Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Daylight streaming in through the DHV Magellan’s gangway blinded Sam as he stepped out of the elevator. He shielded his eyes with his forearm and climbed onto the tri-cycle he’d last been using, revving the engine before running down the ramp and out into the world. 

He was supposed to be heading to Heartman’s lab, far to the north, but Sam wasn’t exactly in the mood to do what Drawbridge expected of him. So he let his tri-cycle take him wherever it wanted to go, staring out at the bleak gray horizon as the wind whipped past his face. Dollman said nothing, which was good. Sam wouldn’t have answered even if he had, but he appreciated the quiet. He didn’t even turn on the music player, his mind swirling with too many things to leave room for it. 

Sam missed the weight of the pod against his chest, but he felt too ridiculous continuing to carry it around knowing that it didn’t even contain Lou’s BT. For a while there he’d managed to convince himself she was along for the ride in all the same ways she had been when she was alive—or at least in suspended gestation. And everyone had payed along, pitying him, making him look like a fool talking to an empty pod. 

Sam didn’t want to see or talk to any of the other members of Drawbridge right now. He wanted to put as much distance between himself and the Magellan as possible. So he sped out of South Knot City after picking up an order for the Tar Therapist. He figured he’d busy himself helping to rebuild the east coast’s infrastructure for a while, do something useful with all this anger. 

What made Sam the most upset was knowing how worried about him the others were right now, especially Fragile. If only they knew. Life kept picking on Sam Porter. It wasn’t enough that his last ties to his kid were all in his head, or that his so-called friends had been babying him through his grief, on top of all that the one person Sam felt connected to right now was the last person he wanted to actually see. …Higgs Monaghan. 

As a repatriate, Sam had lived through unfathomable pain and suffering, more times than he’d counted. The emotional pain was always worse than the physical, but when he’d been in it, Higgs’s chiral flames felt like they might be the exception that proved the rule. Nothing had ever hurt the way those flames had burned. Now, with his grief reopened, Sam knew he’d been foolish to doubt. By comparison, the fire from Higgs’s guitar was like a hot stone massage after a long trip hauling cargo. 

The guy drove Sam crazy mostly because he was always putting on some kind of act and forcing them into a fight. Sometimes Sam just wanted to strap him down and interrogate him, but there was always a gun—or a fucking battle guitar—in the way. The man who haunted him via strange ghost tech was different than he had been back in the UCA. Maybe Sam was giving him too much credit now that he knew what had turned Peter into Higgs, but he couldn’t fight the thoughts back for more than minutes at a time.

Sam carted truckloads of metals from the northern mine down the southern half of the coast, loading them into autopaver after autopaver, trying to put Higgs out of his mind. He hadn’t had to cause all those voidouts, kill all those people, and he didn’t have to be pumping Australia full of munitions now. That he kept doing it was monstrous, and Sam knew he had to stop him. Yet… It was a life Higgs had been backed into, left alone in a prepper shelter with no family and no purpose. His terrorism didn’t come from hate; it came from pain. It was a fucking cry for help.

Every person Sam met on his journeys across two continents had something to live for. Those that didn’t turned themselves into BTs pretty damn quick, without fail. Sam understood that deeply, having tried to do the same, countless times, after Lou died. The Seam had always hated the way he tasted, thanks to Amelie. 

Higgs had made it his purpose to destroy the world, once he realized it meant getting revenge on Fragile, his would-be sister, for a crime she still didn’t know she committed. Sometimes Sam felt guilty for keeping the secret from her, but it wasn’t his place to say, and it would only hurt her to know. Now, burned by another secret Fragile had kept from him, Sam didn’t regret his decision at all. As far as he was concerned, she deserved it. 

Now that Higgs was stranded on the Beach, with Amelie locked away in her own bubble of purgatory, he’d lost his purpose. Sam still didn’t understand the creative solution Higgs seemed to have found to keep pestering him and Fragile, but when he was burning endlessly at Higgs’s feet, Sam realized why the psychopath was really doing this. It wasn’t about the Last Stranding. Higgs insisted he just wanted to make Sam and Fragile suffer, and that was true, in a way, but he wasn’t seeking revenge. Not anymore. His Ha and Ka screaming in unison, Sam had seen the truth in Higgs’s shiny blue eyes. 

“Suffer for me, baby.”

He was fucking lonely. 

If Sam understood everything he’d come to learn, the only person Higgs had ever gotten any sort of love or care from was Fragile’s mother, Coffin. Years and years back, and she was the only one who ever knew him. Sam knew what it was like to be that lonely—fuck, he felt like he was right back to that place—the pod’s absence on his chest felt like a missing limb. The desolate years between Lucy’s death and Bridget forcing him back into the fold were nothing compared to the weeks after Lou died. Losing one daughter had been devastating. The second was earth-shattering, and Sam had no way to end the pain. 

Higgs was stranded on the Beach because of him and Fragile. That was the honest truth. Sam’s anger at Fragile compounded with a fresh wave of resentment that she hadn’t finished the job and killed him when they had the chance. Now hating Higgs was all Sam had left. (Maybe if his anger faded he would want to help Fragile again, but it was hard to escape the bitter taste in his mouth.) Higgs had killed Lou, taken away his purpose, and then given it right back to him by creating another apocalypse to thwart. In a twisted way, they needed each other, to hold onto some mirage of sanity.

Yet three days after leaving the Southern Environmental Observatory Sam still couldn’t bring himself to continue the quest to defeat Higgs once and for all. He wasn’t sure why. Instead, Sam busied himself with as many orders as he could carry, zipping up and down the monorail to collect more materials for the highway reconstruction project. Dollman left him to it, only nagging Sam when he went too long without resting. No matter what else, he could help these people get through their days and pursue the things that gave them meaning in this fucked up world. 

Sometimes Sam imagined what Fragile would say if she knew how his thoughts wound empathetically towards Higgs. No amount of shouting or lost respect could stop him from identifying with that need to feel something he’d recognized in the ghost’s eyes. Sam simply couldn’t blame him, knowing he’d likely go just as nuts if he didn’t have an endless supply of delivery requests to keep his hands busy. Even a porter needed to rely on a stick from time to time. He was no better than Higgs, just a bad day away from turning homo demens. 

Drawbridge would look at him in horror if they even suspected Sam had started thinking that way, but they were hypocrites. Charlie, the President of APAC, Tarman, Dollman, Heartman, Rainy, all those overly trusting and optimistic researchers and heads of distribution, even Fragile. Sam had been handed one too many deadly weapons and warned not to use them on humans to feel like these people were any different from Higgs in the end. Weapons always got used. The Armed Survivalists would steal the tech even if everyone else was responsible; it was only a matter of time. If Higgs hadn’t killed Lou, Sam might have felt strongly enough to confront Fragile about the lunacy of what they were doing. Things as they were, all the Man Who Delivers could do was hate himself, and make one more delivery.

The heat of the flames was so acute it didn’t feel painful anymore. Sam’s nerves were alight and screaming in a way that almost reminded him of orgasm, but it was too intense and endless to enjoy. He opened his eyes and found Higgs beaming manically at him, his hair messily falling across his face. It was no longer strange to see Amelie blended up in his appearance. Sam felt like he was seeing Higgs for the first time.

“Suffer for me, baby.”

Sam shot up in bed with a gasp, his heart pounding in his chest. 

“Did you have another nightmare, Sam?” Dollman asked from his shelf. 

Sam eyed him briefly and swung his legs off the mattress. He didn’t have any privacy anymore with Dollman constantly hanging from his hip or resting on a shelf within arm’s reach. The shower was the only place Sam was ever truly alone. 

He got up and left his private room before Dollman could notice the inappropriate bulge in his pants. Thankfully it was late in the night, and the East Knot City facility was quiet. Sam stripped down and stepped into the shower, leaning against the wall as he flicked the hot water on. He groaned with relief as it rolled down his back and the shower filled up with steam. 

Sam’s skin tingled with the memory of Higgs’s fire. He wondered how many times it had killed him. More than three for sure. Five? A dozen? More? Each time it happened Sam wasn’t afraid to repatriate, having become numb to the pain. And every time he was proven a fool when the flames roared to life again, their heat searing him anew.

He took his cock in his hand and wondered how long Higgs would have tortured him like that if they hadn’t been interrupted. It was a perfect trap, with no escape if it hadn’t been for Rainy’s corefall. Higgs didn’t have any reason to stop unless he got bored of it. How long would that have taken? Sam’s thumb circled the head of his dick, and he imagined how Higgs might have escalated things if they’d been left alone long enough. 

His lust had been unmasked, fueling Sam’s thoughts as he gave himself a few slow, twisting strokes. Higgs had insinuated things plenty of times before, so Sam was not surprised his bloodthirst was twisted up with another carnal desire. Those flames had burned away another layer separating the pair of them, teasing Sam with hope that he might be able to talk to this man and save all the people he kept trying to drag down to hell with him. There were worse fates than sacrificing himself on Higgs’s pyre.

Sam imagined how that dark, heated eternity might have gone while picking up the pace of his hand. Maybe every now and then, Higgs would drop his guard and Sam would summon the strength to turn the guitar against him. He could inflict the same infinite pain back on that horrid goblin, avenging his daughter. If he did enough damage, Higgs might drag Sam onto the Beach and kill him for good. He should be so lucky. No, Higgs would never give up his favorite toy. 

He pumped his cock faster as shame creeped up on him. His hold on the fantasy was tenuous, and guilt was on his heels. Desperate for some relief, Sam pictured Higgs pulling him down into the tar and stealing him away from this punishing life. He would wrestle Higgs to the ground when they surfaced, pinning him. Then the man who killed his daughter would smiled wickedly at him, able to feel the hard length of Sam’s cock against his hip. 

Sam frantically rutted into his fist, leaning against the wall of the shower. He imagined he was grinding Higgs into the ground until his body spasmed. Sam cried out once, the sound bitten off as his breath was stolen from his lungs. He rocked into his hand until there was nothing left and then let go, gasping for air. 

Sam hated himself, hiding behind closed eyelids as the water washed away the evidence of his depravity. At least now he could finish his shower and try to go back to bed. 

After around two weeks worth of deliveries and road construction, Sam felt his resolve to procrastinate waning. His anger had subsided, making him feel like childish for stubbornly blaming every member of Drawbridge for all of his problems. It wasn’t like sweet Rainy had ripped Lou away from him. Plus there would always be people needing a fresh set of timefall jackets or a new case of beer, but he couldn’t be the one to pick up every order. Not because of any physical limitation so much as the threat of boredom, eroding his careful crafted wall against his grief. 

Sam sat in the Miracle Spring by The Motherhood’s base one morning as he begrudgingly accepted that it was time to start meandering towards Heartman’s Lab—and not to clear out the Armed Survivalists’ base and regain access to the chemical mine like last week. There was an order for The Pioneer in his truck, and another for The Data Scientist. He had time before he would have to bite the bullet and accept the main order to bring Drawbridge what they needed. 

Sam already knew that Higgs had stationed a squad of ghost mechs just south of the metals mine, right along the road he used to approach The Pioneer. They would probably be back—a few days had passed since he first cleared them out—but he wasn’t overly concerned. With ghost mechs Sam could just throw a bunch of heavy artillery into his pack and not have to worry about any consequences. 

He knew that was just another way Higgs was getting his way—forcing him to wield bigger and bigger weapons—but he wasn’t sure what to think about it anymore. Sam loaded so many metaphorical sticks into his truck to defend his cargo from the ones Higgs placed in his path. The robo-clown would no doubt try to mock him for it, but it was no real accomplishment. There was no hypocrisy in raising a gun to a ghost. 

Sam knew where to find the squad, so he parked his truck just behind the rise and sorted out his pack. Only weaponry, no cargo. Hopefully the truck’s siding would be enough to protect the goods from a stray grenade if things go wild. 

He strode over the hill armed with a rocket launcher and scanned the red silhouettes, tagging them via the network. Sam wondered privately if Higgs controlled each and every one of these things the way he did the one he’d bothered to put makeup on. It seemed likely, if only because he lacked an alternative theory. Higgs kept fabricating new mechs and new weapons, seemingly unhampered by resource constraints. The Phantom Smith was just playing catch up trying to deconstruct the technology. His mech body was dressed with attention to detail, every inch of it an expression of Higgs’s will. Sam envied that freedom.

