>> Interruption

  Six weeks ago.....

  An echo of Kami explodes through the wall of rain and smoke and shadow in the doorway.

  A memory.

  A shard of what was, and will never be again.

  She turns to pace the hollow shack, as we breach the storm behind her. Tinsheet walls hammering and shaking as if barely attached. Weeping blackened waters onto rusted screwdrivers and drills, lost to the passage of time. Metal tables caging us into a narrow strip of roughened floor, ankle deep with cool waters.

  "You let it inside." She whispers, as if about to kill. Planting many hands on a machine-shop surface bent and rusted by time. "You....LET..... THAT.... THING INSIDE!!!"

  "His name. Is Tufty." I whisper, a hint of death lurking in the rumble of my words.

  "Not anymore." Her voice cracks with hoarse breath as long-gone lightening crashes across the barren rooftop. Flashing in the gaps of our rattling, rust-dripping, shelter. "Spook. You KNOW what they do to the 'Special Kids' at that freaking 'School'. You. Know."

  "No I don't! And neither do bloody you!!!! Nothin' is real in that place!" I snarl with sudden heat at her heaving back, while the rain beats against my own. Slickening my brand-new armour. "You think I'm gonna trust a bloody rumour?? I don't even trust my bloody eyes in that place!"

  "NO! YOU DON'T GET IT!" Kami shrieks back. "Oh god, you don't understand....." She clutches herself, and shakes. Other hands fixed to the pitted counter. "Please listen! Please! I just want to protect you! Please! The THING in there is manipulating you-"

  "HIS NAME!" I scream back. "IS TUFTY!!!"

  "NO! THAT'S JUST HIS BODY!" She cries into the water, and The City weeps with her. "The body is Tufty, but the brain is GONE. They RIPPED IT OUT OF HIM!!" A choking gasp, as she turns her haunted eyes toward me. "Spook. That's what they do to kids like him. They ripped his brain into mush, and stuck something else inside......"

  "YOU'RE LYIN'!"

  "PLEASE LISTEN TO ME!! That's Tufty's body, but it's not Tufty inside it! Not anymore! It's an AI personality core! It's meant to trick you! But he's just a skinsuit! A hollowed out husk! It isn't Tufty anymore!"

  I snarl and turn away. "No."

  "Spook! COME ON!"

  "HE AIN'T A BLOODY PUPPET!" I slam back at her, over the endless noise. My voice turning brittle and desperate as I add "No matter....." I steal a breath from the heart of terror. "no matter how much them bastards wanted him to be....."

  The waters of the torn-open doorway ring with dancing droplets in the sudden silence.

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  Zipper splashes in beside me. Quiet, and quietly wrung out. His eyes flashing wide and reflective-blue in the stark light. Metallic, and shining, like a GMO. Though they aren't the ones he was born with. Not anymore.

  Two days without sleep. Two days on the run.

  They hit hard, right then. Braking us down.

  "Do you even know how that sounds?" Kami's voice is barely a whisper against the torrents smashing our shelter. Dissolving it away, atom by atom. "Spook! Please! I've seen this again and again! They take them away, and they come back WRONG. Just like Freakshow. Just like that thing you let in the ship."

  I slam forward, almost grabbing her.

  "HIS BLOODY NAME!!" I scream. "IS TUFTY!! CAUSE THAT'S WHAT I NAMED HIM, WHEN-"

  "Please! Spook! Don't fall for this! Not after everything he's done! Everything we've seen." Her shoulders are sagging. Her head a lump of lead in her too-many hands.

  I choke. I can't move at all.

  "He's....." Mine. My little brother. A precious link to my father. "Please.... Y'don't gotta bloody do this t'me....."

  "I wish..... I wish I didn't....." Her voice starting to crack. Her breath choking on grief, as her too-many shoulders shake. Guttering out a quiet little sob. "Oh, god. I really don't. I don't want to do this..... I...."

  "Then don't." I falter.

  "No. I HAVE TO." Kami sobs. Broken more deeply than ever I've seen. "Oh god. Spook. I loved him. I really loved him. He used to hug me, and tell me things. Stupid little baby things. It...."

  "Me too....." I whisper.

  "But..... that....." A jerk of pain slams through her. "That thing you brought with us-"

  "Don't call him a 'THING'!" I roar as the steel-plate shed hammers with Typhoon's fury.

  "Spook! Stop! Please stop! You've got to know by now!" She begs me, finally turning her rough-wrought face. Her skull so hollow, and dark, and full of pain. Her sunken eyes so red they're almost bloodied. "That isn't him. That isn't Tufty. I'm sure of it. It's his body. It's his face. But there's something else....."

  "NO!"

  A low swallow. "Has he ever shown you.... what's under that fringe?"

  I go very still.

  "Kami." I whisper. Raw in the throat. "Don't do this shit. Please..... He’s our.…" I choke on the trauma clamping my throat. Reaching out to Zipper for support. "Our lil baby b-b-b…."

  I shut my eyes, and they go red with surging light as the metal roof slams against its bolts.

  "You still can't say it..... even now." She stares at nothing. At the clashing metal.

  "It hurts. It hurts too much...." to call him friend. Or brother. "No matter how messed up he's got...." I whisper, every word lost to the flashing dark. "Even if we're all broken, we gotta try….”

  For a long while, the storm is the only sound.

  Because we are.

  But I let the ripping wind stir around me, because it is real.

  Finally real. A thing that exists, and cannot be twisted away from me, though it stings as fierce as falling knives. Rushing in through gaps and holes to stir the inky water around bare-clawed feet.

  Washing armour worn for days.

  Dripping from animal ears. From the ghost of a sodden tail, dredged behind my legs.

  And my eyes fixate on the busted everLight above. The dead tools. The fallen shelves. The droplets plinking from Zipper's toes as he sits, in silence, on a busted metal-shop table.

  And, slowly, Kami's eyes soften.

  Her face burning with shame and sympathy. Swallowing, quietly, as she stares out at the steaming hulk of The Night Tyrant - still waiting in the dark.

  To Tufty's bound body, inside it. Guarded, only, by Demon and our internal guns.

  Its shape shimmers in the downfall of the sky, as the remembered echo of the little black kid blurs barefoot about in the storm. Jumping, joyfully, through thick puddles as heavy walls of rain slam down upon him.

  Battering him this way and that.

  Behind him, a doll-like thing with ginger hair sits - perfectly and sweetly - in the limited shelter of a Monolith engine.

  Smiling, very nicely, instead of rocking and crying.

  "I'm scared." Kami whispers as the old walls clang with speeding drops. Startling me back. "Spook, I'm scared. and I'm alone. And I'm so far from home.... I don't even know which way to go......"

  I step forward, into the dark shell of the old room. Templates plates shivering with every breath of the howling night.

  A night that will never, ever, end.

  "Like.... What now, mate?" Zipper whispers.

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