There was a breeze, and it brought to him the smell of food. Cheese, he thought, and maybe bread. And there was softness beneath him, and he was dry. Kyle opened his eyes slowly and blinked against the thin shafts of light slipping in through the curtains. Someone in the room moved, and he heard a voice: "You're awake?" It was Seeks-the-Moon.

"I think so…" Kyle remembered-or had he dreamed it?-of spinning and of a place cold and wet "Where am I?" He felt sore and tired, but whole.

"An obvious question," the spirit answered slowly, the timbre of his voice deep and strange. "You are in someone's home. I know not whose."

"I take it the owner isn't home?" Kyle turned his head slightly and saw the spirit sunk deep in a large, old chair, the light from the window cutting a bright slit from his eye to his knee. He seemed older. But also seemed to fit somehow with the shabby, sparse furnishings of the room and the fine cracks that ran down its walls. An open door revealed a narrow hallway and a faded, threadbare rug.

The longer Kyle studied Seeks-the-Moon, the more he could see that the spirit was different. His face seemed older, harder, but the eyes were brighter, more blue than he remembered. And his clothes were different, subtly; darker and more beat-up, but at the same time the colors truer.

The owner is dead," the spirit said. "I believe it was she I found down the hall."

"The bug spirits?"

“No, her own kind." Moon's face betrayed no emotion. "She did not die well."

Kyle tried to sit up slightly, but he was too weak. The pain in his leg was only a dull throb, but the rest of his body felt like it was made of wet clay. Two dogs barked at each other somewhere outside.

"You have been very sick," Seeks-the-Moon told him. "I attempted to heal you as best as I could, but I'm afraid what you taught me wasn't enough to restore you to full health."

"How long have I been out?"

"It's been two days since I found you. You were on the street for at least four days."

"A week?" Kyle said. "It's been a week?"

"Six days." There was an odd stillness in Seeks-the-Moon, a tension Kyle could not place.

Kyle tried to sit up again, and this time the pain in his leg made itself known, shooting through him and collapsing him back onto the creaking bed. "Beth," he said, "do you know what…"

"No, I don't," the spirit said quietly.

Kyle propped himself painfully up on one elbow. Even that simple exertion left him weak and nearly faint. "I have to find out if she and Natalie are all right"

The spirit didn't move, but a slight touch of sadness slipped into his expression. "You are far from where they might be, and too weak to travel. You wouldn't survive the journey."

Angry, Kyle tried to shout at the spirit in his mind, but the cry went nowhere. There was no connection between them. No channel, no empathy, nothing. Kyle stared at Seeks-the-Moon, and remembered the emptiness he'd felt behind the dumpster. And the emptiness he felt now…

"You're free…" he said, slowly.

Seeks-the-Moon glanced away, and then nodded. "Your injuries were great. I believe you came as close to death as someone could without dying. You lived," he said, "but I became free."

"I see," said Kyle, and the spirit tilted his head slightly, moving his eye out of the shaft of light. It still gleamed back at Kyle, reflecting the light that reached it.

"What will you do?" Seeks-the-Moon asked him after a moment

"What will I do? I don't understand."

"Will you attempt to regain control of me?"

Kyle stared as the spirit went on speaking.

"You created me. You have the right"

"I don't think I could."

"That doesn't matter. What matters is whether you want to."

Kyle lay back down on the bed and brought his arm up across his eyes. What did he want? What could he do? What had happened? "I don't know,” he said. "I need time to think." He needed real sleep.

"And the longer you think, the more you will heal, and the stronger you will be," said Seeks-the-Moon.

"Yes," said Kyle. And I'll have gained the strength to contest you, Kyle thought. And you know that

But there was silence, and the spirit allowed him to sleep.

The next time he awoke, suddenly, his mind rushing blindly between the last pieces of a dream and reality, there was a woman sitting in the chair Seeks-the-Moon had been occupying. She seemed familiar, and in the confusion and the dim reddened light that slipped in from outside, she was Beth. He moved toward her, and she faded away, slipping into the shadows of the chair as he woke fully.

Kyle shook his head and ran his fingers through the days of beard growth on his face and through the dirty, greasy tangle that was his hair. He felt rested, but there was still a dull ache through his body, but only that. He turned his senses inward and examined himself. He was immediately surprised. The deep wounds he had felt while lying on the street were gone, healed, no longer anything more than sharp echos in his flesh. Even his leg was healed, the bone joined and solid again. He could tell, though, that it would still be painful for a few more days at the very least.

He felt strong, or at least stronger, and very hungry. From outside came the sound of gunshots, three of them in quick succession, coming from perhaps a block or two away. Moving as carefully and quietly as he could, Kyle swung his legs off the bed and stood.

Again, he was surprised at the strength in his limbs. Looking down at his body, he noticed for the first time that he was wearing somebody else's clothes, but he felt each of his magical foci present, except for the knife. Despite his apparent strength and health, he moved carefully to the window and parted the dulled and dirty blinds. It was sunset, nearly twilight, and the street was empty but for the blackened and charred wreck of a Honda minicar turned on its side against the far curb. That and dozens of bright red sheets of paper that caught the wind and swirled.

If this side of the street matched the one opposite, Kyle thought he must be in a room on the second floor over a small storefront. The ones he could see across the way showed signs of major looting and destruction, their windows smashed and doors flung open.

"You don't want to stand there too long," came the voice of Seeks-the-Moon behind him.

Kyle let the blinds close and turned toward the spirit.

Moon was standing next to the chair. "How do you feel?"

"Better than I should, I suspect," Kyle said. "Like I've been through a car crash, but I walked away."

He nodded. "It's been a few days."

"How long since I last woke up?"

Seeks-the-Moon frowned slightly and looked away, thinking. "Two days."

Kyle sat down on the edge of the bed. He glanced toward the window and then back at the spirit. "What the frag is going on?" he asked quietly.

"You found the main nest, certainly for the region, maybe even for the whole continent," he said. "When you attacked they…"

The spirit looked away for a moment.

Kyle leaned closer. "What?"

"They spread," said Seeks-the-Moon, still looking away.

"What do you mean?"

Seeks-me-Moon shrugged. "They're insects. Their nest was disturbed. They sought shelter elsewhere."

"Oh Jesus…"

The spirit nodded. "They're all over the city, and many people are dead or else wish they were."

"Aren't the police or corps able to control them?" Kyle asked him.

"There are thousands."

"What about the government?"

'They have done something," said Seeks-the-Moon. They have sealed off the city."

"What? That doesn't make sense," said Kyle.

Seeks-the-Moon pointed at a folded, water-stained sheet of bright red paper sitting on the bedstand. "They dropped those all over the city."