A sea of oil rises below our beds like the night sky. Adam's bed is empty. In my dazed state of being, it doesn't bother me as much as it should. It's just a more viscous sense of the cracks and holes and broken places that have been consuming this room for months. When I look over to Adam's bed, to see how he's handling it, I find it empty, with the covers strewn sideways and descending into the deep. Someone abandoned ship already. I slip out of the bed, walking through the darkness, which is like cool water, and open the door.

The water follows me downstairs. Someone is outside the door, waiting for me. The brisk night air is thick with the smell of old trees, and beneath that, the rank scent of whatever Ignatius grows without sunlight. I look for him in the woods, hoping to get one last glimpse of him between the trees, and Adam's hand alights on my shoulder.

"Look at this," I say. "Come on. Look at it."
"No one's there," he promises. "Come back upstairs. Go to bed."

"Won't you listen to me for once in your life? I know you can't be that obtuse. Someone's out there and it's coming for us."

"You don't know anything about me," he says. His hands tighten around my neck from both sides. Water pours around us, rising up to my ankles.

"It's a dream," I reassure myself. "It's a dream, it's a dream, it's just another dream."

"You've been dreaming for months," he says, his voice like a dozen people speaking. "If you think this is a nightmare, you wait until you see what happens when you wake up."

I tear myself from the throes of sleep into a darkened room, where my real brother is gone. I blink a few times. "Still dreaming? Seriously?" This is going too far. Shiloh?

I don't expect an answer, but I get one. Your heart is beating very fast for nighttime.

Shiloh, do most Diosite wielders get weird dreams?

No. I wouldn't call it uncommon, but it is certainly not a majority.

How do I get rid of them?

Win.

When I wake up, for real, my brother is next to me. Late that day, when we're walking, he hands me another little sheet of paper.

"I saw you crying after the funeral," I tell him. "I--" Of course I can't outright admit I read the letter. "I know something's wrong when I see it." It would be so much more noble for me to keep my mouth shut. "What's in these letters?"
"It's not any of your business," Adam says.

"It is if I'm your carrier pigeon. Why aren't you texting him?"
"Maybe because he blocked me," he says. "He's grieving."
"Right. Sorry."

Adam shrugs. "And we're here. Thanks. Bye."

I frown and pass the paper around between my fingers, letting the texture keep me grounded, as well as that repeated message, which I've brought in to every class since, always changing in content but not in message: Any day now. Things will be better. It's something I could stand to hear, I know that much. It's so nice of Adam to unintentionally do something nice for me.

Evan doesn't seem much more receptive. He reads the paper over and crumples it up, placing it at the edge of the desk. This time, while we're "working on the project", I see him press it to his face and breathe deeply. I've interrupted something way too intimate for school, I figure, but I can't find a way to get out of this chair and across the room. Obviously, nothing gets done on the project, but nothing gets done on planning, either. I end up watching Ms. Adana for long chunks of the class. She types frantically on a computer, occasionally stopping to run her hands through her hair. Teaching has to be hectic. I don't blame her.

Sometimes I wish I could help people, really help them, all of them, and when I realize I'm alone in the dark, helping myself, I don't feel like much of a hero at all. There has to be something less lonely than this. I feel selfish admitting I crave the part of the hero's life in the sun, but it has to be an incentive for some of them that people know that they were the ones who saved their lives, that people know their lives were saved at all.

Maybe I'd be making the right decision right now if other people were holding me accountable.

Amanda is, but barely. As we walk through the Veins, together, in costume, she asks, "Are you sure you want to do this?"
"It will be so easy," I promise her. "We just get in there before they do, grab the Diosite before Karen can shock Ignatius dead, and no one has to call the police. We kill every living thing in the house. It will be a field day. It will be so, so easy. Won't it? We're doing them a favor, from their perspective. We're offering to do the hard work."
"She has to know you have a plan," Amanda says.

"A plan to do the right thing? Kill me," I say.

"Compromised motives. If it really comes to it, if we have to decide between the world and ourselves, what're you going to do, Will? Let him go?"

"It won't come to that."
"Will Rosenbloom," Amanda says. "You are my best friend. I need to know that you're going to do the right thing if we have to."
"Stop calling it the right thing," I say. "It's not the right thing. It's murder. I don't do murder. None of us do murder!"

