APOSTLE'S CREED - a zombie story

[TGRF]

Spoiler Alert!

Originally Posted by TheAverageFan

I mean, you might be off your rocker given your assumptions. Nothing that I’m aware of in the text so far suggests that what Thorn chose to do was intended as the right decision that the reader should get behind (some in the group were quite resistant to the idea). I would be curious what gave you such a strong impression otherwise.

~TAF

Because that is the default natural state of the reader. There's a difference between questioning decisions in a story (as I originally did), and feeling like I'm actually supposed to question them.

I dunno, maybe this is one of those cases where I find out just how differently people see things. When I read a book or watch a film, I go in having this basic assumption that the author wants us to be behind the hero's actions. I see failure to do that as just that: failure. Now if a side character makes faulty decisions, that's another matter entirely.

I never go into media assuming the purpose of the media is to make me question the hero's decisions.

Do you go into media differently?

~TGRF.

[TGRF]

Chapter 21:

Spoiler Alert!

Morning was waning as the group finally made the approach to Cincinnati.

Another city again... it's like basic zombie survival to avoid high-population urban areas, but these people seem to go through them just because that's where the road goes.

My name is Ogima, and so Chief what the people here have taken to calling me.

is what the people*

I’m immune and they need to replicate it.

Way to spill the beans, Brooke. I'm surprised the Chief didn't try to hold them prisoner right there and then, although he might still try something...

“We’ve delayed this cure enough as is.” Brooke said, “We can’t afford to wait.”

Yes, yes you can. A few days aren't going to make that much difference up against the slightest possibility of never having the cure at all. I can hear Nazar trying to explain it now: "Why don't we have the cure?" "Well, the courier wanted to save time by cutting across a river she knew was patrolled by Apostle..."

Inside he could see another door moving in the dim lighting. In he went.

Now I'm no soldier, but I've seen enough movies to know that one dude following a set of moving doors is walking into a trap. It seems ironic that Header was just reflecting on his training, and then immediately goes in solo like this with no backup or reconnaissance.

Header scratched his helmet as if it were really his head,

A good line, made me laugh.

~TGRF.

[TheAverageFan]

Spoiler Alert!

Originally Posted by TGRF

When I read a book or watch a film, I go in having this basic assumption that the author wants us to be behind the hero's actions. I see failure to do that as just that: failure. Now if a side character makes faulty decisions, that's another matter entirely.

I never go into media assuming the purpose of the media is to make me question the hero's decisions.

I suppose the question then becomes is Thorn the hero? You had said "Now if a side character makes faulty decisions, that's another matter entirely." I'd obviously argue that Thomas is the hero, and he has his own moral choices he's making continuing to support Brooke despite his cynicism.

You could say that Thorn is one of the hero characters, as this is an ensemble, though I'd ask if Stacey is any less of a hero than he is—the chapter where they decide to attack the factory is from Stacey's PoV and she thinks it's a horrible idea. She only goes along with it because of peer pressure:

Originally Posted by Apostle's Creed Ch14

____She hoped he would see in her eyes that she clearly didn’t want to do this thing, but it felt like he couldn’t see her at all. He was glad for this opportunity, no matter how sullen he seemed, glad for the chance to turn around and go right back into the fire despite the risks. He was after all more concerned with avenging the dead than ensuring his own safety or even hers, and the worst part was that she had somehow so quickly been made to feel selfish for opposing that notion. He was sad and felt responsible for what had happened to her, and now she couldn’t step on that. She of course didn’t want to go back, not now right as she’d been reunited with her friends so close to VACC! She would rather die than go back, and yet she had just volunteered herself to do so. It felt inevitable. She just couldn’t look this man in the eyes and tell him No. She just couldn’t do it.
____Silvin was right about her, she miserably thought.

But this is all tldr; if the intent didn't make the leap from page to reader then it didn't make it.

I will try to post the next chapter tonight.

~TAF

EDIT: I lied I missed something, tomorrow most likely

[TGRF]

Spoiler Alert!

Originally Posted by TheAverageFan

I suppose the question then becomes is Thorn the hero? You had said "Now if a side character makes faulty decisions, that's another matter entirely." I'd obviously argue that Thomas is the hero, and he has his own moral choices he's making continuing to support Brooke despite his cynicism.

You could say that Thorn is one of the hero characters, as this is an ensemble, though I'd ask if Stacey is any less of a hero than he is—the chapter where they decide to attack the factory is from Stacey's PoV and she thinks it's a horrible idea. She only goes along with it because of peer pressure:

But this is all tldr; if the intent didn't make the leap from page to reader then it didn't make it.


~TAF

Interesting point. I would say that Thomas can likely get away with it more than others, due to being the main main character, but then his questionable decisions also don't involve putting everyone in danger, not in the same way anyway.

I would say I still consider Thorn, Brooke, and Stacey as main characters, and thus have that assumption about them too. Header and Jaxson as well to some extent. This is likely because 1) we've spent more time in their heads than others, and 2) we've spent less time in Thomas' head than I would expect for a 'protagonist'. Thus it kind of spreads around the tag of 'protagonist' to them all, thus giving them all the expectation.

It is kind of a moot point at this time; what's done is done.

~TGRF.

[TGRF]

Chapter 22:

Spoiler Alert!

Maybe one of those nights he had missed Brooke sat there with her guitar,

Sitting*

He could offer no comfort no Henry however,

to*

speaking as quiet as she could as he neared the windows,

quietly*

After all the precautions you’d taken up until now?”

You've*. A contraction for 'You had' doesn't make sense here. Different tense.

She wouldn’t let herself be so easily deceived by him again, feeling the knife of betrayal in her gut.

This is likely just a symptom of me not remembering, but what betrayal is Stacey talking about? Obviously she's thinking about when Thorn went after Silvin, but I don't recall that being a betrayal... did I miss an obscure line somewhere?

“Brooke, had you ever played here at Mango’s?

Have*. Again, a tense thing. This one is borderline... you could probably be technically correct with 'had', but it definitely reads smoother with 'have'. Note that if you had included the word 'before' at the end, 'had' would be correct.

But from where she just couldn’t say.

This is more of a personal clarity thing than grammar, but I would put a comma after 'from'. It just reads a lot clearer.

The cars’ tires screeched as they were thrown in Reverse

Odd random capital letter.

On the mountain of zombies came. For a split second Thomas could see movement between the bodies as they approached, a quick darting of jet-black. Then out from the blob of dead came a long spear, a slightly curved blade atop the pike-length shaft. The weapon shot forth with a speed as if fired from a cannon: punching straight through the windshield and past Miles and Thomas both.
They paled and looked back. There behind them sat James and Gene, looking no less panicked, with the spear between them: its blade up to the hilt sunk in the back seat. And their car wasn’t moving any more—whatever held the weapon within the crowd of zombies had strength sufficient to keep the vehicle halted.

I find myself confused here. Is the spear embedded in the car, or is it being held by the Reaper, with only the blade embedded in the car? Because you clearly say it's embedded to the hilt, but then the car isn't moving, because someone is holding it there via the spear. When Miles and Thomas look back, it kind of also implies that the spear went past them, ie it isn't between them, and they are now looking back to see where it landed. Which obviously isn't the case. Either way, it suggests that the spear is still being held by the Reaper. But then a few paragraphs later he's wielding it car-free, like it was never embedded at all. Just some confusing descriptions there.

Not too much comment-wise. The group has again come under attack, as I knew they would the moment they trundled into Cincinnati. Throughout all of this, I kept thinking, 'ah, if only there had been a low-risk zombie-free circuitous route they could have taken to easily avoid all this. Alas!'

~TGRF.

[TheAverageFan]

Spoiler Alert!

Originally Posted by TGRF

This is likely just a symptom of me not remembering, but what betrayal is Stacey talking about? Obviously she's thinking about when Thorn went after Silvin, but I don't recall that being a betrayal... did I miss an obscure line somewhere?

She likes Thorn and reluctantly went along with his plan and ended up getting shot fot it. Not a literal betrayal but just a feeling of being hurt because of what Thorn did.

I find myself confused here. Is the spear embedded in the car, or is it being held by the Reaper, with only the blade embedded in the car? Because you clearly say it's embedded to the hilt, but then the car isn't moving, because someone is holding it there via the spear. When Miles and Thomas look back, it kind of also implies that the spear went past them, ie it isn't between them, and they are now looking back to see where it landed. Which obviously isn't the case. Either way, it suggests that the spear is still being held by the Reaper. But then a few paragraphs later he's wielding it car-free, like it was never embedded at all. Just some confusing descriptions there.

It is the Reaper keeping the car still with the blade embedded in the backseat. He pulls the spear out and into the air when the zombies cover the car, having no need to keep it pinned any longer. Apologies if that wasn't conveyed clearly.

The group has again come under attack, as I knew they would the moment they trundled into Cincinnati. Throughout all of this, I kept thinking, 'ah, if only there had been a low-risk zombie-free circuitous route they could have taken to easily avoid all this. Alas!'

To the group's credit Thorn and Header strongly suggested taking the long way around

Next chapter in a moment, promise

~TAF

[TheAverageFan]

Chapter 31: the penultimate chapter of Apostle's Creed. We are very nearly at the end. Unfortunately for you it is also one of the longest chapters.

Spoiler Alert!

