This is Really, Really Stupid

Rome scrambled to his feet, his hands shaking so badly he had to brace against the processing machine behind him.

"Who... what was that thing?" His voice cracked. Great. Perfect time for puberty's greatest hits. "Who are you? My friends, are they..."

She gave him a look that somehow managed to be both thorough and completely dismissive. Like he was a piece of equipment she was evaluating for potential usefulness and finding the specs wanting.

"They're dead."

Three syllables. Delivered with the emotional investment of someone reading a grocery list.

"That was a D-Rank Scavenger. It doesn't leave survivors." She flicked her katana once. "As for me, I'm the one who just saved your life. Now get up. We're leaving. You're attracting more."

He's... dead?

"The thing I'm hunting is still in here," she continued. "My other half is tracking it. I don't have time to babysit a civilian."

Other half? Was that some kind of partner thing, or...

Rome shoved the question aside because his brain was doing that thing where it latches onto irrelevant details to avoid processing trauma. Focus.

"No." The word came out stronger than he expected. "I have to check. My best friend, Jake, if there's even a chance..."

"There isn't."

"Their families need closure. Something to bury. I can't just leave them in here like garbage."

"Closure?" The way she said the word made it sound like a foreign concept, something quaint and stupid. "You think that thing left bodies? It drains them. Leaves husks if you're lucky, nothing but clothes if you're not. There's nothing for you to find but your own death."

She pointed her katana toward the exit.

"Your sentimentality is a liability that will get us both killed. You're leaving. Now."

Rome took a step toward where the walkie-talkie had last crackled with Jake's voice.

She moved.

One second she was five feet away, the next the tip of her blade rested against his chest, right over his heart. He hadn't seen her move. Hadn't heard her boots on the concrete. She'd just translated from Point A to Point B like reality had skipped a frame.

"I won't tell you again."

His hands shot up in surrender.

"Okay, okay!" The words tumbled out in a rush. "Just... tell me how to hurt them. If you teach me, I can help. I won't be in the way, I'll..."

She laughed.

"Hurt them? You think you can just pick up a sword and fight a Phantom?" She gestured around them with her free hand, the blade at his chest never wavering. "The only reason that Scavenger was visible to you is because you were about to die. Your soul was screaming so loud it temporarily tore a hole in your perception."

Rome glanced at the walls. Still saw those oily shadow things, writhing like they were having a rave he wasn't invited to.

"This isn't a power you learn," she continued. "It's a poison you're born with. Demonic Energy. You don't have it. You're normal."

She lowered the blade, apparently satisfied he wasn't going to try anything else stupid.

"Now, for the last time, get out."

She was right. Of course she was right.

Jake was gone. Chloe, Bree, Madison. All gone.

And Rome was standing here arguing with a girl who could bisect horrors in the dark while he couldn't even land a hit with a metal pipe.

Mr. Henderson used to say he had a good heart but needed to learn when to fold.

This was a folding situation.

He nodded, the movement small and defeated.

"The van you came in," she said, already turning away. "Get in it. Don't touch anything. Don't start the engine. Just wait. If I'm not back in an hour, leave."

She started walking into the darkness, her katana held low and ready. Just like that. Dismissed. No longer relevant to her mission.

The cold night air hit Rome's face like a slap as he pushed through the heavy door. The van sat in the gravel lot, exactly where they'd left it hours ago when everything was still normal and the worst thing he had to worry about was a pop quiz in Economics.

He reached for the passenger door handle. Stopped.

Stood there like an idiot, hand hovering over metal, his breath fogging in the night chill.

A memory surfaced. Not the forced playback courtesy of Amelia's arcane torture session, but a real one. Warm summer evening, sitting on Mr. Henderson's porch, helping him fix that wobbly chair. His hands, weathered and scarred from decades of carpentry work, steady and sure as he tightened a loose joint.

"To whom much is given, Rome, much is expected."

Rome had thought he was just being philosophical. Making conversation while they worked. The old man had been full of those kinds of sayings, pulled from a lifetime of experience Rome couldn't fathom.

Standing in this gravel parking lot with the warehouse looming behind him and his dead friends somewhere in that concrete tomb though, the words took on new weight.

He'd been given something tonight. He'd survived when they didn't. That girl had saved his life when she could've just let the monster have its meal.

That wasn't luck.

That was a debt.

Rome's hand dropped from the door handle.

"This is stupid," he said out loud, his voice strange in the empty lot. "This is really, really stupid."

The fear was still there, this cold knot of terror sitting in his gut like he'd swallowed a brick. His rational brain was screaming that going back in was suicide. That girl had made it crystal clear he was useless, that he'd just be in the way, that he couldn't help.

She was probably right.

Mr. Henderson had also taught him something else during those six months before the state moved him again though. He'd shown him how to fix things. How to look at something broken and find a way to make it whole again, even if the solution wasn't elegant or pretty.

Sometimes you had to improvise. Use duct tape instead of proper joinery. Wedge a shim where you needed support. Make do with what you had instead of what you wished you had.

Rome couldn't fight. Couldn't see properly. Didn't have this Demonic Energy thing she'd mentioned.

He had hands though. A brain that worked pretty well when it wasn't drowning in existential terror. And a stubborn streak that had gotten him through seventeen years of temporary homes and temporary families.

She said they were dead. She was probably right.

"Probably" wasn't "certainly" though. And that sliver of uncertainty was a hook in his gut he couldn't ignore.

He couldn't live with that maybe.

The gravel crunched under his boots as he turned back toward the warehouse.

He was out of his depth. Terrified. Completely, laughably useless in a fight against things that shouldn't exist.

He was done running though.

The warehouse door loomed ahead, that black rectangle promising nothing but pain and probably death. Rome put his hand on the cold metal, the same door he'd fled through minutes ago.

"Jake," he whispered to the darkness. "I'm coming back. Just... don't be dead yet, okay? That would make this a lot less meaningful."