The first Stirrer I see is Mom. She's standing there by the front desk. I grab her with one bloody hand and the Stirrer evacuates her flesh. Her eyes widen and her body drops with a soft sigh. I've no time to lay it down gently. Though it hurts me deeply, I let it fall.
There are so many Stirrers in here. They're a dull scratching behind my eyes, an infection of all my senses. My only hope is that Mr. D's peculiar key is doing what he promised and dulling my presence to them.
I sprint down the hallway past a half dozen Stirrers. There's one at the desk, my Aunt Gloria, Tim's mother. That almost stops me in my tracks, but only for a moment. I hope Tim's somewhere ahead of me, and that he's unharmed. If he isn't, I've failed her.
Aunt Gloria's body doesn't notice me until I've leaped over the tabletop and grabbed her arm with my bloody fingers. It's another hurtful but final stall. Aunt Gloria's body slides from her chair.
The elevator door opens. It's empty. Stirrers are coming down the hallway after me.
I jab the button for the eighth floor. If Morrigan is anywhere it will be there. The door shuts and up I go.
The elevator door pings open. My cousin Jack sees me and his eyes widen. He comes at me with a ring binder. I dispatch Jack quickly.
"Could you please stop neutralizing my staff?" Morrigan asks. He's standing at his desk, his fingers resting on a glass paperweight of the world. He picks it up and puts it down. My gun is trained on him.
"Don't listen to the bastard," says a familiar voice from a corner of the office.
Tim's alive! I look over at him. He looks a little disheveled but is otherwise all right, even if he is tied down to a chair. I see where Morrigan has marked him with a brace. He's proofed against the Stirrers. That's a relief.
"You OK?"
He nods his head. "Better than expected."
"My staff haven't harmed him," says Morrigan.
"Your staff? These are Stirrers. They don't work for you." I glare at him.
"You're wrong there, Steven. We have an agreement, and it is to our mutual benefit. I don't think you understand how powerful I've become."
"Powerful or not, you can't trust them, surely?"
"It's not about trust," Morrigan says. "They do exactly what I tell them to do. They are under the strictest controls. My controls. You see, there's always a problem when you try to fuse an organic process with a bureaucratic one, Steven. Everything is open to corruption, but nothing more so when there is an ill fit, when two separate processes collide."
"Tell me about it," I say. "People start getting murdered in their beds. Friends turn on friends and family. It's definitely a flawed system. You should just kill everyone, then everything's smooth and simple."
Morrigan ignores me. "But I've managed it. Efficiencies will be improved. The Stirrers are much better than human Pomps. You keep them under enough control and everything works well."
"So what you're saying is that death works best without the living to screw it up?"
Morrigan nods his head. "All those noisy rituals, all those dumb beliefs drawing us away from the truth, and shaping the Underworld until it's a mess. You've been there, Steve. You can't tell me it works."
The truth is I can't, because if it had, I'd still be back there, drawn into the One Tree. "So, it has some problems," I say.
"Problems, Jesus!" Morrigan hisses. "I'm steering us toward uniformity here. My region will be like no other, and then the others will slip into line. There will be new efficiencies."
"You're trying to control Stirrers here. They don't care about your efficiencies."
"Poppycock," Morrigan says. "Total bullshit. You want to know what I did? I dragged Mortmax Industries up by the bootstraps. Turned it from a small family business into a well-oiled machine. I may have been born into pomping, Steven, but I chose this path. I didn't just drift around, expecting everything to fall in my lap.
"Have you ever worked a proper day's work in your life, Steven? Have you ever sat there, planning, setting out the future?"
We both know the answer to that, and there's a small part of me that's blaming him. It's not like he ever encouraged me to apply myself. "But I also never planned on killing everyone, never decided that the way forward was fucking contingent on slaughtering my friends."
Morrigan jabs a finger in my face. "We work for the Orcus! The way forward was always going to involve death. You're not a child, stop acting like one."