"We can't let everyone die. It's like-- it's like the train problem," Amanda says. "If you saw a train about to hit a dozen people, and you could flip a switch to make it just hit one, you would do it, because that saves eleven lives. It's not even a question. It's just math. This is so many more people, and he-- he made the train!"
"What if it was Megan?" I ask.

Amanda stops. We're right outside of Shiloh's lair, where we started, anyways. She wanted the walk more than I did. I wasn't the one who was second-guessing us. I wouldn't hesitate for a second. If I stop, everything falls apart, so I don't, and I can't. "It's not Megan. It's a stranger."
"You wouldn't do it," I say.

"Fine. We're doing it your way. You get exactly what you wanted! Just stop trying to guilt trip me," she warns. "I already told you, I'm on your side."

Karen and Garrett are inside. We expected they'd be here by now. We shuffle around each other, exchanging half-hostile glances. She expects me to honor a request made a long time ago. Shiloh has nothing against killing Ignatius, and I have nothing against the police, but between the pair of us there is a wall that only leaves one option, which is the only way it's gone since this started. Sometimes compromise means that no one gets what they want, but that's not my problem. I'm just trying to do the right thing.

"Amanda and I take bottom floor. Two separate portals?" I ask.

"You sure you two can handle bottom floor?" asks Karen.

"Amanda's our heavy hitter," I say. "It makes more sense for her to be on the bottom floor, anyways."

"Alright," Karen says. "Doesn't matter to me. Figured it might be nice to have teams who will actually hold each other accountable for the last hurrah, but we might as well paint our nails and call it a girl's night."

"Could we actually?" I ask.

"No," Karen says. "Come on, pussies, let's hustle."

We hustle. The last of the fall foliage has long since gone moldy underneath our feet. They've been decaying for a long time, but there's been no green to replace it. We exist in the liminal time between winter and spring, waiting for the good things to come. It's a silly thing to be preoccupied on, especially given circumstances, but I can't help it. The leave are wet enough to congeal to my outfit, and they plaster themselves all over me. Amanda, who is similarly being besieged by Ignatius's element before we even deal with his creation, stomps past me towards the narrow crevasse in the land, hidden by thick bramble. She swings purple paint through this, and Ignatius's branches give way. She stares back with an expression that could mean so many things, and then she keeps going.

I have to follow in behind.

Lines of fire light up the sides of the cave as we charge through. There are huge bumps on either side of the tunnel, parts of which collapse when we burn them, and it seems like everything here is dormant, in some state of pupation. It's too easy to just let them go, especially when the people involved have no regards to their own safety. We breathe in smoke and keep running. Somewhere out there, someone has to see the signal we're sending up from the woods.

The tunnel collapses closed behind us. Apparently not.

CMYK beckons me forwards. "Luna."

I have my shield raises. I jog in front of her, the pair of us keeping brisk pace through the darkness, with me ready to block an attack that never seems to be coming. We step over crackling plant bones, over burned foliage, over bits of the tree-like beings we've thrown to the ground, and for a moment, I feel, again, as if it might all be okay.

Amanda stops at the edge of the tunnel. The rot scent has been overwhelming since we entered, but now the house is full of smoke, too. A fire alarm whines somewhere in the distance. Karen and Garrett are nowhere to be seen. The gray cloud of fumes moves around the stairs, trailing upwards.

"Portal!" yells Tesla, from a backroom. She appears right in front of Ignatius just as he moves in, blocking the stairs from him. Her electricity fires wildly, and one of Ignatius's beings directs all that power right back at the ground. He gives her a knowing smirk from behind broken glasses. His red hair is a firebrand as another one of his beings charges down from above, something like a rhino combined with a thornbush, and proceeds to knock out a hole in the stairs. He's escaping around that. Garrett attempts to set up a portal between the hole and the stairs and the basement, which Ignatius takes, seemingly falling right into a trap, then swings Tesla right into it and climbs around her. "Get in here! He's getting away!"

