POV: Henry.

  Everyone who could still stand, started running. From Krutar to the young man with shark-tooth earrings to Gina herself.

  It didn’t matter how strong you were, relative to each other. Not when such waves of power were crashing upon us all. Crashing into the floor and the walls.

  Worse, the walls were giving way. Solid brick and mortar melting like candlewax as the very air buzzed and hummed with crackling bolts of purple lightning.

  All of my hairs stood on end. My muscles shivering s the currents of energy ran through them. Making me feel as if I were being cooked and broiled from the inside. Only for my heart to beat even faster. Throbbing with a speed and ferocity that made each pumping blow feel as if it would crack my ribs.

  It was a level of power that chocked the oxygen out of my lungs. My chest reeling as if I’d been beaten from all directions by metal bats. Both from the outside and the inside out.

  I tried to cough, but my breath burned and grew solid as it travelled up my throat.

  I lost my footing. My mind swaying and swooning due to my inability to breathe.

  Yet I also felt a strange sort of ecstasy at that same time. My mind feeling invigorated in a way I hadn’t thought possible.

  That lightning which had burned me now lit a healing fire within me. Swelling up at the core of my being and letting me feel my own Psy far more than possible.

  I felt bigger. Stronger. My eyes catching each and every spark or violent lightning as it travelled through the basement.

  I tried to gasp once more, but my lungs could not bring in air fast enough.

  Then I feel my heart pumping out more Psy, as well as blood. Each thump now moving in concert with the rest of my being. No longer hurting.

  Before that point, using my Enhancer powers was like asserting myself unto the world. Like making my body and my clothes more real than any of the dead things around me.

  Now, all the dead things around me were more real than I was. More charged with Psy and keeping greedy wishes of their own.

  I could feel them as me. As expansions of me.

  Each piece of furniture was as a muscle.

  Each floorboard was as a bone.

  Just like me, they too twisted in place due to the ambient energy.

  Just like me, they too wailed and writhed with all the effort of existing.

  “Sing Henry.” A face in the wall spoke up. “Know yourself. Your true self. Do not let the fake one crush you.”

  The face made of stone grew three, sapphire-like eyes. Two were where human eyes would have been and another on its forehead.

  “You are real. You are his friend. You are my friend. I will not let you come to harm. None of me will let you come to harm.”

  “Flee.” The air sang.

  “Flee.” The floor sang.

  “Flee.” The ceiling sang.

  “Flee.” The tables and chairs sang.

  “Flee.” The rest of the walls sang.

  “Flee.” The spilled food sang.

  “Flee.” Mittens sang.

  Then the horror leapt at Lalo. Murder in her glowing eyes.

  Her arms and legs moved so quickly that they became a blur within my senses. Even as everything else seemed frozen in time.

  The sword finding Lalo within the pause between two blinks.

  Lalo didn’t move. He didn’t even flinch.

  Instead, he stood his ground. Still as a stone.

  His presence was an anchor to all the ensuing chaos. The eye of the storm that remined still and untouched while the rest of the world was drained of all its usual colors.

  Even stranger shivers ran through me. This time re-asserting the reality I was used to.

  All the faces disintegrated into burnt or crumbling pebbles. All the voices hushed.

  Mittens slowed to a crawl. Moving more like a regular human, with none of the psionic might she had shown thus far.

  I felt it too. Like another punch in the gut. My body returning to its pre-Tutorial levels of strength.

  The changes driving me to tears as my organs struggled to adjust to the newfound weakness. To the absence of the kind of power one could drown in.

  Mittens’ bone sword kept its momentum though.

  Striking Lalo. No…. Sully. Like a thunderbolt.

  The impact sent dust and debris flying in all directions. Slightly crushing the boards beneath Sully’s feet.

  If Sully noticed, he didn’t show it.

  His dressings, the shirt and shorts, retreated into the form of a pair of white dressing pants.

  The skin of his torso was thus left exposed and I could see that it was wriggling as if it had a life of its own. Small masses of flesh twisting and churning like a thousand writhing maggots.

  His skin absorbed the sword in short order. Like an amoeba. Sully’s skin looking as malleable as water as the blade sunk in without bothering him in the slightest.

  I sucked in a breath with great effort. Half expecting Sully to strike down Mittens right then and there.

  Yet, despite Mitten’s growls, snarls and clawed strikes, Sully made no move to act.

  “You believe I am fake.” He repeated. His voice as calm as a tranquil lake.

