After emerging from the tunnel, Russ hiked up spiral stairs, scaled broken walls, and ducked through humid passageways. Strange noises filled the stale air, drilling into his mind. Echoes of creaking, hissing, screaming, and roaring burrowed in his brain. And always the ever-present wailing of the winds of Rubrum shrieked.

They should have sent chills down his spine, but they didn't.

The twin moons, Phobos and Deimos cast elongated shadows that crossed one another, clashing with Russ' depth perception and sense of directions. The longer he moved through the beautifully tangled corridors, the more he realized he'd come home.

At one point he climbed too high, finding himself on the broken balcony of a leaning spire. A terrible rumbling coursed up the tower, shaking him to the core with mirth. The epicenter came from within the spectral city, which he knew instinctively. Tremors rolled in waves, sending cracks along the spire walls. It seemed Carcosa was on the verge of collapsing.

No. Not his city. It could not fall. It might recede, to another place and time, neither here nor there, but it could never be razed. He threw his head back and laughed in the breeze. If only Quynn could join them now.

But if she would vanish this night, then he would sing her song. His voice joined the wailing winds as he called out from the tower.

Along the shore the cloud waves break,

The red sun sinks behind the lake,

The shadows lengthen

In Carcosa.

Strange is the night where black stars rise,

And twin moons circle through the skies,

But stranger still is

Lost Carcosa.

Songs that the Hyades shall sing,

Where flap the tatters of the King,

Must die unheard in

Dim Carcosa.

Song of my soul, my voice is dead,

Die thou, unsung, as tears unshed

Shall dry and die in

Lost Carcosa.

Ending the song, he closed his eyes, breathing in the city one final time. Even now he could feel her retreating, preparing for her astral voyage.

He longed to go with her, but the faint memory of an incomplete task held him on Rubrum.

He had to escape.

Russ doubled back. At every corner, bend, and intersection he fully expected to run headlong into more of those freakish deformities. While he no longer feared the city, he did have a healthy fear of the inhabitants of Rubrum, those warped and outfitted for Carcosa.

He snuck along for what could have been minutes, hours, or one eternal unending night. His heart thundered in his borg chest, a reminder that he should be dead already.

After time immeasurable he escaped the bounds of the dead city, rising out of it like a materialized spirit of the deceased.

He found a downed hovercopter on the outskirts of the city, one of the mercenary vessels. His heart skipped a beat at the find, then sank. It likely wouldn't work. But he had to try.

As his hands worked the controls trying to get the machine to start, a final tremor rocked Carcosa. Something like an electromagnetic pulse hit him, smashing into his body, and passing through his soul, continuing on further into Noctis Labyrinthus.

An internal weight seemed to lift from Russ. Emotions he hadn't even realized were plaguing him, emanating from the city, just melted away. All of the elated frivolity ceased.

His mind paused in a moment of clarity.

Why had he been singing?

Where had those words come from?

Unease and fear of his own bizarre actions gripped him.

The city seemed now to watch him with the hungry eyes of a predator. It stood hollow. Almost, but not quite empty. He scanned the walls and spires. They were simply the ruins of a lost civilization now. Odd. He did not know why he'd felt at home, moments before.

He reveled in the stillness, the somber quiet, admiring the strange beauty of the lost Carcosa who rested against the backdrop of a host of heavenly bodies, myriads of stars twinkling in the great black above, gleaming under the twin moons of Phobos and Deimos. A dead burden stung within. The stars reminded him again of Quynn, his spirit drifting in the great beyond.

Movement on the outskirts of the city caught Russell's attention. Outlines shaped like two men walking alongside a steeder appeared, exiting the city with a confident gait.

He recognized both of them, even in the dead of night from afar.

His mind should have questioned—of all the places to be on the red planet—why was his former sheriff, Blaine Leroux here, braving a lost alien city, just as he himself awoke inside it's catacombs? But when his mind identified the other man as none other than Trace the Ace, cold bitterness seeped into his heart.

They were marching straight for him. No, not for Russ. For the hovercopter. They didn't realize he sat in the cockpit already, trying to take off.

Russ thumbed the heptagonal cylinder of his .38 Special Oersted revolver, loading each empty chamber, waiting for the Terran marshal to close the gap.

He could retreat into the shadows of the rear of the craft. Russ could time it just right so that he caught Tracy unaware, the barrel of his gun pressed against the back of the filthy Terran's head, nowhere to run, no way to dodge.

But that wasn't Russell's way. Quynn would have wanted to be avenged honorably.

Tracy deserved to look Russ in the eyes when his heart bled out.

Déja vu from their first meeting flashed in Russ' mind, spreading the frigid, ice-cold bitterness out from his chest, down his arms, to his hands.

Russ stepped off the copter, emerging from the shadow of the craft cast by the twin moons overhead.

Leroux spotted him first with a sharp cry. To the sheriff's credit, his reflexes reacted by snatching his revolver from his holster.

But Russ had always been the better shot.

Pew.

Leroux was still raising the gun when Russ' shot ripped the revolver from his hands. The sheriff eyed his empty hand. It was fine. His revolver lay in the dust, toasted.

"Russell?"

"Aye, Sheriff. Fancy seeing you here. My beef isn't with you, but Trace the Ace."

