I could have thrown him off that building if I hadn’t had the gun as an anchor to weigh me down and make my flight more burdensome. He probably would have survived.

“Rain’s in position, we’re ready, I’m shooting if they need something shot, but otherwise I’m prepared to help evac.”

“You’re in position and you’re making your plans, but she’s been positioned to win since the moment she moved,” Chris said. “If the cracks spread, it’s to her design.”

“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine?” Sveta asked.

“It’s going to get some of us,” he said, looking out at the ongoing skirmish. Titan Fortuna still in the background, advancing, letting Ophion open the next stage of the fighting.

“Possibly,” I said.

“It’ll get everyone she wants it to get,” Chris said. “The damage you did? Her design, I’m betting.”

“Maybe,” Sveta said. “We don’t know if she has blind spots around this stuff.”

“It’ll get everyone she wants it to get,” Chris said, repeating himself. “The damage you did was her intent. It might help you now but it doesn’t change the outcome she decided on.”

“Are you here to do anything except spout doom and gloom?” I asked, angry now. “Are you going to help?”

He gestured back toward the end of the neighborhood closest to the water, close to the Shin portal, where the giants had gathered. Goddess Giant absent. They started trudging forward. “My giants will participate. I’ll do some stuff. I don’t think we can win. Not against that.”

“Why are you even here if you don’t think we can win?” Sveta asked.

“The irony of this whole situation is that I could probably give every Case Fifty-Three down there a body. Better than the one you got,” Chris said.

“You could what?” Sveta asked.

“Ow. These ears I gave myself are sensitive. You’re shrill.”

“This whole time?”

“Probably with regular injections, but doable. It would have been like painting a house that’s going to burn down tomorrow. I don’t see the point. In the big picture… we were only ever going to get a couple of years before the next world-ending crisis. Machine Army, Simurgh, broken triggers, something. I don’t see the point.”

“You’re a selfish asshole,” Sveta said.

“I am. Absolutely. And the irony is that as much as you want normal pink and brown human bodies I want as far the fuck away from humanity as is possible. I have since the beginning, when I realized just how sick we all are. Put me on a space shuttle, let me be a snake that literally eats its own tail forever, let me be a spider with fifty brains. I don’t care. Just…”

He extended one black-furred paw out toward the city.

“…Ugh,” he said.

“Ugh,” I echoed him, though I was referring to something very different, my gaze locked on him. “You want to be a Titan.”

“If it had to be one of us, wouldn’t you want it to be me?” he asked.