Diving into the fog was a shock. It was ice-cold--it blocked out most of the light--it made every building and tall tree look stunted, because their tops couldn't be seen from the ground. It enclosed the street-lamps, though, which had flickered on in the gloom. Each one had a kind of halo around its head, where the light got caught in the drops of moisture.

Still, our view of the Pont Neuf was clear. The fog was thin there, probably because Hawkmoth wanted me to be able to see my own doom.

I took a deep breath. The cold had been in my skin before, but now it struck into my bones. "Oh god," I whispered.

It was so still, that was the creepiest thing about it. I had never seen so many people standing so still before. They were spaced out evenly along the embankments on either side of the river. And more people--more than I could count--were ranged along the Pont Neuf. They had climbed onto railings and parapets and were standing there, poised, perfectly still, waiting for someone to give them the signal to jump.

Marinette was floating just above the crowd at the centre of the bridge, and she was the only thing that was moving--or at least, her costume was.

It was a spectacular dress. My father would have been proud of it. It was made of scraps and tatters of grey silk, swirling about in the breeze like tentacles. Or was it the breeze? Sometimes they reached out to caress the cheek of one of the blank-eyed citizens ranged along the bridge--and afterwards, the man or woman would turn back to look out over the water with a kind of dark longing, as if their urge to jump had just intensified.

Her lips were candyfloss pink and, just like the real Marinette, she didn't shout. She didn't need to, though. The silence was so profound that we could have heard her from the other side of the city.

She said, "My name is Marinette Dupain-Cheng. And I am The End."

I looked for signs of my soft-hearted friend--or even for signs of Ladybug--but the only vulnerabilities I could see made my heart sink even further. Both of her legs were dangling helplessly. Her arms were bare, and covered in scratches, but there were no goose-bumps--no indication that her body was fighting the cold, or trying to keep itself alive.

I wondered how long he could dangle her about like this before she died. I wondered if I would suddenly see her head lolling on her shoulders--and if Hawkmoth would force her floppy limbs to fight me even when she was out cold.

The fog thickened, as if in response to that thought, but I could still see the motion of the watching, waiting crowd. They weren't waiting anymore.

It was like a Mexican wave--or, I guess, a Mexican drop. The ones nearest us jumped first, as if she wanted to give us a chance of catching them. As if she was teasing us.

I used my stick to push off from the ground and leapt to catch the first of them. The drop wasn't that steep, the water wasn't that cold, but I didn't know if I could trust them to swim. They were so blank-eyed and floppy.

I leapt from one to another as they dived, taking their weight in a way that knocked the breath out of me, lowering them to the ground as slowly as I dared, so that my arms were free for the next one.

I didn't look back. There was no time to shepherd them somewhere safe once I'd caught them. I just had to hope that they wouldn't get up, dust themselves off, and try to hurl themselves into the Seine again.

The river was churning now, as if it was impatient to be embracing them. Beside me through the fog, I could see the others moving. Rena wasn't as strong, and Chloe was carving a path straight towards Marinette, but Carapace was keeping up with me, catching the leapers on the other side.

"Rena," I shouted, as I used my stick to vault towards the next one, "look after the people we've already caught--get them up above the fog."

Her voice crackled in my ear. "Uh... onto all these high buildings they could jump from?"

"It's rising anyway," said Carapace. "It's like smoke, but without the warmth."

"We have to get under it, then," I said. "Take them to the catacombs. Find a way to warm them up. Tell them they have to think positive thoughts."

Rena's breath caught in her throat as she took the weight of a two-hundred-pound policeman. "Don't you dare turn me into the nurse just because I'm a woman! Queen Bee's not doing anything!"

I gritted my teeth. Each jumper was getting heavier as the cold sapped my strength--and I swore they were waiting for me. They could have all jumped at once and we'd never have been able to catch them. But, for some reason, Marinette wanted us to feel like we were doing well.

"You're in charge when I die, remember?" I said, stretching painfully to catch an old lady who'd gone wide.

