The first training session with Marlon had ended with me face down in the ground, and the aftermath wasn’t being shy about making itself known.

Summer had gotten the collar off, and that had helped, the immediate return of everything the thing had been suppressing had felt like surfacing after being held underwater for too long. But the relief only went so far. The weakness the collar had ground into me over those hours didn’t just evaporate the moment the clasp came loose. It clung, stubbornly, layered underneath the more straightforward pain of Marlon’s actual strikes, which had their own detailed catalogue of complaints to file. My abdomen, especially, had well suffered...

Marlon had also mentioned, that tomorrow would be harder.

I believed him completely. And somehow that didn’t bother me the way it probably should have.

I stood in the park with the collar in my hand, just looking at it for a moment. It was lighter than it felt when it was on, small yet so powerful.

I turned it over slowly.

A collar capable of shutting down a Symbiote Host abilities huh?

More like returning to a baseline I’d almost forgotten existed. Without the Symbiote running underneath everything, I was just me. Unaugmented, unenhanced, the same person I’d been before any of this started.

And that person, it turned out, didn’t know how to fight.

Not really. Not in any way that would hold up against someone who did.

I stared at the collar and sat with that.

"What are you daydreaming about?"

Summer’s voice came from beside me, pulling me back.

I glanced at her, then held the collar out in her direction.

"I’ll need it again tomorrow," I said.

She took it and tucked it into her bag with a sigh that had some feeling behind it.

"So the plan is just, put it back on and let my father kick you around again tomorrow? And the day after that?" She asked, watching me.

"That about covers it," I said.

She gave me a look. "I don’t know whether that’s brave or just stubborn."

"Probably both."

She almost smiled at that, then caught herself. "I mean, from what I saw at the mall, you’re already strong. Really strong. You handled that well."

"That wasn’t much," I said, and I meant it in a way that had nothing to do with modesty. I looked at the horizon, thinking about it properly. "There are worse things out there. And I’ll probably be in the same place as some of them before this is over."

Summer didn’t push back on that. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

She stared me for a moment, then leaned over and poked my arm with one finger.

"You’re covered in grass and dried sweat and I think that might be blood on your collar," she said. "You should wash up."

"Yeah." I rolled my shoulder carefully, wincing slightly. "I’ll head to the sea."

"Open air bath?" She asked, something light in her voice.

"The air’s clean out there," I said. "Actual clean, salt and sea wind, none of the smell that comes with everything else now. And the light at this hour—" I paused, glancing toward the direction of the waterfront. "It’s a good time of day for it."

She smiled hearing that in agreement.

"It really is," she said. "That’s my favorite time out there. I stay until the sun gets low sometimes. Just sit with it."

We started walking without any formal decision to do so, falling into step together in the direction of the Boardwalk and past it, toward the shore. Summer walked with her bag over one shoulder and her hands loose at her sides, the evening breeze already picking up slightly as we got closer to the water.

The sand was warm under my shoes when we stepped onto it, still holding the heat the day had pressed into it, and the sea opened up in front of us, wide and dark and endlessly itself, the waves coming in low and steady.

It was also around the same spot where I had came with Cindy and Daisy back then.

The wind came off the water and hit me full in the face.

I stopped walking and just stood in it for a second.

Salt, brine, the deep clean smell of open water with nothing rotting in it, nothing wrong with it, none of the odour that the infected left on the air wherever they gathered. Just the sea, doing what the sea had always done, completely indifferent to the fact that the world behind us had stopped making sense.

Something in my chest loosened a little.

God, that was good. That was uncomplicatedly good in a way that felt almost unfair.

Just like back then when I came the first time here, it felt so good.

"I could sleep out here," I muttered, and I was almost smiling without meaning to.

"I’d advise against it," Summer said immediately, coming to stand beside me. "You never know what might come up the beach at night. And if you catch something weird sleeping on damp sand in the apocalypse, good luck finding anyone to treat it."

"I have a Symbiote," I said. "I’m pretty much immune to most of the ordinary stuff. Getting sick isn’t really something I have to factor in."

She looked at me with something between surprise and consideration. "That’s actually really practical."

