John took form next to a streetlight that probably didn't have a lot of job satisfaction. The illumination pooling beneath its giraffe neck bathed the front of an apartment building that would have looked a hell of a lot better in total darkness: The bricks and mortar were not red and white, but brown and browner, and the cracks in various windows were fixed with zigzagged duct tape and cheap blankets. Even the shallow steps going up to the lobby were a pockmarked mess like they'd been hit with a jackhammer.

The place was just as it had been when he'd spent his last night inside except for one thing: the yellow Condemned notice that had been nailed to the front door.

File that under Well, duh.

As Xhex came out of the shadows and joined him, he did his best to project nothing but a calm dissociation... and knew he was failing. This grand tour of the shitscape of his earlier life was harder to go through than he'd thought, but it was like an amusement park ride. Once you got on and the cart got rolling, there was no reaching for the off/stop button.

Who knew that his existence should have come with a warning for pregnant ladies and epileptics.

Yeah, there was no stopping this; she'd totally tweak to him not finishing it. She seemed to know everything he was feeling--and that would include the sense of failure that would rip through him if he pulled out early.

"You ended up here?" she whispered.

Nodding, he led her past the front of the building and around the corner to the alley. As he came up to the emergency exit, he wondered if the latch would still be broken--

The punch bar let go with just a little force and they stepped in.

The carpet in the hallway was more like the raw dirt floor in some kind of cabin, all packed down and sealed with stains that had leached into the fibers and dried up hard. Empty booze bottles and twisted Twinkie wrappers and stunted cigarette butts littered the corridor, and the breeze in the air smelled like a bum's armpit.

Man... even a tanker of Febreze couldn't make a dent in this nose-mare.

Just as Qhuinn came in through the emergency exit, John hung a louie into the stairwell and started an ascent that made him want to scream. As they went up, rats squeaked and scampered out of the way and the eau de tenement got thicker and more pungent, like it was fermenting in the higher altitudes.

When they got to the second floor, he led the way down the hall and stopped in front of a starburst pattern on the wall. Jesus Christ... that wine stain was still there--although why the hell was he surprised? Like Merry Maids was going to show up here and bleach it out?

Going one more door down, he pushed into what had once been his studio apartment and walked... inside...

God, everything was just as he'd left it.

No one had lived here since he had, which he supposed made sense. People had been gradually leaving back when he'd been a tenant--well, the ones who could afford to get better places had taken off. What had stayed had been the druggies. And what had taken up the vacancies had been the homeless who'd seeped in like cockroaches through the broken windows and busted ground-level doors. The culmination in the demographic shift had been that Condemned notice, the building having officially been declared dead, the cancer of declining fortune claiming everything but the shell.

As he looked at the Flex magazine he'd left on the twin bed by the window, reality warped on him, dragging him back even as his shitkickers were firmly planted in the here and now.

Sure enough, when he reached over and cracked the warm fridge... cans of vanilla Ensure.

Yeah, 'cause even hungry, penniless scavengers wouldn't take that shit.

Xhex walked around and then paused at the window he'd stared out of for so many nights. "You wanted to be other than you were."

He nodded.

"How old were you when you were found?" As he flashed two fingers twice, her eyes widened. "Twenty-two? And you had no idea you were..."

John shook his head and went over to pick up the Flex. Flipping through the pages, he realized he had become what he had always wished he would be: a big, badass motherfucker. Who'da thought. He'd been a real scrawny pretrans, at the mercy of so much--

Tossing the magazine back down, he cut off that thought pattern hard and fast. He was willing to show her almost everything. But not that. Never... that part.

They were not going back to the first building he'd lived in alone and she was not going to find out why he'd left there for this addy.

"Who brought you into our world?"

Tohrment, he mouthed.

"How old were you when you left the orphanage?" He flashed a one and a six. "Sixteen? And you came here? Right from Our Lady?"

John nodded and went over to the cupboards above the sink. Opening one up, he saw the only thing he'd expected to find left behind. His name. And the date.

He stepped aside so Xhex could see what he'd written. He remembered doing it, so quick, so fast. Tohr had been waiting down at the curb and he'd scooted up to get his bike. He'd scribbled the markings as a testament to... he didn't know what.

"You didn't have anyone," she murmured, looking inside. "I was like that. My mother died in childbirth and I was raised by a perfectly nice family... who I knew I had nothing in common with. I left them early and never went back, because I didn't belong where I was--and something was screaming in me that it was better for them that I took off. I didn't have a clue I was part symphath and there was nothing out in the world for me... but I had to go. Fortunately, I met Rehvenge and he showed me what I was."