31
Electric Corridor

i

____“Oh…” Brooke murmured. She was still reeling, the drugs Lance had given her wearing off but the spinning of traveling with Elias still remaining. They had both gone in a bolt of lightning, stretched across space and placed somewhere completely different in an instant. Being suddenly moved to a different part of the planet could be felt all throughout her body, like air lag all at once. They had been squeezed together in that instance as well: her and Elias and that lightning-malice sprouted from his back. For that moment they were all one, and when they had arrived and parted here she could still feel that profound grief and bitterness that had always hid within him. Just the feeling of it made her ill. Drugs and sickness and betrayal brewed about within her.
____For a long time she stirred restlessly in that darkness, finally regaining the senses of consciousness as she felt the heat of bright lights above bearing down on her eyelids. She rasped a breath and startled upright, or tried to: finding herself now bound down upon a bench of some kind. No, it only felt like a bench—she was strapped down upon a surgery table.
____Brooke squirmed and squinted under the blinding overhead lights glaring down at her. A dead spider of folded metal arms hovered above her: little knives and tubes and claws dangling precariously and wakening her in the fear they imposed. Her wrists tugged at the belts fastened about them. She couldn’t move.
____“Everything looks in order.” She could hear Elias’ voice as he paced around her, “Prepare the procedure.”
____Brooke craned her neck to see him, finding herself in a sickly-lit rectangular surgery room. The Apostle logo could be seen on the floor and upon all the screens of the many monitors mounted to the blue-gray walls. From that she knew she was in some kind of base of theirs, probably underground given the strange cold and damp feeling this place exuded, making it feel dingier.
____Men and women surrounded her, wearing lab coats save for a couple soldiers, all tinkering with various equipment and machines preparing for something. None would make eye contact with her, and she knew that meant they had nothing good in mind for her: avoiding that human connection. She looked to Elias, “What’re you doing?”
____He glanced her way, “You’re finally awake. You were beginning to worry us. I apologize for the delirium of our teleportation; it must not have mingled well with the drugs they gave you at VACC.”
____“I’m still alive…” she realized aloud with a sigh, “What are you planning to do?”
____“Setting things right.” he told her, slowly circling the surgery table, “Or, to put it in the evil terms you’d sooner understand, snuffing out the last flame of hope. We’re going to perform a little operation, not unlike what you were to undergo at that base. You carry within yourself something of great significance: an immunity independent of Lord’s blood. Some unsolved error in the genetic code of his virus permits this. Everyone hoped that could be exploited to combat the virus; they’re about to find out that’s not the case.”
____“Why can’t you permit hope, Elias?” Brooke asked him, “Voyeur told me you had some reason, some reason for you to go along with all this evil. I could feel your grief when you took me. Can’t you let it go? Don’t bottle it up with hatred!”
____“Of course. To you, all bad guys are the result of some simple misgiving, who need only let go of their loss to again see the light. But the light itself is a mere illusion. Do you still not feel the bitter sting of betrayal? Does it mean nothing to you?”
____“I wouldn’t ever give in to it and let it conquer me to evil!” she told him furiously, “This is the Devil you’re serving!”
____Elias laughed softly. He folded his hands behind him, the golden locks running down his back bobbing as he circled her, “So you still think of Lord only as the Devil? A simple mind comes up with a simple explanation for all these wonders. Satan in his pettiness would wish to rule this world. For as he himself said ‘By them I lost not what I lost, rather by them I gained what I have gained, and with them dwell copartner in these regions of the World. If not disposer—lend them oft my aid, oft my advice by presages and signs, and answers, oracles, portents, and dreams, whereby they may direct their future life.’ He corrupts but dares not destroy. With horror he would see his kingdom ended, the pandemonium forever muted, and to his hatred an everlasting wake: the peaceful silence of a dead universe.”
____“But it still wouldn’t be good!” Brooke argued through gritted teeth, “Without life—without love and happiness and music—it would be an evil silence!”
____“Perhaps. It doesn’t matter to me.”
____“Of course it matters to you! You don’t get to just wash your hands of responsibility when you continue to follow him. Can’t you see that King is evil?!”
____“I don’t care.” he said, again facing her, “Tell me: when all the world is against you, hating you from every direction, crushing you under the weight of its lies… how would you feel to have one person—just one—come to you saying ‘I believe you’? For just that one glimmer of solace, you would do anything for that person. I would follow him to hell and back. Nothing else in this rotten world matters.”
____“Elias, please!” she rasped in desperation, pleading at this point, “Please just talk to me! You’re not King, I know you still have a soul. I know you’re not that far gone. You can still stop all this, if you’d only just let me in. Just tell me how: how can you decide to end everything for everyone?! That’s all I want to know!”
____He only mused in feigned contemplation, then smirked, “Hmm, what happened to Marion Parker. Awful business, that. I believe that is sufficient evidence to end it all.”
____She didn’t know what he was talking about, but there was nothing genuine in his tone—she could tell that much, “Don’t get smart with me! I’m serious! Do you think acting detached and speaking softly makes what you’re doing any less cruel?!”
____Elias lurched toward her then, quite suddenly pounding his fist onto the table only inches from where her head lay. She flinched at the sudden display of violence, and he whispered sharply to her, “You don’t know what cruelty is! …That’s your problem: your good will in its ignorance only serves to insult.” He stepped back and averted his gaze, straightening his coat and glancing about silently as if he had something else to say but couldn’t find the words to voice it. At length he turned aside to the scientists about him, “Are we ready to operate yet?”
____“Ready, sir. We’re only waiting on King’s signal.”
____Brooke shook her head, “So you really are just a coward who gave up. I never will.” She looked back up at the blinding lights above her, “I’m not afraid. Thomas will save me. I know it.”
____Elias glanced down to her, “He’ll be like me, you know. When you’re gone.”
____Brooke shut her eyes tight.
____The scientist looked up from his instruments, “Sir, we’ve got an incoming call. It’s from the eastern base.”
____Elias’ gloved hand pointed, “That will be Lord. He’ll want to oversee the procedure. Put him on the big screen there.”
____Brooke opened her eyes and again craned her neck, watching the displays. The largest of these hung on the wall to her left where Elias stood, flickering to new life as it lit up with a crisp image of King’s face. He sat there staring, looming huge across the large monitor.
____Elias bowed low, “Lord, we appreciate you taking precious time to supervise.”
____He said nothing, eyes immediately drifting to where Brooke lay. She drew in a quick breath, remembering him at the lab where her friends had been killed, and before at the roadway where he had murdered Jarek and crushed her hopes under his boot. She glared at him—that inhuman evil which had taken so much without a hint of remorse and had given nothing in return—trying to maintain her composure in defiance, “I’m not afraid of you!”
____“You have always worshipped out of fear, kin.” answered that uncaring porcelain mask that was his face glaring right back, “Is an ashamed liar all my brother could conjure in defense of his world?”
____“I’m not a liar and I’m not your kin!” Brooke spat, “You’re the one who should be ashamed! Ashamed of all you’ve done to innocent people all around the globe, you murderer!”
____He did not seem bothered by the accusation, “I see little change elicited from my virus. The undead retain their barest forms: mindless and violent as has ever been. It merely allows me to wield their animal nature against their fellow man.”
____“‘Little change’?! You kill them, steal their voices and their individuality, their free will and their souls! Music and meaning and… being—that’s what makes us human!”
____“Noise is irrelevant, and all meaning is a façade leading only to reproduction.” King said, “I hate those voices. The wickedness of all those who came before you endures through the memories of the living. This time there will be no one to remember, for I am Silence. I will destroy even myself, when all other things are gone. Only in all-encompassing nothingness is there peace.”
____“Never!”
____“Faithless!” King shouted at her, and there was venom in his voice. As he spoke the black left his eyes and surged into hers. Brooke reeled back against the hard surface of the table, suddenly squirming and screaming and rattling against the restraints as if possessed.
____“NO!!” she shrieked at the top of her lungs as his vision clung to her eyes even under the lids, and she saw all of herself, “STOP IT, STOP IT! DON’T MAKE ME LOOK!!”
____“I have seen you! I have heard your thoughts!” King continued in a thunderous voice which penetrated the agony, “You may wave them away with human memory and the dismissal of forgiveness, but I have not forgotten! See all that you are and have done before you claim to stand defiant against me in the name of righteousness! Feel how your precious humanity burns when subjected to perfection: its very antithesis!”
____“I’M SORRY! I’M SORRY!! I DIND’T MEAN TO!!”
____Elias looked from her to King and back in confusion, “What’re you doing to her?!”
____“I do nothing.” King explained, his own eyes now a normal white and faded pale green, as they had once been long ago, “She merely sees what I see.”
____Brooke was rescued only then as the doors in the corner of the room burst open. In ran Thomas, followed closely by the rest of the group. The torture was halted.
____Seeing her there, strapped and thrashing in agony and surrounded by enemies, they didn’t hesitate one bit: raising guns and raining fire into the cluster of Apostles about her. Sparks flew and screens shattered as all around her were shot to hell. The stunned soldiers, the unarmed scientists with their hands raised, all of them were cut down in only a few short seconds.
____Brooke flinched, shut her eyes tight, and when she opened them again upon surviving the hail of gunfire all those around her lay dead. Save for Elias who looked completely unharmed, now standing alone against them all.
