Where the Dead Things Bloom [Ch 48, 49, 50, 51, 52] (Patreon)

Chapter 48: Unstoppable Dog

“Ah, excellent, finally got us a supervisor!” Jim declared with a smile. "The cart recovery department definitely needs experienced management! The previous supervisor got sucked into a dimensional rift that led to a realm of nothing but expired dairy products. His last words were 'I can smell the cheese from here!’”

“Off you go,” Nessy said. “Lot section 49302 desperately needs its shopping carts retrieved from the cart kidnapping gang of toasters. You’re authorized to use deadly force if necessary.”

“Yes mam,” Jim gave Nessy a salute. “I won’t fail you, Miss…”

Jim squinted at Nessy’s badge.

“Maxima Pawsome,” Nessy tapped her badge which had Ms. Nessy Whitepaw crossed out with a black marker, the new name hastily and somewhat lopsided written above it.

Nessy's blue eyes were unnaturally wide, pupils dilated to pinpoints, and her paws constantly shifted and twitched. She looked like a hurricane survivor.

“I’ll get right on it, Miss. Pawsome!” Jim rushed off  to retrieve more equipment, vanishing in the distance, leaving me alone with the manic-looking, sleep-deprived husky. 

“Get to it ASAP!” Nessy yelled at the retreating employee. “If you defeat the dastardly toaster gang there’s a promotion in your future!”

She spun back to me. “Hi Alec! You’re so cute you know. Did I ever tell you how cute you are? Because I’m telling you this now. The cutest cute cutesicle. I’ma lick you now, kay? Kay.”

She licked my face. “Mmmm… Alec flava cutesicle.”

A faint sound caught my attention. It sounded like…

"Help!”

The muffled call was barely audible, but distinctly there. I turned from the husky, scanning the equipment room.

My blood froze.

Behind one of the shelving units stood a shopping cart, but not an empty one. Inside, packed tightly together like sardines, were the Strand sisters—Katerina, Kaledoniya, and Kirra—their limbs handcuffed and strapped to the metal frame with hundreds of white zip ties, their snouts stuffed with what looked like dog chew toys secured with mad loops of zip ties connected to zip ties.

And standing beside them, handcuffed to the cart’s handlebars, a bone-shaped dog toy strapped to her mouth, was Krysanthea. A dog collar encircled her neck, adorned with a lightning bolt charm that glinted in the fluorescent light. Her amber eyes met mine, wide with desperate urgency.

“Help!” She voiced again through the gag.

"Nessy," I began slowly, "what—"

A metallic clicking sound interrupted me.

I spun back toward Nessy just in time to see something unfolding from her wrist—a calculator watch that suddenly sprouted mechanical legs, transforming into a metal spider. Before I could react, the device leapt from her arm to mine, mechanical legs digging painfully into my flesh.

"Argh, fuck get off!" I yelped, trying to shake it off.

The spider-watch tightened its grip, a needle extending from its underbelly and plunging into my wrist. Pain shot up my arm as it drew blood, red sparks dancing across my vision.

[SAVEPOINT ACTIVE]

The message flashed in red text in my eyes as I staggered backward, still trying to dislodge the mechanical arachnid. It clung stubbornly, its red display flickering with strange, alien symbols.

That's when I noticed what else Nessy was wearing—a familiar compass hanging from a chain around her neck, and on her wrist, a bracelet of glass beads, each containing a tiny blue eye.

Katerina's calculator watch. Kirra's compass. Kaledoniya's eye-glass bracelet.

"Nessy, what the fuck?!" I demanded, unsuccessfully trying to pry the calculator watch off my wrist.

Nessy's expression was unchanged—that same manic, caffeine-fueled grin.

"Sam had to help Frodo!" she declared, her speech slightly disjointed. "We're going to Mount Doom! Well, not really Mount Doom—more like Mount Shelf. That's where we return the artifacts that were never paid for!" She bounced on her toes. "Never will be paid for! Too expensive. Much too expensive. No wages could cover it, no, no, no."

Her rapid rambling was punctuated by twitches and occasional barks of snickering.

"The spider rewinds time!" she continued, pointing at the watch on my wrist. "The compass points to glory! The eyes accelerate! All taken without payment! All must be returned to their rightful shelves!"

I slowly began to understand. The artifacts had never been meant for the sisters to keep—they were meant to be paid for or returned. And since they couldn't be paid for...

"Right, these are their artifacts," I said, gesturing toward the captive raptors. "You took them. Why?"

"Confiscated!" she corrected, waggling a finger at me. "Am manager! The Superstore doesn't forget. It calculates. It waits. I'm just helping collect some overdue cosmic debts as any Goodly supervisor ought to do! No, no, G-Supercenter employees should not be wielding stolen items willy-nilly. I’m supervising! This is supervisery! The best kind of…”

I ignored the husky and approached Krysanthea. Her amber eyes tracked my movement, communicating silent urgency. As I reached for the zip ties that secured the chew toy to her snout, Nessy ranted on and on about proper supervision behind me.

I realised that there was no way for me to pull off the zip ties to allow Kristi to speak—there were far too many of them.

“Nessy,” I turned back to the wild-looking husky. “Why are the raptor sisters bound to a shopping cart?”

“They were far too mouthy,” Nessy replied, bending a finger, then another. “Mouthy, obstinate, contrary, defiant, argumentative, combative, confrontational, contentious, fractious, pugnacious, quarrelsome, impossible… MEAN! Do you know what Samwise Gamgee did to Gollum? Well, no, what Sam should have done? Sam should have smacked that little shit to get him in line. Maybe if he did, then Frodo wouldn’t be missing a finger at the end of LOTR!”

Her words tumbled out in a manic flood, her body vibrating with nervous energy as she paced in a circle around me like a fluffy shark.

"Do you know how long they've been awful to me? YEARS!" She threw her paws up dramatically. "Years and years and years of bullying and torment! The gum they put in my fur before the formal that had to be cut out! The time they spread rumors I ate cat poop! The fake birthday party invitation that sent me to the wrong address where I sat alone for two hours in a restaurant before realizing no one was coming!"

She was practically foaming at the mouth now, years of bottled resentment pouring out in a caffeine-fueled tirade.

"Their stupid raptor friends tripping me in the hallway! The fake love letter they wrote to humiliate me at the winter dance! Slashing my bike tires! Putting rotting meat in my locker! Spreading rumors that I had fleas! The 'anonymous' emails to Ferguson High admin claiming I cheated on tests and was selling drugs!"

Her claws flexed and unflexed as she continued. "And oh, let's not forget Kristi, their ringleader! 'Too good' to bully me directly, but never stopped her sisters, did she? No! Just stood by and WATCHED while they made my life MISERABLE!"

Nessy spun to face the bound raptors, pointing an accusing finger at them.

"And now? NOW? When I'm trying to SAVE THEM from themselves, trying to get their souls back, do they listen? NO! They argue and fight and call me 'stupid mutt' and 'brain-dead canine' and tell me my plan is ridiculous! Even after I proved I was right about EVERYTHING! MY IQ ISN’T SEVEN, BY THE WAY!”

She pulled the nail studded bat from a strap on her backpack and tapped the raptor-packed shopping cart making it wobble and making its occupants wince and stare at her with hatred and panic in their eyes.

“Nessy…” I began.

She turned back to me.

"They wouldn't LISTEN, Alec! They were going to keep fighting the store, doing a terrible job, getting low performance rates, and keep getting deeper in debt! Keep LOSING more soul fragments until there was nothing left of em! So I had to MAKE them listen! I HAD TO!"

