The scrub rustles with anger, upset that we have trespassed on what was never ours to take. I stand my ground against the windy prairie and the crackling gives way to a jackrabbit, who is twitching nose and fear. It's not one of us, which I can tell because I can tell, and so I grab it in my paws and wrestle it to the ground. It kicks against my side until I bite it in the neck. I bite it in the neck again and it gives up, dizzied by the effort of living, and I relinquish all the stillness it will ever need into its body.

The void echoes out behind me, promising me all of the empty. I can hear her there, wanting, needing, trying to pull herself out of the space she no longer exists in. I separate, letting the cat in the grass be a cat in the grass. It can only see what is there, and not the things that should exist and no longer do. The space where Angel was is one that will never be filled, but abscesses are more dangerous than absences. If a nail is ingrown, you pluck it out of your body.

The wild type lifts its head and sniffs around for sun. Her warm hands massage my head, reminding me that sometimes it is okay to be touched. Not everything has to feel like hurt. Her hurt. Hands on my chest. Shoulders. Guiding me forwards.

Behind me the house is a big brown mountain, smelling of oak and wet wood. I approach it with my tribute and drop the rabbit against the doorstep, pushing it forwards.

Kali opens the door. "You're kidding."

I jump between her feet and race into the house with my heart pounding. Red is on the floor, so I move the rabbit up to his face. It stares at him. The rabbit's blood on the floor is a river for his spirit to get back to us from the place where things are asleep.

Red moans, awakening from a three-day dream. Dylan bolts out of his skin. The whole room becomes a fire in a rainstorm, flickering, hissing, dancing wildly. Red opens his eyes and I see every eyelash beneath the glasses as his irises dart around, butterflies in a storm. We are a storm of frenzied excitement. Dylan grabs him around the wait. Red falls across him, his voice a ragged sob, and Kali stands over the pair.

Her eyes are the same frigid color they've always been, but fish swim beneath the surface of the twin lakes of her irises. "We thought you were dead."

Red grips the place where the lightning went through him. "Trace healed me. Where is she?"

Dylan sucks in a breath, looking at Kali. "They might be... gone?"

I can see all the little threads that hold Red together untangling themselves and going back in the wrong way, fraying into knots. Red's fingers seize his head with wolf hunger and he bends down over himself. "Something had to happen when I got out. Of course something happened. I was an idiot to think for a second everything could have been okay without me..." He looks up at us, back to Red of the riverbanks, Red whose words are the wall that has been breached. "You realized they'd leave, didn't you?"

"Does it matter?" Kali is venom and storms on the bank.

"Of course it-- Kali, every member of the group is everything. We're nothing unless we're all of us."

Kali's eyebrow raises. I see all the snake in her coiling as she hisses, "Glad to see you're back to normal. If you don't mind, I'm going to go hunt down the middle kids now. Make sure that Mimsy is out of the room before you start screwing on the dinner table of the room of the man we killed."

"Killed?" asks Red as Kali dances out of the room, hips swaying.

Dylan's eyes harden and I remember why he could have been one of the worst of all of us. "No one is ever going to know that he died. We could burn this place down before we leave. It will look like a long, unfortunate accident."

"You killed a man?" Red repeats. "Dylan..."

Dylan puts a hand to Red's face, and Red leans into it. He is going to fall over again. I back out of the room, fur bristling as I prance back in cat form. I can see the momentum of the whole world, turning, pushing Red forwards into Dylan. "I want to be better than them, but you know that deep down, I'm not," Dylan says, leaning right back in. "Show me a jumpy, paranoid, animal, who won't kill what bites their neck first. Tell me that the last thing a shot man desires isn't to fire back."

"You weren't dying."

"Wasn't I?"

"That was my fault."

"It's not your fault you can't transform."

"No, it was-- I can't fix this." Smoke.

"No one blames you for being asleep, Red."

