I was not looking forward to sleeping in Sky’s room again. I already knew sleep medicine wouldn’t work, so this time I tried wearing a sleep mask and earplugs to dull my senses and let me pretend the Boss wasn’t there. That failed horribly; knowing he was in the same room as me but not being able to see him only made it worse.

This was Fox’s first time sleeping in the room, so I tied warning her about what was going to happen. But I don’t think it really sunk in until she saw it for herself. The Boss appeared at 3:33 like always, and then pinned Sky down and muffled her screams with a tentacle.

Even with the light from the window, it was still hard to see in the darkness, so I don’t know when Fox got out of bed. But at some point, she walked up by the Boss, and I heard her whisper, “Father?”

Even back when I was a Runner, I’d never seen the Boss move so fast. Its whole upper torso twisted around, and the shadows cast by the window’s light turned into black branches that wrapped around Fox and lifted her into the air. One of his tentacles moved toward her stomach, and pushed forward until it slowly started to pierce through the skin.

Sky shouted, and jumped out of bed to try and tackle the Boss. I don’t know what happened next; whenever I try to look back on it, all I get is a blank. The next part I do remember is that I had a splitting headache, Fox was back in her bed, and Sky was cowering on the ground, covered in blood and bruises, and with the Boss standing over her. She was trying to protect her face with her arms, and saying “I’m sorry,” over and over. He wrapped a tentacle around her neck, and lifted her up to his head’s level. She kept trying to claw at the tentacle to break free, but it didn’t work. He kept holding her there for a few seconds, then he just placed her back in bed. More tentacles lifted her bed cover over her, and then he vanished.

Once it became clear he was gone, I rushed over to make sure Sky was okay. There were burn marks all along her neck where the tentacle had grabbed her, but she was conscious and breathing. Next I checked on Fox. She had been knocked out somehow, and there was a lot of blood on her, but the hole she should have had in her stomach was gone, with a fresh looking scar in its place. I called Lepidus in to help them, and he got to work. Thankfully, none of Sky’s injuries were too serious, although breathing or talking is going to hurt for a while with her throat like that.

And this is what I’m going to have to be dealing with until Dumas finishes his mission and we kill that Runner guy.