I wrote a post a few months ago (What will it take for Spacex to send humans to mars in 2024?) which did rather well. However I focused only on Starship itself, not on any of the other pieces that are just as important to achieve Spacex’s mars-sized ambitions, so let’s take a look at everything but the big shiny rocket. To be clear (like before), this is less me predicting the future and more me looking to start a discussion based on the data we have and a whole bunch of assumptions, speculations and wishes.
Let's start off by making the mother of all Big Falcon assumptions:
Starship works as intended
This is a MASSIVE leap of faith to take. While SN5’s (and now SN6’s) flight(s) did alleviate some concerns regarding Starship’s ascent, and Superheavy doesn’t really worry me with all the falcon 9 first stages Spacex has to draw experience from, there’s no guarantee that Spacex’s re-entry, descent and landing systems will work as well as they want and expect them to, since those all fall somewhere between unusual and revolutionary. Nor is the rapid and reliable reuse guaranteed to work as well as we all want it to.
Although I will say people need to cool it with claiming Starship is years and years away from orbit; the raptor works and the tanks, plumbing and command & control system are up to standards, as SN5&6 showed. If Spacex wanted to (and had enough engines) they could bolt together a Superheavy booster, stick a Starship on it and fly both expendable to put 100-200 tons in orbit right now if they had a launch pad and a humongous crane. Big waste of money and engines but they could do it. Once Superheavy hops (successfully) you can seriously argue that Starship is closer to reaching orbit than SLS, despite the latter’s development being started a decade earlier. It’s just that reaching orbit isn’t Starships main goal; getting to orbit and back down cheaply and reliably is, which is another thing entirely. To me, SN8’s 20 km flight will be the big thing to watch: if that works, Starship is ready for orbit. If not, Spacex has a nasty problem or two to solve. For the record, I will say that I think the launch, ascent and descent of SN8 will go fine, but that the flip-down has a high chance of going very, very wrong the first few times.
Just to reiterate: this is not me saying what will happen, this is me speculating what Elon plans/wants to make happen in order to put humans on the red planet basically 4 years from now, to give people something to ponder on and give their own take. Personally I doubt that humans will really depart for mars in 2024, but given Elon’s repeated statements that 2024 is still the goal, and the fact that at least at tesla his timelines are getting a little more accurate recently, I have crammed the insane amount of progress needed into the next 3-4 years to make it fit. My timeline should not be taken as a prediction but as my best guess to somehow get all the needed pieces into place given the insane objectives.
So, if we make the admittedly stomach-churning assumption that Starship works and is flying reliably and reusable sometime (early) next year, what else should SpaceX be working on? To me, it seems they need four other pieces to realize their mars ambitions:
getting Starship to mars -> orbital refueling
getting Starship back from mars -> fuel production on mars
getting the humans inside Starship to mars -> life support in space
keeping the humans inside Starship alive on the surface of mars -> life support on mars
I will go through them in order from what I consider to be least to most difficult (no part is “easy” if you ask me):
Orbital refueling:
This one I’ve made a U-turn on. I used to think it was a major obstacle but recently have concluded that it won’t slow down Spacex at all. Why? Because in their Artemis bid, Spacex announced that they plan to use not just tankers, but fuel depots. This simplifies the whole operation massively. Spacex can launch a few custom Starships that consist of nothing but a giant empty fuel tank, something which they can probably build today. No heat shield, no fins, no payload bay, no life support, to maximize the fuel capacity. Only some batteries, a solar panel, rcs and a way to dock. Heck with the recent raptor improvements they might be able to stretch this type of Starship to have even more internal volume for fuel.
Now these most likely will have to be painted pitch black to prevent an angry mob of astronomers marching on boca chica with pitchforks, but that’s probably not a bad idea regardless. The fuel boil off in LEO will be a lot less than Starship will have to deal with on its way to mars due to a noticeable lack of shade during the transfer, so subjecting the LEO fuelers to as high a temperature as possible seems like a useful safety margin when designing for that.
The current Starship can hold 1200 tons of propellant with a large amount of its volume turned over for cargo. Given that a Superheavy can hold 3300 tons of propellant, let’s say that a fuel depot Starship can hold between 2000 and 3000 tons depending on how much it’s stretched, with the lower estimate being more likely. Edit: elon recently stated that they are pushing for Starship being able to hold up to 2000 tons of fuel, supporting my hunch that Starship’s length will increase.
Some back-of-the-envelope calculations show that a 250 ton Starship (100 ton dry mass, 150 ton payload) with 750 tons of fuel and an isp of 380 will have just over 5 km/s of delta V. Going from earth to mars using a hohmann transfer takes just over 4 km/s, while a much faster 3-month transfer takes around 4.8 km/s. This fits well with Elon’s step-by-step strategy. For the first flights having an extra 1000 m/s will most likely be invaluable, allowing on-route course corrections, meaningful maneuvers in martian orbit, as well as an easier landing, both due to being able to start the landing burn higher up and the fact that more fuel means more mass at the bottom of the Starship making it more stable during the flip and upon touching down. Later flights, after Spacex has a high enough confidence in their navigation, aerodynamic controls and landing system, can then start to burn more fuel to incrementally shorten that transfer time until they reach Elon’s goal of a three month transfer for humans.
Now what would this mean? If Spacex launches say three of these fuel depot Starships early next year (and they totally will have the means to build and launch these by then, all they need is a working Superheavy), they now have something to use their insane launch cadence for that is both useful and dirt-cheap. Each one of these fully fueled will provide the propellant for three mars-bound or two lunar-surface-bound Starships to reach their destinations.
Since the tankers will be able to carry between 100 and 150 tons to LEO depending on how far along the vacuum raptor engine is, this is 60 to 90 flights right here for Starship. If I’m Elon/SpaceX, all I’m doing in 2021 is flying Starship tankers DOZENS of times to bring fuel up to these depots for use in 2022. Now I know people are excited about a Starship launch putting 400 Starlink satellites into orbit in one go, but let’s remember that those still cost $300.000 a piece to make, and that’s after achieving an impressive economy of scale (120 a month). One failure on ascent and there goes over a hundred million dollars. At least for the first dozen launches, Spacex would be wise to start with fuel only imho, and move to include Starlink launches after a few months of successful fuel flights. It will give Starship a simple cheap payload to fly over and over again with minimal impact if it suffers a catastrophic failure on ascent. Simply learn and move on; nothing of significant value was lost.
While the engineers focus on decreasing the turn-around time and fixing whatever unexpected problems arise due to Starships re-entering multiple times (which there definitely will be, don’t tell yourself otherwise), the designers can spend 2021 seriously working on life support and ISRU systems, with both available to support the other should they need to. As an additional bonus, all these launches will greatly boost the confidence in Starship from both nasa and the commercial sector, paving the way for Starship’s utter domination of the commercial launch market from 2022 onward. Finally, maybe the realization that voting for Artemis meant voting for orbital fuel depots will give Shelby a well-earned heart attack (one can dream). /s
If Spacex can get 10 to 20 Starship tankers to orbit in 2021 (they can all be the same ship, they can be 3 different ships or they can be 10 different ships depending on how successful they are in their re-use objectives by then), it will give them a much easier time in 2022; “simply” fly the mars-bound or moon-bound Starship to LEO, dock with the depot and perform a single large fuel transfer. This way Spacex won’t have to worry about keeping a dozen Starship tankers in orbit at a time.
As for orbital refueling itself (wow, went a little bit of topic there), I don't see any major hurdles: if Starship’s fuel lines can handle the pressures of being fueled on the pad through the Superheavy booster as is currently the plan, than all Spacex needs to do is not exceed those pressures during on-orbit fuel transfers, which really should not be hard so long as they take their time with them.
Life support on mars
This might surprise some, but I actually think keeping humans alive on the martian surface will be much easier than keeping them alive in space due to the zero-g and radiation concerns that the latter will have to deal with. Consequently, if I were to suggest only one thing to Spacex from my very comfortable armchair, it would be to split the two: one type of Starship designed to act as a permanently inhabitable martian base that is basically an office tower with a big empty drained fuel tank and some engines at the bottom, and one designed for crewed use in zero-g as well as ascent and descent on both mars and earth. Trying to make a Starship do both is asking for trouble if you ask me, as well as greatly complicating the design (“the best part is no part”). Yes this would mean that these “base” Starships will not return to earth, but that is not that big a loss given the production rates Spacex is already achieving, plus having a few extra raptors on mars that can be cannibalised for parts or simply swapped with a malfunctioning raptor of another Starship sounds to me like good redundancy. Furthermore this split would have three enormous upsides:
1: The base ones are easier to design and build due to only being operated and inhabited under gravity after landing.
Let’s remind ourselves that if Spacex wants to send people to mars in 2024, it will be much easier to find support from nasa and the like if there already is a habitable structure waiting on the martian surface for them, which will have to be sent there in 2022. The easier base ones can be the focus of design in 2021 before being built and launched in 2022. Meanwhile the manned zero-g Starship will be granted another year to prove itself as now it won’t be needed until 2023, which is probably a good thing anyway. Even if Spacex can build these next year there is no guarantee that any agency would have enough confidence in Starship by then to provide them with astronauts. Taking another year to really prove Starship’s reliability as a launch and landing system might be enough (remember this means dozens of launches since we’re assuming Starship works) for a Starship to take on crew in LEO at the end of 2022/early 2023, probably at first using a dragon capsule to go to and from orbit as Tim Dodd and others have suggested.
2: It’s simply much safer.
Living and working in a separate Starship from the one that you land and launch in will probably be a whole lot more comfortable for the crew on mars. Sleeping well might be a bit harder if every morning the giant fuel tank a few dozen meters below you is a little bit fuller with highly combustible propellant than the day before. Compared to if the tank beneath you is completely drained while the Starship you will return in sits a few miles away being steadily refueled with you only returning to it a few hours/days before launch. Good back-up in terms of life support systems too; if something is really vitally needed you can take it with you from the landelauncher upon arrival or from the base/habitat upon leaving, as only one at a time will be housing crew. I’m sure nasa would be much more comfortable with this system too.
3: This base/habitat Starship would be perfect for nasa’s Artemis program:
While I don’t agree with Zubrin on a lot of things (seriously, he needs to stop with the whole mini-starship idea, it’s not gonna happen), he is right when he says that starship as a lunar ascent vehicle makes very little sense imo. It would be a huge investment of fuel and time for no real gain besides funding and nasa support, the latter of which is all but assured if Starship works. If instead Spacex offered Starship as a lunar base and suggested that nasa use the landers from the other two companies to go to and from the lunar surface, there’s no way nasa would say no. Imagine the offer:
“So here’s the deal: we will build a Starship interior to your specifications and wishes. Once built we will launch it, refuel it in orbit and fly it out to whatever lunar crater you want us to. Once landed, we fill drain every drop of fuel out of the tanks, lower the staircase/elevator and wait for your crew to arrive on one of those landers. It will have a thousand cubic meters of interior volume, aka more than the ISS, and you can have it on the moon in 2023 since we want to send one or two to mars in 2022 anyway. We’d like you to give us a billion dollars and a promise for martian astronauts in 2024 once we’ve landed it in exchange. Deal?”. Obviously Spacex won’t be that blunt, but I don’t believe that nasa wouldn’t fall over themselves to take an offer like that.
So what would this designed-for-gravity Starship need? Honestly, nothing fancy, which is why I suggested splitting them. Starship will have the unique luxury to simply, as musk has stated, throw mass at a problem until it is solved. As an example, let us say that a mars crew would number an impressive 12 people (one mission commandetest pilot, 4 scientists, 3 engineers, 2 botanists and 2 doctors). We know that they will be staying on mars for at least two years, but for safety let’s design it for 4 years. If they all eat like the most wasteful people on earth (cough, americans, cough...) they will consume 10 tons of food per year, with half of that being the recommended healthy amount. So.... let’s just put 40 tons of food on board. Done. 4 to 8 years of food just like that.
This is what using mass as a solution looks like. All Spacex needs is a way to store and preserve that food by either drying or freezing it for up to 5+ years, at which point that problem is solved. I’m no food expert but surely that technology exists?
Same story with water. 12 people will drink less than 10 tons of water a year, but here recycling is a well-understood and “easy” thing to implement. We’re able to reach 90+% efficiency on the ISS I think (if I’m wrong feel free to correct me), so if Spacex gets anywhere close to that (anything over 50% will do) they can put 20 or 30 tons of water on board Starship and for all intents and purposes have an unlimited supply. Recycling CO2 back into O2 is a solved problem that basically only requires power which Starship will have plenty of.
