I found myself on the carpet, but I couldn’t remember falling down. The nightmare fog covered me completely, drifting over my face in a comforting cocoon. The cold was relaxing. I should just stay here for a while. Pushing on would only make things worse, cause more trouble, ruin more lives. It could be somebody else’s problem for once, somebody else’s responsibility. What was the point? It was like my father had always said, I wasn’t tough enough, I wasn’t smart enough, I didn’t try hard enough. Hell, I was supposed to end his life too, and the last thing I’d ever see in his dying eyes as the cancer consumed his brain was disappointment. The cycle never ended. They’d be better off without me.

Get up. Get up and fight. That’s the Nachtmar talking.

But I didn’t know which thoughts were my own. They were conflicting, colliding. Everything had gone dark. My flashlight had died, batteries leeched by the unnatural cold.

That helped me focus. It was trying to do the same thing to me.

Pushing myself up, the fog tried to drag me back down with chains made of self-pity. Images of sadness and failure filled my mind. “I’m stronger than you!” I roared. It was horrible, this terrible weight, but I managed to get back up. The fog wasn’t just around me, it was in me. Was this a glimpse into the sort of manipulations the human host had been enduring all this time? Lies, distortions, and half-truths…regardless of who you were, you would break eventually. The fog had taken on the consistency of foam and was clinging to my face. I had to physically grab bits of the stuff and hurl it away. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

I could have sworn that something moved in darkness of the corner of my eye. There was the rustle of dry leaves and a whisper. “You are good.”

“You’re not, you wretched piece of shit. Where’s my brother?”

The Nachtmar didn’t respond. Batteries dead, I blundered forward in the dark. The cold was making me stupid. It took a second for me to remember that Hunters always had a backup for everything. Two is one, one is none. There were glow sticks in a pouch on my armor, so I drew them out, cracked them, and shook them until I had a small comforting green glow to light my way. I tripped over a body on the floor. It might have been one of the Paranormal Tactical men or maybe somebody from STFU, but I couldn’t tell because his face had been dissolved.