____“Thomas…! …Thomas!” Seeing him there pulled her up from the terror and cast the inky blackness from her eyes, calming her at last. She teared up at the sight of him, “All of you…! I knew, I knew if I just held fast enough you’d all come for me!”
____“I was a miserable fool to ever part with you in the first place…” Thomas took one step forward, then stopped. There King was on the screen, the black rushing back to his unblinking eyes. And there also was Elias, somehow completely fine despite all the others about him having been mowed down in an instant.
____He looked calm as ever, smiling at them all, “Welcome, Thomas. Now look who can’t hit who.” Thomas grimaced and raised his pistol again, unloading a second round of fire directly onto the lone Apostle. None landed. Every shot fizzled out into nothing inches from Elias’ body, little black bolts of lightning sparking about and intercepting them all. What on Earth was happening? The Apostle smirked and shook his head, perfectly aware of this futility against him, “Tisk tisk…”
____King glared down at all the newcomers from the view screen. “The civilian lot my brother is obsessed with.” he said, “Why have you come here? You cannot hope to cure your condition with this one.”
____“Is it so mysterious to you?!” Thomas shouted at him, “We’re here to take her back from you monsters!”
____“She cannot stop my undead, human, nor could she ever stop the moon’s descent. There is no use in saving her.”
____“I don’t care! I love her! This isn’t about any cure, or what utilitarian advantages she can offer—the only things you and your awful brother care about.” Thomas lowered his gaze from the monitor, staring into Brooke’s eyes as he continued, “I’m saving her for her. Just this one life, no matter what she can or can’t do… because even one small thing can brighten up the world…”
____“Thomas…” Brooke murmured in adoration. But King was unimpressed.
____“Conservative!” he thundered lividly in his deep booming voice, “Do you believe happiness will grace you simply because you now wish for it? You have made this mistake already. You cannot go back and put things together to your liking now that it is too late. Joy has evaded you, and to continue wallowing in regret is your lot. The most you will achieve, even if all things in this war were to turn your way, will be to only ever watch others around you be happy. This I prophesize to you!”
____Gauge stepped forward.
____“Don’t listen to him. He has no power over anything.” he told Thomas, facing the great enemy upon the screen, “If you’re such an all-knowing god, King, then why am I still alive? Strike me down right here if your words have any meaning! Go on, do it!”
____King seemed unfazed, “The end will not be long; still you have not yet served your purpose to me, Gauge.”
____“You liar!” Gauge yelled at him, “Come on guys, there’s nothing he can do now.”
____With this assurance, Thomas took the first step across the room to Brooke. But he was prematurely halted as Elias reacted: quickly drawing one of his pistols and pressing it tight down on her head. Thomas froze.
____“Ah ah…!” Elias said, “You can’t shoot me, but I can shoot her just fine. Now don’t draw any nearer, none of you, or you’ll have come all this way for nothing.”
____“Brooke!” Gauge cried, glaring at Elias in fury, “Let her go, you snake!”
____“Be silent, you miserable traitor. You picked the dying side of this war already knowing its fate, now lie in the bed you made! You should’ve known better by now, but weak-willed men always relapse in the end, don’t they?”
____Lt. Header huffed, “What’re you gonna do, then? We’re here, you’re there, an’ you deliberately chose not to kill her yet. You won’t now unless you have to. It’s a stalemate.”
____“You have fewer arms than Apostle.” King said over the screen, “Did you think I would leave an operation of this importance solely in delicate human hands, even if I could not be there myself? You may have killed my surgeons, but my machines remain just as functional. I shall perform this procedure remotely.”
____From somewhere off-screen the sound of computer keys clicking could be heard. Immediately the metallic arms above Brooke came to life, whirring loudly and descending upon her. She flinched and yelped as they dropped above her, feeling the revulsion of remote surgery performed maliciously through these dreadful machines and squirming in her restraints, “Don’t!!”
____“Sit still.” Elias told her, brushing aside his coat to remind her of the second pistol he had holstered to his hip, “You’ll go along with this, or I’ll shoot your loved ones here in turn.”
____She glanced back to her rescuers in hapless fear. Again Thomas took a step forward in silent protest, but Elias pressed his weapon tighter against his captive’s head. He smiled, elated at the sick control he had over his enemies in this way: holding her life at their expense and theirs at her’s.
____“Did you think human love and resolve could overcome me?” King said to them as they watched, “No amount of it could ever undo your mortal condition. You face the overwhelming wall of death. Your weapons will not save her. They will not save you either, when the time comes. So do all you can do: stand there. Watch and be powerless, affixed to the inevitable.”
____He pressed another key, glaring expectantly at the arms he was controlling. But this time they didn’t answer, hanging there above Brooke like vicious cutlery waiting to be plunged into her—but right now they were inert and still. King glanced downward to the keyboard out of camera’s sight, pressing again and then a third time but still receiving no answer.
____“Why is this not working?” he said bluntly.
____Another voice answered him, “I’m afraid the line has been hijacked.”
____It wasn’t anyone in this room: grainy and remote and coming from the same speakers as King’s own. Still Thomas recognized it through the static, “Lavender!”
____“Forgive me for being late.” her voice answered, “Trying to brute-force the security here made even me a little on edge. Fortunately for you, it’s me.”
____“Nazar’s woman?” King cursed, “The connection was supposed to be unbreakable!”
____“Whoever sold you that one?” Lavender said wryly, “You think your machines are so great, because they can never fail you or betray you? What a complete fairytale. I suppose that’s why Nazar sought me to fight against you.”
____King scowled and aggressively continued pressing keys, none of which did anything, “What have you done? Relinquish your control immediately!”
____“You’ll have to say Please.”
____Her nonchalance infuriated him, “You dare to incur my wrath with this mockery? Are you so foolish as to act smug when you know the terror of death is coming for you!?”
____“Have you forgotten who I am? I follow Nazar.” Lavender replied coolly, “He taught me to know better than to be terrified of you, Leonard Orsley! You can’t force your way back into control of this connection, and it seems that just like us mortals even you can’t be in two places at once. Too bad you didn’t think it necessary to come in person. A flaw at last, perhaps?”
____“GRAAAHHH!!!” King roared in fury, “Your agony will surpass all others! I will impale—”
____“Oh quiet.” Lavender said, muting his line with a simple press of a button and then dragging another video over on top of his stream: a short repeating clip of a cat playing a harmonica. With him dealt with, she spoke to those actually in the room, “I’ve done my part, Thomas. He’s not physically present, he can’t intervene. You have a chance. Now do the rest and get her out of there.”
____“Thank you…!” Thomas said, “We all owe you one.”
____He turned his attention back to Elias, still standing there with his weapon drawn. The Apostle didn’t look fazed by this turn of events, speaking loudly to the screen in the event that he could still be heard: “Fear not, master! I will deal with this lot and then perform the procedure myself.”
____“Let her go.” Header warned, “You can’t expect to hold ‘er up and do an operation at the same time. An’ you can’t expect to kill us all either.”
____“Can’t I?” Elias asked, holstering his pistol. Recognizing the danger, Brooke struggled to sit up. She started a warning shout—knowing what he could do—but was stifled, Elias quickly jamming one of his gloves into her mouth.
____He faced the others and hovered over: feet dangling a few inches off the ground, hands cupped together calmly as the black being of lightning crackled and sparked behind him.
____“Don’t waste your lives.” he said, “It seems fate has something in store for us all, having us meet this many times in such a vast world. But you all seem like good people. You don’t need to perish. The zombies are sparse in open areas now… you should just settle down—up in Canada perhaps—and live your lives in peace while you can. A happy little commune. If you’d only turn around and quietly leave this conflict behind for good.”
____“Gimmie a break! Shaddup and fight!” Header barked. He raised his rifle and fired without hesitation. B-b-bang!!
____The lightning ate the rounds again, and Elias lashed out one arm in protest. The entire room stung with static as he shrieked, “Be silent, you fool! Many of us are about to die here and now—they’ll never see the beauty of daylight again—don’t rush through this last moment for them!”
____Gauge shook his head, “No one has to die if you give up, Elias. Give it up, like I have, and find a reason to live again!”
____“You can’t unsee the futility, traitor. I could cover my ears or bury my head all I like, but nothing will ever allow me to again feel love without guardedness. It is better to have nothing at all.”
____“You’re wrong!” Thorn said, “If I can heal, anyone can. Even now, it’s not too late to try. I’ll help you myself, if you only let me.”
____Elias laughed, “Is death the only way the bitterness of reality will really reach any of you? Rescue Brooke if you can; a cure won’t bring back the billions already taken! It won’t stop the visions, won’t delay the moon’s course, or ultimately Lumis’ Comets. You would die for and delight over a simple delay of the inevitable?!”
____“Give… her… back” Thomas said gravely.
____“You I see are lost in the fog of infatuation.” The Apostle smiled, “Permit me to perform this surgery, and I will give her back to you alive and well.”
____The suggestion was terrible to offer to Thomas, and Header overrode it immediately before the temptation could take hold. “Hell no!” the First Lieutenant roared, “We ain’t negotiating with you. Draw yer weapons and we’ll decide who gets their way here!”
____Elias shrugged and looked at them all, “You all accept this? Either most or all of you will perish trying to take her. You’re all willing, all for the chance? You need only walk away if you wish to live.”
____Every one of them stared back resolutely, all seven saying nothing but plainly meaning everything.
____Elias closed his eyes and shook his head, “Foolish and tragic both. To fight and die for a false hope, or to live and recognize the sham too late. How human…”

