The Sweepers arrived a day and a half later, and we were ready for them.

Once again, I’ll ask you to put yourself in the shoes of our enemy.

Your feet are sore, unaccustomed as they are to days of walking. Your stomach aches, unaccustomed as it is to digesting less than its fill. Your companions are all equally miserable, and your once joyful camaraderie has been eroded by days of hardship and disappointment.

Finally, at the dawn of a new day, you reach the bridge. The familiar bridge that you’ve crossed thousands of times. The bridge that, to you, means safety. It means a warm bed, and warm food, and perhaps if you’re lucky some warm company. All you want to do is traipse back to your home, curl up near a fire, perhaps with your children, if you have any, and forget this whole misadventure ever occurred.

Metalhead trundles behind you on his caterpillar-tracked throne. No hard walking and lean eating for him. He stops at the bridge. Perhaps he suspects something awry, perhaps the deformed man with the gold robes and the gold eyes and no mask whispers something in his ear, perhaps he doesn’t explain himself at all. In any case, he orders you and your friends to cross, sits back, and watches.

It’s a strange order. What does he fear? But even if you had the courage to challenge him, you don’t have the energy.

And so, you exchange a confused glance with your comrades, and take the first steps toward home, the rising sun warming your backs. The sentries up on the wall watch you advance. One of them raises a hand in greeting. The other fires a welcoming burst of gunfire off into the air. Is that Hector and Robbie? It would be good to see them again. You have a lot of stories for them.

That so-familiar gate begins to swing open, and the man next to gives you a light punch on the arm.

“See, told you we’d make it back,” he says.

You realize your hand’s been on your gun this whole time, and with a deep exhalation only now do you release it. “Yeah. Yeah you did.”

Your friend is still smiling at you when he bursts apart, his body collapsing and peeling into chunks of red flesh that whip away on cyclonic wind. Hot blood splashes across your visor as your ears are shattered by a thousand simultaneous thunder-cracks. You throw yourself to the ground, covering your ears.

You dare to peek up at what is happening. All around you, bullets smash into concrete and flesh. A wall of light and smoke blooms from the open gate, pulsing like the sun.

You can’t comprehend it. You can’t process it. Your mind breaks. You scream. You scream and scream until your lungs begin to tear.

Then, as suddenly as they had roared to life, the guns fall silent.

Many of your Tribe lay around you, some of them torn apart, many of them cowering low to the ground like yourself. There is no cover on the bridge. Nowhere to retreat to.

And now that the smoke has cleared, you can see some sort of machine in the fortress gateway. A wall of gray metal, from which sixteen barrels protrude: two rows of eight, one at chest height, the other level with where your head is now.

Why did they stop? Why didn’t they cut you all down?

A metallic screech splits the air, the tell-tale feedback that always accompanies the speaker system on the walls turning on.

“Attention Sweepers,” a voice shouts. Raspy, female, mean. “Those were our warning shots. You have five seconds to clear the bridge.”

You waste the first second staring at your comrades. No one can believe what is happening.

“Four.”

One person scrambles up and turns to run, the trance broken.

“Three.”

Everyone else moves as one, a sudden flurry of desperate movement.

“Two.”

You are running back down the bridge now, your limbs pumping hard, but it is too far. You are going to die.

“One.”

Ahead of you, one of your Tribe swerves off course, vaulting over the barrier at the side of the bridge and disappearing. The others begin to follow suit.

“Fuck it,” you sob, and tear towards the barrier yourself.

“Zero.”

You throw yourself into empty air, stomach rising into your chest as the cold churn of the river rushes up to meet you.

Behind you, the world explodes.

* * *

Behind the sixteen caged heavy machine guns we’d pointed at the bridge, behind our barricade of steel, I heard your scream as you dove over the side. It was the last thing I heard before I ripped back the cords wired to every trigger, and everything was drowned in gunfire.

When it was over, there were no more screams, only my own breathing and the creak of cooling gunmetal.

Kross poked her head over the barricade first, taking aim with her shiny new assault rifle. “I’d say we got about a quarter of them,” she said. “Hard to count really, some of them are cut up pretty bad. Rest took a swim.” She gave me a mild kick in the thigh. “Hey, you all right?”

I was still clutching the cords. We’d color coded them to keep track of which fired which gun, and now all bundled together they looked like a rainbow. That detail stuck with me: such a cheerful looking thing used to deal out so much death. My grip was so tight my nails were starting to break the skin of my palms.

“I’m fine,” I lied. A quarter of the Sweepers was about ten people.

I’d been so proud of the idea when it had occurred to me. As we’d assembled the death machine, my confidence had begun to slip, and by the time the call came to rip the cords back I almost couldn’t find the strength.

Kross grunted. She must have heard the regret in my voice. “Still reckon we should have just blasted the lot of them.”

That had been her proposal. Cold blooded slaughter of the whole Tribe. No warning shots, no chance for the survivors to throw themselves on the mercy of the river.

They were a Bad Tribe, no doubt about that. A Tribe of murderers and thieves and slavers. A Tribe who had stumbled upon humanity’s best hope for recovery and squandered it on creating yet more death. But they were still people, still parents, still sons and daughters, some of them at least, and I wasn’t going to duplicate the tragedy that had created me, created Mari.

We’d spaced the guns so that no one on the bridge would be able to avoid being hit if we fired them all at once. In our first volley, we’d only fired six of them. My initial plan had been to lead with the verbal warning, but Kross had talked me into a compromise.

“If you don’t want to kill all of them,” she had said, “kill some of them first. Shock them, scare them, don’t give them to time think. If they’re all intact with their wits about them they’ll be brave and stupid. We’ll have to gun them all down.”