"Anyway, I am doing something." Chloe's voice was a smug crackle in our earpieces. "I am going straight to the source of the problem."

"Chloe, I told you--" But I had to break off to catch the next one--or rather, the next two. Twins, leaping at different heights to try and confuse me. By the time I was free to berate Chloe again, she was bearing down on Marinette, weaving between the scraps of silk billowing this way and that in the breeze.

She was never exactly subtle, but Marinette didn't appear to see her. She was looking down, clasping her hands in a way that Chloe obviously found infuriating.

She was going to use her stinger. I cried out, not exactly sure who I was frightened for, but Marinette turned so fast that the cry died in my throat.

She used her silk tentacles like hands. One of them snaked around Chloe's ankle and yanked her off course, so that her stinger paralyzed one of the silent citizens on the bridge. He stayed stony and still, but the other people came alive. The tentacle round Chloe's ankle was pulling her into their outstretched arms. She was kicking out at them with the other leg, shrieking as they pulled her hair, shuddering at the touch of poor people. They bundled her down onto the bridge and pinned her hands to her sides while the silken tentacles wound around her, binding her up in a kind of cocoon.

Carapace and I started forwards to help her, but the people nearest to us started to cascade into the water, as if they knew it was their job to provide a distraction. Or as if Marinette was in their heads too.

All this time, she hadn't moved. Her legs were dangling uselessly--I could see bare, soot-stained feet peeping out beneath the hem of her dress--but she was using the crowd as her hands and feet, the way she used everything in a fight to her advantage.

That was when I knew it had been a mistake to think of her as a puppet. She was Ladybug--with all of Ladybug's wits and all of Ladybug's resources. She was probably even deadlier as a bad guy, because now she had fewer scruples holding her back. 'It's what I'd do if I wasn't so nice', she had said.

When Chloe had been bound up from head to foot, the tentacles lifted her to Marinette's eye-level.

"Always," she said, "always a good idea to hang back until you figure out precisely what they can do. Especially if you're going to leave yourself as exposed as you just did."

She spoke so sweetly that I could see Chloe's eyes narrow with fury. That was actually pretty admirable, though I couldn't really appreciate it at the time. She was being squeezed like a boa constrictor's dinner, but her resentment was still stronger than her fear.

"Another tip," said Marinette, "if you want it. Malice is predictable. Your grudges make your actions really easy to anticipate. I'd have known you were coming even if you hadn't been buzzing and seething on the way up. Just something to think about. Might come in handy the next time you get akumatized."

Another tentacle reared up and whipped the comb out of Chloe's hair. And then they all released their hold at once, jerking her and spinning her away. She was still transforming as she plunged into the water.

I dropped my latest catch onto the bank and leapt after her. The light of her transformation was leaving a trail through the dark water. Could Carapace handle the others? But there were no splashes beside me as I dived. The people on my side of the embankment had stopped jumping. And I wondered, as I groped after Chloe's sinking form, whether that was Marinette teasing us or trying to help us.

When I hauled Chloe out of the river, they were still standing poised on the embankments, waiting for me. Carapace was hanging back too. I had to assume that he was remembering my orders to leave the akuma-victim to me.

Beside me, Chloe was spluttering and shivering and bewailing the state of her Gucci cardigan, but I knew her tantrums were seldom about what she pretended they were about.

"I'll get your miraculous back," I said.

She broke off and looked up at me, wary and hopeful. This was why Marinette had promoted her, protected her, even occasionally forgiven her. She could be so child-like at times.

"Listen, Chloe, I need you to go down to the catacombs and help Rena. Wait for me there--I'll have your miraculous. And then I'll be expecting you to follow my orders. Deal?"

She clenched her jaw, as though she was working hard to suppress her first response. But she nodded.

I turned and looked up at Marinette, who was still hovering a few feet above the bridge, watching us with mild-mannered curiosity.

She was making no move to attack us. None of her zombified minions were trying to leap off the bridge. I decided to interpret that as an invitation to get closer.

