
**Praise for Adam Wing's first novel,**Icarus **:**

Adam Wing's Icarus is powerful and gripping. It brings life to a myth that always deserved more. Attention to detail and evocative language puts you right in the Mediterranean beside iconic characters we all grew up with.

—Matt Berry, CEFX-FM

(X92.9) Calgary

Adam has a way with words, fresh approach to an old story, definitely one to check out. I can't wait to see what he comes out with next!

—Ian Gibbs, _Victoria's Most Haunted_ (author), _  
_Ghost Story Guys Podcast
APOCA

LYPSE

SINKS

SHIPS

By

Adam Wing

With Guest Author:

Diana Pearson

(There are no ships in this book)
To kiwis in spheres and

pilgrims in tears.

To fighters, believers,

suckers and dreamers.

To loved ones.
(Seriously, there are no ships in this book...)
(...so don't go looking.)
(You might get lost and I don't want to have to come find you later.)
Contents

****The Other Man in the Bathroom

Mortified

DEEP-FU

After the Seraphim

Encore

[Author's Aside]

 Guest Author: Diana Pearson

Introduction

Sweetie

Last Place on Earth

Pretty-Boy Fast

In His Sleep

Acknowledgments

Sand, Sea and Stone

#

—————

ALONE in the arrivals lounge.

Straight-backed in her chair she sat, hands folded neatly on her lap. She held herself as still as possible; too much movement, she feared, would set unwanted wrinkles into her outfit. She had spent the morning—and a good part of the afternoon—hunting through more department stores than she cared to count, searching rack after rack for just the right look. A silk cardigan—dun-coloured and so fine you would almost call it sheer—draped her shoulders, partially concealing splashes of cherry and green from the figure-sculpting wrap beneath it. A pearl-hued skirt drifted down her thighs, crisp, narrow pleats hiding the contentious bulges of her hips and her rear. It hung at rest now, but when she walked in it... oh, how it flowed! Like waves on white sand. She felt like some sort of beautiful ghost in it. Or a girl in a dream. Her hair was set in curls and tied in a ribbon—green to match her top—with a single mutinous ringlet permitted to hang down playfully in the front. And her shoes—her shoes!—elegant wonders, heeled with an open toe. Held together with netting of thin leather straps, seemingly against all the laws of physics.

A heart-shaped pendant on a near-invisible gold chain around her neck was the only jewelry she wore. Her wedding ring lay abandoned at the bottom of her purse, somewhere between an empty pack of cigarettes and her phone charger.

The man she had come to meet was not her husband. The man she had come to meet was, in every way that mattered, the _opposite_ of her husband. Where _he_ was plain and what she liked to describe as 'dowdy', her husband was stylish and handsome; where _he_ was short, her husband was tall; where _he_ was kind, her husband was only ever cruel. Where she loved the man for whom she now waited, she despised the man to whom she had once vowed to be true.

It had not always been so. Once her husband had been sweet. Gentle. He had always known just what to say or do to make her happy. As if he could step into her mind and walk around, combing through her thoughts and feelings. That was before they were married. But he changed. In their first years as man and wife, she watched him become ever more severe, demanding and suspicious. He provided for their lifestyle, he told her, and _that_ was what mattered. He made her life possible so she had to respect him. As time drew on, the term 'respect' came with more and more expectations. And if ever she failed to meet his expectations... well, 'frightening' did not quite describe it. On the not-too-infrequent occasions she actually angered him, he was downright terrifying. He always seemed to know just what to say or do to hurt, scare or bully her into submission. Again, as if he could step into her mind.

She endured though. For love, she told herself, at least at first. Then out of fear. Then just habit. She learned to accept his cruelty. It was normal.

Then one April evening, when her husband was out of town for work, a friend of a friend came over to help her with her new computer. He was funny and kind; he made her laugh. She made him dinner to thank him. They drank wine and spoke intimate into the night. She felt no guilt at all when she slept with him. That was three years ago.

And here she was again, awaiting the man she loved, eager to fold herself in his arms, forget her otherwise cruel existence. So she sat in the empty airport, eyes attentive, fixed on the frosted glass doors where he would appear. And she waited.

And waited...

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

THE man on the plane was in Row 37, Seat J. His name did not matter but it happened to be James. He had spent most of the flight trying—and failing—to sleep in his cramped starboard window seat. Behind the wing, he could never quite escape the rushing roar of the engines. Worse, the screen in the seatback in front of him looked to be the only one aboard that was broken. And no matter how he pressed the button or awkwardly pushed back with his shoulder, his chair refused to recline. So James sat, exhausted, upright and bored. His back ached, his ass was numb, and his phone was dead. Fiddling on his laptop, he watched the minutes creep by at the bottom of the screen. I shouldn't have checked my charger, he thought for perhaps the hundredth time. I should have brought a book.