I hoped she’d been right. I forced myself to believe she was.

“Are you sure they can survive that fall?” I asked, back in the present.

“Hmm? Yeah of course. I did.” She was distracted, no longer looking at me. “Metalhead held back. Do our lookouts see him?”

{What do you see?} I sent up to Mari, who was on the wall with Bobby and a pair of binoculars. Heff had wanted to help too, but Bobby and I had talked him into staying at the gunshop. He needed to survive to operate the universal constructor.

{He’s coming.} Mari replied. {But it’s not just him. There’s a Gold Robe out there somewhere. I saw him for a moment, but he’s disappeared again.}

“He’s coming,” I repeated to Kross.

She nodded. “Time for the big boy then.”

The ‘big boy’ was at our feet. A gun so long and unwieldy that it was a struggle for one person, especially a person with Kross’s small frame, to carry alone. I got up to help her mount it on the barricade.

As we set the weapon’s barrel down, I caught a glimpse of the red ruin we’d made of the bridge. My gorge rose, and I snapped my eyes away, almost vomiting in my mask.

Kross settled in behind the scope, flexing her fingers on the over-sized rifle’s grip.

“All right you bastard,” she mumbled, “let’s see how indestructible you really are.”

The ground shook, and the air rumbled as a metallic voice peeled out. One long word.

“MUUUM!”

“Ah shit,” Kross said, wincing.

“Mum?” I sputtered.

{What?} Mari asked.

“Mum! I know that’s you! I heard your voice! I know you’re helping these worms!”

It took a heartbeat or two for all the pieces to fall into place.

“He’s your son?” I stared at Kross in disbelief. “Your son is the one that betrayed you?”

She gave her customary shrug. “It’s what kids do.”

“It really isn’t.”

{Is the metal man Kross’s son?} Mari asked.

{Yes. Yes he is.}

{Is she still going to shoot him?}

“Are you still going to shoot him?”

Kross hesitated. A mixture of feelings swirled inside her. Too complex and intermingled to simplify into something as crude as words. Her shoulders shook: a laugh, or a sob disguised as one. “I brought him into this world. My job to take him out of it.”

“Right,” I said carefully. {Looks like it,} I sent back to Mari.

“I’m still going to kill you, Mum,” Metalhead screamed. “Just wanted you to know you I knew it was you.”

“Always barks when he should be biting,” Kross hissed through gritted teeth. Her body rose as she drew in a deep breath. She let it out very slowly, and in the midst of that exhalation the rifle erupted with a blast that made my teeth shake. Kross was knocked halfway to the ground by the impact.

The clap of supersonic lead on steel echoed out from the other side of the bridge.

{She hit him!} Mari crowed in the mental realm. She let out an excited cheer in the real one too.

I grabbed the binoculars from around my neck and put them to my eyes. Metalhead was still standing, but his head was slumped forward, swaying as if drunk. Cold fear ran through me.

{He’s not dead,} Mari told me, at the same time that I repeated those words in the real world.

“Ah shit,” Kross said.

A high pitched whir cut through the air as the massive gun on Metalhead’s right arm began to spin. He roared. “MUUUM!”

“Ah fuck,” Kross said. She dropped the big boy and turned to run. I followed. Fortunately, we’d planned for this.

{Mari. Off the wall. Now!}

{Coming.} Her and Bobby’s minds already moving, descending the metal slide we’d built to get down more rapidly. The closest buildings where only a few seconds away, and we’d reinforced their bridge-facing walls with extra scrap.

We were halfway there when the air seemed to burst. The noise from Metalhead’s gun was one deafeningly loud, never ending, explosion: a continuous tear in reality. The world shook as if it was about to fall apart.

I couldn’t help but glance back at the carnage.

The barricade where we’d hid just moments before tore apart. The rounds from the god-gun exploded on impact, hundreds of tiny explosions bursting on the steel shell, shattering the machine gun racks welded behind and tearing chunks from the metal, throwing splinters in every direction.

My head snapped to the side. White hot pain flashed across my forehead. Warm blood filled my vision. I screamed.

{Alan!} Mari shouted in my mind.

The pain wasn’t what worried me. I could feel a cool breeze on my face. “My mask! My Mask!”

I ran forward half-blind, until firm hands grabbed me and pulled me down to the ground.

“Hold still you idiot,” Kross snapped. I could barely make out the words amongst the storm of explosions behind us. The intent came through in her thoughts though.

“Oh fuck!” Bobby’s voice, high with worry. “What happened.”

“Mask breach.” Kross said. “You got that tape?”

I clasped a hand over my shattered visor. I should have sealed my mouth shut immediately. I did that now. But after the running and the screaming a lot of magic-infused air had made its way into my lungs. I could feel it inside me— tiny motes of white hot heat scorching holes in my consciousness. Though it wasn’t pain. Just pure, overwhelming, sensation. A taste too sour, a noise too loud, a light too bright.

I tried to push them out, but it was like my mind was made of ice— pushing against the golden dots just made it melt faster. I didn’t know what else to do. I reached out for something, anything, and found Mari.

{What do I do?} I begged.

{I… I don’t know.} Whether her panic her own or a reflection of mine, I couldn’t tell. {I don’t think there’s much of it in there. Just stay calm.}

Kross and Bobby pinned me down, and soon my red vision became black. My mask was sealed, but there was still magic in the air beneath the tape. There was nothing I could do about that though. I braced myself, then breathed.

More flecks of gold flooded in. I didn’t even try to push them out. That just made the sensation worse. Instead, I flowed around them, like a river around jagged rocks.

Still things exploded outside, but the noise felt very distant.

