Fire sank in the water.
Chen Mo could not tell whether it was fire falling from upstairs or Pamela's loose hair.
Red drifted between his fingers. He reached for it, his fingertips touching her face, then moving down to cradle the back of her neck.
Too cold.
When she had touched him just now, her hands had not been this cold.
Someone above the water shouted his name. The voice fell toward him from very, very far away. Chen Mo tilted his face up and saw shattered golden light hanging overhead, piece by piece, like lamps offered to a god.
He held his offering.
No. You can't have this one.
Take something else.
Whatever the god wanted, it could take his. A miracle had finally come around; surely it couldn't still be so stingy.
How long had she even lived?
Chen Mo opened his mouth, and water poured in. His unfinished words floated upward with the bubbles. He wanted to chase them and make his request clearer, but a sudden stab of pain made his waist shudder.
His wound was healing.
Torn muscles tightened, and his chest began to rise and fall again. The Dionysian Factor invaded through his blood, the changes it spurred colliding head-on with his existing healing powers, tearing and repairing over and over inside a body that had already been modified too many times.
Deadpool's, Wolverine's, and the part that belonged to the spider.
Chen Mo survived once again.
Several powers preserved his body, but the pain in his head kept burrowing deeper.
He remembered the snapped vine, remembered the laughter above. His jaws clenched tighter and tighter, until he could not even spit out the water he had choked on.
Black unfurled from his shoulders and back.
Venom soaked in the same pool, every strand