When I got bay domain, I took the time to revert bay Synthia disguise and recreate my cell phone.

  Then I texted my old coworkers, “Update as promised: Talked to other monster. Name is Milk. Looks like milk. Had some iing mohings to say. Easier to expin in person, if you’re curious. Will text highlights ter when I figure them out.”

  After a couple thoughts, I decided to send them o message.

  “This doesn’t really or impact you. As a friend, I just want to start sharing more of my,” and I really hesitated on the word before typing it in, “life with you. If you want.”

  They, of course, didn’t see that hesitation at all. I’d been using ‘life’ to describe my existeo them before, when I was hiding the fact that I was a monster. But I don’t think of my existence as a life. Life is what anically blooms on this p. It’s not me.

  If I were talking to Felicity about my existence, I might say, “I’ve had a good emanation, so far, I think.” One of the things I really liked about the word she taught me. Emanant. It gave me a set of words that were equivalent to ‘life’ that really fit.

  In my mind and when I talked to people, I noticed that I was sort of slowly swinging bad forth between ‘emanant’ and ‘monster’, and the longer I used one of those two words the more it felt like the other word fit better. And I wasn’t sure whie I’d nd on. But that was a minor thing that would work itself out. I’d had simir problems with uages in the past.

  In the meantime, I had bigger questions.

  Questions to actually ask someone.

  “Felicity,” I addressed my parasitic partner. “ I ask you a question?”

  “I ’t really stop you,” she replied.

  I sehe monster equivalent of a mental sigh, but just pushed on without expining further, “Would you be willing to tell me how you sehat it’s probably another emanant ing up our mess in the prect?”

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “It’s not an ‘adaptation’ as you’d call it, though.”

  “Ah, you get why I’m asking.”

  “Yeah. But, anyway,” she replied, “it started when the eborate modifications to their puters you’d made for me got unmade before my eyes in a matter of mihat was the first big clue.”

  “Shit. Like Hayward Grocery.”

  “Yes. But the sed clue ookier.”

  “Oh?”

  Felicity lowered her mental void expined, “The people I’d riled up and gotten all angry and on their own personal aths started ing back with missing memories and no i in tinuing their beefs.”

  “Oh.” I thought about that a little bit, chilled by the implications. “Were those your hosts? Like hosts you’d used and the?”

  I got a mental shake of her head, long and slow.

  Then she said a worse thing, “A couple of them were potential hosts, though. And then they weren’t.” Then, while I tried to pte what the ramifications of that were, to imagihe kind of mohat could do that, she asked, “ you tell me how you haputers like you do? Maybe even teach me to do it?”

  “Sure,” I responded, almost absently. But as instantly as I could.

  If we were truly allied against the same Supraliminal emanant, or emanants, who were w against us, I wanted her to have as many of my skills and adaptations as I could give her. And I wao figure out a few more adaptations to beef us both up as well.

  We o learn how to look at the Strands, to send ourselves and others that existed there. And I wondered if doing so might give us some insight in how to remove Felicity from my being.

  But, because of my Big Bad Hunch, I didn’t know if I could trust her with that much.

  However, I couldn’t let on that I felt that way.

  I added, “We do o learn how to see the Strands, too.”

  “I don’t even know how to start with that,” she mumbled.

  I decided that this was a good time to che, “Are you OK?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You decided that you wao stay within me for the time being, st time we tried to excise you, and I suggested that trying to eat another emanant could be your avenue of escape,” I reminded her. “But you’ve ged a lot. You’re not as enthusiastic as before. You seem frustrated and disced.”

  There ause and a quietness of thought from her, and then she said, “I guess that makes sense.”

  “What I do to help you?” I asked.

  “Why do you want to help me?” she shot back almost immediately. “You’re sustaining my existence already. I’m eating you.”

  That brought me up short.

  It reminded me of exactly what our retionship was at the moment.

  Just as I could other monsters, and could adapt myself to eat her specifically, ridding myself of her presend drain on my system, she could do essentially the same. This whole time, she could have been putting her growth into her mouth and digestive tract, so to speak, to begin i an expoially increasing rate. I would be gone in seds. But she chose not to do that, at no apparent be to herself.

  Except that maybe I was a good pce to hide.

  “Uood,” I said. Then I opened my mind more clearly to her, so that she got my surface thoughts and feelings, and said, “Here’s what I’m pnning on doing. I’ve got energy reserves that will st us for a while even if I do. So I’m going to ge the way I eat to something less nutritious but more useful to our mutual goals.”

  “I still don’t uand how you do that,” she said. “Some adaptations I get, yes. But ging how you eat? Isn’t that fual to what you are? I know you do it, but how?”

  “It might have something to do with how I emanated.” I wasn’t sure. I was just throwing out an idea as it occurred to me. “It could be that my fual nature is to be adaptable in that way.”

  She guessed where I was going with this, or read it in my mind, “So, yoing to go back to eating the emotions of other emanants?”

