The room is trying to swallow me alive. I look down to see a sea of oil rising towards our beds. Adam's is empty. I rise from my own sheets, knocking a cherub plush into the liquid below, and look towards the ceiling.

The roof is covered in bullet holes. Darkness gushes through them at an astounding pace, and as that oil rises to my sheets I leap off. A revolting sensation fills my senses, but I manage to get to the door and yank it open. Swimming out, the oil rises around me, threatening to flood the house, and I slam myself against the door, finding my shield around my waist despite being in my pajamas. Outdoors is a forest, with unidentifiable shapes hanging from the branches of old, tired oaks.

Adam's hand closes around my shoulder from behind me. I know it's him, the same way I know my own fingers, and it emanates unbearable heat.

"It's a dream." I tell myself, refusing to turn around. "It's a dream, it's a dream, it's another dream."

"You've been dreaming for months," he says, his voice like a dozen people speaking. "If you think this is a nightmare, you wait until you see what happens when you wake up."

I tear myself from the throes of sleep into a darkened room, where my real brother snores next to me. The clock tells me that it's four AM.

Shiloh?

I don't expect an answer, but I get one. Your heart is beating very fast for nighttime.

Shiloh, do most Diosite wielders get weird dreams?

No. I wouldn't call it uncommon, but it is certainly not a majority.

How do I get rid of them?

Win.

No matter how I prod him, that's the end of that. I roll over, away from the red beam of my clock, and force myself to stay awake.

---

Four hours of sleep wear on my brain fast. The price of my singular act of self-advocacy is a head that feels like it's full of flies, which is as unpleasant as that sounds.

I think I might be asleep again when Adam almost knocks me off the bed in the morning, and then I remember that he wants something from me. "Did you get him the letter?"

"What? Right. That." I rub my eyes and dig into my backpack, which is slouched against the edge of my bed. I hand him a sheet of paper.

"He took it?" Adam sounded legitimately surprised. He scrawls something down on a piece of stray notebook paper, folds it three times over, and signs it, thrusting it into my hands. "Great, here's another one."

I take the paper with a raise of my eyebrow. "Why can't you bring it to him in person, again?"

Adam shoots me a dry glare. "Will. Real talk here? Stop asking stupid questions."

"No, actually, I'm not going to stop. Look, you've been acting really sketchy for weeks, and I just... I want you to know that I'm not going to punch you or make fun of you or whatever if you tell me the truth."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Adam asks, although my sibling ESP tells me he's nervous.

"Are you gay for Evan Drake?"

Adam bursts out laughing in a firecracker of emotion I barely understand. "Will,"

I blush bright-red. Adam is still cackling like a coyote. "No, I'm serious. If you two weren't a thing, were you both crushing on Megan? Some weird-ass triangle-"

"It wasn't weird," Adam snaps.

"Forget I said that. Look, you're not the only one with secrets." I say. "I just want you to be honest with me."

Adam's smile trails off. "I was serious about the questions."

Fear overtakes me-- I don't even need Shiloh to shut me down. I nod, looking down at the folded paper. "I'll give him the letter."

---

English comes around again, not soon enough (could he seriously not have passed it in gym, at the least? He was staring at Evan the whole class) and with it, an opportunity and a grim reminder that this project is not getting done. Evan grabs the note from me, this time, and scribbles something down before handing it back to me.

I open it up. Adam's writing is almost illegible, but it definitely says, Keep fighting, while Evan's response is just an address, which lies in the crummy part of town. It's near the commercial district, at least I believe so, but who puts down an address when you could just put the store name?

What is wrong with you two, I type onto the document, in place of a meaningful analysis and means of 'creatively representing' the balcony scene from Romeo and Juliet.

Bad break-up, he responds. All my fault. Speared someone right through

the heart? I don't finish for him. He stops, backspaces, and I look at the computer to see his fists seize up. "I can't work on this," he says.

"Me neither," I admit. "Are... are you okay, man? If you want to talk about things, I'm here."

He's still not making eye contact with me. No theory I can begin to place together explains his behavior, nor that of my brother. Amanda seems certain Adam's never heard of Ignatius. Is there a chance Megan somehow came under the influence of his powers? That doesn't work either, unless Ignatius does know our secret identities, and is trying to target our loved ones. In that case, we would all be in danger, and Ignatius wouldn't know to go for Amanda's ex. It has to be some teen drama spurred by a sudden, accidental death- tying it into our apocalypse doesn't make any kind of sense.

Evan slips me a note before the bell, his handwriting almost illegible- it's an address.

"Take care of him, Will. I couldn't." Evan says, backpack balancing askew off one shoulder. I take a picture of the image, send it to Adam, and exhale as I turn around. The teacher is watching me, his hands pursed.

"He's... not coping well with Megan's death." I explain, hastily. "I have to go somewhere."