Her voice cracked slightly, a hint of desperation breaking through the mania.

"I'm SAVING them! Don't you see? They've always been mean to me, but I'm still saving them because that's what good dogs DO! We protect people even when they are MEAN LIZARDS who steal my pack mates and mock our intelligence and call us STUPID!"

She panted heavily after her outburst, fur standing on end. Five and a half weeks without sleep had clearly pushed her over an edge I hadn't realized was there.

"The artifacts have to go back," she continued. "They're stealing souls. Can't pay the price. Too high. Wages not enough. Must return to Mount Shelf. Must fix this. Even if they hate me more. Even if they never thank me. I'm saving their ungrateful, scaly butts."

I approached her slowly, hands raised in a placating gesture. "Nessy, I understand. You're trying to help. But this isn't the way. Let me help you think this through. You clearly need sleep, and they need to be untied."

“What, so they can call me more names and be obstinate fucks? Yeah, I don’t think so! I’ve had enough of their shit. Enough, enough, enough! I’m not going to put up with it! They don't want to be in a pack with me. They never did. Especially not now. They’re raptors, Alec. They see everything as prey, property or competition that needs to be eliminated or pushed out of their territory!”

"Nessy," I said softly, "you need to rest. This isn't you talking—it's no sleep and whatever was in those coffees."

"NO!" she barked, jabbing the nail-studded bat toward me. "I don't need sleep! Sleep is for the WEAK! I'm STRONG! Strong enough to fix everything! Strong enough to save these stupid lizards from themselves! Strong enough to protect you from everything bad here!"

She began pacing in tight circles around me again, her tail stiff behind her.

"You know what happened after you left for university, Alec? After you abandoned me?" She didn't wait for a response. "They got WORSE. So much worse."

Her voice took on a haunted quality as she continued. "Kristi wouldn't even look at me anymore. Just walked past like I was invisible. But her sisters? They made sure I knew I existed. Oh yes."

The bat thumped against the shopping-cart bound raptors rhythmically as she spoke, punctuating her words.

"Katerina started rumors I was mentally unstable. Said I was obsessed with you. That I had built a shrine to worship you. That I slept with your clothes." She laughed bitterly. 

I looked at her pointedly.

"Okay, those last three are technically true, but that's not the point!" She huffed. 

I glanced at Katerina in the cart, who couldn't respond with the bone-shaped toy gagging her, but whose eyes blazed with hostility.

"Four years, Alec. FOUR YEARS without you to make me feel less alone, and they never stopped. Never got bored. Never found a new target!”

I approached Nessy carefully, recognizing the dangerous state she was in. Sleep deprivation mixed with what appeared to be weeks of bottled rage and years of raptor-related trauma had transformed the usually cheerful husky into a ball of spiky rage.

She began pacing in tight circles again.

"Kirra organized a 'Whitepaw Appreciation Day' at the auto shop where I worked. Convinced a bunch of their friends to bring in their cars and demand I fix them for free because 'dogs work for treats, not money.'" Nessy's voice cracked. "Will chased them off, but the damage was done. We lost three clients who believed the lies that I was an incompetent drunkard who can't fix anything and will sabotage cars I work on!"

She pointed the bat at Kaledoniya. "This one used to drive by Will's garage every day in her Mustang just to throw trash on our property. She'd speed off before I could even get out the door."

The youngest Strand sister had the decency to look slightly ashamed despite her current predicament.

Chapter 49: Inescapable Mire

"When Will promoted me to head mechanic, they spread rumors I was sleeping with him for money. Will's SIXTY-TWO, Alec. And married!" Nessy's voice rose again. "My dad nearly got into a fight with a few people over it!"

I kept moving closer, inch by inch, trying not to startle her.

"And then Systemfall hit, and I thought—finally, they would have something more important than bullying the mechanic dog-girl! Bigger problems to worry about! But nooooo." She growled. "I tried to help during the first day. I volunteered for ranger duty. Katerina told me, to my face, that 'dumb mutts aren't allowed on her squad.' Said I'd 'bark and give away their position' or 'run after squirrels instead of doing my job.' I don’t run after squirrels! That was like one time when the mailgirl lost my Pradzone delivery!”

I opened my mouth trying to find the right words.

"When I left to find you, Alec? When I abandoned Ferguson to search for you?" She laughed, a hollow sound. "Kirra threw a backyard PARTY with her friends to celebrate me running away forever. She sent me photos of it on Pradstagram, the jerk!"

Krysanthea made a muffled sound through her gag, something close to a protest.

"Oh, you want to talk now, Chief?" Nessy mocked, spinning toward her. "NOW you want to say something? Where was that voice when your sisters were making my life hell? Hmm?"

She turned back to me, her eyes glistening with sparks of tears beneath the manic energy.

"And now? Now I'm trying to SAVE THEM. Save their SOULS. And they still won't listen! Still call me stupid! Still think I'm worthless!" She gestured wildly with the bat. "So I'm MAKING them listen! I'm fixing this! Because that's what good dogs DO!"

I was close enough now to reach out and touch her shoulder. "Nessy, you are not worthless. You're brilliant, kind, sweet and incredibly brave. But right now, you're not yourself. You've been awake for over a month, drinking God knows what from the local vending machines."

"No," Nessy shook her head violently. "I'm myself. I'm MORE myself! All the filters are gone! All the niceness, pretending to forgive and forget, turning the other cheek—gone! I'm pure now! Pure purpose! Going to Mount Shelf!”

"Let me help you then," I offered. "We can all return the artifacts together. As a team."

For a moment, something flickered in her eyes—recognition, perhaps even a hint of her usual self. Then she shook her head again.

"No. No team. Just me and you. Employee and Manager. They won't help. They'll fight. They'll argue. They'll call me names, bully n’ hostile me like they always have. Better this way. Faster. More efficient! I can’t stop, I won’t stop until I return the compass, the watch and the bracelet to Mount Shelf!”

“Nessy,” I pressed on, trying to get at least one of the raptors liberated. “Kristi is our pack mate. Why is she handcuffed and muted too? What did she do to you recently?”

“She wanted me to free her sisters from their shopping-cart detention!” Nessy huffed. 

“Uh-huh,” I said. “And if I tell you to free them, are you gonna handcuff me too?”

Nessy's face went through a series of complicated expressions—shock, hurt, anger, and something like desperation all flickering across her features in rapid succession.

"You?" She laughed, a high-pitched, unnatural sound. "No, no, no. You're my pack leader! My best! My anchor! My tree! I would never handcuff you! I gave you the spider watch for rewinds, in case something bad happens to you. Absolute protection! I'm protecting you! See! See?"

I held her gaze steadily, trying to reach the real Nessy beneath the mania. "Kristi is also our pack mate. Remember? We all slept together in the RV. We established Fort Pack together."

"Yeah but..." Nessy frowned, her brow furrowing as she struggled with some internal conflict. "She's also a lizard. A mean, rude lizard who let her sisters bully me. She doesn't... she doesn't deserve..."

"Deserve what, Nessy? To be tied up? To have her voice taken away?" I asked. "Is that what a pack does to its own?"

Nessy looked away, her tail drooping slightly. "You don't understand. You weren't there for those four years. You didn't see how they treated me."

"You're right," I acknowledged. "I wasn't there. And I'm sorry about that. But I'm here now."

She looked back at me, her blue eyes searching my face.

"And right now," I continued, "I see my friend who's been awake for too long and isn't thinking clearly."

"I'm thinking PERFECTLY clearly!" she insisted. "I'm FIXING everything!"

