"You know, when Will promoted me to head mechanic, they spread rumors I was sleeping with him for money. Will's SIXTY-TWO, Alec. And married!" Nessy's voice rose again. "My dad nearly got into a fight with a few people over it!"

I kept moving closer, inch by inch, trying not to startle her.

"And then Systemfall hit, and I thought—finally, they would have something more important than bullying the mechanic dog-girl! Bigger problems to worry about! But nooooo." She growled. "I tried to help during the first day. I volunteered for ranger duty. Katerina told me, to my face, that 'dumb mutts aren't allowed on her squad.' Said I'd 'bark and give away their position' or 'run after squirrels instead of doing my job.' I don't run after squirrels! That was like one time when the mailgirl lost my Pradzone delivery!"

I opened my mouth trying to find the right words.

"When I left to find you, Alec? When I abandoned Ferguson to search for you?" She laughed, a hollow sound. "Kirra threw a backyard PARTY with her friends to celebrate me running away forever. She sent me photos of it on Pradstagram, the jerk!"

Krysanthea made a muffled sound through her gag, something close to a protest.

"Oh, you want to talk now, Chief?" Nessy mocked, spinning toward her. "NOW you want to say something? Where was that voice when your sisters were making my life hell? Hmm?"

She turned back to me, her eyes glistening with sparks of tears beneath the manic energy.

"And now? Now I'm trying to SAVE THEM. Save their SOULS. And they still won't listen! Still call me stupid! Still think I'm worthless!" She gestured wildly with the bat. "So I'm MAKING them listen! I'm fixing this! Because that's what good dogs DO!"

I was close enough now to reach out and touch her shoulder. "Nessy, you are not worthless. You're brilliant, kind, sweet and incredibly brave. But right now, you're not yourself. You've been awake for over a month, drinking God knows what from the local vending machines."

"No," Nessy shook her head violently. "I'm myself. I'm MORE myself! All the filters are gone! All the niceness, pretending to forgive and forget, turning the other cheek—gone! I'm pure now! Pure purpose! Going to Mount Shelf!"

"Let me help you then," I offered. "We can all return the artifacts together. As a team."

For a moment, something flickered in her eyes—recognition, perhaps even a hint of her usual self. Then she shook her head again.

"No. No team. Just me and you. Employee and Manager. They won't help. They'll fight. They'll argue. They'll call me names, bully n' harass me like they always have. Better this way. Faster. More efficient! I can't stop, I won't stop until I return the compass, the watch and the bracelet to Mount Shelf!"

"Nessy," I pressed on, trying to get at least one of the raptors liberated. "Kristi is our pack mate. Why is she handcuffed and muted too? What did she do to you recently?"

"She wanted me to free her sisters from their shopping-cart detention!" Nessy huffed.

"Uh-huh," I said. "And if I tell you to free them, are you gonna handcuff me too?"

Nessy's face went through a series of complicated expressions—shock, hurt, anger, and something like desperation all flickering across her features in rapid succession.

"You?" She laughed, a high-pitched, unnatural sound. "No, no, no. You're my pack leader! My best! My anchor! My tree! I would never handcuff you! I gave you the spider watch for rewinds, in case something bad happens to you. Absolute protection! I'm protecting you! See! See?"

I held her gaze steadily, trying to reach the real Nessy beneath the mania. "Kristi is also our pack mate. Remember? We all slept together in the RV. We established Fort Pack together."

"Yeah but..." Nessy frowned, her brow furrowing as she struggled with some internal conflict. "She's also a lizard. A mean, rude lizard who let her sisters bully me. She doesn't... she doesn't deserve..."

"Deserve what, Nessy? To be tied up? To have her voice taken away?" I asked. "Is that what a pack does to its own?"

Nessy looked away, her tail drooping slightly. "You don't understand. You weren't there for those four years. You didn't see how they treated me."

"You're right," I acknowledged. "I wasn't there. And I'm sorry about that. But I'm here now."

She looked back at me, her blue eyes searching my face.

"And right now," I continued, "I see my friend who's been awake for too long and isn't thinking clearly."

"I'm thinking PERFECTLY clearly!" she insisted. "I'm FIXING everything!"

"Nessy," I said softly, "you once told me that the pack bond would help us overcome everything. That we were stronger together than apart. That we'd find a way through anything as long as we stuck together."

