Rachel handed me the dog. It was a chihuahua that might have been inbred, its teeth sticking out at one side, hair in a tuft that tried to become a mane, tracing down the back of the neck, while being too thin. More wispy fur extended around its paws. It made its best attempt at a deep-in-the-throat growl, which was less intimidating than me saying ‘urrrrr’ might have been.

“Hi Yips,” I said.

“Good remembering,” Rachel said. “Look after him.”

“Absolutely,” I said.

I walked away, dog in the crook of my arm, periodically turning its head around. It stared at Ashley and Rain, growling, turned its head, and seemed to notice I was there, jumping a little, before yipping and barking. Like it had fucking forgotten I was carrying it in the five seconds it was focused on something else.

The room that looked like a conference room, with a whiteboard on the wall with lots of chemical formulas written on it. Within the room, Ashley and Rain were waiting, Rain sitting on the table, Ashley by the wall.

“Are we supposed to discuss this?” Rain asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I feel like it’s a personal decision, and it’s not really a decision we have any right to make.”

“Maybe we write it on our hands?” he asked. “We show each other simultaneously, so we don’t influence each other.”

It felt like such a shitty way to decide on so many lives.

“Yeah, if we don’t come up with anything better. Where’s Capricorn?”

“Filling an elevator shaft with water.”

I could see through the open door as Contessa worked on the computer. At least we had a bit of a reprieve. She wasn’t running for cover, and I didn’t hear anything, let alone any impacts.

The Harbingers were sticking close. Contessa pointed in the direction of the elevators, then at our group. A third point was aimed in Sveta’s direction, where the massive storage totes were. Both Harbingers turned their heads around to look.

“How are your ribs?” I asked Swansong.

“Fine,” she said, the answer terse.

“She got shoved by the Custodian. It bled pretty badly.”

“I stopped the bleeding. It’s not a problem, I’m good to fight.”

I turned around, looking for the whiteboard markers, and found one on the ground. It seemed to be a permanent marker, used to draw the lines that sub-divided partitions and portions of the whiteboard and write headers. A part of me wanted to grab another marker, but it felt petty and weird to do so when handling a decision like this.