To Fathom, the gun felt heavy. 

     "Lift it up," Niki said. She rested twelve paces away from where Fathom stood. "Let me see it."  

     A block away, the twelve-foot, round, meat-and-flesh ball that was Egoneg rolled towards them.  

     "It's a fucking machine gun," Niki said. 

     "Told you." 

     "Shoot him." 

     "But Trevor, he's..." 

     "Shoot him!" 

     Fathom didn't waste another second. She aimed the weapon at Egoneg and squeezed the trigger. 

     It was a machine gun, all right. Hundreds of bullets seemed to blow out of the end of the barrel all at once. The recoil made Fathom have to take a step back and caused her shoulder to yawk! in pain. 

     She kept her finger on the trigger until all the bullets were gone. 

     That blast of gunfire would have shredded any normal human being. 

     It shredded Egoneg too, but he kept reforming, reforming, so that, after the barrage ended, Egoneg still stood. 

     He bled, though. 

     And it did hurt him. 

     Egoneg let out a roar that made Fathom's ears and her inner being tremble. 

     Egoneg opened himself up to set Trevor free. 

     Trevor now had bullet holes all over his profusely bleeding body. 

     He'd be dead within seconds. 

     Egoneg became a thing with a dozen heads. The faces on some of them had fangs. Some of the skulls had horns. Egoneg stood on six elephant-sized legs. He had six arms, some as thick as tree trunks, others spindly with long, sharp claws. 

     Egoneg had become, not only a nightmare, but the pulsating, predatory monster at the core of all nightmares. 

     Egoneg came at Fathom with hatred and fury.  

     And there was nothing Fathom could do to stop him. 

     Worse, at least for Niki, there was nothing she could do to stop him.  

     Her spirit was trapped inside of a human body whose main control center, her brain, was severely damaged. Every time she moved just the slightest bit, the inside of her skull exploded with pain. Plus, the thoughts themselves, the inner workings of her mind, they had been severely damaged. 

     No, she could do nothing to help Fathom, as much as she desperately wanted to.  

     She could do nothing but watch Egoneg pick Fathom up, swing her around his head like a lariat, then slam her into the sidewalk again, again, again. 

     There was nothing Niki could do about any of it.  

     Nothing.  

     Fathom's body, after Egoneg finished with it, looked anything but human.  

     All Niki saw was blood, bone, and innards.  

     Egoneg killed Niki's beloved right in front of her. 

     Dead, Niki thought.  

     Just as Pomimi was dead. 

     Just as Trevor was within moments of being dead.  

     And, now, the bleeding monstrosity that Egoneg had become focused his attention on Niki herself.    

                                                        CONTINUE