For months now, death had seemed like freedom. Sam didn’t know whether Higgs was dead, technically speaking. What would it take for Sam to join him on the Beach? Would his companionship satisfy Higgs’s hunger? Might he be able to win a turn wielding that flaming guitar? He shook himself and refocused on the mechs in front of him, reminding himself not to hope that their boss would should his smirking face.

Sam locked his rockets on the largest target—a coffin type mech—and let loose. He barreled in without hesitation, dropping each gun when he ran out of fresh clips for it. He’d started using chronobiotes more since these things showed up, and he liked to think he’d gotten the hang of it. The sweet taste bloomed on his tongue as he got out of the way of the mechs’ onslaught and switched to a fresh machine gun, unloading on the nearest target before the time dilation ran out. 

When all that was left was a few half-used guns and some stray shrapnel, Sam bent forward and gasped for breath. 

“Well done, Sam,” Dollman praised as he unscrewed the cap to his canteen. 

He gulped the water down and then took another gasping breath, swaying in place on the desert sands. “Hey Dollman?”

“Yes, Sam?” He could hear the little guy’s surprise at being addressed and ignored it.

“You think Higgs has his fingers in every one of these things?”

“Hmm. An interesting theory,” Dollman mused. “I have become attuned to Higgs’s energy, especially after what he put you through back at the observatory, and I do feel his influence over them.”

“...But?” Sam prompted as he set the last of his destroyed and empty equipment on the ground. 

“It isn’t as strong as I would expect it to be if he was controlling every mech independently with precise detail,” the tiny medium explained. “I suspect there is something more complex happening on whatever Beach Higgs is operating from. We can ask the Phantom Smith and his mentor for their theories, but I fear we may not be able to know for sure until we lock onto his location.”

“Hmm,” Sam grunted. 

He climbed into his truck and kicked on the engine without another word.

Tarman gave Sam an unnecessarily thorough recounting of his options in taking the network stabilizer south, given that he probably knew the terrain of Australia better than anyone alive at this point. (Possibly, depending on whether Higgs was truly alive.)  He wasn’t planning on making a straight shot of it anyway. After collecting the capture crystal from the dolphin-like BT on behalf of The Fisherman, he had a date with a god-like ghost fish. 

The cargo didn’t seem all that special as Sam loaded it into the truck and set off down the hill. Just a regular network stabilizer. The chiral network needed so many of these it felt like it was held up by sticks and chewing gum. He wondered how the network could be the thing that would make post-Stranding life bearable if it was so fragile, but Sam held his tongue like always. 

He went the long way around to Pizza Atami, in search of more orders he could complete along his route. The chef gave him a free pie before sending him on his way, which Sam ate on the drive up to the Architect. Everyone seemed happier than when he’d first met them, but he had no idea what had really made that happen. The network? Himself? Being able to talk to some other prepper whenever they wanted? A particular valuable delivery? Sam knew he was a good porter, but he just didn’t buy into the thought that he was the sole reason everyone in Australia liked their lives better, Q-pid or not. 

The Fisherman said he was the only one who could take out the Lord of the Tar Lake and free the survivors of the voidout there from the demons of their past. Sam believed that to be true, but he wasn’t some super soldier. As Higgs loved to point out, he just simply couldn’t die. Sam’s special skills were forced immortality and not complaining as he carried cargo anywhere he was told. 

He wasn’t scared of the Lord. Another voidout wouldn’t hurt anyone but himself, and he’d bounce back quick enough. And then he would wake up alone in a crater yet again—except for Dollman who was nothing more than a ghost himself. It wouldn’t matter, so long as Sam destroyed the BT. All he had to do was hit the broad side of a barn, really.

He survived the fight with the Lord and showed up on the Fisherman’s doorstep completely exhausted. Sam had no choice but to make use of his hospitality to recover, grateful that the man had been moved to open his doors now that they had reached maximum connection level. He showered and passed out, drifting into a dark dream. 

Sometimes dreams felt like being in the Seam. He’d visited Amelie’s Beach this way often enough that Sam could never be sure his Ka wasn’t really travelling in his sleep, which always gave his nightmares an extra edge of danger. Because of this, knowing he was dreaming wasn’t necessarily a comfort.

In this dream, Sam could hear Higgs singing his father’s lullaby. The one he had sung to Lou when she was in the pod. Somehow Higgs knew all the words, and his voice was so sonorous that it made Sam feel uncannily relaxed. He didn’t know where they were, and he couldn’t see Higgs. The sky was a blindingly bright gray, which didn’t narrow it down at all. It looked like the Beach, but not one that Sam had been to before. 

He walked down a sandy shoreline towards the sound of Higgs’s voice, on edge for something unexpected. Nothing happened for a long time. The Beach stretched on. Higgs’s song did not grow any louder. Tension built, curling tight in Sam’s chest. Finally, he crested a small bluff and spotted a figure in the distance. It wasn’t Higgs. It was a woman with dark hair and a white dress, smattered with tar. 

“Tomorrow?” Sam asked aloud, though she was definitely not close enough to hear. 

It might not be her, but… If only Sam could get close enough to tell whether her hair was tar-soaked or truly that dark. But it was so far away. 

Higgs’s voice faded and the electric wail of his guitar blared. Sam looked around wildly, his heart racing. Yet there was nothing, no one. The woman in the distance slowly turned over her shoulder to face Sam, and he leaned in with a fierce curiosity, squinting against the light to see her face. Then she rushed forward, crossing the hundreds of meters between them in a single breath and laughing maniacally in Higgs’s voice. The hair was blonde, but it was Amelie’s. His face was streaked with gold, black, and white as he charged Sam at full force.

Sam couldn’t help but flinch back. He sat bolt upright in bed, gasping and scrambling away from no one. 

“Are you alright, Sam?” Dollman asked from the shelf beside the bed. 

It took him a moment to remember where they were in his unfamiliar accommodations. This was the room The Fisherman had lent him. Sam hadn’t seen Tomorrow or Higgs for weeks. He hadn’t realized how much he’d been missing her, but as his adrenaline cooled off Sam realized he wanted to see her and make sure she was okay. He pushed aside he silly thought and nodded to Dollman, swinging his legs off the side of the bed. 

There was a light knock at the door. “Everything alright?” The Fisherman asked softly.

“Uh huh,” Sam replied. He stood up and crossed the room, opening the door to put his host’s mind at ease. “Bad dream. Everything’s fine. I’ll get out of your hair.”

“Oh, but you don’t have to go,” the man said, worry pinching his brow. “I was gonna cook up a big breakfast. I’ve got some fresh roo in!”

Sam shook his head. “Need to hit the road,” he insisted. 

“Right. Lots of important deliveries to make, no doubt,” his host agreed with a note of disappointment. 

“Mhm.”

He felt bad for dipping out on the guy, but it wasn’t personal. Dollman handled the pleasantries and made their apologies better than he ever could have. Until they stepped outside and Sam could finally breathe fresh air, leaving the nightmare behind. 

Sam managed to delay his arrival at the distribution center a further three days after leaving The Fisherman’s shelter. The longer time went on, and the more his anger faded, the guiltier his procrastination made him. But it wasn’t like he was shirking his duties as a porter. He was delivering orders, helping people with tasks they couldn’t complete on their own, and they kept rewarding him with things they thought would help him in his quest to connect the continent. 

The more he heard people talk about it—the closer Drawbridge got to achieving that goal—the more Sam wondered how many people realized what he was really doing was tying the land to the Beach. Bringing them all closer to death in a very literal fashion. That was why they needed all these stabilizers and nodes and all the other tech bullshit. Would everyone be so excited about the possibility of another plate gate if they knew their world was colliding with the Beach? Then again, they knew the gate was the cause of those unpredictable, violent tremors and it didn’t seem to stop them from wanting a second one. 

Regardless, no one was trying to stop him. Not even Higgs really. So Sam would follow through; he had nothing better to do with his time. 

He couldn’t stop thinking about all of these things and what they might mean for the completion of the network as he approached F7. Sam’s boots crunched through the thinning layer of snow as he walked down the hill from The Adventurer’s shelter. Fragile, Dollman, and the others kept claiming Higgs was trying to intervene, but Sam was more inclined to take him at his word. His latest acts of terrorism weren’t about stopping Drawbridge, or APAC, or even Bridges. It wasn’t some homo demens ideology about destroying the government and the world. 

There was far more truth to Higgs’s claim that he was only out for revenge on Fragile and Sam himself for what they had done to him. They had been stupid enough to trap a sadist alone in purgatory to rot, and this was the price they had to pay for it. Yet Sam doubted Higgs drive for revenge every time the memory of that endless fire resurfaced. His honeyed words and hungry eyes had told a different story. 

Even if Sam might be dooming the people of Australia by tethering them to the Beach, he still felt guilty as he trudged through territory that wasn’t on the network. Things always seemed so much more desolate without the signs of other porters passing through and lending one another support. Sam had gotten used to the ability to play his music while he walked, and he missed it when the player stopped in a burst of static. 

The F7 distribution center looked so lonely tucked away in the hillside without any of that life surrounding it. At least these were things Sam had the power to change, even if he wasn’t sure what kind of solution they were. 

Neil Vana. Sam had almost forgotten about him after learning that no trace of Lou remained in this world. It shouldn’t have surprised him to come face to face with the dead man again. He didn’t bother going to F7’s private room; he had stamina left to see whatever this was to its end. Sam just swapped out his hiking gear for a few extra guns and marched outside. 

He wasn’t expecting to see Lucy’s form in the tar however. Of all the people who had seen fit to haunt Sam from the Beach over the years, he had never seen her before. Not even on the day she died. He had held her empty Ha to his chest, lifted her in his arms… Not even afterward, in the Seam, on the Beach. Heartman had glimpsed his family’s Kas moving on during the voidout that he survived. Sam had not been so lucky. 

Yet again Neil Vana had armed himself and recruited other unfortunate souls to defend him. Sam wished they could just fucking talk. All he wanted was answers, to figure out why the hell Vana had picked now, 11 years later, to come pick a bone with him. Instead he kept throwing stick after stick at the man who had made a cuckold of him with no idea if anything would come of it. It all felt so stupid, huffing and puffing his way through some fucked up nightmare.

He fought his way through stations and train cars, tracking Vana across every broken slab of floating cement. His mouth was acrid with the taste of cryptobiotes. Gunshots rang in his ears. 

Then Sam climbed up onto the upturned ceiling of a broken down train station and found Vana dressed in a clean suit, not a single weapon on him. He let his machine gun fall to his side as he stepped forward, hoping that they were finally done with all this violence. Vana turned and smiled at him as if they were old friends, a strange love in his eyes. He pulled his arm out from behind his back and lifted a small bouquet of fresh flowers out to Sam.

“Just to make things more romantic,” he said warmly.

“What?” Sam breathed, his stomach lurching. 

But the flowers disintegrated as they fell to the floor, and Vana transformed back into his fatigues. Sam popped a chronobiote just in time to dodge out of the way of the spray of bullets and level his sights again. He stayed light on his feet, pivoting every time Vana zipped away to catch his breath. Until finally the bastard went down and didn’t get up again.

Sam approached the lost soul warily, prepared for him to strike unexpectedly, but Vana was saying his name. The whole scene reminded Sam so much of Cliff, only this time he knew exactly who the man in front of him was and how they were connected. 

“Sam? Are you Sam?” Vana asked, squinting weakly in his direction.

“Yeah.”

A loose piece of rubble collapsed onto Vana out of nowhere, and he had to be pulled free. Sam felt the similarity to the memory he had just witnessed rattle through his bones—the time Vana had left a little girl that could only have been Lucy pinned beneath a similar hunk of concrete. 

“I’m so sorry…I tried to protect them,” Vana said once Sam had him upright again. “I’m sorry.”

Them, plural. Lucy and the kid? Lou? He had known her name, called it out during another of their strange battles. Lou was Neil’s daughter, so Sam shouldn’t have been surprised. It was just that Lucy had promised him they were going to have a life together. He’d never found out what had really happened. Everyone who might have told him died in the voidout. Not even a security video was left behind. 

The official story was that the voidout was caused by yet another suicide no one had found until it was too late. Sam had never tried to correct anyone on it. Before that, the Bridges director who oversaw porter operations for the whole city had told him Lucy had killed herself because of her DOOMS symptoms. It had never made any fucking sense; Lucy didn’t have DOOMS.

Vana hung his head and changed, suddenly back in that gray suit instead of his soldier’s gear. He reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a familiar silver-gray patterned silk scarf, and handed it to Sam. 