CMYK doesn't waste a second. As the fire alarms cry out for mercy, we portal up onto the main floor, exchanging a quick flurry of long-range blows. He has one of his creations strapped to his back, still, so hitting him means contending with a range of vines that seem to be more adept at parrying than he was when they were under his control. None of the electricity does any more than shoot open a few vines. He smiles. It's too easy. "Rest of the party is here, hm?" he asks. "I told you what I was capable of. Frankly, I'm a little disappointed. You could have just taken the offer. Now I'm going to have to kill you." Succulents close in on us from all sides.

"We're going to have to switch," Tesla yells to CMYK. "Finish him off!"

They switch. Tesla begins blasting succulents across the room and Phantom and CMYK tag team, sending blasts of concentrated fire and ice throughout the room. Pictures burn, all the relics of his old life coiling into smoke. The fire alarm wails loudly. The whole room is burning on its foundations, and finally, a single blast shoots right through a portal and towards the man's face. Ignatius blocks it with several vines.

They're distracted. I should be doing something. They're distracted. I'm frozen.

"We can't do this," I realize. "We have to--" You can't retreat again.

Karen lunges for the phone.

Ignatius grabs her with several vines around the neck. Karen reels with electricity, her whole body bursting with it. She grabs the vines, wild sprays of light and fire flickering through the room, every light fixture in the vicinity flaring until it breaks (I raise my shield to deflect several shards of glass), and then she falls to the ground, the fringe of her costume smoking.

"That's enough of that," Ignatius says. Garrett lunges through a portal towards her and a vine grabs him by the ankle, drags him back through his own portal, and swings him against the carpet. Something cracks. He doesn't get up again, either. "It'll take a little more to kill any of you than it did that man, I wager. I wouldn't stress it." He speaks like he's about to exterminate some rodents. His eyes flick back towards CMYK. We stand in the broken house together, back to back, but his eyes are only on her. "Care to join them?"

"You wanted to bait us out," I say. "You knew something was up with our refusal to get the police involved, and you wanted to bait us out."
"Smart," Ignatius says. "Smart, as I expected. Someone's taking care of you, aren't they? Someone told you where I was, or at least pointed you in the right direction. Why else would you immediately assume that the other Diosite holders were hostile, or would become hostile? I don't know who that entity is. I don't know what they're capable of. I'd hate for someone to crash my party halfway through, but, well, if I want to cripple the hand, there's always the option of snapping off fingers."

"Don't you dare," she says. "Don't you dare."

"Someone's touchy. Did you lose someone?"

CMYK's brush burns with silver paint. Before I know what's happening, the pair of them are engaged in another fight. Cee is bursts of energy, noise that should have long since alerted the neighbors, and Ignatius is leading her back into the basement. I try to parry blows from several kinds of stinging plants, catching needles off the shield, or several quick bursts of liquid poison, but everything is happening fast, and more importantly, Amanda's not fighting with any kind of restraint. If I step in there, I am going to be collateral damage. Every blast that hits the floor or ceiling leaves a burning mark behind. Amanda keeps surging forwards, he keeps falling back, and I realize he's leading her into the basement.

"We can't go down there," I say. "It's a trap."
"Give me a better option," she says.

"Evacuation?"

"You can't run from everything, Luna." She brandishes her brush, but it's not towards the basement. "I've almost got him. It would be better if you-- if you stayed out of the way."

I step back. "What are you talking about?

A wall of orange paint pins me against the wall.

Amanda descends into the basement alone. I struggle, hearing distant clattering, and the house continues to tilt. I pray for the neighbors to notice us. I beg for an intervention. I struggle against the binds, harder, and swear under my breath. Some superhero. Some hero. I'm barely even a bystander. I can't even get to the bodies of Karen and Garrett-- they can't be-- this is all my fault. I could have done something. I keep hesitating when it counts. They know that I wasn't going to do anything. Other people get hurt because I step down, right? What am I supposed to take from that? The chance I had was over.

I'd do anything for a second one, but I can't even promise I'll get it.

Ignatius emerges from the basement.

"The beasts'll get her," he says. Ignatius leers over me with disappointment. His face reminds me of Shiloh's, something just approximating human, and he's not even trying that hard anymore. "It was very stupid of her to incapacitate her only ally.

I begin praying for a miracle. The shield glows under Cee's paint, but her binds are too strong for me to take alone.

