Rick's stomach dropped. One by one the black shapes poured from yawning portals until they numbered nineteen—nineteen silhouettes that drank the light around them—and the lizard paced among them like a calm captain. The sight hollowed him; every instinct screamed danger.
Below, the city was a ruin of smoke and broken glass. Fires gulped at gutted stalls, bodies lay slumped in the streets, and the black things moved with an impossible, liquid grace. Where they stepped, the pavement seemed to fold inward, swallowing the feeble glow of streetlamps. Rick's fingers closed on the Quill until the metal bit his palm; it hummed, alive and hungry.
"No—nooo! Hang on, Rick—I'm coming!" Mark's shout tore up from below. He was already moving to descend when his comm vibrated. He answered, voice clipped by years of decisions.
"Mark—Mark, WEEE NEED HELP. Monsters—black—scary—invade—city!" The caller's words tumbled out in jagged bursts, raw with panic and pain. Mark's jaw tightened. There was no room for shrieking on the line; there were choices to be made.
"Calm down, Cane. Tell me everything slowly." Mark's reply was steady only because he had to be. He scanned the wreckage for his son, the arithmetic of a father's choice carving through him—one life against millions. He stole a look up at the rooftop, eyes catching Rick's silhouette, and then murmured the apology that knifed his throat. "Sorry, Rick, below, the monsters just looked at Rick with an amused face. Rick didn't move. The Abominations arranged themselves into a slow, deliberate formation. The closest one stepped forward; when it spoke its voice was a clean, metallic calm.
"Rick Morris," it intoned. "We are the race known as Abomination. We have chosen your planet."
A verdict dropped into the air: surrender or die. The words should have been terror; instead, a brittle laugh cut free from Rick's throat. He tightened his grip on the Quill; light struck the metal and fractured into hungry sparks.
"Let's see who will die today," he said. The voice that carried the words was altered—flatter at the edges, threaded with a new hunger that had not been there before. The cadence, the hunger behind it, the way he savored the last syllable—these were the Quill's fingerprints.
Around him the Abominations shifted, patient and amused. The lizard's eyes gleamed with collaborative intent. Portals pulsed behind them like a distant heart, promising more darkness.
Mark's hand clenched the comm until the plastic creaked; emergency channels spat orders into the void. In the wreckage below, prayers and screams braided together. In the city, the Quill thrummed against Rick's palm, an animal's throat pressed to the air.
The change in Rick was immediate and undeniable. The weapon's influence threaded through his blood, reshaping the edges of his fear into something sharp and bright. The laugh, the tone, the hunger in his words—each confirmed the same brutal truth.
This confirmed it—Rick Morris has been tainted by the Quill.