ii

____At last Brooke managed to spit out the glove, shouting the second she could, “Thomas! He can teleport!”
____As soon as she said it, Elias blinked out of existence, reappearing in their midst. Only the shift in displaced air and the sting of static rippling about his body gave any signal. Hearing what Brooke had said and feeling that sudden reappearance nearby, Thomas chose to simply drop prone rather than turn to meet the threat. Behind him Elias drew his pistols faster than others could aim them, whirling around and lighting up all those around him in a burst of gunfire. Bangbangbangbangbangbang!!
____It was inaccurate as ever for Elias, but the group was bunched tight enough for it not to matter. Thorn and Gauge were both struck in the chest—knocked over by the impact—while Irene and Gene both caught shots in the arm and shoulder respectively. Everyone else had ducked, scattered, or been lucky enough to evade.
____Header knew not to trust his gun and simply barreled over to his enemy. But to this Elias simply turned, as the entity behind him followed his movement. One long arm of lightning stretched out, bent like a scythe, and struck Header across his torso. The First Lieutenant was flung back, striking the wall hard and his back demolishing the mounted monitor there in the impact. He fell crashing to the floor, roaring with pain.
____Thomas didn’t care, letting them all duke it out behind him. He focused only on Brooke, getting to his feet and racing across the room while Elias was occupied. She was the only thing that mattered right now. If he could just free her, the two could make a run for it.
____Elias saw him near her and leapt back, yanked through the air as if pulled by invisible puppet-strings. As he reached the far wall it went with him, racing backwards and revealing new walls, floors, and ceilings in its wake. Each of these was an exact copy of this one room: now rendered a long hallway of repeats missing only the far walls that would separate them. The original had stretched back and taken Brooke with it, the sound of her scream also yanked backwards as Thomas reached the table where she had been and found only the empty copy. He looked beyond in bewilderment, not knowing how to process this magic trick, “The hell…?!”
____With a burst of black electricity Elias came back, now standing upside-down on the ceiling above and casually reloading his pistols, still ignoring any gunfire impotently directed his way.
____“I’m not playing by the same rules as before.” he told Thomas calmly, dropping the spent magazines and watching them fall up to the floor below, “You’re not fighting simple humanity here. What will you do? Do you still doubt Lord’s power?”
____Thomas scowled up at him, unable to do him any harm. He instead simply turned and continued racing down the new corridor of repeated spaces, “Brooke! I’m coming!”
____Elias stamped his foot and the room Thomas was currently in shifted violently to his right: thrown outward in more copies and taking him with it. Thomas halted, seeing the far wall now in front of him again and nearly running into it. His palms pressed tight against the tiled surface, still bearing the bullet holes of their shooting the staff. Even that had been copied, though the killed scientists were gone.
____Now his left was where the walls were missing leading back to the main corridor of duplicates. He cursed and ran that way, trying to get back to where he had been. So many copies of this one room now, and he knew Brooke would be in only one of them. He had to find her, though he couldn’t even hear her from here, wherever she was.
____“You should have taken my offer to live! This world is now under my dominion!” Elias announced as he watched his prey scurrying back to the main hall, “It bends to my will! What chance do you think you have with meager weapons? I have space! I have lightning! Do you think you can destroy these things with your guns?”
____He aimed his pistols and unloaded a fresh hail of gunfire down upon Thomas. Sparks and chunks of metal shrapnel flew into the air about the actor, and he hurled himself behind the vacant surgery table. He waited for the fire to stop before peering back up with his weapon aimed, but Elias was already gone. Only the sound of his displaced laughter told Thomas where to turn next, whirling to meet where the Apostle had teleported behind him.
____But Elias was already in the motion of throwing his arm as if pitching a baseball, and with that silent command the room launched again. Thomas clutched the table as he felt the velocity, and when it halted he was in a new path of copies, his foe still remaining where he had been: now over a hundred feet away. Hating the feeling of being toyed with but unable to do anything else in his human limitations, Thomas could only stand and begin running anew down this fresh corridor of endless repeats.
____But his run was more of a stagger, and he could already feel the mounting of exhaustion now that the final goal within reach was stretched and stretched. He had been running all day, and still the lightheadedness of his earlier injury remained.
____I can’t… he thought as he ran, I can’t give out, not until she’s saved! I’m so tired! But if I stop I’ll die. Just keep going, keep going!!
____Unless he could do something, Elias would require only their fatigue to kill them all.

____Elias had left Thomas to his devices and teleported back to the scattered others. Gauge and Irene had answered him first with gunfire which the lightning caught, and he sent them flying down a new fork in the hall with but a sweep of his arm, “I’ll deal with you two momentarily.”
____He did the same to Gene, moving the halls to his will. Stacey now remained the furthest down the main corridor, armed with but her knife and only hoping to catch up to Brooke while the others fought. Elias smirked at her effort and stamped his foot, and as he did so the room she occupied was shifted downward: one copy down lacking its ceiling above. With her trapped and the others shifted aside, he returned to the two soldiers who he deemed the greatest threat.
____Lt. Header was helping Thorn to his feet. The Corporal had been winded hard by the shot, uninjured as he was, but Elias was already back and Header had to drop him and dive rolling along the floor to avoid the spray of gunfire that soon followed. The First Lieutenant evaded the shots and lurched up aiming, but Elias was already gone: teleported to a new and then another spot in rapid succession. Header swore as he swiftly aimed to keep up, finally locking on and gripping the trigger of his underbarrel grenade launcher.
____Elias saw this and teleported away, a black strip of lightning surging down the long hall of copied rooms in an instant, as the grenade struck nothing and exploded. He was gone.
____Again Header swore, reloading before turning to Thorn. The Corporal was back on his feet, dusting himself off, “He ran away?”
____“Hm.” Header answered, gesturing to his weapon, “He wouldn’t dare catch one of these. The sonic boom of an explosive might be the only thing that could hurt ‘im right now. Reckon he’s after the others instead.”
____Thorn glanced worriedly down the long hall, “Then you might be our only chance. And we need to catch up with the scattered civvies.”
____“Stay close. He’ll try to come back and git me from behind, I’m sure of it.”
____“Right.” Thorn said, not sure how he was supposed to protect anyone with bullets that wouldn’t land. Nonetheless he followed his superior and the two jogged down the countless copies looking for the rest of their number.

____Stacey turned one way to another, looking around the lab for any way up and finding none. It was a tall room, acting now as a pit, and she was short and not fit for climbing any time soon in her current condition. She resorted to just stamping her foot, “Someone help!!”
____She heard the crackling of static above her and looked up, finding Elias standing sideways on the wall peering down at her. His arms were crossed and he looked amused at her plight, “You don’t even have a gun! Why did you agree to come here?”
____She threw her knife the way she had seen Thorn do, but the lightning buffeted it aside no different than it had done the other projectiles. It landed spinning on the floor and she ran after it, only answering now that futility had been established, “Brooke’s my friend! It’s nothing you would understand!”
____“I know that she would’ve been happier had you chosen to stay away in safety.”
____“So are you gonna kill me or simply talk my ear off just because I’m unarmed?!”
____Elias laughed, “No, no! I know you’re the one Silvin had refused to kill at the steelworks. It would be hypocritical of me not to kill you. I only wanted to hear what you had to say first, but it’s only the usual ‘go to hell’ and all that. I fail to see what it is Alex saw. Oh well.”
____He teleported, reappearing behind her and leveling his gun close to the back of her head. But he had come too near, just as she retrieved the knife. Stacey whirled and slashed with it, and the blade connected with his hand. Electricity crackled in the air as he reeled back, and she felt a strong shock in return. But it had still cut him.
____Elias stepped back in surprise, pistol rolling limply in the one finger still holding the trigger, and he stared bewildered at his bleeding palm. He aimed with his other hand and fired several shots at Stacey—who scurried away and hid from the inaccurate barrage—and then he backed off and teleported away. Gone, if only for now.
____She didn’t want to wait for him to come back and finish her off, but she remained trapped. Standing and scuttling, Stacey tried to climb the wall at several places: attempting to clamber the mounted monitors or equipment racks without success. Groaning with both pain and frustration, she whirled and ran to the doors they had entered from: throwing them open. But where there had been a hall and a rest of the facility there was now only a complete wall of black, Stacey teetering at the doorframe afraid of falling in.
____Feeling the dreadful pull of that blank abyss, Stacey threw the doors shut and fell back on her ass, just sitting there alone shouting out, “Help! Help!!”
____Another voice answered her from up above: calling out aimlessly, “Anyone there?”
____Stacey looked, seeing Gene peering down from the ledge above. Instantly she stood and raced to the wall, standing on her toes, “I’m here! Help me out!”
____“Well, okay.” He looked around to make sure it was safe first, as if that could really be accomplished, then leaned way down and reached his lanky arms out for her.
____Stacey again mounted the wall, hoisting herself and using the cabling and monitors like rock-climbing grips. She stretched and reached, finally gripping Gene who slowly pulled her up and over the edge. He fell back and gasped, Stacey scowling at him, “I’m not heavy or anything! Listen: I cut him!”
____“Cut who?”
____“Who do you think?! That weird lightning blocked all the bullets, and it blocked my knife when I threw it. But when he got too close I actually cut him, and he ran away.” She showed the blood on the blade as proof.
____Gene scratched his head, “Does it not work against adjacent attacks?”
____Stacey shook her head, “I don’t know! But he looked just as surprised as me. I think it was just because he wasn’t expecting it. He’s not omniscient: if we can surprise him, maybe we can kill him.”
____“Well, that’s good and all, but how are we supposed to surprise him? He’s mostly been surprising us.”
____“How should I know?” Stacey stood and looked at the endless copies of rooms about her, stretching onward behind and ahead both, “I guess there are more of us than of him. He can only divide his attention so much, right? Come on, help me spread the word! You go that way, I’ll go this way.”
____He looked a little uncertain, but ultimately stood with her and nodded. They split, Stacey racing back the way she’d come from, while Gene entered the pit and climbed up the other side. He felt tenser than ever now, hoping he wouldn’t be shot before he could do as little as impart this knowledge to one of the capable ones.

