I'm vomiting in an alley, and I can't remember my mother's face.
I know I have a mother. Had? Have. She's alive. I think she's alive. The sanctuary keeps records, I could check, but when I try to picture her—when I reach for that memory—I see someone else.
A woman I've never met.
Her hair is burning.
Her hands reach for a child that isn't me.
Her screams sound like my screams, and I don't know where hers end and mine begin.
The Residuum is still dissolving into my skin. I can see it spreading up my forearm like frozen lightning—iridescent cracks of light, beautiful and wrong, burrowing beneath the surface. It doesn't hurt. That's the worst part. It should hurt. Something this wrong should hurt.
But it just feels... full.
Like I swallowed too much water and it's pressing against the inside of my ribs, looking for somewhere to go.
I heave again. Nothing comes up. My stomach's been empty since yesterday.
Three minutes ago, I touched it without thinking.
Three minutes ago, I was just Silas Kaine. Therapist. Survivor. Nobody special.
Now I'm Silas Kaine plus the last desperate moments of a woman named Claire who burned to death in an apartment fire seven years ago, searching for her son in the smoke.
And I can't stop screaming because she's still searching.
Where is he where is he where is he—
"Shut up," I gasp to myself. To her. To whatever the fuck I am now.
My voice cracks. When did I start crying?
The alley smells like rot and rust. Most places do now, this close to the outer walls. The dead don't decay the way they should—something about the Veil breaking preserved them, locked them in their final moments. The researchers say it's because they're not really corpses anymore. They're echoes. Impressions.
I press my forehead against the brick wall. The cold helps.
Breathe, Silas. You know how to do this. You've talked a hundred people through panic attacks.
But Claire doesn't know how to breathe through panic. She only knows how to search.
Her son's name was Thomas. He was six. He had a stuffed rabbit named Hopper. He was afraid of thunderstorms. He liked strawberry jam on his toast, not grape. He—
"Stop," I whisper.
These aren't my memories.
I don't have a son.
I don't—
My legs move.
I'm not the one moving them.
I'm walking toward the residential quarter, toward the family housing units, and I'm not choosing to do this. My body is following something I can see now—a pull, a connection, like a fishing line hooked through my sternum, reeling me in.
No. No no no.
I try to stop. My legs keep walking.
This is what Chen tried to warn me about. Three days ago in the clinic, he grabbed my wrist and said, "Don't touch the lights, Kaine. I know you can see them. Don't touch the fucking lights."
I didn't know what he meant.
I do now.
The Veil tore seven years ago on a Tuesday.
I remember because I was in a session with a client—Marcus Webb, thirty-four, depressed, having trouble sleeping—and he stopped mid-sentence and said, "Do you hear that?"
I didn't hear anything.
Then the windows shattered.
Not from wind. From pressure. Like something enormous had exhaled against the other side of reality and the glass couldn't take it.
The dead came after.
Not all at once. Not like a wave. They just... appeared. Wandering the streets like they were looking for something. Someone.
And they were.
The dead don't want brains or flesh. They want closure.
Every broken promise. Every unpaid debt. Every apology you never gave, every goodbye you never said, every lie that festered into regret—the dead came to collect.
You can't kill them. They're already dead.
You can't negotiate. They don't speak.
They just follow you. Stand outside your door. Wait in your hallway. Stare at you with eyes that don't blink because they don't need to anymore.
And when they touch you—
Nobody knows what happens when they touch you because nobody who's been touched has come back to tell us.
We built the sanctuaries. Walled cities with wards that the researchers don't understand but that seem to keep the dead out. Mostly.
And we survive.
We wait.
We try not to think about what we did that brought them to our doors.
I'm in the family quarter now.
My body is still moving without me. I should be terrified. I am terrified. But underneath the terror is something else—Claire's desperate, aching hope.
Maybe he's here. Maybe he survived. Maybe—
"He's dead," I say out loud, to her, to myself. "Claire, he's dead. The fire was seven years ago. He's—"
But she doesn't believe me. She can't. Hope was the last thing she felt before the smoke took her, and hope is what's puppeting my legs now, pulling me forward.
I round a corner and nearly collide with someone.
"Shit—sorry, I—"
It's a kid.
Maybe seven years old. Skinny. Dirty blonde hair. Clutching something to his chest.
A stuffed rabbit.
No.
No, that's impossible.
"Thomas?" The word falls out of my mouth before I can stop it.
The kid blinks up at me. "My name's Oliver."
Of course it is. Of course it's not Thomas. Thomas died seven years ago in an apartment fire in a city three hundred miles from here. This is just a kid. Just a random kid with a stuffed rabbit and—
The dead man appears behind him.
I see him before Oliver does. A tall figure in a torn security uniform, flesh gray and mottled, eyes like clouded glass. One of the wandering dead, shambling through the street with that horrible, patient determination.
Heading straight for the kid.
The wards, I think distantly. The wards should have—
But I can see it now. There's a gap in the wall ten feet away. Not large. The size of a fist. But large enough.
Large enough for one of them to slip through.
Oliver still hasn't noticed. He's looking at me with mild confusion, probably wondering why some random adult just called him the wrong name.
The dead man is fifteen feet away.
Ten feet.
I should yell. I should grab the kid and run.
But I'm not moving. I'm frozen. Because I've seen the dead before, plenty of times through the walls, through the barriers, but I've never been this close. Never been close enough to see the details.
The way his jaw hangs slightly wrong.
The hole in his chest where something punched through.
The wedding ring on his left hand.
Five feet.
Oliver turns. Sees the dead man. Goes rigid with fear.
And something in me—something that isn't Silas, something that's Claire, protective and desperate and maternal—explodes.
I'm moving before I know I'm moving.
