“What’s your name?” I ask, trying my hardest to keep a straight face.

Surprise turns to blankness, and then in turn to a face so judgmental, I’m upset to see it on my own face. She points a clawed finger at me, and then back at herself, slow enough that it toes the line between miming and insulting.

“No, I get that, but we can’t both be Brooke, right? We may have started the same, but we’re definitely different individuals at this point.”

She tilts her head in thought, but instead of stopping at a slight angle, she just keeps twisting, corkscrewing her neck as it elongates. My entire body shudders, but I can’t look away; this moment too important for my squeamishness to ruin. She stops twisting, apparently having had enough after three spins and a whole meter of additional neck.

Her hands, their clawed forms somehow acceptable to my desensitized self now, point at me before balling them into fists and jerkily swapping their positions, keeping her wrists pointed at each other. What is—is that sign? I can’t believe the first time I get to use ASL in a real-life scenario is to translate for myself.

I copy her hands as I recall those classes from years ago. “You… Change? Me change? You want me to be the one who changes my name?”

She nods, bobbing her now-unwound neck at me. I wish she wouldn’t do that. “I’d prefer not to, as everyone outside knows me as Brooke,” I say, fingerspelling my own name as I say it.

She signs back at me, but with two sets of hands this time, one of the sets poking out from her back like a pair of membraneless wings. Two of her hands touch the tips of her fingers to the base of her horns, before pulling away, leaving only her thumb and pinky out on each hand.

"Why,” I say, watching her other hands as they click together, their sharpened tips brushing together as she makes two “ok” signs and brings them together for what I’m pretty sure is “important.”

Her more humanoid hands act as if they are picking something up and moving it away, while the ones on her back make the easy-to-recognize three-fingered “no” sign.

“No… no leave?” I ask, nervousness rising in my throat. “I had a feeling this might be a point of contention, but I didn’t think we’d get to it so soon.”

Face erupting into a grin, she shows the teeth that have grown far sharper while hidden behind her lips.

There’s a vindictiveness in her expression. A desire to hurt, that—while understandable—marks a decisive line between the people we’ve become this past month. The common ground I’d hoped to find is there, but it’s derived from our stubbornness and refusal to give up anything to the other.

“You’re certain that’s the path we have to go down?” I ask, and her grin fades, suspicion at my confidence giving her cause for alarm. She is me, so she knows me. I’m not great at bluffing, most of all to myself.

Her barbed tail stabs into the mirror, going straight through it rather than shattering it on its way to me. I don’t bother dodging; even if I thought she could hurt me there, she wouldn’t make it to me in time.

I wake up.

Roosevelt looks in my direction from the tank he’s standing in front of. I wonder how he knew I was awake. I don’t snore when doing that ritual, right?

“You didn’t snore.”

“Don’t read my mind.”

“I didn’t need to. Come here; this one will suit our purposes just fine.” He says, beckoning me with one of his hands while the other three weave glyphs onto the cylindrical glass of the aquarium.

I pull myself up with the handle of a nearby bench, my arms wobbly from my mental exhaustion. This has been a hell of a week. Between the emotional toll of everything going on in and outside of my life as a Vanguard, and the literal life-or-death scenarios I keep running into, calling myself burned out would be a gross understatement.

“I’ve got the connection; do you think she’ll follow?” I ask, stepping up beside him.

“Do you?”

“Probably. I’ve gotten better at acting, and she tried to stab me.”

An all-consuming hunger presses down on us, the other-Brooke bearing her will upon my little bastion of the mind. The entire floor is flooded an entire two inches at this point, but I no longer care about the pearlescent liquid that's seeping into my shoes. I press my fingers to my temples as I reinforce my mind, taking everything I’ve learned so far and blocking her out.

The sound of hundreds of fists bang against the building's exterior like a furious rain, but I hold strong, adding more support wherever she finds a weakness. It’s easier than expected, too; my training with Menagerie simplifying the process significantly.

“She’s getting desperate,” Roosevelt states, pressing one of his palms to the roof, his tentacles undulating anxiously.

