Their clothes were torn; bloody scrapes and gashes covered their bodies; big splotches of hair had been ripped from their heads. They attacked each other at random, moving from one to the other without warning. They coughed and spit and snarled and bit anything in sight. They cried one second, laughed the next, then screamed as if their very throats would burst. They climbed the walls until they fell crashing to the floor. They jumped and huddled and kicked and flailed their arms.

It was, without any doubt, the most horrific thing Sato had ever witnessed, and he knew he would spend the rest of his life trying to purge it from his memory.

“What is this?” He had to force the words out, rage clogging his throat. “What’s wrong with them? How could you do this to them!”

Renee knelt on the floor next to him, not taking her eyes off the mayhem before them. “So you believe me now, do you? You believe that he’s inside my head, controlling me, talking to you? That I am Reginald Chu at this moment?”

“I don’t care who you are,” Sato said. “I’ll spend the rest of my life making you pay for it.”

Renee tsk-tsked as she shook her head. “Hard to believe you’re only a young man—you speak more like an adult than most men I know.” She shifted until she was sitting comfortably with her legs crossed beneath her. “But this isn’t what I really wanted to show you. Let me show you the future.”

Sato finally tore his eyes from the sickening display and looked at Renee. “What?” he said, throwing all the hatred he could into the word.

Renee didn’t return his stare, looking instead at the people around them. “They’re like this because I underestimated the power of Dark Infinity. I can’t control it on my own—I need help. I need a partner.”

She pushed herself to her feet and walked forward, seemingly oblivious to the danger she entered. But then, as if spurred by the flip of a switch, every person in the vast room grew silent, freezing in place. After a few seconds, the people—every single one of them—calmly gained their composure and joined Renee in the middle of the chamber, lining up in perfectly straight rows. The formation filled the floor, as ordered and organized as any military group in the world. Not a sound could be heard as they all stood still, each one staring at Sato.

“He is in all of our heads, now,” Renee called out, standing rigid as she spoke. “We will do his bidding, whatever he asks, until that time he must leave us, and then we will return to the horror that is life without him. The day comes when he will never leave us again.”