  “I see into your mind and I see loyalty towards me. I see into your soul and I see the marks of my own Psy. I see into your body and I see the marks left over from my experiments.”

  He blinked and all that was left of the world shuddered.

  “So why? I supressed all outlying Psy with my own presence, so whatever was affecting you should have been dispelled. Why do you continue to defend gnomes? I would understand if it was literally anything else, but gnomes? Really?”

  “Mittens does swear. Mittens foretells. Sully will ring your death knell.”

  The copy blinked in confusion.

  “I am Sully though?”

  His face, which had been paralyzed and devoid of emotion until that point, suddenly started showing some expression.

  “You’re thinking that I’m not. Those gnomes are thinking that I’m not. They think they know me though. How? I’ve never spared a gnome and I know I’m not being tricked or manipulated.”

  Mittens snarled.

  Then the air shivered once more. Pushing back the blankness that the copy had asserted over the world

  I gasped. My eyes dilating. As the thing stepped forward.

  It had two heads. Three eyes in each one. A stark white suit. A long, angular body. And no face on either of its skulls.

  One of its gangly limbs rose up. The copy reeled back as if struck.

  His own blank and expressionless face giving no hint as to what was going through his mind.

  “Impossible.” He spoke. “You cannot betray me. You cannot. You are me.”

  “He is. Oh false one.” Another figure spoke up. Wearing a half-suit, half-robe dyed crimson.

  “Serpent-Tongue.” I gasped.

  The thing looked down at me. Seeming overjoyed.

  “Oh! Master Henry! What a lovely surprise!” His fingers closed around my arm. “Come now. Let us be off. His majesty would not forgive me if I allowed you to come to harm.”

  I felt my body dissolving. All of myself turning into smoke. Into coloured steam.

  I saw a light. Felt the rush of displaced air. And then the darkness welcomed me back.

  The dream was old and dreadful. Just as it always was.

  I dreamt of Sully and of his family, running next to my own. I dreamt of the crabs again. Of how they tore people apart. Of how their mandibles sounded when they were cracking through human ribcages.

  I was kneeling. Pressing myself against my parents.

  I was choking back tears.

  And I continued to choke back tears after my body wasn’t my own anymore. After my mind wasn’t my own anymore.

  I couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t scream.

  The air was molasses and someone had set all the sky on fire. So that each new labored breath felt like lava searing my lungs. My eyes. My ears. My nose. Every single pore along my skin.

  I felt the blows of pickaxes falling atop my skull. Cracking it and cracking it and cracking it.

  The was music. Too loud. Wails too. Also too loud.

  I tried to grasp onto something and felt my fingers disintegrating. As if I were a doll made of sand and I had somehow forgotten that fact. The folly leading my being to crumble and collapse upon a blackened beach.

  Yes. I was but grains of sand along a coastline. Tittering winged children chattering amongs themselves above me.

  “Remade.” One of them giggled.

  “Reforged.” Another corrected.

  “Reconstituted.” A third added.

  “Made anew in the image of our lord.”

  “Our great master!”

  They all tittered then. Laughing and cheering and whooping as I felt hands coming down to grab what little remained of me.

  Powerful, steady fingers gripping the wet grains of sand that were me and making them into a new figure. A new castle.

  I had eyes again. And ears and a nose and a tongue. I had skin with which to feel and fingers of my own with which to mold the world around me.

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  I was a doll once more.

  Only now I could see my own strings.

  I felt a headache coming to me and winced as I brought my hand to my forehead. It didn’t feel like a normal hangover. Instead, it felt as though someone had bashed me over the head with a shovel or some other blunt object. My brain throbbing intensely as if I was seconds away from passing out.

  Yet I didn’t lose consciousness and the aching redoubled.

  Until I saw Sully in front of me once more. The very picture of childhood innocence as he walked around his own home. His room which I’d often visited before.

  “Damn it. This dream sucks. What even brought it on?”

  ‘Help!’ I tried to scream. ‘Help! Come to your senses! Come on Sully! Remember me! Remember who you are! Remember that this is a fake world! That I am not a gnome!’

  But Sully didn’t notice me. Instead, he dimly recalled the exams, despite the last of them having been finished only yesterday. Only hours before this dream, all those months ago.

  ‘Wait, how do I know that?’

  I tried to shake my head, but felt grains of sand drifting away from me. Fierce fires coming from the side and melting my form until my outer layer had turned to shining obsidian.

  The pain was unimaginable.

  But young Sully didn’t seem to notice.