"Nessy," I said softly, "you once told me that the pack bond would help us overcome everything. That we were stronger together than apart. That we'd find a way through anything as long as we stuck together."

Her ears flattened slightly.

"You told me that when I was a tree with many hands in our shared dream," I reminded her. "Remember? When you were hiding from that magnetic lynx? Both Kristi and I protected you then. We formed a pack to be stronger together, not to handcuff each other when we disagree."

"That was... different," she mumbled, wobbling side to side.

"Nessy Rex Whitepaw," I said, using her full name to pound my words into her. "As your pack leader, I'm formally asking you to free our pack mate Krysanthea, and to refrain from threatening any more members of our group. Will you comply?"

She stared at me, her expression torn. The bat drooped slightly in her paws.

"But... but they won't listen," she protested weakly. "They never listen to me..."

"I will make them listen," I promised. "But as pack leader, I can't allow this to continue. We work together."

For a moment, I thought I'd reached her. Then her eyes hardened, and she raised the bat defensively.

"No," she declared. "I've decided. I'm doing this my way. Going to Mount Shelf. Returning the artifacts. Fixing EVERYTHING. Then everyone will have to admit I was right all along! That I'm not stupid! That I'm actually HELPFUL and GOOD!"

"Nessy—"

Her eyes flashed with blue and then she vanished from where she stood.

A cloth was firmly pressed to my mouth and I tasted a chemical concoction of some kind.

“Shhhh,” she whispered as I struggled in her embrace. “No argue. Only sleep now. Have a nap on the cart. Kristi can roll you there. When you wake up, everything’s gonna be… solved n’ fine n’ better.”

I pushed past drowsiness with all of my will, focused on staying awake, tried to claw my way out of the mire of chemical-induced sleep. It didn’t work. 

Chloroform was just a movie thing, right? Maybe this was some sort of bullshit Systemfall-made or alternative dimension extra-potent chloroform?

My thoughts collided into each other and then there was only darkness.

The calculator watch on my wrist suddenly beeped. Blood red letters filled my vision.

[LINEARITY INTERRUPTED. REWINDING USER.]

[SAVEPOINT LOADING...]

. . .

“What,” I uttered, blinking red fog out of my eyes. I was standing in the shopping-cart retrieval employee outfit shed.

"Sam had to help Frodo!" Nessy declared, hands spreading wide in front of me. "We're going to Mount Doom! Well, not really Mount Doom—more like Mount Shelf. That's where we return the artifacts that were never paid for!" She bounced on her toes. "Never will be paid for! Too expensive. Much too expensive. No wages could cover it, no, no, no."

“Fuck my life,” I exhaled, the metal spider-watch digging painfully into my wrist.

"The spider rewinds time!" she continued, pointing at the watch on my wrist.

“When does it rewind time?” I interrupted her rant.

“When the user dies,” Nessy shrugged. “Pretty handy, yeah?”

“Does it rewind someone when they pass out?”

“Nope. Only death rewinds the person wearing it.”

Great. That means I died.

“Did it… rewind you?” I asked.

“A bunch of times,” she nodded. “Stuff keeps killing me. It’s annoying.”

“Don’t you have…”

“Scrutiosmia? Nah,” she shook her head. “Run outta that stuff ages ago. No Riffweld either. No more whimsical musicals for you, cheeky fucks.” She flickered in one spot and banged the cart with the raptors with the bat that was suddenly in her hands. “You try so hard, but NOBODY truly appreciates your songs! That’s all I do TRY TRY TRY, but I never get no respect, no siree, nope!”

“If you don’t have Scrutiosmia, how exactly do you expect to find your way to Mount Shelf?” I asked.

“I can ask fellow supervisors,” Nessy huffed. “I am a very social creature. EVEN THOUGH SOMEONE drove me into a self-deprecating depression spiral with their unending fuckery and subterfuge.” She banged the raptor-cart once again. “How do you like them beans? I should feed you all canned beans. The kind you left in my locker to mess with me! See how you like it!”

I noted that the raptors for the exception of Kristi were no longer wearing uniforms.

“Are they not employed anymore?” I asked.

“Nope,” Nessy fired back. “I fired them for not meeting my expectations.”

I opened my mouth.

“They were gonna get fired regardless,” she barked. “Cus they hate this place and want to set it on fire. Especially this one.” Nessy banged the spot where Kat’s shout was smooshed into the corner of the shopping cart.

“But Kristi is still employed?” I asked.

“Kinda,” Nessy huffed. “She’s on super-thin ice for arguing with her superior though.”

"Can I at least talk to Kristi? Without the gag?" I asked tiredly.

Nessy's expression darkened. "Why? So she can insult me more? Call me stupid? Try to convince you I'm 'unstable'?" She made air quotes with her fingers. “None of you appreciate me! The G-Supercenter appreciates me! She gave me an exemplary performance review! I’m an exemplary manager! And I’m wasting time arguing with my employees when I should be returning the stolen items to their shelves!”

“Ness,” I said. “You really need a nap. You’re not acting rational.”

“I’m perfectly rational! The rationalest doggo in this place!”

I visualised the Pack network between us, grabbed onto it mentally.

“Nessy,” I said. “As your pack leader, I’m ordering you to untie Kristi.”

A gray eye suddenly opened on her blue vest, glaring at me.

I froze, staring at it. It glared back at me with an unsettling intensity, unblinking and alien, as if it belonged to something ancient and dangerous.

Nessy’s tail twitched erratically, her grin faltering for a split second as she tilted her head, almost like she was listening to a voice I couldn’t hear. “Order me?” she repeated, her voice sharp and cold like that of Insurance. “I’m your manager, Alec. You don’t get to order me around. The G-Supercenter gave me greater authority, see? I’m exemplary. Top dog. Best employee! And you—” She jabbed the nail-studded bat in my direction, not quite touching me but close enough to make my skin prickle. “You’re just a cart collector. A grunt. So stay in your lane and do what you are told!”

The gray eye on her vest pulsed faintly, and I swore it moved, tracking me as I took a cautious step away from the rusty-nail bat. My mind raced, piecing together the fragments of what was happening. Nessy wasn’t just sleep-deprived or pushed to her breaking point by years of bullying. Something else was at play—something tied to this store, to the artifacts she’d taken from the Strand sisters, to that damn eye staring at me like it knew my every thought.

I tightened my grip on the mental image of our pack bond, the silver threads that connected me to Nessy and Krysanthea. They were still there, pulsing faintly, but the thread to Nessy felt... Wrong, frayed, tangled with something foreign. Whatever was influencing her, it wasn’t just her own pain or exhaustion. The Supercenter itself—or something within it—was pulling her strings like an invisible puppeteer.

“Nessy,” I said, keeping my voice calm despite the unease crawling up my spine. “You’re not just my manager. You’re my pack mate. My friend. And I’m asking you, as your friend, to let Krysanthea go. She doesn’t deserve this.”

Nessy’s ears flicked back, and for a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of the real her—the warm, loyal husky who’d fought beside me, sung to lift our spirits, and curled up against me in the RV. But then the gray eye pulsed again, and her expression hardened. “Friend?” she spat, her voice dripping with bitter sarcasm. “Friends don’t side with lizards who’ve been nothing but cruel to poor, tolerant doggos. Friends don’t try to undermine me when I’m fixing things!” She gestured wildly at the shopping cart, where the Strand sisters and Krysanthea remained bound, their muffled protests inaudible through their dog toy gags.

I glanced at Krysanthea. Her amber eyes were locked on me, pleading, but there was something else in them too—trust. Even now, tied up and silenced, she believed I could get through to Nessy. That trust grounded me, gave me the motivation to keep trying.

