"We have to run!" Nessy's voice cracked with fear as her nose twitched frantically.

Without hesitation, we took off down the endless aisles, our footsteps echoing through the vastness of the Supercenter. The raptors moved with impressive speed, their digitigrade legs propelling them forward in powerful bounds. Nessy raced ahead of everyone, her paws clacking against the polished floor.

I tried to keep pace, but my human legs weren't designed for running this fast. I gradually fell behind, my lungs burning as I pushed myself to maintain visual contact with the others.

"Wait!" I called, gasping for breath.

Ahead of me, Nessy skidded to an abrupt halt, her claws scrabbling against the floor as her momentum carried her forward. The Strand sisters followed suit, their talons digging into the linoleum as they stopped.

In the aisle ahead stood a figure that made my blood run cold.

A pradavarian humanoid lynx, her body constructed entirely from rusted metal and iron scraps, blocked our path. Corroded gears visibly turned beneath patches of missing plating in her torso. Her face was a grotesque mask of dented metal, with a multitude of headlight eyes that glowed with cold fury. She wore a blue employee vest, hanging loosely atop her jagged metal frame.

Just as Nessy smelled, the lynx too had found a way to traverse the store, somehow got employment here, rearranged her shape all for the purposes of reaching her prey.

Most disturbing of all was the faint humming sound emanating from her palm as she raised it, pointing directly at Nessy. At the center of that palm, I could see what looked like a powerful electromagnet, glowing with an unnatural blue light and crackling with an electric current.

"No..." Nessy whispered, her ears flattening against her head. "I… please, don't… I'm sorry… I didn't mean to kill your babies, I swear! I…"

The hum intensified to a piercing whine.

What happened next seemed to unfold in slow motion.

A single nail—rusty, bent, and warped shot to the front of her palm. Then, super accelerated by magnetic force, the nail blasted from the lynx's hand with a deafening boom. Before any of us could react, it tore through the air and punched through Nessy's head, entering just above her left eye and exiting through the back of her skull in a spray of red.

Nessy's expression froze in shock and pain. Then, she crumpled to the floor, her body folding in on itself like a marionette with cut strings.

I froze in horror and shock, too far away to do anything.

"NESSY!" Krysanthea's agonized scream echoed through the aisle.

The raptors didn't hesitate. In a blur of scales and feathers, they launched themselves toward the metal lynx, talons extended, faces contorted with rage. They rushed as one to the defense of their fallen packmate.

The lynx simply raised her left palm and reloaded her right hand. The humming intensified.

More iron nails—dozens of them—shot forth in rapid succession, cutting through the air with lethal precision. Katerina was the first to fall, three nails punching through her chest and throat. Her momentum carried her forward a few more steps before she collapsed, golden eyes dulling instantly.

A nail caught Kaledonya in mid-leap, piercing her skull. She was dead before she hit the ground.

Kirra and Krysanthea met similar fates, their bodies jerking as multiple projectiles tore through them.

Kristi lasted the longest, her higher level letting her survive longer. Her final step brought her within a meter of the lynx before a final nail found her heart, and she collapsed in front of her fallen sisters in a heap of bloodied scales and feathers.

In the span of perhaps five seconds, everyone I cared about in this world was dead.

I stood frozen, unable to process the carnage before me. The lynx's glowing eyes fixed on me, her metal face expressionless. She raised her palm again, the magnet at its center humming to life—but she didn't fire.

"Why?" I let out with a choke.

I instantly knew that if I moved, if I showed any sign of aggression, a nail would punch through my skull as well. But in that moment, death seemed almost preferable to the hollowness expanding inside me. "Why did you do this?"

The lynx's metallic jaw creaked open. Her voice was a grating sound of metal on metal, yet distinctly feminine.

"She killed my nestlings," she answered simply, unblinking headlight eyes glaring at me.

I swallowed, my gaze drifting to Nessy's crumpled form. The husky looked so small in death, her fluffy tail still beneath her, her bloodied muzzle partly open.

"It was an accident," I said. "She... she was just looking for me. She didn't mean to destroy your nest!"

The lynx tilted her head, metal creaking. "Accident or intention, they're still dead. I waited for them to pull themselves back together... They never woke up. They were too small, too young… blooming at the edge of the loop so that they could grow up strong."

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"She would have made it right if she could," I said, tears streaming down my face as I looked at my fallen friends. "She was kind… she was good. They all were. They…"

I tried to find the words, drowning in despair.

How did Nessy not foresee her end with Scrutiosmia? Why didn't she… choose a different path? Why the fuck did she run ahead of everyone, headed straight towards her death?!

I had no answers to my questions, only silence and the grinding of iron gears from within the metal lynx.

"It doesn't matter. The debt is paid," she said.

She lowered her palm, the humming dying away. "You're not on my list, human. You can go."

I looked at the bodies scattered across the aisle—Nessy, Krysanthea, Katerina, Kaledoniya, Kirra. My pack. My friends. The only people who had made this broken, fucked up, System-infected world bearable.

"Go where?" I asked more to myself than the lynx.

"Wherever it is you wish to go," she said. "Don't attempt to hostile me, or I will end you now as I have ended many in my way."

