paths to success is viable, so choosing the right one does require reviewing a lot of variables, and its possible that I have miscalculated the factors relating to you, I hope my simulations are accurate with regards to your behaviours, but it’s certainly worth a peer review!”

Al muttered something non-committal and slipped towards the doorway before it could get dragged into any further explanations of why its demise was necessary. When the door finally slammed shut and vanished behind it, Al breathed a sigh of relief. For half a second it considered checking the sky for directions but decided it didn’t fancy going home just yet.

Instead, Al just wandered aimlessly down the street whilst Bitey followed behind it chirping enthusiastically as they darted through the air. Al considered the dragonling as it walked, the cheery reptile’s movement a persistent, and somewhat adorable distraction from the dreary decision before it.

Self-sacrifice or potential death to each and every friend it had left, as choices went Al thought, they both sucked. Fortunately, the joy of watching Bitey plummet from the sky, tail locked in their mouth, was a balm to their tumultuous mind. So much so, that as it walked it felt its steps growing lighter and easier as it picked on the thread of the most tantalising, unthinkable of thoughts.

What if Red was wrong?

They had been before, in myriad small ways, she’d made miscalculations and came to wrong conclusions, never for something so serious as this, but still...

Abruptly, and quite by chance Al’s thoughts were interrupted by its arrival at the infinite graveyard where the pale form of Penelope was waiting for it just beyond the entrance. She smiled as Al made reluctant eye contact and reluctantly stepped over the threshold, quickly moving to slip a phantasmal arm through and around its shoulder.

Al shuddered at her touch, but she leaned in conspiratorially regardless.

“It’s not all bad, you know – being dead.”

Al tripped as it tried to doubletake mid step.

“Excuse me?”

The doctor inclined her head, the faint outline of a cloud drifting behind her pale semi-transparent eyes.

“Yeah, its honestly a pretty good deal. I don’t have to eat or sleep, and my hair, well it’s always perfect.”

Al’s eyes flicked over her floating form as she flicked her hair with her free hand.

“That seems… a bit shallow?... wait, why do you even think I’m going to die?”

She smiled sadly and looked deep into its eyes.

“You were muttering it under your breath as you walked by. And besides I’m the GP assigned to you, so it’s my job to understand your mental and physical health. I have metrics I could have figured it out from, but I doubt you would understand. “

She rolled her eyes theatrically prompting Al, who had started to nod, to opt for a scowl instead.

“You know I have a pet which eats necromancy right?”

Bitey chirped defensively and flew up to land on Al’s shoulder as she shrugged and drifted through the air away from the pair, seemingly unconcerned by the enbies threats.

“Threatening people whilst on your way to visit your own open grave, hardly speaks to good mental health Al.”

Al, who had by this point elected to ignore her, pointedly walked past her, and made its way towards the only location it knew of in the endless expanse of the infinite graveyard, the row of grey headstones which contained Al’s plot in the infinite graveyard.

“Just leave me alone alright?”

Penelope shrugged and allowed herself to be left behind as Al stomped further into the graveyard, eyes set upon the row of graves which marked with its own name. I stopped before the smooth everchanging stone, and examined the harsh letters carved deep into the dark basalt. Its name, age, and today’s date and before it, a meter deep hole dug into the damp coarse dirt.

Al considered the plot for a moment, crouched, and dropped down into it.

It slipped as it landed, the loose soil slipping under Al’s trainers as it landed. From its new vantage, it ran its fingers along the loose root network that interlaced the pressed dirt of the grave. Al considered the grave, really tried to envisage lying in it, unmoving for all eternity.

Al even managed to consider it for ten or so seconds before the squirming form of Bitey rolled down from above, a thin bluish-grey serpent latched in its mouth. Al watched as with a vigour rarely seen outside of their shoe-nemesis Bitey span and tore the small snake into a blood half scaled mess in a matter of moments.

Al watched for a moment longer as Bitey turned away from the seemingly dead snake and flapped out of the grave to find their next distraction. After a second, the snake shuddered and a crackle of sickly green energy jolted it back to life, the tears in its scales sealing as it slithered back into the shadows, revitalised and very much alive.

Al glanced back at its grave open and ready and considered Red’s ‘best option’ again.

Perhaps it would work, albeit with a few modifications.