“Nessy,” I said. “I’m not siding with anyone. I’m trying to keep our pack together. You said it yourself—pack is family. We don’t tie each other up. We don’t hurt each other. We work through things, even when it’s hard.”

Her paws trembled, the bat wavering in her grip. “You don’t get it,” she whispered, her voice breaking. “I have to do this. I am THE manager! I NEED to MANAGE everyone… Even you… for your own good!”

She flashed in one spot and suddenly had a white bottle in her hands with the words Chloroform+ in silver-gray and a small towel with a picture of a dog riding a rainbow on it.

“I think that you’re the one who needs a nap, Alec,” she said. “You’re impeding item returnery. Returnage? Re…”

I knew that if I tried to pull on the strings again trying to influence her mind I would be chloroformed and then for some reason I would die. Permanently. The kind of death from which Reconstitution clearly couldn’t restore me from, perhaps because there was nothing left to reconstitute from, no seed-remnant of Alec to bloom from.

Chapter 50: Immovable Tree

I stood frozen, staring at the bottle of chloroform in Nessy’s trembling right hand, the rainbow-dog towel dangling from her left. The gray eye on her vest pulsed with an eerie rhythm, its gaze boring into me like a predator sizing up prey. My heart pounded, not just from the immediate threat of being knocked out, but from the chilling realization that Nessy—my Nessy, the loyal, vibrant husky who’d been my greatest anchor in this insane world—was slipping away.

The needle of the spider-calculator-watch stung, embedded deep in my skin. I’d already died once, been rewound, and the memory of that failure hung heavy over my shoulders. Whatever had killed me before, I couldn't prevent, if Nessy put me to sleep.

Krysanthea’s muffled protests from the shopping cart grew more desperate, her amber eyes locked on me, urging me to act. The Strand sisters, their limbs entwined, twisted and crammed into the cart like tetris blocks, glared at Nessy.

“Nessy,” I said, my voice low and steady. “Put the chloroform down. You don’t want to do this.”

Her ears twitched, and for a fleeting moment, I thought I saw hesitation in her manic blue eyes. But then the gray eye on her vest pulsed again, and a non-Nessy smirk returned, sharp and unhinged. 

“Oh, Alec, you sweet, silly tree,” she cooed, her voice dripping with condescension. “You think you can talk me out of this? I’m the manager! I’m in charge! And you—” She jabbed the towel-wrapped bottle toward me, the chemical’s sharp scent already stinging my nose. “You’re just confused. A little nap, and you’ll see I’m right. Everything will be fixed when you wake up!”

Whatever was influencing her, it was using her pain, her years of hurt, to twist her into this version of herself. I had to untangle it, had to find the real Nessy beneath the Supercenter’s grip.

“You’re not fixing anything by hurting us,” I said, keeping my eyes locked on hers, ignoring the gray eye’s stare. “This isn’t what a pack does. You taught me that, Nessy.”

Her tail flicked, and the bat in her other paw dipped slightly. “Don’t,” she snapped, but her voice wavered. “Don’t try to use my own words against me. I’m doing this for the pack! For you! For them!” She gestured at the cart, where Krysanthea’s eyes widened with frustration. “They’re the ones who broke everything! They’re the ones who never listened, who never cared!”

“I know they hurt you,” I said, taking another cautious step closer. “I know they were cruel, and I’m so sorry you went through that alone. But this—” I gestured at the cart, the chloroform, the artifacts dangling from her neck and wrist. “This isn’t you. The Nessy I know sings to lift people up. She fights for her pack, not against it. She’s the one who saved me from drowning, who brought me to Ferguson, who made me feel like I belonged!”

Her paws shook, the chloroform bottle tilting dangerously. “Stop it,” she whispered, tears welling in her eyes. “You don’t… you don’t know what it’s like. To be pushed aside, mocked, treated like nothing for so long. To try so hard and still not be enough!”

“I do know,” I said. “I was murdered, Nessy. Drowned in a bathtub because of someone else’s mistakes. I woke up in a world that didn’t make sense, with no one to guide me. But then I found you. You gave me a reason to keep going. You… You’re enough for me!”

Nessy’s eyes filled with tears but she flashed in one spot and blinked rapidly.

“Liar!” she barked. “You’re just saying that to stop me! You’re siding with them, with her!” She pointed at Krysanthea, who made a muffled sound, her claws straining against the zip ties.

“I’m not siding with anyone,” I said, holding my ground despite the threat of chloroform. “I’m fighting for you, Nessy. For us. For our pack. But I can’t do that if you’re lost to that eye. You have to fight it!”

The gray eye on Nessy’s vest pulsed again, and her expression hardened, the fleeting vulnerability gone. “Lost? I’m not lost, Alec. I’m found! The Good Directorate Supercenter sees me. It values me. Unlike them!” She jabbed the towel at the shopping cart. “Unlike you! You… you lick miser!”

“Nessy,” I said, “If you want more licks, you're welcome to them after you free Kristi. The Supercenter doesn’t value you. It’s using you. Those artifacts—” I said. “They’re not tools. They’re traps. They’re stealing pieces of you, just like they stole from Katerina, Kaledoniya, and Kirra.”

Her ears flicked back, and for a moment, I thought I’d reached her. But then she laughed bitterly. “Stealing? No, no, no. I’m unstoppable now, Alec! I’m the best manager this store’s ever had!” 

“You’re not unstoppable,” I said. “You’re exhausted. You’re not thinking straight, becoming someone else and deep down, you know it.”

Her grin faltered, and the gray eye on her vest dimmed slightly, as if my words had momentarily disrupted its hold. But then she shook her head violently, her fur bristling. “I’m fine! I’m better than fine! I’m saving their stupid souls, proving I’m not the worthless mutt they think I am!”

“You’re not worthless, Ness,” I said, taking a slow step forward. “You never were. You’re the strongest person I know, Nessy. You ran across highway 69, across the city full of Systemfall monsters to find me. You saved Ferguson from the slime dungeon. You built Fort Pack with us. You don’t need to prove anything to anyone—not to them, not to this store, especially not to me.”

Tears welled in her eyes again, but she blinked them away, her grip tightening on the chloroform bottle. “You’re wrong,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I have to prove it. I have to make them see. I have to make her see.” She glanced at Krysanthea, and the pain in her expression was raw, a wound that had festered for years.

I followed her gaze to Krysanthea, whose muffled protests had quieted, her amber eyes now soft with something like regret. The sight of her, bound and silenced, sparked a surge of anger in me—not at Nessy, but at the circumstances that had driven Nessy to this point of no return.

“Nessy,” I said, “Krysanthea does see you.”

“Does she really? Or does she see me as competition? An impediment to owning you?”

“She’s in our pack because she trusts you. She fought beside you in the slime dungeon. She made breakfast with you in the RV and helped Bulwichu bloom with Bulbees. She’s not perfect—she made mistakes, let her sisters hurt you—but she’s trying to make it right. Right?” I looked at Kristi.

The bound raptor nodded.

Nessy’s eye twitched.

“Tying her up, tying them up, isn’t going to fix the past. It’s only going to hurt you more–make them trust you less.” I said.

“I don’t need their effin’ trust,” Nessy growled. “I don’t need anyone… except for you in my life. You’re the only thing that matters. You. I haven’t seen you for weeks, Alec… and before you say anything–I had to do it, had to work my way up to manager, had to buy a never-ending coffee thermos, had to get here as quickly as I could… because I sniffed that you would die out here in shopping cart hell. Permanently. Past Reconstitution. I sniffed every possible path. There is no other way forward. These raptors are always going to hate me… especially Kat.”

