Greg was in the middle of one of his more ridiculous recurring dreams.

  It was the one where he was standing in one of the aisles of Hayward Grocery, fag the back of the store, with Cassy and Ayden opposite him. And while Cassy was trying to sell him on some new feminine hygiene or etic product, Ayden was egging her on like an eager marketing coach.

  Everything about it was absurd and painful, and in the past two years he’d been having it incessantly. His subsciousness wouldn’t let go of the idea of it.

  Not only did he have no practical use for whatever Cassy was holding, but her sales tactics were more fitting of a cell phone dealer, not a grocery store.

  He sort of chalked it up to being a derivation of his nightmares from w at the mall.

  But as he sighed yet again and tried to interrupt her to say that, no, he did not have a single piece of anatomy that o smell like vender, his phoarted buzzing really, really loudly. And then he had to look for it.

  And as he went from looking for the damn thing in his pockets to casting about the shelves surrounding him, he did have the stray thought that he did like the smell of vender. It might be o smell it more often throughout the day. It would be calming. But he could use a sprig of it for that, like in his truck, maybe. Or carry around a fu’... thing… he could lose, like his damn phone, where was it?

  Men were allowed to have vender, after all.

  Lavender didn’t have a fug gender.

  Ached his hands go from fumbling through boxes of tampons and hair dye to digging through the donuts in search of that bsted phone.

  Momentarily it stopped buzzing, aopped searg, straightening up to look around. And he found himself bewilderingly in the bakery, but didn’t remember actually walking there.

  And then the phoarted buzzing again and it sounded like it was behind him. But wheurned around, it was still behind him.

  Ahought it articurly loud, like it was sitting on hard woht behind his head. Like it usually was at night.

  Well, when he was asleep anyway. He didn’t sleep during the night anymore.

  Oh.

  Looking out the window, he saw that it was daytime.

  Oh!

  He should be in bed right now.

  He was in bed right now! This was a dream! Of course it was a dream. Cassy never pushed girl shit on him when he wasn’t dreaming!

  Ayden sometimes did, but that was more of a man to man in-joke for Cassy and Synthia to ugh at, and obviously doongue-in-cheek.

  But, but, this was a dream, and if it was a dream maybe his phone was really ringing right behind his bed.

  So he went in the dire of wakefulness, which was usually up, and woke up surrounded by his softest duvet and the severe darkness of his room with bckout curtains. A darkness interrupted only by his lit up phone s as it buzzed and dispyed the ining call graphics.

  It was Ayden.

  Ayden was calling him.

  Ayden was w, and would only do that in an emergen any case.

  “Yes?” Greg said, putting the answered phoo his ear, hardly remembering thumbing the right prompt for it.

  “Greg?”

  “Yes.”

  “Something big is happening over toward the civiter,” Aydeed, “and you probably see it from your house. I felt it from the dairy department. There was ahquake, and now everyone’s outside. Did you feel it?”

  “No, I was asleep,” he answered.

  “Well, get outside and look, I’m going to call Cassy nex –”

  And then Ayden’s voice was overwhelmed by the sound of Synthia’s voice shouting, “No!” so loudly it rolled and echoed off the ndscape like thunder. He first heard it over the phone, and then it hit his house.

  The pitch, tone, and iion was unmistakable, and the size of the PA system necessary to amplify it that much was unimaginable.

  He was out of bed so fast he lost track of his bearings. He felt like he was right on the edge of hyperventiting, and maybe even screaming in a rage he didn’t actually feel. He’d been startled and terrified so bad by that sound, he was shaking untrolble as he stumbled a around for the light switch.

  No use going for his table mp, he’d just knock it right over.

  He should be able to follow the edges of his bed to the door, if he was on the right side of his bed. The wrong side, and he’d – he banged his knee and chest into the wall beside his bed.

  Well, OK, the door was the other way.

  “Did you fug hear that?!” Ayden cussed through the phone.

  “Yes, I did, Ayden,” Greg replied, finally at the light switch. He tur on. “I’m going outside to look. Che Cassy. I’m… I think I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Text ter.”

  “Will do.”

  He hung up, and grabbed his robe as another warmer yer over his boxers and t-shirt. He’d go for the sandals at the front door for expediency. He ran hot, too hot, most of the time. The brisk January air would feel good, actually.

  And he doubted his neighbors would care about his afternoon fashion sehey’d be too busy gawking in whatever they were wearing.

  Seedy MacSeedpod was taken pletely by surprise and obviously didn’t know what to do. Like Felix had been, it was trapped by its own grip on me. I could feel its panic like it was marinated in tasty, spicy terror.

  Felicity, however, retaliated immediately, turning her arm and pain into the rage of a.

  I was all eyes, and all she had to do was turn some of hers toward me. And this time she didn’t hold back.

  As I ierced by a hundred or so needles of excruciating acid and stinging fire, which immediately started growing in number and w their way into my very being, I hissed at Felicity, “Get out of Cassy, now!”

  “You intractable fool!” Felicity snarled back. “You’ll die before you ever uand what’s going on!”

  There really was no point in responding to that. As she ate me, she was gaining my memories and thoughts, just as I was doing as I bloomed inside of her. We were both learning about each other’s motives and history as we went. But, I had the edge on her.

  Because not only was I starting with far more energy and bulk than she had, but I was also quickly dev Seedy at the same time, and learning what it was as I added its energy to mine.