The cabin lights were off. Luminous yellow lines lit dim paths down the aisles. Reading lamps shone here and there up the cabin, but most passengers sat in darkness, heads lolling uneasily, breathing slow and even. James envied people's ability to let go in the face of such discomfort. It was something he could never quite manage.

The trip had been a short one, though not in travel time. Detroit to New York. New York to London. A day of meetings, a presentation, three new clients. Then right back around home. He had slept _maybe_ nine hours in the last four days. Yet his body insisted he remain awake. He closed his computer. Then his eyes. _If I just relax,_ he thought, _breathe deeply, sleep will come. It will come_.

It did not.

Sighing, James opened his eyes. And his laptop. Knowing he would have nothing but time, he left himself plenty of work to do on the plane. He had finished it in an hour and a half. Opening a game of solitaire, he scrolled endlessly through the draw deck without playing a single card. _Four more hours_.

James turned off his computer, sliding it back into its case and under the seat in front of him. He lifted himself off the uncomfortable chair, wincing as the blood returned to his legs. A nudge to his sleeping neighbour—as small a nudge as he could manage—saw him squeezed back out into the aisle.

With a feline stretch, James moved up the cabin toward the bathrooms. Both toilets were vacant. He wedged himself into the closest and shut the door. _Snook_. As he slid the lock into place, the lights flickered on, offering only the briefest petulant buzz. A gaunt, unhappy face stared back at him in the mirror. "Look who needs a nap," he mumbled to his reflection, rubbing his left temple. As he turned to the toilet, the floor shuddered. The metal bowl danced in front of him. _Small target..._ What if they hit some real turbulence? The prospect was more than James wanted to think about. He lowered his pants and planted himself squarely on the cold plastic seat.

A light tinkle rose between James's legs as he emptied his bladder. When he was finished, he sat for a minute, hunched on the little grey stoop. Hours in the spine-bending vice of his coach seat had transformed even a smelly airplane bathroom into a fine change of scenery. He did his best to ignore the sour stench of his own urine.

Damn, what did I eat?

The lights flickered again. Then they went out.

James froze. His heart beat against his chest. _Nothing to be scared of,_ he assured himself. _Just a minor issue with the lights._ Though he could see nothing in the sudden darkness that surrounded him, he could still hear the roar of the engines and the soft rush of air in the ventilation system. No announcement came from the flight crew. _No emergency. No catastrophic mechanical failure._ _Just a hiccup_. As his pupils began to adjust he realized that a line of soft orange lights—so dim he initially failed noticed them—was set into the floor, slowly painting shapes and colours back into his vision. Soon he could make out most everything in the room. Even his own face in the mirror. He was about ready to go back to his seat now though.

As James leaned forward to stand, he thought he heard a voice whisper into his ear. "Stay," it said to him.

_What?_ James swung his head around. No one was in the bathroom with him. He was hearing things. _God_ , he was tired! He started to rise again.

" _Please,_ don't get up _._ "

James dropped hard back down onto the seat. "Is someone there?"

He waited for a reply. After a long moment, the voice came again. "Yes," it said with notable unease.

"Who— _where_ are you?" James listened in silence, but no answer came. Then, "It's illegal to put a camera in a public bathroom, you know." He had no idea if this was true but, it sounded reasonable. Saying it made him feel better.

"There's no camera."

_Okay, I'm more tired than I thought. Time to clear out of here._ But before James could stand, as if reading his thoughts, the voice spoke again. " _Don't get up_. Please." It sounded familiar.

" _Who_ is that?" James demanded, looking around again, fumbling his fingers over the walls, the door, the sink, feeling for microphones or speakers. "Where are you?"

"First, may I ask a question?"

_What?_ James laughed. _This is so Goddamn stupid_. But he closed his eyes. "Sure, why the fuck not."

"Are you religious?"

"Am I...?"

"Religious?"

"Am I _religious_?" What was even happening!?

"Yes." The voice was louder now, steadier. "Have you faith?"

James scanned the room. His eyes, now fully adjusted, could see with some degree of detail. There was no one with him in the tiny space. Sitting back on the toilet, he sighed. "I guess. I go to church. When there's no football."

"And you believe?"

_Believe?_ "In what? In God?"

"In... _whatever_."

