Ayden looked over at Greg’s drink. Both of their glasses had dregs left. They had been savoring their cheap liquor in the slowest race to finish last.

Then he looked up at Greg, apparently with the impetus to say something again.

“I have a question,” he stated.

“Yeah?” Greg prompted him.

“Did we… You know. Did we really choose to come here and sit things out while our own Cassy goes to fight monsters with Synthia?” he asked.

“Shit.”

“Like what the hell? Some men we are, right?”

“I’m sorry Ayden, but you’re alone in that particular existential dilemma. I think I’ve renounced my manhood,” Greg swirled his shitty tequila. “But, yeah, we did that. And it doesn’t sit right. Gender notwithstanding.”

“I don’t want to say we could have kept her from going,” Ayden suggested. “But we should have fucking argued with her.”

“We should have.”

“Why didn’t we?”

“Well, you know,” Greg looked back at him. “I think I’m still in shock about the whole fucking thing. Too dazed for words.”

“Yeah, I don’t think I’m not, either.” Then, having said that, Ayden looked up at the ceiling as if to consider the words he’d spoken, to see if they made sense. After a bit, he nodded and took a performative sip of his drink.

“I do feel like we should do something,” Greg said.

“Like what?” Ayden asked.

Milk watched this conversation unfold from the low but covert vantage of an outlet near the hallway to the bathrooms.

Part of the reason that it had chosen to accompany Ayden and Greg to this location was that it was central enough to downtown Portland that it could keep an eye on the movements of most of the local Overlords.

The preliminary planning sessions with Cassy and Synthia had brought up the likelihood that Chord must be coordinating with the Overlords of Portland to set up his trap for Sewer Teeth. But just how involved those Overlords would be was still a big question. And their reactions to the trap being sprung would be critical to how Milk itself participated in things.

And, if one of those Overlords noticed it and confronted it, that would give it a chance to talk to them, or it would run. It was good at running.

In the meantime, it studied these two humans that Synthia seemed to care about.

Greg was tapping the table in thought for a while, watching the T.V. above the bar, which was now showing the opening scenes to Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai.

“We could keep my truck warm and ready for a getaway,” he suggested.

Ayden tapped the table back once in response and said, “We should have suggested that back in Salem.”

“Yeah.”

“Messaging Cassy now might give her trouble.”

“Let’s do it anyway, in case she messages us.”

When they moved to Greg’s truck, Milk moved too.

It could pursue two goals at once, at least for a little while.

As I slowly transformed my body for speed while running, the Swarm harried me. It could have surrounded me and consumed me entirely within the building, but apparently it had been instructed to merely chase its prey outside. At least at first.

The building was long, and the chase was excruciating, with my pace increasing incrementally with every step, and my motive deepened with every niggling bug bite. But by the time I reached the fire escape door near the entrance to the control room, I was bounding on arms that were quickly becoming feather covered wings, and hind legs like those of a greyhound.

To become something of a battering ram, I’d transformed my head into something that more closely resembled a pachycephalosaurus, with a domed crown of reinforced bone.

The door slammed open with a bang and I leapt out and spread my vestigial wings, letting feathers continue to sprout slowly all over my body.

I was able to control my dive more than glide to the ground, turning to the right, away from and around the building. The speed of that movement took me away from my adversary very quickly, though, and gave me some reprieve. But once it caught up, I could only hope my feathers would stymie its bites. Emanants don’t ever work quite like physical beings, after all.

And as the helicopter wheeled around the north side of the building where I was, searchlights tracked me from below and I was greeted with gunfire. And I could see I was about to land between a couple of dark buses that had carried a number of military personnel. Troops, I guess, many of whom were right below me.

To the left of them from my vantage, I caught sight of a van in the same colors with numerous antennae and other sensory equipment on the top of it.

If I could have transformed fast enough, I might have flown away with the speed of a hawk, faster than the Swarm, or whatever it called itself. But now I needed to adjust for a rough landing and some expedient ground travel. And the bullets that were being thrown at me were distracting.

Just distracting. Kind of painful, but not really doing me any more damage than the darts had done.

Most of them missed, of course.

Bam!

Ground.

I rolled, dodged, pounded the pavement with padded feet and calloused knuckles and worked myself up to an horrendous speed toward the south, weaving between vehicles and people. And I heard the Swarm whining down behind me over the shouts of scrambling soldiers.

I did my very best not to touch a single human, but I had no idea what the Swarm would do. And I couldn’t control it.