  His thoughts drifted to Henry. To the person I had been before the Tutorial. To the talk we’d had near the window. To the things that woman had been saying before the ambulance took her away.

  There was, something about delusions? Burning skies and eyes that hadn’t opened?

  My body started shaking. My stomach churning as I felt my intestines turning and writhing like serpents.

  Sully rushed to the bathroom connected to his room. Forcing open the door and trying to heave into the toilet, only for nothing to come out.

  Worse, the pain redoubled. For both of us. Travelling from my stomach and up my spine until it rang my head like a church bell.

  “Sully?” A voice called out from outside the bedroom. “Sully? Are you okay?”

  “Yes mom.” He said.

  Knowing that it was only a dream, but unable to keep himself from reassuring her.

  I stayed there. Heaving along and clutching my own stomach, until I heard the door opening behind me.

  I saw Sully turning with tears in his eyes and almost jumped backwards in surprise.

  This person, was not his mother. I mean, she looked like her. As she had some 15 or so years ago. Yet there was an underlying wrongness about her. Her features were somehow off. Too relaxed and placid, with a glazed-over expression that seemed to see right past both of us and out into nothingness.

  ‘No!’ I realized with a start. ‘It’s me! She’s looking at me!’

  I tried to plead. To beg for the pain to stop.

  She either didn’t hear me, or couldn’t do anything about it.

  “Uh. I’m, okay?” Sully said. Partly paralyzed by fear.

  “That is lovely dear.” She answered. With that same glossy gaze that wasn’t particularly focused on anything Sully saw.

  She then lowered her head a little. Too slowly for it to be anything like a normal human expression. I squinted and barely made out a humanoid shape sitting on her shoulder. Two cold blue eyes. Like chips of dirty ice, straddling a mouth bearing a wide grin. That impish smile grew slightly wider and the figure waved once before the outline dissipated like morning mist.

  “Yes. Lovely. Lovely, lovely, lovely. Come down and have some breakfast.”

  ‘Yeah. No. I think I’d like to wake up now.’ Sully thought.

  ‘That makes two of us!’ I tried to scream. ‘Let’s get the (Cherub) out of here!’

  We pinched ourselves.

  Hard. Then we did it again. Even harder. To no avail.

  “I don’t think I’ll be having breakfast today mom.” Sully told the creepy facsimile.

  She nodded slowly. Without any hint of emotion.

  I felt the twisting in my stomach worsening and I even went so far as to take a couple of steps back. Fearing that the outline might return.

  It didn’t.

  “That’s fine. Will you be going to school today?”

  Sully blinked. Several times in quick succession.

  “Uh, is today a school day?”

  “Yes.” She confirmed with a small smile. “It is.”

  “No.” He told her. “I won’t be going to school today.”

  She bobbed her head up and down like a broken doll and her empty eyes found mine. Not Sully’s eyes, but mine.

  “Whatever you think is best Sully. I love you.”

  Then she turned around and strolled right back down the stairs. Failing to close the door behind her.

  Sully looked like he was feeling it then.

  He felt as though there were thousands, or hundreds of thousands of voices calling out to him from all around the room. Mine being the loudest of them.

  Whispers sneaking in from the corners in the ceiling and from underneath the bed. From within the walk-in closet and beneath the desk. From all the books on the bookshelf and the posters on the walls.

  They were an incessant chorus assaulting him. Pleading for him to let them out. To allow them the freedom to wake up. Their voices sounded young and old and they came in all kinds of accents. All begging. Pleading. To be let out.

  “Jeez. That’s what I want. I don’t want to be here any more than they do.”

  Yet the buzzing did not end. They kept assaulting him when he tried to crawl back into bed and they kept assaulting him when he pulled the pillow over his head and they kept going and going no matter how much he willed them away.

  All while my stomach kept turning and twisting.

  The voices did not relent. Neither did the pain for that matter. It all swirled around us like some thick, gaseous soup. A fog that permeated the insides of both of our minds.

  “Sully? Will you be having breakfast?” The dream version of his mom asked from behind the door.

  He threw aside the pillow and decided that he might as well. Perhaps then the dream would let us out.

  He walked down the stairs in sullen silence. Not bothering to change out of his pajamas.

  His Dad was down there. Eating a healthy breakfast of eggs and some assorted vegetables. He had the same vacant expression that mom had plastered on his face. His eyes seeming to drift off into the air without any rhyme or reason.

  ‘No. He’s also looking at me. Also screaming internally. He wants to be let out.’ I thought.