____Gauge and Irene had been thrown far from the others, running back down the endless series of rooms without result. Neither had any clue what was going on, having come here expecting a normal firefight.
____Irene stopped for only a moment, gasping for breath, “Where are we even going?”
____“We have to find Brooke.” he mindlessly answered. She scowled at him.
____“She could literally be miles away!” she said, “He could just throw us aside again!”
____Gauge frowned, looking no less frustrated himself, “What do you suggest then, oh wise one?”
____“I don’t know!!” Irene paused and looked for the words, “I just, I don’t know what to do…”
____He opened his mouth, either to chastise or comfort her she didn’t know, but then there Elias was: brought back to them in an instant while they were stopped and talking. He appeared behind Gauge, who felt the displacement and dove, tackling Irene and rolling along the tiled floor. Gunfire followed them.
____“Hey! Get off, get off!” Irene shouted, aiming and firing her shotgun at the Apostle. The buckshot vanished before the lightning-barrier and he was gone again. Irene shoved Gauge aside, not wanting to be still for long, and as he rolled off her she saw that his back was red with injury. His plate had eaten two pistol shots, though his back was less armored and the bullets had still tasted blood. It paused her fury and she tried to help him up, “Hey, get up! You’re okay, you’re okay!”
____“Thanks…!” Gauge staggered to his feet though only for a moment. Elias appeared before them again, standing on the ceiling above with weapons aimed downward: scattering them both with another spray of pistol fire.
____“Traitor, traitor…!” he said calmly as he watched them hide behind the empty surgery table, “Are you feeling the pang of regret yet?”
____“No!” Gauge shouted back, “Everything has led me here, here to kill you and finally make a difference! This grunt is taking the damage all the way to the top!”
____“Then here I am.” Elias hovered nearer, smiling as Gauge broke from his cover and poured full-auto fire into him. The lightning ate it all, and the Apostle smiled: gleeful at the sight of such futility. He teleported again, reappearing behind Gauge and shooting him right through the back. Blood sprayed out of the savaged armor, and he staggered forward.
____“No!” Irene cried. Knowing her weapon was useless, she sprinted out and charged for Elias directly. But he saw this and teleported away, putting distance between the two. He raised his weapons.
____Gauge stood and again tackled Irene, knocking her out of the way of the gunfire that soon followed. Elias did not relent, refusing to go away: appearing above and firing and firing after the two. At this point Gauge wasn’t even fighting back, just using himself as a body shield to defend Irene, being more fit to take pistol shots than she was.
____Recognizing this, she pounded at him, trying to tell him to stop. Not wanting him to die just to prolong her life a little longer, like all the others had, “Stop it, idiot! Just run!”
____But he would not leave her. Even as he bled on her he stood again, interposing himself between her and Elias as more rounds came. A second shot found its mark between his armor. “Get back!” he shouted in futility, “Get back—”
____As he pulled her away again, Elias reappeared a few feet to his right. The black lightning lanced out, bent downward and spread like the reaching fingers of a giant clawed hand. It smashed into Gauge and he stumbled back, dropping his gun. Even as the carbine clattered to the ground a second scythe of cutting electricity swept across him, and his abdomen fell open.
____“Gauge!!” Irene screamed. Elias kicked her down and leveled his pistol at her head, firing with an empty click!.
____“Hm.” he said, “See you later, then.” And like that he was gone, vanished off elsewhere to reload.
____Irene groaned in both physical pain and emotional agony, crawling over to where Gauge lay. The entity’s claw had split him open, and all his blood welled in the tiles of the repeated floor. Only something equally supernatural could ever heal such a wound. He just looked dazed as she lifted his head, “I’m okay. I’m okay…”
____“Gauge.” she said simply.
____“Finally penetrated the nicknames, Irene…” he muttered, “I’m fine. Just help me up, please. We still have to rescue Mary…!”
____“Yeah, okay…” Irene lied, holding him tight, “We’ll get up. We’ll get up in a minute…”
____But Mary was dead. And before long, so was Gauge.
____“Don’t go.” she begged, “You came this far, remember? You couldn’t have come this far just to end up like this… What was the point?”
____No answer. His open eyes were empty.
____Irene didn’t leave that spot, watching horrified as his corpse withered quickly as if infected for a long time. She nonetheless held his body in her clutching arms, wondering why she alone always survived. Almost hoping that Elias would come back quickly to put her down and prove that it was no conspiracy. But he did not return.

iii

____Header aimed as he saw the lightning-movement dart through the hall, but no shot made itself available to him. He swore and kept on tramping down the corridor, Thorn close behind, chasing as if Elias were something that could be hounded down and caught.
____“Thorn! Thorn!” came Stacey’s voice, as she bounded down the way and found the two soldiers. She had never been tenser running alone looking for the others.
____Thorn only dove and caught her as they met, seeing Elias appearing behind with weapons raised. The Apostle had emerged close to her, probably hoping that Header wouldn’t dare use an explosive so near to one of his own. He was wrong.
____Header aimed precisely and fired, targeting his grenade at the floor near the enemy, only mildly hoping the others would be just outside the blast radius. Thorn caught Stacey and hit the dirt, clutching her tight and shielding her back with his to the explosion. Both felt the rupturing force, as shrapnel struck Thorn’s armor. Elias was again gone, vanished in retreat.
____Stacey breathed rapidly, feeling the panic of the enemy and the explosive so close to her, and of the Corporal’s touch and firm grip to her from behind. Her back was against him. But he had done it to save her, and was quick to release her.
____“I’m sorry.” he said, “Stay close.”
____“I will.” she promised in a tone too hushed for ringing ears, only speaking up louder to explain what she had found, “Header! I know a way to hurt him.”
____The First Lieutenant didn’t seem too bothered, “You can tell us, but likely don’t matter girl. He ain’t gonna come back for us anyhow.”
____“What do you mean?”
____Header checked his pockets, looking grim. Elias wouldn’t know it right away, but he’d fired his last grenade, “He’s gonna kill everybody else first.”

____Thomas ran staggering, pistol drawn, at last finding his way back into the main corridor. Identical rooms stretched on in both directions, only a faint web of crackling black static periodically echoing down the way indicating any bearing to where the original—and Brooke with it—lay. But he could not see the end.
____There was shouting coming from behind. Thomas turned and raised his weapon, lowering it just as fast with the relief of a friendly face.
____“Thomas!” It was Gene, jogging up and breathing heavily. His rifle hung slack across his back, Gene well-aware of its uselessness here.
____Thomas began to speak but he heard Elias appear near them, instead greeting his friend simply by grabbing him and yanking him to the floor. All around them lit up in gunfire, and Elias disappeared again just as fast. Thomas sat back up and pressed his back against the wall, chest heaving in quick breaths, “Hello, I was going to say…! This never ends.”
____“Stacey told me she cut him.” Gene explained, gasping with both the long run and the nerves.
____The news dispelled some of the exhaustion from Thomas, “Really?”
____“Well, yes, but only because he got close enough and wasn’t expecting it. He won’t lower his guard so easily again, I imagine.”
____“That’s bad.” Thomas stared down the endless halls to his left and right, “If I could just get close, maybe I’d have a chance. But he’s always there then not there, and always a few yards away or in the air or both…”
____“Do you have any ideas?” Gene asked him.
____“If we could all get back together and exploit our numbers.”
____Gene gave him a strangely grave look, “That’s not happening. He’s got us all scattered way apart by now. It took me long enough just to find you. And it could very well be down to the two of us by now, for all I know.”
____Thomas laughed grimly, “Another deadly scenario with no way out and only the two of us, just like at the factory.” He glanced at Gene, “But you are talking quicker than usual; do you have an idea?”
____“Well, one… but it’s not a good one.”
____“Let’s hear it.”
____“Well, okay…” Gene nodded, “He’s toying with us, Thomas. Spraying, leaving, throwing us this way and that, coming back… I say the only way to make him stay put is to make him kill one of us.”
____Thomas frowned, “Do you wanna draw lots before he comes back?”
____He gave a single soft laugh, “Ha…! I’m lucky, Thomas. You’d lose.”
____“Then you’re offering yourself as a sacrifice? Aren't you scared?”
____Gene rubbed the back of his messy head, smiling but dreadfully pale, “Yes! ...B-But I stayed when he offered each of us the chance to leave. I can’t back out now, really.”
____“Just to get him to maybe sit still for a moment?”
____“Well, I don’t know if we’ll get the luxury of anything more than that.” He shrugged, “I have to make something of myself sometime, like Jaxson always does, yeah? And besides, it’s your girl isn’t it?”
____“Brooke wouldn’t like that at all.”
____“Well, she doesn’t have to know.” Gene stood, “I’ll be fine. Things usually go my way. Just don’t mess it up on your end; you’ve really got to get the jump on him!”
____“I… I’ll try.” Thomas nodded, stooping down and ducking under the surgery table. Gene backed a good distance away—drawing his weapon as if to use it—and the two waited. Waited knowing that the others might be getting killed then and there, but it was all they could do.
____Gene breathed deeply, feeling the nerve that he’d ignored for so much of his life. Stacey would be furious if she knew this is what he was making of her discovery. But he spread the word like promised. Now it was up to him to do the rest. This pressure, it must be what Jaxson felt all the time. No wonder the poor guy was so high-strung.
____“You’re not useless. You’re not just there.” he coached himself between ever-quicker breaths, “We’re going to win, we’re going to make a difference. It’s more than luck, it’s more than circumstance, you’ve come all this way for a reason! Come on, come and get me. Divide that attention for us. Just try to top this, Jax!”
____At last Elias reappeared: teleporting directly behind Gene and firing upon him. His good shoulder burst in blood and he reeled backward, scrambling along the floor and hiding as the continued gunshots followed after him. Elias watched this with amusement, teleporting now in front of Gene on the opposite side of the cover and continuing to fire recklessly.
____But his injured opponent surprised him. Gene, gripping his rifle tight in his hands and putting on a brave face, lifted himself up and simply charged right for Elias. Seeing this, the Apostle teleported a few paces back and kept on firing. Volume overrode his inaccuracy, and two of the sprayed shots struck Gene’s torso. They hurt just as bad as he’d always imagined, but he just shouted the wounds down and continued charging.
____Elias teleported back again, and then again as Gene ran after him: trying to chase the Apostle closer to where Thomas hid. A third, fourth, fifth hit, and he staggered. His enemy continued to stay out of reach, but it didn’t matter. Thomas now left his hiding spot and charged Elias from behind, the Apostle having unknowingly moved much too close.
____Even as Gene succumbed to the rapid exhaustion of the multiple wounds and fell, Thomas raced to Elias and fired upon him. The bullets were still caught even with his back turned, and seeing this Thomas just grit his teeth and sprinted, throwing himself at Elias even as the enemy whirled to face the new threat. He made it, tackling Elias successfully. Instantly violent electricity enveloped him, the surge of reactive teleportation taking him away. Elias vanished, and Thomas went with him.
____Gene watched them go, taken together, lying there in pooled blood and sighing his last in relief, “Good luck…!”

