It was The Singularity that had come in search of them. Now there is no end to the flesh.

Neutrino’s struggles are causing him to be swallowed all the faster.

The X-Ray Kid focuses an intense eye-beam on the ghastly folds that have Neutrino in their grasp but even as it howls in pain – before the beams have even struck it – it seems to grow stronger with the attack, gaining force and fury from what, in The Anti-Matter Universe, is merely the transference of powers.

Then The Anomaly makes his play.

He stops moving. He surrenders.

He gives in to the back and forth, to the trap of the flesh, to the calling of The Singularity.

He refuses to resist.

The flesh around him recoils and extends itself in horrifying reconfigurations.

It opens huge waste pipes around him and exposes the great effluvial channels that run beneath the universe. But The Anomaly refuses to be drawn into wonder.

Even as Neutrino screams and appears to be on the verge of being torn and quartered by the force of their assailant.

Even as The X-Ray Kid appears to turn on The Anomaly himself, his eyes tearing through him in an attempt to rearrange his cells for what he perceives as a moment of mutiny or just a lack of heart for the battle.

As The Anomaly renders himself motionless in the tumult, the tumult itself accelerates, to the point that it starts to feed on itself.

The great Canals of Slurry that run beneath become super-heated and trigger a series of elemental transformations.

The waters start to run clear.

The sound of teeth rending the air.

The sound of the air swallowing itself.

Neutrino drops to the ground with a klang!!! as the endless flesh turns itself inside out in a series of shuddering orgasms.

Don’t fight it, The Anomaly commands his brothers.

Neutrino and The X-Ray Kid are stood in wonder.

Is it not beautiful, Neutrino says, as he himself is lifted up by his own power.

He goes to take his helmet off.

No! commands The Anomaly. Don’t go too far! There are temptations on all sides, he says, even as the great Canals of Slurry now flow like the rivers through Eden, pure and bright and slow, even as the flesh gives way to soft grass and lush trees and the sound of birds appears on the horizon. Even as they walk forward together and the vegetation parts and a great smoking tower is revealed to them, a great smoking tower that is in great pain, even as they realise that truly this is a mercy killing and that The Singularity tricked them with the notion of a mission, with the idea of a quest, for good against evil, when really the universe was upside down and they arrived, truly, as a relief force, as warrior monks in the charge of the sacred flame, not so that others could live, but so that they could finally die.