Also keep in mind that the above figures don’t assume food production or recycling, higher efficiency or using martian resources like water ice, any one of which would make surviving on mars for a few years a non-issue.
So… is that it? Well... yeah, pretty much. Spacex will need to design some ways to control temperature, humidity and (human) waste disposal as well as provide communication and spacesuits for the astronauts, but these are by no means show stoppers, especially with help from nasa and all the lessons learned from dragon. As for spare parts they can either take a 3D-printer or simply a literal ton worth of the more important components, or both if they want to.
None of the above is easy, but none of it is something that Spacex cannot obtain or build in a year (that year being 2021).
I have a design in my head for how this thing would look like on the inside but I’m a pretty bad programmemodeller. If someone who is good at that wants to model and render it and read my far too detailed description feel free to ask. Just be prepared for a very long response comment.
Life support in space
This is where things start to get “actually” difficult even if Starship works. Keeping astronauts alive during the 6+ month trip to mars will be easy. Keeping them healthy and in good condition will be very hard. Like I said with the mars base Starship, food, water and air won’t be a problem. Even basic water recycling and CO2 scrubbers will keep the crew alive just fine. Put 10 tons of food and 10 tons of water on board and there’s your problem solved. Even if they have to abort the martian landing on-route for some reason and slingshot back to earth they will be fine as they will have 1 to 2 years or more of food, water and air. No, the two big problems will be radiation and weightlessness. On mars neither of these factors are a show stopper: The gravity most likely will be fine and mars and its atmosphere will shield you from some/much of the cosmic rays, while putting the radiation shelter right below your 40 tons of food with your 20-30 tons of water surrounding it will protect you reasonably well from solar storms. None of these “easy fixes” is available in interplanetary space, as there is no planet to create gravity or block radiation (shocking I know), nor will these ones be as full of food and water to use as shielding since they will be carrying much more cargo and scientific instruments. No reason not to if there is already a base Starship full of food and water waiting on mars.
The simplest way to solve the radiation problem is some sort of physical shielding material in the walls (maybe hydrogen-rich foam?) and a solar storm shelter which is surrounded by all of the food and water on board. Whatever Spacex comes up with, this is something that I hope they work very closely with nasa on. The main problem is that they will not have much time to test this theoretical solution with humans on board until probably 2023. At the earliest Starship will be flying with crew on board in 2022, and even that’s jaw-droppingly aggressive. It would probably require Starship to reach falcon 9’s current amount of launches (a 100 basically) in less than two years (aka, one orbital launch every week on average) with little to no failures before nasa would trust Starship to launch and land safely, since I don’t see any sign of Spacex adding a launch abort system or changing the landing sequence. For the first few flights they can use a dragon to shuttle between a Starship in LEO and earth’s surface, but they can only do that a few times before the costs in both money and disposed falcon 9 second stages start adding up. No humans have ever gone beyond the earth-moon system, and no human has gone beyond earth’s magnetic shield since 1972, so this part very much has a possibility of providing some unwelcome unknown unknowns.
There is another big thing though that I think too many people ignore: weightlessness. The first flights to mars will take at least 6 months. Even with exercise, I think it’s fair to say that astronauts currently do not have the muscle and bone strength to stand up and walk by themselves after returning from a 6 month mission on the ISS without help. Mars’ lower gravity might help them recuperate faster, but this too is a complete unknown that neither nasa nor Spacex will or should count on imho. So far I’ve seen only two solutions suggested: lots of exercise on-route combined with simply letting the crew recover slowly once they land on mars, or tethering two starships together and spinning them. I don’t think either one will be an option. The first one is probably not enough, and the second one is too risky. Nasa would almost certainly go pale with that amount of inhabited mass under constant loads and stresses from circular acceleration, even if Spacex can make it work mechanically.
The only alternative I can come up with is this (and since I don’t believe for a second that I’m smarter than the teams at Spacex I’d very much appreciate someone more knowledgeable to explain to me where my thinking is flawed): You place a ring inside the pressurised part of Starship 8 meters in diameter and 3 meters in height, connected to a central pole that is bolted to the floors above and below but is free to spin. You put the sleeping accommodations on the inside of this ring with your head facing towards the centre. At the start of the sleeping shift, you spin the ring up to a lateral speed where you feel your back being pushed into the wall at a force of one g. Since your entire body is experiencing the same acceleration at every part, as the radius between your head and the pole and your feet and the pole is constant, it shouldn’t be nauseating. If there are walls on all sides of you (and one door) so that you don’t see the rotation, and your “bed” is slanted slightly to account for the coriolis effect, would it not feel just like regular gravity? Big bonus: you can start at one g and slowly move to 0.38 g over the course of several months to acclimate to mars. Small bonus: if you’re willing to pay the power cost, putting some big scoops or buckets on the outside of this ring might help with circulating the air around the ship since it will be spinning quite fast. Finally you could also spin it faster to do exercises like push-ups (basically any effort where your body remains more or less fixed to the floor could work), meaning you could compensate for being in zero g most of the day by sleeping under gravity and performing some exercises while under higher gravity [insert goku joke here].
I’m sure I have overlooked something, but it seems to me like this would work and be a reasonably effective and practical solution. Feel free to explain to me why I’m wrong.
In short, Spacex needs to find a solution to the zero-g and radiation problems by the end of 2022 at the latest. Firstly because dearmoon is scheduled for 2023 and I can’t see nasa (much less the US congress) stomach letting private civilians being the first humans to return to the moon’s vicinity since Apollo instead of nasa astronauts. If a Starship capable of sustaining humans is flying successfully in 2022 and dearmoon is set for mid-to-late 2023, I’d bet on there being effectively an order from congress for Spacex and nasa to fly american astronauts on Starship around the moon before dearmoon takes place, regardless of the state of either SLS or Artemis. And before you say that that would be massive hypocrisy, remember that these are US politicians we’re talking about.
Secondly because they really need to perform a 6 month trial run at the L2 earth-moon lagrange point to confirm that their life support, radiation protection and zero-g mitigation solutions work as intended. (This is why my money is still on humans to mars in 2026 because I can’t make myself believe that everything will work right the first time they try it). If they want to send people to mars in 2024 they will need to have this test done to satisfy nasa (or whomever is providing them with astronauts) by the end of 2023.
So my reasoning/guess is that Spacex will want the design of this version of Starship finished in early 2022, build and launch one that summer, and maybe bring some crew on board with a dragon to prove out its life support systems by the end of the year. The big year for this piece of the puzzle will be 2023, as this is the Starship type that they will most likely use for dearmoon as well as perform any major test runs in the earth-moon system, before the big launch of the first crew to mars in 2024.
Refueling starships on mars
So why do I think this is the biggest hurdle? Isn’t the sabatier process a well-understood and quite simple chemical reaction? Yes it is, and the problem as I see it isn’t with the chemistry, but with the scale, the schedule and the industrial processes that are needed.
Spacex will have to design, test and build a full-on fuel production system… and have it ready for launch roughly 18 months from now. Why so soon? Because there is no way, repeat NO WAY that Spacex will be allowed to send astronauts to mars, on a rocket that cannot get back to earth without being refueled, if there is no fuel production on mars at the time of launch. I know Elon has often said that there is a real chance that the first crew sent to mars will die, but I can’t imagine he actually believes that he can get professional astronauts and nasa support if he doesn’t take every precaution possible to ensure that they can get back home safely.
Just to be clear: I don’t mean that there needs to be a fully fuelled Starship sitting on mars when the first crew lands, but there absolutely, 100% needs to be a Starship on mars producing fuel by the time the first crew leaves earth. And this is not as easy to pull off as it might seem.
Getting the CO2 is a non-issue: mars’ atmosphere is so rich with it that you might not even need to filter the incoming air. Also as long as the crane/elevator on Starship works, setting up a large solar field won’t be that difficult provided Spacex has made the panels reasonably easy to unload and deploy (safe assumption if you ask me), and if the surrounding surface is flat. Given that Spacex has chosen a landing/base site in the northern plains (IIRC) this should also not give any major problems.
The main difficulty will be getting enough water to produce enough fuel. If Elon is serious with his recent comment about “~2 tons/day” of fuel, which I have to assume he is, that means many tons of water ice have to be excavated, moved, filtered of other materials, melted and separated into H2 and O2, per day, for over two years, with no one around to fix something if it breaks. This is orders of magnitude more intense than what we’ve done on mars before. To be blunt, we are talking nothing less than autonomous bulldozers, that weigh several tons and make Perseverance look like a toy. Scooping up and gathering a truckload of ice and rocks daily and dumping them into whatever device Spacex comes up with to separate out the ice, melt it and split it into hydrogen and oxygen (of which the former probably must be combined with CO2 and turned into methane immediately given its habit of not liking being stored and subsequently floating away), and not break down thanks to the martian dust getting anywhere crucial.
Even setting aside the fact that this operation will make the planetary protection crowd pull their hair out, the chances of it working as designed the first time are not high if you ask me. There is every chance that something wears out faster than expected, stops working due to some unknown unknown, or gets wrecked by a malfunctioning autonomous vehicle glitching out and driving into/over it. Once there are actual humans on mars, keeping these machines operational won’t be all that hard, but basic safety standards (and nasa) are going to require that the fuel farm works reliably on its own, for as long as it takes to make enough propellant for the first crew to return home safely in case of an emergency, before the go-ahead is given for that first crewed mars mission to leave earth.
I would not be shocked if Spacex manages to design, test and build a system that they think will work in 2021 and launch, refuel, transfer to and land it on mars in 2022, only to find out that some crucial part doesn’t work as designed under the martian conditions, leaving a fully habitable base Starship and an empty propellant plant Starship sitting on mars with all the accompanying parts needed to start a base (pressurised cybertruck rover, unpressurised cybertruck rover, water ice gatherebulldozer, fuel transporter, solar farm and guidance & landing beacon) present, but no way to make fuel. It will be the most infuriating and cathartic thing ever at the same time. Such a situation will almost certainly set the Spacex timetable back the full two years, as I just can’t see nasa allowing astronauts to get in a Starship and blasting off to mars if there is no way for them to get back yet. I don’t think the argument “Well once they are there they can fix the fuel farm instantly!” will hold much weight, since if something important has broken, what’s to say that something else will not go wrong unexpectedly that the crew can’t fix, leaving them stranded?
My basic reasoning is this: the other three parts can be tested in LEO or on earth with the results being representative of their supposed tasks, but this one cannot. The environment on mars is simply too different from the one on earth (especially the atmosphere), and the scale and ambition of Spacex’s plan means that the rovers currently on mars are not much of a reference either. There is no way for us to know outside computer models what a five-ton vehicle driving around on mars for years hauling several tons of regolith and ice around daily would go through in terms of wear and tear, creating a massive potential for unknown unknowns to appear where we don’t expect them. To put Spacex’s project in perspective: the first fully loaded Starship upon touchdown will probably consist of 99% of all the mass humanity has ever landed on the surface of mars. Let that sink in...
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So that’s my take on Spacex’s mars ambitions. If Starship works (big if, but it seems to be getting more believable by the day), I am reasonably confident about orbital refueling and a martian habitat being ready on time, but have reservations about the human-rated Starships and am outright concerned regarding the autonomous propellant plant working as designed. As I’ve mentioned, my money if SN8’s 20 km flight goes well is on Spacex getting a Starship to mars in 2022, but not sending humans until 2026, either due to the 2022 starships not performing as well as intended (or not performing at all if they crash) or due to Starship not yet being declared safe for human flight in 2024.
Now before I go ahead and request the longest-reddit-thread-of-the-year award (I genuinely think this post is twice as long as my previous one), I’m curious as to your response to the three questions that in my opinion sum up the whole thing:
1, Did I miss something important besides the four areas I covered?
2, If you agree that these are the major roadblocks for Spacex and Starship, do you agree with my take on them? Did I badly underestimate something that is much harder than I gave it credit for? Or are certain things that I considered difficult much easier than I made them out to be?
3, Regardless of whether or not you agree with my list, ranking and reasoning, what do you think Spacex’s biggest obstacle will be to sending humans to mars in 2024, assuming Starship itself works?
Looking forward to your responses, opinions and rebuttals.