____Everything around Thomas blurred and condensed. Moving, moving so fast he could barely fathom it. He and Elias and the entity on his back were all crushed together as they teleported, flying down countless rooms in an instant. Pressed into a strip of black lightning: thin and forked as a snake’s tongue. No amount of evolution—catering only to the circumstances of nature—could have prepared his human form for such physics. In the blink of an eye they were back and normal again, grappled together flying in midair as Elias tried to aim his pistols. Thomas shoved one of the guns aside, lashing out with his free arm and punching Elias across the face. In a knee-jerk reaction he teleported again and—still touching him—Thomas went with him.
____He could feel the wrongness of the speed at which he moved: the halls bending and thinning, all the Earth bending and thinning with only the sparkling blackness of space behind it. Right now Thomas was only the instant of a bolt streaking down those infinite halls, merged together with Elias as they moved in this manner. He could feel Elias’ being, fused with him in that moment. A lifetime of happiness and regret washed over his own: two shores never meant by God or nature to meet and now lapping over one another. He could feel the wind on his face of the Summer, a sea of starry orange factory lights piercing the misty dark while driving along the expressway. Long-faded elation engulfed him, as Thomas forced himself to remember that he himself had never had children.
____And there among it all was King glaring wordlessly—and rippled, scaled flesh with eyes barely visible in the bright light bursting all about his memories. All of Thomas was flooded by melancholy, and then even more so by rage. He realized in that long passing instant that only King would understand him, and that was the only sliver of love and awe left in him. And he swore his oaths to that man, taking the two wedding rings off his one finger and vowing to do anything to make it all go away and be righted forever. But this was not Thomas, and he struggled to have his own self emerge from the torrent.
____He could also sense that third lightning-presence in there with them: something ancient that King had birthed out of himself, planted in the Earth and watered with blood, and now raged within Elias’ own body. This Power was alive, and it lacked all remorse that colored so much of Thomas and Elias’ beings.
____All of these feelings ran rapid like fire through Thomas in that momentary instant, and then he was parted from Elias. All reality came rushing back, and he was himself again.
____The moving end of the hallway was outpaced by the speed of the teleportation, and the two came crashing into it as they reappeared. Thomas was jolted back to himself as the black lightning surged all around him and he fell crashing to the floor, hearing Brooke shouting after him though the words were blurred in his dizziness. He could see the floor moving under his hands, tiles sliding under his palms, but he was no longer moving with it.
____This room—the true room where Brooke lay strapped down—had ceased its retreat backwards and slowed to a halt. Now it reversed: bending slightly upwards, floor moving inward, sucking up the copies beyond back into itself. Thomas saw the empty table of the nearest copy come flying toward him, but as he sat up and shielded himself it passed through him. He stared at his hands, mind still reeling from the injury, the sights, the fusion, all of it.
____It’s only an illusion. he forced himself to think, contriving reason to remain even as all reality around him seemed to break down, It’s all only an illusion! Save her!
____He stood and turned. There Brooke was, still strapped to the table staring wide-eyed at him in disbelief. Wounded ear ringing, head pounding, he staggered after her: climbing the floor that bent upward, so much so that the walls cracked under the pressure and tiles fell from the ceiling. There was a bright burst of light and sparks and wires fell from above, copied a thousand times over in the rooms behind. Thomas flinched as fire began to spread in the resulting collapse. The whole place was falling apart, or rather this one room was crumbling under the pressure of this profane enchantment no object was ever created to endure.
____“I’m… here…!” he rasped, finally making it to Brooke’s side and grasping her hand.
____She herself managed a still-delirious smile, wriggling her right arm close to him, “Untie me from this!”
____He fumbled with the restraints, loosening the straps only slightly before he heard Brooke shout and felt himself shocked and struck, sent flying and crashing against the bent wall. Elias had recovered back to his feet and now stood where Thomas had just moments before. One gloved hand clutched his golden head, himself reeling from the fusion that had momentarily occurred, and with his other hand he shakily aimed one pistol.
____I should’ve dodged that grenade faster! Thomas thought at the sight of the Apostle so staggered, feeling blood and ringing in his ear but remembering that his ear had actually been destroyed. It was the parting memories of Elias fighting against Header. He was wounded then, and he too was not meant to endure all these forces that King had granted to him. Recognizing this, Thomas scrambled to his feet as fast as he could.
____Elias fired slower than he had before, every hole punched into the wall behind Thomas reappearing on all the copies. Having no real means of fighting back, Thomas simply charged right for him. The Apostle just wearily smiled at so desperate an action.
____“Thomas!” Brooke shouted. She struggled in place, hand repeatedly tugging at the loosened straps he had undone while he could. Squeezing, she at last slipped her right hand free, reaching through the lightning-entity on Elias’ back and grabbing him even as it electrocuted her.
____Elias teleported to evade Thomas, taking Brooke with him which took the table which was bolted to the floor: causing him to only shoot a few feet halted into the air. With that, Thomas caught up and crashed into him, and as Brooke relented her grip from the pain the two were again together. In panic they teleported straight into the air and crashed into the ceiling, falling back down and hitting the fast-moving floor hard.
____Thomas rolled along the bent floor, seeing the rooms beyond speeding inward: floor after floor, fire after fire all flying back into place. There was no time to think about it. He crawled, reaching out and grabbing one of the pistols that had fallen. He didn’t even know if it was loaded or not, only that he alone could act right now. He had come all this way for this, Gene had died for this moment right here… this most important moment in all Thomas' life.
____His mind still trembled with the fresh combining of his form with Elias: faint thoughts racing through him even as it faded like a dream—that all love was only a Trojan horse for more pain, that corpses were more honest than men, and that all things should be destroyed. Thinking Brooke would be any different was a fool’s errand, enamored only by a present’s paper. Better that he should forever lament losing his beloved than grow to hate her over the many winters of the march of time. But Thomas pressed through it, hoping that Elias would be more slowed than he at these foreign thoughts, wanting only to triumph in this one moment: where he could maybe finally make a difference against all the machinations that had conspired all his existence to render him unfulfilled and miserable. He willed and hoped and believed, and fought.
____He aimed and fired as Elias sat up, but still the entity caught the shots. Elias snatched up his own gun and teleported before Thomas could tackle him again. He appeared directly behind his prey, the entity behind with lightning-arm raised. Thomas rolled out of the way, and again and again as Elias continued teleporting and attacking repeatedly. The Apostle's own hands fumbled with his one remaining gun, trying to reload it.
____Forcing pressure even as his form quaked and his head bled and all the room spun beneath him, Thomas rose to his feet. He saw Elias cram the magazine into his weapon and then immediately disappear. Knowing him, Thomas aimed preemptively, and Elias reappeared—knowing Thomas as well—with pistol raised right to his head. Both fired.
____Bangbangbangbangbang!!!
____Thomas stood there, ducked down low, his gun pressed right into Elias’ stomach: directly against his body where nothing could intervene between the barrel and the flesh. The pistol leveled back stood directly above him, smoke pouring freshly from the spent weapon. They had both aimed where the other would be, but Thomas had crouched. Blood fell and pooled on the floor where Elias stood, and he remained perfectly still even as the stain of red ran down his black clothes.
____The black entity behind him writhed and thrashed, and all the walls around Thomas bent and doubled like prisms in the light. His ears popped and his head rung loudly. And then the electricity burst back all upon Elias, and the illusion came crashing down as the lab room all at once returned to normal. Elias fell back.
____The slapping sensation of everything snapping back into place threw Thomas back, and more tiling and wires buckled down from the ceiling into a terrible wreckage. The room was cut in two by the fires and the collapse, and although he could now see Lt. Header and Stacey and the others they remained cut off by all the flaming debris that lay scattered about.
____“Thomas!” he heard Thorn shout. The Corporal was nearest, shielding himself from the flames, “Thomas, are you all right?!”
____“I—I—I… yes!” Thomas yelled back as he struggled to peer over the wreckage. He could see the soldiers, as well as Stacey already draped over Gene’s lifeless body in tears. He was still and soaked in blood, but had nonetheless died smiling. Gauge too lay dead and withered, clutched in Irene’s arms still rigid with shock. Thomas grimaced, “Just get out of here, all of you! I’ll save Brooke! Go back the way you came!”
____Thorn didn’t leave immediately, looking Thomas in the eye for a moment before finally nodding, “Get out alive, you two! We’ll see you on the surface!” He retreated, gathering Gene’s corpse in his arms and leading the way out from the burning room.
____Thomas returned the nod and stumbled back away from the flames over to Brooke. He could see Elias lying there on his back, electric being under him still writhing in vain. But Elias himself was just staring up at the ceiling in complete shock as he bled out. The pistol had fallen from his hand.
____Brooke was in bad shape herself. She had been fiercely electrocuted when she had grabbed Elias through the monster, and lay there staring and breathing heavily but doing nothing as Thomas approached her. Though one arm was loose she had not freed herself, still bound upon the table. He put one hand on her cheek as he came near, causing her to break the aimless staring and look up at him. His eyes met hers wordlessly, trying to offer solace even as he himself likely looked ragged and terrible. He wanted comfort only in each other right now, for the rest of their lives. But they were both in bad shape, and had to get out of here first.
____“I’ll getcha.” Thomas told her, casting aside the spent pistol, and he leaned and unfastened all the restraints along the table. Brooke sat up as soon as she was able, stepping down and stumbling feebly into his arms, still barely able to stand. Thomas caught and supported her, trying not to collapse himself, looking around the room for anything other than walls and flames. The way he had come was behind him, cut off by the inferno. The only other doors in the opposite corner by him had no handles, and he warily approached it, “Come on…!”
____He kicked at it first, but it seemed to be a pull-door, and sturdy at that. He leaned on it, ran his hands along it, tried to get a grip anywhere… but nothing worked. Panic began to slowly creep in just as the flames behind did. He was in no shape to somehow force it open.
____“Thomas…!” Brooke said, looking around for any other escapes and finding none.
____“I know!” he shouted. The desperate bashing intensified.
____He kicked the doors too hard and the two stumbled back and nearly fell over. Just then the sealed doors banged from the other side, several times in a row, before at last throwing themselves open. In staggered Nazar, gun drawn and arm raised to shield himself from the sudden heat of the fire.
____He swiftly looked, surveying from Thomas to Brooke to the dying Elias, then lowered his pistol and gestured behind him, “This way, quickly!”
____“Nazar!” Brooke cried, “You’re actually helping!”
____“Very funny.” he said, “My sole purpose is to thwart Apostle, you know. Of course I’m helping. Now come on, we need to leave.”
____He turned and led the two into the hall he’d come from. They moved slowly, leaning equally on each other and forcing Nazar to maintain a gradual pace. He walked to the end of the dim corridor where two sealed doors stood, reaching to his radio.
____“Lav. Get me a lift again.” he ordered, “Restore power to the elevators in Column G.”
____Thomas could barely hear her voice echoing from an unseen radio, “On it, sir.”
____The three tensely waited.