Someone shoots Ignatius from the back, but it isn't Amanda. In the other room, Tesla and Phantom rise, like automatons, and behind Ignatius, a facsimile of my best friend with golden eyes rises. All three of them encroach on him with mechanical precision. Phantom drops a portal beneath him, and Ignatius retaliates by anchoring vines to the ceiling. He dodges the second hit of silver fire, causing it to burst open the back of his house. Ignatius looks at the three of them, throwing one of his succulents in the way of one of Tesla's attacks, and says, with a smile, "I was wondering what I'd have to do to bust you open."

Amanda looks back with Shiloh's empty expression. In a female voice that isn't hers, she announces, "Turn over the Diosite or we are going to kill you."
"Tell that to the police," Ignatius says. There are sirens in the distance. I can not tell you, for the life of me, if it was the noise, the alarms, or the smoke that tipped them off. As all three of them turn, Ignatius disappears back into the dark beneath his house.

A wave of blue paint floods the room, dissolving my bonds and putting out several small fires. I cough violently, but Amanda, Garrett, and Karen seem completely unaffected, even though the last two are now soaking wet. Garrett raises a hand and lowers it towards the ground, and I fall through a portal. The others encroach into the darkness.

There is nothing in the Veins but darkness. When the lights finally click on, the others are slumped in the corners, passed out, as if the whole thing were just a bad dream. Can I dream? The real question is, have I been awake at all for the past few weeks?

"What happened?" I ask.

"I had to take over for a second, there," Shiloh says. His eyes glow in the dim light. The area around us is hazy, dulled as if I'm staring at it while spacing out as hard as possible. I have to be delirious right now. I rub my eyes, but my vision doesn't improve. "They're not as receptive as you are. Otherwise, I might have been able to hold it longer."

"Hold what?"

Shiloh rubs his head against my chin. His horns softly butt my head. "It's fine, Will. Don't worry about it."

"We didn't-- did we get him?"
Shiloh shakes his head.

"Oh no. Oh no no no no-- what if she goes to the police and tells them everything we know? They probably wouldn't believe her, but we could be-- you could be in serious danger right now."
"It won't happen," Shiloh says. "We'll talk to her when she wakes up, when she's done healing. I think we can come to an understanding. Everything is going to be okay, Will. I just need you to hold out a little longer."
"But he could kill people--" I say.

"You can stop that," Shiloh reassures me. "You've been doing a good job this whole time."
"We shouldn't be doing this. We never should have been doing this."

"But you're the most qualified people for the job," Shiloh says. "You're the heroes, aren't you? Sometimes, heroes fail, but in the end, good always prevails. You have to overcome this, but on the other side, I have full confidence that you'll be able to make a recovery as a team and--"

"You're lying," I whisper.

"Will," Shiloh says.

"You've... always just been saying exactly what I want to hear. Whatever will get you what you want." It dawns on me that I am not here at all. I don't know what the "lair" we've been camping out in has been, but it has not been a real place for the entirety of the time we've been here. Everything, right down to each whorl in the wood, is a fabrication, and right now, I'm seeing it as an illusion for the first time. "What else haven't you been telling me?" Shiloh moves closer, a concerned mew in the back of his throat, but even the form he's taking right now is a lie constructed to disarm me. The only real thing are his eyes... they're purple. Not gold, like whatever took over my friends back in the house. I want so badly to allow him back into my arms, but I'm fixed on his eyes, the twin lying eyes, purple, not gold, not gold, not gold-- who was that? I look at my slumped teammates as I keep retreating from Shiloh, scooting across the floor, so close to the hand that is not mine, the me that is not me, a stranger in my head. Who was-- you're being unreasonable-- I can't let them suffer any longer-- all you have to do is hold them together-- my hands, my eyes, my body.-- Ours.-- Mine.-- I'm helping you. I'm helping you, right now-- I have to help you. I have to help them-- Stop standing around--

Stop being a victim.

Stop being a victim.

I can't stand by and watch anyone else get hurt.

Of course you can't.

I clutch my head in my hands. I can't tell whose thoughts are whose anymore. I begin to cry, but even that feels hollow.

"Come on, Will," Shiloh purrs. "You're being unreasonable. Let's talk about this."