“Why?”

“Because a male dog in cycle attacked Katerina when she was just a teen. I sniffed it a while ago and used the watch and extreme violence to confirm it as the truth, beat it out of her.”

Katerina reacted violently within the confines of the shopping cart to Nessy’s statement, thrashing against the zip ties, her muffled snarls barely contained by the chew toy gag. Her golden eyes, fixed on the husky, blazed with an incandescent fury that transcended mere anger—it was the raw, visceral rage of someone whose deepest wound had just been ripped open and exposed for everyone to hear. 

Even Krysanthea, standing beside her bound sister, looked stunned, her amber eyes wide with a dawning horror, perhaps understanding the depth of her family’s prejudice for the first time.

“See? Katerina will always see me as her enemy,” Nessy said. “There’s no solving this divide, no putting aside this hatred. We’re returning these artifacts, working here to make enough savings for a lifetime of adventure… Then we’ll buy stuff that’ll make us invincible and then you and I are going to drive our RV from Ferguson.”

“And Kristi?”

“She’s a raptor and will never see me as her equal,” Nessy shook her head. “So, I’m done trying to help her, done trying to… I… I just want to be happy, damn it! Is that too much to ask for?!” she yelled out loud.

The raw pain in her voice echoed in the endless equipment shed. The gray eye on her vest observed me with cold indifference. It felt like I wasn't just talking to Nessy anymore, but to the Supercenter itself, wearing her pain like a mask. Was the store unhappy, serving infinite customers forever?

"They'll always see me as the mutt," she continued. "The stray who doesn't belong in their perfect, pedigreed world. Kristi might tolerate me for your sake, Alec, but she'll never truly accept me. And her sisters? They'll sabotage us every chance they get. There's no future for us in Ferguson. Not really. Not together."

She stepped closer to me, the manic energy replaced by a desperate intensity. "But we can make our own future! Away from them! We work here, pay off my debt—because I actually will pay and work hard—get strong, get rich, get geared up, and then we leave. Just you and me, Alec. In our RV. We can explore other dimensions, drive from the Supercenter to a world that’s not been destroyed by Systemfall, where no one knows us, where we can finally just... be together."

Her vision, born of caffeine, exhaustion, heartbreak and whatever the eye represented, was tragically flawed, yet utterly sincere. But it wasn't our future. It was her escape fantasy, fuelled by whatever alien influence held sway over her throughs.

"Nessy," I started, trying one last time, "that's—"

Her body flickered before I finished.

The rainbow-dog towel, soaked in the cloying sweetness of chloroform, pressed firmly against my nose and mouth. I instinctively tried to pull away, to fight back, but her pradavarian grip was stronger than my struggling.

"Shhhh," she whispered, her tear-filled eyes meeting mine as she held me. "No argue. Only sleep now. Have a nap on the cart. Kristi can roll you there. When you wake up, everything’s gonna be… solved n’ fine n’ better."

I struggled, thrashing against her hold, trying to twist my head away from the suffocating fumes. My lungs burned, my vision swam. Krysanthea and the sisters were making frantic, muffled noises from the cart, their struggles futile against the zip ties. 

No, I thought desperately, clawing at her arms. Not like this. I focused my will, trying to fight the encroaching darkness, trying to hold onto consciousness, onto myself. But the chemical mire was too strong, dragging me down, dissolving my thoughts, pulling me under. 

Failure. The thought echoed as my connection to the world dissolved. I failed her. Failed everyone. Again. Damn it.

Then, a sharp sting on my wrist. Red static filled the void.

[LINEARITY INTERRUPTED. REWINDING USER.]

[SAVEPOINT LOADING...]

Chapter 51: Liminal Soul

I didn’t say anything this time.

"Sam had to help Frodo!" Nessy declared once again, hands spreading wide in front of me. "We're going to Mount Doom! Well, not really Mount Doom…”

I waited for her to finish her LOTR-themed rant.

“Was Sam… a dog?” I asked after she fell silent.

“You bet your ass he was a small, hobbit-sized dog!” Nessy nodded. “The bestest friend Frodo could ask for!”

“A very lovely analogy. You’re right, Nessy,” I said. “You have a heavy burden to carry. Like Sam carrying the One Ring for Frodo.”

“Yass! You totally get it!” She clapped. “We should buy a TV here and have a LOTR dvd marathon!”

“I do,” I agreed, keeping my tone as soothing as I could make it despite my pounding heart. “You’ve got a very heavy burden to carry, Nessy. Just like Sam carrying Frodo, or maybe even carrying the Ring itself for a time. It’s a huge responsibility, returning those artifacts to Mount Shelf, especially when… when you’re so tired.”

Her tail gave a weak wag, the manic grin softening slightly into something closer to genuine exhaustion. “It’s… hard,” she admitted, her voice dropping a fraction. “I am tired, yes… But, the store… She keeps me motivated! Responsible! Managerial!”

“These artifacts,” I continued, gesturing carefully toward the compass around her neck and the bracelet on her wrist, “they must be weighing you down, Nessy. Not just physically, but… spiritually. Like the One Ring. Making your journey harder. They want to be returned home. Right?”

“Yes, yes. They want to go home to their shelf to be sold properly,” Nessy nodded. She touched the compass instinctively, her brow furrowing. “And they… they do feel heavy,” she added. “And noisy. The compass keeps wanting me to go find… glory? And the bracelet makes me want to just… run. Run away from everything. So many Zoomies. All the zoomies!”

“Maybe you give me all of them to carry?” I asked. “You’ll be a better manager if you don’t have to carry that stolen property and get distracted by their whispering or whatever, right? You can lead me to wherever their shelves are. You already gave me the watch.”

“Right,” Nessy nodded. “Better management, yes. Good and true. Okkay! Here.”

She pulled off the compass and hung it onto my neck. Then, she slipped the glass-bead bracelet onto my right wrist as the left one was already occupied by the watch.

The moment the last artifact settled onto my skin, a wave of something hit me. It wasn’t physical, not exactly, but a surge of mental noise, a cacophony of conflicting impulses. A sharp, almost painful yearning for glory pulsed from the compass like a ghostly hook trying to latch onto my thoughts, trying to figure out what I wanted in life in terms of desire.

Simultaneously, a frantic, jittery energy buzzed from the bracelet, urging me to move, to run, to accelerate away from this tense standoff, to vanish into the infinite aisles. 

And beneath it all, the cold, calculating presence of the spider-watch ticked, a subtle awareness of time’s potential elasticity, its capacity for repetition, for trying something again and again and again… until its user was sucked dry of their blood and soul.

As I felt each of them competing for my attention, each call became clearer to me, better understood by me. Another similar sensation suddenly became obvious to me. 

The blue vest I was wearing. The badge. 

They too were attempting to influence my mind, trying to gradually turn me into a perfect employee that would become reborn as ‘manager’. Like a butterfly, bursting from a cocoon of a lowly employee–to pin a gray everwatchful eye to me, to bind me forevermore to this place.

I felt dizzy, momentarily sidelined, the world tilting as the three artifacts, the vest and badge warred for dominance over my thoughts. Nessy’s manic grin seemed to swim in front of my eyes in and out of focus.

She pulled out a large, metal thermos with a letter G on it from her backpack and sipped it. It smelled strongly of coffee.

“Can I have some of that?” I asked. “Damned things are definitely competing for attention in my head.”

“Ah ye, totes,” she nodded, offering me the thermos. “Here.”

