It was morning, and Winona woke on the cold basement floor (which was beginning to get really old). A scream dissected the silence and she froze. The door burst open and the lights flicked on, and Theo hurried down the stairs.

“Get up,” he snapped. His hair and face were sticky and wet, fresh hot blood running down his neck and onto his chest. Winona scrambled backwards on the floor, away from him.

“Get up, dear,” he raised his voice and grabbed her ponytail, wrenching her to her feet as she howled.

“I reread the ancient texts and it occurred to me that maybe it wasn’t pain that caused the Sight to manifest. What if was fear?” Theo let go of her hair and grabbed her arm, and goosebumps formed as she realized why he felt so clammy.

“Where are we going?” Winona cried.

“You’ll find out when we get there!” He yanked her behind him as he rushed back towards the stairs and up through the door.

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Out on the streets, Fritz drove his old, shiny black car which pulled behind it a parade float. On that float, Jam Stoker performed their most well-known songs, including “Trouble in Paradise (The Island of Dr. Moreau)” and “They Came from the Deep...To Remind You They Are Nonbinary!”. Theadora was on vocals and played around with some pedals that did all sorts of weird shit to their voice. Persephone’s solemn guitar was the perfect counterpart to Janis’ snappy bass, and Lux stole the show with his tear-inducing keytar skills.

Members of the Lost Boys Troupe trailed behind and alongside the float; there were fire-breathers and fire-hula-hoop dancers, people on stilts, and people on roller skates. A few people were operating a giant dragon puppet, and various people played with tiny toy instruments; some people passed out sparklers and noisemakers, while others passed out brand new camcorders, wow!

Civilians from all over the city were gathering to join in on the festivities. Everyone had gotten the invite, and it was a pleasantly surprising turnout. As the procession made its way around to the front of the Renfield, a rather suspicious news van pulled up and out popped Circe with a microphone and a camcorder.

The noise from the street could be heard across town, and even beneath the surface. A sewer grate near the facility popped open, and out climbed a rough-looking group of young people. They laughed and joined in with the celebrations, and nobody paid any attention to them at all.

The group spotted Torie towards the front of the procession, walking in even taller heels than last time they had seen her. As the ghost gang fought their way through the crowd, someone handed a sparkler to Lena and the way her skin reflected the shimmer was enchanting, to say the least.

Having made their way over to where Torie was stopped alongside Fritz’s car, Lena laughed and hugged her, and Sidney produced Fritz’s lighter and handed it to him.

“We got rid of the ghouls and found it on our way back!” Shouted Sidney over the roar of the music.

Fritz held the lighter out for his wife to light a cigarette with. He paused, smiling, then said,

“Thanks, kid.”

The ghosts erupted into laughter and screaming, applauding Sidney for mustering such a reaction from the steely gentleman. Much to Fritz’s chagrin, the ghosts climbed on top of his car, and Ivan pulled the rebar from his head and neck to drum on the roof.

Lux finished a groovy, improvised keytar solo and proceeded to remove the strap from the instrument. Upon pressing a star-shaped button, wheels popped out of the back.

“Later, dudes,” he said to the applauding crowd, skating off the float and doing a cool trick before landing. A handful of guards stormed out of the building and right into the trap.

“What is the meaning of this?” Shouted one of the guards, who was thick as hell and totally pissed.

Lux skated on up to the entrance as Circe came in hot with the microphone and camcorder.

“Hi, we’re with the Channel Hell News! What do you have to say regarding the allegations of horrific cloning experiments and rampant rights violations occurring within the walls of this facility?” Lux took the microphone from Circe and shoved it into the face of the nearest goon.

“What? Get that out of my face!” The guard shoved the microphone away and Lux dropped it, feigning surprise.

“Did you just hit him?” Circe shouted.

“What the fuck? What is this?” Barked the guard.

Lux decked the goon in the nose, knocking him backwards. The music halted and the crowd fell silent. Suddenly, the doors whipped open and a dozen more guards filed out of the building as backup, and pandemonium erupted.

As chaos enclosed upon the Renfield from below, Manfred circled the building in a helicopter (and was far too excited about that fact). He kept an eye on the scene below in addition to watching the roof for a sign of his friends, ready to come in for the rescue at a moment’s notice.

Alice and Toffee hung towards the back of the crowd and slipped away, behind the building and out of sight. Toffee set down the large black briefcase he was carrying and opened it up. Inside was a grappling hook gun that Manfred had secured for them through a friend.

Toffee gathered Alice in one arm, and she wrapped her arms around him tightly. She cradled her head in the crook of his neck and he couldn’t help but crack a smile. He pointed the gun towards the top floor, as they were planning to work their way down while the riot kept anyone from escaping.

Pulling the trigger, the grappling hook sliced through the air and pierced a top floor window, wrapping around the windowpane and latching onto itself. Toffee pressed a button that caused the rope to retract, pulling them up along the side of the building. As the pair climbed up and through the broken window, they could hear a voice screaming out in protest followed by a door slamming.