  Just as I realized there were thousands of others in here. All begging to be let out.

  “I heard that you didn’t go to school today.” He said. Not sounding angry in the slightest.

  “No.” He confirmed. “I figured that I might try something different here in the dream. For once at least.”

  His Dad didn’t comment on his words, but merely kept nodding. A fact that sent even more chills up my spine.

  ‘He can’t do anything else! He’s trapped!’ I turned to Sully. ‘Realize it you fool! Free us! Let us go!’

  Sully only rubbed his head a little harder. As if he were feeling a fraction of my own enduring agony.

  The black glass that was my spectral body shattered then. Cracking as if struck by a sledgehammer.

  I wailed as I was unmade and watched with horror as Sully reeled from the blow as well.

  ‘He feels it!’ I realized with mounting horror. ‘He feels what I feel! He feels everything!’

  I tried to weep. To console him. But only beads of molten glass came out. My voice drowned out once more as blasts of purple lighting phased through the ceiling and struck me down. Over and over and over.

  “Very well.” He said after a while. “What would you like to do today?”

  Sully shrugged. Trying to ward off the worst of the headache. And failing.

  “Well, since I’m here. An ice-cream breakfast would be nice.”

  His Mom smiled. Clapping her hands awkwardly as if to congratulate him on his choice.

  “Of course, dear. What kind of flavour would you like? How many bowls? Would you like me to pour chocolate syrup on top? Or would you prefer to have it with some cake?”

  Sully blinked at her.

  Several times in quick succession.

  Again, it shouldn’t have bothered him. But he seemed to sense something was wrong. Despite Trying to ward off the pain. I could feel his own spine practically vibrating with all the chills going up and down its length. His stomach turning into a boulder that still managed to squirm in place.

  ‘Oh Sully.’ I wept. ‘I’m sorry. I never knew…. I never realized you had gone through so much… I… I should have done more… Please forgive me.’

  That was when we both heard the singing.

  We turned to look out the front windows and saw them there. Birds of all kinds and colours. Even ones that obviously weren’t native to Canada. All singing their little songs in front of the glass. With no regard for each other.

  Their movements were inexplicably stiff and robotic in nature. As if they weren’t truly birds at all, but rather, some creepy contraption rigged up to play music in the likeness of birds.

  Worse yet, were their eyes. Their tiny, beady eyes.

  They tracked me. Both of us.

  While Sully walked along the table’s edge. Somehow coming across as hateful, desperate and terrified, all at once.

  The TV turned on by itself then and I was greeted by a sleepy-eyed news anchor I didn’t recognize. Smiling in a way that suggested he’d had several hits of morphine before coming on the air and staring out into nothingness in the exact same way that Sully’s parents were.

  “And now for the morning news. Everything is perfect today. There is no crime. There is no scandal. Everyone has housing and everyone has a job. The economy is stable. New toys are being made with the cool moving arms. The government is handing out kittens and puppies. Everyone is happy. This is another perfect day in our perfect world. Now back to you Sean.”

  “Thank you, Tom. There were a lot of sports teams playing last night. Half of them won and half of them lost. It was very exciting. In other news, there were 1, 233 Rifts appearing in the past week. All the monsters tore themselves to pieces or otherwise mysteriously disappeared. No one got hurt.”

  ‘Holy (Cherub)! I remember this!’ I thought with alarm. Somehow managing to push past the agony.

  ‘There wasn’t a monster attack in a whole year! None of them lived past the initial breaches!’

  I heaved an unnatural sigh and grains of sand left my unreal lungs.

  ‘It was always like this. Sully was always this strong. Ever since he was six. Ever since we were six.’

  Sully himself had confessed that to me before I went back to our world, but the scale of his power had seemed a distant blur until now.

  In a single year, he had killed every monster in the world. Without any effort on his part.

  I shuddered once more. Realizing that I had the free will to know this because he willed it. If Sully had wished it, I could have been a puppet without any means of escape. One that didn’t even want to escape.

  Forever.

  I wailed as more purple lightning fell upon me. Searing my back and cleaving me in half before stitching me back together.

  “How wonderful Sean. Now, could you tell us about the mysterious disappearances?”

  “No Tom. We don’t talk about those.”

  “Okay Sean. You look great. I definitely don’t hold a grudge over you keying my car.”

  “Thank you, Tom. It means a lot. I was very stressed and had to let it out before you-know-who made me mysteriously disappear for having bad thoughts.”