  “Yes,” I affirmed her. “Your own radiaions will not be enough to replenish what you take from me, of course. I’m not sure the bined emanant popuce of Gresham could do that. Emanaions are not as rich as those of life, much less humans. Not for me, at least. And there are much fewer monsters here than I’m used to.”

  “But it’ll let you read emanaions,” she cluded.

  “Exactly.”

  Felicity asked, “You want to use that to help you fight your enemies?”

  “I do,” I replied.

  “And you’ll be more able to read my emotions more easily, even if I hide them.”

  “That will be one of the effects, yes.”

  “Are you asking my permission?”

  “I think I am.”

  It took her a long time to reply to that.

  I was so focused inward, that I was not really aware of the state of my domain, or the world around it. But I did notice a freezing rain that began to fall through my leaves. And so I took a moment to s the surrounding area, and there were no other emanants of any size or type within range of my senses.

  Everyone and everything that was not life had cleared far and away from me.

  If I wao actually feed on the emotions of other emanants, it looked like I would have to actively find and chase them. Which meant I’d expend more energy than I ed, if I didn’t actually eat them.

  But I’d suspected that would be the case.

  My surface thoughts were still open to Felicity.

  “OK,” she said. “Go ahead.”

  Actually sitting down and adapting myself to do the hings I wao do took less time than it did in the past. But it was still time ing. Especially on the scale of time as I was experieng, more like a human.

  Teag Felicity how to do the same made it take longer, of course.

  Certain holidays came a, and the music that Harward Grocery ying had probably ged signifitly by the time we were done.

  Trying to see the Strands and learn how to explore them turned out to be as simple as pushing my sciousness into that part of myself that resided in that realm, and then developing something akin to eyes that I could push through my outer surface there.

  It took some experimentation to uand what I erceiving and how to perceive more, but I started to uand why Milk had called them the Strands. They looked like something I’d call the Strands, myself. Separate, nearly unected dimensions of spacetime itself, sort of.

  I saw that I might even be able to detect other mohere if I could get close enough to them iher the subliminal space or life space.

  It was a start.

  And I felt better about w with Felicity on it all as well.

  We might make a good team, afterall.

  It was also possible that spending so much time retreated into my domain made our adversaries feel that they had cowed us. I hoped that’s why they didn’t interrupt us during that time.

  Milk wasn’t doh Gresham, even though it had left.

  It wao be doh Gresham. The situation there was untenable and likely to bee very violent very quickly, and any other Overlords who were present when it did would be torn asunder by the victor. But maybe it could wait until that was done.

  The thing was, however, that when Milk had taken the opportunity to really examine Synthia up close, it had discovered something arming and deeply intriguing.

  There was another Overlord secured, safe and fed, within Synthia itself.

  Milk o know more about that. It had never seen such a thing before. It o learn.

  But, for now, it returo its home, its own personal cell tower where it fed aabs on the world via the I.

  Maybe it could learn something more from its owwork of information. If not, it would venture forth agai had refilled its energy reserves.

  Cassy sat in their old ary booth at Shady’s, aloaring at the st text message that Synthia had sent, two weeks ago.

  “This doesn’t really or impact you. As a friend, I just want to start sharing more of my life with you. If you want,” it read.

  her she n nor Ayden had known what to do or say about that message. Not after learning what they had learned about Synthia. It was too scary. And then they didn’t receive any more, and had not seen nor heard from Synthia since. And ierim, their lives had been upended. It was harder to coordio do anything about anything.

  Following Synthia’s removal from Hayward Grocery, things there had ged quickly. Sometimes it was with the excuse that they were restructuring for Christmas specifically, or for the New Year, but other times it was bmed on Synthia and the need fhter security.

  Clog in and out, bizarrely, went from solely relying on the puter system to a step back. And now they had to hand sign a paper form as well. A small ge, but a very irritating ohat required them to stop in front of the manager’s offid take ora little step on the way in and out of work.

  A security officer was hired, who worked from an offsite office, and some of the staff were occasionally assigo work with that officer by rotating door duty. They were called “greeters”, but their instrus were to watch for “unusual people”.

  There were a myriad of other small ges, too, that were too numerous to list. Alterations to the codes they called out over the inter, and when to call them. ges to bagging procedures. Clearer and more detailed instrus for ting your till. Those kinds of things.

  And then their shifts had all been shuffled about.

  And now, Cassy, Greg, and Ayden were all on separate shifts that didn’t overp muecessitating different personal schedules, with different weekends.

  It was nigh impossible for them to meet in person for lohan a few minutes anymore. Not all three of them at onot for lohan a few minutes.

  And that felt like early stage union busting tactics to all three of them. The timing of it was just too obvious. And the disruption of it too thh.

  They still unicated via text and email, though, and were more seriously w on the whole union idea now. Especially with the ges ma had been making to the store. In some ways, getting the other employees on board was now easier.

  But on her own personal time, alone, while Ayden was w and Greg was sleeping, and her own housemates and other friends – if they could really be called friends – were doing their own things, Cassy couldn’t stop thinking about Synthia.

  Synthia’s lot was not that far away from Shady’s.

  She could easily walk there.

  What if she did? What would she find?

  theInmara