The lawman peered at Russ from under the brim of his Stetson, then turned back to the steeder. For the first time Russ noted a grown man strewn over the back of the steeder, tied down, and a young child riding the stallion, small enough to hide behind the metal horse's head. The steeder bucked and pawed the dust with a hoof, anticipating the upcoming conflict.

"Let us pass, Russ. I've captured the fugitive. And this child is under my care now."

Moonlight reflected within Russ' crazed eyes. "You went and made a mess of things, Marshal. My friend Quynn's spirit cries out for blood. Rubrum and Carcosa, they cry out for your blood too."

"Revenge won't appease you. And it won't bring your pal back."

Seething rage stopped any coherent words that Russ might have said. He stammered, before getting out, "Shale. Choke on sand and dust, Irving. You killed my best friend. Sent him to the grave in flames."

"He one of the guys that took a dive over the cliff's edge?"

Russ couldn't keep his lips from quivering in cold hatred.

"Or was he in the speeder that got buried?"

Russ' soul burned like dry ice. "Think you're so slick, Trace the Ace?"

"Shouldn't have hunted me down like a wild animal."

Russ cracked open his gun, dumping out all the rounds in the dust but one, then spun the cylinder to line it up so that one shot was his next.

"Let's duel it out. Only one shot each."

"Russ. This is crazy. We need to get back to—"

"Can it, Sheriff, or you're next. You're partially to blame. Sending us after the Ace, when you wouldn't go yourself."

Leroux recoiled, cowed into silence. Then a scowl spread across his mouth and he yelled at his former deputy. "In front of a child, Russ? At least let us move out of the line of fire."

The sheriff directed the steeder holding the child and the unconscious man out of the line of fire.

Tracy scowled but squared up to Russ without comment.

Russ loathed his smug demeanor. He'd blast off the lawman's face with one perfectly placed shot, then reload and riddle Tracy's body with every round he had, to ensure the buzzards had nothing left to pick from the corpse.

Russ took a wide stance, digging his boot into the dust, hand hovering over his holstered revolver. Tracy mirrored his movement, but eased one foot forward, resting his weight on it.

The stars above gathered, incalculable glimmering astral witnesses to Russell's loss avenged.

With his flesh hand, Tracy formed a finger gun shape, pretended his thumb was the hammer, cocked it, and took aim. He yelled into the night. "Bang!" He raised his finger to his lips, blowing away imaginary smoke, mocking Russ.

Russ gnashed his teeth so hard, one of them cracked. His eyes saw stars.

The lawman squinted, then opened his eyes wide, feigning amazement. "Still standing? Well I have another."

He raised his smartarm, mimicking the finger gun shape again. This time the metallic arm gleamed in the twin moonbeams. "Too scared to draw, Russell? I'm warning you. Won't give you another chance."

Russ had enough of being made a fool. All of the time in the haunted Carcosa must have broken the Terran, shale-splintered his mind. He'd show Trace who was the real ace.

Quick as a wink, Russ' hand traveled across his torso. He'd practiced and used the cross draw until his muscle memory performed the swift action without thought. But as he peered down the sight of his revolving gauss gun, a ball of light glowing from Tracy's smarthand distracted him.

As he squinted, trying to understand what he was witnessing, a barrel flash erupted at the end of the lawman's alloyed finger, preventing Russ from seeing the machinations of the mechanical appendage.

He pulled his trigger, but his shot went wide, only grazing Tracy's duster.

A strange sensation burned in him, then a slow, tormenting pain, like the gradual driving of a cold spike piercing his skin, penetrating the deeper layers, down to his vitals.

Confusion wracked his mind. Russ could no longer hold a thought straight, nor stand. The dust laden ground rushed up to his face. He crumpled in a heap before sprawling out on his back.

He drew breaths in short bursts. Each time it became more burdensome, causing him more grief. Darkness passed over him, but he could still see. It was the lawman standing over him, clutching his side, but still standing.

Russ expected to see a face of smug triumph, but instead he caught something unexpected in Tracy's expression. It looked like pity. No. Regret? Sorrow? Russ didn't understand that look, but he did understand how Tracy bested him.

"I gave you plenty warning," said Tracy, voice thick with regret.

Plasma fumes rose from the tip of Tracy's now oversized smartfinger, which had morphed into a one-shot mini cannon. Exposed wires, cogs, pistons, and open panels revealed that Trace the Ace had held a literal trick up his sleeve. That dirty cankershale.

Russ tried to curse the man, but spewed only blood, hacking on his own life liquid.

Metallic whooshing and zipping sounds filled Russ' ears as he watched the mini finger cannon transform, shrinking, metal panels folding into place. The weapon concealed itself back into a cyborg hand form once more.

Beneath him, Russ could feel his life liquid pooling, and under that, Rubrum drank freely.

Russ drowned in dizziness, feeling lighter with each breath. The growing weightlessness lifted the burdens of life from Russ, then his life itself. He and Quynn would be reunited soon, friends through the end. He hoped Quynn would understand that he'd tried his hardest to avenge him.

He blinked, but couldn't find the strength to open his eyelids. He plummeted through darkness, until one by one, the stars above winked out and faded altogether.