Hi. Tim Collins here. I would have posted an update sooner, but the last few days have been… difficult. Before I go into detail, I want to make it clear that Steph and I are both alive and well, and safe for the time being.
I had planned on telling Steph everything on Saturday, after she’d had a chance to hang out with her friends, but… it didn’t work out that way. She left Tuesday afternoon to meet up with a group of kids she’d known since she was in diapers, and I got a text around 8pm asking if she could stay out longer. I didn’t see any reason why she couldn’t, so I said she could as long as she stayed safe and let me know when she was on her way back. I spent a few hours talking with Kathy, hammering out the details on how we were going to talk with Steph, and then played some Call of Duty while I waited for Steph to text that she was on her way back. When 2am rolled around and I still hadn’t heard from her, I wasn’t too worried She had a good group of friends. I sent a reminder text to Steph and then headed to bed.
When my alarm went off the next morning, I automatically checked my phone to see if Steph had responded. She hadn’t, so I got up and checked her bedroom, figuring she’d probably crashed as soon as she got home. Wishful thinking, I know. She wasn’t there.
I tried calling her, but no answer. I called her friend Antje, same thing. Finally, I tried giving her friend Leo a call. I was so relieved when he picked up the phone.
“Leo, it’s Tim. Steph’s dad.”
“Oh, hello, Mr. Collins. Stephanie went to Antje’s house last night.”
“Do you know where she is now? I tried calling both her and Antje but neither of them are picking up.”
“Oh. Well, I don’t know much about that.”
I recognized the tone of voice Leo was using. It was the same one I’d used when I lied to my friends’ parents. I sighed.
“Listen, Leo, if you promised not to tell me where she is, then fine. I just want to know if she’s safe, and when she plans on coming back home.”
There was silence on the other end for a moment. Then, Leo spoke, in a low, cautious voice.
“She’s not going to be happy with me for telling you this, but… Stephanie doesn’t want to stay in Germany anymore. She said she was going to find a way back to America.”
My heart sank. “Did she say how?”
“No. I don’t think she has a plan. She was very upset yesterday, and then Antje suggested she stay with her so they could come up with a plan. I think Antje was going to try to convince her to talk to you.”
That was a relief. Antje was a good kid, and I was sure that she would be able to get through to Steph. Even so, I was worried.
“Did Steph say anything about why she wants to go back?”
Leo hesitated. He probably didn’t want to tell me what Steph had said about me. He just said she missed her grandparents.
I sighed. “I’m sure she does, but I get the feeling that’s not the whole story.”
“No,” Leo admitted. “She’s… not happy with you.”
“I know. And I’m not mad at her, or you, or Antje. Truth be told, this whole thing is kind of my fault.”
Another moment of silence, then, “I’m about to leave for Olympiapark to meet them. If you meet me at Prinzregentenplatz, I can bring you to her.”
“Thank you, Leo. I’ll see you there.”
--
When I found Leo at the station, he looked miserable. I didn’t blame him. He was going to catch hell from Steph for this. I felt bad for the kid, since he was clearly uncomfortable with the whole situation, so I told him I’d follow from a distance and he could pretend he didn’t know I was there. That made him relax, and I was able to get a little more information out of him as we made our way to Olympiapark. Evidently, Steph had been thinking about this for some time, and she'd been coming up with stories to tell at the airport to convince them to let her on a plane to Dallas. She had also brought up the idea of sneaking onto a cargo ship, but Leo had talked her out of that one pretty quickly. I thanked him profusely for this.
When we got to the park, I slowed my pace and waited for Leo to get ahead of me. He seemed to be meandering a bit, and I was beginning to wonder if he was really leading me to my daughter when I spotted her. She and Antje were sitting in the shade of a giant oak tree, and they waved him over. Steph had her laptop out, and she didn’t notice me until I was a few feet away. Leo acted surprised to see me, too. Not the best acting job, but Steph was too distracted by me to notice.
“Dad? What are you doing here?”
“You didn’t answer my texts. I was worried,” I explained.
Steph slammed her laptop shut and stood. “Damn it, Leo, why the hell did you tell him?”
“He didn’t. I was looking for you by the station and I saw him, so I figured I’d follow.”
“So you just decided to start stalking my friends?” Steph screamed at me. “What the hell is wrong with you? Why can’t you just leave me alone for a day?”
“I told you to text me last night. You know you’re not supposed to have sleepovers without asking me first.”
Antje and Leo were standing off to the side. It was hard to see their expressions under their masks, but they were clearly uncomfortable about the whole situation. I felt bad for them, but I focused on Steph.
“Come on. Get your stuff, we’re going home.”
“No! I don’t want to go back!”
I was about to start one of my stern dad lectures when I had a sudden thought. “Then where do you want to go?” I asked.
“I want to go home!”
I raised an eyebrow. I knew what she meant, but I couldn’t help giving her a little bit of a hard time. “You just said you didn’t want to go home.”
Steph let out an aggravated screech. “No! I mean our real home! I want to go back to the ranch and just… just fucking stay there!”
“Why?”
“Because I’m fucking sick of you dragging me around everywhere! There’s a fucking pandemic going on, dad, and you’re just ignoring it so you can make me follow you around while you go work a job that doesn’t even need you here! I’m sick of it! I want to go home!”
“Okay.”
I wish I could have taken a picture of the sheer confusion on Antje and Leo’s faces. Steph was taken aback as well, and she stared at me before asking, “What?”
“If you really want to go back to the US, then we’ll go back,” I said calmly. Leo’s eyes were opened so wide that for a moment I wondered if they were going to fall out of his head.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Steph screamed.
I shook my head. “No. I’m serious. I’ll even book the ticket right now, but only if you promise me something.”
Steph snorted. “Of course,” she muttered as she threw up her hands.
“It’s nothing that bad, Steph. I just want to talk to you.”
“No offense, dad, but you’re the last person I want to talk to right now.”
“I know, and that’s understandable, but this is important. If you don’t want me to tell you, then you can ask grandma Kathy, but I think it’s better if you hear it from me.”
That got her attention. “Hear what from you?”
I glanced over at Leo and Antje. “It’s… not something we can talk about in public, but it has to do with your mother, and why I haven’t let you stay with my dad or grandma Kathy.”
Steph looked skeptical, but after glancing at her friends, she sighed and nodded. “Fine. But if you don’t keep your promise-“
“I will. Antje and Leo can be our witnesses. I won’t tell their parents about this, either.”
I saw the relief on all three of their faces and smiled under my mask. These three really cared about each other. It made me happy that Steph had such good friends.
Steph put her laptop back in her bag, and she hugged Antje and Leo before walking away with me. I waved at them as we headed out of the park.
--
When we got home, Steph dropped her bags on the floor and plopped into her spot on the living room couch. I sat on the other couch across from her.
“So,” I began.
“So.”
Steph was regarding me with suspicion, which didn’t surprise me. I leaned forward, my hands clasped and resting on my knees. “I guess you’ve known for a while that this whole travel thing isn’t because of my work.”
“Yeah.”
“Why do you think we’ve been doing this, then?”
Steph scoffed and shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know. Because you want me to be all multicultural and shit?”
“That’s just an added bonus,” I said.
“Then why do I have to keep coming with you? Especially when we were supposed to be in lockdown! People are dying, dad, we can’t just act like everything’s normal!”
“I know. And believe me, I wouldn’t be making you do this if I had any other choice, but there’s…”
I faltered. I knew I had to tell her, but I just couldn’t summon the words.
“Dad?”
I looked at Steph. She was looking at me with concern in her eyes. I was struck by just how much she looked like her mother.
I could feel the tears brimming in my eyes, and I bowed my head. “I’m sorry, Stephie. I’m so, so sorry. I should have told you this years ago, but…”
My breath hitched in my throat.
Steph’s entire demeanor changed. She stood and stepped around the table to sit in front of me. “Dad, what’s wrong? What happened?”
“I fucked up, Steph. I did some stupid fucking shit when I was in college and I’ve been paying for it ever since. I never wanted any of this to affect you but I couldn’t stop it from taking over your life and I’m so sorry.”
“Dad, what are you talking about? Are you in trouble?”
I took a deep breath and shook my head. “Not… not in the way you might think. Look, this… this is going to be hard for you to believe. I still have troubles believing it sometimes. It’s… it shouldn’t be possible. You might think I’m crazy after this, but I swear to you, everything I’m telling you is the truth. Just… just promise me you’ll hear me out, okay?”
Steph looked a bit hesitant, but she nodded. “I promise, dad.”
I smiled at her. “You are the best daughter anyone could ever ask for. All right, it started when I was a senior in college. I had this friend named Scott, and he told me about this creepy abandoned warehouse out in the woods, so one night we went to go check it out…”
--
Steph… took it well. As well as she could, anyway. She was stoic for the most part, until I got to the point where the creature had come after her for the first time. She had a small panic attack at that point, and when she finally calmed down enough to tell me why, all she could say was that it felt too familiar. I nodded and suggested she might have some memory of it in her subconscious. I offered to stop there, but she insisted I continue. She wanted to know what happened to her mother.
I tried to be vague. I told her that we didn’t know about the pregnancy, and that the creature had no interest in Katie, which is why we were able to see her before she died. Steph didn’t need to know all the details to understand what happened. She knew that her mother’s womb had been ripped open.
I held her hair and gently rubbed her back as she vomited into the toilet. Once she’d emptied her stomach and collapsed against the bathroom wall, I got a water bottle from the kitchen. She was sobbing when I returned, and I just handed her the water and sat next to her. I wanted nothing more than to hug her and hold her close, but that wasn’t what she needed right now.
Once she’d recovered, she took a huge gulp of water and rested her head against the wall, her eyes focused on the ceiling. It was quiet for a little while longer, then she spoke in a near-whisper, her voice raspy. “I remember the hospital. And the doctor. He’s the one who told me that mom wasn’t coming back because you and grandma couldn’t stop crying.”
I nodded, the tears coming back to my eyes. “I wish I could have been stronger for you, but I just… couldn’t. Losing your mother destroyed me, and the only reason I could pull myself together was because you needed me.”
Steph was quiet for a moment. “Will it do the same thing to me?”
“Not if I can help it,” I said firmly. “I’ve lost too many people to this thing already.”
“But what if I have kids? Am I going to have to do the exact same thing with them?” Steph began to cry again. “Why does it even care about me? I’m not you, I wasn’t alive when this thing showed up, I didn’t even know it existed until now, so why do I have to live with your stupid curse?”
She sobbed, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “I wish I knew. You don’t deserve this. You should never have been dragged into this bullshit, but that fucking shitass… thing doesn’t seem to care about anything besides eating its next victim.”
“Can’t you kill it?”
“I’ve tried, but I don’t know how. I wanted to make sure you could take care of yourself before I started looking into it again.”
“I can take care of myself, dad. You know that.”
I smiled and hugged her tight. “I do know that. You were ready to learn about this a long time before I was ready to tell you. Just promise me you won’t try to go after it, okay?”
Steph elbowed me in the ribs. “I’m not that stupid, dad. You’re the one who keeps saying how I got mom’s planning skills.”
I laughed. “You did, but you also got my tendency to do stupid, impulsive shit.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not going to repeat your mistakes,” Steph declared as she shakily got to her feet. “There’s got to be something about this thing online. If we do enough research-“
“Why did I know you were going to say that?” I laughed. “Don’t worry about it right now, Steph.”
“But-“
“We’ll have plenty of time to do research when we go see grandma Kathy,” I said. “But I want you to take it easy today. I’ve got stuff to do before we head back to the states.”
Steph rolled her eyes and gave an exaggerated sigh. “Ugh, fine. But I still want to see you book the tickets.”
I smiled. “I’m kind of surprised how easily you’re believing all this.”
“Yeah, well, me too,” Steph replied as she walked into the kitchen. “I mean, it sounds like bullshit. Or a shitty-ass prank that only an asshole with a shitty sense of humor would pull.”
“Well, I am an asshole with a shitty sense of humor,” I said with a smirk, causing Steph to laugh as she pulled a pizza from the freezer. “But this isn’t a prank, and as much as I wish this was all a bunch of bullshit, it’s not. It’s real.”
“Yeah. It’s weird, but when you talked about it finding me when I was little…” Steph shuddered, and she looked like she was going to be sick again, but she took a deep breath and continued. “It sounded… familiar, I guess? Like, I can’t remember it happening, but I just get this weird sense of déjà vu. I can almost picture this thing walking through grandma’s yard towards me…”
She stopped and suppressed a sob. I rubbed her back. “You okay?”
“Y-yeah. It’s just… I never told you, but sometimes I have this… this nightmare, where something’s following me. I can never really see it, it’s just this… weird, tall shadow, but it’s always coming straight for me.”
She stood still for a moment, staring at the baking sheet she’d gotten out for the pizza, then looked up at me. “Do you think it’s coming for me in my dreams?”
It was my turn to feel sick, but I put on a brave face. “Nah, you’re fine. If it could come for people in their sleep it would’ve done it to me a long time ago.”
Steph looked skeptical for a moment, but she either accepted my words or was willing to humor me, as she didn’t bring it up again. Instead, she put the pizza in the oven, and we shifted the conversation to other, happier things as we waited for our food.
--
We got to California a day later. Steph was doing surprisingly well, considering the circumstances. She’d spent most of our remaining time in Munich going over her mother’s notes and doing some research of her own. She also read my posts here and would like to thank everyone who told me to stop dragging my feet and tell her what’s going on.
Steph spent most of the first two days in California talking with her grandmother. She had asked on the way over if I could give her some space, and I was happy to oblige. I had some other things I wanted to do, anyway. Some of you were curious about the warehouse, so I decided to dig deeper into the history there. I was also able to get in touch with a man who specialized in the paranormal. His name was Frank Henderson, and he was very interested to hear about my situation. He’d never encountered this creature before, but after I told him everything I knew about it, he told me he had a few theories and that he wanted to meet in person. I talked it over with Kathy and Steph and we decided to meet him at a park in Los Angeles.
Let me tell you, Frank was not what I expected. He’s a bit… odd, to be sure, but friendly, and extremely kind and sympathetic. He’d lost his younger brother to a supernatural entity when he was a kid, and that was why he was in this line of work. He was determined to help us find a solution for Steph’s sake; he hated creatures that targeted children.
The first thing he wanted to do was visit the warehouse. Well, he wanted to see the creature first, but since it was somewhere in Tennessee at the time – not to mention the whole ‘invisible to everyone except its targets’ thing – he settled for the warehouse. Steph wanted to come, too, but I was worried that her presence could trigger something, so I convinced her to stay at home after promising I’d take plenty of pictures and video.
The trip to the warehouse was uneventful. Frank’s equipment didn’t pick up any of the usual signs of paranormal activity, and hardly anything had changed since that fateful night nearly twenty years ago. Just some new graffiti, more trash littering the floor, and a mattress lying on the ground just past the entrance. Other than a few stains on the mattress that indicated an… amorous encounter, there was nothing interesting about it.
We found the blood message again. There was some graffiti covering bits of it, but it was still legible. Don’t stop moving. The words had a much more chilling effect on me this time around. I wondered whose blood it was, as I didn’t think a victim of the creature could have written it once it had caught them. Frank did more of his usual tests in the room, then pulled out a candle and a satchel, along with a few other things that were very out of place with all his modern technology. He said he was going to try a ritual, and that he needed me to leave the room for a while. I was a little concerned, but I agreed and said I would take a look around outside. Frank nodded and waved a hand at me as he focused on preparing his ritual.
I walked around the parking lot for a while, thinking of the first night I’d come to this place. I could still remember the exact place the creature had stood while it tried to get into Scott’s car. I felt sick as I remembered the look of terror on Sam’s face as she screamed for our help. I thought I’d done the right thing by distracting that creature, but sometimes I wonder if maybe I’d angered it when I threw that rock.
It occurred to me then that I could try to retrace the creature’s steps. Sam said it had come from the forest and gone straight to the car, and the car had been facing north that night, so I turned to the east and made my way into the trees. I walked for five or ten minutes, not seeing anything unusual, then decided to turn back before I got lost. When I got back to the warehouse, Frank was outside, looking at his phone. I called to him and he waved before putting his phone away.
“I was just about to call you. I was wondering where you went,” he said.
“Just wanted to check out the woods,” I said. “How’d the ritual go?”
Frank shrugged. “Didn’t get the results I wanted, but there’s definitely some kind of presence tied to this place. How about you?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. I thought if I walked the way the thing came from, maybe I’d find something, but it looks pretty normal to me out there.”
Frank gave me a pat on the shoulder. “Maybe you just don’t know what to look for. Come on, you’ve got me curious now.”