Did I want it to keep chasing me and leave the humans alone? That’s what it would probably do. But if these humans were part of Chord’s greater plan, who knew what was slated for them.

Oh.

I forgot they were riddled with emanants already.

When I passed the last cluster of people before a dark dash down the railroad leading along the river to the south, one of them lept at me with animal limbs and widening jaws. If I hadn’t been distracted by the Swarm behind me, I could have dodged a little further away from that one. It hadn’t exactly been covert to me.

I rolled with the blow, skidding and twisting up and over it as it bowled me over and slammed down on the other side of me with its claws and teeth in my sides. I leaned all of my weight into it when it was my turn to be on top of the ball of limbs and tails, and that was enough to make it let go.

I managed to land on my feet and start running again before it could get up, but I’d lost precious lead and felt several mosquito bites in my flanks as the whine of the Swarm roared above me.

And then I saw why I might not be leaving this property.

There was what looked like an old arcade cabinet right in the middle of the train tracks, under the North Steel Bridge, barely visible in the shadows of the trees on either side of the passage in the quickly darkening night. Only, it loomed in the Strands.

Although there was no storm, and the sky was relatively clear, the surface of it flashed briefly as if illuminated by lightning.

Polybius.

It seemed to have just appeared there.

And I decided to go nowhere nearer than that, dodging around the corner of the huge old silo to dash toward the water, even though that would take me through another knot of vehicles and armed people.

My dive had managed to take me almost all the way down the enormous length of the building, it was so tall and maybe I had affected a bit of a glide. Still, I’d had to hit the ground and start running. But if I could make it to the water, then perhaps I could lose the Swarm that way.

The soldiers in front of me couldn’t fire their weapons for fear of hitting the soldiers behind me, but they fucking did it anyway, they were so terrified of what they were seeing. And then one of them near the back of their group suddenly grew in size and stature to resemble something like a cross between a bear and rhino, and then adjusted its stance to block my path.

Behind it, something rose from the river water that I hadn’t seen for millions and millions of years, and much larger than it had ever been at that.

So the water was out as a means of escape.

And now there was no denying to all of Portland and the rest of the United States that there were monsters. The rest of the world would probably take some convincing. Maybe.

I thought I heard the helicopter panic.

Taking quick stock of my surroundings, while monster mosquitos started biting into my haunches with alarming frequency, I could see that I was suddenly surrounded by seven very large Supraliminals, besides the one that was chasing me.

The Overlords of Portland had taken interest.

As it followed Greg and Ayden into the parking garage where Greg had parked his truck, Milk noticed a couple of the local Overlords pass by.

They were making their move, and ignoring it.

The others were likely approaching the site of the trap from the South and the East, and it would miss them.

This didn’t bode well for Synthia or Cassy.

If they were moving in that close, then they would be vying to control the outcome, maybe even working together, despite the impacts that would make on the local population.

Normally these emanants stayed spread out enough to keep their thralls and commoners calm and functional. Concentrating their numbers like this would throw the whole city into chaos for the time being. But it also meant that they were invested enough in the results that they didn’t care about that.

This made it very difficult for Milk to help Synthia or Cassy directly. It made it very unlikely either of the other two would survive the night. Well, Synthia in particular. Cassy could probably escape with ease if she stayed out of it.

Instead, Milk would observe to learn what to do in the aftermath.

If humanity was inordinately exposed to emanant presence, perhaps it could work to mitigate that damage.

Perhaps Greg and Ayden could be useful in that regard.

Or, Greg’s truck could provide a handy ride to get a better vantage, at least.

But while it hung back to wait for them to get inside the cab, they paused on each side of it, looking over at each other.

“We’re not going to just sit and wait in the truck right here, are we?” Ayden asked.

“No,” Greg said. “I was thinking we should get closer.”

“To watch, right?”

“For a lot of reasons. The closer we are, the faster we can help.”

“Sure.”

Milk rushed forward and slid up the left rear wheel to wind itself around the axle and work itself up into the chassis of the vehicle as the two people climbed in.

Foolish, foolish creatures!

If it couldn’t save Synthia, it could at least keep Synthia’s friends from getting hurt.

It would do its best. Perhaps by disabling the truck before they got too close.

It didn’t know why it cared in particular, just that it did.

Maybe its behavior had been altered by the memories from Synthia it had preserved within itself. It would have to think about that. It would have to decide if that bothered it. It had certainly experienced such things before, but this time the mechanism was affecting it in a moment of crisis.

That could be a problem.

Otherwise, being able to eat and co-opt memories was an important adaptation for survival. It was part of why it had managed to exist for so long.