I used my stick to propel me up to the parapet and waited, looking for some kind of clue in her eyes. Was it unfair of me to be expecting her to fight the akuma? She must have been so tired, so injured. And, after all, I was expecting her to fight my own despair, which I wasn't doing a great job of fighting at the moment. But still. She was Ladybug. She always thought of a way out.

I let her wind her silken tentacles around me. She seemed more curious than anything else. It made me think of a blind person trying to feel my face to work out who I was.

Carapace cried out, but I turned very slightly and shook my head. It was probably a trap, but if she was trying to fight the akuma, I had to give her a chance. I wasn't going to throw the first punch. But I kept my stick folded in against my chest, because I wasn't stupid.

"Cat Noir..." she said uncertainly.

That lit a flare of hope inside me--she could probably see me light up from the inside. She wasn't calling me 'Kitty'. That meant some part of her was still trying to conceal her identity. Only Ladybug called me 'Kitty'.

I took a deep breath--as deep as the silk wrappings round my chest would allow.

"Marinette, this isn't you. You're not like this."

"Oh no," she said. Her eyes were wide and doe-like, her candyfloss lips curving into a smile. "Of course it isn't me. None of this trouble could come from Marinette, could it, because she's so sweet--" The tentacles tightened around me, making my breath come out in a huff. "Marinette could never get angry, because she's just an angel--" Another tentacle scythed through the air like a fist, knocking Carapace back as he dived to rescue me. "You don't have to worry about what you say to Marinette, because she's so forgiving."

Her voice softened, but not her grip. "For the record, you're right," she said. "Marinette's gone." Another tentacle brushed my cheek, almost tenderly, as if she didn't know the other one was bruising my ribs. "It's not her. But it was. And it was awful."

I extended my stick, eyes bulging now, to try and break the vice-like grip she had me in. It snagged the side of the bridge and propelled me backwards so fast that the scraps of silk fell away. Or maybe she let me go. She'd made her point, after all.

But now I was back where I'd started, and she had lined up more civilians along the embankment, ready to jump.

She spread out her hands, and those silken grey tentacles reared up in the breeze.

"Are you ready to go faster?" she said, in her sweetest, school-girl voice.

I shook my head, but she wasn't paying attention. The couple nearest to me--they were still clutching each other as they leapt--threw themselves into the Seine.

And for a moment, I stared at the ripples spreading out from the splash and couldn't bring myself to do anything. Plagg squirmed against my skin, but I couldn't make myself move. I couldn't stop thinking that it was too late to do anything--particularly about Marinette.

I don't know what shook me out of it. Maybe it was Carapace's shout, or the fact that Ladybug's eyes were still on me, and I couldn't let her see me fail.

The whole time, while I plunged into the water, following the trail of bubbles, and dragged the protesting victims up to the surface, I was trying to reason with the voice in my head that told me it was too late. But I couldn't think of anything. I told myself she wasn't gone, but it was just meaningless words--just a kind of chant in some long-forgotten language that nobody spoke anymore. I couldn't make it mean anything.

All I could do was grit my teeth and try to get through it, hoping that at some point I'd come out the other side. After all, when you're inside the cloud, what good is the silver lining? It's just another wall to hem you in.

I kept going. I hauled my sodden couple onto the bank and leapt up to catch the next ones, and the next. Each new catch twanged the tendons in my neck and shoulders--and sometimes they got past me and I had to dive in after them, dragging them back to the shore while they struggled and complained. But she was watching, so I didn't disappoint. She had pinned Chloe's miraculous in her hair. It glowed golden through the fog, like a beacon.

By the time I worked my way back to the bridge, panting and aching and wet from the river, I was almost smiling. So was she.

"Getting bored yet, princess?" I said, trying to recapture my swagger.

She shook her head. "I could watch you all day."

"Well, I'm usually pretty good value for money."

I climbed up over the parapet and onto the bridge, glancing over my shoulder as the civilians backed away and then re-grouped to form a circle around me. I was certain by now that she was herding them with her mind, positioning them so that they were best-placed to attack me. Hawkmoth had really played to her strengths. If there was one thing Ladybug was good at, it was organizing people.

