I haven't touched a TV since Maikendo. Can't even walk past a toy store without feeling a tightening in my chest, like invisible hands pulling me back into the screen.

Most nights, I don't sleep. Not really. I lie there, wide-eyed in the dark, and wait for the game to glitch me out of this world again. Sometimes I swear I see the loading screen flicker behind my closed lids — the bright blue sky, the smiling sun, the fake laughter.

I started working on my focus again. Medicine drills, memory sharpening, hand exercises — anything to remind myself this is the real world, not some sick playground. Whisper of Life is getting stronger too. The touch that can pull people back from the brink... or push them over it.

I am not a player anymore. I’m the one writing the end screens.

If Maikendo ever comes back, I won't just play.

I’ll win for real.

After Nevada, sleep doesn't come easy. I hear it when I close my eyes — the faint rustle of fungal threads growing under my skin, even though I know they’re long gone. It’s just my mind playing tricks. Old habits from older wounds.

I spent the downtime cleaning my tools, replacing my gear, practicing hand stabilization techniques until my fingers cramped. I’m a doctor, after all. Healing is supposed to be my answer to everything. But some infections don’t bleed. They whisper.

I burned my clothes from the Rachel run. Bought a new burner phone, a new backpack. Cut my hair. Nothing extravagant, just enough to feel like I’m shedding the skin those spores tried to wrap me in.

I took a few shifts at the hospital, pretending to be normal. Kids with broken arms, teenagers with concussions, mothers crying over nothing at all. I smiled. Listened. Pretended.

Underneath it all, I’m sharpening. Waiting. When the next call comes, I’ll be ready — like always.

— Selma

I’ve been back in Los Angeles for three days. My shower ran hot for an hour the night I got home. It didn’t help. The cold is still in me — not the Siberian frost, but something deeper. That bird, Murphy… whatever he really was, I can still feel the tension in my neck when I think about him. How something so beautiful could cause so much death.

I stitched myself up in my own kitchen with trembling hands. The heater broke halfway through, and I let it stay broken.

My practice resumed as if nothing happened. Children cry in my office, parents apologize, and I nod along, soft-voiced and hollow-eyed. I gave one child a plush penguin and had to fight back the urge to scream. Wolves. Frozen water. Caleb’s body in the air.

Still, I smile. I’m good at that. The mask holds. But I’ve started sleeping with a knife under my pillow.

The world feels more brittle now. Maybe I do too.

— Selma