I bolt out of the classroom and arrive in the Veins in time to find everyone else there. Karen and Garrett are holding hands, though they're standing so far apart they could possibly be holding each other up just from the tension, and Amanda is messing with her brush, spinning it in lazy circles. She throws it up and it falls to the ground, useless. She waves to me, a bitter sadness in the gesture.

"I had a weird day. Sorry I'm late." I tell them.

"By like two minutes. Chill." Karen responds, shaking Garrett off.

Amanda grabs her paintbrush. "So."

I give Shiloh a thumbs up. "We have a back-up plan, right?"

Shiloh shakes his head.

"The back up plan is the authorities," Karen says.

Shiloh gives me a near imperceptible shake of his head, and the implication is clear: this is my problem, first and foremost, and if we fail today, there will be no authorities. I try to ease my expression into something more reassuring than mortal terror. "Let's go," I say.

The crunch of old foliage beneath our feet is nonreassuring, like bones shattering under the weight of our every step. The air, only now coming close to bearable spring temperatures, is filled not with the smell of new life but the smothering aroma of stone foundations, urban life, and beneath it all, a trace of rot. It's the type of thing that sets you on edge, but luckily, I was going to panic no matter what happened.

I close my eyes and reach out for the presence of Diosite, my mind clenching on a faint presence, but it isn't in his house. The Diosite is deep under the soil beneath our feet.

The door is askew.

"Guys? Anyone have a shovel?" I ask. "It's straight down."

Garrett moans, "This is going to be bad, isn't it?"

Karen sighs. "At this point? I don't know what else he could throw at us. It's not like we don't have a huge advantage on him anyways. Remember? Long, arduous mission ending with us stealing half of his power source?"

"We don't know that it was evenly distributed. In fact, didn't Shiloh say..."

"Excuse me for trying to lighten the mood." Karen mutters, "Hey! No going it alone!"

Amanda is already trekking towards the house, her brush extended and whispering with noise. She slides the door open with surprising force and stares glumly into the house. "Let's get on with it."

I rush after her, scared from experience. The rattling sound of the succulents moving around the corner makes the air go electric, aside from literal sparks from Karen. Garrett readies both his halberds. I lift my shield, but Amanda slides around me and makes for the basement. "Amanda! What are you doing'?"

Amanda leaps the last few stairs. Her fury turns to pure fear as she looks upwards, her breath shallow, and points up to a softly swinging figure overhead, one familiar from my dreams.

Garrett slams the door behind us, and as he joins the group, he's the first to exclaim, "That's... a corpse." His face is pale and his breath comes in uncertain, choking gasps. "That- that's a corpse."

We all stare straight up, even though all of our collective common sense is begging us to turn away. The emaciated body does not answer us. I think I can see eyes. The skin coloration is unnatural. My stomach burns but I can't even make myself throw up.

There's a rustle of leaves from behind us, and when I clench my eyes I see a familiar speck of light, growing as it approaches. An inhuman cacophony of noise follows, the mark of some abomination to come, and I push my teammates away. We crouch in the ruined corner of what had to be a normal basement at some point, but has now become a disaster area, rife with tangled vines and live wires half torn open. Karen looks up, bracing herself, and Garrett stares at me for direction. Amanda hasn't moved an inch, and she lifts her brush into an offensive position.

"You're not here for a surrender." Ignatius states, emerging from the shadow with a floral hydra behind him, its many heads opening and closing their petals. His fingers rest under its chin, and his gaze is unfocused.

Amanda lobs a bright glob of paint at him, which hits the wall behind him and sizzles through a few inches of foundation. "How many people have you killed?!" Amanda cries. "How did you make it seem like a car accident? Huh?!"

"You're exhausting my patience." Ignatius mutters. One of the hydra heads gets the next hit of poison, curling down in front of him to take the hit, then regrowing from a stump in moments. "Stop that."

"Did you kill her?" Amanda retorts.

"That man was a former Diosite holder, who I contacted through a conspiracy board on the internet. He was... unable to give me the information I wanted." He holds his head in his hands, rubbing his temples. "I tried to negotiate. I'm trying very, very hard to be patient, but what have I gotten for it? Nothing. Nothing from any of you. They win every second we hesitate. They're preying on your minds right now!"

Karen grabs a wire, its power pulsing through her body, and fires a focused bolt from the other side. The bolt hits Ignatius's beast below the place where its individual heads branch, but the burned flesh quickly heals of all wounds and darkened pulp. Meanwhile, one of the succulents busts the door down and they file downstairs. Amanda doesn't seem to notice, in fact, she's still trying to hit Ignatius, swinging like a child about to crack open a pinata.

"Luna," Karen says, "I don't think he can't generate anything else."

"He could still have poison down here," warns Garrett.

"We have him cornered. Don't you get it?" Karen says.

"Take out the succulents." I tell them. "I've got to help her."

"I tried to negotiate!" Ignatius yells, delirious, as Amanda weaves a wide arc around him, slinging paint of all varieties to no avail. "I tried. I tried."