Of course, there were lots of things. That was the problem.

"I don't want to tell you your job," I said, with all the cheerfulness I could muster, "but the akuma-victims usually issue a few demands before tearing up the city."

Marinette shrugged. "You know what they are by now. He wants your miraculous. Yours and Ladybug's."

Again, her phrasing made me wonder if there was some part of Marinette's mind still in control. She hadn't said 'Yours and mine'. She had said 'Yours and Ladybug's'.

"And if we refuse?" I said, just as carefully.

"Well, more of this." She gestured downriver, to the crowd of citizens that I'd left dripping on the bank. "But for real. I don't have to line them up in front of you and make them jump slowly, one at a time."

"It wasn't that slow," I muttered.

"I can make them die quietly in their own houses. You'd never know there was anything wrong until they were long past saving."

"And what's in all of this for you?" I said.

She hesitated, as if she hadn't quite understood the question. "Do you mean me, Marinette? Or me, The End?"

I blinked. "Whichever one of you I'm currently talking to."

"I told you, Marinette's gone."

"I don't believe you."

She came down to my level--not quite to the ground, because I was taller than her, and presumably her legs wouldn't support her anyway--but we were face-to-face now.

"You do believe it," she whispered. She was very close. Her hands were hovering half an inch from my chest.

It suddenly dawned on me that I was looking at Ladybug without the mask--which I'd been dreaming about doing for the best part of a year. And the knowledge that I had really been doing it for the best part of a year didn't make this moment any less significant. I was suddenly aware of how pretty she was, and how the grey dress was clinging to her. I think I would always have known she was pretty if she had looked at me directly like this, instead of mumbling at the floor.

"I can feel it dragging at you," she said. "Every step is a struggle, because you know you've already lost."

I shook my head. "Not while you're alive."

She gave me a smile, as if I was too dumb to be argued with. "If you want to know what's in it for me, you have to understand that I'm not Marinette. What he told Marinette was that he could make the outside match the inside. He said he could make sure everyone else knew what it was like to feel the hopelessness she carried around with her every day. But he was talking to me by then, and I'm not interested in equity or social justice. Despair isn't really an emotion, it's a disease. And all a disease wants is to spread."

I stared at her. She was saying all this quite calmly--with none of the ranting and desperate self-justification of the usual villains. In fact, she was talking to me like Ladybug, who could be quite good with the quips and defiant speeches, but mostly just hung back and watched and reasoned. It was crazy how much she sounded like Ladybug--it raised goose-bumps all along my arms--but every word she said was contrary to what Ladybug stood for.

That was the problem, wasn't it? We had turned her into a symbol--someone who 'stood for' something--and forgotten she was a person. Nobody was better-equipped to know that than me--I had seen her make mistakes, I had seen her fall flat on her face in the middle of a mission. I had just been over-awed by how quickly she got up again.

It was weird. She was telling me she was the personification of despair, and it wasn't that I particularly disbelieved her--I'd just never really thought of her as a human being before she started declaring that she wasn't.

Marinette shut her eyes, and got that abstracted look I recognized from the other akuma-victims. It meant Hawkmoth was shouting in her head.

"He telling you to stop talking and get on with it?" I said.

She shrugged again, though it was a bit shaky. "He says to tell you that he'll kill me if you don't hand over the miraculouses. He says I'm dying already--and the longer this goes on for, the less chance there is that I'll recover."

"Do you believe him?" I said, trying not to let the panic show on my face.

Marinette tilted her head again, as if she was trying to shake him out of her mind.

"I believe he won't stop at murder," she said, in that same cool, matter-of-fact tone. "But I also believe he couldn't get me to stop if he ordered me to." She winced--clearly he was yelling in her head--but it didn't keep her from looking straight at me. Her mild-mannered smile had disappeared. "You're probably the only one who can stop me now."

"I intend to, princess," I said. Then I lurched forwards, plucked the comb out of her hair, and waited for the consequences.