I hear the form of one human slumping into another and then they are kind of human, but not very, and they are the thing with two hearts and four eyes that sees everything and hears and knows but wants more than anything. I don't want to touch it. The cat understands better. The cat is old enough to understand but I am still small and can't touch flesh and can't be touched at all.

The house is afflicted by emptiness. It sounds out like a waterfall. I can't be here.

"I'm leaving," I announce to no one in particular, peeking out of cat form for moments. The house answers 'okay' with its big wide doorways that are still waiting for more familiar faces to walk through and will keep waiting. Wood is constant. Trees grow up and people grow in too many ways, all around each other like Red's threads, Red's worlds, Red's rivers. Red is too human. I exit the house through an open window and go back to hunting.

Hunting is like the stick game, but the rules are easier. Things do not demand to be named. Everything knows what their role is. We are playing the game across hundreds of lives. They play the game as part of me, and when I am killed I will play the game through someone, muted infinitesimal parts glistening as embers, knowing deep under the skin in a way that never grew words or thoughts. Can I die? If so, let the predators have me instead of the worms. I demand noble existence for as long as possible. Selfishly.

The scrub cackles as it watches me, hunting. It still thinks that I'm playing two games-- playing at this, but playing, also, at being predator, at being feline. I don't like the scrub. There is nowhere to hide. Everything is dead and angry at you for being alive.

Alex crouches in the grass. He is the least dead thing. All the scents are stale, so I follow his electric voice, crouching in the bushes.

"Hello?" Alex says to the air. "Hello, testing, one-two-three? It's me, one of your, uh, one of your... One of them. I think I'm oh-six or something? That sounds like Alex."

He's wrong. He's ten. I remember when they named us. I remember the way Ms. Grace put her hand around my face and held me tight to her chest, whispering that I was her daughter, I was her child, that she would do everything in her power to protect me. Ms. Grace was so kind and so cruel, so brave, so brave, slipping me treats when no one could see, eyes full of all the pain in the world. Now I get to bring her everywhere.

I do not hear the man that answers back. "Okay. I can't tell you where we are but we are going to be leaving, soon, and um, there will be nothing there for you to find. Don't look for us. We'll just come to you. Kinda? I don't know if we can actually come to you. What if we came near you and you just interacted with us in a way that was helpful but not dangerous to us, like leaving out a bunch of food?" Alex stops. "You'd get to know you helped us out, and we're kind of like your children, I guess, if you're telling the truth about this."

I creep closer.

"I dunno man, isn't there some kinda way to protect yourself from having more kids if you don't want them? I don't know why you would make us on purpose."

"Ay. Well, we're not exactly good people. You're going to be real disappointed." He looks down at the insect shell.

I pounce on his leg.

"Mimsy! Did you hear that?" Alex asks.

I am a human but am still attached to his leg. He needs to know that he is doing the stealth incorrectly, and also, his leg fabric is whistling in the wind. I am trying to pat it down. "I heard your leg in the bush. You would be dead in heartbeats in the wild. You smell and taste like black static smoke. It's all the people stuff, all over you. Their cities. Their need." I tell him.

"I smell like a regular human," Alex says, sniffing his armpit. He sticks his tongue out. "I smell like a really gross human. You smell like a wet cat." He kicks me off his leg. "Did you really have to spook me like that? Don't you have anyone else to bother? Actually. No. Don't you have a big fat no one to bother?"

"Everything is dead," I say. "You can not eat no one. The cabinets are full of empty and we burned the dead human."

Alex's face does the crumpled leaf thing.

"I am..." I begin. I sit down. "There is a bad feeling in my gut but I'm not hungry."

"You mean like fear?"
The electric cold settles on me like a blanket. I give it a quick nod. "Alex. Are we going to... live through this?" The darkness is still behind me. "Is Angel going to come back?"

Alex tugs me in around the shoulder. I sit next to him, breath shuddering as it courses through my chest. I have not been as afraid since the moment Red died, but I do not move.

The sun shines from between two clouds.