“Should I do it?” I ask, confident that if I’m the one who has to decide the timing, I’ll pull the trigger too early.

His response isn’t verbal; instead, he holds up both of his right hands, counting down from his eight fingers. He doesn’t even make it to six before I feel my walls buckle, the ceiling cracking, and the fluorescent lights exploding into sparks.

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“Now!”

I release the mental defenses I’d set up above the tank, letting other-Brooke’s attacks burst through the roof and spill into the aquarium. A deluge of ink, arms, and faceless mouths writhe against the cylinder of reinforced glass as Roosevelt's fingers zip across his starry ritual and seal her in fully.

We both watch in silence as this morbid representation of my other self wails and slams herself against her prison. Roosevelt flicks a couple of glyphs at their struggles, adapting the ritual on the fly to exhaust her further. It takes what feels like ages, but she does finally still, settling into a murky bog of miasma. Glaring eyes lurk within, but it’s hard to be intimidated when she’s packaged like a can of soda.

I glance over at Roosevelt; his skin returned to its normal leathery state. Well, normal for this version of him, at least. “You look way more relieved than I expected; weren’t you confident this would work?”

“It is not often that my existence is genuinely at risk of becoming undone. Under normal circumstances, a contractor will outlive their Vanguard and move on to a new host. I am reluctant to admit it, but this is the closest I have come to what you’d consider death in nearly a century.”

I stifle a gasp, placing my hand on his out of concern. “That must be terrifying! Are you doing okay mentally? Emotionally?”

His crocodile eyelids flip up as he blinks at me blankly. “I am quite alright, Vanguard. It is you who should be receiving concern for your own experiences these past weeks. I promised you a much less dangerous life when you first asked me what being a Vanguard is like, and for that, I apologize.”

I cross my arms, indignancy in my tone. “Just because I’ve had it rough too doesn’t mean you don’t need care. And forget all that nonsense from the beginning; it’s pretty clear things have been taking a turn since you all lost Silo. Nothing’s gonna go as expected until someone fills the hole he left.”

His flinch is subtle, but he’s large enough that I catch it pretty easily. I can tell there’s a feeling of loss and that no one can fill that hole, but that’s why I didn’t mention myself as that person. I just know how grieving people can be. They won’t let anyone occupy that space for them even if it hurts them and their surroundings.

I don’t make him finish the response he’s been formulating, looking back at the tank. The murky water has coalesced into the Brooke from the mirror, though only a couple of her mutations remain. Her neck is back to its normal length, and the extra arms are gone, but both pairs of eyes glare at me from beneath her antlers, betraying her ire.

“Sealing myself in like this sits really terribly in my stomach,” I mutter.

He perks up a bit, or at least I think he does. It’s still difficult to read this form without our link telling me how he’s feeling. “I would be more concerned if it didn’t. It is an unfortunate situation, but if she had bested you, she would have been obliterated regardless. This is the optimal solution with the tuh’lyem provided.”

I’m busy trying to work out what a “tuh’lhem” is through context clues when I suddenly feel like someone’s stuck a massive vacuum cleaner hose to the top of my head.

“Bweah?”

“BrOOkE? cAN Yo– EAr uS?” Catherine’s voice asks, blasting the question into my mind at various echoing volumes.

I clutch my already-pounding head as I fumble around mentally for some sort of volume control or off button. “Brooke here! Very alive! Use few words! Very loud!” I shout, having no idea whether they can hear me.

Roosevelt rises to his feet, his arms cracking like dried mud as he gets up. “They must have finally gotten the Tab’Yale-A on your head. I’d always wondered what it felt like from the inside.”

“Jarring and obnoxious?” I respond, still watching other-Brooke out of the corner of my eye.

“In all fairness, this isn’t just som—”

“siTuaTION?” Chassis voice interrupts, sending a full-body twitch through me.

“...Obnoxious isn’t a totally inapt descriptor.” Roosevelt acquiesces.

I make sure he doesn’t miss my smug look as I shout back to the older Vanguard. I’d go to the jellyfish display to actually see them, but I’m still paranoid that something is going to happen over here.