I sighed and followed Frank back into the woods. Despite what he’d said, Frank didn’t seem too interested in looking at anything as we walked. He’d glance at a few trees from time to time, but he never stopped to take a closer look. I followed him, trying to get answers as we walked, but he either ignored my questions or responded with, “I’ll know it when I see it.”
We hadn’t gotten very far when he stopped suddenly, almost causing me to run into him. “There. You see that?”
I frowned as I looked where he was pointing. “See what?”
“That boulder right there. Looks a little unnatural, doesn’t it?”
I shook my head. It looked the same as everything else in this forest.
Frank sighed and walked over to the boulder. “I know it’s hard to tell, but if you compare it to the other rocks around here, it’s clear that this one hasn’t been here as long. Plus, look at the limbs on the trees behind it. Some of them have been cut.”
I looked at the trees, and sure enough, it looked as though the lower limbs had been sawn off. It must have happened a long time ago, however, as the stumps of the limbs had almost been overtaken by the newer rings of the trees. Frank circled around the boulder and let out an excited exclamation.
“Hot damn, Tim, look at this!”
I ran around the boulder to see what Frank was looking at and stared in amazement. Someone had put a lot of work into attaching a chain to this thing. It was anchored in there pretty well, too. I tried pulling on it and it felt firm.
Frank found the end of the chain after a moment of searching, and he took a picture of the end before telling me to take a look at it. I did, and I noticed that it had been snapped in two. We looked for the part that had broken off, but it was nowhere to be found.
“This chain… I think it’s made of silver,” Frank remarked.
“Silver? Doesn’t that have some kind of special property when it comes to this kinda stuff?”
Frank nodded. “That’s right. Now, I’m not an expert on metallurgy, but this break right here doesn’t look like it happened naturally.”
“Do silver chains ever break naturally?” I asked.
Frank snorted. “I meant it didn't happen over a long period of time. It looks more like something broke it.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not sure, but I’m betting it was a bulldozer or something. I’m also betting that it happened around the same time the warehouse was constructed.”
I was beginning to see where he was going with this. “And maybe these chains were holding something prisoner.”
Frank grinned and nodded. “Now you’re getting it. People didn’t start to go missing from here until the warehouse went up, right?”
“As far as I know,” I replied. “But then why would they drag it out into the woods and leave it? If that chain’s actually made of silver, then wouldn’t whoever found it want to sell it?”
“Not if they dug up a monster at the same time,” Frank pointed out. “Plus, look at the anchor. I think there’s something written there.”
I wiped some of the dirt off the anchor with my sleeve. Sure enough, there was something engraved in the metal. Do not break the chains, or it will walk free. Do not look into its eyes, or it will follow you. Do not wait for it, or it will consume you.
I was stunned. Was this real? Had this been here the entire time, just sitting a few hundred yards away from the warehouse?
I felt an anger rising in me. This could have helped us. This could have saved Sam and Katie. If we’d just spent a little more time looking back then…
“God fucking damn it!” I screamed, kicking the rock in frustration.
Frank was shocked. “Dude, what’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy about this!”
“Oh, yeah, I’m real fucking happy,” I yelled. “I’m just so fucking thrilled that I wasted twenty years thinking there were no answers, and this thing was just fucking sitting here the whole goddamn time! We fucking looked, Frank! We came out here and looked everywhere to find something – anything – that could tell us how to beat this thing, and here it is! Here it fucking is, thirteen years too late to save her!”
Frank put a hand on my shoulder. I shoved it away, but he put it right back again and squeezed hard. “Look, Tim, I get it. You lost someone you loved, and you can’t stop thinking about how you could have saved them, and it hurts. It hurts so damn much, I know. But you can still save someone.”
I was quiet for a while. Frank was right. I was doing this for Steph. She had a chance to be free of this monster, and I wasn’t about to lose it. I took a deep breath and nodded.
“Sorry, Frank. Just… old wounds, you know?”
“I get it, man. I still lay in bed at night thinking about everything I could have done to save my brother. I can’t do anything for him now, but I can do something for you. For Steph. We can figure this out, Tim.”
I nodded. “So… what now?”
Frank began to gather up the chain. “There’s still some questions that need answers. This thing can walk through walls, so we need to find out if this chain can really stop it. There’s also the question of why you can see it when others can’t, and whether it’s really got a connection to this place or if it’s got something to do with its imprisonment, not to mention who brought it here in the first place-“
“Right, right, I get it,” I said. “Are you planning on taking that with you?”
“I want to take a closer look at it, maybe get an acquaintance of mine to look at it, too,” Frank explained as he placed the chain in a pile on top of the boulder. “I’ll probably have to come back with some bolt cutters or something. The chain’s already been broken, so I see no harm in removing it completely.”
I nodded, and we headed back to the car.
--
Frank got back to me a couple days later. He wanted to head east to find the creature, and he wanted both me and Steph to come along. I tried to argue that it was too dangerous for Steph to come with us, but the fucker went and told her about his plans. Steph has a way of wearing me down when she really wants to, so I didn’t have much of a choice but to let her come along. I made it clear that I wasn’t happy about, however. Even though Frank assured me that he would keep her safe, I still worried. I mean, how could I not? Steph is my baby.
We set out in Frank’s RV. Yes, he has an RV, and it’s about what you’d expect from a guy who hunts the supernatural for a living. Frank and I took turns driving and discussing what he’d learned. The chain wasn’t just silver. It also had something engraved in it. Words of protection, Frank called them. The same phrases, repeated over and over and over again. He’d also gotten someone to look at the broken end of the chain. It was definitely broken by some kind of heavy machinery. The attachment to the boulder was apparently made in the 1950s, so Frank suspected that someone had bound the creature to the stone and buried it in the forest under the assumption that nobody would ever find it.
As for what he had planned when we spotted the creature, well, he just wanted to test a few things.
We made it all the way to Amarillo, Texas before stopping to rest, and set out again early the next morning. We estimated that we’d encounter the creature somewhere in Tennessee, so it would probably be dark by the time we found it. At least we’d have less people around to see our confrontation with this “invisible” being. Frank said he knew a good place to stage our meeting. It was an old, abandoned farm with a huge field, surrounded by old trees and far away from any other houses. He’d investigated a supposed haunting there back in the day, he said, but it had turned out to be a hoax done by a neighbor who wanted to buy out the land. Said neighbor also murdered the husband, so the wife and kids had moved away, but kept the property out of spite.
Frank has a lot of interesting stories to tell. Maybe someday I’ll convince him to share them with you.
The sun was setting when we crossed into Tennessee, and Steph was texting with her grandmother in the back, so I went up to sit with Frank for a while. It was about time to start keeping an eye out for the creature, anyway. Frank glanced over at me and nodded before turning his eyes back on the road.
“You ready for this?”
I sighed. “I don’t think I’ll ever be ready, but I can fake it.”
“We’ll be okay. This thing won’t attack until it’s within six feet of its target, so as long as you keep your distance, you’ll be fine.”
“Great, more social distancing,” I said, and Frank laughed.
“If only we could kill this thing with the coronavirus.”
It was quiet for a moment before I brought up something that had been bothering me. “You seem to know a lot about this creature.”
“Your wife kept good notes,” Frank said.
“Not about this thing’s attack range,” I pointed out. “Did one of your rituals tell you that, or are you just throwing out numbers?”
Frank stared out at the road for a while before answering. “Tim, I gotta be honest with you. I didn’t just answer your email because it sounded interesting.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Then why did you answer it?”
Frank sighed. “I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure, but the thing is, I’ve been looking for this creature for a long time.”
I frowned but didn’t speak. Frank rubbed his head nervously.
“Yeah, so, I mentioned I started doing this because of my brother, but that’s not where I first got interested. It was actually my great-uncle who’s responsible for my obsession.”
“Your great-uncle? Was he into this shit, too?” I asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” Frank said. “His son was a victim of the Walker, and he dedicated his life to destroying it.”
The Walker. A fitting name, I thought. “Is he the one who made that chain we found?”
“That’s right. He figured out how to trap the thing, and then he brought it out to the woods, bound it to that rock, and buried the whole damn thing. He thought that was the end of it, but he made a mistake.”
“He buried it too close to civilization?”
Frank shook his head. “No, he thought he’d buried it in a national park. You know, someplace where there wouldn’t be any construction that could dig it up. But he wasn’t the greatest navigator, and he ended up being way off. It took so long for him to realize his mistake that by the time he figured it out, he didn’t know where he’d buried it.”
“How the hell do you not remember something like that?” I asked.
“The guy was old by this point. You can’t blame him for going senile,” Frank said.
“So why did you wait until now to tell me this?” I asked.
“Because I wanted to be sure, and then I just didn’t know how to bring it up,” Frank explained. “You should understand how that is, right?”
I sighed. Considering how long it had taken me to tell Steph about the Walker, I wasn’t really fit to judge. “So how come it took you so long to find this thing?” I asked.
“I’ve been busy,” Frank said. “The Walker isn’t the only dangerous entity out there killing people. In fact, it’s one of the least threatening creatures I know of. And I don’t mean to say that it’s not threatening. There’s just a lot out there that’s worse. Plus, I’ve had to work. I’ve never been that well off, and doing this costs money. I spent most of my life selling insurance just to cover the costs of this stuff. Sure, I’ve been trying to find where my great-uncle buried this thing, but I was having absolutely no luck until I found your posts.”
“So do you know how to stop this thing?”
Frank shook his head. “Not exactly. I mean, I know what we have to do, but there’s one step that I can’t figure out.”
“And that would be…?”
“Making it solidify. The chains won’t work until it’s solid enough to bind, and it’s only solid under two conditions. First is when it’s eating, and second is when it’s waiting for a new victim.”
“That must be why it couldn’t get into the car back then!” I heard Steph exclaim from right behind me, and I nearly jumped out of my seat. How long had she been there?
“But it wasn’t waiting for a new victim when it was trying to get to Sam. It already saw her.”
“True, but it was still in the waiting grounds,” Frank explained.
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Whenever the Walker is done hunting, it doesn’t start right back up again. It returns to wherever it found its last victim and it waits for another one to come along. The area where it waits is what I called the waiting grounds, and when it’s there, it does some kind of ritual, and then it waits. It stays right where it is for six days, then it begins to walk in circles, each one a meter or so further away from the anchor point. It stays solid until maybe the fiftieth circle, and then it becomes invisible to everyone until it finds a victim. If it finds prey before the fiftieth circle, it stays solid unless the target leaves the waiting grounds.”
“So when it found us at the warehouse…”
“It must have been on an early circle. The other thing about these circles is that it takes the exact same amount of time to complete each one, despite them growing in size with each completion.”
“So the first circle must take forever,” Steph remarked.
“That’s right. And whatever speed it’s going at when it spots a new victim, it stays at that speed until it’s succeeded in its hunt.”
“So if it doesn’t find a new victim for a while…”
“It moves real damn fast. And like your wife figured out all those years ago, it won’t consume anyone it hasn’t made direct eye contact with. You’ll always be able to see it if you encounter it at the waiting grounds, but unless you look it straight in the eye, you’ll be safe.”
“How do you know all this?” Steph asked.
“My great-uncle’s son had a bit of an obsession with the creature. He saw it kill someone, and he spent years learning everything he could about it. Unfortunately, that meant testing some of his theories on actual people, but he mostly chose people that wouldn’t be missed.”
My stomach dropped, and I saw Steph’s face go white. Frank’s cousin was an absolute monster. I was glad the thing had killed him.
Frank’s face was grim. “You’re just as horrified as I was when I found out about all this. That’s right, my dad’s cousin was a cruel, heartless piece of shit, and my great-uncle was the one who stopped him. He used his son as bait and trapped the creature as it was feasting, and that was supposed to be the end of it.”
“But then it escaped,” I said.
“That’s right. And I don’t know how we’re going to trap it again without letting it catch another victim,” Frank replied.
I felt a pit of dread in my stomach, and I glanced back at Steph. She seemed to have the same idea I did. I turned to Frank, trying to stay calm, but I was angry.
“So which one of us were you going to sacrifice?” I asked.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. That… thing only has two targets right now, and they’re both sitting here in your RV, so who is it?”
Frank looked over at me, his eyes wide. “Tim, no, you’ve got it all wrong-“
“Really? Because you’re the one who insisted we all go together, you asshole!”
Frank suddenly slammed on the brakes. I jerked forward in my seat and barely missed hitting my head on the glove compartment. Frank put the RV in park and turned to me.
“Tim, you absolute shithead, do you really think I want to follow in my cousin’s footsteps?” he snapped. “I didn’t bring you two along to give that thing a nice meal!”
“Then why are we here?” Steph asked.
“Because I can’t see the fucking thing! How am I supposed to stop a monster I can’t even see?”
“But you just said you can’t stop it without sacrificing someone,” Steph pointed out as she got out of her seat.
“No, I said I don’t know how to stop it. That doesn’t mean it can’t be done!”
“So you’re just going to let it chase it around until a lightbulb goes off in your head?” Steph snapped. She was getting angry now, and I unbuckled my seatbelt and stood. I wanted to avoid coming to blows.
“Well, what else am I supposed to do? My goddamn cousin was too busy watching this thing kill people to find out anything about stopping it!”
I held my hands up in a gesture of surrender. “Okay, okay, I get it. Steph, sit down.”
Steph did so, still glaring at Frank. I sat down as well and nodded at Frank, who started the RV again and continued down the road. The sky was dark now, and we could only see what the headlights illuminated. After a while, Frank said we had about twenty miles to go before we got to the turnoff to the farm. Steph grunted in response. I kept my eyes on the road. We had to be getting close to the creature.
Sure enough, we’d barely gone a mile when I saw a shadow on the road. I sat up straight and nudged Frank. “Go in the other lane.”
“What?”
“NOW.”
Frank immediately swerved into the left lane. The Walker began to alter its course, but we passed it before it could cross over the yellow line. I let out the breath I hadn’t realized I was holding as we sped away from it and looked at Steph.
“That was it, wasn’t it?” she asked me in a shaky voice.
I nodded grimly. “Yeah.”
It was dark in the cabin, but I could still see tears in her eyes. “It’s just like the thing from my dreams.”
I got up and knelt by her seat, pulling her into an awkward hug. “It’s okay, Steph. We won’t let it get anywhere near you.”
Steph buried her head in my chest. We sat like that until Frank began to slow down. He turned onto a small dirt road and drove slowly through the trees, which soon gave way to an open field. I could see the silhouette of a house in front of us. Frank pulled up to it, turned the RV around, and parked it so we could speed out of there.
“Here we are.”
We got out of our seats. Steph stayed close to me until we exited the RV, then kept her distance while Frank and I unpacked. He had brought some floodlights, which we positioned strategically around the RV to light up the area. Steph watched us set up for a little while, but she kept looking back at the driveway. Once we were done with the lights, I came up to her and patted her on the shoulder.
“It’s going to be a while, Steph. You might want to get some rest.”
Steph shook her head. “I don’t want it to sneak up on me.”
“It won’t. We know where it’s coming from and how far away it is. If your mother was here she’d tell you exactly how long we have before it come walking through those trees.”
Steph took a deep breath and looked at me. “I don’t like this, dad.”
I hugged her. “I don’t like it either, but if we can trap this thing, then we never have to worry about it again.”
“But how are we going to trap it?”
“I have a few ideas we can try,” Frank said, coming out of the RV with a massive rifle. Steph stiffened, and Frank quickly added, “Ideas that don’t involve using either of you as bait,” as he set the gun aside.
“What do you have in mind?” I asked.
“One of your commenters suggested shooting it in the eyes. I think that’s a good place to start,” Frank said, gesturing to the gun. “There’s also holy water, a salt circle, a couple of prayer rites, and if we get real desperate, we can try the flamethrower.”
“What if you start a wildfire?” Steph asked.
“I’ve got a friend who’ll be calling the fire department if he doesn’t hear from me by a certain time,” Frank said.
Eventually, Steph was willing to go inside the RV and play a game of cards while we waited. Well, it was more like five card games, and she spent the whole time glancing out the window at the road. I tried a few times to convince her to take a nap, but she refused. She didn’t want to risk it.
I couldn’t blame her.
When we had about an hour left, we put away the cards and began getting ready. Steph put on her running shoes and strapped on her headlamp, and Frank and I checked over our equipment. I fired a few practice rounds with regular bullets before switching over to silver ones.
None of us spoke as we stared out into the woods. The silence was tense, but nobody wanted to break it. Then, Steph made a small noise.
I glanced at her. She was staring directly into the woods. I followed her gaze, and my breath hitched in my throat. The Walker was approaching.