Despite himself, James cackled at this. Screw it. He let himself consider the question. He _had_ grown up in a Christian household, churchgoing as long as he could remember. He always assumed he believed in God, never really stopped to consider it. He did though, didn't he? He did, right? Yes... he must. "I suppose," he finally said. "Yeah. Yeah, I believe. Why do you want to—" James stopped himself. _What am I doing here_? "Why am I even talking to you—" _There's nobody here!_ "—to... _myself_!" _There's nobody_ — "Ah, shit!" James yanked up his pants and slapped a hand on the flush button. _Let someone else entertain the crazy voice in the bathroom_.

"Wait," the voice bit sharply. "Please, this is important."

James shook his head. "I'm not going just to sit here, talking to... _whoever_ about whatever nonsense he can come up with."

The bathroom was silent. James waited. No voice. Nodding, he touched the door latch.

"Look in front of you then."

James growled. _Goddamn it._ Shaking his head, he raised his eyes from the door. Before him, the squashed basin of an airplane sink, push-button spout reaching over its plated drain. _What am I looking at? You want me to wash my hands? Is that what this is about?_ James smirked and rolled his eyes. What a ridiculous nightmare he was having. Above the sink, painted maroon in the dull emergency lighting, hung a narrow, drop-spattered mirror. It was bordered by a velvety frame of shadows. _Look in front of me. Look at what, exactly?_ What could he possibly see? The tiny space was empty.

Empty.

And James understood.

Standing there, staring into the mirror, he saw himself—his reflection— _sitting_ on the toilet. Ankles crossed, gazing through the glass partition, a confident twist curling the corner of its lip. Then even more remarkable, as James stood and stared at the impossible sight, his reflection leaned forward, and it spoke. "I ask if you're religious because soon I'm going to ask you to do something. What I require is urgent beyond anything you can imagine, and it will take a tremendous leap of faith on your part. But it _needs to be done_. So before I ask, I must know if you're capable of such a leap."

James realized suddenly why he had recognized the voice. It was his own.

He could feel his throat closing up. He wanted to answer but seemed to have forgotten how to speak.

"One more time," the man in the mirror breathed patiently. "To whatever god or power you believe in, to whatever religion you subscribe, _do_... _you_... _believe_?"

James shook his head. _This can't be real. Mirrors don't come to life and talk to you_. "I—I'm hallucinating," he croaked. "I haven't slept..."

"You're not," his reflection replied flatly. "I can prove that, but first you need to answer my question. DO YOU _BELIEVE_?"

"Yes!" James almost yelled the word. "Yes—yes, I believe. Jesus, God!" He took a half step back; his calf bumped the toilet. The bathroom was closing in around him.

The other James—the one in the mirror—smiled. "Okay. That's a start. All religions, you see, require faith, but few offer anything in the way of—Look at me!" James, who had been eyeing the door, snapped his gaze back to his reflected self. "As I was saying, all religions require faith. People will die for their beliefs— _kill_ for them—with no knowing what they believe is true, no _proof_ to justify their actions. They trust their gods—or their God—to tell them what's right. And nothing can divert them."

James opened his mouth, then closed it. _What?_ What was this hallucination going on about? "I __ won't ask this of you," the reflection continued. "As I said, I'm going to need your trust... your _faith_ , but whatever I ask, at the very least, I will offer you some proof. Not just that I'm real, but that I possess a greater knowledge of the universe. So if— _when_ —you decide to help me, it will be with as much of the truth as I can safely provide."

James fought to comprehend the situation. His mind struggled to accept what was happening. His reflection stared back expectantly. "Okay," he grunted at last.

"And if I can do that..."—James suspected his reflection's smile was meant to reassure him—"...if I can _show you_ that I'm real, and not some... creation of your sleep-deprived brain, you will sit down and listen to what I have to say?"

James gulped. He nodded.

"Good." Mirror-James winked at him. "In two minutes, a man in black slacks and a green checkered shirt will walk past this bathroom. His name will be Victor Szewc. His wife is Adriana. None of that matters; he's not important. What's important is that I'm telling it to you now, now before it's happened, something you couldn't possibly have known on your own. If I'm _right_ , you'll have learned two things, one: I exist, and two: I _do_ have some knowledge of future events. After that... well, we can figure it out from there."

James considered the other man's words carefully. "Okay," he said again, somehow finding his voice.

"All right. Soon then. When I say, open the door."

They waited. James scrutinized his reflection. Its likeness was perfect; it could have been him. It _was_ him. He almost checked to see that he was indeed standing in front of the glass and not perched on the toilet as he appeared to be. Only the eyes were different, he noted. The other James's eyes _looked_ like his, but there was something else in them... a brittleness he had never seen before, certainly never staring back at him in his own reflection.

