Her doppelgänger was in the prison that was Botch. No longer in control. Small in the tidal pools. Useless. Nothing they did from afar could help. Nothing from close by. Yet she could sense particles of her other self in the air around them, in the dissipated image of the duck. What did this mean?

The southern door would not open. Chen put his shoulder against it. Moss pried at the seams. Grayson faced the storm, gun drawn, feeling helpless. There was no path out, no escape.

The shape rammed into the Balcony Cliffs, lost its form, became a chaos of loose particles in the air and the wind shoving and smashing into them. In the high keening they heard the sound of part of the ruined roof coming free and walls creaking with the stress, trying to withstand what could not be withstood.

The scrabbling, terrible presence, demanding to be let in. Knew, three as one, that once it locked in place, once it splintered their skulls, broke into their minds, they would be lost.

Rocks and branches smashed against the wall around them.

But still the southern door would not open.

“Stand aside,” Grayson shouted.

She shot, four times. The bullets wedged in the metal. But the door would not open.

“Moss should take us out of here!” Chen shouted.

“I can’t. The storm’s in the way,” Moss shouted back.

The storm didn’t just exist in this space, in this time. It was obscuring her internal map, her compass. It was muffling the information, closing down the escape routes. Particles of her other self used to confuse her uncanny senses.

The door snapped open from the inside and Chen raged out. Glistening in that dark light, possessed by a terrible spirit, a terrible impulse. Shining like a beacon of burning white light. Face torn apart by rictus. Eyes turned up in his head.

Nocturnalia.

Moss understood: The duck had turned him. Some part of Charlie X had turned him. Controlled him.

But she could not turn away soon enough. Chen-not reached out to her, and even as she tried to dissolve into flowers, into a hail of leaves, he swiped through her form, grazed her shoulder, and, as she briefly fell apart, scooped flowers from her chest. Before she gasped and became human again. Chen-not’s hand came away green, holding part of her.

While his other hand, with the blade, had stabbed Chen in the back.

Grayson shot Chen-not. A hole ripped through his throat, but he fell backward, hand catching the door latch from the inside, closing it again. Them still trapped on the outside, now Chen-not’s weight jammed against the door from the inside. Chen slumped against the door on the outside.

As the storm washed over them and they huddled there not knowing their futures until it had passed and all was still.

None of them ready.

Thought they were in the middle.

Not the end.

xvi.