They sat together under the blinking light of the lab.
"You told them the truth, didn't you?" Nicole asked. She'd barely slept the last few nights.
Jespar couldn't look at her. The dark shadow wrapped around her left eye conjured up too much anger in him. If they hit her again, he'd bite back. That's it. He was done.
But then, there was the problem: he was ready to die if it meant being free. But he wasn't ready to let her go.
"They'll never find it," he whispered.
She double-blinked. He knew she wouldn't let this go this time.
"Even if they know where it is," he continued. "I've told them – they need me."
She stifled a laugh and held her head in her hands while her whole body shook.
Beside her sat the results from the day's testing. Spools of statistics utterly incomprehensible to Jespar were still being vomited by the machine in the corner. The lights above buzzed their uncaring neon luminescence but did nothing to stave off the shadows that encompassed the ever-working machines and computers that worked with no alternative. All around them, the mechanical nature of their existence seemed to bear down upon their shoulders.
And finally, today, she realized the weight was too much to bear.
He could sense, like always, the trembling fear in her voice as she spoke, numb, without looking up. "So, what's your plan then?"
He leaped towards her and pawed at her hands, trying to break the shield she put up for him.
"Stop it, Jespar!" she wailed. "Just stop!"
"Nicole," he said. "Come on, even when you were still pissing the bed in your PJs, I was there for you when you woke up. Don't hide from me."
She slowly let her hands drop, and long strands of her unkept hair fell over him as he looked into her eyes and saw his own dumb face stretched out there in the turquoise sea of her iris.
"Woof," he said. "You really made me one ugly son of a bitch."
She chuckled despite herself, wiping away fresh tears. And there they sat, he trying to think of something clever or witty to say. At the same time, she pondered, her mind totally impenetrable to him, calculating ideas, scenarios, and odds of success that they had in getting away. She lived in the real world. He lived in her shadow. For her, freedom was an idea as fanciful as the creature smirking before her.
"Listen," he said. "When they come back, they'll work out that they need me to show them the way. And that's our ticket, baby. That's our chance. I'll convince them to take both of us, and we'll make a break for it the first chance we get. I'll figure out a way for us to get out, as I promised. I'll lead them to their final destination, all right. And then we're home free."
She looked down at him, wagging his tail excitedly as he did in the days before the darkness came upon the world. Her memories of that time were still so hazy. He couldn't talk back then. But still, she remembered him – his cheeky little face, cute, feeble bark, and how he waddled after her or bumped into the walls of her father's house. Those memories were hidden behind walls thicker than those of the prison that now surrounded her. She placed them in a little box in her brain so they would not be dwelled upon but cherished when she needed them. When they came and took them to this place, and she held him close to her on the journey, she had opened that little box and stayed calm. Even as the skies had darkened above them. And untold horrors that defied the logic she swore by were loosed upon the earth.
Now here he was. The product of that very same thing had led to the end of everything she had ever known. All she had wished for was a friend to stand by her side. Forever. And now, he was ready to risk his life for her freedom.
Jespar saw her bow her head, smiling to herself as she did in that sad way when she wanted to reprimand him for being an overgrown child but loving him for his naivety.
I should have known then, Jespar thought in the darkness of the dream world. I should have known how this was all going to end.
"Stay here," she said, suddenly grabbing him with both hands and pulling him close, bear-hugging him like she did as a child. "Stay here with me. Let them find it. Take them to it and come back to me safely. And with it, we can build a new world. We won't have to be afraid of the outside anymore. We'll see the sun again. We'll see it together!"
He sighed deeply, closing his eyes and feeling the embrace. To his surprise, it was warm. It was as if she was really here again, holding him.
But everyone had to wake up and smell the shit sooner or later.
"I'd love to, Nicole," he said after savoring the moment and knowing that if he really wanted to, he could probably sit here and waste away into the ashes of the rest of this doomed planet. "I'd love to, but that's not what you said."