“From Lucy…” he said. “For you.”

Sam ran the material through his gloved fingers and raised it towards his face. The next second the scarf was replaced with a simple, tarnished necklace on a ballchain. The oldest bit was a steel symbol pendant that reminded Sam of the cancer zodiac sign. Lou, the first Lou, would have been a cancer if she had been born normally. Beside the pendant lay a coffin-shaped, sleek piece of metal with no discernable purpose. Neither of these things held sentimental value for Sam. He had never seen them before. There was no reason Lucy would ask Vana to pass them along, certainly not from beyond the veil. There had to be something else to it.

“What is this?” he asked the weakened soul before him.

Vana simply stared back at him, his brilliant green eyes so big and full of sadness. “Keep Lou safe,” he said.

It was strange feeling so on the same page with someone who kept firing a gun at him—but then Vana also wasn’t the first person to make Sam feel that way. If Vana really cared this much about Lucy’s child, then her choice to raise the baby with Sam made even less sense. Lucy would have been better off with him instead of tied to a cursed repatriate. Putting all of that aside, Sam was oddly warmed to know that this man cared as much for Lucy’s lost child as he did. He wished they had met back then. 

Sam tucked the necklace away and leaned forward. He lay a hand on Vana’s shoulder, not sure if there was more information he would be able to share or if his efforts would be better spent on helping the man finally move on. There was flash of images, much like his visions. Lucy’s face smiled back at him—at Neil Vana.

There was nothing to do but sit back and watch the memories play out.

Lucy was on his mind when he went to sleep later back on the DHV Magellan. Sam’s tired body outmatched his anxiety over all that he had learned and the question of what lay ahead, but the first person he’d truly loved still walked his dreams. The news he got upon waking was no longer a surprise, but it still made his chest ache. Louise, who was carried by Lucy, was his child after all. And Bridges wanted her for themselves. He’d always known in his bones that he was the one who had gotten Lucy killed. 

Sam was sickened that the fresh depths of the pain Bridget could inflict upon him always felt like a shock to the chest. Every time he came back into the fold, let the organization worm its way into his life, he was reminded of exactly why he could never trust it. Bridget had only ever seen Sam as a tool. His bond with Amelie was what had staved off the Last Stranding two years ago, but it had been built through lies and manipulation. He should have died as a baby, when her bullet passed through his tiny chest. But she hadn’t let him. And when she found out he had fathered a child, Bridget planned to use her the exact same way. Before Lou had even been born. 

It made him feel sick to his stomach to think about, so he did his best not to. Fragile brought him to the bridge for the mission briefing, and he set to work. One last network node and everything Sam had agreed to would be complete. Maybe then Drawbridge could part ways with APAC, let it all die with the conclusion of a single contract. Maybe they could just be normal porters again, and together they could make life bearable. He never wanted to see that ridiculous puppet of a president again—or Charlie with his stolen voice and shady way of dodging questions.

To Sam’s great shame, the assault on Higgs’s blockade felt good. He had learned how to deal with these bizarre mechs, and he had the DHV Magellan at his back. Together the army of ghosts was no match for them. Fragile had assigned everyone perfectly. Tomorrow was truly impressive on the mini-gun; it made Sam want to see what she could do on the ground after all that VR training. The updates he got from Rainy, Fragile, and Tarman were well coordinated, and it became much easier to handle a large continent of enemies. 

Sam wasn’t used to people having his back like this. The idea of getting used to it scared him. As much as he wanted to consider the people on board that ship family, he still remembered the secrets they were capable of keeping. The last time Sam felt like he bonded with members of Bridges he had to be the one to leave, but none of them reached out until they needed something from him, even though Fragile proved he was possible to find. There was no evidence that they wouldn’t all go their separate ways once the contract was complete, leaving Sam utterly alone once again.

These fears crept in while he took a breather after connecting the second relay. Sam gulped down water from his canteen and reminded himself to focus. He had empty clips to recycle and blood bags to change out, proof that the threat laying ahead was real. Things might have been quiet at the moment, but he knew Higgs wasn’t going to let them finish the network this easily. He may not care about expansion or extinction anymore, but Higgs wasn’t going to let them shut him out of the world of the living without a fight. 

So when he set off, Sam was on edge looking out for signs of the head ghoul. The long ramshackle bridge felt like the perfect place for ambush, even after clearing out yet another squad of mechs. Sure enough a bigger group than he’d ever faced solo popped up from the tar, but still no sign of Higgs. Without the Magellan to back him up, Sam wasn’t totally sure how this was going to go. He was pretty sure getting killed by a ghost mech wouldn’t cause a voidout—he’d managed to avoid it so far—but if they stole the terminal unit it would definitely complicate things. 

Suddenly a familiar silhouette landed on the scene. Katana in hand, the Red Samurai cut a dividing line between Sam and half of the mechs. The uncertainty of the stranger’s motives evaporated the moment he spoke. Sam peered into the unzipped mask and saw the pale face of Deadman’s corpse. His relief was accompanied by frustration—why hadn’t he said something earlier?—but Sam let Deadman take his half of the enemy force and pressed on. 

It wasn’t Higgs who arrived after the final wave had been defeated, but the half-destroyed mech from the mountains which rose up out of the tar-filled sea instead. Sam fought back a strange feeling of disappointment. The mech was not as strong as it had been the first time, thankfully, but now he was all alone and pinned down on a narrow bridge. He fought hard, relying on his spare blood bags a lot more than he should’ve. Sam was limping by the time the thing finally collapsed back into the depths it had come from. 

He huffed and puffed his way down the ramp to the terminal. No one was there to greet him, but Sam was too beat to give it a second thought. He turned in the unit and brought the facility online, completing his contract with Drawbridge and Drawbridge’s contract with APAC. The moment the terminal deactivated the large receiving room echoed with the sound of slow applause. Sam knew without turning around who he would find.

“Here’s to the man of the hour,” Higgs proclaimed, walking towards him from near the entrance. “Our hero finally linked up the whole damn continent.”

Sam pulled his gun off of his tool rack and fired on him without delay. Higgs’s powers seemed somehow even stronger than before. His mech body phased in and out, popping up here and there and dodging Sam’s bullets. He had no idea how the man had figured out how to do all this from the Beach; the Phantom Smith and Deadman were only just cracking the code on the technology. 

Sam stopped firing, and Higgs solidified again. “You know I’d say this is a happy ending, but…our story ain’t over yet,” he grinned smugly.

Sam waited, silently agreeing. Higgs kept walking closer, so he fired again, hoping to put some distance between them. The king ghost mech just phased forward, grabbing the barrel of Sam’s gun and shoving it skyward. 

“Sadly we won’t be having ourselves a boss battle this time,” Higgs lamented as Sam tried to free the weapon from his grip. “There’s just no point. You see, y’all can’t win.”

Sam didn’t care about winning. He barely cared about living. He just wanted this senseless violence to end, to put their past in the past. That meant severing whatever ties to the land of the living Higgs still had in order to free himself and Fragile from the man’s specter. He didn’t take any joy in it, but it had to be done. 

Sam finally wrenched the gun out of Higgs’s hand and fired once into his chest. The mech body phased away, as if there had been no impact at all, and Higgs somehow stole the gun in the process. He laughed at Sam from a few meters away, brandishing the gun boastfully, but Sam didn’t rise to the bait. He could see the DHV Magellan rising out of a fresh tar pit in the dark expanse of the delivery bay. The arm of its mounted cannon shot out and rammed Higgs up into the wall of the facility, severing his form right down the middle. 

“Goddammit,” Higgs spat, as if the impact caused him no pain.

Fragile popped out of the Magellan’s hatch and walked down the hull towards them. She was here to finish the job Sam had left her with two years ago, and she looked like she was ready to do it right this time. He watched quietly, but Sam doubted either of them could do anything to this version of Higgs that would prevent them from seeing him again. This was just another empty shell he’d figured out how to pilot. 

“Sorry,” Fragile said, “but you are long past your prime.”

Sam fell in step beside her and picked the assault rifle up from the ground so that Higgs couldn’t snatch it. He stepped back, letting Fragile do what she needed.

Higgs had been severed at the waist. Tar dripped from the wound. Fragile grabbed him by the shoulder and hefted him upright with one arm. They looked into each other’s faces, a lifetime of animosity passing between them. Sam wondered if Higgs might tell her about Coffin and the things they shared.

“Hello, beautiful,” he said instead.

“You’re damaged goods,” she replied. 

A mechanical tentacle snaked out of the chamber in Higgs’s abdomen and stabbed Fragile in the chest. Sam winced as she recoiled in pain, wondering whether what she felt was more physical or psychological. He was pretty sure the blow had landed right on her old bullet wound from the day Higgs attacked her and Lou. 

“Tell me,” he pried in that soft, creepy, enticing voice of his, “does it still hurt? The memory of what I did.”

She didn’t answer. Sam watched her while Higgs began to laugh.

“It does, doesn’t it?”

Fragile got to her feet and picked up Higgs’s discarded guitar. 

“Ah, yes. Go on,” Higgs goaded her.

She got into position, aiming the neck down at him. 

“It won’t work,” Higgs warned her, “but…be my guest.”

Fragile began to play, screaming as she sent electricity arcing into Higgs’s torso. Sam sat back and watched, hoping that she got some kind of catharsis out of it. However he knew that Higgs was right: she wouldn’t be damaging him with this and probably couldn’t even cause him pain. Getting cut in half seemed to have only frustrated him. 

Although the guitar did do some real damage to his mechanical body, burning and breaking the exterior away under the onslaught. Higgs laughed as he endured it, a carefree smile on his face as if this was exactly what he’d always wanted. For Sam’s bet, it probably was. He kept his gun at the ready to back Fragile up if she needed it. 

She finally tired, but she didn’t lower her weapon as she caught her breath.

“Still as stubborn as ever.” Higgs turned his head towards Sam, resting on his forearm as he slumped against the wall. “Oh, and by the way, Sam…it was me who killed Lou.”

He told himself not to take the bait, not to give Higgs the satisfaction. It wouldn’t do anything but make him laugh. Sam knew that, but he caved and raised the gun anyway. He unloaded the clip into Higgs’s body and pretended it felt like catharsis. In truth, Sam wanted to grab Higgs—the real Higgs—by his stupid stolen haircut and wrestle him to the ground. He wanted to make that little shit call uncle by any means necessary. 

“Kinda tickles,” Higgs taunted with a smile while Sam reloaded.

He turned the gun on him again and managed to hit his face this time. The mask flickered, revealing the plain white structure beneath his chiralgram. It just served as reminder of how everything about the man was a performance. Sam might have known a little more about Higgs than most, but even connecting him to Peter only said so much about who he was today. Nobody knew if there was anything of substance under all this violence and flamboyance, maybe not even Higgs. 

“Your thirst for revenge…will never be satisfied,” Higgs warned Sam with a smug grin.

Sam didn’t doubt him. He knew Higgs spoke from experience. That wasn’t really the point for him, same as Higgs. The guy was a hypocrite and a liar, but there was always truth wrapped up in his bluster. What he said revealed a lot about what he had been through and what he was really after. 

“Enough!” Fragile snapped. “I’m putting you down.”

She yanked the whammy bar on the battle guitar and unleashed the chiral-eating fire on Higgs. Finally the damage really started to show. Higgs’s hair burned away in a flash, and his body lurched as the flames ate at him. He began to crawl towards Sam, trying fruitlessly to escape the flamethrower. 

Sam’s mind veered off imagining what might have happened back at the observatory if the flames had caught on Higgs’s tar-filled body. Would they have been caught in a loop of death together? Or, if Higgs couldn’t die, would he be able to feel the same numbing pain that Sam did? Maybe he would have laid their writhing in yet another performance, pretending to suffer the same was Sam was.

Fragile cut off the beam and glanced at Sam as Higgs collapsed to the floor. If the freak had had lungs, he might have been gasping for breath. Whatever he could feel through this form, he looked exhausted. 

“I’ll take the damage and the goods. I don’t break that easy,” he murmured, his voice low and thick with rasp. 

Fragile’s curiosity was piqued. She took a cautious step closer to him. “What?”

“I’ll take the damage and the goods. I don’t break that easy,” he repeated, lifting his head with a delirious smile painted on with his chiralgram face.

Then he said it again, spreading his arms open as he rolled onto his back. As he opened his mouth to repeat the strange mantra Fragile level the guitar at him once again. Sam figured this had something to do with their history. The words had that cute sort of wit to them that reminded Sam of Fragile. 