She glanced over her shoulder. "The near misses in life... man, they're a killer, aren't they. If Tohr hadn't found you..."

He would have gone into his transition and died in the middle of it because he didn't have the blood he needed to survive.

For some reason, he didn't want to think about that. Or the fact that he and Xhex had a lonely stretch of lost in common.

Come on, he mouthed. Let's go to the next stop.

Out among the corn fields, Lash drove along the dirt lane toward the farmhouse. He had his psychic cover in place so that the Omega and his new boy toy couldn't get a bead on him and he was also rocking a baseball cap, a raincoat with the collar turned up, and a pair of gloves.

He felt like the Invisible Man.

Fuck that, he wished he were invisible. He hated looking at himself, and after a good couple of hours of waiting to see what else was going to fall off on his descent into the living dead, he wasn't sure whether he was relieved that he appeared to have plateaued.

He was only half-melted at this point: his muscles were still hanging on to his bones.

About a quarter of a mile away from his destination, he parked the Mercedes in a stand of pines and got out. As his powers were all being used to keep himself masked, there was nothing left over for him to dematerialize with.

So it was a long frickin' walk to the goddamn shithole and he resented like hell having to work that hard just to move his body.

But when he came up to the clapboard house, he got hit with a surge of energy. There were three POS cars in the driveway--all of which he recognized. The Willy Loman rides were owned by the Lessening Society.

And what do you know, the place was hopping. There were a good twenty guys inside and there was a whole lot of partying going on: Through the windows, he could see the kegs and the liquor bottles, and all around, motherfuckers were lighting up bongs and snorting God only knew what.

Where was the little bastard.

Ah... perfect timing. A fourth car pulled up and it was not like the other three. The street racer's flashy-ass paint job was probably just as expensive as the souped-up sewing machine under the hood, and the undercarriage's neon glow made it look like it was coming in for a landing. The kid got out from behind the wheel and gee whiz, he was all spanked, too: He'd gotten himself some brand- new jeans and a sweet-ass Affliction leather jacket, and he'd taken up lighting his cigarettes with something gold.

Well, wasn't this going to be the test.

If the kid went in and just partied, Lash had been wrong about the fucker's smarts... and the Omega had gotten himself nothing other than a good lay. But if Lash was right, and the SOB had more to him than that, the party was going to get interesting.

Lash drew his lapels closer to the raw meat that was now his neck and tried to ignore how jel he was. He'd been in the sweet spot where that kid was. Reveled in the I'm-so-specials and assumed that glow would last forever. But whatever. If the Omega was willing to kick his own flesh and blood to the curb, this previously human piece of shit wasn't going to last long.

When one of the lushes inside stared out the window in Lash's direction, he supposed he was taking a chance getting this close to the hub, but he didn't give a crap. He had nothing to lose, and wasn't really looking forward to spending the rest of his days as nothing more than animated beef jerky.

Ugly and weak and leaky was not hot.

As the cold wind made his teeth rattle, he thought of Xhex and warmed himself with the memories. On some level, he couldn't believe that his time with her had been mere days ago. Felt more like ages since he'd had her under him. For fuck's sake, finding that first lesion on his wrist had been the beginning of the end... he just hadn't known it at the time.

Just a scratch.

Yeah, right.

Lifting his hand to push at his hair, he hit the bill of the baseball cap and was reminded that he had nothing to fuss with anymore. All he had left up there was a bone dome.

If he'd had more energy, he would have started ranting and raving at the unfairness and the cruelty of his decaying destiny. Life wasn't supposed to be like this. He wasn't supposed to be looking in from the outside. He had always been the focus, the driver, the special one.

For some stupid reason, he thought of John Matthew. When the motherfucker had come into the training program for soldiers, he'd been a particularly small pretrans with nothing but a Brotherhood name and a star scar on his chest. He'd been the perfect target to ostracize and Lash had gotten off on riding the kid hard.

Man, back then, he'd had no idea what it was like to be the odd man out. How it made you feel like worthless crap. How you looked at the other people who had it going on and would trade anything to be in with them.

Good thing he hadn't had a clue how it was. Or he might have thought twice about fucking with the cocksucker.

And here and now, leaning against the shaggy, cold bark of an oak tree and watching through the windows of the farmhouse as some other golden boy lived his life, he felt his plans shifting.

If it was the last thing he did, he was going to take that little shit down.

It was even more important than Xhex.

That the guy had dared to mark Lash for death wasn't the driver. It was the need to send a message to his father. He was, after all, a rotting apple that didn't fall far from the tree, and payback was a bitch.