Mirror-James cocked his head. "He's coming."

James fingered the door lock, waiting for word to open it.

" _Go_ ," the reflection hissed.

He released the lock and opened the door to poke his head out. A thin man in long black slacks and a green checked shirt ambled up the aisle. "Victor?" James hissed.

The man stopped. "Sorry?"

"You're—you're Victor, right? Victor Szewc?" The man's expression was lost in a shadow, but James thought he might have been frowning. "Excuse me. I'm a friend of your wife, Adriana. I met you at... at..."

"Nadia's wedding," his own voice whispered from behind the glass.

"...At Nadia's wedding."

"Right." The man in the aisle nodded slightly. Dropping his eyes, clearly uncomfortable at being caught off guard in such a way, he hurried on, the way he had been going. As he brushed past James, he turned and grumbled over his shoulder. Something about it being good to see James again.

"You too." James pulled his head into the bathroom, sliding the panel door shut and locking it behind him. The lights did not come back on.

"Well?" His reflection smiled.

"As you said."

"His name was Victor?"

James nodded.

"His clothes?"

"Black and green. Just like you said."

"And his wife—"

"Everything," James snapped. "Everything was just as you said it would be."

"You'll hear me out, then?"

James sighed. This was _crazy_! But... but... Lowering himself back onto the toilet seat, he nodded his agreement.

As James sat, Mirror-James stood. "Do you value life?" the reflection began. James stared blankly. _What? Like, in general?_ Of course he did. "Of course you do," the other man answered before he could speak, reflecting his very thoughts. "But how much? What is a human life worth to you?"

James was not sure what to say. Where was this going? "A lot," he croaked wanly.

"But what is the _worth_? Ten thousand dollars? A million? A billion?"

He shook his head. "I'm not going to kill anyone, if that's what you want."

"Well... we'll get to that. How about this then: who do you love? You do you love someone, don't you? Anyone at all?"

Who did he—? What did _that_ have to do with anything? "Yes," he answered. His voice had begun to shake.

"Tell me."

Fuck you.

James bit his lip. He said nothing. The conversation was moving in a direction he did not like. "The person you love, how much is _that_ life worth to you?" The bathroom was growing hotter. A tear of sweat traced a sharp line down James's neck. His chest felt tight and breathing had become difficult.

"What do you want?" James mouthed the words.

"Would you die to protect a person you love?" Other-James prodded. "Would you kill for them?"

And there it was.

"If you... if you think you can threaten—"

Mirror-James raised a hand. "Stop. I'm not going to hurt anyone. I just want to impress on you the importance of what's about to happen."

" _What_?" James demanded. "What's about to happen? What do you want from me?"

The man in the mirror gazed out coolly. Brittle eyes glittered in the dim bathroom light. Then he nodded. "Okay." His voice was grave. "There's a man on this plane—not a bad man—a man, innocent of any crime, who has done no harm to anyone. But all the same, he must die. If he lives to see tomorrow's light, millions—tens of millions—will die. Painfully. Including everyone you've ever known or cared about. This is why I've come to you." The reflection exhaled dramatically. " _This_ is what is so important, why I took the time to prove myself to you, why I need you to believe."

James almost laughed. He did not buy this story for a second. _It can't be true_ , he thought. _There's no way_... Then a vision of his family, dead in the street, wormed its way into his head. _No_. He shook the image away... only to replace it with coworkers, with friends, suffering in their final moments of life. _No_. His parents burnt to death in their homes. _NO!_

This was insane. _I have to get out of here_ , he thought.

But... what if it _was_ true? The thing in the mirror—whatever it was—knew things. He knew about that man, Victor—knew what was going to happen. James could not deny that. What if... _Tens of millions..._ He could not imagine. He had to... he had to think...

The other man watched him in silence. James tried to speak. His mouth was dust. He coughed and cleared his throat, took some water from the sink. Finally, he found his voice. "Is it _true_?"

Brittle eyes stared back.

"What does he do?"

"Does that matter?" the reflection asked. Did it? He supposed not.

"How do _you_ know? How can _I_ know that you're right?"

"You can't," the other man said. "And there's nowhere _near_ enough time for me to explain it. All I can say is this: I'm not _really_ here. I can only _communicate_ the message, and only to a very rare few. You're the only one on the plane who will hear me." James closed his eyes and cradled his face in his fingers. "It has to be you, James. _You_ need to do this." His own voice, filtered through the glass, spoke with more conviction than he had ever been able to find in it. "Or the world as you know it will end. So tell me one more time, James. Do you have faith? Can you take the leap?"

With a shuddering breath, James raised his head. He met the reflection's eyes. Cold. And brittle. _Those eyes._ "What do I have to do?"