I grab Oliver and shove him behind me. I'm facing the dead man with my hands up like I could possibly do something, like I have any idea what I'm doing, like—
The dead man reaches for me.
His hand is cold. I can feel the cold radiating off him even before he touches me.
And then—
Instinct.
Not my instinct. Claire's.
When the fire came, when she couldn't breathe, when the smoke filled the hallway and she couldn't find Thomas, she didn't freeze. She moved. She searched. She fought.
That instinct is mine now.
I sidestep. I don't know how I know to do it, but I do. The dead man's hand passes through empty air.
I grab a piece of broken rebar from the rubble near the wall—when did I see that? when did I register that as a weapon?—and I swing.
It connects with the side of the dead man's skull with a wet crack.
He doesn't fall.
He doesn't even stagger.
He just turns his head slowly to look at me with those clouded, patient eyes.
Oh, I think. Oh, I'm going to die.
And then someone else is there.
A woman. Thirties, maybe. Dark hair pulled back, wearing patched tactical gear. She's holding something—a cylinder, about the size of a flashlight—and when she presses it against the dead man's chest, there's a sound like glass breaking.
The dead man stops.
For a moment, he just stands there.
Then he starts to... dissolve. Not into ash or dust. Into light. The same iridescent light that's still fading in the cracks up my arm.
In five seconds, he's gone.
The woman looks at me. "You shouldn't be out here."
I'm shaking. "I—there was a kid—"
"Already gone." She nods past me. Oliver is sprinting back toward the residential buildings, stuffed rabbit clutched to his chest. "You saved him. Congratulations. Now move before more of them find that gap."
She's already walking toward the hole in the wall, pulling tools from her belt.
I follow because I don't know what else to do. "What did you do to him? The dead man?"
"Dispersed his Residuum." She doesn't look at me. She's examining the gap, measuring it with her hands. "Broke the anchor keeping him here. He's gone now. Really gone."
"Residuum," I repeat.
"The crystallized soul fragments. The things that keep the dead tethered to—" She stops. Turns. Looks at me properly for the first time.
Her eyes drop to my arm. To the fading iridescent cracks.
"Oh," she says softly. "Oh, fuck."
"What?"
"You can see them, can't you? The Residuum."
It's not a question.
I think about the lights I've been seeing for the past month. Little crystallized fragments scattered through the sanctuary. Glowing softly in colors that shouldn't exist. I thought I was going crazy. I thought it was stress or malnutrition or—
"I touched one," I hear myself say. "In the alley. I didn't mean to. I just—"
"You consumed it." She's staring at me like I'm something dangerous. Something volatile. "How long ago?"
"Maybe... ten minutes?"
"And you're still coherent." She sounds almost impressed. "Most people lose themselves completely the first time. Can't tell their own thoughts from the consumed soul's. You're—"
"I can't remember my mother's face."
The words come out flat. Empty.
The woman goes very still. "What?"
"The woman I consumed—Claire—her memories are... I can see her son. I can see her apartment. I can see the fire. But when I try to remember my own mother, I see Claire's mother instead. Or—or I see parts of both and I can't tell which is which."
I'm crying again. When did I start crying again?
"I'm losing myself," I whisper. "Aren't I?"
The woman doesn't answer immediately. She just looks at me with something that might be pity or might be recognition.
Finally, she says, "What's your name?"
"Silas. Silas Kaine."
"Silas Kaine," she repeats, like she's testing it. "My name is Maya Zhao. I'm a Residuum researcher. And I think you and I need to have a very long conversation."
She finishes sealing the gap in the wall—some kind of putty that hardens instantly—and turns back to me.
"But first, I need you to answer one question honestly. Can you do that?"
I nod.
"When you consumed that Residuum, when Claire's memories filled your head—did any part of you like it?"
I want to say no. I want to say of course not, it was horrifying, I would never—
But I remember that moment in the alley. After the screaming stopped. After the panic faded. When Claire's memories settled into place alongside my own.
I remember thinking: I'm not alone anymore.
Maya sees the answer in my face.
"Yeah," she says quietly. "That's what I thought."
She starts walking. I follow.
"Where are we going?"
"Somewhere we can talk without being overheard. Because what I'm about to tell you—what you are, what you can do—there are people in this sanctuary who would kill you for it. And there are people who would use you."
"Use me how?"
She glances back. "You consumed one Residuum by accident and gained combat instincts that saved a kid's life. Imagine what you could do if you consumed a hundred. A thousand."
I think about Claire's protective instinct. Her desperate search. Her hope.
I think about having a hundred different people's instincts, memories, drives, all screaming inside my head at once.
"I'd lose myself completely," I say.
"Yes," Maya agrees. "You would."
"Then why would anyone want that?"
"Because, Silas Kaine—" She stops walking. Turns to face me. "—before you lost yourself, you'd be the most powerful person in this sanctuary. Powerful enough to fight the dead. Powerful enough to find out what's controlling them. Powerful enough to maybe, maybe fix this."
"At the cost of my identity."
"At the cost of everything you are," she confirms. "The question is: would it be worth it?"
I don't have an answer.
We stand there in the shadow of the sanctuary wall, surrounded by the distant sound of the dead scratching at the barriers, and I realize my entire life just changed.
Ten minutes ago, I was Silas Kaine, therapist, survivor, nobody special.
Now I'm Silas Kaine plus Claire's last desperate moments.
And if Maya is right—if I can consume more, become more—
How many fragments can one person hold before there's nothing left?
How much of yourself can you sacrifice before the sacrifice stops meaning anything?
Maya is watching me. Waiting.
"Come on," she finally says. "Let's get you somewhere safe. And then we'll figure out what the hell you are."
I follow her into the sanctuary depths.
Behind us, something scratches at the wall.
The dead are patient.
They can wait forever.
The question is: can I?