The final chapter is also the shortest chapter, so I will post it soon to bring things to a close.

~TAF

[TheAverageFan]

Chapter 32, the final chapter of our story. As said previously it is the shortest chapter of the novel.

Spoiler Alert!

32
Silence

____Elias felt the pounding feeling of life leaving his body. With the last of his strength he rolled over onto his shot stomach, lying there in the welled blood of his failure. The only thing left in him was the entity upon his back, crackling and jolting about in its dying agony. He could still feel the fresh hate it constantly exuded: a never-ending will to extinguish all life until its appetite for bloodshed was satiated. And he could feel the lingering self of Thomas in his subconscious, naïvely believing that he could still feel happiness. That sentiment rolled off Elias like water off a duck’s feathers. He had erred down that path already.
____Glaring down the open hall his killer had escaped into, Elias could still see him from here: standing with the girl and Nazar by one of the elevator shafts nervously waiting. Nazar was pushing the button every few seconds, saying something into a little radio and glancing about while the other two just leaned on each other in exhaustion.
____Reaching out, sleeve sliding in the blood all over the floor, Elias slowly picked his pistol back up. He held his arm out erect, violently shaky in his dying bloodloss, and took aim. Hate running all through his veins pushed him onward: the need to die while taking, so that to perish was an escape stealing away from his enemies in one final act too late to punish further.
____He could feel King’s eyes on his back, watching him. The violent bursting of the dying lightning behind him crackled and thrashed in place, desiring only harm and driving its hateful will into Elias’ being. Everywhere about him there was that insignia, demanding destruction. To soothe the shaking, he now clasped the weapon in both hands, aiming with more deliberateness than he had ever done, squared right at his target. He could hear only his own breathing now.
____The two were hugging, leaning against the wall while they waited for Nazar and the lift. Both slumped down low to the floor, injured and lightheaded and nearly too tired to move at all. All they seemed to have in all the world now was each other, and so they just sat there embraced tightly together.
____Elias aimed, aimed… Then he let the gun fall from his hands and pushed it, letting it slide across the bloody tiles far out of reach. Perhaps the sentiment did reach deeper than he guessed. With that he went limp and lay there letting the last seconds of life leave his body, still watching the two hug and hope, all the while feeling the burning sensation of King’s eyes on his back as he died.

