III

No matter how bad Connie's knees ached, how loudly her stomach growled, how icky her skin felt, walking through the empty brightness only got easier and easier, because every step took her closer to a good friend. By the time she caught sight of him on the horizon, she was gliding forwards. Similarly, Faust was striding towards her, his spine bolt upright, head held high. He'd changed.

It didn't drain a drop from her happiness reservoir to wave at him. When he waved back, she realised that a smile had come to her lips without her consciously forcing it, and what an odd feeling that was — she'd gone from crying of her own accord to beaming brighter than the sun! If anything, the happiness reservoir was overflowing.

"Hey, man!" she shouted.

"Greetings!" he hailed, doubling his pace.

They paused when they met, grinning, unsure what kind of terms they were on. She wanted to hug him, lonely as she'd been, but she was covered in Alan MacCain's blood, and Faust's body language was oddly closed off. He was carrying some kind of bundle against his chest. He turned away slightly.

A couple days ago she'd have felt rejected by that — she'd already have died of embarrassment, looking as she did in her sodden, torn pyjamas; hair matted and drooping. Honestly, though, she couldn't find it in herself to give a single fuck. No better time than now to test the Democratisation of Reality, she supposed.

"I wanna get all this Alan off me," she said, wiping the gloop off her arms. "Are you in favour?"

He put his thumb up and a curious thing happened. Both of their lights streaked into the bundle at his chest before scattering like tiny fireworks.

2Y

A dry, comfortable and altogether more content Connie took a step back, Saheel's words about trust echoing in her ears.

She said, "You're Team Shameless Faust, right, not Fleshy Mound-y Faust?"

"Shameless, and proud of it." He uncovered the bundle in his arms. "There was an explosion..."

"What the fuck, is that a BABY? No, that's like — jesus, dude. He has your eyes. And, ugh, your beard?"

The baby thing was barely the size of her hand and its skin looked watery, like an artichoke. Because she was still kind of a horrible person, she imagined the little splat it would make if she squeezed it, which caused her to instantly cringe and shove her hands in her pockets. Best not to splat the bearded baby of wisdom.

"Are you quite alright?" said Faust. "Anyway, all that's left of our enemy is Fleshy Baby Me, and he's not exactly growing into a strapping young lad. He's not growing at all."

"Yeah, I saw it happen when we voted. Is it... is he... conscious? Can we talk to him? Get him to surrender or something?"

He shrugged. "I don't have a phone. But he's not evil, Connie. He loves me, and I love him!"

She giggled, because what he'd said was patently ridiculous, and yet his smile was ironically genuine rather than genuinely ironic. She felt guilty, worried that laughing at him would make him recoil, but there wasn't a trace of that self-doubt from when he'd confined himself to bed.

"Wowee," she said. "I've got Saheel's phone and it looks like it's still got a bit of charge on it. But first, would you mind setting the baby down for a second?"

"Abandon my BABY?" he cried. "My precious little honey-woney Fausty-kins? Oh, well, alright then."

Connie winced as he let the baby plop to the floor. It bounced up and down like a balloon, until it came to rest on the layer that sieved out inanimate objects.

"Man!" she cried. "What the fuck? Your baby?"

"Whoops. What the fuck, how could I, I'm a monster, etc. Except the only way it can die is by the Double-Edged Sword, and I don't know where that's got off to. All I have is this None-Edged Sword."

Faust held up a jade hilt that had two empty slots for a blade on either side, and it was pulsing green at the same rate as her net.

"The number of things that it can cut," he explained, "is none. Now, why'd you have me dunk my fleshy baby self?"

She hugged him. He hugged her back. He was warm. His beard was scratchy.

"It's good to see you again, man," she said. "I really thought I'd lost you."

His voice resonated through his chest where her head was. "Sorry for just kind of... fucking off."

"That's alright. Just don't 'kind of... fuck off' again."

They kept hugging.

He said, "...This is kind of a long hug."

"Allow it," she said, and he did. What would come next was uncertain, but for this moment, everything seemed like it was going to be alright, as it usually does when hugs are involved. The steady rise and fall of his breaths soothed her. She felt her eyes drooping.

He said, "You're leaning on me. And this hug has exceeded the length that I would hug my own mother."

She clung on tighter. "I've been walking in this barren fucking sky like the last person on earth for god knows how long. Stop being sarcy and just allow it, man! We made it. Isn't that great? We both came to terms."

"I know," he said, pushing back against her. "I'm allowing it. And I had to see what was at stake to realise that. I promise it won't all have been for nothing. We're going to find a way to get out of here together, and we're going to go back to our lives with a newfound joy. Are you with me?"

"Course I am. You're not dying on me without my permission, Fausty-boy. I'm gonna visit you in your care home when you're ninety and we're gonna laugh about this stupid fucking game and only then am I gonna grant you permission to croak of a heart attack or something. We'll figure this out."

"Okay, cardiac arrest at ninety it is, not meeting the wiggle worms even a year before that, just have mercy and please stop leaning on me." His legs started to give out under him; he was losing his balance.

"Right, sorry," she said, releasing him. "It got a little weird at the end there."

"...Yeah."

He scooped up the foetus back in his sleeves while she got out Saheel's phone and waved it in front of its face. It began to ring. The voice matched the baby's appearance: weaker than a fly's sneeze, higher pitched than mosquito, and dripping with Faust's signature irony. Connie shuddered at the resemblance.

The baby said, "Please, please, please, please, please — hurry up and kill me."