I sipped the sleep-depriving coffee. It slid across my thoughts like a knife. Another influence.

Optimization. Perfection. Clarity. Purpose. Understanding. 

I suddenly felt like I could calculate very large numbers in my head, like I could count every dust mote in the air. Like, if I focused long enough on Nessy I could count exactly how many white and how many black hairs she had on her cute, husky face.

The coffee was powerful, but the artifacts were just as persistent, fighting for attention beneath the sharp clarity of pure, absolute focus like an ocean beneath the ice.

Focus.

I wasn’t Alec. I wasn’t really linear. 

Like lightning illuminating a dark landscape, the shared dream flooded back. Not just the memory, but the feeling of it. 

The endless junkyard. The monstrous lynx. Nessy cowering. And me… blooming. Expanding. Becoming a forest of hands, a tree of infinite selves rooted against the onslaught of the Lynx.

I’m not linear, the thought echoed, not as a single idea, but as a chorus resonating through countless branches of consciousness. I’m liminal! I’m a tree of Alec-ness!

The realization acted like a personal barrier, or perhaps more accurately, like an infinitely complex filter. The artifacts’ influences washed over me, but they found no single point of purchase, no unified consciousness to hijack as my thoughts suddenly bloomed, fractalized, multiplied.

Ten, one hundred, one thousand, one million, an infinite number of desires were presented to the Compass of Glory. 

The compass on my chest began to spin wildly, unable to focus on a single desire. It spun so rapidly that it felt overheating, burning on my chest. 

The compass pulsed on my chest, demanding a single, linear target for glory. My mind, branching and replicating, offered it an endless fractal landscape of potential glories—infinite desires blooming into infinite variations, an endless garden of ambition. The needle on the compass spun frantically, caught in an impossible loop, unable to choose a single direction amidst the overwhelming potential. It whirred audibly against my chest, a frantic buzz of indecision.

I didn’t stop what I was doing. 

My thoughts and desires multiplied in my head, blossomed with more branches, more roots, more slightly different Alecs who made different decisions, desired slightly different things.

The glass of the compass began smoking. Then it cracked and shattered, the glass detonating outward. The red and blue arrow flew and struck the floor, innards of the compass comprised of springs and gears spilling out.

“W-huawh?!” Nessy choked.

The bracelet vibrated, screaming ‘run away, escape, accelerate’! But where? My tree-self was rooted here, yet simultaneously exploring every possible path outward, every branching timeline, every potential escape route dissolving into more possibilities. The urge to flee became a diffused hum, lost in the rustling leaves of my boundless awareness. The jittery energy dissipated, unable to galvanize a self that existed everywhere and nowhere at once.

And so, I accelerated without moving. Stood still while thinking and breathing fast. Fast. FASTER. Vibrated in one spot. Vibrated so hard that the air around me ignited.

The glass eyes on my right hand spun madly, burning through their power of acceleration, unable to find purchase on my soul. They, too, overheated, burning my wrist. One by one, the glass eyes cracked, popped, shattered.

The blue hooks of the vest demanding corporate obedience became engulfed with the endlessly multiplying roots of my soul. 

As I vibrated, ran without running, moved without moving, the air around my body reached a temperature of a thousand of degrees in a flash. My clothes ignited, the vest burning. A eye-like thing that didn’t quite grow tried to open and screamed as it burned to ashes.

The G-Superstore badge melted, howling and cursing in fax-noises.

I was a human torch now. Burning. Dying. Reconstituting as my top layers fried away.

The spider-watch attempted to rewind me but it too failed, its [SAVE POINT] needle no longer able to find purchase on my ever-expanding, blooming soul.

Nessy leapt away from me, eyes wide in panic.

The watch howled, unfolded into a spider. It leapt off my burning wrist and rushed away from me, wobbling like a drunken sailor. I took a single step forward and crushed it under foot, blasting heat in all directions, my boots melting.

The thermos in my hand overheated, most of the coffee boiling away in seconds, turning to vapours and escaping into the distant skylight-covered ceiling overhead.

The final beads of the bracelet shattered, detonating and my endless acceleration ceased.

The bent, superheated, warped metal thermos fell from my fingers, clattering to the floor, the remainder of coffee spilling across the warped plastic tiles.

The infinite tree of my thoughts powered by the coffee collapsed, detonating into sparks.

Pain hit me then. Spontaneous combustion hurt like hell. I burned through the remnants of my reconstitution to restore myself to my human, linear, singular form. 

Blinking and groaning, I found myself standing on a blackened spot of the floor, completely naked. Nessy stared at me with wide eyes as did the shopping-cart bound raptors.

Then she blinked at the thermos on the floor.

“No… no, no, no! My endless coffee! I need it to stay awake!” She cried, going down on all fours. She started to lick the remaining coffee spilled across the melted floor.

As she was distracted by this activity, I grabbed the Chloroform+ bottle from her backpack pocket. Unscrewing it quickly, I turned the Chloroform bottle over and poured it directly onto her head. It ran across her fur, mixing it with the coffee she was lapping up.

Nessy paused mid-lap, a confused look crossing her face. "Alec?" she murmured, shaking her head slightly, droplets flying. "What arrrr… you… You spilling on me… fuzzy… Ugh… feel weird…" Her nose twitched, catching the pungent chemical scent now saturating her head fur. Her eyes rolled back, and with a soft sigh, she collapsed onto the blackened floor, succumbing instantly to the concentrated fumes. She curled into a ball, fast asleep amidst the spilled coffee and charred residue of my spontaneous combustion.

Breathing heavily, naked and still reeling from the artifact battle and subsequent rebirth, I took a moment to steady myself, screwing the magic chloroform bottle shut.

With a sigh, I carefully slid the backpack off Nessy’s shoulders and slung it onto my own. It felt heavy, probably filled with whatever strange supplies she’d purchased from the store during her five-week caffeine binge. Then, I unzipped her blue G-Supercenter vest. The gray eye glared at me as I pulled the fabric away from her still form. I removed her employee badge from its clip, the plastic feeling a touch colder than normal plastic should.

With Nessy temporarily neutralized and her corrupted gear removed, I looked around the equipment shed, dropping the badge and vest onto the floor a few steps away from the sleeping husky-girl.

My eyes scanned the infinite shelves packed with bizarre tools until they landed on a pair of heavy-duty garden shears with long, sharp-looking blades hanging on a hook near the entrance. They looked mundane enough for me to wield.

I looked around for some clothes and found gardening overalls hanging on a hook a few meters away from the shears. I walked over to it and pulled it on.

Chapter 52: Pecking Order

Grabbing the shears, I returned to Nessy’s discarded vest lying on the floor. I positioned the shears over the eye that seemed to follow my movements. I didn’t hesitate. I brought the blades down, shearing right through the center of the eye.

A high-pitched screech, like a malfunctioning photocopier mixed with a dying fax machine, erupted from the vest fabric as the eye was severed. The sound echoed unnervingly in the vast shed before fading, leaving only the bisected, now lifeless vest. I wasn’t done. I attacked the badge next, snipping the plastic card into two pieces. It emitted a similar, though less intense, electronic shriek as it snapped in half.

Satisfied that Nessy’s connection to the store’s influence was broken, I turned to the shopping cart. Krysanthea watched me approach, tracking the sharp shears in my hand. I offered her what I hoped was a reassuring look before carefully inserting the tip of the shears into the metal loop of her handcuffs. With a grunt of effort, I squeezed the handles. The metal groaned, then snapped, freeing her wrists.

She immediately tried to pull the gag off, but the zip ties held firm and her hands were shaking from stress, unable to get under the ties.