____Beep. The shaft doors lit and opened. Thomas lifted his head at the sight. Lavender had saved them again. Instantly Nazar stepped in, gesturing for them to follow. Without hesitation Thomas and Brooke limped in after him, and the three were taken up and out of the bowels of the dark evil place below.
____A new hall greeted them, and Nazar deftly led the way forward, “This is the way I came. Follow me. We don’t want to keep your friends waiting.”
____He took a few short turns down one dark passage after another, until at last he made it to a stairwell leading up. No monsters appeared to hinder them. Nazar ascended, a thin line of light beaming down upon his brow as he neared the top. Two trapdoors lay shut there, and he threw them open as he led the way to the surface. Gray light bombarded their eyes and they crawled out in one final flight.
____It was drizzling lightly as the three escaped into the open field above, standing now atop a short but vast hill. Again they could feel the organic touch of cool open air about them, and of natural light and water—at last free of the stifling suffocating atmosphere of that dark tomb below which had felt only of metal and dust and electronics. It was hardly a sad rain: the water didn’t even feel cold, Thomas welcoming it as if it were here to cleanse everything away. Winter was finally over, Spring was here.
____Brooke hugged his side, his hand over her shoulder. She shuddered at first as they finally halted, gasping for breath in the haste to escape. Then she laughed a little, almost startled at the notion of safety now: standing here finally free out in the middle of an open, rolling hill with all the death buried down beneath her. He beheld her smile and then embraced her tighter, kissing her in the light rain. To even smile was such a gift now, and he knew she would be sad again for those who had died to help save her. That could come later, reuniting with the others could come later; he wanted this moment for himself.
____“Thomas…!” she whispered between kisses, “Oh, my Thomas. I knew you’d come for me, I just knew it!”
____“I never should’ve left. I’ll never leave your side again.” he murmured back, “You’re the music of my life, Brooke. I love you. I need you.”
____Nazar was less interested in romance, sealing the hatch back shut behind them before walking over to the two. He gave them only a second longer to kiss before insistently beckoning Brooke away. “Yes, yes, very nice. There’ll be plenty of time for that later.” he said impatiently, “Look at me, Brooke. I need to know what they did to you.”
____Thomas frowned at him, not wanting any more interference. He had meant what he’d said before: wanting only to be alone with the woman he loved, away from all the factions and fighting that would threaten her forever. If Nazar still insisted on taking her away again even after all of this…
____Brooke at least obeyed Nazar’s request, shaking her head and brushing her already-wet hair from her eyes, “I was only drugged by Dr. Lance. I couldn’t tell you much else.”
____She almost seemed dismissal of his concerns, still elated at her unexpected escape from Apostle’s clutches. It was an innocent sort of noncommittal response, but Nazar still seemed to fume at it.
____“Brooke! Look at me!” he snapped at her in a gravely serious tone, stepping close and holding her chin so she’d meet his gaze, “I want you to answer me with complete honesty! Did they take any blood or fluid samples from you?”
____“No!” she replied gladly, “They were waiting for King. My friends got there before they could do anything to me.”
____“No bloodwork from you? No needles of any kind?”
____“Nothing!”
____“Oh, thank God.” Nazar relaxed, then deftly raised his pistol to her jaw and shot her through the head. BANG!!
____“NO!” Thomas stooped and caught her only just before she struck the ground, staring in disbelief at her body. Head split, killed instantly. Nothing settled, no last words, gone just like that. He looked back up at Nazar, trembling with the sudden shock.
____Anticipating his anger, Nazar already had the pistol pointed down to meet him, explaining himself: “She was a liability the second Louis knew about her! As soon as King became aware of what I was planning she was sealed by him and made useless, and worse yet Apostle could use her to create a counter-cure against future attempts.”
____“What?!” Thomas asked through gritted teeth, unable to even comprehend that she had been taken at all, let alone for such a reason as this.
____“Every difference in her blood we wished to compare to King’s to exploit they could do in reverse to seal it off. How then would we ever stop them, even if we did find another like her? I miscalculated—I should’ve known the moment the samples we’d already taken kept coming back blank. It’s better this way; there’ll always be other candidates we can use. Others I can keep properly hidden, safe and secure, now that I at last have complete control.”
____“Others?!” Thomas growled, “She was one of a kind! She was everything to me! I’ll kill you!”
____“Calm yourself, Thomas!” Nazar snapped back, “I still have plans for you, but my own life remains the most important. Don’t make me put you down in self-defense. It’s a terrible waste of resources to kill a human being in such times. Haven’t we seen enough of that already?”
____“She was a human being!” Thomas batted the gun away and leapt.
____BANG!!
____The weapon discharged as it was knocked aside, Thomas tackling Nazar and pinning him to the ground. While they grappled he repeatedly punched Nazar’s face with his right arm, over and over as hard as he could. He could feel his own head throbbing with the pain of adrenaline against his injuries, but he kept at it. He’d die before he gave in.
____“Bastard!! You murderer! You condescending, sniveling, smirking, backstabbing bastard! She was my hope! I’ll kill you!”
____Nazar caught his last punch, arm wavering as he held Thomas’ fist in his hand. He smiled knowingly as he always did—no: cruelly, gladly—blood trickling from his nose and lip, “You faithless idiot. I do whatever suits the endgame. I’m the only one who can see the big picture here.”
____“To hell with the big picture…!” Thomas snarled back. He grappled against Nazar, balled fist trembling with effort against Nazar’s palm, as the two lay there alone in the rain.
____“You human.” Nazar hissed, “Bickering shortsighted humans all running amok crying for help as they poke holes in my ship. While I alone try to steer them to shore. Use your head. Do you want Apostle to win, for the world to end, all because of your high oxytocin count? You can’t kill me. You need me if you’re ever going to stop him.”
____Thomas managed to break the grip, knocking Nazar’s arm aside and getting ahold of his neck. He squeezed tightly, “I’ll give your corpse to your brother in a wrapped box.”
____Nazar’s grin only grew more wicked as he was throttled, glaring up at Thomas all brow-furrowed and hair wet, face bloody. Thomas squeezed harder.
____He heard Header behind him, the rest of the group having made their way to the surface. The two soldiers had circled the hill, desperately searching to ensure that Thomas and Brooke had made it out. The First Lieutenant was running over, “Thomas, stop!!”
____It was no longer a friendly presence as far as he was concerned, Thomas just trying to strangle Nazar while he could. But there wasn’t enough time. He could hear the boots in the wet grass, tramping up the hill quickly. Header and Thorn were there already.
____Header grasped him from behind and pulled, taking a few tries to tear Thomas off, “Let go of him! We need him!”
____Thomas kicked and struggled, “I don’t care! He killed her! Let me go!”
____The First Lieutenant glanced down and saw Brooke lying there dead, frowning but maintaining his grip. The lack of words or real response only made the feeling of betrayal run redder, Thomas thrashing twice as hard.
____“DON’T YOU CARE!? HE MURDERED HER! LET ME GO! DON’T ANY OF YOU CARE?!” he screamed at the top of his lungs, struggling madly. All his anguish and fury halted by Header’s simply stronger arms.
____“…We need him, Thomas.”
____Nazar staggered back to his feet, wiping his mouth, “Thank you, First Lieutenant. I don’t expect all of them to understand, but we will recover from this. The important thing is that Apostle’s plans have been thoroughly foiled. This is a victory, even if it may not seem like it right now.”
____“Yes sir.” Header answered bluntly. Cpl. Thorn couldn’t help but glance worriedly to him. Still he said and did nothing.
____“They won’t be perfecting their virus now, but I still need to find a new lead if it’s to make any difference. Expect further orders, First Lieutenant.” Nazar said simply, retrieving his pistol and taking his leave from there, “I will keep in touch. There’s still a lot ahead of us.”
____“No! No, no, no!!” Thomas watched him just walk off free-of-charge, “Let me kill him! Let me—oh!”
____He was interrupted as Header released him, seemingly determining that Nazar was safely away. Thomas fell to his knees, gritting his teeth and glaring at his enemy sauntering off as if nothing significant had happened. Thinking quickly, he leapt back up and reached to Header: yanking the First Lieutenant’s pistol out of its holster and aiming swiftly to Nazar behind him.
____Faster still, Header reached out and pulled the slide right off the pistol, rendering it unable to fire. In the same movement he then punched Thomas in the face, knocking him straight down to the ground again. Thomas gasped, too dazed to sit back up as the gray clouds above spun. At last all the mounting pain and fatigue came rushing in, finally insurmountable. He could only roll onto his side, rasping.
____“Sergeant…!” Thorn began.
____Header pointed to Thomas, “Stay down, boy.”
____“You…!” Thomas exhaled, “...I’ll kill you…!”
____“Your grief is not special.” Header said gravely, “I lost the only woman I’ve ever loved. I lost my li’l firefly before she was even old enough to like boys. You can’t even fathom what it’s like to lose a child. No matter what you’re feeling right now, he is too important for it. You don’t have the right to kill him and ruin everything in doin’ so. An’ if you think otherwise you might as well put on an Apostle uniform, like the rest of them thinkin’ their sorrow outweighs the whole world.”
____Thomas glared up at him in silent impotent fury, recognizing now the grim expression on the man: the complete lack of surprise or anger at what had befallen Brooke. The First Lieutenant had accepted her fate the moment VACC-102 had been taken; Thomas' hope had only blinded him to that fact until now.
____Header continued, “Think about why she had to die, Thomas. There’s only one reason he ever does anything. To stop them. They’re the reason we’re here right now. They’re who’s to blame. An’ we can’t stop them without him. We can worry about him when—an’ only when—it’s over. The most we can do for Brooke right now is just to mourn her. An’ the same goes for Gene an’ Gauge. Let’s jus’ bury our dead for now.”
____“So you’re with him, then.” Thomas muttered, “She’s not even cold, and you’re just resigned to being a c*cksucker for him. You don’t even care.”
____“I can’t afford to think that small anymore!” Header told him, picking up his pistol and reassembling it, “You’ve lost everything, welcome to the club. If you wanna die then die, boy. But for me, there is only the mission left. We make sure someone—someone—survives, by any means necessary! We did things her way, puttin’ one bullet in our feet after another. Cluelessly blundering our way forward, wasting time an’ getting people killed. We stopped makin’ smart decisions, an’ here’s the natural end result. You’d have seen it comin’ a mile away if you were as rational as you claim.” He forcibly shoved the gun back into its holster, “You’ve had it hard, but you never stopped bein’ a child. It’s time to grow the f*ck up an’ make the hard decisions that’ll see us to the end of this war… or you can give up like a coward.”
____“Sergeant…” Thorn murmured again, staring at his superior with uncertainty.
____“It’s First Lieutenant!” Header snapped at him, “Git this one back to the others, an’ find me somethin’ to cover the body with. I don’t want any of them seein’ it like this.”
____The Corporal took a deep breath and nodded solemnly, “…Aye sir.” He slung his carbine and walked to Thomas, hoisting him up and supporting him, “On your feet, Thomas. You’re going to survive this. Let’s just make it to the jeep, for starters.”
____But there was no starting for him, inconsolable as he was. Everything had just ended, as he had so miserably recognized would happen the very first time he had allowed himself to be vulnerable with her. Maybe for Thorn and the rest the world would keep spinning, with all their hopes and stakes still hanging in the balance, but for him it had just stopped. He had in an instant fallen right back down to his deepest gulch, and from there he could again clearly recognize how careless and precarious he had been before. Of course it would end like this, but knowing it didn’t make him feel any better. He had fought and fought wanting to be wrong, for once in his wretched life. But as always he was right, and powerless, and alone.
____Silently with the Corporal he staggered down the hill—barely able to stand with the weight of his bloodloss, with no hope or drive to hold it back any longer—led to the waiting cars where he at last collapsed and passed out, and there was only the noise of the light drizzling rain, and no music.

~TAF

[TheAverageFan]

____
Apostle's Creed Final Survivor Count [SPOILERS]

Spoiler Alert!

Protagonists: Thomas, Thorn, Header, Stacey, Reed, Irene
Others: Nazar, Lavender, Grimm, Tandom, Jaxson, Miles, Abbey, James, Oriel, Henry, Brett

This Fiction is now officially Completed. If you've read this story and would like to rate it, PM the Fanart/fiction Indexer The Grim Reaper's Friend with your score out of 10. And don't forget to check out the OP for any final details now that you are fully caught up!

Until we meet again,

~TAF

[TGRF]

Chapter 23:

Spoiler Alert!

No grammar things for this one.

The fact that Irene was able to even make it a contest with the spear pulling her seems odd to me... didn't the Reaper just stop a car with strength alone? How on earth is Irene putting up any fight at all? The Reaper should be dragging them both into the zombies instantly. Unless this is intentional, and the Reaper's strength is proportional to his target for some reason...?

The Reaper follows the tradition of Apostle missing everything in front of them. I was wondering why he was using a spear, but this actually explains it - he can't hit Irene with a literal spray of bullets. At this point I feel like this has got to be a thing - some side effect of being Apostle is terrible aim. Which brings into question how Silvin or Guage can hit anything (I assume Guage has hit things...).

Honestly I'm glad Hanna died. I was beginning to think over the last few chapters that we were making it through this with way too few casualties. Injuries yes, but everyone seemed to be surviving. Another death is good, but I'll still be surprised if there aren't more by the time they get out of Cincinnati.

I've got to say that I loved your bit with Apostle missing everything. Totally something up there.

Aaaaanndd there goes Thomas...

I question Header's judgement yet again when he enumerates the reasons they need to keep Brooke safe, and then promptly sends one questionable civilian after her. Like.... seriously??

Seeing that we only have nine chapters to go makes me wonder how you're possibly going to tie this all off. There are just so many unknowns and unexplained mysteries. Obviously I'm hoping (and assuming) that things don't just 'end' outside of our hero's control, with them just being along for the ride.

~TGRF, looking forward to seeing how things end.

[TGRF]

Chapter 24:

Spoiler Alert!

You don’t need a child’s life on your conscious.

Conscience*. A common mix up.

“This window here was already broken! I’ve pulled a Buster Keaton!”

Ah, we have a man of culture here, I see.

Not a lot to say about this one. I still don't know exactly what kind of closure Thomas was looking for in the hospital - maybe it was explained but just not clear enough for me.

This chapter seemed to require a bit more suspension of disbelief from me, between Thomas' actions, Brooke's actions, and Gene's quippiness. It still works okay.

~TGRF.

[TheAverageFan]

Fixed, I don't know how I missed that one. I did a Find + Replace check across the whole novel the first time you pointed it out, but I must've missed one somehow

~TAF