Moments before the subway train slammed into Henry Kyllo, these were his thoughts:
I have killed, and I will kill again.
I do not want this. I do not deserve this.
More death as a result, but at least it will be over. I will be stopped. Whatever’s inside me is eating its way out. Devouring me as it goes. Who I am. Who I was. Only a hint of a shadow of me remains.
This will end it. For me, for Faye, Milo, everyone.
I need to die. I need to die.
When the train hit Henry, it drove him back a hundred yards, brakes screeching the entire way. It caved in his chest, crumpled parts of his face, severed one finger from his right hand, two from his left.
Inside the train, dozens were killed instantly, thrown around, batted from side to side as most of the cars of the train derailed, slammed into the sides of the tunnel. Glass and steel punctured lungs, ripped off limbs, crushed torsos, flattened heads, shattered spines. Many more were severely injured, and bled to death not long after the train finally came to a stop. Those who somehow made it through somewhat unscathed – mostly those at the back of the train – wandered around the wreckage crying, dazed.
When Milo and Faye heard the deafening crash, they ran toward it through the service tunnel that joined the old and new lines. Panic rose in Milo’s chest. Disbelief and horror quickly replaced that feeling once they saw the devastation.
Milo shone his flashlight toward the wreckage. Henry was lying on his back several hundred feet from where Milo and Faye stood. The car at the front of the train was mostly crumpled inward, had settled across one of Henry’s legs. Four or five cars beyond it were visible before there was a turn in the tunnel, and these cars were all tilted at crazy angles – one of them nearly vertical. A small pile of dead bodies had accumulated at the bottom of the closest car where it had been wrenched open by the force of the impact, spilling its contents onto the track.
Faye and Milo ran toward Henry, stopped short. Tried to block out the cries for help, screams of agony coming from seemingly every direction.
“Henry!” Milo shouted above the din. Milo put a hand on the leg that was trapped under the train car. He wanted to ask why, but he thought he knew why. So did Faye.
This was his only way out. Not escaping the city. Running forever. Out of control.
But it hadn’t worked.
Milo saw Henry’s shattered chest rise, pull in breath. One eye opened slowly. A nearby sparking wire caught the shiny part of that eye, and Milo had a horrible feeling that something beyond any of their comprehension was at work here. This wasn’t just ascension that had gotten out of hand. This had been calculated. By who or what, Milo had no idea. But there was something ageless in the spark of that eye. Something malignant. Persistent.
Less and less remained of Henry with every passing second, but Milo would stay by his side for however long he lasted. For however long he needed his friend.
Inside Henry, the blackness he’d hoped would be his world forever stirred. It churned into recognizable shape. A recognizable feeling.
He was alive. He cracked an eye. The first thing he saw was Milo. Then Faye. His other eye opened, and his head turned. He saw destruction. Death.
Pain everywhere, and all his doing.
He didn’t know it then, but the last words he would speak came out of his misshapen mouth. He looked at Milo, concentrated, and said, “Why can’t I die? I just want to die. I can’t feel myself anymore, Milo. There’s something awful happening… inside.”
And then Henry Kyllo grew again.
This time, he didn’t feel it at all. The tiny portion of his personality, his consciousness – whatever made him who he was – was thrown so far back from the experience that it could have been happening to someone else.
His legs and arms grew longer, his torso stronger, wider, his head bigger, sharper – and all of him a darker metal, a coarser rock, bordering on black.
Milo dragged Faye back, as far away from Henry as he could. Henry gained his feet, any damage from the train now fully healed, covered over. His head and shoulders burst through the tunnel ceiling, crashed through into the city street above. A few cars swerved around him, but most just shot straight into him, looks of rage and hatred on people’s faces before they hit.
Henry looked up, saw the choppers in the sky, saw police cars, fire engines, ambulances everywhere – and regular people on the street charging at him, throwing themselves into their attacks, heedless of any injury they might sustain themselves.
This is humanity’s last ditch effort to save itself, Henry thought, unaware where the thought had come from, but knowing its truth. We are the Other, and we cannot be understood.
Henry grew more, his gleaming black torso now rocketing up through the pavement, chunks cracking to either side of him.
He turned his massive head, saw a tank rolling down the street toward him. The tank fired, the shell catching him high on the cheek. Besides losing his vision momentarily, there were no adverse effects whatsoever.
Ridiculous, he thought. I am a ridiculous cartoon monster, but I will be the end of all these people.
The fear was contagious. More virulent than any plague in history.
The Other must be eradicated.
