On one of his scavenging journeys, Louis Kelping and his small crew of eight arrived with a bulging sack of relics from the lost world. He always presented his findings first to Captain Francis and his officers who would sift through the haul, deciding what would be valuable for the ship and how the rest might be distributed. Wires, copper, and gears were prized most. Any mechanics were stripped down, reassembled, each piece finding new life on the vessel.

After the items had been sorted and distributed across the ship, Louis gathered what remained and carried them to his suite. He laid them out on the table, and Joe, Anne, and Sam leaned in, faces lit with excitement, fingers ready to explore.

Shiny stones, small plastic figures, and fragments of aluminum scattered the tabletop, but one piece captured their attention above all—a sand timer. Joe and Sam, unable to resist, both reached for it at the same moment, each racing to be the first to hold it.

Joe, being the eldest and the fastest, grabbed it first, lifting it with a triumphant grin and wagging it teasingly before little Sam. Sam’s jaw tightened, his eyes squeezed shut, holding back tears that threatened to spill. I nuzzled against his leg to comfort him. Their parents chided Joe, telling him to share the sand timer with his brother. After a moment’s pause, he suggested a race—up on the deck, from one end of the ship to the other—before the sand ran out.

I ran with them. We raced in wide loops from one end of the ship to the other. The timer was slipping away, and I ran harder, faster. I ran as if everything depended on that last grain of sand.

*****

I could still see the sand timer, each grain slipping away like a final breath before my eyes. The door between the material and ethereal worlds was closing, the portal sealing, while the lifeline tethered to my body grew ever thinner, weakening, drifting beyond my grasp.

We sprinted from Big Yard, relieved to see no sign of the Warden patrolling the area, then crossed the swaying rope bridge.

“Hurry up!” I stopped, glancing back to find Lee lagging several yards behind. Rusty and Marlow—the middle Wise Keeper—clung firmly to his back, while Flynn sat ahead, one hand gripping the strap of an oversized dark green sack that matched him in size, the other hand buried in Lee’s fur for balance.

"I’m running as fast as I can!” Lee gasped, his tongue lolling, flinging flecks of saliva at the rats. “But it's almost impossible to keep up with you!”

Sea Green stretched ahead, its rolling hills lush with green grass and vibrant trees basking in sunlight. Splashes of wildflowers painted the landscape in colors almost unreal. The stretch of green land looked almost too perfect. I imagined this was the world as it had been, before the Great Wrath. How the world once looked. But the closer you got, the more you noticed that it was only a replica of the lost paradise. A mere imitation made out of plastic, plexiglass, latex, and nylon.

Little Eden wasn’t home to all cats. Some, unwilling to trade garden patrols for a roof and scraps, wandered to Sea Green, where existence was easier… or as easy as life allowed in Floating City. The cats of Sea Green roamed freely, sprawling and tumbling across the artificial grass. Meanwhile, dogs raced and barked with delight, sniffing trails and marking bushes or flower beds as they pleased. Here and there, human settlements dotted the landscape: dome-shaped houses of stacked rubber tires and recycled glass, glinting like jewels under the sun.

A piercing screech pulled us toward one of the domes. We slipped through the gap in the dark green tarp that served as a door. Inside, we found the wraith-Page, back arched and hissing, eyes locked on Alan with a look of pure malice.

It launched itself off the long table, and Alan screamed as it clawed its way up her wounded leg. She clutched its neck, desperate to tear it off, but it clung to her, one paw reaching for her pocket. Stumbling back, she tripped and crashed into the wall. The black stones tumbled from her pocket onto the floor. In an instant, the imposter Page leapt from her leg toward the stones, but before it could reach them, Gunther seized it by the scruff of its neck.

“What’s gotten into you, Page?” he demanded, his eyes wide with alarm, as the creature hissed and yowled, swiping at him with dagger-like claws.

He rushed to the small cage on the table, wrenched the door open, and forced the creature inside. Then he slammed the door shut and locked it. Enraged, the imposter thrashed about, flinging itself against the cage walls, hissing and shrieking.

After a moment, the creature quieted, though its sides still heaved with residual fury. Alan threw a blanket over the cage, and, with a final, defeated huff, the creature fell silent. She picked up the two black stones from where they had fallen and placed them on the far end of the long table, away from the cage.

We crept silently to a space behind a shelf stacked with jars, vials, and pots filled with powders and liquids in every color. The rats slid off Lee’s back: Flynn dropped down to the floor with a soft thud, his fall cushioned by the sack he carried. Rusty followed close behind, and finally, Wise Keeper Marlow joined them.

“What's the plan? What are we going to do?” Lee whispered, struggling to contain his excited voice.