I wedge the shield into one of the plant hydra's stems, which begins to freeze up, but this leaves me defenseless. As all the heads round on me, Amanda too lost in the rush of the fight to notice, the massive man-eating plant from earlier scuttles out from the dug-out back of the room. It knocks over conspiracy boards, thorn-teeth pointed in its mouth, its roots screwing the floor over.

Amanda ducks out of the way from one head of her current adversary and close to the range of the other, trapped between monsters. She twirls her brush overhead, fire swirling around her, and I dislodge my shield from one of the stems and slide towards her. One of the flowers of the hydra gets me by the leg, its innards covered in sticky residue, and I struggle to free myself as the man-eater grabs Amanda in its mouth.

"Amanda!" I scream, hands scrambling against the ruined floor as I'm lifted into the air by one leg, all blood draining to my head.

"I knew I'd get her name out of you somehow." whispers Ignatius.

Karen and Garrett turn from globs of dead succulents, clothes covered in dead plant matter and thorns, and Karen lets out a surge of electricity that causes every light in the room to flicker on, a decrepit radio flaring with high noise before several light bulbs break and the whole room goes dark, save for the glow of my shield.

"N-no... she can't-" I'm no longer speaking coherently.

"I'll have her Diosite in a second." Ignatius gloats, his cracked glasses gleaming off the blue light. "Turn it over and no one else gets hurt."

I sling my shield at the base of the stem holding me, though my aim is off and I hit the base instead. Ice begins to congeal around the surface, then fracturing off into massive, irregular patterns. Karen falls, Garrett's left halberd slices a hydra's neck at the root and gets stuck their, impeding its regrowth, but all of us are stuck.

My body shivers, shock breaching every muscle in my body, and from the inside of the plant comes a hissing noise as its whole body is corroded by a strong acid. Amanda bursts out, her arm bleeding freely and one eye beginning to scar over.

Ignatius flinches as if he'd been kicked.

Amanda raises the brush slowly, "Stop avoiding the question. Did. You. Kill. Anyone. Else."

"Not yet," Ignatius whispers. Karen has her hand up to brace herself from a succulent attack, Garrett is down a halberd, and the hydra grows dozens of heads, new blooms shooting up from every direction. Amanda slumps to the ground and Garrett portals the halberd over to slice me free. Another portal opens up beneath Amanda and I jump over, with Garrett freeing himself and Karen a split second before the succulent embeds its spines in her face.

Our girls fall into the lair and I slide sideways onto the floor, my shield scuttling away. Shiloh's eyes widen, although I'm sure he already knows we failed. Garrett sucks in a breath. "Maybe... maybe not our best effort."

Karen rubs her head. "Should have kept going. Stuck to the plan."

"We can't plan for him." Garrett squeezes her hand. "Karen, lie down. You're going to hurt yourself."

"Screw off." she whispers, still kneeled over.

I shake Amanda's side as Shiloh rushes over to her, running his tongue along her wounds. The cuts begin to heal, slowly, but her eye and the left side of her face is a different matter. Worse, she has several acid burns on her body, and she coughs blood when she tries to move herself. "Had to be lying. Who else could it be? Had to."

"Can you fix this?" I ask Shiloh. "Please, please tell me you can fix this."

Amanda moans.

"It's a stretch. The real problem is how late I'd have to keep her here. Isn't it a school night for you kids?" Shiloh asks.

"It's a Friday," I respond quietly. "I could claim she was at my house. Maybe that her phone died? I don't know. Just... help her."

Shiloh's eyes narrow. "I'll do what I can."

"He can't regenerate anything!" exclaims Karen. "We could wear him down. We need to go back. Today. Tomorrow. He knows Amanda's name- he could-"

"We're outmuscled. It could take us forever to get down there." Garrett argues. "We could just call the authorities-"

Shiloh's voice thunders through my mouth. "No."

They turn. Amanda shudders.

I raise a hand to my arm. "Give me a little more time. There are some things I need to piece together."

"Bullshit goose chase? Really, Will?" Karen says.

"Trust me." I plead.

"I can't," Karen sobs, her voice oscillating in and out of the facade of calm.

Stress floods my body. I grab my shield from the ground and raise myself to a standing position. Shiloh's purple eyes watch mine, determined. Amanda and Garrett watch from the floor as Karen and I stand across from each other. We're both shaking almost too hard to stand up, unsure if cherub influence is trying to raise us up or pull us back down.

As I walk towards the door, I offer, "He... won't let you do it."

Karen says softly, "He can try to stop me."

Shiloh is still as a stuffed animal. I look back towards Amanda, my heart accelerating, and try to muster up the courage to do anything. "Stand down," I say, but it's not my voice nor my force of will.

As if reading my mind, Karen says sadly, "You're not a leader, Will. He is."

She disappears, and I know exactly where she's going.