And, I could see now that we were closer, there were more, small, almost imperceptible sparks traveling from each spike to elsewhere. It was barely visible, but with a thousand spikes all together…

Sharp fingertips scraped the already damaged section of crystal. It got Tattletale’s agent to pay attention, upper body and main head craning over in the direction of the spike-headed woman.

Lowering her face to be almost on the same level as the spike-headed woman’s.

They began communicating, clumsy and at range, bringing up disparate images.

Tattletale motioned.

We used the distraction.

Into the forest, that was alive with the arms.

A crystal lit up to my left. Slaughterhouse Nine.

Like a punch to the gut.

Mama Mathers, throwing herself in Rain’s direction, like an animal at the zoo hurling itself against the glass. Then, when I passed that same crystal, it was Crawler, puking.

Kenzie, a few steps behind me, saw a black woman with a serious expression. Not her mother. Hand reached out—bandage pulled away.

I looked back because looking forward was to wade into a storm.

Into Leviathan. Into the hospital room.

Many-sided crystals where every side was a different image and every image was the hospital.

And then not the hospital, but flesh. My flesh, my features, my belly with gaps on either side so it was still my torso and my silhouette, but the armpits webbed out to more torso and to arms and to legs, and the slope of belly meant to connect to pelvis bridged out to another torso instead, like the queen of spades in a deck of cards, joined to her other half at the ribcage.

Sad eyes, without hope.

It got my guard down, made my heart sink. More images around me flared to life, so visceral and visual they seemed to have sounds to them. Violence, being drenched with acid. Violence, having my arm shredded. Over and over again, injuries, my body being torn apart with battle wounds, until I felt like I might look down and find myself in tatters.

That paralyzed, frustrating feeling was building up, and with it came the terror that if I couldn’t push through, if I lost strength now, then that feeling would be with me forever.

And at the same time, if I pushed forward, then it would mean risking doing something reckless and stupid.

The violent images shifted, as Kenzie became the closest person to that cluster of crystals. Kenzie, viewed from across a dinner table, as her face was smashed into a plate.

I’d seen that, captured in still image, on the projector box in her workshop.