“Just hold on,” I said. “Let me take the uniform off you. Wouldn't want that shit to influence you like it did Ness.”

She nodded.

I grabbed her vest and badge, pulled them off her torso and sliced them apart with the shears. They screamed, just like Nessy’s had, but far less loudly as Kristi wasn’t a manager yet.

Finally, I positioned the shear blades carefully around the thick bundle of zip ties securing the chew toy gag. "Hold still," I murmured. 

With precise snips, mindful of her scales and feathers, I cut through the plastic restraints one by one.

The last tie snapped. Krysanthea violently spat the saliva-soaked bone chew toy onto the floor, gasping for air, her sharp teeth bared in relief and lingering fury.

“Slayer-damn it,” she hissed out, spitting, opening and closing her mouth trying to get sensation back into her jaw.

“How are we getting them out?” I looked at the shopping cart packed with raptors.

“Very carefully,” Kristi blanched. “I don’t know how the fuck she even got them in there.”

“Right,” I sighed. “I’ll cut the ties first, then cut the metal. How are you feeling?”

“Blah,” the raptor-girl let out. She sat down on the floor massaging her wrists and jaw. “Give me a moment. Start cutting them out... Katerina's probably about to have an aneurysm in there by the looks of things.”

I nodded and moved to the cart, where indeed Katerina's golden eyes blazed with murderous intent. As I approached with the shears, she flinched slightly.

"Relax," I assured her. "I'm just cutting the zip ties."

Carefully, I began snipping the intricate web of plastic restraints that held the three sisters in their cramped confines. The task was painstaking—Nessy had been thorough in her madness, securing them with hundreds of interlocking ties. Krysanthea joined me in a few minutes, using her talons to snip ties.

It took Kristi and me a while to demolish the entire shopping cart frame, but eventually we succeeded, prying the bars apart. Kira was the first to be pulled out from the raptor-cube.

"Watch the tail," She mumbled as soon as her gag was removed. I carefully snipped her tail from where it was bound to Kat’s ankle.

“Thank you, Alec,” Kaledoniya let out next as she was freed. “You’re the best.” She wrapped herself around me in a tight hug. “Best human in the universe. Thought I was going to die in that cart. How’d you do that flame thing? Are you a wizard?”

“I… accelerated without moving,” I said. “It set the air on fire.”

“Dang,” Kale whistled.

Katerina was the last to be freed by Kristi as Kaledoniya relentlessly clung onto me.

The moment her gag was out, Katerina spat onto the floor with violence that matched her expression. "I'm going to kill her," she snarled, eyes fixed on Nessy's unconscious form. "I'm actually going to fucking kill her this time!”

"No, you're not," I said firmly, positioning myself between her and the sleeping husky while still holding onto the trembling teenage raptor. "She wasn't fully herself. The store was controlling her through the artifacts and that... eye thing."

"Convenient excuse," Katerina growled, stretching her cramped limbs. "She kidnaps us, humiliates us, keeps us prisoner, and it's the store's fault? She's always been unstable!"

"Kat," Krysanthea interjected. "Enough. It wasn't just Nessy."

"How can you defend her after what she did to us?" Kat demanded.

"I'm not defending her actions," Krysanthea sighed. “I… I just…” She glanced at me for help.

“Those artifacts amplified your worst instincts, used your desires and your darkest thoughts,” I said. "All of you pushed Nessy to a breaking point long before the store got its hooks into her, pushed her away from Alec, tormented her in high school and then for four years after.”

“Why are you talking about yourself in third person?” Katerina squinted at me.

“Because I’m not your Alec,” I said. “Your Alec died. I'm Alec from another dimension.”

“WHAT?!” the raptor sisters sputtered.

“A week ago I didn’t even know that pradavarians existed,” I said. 

“Wait…” Katerina stared at me, mouth open wide. “So then… then you’re not Kristi’s boyfriend?”

“Never was,” I said.

“Can you be my boyfriend then?” Kaledoniya asked. 

“No,” I said. “You’re sixteen and I’m twenty three.”

“Boo,” she let out, still clinging to me.

“Kale,” Katerina growled. “Let go of him.”

“No, I do what I want,” Kaledoniya shook her head, digging harder into me. “I don’t give a fuck if he’s not our Alec. He’s nice. He rescued me. Rescued all of us! He’s cool and if you hostile him again, I will chew your throat off while you sleep.”

“You do realise that all of this is his fault and the fault of that damned husky?” Katerina asked, completely ignoring the throat-chewing comment. “That we wouldn’t need to be rescued from a fucking shopping cart if we never allowed the insane husky to come with us? She was the one who wanted us to work here to begin with!”

"I said, enough, Kat!" Krysanthea snapped, moving over to Nessy's unconscious form. She bent down and carefully gathered the sleeping husky into her arms. Nessy instinctively wrapped her arms around Kristi in her sleep, nuzzling against the raptor's neck.

Katerina stared in disbelief. "What are you doing? After everything she did to us, you're carrying her?"

"She's my pack mate," Kristi said simply, adjusting her hold on Nessy. "And as such, she's my property."

"You’re still on about that?" Katerina's voice rose an octave.

"Yes," Krysanthea replied, her amber eyes hard like steel. "Nessy is mine. Do we understand each other, Kat?”

"You…" Katerina sputtered. "She zip-tied us to a shopping cart! She gagged us with dog toys! She…"

"She was being mentally fucked with by artifacts YOU brought back from this place," I pointed out once again. "If anyone's to blame for this mess, it's the three of you for stealing cursed shit from here."

"Alec's right," Kirra admitted reluctantly, rubbing her sore wrists with wince. "We did take the artifacts. That compass absolutely messed with my head, now that I think about it. We're the ones who got ourselves into debt with this damned place. Nessy was just trying to help in her own... overly enthusiastic way."

"Overly enthusiastic?" Katerina echoed incredulously. "She imprisoned and taunted us! Just as I warned you all!”

"Eh,” Kaledoniya shrugged, finally releasing me from her hug. "I imprisoned her a bunch of times back in school, used super-glue to lock her in a bathroom and then a storage closet. If anything I’m impressed how she finally got us back for all the shit we put her though. That's very raptor of her, if anything!”

“She’s a dog, not a raptor!” Kat snarled.

“A-pa-pa-pa,” Kaledoniya put her arms on her waist, shaking her head. “She kicked your ass and somehow pried that watch from you and shoved you into a cart. She kicked all of our butts! This makes her Alpha. Only Alec was able to stop her. This makes him Alpha.”

Kat opened and closed her mouth.

“I concur,” Kirra nodded. “Alec’s our Alpha now.” She looked at Kristi.

“Sure, whatever, he is Alpha,” Kristi commented. 

“The new local pecking order is thus set!” Kaledoniya clapped. “Alec>Nessy>Kristi>Kat>Kirra>me!”

“Seconded,” Kirra nodded. 

“Thirded,” Kristi said, eyeing the endless shed warily.

“Slayer,” Katerina rubbed her face in frustration. “He… he’s just human!”

“Correction,” Kaledoniya shook her violet-blue-green feathery mane. “He smells human, but he is totally some kind of wizard. Humans don’t spontaneously combust, nor vaporise magic artifacts. If you want to challenge the pecking order you’ll need to beat up Kristi first, then Nessy and only then challenge Alec’s authority. Them’s the rules.”

“Urghhh fine, whatever,” Kat threw up her arms. “How the shit are we even getting out of this place?”

The quartet of raptors looked at me, expecting their violence-elected Alpha to have an answer.

