Chapter 21

chapter twenty-one OK, now the entire-life-flashing-before-my-eyes thing is gonna happen. That's what I think as the chunk of statue falls on me and everything goes black. But instead, all I see is darkness, followed by that same horrible image. The thing that I saw through the rip-tear. The embodiment of absolute horror. I see it for longer, this time. I want to look away, but I can't. For real, it's not possible—it's just there, behind my eyelids. And I think... darn it, I'm about to die, and I never even found out what that vision was. The words start to repeat in my head like a little lullaby, rocking me to sleep. I never found out what it was. I never found out what it was. I never found out what it was. Found! OUT! Words twist and shift and slide together. "Found!" It's Quint. "Found him!" he says. And he's talking about me. I feel rubble shifting, falling off me.

"OUT!" It's Wracksaw, roaring, "OUT OF MY WAY!" I feel something crawling near my ankle. I bite back a scream and look down, expecting it to be the same foul rodents that piled atop Quint. But it's not. It's a strayfur. Specifically, it's the strayfur I slipped on. The dead one. Only... somehow it's not dead anymore. It's moving in a herky-jerky, shuffling manner, reminding me a bit of how Alfred walks. And the realization hits me like a comet. This strayfur isn't dead. It's undead. It was bitten by Stargrove. Stargrove is a zombie monster. And zombies make more zombies. Which means this entire place... is now filled with hundreds of zombified strayfurs. And this is terrifying... unless you know how to control hundreds of zombies. I think back to Ghazt's words: Now you are the general, Jack. Until this moment, I never truly considered what it would mean to wield the powers once wielded by Ghazt. Ghazt is evil. Ghazt served .e...c.. Ghazt helped me solely out of desire for revenge against Thrull. Ghazt, in the end, was weakened and broken. But that

was only because of the error that occurred when Evie tried to summon him to my world—the error that caused his true, godlike form to be replaced by a ridiculous monstrosity. So now... I'm supposed to take on that mantle? Use those powers? If I do, I'm crossing a bridge that can't be uncrossed. How far will I go to stop .e...c. and to save my dimension and my friends? Dumb question, Jack. I'll go as far as I need to. But what if in doing that... I lose control? Thrull weighs heavy on me. And not just the massive stone chunk of his head currently sitting atop my body. It's the information we've learned about Thrull that presses down on me—knowing that, at one point, he was not pure evil. He fought against the servants of .e...c.. His greatest moment was right here—on this ground where I'm now lying. How did he turn evil? Did he make a choice? Or did it just... happen? Could it happen to anyone? At the forbidden fortress, I saw June about to be killed—and the Cosmic Hand saw, too. It acted on its own, to save her. And that terrified me. It meant I was no longer fully in control of the hand, or of myself. And

if I'm not fully in control of myself, I can't be fully in control of what I become. That was the most frightening part. But Dave saw my fear, understood it, and told me to lean into it. Accept and trust it would work out. And I've been trying. I've been trying so, so hard. Accepting, continuing to power forward even as this hideous, otherworldly force was becoming stranger, larger, more a part of me. But knowing what I now know about Thrull? Can I keep trusting what I'm doing is right, when there's no way to truly know? Light splashes my face. The world comes into focus—I see a chunk of rubble being lifted off me. Wracksaw looms over me. I stare up at him– and pain rips through my arm. The Cosmic Hand twitches. But I fight it. I still have the faintest mental grip on the power of the Cosmic Hand. It's a bucking bronco and I'm riding it, trying to hold on. Two more zombie strayfurs limp into my field of vision. One tries to fly, like it hasn't realized it's dead. It leaves the ground for a moment, then falls. My eyes flick up. Wracksaw doesn't notice the strayfurs. I have the memory of his voice in the back of

my mind. I shut my eyes, and I see him... THIS LABORATORY IS WHERE I BUILD MONSTERS. BUT YOU WON'T NEED TO BE BUILT. YOU ARE WELL ON YOUR WAY TO BECOMING A MONSTROSITY YOURSELF. WITHOUT MY HELP, My eyes reopen. And now... my vision is filled with a thousand mind-doodles. I'm seeing the thoughts of the strayfurs. Which means it's not only Stargrove I can communicate with and command. And if I can control every strayfur here, then I'll know for sure: if I get home, I can control every zombie marching toward the Tower. I feel the hand growing around me again, forming the Slicer, the midnight blade, jagged and fleshy and made of the same strange skin that covered the Scrapken's body. I stop fighting it. And I deliver the mind-doodle: get this statue off of me.

At once, the zombie strayfurs swarm toward me, turning the world black as they dive beneath the monument, pushing, nudging, beaks digging into the ground and chipping at the stone. The statue starts to move, just slightly. Enough for me to get one leg free. Wracksaw staggers back. "Wracksaw!" I shout, sitting up. "Didn't you realize? Didn't your all-knowing, brilliant mind consider? That if the hand wrestled control of my being, took over— then your enemy would be a monster?" At once, the undead strayfurs pull the monument up, freeing me completely. I stand. The strayfurs swirl, forming a tornado around me. A massive, terrible army of the undead.