“What is this?” he asked.

Neither of them answered. He tried to move towards the young girl. His footsteps echoed with reverb in the deafening silence, increasingly more and more as he attempted to increase his pace. Though he wanted to get away from the Jester, he mostly wanted to apologize to the girl and beg for forgiveness. If he deserved punishment, he would accept it with open arms. Yet no matter how fast he ran, the distance between them never seemed to diminish.

Slowly but surely, he felt his strength waver as his arms and legs lost consistency. He looked at the girl, then at himself. His limbs were covered in a black viscous substance. It grew exponentially, eventually covering nearly his whole body, each inch of covered skin feeling fragile and sensitive as if he had a fever. He progressively felt increasingly weaker and sick, the feeling spreading to his stomach and his lungs. He struggled to breathe and reached out with his hand to hold on to something, anything that would prevent him from falling. But there was nothing but empty air, and thus, he fell on his back.

That’s it, he thought. I’m dying.

Both the young girl and the Jester leaned over him in silence. Their eyes were completely blank. There was no laughter. No judgment. Only passive observation.

“Help…” he muttered as the pain became excruciating.

The two individuals moved aside and left his field of vision. He attempted to turn his head without success. He could only look forward in the darkness. Yet something emerged: a familiar silhouette, one he knew too well. It was himself.

As the form came closer, its features became clearer as well: it bore his own face, but it was filled with black, living and shapeless ink, constantly moving. The eyes of the simulacrum were entirely yellow save for the small pupils. They frantically moved in seemingly random directions, never stopping for a single second. It kept getting closer and closer, Noah feeling the heart in his chest beating in a deafening thump. The figure kept getting closer, stopping only a few inches from his face. Its eyes stopped moving. The heartbeat went silent. Everything stood still, the moment frozen in time.

The double then opened its mouth, revealing a full set of sharp fangs. Black goo emerged and enveloped Noah’s face. It was more than just a projectile: it had intention, it had willpower. It had a nefarious purpose.

Noah suffocated.

He then inhaled sharply as he opened his eyes wide, in shock from the nightmare. It took a moment for him to ward off the confusion of waking up in this unfamiliar environment, but laying his eyes on his friends still in one piece and sound asleep, with Isaac still snoring like two rusty gears grinding against each other, reassured him that he was still alive. That, and the searing pain on his lower back and the back of his head, a good reminder of how he had not been sleeping on a mattress.

What was this thing, this double of himself? Did it have any meaning? Was it only an irrational fear of dying, his survival instincts kicking in but distorted by some form of post-traumatic stress? Or was it, perhaps, an unconscious reflection of what he thought he would become? A parody of himself, a caricature of a human being, devouring everything in its path?

Kaycee was still awake by the window. She stared at him: no doubt she had heard him wake up.

“You okay?” she asked.

He nodded and got up, then sat closer to her. It was still dark outside, which led him to believe he had only rested for a short time. He knew he would later regret getting up this early but the raw fear instilled by the nightmares hadn’t completely subsided yet.

“Are you okay? Didn’t you get any sleep?” he asked, trying to forget about it.

“Can’t. Someone has to stay up and stand guard.”

“True… but you could have told us. We could have split the task in shifts and-”

“No,” she said firmly. “Everyone is exhausted. You all needed to rest.”

“That’s rather noble of you.”

“It’s not. It’s selfish. I don’t trust any of you to make it through the night without dozing off,” she said with a smirk.

She turned towards the window and looked out, a frown on her face. She clenched her hand into a fist and gripped her pants, needing some outlet to spend the energy given to her by her anger.

“The truth is…” she sighed. “I can’t sleep. I got Brett on my mind.”

“Brett? He’s that guy back there we tried to save, right?”

“Yeah. The one who died in that ambush.”

Noah remained silent for a moment. He was no stranger to death himself - his own biological mother had passed away in a car accident when he was no more than a child - but the memory was so distant that he felt it unfair to compare the two. Besides, losing someone to a plain old violent murder was on a whole other level. Talking about lost ones never got any easier either.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “Were you two close?”

“Nah. Not on a personal level. But he’s not someone that can be easily replaced. He was very smart. He’s one of the guys who studied the Corrupted, and he helped build the defenses against them. We owe the safety of our home, in no small part, to him. He left us too early.”

“Hm… Not that I want to criticize but, if he was so valuable, why not keep him sheltered?”

“I agree, I thought that, too. But he always wanted to go outside, see how the world had changed. We just didn’t expect the people to have changed this much. And he trusted me to keep him safe.”

“You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

“I don’t… I mean, not really. I could have done a lot of things differently, but then we get into the zone of all the what ifs. I’m not the one who pulled the trigger. It hurts, but it’s no use beating myself up over it.”

Noah looked at the ceiling for a moment, carefully considering what she said. While the situation was different, he tried to apply the wisdom in her words to him as well. But he couldn’t - with the girl in the Jester’s mansion, he was the one who had pulled the trigger, so to speak.

“You’re strong,” he said.

“Thanks, but strength is going to be meaningless if we can’t find a peaceful resolution with the people from Sandy Hook. I mean, look at us. We’re all people, aren’t we? We should be trying to help each other, survive as a species. But now we’re killin’ each other. Why? Because we’re not their people? Because they’re not ours?”

Remembering a past conversation with a friend, Noah couldn’t keep himself from smiling. She and Matthew would have gotten along.

“It’s not funny, Noah,” she said angrily.

“No. No, of course not, I’m sorry. You just reminded me of someone I know. He said something similar when we talked about the purpose of countries. He kept questioning the divide of our borders. But as for your question, it boils down to people just… sharing different values and looking out for people who are closer to us, I suppose. The natural state of humanity is conflict. Being peaceful and generous takes a tremendous amount of effort, you know? At this point, being of the same species isn’t enough when the leaders of each faction care more about their own morality or their own needs. When either a diverging morality or a need is so strong in someone’s mind, I suppose it’s reason enough to kill…”

He paused for a moment, peeking outside the window, then came back to look at her straight in the eyes.

“Or die, even. Maybe the Corrupted simply enable people enough as a means to obtain more power or to fall back to baser instincts. Though, everyone has the potential to be selfish, so perhaps the attacks aren’t necessarily a consequence of the Corrupted. Heck, maybe the Corrupted are even a consequence of our own failings as intelligent beings.

“What, like a punishment from God?” she said as she frowned.

“Well, I don’t exactly-”

Kaycee suddenly put her hand up to indicate to him to remain silent. A worried expression crawled on her face. She turned her whole body towards the window, searching for something outside.

“Did you hear that?” she whispered. There was a very perceptible anxiety in her voice.