Unlikely Hero

Wrong, this is wrong! These creatures are dead, I can feel their deadness, and dead creatures shouldn't be walking around. It's an abomination, a perversion. It fills my incorporeal senses with the stench of evil.

In the creature's grasp, Zhaan struggles futilely for air, and I can feel her, too, sliding towards death, struggling against it. It's my job to ease the struggles of the dying, but not this time. So many deaths I haven't been able to prevent, so many souls I've sent to their destinations, but not Zhaan. Not Zhaan. Not at the hands of these... these... things, things that offend the sanctity of the universe by their very existence.

I will stop them. I am Stykera. I have the power.

I spend a moment to prepare, so it doesn't hurt when the mask comes off. And then I do it. I pour myself into them, release all my energies. You're dead! I tell them. I may be screaming it out loud, too. It's hard to tell. It's hard to remember sometimes whether I'm saying something or just thinking it, but it doesn't matter, because I know they can hear me. You're dead! BE DEAD!

They don't want to go. They don't want to stop moving. But I push and I push and I make them. I have so much pain to give them, all my pain, and they can't stand it as well as I can, because I'm alive and they're dead, I am Stykera, and they are only abominations animated by evil magic.

They fall.

I fumble with my mask. Must get it back on. Must stop... Too much. Hard to get it back under control. Don't want to hurt anyone. Don't want to hurt myself.

From a long way away, Crichton's voice comes to me. "Holy hell. Stark, what the frell did you do?"

"I'm good with dead things," I say. I get the buckle closed. I collapse on top of Zhaan.

1. And that's all I remember for a while.

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