“You didn’t know.”

The maggots began wriggling again. The soft tissue in my head began to swell. “I knew the moment you entered this building! This city, even! This fucking world!”

“No.” I actually laughed, though barbs pulled at the muscles in my neck. “You didn’t.”

He must have sensed the honesty in my derision, because the floor began to shake and the dead lights rattled in their sockets. I realized then that he couldn’t be two places at once. He was either planted inside me or manipulating the environment, but he couldn’t do both. So, I thought, even imagined beings had their limits. Good to know. “I know exactly who you are! You smell like sweet desert sage and cactus juice, burning roses and freshly ground allspice.”

I winced as each barb pinning me in place loosed more of my blood free. “It’s my perfume,” I said, gritting my teeth. “Available at Macy’s.”

“A tart tongue as well. Only one other person possessed all of that.”

Don’t ask me why I was doing it. Perhaps because the sarcasm Xavier had always chastised me for was, once again, my only defense. It seemed to piss off this cool, controlled being who feared nothing. So I went ahead and struck him with a low-voiced barb of my own. I figured I was dead anyway.

“Oh, and you knew her well too, didn’t you?”

The needles suddenly disappeared, ripping from my flesh. I cried out as the floor tilted, and I was slammed into the wall again. I was able to free myself this time, and I rose to my knees and palms quickly. I grabbed my conduit, its outline visible in the glow of my glyph, but pushed myself to my feet too soon and stumbled, falling against the wall again. I righted myself dizzily and kept going. “You knew her so well she infiltrated your organization twice without you ever suspecting it.”

Light casings began to burst up and down the hallway. I felt shards of glass stab and then settle atop my skull. I ducked, and concentrated on moving forward. I was free, and no matter what, I had to keep moving forward.

“I fucked your mother!”

“You men,” I said, shaking my head when silence fell again. “I don’t know why you always think that lends you some sort of power. I mean, let’s be honest, okay? Just between you and me. My mother? She fucked you.”

A vortex of wind whipped around me, so violent it sucked the air from my mouth and throat and lungs. My eyes were glued to my lids, even beneath my shield, and I actually felt my heart jump in my chest like a startled sparrow. Then it faltered. My liver and lungs ached from the hot, vapid suction, like a vacuum had been affixed to my mouth, and a strangled sound was lifted from my throat and ripped away like shredded paper. Like a baby in the womb, I forgot how to breathe.

Then the center of the spiraling wind shifted, amassed, and, limb over limb, I was catapulted down the Gauntlet. I slammed into the wall head first, and slumped to the ground as hollow pops fired down my spine. Fresh pain bloomed with each snapped vertebrae, and a buzzing sounded. It could’ve been the handful of remaining lights flickering on, but I didn’t think so. It had come, again, from within my own skull, but this time there was no one else there. Maybe, I thought dully, that was just the sound soft tissue made when it seeped through newly rent crevices. I choked as blood welled in my throat and my tongue lolled on the floor, spilling it all forward.

The wind died down, as if a switch had been flicked. The Gauntlet looked like a cave in the meager light. The silence was deafening.

There’s usually a grace period before injuries are felt. Adrenaline, and the shock of being alive temporarily numbing the senses. Not this time, though. My limbs shook, my organs felt battered inside me, and I was sure my right shoulder had dislocated when I’d punched into the wall. I coughed, and more blood fountained from my mouth, like one of those ancient marble statues in the middle of some picturesque European marketplace. For some reason, that thought made me giggle. Blood bubbled from my nose, and I laughed some more.

“Who are you?” The words were evenly spaced, but so jagged they sounded a bit off. I realized, with some shock, that the Tulpa’s voice was trembling. Lifting my head, I thought about that…and realized on another jolt that he believed I should be dead. That had been his parting shot, and it’d been a damned good show…except that I was still alive.

I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t stop laughing. The laughter and blood mingled to bubble in wet gasps from my throat, hot iron gurgling to temporarily render me speechless.

“Now that…that is something you should know,” I finally managed, wiping the tears from my eyes, the sticky warmth of blood spreading everywhere. I hacked a big glob on the pristine floor, and looked up at the ceiling. It was probably only blood loss making me loopy, but I figured I might as well get in the last word. What the hell? If this event was going to be recorded in the manuals of Shadow and Light, I wanted to go out in spectacular, if bloody, style. “After all, you created me.”

Dead silence.

And that was it, I realized. He had created me, and once again that had saved my life. So intent on destroying his opposite, his enemy, he never even realized that I was of his blood.

So, maybe I wasn’t dying after all.

“Interesting, huh?” I threw one hand halfheartedly into the air, the other creeping along the wall to lift me into a standing position. I ignored the red prints I left decorating the wall in a macabre geometric design because I was definitely feeling better. Stronger. More powerful. “What happens, I wonder, when the Created becomes the Creator, huh? When you’re no longer just a Tulpa, but a father? What’s next?”

It was so silent, I could almost believe he’d left. Almost.

“What’s the matter, Daddy?” I whispered as I stood, knowing he could hear me as clearly as if I were shouting from the top of Valhalla. I was bent, wobbling, but I was standing. “Cat got your tongue?”

“The Kairos! The first sign of the Zodiac…but it can’t be!”

“Can’t it? You say I smell like her, but who else do I smell like?” I paused. “But that’s right. An agent can’t smell themselves. Even, it seems, a Tulpa.”

I began making my way to the far door again, and as I stumbled forward, I felt his confusion grow.

“You sent a Shadow after your own daughter,” I said, helping him out. “You ordered me raped and beaten and killed at only fifteen years old. Fifteen! And I would have died. Would have, except I was yours.”

I straightened. You’d have never known that mere moments before I’d been a broken heap of bones and blood on the floor. My voice grew stronger. He couldn’t kill me, I realized, until he was willing to kill pieces of himself…but I wasn’t going to let him in on that little secret just yet. “You claim to be all-knowing. You set yourself up, godlike, in this tower, to mete out destruction and judgment as you see fit. You stalk the agents of Light, set on destroying them and this city. But you aren’t all-knowing. You aren’t omnipotent, or even omnipresent.”

By this time I was within ten feet of the door, and my stride was almost normal. My hand was on the door when the voice sounded again.

“Wait!” Power flowed into me with the words; massaging my organs, all my wounds instantly healed. My shoulder popped effortlessly back into place, my bruises disappeared. I could see how a person, or a nonperson, could get used to this sort of power. “At least show me your face.”

I didn’t remove my mask. “Look in the mirror.”

He tried again. “But see how easily I can heal you?”

I smiled at that. “I’d heal anyway.”

“But I can do more. In fact, join me and I can give you more.”

I hesitated. “More what? Power, money, status?”

“I can do anything. Give anything. But in return—”