{Alan, are you all right?}

{I’m…} I paused, assessing myself. My head hurt, but the pain was fading surprisingly quickly, drowned out by the raw sensation pulsing from the motes of magic. Now that I wasn’t pushing against them, it was like they were revitalizing the parts of me that brushed up against them. I felt awake, alive, perhaps more than ever before. {I’m fine. I’m good, actually. Very good.}

Her mind spiked with concern.

I tried to send some comfort her way. {No, really, does my mind look damaged to you?}

{Yes.}

I didn’t really process what she’d said. My mental perception was expanding, becoming sharper in focus. The minds of the three very worried people around me became richer in detail— a child’s drawing becoming a life-like portrait. I could sense the small animals cowering in buildings three hundred meters away. I could sense Metalhead, on the bridge, stomping toward us as he fired. His mind was still very faint and distant, but it was there.

{This is why they don’t wear masks, Mari.}

{What?}

{The Gold Robes. This must be how they feel all the time.}

{You’re scaring me, Alan.}

“Ssssh,” I said in the real world, and reached out blindly to press a finger against her mask’s filter. “No need to be scared. I’m a Good guy, remember?”

The explosions had stopped.

“Eh?” Kross grunted. “He going Monster on us or something?”

“Krossss,” I purred, grinning behind my mask. I could not see her face, blinded as I was by the blood and the tape, but I enjoyed the way her mind recoiled from me. “Your son is coming. He’s coming to kill us.”

“All right, I’m taking his gun,” Kross said.

“Good idea,” Bobby said.

Firm hands pinned my arms in place as my gun and its sling were ripped from me. I didn’t resist.

I giggled. “You’re being silly. I don’t need a gun to kill you.”

I said it because it was simply true. In my addled state I didn’t hear the threat in my own words.

“You keep talking like that,” Kross said, “and I’ll put a bullet in your head.”

I laughed again. It all seemed so ridiculous— us bickering like this as doom stomped towards us. “Okay. All right. Fine. I won’t speak unless spoken to.”

There was a pause, and I felt like there must have been an exchange of meaningful looks and gestures.

“Alan,” Bobby said gently. “Where’s Metalhead now?”

“Almost at the gate. But don’t worry. Mari and I can kill him.” I patted around to find Mari’s arm and gave it a squeeze. “Especially if you let some magic in too.”

“Mari, I really don’t recommend that,” Bobby said. “But do still think the two of you can take Metalhead out from here?”

Mari remained silent for a while. {Are you really okay? Alan?}

{Mari. You can trust me. I’m still me.}

“Mari?” Bobby prompted.

“Yes,” Mari said. “Need get… closer.”

“All right,” Kross grunted. “I can get him closer. Maybe best the rest of you aren’t standing next to me though. Get out the back and loop around.”

I was pulled to my feet, Mari taking my hand to guide me away.

“MUM!” the shout came from outside. Muffled now, but more raw and human—Kross’s bullet must have broken his speakers. “Come out you bitch!”

“It’s over, junior,” Kross spat back. “All your little friends are gone.”

“I can find more, after I’m done grinding you into paste.”

Mari and Bobby shepherded me out of the building’s side door.

“Will you two be okay?” Bobby asked. “Stupid question. Be careful, all right?”

I felt a squeeze on my shoulder.

“Thanks Bobby,” I said. “You be careful too. You’re nice and very attractive.”

I could feel the heat of their blush blooming in their mind. Hot embarrassment pulsed out from Mari too, despite the dire circumstances we were in.

Their reactions didn’t bother me, not in that moment.

“Right. Okay.” Bobby cleared their throat. “I’m going to loop around the other side. If it looks like it’s not working, I’ll use my final green grenade. If I shout, you need to run, you understand?”

“Loud and clear.”

They patted me on the back one last time, and then they were gone.

Mari tugged on my hand, dragging me forward. {Was now really the best time for that?}

I grinned. {We might die soon.}

She didn’t respond to that. What response is there to such things, really?

Metalhead was closing in on Kross’s hiding spot. “Get out here Mum, I want to see the look on your face when I blow you up.”

“Why don’t you come to me. What? You actually afraid of me? Still?” Kross’s laugh was pure evil.

Rage flared in her son’s mind, and his barrel whirred. “I’m not afraid of anything. You hear me?”

I don’t think he could see or hear very well inside that helmet of his, especially after it had been hit by the over-sized bullet, or perhaps Mari was just a lot stealthier than I had expected. Either way, we crept into a blind-spot on his flank. We got close.

{Ready?} Mari’s hand was tight around mine, grinding my finger-bones together.

{Ready.}

I let my consciousness flow out, like oil spreading through water, and wrapped it around Metalhead’s raging mind. I felt stronger than I had ever felt. As I constricted, I expected to crush his mind entirely.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

Instead, it shrank away from me, grew denser, harder. It wasn’t the regimented defense of the Gold Robes or their hounds, but it wasn’t the complete panic I’d encountered when attacking the Sweeper, either. This has happened to him before.

“Argh, get out!” He roared in the real world. “No more!”

I tightened my grip on him, exerting all the pressure I could. {Mari, now!}

Every time Mari hit someone, she got a little better at it. Her previous attacks had been psychic headbutts, or punches, or spears. This was a bullet. A ball of hatred packed so densely that it almost had a gravitational pull. The shell around Metalhead’s mind crumpled as if it was burnt paper.

“No!” He screamed in both realms.

I flowed into him, smothering his mind with my own.

Scenes of his, mine, our, past assaulted me.

