"My home is yours. It isn't much, but you are welcome to it."

Her host told Tasìa, warmly. His words were spoken in a low, airy reed.

Sachmilli Cuervo wore a Panama straw hat and a red-on-black checkered flannel shirt. Long silver-white hair fell on his shoulders.

In his hands, he gripped a snub-nosed pair of garden shears.

He was a small-framed man much like his son. A mere five foot and five inches.

Tasìa gazed past the maze of bird cages to the shack on the far north end of the roof. Her eyes rested upon a long structure covered in vines, azaleas, and staggered rows of potted plants. A lean-to solar panel sat on top of it.

She then realized it was not a shack at all but an RV, recreational vehicle, without the wheels attached.

She met his gaze with a smile.

"How in the seven hells did you get that up here?"

He winced as if he was thinking, my little friend is assuredly smarter than that.

"Easily enough accomplished if you have a lift-server copter available to you."

Though a long-retired CEO of Marejada, a company devoted to mining equipment and related technologies, their resources were still his for the asking. The business had been kept in the Cuervo family.

Tasìa had known the man for more than twenty years before she ever met his son. He was the financial patron of her father's Cathar sect, The New Creation, or more commonly called the Anewed.

A position of honor and responsibility he inherited from his own father.

In the midst of the Cull Spore invasion, a quarter of a century beforehand, he requested a leave of absence. Sachmilli Cuervo decided it was up to him to save the human race.

So far, a Quixote enterprise, at best.

Tasìa twisted her neck around for a glance towards the brownstone buildings where the stoner cult she sought, Hijos Lux, held court.

In the center of the tallest platform, something alabaster-white caught her eye, but Tasìa did not know what to make of it. She turned her head back around as not to appear rude and distracted.

"You have moved from your old office complex. I have heard some interesting things about your former neighbors."

Sachmilli Cuervo slowly nodded with his neck pinched in tightly. He spoke.

"There was a time when our purposes were copacetic even if our methods were at odds. They have become something altogether different than what they were."

With an angry squint, Sachmilli spat in the direction of the raggéd brownstones.

"The Sons of the Light, I assure you they certainly are not now, if they ever truly were in the past."

"So, it is true then? They have no social interaction with outsiders now?"

Sachmilli Cuervo grimaced as he bit his lip.

"Mel told me you were showing the signs. They won't bargain with you in any case."

Tasìa shivered at both confirmations.

Even she wasn't entirely certain if she had been infected. Losing her mind felt like an entirely natural response to her fortunes. However, crows detected both insanity and the onset of manifestation at a hundred-fold sensitivity better than humans.

"Have a seat," Sachmilli said as he gestured to the patio chairs around a table beneath a parasol.

There was a police scanner on the table Sachmilli apparently had been listening to before she arrived.

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"I'll come back with a cooler full of beers, and then we can talk. I also have something that you should have."

It was the first time she had seen Sachmilli since the death of his son, Gael-Sebastian. She assumed the gift was something belonging to his son.

Tasìa smiled and nodded as he walked away towards the RV.

She considered her predicament. LSD was not difficult to manufacture with a few base ingredients and the right distillation set-up; however, she doubted there was time left to do it herself.

The Hijos Lux cult was the only source for it of which she was aware. The penalties for the manufacturing and distribution of LSD were the harshest of any substance.

The Salvage discouraged any competition with its inoculation program.

Tasìa reflected upon the institution she had grown to loathe.

With all the medical procedures she was going through, the countless tests they performed on her, their doctors had to have known she was in the early stages of infection.

They had no more regard for her life than the amoebas in their Petri dishes. Just another test subject. When she finally did become Manifest, they had a place just for that to study her even further.

She realized it was what her gut was telling her the entire time that she was at their mercy, during her incarceration. Her actions then were not irrational as she feared them to be. Her intuitions had pressed her into open rebellion as her only recourse.

That was in the past. What was she going to do now?

Tasha kept a small x7 magnification, 4x28 mm pistol scope wrapped in a scarf in her fanny-pack.

Even it was too big for the Kel-Tec .32, a gun that was designed for concealment.

However, for surveillance, the scope was perfect. She focused on the brownstones.

Two skinny men conversed on the roof.

They were supposed to be walking along the parameter, guarding their leader, Maestro Sol, who never came out of his mini-palace of black marble in the center courtyard.

Mel, the crow, cahed for her attention.

Tasìa shook her head.

"I'm afraid I don't speak Crow, my friend."

With a purposeful shake of its own head, Mel flew off in the direction of the brownstones.

She turned her attention back to the supposéd guards. They were laughing it up as they smoked cigarettes.

A strange-looking pair they made. Ochre yellow skin clung mottled on their bones that in turn provided scaffolding to unnaturally thin physiques.

Their eyes rested deep in their sockets. Both men were bald.

As she examined the buildings for more defensive vulnerabilities, the police scanner caught her attention.

". . . wallet never recovered. All of the women on the bus were thoroughly searched. The victim, Sanché Malle carried an unregistered switchblade in his pocket; it popped open and sliced into his penis. Blood loss led to heart failure before attending medics could stabilize him."

Tasìa had forgotten about the wallet she had stolen off of the ex-cop.

"I have been listening to that report being updated all morning," Sachmilli said as he approached from behind. He chuckled, "quite a thing to happen to a man's pecker."

Tasìa was suspicious of the reported cause of death. Her personal life never went so well to even entertain the possibility that things fell in place for her this time.

Where did the switchblade come from?

"Do you know anything about this Sanché Malle," she asked.

"Just a piece of shit like all the rest of them," he answered. "Caught a bullet in the back of his knee while fleeing a shootout. Made early pension and disability. Kept busy as a private eye." Sachmilli waved his hand, dismissively. "Enough of those low-lifes."

Sachmilli Cuervo held up a delicate appearing jacket of feathers laid in rows. Black of raven, followed by gold and red of hawk, followed by the white and gray of eagle. Thrice the rows repeated.

Gael-Sebastian told Tasìa of this very jacket.

"Gael would have wanted you to have this. As you know, he has three older sisters. Growing up, he was their Little Prince. They made this for him."

"Thank you for your kindness, Senor Cuervo."

He told her more stories about his children when they were little. Even though she had heard all of the stories before, Tasìa listened patiently as she tried the jacket on.

She sat a small mirror down in a lean against the police scanner. She backed up to check out the jacket.

It looked as if it had been custom-tailored just for her frame. How old was Gael-Sebastian when they made this for him? Nine? Ten?

Oh well, he only grew a head taller than Tasha herself.

Mel made his presence known once more with a repeated baying "cah."

He circled once, and then landed on top of a wire cage nearby them.

Mel's head stooped forward as he stared into Sachmilli's eyes. The cochlear augmentation allowed the translation of the crow's perceptions to mimic a finely-tuned language that could be understood by the recipient of another cochlear implant.

Sachmilli frowned. He turned to Tasìa.

"What is it," she insisted.

"Mel says you have the smell of the Other on you. Just as they do."

"What does that mean?"

"The other construct. Not born of the Nano Spores, but created as a rival to them. You have been exposed to her."

He pointed towards the brownstones.

Tasìa raised her scope up to her dominant eye. She focused on the object she noticed before. It was a statue of a small woman dressed in silken finery.

The Infernal Madré.