Higgs writhed as he burned anew, but when Fragile stopped playing he picked the mantra up again. His voice grew louder, flaunting his invincibility at her. Fragile changed tact as Higgs screamed at her, grabbing the guitar by its neck and smacking it down on him like an axe. The metals and ceramics holding the mech body together crunched under the impact. Fragile put everything she had to a final few blows before pausing for breath.

“I don’t break that easy,” Higgs whispered, his voice distorted by damaged tech. 

Fragile smashed his head one last time and then straightened up, satisfied. Sam stepped towards her and took the guitar from her hands.

“You okay?” he asked, but she looked better than she had in days. 

There was a weight off her shoulders, and it made Sam jealous. He wished he could get that kind of relief that easily. Still, he was glad for her. Fragile carried too much, when Sam knew she’d done everything she could to protect Lou. 

She lit a cigarette on an ember of the dying flames flying overhead and took a long drag. She looked strong, and as she exhaled she recentered herself. Their calm and collected commander was once again ready to take charge. 

They both knew they weren’t really done with Higgs, but hopefully they’d bought themselves enough time to find a way to bring the fight to him. Sam had a few questions for the others about how Higgs could even turn up within a network facility after it had been activated. But he was tired; everything in due time. 

The Magellan’s familiar tune rang out, and Sam realized it was no longer half-submerged in the delivery bay. The sound came from outside, where Tarman must have found a more suitable parking space.

“Shall we?” Sam asked Fragile. 

“Definitely,” she agreed with a smile. “I think we have all earned a rest. Then we can celebrate a job well done.”

Sam grunted and followed her out of the building, thinking to himself that a good night’s sleep was the only celebration he needed.

Chapter Text

Sam was still getting used to the idea that Die-Hardman had been onboard the Magellan the whole time when the Red Samurai turned up again. He was so caught off guard, thinking it was Deadman. He should have known better. Fucking of course Higgs had found a way to get back here in less than a day. There wasn’t even time to wonder what he had done with Deadman’s Ha before Higgs was claiming he had pulled all the strings during their journey through Australia without anyone knowing. 

It was ridiculous, and Sam didn’t believe it for a second. Now he was all about extinction again? Yeah, right. He was right about one thing: bringing about the end of life on Earth would be the best revenge he could get on Amelie. But that wasn’t why he was doing it. Higgs had lost the last shreds of his sanity, and he was seeking anything that got him attention. Fragile and Sam’s attention in particular. Sam didn’t know why the nutjob had decided to fixate on him—his relationship with Fragile went much further back—but he understood the way loneliness could make a man claw at the walls of his own brain. 

“What makes you think you can pull it off?” Sam asked, sick of Higgs’s bullshit. 

For all they knew he was just making empty threats. The ability to control an endless ghost mech army didn’t seem like it would translate to resummoning an Extinction Entity who had closed herself off from both the worlds of the living and the dead.

“Well, I am so glad that you asked,” Higgs replied, leaning forward. “You see during my lengthy imprisonment I had time to figure it out. All I needed was a catalyst with a connection to Amelie—and I could break through to her Beach!”

“That connection is long gone,” Sam spit. 

“Oh Sam,” the Red Samurai purred. “Sweetheart, I’m not talkin’ about you.”

Sam swallowed and shoved away the strange way that pet name and soft tone made him feel. It wasn’t like Higgs was earnest in his gentleness, but the anger Sam should have felt just wasn’t there. 

Higgs turned his head and picked up the katana, pointing the tip at Tomorrow, wrapped up in that yellow cocoon. “This,” he began ominously, “...this is the catalyst I’ve been searching for. Brand new Extinction Entity.”

Tomorrow? An Extinction Entity? But she didn’t have an umbilical cord. Sure, her dooms abilities were like nothing any of them had ever seen—and far more physically manifested than usual—but none of the others had ever suggested… Sam glanced sharply at Heartman, looking to see if he had had any inclination whether this might be true. Had they really been driving around with another Extinction Entity on board this whole time? Could Tomorrow be destined to bring about the Last Stranding?

Higgs turned his gaze off of the cocoon again and must have seen the confusion in Sam’s face. “Still in the dark, huh?” he asked. “Your genes lined up beautifully.”

What was he talking about? Sam’s and Amelie’s genes? Hers and Tomorrow’s? Amelie was never really his sister. Bridget was never his mother. She was a monster who had killed, resurrected, kidnapped, and raised him as her own. If Sam carried any of Bridget’s genes it was breaking fucking news to him. 

“God damn, man!” Higgs exclaimed when Sam didn’t react the way he’d expected. “She’s your daughter!”

Sam blinked, startled by the statement. “What?!”

Higgs swung the katana over their heads, and everyone ducked out of the way. Tar bubbled up from the floor of the Magellan and locked their feet in place. Sam was forced to watch as Tomorrow’s cocoon was pulled beneath the surface. Higgs followed her, a finger raised to his lips. 

The moment he could free his feet Sam ran to the place where Tomorrow had disappeared. He rooted around in the tar, trying to reach deeper and grab hold of something, anything. His fingers knocked into something hard, and he grasped it tight. But it was too small and light to be Tomorrow. Higgs’s red Amelie mask emerged from the blackness, dripping in Sam’s hand. 

“If y’all wanna come after us, be my guest!” Higgs’s voice called up from the depths. “We’ll be waiting on the Beach.”

Something else bubbled up to the surface of the tar puddle. One of Tomorrow’s white converse shoes. Sam had no idea if she was really his daughter somehow, but he wasn’t going to leave her alone with that sick fuck. Especially not if he had found a way to use her to bring about the Last Stranding. 

The next morning, Sam’s mind was even more jumbled than it had been the day before. Die-Hardman, APAS 4000, Higgs, Tomorrow, and the Last Stranding suddenly on the table again. It was far too much to cope with. They had to get back to Mexico and to his old, abandoned shelter, but that was the last place Sam wanted to be. 

He ran into Fragile on his way back to his room from the shower. He grabbed her sleeve and stepped in close. She blinked at him, lips parting with curious concern. 

“Everything okay, Sam?”

“Tomorrow…is she really mine? Don’t think Bridges had my sperm long enough back for it to make sense.”

Her lips pressed together firmly, and she darted her eyes side to side. “Let’s take a little walk, shall we?”

Sam swallowed and nodded. They went out into the daylight in their plain clothes, wrapped up in yellow timefall jackets and started strolling down the broken bridge away from the city. Fragile didn’t say anything for a while, and Sam wondered if she was trying to get out of earshot of anyone in particular. The fresh air felt nice though. Sam had always preferred to be outside. 

“You are definitely her father, Sam,” Fragile said suddenly. 

“Well…who’s her mother?” he asked dumbly. 

“I…haven’t looked,” she admitted. 

“Well, why not?!”

“It’s not that simple. With you we had a sample to compare. I could run her DNA against every record Drawbridge has access to, but that will take time. And there is no guarantee her mother will be in there.”

Sam huffed and kicked at a loose piece of concrete rubble with the toe of his boot. “If Bridges stole my sperm to make her, she has to be in there.”

“Presumably, yes. We both know the lengths Bridges has gone to to cover up their more…controversial projects.”

He grunted and rolled his eyes, turning to lean on the railing that overlooked the tar-soaked sea. 

Fragile gave him a moment and then stepped up beside him, lighting a cigarette with her mechanical hands. “I understand that this must be difficult news, given everything you went through with Lou,” she said. “Tomorrow’s a grown woman. She already understands the pain you’ve been in. She won’t expect you to feel the way a parent does about her overnight.”

Sam shook his head and looked down. That wasn’t what had been bothering him at all. In a way, he did feel a bit of that protective, parental urge when it came to Tomorrow. If she hadn’t already saved his ass more times than he’d saved hers, he’d be worried sick right now. The pride he felt about her accomplishments wasn’t exactly paternal, but it wasn’t a far stretch either. Sam had always felt a subtle bond with Tomorrow, like she got him even though he wasn’t one for words. 

“But…how is she an Extinction Entity? It’s not like I’m really Bridget’s kid,” he reminded Fragile.

“I don’t know,” she admitted easily. “Could be that it’s just a coincidence. Or maybe it’s the result of some Bridges experiment. Or it’s because she’s the child of a repatriate. We know that’s why Bridge’s wanted Lucy’s child in the first place.”

Sam nodded. There was so much they still didn’t understand. All of the options Fragile listed just made him feel guilty. If Tomorrow was an EE because Sam was her father, then it was his fault she was caught up in all this. She was in danger because of him, and he had to find Higgs and get her back out of it again. If they managed to make it back in one piece then they could sort out this whole daughter business. 

“What about Higgs? You think we can kill him?”

Fragile took a long drag on her cigarette and shrugged. “I should’ve done it already. On the beach.”

She was right, so Sam said nothing. He didn’t blame her, but if Higgs had crossed over back then it would have saved them a whole lot of headache. 

“I mean, what do we do if he’s already dead?” Sam asked again.

Fragile sighed. “Nobody’s Ka is meant to reside on the Beach forever.”

Sam watched her for a moment as she stared out at the black sea and ashed her cigarette. “You’re talkin’ about APAS 4000,” he reflected.

She nodded and took another slow drag. “Among others.”

Silver smoke curled up from her nostrils, and Sam turned to gaze out at the horizon with her. It was their fault all those poor souls were trapped in a bunch of servers. The Beach was never meant to act as a fucking data center. If Sam hadn’t connected the UCA to the network, all 4,000 of them could have passed on after the voidout like they were meant to.

Yet it was only because of the Beach that they had any lingering connection to the dead. It brought about voidouts when lost souls tried to clamor their way back, but it was also how Deadman was able to participate in Drawbridge. If he had moved on like he was supposed to, there would be no Red Samurai. 

“What about all that stuff about ‘death can’t tear us apart’?” Sam pressed her.

“Death isn’t the separator,” Fragile argued pedantically. “Eventually everyone has to move on, or else they end up like Dollman’s wife.”

“So what?” Sam puffed. “The living are just holding everyone back? Are you implyin’ that if Lou really had been in that pod, it would be my fault she can’t move on?”

“No, Sam. That’s not–”

“It’s all bullshit is what it is,” he declared, shoving himself back from the railing. He huffed and stomped, itching to hit the road and chase down Higgs once and for all, just to be able to move his feet.

“Sam, listen,” Fragile pleaded. 

He turned and glared impatiently at her, somewhere under the anger and pain he hoped that she knew it wasn’t her he was really mad at. 

“Time passes differently on the Beach. We can linger for a while, if we choose. Lend support or bide our time until our family joins us and then move on together. Many people move on quickly, and that can be just as freeing. But we are still connected, across every world.”

He grunted. It wasn’t like Fragile was a true expert. He’d been to the Beach just as much as she had, and neither of them was a scientist. Sam was the one who had actually died, dunking himself in the Seam more times than he could count. He knew what it was like to be caught between the living and the dead, like a BT with a heartbeat. Most days he wanted nothing more than to move on, to sink into the Seam and finally find peace. Sometimes he wished he would find Lucy there, but these days he was only thinking about Lou. 

“What’s troubling you?” Fragile pried, resting a gentle hand on his arm.

Sam grimaced. He didn’t want to share his cynicism with her, knowing she’d only worry. “If that’s true…maybe forcing Higgs to cross over won’t rid us of him,” he pointed out.

She made a face, raising her eyebrows as if she hadn’t considered that. “In a way, yes,” she agreed with a reluctant smile. “People like Higgs…they tend to leave their scars.”

Fragile looked down at her hand, now healed from the damage Higgs had put her through thanks to Rainy’s corefall, twisting it this way and that in the morning light. Sam nodded. He was tired of metaphors but knew that this was probably as down to earth as this conversation could be. He’d had enough. 

Sam stepped back from the railing and said, “I should hit the road.”

“Yes, we have a long journey ahead of us,” Dollman agreed. 

“Travel safe,” Fragile wished them with a small smile. 

Sam waved goodbye before turning over his shoulder and heading back to the facility to get geared up. No matter how he had come to father Tomorrow, he had to save her. No one, even an Extinction Entity, deserved to be used as a pawn in some game Higgs was playing with him. However Sam was still a porter above all, and Dollman was right. Their journey could be used to help out a few more poor souls along the way. He was already mentally mapping out which facilities were on the way back to the plate gate from Terminal Fort Knot City. Setting his mind to that problem made him a lot less dizzy than problems of death and daughters.