The tongue lashing a young Kross gave me for some crime or other. I don’t recall what— I always seemed to do something wrong. The beating she gave me after she’d caught me and my best friend stealing. I was already taller than her by then, but she’d used a club. The look on that same friend’s face when I shot him dead. She forced me to do it. The look on her face, that day by the river, when I finally played my hand, the smugness melting away to disbelief. The kick of the gun, the way her body twitched as a bullet punched through her stomach. Her final words before she fell into the water: “can’t even kill me properly.”

Turned out she’d been right. But she was here, now, just inside the building before me. All I had to do was step inside and backhand her into oblivion with a power-assisted fist. Or should I? It was boiling in that armor after firing the gun for so long. My face was drenched with sweat. Perhaps I would be able to think more clearly after I took my helmet off.

Yes. That was what I should do, take my helmet off.

{I wouldn’t advice that,} a voice said. Dark and cool and strange.

Alan and Metalhead both flinched away from the voice, in separate directions. I became me again, and he him, both behind the same set of eyes. We floated there, two sparse nebulae drifting in the space between the dark void of unconsciousness and the meat of reality.

We weren’t alone. There was someone inside Metalhead. A consciousness within a consciousness. Made from the same material but… separate somehow. And horrifyingly familiar.

{Why hello there, child,} the Gold Robe said, oozing from the depths of Metalhead like pus from a sore. {I thought you might turn up here eventually.}

{What on earth is happening?} I stammered.

The part of Metalhead that was still Metalhead was all terrified icy fog. {I don’t know. I don’t know. What is this?}

{Oh you have so much to learn, young one,} the Gold Robe purred. {We reasoned it would only be a matter of time before you started poking around in minds, and this one seemed practically destined to be invaded by you at some point. You or your delightful little companion, who I imagine will be barging in here any moment.}

{But how can you be here? Inside a person like this.}

{We’re all just paint on a canvas, child. If you know how, you can smear us around and make something new with the same colors.}

{What is he saying?} Metalhead sputtered. {You know what? I don’t care. Get out! Get out!}

His flailing achieved as much as a man trying to run from his own legs. The Gold Robe didn’t even bother to address him, speaking only to me.

{You see, don’t you child, the things we could teach you. What you could become.}

{You… painted over part of Metalhead? Made him you.}

The parasitic consciousness hummed with satisfaction. {You do see.}

If I still had a stomach, it would have churned. The concept was sick. It broke every rule of, well, Good. To completely rob a person of who they were, to change them on such a fundamental level against their will...

{I see now Mari was right.} I threw at him {You shouldn’t be allowed to exist.}

{Oh ho ho. Such venom. I like that. But so self-righteous. Is what I’ve done any worse than the horror you just committed on the bridge? Is this any more of an aberration than murder?}

My instincts told me that, yes, what he’d done was far worse than murder. I couldn’t find a rational justification as to why, not yet. So I lashed out dumbly. {It’s sick. This is what you’ve been doing in the east, isn’t it? This sort of thing? I’m… I’m going to kill you. So that you can’t keep doing this.}

The Gold Robe’s laughter came from every direction at once. {You’re welcome to try, child. I’m sure destroying me would prove an illuminating step in your education. Be warned, if you fail, I plan to spare you, and the girl, but I will take this body and use it to dismember your useless friends as punishment for your defiance.}

Metalhead’s body, our gateway to reality, was near to us. A short mental crawl away. Though space isn’t an adequate stand in for what goes on inside minds. Through his eyes, we could see the street, the inside of his visor, the spinning barrel of his gun.

The Gold Robe began to drift towards the body, back towards control of the flesh.

Rage boiled up from inside me. I couldn’t let him do that to Bobby. Or even Kross, as terrible a mother as she was.

I didn’t say anything more, just lashed out with a blade-like tendril of mind-matter, lightning fast, aimed directly at the Gold Robe. He halted his retreat, and my attack shattered on a hastily assembled mental shell. I struck again, and again, and again. Each attack sucked more strength from me, and from the Gold Robe as he defended, our nebulae dimming.

Metalhead screamed into the void, clawing desperately for an impossible escape.

I kept up my barrage, the Gold Robe smugly defended. His technique was better, more efficient somehow, in the war of attrition, he was winning. He began to drift back towards the body. {Watch carefully, how I wield my mental power, if you pay attention, you might learn how to destroy me.}

{Shut up.} I snapped, half-exhausted already, even with the boost of energy the flecks of magic had given me. I switched tactics, and threw myself at the Gold Robe-Metalhead chimera, entangling my consciousness with theirs.

{What is this supposed to achieve? Hmm? Exhaust yourself holding me in place? I’ll simply shrug you off when you’re spent. Then I’ll kill your friends.}

If I had teeth in that place, I would have grit them. {I don’t have to hold you forever. Just until Mari gets here.}

{How charming, but where is she? I’d have thought—}

When Mari arrived, it was in exactly the manner you’d expect. She didn’t creep timidly into the space between something and nothing, or ooze in from Metalhead’s body.

She slammed into our enemy before any of the other consciousnesses had even registered her entrance. Her entire mind had forged into one continuous blade, and it cut through the Gold Robe, through Metalhead, all in one instant. One moment she wasn’t there, one moment she was, a thin white slice on the border of the none-space the only indication of how she’d got there.

The Gold Robe sputtered, his defenses failing to form in time to fend off the lightning fast strike from nowhere. Swathes of the aether-gas that made up his consciousness darkened, floated away, became nothing.

{Took your time,} I said, radiating pure joy.

{Couldn’t figure out—} Mari stabbed herself through the Gold Robe again. {—how to get in here.}

{Oh good, you’re all here.} The Gold Robe tried to project confidence, but his mind was in tatters. He lurched toward the body again, I tried to slow him, but my strength was slipping away from me, he gained ground.