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

THEY touched down in New York an hour behind schedule. The plane made its leisurely taxi around JFK—more than a few full circuits, it seemed to James. He had long since missed his connecting flight. Not that it mattered. He would not make it home. A chill of sweat had soaked through both his shirt and his sweater. His eyes darted up and down the cabin, searching for a man matching the description he was given. "You'll see him in a faded yellow ball cap and a bright red polo. He'll be clean shaven and have thick fish-eye glasses." Mirror-James could not have been more specific. Not without an actual seat number, anyway.

James had already searched up and down the aisles but had not seen anyone matching that description. _Sleeping_ , he supposed, _or simply turned away. Hiding, maybe._ As they approached their destination, he was compelled to return to his seat. __ Settling back now, he took a deep breath and laboured to hold his calm. It was a big plane; he was here somewhere. _Just relax_. _There's nothing to be done yet, anyway_.

They finally turned toward the larger building and rolled to a stop. The instant the seat belt light went dark, James leapt up and slid past his neighbour. He rushed through the aisle, dodging between weary travellers stretching or fumbling for their bags. Halfway up the plane, the human tide closed around him and he could not force his way another inch. Bouncing on his toes, he scoured the crowd for a yellow ball cap or a red polo shirt, scanning every spectacled face he saw.

At last the aisle cleared and James ran forward, slipping past the last few stragglers and sprinting up the walkway to the gate. He loped through the broad airport terminal, around kiosks and tired clusters of travellers, arriving at baggage claim before anyone else on his flight. Bent over a cramp in his ribs, lungs burning with acid, he waited beside the empty conveyor, watching the other passengers file in behind him. With a squeak and a low moan, the conveyor belt sprung to life.

"A bright orange duffel," his reflection had instructed. "Striped with reflective tape. In the outer pocket you'll find the knife..."

James watched for the duffel. He scanned the other passengers as they gathered to wait for their luggage. _Yellow ball cap. Red shirt_. He could still hear Mirror-James's voice. _His name is Thomas. Don't forget. Don't get the wrong one._

"Thomas," James said the name aloud. Bags started to appear, sliding down the shoot onto the conveyor belt. "Orange duffel. Reflective tape." His heart drummed against his rib cage. "— _Knife_."

A man in a red polo shirt and yellow cap appeared from the corridor, thick Coke-bottle glasses perched on his nose. Thomas. The man rolled a carry-on behind him. Skipping the conveyor, he headed straight to the customs line. _He didn't check a bag_.

James turned back to the chute. Suitcases continued their parade onto the conveyor. Still no orange duffel. Thomas was in the line now, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, slowly making his way to the front. _He's getting away_. _I might not have to_...

James could almost hear his own voice—his reflection's voice—admonishing him. _YOU have to do this._

The bag appeared. _Orange duffel. Reflective tape._ It slid down the shoot toward him. James grabbed it as it landed, tearing open the side pouch. His eyes fell on the four-inch silver pocketknife. He snatched it out, leaving the bag to circle the conveyor on its own. Forever, as far as it mattered to him now.

Moving as quickly as he could—Thomas was second from the front in the line—but careful not to draw attention, James marched toward his target. _Don't hesitate_ , he reminded himself. His heart pounded so loud he was surprised no one around him could hear it. _Do it quick; do it right_. He pushed past the other travellers, ignoring angry shouts and obscenities. And he caught up.

The man turned to see what the commotion was about. Suddenly, they were face-to-face. "Thomas?" James asked, fingering the knife in his hand.

"Yes?" the man said.

James opened the knife and brought it up. He pushed it into Thomas's fleshy throat. Those fishy eyes grew even wider. The man's mouth opened into a deep, quivering oval, completing his aquatic likeness. James yanked the knife out, then plunged it in again. And again, ensuring death. Spectacles clattered to the floor. Blood fountained from the holes in Thomas's neck. James stepped back as waves of screaming voices washed over him. All he heard was a pressure though, deep pulsations in his ears, behind his blurring eyes. His hands had gone numb. The knife slipped from his fingers and vanished. He watched as the colour drained from Thomas's face. The light from his eyes.

Then security had him. They yanked James down and twisted his sticky arms behind his back. "I'm sorry," he whimpered. "I'm sorry! I had to." They dragged him away, and he found himself fighting, screaming, trying to get back, trying to...

"I had to! It was the only way! I _believed_! __ I had to believe!"

I had to...

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

THE woman sat on her bench. Her lover's plane had been delayed. The wait was much longer than she had expected. Her bright new clothes drooped off her body now. