Every day, when she woke, Siddie dressed almost mechanically, not in the carelessly messy way she'd allowed herself to slip into in those first few days, but regressing a little, maybe, dressing herself like a doll in lace and petticoats and tatters. She'd stopped carrying her dolls again, brought only Clove with her as she moved dazedly from class to class. She checked the mirror every morning. She was well enough dressed; perhaps she would not look quite so hollow to anyone other than herself. She slept and woke and slept and woke and didn't bother to eat, because it wasn't necessary, not really, because she wasn't hungry. The gnawing void in her was something different.

She avoided people she knew. Why bother, she asked herself. She had nothing to give. Beneath that thought lay a darker one, more frightening, a thought she didn't care to examine. Were they really her friends? Did she really know anyone at all?

It was safer to be alone.

Morning slid into night slid into morning, and then Sammy came to see her, insisting she was worried, was Siddie avoiding her, was something wrong? She just wanted to see her, that was all. Maybe it was okay. Siddie allowed Sammy to convince her to come out, to share some eye scream with her, to poison some pigeons in the park. It was ... it was nice. It might be safer to be alone, but it was so very, very lonely.

The greyed tips of Sammy's bone fingers slipped under her notice.

She'd missed giggling in a friendly way at Shehk's new interest in Jericho, talking about small things and clothing design with Junko, quiet conversation with Barth, even the slightly awkward, prickly matter of making peace with Calder. She'd been painfully lonely, and she let herself slip back into the habit of being friendly, being open.

Had Shehk's eyes always been yellow?

Life slipped back into familiar rhythms. Siddie attended class, took her druttens for walks and out to the arena, went to club meetings, answered her mother's weekly emails in the same glacially polite tone in which they had been sent. Yes, mother. Her friend was fine, as was her fiance.

Barth had always been grey. He wasn't changing. It was her imagination.

Sammy usually looked hungry. It was a combination of being a perv and being a zombie.

Calder wasn't really fond of her anyway.

Were they talking about her, when she wasn't there? The whispers sometimes stopped a bit too suddenly. The way they turned in unison to give her smiles that didn't quite reach their eyes was strange.

Calder didn't like her. She'd been sure of that. Why was he paying attention to her? Why the smiles that showed just slightly more tooth than they should? Why were Barth's yellow eyes fixed on her and not on Calder?

Why had she woken to find Sammy standing over her, watching her sleep, her eyes eerily empty of affection, empty of any emotion at all?

Why did everyone she knew move like a flock of corrividi, a school of piranha, like a single mind in many bodies? Why were they watching her?

She couldn't deny it any longer. It had been safer to be alone. The Insanity was using them, puppeting them, had lured her out of her isolation using sweet words in Sammy's mouth so that it could hunt her with all its hands and eyes and mouths. She retreated to her room, locked herself in. She didn't have to eat. She wasn't hungry.

She had forgotten Sammy had a key. When she woke to lambent yellow eyes staring down at her, to one fleshy hand and one bone reaching for her throat, she moved instinctively, her fingers elongating to claws even as she brought her hands up (zombie, said the back of her mind, go for the head) and drove the blades of her own shadowstuff up and through her lover's eyes.

As she withdrew her hand, trying not to sob or vomit with the awful feeling of rotted flesh wetly releasing her talon, Sammy's slumped body grew heavier across her, turned hard and colder even than undead flesh had been. It took several minutes of desperate struggling shoving to escape from the statue's embrace.

Siddie turned at the door to her room, took one last look at the slumped stone figure that had once been the ghoul she loved. Then she walked out. She had a duty to complete.

Shehk's stitches ripped beneath her claws. The cold unbeating heart beneath was sickeningly soft before it turned to stone.

The Mistress bit her and wound coils of hair around her neck as Junko watched with yellow eyes. Siddie went limp, as though fainted, and when the coils relaxed, she drove her claws deep into warm flesh, flesh that went cold even as she pulled away.

She had enjoyed killing, in the visions, much as she hadn't cared to admit it. Some part of her took deep pride and satisfaction in her kills, even as she knelt beside Calder's statue and fought to keep her stomach under control.

So many. There were so many.

When it was all over, she would cry, she promised herself. Was it kindness or cruelty? She stood with her hand flat against Barth's door. Would Christof answer? Would she need to kill him first?

The nightmare clung as she struggled into wakefulness, mocking laughter and soft distant whispers teasing just beyond her comprehension. A dream. Only a dream. "Only a dream," she whispered. If she examined Sammy's bone hand more closely next time they met, the zombie ghoul wouldn't know why. She wouldn't be be grey.

But Siddie would check.

It was safer to be alone.