  “My pleasure Sean. I for one, live in constant terror that you-know-who will get me too. I’ve actually been pooping blood for the past couple of months.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “Exactly what I thought. So, I understand where you’re coming from and I assure you that in no way do I wish harm on you. A little vandalism is okay if it keeps you around.”

  “That’s very nice of you Tom. I certainty have changed for the better since then. I love you. Please let me go. Please let my wife and children go. Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please…”

  ‘Please!’ I wailed in concert. ‘Please, please, please, please, please, please, please, please…’

  “Stay strong Sean. I love you. Now, lets check on the weather….”

  Sully’s Dad turned the TV off then. His vacant expression turning to me. To us.

  “Sorry about that Sully. It looked like the news was upsetting you.”

  Sully shook his head. Wincing as the singing of the birds and the voices streaming in from the corners of the room came together to beat me down further.

  “You know what? I will go to school after all. Let’s get this over with.”

  “Okay dear. I love you.” His Mom and Dad said in unison. Both still wearing those same blank faces.

  In the end, his Dad ended up taking us to school. His old car starting up with a rumble outside his old driveway. It would have been a nostalgic, almost pleasant moment, if it weren’t for our neighbours. All of them were lined up outside their own houses. All waving goodbyes at us as we drove down the street.

  “Have a good day, Sully! We love you!” They all said as one. Repeating the words over and over again as we travelled out of the roundabout.

  Things did not improve at school. Everyone, even a younger version of me had those same empty stares. Smiling without any mirth and, weirdly enough, agreeing with whatever he said.

  “Henry, I think that Telepath might have done something to me when she was having her fit.” I told the younger version of my friend.

  ‘No you dumb(Cherub)!’ I tried to scream. ‘She’s a kid in diapers next to you! She’s terrified of you! Everyone, from Patricia to principal Banerid to Granny (Cherub)ing Golden is terrified of you!’

  I paused.

  ‘And I’m starting to think they have a point!’

  “Of course, Sully. You’re always right. You’re so smart Sully.” The other me said.

  I wailed as my body was undone and redone once more. My feet flying towards the younger boy’s face in an effort to kick his stupid teeth in.

  ‘Get a grip! Tell him to let you go!’

  Sully narrowed my eyes at him.

  “Yeah. I guess I am. And you’re going to be in for a lecture when I finally get out of here.”

  “Of course, Sully. You’re always right. You’re so smart Sully.”

  I gaped in astonished, morbid fascination.

  ‘Was I like this when Sully was in control? I don’t remember this!’

  “I mean, what kind of idiot goes around fraternizing with Telepaths anyway? Do you have any idea what her powers were? What she might be able to do?”

  I was left stunned at the sheer heights of hypocrisy on display.

  “No, Sully. You’re always right. You’re so smart Sully.”

  Sully stopped trying to talk to him. Asking the teacher to distribute the tests so that he could get this whole thing over with.

  She did so.

  Stating that, since he wanted to do a test, we would all be doing a test today. Out in the real world, that would have resulted in the other children administering a rather vicious beating to him later.

  Me included.

  I mean, I loved Sully like a brother but some things are going too far.

  But not in here.

  All of the other children there agreed that it was a good idea and that he was very smart for wanting to do a test.

  I was shivering again by that point.

  “Okay. No. I have had enough of this. Let’s get the test done and be out of here.” Sully spoke.

  Then, like a drowning man surfacing from beneath a lake, I was back. Gasping as I shivered. My body drenched in cold sweat.

  “That mother(Sully)! This whole time! He kept this secret this whole time!”

  I was crying. Though I didn’t know whether it was due to my own suffering, or the suffering I knew my friend had gone through.

  I felt a hand grasping my mouth then. Holding my head so tightly that I thought my teeth might shatter.

  “That really isn’t a smart thing to say around these parts son.” A man said. “Come on. We’ve been waiting for you.”

  I blinked up at the speaker. Trying to discern his shape in the dim lighting.

  “President Lincoln?”

  The man gave me weary smile.

  “Technically I haven’t been elected. Not yet anyway. From what I’ve been told, it is still a few years away.” He paused to sigh.

  “Mr. Lincoln will do for now.”

  He paused to give me a once-over.

  “Now, before we join the others, could you be so kind as to bring up your Status and tell me what you see?”

  I blinked at him in confusion.

  “I’m level 18 and…”

  “No.” He interrupted me. “None of us are the same anymore. Trust me on that. Take another look and tell me what you see.”

  “Oh Sully.” I moaned. “What the (Sully) did you do now?”