I step back. "Yeah, then what about the Stirrers on George Sreet? The Orcus would never allow that. Remember what this job is about?"
"You don't know what you're talking about," Morrigan says, but he doesn't seem as certain as he did. And he's shuddering, the bastard is as worn out by all the pomping as I am. And that shouldn't be happening if the Stirrers were actually helping him and not just waiting to devour Australia.
"I wish I didn't. I've pomped a hundred people today. All you've done is remove the people who held back the Stirrers. But it isn't too late. We can stop this. God knows it'll probably kill us, but we'd be halting a Regional Apocalypse."
Another Stirrer comes near enough for me to touch and I do. It takes the breath from me. Every time I do this, my heart tears in my chest. "You know it's true, Morrigan. We can do this. The Stirrers are older than life itself, and they want this universe for themselves. And you've let them in. You've opened the door wide and I don't even know if we can close it now."
"Steven, the moment I killed Mr. D, I put into motion something that can't be stopped. And I don't want it to."
"But maybe-"
There's a dark flash of pain, and I'm down. I hear my gun clatter to the ground. I'm not long after it.
My eyes open slowly. I don't know how long I've been out. Not that long, I think. The big glass paperweight of the world that struck my skull is next to me on the floor, and there's blood all over the thing. Oh, the prick.
"Good, you're awake," Morrigan says. "Now kill him, darling."
I look up. Blood is pouring into my eyes from the deep cut in my head, but there's Lissa's body. The evidence of all my failures. Not her, why did he choose her? She's holding a rifle.
She swings the gun up and fires.
The bullet strikes Morrigan in the chest. He stumbles backward a step, and then another. He stares at the wound in disbelief, then falls to the ground silently, his arm outstretched toward me.
"You're alive," I say, somewhat obviously.
She runs toward me and wraps her arms around me in what is the most wonderful embrace I have ever known. She's all hard breath against my neck. I kiss her.
She's alive. She's alive! I didn't fail her. I'm woozy, bleeding, possibly dying, and I can't stop smiling.
"Don't you ever do that again," Lissa says. "Don't you ever pull me out and leave me alone."
"I won't, I won't," I say. She pulls back and I drown in those eyes. "I thought you were gone. Jesus, I thought I'd lost you."
"Where else did you think I would be? My body was here. I'm so sorry, I've been doing my best to keep away from Morrigan, and the Stirrers, but trying to look like I'm not. It's exhausting, let me tell you."
"It's OK. We've made it." The words come slowly. I'm just so happy to see her.
Lissa shakes her head. "I don't think so. Look where we are."
But at least we're together again, I think, smiling. "How do I look?"
"Like shit, not a good impression at all. I thought you were dead." Lissa grabs my face gently, it hurts. "When you slipped away from me, or I slipped from you, there were all those Stirrers and their guns. I couldn't see how you'd survive that, but I thought if you did survive, you'd come here, and if not, the Stirrers could take me again."
"Have you managed to stall any of them?"
"Steve, I'm not a Pomp anymore. I died, remember? You brought me back. I don't have those powers, and there's no RM to give them to me. I'm not even sure I want them back. If I hadn't stolen some of Morrigan's brace paint I'd be dead."
"Good for you," I say. I'm really bleeding a lot. My vision's fading.
"You patronizing shit. Now, hold on, you're going to be OK."
I touch her oh-so-serious face. "It's a Regional Apocalypse. There are Stirrers everywhere. If you're powerless, you need to get out of here. As far away as possible."
"You're going to be OK," Lissa repeats.
"I really don't think so," Morrigan says. He's on his feet and looking as bad as I must, maybe even worse. We're mortal, even here in Number Four. Being Pomps we have no excuse for forgetting that. I don't want to die, but I know that's what's about to happen.
Morrigan lifts his rifle and aims it at me.
With whatever strength I have left, I push Lissa away from me, except she's already off me and rolling, her gun swinging up toward Morrigan.
And Morrigan's rifle fires, almost at the same time as Lissa's.