PArt 1

The sky was blood red with the sunset, the air lower seeming red with a fine mist she could recognize as otherworldly, even for here. The streets of the small town were silent but for her footsteps. Fitting, really.

The ghost town had nothing, nothing really. Just her, just a way to escape and talk to her more directly, outside of what had occurred out there.

The young woman walked to one of the boarded-up shops, to its one, unbroken window. Strange to see that here, nowadays. She bit her lip in apprehension, seeing the message scrawled out upon the grime.

WHAT I LOVE I DESTROY. WHAT I DESTROY, I LOVE.

What was the point of this exercise? Nothing could be gained here, especially not like this. "It wasn't me. She did this."

"Oh, did I?" The newcomer had done this too many times for it to surprise her any longer. She had long, brown, nearly black hair, and wore a purple dress reaching halfway down to her knees. This woman's face was charred, her eyes a piercing blue. She leaned against the side of the building, a three-hundred or so long hardcover book in her hands. The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame. The points that she touched decayed slightly, as if corrupted by her touch alone. "You keep telling yourself that, and it will never be any more true."

The first woman looked her way"You were never like this before it happened, before the launch and Doomsday."

"You fought back. This was your mistake, not mine." She turned the page.

"So I defended myself, as I do. Fought back against this evil, these...these..." The calm demeanor cracked, and she turned toward her companion. "These complete b*******! You think you haven't been affected? What happened to you, then? You did the deed, set him aflame and made her watch it. Your dress covered in his blood as he tried to beg you to stop, to fight back as those soldiers kept us apart. You--"

"Death rides on my shoulders, death walks in my footsteps," was the cryptic, resigned answer. "I am death."

"No. You made your choice, chose to kill over living and fighting back. I didn't. I fought against them, fought against it all, fought against..." She looked around to the streets. "This! All of this!"

"Such is the wheel of our life. No mercy. No pity. Just keep turning and turning. Turn that crank, work that nozzle." She took a bookmark out of one page, and slipped it into her spot, tucking the book under her arm and closing it in one motion as she started walking, expecting her companion to follow.

It was not as if she had much choice. She did not have much to work off of. With a grunt, the first of them walked after her. "Were you always such a fatalist?"

Just a shrug. "If you call realism fatalism, maybe I was. Some of these things fade with each passing treatment."

"But all of that pain, those things you did, that you kept me from ever stopping--"

"Sometimes pain is the only thing that lets you know you're alive. The way I see it, I helped." She sighed. "Too bad it didn't last."

"We can change this. Fix this. You have those powers, and more each day. You can--"

"I thought I could build." Another sigh. "I was wrong. We are not builders. Not you, not me. Not the other one either. We are destroyers." Looked to her briefly, repeating herself. "Destroyers." And her eyes went back to the ground.

"She's seriously screwed up in the head. You know that as much as I do. I mean, that sergeant?"

"And you?" A glare directly at the one who had not been reading. "She had more of an excuse than any of us. That company...fourteen years. Me? Seven, with these addenda. You? Just the latter."

"The new one was forty on, right? That's why your book--"

"Yes, that's why. You are dead eager to obliterate this army, aren't you?"

"Yeah, of--"

"Just as soon plain dead. I don't think you understand the magnitude of your own stupidity sometimes."

A roll of hazel eyes. "Great endorsement. Should I put that on your business card, then?"

"We fight as we fight. Make your alliances where you can, no matter what they would do to you. After all, sometimes you have to make an alliance with the lion to fight the serpent until the battle is done." A chuckle. "Pity. The lion's been turned to a house cat, hasn't it?"

A frown at the laughter. "Analogies now? Another addition to the cryptic words?"

"You have told me to mix it a bit."

"And the laughter?"

"Sorry. The more tragic these things get, the more I feel like laughing."

"I can't accept that. You wouldn't give me that crap any other time. Something's seriously wrong with you."

Ignoring the statement, the darker-haired woman looked around the city, touching some wooden boards. They slowly disintegrated with her moving touch. "I killed a whole world once," she said, looking around, her face calm. "You can, too, if you try hard."

"I'm not like you. I still think there are things worth fighting for. We established that a long time ago."

"Aren't you?" She looked down at the other woman's clothes. "I think I know why you came back this time. You can't escape the traps you spin yourself, to protect your mind from your own sickness."

She hadn't looked down in all of that time. Hadn't since the incident that she had spoken of. Come to think of it, she hadn't even looked to the cryptic woman's dress until then. For all of her decaying appearance and touch, she was still clean. Shakily, the lighter-haired woman looked down at herself.

"Shocking, right?" She could not even hear it said.

The reaction was silence, as she stared down. Then it happened. The blood on her shirt and pants, both fresh and crusted, made her scream.