as you summon to a feast day,
so you summoned against me terrors on every side.
In the day of the Lord's anger
no one escaped or survived;
those I cared for and reared
my enemy has destroyed.
- ʟᴀᴍᴇɴᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴꜱ 2:22

Sumin had a plan the whole time. Shed her life for the girl made of tears? She had regrets, but not that many. No, Sumin had not thrown her life away in vain. She knew what she was doing.

It started with Iphigenia.

Standing over the pulpy mush that used to be the child-faced monster, Iphigenia had breathed furiously, chest pumping air into her lungs, sweat sliding down her thick hair and her shoulders of lioness. Wood splintered everywhere, pages scattered from the rampage, paperbacks and hardcovers lying limply like dead birds underfoot. She had looked wild, regal, with the kind of fervour Sumin only saw in textbooks about ancient Chinese gods. Sumin craved her power.

And then the body had twitched, as if giving up its very last scare. Its pale little face contorted. Nixie had screamed, Cullen lunged to her. Alex reached for his non-existent gun. Spellmeyer froze, Sumin noted with disdain.

But instead of rising for Iphigenia's blood, or giggling creepily again, a wire sparked with blue electricity, snaking wildly into the air. Zip, zip, zzzt!

"Ow," Iphigenia said, more surprised than hurt, glancing at her calf. "It zapped me."

"It's part machine," Cullen leaned closer to look.

Nixie grabbed him by the back of his shirt, pulling him back. "Don't," she rasped.

"It's dead, then," Sumin announced. She glanced at Iphigenia. "You did well."

"Thanks," Iphigenia shrugged, then collapsed into a heap.

It was only a second, nothing more, but something was more alive in her eyes when Iphigenia sat up. The others fussed, fawned, but Sumin simply stared, trying to figure out what had changed. What had occurred between those single few heartbeats.

Iphigenia was a team player, a queen who collaborated with her people, so she told them the truth.

"My memory," she said, haltingly. "Just a little one. Of... a person. Short blond hair. I don't know who they are."

Cullen was increasingly fascinated, as much as Sumin found he allowed himself to be. He leaned to the monster again, and this time Nixie didn't stop him. "So killing that thing brought your memory back."

"A little memory for a little monster," Sumin said softly, nearly singing. She lifted her eyes, meeting Cullen's gaze, and for a split second they could both agree on something.

Spellmeyer and Alex both spoke at once: "Don't go hunting them."

Sumin laughed. "Why ever would we do that?"

Alex appraised her, his pretty blond hair slicked with sweat. "It's not safe. C'mon, Sumin, don't be difficult."

She ducked her head, chastened, digging her slippered toe into the carpet. "I won't."

Only the dead monster's face could see her smirk.

So yes, Sumin had a plan. A plan that she did not regret, even as Harvey's maggoty arms wrapped around her, or as his mouth opened, revealing hundreds of spiny teeth bristling and moving each on their own. She saw the black sheen of oil dripping in the back of his throat, just behind the dancing coin on his mottled tongue, and her resolve hardened.

It was so easy to recall. Blaise had shown her everything, step by step. Sumin was good at following steps. Learning dances required sharp memory, an intense attention to detail. If you hadn't learned the choreography by the third run, you were screwed. So when Blaise went through the motions, Sumin remembered.

Take the wires located by the centre controls. Easy enough: Sumin plunged her hand into Harvey Jones' mouth, feeling the wriggling teeth squirming against her wrist, digging into her flesh. It was hot, wet, and his tongue thrashed against her. She ignored it, shoving her hand deeper, tipping her weight forward.

Harvey crashed to the ground, Sumin atop him, and she held him steady as she pushed her fist deeper, deeper, blood spurting around his lips as his teeth sliced into her. The maggots writhing on his face squealed in joy and swarmed the bloody gashes. She screamed, fingertips straining, plunging deeper—

She grasped warm, thrumming metal. Sumin screeched in triumph, fisting her hand around the wires, and yanking.

From Harvey's mouth, Sumin pulled a tangle of wires, slicked in oil, drawing them out from his body. He jerked, convulsing, thrashing against her as his innards were pulled inside-out. The machinery had merged to his flesh, slimy pink bits congealed around the bright red wires.