It was hard to reconcile what he was doing as he took a slight detour to connect the facility he’d spotted on the way to F7. Tomorrow’s life was on the line, and if Higgs was telling the truth about her so was the whole world. On the other hand, Sam knew he would need every tool available to him to put down this threat once and for all. Maybe one of these people would have something he could use against Higgs. 

The man who answered Sam at the terminal of the little snowbanked encampment called himself BPAS. Or, he called the collective he was a part of BPAS and always spoke with the royal ‘we’. It was super weird, especially because the network claimed the facility housed 0 residents. Given what he’d just gone through with APAS 4000, the ethos of this entity seemed well founded, but Sam couldn’t rule out BPAS being another AI/human ghost convergence. They gave Sam a fucking rad software enhancement though so the trip was damn worth it. 

He fabricated a coffin board at their shelter and used it to ride over the mountain ridges. This thing was a fucking gift, and Sam loved how much more traversable the highlands were with it. He reached for one anytime he didn’t have much cargo to carry. He swept over the bluff and down to The Adventurer’s place to drop off some lost cargo, hoping he wasn’t about to hear the man had gotten himself stranded again. Sam knew he wouldn’t be able to move on knowing The Adventurer was in the lurch, but he had places to be. So he breathed a sigh of relief when the chiralgram coalesced, and he saw the father riding on his son’s shoulders and laughing. Sam waved as he approached the shelter and hopped off the coffin board. 

Of course there was still another territory on the way back west that didn’t have network connection. Sam had to jump off the board not far past the F5 center and attach it to his ankle. The thing floated behind him uselessly as the sun set in the distance. He grew tired as he made his way along the ridge, the path unworn and dark. There wasn’t a brigand camp anywhere nearby, and the Q-pid activation had banished the mechs, so it was relatively safe. 

Sam eventually caved to the fatigue just after coming back into network connection a short ways from The Lone Commander’s shelter. He found a Timefall Shelter near the dead end of a highway segment he’d built months ago and settled down for a sleep. Dollman wished him a goodnight, and Sam grunted in reply. He tipped his cap over his eyes and let himself rest. 

Deep into the night, the coffin board, floating silently to one side of Sam, cracked itself open. The top half of the coffin revealed Higgs in a fresh mech body exactly like his old one, laying there with a wicked grin. Higgs sat bolt upright, his arms crossed over his chest like in an old vampire movie. He turned his head towards Sam, who was still slumped over asleep. Higgs carefully climbed out of the coffin and stepped around Sam to look at him from the front. 

Higgs smiled, dropping to one knee. His gaze had a strange warmth in it, like he was genuinely glad to see Sam. Sam realized his mind’s eye was hovering somewhere outside of himself when Higgs turned and made eye contact with him, his own sleeping body behind the undead mech’s coy gesture. He felt his anxiety pick up as Higgs turned back to his body.

“Wakey wakey eggs and bakey,” the guitarist sang mockingly. 

He tapped on Sam’s shoulder with a single finger, and Sam startled awake. Suddenly he was looking out of his own eyes again, and he shot to his feet the second he realized what was happening. Sam grabbed Lou’s pod defensively and reached out with the other arm to keep Higgs away from him. Higgs matched him, grappling his head and shoulder so that their frames were locked together. 

Sam started to panic as he realized he didn’t have much leverage. Higgs was taller than him, and he had free use of both hands, his body expendable. It wouldn’t be a surprise if Higgs had come here asking to get beat up again. Yet Sam was unarmed and unprepared.

Instead, Higgs looked deeply into Sam’s eyes, making no move to attack, and murmured, “I can’t deny this.”

Sam frowned, unsure what he meant even as his stomach squirmed. 

Higgs pursed his lips, and his tongue split them open. Only it wasn’t his tongue; a dark tentacle stretched out of his mouth, growing longer by the second. It reminded Sam of the ones he had seen grab Tomorrow before she’d been trapped in that cocoon. 

The sight should have disgusted him, but Sam was intrigued. Something in him yearned to be touched by Higgs in this way. The feeling was so foreign and so strong that it scared Sam, but it was undeniable. The thing inside him that wanted Higgs reached out, emerging from between his lips. A second tentacle met the first, but this one was part of Sam. 

They twined together, pulling their faces closer and bonding to each other. Sam could only stare at Higgs as it happened, horrified and fascinated by the satisfaction he saw in the set of the other man’s eyes. He still had a palm braced on Higg’s chest while the other laid over the top of Lou’s pod. It felt silly somehow to be holding the intruder back. 

Sam’s body arched into him without a thought. They shifted as one, moving their hands to each other’s waists as they sank deeper into this alien kiss. More tentacles emerged from Higgs’s core and entangled the two together. Sam’s eyes fluttered shut as he fought his instincts and gave into the sensation of being held.

Then he jolted awake a second time, grunting in alarm. It had been a dream, thank fuck. Sam was deeply confused—not least by the aching hardness in his pants—and he looked to Dollman to ground him. The small body of his friend hung from the Timefall Shelter’s post and rattled as he reacted to Sam’s jerky movements looking over each shoulder. 

“Whoa! Sam! Are you okay?”

Sam calmed himself down, grunting as he caught his breath. Higgs wasn’t here; it had all been a dream. Everything was fine and in its right place. Except that Sam was too hard to comfortably stand up right now. He nodded at Dollman and ducked his head, worried he might be blushing with embarrassment. 

Sam bent one knee to his chest to hide his state of arousal and tried to focus on settling down. The sun hadn’t yet begun to kiss the eastern horizon, but he figured it was time to move on anyway. Tomorrow had saved his ass a handful of times already, and Sam owed her a return of the favor. …And he needed to find out who they really were to each other. He knew it wouldn’t feel real until he could look into her eyes again. 

“Did you get enough rest?” Dollman asked as Sam adjusted the shoulder straps on his suit. 

“Mhm.”

There was brief pause. “Very well. Let’s get back to it, shall we?”

Sam nodded as stood up, taking the opportunity to shift his clothing around his package. By the time he got his backpack fixed in place he was reasonably confident that Dollman wouldn’t notice his waning erection. He lifted his small companion from his perch and hope that if he did see it, Dollman would assume it was plain old morning wood. 

Mexico was fucked up. Die-Hardman’s fancy special-order Q-pid from Lochne was supposed to weaken bonds to the Beach, but the Beach was more present than ever here. Despite being a land so sparsely populated, the strands tying it to the other side seemed to have pulled the Seam directly down upon it. 

It felt like at any moment the steady timefall could transform the atmosphere into a fluid ocean. Breathing was almost like taking a drink. Thankfully no one else was out in this…could it even be called weather? Sam didn’t see a single soul as he drove for hours down to the lowlands, not even a BT. 

A porter should never drive past a shelter—much less a distribution shelter—without stopping in to check the order list, but the situation was too dire. The sky was as oppressively constraining as it was beautiful, shimmering with the Seam’s surface. Sam knew this sight well. It was almost as comfortable as home had once been. Yet seeing it here on the roads of Mexico chilled him to the bone, and he knew there was no time to waste.

One last sleep on the DHV Magellan before the final push. It was hard to let himself rest, but Sam’s body demanded it. Dollman reminded him that the others had preparation to do and the best way for Sam to prepare was to take care of his body. A single REM cycle, a shower, a fresh set of clothes, and it was time to make the jump. 

Sam suited up in his yellow Drawbridge jacket and took Dollman to the bridge. Everyone else was already there, strapping in and checking the ship’s instruments. Fragile wasn’t dressed in her commander’s beret today, but she looked as focused as ever. Sam was worried about her, but he learned the day they met that she was someone who made her own damned decisions, whatever the consequences may be. Using her power to jump them to the Beach was the best plan they had, and there was no way any of them could convince her to back out now. 

She went around the room, checking in with everyone one at a time, and nobody fussed over her. Not even Rainy, who he knew had spent more time with Fragile these last few months than any of the rest of them. Those two had grown close quickly. 

Die-Hardman stood and colled them all to attention. “Everybody ready? Concentrate—and focus your powers,” he directed without preamble. 

“For the sake of the future, we must all come together,” Fragile added as he sat back down. “As a barrier to the bad, and a gateway to the good. All hands, brace for launch.”

She looked at Sam but turned her face down when she saw him watching her. Everyone knew she was putting on a brave face about the risks this jump posed, but she seemed to struggle harder to wear the mask in front of him. 

They stepped into the center of the bridge while Tarman got the ship in motion, coming together step by step. She moved her thumb ring to her index finger and pressed it to her lips, eyes closed, as if making a wish on it. Then she smiled at Sam, suddenly wearing an inappropriate excitement on her face that was totally Fragile. 

Sam held out the photograph as Fragile activated her signal umbrella. Bridget—Amelie—stared back at him, her arm wrapped around Lucy’s shoulders as they celebrated the pregnancy. This photo had been painful for him for 11 years, and the more he learned about the past the sicker it made Sam feel. He looked at Lucy’s belly and thought of Tomorrow, hoping he wasn’t about to lose a third daughter he’d barely gotten a chance to know.

Fragile gently pulled him back to the present, laying her hands on his arms and tilting her forehead towards his. This position was familiar. He remember all the times when he had fought through his aphenphosmphobia to allow her to get him where he needed to go. She was so patient with him, always gentle and respectful in a way no one else had been since Lucy. 

Sam focused on their bond, remembering Tarman’s warning that the whole thing rested on the two of them carrying the ship and its passengers safely to the right Beach. Fragile could only follow the photograph if Sam could connect with her with his whole self. Fragile’s eyes moved up to his, down to his lips, and back up again. He felt what she intended before she tilted her head away and brought her chin closer to his. 

It wasn’t a shift in the energy. There was no monumental revelation. Sam was exactly on the same page with her: they needed to express everything that they were to each other, lose themselves in the strength of their bond. Their relationship was complicated and utterly unique to them, but neither of them could ever doubt the other. That Sam was here after Lou’s death said it all. He had entrusted his child to Fragile, and she hadn’t been able to protect her, but Sam couldn’t hate her for it. 

He watched Fragile’s eyes drift closed and her mechanical hands reach for his chin. He waited to be kissed and then met her energy. It was so easy to fall into a rhythm together, their lips expressing everything Sam didn’t have words for. The grief they shared, the hope they brought each other, and their unshakeable solidarity through the worst tragedies anyone could endure. 

Fragile’s second set of hands gripped his collar and held his face to hers as they lost themselves in the kiss. Sam’s vague awareness of his surroundings told him that it was working; he could feel the strange buoyancy of the Seam cradling them as their bond ferried the DHV Magellan out of the land of the living. 

They paused and looked at each other, but nothing needed to be said. Tears from their chiral allergy trailed down both their cheeks, highlighting the melancholy in Fragile’s eyes. Sam kissed her again, soothing the apology he felt her trying to make. They both knew there was nothing they could have done to save Lou. There was a chance that Fragile wouldn’t survive this journey, and he needed her to know he didn’t hold onto any resentment for her part in what happened that day. 

Sam was so in it that he forgot to spare a thought for Rainy, although she knew how tightly he and Fragile were bonded. He was happy for them and wouldn’t have stood in their way for anything. Every strand connecting the members of Drawbridge was unique and had little to do with the company itself. After this fight, it was hard to say what would become of Drawbridge, but the relationships they had built were far stronger than a job. Or at least Sam believed they were while Fragile was kissing him so tenderly. 

All of their Kas united in the Seam, and together they ferried the Magellan to the other side. Sam startled awake on the floor of the bridge clutching Lou’s old pod. Fragile was laying beside him, still passed out cold. Sam hurried to her side, calling her name, but she didn’t respond. Die-Hardman helped him haul her body up into the commander’s chair where it belonged. 

Their worry was interrupted by the realization that they were still in the Seam. Tarman lowered the blastshield to show them floating in its gray waters. Sam knelt beside Fragile as the Magellan breached the surface and emerged onto a strange Beach. He hadn’t noticed her coming to in the commotion, but the next thing he knew she was giving orders again. 

“Get us airborne, on the double,” Fragile told Tarman. 

Sam got to his feet, sharing a nod and a small smile with a very fatigued looking Fragile before focusing in on Die-Hardman’s orders. He looked out the window and recognized where they were immediately: APAS’s Beach. The stakes were clear. Tomorrow really was the catalyst Higgs needed to reinitiate the Last Stranding. The sight of so many giant BTs between Sam and her was overwhelming, but Die-Hardman had come prepared. 