First | Previous

^{Kings often dwell on subversion, although mostly of a different sort than what I find myself contemplating on quiet evenings. For subversion of the self, the issue is the degree of change one is willing to accept from a single source. The inevitable minor changes from life go mostly unnoticed, the gentle wearing of waves on rock or wind on a crag. Major change may be a tragedy, a friendship, a marriage. Many a man has been dragged to a new course by a determined wife or comrade, but do we term this subversion? Only in grumbled jests from the man’s abandoned drinking partners.
Should I consider myself compromised by the touch on my soul? I submit that its extraordinary nature does not lend it any particularly sinister aspect. I am not even the more malleable of our pair. Our conversations draw and redraw the mark upon me with every passing day, and were there eyes to see none would spy the companion who left with me for Sjatel in my dreams of late.
Excerpt from the collected letters of Goresje Di Sazhocel Selyta, Royal Archives, Ce Raedhil.}

“I think we have an agreement in principle,” Arjun said, leaning back to massage his brow.
Vumo smiled back faintly. “It would appear so,” he said. “Supplies and noninterference in exchange for your assistance in preparing our defenses.”
“Where we come from, there’s a saying that the, ah - evil is in the details, shall we say,” Arjun replied. “I expect we’re envisioning two entirely separate arrangements at the moment.”
The scriptsmith chuckled softly and rubbed a hand over his bald head, looking around the table at the others. “I shall have to remember that one for the next session of the ministerium,” he said. “Very well, let us revisit some of the items in detail. Did you have a starting point in mind?”
“There’s only one place to start,” Mark said, looking at Vumo with a dark expression. “And that’s with the Aesvain.”
Vumo frowned. “They stay here, of course. I had no plans to disclose their presence to the garrison abbey, with any question of future disposition to be settled after the threat from Asu Saqarid is dealt with. As long as they offer no threat to us and remain concealed from the garrison abbey, I am content with the current state of things.”
“We’ve got some objections, for our part,” Jyte retorted. “We want safe refuge here for the Aesvain.”
“I believe that’s what I just said,” Vumo replied dryly.
Jyte stabbed his finger down on the table, glaring at Vumo. “All of us,” he said.
Vumo looked puzzled for a moment, then his eyes widened. “Impossible,” he protested. “Keeping you here is one thing, but moving all of the rest - even forgetting the supplies and manpower needed, they are in no condition-” He blanched and bit back the rest of his sentence, managing to look slightly abashed. Jyte’s glower deepened, dripping with contempt.
“The fact that they’re in no condition to travel,” Jackie said softly, “is exactly why transferring them here is non-negotiable.”
“I understand your position,” Vumo said frustratedly, “but there is simply no way to move them. Most of the Aesvain are near Idran Saal, and thanks to you we have no keystone to activate the gateway frame we’ve constructed there. Bringing them overland would kill them, and even if they could be brought here there is no way to ascend the summit without alerting Draatyn Asidram.”
He sighed and gestured helplessly. “I can route food and medicine to them, improve their quarters, perhaps even discuss relocating them farther from the front given time. Realistically, however, I cannot promise more than that, not without damaging our defense of Idran Saal.”
There was a moment of stony silence before Mark rapped his knuckles on the table. “And what if you had a gateway in Idran Saal?” he asked.
Vumo raised his eyebrow. “That would require a keystone,” he said. “We currently possess three, which are in active use in Utine, Ce Raedhil and Setimen. All three are vital cities, our war preparations rely on each of those gateways being in operation. The only keystone we could spare is the one you left in Sjatel.” He spread his hands wide. “If you were to grant us use of your keystone we would be immensely and materially grateful, but somehow I doubt that was what you had in mind.”
“Ours is off the table,” Mark confirmed. “But for reasons I don’t feel like sharing with you, we already had plans to visit Idhytse.”
“Idhytse,” Vumo muttered, rubbing his chin thoughtfully. “We had never attempted operations there, it was too far afield when we had Sjatel practically within our borders. You believe there’s a functional gateway there?”
Jesse nodded. “We have reason to think so,” he confirmed.
“Even so,” Vumo said, “the distance is prohibitive. I presume you had to leave your chariot back in Sjatel?”
“We did,” Mark said with a grimace. “No way to fit it through the gateway.”
“No, I imagine not,” Vumo chuckled. “Unfortunately, that means that there is no good way for you to get back to our lands from Idhytse if you disable the gateway. By land or sea, it would require that you reach Utine, transit via the gateway there to Ce Raedhil, then proceed from the capital to Idran Saal.”
“So send a chariot to pick us up,” Jackie suggested. “You guys have some, right?”
Vumo stared at her. “That would be difficult,” he said slowly. “There are a handful of functional chariots in Tinem Sjocel, but they are not all equally capable. You’ve traveled that stretch of land before, so you know that the terrain is rough and the distance considerable.” He shook his head. “None of the ones owned by the scriptsmiths could make that journey.”
Arjun squinted at him. “But there is one that could,” he guessed.
“Belonging to Citsuje Di,” Vumo sighed. “But obtaining use of a chariot owned by the king would be-”
“Difficult?” Mark said snidely.
“Awkward,” Vumo replied, giving him a cool look. “It would require disclosing things to the royalist faction that they do not currently know.”
“You, keeping secrets?” Mark snorted. “I’d like to say I’m shocked, but…”
“You may make light of it if you wish,” Vumo said patiently, “but I believe you have seen by now that sometimes knowledge is dangerous. The scriptsmiths consider carefully what we share with others, and what the implications of spreading that knowledge may be. The royalists are less mindful in that regard, so we may expect that anything we tell them will spread to all interested parties in short order.”
Arjun frowned, running a hand through his wispy hair. “You think they’ll leak word of the Aesvain’s presence here?” he said. “Is it necessary to disclose that to obtain the chariot?”
Vumo shook his head, suddenly looking very tired. “They would certainly spread that news if they knew, but I don’t believe it will be necessary to disclose it,” he sighed. “No, I was referring to the state of the impending conflict with Asu Saqarid. I told you when I arrived: we cannot risk disorder in this crucial time. It is imperative that our preparations are calm and orderly, undisturbed by the infighting that panic would bring.” He hesitated, seeming to be on the brink of speaking further before shaking his head and looking down at the table.
Arjun stared at him. “They don’t know,” he said softly. “You’ve let them think that you have all the answers, that this is some manageable border skirmish. They have no idea how serious the threat is.”
Vumo looked up and met his eyes, giving him a small half-smile. “I am the expert on the silent ones,” he said bitterly. “I am one of the few remaining who has fought them in the past, and the head of the scriptsmiths besides. If I cannot repel this threat, then who among the Sjocelym could?” He laughed again, dull and quiet. “As I said before, we are not without our resources. It may be that addressing this threat is well within our capabilities, but to say that it is certain we could repel it-”
He broke off, then shook his head. “No, not certain at all, although the thought has not yet entered their heads. Scriptsmiths’ business is handled by scriptsmiths, after all!” The smile died from his face. “Asking for the chariot would be unprecedented, and if I do the royalists will begin to suspect that the threat may be without precedent as well. They will not know, but the seed of fear is enough. Some will move to protect themselves, selfishly and blindly, and in so doing they will expose others to their fear.”
“Fear is a disease,” he said. “One that spreads through expressions and furtive glances, one man’s hurried pace or hunted eyes. Release it and we will shortly be forced to fight this war on two fronts, holding ourselves together with one hand while our other pushes back the enemy. I have no doubts about that fight’s outcome.”
Arjun opened his mouth to reply, but before he could speak Mark stood from the table and walked around to sit directly beside Vumo. The smaller man looked up at him curiously, and when Mark spoke his voice was barely audible to the others.
“Let me tell you how it is,” he murmured. “You keep saying it’s going to take everything you have to win, but you’re already closing off options because you think you can salvage this. You still think that you can handle this without looking like a dumbass in front of the king.”
Mark grinned. “But you’re fucked. We’re all fucked. Maybe, if we work really hard, we might be able to get to a point where we can put a plan together. Right now we can’t even estimate how bad it is. We need intel, we need resources, and we need you to stop holding out on us because you don’t want to kill the mood at the king’s dinner parties.”
Vumo stared back for several long seconds before nodding. “I will obtain the chariot,” he said, his voice low and strained. “And I will think on what you’ve said.” His gaze sharpened. “One should always be aware of the limits of their capability. Good advice for anyone to heed.”
“Great,” Mark drawled, pointedly not looking at Vumo as he walked back to his seat. “See, this is fun. You want to keep going?”
“I suppose we must,” Vumo said, rubbing his eyes. “Very well. I have a list of artifacts that I would like to show to Maja for identification and analysis.”
Jesse cleared his throat. “You can leave them here with us,” he said, “and we will have Maja review them.” Arjun looked appraisingly over at Jesse but said nothing, while Jackie shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
Vumo paused, then folded his hands in front of him. “You have no intention of giving me a direct conversation with Maja,” he said. There was something hard and brittle in his voice, and an ugly pall flitted across his eyes.
Jesse shook his head, ignoring the attention from the others. “Not today.”
“We could have bargained for more if we gave him what he wanted,” Mark grumbled, scratching his head discontentedly. “I don’t see what the harm would have been. It’s not like she would take commands from him.” He darted a glance at the front door, as if expecting Vumo to pop through.
The elderly scriptsmith had long ago returned down the hill, looking an equal mix of hopeful and frustrated. In exchange for supplies and Vumo’s assurance of safety for them and all detained Aesvain, they would provide analysis from Maja to help the scriptsmiths best employ the contents of their deadly vault against Eryha. And as a down payment, Arjun was currently downstairs inspecting every spoke of the self-powered cart.
Vumo would return in a span of days via the gateway to bring the first batch of artifacts and to exchange intelligence on their mutual enemy - but not to speak with Maja. He had repeatedly tried to bring the subject up after Jesse’s initial rejection, but the answer had been the same every time.
Jesse nodded. “I know,” he said. “I might just be paranoid. Maybe it would have been fine to let them talk, but there’s something about the idea that I don’t like. Vumo is old and knows a lot - and he wasn’t lying when he said that a few minutes of conversation with Maja could yield big returns for him. I just don’t know that we would necessarily be able to pick up on everything he got from her - or that she got from him.”
He shook his head. “Honestly, though, that’s just a rationalization. I had ruled it out before I ever really thought about it. Whenever I think of Vumo and Maja talking one-on-one, I just get this sense like that would be something significant.”
“Significant how?” Mark asked. “Like he’s got some plan involving her?”
Jackie leaned back in her chair, staring up at the darkened ceiling. “Like it would be something that changes everything, that we could never undo,” she said tonelessly. A few beats of silence passed before she lowered her gaze to see confusion on Mark’s face and raw astonishment on Jesse’s.
“That’s exactly it,” Jesse said. “How did you know?”
Jackie shrugged. “Probably the same way you did,” she countered. “My guess is that Tija knew something, and even if I don’t know it I’ve got the memory knocking around somewhere upstairs. I couldn’t tell you why, or what might happen - I just know that we should have our ducks in a row before we let those two talk.”
