He knew he had to work quickly. Already the symbols were beginning to fade, what life force they had drawn from him and consumed now dwindling, but he dare not touch her again to relight them. At best, he had put himself at great risk and would need to go to ground before long. At worst, he had endangered everyone in the building, depending on how badly They wanted her, and if They had known where she was before he had activated their handiwork. The sigils were more lighthouse than sealed envelopes.

Padraig pulled his battered old phone from his pocket and tried to focus the camera on her bandages, but the runes, even the most vividly red among them, were stubbornly invisible on his screen. Cursing, he tore a page out of the nurse's log on the door and snapped the pen off its chain on the accompanying clipboard.

Hastily, but as accurately as he could manage, he tried to sketch the dying ember sigils and symbols. He focused first on the ones that Morgan had obviously made herself, knowing there was a message there, knowing she had carved his name into her skin so that he would be the one to see this. She would not have understood the danger posed by the rest. Or perhaps that was unfair. She had been around a while now. Maybe she knew, and decided it was worth the risk. It was chilling to consider.

Time was forever an agent of the enemy. The fire behind the writing died as their energy was expended, leaving fading purple impressions in his eyesight like headlights on a dark road. The conversations of the family, most notably Catherine's voice rising steadily in pitch, edged closer and closer to the door.

Now he was simply scrawling, hoping it would make sense to someone. He had never bothered to learn Their language; in fact, his supervisors had forbidden it. There were some words and meanings that no good could come of even knowing. To simply allow the knowledge to exist in your mind, they had said, ran the risk of it spreading, corrupting the very memories and, in his case, living tissue around it. A literal memetic curse. But there were people who knew. Out of desperate necessity, they had been allowed to know, and they had been protected to keep it from metastasizing. He had rounds to make now. And not in good neighborhoods.

"What in all o' the hells happened here?!"

"Not right now, Bennie!" Padraig didn't even turn around as his newly materialized companion rushed to the other side of the bed. "Not exactly working with a lot of runway."

Bennie stared down at the mutilated body on the bed, so much more damage than imagined hiding beneath the bandages. Hiding within her mind.

"Have they all seen them?! The civilians?!"

"I don't know, Bennie! You're in my light!"

"But will they know?"

"Bennie, I don't even know what these damn things mean! She's a mental patient and an escaped one at that." Padraig winced at the pain he remembered seeing in Evelyn's eyes, recounting their last failed attempt at-home care. "The first responders were probably the only ones to make contact, and I'm sure they assumed it was all her own doing. Just some nutjob into cutting."

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His eyes never left the bed, his pen never stopped moving, the frantic scratching punctuating the silence as Benny paced, running his fingers through his hair as he did on the rare occasion when he was at a loss for even the most sarcastic of words.

"Jaysus, Pad, she just went off like a solar flare!"

"I am aware, Bennie."

"They probably felt her all the way in the Black!"

"I am aware, Bennie!" The scratching increased in pace. Accuracy be damned. The last tracers of those vicious markings were receding from his sight.

'"Did ya bleedin' touch her, Pad?"

Padraig slammed his pen down on the bedside table as the last traces faded. " I didn't exactly know she was rigged up like a bomb!"

The door opened, Evelyn's concerned face peering in.

"Is…is everything alright Padraig? We thought we heard…well, it sounded like you were upset, is all."

Padraig shut his eyes tightly, his head throbbing trying to reconcile everything going on in the room, reopening them with what he hoped was a reassuring look for Morgan's beleaguered grandmother.

"I'm fine, Evelyn," he said, folding and pocketing the piece of paper he had been drawing on while it was still out of her line of sight. "Anger is one of the stages of grieving, right?"

Evelyn's features immediately softened.

"Of course, dear."

"That's what I thought. I just wish I could have…could have done something, and I got upset. With her. With myself, for not being there…"

She moved into the room and hugged Padraig again, holding him close while the doctor and immediate family filed in behind them. Catherine came last, circling the room along the walls, staying as removed from Padraig as she could, stepping directly through a startled Benny in the process.

"We'll catch up later, mate, but I suggest ya be findin' a way out o' here with a quickness, no mistake." Benny gave his watch a meaningful tap and was gone. There was no slow fade, no translucence. Simply Benny, then no Benny. Only Catherine. Padraig preferred Benny.

"It's time for you to go, Padraig," she hissed, throwing him an unexpected lifeline even as she was trying to be hurtful. He glanced down at Evelyn, who pulled away slowly, set her jaw, and nodded.

"We have some awful business to attend to, dear boy. And it may be best, for all involved," she paused, a meaningful glance cast at her daughter, "if this is a matter for blood only."

"Of course, Evelyn," Padraig relented. Catherine's mouth opened to object, before realizing he had agreed, spreading instead into a self-satisfied grin. Padraig marveled at the fact that, at a time like this, her hatred for him still burned so deeply, deeper than the hidden wounds on her daughter's body, deep enough that she could find pleasure in his perceived defeat at this, the latest of all hours.

Padraig hugged Evelyn. He shook hands, exchanged condolences with those family pretending to be closest to her. He stepped directly in between Catherine and Morgan one last time. He mimed kissing her forehead and her badly swollen cheeks, taking the utmost care not to accidentally brush against her again. Realized, perhaps for the first time with absolutely clarity among the evening's drama, that this was well and truly goodbye.

He remembered her face in better times, how the sunlight would dance in her eyes and her smile would light a room. Remembered her face in worse times, how her tears would streak through the dirt and the dust, how she would bury it in his shoulder and sob for hours. Remembered the girl he had married. Remembered how she was taken from him. Remembered how it had all come to this.

And when his mind, now completely aware of the finality of the moment, could take no more memories, he turned and walked out without a word.

Out of the room, and the brief, tragic remainder of his oldest friend's life.