The hand at my mouth swelled, a thumb pressed against my lips, then a golf ball, swiftly and almost instantly becoming the size of a softball. It burst, flooding my nose with fluid that tasted like sugar water mixed with urine. The sensation, my head tilted back, fluid flowing straight into the sinuses and throat, it prompted a sudden, involuntary, whole-body reaction, my back arching.

Fierce enough that even though it was fleeting, it kept me from noticing the initial push of solid mass at my mouth.

Like containment foam, I thought, grasping for safety in the midst of horror. Like taking a drink of water and finding a slug in it sliding right past the tongue, except not water, and the slug didn’t end—it branched, twisted around itself, and varied in texture.

Straight to the back of my nose, punching the soft flesh there, straight down my throat, like a slug followed by a fist followed by a knobby arm with too many elbows, all wreathed in slick, loose flesh.

All growing to a dangerous size in the time it took me process what was happening. To process that another was at my fucking boot again, for some fucking reason.

I flew backward and away. Using flight to give me the initial tug, to get things moving the opposite way.

Lord of Loss caught me in the air before the tug happened. My head dangled, the growth still attached.

“Good effort,” he said. “Let’s go find your friends.”

No! Bad effort! Fuck you! Panic tinged my thoughts. There was a growth just behind my collarbone, in the midway point of my throat, that I could feel growing to size and stretching things there. I couldn’t breathe, I—

Air pushed into my lungs. I could see openings in the growth that connected to me widening and closing as it sucked in air and supplied it to me by some column or tube in the midst of it all.

Which didn’t help the fact that it was still expanding inside my throat like it was going to tear everything internal to pieces. I thought about using the Wretch in my panic, them remembered that if it tore the growth in half, then one half would be inside me, not retrievable without surgery.

I would not go to a hospital like that. I would not see those looks on the faces of medical staff. I wouldn’t be a sideshow. Not again. I’d sooner go out fighting.

In the distance, Rain created a blade of silver. I saw him throw it.

Lord of Loss didn’t move, nor did the growth. The blade sailed through the air, missing us completely. It hit a distant building.

Fuck you, Rain!