"Depends on how you look at it," I said. "If you don’t mind being on the radar of an alien race, then sure. Very practical."

The lightness went out of the moment slightly.

"Right," she said quietly, and exhaled. "Sorry."

I glanced at her. She was looking out at the water, the wind moving through her blond hair held by her cap.

She’d heard about all of it, then. The Starakians, the bigger picture, the thing that sat behind all of this that was stranger and larger than a simple collapse of civilization. Marlon must have told her, or Maribel, it wasn’t the kind of thing you could keep contained forever, not when it was already shaping every decision being made around here.

I didn’t push the subject. I just looked back out at the water.

The sun was still above the horizon but moving toward it with intention, the light going long and amber, the sea catching it in broken pieces across the surface. The sky further out was already deepening, a rich darkening blue stacking up against the last of the gold.

It was truly a beautiful thing to look at.

My knees had developed strong opinions about standing, and the rest of my body wasn’t far behind in registering its complaints. The sand looked flat and soft and nice, so I made the decision and dropped myself onto it, and then immediately groaned as the impact travelled up through my back and reminded me that the back, too, had been having a day.

I adjusted, shifted, gave up on any posture that involved dignity, and just laid flat out on the sand with my arms folded behind my head, staring straight up at the sky.

"What are you doing?" Summer looked down at me surprised.

"Resting," I said. "After your father spent the afternoon using me as a practice dummy."

"You signed up for that, if I remember correctly," she said, folding her arms.

"I did. And I don’t regret it." I stared up at the darkening sky. "But I’m also going to lie in this sand for a few minutes without apologizing for it. I also don’t particularly want Maribel finding me like this."

"Why not?" Summer laughed.

"She’s taking her babysitter role extremely seriously," I said, completely dry. "I feel like she’s one bad report away from putting me in a timeout."

Summer settled down onto the sand beside me, not lying down but sitting with her knees drawn up, arms resting across them, looking out at the water.

"Well, you still have to prove yourself, don’t you?" she said. "Loyalty goes both ways around here. People want to know who you are before they trust you. So?"

"Fair enough," I admitted. "Met Deshawn and Petra today. Good people, both of them. That helped."

"Yeah, they are," she nodded easily.

I stared at the sky for a moment.

"By the way, is Deshawn related to Doctor Shawn?"

Summer turned and looked at me dumbfounded.

"Are you stupid?" She asked.

"I’m just asking," I said.

"You think that because they both have Shawn in the name," she said.

"...Yeah," I admitted, a bit embarrassed.

"That’s the whole basis of your theory."

"When you say it like that it sounds worse."

"Because it is worse."

I closed my eyes briefly. "I’m tired. My brain is not fully operational."

She laughed again, shaking her head.

Though, honestly, if I was being fair to myself, my head had been running badly all day and it wasn’t entirely about the training. Some corner of my mind kept going back to what Sydney had described. The way Mei had apparently been, in that hotel. The word rejected sitting somewhere in my chest in a way I hadn’t found the right drawer to put it in yet.

I left that alone and moved on.

"You should probably head back," I said after a moment. "Your dad’s going to have things to say."

"I’m not a child," Summer replied, unbothered. "And I already told you, this is where I come at dusk. This is my time. I’m not rearranging it."

"Sure, but do you usually sit here next to a man?" I asked, glancing up at her. "Because your father has a very particular set of feelings about that kind of thing. I’ve been on the receiving end of his attention enough for one day and I’d prefer not to add that to the reasons he works me over tomorrow."

Summer tilted her head slightly, conceding the point even if she didn’t fully surrender it. "He just worries. He thinks the world being like this makes it easier for someone to take advantage. I’m not gullible though."

"No, you’re clearly not," I said honestly. "But I’m the one he’ll look at. And I don’t have the energy to deal with it tonight." I paused. "I also have a feeling some of those hits today were, slightly personal, let’s say."

She pressed her lips together like she was trying not to smile.

I let that speak for itself.

"Well," she said after a moment, "you already have a girlfriend. So he has nothing to worry about."

I felt my expression do something involuntary.

Again.

Again with this.