Far away in a war room in the country’s capitol, generals seized with this inexplicable, overriding fear gave the order that nuclear missiles – along with dozens of other rockets – were to be launched in Henry Kyllo’s direction. But that order was moot, since the personnel who turned the keys to launch the missiles had already done so.
And it was the same in as many other countries as were in range.
Humanity acted as one organism under threat of extinction, throwing everything it had at the enemy. A colossal worldwide Hail Mary to try to save itself from eradication.
Adelina Palermo walked through the dark of the old subway tunnel until she heard the crash of the train ploughing into Henry. She found the tunnel joining the old subway line with the new one, and headed down it.
Behind her, with no light source to help them, Marcton, Cleve, and Kendul simply followed Adelina’s footsteps, watched for any shifting movements in the darkness that might reveal her changing direction.
When the sound of the crash reached them, rumbling through the walls, they picked up their pace, hearts in their throats – even though somewhere deep down, they knew they were running toward a lost battle.
The chaos aboveground had, to their minds, dwarfed their petty little revenge drama immeasurably. It seemed shockingly minor in the face of what was happening. All three men felt that this wasn’t even about the Inferne Cutis any more – perhaps had never really been about them.
But still they plodded on.
Just grist for whatever new mill was starting up aboveground, Kendul thought, and shivered.
Adelina and the men emerged from the side tunnel joining the subway lines, and saw the destruction Henry had caused. By the time they arrived, only Henry’s legs were visible, his upper portion having already burst through to the street above. They heard cars crashing. Sirens. Bombs. People were falling down through the hole Henry had created. Breaking their arms and legs from the fall. Bleeding. Dying.
Though she could not cry outwardly, internally, Adelina wept for her father. She wept for whatever was happening to the world above. She wept because she knew how this would end, had seen it in her mind well before events had progressed to this point, but was powerless to stop it, or even fully believe it could happen.
The possibility that she had, in fact, been one of the catalysts for it was something she consciously blotted out. There was no reserve of calm left in her body. What little of herself remained was focused solely on fighting whatever was taking her over inside. It wanted her to help Henry by leaving him alone. She had done her job, had kept Milo in the picture, which in turn helped keep Henry in the picture, away from prying eyes so that he could mature. Grow into exactly what he’d become.
She fought hard against what was inside her, even though she knew her efforts would amount to absolutely nothing of note. That nothing would change, no matter what she did.
As bombs burst above, tanks rolled down the street, firing on Henry. Helicopters and planes shot at him. People attacked with nothing more than balled-up fists.
Adelina strode toward Henry as quickly as her legs would take her.
Faye and Milo flattened themselves against a nearby wall, tried to hide from her sight as best they could. Adelina stormed right past, reached up, grabbed hold of Henry’s waist and tugged down as hard as she could, eventually securing a strong enough grip to pull him back down. Once his head and arms were mostly underground again, Adelina used all her strength to throw him down the tunnel. He flew headfirst about fifty feet, turned in the air, landed on his back, skidded another twenty feet, then stopped.
People and vehicles began to stream down the hole like lemmings off a cliff.
Milo and Faye ran away from the hole, toward Henry.
Henry sat up, looked at Adelina. When their eyes met, something incredible happened – something neither of them thought could happen, not any more. They genuinely felt something. Something of themselves – the selves they’d given up, the selves they’d relinquished. Some kind of empathy, perhaps. Recognition. A strange kinship that neither of them understood. A feeling that no others on Earth have had, nor would ever have again. Something singular.
Adelina Palermo saw the apology in Henry Kyllo’s eyes, and Henry saw and understood the pain, rage, and confusion in Adelina’s. Forgiveness passed between them then.
The last of Adelina was snuffed out at that precise moment.
Milo felt her go, feeling as though he’d lost something he’d never really had to begin with. It was a hollow ache, like the hole where a pulled tooth used to sit. He didn’t feel sad, exactly; he just felt a sort of slow, unnamable crumbling in his heart.
Henry was fully aware now that whatever he’d be battling, it was not Adelina. It was not that girl. It was not that woman. It was no aspect of anything he understood, or could ever understand. It was simply Other now – more Other than the world had even known.
And he knew that whatever awful, horrible thing was filling him up, very close now to snuffing Henry out entirely – it was one and the same. A cancer that grew and twisted in him, filling him up to bursting with its emptiness.
The metal giant that once was Adelina Palermo moved toward Henry. It came at him tentatively. One earthshaking step, then another. Then one more. It stood in front of him now. It blinked twice, then sat down on the ground, hung its chin on its chest, and closed its eyes.
Powered down.
