Starlight

XXXVII: Our Love is God

Content Warnings:

I've attached this previously, but wanted to add it again as a reminder.

As we reach the end of Starlight, it will become darker in tone. Given this, I don't feel like it's a spoiler to warn you that from now on the story will include discussion of death, violence, and injury.

If you would like to have some more in depth and chapter-specific warnings, please feel free to message me and I'll be more than willing to provide those for you.

I want to make sure that everybody has a comfortable reading experience. That being said, I hope you enjoy this chapter.

___

You are the only thing that's right
About this broken world
Go on and cry
But when the morning comes
We'll burn it down and then
We'll build the world again...

- "Our Love is God", Heathers

xx.xx

"Remarkable. Simply remarkable..."

Henry gazed at a phosphorescent blue phial, swirling its contents and scrutinizing it with the utmost precision.

Or was it awe?

As Robbie had found out by sitting in the lab with him, her partner had a tendency to mutter to himself as he worked. At first, his little exclamations had been infrequent and endearing. The odd gasp, the odd expletive. Now that time dragged on, however, they became more frequent and more reverent...

It had been way longer than twenty minutes, with no sign of Emma, Paul, or Bill's return, and Henry grew more and more consumed by his work as the seconds ticked by.

She had always loved his wildness and unpredictability, his flights of fancy and his untamable philosophizing. He marched - or rather, danced - to the beat of his own drum, always, but this was different. He was teetering on the edge of something darker.

"What? Made a breakthrough?"

Henry stared at the phial still, gazing into the depths of its blue. "This stuff - the things it can do - it's incredible."

"Incredible?" She frowned, shivering in her armchair. Henry had turned on the AC despite the brisk October day, given that his lab had transformed into a makeshift morgue - but it wasn't just the refrigerated air or the cadavers in the back that caused Robbie's hair to stand on end. "You're making it sound like it's a good thing."

He didn't respond, instead twirling it around, over and over again, creating a tiny whirlpool within the glass.

"Henry." She spoke more harshly, and he finally tore his eyes away from it to look at her. "What's going on? What have you found?"

"I think we -- I think it's --" He took a deep breath, turning away from her once more. "Robbie, How do you explain an entire race of beings spontaneously bursting into song and dance? How do they all know the lyrics? The choreography?"

"I've no idea."

"What we're dealing with here is a collective consciousness. On one level they are individual, but, on another, they are all appendages of a much larger organism - all connected by a central brain..."

He looked at her expectantly, but all she had to offer was a shrug. "The meteor!" He enthused, "I think they're all controlled by one entity - which is centralized around the meteor."