I expected that I would be scared into staying awake the rest of the night after what had just happened, but I ended up falling asleep even faster than usual. At least, my body felt a little too well-rested in the morning for me to have possibly stayed up. The first thing I saw was Hodek sitting up and facing the stairway, unmoving, with his hands curled into fists. I stood up and tapped him on the shoulder. To my surprise, he didn't react.

"Couldn't sleep?"

"Eh. Probably could if I wanted to," he said, his voice empty and dry. I took a breath and tried following his line of sight, but it seemed he was just staring at a chip in the wall paint.

"And let me guess—you stayed up in case you needed to save yourself, and definitely not because you care about me in the slightest?"

"Of course," he said with a kind of forced absentmindedness.

Of course.

I sat down beside him, trying to catch his eye with little success. It was almost as if he wanted to distance himself from me, at least for a few minutes, but didn't care enough to make an effort. A sudden sense of hopelessness began to absorb me the more we sat there in silence.

"Hodek, do you think...maybe we should give up?"

He scoffed, though I could tell he was surprised. "And what, lay down and die on the spot?"

"All I'm saying is that no matter where we go, those two will always find us somehow," I said, trying to come up with a kinder phrase for somebody like the Elder and a literal demon. "Why we're even worth their time, I'll never know, but you heard what they said. This isn't going to go away. What's the point of even trying to fight, you know?" I let my voice drop to a whisper, hugging my knees close. Hodek was silent for a moment, then threw his hands up.

"You think I wasn't thinking that a few hours ago? Look, I gave up trying to avoid Angus years before you came around. When he finally left, I couldn't figure out what to do with myself now that I'd 'won,' or whatever, but then he tried using you back at the trapdoor. That's when it really set in that he would always be around. And despite it all, I was ready."

"So what? So we're just doomed to live like this forever?"

"Uh, yeah. But you're saying that like it's the end of the world. How do you think I got here? Do you think all those charges and police chases and getting confused with that little punk Jeff Woods just went away one day, and I was free?"

I lifted my head to glare at him. "That's different. You're able to hide from all that, this is going to weed us out and haunt us until we either die or..." I couldn't bring myself to say the next part out loud. I simply sighed and nodded at the ground as if to say, you know. Hodek furrowed his eyebrows.

"We're not splitting up anytime soon, if that's what you're worried about. But I'm not saying we should try hiding from them anymore, Max. I'm saying we could adapt. Learn to live with it. I mean, nobody said this was going to be easy in the first place." He turned on his spot and took one of my hands.

"And who knows; maybe one day we'll get lucky, find the Elder ourselves. And when that day comes, we'll throw every last punch and slice we've got at her until she stops this bullshit. Right?"

"...right." As much as I tried to stop it, exhaustion and defeat managed to find their way into my voice. Hodek sighed, stood up, dusted off the back of his sweater and made his way up the stairs, pausing in the middle to see if I was going to follow. A jolt of realization shook me, and my eyes scanned the rest of the basement to just to make sure...

"Uh, yeah," Hodek said. "It's really me. Dunno if Angus could slander himself or the Elder for his life."

"I-I know, I just—"

"No, I get it. Come on, this place won't do much for us anymore. Do you have your pliers, rope, whatever you carry with you these days?"

I checked my beltline and pushed a stray lock of hair out of my face. "Yes."

When we started back up the street and I turned to take one last look at the house, I saw a single word in large letters painted on one of the walls, where before there had been nothing but overgrown ivy:

"TRAITOR"

—

Hodek didn't let me in on where we were going this time. He simply led the way and gave me a sideways glare whenever I opened my mouth to ask him a question. It seemed he didn't want anything about our path to be overheard, whether it be out loud or even in his own mind—several times, he looked a bit lost himself. So this is what he meant by "adapt."