I’d come here once with Cindy and Daisy, once and somewhere between that afternoon on the beach and now it had apparently been unanimously decided by everyone in the general vicinity that Cindy and I were a couple. Filed, confirmed, recorded in the unofficial social ledger of Marlon’s community without anyone consulting me about it.

The frustrating part was that I couldn’t entirely argue against it either. Not with any real conviction. The way we were with each other, the way it must have looked to anyone watching from the outside, I understood why people landed there.

I mean it was hard to hold back and act like a friend with your girlfriend...

But still.

"So which one is it?" Summer asked, tilting her head. "The girl with the broken glasses, she’s very cute. Or the really pretty blond one?"

I looked at her for a moment.

"Can you remind me," I said slowly, "why I’m lying in the sand discussing my love life with you?"

"Because I’m bored," she said simply, like that settled it.

I stared back up at the sky.

"I’m not discussing it," I said.

"You don’t have to," she said pleasantly. "I’m just going to sit here and come to my own conclusions."

"That’s worse."

"Probably," she agreed.

"By the way did you get those shoes back?" I asked, glancing up at her from where I was still lying in the sand.

"Yeah, I did," she nodded.

"Good." I paused, turning the thought over for a second before I said it. "Then I think you should stop going back to that mall."

Summer looked at me with surprise. "Why?"

I sat with the question for a moment.

The truth was complicated and I wasn’t sure how much of it I wanted to lay out right now. My Dullahan senses had picked something up the last time, something on the top terrace floor of that mall, something that had very much the signature of Starakian technology sitting dormant up there. I’d felt it and then not thought too hard about it, because thinking too hard about it meant deciding what to do about it, and what I needed to do about it was eventually go up there and deal with it.

Which I wasn’t looking forward to.

The Frost Walker had been enough. The Screamer had been more than enough. Every time I’d found one of these things it had come with a price attached, and some part of me that had been through enough wanted to just leave it alone and let it be someone else’s problem.

Except it wasn’t. It was sitting there, and sitting there meant it was eventually going to be a problem for someone, and that someone was probably going to be whoever wandered up there without knowing what they were walking into.

"It’s dangerous," I said finally, which was true even if it wasn’t the whole truth.

I could actually tell the truth but I don’t know. I preferred to keep it myself just in case she had some funny ideas even though I didn’t think she was that stupid.

Summer gave me a neutral look.

"I’ve been going there plenty of times," she said. "I’ve always come back fine."

"The last time you nearly got yourself killed," I said.

"The last time," she corrected me with a pointed look, "was when I went back to get the shoes you dropped and left behind. And I was perfectly fine. If anything, you seem to be the one who attracts disasters."

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

She wasn’t wrong, technically....

But that didn’t change what was up on that terrace, waiting.

"Then whenever you go to that mall," I said, "call me. I’ll come with you."

Summer glanced down at me, those aqua green eyes carrying something between suspicion and something harder to name.

"Why would you do that?" She asked carefully.

"Because I’m concerned," I said, after a moment that probably lasted a beat too long to be casual.

She made a short sound, somewhere between a scoff and a laugh, and shifted like she was about to stand up and close the conversation.

My hand moved however fast, catching her arm lightly.

"I’m serious, Summer," I said.

She stilled.

I looked up at her. The last of the evening light was behind her, the sky going deep and dark at the edges, and I meant what I was saying.

If something happened to her up there, if she went back and walked into whatever was sitting on that floor without knowing what it was, I’d feel it. That wasn’t something I could pretend otherwise about.

And yes, somewhere in the back of my mind, the practical part that never fully turned off, I was aware that going with her might give me a chance to get eyes on the Starakian tech. Maybe even secure it. A power stone added to what we had wouldn’t be nothing, and leaving that kind of hardware sitting unclaimed in an abandoned mall with the world the way it was seemed like a waste at best and a liability at worst.

But that wasn’t the whole reason. It wasn’t even most of it.

"Next time you go," I said, holding her gaze, "you call me. Okay?"

The wind came off the water between us.

Summer’s expression had gone through several things in the last few seconds and landed somewhere quieter, the sharpness softened out of it. She looked at me for a moment longer than necessary.

Then she pulled her arm gently away.

"O...okay," she said quietly.

I was about to thank her but she turned and walked off up the beach without looking back.