{Mari! Finish him! I can’t hold much longer.}

She responded by driving herself deep into the Gold Robe. This time she stuck fast, as if he solidified around her.

{I’d really you rather not keep doing that, child.} He constricted, and Mari’s mind screamed. Her mind lost vitality, he was crushing her.

I wrapped myself around her and pulled hard, ripping her free inch by inch.

Every mind in that void was tattered and weak, one final blow from being snuffed out and banished into unconsciousness. The Gold Robe lurched again and, all tangled together, we fell into the body as one.

I was the hungry loner, and the screw-up son, and the last survivor, and the cruel master, all at once. I needed to take my helmet off. No, I needed to kill those pathetic scumbags. No, I needed to kill myself.

Thick blood streamed from my nose, my ears. I wasn’t supposed to be four things at once. It was all so confusing. So hot in there. I reached up to my head, the servos in my armor whirring.

My helmet hissed as the seal broke, and I breathed deeply of the cool air as I cast it down into the dirt. Gold dust flowed into me, in the space behind the eyes that wasn’t really there. Two took the gold into themselves, and then one took the gold from the other, and became stronger, louder.

I became that one.

{Idiots.} The dominant me crowed in triumph. {Your minds might be in here, but I’m burned into the host-brain. I’m the one connected to the meat. You’ve given me exactly what I want.}

Two of the four cowered and despaired, pushed almost into oblivion by the pressure of this new force.

One of the four whimpered out a word. It was the only one of the four mes still looking out of the eyes, the only one still interested in moving the lips. The word was, “Mum.”

The other three saw what the one had seen. Our mother. The dark barrel of her gun.

{Oh,} all of me thought. And then there was a flash, an instant of pain, then nothing.

I—me, Alan, Red—came back to my body to find it drenched in sweat. My limbs felt like lead, and there was an agonizing pressure behind my eyes. The flecks of gold were gone, burnt up in the fight with the Gold Robe. Mari’s hand was still clenched in mine, my fingers numb. She was shaking.

{Is it over?} she sent to me, very faintly. Neither of us had any strength left.

I looked up, peering through the thin sliver of vision not obscured by blood or tape. Just in time to see Metalhead’s near-headless body teeter backwards in its colossal armor. The ground shook as it pounded into the ground.

{I think it is,} I said. {For now.}

She let out a deep breath, released my hand, and collapsed against a piece of scrap metal.

“You two all right?” Kross shouted from a hundred miles away. Through my ruined visor she was a smeary silhouette. Her mind was… complicated. Numb grief, hot rage, cold fear, the electric buzz of adrenaline. The woman had just shot her only son in the head, so that made sense.

“Barely,” I croaked.

She padded over to inspect us up close. “You look like shit. Have some trouble doing your witchy thing?”

“Something like that. The Gold Robe…” I trailed off.

The Gold Robe was still out there. The real one.

One of the memories I’d stolen from Metalhead surged back to me. The Gold Robe had been there on the other side of the bridge, it had been his idea to send the Sweepers across first and hold Metalhead back. But why hadn’t he crossed too?

{Alan?} Mari asked, reading the panic in my mind.

“He’s coming. The real one. Metalhead was just a trap. He didn’t care about the Sweepers or any of the rest of this, he just wanted us to tire ourselves out so we couldn’t resist him.”

“What are you talking about?” Kross said. She took my warning seriously though, gripping her rifle tight.

“We need to get back to the gate, you need to shoot him before he gets—” something shot past me in the mental realm, grazing my mind as it passed “—too close.”

He was already here. Mari’s mind exploded in alarm at the same time as mine. I staggered to my feet and began to move, but Kross remained still as a statue.

“Kross?”

Her blue eyes shook in their sockets. Her mind was in turmoil, turning over and over, in on itself. Something else was in there, attacking her.

She tilted the rifle’s barrel back and up, but froze halfway, the pale skin about her eyes red with exertion, as if the rifle were resisting her. As if she was resisting herself. Slowly, shakily, the barrel moved toward her own chin.

“Kross!” I screamed and lunged forward to grab the rifle. She pulled back from me, but only with half her strength, and she was still a lot smaller than me. I tore it from her grip.

She stared through me, her pupils dilated wide in fear, and her right hand darted to the pistol at her hip. I tackled her to the ground, pressing a knee into her forearm,

{Help,} I sent to Mari. {We have to get him out of there.}

{Too weak to fight him again,} Mari responded. {Knock her out.}

“I don’t know how to do that,” I said, struggling against Kross. What was I supposed to do? Bash her in the head? Strangle her?

{With our minds. Attack her, not him, like when I sent you to the dark. On three.}

I had no idea if it would work, but there was no time to think of something better.

{One. Two. Three.}

Mari and I blasted our minds into Kross’s. No attempt at control or penetration this time, just raw force, like those first clumsy blows Mari had lashed out with all that time ago in the hospital. Had it really only been a week since then?

Something happened to Kross. Our blows were like lightning strikes, shocking her mind so that every particle hummed with light. It was a mind completely untested by mental attacks, and it dimmed as rapidly as it had illuminated.

In that brief moment of contact, before we could drift back to ourselves, we brushed up against something else in there, something disentangling itself as Kross’s mind inverted.

{Well done,} the alien consciousness said. It was the Gold Robe. The real one. Far clearer and stronger than the strange parasitic abomination he had burned into Metalhead. An ominous dark cloud sparkling with golden lights.

Kross’s body tensed, then fell slack, her eyes half-closed, and her mind went still.