We continued from there, feeling the slightest bit better about our situation. We carried on, breaking into houses, scavenging, disposing of anybody in our path that might have caused trouble. I was still reluctant to kill, of course, at least as brutally as Hodek did. Every new body marked with an X through their heart, a smile carved into their face, or a simple red line across their neck still felt like another cut in the same place to me. But this was survival. Even so, I wasn't sure if I could bring myself to kill someone in cold blood, purely because I wanted to. Again, Hodek didn't have any problems with that right now. The confrontation with Angus and the Elder had left both of us tired and bitter. He was bound to want to take some of his anger out on the first "expendable" person he saw, whether he realized it or not. I did, at the very least.

It was a relatively calm day; we'd decided to take a small break from our near-weekly house hunt and simply walk around, looking for anything interesting to do. We had recently gotten lucky in the "how are we going to get our next meal" department, and figured some attempted relaxation couldn't hurt.

"Well? Anything catch your eye on this..." Hodek made a face of mild disgust. "...impossibly boring street? I think my answer should be clear enough."

I laughed quietly and took another glance at my surroundings. He wasn't far off; this neighborhood both looked and felt like all the life had been sucked out of it. Sure, there were a few residents here and there, the grass was green, tiny perfect houses lined each side of the road we were walking down. But nothing stood out very much, if at all. It was just a little too monotonous for my taste, everything except...

I stopped walking and narrowed my eyes curiously.

"Let's go inside."

"Uh, where exactly...?"

"There."

I pointed to an old, weathered shack on the corner, with a picture of the moon painted on its left side. The longer I looked at it, even with somebody right by my side, I felt an odd and faint energy singling me out. It felt almost like something was drawing me in. Like something wanted me to see whatever was waiting there. Hodek looked apprehensive.

"...I don't know, man. Are you sure you don't want to go anywhere else?"

"It's just a look inside, come on. If there's nothing dangerous, then maybe we can even stay the night."

He gave the house another doubtful once-over, as if actively searching for reasons to trust it. He seemed to come up empty, but sighed and walked in with me anyway.

The place was surprisingly empty, even for an abandoned house. Not a single piece of furniture lay in sight, at least nothing that could be moved with one's bare hands. As I explored, I found a kitchen island covered in wax paper, not one spot free of dust. Half of the plaster on the walls had been torn off, revealing their crumbling layers of brick underneath. I looked up to see that even the ceiling was incomplete; wooden beams lay, barely balanced, above my head. I took a mental note to be extra careful of where I stopped, turning to the stairwell before me. Oddly enough, it was the one structure in this place that seemed most finished. I heard a click from around the corner and a barely interested "hm."

"Did you find something?" I asked.

"No, I was just trying one of the light switches. Do you think this is the same kind of place your...brother, or whatever, came to? The one with that weird ghost thing, who gave him some phone number?" Hodek let out a rueful laugh. "Cruel twist of fate, if you ask me."

I furrowed my eyebrows, remembering the painting of the moon we saw outside. "...I don't think this is just the same kind of place."

He took a step back out of the room he was in to give me a strange look. After a moment, he followed my eyes up the stairs, then shrugged as if to say, we might as well.

"You thinking of going up? Just to see?"

"Yes. Besides, we might actually find something worthwhile."

We began upwards, at least one of us wincing whenever it seemed like one of the steps would collapse at any moment. The floorboards creaked so loudly I was certain someone outside would hear, but I pressed onward, making sure to step close to the wall. There were a couple of rooms in the hall ahead of us once we'd reached the top, and from what I could tell, all of them ended after about seven feet. All except one.

It was the only room on the floor that had a window. Dark, uneven lines ran down the walls, from the ceiling to the floor. It took me a good second to realize that they were dried streams of blood.

Then I heard a voice.

It seemed so distant, and distorted that for a second I couldn't even tell if it was real. But it rang loudly in my ears, and from the looks of it, Hodek heard it too.

"Hello, there, gentlemen. It's a good thing you're here, I was just starting to get lonely..."

His expression slowly morphed into one of both relief and disgust, as impossible as that sounds.

"Great. It's him again."