Others rose, gray and papery. Ursulina, age six, ready to hug strangers when they looked sad because it hurt to see them. Lina, age eleven, staying in bed with her mother for hours because it was a day she just didn't see the point of getting up for. Lina, age thirteen, wondering at the creative uses of razors and scissors. Lina, age fifteen, lifted into a kiss like a bird perched on an arm, smiling even as she saw the faint smear of someone else's lipstick because it made Jack happy to see. Stormy cutting into Jake vengefully, drained but driven as Sherry cursed. Stormy trying to put on a brave face for Evan in the dead of night so that he didn't know the nightmares kept her up because she never faced them. Stormy shopping with Abbi, buying presents for their loved ones as carols soothed their spirits. Stormy drunk because it was easier than feeling as intensely as she did for others, smearing herself onto Gale to absorb him. Lina on New Years, unfettered and happy, dancing the night away and ready to sneak him to her room. Stormy and Otto forgetting for one hour what life was like outside the door as the music swallowed them. Stormy grasping at Nevada, yelling at her for endangering the life she was working to preserve, the scars on her wrists making her arms tingle in familiar ways she wished to never revisit. Stormy, smiling brightly because it was the only thing she could bring to the world that mattered, and because if she smiled enough, maybe one day someone would do the same for her when she needed it most.

She cut down those that got in the way without looking, even though every blow felt like a new wound was being ripped open.

They were behind her, protected. They were all that mattered. Not the bugs, not the darkness, not the corpses of her team she kept running across, over and over, replaying and editting itself, sometimes someone crying out for help as she passed by, sometimes a hand grasping at her ankle to stop her, sometimes falling silent when she tried to pull them up and found them disintegrating, not the buzzing, not the whispers, not the stench, not the faint gray fog. Nothing mattered anymore except getting out. They were all waiting. And if they weren't, then she would sit vigil for them and never forget, the undead who remained as a guardian even when reduced to bones.

Who are you?

I am who others need me to be.

And just like that, things seemed to ease off of her. The smothering, the burning, even the chill was beginning to recede. She was alone again, save for Thane shifting in her mind like a serpent. Rather than their hands, she found something smooth in her grasp. Slender. A dark half-mask with designs delicately carved within.

For the first time, Stormy felt like she could breathe. But it was labored; she became keenly aware that her shield was gone, had been gone for who knew how long. And the bugs remained.

There was a glimmer up ahead, filtering over uneven stone steps. Stumbling, wheezing, bleeding, eaten, she made her way into the light.