Sumin ignored the gore, shaking it off roughly to clean it best as she could. Beneath her, Harvey was already fading, the maggots enlarging his pores as they dug to hide beneath his skin.

Attach them to your head. Quickly, before Harvey stopped his jittering, Sumin jammed the wires into her own mouth. They sparked to life, invigorated by human breath, and surged up her nasal canal.

Now was the hard part. Win. Blaise had given her low machinery, simple little bots with simple joints. Sumin had made them dance easily, jerking their limbs into the choreo of "Distort".

Something told her that Harvey would be much harder to subdue. Sumin shut her eyes, shoved her sleeve between her teeth so she wouldn't bite her tongue, and let the darkness sweep over her as the wires plunged into her brain.

✸

Sumin stumbled along the corridor, the front of her button-down shirt sticky and thick with blood that gushed in a waterfall from her nose. Her head pounded, swirling in strange shapes as she drunkenly made her way back to the library.

Knock. Knock-knock.

There was a silence, hot and heavy.

Then a whisper. A hiss. A murmur. Sumin held her head and prayed that she wouldn't fall, tipping to lean against the cold metal door. It felt good, cool and familiar.

The door slid open, and Sumin tumbled through.

"Sumin!" Nixie cried, lunging. So impulsive, that one. For a weakling, she was determined to throw herself in danger as much as possible.

Cullen caught her around the waist, slinging her back. "What makes you think that's not one of the monsters?"

Nixie struggled, weakly, as if some numbing thing had settled into her bones. Sumin recognised it well: defeat. "But—"

Alex had surged forward, in time with Ipheginia, both of them armed with wooden planks. Pathetic, Sumin decided. Wood would not stop a monster, and not her either.

"Tell us something—" Alex began, as if he were in a sci-fi movie with skin walkers. Tell us something only you would know. No, he was not a movie star, just drunk on his own horrible nightmares. They were responsible, after all. Nonsense was flowing from her cranial nerves like musical notes, stringing along in a dancing bob.

"Nan Sumin," she cut over him, and the voices in her head, her throat grating and raspy. Her vocal cords were fried, and normally she would have slit her own neck over that travesty, but there was no audience here. Nobody cared to hear her sing. "Born in Kyoto, Japan. Member of AIYO. I'm a historian. A teacher. None of you like me. True."

Whether they were stunned at her appearance, or what she said, it didn't matter. Sumin shuffled in, dragging her twitching leg, and the doors sealed behind her.

"How did you open the door?" Spellmeyer rasped. Something had caught in all of their throats, it turned out, not just hers. Perhaps they were collectively rusting, machinery frozen in motion. Sumin would freeze in her favourite position, a wink with a leg popped up, flashing the appropriate amount of thigh.

Sumin stared ahead, at the rows of black bookshelves, the colourful spines that filled them. She swayed.

"She needs help," Nixie whispered. "Cullen, let go of me. She's not a monster."

Sumin began to laugh. A high-pitched, forceful giggle, like her chest was being squeezed and the laugh vomitted out of her. Sumin laughed and laughed, eyes rolling in her head, tears streaking down her cheeks. She laughed in circles, she laughed up and down, she laughed in a scale. She laughed and laughed and water poured from her eyes and the corner of her lip and something broke between her eyes and hot wet began to gush down, down, filling her mouth with metal.

She crumpled with a shriek of triumph, careening to the side.

Nixie's arms wrapped around her, angel-soft, lit in the hazy glow of the library's lamps. Gently, they sank to the floor.

"I've got you," Nixie whispered, stroking her hair. Blood soaked the front of her dress, colouring the dried stains with a fresh coat. Had nobody noticed her dress? It was ripped. Sumin had a tailor she knew, could fix her right up. Sumin cackled in her arms, thrashing. "Don't worry, Sumin, I've got you."

"Do it," Nixie tilted her head up, and Sumin could see the soft part of her throat, the little triangle of her plump chin. She wanted to sink her teeth in, make the voice in her head stop.

Then something hard hit Sumin in the back of her head, and everything went black. Again. 抵死嘅仆街。

author's note!

i'm sorry these keep getting shorter and shorter. school is draining my life more drastically than sumin was drained of her sanity. sorry that was horrible. 

updates are gonna be slow, but as always, i'm eternally grateful for your guys' support and love! see you for chapter five <33