Her ears flattened slightly.

"You told me that when I was a tree with many hands in our shared dream," I reminded her. "Remember? When you were hiding from that magnetic lynx? Both Kristi and I protected you then. We formed a pack to be stronger together, not to handcuff each other when we disagree."

"That was... different," she mumbled, wobbling side to side.

"Nessy Rex Whitepaw," I said, using her full name to pound my words into her. "As your pack leader, I'm formally asking you to free our pack mate Krysanthea, and to refrain from threatening any more members of our group. Will you comply?"

She stared at me, her expression torn. The bat drooped slightly in her paws.

"But... but they won't listen," she protested weakly. "They never listen to me..."

"I will make them listen," I promised. "But as pack leader, I can't allow this to continue. We work together."

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For a moment, I thought I'd reached her. Then her eyes hardened, and she raised the bat defensively.

"No," she declared. "I've decided. I'm doing this my way. Going to Mount Shelf. Returning the artifacts. Fixing EVERYTHING. Then everyone will have to admit I was right all along! That I'm not stupid! That I'm actually HELPFUL and GOOD!"

"Nessy—"

Her eyes flashed with blue and then she vanished from where she stood.

A cloth was firmly pressed to my mouth and I tasted a chemical concoction of some kind.

"Shhhh," she whispered as I struggled in her embrace. "No argue. Only sleep now. Have a nap on the cart. Kristi can roll you there. When you wake up, everything's gonna be… solved n' fine n' better."

I pushed past drowsiness with all of my will, focused on staying awake, tried to claw my way out of the mire of chemical-induced sleep. It didn't work.

Chloroform was just a movie thing, right? Maybe this was some sort of bullshit Systemfall-made or alternative dimension extra-potent chloroform?

My thoughts collided into each other and then there was only darkness.

The calculator watch on my wrist suddenly beeped. Blood red letters filled my vision.

[LINEARITY INTERRUPTED. REWINDING USER.]

[SAVEPOINT LOADING...]

"What," I uttered, blinking red fog out of my eyes. I was standing in the shopping-cart retrieval employee outfit shed.

"Sam had to help Frodo!" Nessy declared, hands spreading wide in front of me. "We're going to Mount Doom! Well, not really Mount Doom—more like Mount Shelf. That's where we return the artifacts that were never paid for!" She bounced on her toes. "Never will be paid for! Too expensive. Much too expensive. No wages could cover it, no, no, no."

"Fuck my life," I exhaled, the metal spider-watch digging painfully into my wrist.

"The spider rewinds time!" she continued, pointing at the watch on my wrist.

"When does it rewind time?" I interrupted her rant.

"When the user dies," Nessy shrugged. "Pretty handy, yeah?"

"Does it rewind someone when they pass out?"

"Nope. Only death rewinds the person wearing it."

Great. That means I died.

"Did it… rewind you?" I asked.

"A bunch of times," she nodded. "Stuff keeps killing me. It's annoying."

"Don't you have…"

"Scrutiosmia? Nah," she shook her head. "Run outta that stuff ages ago. No Riffweld either. Have a bunch of apples saved—but those are for your healings. No more whimsical musicals for you, cheeky fucks." She flickered in one spot and banged the cart with the raptors with the bat that was suddenly in her hands. "You try so hard, but NOBODY truly appreciates your songs! That's all I do TRY TRY TRY, but I never get no respect, no siree, nope!"

"If you don't have Scrutiosmia, how exactly do you expect to find your way to Mount Shelf?" I asked.

"I can ask fellow supervisors," Nessy huffed. "I am a very social creature. EVEN THOUGH SOMEONE drove me into a self-deprecating depression spiral with their unending fuckery and subterfuge." She banged the raptor-cart once again. "How do you like them beans? I should feed you all canned beans. The kind you left in my locker to mess with me! See how you like it!"

I noted that the raptors for the exception of Kristi were no longer wearing uniforms.

"Are they not employed anymore?" I asked.

"Nope," Nessy fired back. "I fired them for not meeting my expectations."

I opened my mouth.

"They were gonna get fired regardless," she barked. "Cus they hate this place and want to set it on fire. Especially this one." Nessy banged the spot where Kat's snout was smooshed into the corner of the shopping cart.