“We need the wraith to swallow this,” Marlow replied, reaching into Flynn's sack and pulling out a thick, dark-brown hairball.

“What exactly is that?”

“This,” Marlow said, brandishing the dense hairball, “is the Soul Cleanser. It’s made from cat hairs fermented in seawater for a year, with sacred liquids from the Wise Keepers—”

I pulled a face. “Oh, wonderful, that sounds appetizing!”

“—and then dried in the sun and blessed by the leader of the Wise Keepers.”

“Who would that be?” Lee asked, curious.

“Why, me, of course!” Marlow answered, looking slightly affronted.

“How are you going to get the wraith to swallow that nasty, stinking hairball?”

“Soul Cleanser!” corrected the Wise Keeper.

“It won’t be easy,” Flynn said, pulling a few thick cords from the sack, each one as long as three cat tails, and knotting them into lassos. “Rusty and I will need to catch the wraith and hold him down, while His Wiseness gets him to swallow the Soul Cleanser. Once he does, the wraith will be forced out of Page's body—that’s why it’s called a ‘Soul Cleanser’—and then you can re-enter your own body.”

“And I’ll chop the wraith’s head off with this!” Rusty announced, brandishing a long sword fashioned from a razor blade. “It’s been blessed by all seven Wise Keepers with their sacred liquids.”

“Do I even want to know what those liquids are?” I asked, uneasy.

Flynn grinned slyly. “That’s a secret. And believe me… you're better off in the dark about it.”

“Quiet, everyone!” Marlow whispered, raising a hand and a finger to his lips to signal us to fall silent.

Just then, Dr. Starkey, the Sea Green veterinarian, walked in from another room, carrying Ziggy in her arms, his shoulder and legs swathed in bandages. Her wild curly gray hair bounced as she carried him over to a corner and gently lowered him into a basket, where he slumped, too drowsy to move, against the soft cushions.

“He had a nasty wound on his shoulder,” she said, stroking his head lightly. “He’ll be alright, though. I gave him something to help him relax. The burns on his legs should heal within a few weeks. Of course, with proper care–”

She paused suddenly, blinking in surprise. After a quick adjustment of her crooked glasses, she looked up at Alan's serious face. “What’s the matter?”

“There's something wrong with Page,” said Alan, her eyebrows furrowed with worry.

Dr. Starkey's eyes fell on the blanket-covered cage. She cautiously approached it and lifted the edge of the blanket, glancing inside. But she flinched back when the creature hissed and lashed out, a sharp claw scraping against the metal bars. Wordlessly, she lowered the blanket back over the cage, a troubled look crossing her face.

“He’s never acted this way before,” said Gunther.

I floated up onto the table, watching the vet closely, sensing she was about to deliver unwelcome news.

“He could be in shock, a panic reaction to today's events,” she began, then hesitated. “But…”

Alan swallowed hard. “But what?”

The vet’s gaze darkened as she glanced between them. “There's a chance he could be… infected.”

“Infected with what?” Alan and Gunther echoed in unison.

“I’ve been finding animals, mainly rats, infected with a strange parasite lately,” Dr. Starkey explained. “Just a few weeks ago, I came across a dead rat on the street with tendrils pushing out from its mouth. I brought it back to the lab, dissected it, and inside was this gelatinous creature… something that looked like a jellyfish.”

“So, you found a dead rat with a jellyfish in it,” said Gunther, bluntly.

“But it wasn’t a jellyfish. I don't know what it was. Anyway, whatever it was, it had infiltrated the rat’s organs and nerves completely.”

“What makes you think Page is infected with this jellyfish parasite?”

No! It's not the blob. It's a wraith! I wanted to tell them.

“Because the other day, I saw another cat showing the same behavior as Page. I was doing a routine checkup on the cats in Little Eden when one of them caught my attention. He’d become unusually aggressive, slashing at the other cats without cause or provocation. And it wasn’t just his behavior. He’d grown much bigger, too, as if something was transforming him.”

“What now?” Gunther snapped, scowling. “Are we just going to stand here and watch that thing eat Page from the inside? Are we going to let him die?”

“I was sure that the apothecary had something that could've helped him,” said Dr. Starkey, “but that shop is, obviously, gone now. So, there's no magic pill that can cure him. We no longer have many of the medicines that we once had in the old world.”

Alan frowned. Her face tightened as she looked at the vet. “Then how will you remove the parasite? Can it be done without killing him?”

I glanced anxiously at the vet as her tone grew grave. “The only other option would be to surgically remove the parasite.”

As soon as those words were said, the world seemed to fall around me. She was going to cut me open!