{It worked,} I sent to Mari. As I stood, I made sure to pry the pistol from Kross’s limp hand. My body was so heavy and my head so light that I almost fell over.

Mari was still on the ground, her breathing labored. {Good. Because I really have nothing left.}

Neither did I. If the magic had expanded my perception, overexertion had had the opposite effect. I could only sense minds from the end of the street, and everything was a haze. The Gold Robe would be right on top of us before we sensed him, and apparently he didn’t even need to get that close to strike at us.

I didn’t know why he hadn’t yet. But our only chance to stop him now was with bullets. I hefted Kross’s assault rifle and began staggering toward the gate.

{Come on,} I sent to Mari. {Let’s shoot this bastard.}

I felt a weak flicker or agreement from her, that spark of rage trying to reignite the fire she’d burned with whilst storming the fortress. Even that couldn’t overcome her fatigue, but she did rise, and did follow slowly in my wake.

The Gold Robe was waiting for us at the gate. He was a bulkier man that Peter had been, and shorter, but no less monstrous. Bulging veins crept out of his tattered robe, up his neck, and over his hairless scalp. They pulsed with golden light, as did his eyes. He was stood in the open, his fingers interlaced in front of his chest.

Four enormous hounds sat on their haunches behind him, standing to attention like parade ground soldiers.

He raised his head as I approached and smiled. Only with his eyes. His entire lower jaw was missing. A stub of a tongue flapped grotesquely, as if tasting the magic-laced air for our scent.

{Nice to finally meet you face to face, brother Alan. My name is Victor.}

I responded by raising the assault rifle and squeezing the trigger.

Golden eyes flashed. My head snapped back, my vision going black. It returned a second later. I was on my knees, the rifle dropped at my feet.

{Did you really think that would work?} Victor purred.

I used my words, it was getting too difficult to use my mind even for communication, and I needed to save what strength I had left. “Ask your brother, Peter, and whoever it was my friend decapitated under the giant flower.”

{Ha! Fair enough, child.}

I felt Mari round the corner behind me, what was left of her mind spiking with murderous intent.

“Mari, don’t!” I tried to warn her, but she must have raised a weapon too, because her consciousness jolted for a second as Victor slapped it with his. She yelped and fell to the ground.

The hounds laughed to each other.

“I… kill you,” Mari said, but her voice was small and weak, no conviction behind the anger.

Victor cocked his ruined head, making a choking noise that might have been a laugh. {Perhaps one day you will. You are very strong for one so young. I have no doubt you will surpass me in time.}

“What do you want?” I spat.

{I want you to join our order, of course. Why else would I not have simply obliterated the two of you?}

“That isn’t going to happen,” I said.

{Is it not? I don’t think you have much choice.}

A sick shudder crept down my spine. “You’re going to paint over us.”

{Oh, my duplicate told you about that, did he? No, I’m not going to do anything so crude. Willing candidates are the best candidates, and variety, diversity, individuality— those things make the order stronger. If we all thought the same, we’d all make the same mistakes, only think of the same solutions.}

I didn’t need to read Mari’s mind to know what her response would be.

“Well, we’re not willing,” I said. “So what now?”

The golden jewelry hanging from his neck jangled as he shrugged his heavy shoulders. {Then I’ll just reach in and make some minor adjustments.} He held up a hand, his thumb and index finger pinched together. {You seem to have an overgrown sense of self-righteousness, that can go, and all that empathy too— useless. Come, Alan, you could be a very powerful man within the order, and one day the order will control the whole world. We are the future, you see, people like us.} He patted a gnarled hand against his chest, then outstretched it to the two of us.

“I’m not interested in power,” I said.

{No?} Victor pointedly turned to stare over his shoulder, at the mangled bodies that littered the bridge. His dangling tongue flapped grotesquely. {Did you not just overthrow the strongest Tribe in the city?}

“We had to, they wouldn’t stop chasing us. And they were murderers.”

{So you killed them because they abused the power they had.}

“Yes.”

{So you’re the one who should decide who gets to do what with their power? It sounds to me like you’re very interested in power, Alan, you just don’t want to admit that to yourself.}

“I…” I didn’t know what to say to that. Of course I had feelings about how power should be used, I knew Good from Bad and I would act on that if I got the chance. Who wouldn’t? But then there was that prophecy, how I’d started to believe it, how Mother (who, let’s face it, was probably just a very sick part of my subconscious) kept telling me how great and Good I was.

Perhaps he was right. Perhaps I did want power.

“Shut up!” Mari said, pulling herself to her feet. “Shut up! Fuck off!”

She perhaps didn’t have much of a vocabulary yet, but clearly enough of Kross had rubbed off on her for her to make her point. Her words were still clumsy and mispronounced, but there meaning was crystal clear to me.

“You bastards chased my family from their home. You bastards are why they are dead.” The flames of her rage had found a way to reignite. She stood tall now, proud, despite her exhaustion, her small, shaking, hands balled into fists. “I will kill you or I will die but I will never join you.”

Victor raised hairless brows, unimpressed.

I drew in a deep breath, then pulled myself to my feet. “What she said. Fuck off.”

Perhaps Kross had rubbed off a little on me too, but it wasn’t just blind defiance that made me reject Victor’s offer. I did want power, I realized that now, I always had. Perhaps everyone does. But I wanted power because I knew what it was like to have none, because I didn’t like the way the world was, because I wanted to put a stop to all the Bad, make it Good, and what the Gold Robes were doing… I couldn’t think of a worse Bad.

{Very well then. Let me offer one more thing before you take your noble last stand. If you look behind you, you’ll see your friend… Bobby, is it?} We both whirled to find Bobby stood a stone’s throw away, in the middle of the railroad tracks. They were cradling something in their hands.