“I agree completely,” Jesse said, sounding slightly dazed. “I should have figured this out earlier. Didn’t really even connect it to Jes before now. It just feels like intuition, or something you half-remember from a dream. The shape, but no details.” He paused to collect himself, looking intently at Jackie. “Then - can you remember it happening any other times, aside from just now with Vumo?”
She shook her head. “Can’t think of anything.”
“No, there was definitely another time,” Mark said. “Right after you touched the tablet a couple of nights ago, I suggested that we show it to Maja. You did the same thing, you were immediately against it with no hesitation.”
Jackie blinked. “I guess I was,” she said, sounding vaguely troubled. “I didn’t even think about it, it’s like Jesse said - I just know that asking Maja to look at it would have consequences.”
“I know it too,” Jesse said, surprised. “For the tablet, just like when I consider letting her work on my sword. Not sure how, but when I think about giving either of those items to her it feels fundamentally wrong.” He shook his head, blinking rapidly. “A whole lot of things are starting to make sense. Jackie, have you learned anything about the tablet from the fragments in your head? Something that might let us know what Tija did that makes it so important?”
“Not from the fragments in my head,” Jackie said, shivering as her eyes defocused. “But when I touched it I had a - strange experience.”
Mark frowned. “You didn’t say anything about that,” he muttered.
“It seemed crazy at the time,” Jackie said. “Still does. I wasn’t sure if I had imagined all of it or not.” She shook her head, closing her eyes. “I touched the tablet and felt lightheaded, and then all of a sudden I was somewhere else. A long, enormous room with high ceilings, and all along the sides were these alcoves decorated with statues.” Her eyes fluttered open, looking at nothing in particular. “It was otherworldly. I’ve never seen anything else like it.”
“I have,” Jesse murmured. “Let me guess - the light was cold, and nothing made a sound. The things in the alcoves hurt to look at.”
Jesse met her eyes and saw shared understanding there. Mark looked back and forth between the pair in increasing consternation.
“All right, someone fill me in,” he said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Back in Sjatel - just before everything went south, Jes showed me something,” Jesse said. “She said that when Goresje made this sword he somehow put fragments of knowledge inside it, things that were like the parts that made up her being. They contained techniques, knowledge. What she learned from the sword helped her talk to me more effectively.” He pursed his lips, glancing down at the sword. “When she showed me what it looked like to her, it was a place like what Jackie just described. A sort of hall, almost like a cathedral.”
He looked up at Mark, who was still anxiously shifting his gaze between them. “It’s a toolbox,” he explained. “A toolbox meant for someone like Jes to use, or like what Tija tried to put in Jackie.”
Mark blinked, looking at the sword sidelong. “So when you’re moving fast or doing the trick where you impersonate one of the pillars, it’s from the sword?”
“Kinda,” Jesse said. He waggled his hand back and forth equivocally. “There’s some things that Jes can do on her own, others she needs the sword for. But the sword makes her better at everything, more powerful.” He looked at Jackie. “For me, that’s a good thing. For you…”
“Yeah, we don’t want to make anything I’ve got in me more powerful,” Jackie agreed. She rubbed at her arm under the sling, flexing the fingers on her injured hand. “There was something else,” she said. “When I was there, my arm was covered in these glowing lines from the tips of my fingers right up to where the bone broke.”
Jesse frowned. “Lines like script?” he asked.
“No, not script,” she said, shaking her head. “Like webbing or lace, just this dense pattern over my skin that glowed like a qi coin.”
“Interesting,” Jesse said thoughtfully. “I never saw anything like that, but when Jes took me into the sword she had a strand of qim. She never explained it to me and I assumed it was just for lighting at first. Later, though, I got the impression that they were protecting us from the light in the cathedral somehow. The light is-”
“Dangerous,” Jackie said, shivering as she remembered. “You don’t have to tell me. It feels like it would shine right through you, and not even bones would be left.”
“So what do we do about the tablet?” Mark asked. “We don’t want to risk what’s left of Tija getting supercharged. As much as I want to try and fix it up, it might be safer to ditch it. We don’t really need the tablet anymore now that we’ve got the regional code set up.”
Jesse stroked his chin, looking thoughtful. “Maybe,” he allowed. “But think about it. Tija wanted to use Jackie and the tablet for one purpose - to kill Eryha. So if she built a toolbox out of the tablet we can be pretty sure that everything in there will be useful for that purpose.”
“I hate that you’re making sense,” Jackie muttered. “I’ll be honest, that thing scares the piss out of me and I want to chuck it down the mountain - but I think Jesse’s right. Tija kept going on about how I couldn’t hold everything she needed to take down her sister, so I’m betting she put just enough in me to keep control and tossed the rest in the tablet.”
All three of them looked over towards the corner where the tablet was tucked away in Mark’s bag. “So, we hang on to it,” Mark said. “Actually - wait. The sword and the tablet are both scary artifacts, fine. I can see why maybe there might be some issues handing them over to Maja. But why do you both get the heebie-jeebies thinking about letting her talk with ol’ Grandpa Vumo?” He raised an eyebrow and looked between them. “Doesn’t that raise some questions about him, if he’s in the same category as the tablet and the sword? And, for that matter, doesn’t it raise some questions about Maja?”
“It’s concerning that every time we’ve had one of these feelings it’s about giving Maja access to someone or something powerful,” Jesse agreed. “Especially considering we’re planning on finding yet more artifacts to give her so that she can fight Eryha. But at the same time, when I talk about doing that it doesn’t feel the same as handing her the sword.”
“Yeah, for me either,” Jackie agreed. “I’m not sure what it means. Maybe it’s just - hell, I guess I’m an asaarim just like you now, aren’t I?” She laughed, sounding wholly unamused. “Vumo said asaarimyn were guided down a path. Maybe this is just what that feels like.”
Mark shook his head. “I would get it for Jackie, since what she’s got came from Tija. But why would Maja load Jesse up with a script that would make him hesitate to hand her powerful items? She’s definitely interested in them.” He scratched his head. “It doesn’t make any sense.”
“I - don’t know,” Jesse admitted, flexing his fingers. “I can’t figure it out either, but I know someone I can ask. Someone I should have asked a long time ago.” He patted his sword in its scabbard and gave the others a small smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “It’s getting late, but I’ll try and have a conversation with Jes about it before I turn in. Now that I know the right questions, I might be able to get some answers.”
It was dark in the control room once more, and reflected starlight twinkled from Goresje’s blade as it lay across Jesse’s knees. Slowly, he lowered his fingers until they were resting on the bare metal of the flat, then closed his eyes. Inhale, exhale. He breathed slowly, trying to let the tension bleed out of his shoulders.
Inhale, exhale. Now that he was looking for it, he could spot a few times where he had made snap judgments about something without really thinking it over. Were any of those decisions truly his? It was a disturbing line of thought, and he pushed it aside for the moment. Pushed them all aside. Getting agitated would only delay his answers.
Inhale, exhale. He found himself dwelling on it and cursed under his breath. He was procrastinating. He was - afraid. He didn’t really want to have this conversation, but what good would putting it off do? It was overdue already, only happening this late because he had been too blind to ask the right questions.
Inhale, and the sharp salt tang of the sea tickled his nose. He opened them to find the familiar window open over the Ce Raedhil shoreline, stars and qim twinkling beyond it in the two halves of the world. The room’s decor had shifted again, and Jesse saw a selection of small figures on the end table - mostly animals, hand-carved out of rough stone.
“Hey,” Jes said, smiling and walking towards him from the far corner. “I didn’t expect you back so quickly.” She met Jesse’s eyes and her smile faltered. “Is something wrong?”
“Can’t you tell?” he asked.
“You know I don’t just snoop on everything,” she said, sounding wounded. “You deserve some privacy, and for me - I’ve been taking time to think my own thoughts, to try to see what they are. I can’t do that if I’m constantly exposed to yours. If you want, though, I can-”
She blinked, then stared at Jesse with tears welling in her eyes. “Oh. Oh, no, no,” she whispered. “No, it’s not like that.”
“Tell me how it is, then,” Jesse said levelly, stepping forward as the qim in the room grew dimmer. “Because from here-”
“I’m not controlling you,” she protested. “I’ve never tried to. I don’t even think I could. It’s you, it’s always been you.” She hesitated and looked down at the floor. “You know that I can’t see all the fragments I was left with,” she said. “I don’t know why. Maybe it was a mistake when I was transferred to you, maybe they’re just not meant for me yet. But I can sense the shape of them, feel around the edges. I think maybe you can too.”
“I’ve never had any insight into your mind,” Jesse said pointedly.
Jes shook her head. “No, not like I have into yours,” she agreed. “But the link is there even if you don’t have the tools to use it. I’ve always wondered if maybe you can see a little more of those pieces than I can.” She twisted her lips ruefully. “You weren’t built with blinders, like I was.”
“So you’re saying I’m accessing bits of you that you can’t see,” Jesse said, giving her an evaluating look. “But that doesn’t explain why you’ve got those bits in the first place.”
Jes went very still. The room was dark now, but Jesse could see the raw fear building in her eyes as he spoke. “It makes sense that Tija would want to keep Maja away from items of power, sure,” he said. “But why would a piece of Maja want to do that? The entire point of creating asaarimyn is to go out into the world and do things Maja can’t, so why would you balk at giving her what she wants? She clearly wants it.” He stepped closer to her, looking down at her wide-eyed face. “But you don’t, and I think you’ve known why for a while.”
Jes took in a shuddering breath. Tears marked the corners of her eyes, and she turned away from his gaze. “Yes,” she rasped. “Or at least I suspected. There were too many things that didn’t add up after Sjatel. All it took was a touch…” She trailed off, touching her right arm, then forced her head around to look Jesse in the eye.
“I should have told you,” she said. “I should have shared - but you had just started talking with me.” The words came out of her mouth in a rush, jumbled and desperate. “You accepted me, after all that time, after all those days hating me, hating what I was. I couldn’t - I wasn’t sure, I didn’t have anything other than a horrible suspicion until Jackie helped to confirm how marks from different sisters interact, how that was the only difference between… us.”
“I should have told you then, but I just-” She clenched her fists, looking up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “I was so afraid. Am still. Afraid of what all this means, of what I might do, that you might have been right to-” She choked off and began to cry, sinking down to sit on the bed. “I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed.
She was silent, then, weeping and shuddering in the near-total darkness. Jesse stepped forward and sat beside her on the edge of the bed, and after a minute she spoke again in a small, hopeless voice.
“Do you hate me?” the fragment of Eryha asked.
Seconds ticked by before Jesse sighed and shook his head, draping an arm around her shoulders. “That would be easier, wouldn’t it?” he said. “But I don’t. I - dammit, I can’t. You told me from the beginning who you were. Not Maja, not Eryha.” He gave her shoulder a gentle squeeze and pulled her close. “You are me, and I am you.”
The room rippled with a burst of color, the qim flaring to life around them. Her arms snaked around his torso and squeezed. He felt tearstains soaking into the front of his shirt, felt the soft tremors of her relieved weeping as the tension bled out of her. Jesse returned her embrace in silence and watched the light slowly trickle back into the room.
“So what do we do?” she murmured, her voice quiet and hollow.
It was the right question to ask, but Jesse had no answer.
---
Jackie - Page 64
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I feel like we ended up asking more questions than we answered. Surely I wouldn’t choose a chapter name just for a cheap pun, right? Yes, surely not - I have more authorial integrity than that.

