“You’re very welcome,” he said.

She left the store, and he moved the figure from the spot he’d given it to another place.

Nothing was easy. He hadn’t known what to say, so he’d spoken from the heart. The things weren’t so important, it was being able to get up again. That was what got him through the day. He and his brother had lost their parents early on. He’d lost his first job because a manager had shifted blame downhill, and he’d been blackballed from the local industry. Forced to choose between moving elsewhere to find work and staying close to his remaining family, he’d chosen the latter.

Now he had neither. He pressed on.

He helped some more customers, until a torrent of stern words from across the shopping center’s concourse turned his head.

A red-haired woman, berating her daughter.

It made him uncomfortable. It was a move away from the civilization and society he hoped things were trending toward.

He retreated further into his shop.

⊙

The Fallen kid screamed as he smashed his chair against the invisible barrier. Over the course of four impacts, he smashed it to pieces.

He’d just relived the nightmare. Everything, from his point of view, playing over again, with scattered context from elsewhere. He’d seen fleeting glimpses of his brother, he’d seen the store, and he had heard the explosions.

Then his world had turned upside-down and emptied out. No store, no money, no peace and healing.

He’d gotten out of the hospital and he’d made his way straight to the shopping center, using his new power to get past the tape and barricade. Everything was gone, from the zombie doll to the boxes of cards and the crate of comics he’d liberated from his brother’s store. There had been a comic in there that might have let him make an emergency payment on the store for a month, and now it was gone.

Then he had keeled over early into a sleepless night, and he had relived that night. Now he was here again.

The boy with the glasses sat with his face in his hands, glasses pushed up.

The woman had had a breakdown the first night and now she looked like she was going to crawl out of her own skin, fingers in her mouth, teeth biting down on flesh.

And the Fallen kid—the fucking kid with the demon mask—went from railing uselessly against the walls of his cage to taunting Jonathan and the others.

He kicked the dais in the center of the room.

“Stop,” Jonathan said.

The kid backed up, got a running start, and kicked the dais again, hard enough he should have broken his foot.

“Stop. You’re not going to do anything.”

Grabbing the edge of the dais, the kid tried to shake it loose.

“Stop!” Jonathan raised his voice.