I slid down to Nessy, grabbing her, wishing for my Reconstitution to fix her, to heal her, my eyes filling with more tears of despair.

Her fur was still warm, but the spark that had made her so vibrantly her was gone—extinguished faster than I could even do anything.

I looked up at the metal lynx, my vision blurred. "Who…?" I let out, my voice hollow. "Who will you hunt next? Another innocent person who accidentally crossed your path?"

The lynx's headlight eyes flickered, mechanical pupils contracting as she regarded me. Her metal jaw ground against itself as she processed my question.

"Anyone who gets in my way," she replied. "The one who destroyed my nest and killed my younglings is dead. This chase is over."

"So…" I looked up at the metal creature through tear-filled eyes. "You just... going to go back to whatever life you had before?"

"Yes," she answered. "I will return to the outer edge of the highway."

"Why?" I wasn't even sure why I was conversing with Nessy's killer.

Maybe it was a need for closure, a way to cling to my slipping sanity, my brain trying to locate some way to undo my packmates' deaths.

"I am married to her," the lynx replied.

"To… whom?"

"The heart of the highway," she said. "I am her Sentinel. Perhaps I will make a new nest. Protect it better."

My eye twitched.

"And what if the people whose friends you've just killed come seeking vengeance?!" I growled. "Where does it stop? You've created new debts. New pain. New reasons for others to hunt you down."

The lynx tilted her head, gears grinding. "Others may try. They will fail. I am strong. I have learned many new things searching for the dog, and got even stronger. Nothing here can stop me."

"Maybe," I conceded, taking a step forward. "Or maybe not. Maybe someone will find a way."

"Is that someone… you?" The metal creature's eyes brightened with warning, her hand humming.

"No," I said, my voice steadying. "I'm just telling you the truth about debts. They don't end cleanly. They ripple outward, creating more debts, more pain. That's how the System works, isn't it? Everything has a cost."

The lynx regarded me silently for a long moment, her metal jaw working soundlessly as if processing my words. Finally, she spoke. "The dog destroyed my nestlings. I have repaid in kind by extinguishing her."

"And what does that make you?" I asked. "Just another monster in this broken world? Another debt collector?"

"I tire of your circular inquiries, human tree," the lynx walked to Nessy. Something ground inside her and what looked like bent and chewed up guns emerged out of her metal innards.

The weapons clattered on the floor—bent, crushed, and mangled almost beyond recognition. There was one identifying feature though—Nessy's name was etched into the stock of what had once been a shotgun, alongside an etching of a tree with a stick figure underneath it labeled "A+N" inside a heart. Even in her preparations for defense, she'd found a way to express her devotion to me.

"You wish this debt repaid, yes?" She looked down at me, smiling with jagged teeth made from rusted metal. "You desire vengeance? Good. You have halted me once in the Astral, so perhaps you have the potential to do so in the physical too. Get stronger and find me at the boundary of the Highway. I'll be waiting for you there…"

With that, the lynx turned and began walking away, her metal body creaking and grinding with each step. I had no words left for her, knew that I could not stop her and would only waste Reconstitution if I tried attacking her.

I simply stood there, surrounded by the bodies of my friends, the limitlessness of the Supercenter pressing down on me from all directions. I picked up the bent gun and stared at the A+N etching for a few minutes.

Still holding onto the gun, I slid onto the tiled floor beside Nessy. My fingers trembled as I brushed bloodied fur from her face. The cheerful smile was gone, her one remaining blue eye unmoving and lifeless. Ahead, Krysanthea lay sprawled, her amber eyes fixed on nothing, feathers stained crimson. The Strand sisters were scattered nearby, their bodies contorted in the positions where they had fallen.

My mind refused to accept what my eyes were seeing. This couldn't be real. They couldn't all be gone, just like that. Not Nessy with her future-sniffing, songs and boundless optimism. Not Krysanthea with her fierce protectiveness. Not even the difficult, complicated Strand sisters who had just become my pack.

I reached out with shaking hands to close Nessy's eye, a sob tearing from my throat.

"Stats," I said.

Only my stats came up.

The triangular threadwork of our pack bond had snapped, leaving me untethered and alone in the infinite aisles.

My pack. My friends. Gone. GONE.

All I had now was myself. My limitless, useless, liminal, slow, weak self.

I felt something stir within me—a familiar sensation of branching awareness, of consciousness expanding outward like the limbs of a tree.

I drowned myself in an ocean of Alec-ness to stop despair from consuming me, trying to think of a solution.

The Spider Watch. The Compass. The Eye-Glass Bracelet. I had destroyed them with my liminal consciousness, but pieces remained. I still had fragments of each in my pocket.

Maybe I could repair the watch, rewind time back to the moment when Nessy was puppeteered by managerial insanity?

With desperate hope, I pulled out the cracked glass eye bead I'd saved from Kaledoniya's bracelet.

I stared at the glass bead.

Nessy had used it to accelerate herself several times to chloroform me.

Was this artifact remnant still tied to the husky, still bound to the bits and pieces of the Strand sisters' souls trapped forevermore in this cursed place?

I had no answers, no way of knowing the truth.

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