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This is a long overdue post. Brought on my a half-hearted smile and a sage nodding of the head in agreement I felt when writing advice for this post.
I really need your help
You see it's the cheesecake. I really really deserve that cheesecake.
I am writing to you from a Holiday Inn motel room. I left my addict last night. Yeah, your Founding Mod, the Dear Abby of Advice, finally broke down, fell apart and rolled on outta there. Spent the last 24 hours in a coma of disbelief, relief, and exhaustion. The biggest decision on my plate was how warm I wanted the room...total bliss.
The saddest part. He is probably sober. I am not to porn police so I don't care. But all his other symptoms have become so onerous and stifling that I am unable to function anymore and have started to choke and die.
I have fought for us, him, myself, our families with the heart of a lion and the strength of a warrior, despite my broken soul and bleeding heart. I have been the little engine that could. Well, I cannot anymore.
The burden of his issues, of any addicts issues are just too heavy for another person to carry. Almost all addicts have numerous disorders that only a pro can diagnose. In my addicts case he has an OCD complication of Hoarders dystopia. His father also has the same symptoms, never diagnosed...as they say look to the parents....
They symptoms parrot the sex addicts so even though he may not PMO anymore he still has the other symptoms that throw ones life into chaos. Yet the person cannot see anything wrong with their behavior.
The bathroom has been in a state of remodeling for 35 years...but he's to busy to finish it.
He has never finished the drywall in any of the house in 35 years, but he has been to busy to do it.
Unfinished plywood floors throughout house..but he never had time to put in real flooring....
But you can sure bet during our couples therapy he made sure to point out that I didn't scrub the floors often enough. That was a highlight that will be seared in my mind forever.
I won't bore you with the details, but rest assured, I wouldn't have cracked unless the pressure was immense.
I have decided that for me to survive I need to find myself again. The real me. I know I am in here. I know I am beautiful, strong, smart, worthy. I know that I love myself.
I know that I deserve Homemade New York Cheesecake with fresh strawberries on top and a dollop of fresh whipping cream.
Follow me girls, WE are going to Maine for a little R&R.
Here is my story for those who don't know me: A MODerators story
Update: Monday
Rotten nights sleep, if one could call it that. 4 hours at most, Curled in a little frozen ball. Woke up crippled by tension so thick in my forehead, neck, down my arms and shoulders...the bra was a nonstarter. I was a horror in the mirror. Blotchy, old lady eyes puffed to their height of glory..not a wrinkle in sight if you could believe that. A big juicy cold sore had popped up on my lip over night. Worst of all..I left the effing house without a comb. I'm ready for Halloween early.
We are talking foul, foul mood. Then the piece d' la resistance? I locked myself out of the room trying to place last nights dinner plate outside the door. I just stood there staring at it dumbfounded for at least a minute. I even tried the handle a few times. No shoes, no mask, barley clothed...
Down the elevator I went. Of course I had to stand in line at the front desk. People looking at me out of the side of their eyes, I can just imagine what they thought. This is a nice hotel, I look like a homeless person and I am sure I smelled worse. If I had been my usual self, I would have been snarky and let out a cough and cleared the way...but I didn't think of it in my self-imposed humiliation.
I got a new key card and politely asked for them to send up someone to fix the heat.
I spent some time absorbing some support and sustenance from my subbies here (I love you all) and then made the decision to reach out to 2 good friends and share my struggles on a deeper level. They had not one clue. That wonderful false front we all carry to protect our addicts and ourselves from humiliation, disbelief and denial was hard to break past.
I made a few inroads, but finding support for my decisions was tenuous. Maybe they will come around. I know they love me, but they think I am depressed (Yes, I am) and am overreacting. That it will blow over. You just cannot explain something this traumatic to someone who doesn't live the life.
If I wanted to, I could send them pictures and video, plus send them to this sub, but I am not ready to expose myself in this fashion. The vulnerability of doing so, is just too much. The probable rejection of who I truly am superimposed against who I have presented myself may backfire and I am too fragile mentally to handle the outcome. I already have very few friends, to lose them would be devastating.
I have been asked many times to speak publicly rather then as an anonymous source, but like all of you, my terrors and fears rule me. Until I own myself, I cannot step into the daylight and enjoy the warmth of the sun upon my face.
Anyway, I had worked myself up into a crying jag by noon, the heat still wasn't fixed and I needed to do something about my cramped muscles. I found a masseuse, and on my way out, I screamed at the hapless desk manager about my heat, I mean really screamed, sobbing and crying the whole time. It was worthy of a movie scene. The look on their faces was priceless. I didn't even feel bad.
Got my hot rock massage, if you have never had one...it's the bomb! Totally relaxed all my knotted muscles and my headache went away. I treated myself to lunch then back to the hotel room. Finally slept..Yes the room was nice a toasty.
:)
My firs toe into the waters of "stand up for yourself"?
SUCCESS!
​

