They all charged at once.
Wolfen jumped to the side, avoiding the first wave, the second, the third. He wasn't fighting back—not yet. He was saving his Pulse, conserving his strength, waiting for something he couldn't name.
The one who looked like him stopped. Looked down at the ripped body of the crying Wolfen. The frozen tears had melted now, mixing with the blood, steaming in the cold.
He smiled. Small. Sad.
"You know," he said, gesturing at the corpse, "this one was different from us. Soft. Fragile. A crybaby."
The others slowed. The fire Wolfen's flames dimmed. The zombie tilted its head.
"When the apocalypse began in his world, he watched his friend and his sister get ripped apart in front of him. He had nightmares for years. Couldn't eat. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't look at people without seeing their insides."
Wolfen listened.
"The Architects got him. Experimented on him. Broke him so badly he couldn't handle it. Didn't want to live. His powers were uncontrollable—he killed Derek and Jordan by accident. Just... lost control, and they were gone."
The one who looked like him paused.
"Leo hunted him for a hundred years. Tracked him across the burning ruins of their world, trying to put him down. And when he finally caught him, he burned to death. Accident. Wrong place, wrong time, wrong fire."
Wolfen's jaw tightened.
"His Zoey was an Architect. And unlike yours—" the Wolfen's eyes flicked to Wolfen, sharp and knowing "—she hated him. Made a whole unit of special soldiers just to kill him. Included his Maya. His Eva. They died the same way. Caught in his fire. Burned to nothing."
The snow around them was melting. The ground was warming.
"He didn't have control. It took him five hundred years to learn. By then, half the world had burned. The planet was uninhabitable. Humanity was extinct. The Architects had to flee to space just to survive."
The one who looked like him looked at Wolfen.
"And one day, a portal opened. He went through it. Thought he'd get a fresh start. A new life. A chance to be something other than a monster."
Fire surged around the one who looked like him. His eyes blazed.
"And now you killed him. Like he meant nothing."
Wolfen didn't look away.
"And you know what?" The Wolfen's voice was rising. "That really pisses me off. You killed him like he was the evil one. For wanting a new start." His flames grew higher. "And you think we're the evil ones?"
"There is no good or evil for us." Wolfen's voice was cold. Flat. Absolute. "We're all murderers. Made to kill. There is no good or evil. We're nothing but monsters."
They charged.
The fire Wolfen made a long, burning rope—fire given form, solid and hungry. It whipped through the air, wrapping around Wolfen's body, pinning his arms to his sides. He spun, and the rope spun with him, tightening, burning.
It unraveled.
Wolfen flew toward the faceless one. The faceless one raised its hand. A beam of fire—high, hot, dense—shot toward Wolfen's chest.
It hit.
Wolfen flew backward, toward the Architect Wolfen. The Architect Wolfen punched him—up, high, sending him into the sky.
Wolfen tumbled through the air, a ragdoll, weightless and broken. Fire erupted from his feet. He stabilized. Dodged an attack from the zombie—close, too close, the wind of it singing his hair.
He raised his hand. A fireball—high heat, high density, burning with everything he had—shot toward the zombie. It hit. The zombie crashed into the ground, carving a crater, lying still.
Wolfen hovered in the air.
He raised both hands.
A fireball formed between them—not the small, quick ones he usually threw, but something massive. Something that looked like a small sun. Solar lava, full power, burning with everything he had left.
The light was blinding. The heat was unbearable. The snow for miles around evaporated. Trees caught fire. The ground turned black.
"Go on!" the one who looked like him shouted, his voice carrying across the burning wasteland. "Destroy your world! Like we did ours! Go on! Be a destroyer! Become us!"
"I already am you." Wolfen's voice was quiet, but it carried. "You're my versions. In my head. Constantly shouting at me."
The fireball descended.
The explosion was unlike anything anyone had ever seen. Like ten nuclear bombs detonating at once. The light was white, then red, then black. The sound was silence, then screaming, then silence again.
When Wolfen landed, he stood in a crater. Miles wide. Nothing but ash and glass for as far as he could see.
He was alone.
---
The facility shook.
Leo felt it first—the tremor under his feet, the rattle of the windows, the distant roar of something vast and terrible. He looked at Jordan. Jordan looked at Lena. None of them spoke.
Derek lay on the cot behind them, barely conscious, his wounds still healing, his breathing shallow. The tremor didn't wake him.
---
Eva felt it too.
She was sitting across from the wrong Eva, watching her cry. Warden sat beside her, still and silent. Maya stood by the door, her arms crossed, her eyes distant.
The wrong Eva's face had changed again—the panic was gone, replaced by something softer, sadder. The scientists had explained it. DID. Dissociative Identity Disorder. Two personalities sharing one body, one memory, one endless nightmare.
The tremor shook the room.
Eva looked at the ceiling. Warden's visible eye narrowed.
---
Zoey sat up in her bed.
The pillow was still clutched in her arms, damp from her tears, warm from her body. The tremor had rattled her window, knocked a book off her shelf, sent dust drifting down from the ceiling.
She looked at the door.
Wolfen was out there. Somewhere.
She didn't know what to say to him. Didn't know what she felt. But she knew she didn't want him to die before she figured it out.
---
The smoke cleared.
Four Wolfens stood in the crater. The zombie. The one who looked like him. The faceless one. The fire one.
The fire one looked different now—more fire than flesh, his body barely holding together, rage burning in his eyes.
The others were dead.
"Congratulations." The faceless one's voice was flat, emotionless. "You've officially doomed your planet."
Wolfen looked at them. At the destruction around them. At the ash falling like snow.
"Tell me about the ones who died," he said. "The ones I killed. Tell me why they took that path."
The one who looked like him stared at Wolfen for a long moment. Then he smiled.
"Finally asking the right questions," he said. "Sit down. This is going to take a while."