Up in the air above APAS’s server farm, Sam had no idea how he fit into all of this. Everyone had their assignments from the last time they’d brought the DHV Magellan into battle, but there was nothing he could do against these huge BTs. 

Fragile, as always, was there to ground him. “Please Sam—it has to be you. You have to be the one to finish it,” she pressed. 

He stepped towards her, searching for a way to tell her how uncertain he was, although she clearly already knew. But Tarman called his attention away, advocating that he take the battle guitar into the melee. Sam collected Dollman, got a final order from Die-Hardman, and then turned back to Fragile again. 

She weakly climbed out of the chair and stepped down to bid him goodbye. “Be careful,” she pleaded. Sam opened his arms for her as she came in to hug him, her weight a little heavier than usual. “And remember, I’ll always be with you.”

Then she went limp, her hands sliding off of Sam’s shoulders. 

“Fragile!”

His concern spiked; she was worse off than he’d thought. They needed to take care of her, but the fight was coming at them quickly. Sam couldn’t imagine Fragile had it in her to jump them back home, but that was a problem they’d have to face later. 

He helped her back into the commander’s chair and turned to leave, but Fragile grabbed him by the hand. Her body was loose like a ragdoll, and her eyes were strangely distant. She said nothing as she held on, but when Sam tried to break free Fragile refused to let go. He came closer and knelt down in front of her, offering his full attention. 

They shared a moment of eye contact that assured Sam that she was fine, at least for now. Fragile smiled sweetly at him and let him go. 

With barely a notion of what was going on out in the surf, Sam charged down the Beach. 

The Red Samurai wasn’t a surprise, but it also wasn’t really Higgs. Part of Sam was dying to see the man himself again, with all of his masks stripped away. He couldn’t really ignore the frustration that came with that urge as he played Higgs’s battle guitar, sending arcing electricity into the giant katana-wielding mech. The longer the battle raged on the more impatient Sam became, until finally the hulking mech lay defeated on the sand. 

“Not long now,” Higgs’s voice echoed through the vast space as Sam stared at the intimidating tear between realities. 

He turned slowly, eyes scanning the horizon until he spotted Higgs. In the end, he was just a man, sitting on top of one of the barnacle-covered server towers. 

“You’re too late, Sam,” he claimed with sadness in his voice.

Sam took a few steps towards the surf, trying to get a better look at him in the distance. Then he was suddenly jumped forward, appearing in the midst of the towering columns of servers, just like he had when APAS 4000 had brought him here in a dream. 

Higgs sat on one of the server towers just a couple rows ahead of him, his legs dangling over the edge. He was slumped, as if defeated, and his chest was completely bare. Gold lettering glimmered on his skin, the same mathematical tattoo across his forehead was now written in chiralium. Sam wondered if the ones that spread down his arms and chest were new. He wanted to touch them and see if he could feel the texture of their shape beneath his fingertip. 

Amelie’s haircut was less of a mask than Sam had previously assumed. On the real Higgs it was shaggy and poorly kempt, making Sam believe it had grown out on its own. He wondered whether Higgs had chosen the mask after seeing a resemblance in the reflection of his face in the waters of the Seam. How strange it must have been to be haunted by Amelie like that. It would have driven Sam mad too. For one reason or another, Higgs had chosen to wear her quipu from his neck, like he was mourning a lost love.

Sam looked up at him, his hair blowing gently in the breeze, and resented how beautiful he looked. What right did Higgs have to appear so lovely after everything; he should have been as ugly as his deeds and the twisted mind that had fueled them. At least then Sam wouldn’t be so distracted.

“Well, let’s just say I’ve…died on the Beach before,” he said, staring off into the middle distance. “You of all people should understand.”

Sam stepped closer to him, saying nothing. He wasn’t sure what Higgs wanted him to empathize with and wasn’t ready to cosign the horrible things he had done, but dying and visiting the Beach were experiences that lived in Sam’s every cell. It wasn’t a commonality he had with many people. Even those like Fragile who were able to come and go from the Beach freely didn’t have the same visceral experience of it that Sam did. 

He felt the words before they left Higgs’s lips hovering in the space between them. 

“The loneliness. …Tens of thousands of years of just…wandering.”

Sam could feel how painful that time had been for Higgs. This wasn’t a lie or an exaggeration for once. He could picture it plain as day. Sam remembered his time alone on the Beach after Amelie cut herself off, the endlessness and aimlessness of it all. There was no way of knowing how long he had been there before the Bridges team found a way to pull him back out, but it had felt like an eternity. 

Back on Earth, it had taken them days to find him. The way time passed on the Beach, it could have been months. Sam had known getting trapped there was a risk when he went. At the time, there was no other option. 

For Higgs, it was different. He had been so confident he was about to end the world and himself with it. Later, Sam had expected Fragile to take him out. Instead Higgs had been trapped there for around two years the way time passed on Earth. When Higgs said tens of thousands of years, there was no way of knowing for certain, but the exaggeration may not have been as far off as it might seem. Sam believed without a doubt that that was what it must have felt like to him, having gotten just a taste of it himself. 

“Without you…” Higgs lamented, his eyes still dead and distant. 

Sam blinked, surprised to hear the longing in the other man’s voice. The obsession had been clear for a long time, especially since he entered Peter’s bunker back near Lake Knot, but he hadn’t thought that Higgs actually cared underneath all that fanaticism. 

“...Fragile…” Higgs listed, tears trailing down his cheeks as his voice grew weaker. “...Amelie…anyone.”

The pain in him was so palpable that Sam couldn’t help but feel the tug in his chest. He knew this was his chance to get through to Higgs, while he was so raw and open. Sam strongly suspected Higgs could be talked down if they could only find a way to tether him back to reality. Maybe he would still have to move on, through the Seam, but Sam wanted to send him on his way with peace if he could. 

“I couldn’t fucking take it,” Higgs grit out, his soft voice on the verge of breaking. 

He held his hand up to the side of his head in a lazy imitation of a gun and smiled wryly down at Sam. Higgs let out a puff of breath as he gestured taking his own life. Fragile must have left him with a gun, or maybe there had been one discarded on the battlefield with a bullet left in the clip. Sam felt an empathetic ache in his own temple, the back of his mouth, and behind his ear as his body recalled what that felt like. No one he had ever met had died as many times as he had, and Sam new how much worse it stung when you fired the gun yourself. 

The rain started, as if the Beach itself was mourning Higgs. Sam looked up at him and was struck again with how hard it was going to be to end this. Higgs was already dead, and there was very little Sam knew how to do that could force him to move on. Then again, he clearly hadn’t wanted to remain here, so what was keeping him?

“And just…when I finally embraced oblivion,” Higgs explained with longing in his voice, “these dead folks right here up and called me back.”

Sam watched him lay down on top of the server bank, that sardonic grin returning to his face. He felt the opportunity to reach him slipping through his fingers as Higgs turned bitter again, but if APAS 4000 was his enemy then that was something they shared. Sam searched for the words, but they weren’t his strong suit. While he deliberated, sadness filled Higgs’s features again. 

“Four thousand poor bastards who joined with APAS in a convergence.” He gazed up at the sky thoughtfully, surprising Sam with how reflective he seemed. “To them I was another ghost,” Higgs continued with a shrug. “Just another…lingering soul.”

Sam hadn’t realized how dark it had gotten until Amelie’s quipu lit up Higgs’s chest with a golden glow. Its warm light against his skin would have been inviting if it weren’t so eerie. Was Higgs doing that himself? Sam couldn’t keep straight whether the guy was pining for the attention Amelie had once given him or ready to burn her on a pyre for abandoning him. Whatever it meant, the quipu glittered into dust like so many chiral crystals. 

“Well, with so much in common,” Higgs intoned, his voice lower and more dangerous than before, “they thought I should join up with their little company.”

This answered the questions Sam had after hearing APAS 4000 claim to have controlled him, so Sam believed it. Higgs had sought the release of death and gotten caught up in the same gravity of these servers that had trapped the dutiful citizens of the UCA. Was he still a ghost, or had he been forcibly repatriated like Sam? If Sam touched him, would Higgs be warm beneath his touch? All of this was Sam’s fault in so many ways, and it made him feel sick to his stomach. 

“And me being me,” Higgs continued, “I played along. All the while…I was working towards my own…personal goal.”

Sam shifted his weight as Higgs sat up and turned that devilish smile of his down upon him. Here came the kicker. Once he was trapped as a part of the fabric of APAS 4000’s server farm, what did Higgs decide to do then? Everything that happened next hinged upon it, especially Tomorrow’s fate. The rain turned to snow, and Sam stepped forward, ready to make his plea.

“No, I get it,” he told Higgs earnestly. “But is that really what you want?”

“Oh yeah,” the ghost replied, his voice breathy with desire. 

Higgs got to his feet and pulled a shiny new battle guitar out from behind his back. It was chiralium gold with two necks, a new and improved model over the one Sam had come armed with. Again he thought how unfair it was that a person who committed such ugly deeds could look so radiant. 

“To bring about the Last Stranding–” He punctuated himself with a few powerchords, blasting electricity into the air overhead. 

Sam hardened his stare. He wouldn’t hesitate to put Higgs down in whatever way he had to, but he was determined to make him see sense—no matter how ill-advised a notion that was. Someone had to call this asshole on his bullshit. 

“But for real this time,” Higgs stated, aiming the necks of his guitar down at Sam.

Sam ducked behind a server tower just in time, but some of the souls bound to APAS were not so lucky. A few of the BTs orbiting the server farm were struck by the fire and squealed angrily. They began to fade, just like they did when Sam banished them from the world of the living. He hoped that whatever Higgs had done had set them free, like cutting their umbilicals, and they wouldn’t be drawn back to this cursed place.

“I mean, honestly!” Higgs shouted up to the skies. “What is the point of this graveyard, huh? Humans deserve to go extinct, to be forgotten.” He jumped down to the shallow bay a few meters ahead of Sam, but didn’t attack immediately. “Whaddya say?” Higgs spun his new guitar on its strap, leaning back and putting himself on a confident display. “One last dance on top of their ol’ bones?”

Sam slung his guitar onto his shoulder, ready for the challenge, and nodded.

Chapter Text

Higgs disappeared again, and Sam followed the sound of his guitar to track him down. The distant wail pointed him to the outstretched palm of a giant calcified BT. Higgs played the melody of Clifford Unger’s lullaby, shredding his heart out. All the threat from their fight seemed to have evaporated.

“You remember that day on the Beach?” Higgs called down to Sam. “My guiding light betrayed me.”

Sam held himself at the ready as Higgs picked up the tune again, tossing his hair like some rock god. He didn’t trust the man one bit and knew that any second another bolt could shoot in his direction. 

“Chose not yours truly,” he continued as the last chord echoed down from his high perch, “but Sam the man.”

He hated it when Higgs—or anyone—called him that. Of all the titles people had given him, that one was the stupidest. It didn’t mean anything. Higgs was always throwing it in his face as if everyone thought he could perform miracles and had made his life easy and full of reward as a consequence. Yes, people appreciated his work immensely, and the did give him gifts. But all of that was in service of him continuing to do more work for them. Sam could—and had—plummeted to his death in the name of transporting cargo only for the profuse gratitude he received to be followed up with more order requests. 

Being “the man” hadn’t protected Lou. It hadn’t earned him a comfortable life in which to raise her. Every contract he ever signed failed to end when it promised to. The work always led to more work. All he had was his body, its strength and resilience. When that finally wore out, Sam would truly have nothing left to show for all his years porting. He could only die of old age, and that prospect was a giant, horrifying, lonely unknown. 

“Well, that girl was meant to be mine,” Higgs proclaimed before tossing his head back and strumming another power chord. 

It was stupid that he still idolized Amelie. The things that happened that day—and the days that followed it—revealed to Sam that he and Higgs had been mere pawns in her game. They were so similar in that fashion. Just a couple of orphaned boys plucked out of their lives by the most powerful being on the planet and pitted against each other to help her decide whether or not to end the world. It was cruel, and they had been through it separately, but their story was the same. 

Sam wondered if Higgs even knew that part of the story. With all of APAS 4000 available to him, Sam figured he must have. He was glad he had been able to steer Amelie away from total destruction of life, but Higgs was caught up in petty jealousy. It was impossible not to see the hurt, lonely little boy up on that platform, pretending at power.