“I’ll save the full recounting for when I’m not still stuck in my own head, but the gist of things is that Roosevelt isn’t the only resident in Brooke-lyn anymore. I’m not in any danger now that we’ve sealed her in a fish tank, but I still don’t know how to reconnect my consciousness with my body.”

I wait for a response, bracing myself for the sound to slam into my eardrums, but the assault never comes. Not that I relax, mind you; I know how this works. As soon as I turn to ask Roosevelt what to do, they’re going to rupture my poor eardrums.

So I wait.

And wait a little longer.

Roosevelt, looking hesitant to speak but not committed to silence like I am, raises a finger, as if asking the world to do it now rather than interrupt him after he starts speaking.

Taking their continued silence as a sign, his facial tentacles raise and—I’m assuming—his mouth opens as he says to me, “I will be able to assist with your body-mind dissonance, but ensuring your alter-ego remains contained takes precedent over—”

“rooSEVelT shOULD KNow the requiRED TechNiqUE.” Catherine’s voice says, shouting over his explanation of that exact thing.

A snort escapes my nose at his response, his coiled tentacles leaving him looking like a puckered octopus. He did kind of ask for it, though. Some statements are just requests to have fate kick you in the teeth. Like, “It sure is nice weather today" or “Nothing is going to stop me from getting Benny’s ice cream on my way home.”

I frown; the thought of Benny’s reminding me that I haven’t had any since I signed on to be a Vanguard. “We’ll work it out, in that case. Do you think anybody could get me some Benny’s? It’s been kind of a rough day at this point.”

This time it’s Revision's voice who calls out, his already distorted voice doing a number on my ears as it’s transitioned directly into my mind. “eaSILY Done. juSt TEXteD mEL.”

I also want to apologize to him for nearly letting my other myself take a bite of out him, but that can wait until I’m flesh and blood again. Definitely not doing this back-and-forth thing any longer than I have to.

Other-Brooke leans her head against the glass, her antlers making a thunk as they bonk against it. It startles me a bit, as this is the first real movement she’s made since coelescing into a more physical form. A simmering anger is visible in her eyes, more like a bed of coals than the inferno I expected her to be feeling toward me.

Roosevelt slides his fingers through the air deftly, narrowly missing his other hands as he weaves the stars together in a complex three-dimensional constellation. “She’s given up trying to break my seals, for now. I have no doubt she’ll find something to chip at later, but my work will last more than long enough for me to get back here after we fix you up.”

Despite the good news, I’ve got a hard time feeling great about it. “...Is she going to keep suffering in my stead?” I ask, stepping up to the tank again.

His constellation flattens, and he pushes it onto the glass, wrapping it around the cylinder perfectly and linking the stars on each end. It isn’t until it’s completed that he responds, and I’m not sure if it's hesitation or focus that delays him.

“She will, yes.” He says, flopping backward onto a decorative bush. “But with the forces at play, neither you nor she have the means to stop it. If she takes control, you’ll be killed by the Vanguard. If we somehow separate the two of you, you’d die from the chthonic impact on your mind. It’s fatalistic, but this might be a permanent arrangement.”

Taking that in feels like swallowing a jagged stone, and I bite my lip as I think. “There’s nothing at all that can be done? What if I met that entity again? Could it help?”

“Brooke, do not—under any circumstances—seek one of them out. Their interference is the main reason we’re in this situation to begin with.” He commands, deflating after he realizes his own tone. "Apologies; I did not intend to raise my voice. One of humanity's greatest hubris is assuming that other creatures think the way they do. We do not. The creature you interacted with regards you less than you would a dust mite. A momentary entertainment beneath a microscope.”

I lower my eyebrows, having been a little shocked at his initial shout. I don’t think he’s ever spoken to me like that before, so I’m left a little off-kilter. "That's... fair. I don’t think I would have; it’s just all I could think of at the moment. Sorry.”

“You’ve done nothing to apologize for. The fault is mine. I’ve simply seen too many Vanguard lose themselves to the pull of powers they can’t comprehend. Now come, we can discuss this later, once I’ve finalized this seal.”