“Bobby?” I called, but they didn’t respond. I spun to face the Gold Robe, striding towards him. “Let them go!”

The four hounds surged forward, snapping and snarling, to from a wall of teeth and claws between me and their master.

{Gladly. If you submit, that is. They can even come with us. You can be together, if that’s what you want. They really do like you, you know, and if that changes once you accept my offer, well… we can always fix that.}

I almost choked on my own rage and disgust. “Don’t. You. Dare.”

{Alternatively, I can have them pull the pin on that nasty grenade, and we can all watch that appealing face of theirs melt through their filter. Your choice.}

My head swam, the world spinning. It was too much. Too horrible of a choice. I couldn’t let that happen to Bobby. I couldn’t join the Gold Robes. But if I fought, I had no chance of winning. The Gold Robe had made sure of that, tiring us out so thoroughly before he even…

Something clicked into place, the same way it had before I’d used the Lawbringer, and I knew what we had to do.

He had tired us out, he had removed all other complications, and only shown himself once he knew victory was assured. Even then, he was still trying to coerce us, threatening our friends. Why would he bother if he could overpower us as easily as he claimed?

He feared us. He knew we could still win, somehow. There was something he had thought of that we hadn’t. But what?

If he tried to make Bobby pull the pin, they could resist him. Kross had managed it. Only for a few seconds, but it had been enough. Still, we didn’t have any energy left to fight him. Unless…

“All right. All right,” I said. “You win. Just don’t hurt Bobby.”

“Alan?” Mari’s voice full of betrayal. “What?”

Victor’s mind glowed with smugness. {There. I knew you could see sense.}

“Why fight it anymore? You’ve made it impossible to refuse you. And I’m so, so, tired. I just want the people I care about to be safe.”

{Yes. Exactly. You put up an admirable fight, but there’s no shame in admitting when you are beaten.}

“Alan! Nay. Don’t listen.”

I turned to Mari, my back to Victor. “Aren’t you sick of it Mari? Aren’t you tired? I know I am.” I pointed to myself with a thumb and stared into the space where her eyes should have been, behind the black visor. I didn’t dare think about what I wanted her to understand too hard, lest Victor catch it.

Slowly, I raised that thumb to my chin, hooking under the rubber lip of my mask. “I’m so tired. Too tired to go on. Certainly too tired to win this fight.”

She went very still, then inclined her head ever so slightly. I had to have faith that she’d understood.

“I’m tired of eating scraps, I’m tired of hiding from those stronger than me, I’m tired of running. I’m tired of wearing this stupid mask.” I ripped it from my face, letting in fall behind me. Cool air caressed my face, and I drew in a deep breath.

This wasn’t the desperate gulp of half-contaminated air I’d gotten before, but a true, chest swelling lungful. Magic poured into me, the gold dots so densely packed they were almost a liquid. My mind bloomed around them, color rushing back from where it had faded to limp gray.

My perception sharpened once more. I could feel Bobby’s terrified captive mind, Kross’s unconscious form slumbering, Thunder, lurking on the far side of the bridge.

Thunder?

Yes. I was surprised as you are. Thunder. Our stalker, the one who’d followed us from a distance on the return journey. With my new sharpened perception, it was obvious. He’d survived, somehow, and there was something different about his mind. It was bigger, for one thing, but more complex too, more human. The Gold Robe must have noticed him, too, but what was one more animal mind lurking on the edge of a kill site?

Now there was something. Something that could tip the odds in our favor. Somehow.

When I turned to face Victor again, my face was creased with pleasure. I thought I saw him lean back a little.

I continued to ramble, buying time as my strength flowed back by the second, but it wasn’t entirely an act. The elation I was feeling could not be contained.

“Because we don’t need these masks, do we? People like us? What kills others just makes us stronger. Evolution, that’s what it is. All the animals out here aren’t immune because they’re animals. They’re immune because the weak ones died out. They didn’t have masks to protect them.”

{You see it now. You see what the future holds.}

My strength restored, I switched back to speaking with thoughts. {Oh. I see it all right. Thank you, Brother Victor, for showing me the truth of things.}

{You’re very welcome, child.}

I bared my teeth, reveling in the novelty of an unmasked face. {I know what the future holds now, and you have no place in it.}

His mind reeled. {What?}

I did several things in rapid succession.

I pressed a message into Bobby’s mind. {Hold on. Hang in there. Trust me.} Along with it poured warm affection and half-mad hope. Their mind was still suffocating under Victor’s, but I felt it tense.

To Thunder, I sent {Help Girl, Thunder. Help Girl.}

{Alan?} he responded. He’d never used my name before.

{Help Mari, Thunder. Help us!}

His response was an affirmative one, but so much more complicated than a ‘yes.’ Love, wrath, and, surprisingly, iron-hard duty burst from the horse’s mind. He charged onto the bridge, galloping towards the confrontation.

To Mari, I simply sent the word, {now.}

And then I threw my mind at Victor’s. He exploded out to meet me, refusing to be enveloped, and we tangled together in the space between our bodies.

{You fool,} he growled. {I’ll tear your apart and put you back together in my own image.}

His strength was overwhelming, even with magic flowing though me. He folded me back on in myself, crushing down on me. I fumbled around for whatever connection he had to Bobby but couldn’t grasp it. In the real world, my body slumped to its knees, my vision blurring. I’d just have to hope Bobby managed to hold a little longer.

{Stop talking about it and just do it,} I threw at him, {if you can.}

The pressure shifted, then suddenly released.