“Luckily I found someone new,” Higgs reminded Sam, gesturing over his shoulder to where Tomorrow’s pod hovered in the opening of the giant tear in reality. “Your very own baby girl, the Extinction Entity. I am…truly grateful. I got to savor this revenge against you twice over!”

He played another lick on the guitar, trying Sam’s patience. 

“There’s just a beautiful poetry in our fates!” he shouted down triumphantly.

Sam wished he could disagree, but well… That was the exact reason he still hoped he might be able to get through to this maniac. Unless what Higgs had in mind was the two of them dying in each other’s arms while the world burned around them. It might have been a tempting idea if Tomorrow and the whole world weren’t mixed up in Higgs’s plans. 

Higgs aimed the guitar at Sam again, and he braced for pain, feet rooted in place. Yet it didn’t come. No bolts flew from the neck of Higgs’s guitar. Sam’s skin felt like it was catching flame, overheated by his suit all of a sudden. He grimaced and then found himself transported in a flash. 

Sam stumbled, planting a hand on the ground. His arm was bare. He looked down at himself and found that Higgs had somehow stripped him out of his porter’s suit. He wore only his boots and leggings. None of his gear had come with him, and neither had Dollman. There wasn’t any time to worry about what had happened to him, because Sam was just feet away from Higgs, in the palm of that giant BT. 

The battle guitar he brought with him landed right in front of Sam’s face like a thrown gauntlet. But as Sam looked up, he realized Higgs wasn’t even looking at him. He had his back to Sam as he stared up at Tomorrow reverently. 

“See that?” Higgs asked as Sam struggled to his feet. “The Last Stranding is finally upon us! …Victory’s mine.”

Reality was rapidly crumbling apart before them. Whatever Higgs had started by trapping Tomorrow in that pod, it seemed to be connecting them to Amelie’s Beach. Sam expected that Higgs hadn’t had much choice in the matter, but this Beach was probably the worst one to make contact with Amelie. It couldn’t have gone better if he had planned to get snatched up by APAS 4000. 

But it wasn’t over yet, and Sam was nothing if not persistent. He didn’t know whether he would be able to stop the Last Stranding a second time, but he was prepared to die trying, until one or the other of them succeeded once and for all. Like Higgs, Sam wanted an ending to this struggle more than anything else. 

“‘Cause that girl ain’t got no choice, but to accept what’s happening,” Higgs commented, as if he’d found the secret to his success: removing the Extinction Entity’s agency.

Sam clenched his jaw as he watched Higgs grab his guitar by each neck and split it into two pieces. 

“Up close and personal!” Higgs declared. Then, in a low, sonorous, melodic voice, “That old familiar feeling… Kept you waiting, huh?” He grinned, all traces of malice gone again. “You and me…”

“It ain’t over yet,” Sam reminded him, lifting his own weapon by its neck. 

Finally it was just the two of them, no bullshit. Sam let Higgs expend his energy, weathering his attacks to wait for an opening. The golden glow from the tear between Beaches bathed them both in warm, ominous light that nonetheless shone flatteringly off of Higgs’s hair. He still jumped from here to there, but Sam wouldn’t expect him to play fair. 

Sam gave as good as he got, and soon the pair of them were covered in sweat and blood. It felt good to make Higgs hurt, better than he would ever admit. Sam took no pleasure in violence, usually, but Higgs seemed to be an exception. The last time he felt alive like this was when they had first faced each other without a single weapon, knee deep in tar. Sam’s blood thrummed in his veins, spurring him on. 

“Can’t get by without a stick in the end,” Higgs taunted, zapping himself out of reach. “Even you gotta face facts.”

Sam ignored him and slammed his guitar upside Higgs’s head. These instruments were unwieldy in close combat, and their weight began to tire Sam out. He could see the same impact on Higgs, but just when it might have evened the score Higgs slammed the halves of his guitar back together and started to play. 

He ripped out a wailing solo and tossed to Sam. It was playful and nonsensical. Sam should have thrown the invitation back in Higgs’s face, taken the opportunity to cleave the side of his instrument into Higgs’s shoulder, but he caved. If this freak wanted a guitar battle, they could have a fucking guitar battle. His skill was not enough to win, but that didn’t really matter. Sam still held onto the hope that he could offer Higgs the company he craved and put an end to this needless violence. 

“Hell yeah!” Higgs exclaimed, jumping joyously as he picked the tune back up.

They played phrase after phrase, trading solos faster and faster until their music intertwined in harmony. Each of them stepped forward as they strummed, the gap between them narrowing until there was less than an arm’s length between them. This felt too damn good. No amount of guilt could free Sam from the intoxicating freedom of the moment. He almost forgot the world-ending battle raging around them.

The song built to a peak and both guitars wailed their last in tandem. Higgs’s smile felt so genuine, and it filled Sam’s chest with a warm, tingling feeling. He could do this, pull Higgs back to reality. Adrenaline and hope pumped through his veins even as Higgs zapped himself away again. 

“This is the moment I’ve been waitin’ for!” he shouted, splitting his guitar in half again. 

Returning to the fight didn’t feel like a step backwards. Sam’s endorphins skyrocketed as his instrument became his weapon once again. Unfortunately this meant the body of the guitar would no longer hide his growing bulge. Higgs’s hips were unfairly draped in the tied together sleeves of his old porter jumpsuit, so Sam had no idea if his body was reacting to this strange dance of theirs in the same way. 

He put everything he had into attacking Higgs’s every opening, and soon Sam sent one half of the golden battle guitar flying off into the sea below them. He expected Higgs to react in anger, but he sized Sam up, looking at him sideways, nodded once, and then launched into another assault. Their guitars crashed together, cracking under the impact. They spun around and met in the middle, the necks of their instruments like crossed swords.

Higgs did not pull back. He began to play, leaning his weight into Sam through their weapons. Sam did the only thing that made sense, he picked up the tune. They made music together, still fighting for dominance with their eyes locked. He could smell Higgs, they were so close. Sam’s dick gained more and more interest as he pressed his bodyweight into their every point of contact, trying to hold his own under Higgs’s unrelenting pressure.

It was impossible to keep his mind from wandering. Higgs had always been expressive, but the faces he made now were downright orgasmic. The sight fed into Sam’s carnal urges until he found himself rutting into his guitar as he pushed Higgs backward. He had to stay focused, but it felt too good. Higgs was clearly enjoying something similar on the other side of the dueling instruments, his eyes fluttering shut as he tried to keep his head in the game. 

Sam found his moment and smacked Higgs upside the head with his guitar while he was mid-groan, sending him sprawling to the ground. He quickly forced himself back to his feet, but they were both stripped raw now. Sam tried not to be embarrassed of his tented trousers, mollified by the sight of a bulge peaking out from the folded sleeves of Higgs’s jumpsuit. 

They gasped for breath, guitars hanging heavily from one hand as they squared up. Higgs looked worn out, but he was stubborn. Sam wished like hell that they could put all of this to rest with a quick hate fuck, but he knew better than to think it would be that easy. 

He stepped forward and swung his guitar at Higgs, using its own weight to back up each blow. “Fuck! You!” he screamed hoarsely. 

Higgs staggered, taking a few unsteady steps before he recovered. “You ain’t shit! Compared! To me!” he shouted, punctuating each retaliatory strike. 

Sam lunged forward and swing his guitar again, spitting blood from his mouth. “You wanna jam? With me?” he taunted back. 

“You little! Son of a bitch!”

“I’m tired! Of your bullshit!” Sam cried, forcing Higgs backwards. 

Higgs sucker punched him in the jaw, and Sam stumbled, losing the ground he had gained. “I wanna hear you wail!” Higgs growled, making Sam’s cock ache in his pants. 

He built up a roar in his chest and struck forward again. “You like how this feels?!” he hollered.

“Hey, you’re in my world now,” Higgs teased, wiping blood from his grin on the back of his hand while swinging his guitar into position to strike. 

Sam blocked his next blow but stumbled anyway, too exhausted to withstand the onslaught. Yet Higgs was in much the same state, no longer jumping himself out of the way when things got tough. 

“Don’t wanna hear–! Your fucking encore!” Sam roared.

“Give my regards to that bitch, Fragile!” Higgs taunted back. 

It was such obvious bait that Sam knew better than to fall for. If Huggs had his way, Sam would never see Fragile again anyway. …Then did that mean he felt like he was about to lose? A fresh burst of energy surged within Sam. 

“Fuck you!” he cried as he jabbed the guitar towards Higgs’s midsection. 

They traded a few more blows, panting with the effort, before either of them found the breath to speak again. Sam wondered if one of them might just collapse without needing to be struck. He felt like a light breeze might blow him over, but he’d never give Higgs the satisfaction of cutting him down. 

“You can’t stop the Last Stranding!” Higgs claimed. “Because all of us…! We deserve to die!”

Sam blocked each blow, the weight of them aching in his joints. He dropped the guitar and huffed for breath as soon as Higgs relented. 

“Get ready. We’ll all be joined together soon…” he promised as Sam hefted his guitar and tried to build the momentum to wield it. 

Sam jabbed the weapon at Higgs’s head, grunting with the effort. Higgs took it on the jaw, his body lurching sideways with the impact. He recovered far too quickly, the cut seeping fresh blood. 

“You trapped me! On the fucking Beach!” Higgs roared, gaining ground as he swung his weapon wildly at Sam. “I will cut you off…from everyone!”

“I’m putting you down!” Sam growled back, digging his heels into the ground.

Higgs skipped toward him before Sam could lift his arm and sucker punched him in the shoulder, shouting, “Hey, brother! Got any pizza?”

The flat side of Higgs’s battle guitar smacked him, catching Sam off guard while he tried to process that question. He cried out in pain and then growled, using it as fuel to feed another assault against Higgs. That smug, teasing smirk taunted Sam even as he landed repeated blows on Higgs. He was enjoying himself too much, but Sam couldn’t decide whether that mattered. Maybe it meant he was getting through to the bastard. 

“Gimme my fucking pizza!” Higgs shouted, flailing his guitar in Sam’s direction. 

The delirium was starting to get to Sam. A smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, but it came out a grimace. Higgs didn’t seem to mind, cackling as this new wind fueled him for another barrage against Sam. 

Higgs stopped when Sam’s back foot slid up to the sloping edge of the calcified BT palm they stood on. He backed off, giving Sam the space to get clear of the drop and raised his guitar to block any oncoming blows. It was ludicrous of him not to take the finishing strike when he had the opening, but it was also very telling. Higgs didn’t want to kill him. He would let the Last Stranding do that job, and until then Sam was his plaything. The question was whether Sam could bring himself to destroy Higgs before Amelie’s Beach broke through.

He summoned his courage with a roar and swung the guitar up towards Higgs’s knee. It was smacked away, and both men stumbled into each other. 

“I would kill! For a slice of pizza!” Higgs growled as they grappled with each other for a moment. “Pizza! I fucking love it!”

Higgs slapped Sam’s guitar away with his own, and Sam staggered backwards a couple of paces. He panted for breath and eyed Higgs up, wondering how much more of this the guy had in him. 

“And guess what?” Higgs laughed, his face bright and almost hopeful. “I love you too!”

That blow hit Sam harder than the rest. “What?” he breathed. 

Higgs’s lust—his obsession—had been evident for ages, but love? Sam assumed he must have been trying to get a rise out of him. So he ignored it, recovering quickly and gathering his strength for another attack. 

“You and me…together forever!” Higgs exclaimed as he absorbed Sam’s hit and turned the momentum back on him. 

Sam ignored the flustered sensation in his chest and the aching in his groin and kept up his defense. This was a strange turn of events, but maybe it would lead where he’d always wanted to go. If Higgs could calm down, talk to Sam like a person, they might be able to stop the Last Stranding without any more bloodshed. Real love would make any normal person hear Sam out. There were worse ideas than hoping Higgs would follow a similar logic…right?

“I love you!” Higgs proclaimed as he tried to break past Sam’s guard. “Almost as much as pizza!”

He startled a laugh from Sam, and he didn’t bother to hide the smile. It was hard to say whether Higgs was messing with him, but Sam didn’t care. For everything he knew about the man, this unconventional confession was exactly in line with his character. 

“You like how this feels?!” Sam taunted again as he pounced on an opening. 

Higgs’s grin seemed to grow more genuine. He spat blood from his mouth and hefted his guitar overhead. “You know I might love you…” he began as he lifted it into place, “more than I love pizza!”