I looked back at them. I had no idea what to do next. I didn’t expect to be elected pack leader simply because I defeated the Supercenter-controlled Nessy. 

Still, it was nice to have all of them finally fully on board. 

Perhaps this was Nessy’s plan all along? Was she playing some kind of 5-dimensional Scrutiosmia chess? Did she allow herself to be dominated by the infinite store just so that I could kick her ass and become top raptor? 

I looked at the passed out husky in Kristi’s arms. 

Could she sniff out people’s moves that far into the future? Did she actually know that the artifacts could not be returned, that they had to be destroyed by me and me alone, since my soul was a tree, capable of multiplying endlessly?

I bent to the melted floor and picked up a single remaining blue eye bead. It was cracked but 80% intact. I put it into my gardening overalls pocket.

Then I picked up the warped infinite coffee thermos and slid it into Nessy’s backpack.

Kaledoniya deduced what I was doing. She grabbed what remained of the crushed and melted spider watch and handed it to me with a smile, feathery tail wagging. 

Then the teenage raptor dug out what remained of the compass arrow from the floor and gave it to me.

“Do you think that your magic tree will be able to grow us new artifacts from these bits and pieces, Alpha?” She asked me. 

I noted that she now kept her eyes downcast when addressing me.

“Maybe,” I shrugged.

Kirra glanced at my bare feet and ran down the isles. She returned in a few minutes with a pair of sturdy gardening boots.

“Got you footwear, since yours melted, Alpha!” she offered them to me with a bow, coming down on one knee to slip the boots onto my feet. “Human feet require footwear to move swiftly!”

“Thanks,” I said and then pointedly looked at Kat.

Unlike her younger sisters, Katerina met my eyes head on. Thankfully, I finally started to understand how raptors operated so I stared at her challengingly, taking a single step forward.

She twitched, but still glared back at me. 

You have chosen violence then, Katerina.

“Deal with her impudence,” I said to Kristi, channeling my inner xianxia villain.

Krysanthea quickly passed the sleeping husky to Kirra and delivered a swift thunderclap slap across her sister’s face, sending Katerina flying sideways into a shelf.

I walked over to where she was sprawled, not letting my eyes off hers. She still didn’t give up, didn’t lower her gaze.

“I know why you hate dogs,” I said into the silence as she rubbed her darkening cheek.

Looking at Katerina's expression, I could see the shock in her eyes. The "WHAT? How could you know THAT?!" was written all over her face.

I bent down, keeping her pinned with my gaze. "I was wearing a watch that could rewind time before I destroyed it with my mind," I said softly, for her ears only. "I've seen far more than anyone should, timelines that you forgot. I know exactly what happened to you, Kat. Your fears. Why you hate dogs. Why you’ve been driving your younger sisters to harass Nessy since high school."

The knowledge—Nessy’s revelation about the male dog attacking Katerina when she was a teen—was a knife I now held to her throat, sharp and unspoken, and I wielded it not by revealing it publicly but by letting her know I knew. That was enough to unsettle her, to throw her off balance in this raptor-style existence of constant dominance where every glance, every gesture, every action was a battle to be won.

Katerina scrambled to her knees, her claws flexing, her feathers bristling as she glared up at me. She was a predator, a raptor born to dominate, to claw her way to the top of any hierarchy. But I wasn’t just Alec anymore—not just a human, not just linear. I was a tree of Alec-ness, an immovable mental fortress, my consciousness branching infinitely, impossible for her to map or predict. And in that moment, I leaned into it once again, letting the weight of my presence stretch across an imaginary sky like a storm she couldn’t outrun.

“You think you can challenge me, Kat?” I said, my voice low, steady, unyielding, my presence… liminal. 

I didn’t blink, didn’t look away, holding her gaze with an intensity that felt like it came from a thousand versions of myself, each one staring through her, seeing every crack in her armor. “You think you can keep fighting this entire pack, keep pushing Nessy away, keep pretending your hatred doesn’t come from a place of pain and fear? You don’t hate the husky because she’s a dog, you’re afraid of her!”

Her lips curled back, revealing sharp teeth, but her eyes flickered with uncertainty. She was trying to read me, to find a weakness, a way to reassert her dominance. Raptors fought with precision, with calculated strikes, mapping their opponent’s reactions to exploit them. But I wasn’t giving her a map. My mind was a labyrinth of endless branches, each thought a new path, each intention a shifting root. She couldn’t pin me down, couldn’t predict what I’d do next, and that unreliability unnerved her more than any physical blow.

Krysanthea stood to the side, ready to smack her sister again if need be. Kirra and Kaledoniya flanked her, their postures submissive, their gazes darting between me and Katerina. They’d already accepted the new pecking order, had bowed to me as their Alpha after I’d burned through the artifacts and stopped Nessy’s rampage. But Katerina? She was the holdout, the one who refused to yield, her pride and pain a wall she’d built too high to climb over.

I took another step forward, closing the distance between us. Just a human in gardening overalls, shorter by a head than her. But the memory of liminality still lingered in me, a quiet hum of potential, a reminder that I wasn’t bound by the same rules as everyone else. I was vastness itself, a bridge between life and death, human and something more. And I used that now, letting my presence loom like a tree whose roots stretched into the infinite, who’s branches cast an invisible shadow over the raptor girl.

“Why don’t you focus on someone far worse to be afraid of—me,” I said sharply. “Someone who crushed your magic watch spider underfoot, ended your power over time. Done what you could not, what you were too weak to do. You let it suck your blood and soul like an annoying mosquito instead of swatting at it like a true leader would.”

Her orange-gold eyes widened, pupils contracting. Her body tensed, feathers bristling in defensive posture. I didn’t show weakness, didn’t project fear, letting my true emotions drown in the invisible ocean of Alec-ness hidden below my finite, physical shell.

With a flash, her talons slashed across my chest close to my neck. I didn't back down, didn't wince, simply letting Reconstitution heal the shallow cuts.

“You can't hurt me with those pointy claws,” I said. “I can't die.”

And with these words, I finally saw something break, snap inside her. 

The weight of her secret, known by another combined with the fact that the watch was draining her life for its rewinds and my apparent invincibility was too much to bear. She finally lowered her gaze, looking at the floor instead of challenging me.

"I'm not going to tell anyone anything," I assured her. "That's your story to share if you ever choose to. But know this: Nessy isn't your enemy. She never was. She is my pack mate and I will destroy you if you dare to fuck with her again. No more hating on MY husky for what someone else has done. Is that understood?”

“Yes… Alpha,” Kat breathed out.

“Good,” I offered her my hand. “Rise then, my raptor knight.”

She accepted my fingers with cautious grace, the big tough raptor with a shark pattern on her face finally looking skittish, terrified of the impossible power I wielded.

Had she been human, then hitting and threatening her would have been wrong—but she was a pradavarian raptor created by fucked up evolution or the wish of the man who called himself the Slayer. All raptors operated on entirely different rules, mentally bound to a rigid framework where everyone was either property, prey, competition or… a leader who was to be respected, served and obeyed. Unlike Nessy’s soft power of a shield that constantly protected me, they were a sharp blade to be wielded, easy to cut yourself on if you had no idea what you were doing.

“Yay!” Kaledoniya clapped behind me. “Finally! The Kat submits!” 

“Oh shut up,” Kat let out.

“Just admit it–this Alec is awesome!” the teenage raptor said. “Way better than our old Alec. Much more raptory!”

“I don't have to admit shit to you,” Katarina snarled, the bottom part of face flashing with dark violet and red. 

“Mmmhmmm, sure, sure,” her younger sister laughed.