{Oh no you don’t!} He threw out another tendril to strike at Mari. She was glowing with golden light now too, and if he’d struck at her she must have gone for a gun.

{He’s strong,} she grunted.

{We can beat him,} I said.

{We can.}

{Ha!} Victor’s thoughts were strained, but still strong. {You won’t want to beat me once I’ve performed my work.}

Thin tendrils of his mind lanced out, striking deep into me. My vision blurred further. The hounds rushed forward to snap their jaws in my face. I wasn’t for eating, but I was still the enemy of their pack.

{Hmm, a lot of guilt here, about all that murdering you just did. That’ll slow you down once you have time to process it.}

{Stop.} I focused on that guilt, let it overwhelm me, forced myself to imagine the look on that angry Sweeper boys face. Had I killed his father? His mother?

The tendrils twisted, the guilt began to pour away.

{Stop!}

What was there to be guilty about, really? They were just Sweepers, just wasteland trash, mere meat waiting to be dominated, spent easily to achieve a goal.

The tendrils twisted once more. {Poof! Gone. I did you a favor. You’re welcome.}

It was true. I remembered feeling guilty about all those Sweepers we’d slaughtered, but it was a distant thing now, not something I felt in the present.

{STOP!}

{What’s this?} Victor said. {Childhood trauma. A lot of it. You know, with a different perspective this would make you see things my way. It should have awoken you to the absurdity of morality, not anchored you to it. Ah, here we are. The missing piece of the puzzle. Your Mother.}

I railed against him, trying to push him out. {You stay away from her.}

{There’s quite a bit of space reserved for her in here, isn’t there? An unhealthy amount. Isn’t it time to move on?}

I threw everything I had at him. It wasn’t enough. He barely budged.

{I’ll just rip that tumor and then—} He stopped still, cold fear spreading through him into me. {What is this?}

My blurred vision sharpened. Sharpened enough to see Victor’s eyes widen in fear.

“You stay away from my son,” Mother said. She was standing between us, black hair blowing in the wind. Her back was to me like always, but Victor, he was staring right into her face.

The jaw-less man made a choking sound and stumbled back at step. {What? What have you done? What are you?}

The hounds fell back, high pitched whines pealing out of their throats. They could see her too, everyone could see her. As mother strode forward, they fell over themselves to get out of her path, then turned and ran, tearing away across the bridge.

She pulled back her fist, and then lunged forward and thrust it thought Victor’s chest, passing through him as if he wasn’t there. His consciousness jerked, curling up, and his grip on me and Mari loosened. Only a fraction, not enough to let me free, but somewhere distant, I felt Bobby’s mind gasp in relief.

Victor’s fear quickly turned to rage. He looked up from where the immaterial limb had punctured his chest. {It doesn’t matter what you are, I’ll destroy you anyway.}

Mother was blasted back by an invisible force, a chunk of her shoulder shattering into black dust. Some dark corner of my mind disappeared, almost too subtly to notice. She swung back at him with her other arm, her nails clawing through his mutilated face.

Victor recoiled in agony, but Mother’s hand crumbled to nothing a moment later.

“Mother, stop,” I said. “He’ll destroy you.”

“It’s okay, Alan,” she said, through gritted teeth. “This is what I’m here for.”

“What are you saying?” I pleaded.

{What the hell is going on?} What little of Mari’s mind that wasn’t fighting Victor was a sprawling mess of confusion.

“I’ve died for my child once. I’ll happily do it again.”

Tears welled in my eyes. I choked on my words. “Mother, please, don’t go, not again.”

She fell to her knees, dragging Victor down by the throat with her remaining hand. Her form was blurry now, bits of her were missing. There was no blood or gore. It was like she was a painting that had half washed away. “It’s okay, Alan, you don’t need me anymore.”

“I’ll always need you.”

“No. No you don’t. You have others now. Other people to love.”

{And people—} Victor grunted, and more of Mother fell away, more parts of my mind fell away. {—call me insane.}

“Mother! No!” I tried to crawl towards her, but my body moved as if underwater with Victor pressing down on me so hard.

She finally fell away from Victor, landing hard on the ground, and looked up at me. I met her gaze. For the first time, for the last time: I met her gaze. The glistening raw red muscle of the skinless face, the bulging, lidless, eyes. The face that no living person could have. The only face I can ever remember her having.

It smiled a lipless smile at me, and my heart swelled with love.

“Goodbye, Alan. Never forget how much I love you.”

I reached for her.

She disappeared, leaving a void in my mind where she had been.

Victor’s mind shuddered in relief. He clutched his face as if it had been mauled in the physical realm too. {Now that’s something I’ve never seen before. You really are a fascinating specimen. But, in the end, your secret weapon was a mere distraction.}

{Oh, of course}, I thought back at him, dryly. I wanted to feel smug, but I’d lost too much. {This has all been a distraction.}

Victor frowned, the truth failing to dawn on him. He might have been much stronger than us, even with our masks off, but it had taken all of his concentration to just hold us in place. There was nothing spare to keep his senses open for new threats.

New threats like a half-ton of horse smashing into him from behind.

{What?} Victor’s mind exploded in pain as he fell, his heavy frame wheezing as the air was forced from his body. He grasped for his new opponent, but Mari and I held him fast, forcing his mind to stay in his skull.

Thunder stood before the crumpled man with an almost regal poise. The way horses look in portraits of long dead generals.

Love poured from him, and Mari, and even from me, all mixing together in and overwhelming maelstrom.

Pure confusion was what rose from Victor. {What?}

{I am a horse,} the horse declared, simply, proudly, as he raised one of his back legs.

Victor had enough time to think, {what?} one more time before a hoof shattered his skull.