  She was going to eat the vast airy bulk of me that occupied physical spa a fsh, with so many expoially growing mouths. But there was still so mue irands, and I was taking the energy I got from Seedy to accelerate the size and plexity of the spines I had inside of her. There, away from her wormy teeth, I greidly like crystal, increasing my surface area at a fractal rate.

  I calcuted that I’d win in the end.

  But would I win fast enough to save Cassy?

  I still didn’t uand what was happening with her. I hadn’t reached those memories of Felicity yet.

  And then things, unsurprisingly, started to get fusing and muddled.

  Greg made it outside in time to see a roiling cloud of the deepest bess he’d ever witnessed vulse and begin shrinking on the horizon.

  He lived on the far Eastern edge of town, and still he saw it.

  Whatever it was, that was impressively huge. And if it had been the source of Synthia’s amplified shout, that distance vinced him he knew of no teology that could do that. One more bit of evidehat Synthia’s story was true.

  Not that he didn’t believe anymore.

  He’d already been through too much to doubt.

  He sighed, gng around at his neighbors, not knowing what to do. There was really nothing he could do. Except hang out outside and watch with everyone else.

  His phone buzzed once.

  It was Ayden’s text, “Cassy’s nt pkng up.”

  The cloud buckled and colpsed, then billowed up and grew from the far side of it. But what grew immediately started shrinking again as if struck by whatever chemical rea was eating away at the rest of it.

  It moved like a living thing, too fast for atmospheric forces. Too fast for something its size. And it never rose higher. It just boiled and burbled about on the edge of sight, half occluded by the roofs and tree opies of the neighborhood skyline.

  “She’s prolly in bed,” Greg respoo Ayden.

  “Then shed ansr!” Ayden shot back.

  Greg growled audibly. If Ayden was calling her, she would.

  “Shower,” he sent.

  “Nt b4 bed,” Ayden replied.

  “Something.”

  “That no. She’d ansr. Its an emrgncy.”

  “Yeah.”

  “What do?”

  Greg’s shift started in four hours, when Ayden’s would end. He’d gotten maybe six hours of sleep. That was enough.

  He’d wandered out to the sidewalk to gawk, so he looked back at his house and his truck to sider his options, and calcute how fast he could get into town.

  If the streets were even clear, it would still take too long to deal with anything serious. And he had no idea how either he or Ayden could find Cassy without her messaging back or answering her phone. But at least he could be with Ayden and ready to do something when she did that.

  “ing into town,” he sent to Ayden.

  “Thx! C u soon!” Ayden replied.

  “Probably not that soon,” Greg mumbled to himself.

  Theomped back to his house to get his keys and wallet. Fuck getting dressed, this was good enough for a day like this. Work could fuck itself if the managers pined.

  Eh, he grabbed his work clothes anynning on ging in the employee restroom when he had the ce.

  What the imperti fool of an affectivore figured out too quickly was that if she dispersed her physical proje, the burrowiovore inside of her would dive into the Strands from what she’d mao invade in order to eat her there. So she didn’t do that. She started slowly solidating her bulk on the surface, pulling it up from below.

  And while she did that, the upstart Overlord began to wither and die.

  No, not her, that much younger oill rooted uhe pce of civil ma.

  They were all teratovores, really, so it was uandable to be fused which was which.

  And their memories were so vast and sweeping, it became difficult to uand whies beloo whom, or for how long. Narratives were trimmed, snipped, shredded, and all mixed up. Especially the narratives of the st few moments.

  All that could be dised was that there were three distinct wills, and one of them was losing badly and quickly. But not quite as fast as the other two were tearing each other apart.

  And now it was impossible to determine who was having this observation.

  At some point, something would have to ge.

  It was agreed, all other siderations aside, that a specifie of the teratovores should be the loser. If the other two could sort themselves out, they could make that happen.

  The side streets were hell, with people having stopped their cars wherever just to get out and gawk, or talk to their neighbors. But once he got on NE Division, eve was just two he going was much easier. People there were still driving.

  They were pointing and gabbing while driving, or just navigating in a daze, oo the radio or something.

  He saw more than one person looking at their phone while one hahe wheel steady. Those were the ones driving away from the city and the sight of whatever that was on the horizon.

  He had kind of a hunch that the bck cloud was Synthia herself. But she was the only monster he knew, and he had no idea what else might be sharing the world with him. His hunch might well have been the result of the simplest and most crete association.

  In any case, if that wasn’t her, she was near it. Maybe fighting it, or something. Or something that could imitate her voice was there, at least.

  He didn’t think it likely that all monsters sounded like her. She was a shapeshifter. The way she sounded could ge with her will, too, most likely. For protective coloration.

  But, if that was the case, if she was a big bck cloud, why had she sounded like the Synthia he knew?

  After several blocks of driving and thinking, he decided it robably because she was unig to someone she knew.

  Maybe to him and Ayden. But, more likely, to whomever was near her and involved in something she didn’t want to happen.

  It could be Felicity, that monster eating nightmare mohat supposedly had been hiding in and trolling that regur, who was supposed to be inside of Synthia now. But if she was inside of Synthia, why shout out loud?

  Without knowing anybody else that Synthia might know and care about, Greg’s mind could only settle oher possibility.

  Cassy.

  Cass was in trouble, and there was one pce where she most likely was.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  He pounded his steering wheel.

  theInmara