That shouldn’t have boosted Sam’s ego. And his boosted ego shouldn’t have given Sam further strength to wield his heavy weapon. Higgs was probably just fucking with him. …Unless he wasn’t. 

“I wanna hear you wail!” Higgs screamed.

Sam shouted wordlessly as he lunged at Higgs, swinging the guitar at his head. It connected, sending a tooth flying from his smirking lips. They staggered apart, Sam catching his breath while Higgs stared up at the tear in the Beach. 

Then something changed. The single crack split into fingers, then a whole hand shape appeared in the dark sky, glowing bright orange. The strands attached to Tomorrow’s pod disconnected and she fell back into the haunting aura of Amelie’s Beach. Sam had taken too much time fighting Higgs; he’d failed yet another daughter. 

“Here it comes,” Higgs said eagerly. 

Sam could see the fiery star that threatened to take out all life on Earth in a giant supernova. It looked far bigger than it had the last time he’d seen it. If Tomorrow was truly an Extinction Entity, Sam had no clue how to save her and end Last Stranding at the same time. It might be down to a choice between them, and Sam didn’t know if he was strong enough not to concede. 

Maybe each human didn’t deserve to die, but what they were doing to the natural world wasn’t right. And Sam would much rather experience the release of a real death than have to go on living in a world where he had lost a child three separate times, each his own fault. 

The hand began to suck in a great wind, vacuuming up the dislodged pieces of reality that had crumbled away. The tear disappeared completely, sealing Tomorrow away within Amelie’s Beach. 

“Tomorrow!” he wailed, chest aching with the sharp pain of failure.

It was eerily quiet. For once, Higgs wasn’t listening to the sound of his own voice. A watery noise surrounded them, as if they had been dipped into the Seam. The dark wall that loomed over them rippled. Something round pressed against its surface until it breached. 

Sam recognized it as the head of a baby, wet and covered in sparse hair, despite it being absolutely ginormous. Amelie’s Beach birthed this child forth until they fell onto the smouldering tar surface below the giant BT that Sam and Higgs stood atop. Molten lava followed it, the amniotic fluid of life itself. The baby cried, their voice echoing, and tried to sit itself up. 

No newborn should have been able to lift their head and sit upright, but what they were looking at was not exactly human. Sam stood behind Higgs, who gazed up at the child in awe. He didn’t know whether Higgs had any more idea of what to expect from this than he did. It felt so immense that Sam expected they were past the point where either of them had any control, DOOMS or not. 

The child lifted their head and opened their eyes, cooing down a them in a voice that resonated in a deep part of Sam’s chest. She blinked down at them wholly innocent and utterly familiar. 

“Well, it really is you, isn’t it?” Higgs remarked softly. 

The baby smiled, her face lighting up excitedly. She slapped the stony surface of the BT’s fallen form with both palms. It was like she recognized them, whether Sam, Higgs, or both it was impossible to say. 

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Higgs soothed, surprisingly gentle. 

Sam’s mixed up heart couldn’t handle all of this. He frowned as Higgs lifted his guitar up to play, eyes darting between him and the ginormous child. On some level he knew who this was, but he couldn’t admit it to himself. It didn’t make any sense, and Sam couldn’t survive another heartbreak. 

“See the sunset,” Higgs sang, his voice gentle and melodic, underscored by a single chord. “The day is ending.”

The baby calmed and stared down at him, tilting her head curiously. Dark, tar-tainted tears spilled from her wide eyes as she watched Higgs play.

“Let that yawn out, there’s no pretending.” Higgs turned slowly to Sam while he sang.

His eyes were full of relief and joy, which looked foreign on Higgs’s face in their sincerity. Sam didn’t know what to make of that, but certainty of a different kind was spooling in his chest as he looked from the dark tears on Higgs’s tattooed face back up to the child. He wasn’t even sure how or when Higgs had learned this song.

“I will hold you,” Higgs sang, his voice gaining strength. He turned his back to the baby, playing directly to Sam now. 

The child smiled as she watched him sing, looking at Higgs like he was a beloved toy. 

He glanced over his shoulder as he sang the next line, “and protect you,” almost as if making the promise to her in earnest. Then Higgs turned to Sam again, smiling at him with a look in his eyes that made Sam believe every word he had said while they’d been fighting. “So let love warm you, til the morning!”

So many questions warred on the tip of Sam’s tongue, but before he could ask them, the child snatched Higgs up between her giant fingers and lifted him into the air. She placed him in her mouth, and all Sam could do was watch. He couldn’t tell whether she chewed or swallowed, but her cheeks moved around him as she turned her head to the side. 

The child spat, but Higgs did not fly from her mouth. Something much smaller did, landing on the scorched ground. Higgs’s golden mask gleamed in the fire light. It was a mystery where it had even come from, as Higgs hadn’t been wearing it, nor had Sam seen it on him in years.  Sam watched the child get to her feet, standing unassisted. She lifted one giant foot and slammed it down on the mask, kicking up a cloud of dust.

Sam watched, awestruck, as the child turned to him, dark tear stains trailing down her cheeks, She lifted an arm and gave Sam a thumbs up, smiling adorably down at him, as if to say that everything was alright. 

In the distance, the sounds of battle subsided. The giant BTs fighting the DHV Magellan stumbled and collapsed, crashing to the ground with thundering splashes. Sam ignored all of that, transfixed by the baby in front of him.

“Lou?” he asked, stepping forward.

She leaned down, smiling, pleased to see him too. 

Before Sam could celebrate—or shake off the fog of confusion—she gathered some dark, tar-like material to her back. It coalesced into wings before Sam’s eyes, and Lou turned her gaze up towards the rather cunt-like opening she had come through. She pushed up from the ground and let her wings carry her back towards that blinding light. 

Just before she reached the opening, Lou’s body broke apart into a cloud of black particulate and swarmed through the gap. Sam stared after her and tried not to feel alone. He couldn’t understand how Lou had turned up, but she seemed to have saved him, and maybe the whole world. Sam should have felt happier, but the hole within him yawned painfully.

He watched the opening seal itself closed. A liquid drip of molten star stuff squeezed out and fell to the ground. A silhouette appeared in its light on the horizon. Sam watched as Amelie approached. She looked the same as she always had, dressed in red with her quipu around her neck. 

Without saying a word, Amelie stopped and turned back. Behind her was Fragile, or at least her Ka. She carried a yellow bundle in her gray arms: Lou. Fragile set Lou down at Sam’s feet with a soft smile. The DHV Magellan sounded, and Sam turned to see it landing nearby, no longer bound to a BT. 

Everything was happening so fast. Sam looked back at Amelie, wanting to ask her if it was really over. She approached him and took Sam’s hand in his. He dropped his battle guitar as Amelie stepped in to embrace him. Sam tensed up, his body wanting to reject the hug in a different way from his aphenphosmphobia. He felt none of the affection for Amelie that he once did, now that he knew the truth, but he let it happen. 

Sam watched Amelie warily as she pulled back, struggling for what to say and bracing for anything. But not for what he should have been. Like an echo of a bad dream, Amelie put her hands to Sam’s chest and shoved him backward, plunging him into the Seam. His clothes vanished the moment he met the water. There was a burst of fire overhead. Sam felt deja vu as he wondered whether the Last Stranding was destroying everything after all. 

And then everything went white.

Sam woke from a dream about carrying Lou home to their shelter to find himself kneeling on the Beach. Lou was gone, but Tomorrow was there. She was unconscious and dressed in the white dress she wore when they first found her, as if the cocoon itself bestowed it upon her. Sam gathered her into his arms and held her to his chest, relieved that she was warm and breathing. 

The DHV Magellan hovered nearby, a beacon of safety. He carried her aboard and straight to the bridge, where everyone was gathered. Rainy and Tarman rushed to his side to help Sam lay her in the gunner’s seat. Tarman felt for her pulse, and Sam activated the vitals monitor on the chair. 

“Is she alright?” Rainy asked. 

“Unconscious but unharmed,” Tarman replied.

Then he straightened up, letting Tomorrow’s wrist lay at her side. 

“Uh, Sam…Listen…”

Behind Tarman, Heartman and Die-Hardman stood around the commander’s chair where Fragile sat. Just where Sam had last seen her…or, her Ha anyway. They stepped aside, allowing Sam to see her. 

“Fragile?” Sam asked as he approached her. 

He glanced to Heartman to confirm what he already knew. Die-Hardman laid a consoling hand on his shoulder. 

“Fragile’s dead, Sam,” he said.

Sam went to her, kneeling by her side. He laid a hand on her face. Her skin was cold. It wasn’t a shock, as it explained why Sam had seen her Ka bringing him Lou, but that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. 

“Truth is…she’s been dead for some time,” Die-Hardman told him. “While you were searching for that photo, Fragile contacted me. Came clean about the whole thing.”

Sam hung his head in grief.

Die-Hardman kept explaining. “It happened back when she tried to jump Lou to safety…”

The words washed over Sam as he knelt there, burdened by what he was hearing. All these months of travelling together and he had never guessed. In a way, it all made sense. Everything Fragile had said about death not being able to tear them apart, she was speaking from experience. Deadman wasn’t the only ghost haunting the Magellan. 

In a way, all of them were. Fragile’s empty Ha. Dollman’s trapped Ka. Rainy’s stillbaby syndrome. Tarman’s missing hand, still clutching onto his son. Deadman possessing the body of Heartman while he walked the Beach. Die-Hardman communicating through a mech called Charlie from his hiding place in the belly of the ship. Sam carted around his empty BB pod and sang it to sleep. And Tomorrow…the girl they’d found in the land of the dead, protected by the Ka of Neil Vana. 

Fragile knew what she was talking about. Sam should have listened to her. This whole time she had been protecting him and preparing him for the day she wouldn’t be here anymore. How could she ever have blamed herself for Lou’s death when Higgs had taken hers as well? He wanted to shake some sense into her, but she was long gone. 

“You were the one person she asked me not to tell, Sam,” Die-Hardman confessed. “The only one.”

So they had all known, before the jump to the Beach. It explained so much. Rainy and Fragile had had their goodbye before Sam had emerged from his room. They’d all taken the moments they could while he slept. 

“And I trust that you understand why,” he added. 

Sam did know why. Fragile knew he couldn’t have left her side to do what needed to be done if he had known. But what had he actually done in the end? Just kept Higgs busy until Lou turned up and stopped the Last Stranding all on her own. It was a familiar anti-climax. Sam had been losing his edge. 

He got to his feet and moved to Tomorrow’s bedside instead, needing desperately to understand what had happened down there on the Beach. He set Dollman aside, uninterested in his condolences. Glancing down at Tomorrow’s unconscious body, it was too much. 

Sam took off down the hall and didn’t stop until he planted is palms against the inner wall of the shower. No one followed him. He began to break down, lost without Fragile to moor himself to. She would know what to say about Tomorrow, about Lou. There was no one else alive that stuck with him the way she always had. He didn’t know how he was supposed to be a father again without her by his side. 

He cried himself into a stupor. Somewhere along the way he turned the water on and got himself clean. Sam peeled his wet clothing off and walked through the driers, stumbling naked down the hallway. He was so deep in his grief that he wasn’t aware enough of his surroundings to care who might see. It was a miracle his auto-pilot was enough to get him dressed before he passed out. If Fragile had been here, she would have been the one to step in and preserve his dignity. 

And then he dreamed. Fragile was there. She told him the story of her death and apologized for the ruse. Lou was special, just like Tomorrow. It was still too much to let the thought continue past that. Fragile’s apology was about lost time, but her goodbye was full of hope. Sam knew what she meant—he did—but he forced himself not to count the years. 

“Promise me you’ll make the most of your future…with Lou,” she said, a smile in the final words. 

It felt like a dream within a dream, poison to the touch. Sam flinched away from the truth and awoke. Fragile stood over him—her Ka. It was she who was speaking to him; she had been manipulating his dreams. Everything he had just heard and seen cam straight from the source. 

“You will never be alone,” she promised him. 

Sam sat up, following her like a lifeline. Fragile gestured towards the photos pinned to his wall, and he he spotted the one of all four of them. Rainy, Fragile, and Tomorrow taking a selfie with Sam in the background, Dollman hanging somewhere behind Rainy’s head. The pod was on his chest, utterly empty. 

“Death can’t tear us apart.” Fragile had moved to the doorway, antenna umbrella over her shoulder. “We will always be with you,” she reminded him, full of certainty. “Now go on. The others are waiting.”

Sam glanced down at the photo again and sighed. When he looked up, she was gone.