Monokeros hit me with her power. It took all of the fight out of me, blinded me, and sent my thoughts spiraling into irrational tangents. Instinct and impulse recognized people hurling themselves toward her, and a bizarre, white-phosphorous bright impulse made me not want to share that space close to her with them. I turned.

Lookout fired again, and the feeling went away as quickly as it had come, just an instant before I could lash out at anyone nearby.

In the wake of it, I felt like a small part of me died, burned away. Not because of any lingering aspect of the power, but because I hadn’t ever wanted to be influenced like this again.

Blinded, Monokeros kept a hand out toward us. I saw others react as she hit them in turn, firing blind.

But she could only affect one person at a time.

I put my hand around her throat. She hit me with her power, that white-phosphor, all-consuming feeling of being overwhelmed in a good way.

Again, the feeling of death as it passed. Swansong was there. Saying something.

“…if Antares lets go of you, I will take your head clean off.”

“Then do it,” Monokeros said.

“No,” I said. “No, we aren’t killers.”

I didn’t use my powers to force her to move. Shoulder to shoulder, my hand at Monokeros’s neck, Swansong’s hand gripping her by the ear, we made her walk backward.

She started to speak, and I squeezed until the words stopped trying to get out. She’d talked enough.

Her feet reached the edge of the lip of the hole we’d made.

“I’ve got it,” Swansong said.

“You’re sure?”

She nodded.

“Don’t just push her so she falls down to the hole and then falls through. That feels too barbaric.”

“I know,” Swansong said. Swansong held onto Monokeros’s ear, as the rest of Breakthrough formed a loose circle around the hole. Swansong had to crouch, one hand and both feet sliding on the slope as she got closer to the hole itself.

She let go. Monokeros fell through. Capricorn’s lights were already marking where he was closing off the tunnel.

If anything in this was salvageable, it had to be that we’d either tell people to watch out for Monokeros in the access tunnel, or that we’d just close the portal altogether, or leave it lensed.

Not a death sentence, but if we could put her in a world without people, without innocents, where there was only nature and subsisting on her own, I was okay with that.

“…my first genuine friend that doesn’t have my DNA, and you know that’s a high bar when it comes to quality.”

I turned to look at Swansong talking to Lookout. A small laugh from Lookout.