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All thirty marked families arrive at the library, but they're not separate anymore—they're merging into one impossible body with the Davidsons as a leg with screaming faces in the kneecap, the Pattersons as an arm with children's mouths for fingers, and the congregation twisted into organs that pray and sing. The twenty wrong Margarets melt into this mass as it reaches for Margaret with appendages that shouldn't exist—hands made of tongues, fingers that are entire arms—trying to absorb her as the witness that gives their meat meaning. Father Williams tears through the convergence with his inverted body existing inside and outside simultaneously, revealing the merger is actually digestion—making thirty small pieces into one easy-to-swallow mass—and pulls Margaret free though she leaves layers of skin behind.

At the fountain, the original Sarah Blackwood still stands pregnant after 251 years, offering Margaret a choice: merge with the thirty-family mass to become the Pattern itself, or merge with Sarah to become poison—either way, they're getting eaten. The entire town converges toward the fountain as buildings lean together and drivers fuse with cars, while Margaret realizes she's already split between two convergences, dissolving into the space between choosing.

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