Of course. This is what it wanted, Henry thought, that sick churning feeling returning to his mind. Whatever I’m about to become – this was the plan all along.
Henry didn’t know what awaited him, in what form his existence would be after this – if such a thing were even possible – but with every shred of his remaining will, he wanted Faye and Milo to be there with him. This became his sole objective.
Henry leaned toward Milo and Faye where they crouched near one of the tunnel walls. He held out one hand, nodded his head toward it.
Faye and Milo understood. They climbed onto his hand – Milo getting on first, then turning around to hoist Faye up.
Henry closed his fingers around them protectively as much as he could, worked himself into a sitting position. He knew if he stood, he’d bash through the ceiling and onto the street again, endangering his friends.
He remained in that position, while the bombs rained down overhead, punching holes in the pavement above him. More vehicles and people crashed through to the subway tunnel. Throngs of people began crawling on Henry, climbing him, their attacks vicious, but harmless.
Henry shifted Faye to his right hand, so that he had one friend in each. He raised his arms higher so the people now swarming his legs couldn’t easily climb farther up him, get access to his hands.
Milo and Faye did nothing but stare up at Henry, tears in their eyes while they waited for whatever came next.
Kendul, Marcton, and Cleve stood far enough back from the scene unfolding in the tunnel that their thoughts remained calm. They felt detached from what was happening. They did not understand why Adelina stopped advancing on Henry. They had no idea why she’d simply sat down in front of him and closed her eyes.
These three men knew only that they were witnessing the end of their city, and possibly the events that would usher in the end of their kind. They said nothing to each other, too shocked and confused to properly articulate their thoughts.
Henry Kyllo sat with his back to them. Waiting.
That’s when Henry entered the final stage of his transformation.
Something like creation filled him up inside.
A slow-burn big bang.
Not long after this process started, the last vestige of Henry Kyllo would vanish from existence. But for the final two minutes of his life, he would be vaguely aware only that he was getting bigger again, and that he had saved his friends. At least for a time.
When he felt this last episode of growth coming on, he instinctively got to his feet. He curled his fingers around Faye and Milo, still one in each hand, to protect them.
His head, shoulders, and torso shot up through the tunnel ceiling, destroying it. He emerged into a different section of the street above. Chaos was everywhere. Everything was burning. Everyone was dying. It no longer even seemed connected to him any more.
Seeing this filled Henry with profound sadness, and he closed his eyes against the sight.
Several missiles landed about a mile away, exploded, lit the night. More landed closer. And Henry continued to grow.
Hands still wrapped as tightly as possible without crushing Milo and Faye, he rose up through the ground, expanded, changed, now fully smooth and entirely black. A massive robot carved from obsidian.
Taller and taller. His head shot past the fourth floor of a glass skyscraper to which he was adjacent. He turned toward it, saw his reflection for the first time – truly saw what he’d become. And that loss of self-identity – that part of everyone that anchors who we are to how we look – was the last thing to break inside of Henry Kyllo. As he grew taller than the tenth floor of the skyscraper, he felt his consciousness drain from this machine like water down a rainspout.
When he passed the twentieth floor, he was gone from this world.
Henry, Milo’s and Faye’s dear friend, no longer held them; they were now simply in the hands of an unfeeling, unknowable monolith.
As Henry’s torso expanded, Milo and Faye stared in terror at each other through his fingers, the gap between them becoming greater and greater. By the time Henry’s head cleared the seventy-story skyscraper, his chest was nearly the width of the building itself.
And still, he continued to grow.
Missiles exploded down at his feet, and as far as the eye could see. All throughout the city, out into the countryside.
Henry grew further outward, shooting up through clouds still dumping the neverending snow onto the earth. A passenger plane crashed into one of his arms, burst into a fiery ball.
Down below, Clive, Kendul, and Marcton sat huddled near each other underground, waiting to die. When the first nuke hit, they were vaporized instantly.
The mushroom cloud rose up, engulfing Henry’s legs.
At about forty thousand feet, the tiny dead people in his hands forgotten, the worldchanging machine known as Henry Kyllo dropped his arms to his sides and opened his hands. Faye’s and Milo’s bodies tumbled down, down through the night sky. Swallowed up by the devastation below.
Henry rose up and expanded into the stratosphere still.
Fifty thousand. Eighty thousand. A hundred thousand feet.
Henry looked around him at this height, saw the curvature of the world. And it seemed very, very small to him.
Small and worthless.
Henry grew more, out into space.
Beyond the moon.
Beyond the sun.
Beyond the solar system.
He grew and grew until the universe knew nothing but Him.