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Theo was operating under a blind rage and was not remotely concerned with the fact that his staff was panicking, and all the functioning clones were booking it past him and down the stairs. Making his way to the top floor with Winona in tow (possessing a particularly twisted arm at this point), he wrenched open the door to the roof and shoved her through, crying out as she stumbled and scraped her knees and hands.

Theo was barely out the door himself when he began to convulse. His bones began to crackle like branches underfoot, and his skin began splitting along the lines of his scars, shedding in pieces like a snake. His body appeared to be growing faster than his skin could keep up.

The worst part was the scar on Theo’s face, which practically unzipped and exposed the inside of his mouth. The shriek that erupted was an affront to the gods, like a fork scraping across a ceramic plate (or one of Jam Stoker’s more experimental pieces).

His back opened up like a wound and out came the candy-striped tendrils. His hair sprouted and grew wild like vines, twisted and tangled and angry, and he reached for Winona with everything that he had.

“Get the fuck away from me!” She kicked at the tendrils trying to clutch at her feet and sprang up, running in the opposite direction. She was plagued by darkness and completely oblivious to her surroundings.

“No, don’t! Stop!” Cried Theo, chasing after her as he continued to shift into a grotesque imitation of the man he used to be. It can’t end this way. Not like this.

Alice and Toffee quickly caught up and slammed open the door, just in time to see Winona trip over the edge and fall, screaming.

Theo reached over the edge with his tendrils to catch her, but she had already slipped out of reach. The crowd below fell silent and looked up, watching on in horror as she fell to her death. Cameras were rolling. Photos were taken. Her rescue team barely had time to react, let alone help in any way.

Halfway down, a massive ball of light engulfed Winona and she began to slowly rise. She hovered above Theo and it became clear to him that his plan had worked after all.

Winona’s clothes had fallen like rags off her body, which was covered head to toe in dozens of eyes, all blinking and peering around in different directions. She had a second set of arms, and two sets of white, feathery wings. Her hair stretched down past her feet and swirled around her body in a near-liquid fashion, shielding her chest and lower regions from the eyes of everyone else. She had developed a form of the Sight like nobody had ever seen, a more powerful and terrifying ability than ever before.

Each of Winona’s eyes could see different parallel versions of her past, her present, and her future. In an adjacent universe, she watched Theo take hold of her limbs and gore her to pieces before consuming her flesh and blood. He grew misshapen, leathery wings, and jagged black and white horns sprouted like tree branches climbing towards the heavens. He took to the skies before descending upon the crowd below to feed once more.

In another version of her present, Theo and Winona tore each other apart limb from limb, dying simultaneously. Shockwaves rippled throughout into the city, shattering windows and knocking people to the ground. It was a bloodbath, and even though they both lost, it still felt like he had won.

Viewing a flashback, Winona watched the earlier scene from Apollo’s Liar unfold when her rescue team first met up and narrowly escaped death. She also saw a version of these events where her allies failed and were brutally slaughtered before the mission even began—the version of the events she was told (and still believed).

A glimpse into another past recalled the moment when she made her initial discovery—the clones in the tanks. In this reality, however, the clones in the tanks all belonged to her. The double closest to her woke up and began to pound against the glass in terror, and Winona whipped around. The previous lab setting had vanished and was instead replaced by a dark tunnel full of bodies, some limp, some twitching. They also bore her characteristics, and at the top of the pile, she saw four severed and bloody wings.

Winona was shown a version of the future where she was chained down by her wrists. Candles were lit all around her and blindfolded worshippers began to close in on her. Winona’s back seared with pain as she realized what had been taken, and as she cried, the worshippers collected her tears from all of her eyes in the little glass vials they carried. They began to vocalize to drown out the sound of her screams.

Every angle of what was and what could’ve been was playing out in her mind simultaneously; she was seeing and processing so many appalling things at once, and as her psyche finally fractured, Theo went in for the kill.

He extended dozens of tendrils forward, wrapping tightly around all four of her wrists. The skin on Winona’s hands began to blister and turn a blackish-purple, and it started to spread up her forearms. The rest of Theo’s pale, human skin fell from his body like wet paper and the creature within finally came out of its shell. He was bruise-toned, with a sickly yellow-green bleeding through in places.

Theo had opened the door to his soul in order to pull Winona in, never thinking for an instant that she would have the guts to reach back. Her body grew hot to the touch, searing his skin and causing him to let go as she beat her wings and rose backwards out of his grasp. Materializing a golden spear out of light that was longer than she was tall, the avenging angel was ready to take her last stand.

Winona let out a scream and propelled the spear down into Theo’s chest, piercing his heart for the second and final time. Glistening rays of light erupted from the wound and his body began to break apart, like the bricks of a crumbling building. As the last of his remains fell into dust, all of Winona’s eyes rolled back and closed. Her body grew limp and fell to the roof, landing hard on the cold ground. Her feathery wings delicately draped her exposed body, and the light she emanated tapered off before finally going out.