"But Kristi is still employed?" I asked.

"Kinda," Nessy huffed. "She's on super-thin ice for arguing with her superior though."

"Can I at least talk to Kristi? Without the gag?" I asked tiredly.

Nessy's expression darkened. "Why? So she can insult me more? Call me stupid? Try to convince you I'm 'unstable'?" She made air quotes with her fingers. "None of you appreciate me! The G-Supercenter appreciates me! She gave me an exemplary performance review! I'm an exemplary manager! And I'm wasting time arguing with my employees when I should be returning the stolen items to their shelves!"

"Ness," I said. "You really need a nap. You're not acting rational."

"I'm perfectly rational! The rationalest doggo in this place!"

I visualized the Pack network between us, grabbed onto it mentally.

"Nessy," I said. "As your pack leader, I'm ordering you to untie Kristi."

A gray eye suddenly opened on her blue vest, glaring at me.

I froze, staring at it. It glared back at me with an unsettling intensity, unblinking and alien, as if it belonged to something ancient and dangerous.

Nessy's tail twitched erratically, her grin faltering for a split second as she tilted her head, almost like she was listening to a voice I couldn't hear. "Order me?" she repeated, her voice sharp and cold like that of Insurance. "I'm your manager, Alec. You don't get to order me around. The G-Supercenter gave me greater authority, see? I'm exemplary. Top dog. Best employee! And you—" She jabbed the nail-studded bat in my direction, not quite touching me but close enough to make my skin prickle. "You're just a cart collector. A grunt. So stay in your lane and do what you are told!"

The gray eye on her vest pulsed faintly, and I swore it moved, tracking me as I took a cautious step away from the rusty-nail bat. My mind raced, piecing together the fragments of what was happening. Nessy wasn't just sleep-deprived or pushed to her breaking point by years of bullying. Something else was at play—something tied to this store, to the artifacts she'd taken from the Strand sisters, to that damn eye staring at me like it knew my every thought.

I tightened my grip on the mental image of our pack bond, the silver threads that connected me to Nessy and Krysanthea. They were still there, pulsing faintly, but the thread to Nessy felt... Wrong, frayed, tangled with something foreign. Whatever was influencing her, it wasn't just her own pain or exhaustion. The Supercenter itself—or something within it—was pulling her strings like an invisible puppeteer.

"Nessy," I said, keeping my voice calm despite the unease crawling up my spine. "You're not just my manager. You're my pack mate. My friend. And I'm asking you, as your friend, to let Krysanthea go. She doesn't deserve this."

Nessy's ears flicked back, and for a moment, I thought I saw a flicker of the real her—the warm, loyal husky who'd fought beside me, sung to lift our spirits, and curled up against me in the RV. But then the gray eye pulsed again, and her expression hardened. "Friend?" she spat, her voice dripping with bitter sarcasm. "Friends don't side with lizards who've been nothing but cruel to poor, tolerant doggos. Friends don't try to undermine me when I'm fixing things!" She gestured wildly at the shopping cart, where the Strand sisters and Krysanthea remained bound, their muffled protests inaudible through their dog toy gags.

I glanced at Krysanthea. Her amber eyes were locked on me, pleading, but there was something else in them too—trust. Even now, tied up and silenced, she believed I could get through to Nessy. That trust grounded me, gave me the motivation to keep trying.

"Nessy," I said. "I'm not siding with anyone. I'm trying to keep our pack together. You said it yourself—pack is family. We don't tie each other up. We don't hurt each other. We work through things, even when it's hard."

Her paws trembled, the bat wavering in her grip. "You don't get it," she whispered, her voice breaking. "I have to do this. I am THE manager! I NEED to MANAGE everyone… Even you… for your own good!"

She flashed in one spot and suddenly had a white bottle in her hands with the words Chloroform+ in silver-gray and a small towel with a picture of a dog riding a rainbow on it.

"I think that you're the one who needs a nap, Alec," she said. "You're impeding item returnery. Returnage? Re…"

I knew that if I tried to pull on the strings again trying to influence her mind I would be chloroformed and then for some reason I would die. Permanently. The kind of death from which Reconstitution clearly couldn't restore me from, perhaps because there was nothing left to reconstitute from, no seed-remnant of Alec to bloom from.

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