Steven looked up and saw his dead friend standing in front of him. His face was pasty and white, his skin was a bit too tight, but the bullet hole in his temple was just as Steven remembered it.

“What are you doing here?” Steven whispered as he shrunk back toward the corner.

“You’re supposed to be…”

“Dead?” his friend said, moving closer to him.

Steven retreated until his back was against the cabinets. The tears fell even faster now. He was shivering, and his eyes were wide with fear.

That made his friend happy. He smiled and knelt down, leaning in until their faces were almost touching.

“Why couldn’t you understand when I told you I didn’t want to be in the legion anymore?” he asked, his thick tongue marring his words.

Steven was afraid. Not because a dead man was inches away from him, but because he could see what had happened to his friend’s body after his death. There was an indentation circling his head, where his skull had been cut open and reattached. There was a line across his chest where his skin had been sliced. There was stitching in his mouth where his tongue had been sewn back into his mouth.

“It doesn’t matter why I couldn’t understand,” Steven said. “You’re dead now.”

“Yes, it does matter,” the dead man said. “You made me overdose, and you shot me. Then you tried to make it look like I killed myself. Tell me why you did it, or I’m going to kill you.”

Steven looked into those lifeless eyes and knew that his friend’s soul was gone. Knowing that made Steven more afraid.

Through tears and grief, he tried to explain. “I didn’t want to do it,” he sobbed. “But he told me he would kill me if I didn’t. He said you’d ruin everything if we let you walk away. I couldn’t let you.”

“You couldn’t let me do what?” his dead friend said. “Be happy? Live?”

“I couldn’t let you ruin it,” Steven said earnestly. “Not now. Not when we’re so close to finishing what we started. Don’t you see? People die in war. The people in the church in Logan, the people in the church in North Philly—”

“And me,” his friend said, standing up and looking down at him.

“So what are you going to do?” Steven whispered in a small frightened voice.

The dead man smiled. “You killed me,” he said as he pulled a sawed-off from his jacket. “I’m going to return the favor.”

Steven closed his eyes as the blast rang through his consciousness. It shook him to his core, pulled him from his reverie, and landed him in a place where darkness gripped him like a vise.