“All right,” said JC. “Not as helpful as I’d hoped, but that’s Happy for you. Natasha?”

“It’s real,” she said flatly. “Real enough to kill us all. Or perhaps remake us in its image.”

The green light from the chemical stick was already guttering. Melody shook the stick savagely and said terrible things to it, but it died anyway. The darkness crept remorselessly in, from every side at once. Some of it had already crawled up the sides of the car and joined together on the ceiling, over their heads. There was a distinct chill on the air, as though the darkness was soaking up all the warmth in the car.

“This is not a natural darkness,” said Erik, his voice high and unsteady.

“Oh, you think?” Melody said harshly. She threw her useless chemical stick at the darkness, which swallowed it up in a moment. “What was your first clue? When it oozed right through the bloody windows? Of course it’s not natural!”

The five agents huddled together as the circle of light slowly contracted around them. Kim hovered beside them, glancing nervously at the dark ceiling. JC glared around him, his eyes glowing very brightly behind his sunglasses.

“Erik’s right,” he said abruptly. “This darkness may be real, in the sense that the Intruder created it and imposed it on our world; but it’s not a natural darkness. This is all more of the Intruder’s mind games to soften us up. Right, Happy, Natasha?”

“I don’t know,” said Happy. “I can’t tell. Maybe.”

“So help me, you take one more pill without my permission, and I will knock you down and stamp on your head,” said JC. “Concentrate! Is this darkness something the Intruder created?”

“Yes!” said Happy. “Has to be. Darkness doesn’t behave like this in the normal world.”

“Natasha?” said JC.

“If the Intruder made it, then it’s real enough to kill us,” said Natasha. “But that doesn’t make it real.”

“Make a circle,” said JC. “Everyone hold hands. Kim, fake it. This is symbolic. We’re going to work together, join together, and repudiate this darkness through sheer will-power.”

“What makes you think that’ll work?” said Erik.

JC grinned. “Because I already did it once.”

They made a circle, standing very close together, hand in hand in hand. Kim stood inside the circle, both her ghostly hands on top of JC’s. The darkness was very close. There was no car left outside the circle of light. They stood alone, the living and the dead, surrounded by darkness. JC took off his shades, and his eyes were very bright.

“Be strong,” he said, and his voice was calm and comforting and very sure. “The darkness is not real, but we are. See the world as I see it, through my eyes.”