Transcribed some thoughts I felt were relevant.
Introduction

• Hezbollah can't be a militia against Israel and Syria but also a Lebanese political party. Hezbollah shouldn't think it's stronger than it is.
• I salute the Lebanese Army for keeping stability.
• Hezbollah must show that it respects Lebanese in their entirety. Hezbollah has clearly shown in these past days that the opposite is true.
• No one has been up to the task given to them. All of them were saving their own hide and clan. They will not succeed.
• I will take note of this collective treason. They carry entire responsibility.
• The 1st September plan is still on the table. It is the only option and there is no alternative, so it stays on the table.
• End of October fund raising conference is still scheduled.
• Meeting on Lebanon within the next 20 days. We will demand the results of the Aug.4 explosion investigations and ask the results be published.

Q1

• I think Saad Hariri was wrong to put a religious aspect to a specific ministry. This was not agreed in the plan. I concede that eventually, Hariri did compromise and backtracked. We should recognize that.
• Amal and Hezbollah explicitly decided that nothing must change. At every single step they said, "We will name our ministers". Berri admit to us that this was a condition of Hezbollah, that he played along with. I know who decided, Hezbollah. I understand that this means Hezbollah decided to not respect what they told me, face to face and eye to eye.
• If the Lebanese political elite are betting on a certain change in the US political field, they're also wrong. Because with each day, an agreement grows more complicated and chaos seems nearer.
• Time for a second try, for the formation of a government of mission without any connection to the Lebanese political parties

Q2
There are several options.

• A government without shiaa representation. This is not realistic, because Lebanese leaders are afraid of Hezbollah and are afraid of war. Can I promise to protect them using the French army? No. So this is not realistic.
• Option 2 is to return to a political government. It will be a status quo, and reforms won't work.
• So, it's not because I lack imagination but as long as there is no deeper crisis in the region (to shake things up), our option is the only option on the table. Gathering the parties around a government of mission.

Q3

• Do we have time to rebuild a new Taef? (Which was originally designed for the Sunnis, but has now been captured by the Shiaas?). No, we simply don't have time. It's too late. This is why a government of mission is the only solution.
• Taef was not meant to be a system entrenching corruption, but that's what it has done. And superimposed on this system is a system of terror, that Hezbollah has imposed.
• [In response to a Qstn whether Iran forced Hezbollah to entrench]. I cannot tell which role Iran had to play, I have no proof to be able to say anything. Did Hezbollah entrench itself because of Hariri's move or is it because of regional considerations, I have no proof.
• [You] are right that the non-coordinated sanctions by the US have tensed things up, and made things harder to move. Which is why my line is to coordinate with all players involved [including Iran], to get a joint approach.
• There is another approach, endorsed by some, which advocates for immediate war on Hezbollah. The logic is to attack Hezbollah and bring Lebanon down with it. I think this is an irresponsible approach, because Lebanon has already went through civil wars and no one can really tell how that'll end up.
• Advocates of this approach believe the compromise is impossible, and thus war is the only option. We must avoid this escalation.
• I also add that Hezbollah and Lebanon's Shiaas also face a historic choice; whether they want a democracy in Lebanon or if they also want to follow this approach towards the worst.
• Today, the choice is in front of Hezbollah and Berri. If they decide for the worst, there's a risk that they create the worst. (Civil war)
• Today, this system doesn't work. Today, a dozen of people are sinking an entire country and its people.

Q4.

• In a month or a half, we will re-assess. In 4-6 weeks, we will see if we must take a different approach that fundamentally re-assesses the situation, but I still think the time for such an undertaken is inopportune.

Q5. [I will not transcribe this in much detail. This will also be in the 3rd person, not 1st as above. I'm tired, and he's repeating what everyone already knows. Economic reality.]

• Discusses the Lebanese economy. Repeats what many of our experts said about the Riad Salameh Ponzi Scheme, the lack of reforms, the collapse of the banking system, the banking system being beholden to Lebanese politicians, the way money was smuggled out; etc.
• Notes how the banking system managed to suffocate the Lebanese system. Explains the Ponzi scheme. States that all Lebanese politicians did in the past few weeks was try to maintain this system, which exists only to smuggle their money out.
• Lebanon cannot make it without international aid, and when reforms are implemented the International community will inject aid; whose monetary value will be "massive".
• [Macron] believes a rebound is possible, but only if the political class understands that they must give way to reforms or the end is now. Then, there are shocks that will hit Lebanon, internal or external, that he's been trying his best to stop.
• No one will help Lebanon as long as it operates this way.

Q6. [Back to 1st person]

• I believe the government of mission should represent every sect, because a secular government is simply not possible in Lebanon; let's be real. But the important point is that none of those in the government are beholden to the traditional parties/clans as hostages.

Q7.

• [In response to a question asking why he accepted a delay]. I could throw the towel and give up, tell the Lebanese they're on their own. But know what happens then? Either a return to the current governance or civil war. So I will maintain this pressure.
• It is much easier for foreign powers to destabilize Lebanon as long as there is no government in place. And we see today the games played by Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia.
• I don't have proof of specific orders from abroad, but what I'm saying is that the less governance the more space for foreign powers to occupy. And this won't be for the best, but the worst.
• So you ask me, why didn't I abandon them to a system of terror? 15 days, you're on your own in the hands of Hezbollah. No. [I will not do that.]
• I engaged with Hezbollah as a political force, for the first time. I don't want to say there's no hope for a political breakthrough, what I want to say is that over the past 10-15 years Hezbollah has maximizes its power by playing on its ambiguity.
• What I mean by ambiguity is where Hezbollah is a militia, terrorist group, and political force at the same time. So Hezbollah MPs in Parliament have to clarify their game. They cannot pretend to be the democratic representatives of a democratic nation by terrorizing with weapons, and you cannot stay on the table for long if you don't honor your engagements around the table.
• I cannot say what choice Hezbollah made, it would be irresponsible. But if they indeed choice the worst path, then I must abandon this initiative and indeed join the worst path. [US strategy implied]
• I don't agree with them, but they are here. It's not I who put them. It's a segment of Lebanese who support them, whether by choice or by fear; and I respect that. And it is also the other Lebanese political forces, who in a way, allowed all this to happen. And there are some who decided to become hostages of Hezbollah in an explicit fashion, and no longer run their own political parties.

Q8.

• I believe the policy of sanctions and terrorist designations is an instrument of American diplomacy that has its limitations, as we've seen.
• I think that when we want to try to improve a nation, we must talk to all its constituents; and Hezbollah is a part of it.
• The main question posed to Hezbollah is, is it solely a political party or is it a terrorist force dictated by Iran? I still want to believe a breakthrough is possible, which we should see in the next weeks.
• I am not naive, but it is important to go to the very end before making impactful conclusions.

Q9.

• When I first submitted my initiative, I did talk to Rouhani and discussed our terms. But I did not ask him to intervene with Hezbollah, because I wanted to maintain my coherence. I always defended the idea to keep Lebanon outside regional politics, and I only asked him to avoid negative interference but I did not ask him to behave as if he were a Lebanese political force.
• All the exchanges I had with the other neighbours in the region had a similar vein, where I shared the terms of the interference and asked to avoid any negative inteference.

This was exhausting. Alot is missing, but this is the gist of it. I will refrain from adding my opinion in the OP, outside the few interesting points I bolded.