Time froze. And he felt the thing that wore the mask of Nicole stiffen.
"It's a nice dream you've cooked up here, buddy," Jespar continued. "But I ain't no dumb-ass-lickin' cat-chasin' puppy. I'd have stayed with her if she asked me. But she didn't. And when shit hit the fan, she was right there with me. Till the end."
And though he felt water gather in small pools at the edge of his sad eyes, he drew back from her embrace and saw that the tears that stained her features were gone, replaced by the confusion that didn't become her.
"Jespar, what do you mean?" she asked, flashing an innocent smile. "It's me – your best memory in the whole world. And you can stay here with me. You can stay here and see me every day. Forget the girl with the tattoos. Forget the world out there. Just take my hands and let me hold you. Forever."
And looking at her – at the only human he had ever loved – he knew he could do it. He could probably stay here, content to swim in the world of his own memories where she was still here. And sure, it was a lie, but she was here, and he could feel her embrace every day. He could get everything he always wanted.
But then he saw something else. He saw Nicole in her final moments. And he heard the words she spoke to him just before she left this world for good.
"Good trick, buddy," he said, and as he spoke, he saw through the thing before him, which began to phase in and out of existence like a strobe light losing power. He saw what was really before him – the thing that was nothing but a faceless shadow, and Nicole's eyes were replaced by its pure white oval voids that had looked into him and grappled with his heart to conjure its trap.
"I bet you've done this a lot, haven't you?" Jespar continued. "You've taken those Tribals the Chief talked about and screwed with their memories till they're nothing more than walking numbskulls. You've tried to trick them into staying in this piss-filled tunnel for – what? What do you get out of it? Fun? Food? Or do you not even remember anymore?"
The blackened specter before him shuddered and grew till it encompassed the entire bunker. The room's walls imploded, flying out and revealing nothing more than a great void of nothingness that contained only he and the staring eyes of the thing that looked down upon him. Its featureless face bellowed a question that rang from deep within his subconscious:
"Can you not accept the peace I offer, creature?"
And unfazed, scratching behind his ear, Jespar answered the voice in the dark:
"Oh, I could certainly try. But I've got a job to do. One that she gave me. And you're the last thing that's gonna stop me. You're just a two-bit invention like me. But unlike me, you're so full of yourself that you actually think you're some kind of spirit. And we both know that's not true, don't we?"
Then in the shadow that consumed his vision, there was fury – and the world of darkness shook with the black rage of that which would be a God. Each of its puppets of flesh formed themselves before Jespar and looked not with eyes of their own but those of the Changeling. They beamed a searing light that scorched his retinas and screamed until the void swallowed them. Nicole's wail of terror reached his ears, the roars of fury from the soldiers as they tortured him came after, and finally, the open maw of the scarred man loomed over them all, threatening to swallow him whole.
Through it all, he stood fast and barked away each mist-borne illusion that crept towards him. And the walls of the tunnel began to resolve once more.
"I've got a job to do," he shouted as the dark rescinded, and he saw the faceless being for what it was: a child, wreathed in a cloak of shadow, shielding itself with long taloned fingers from the real world.
"Go bother someone else," he told it. "You've got nothin' on me, little guy. There's nothing you could show that'll stop me. My time's not up yet."
Then the image of the trailing dark cloak that clothed the Changeling scuttled away, twisting around and through him and still laughing with the laughter of the hundreds of doomed souls whose minds it had taken long ago.
He saw that he was back in the tunnel as though no time had passed. With a snort of triumph was about to give himself a congratulatory lick in his nethers when he heard the laughter of the creature of shadow echo from behind him. He turned, more with annoyance than fear.
And he saw that the girl was still there.
And her shaking arm held a knife of bone dangling above his head.
"Chief..." he began, his attention shifting between her glazed eyes, her terrified face, and the dagger ready to strike. "Chief!"
Then the dagger plunged down, and the dog's scream was swallowed by the dark.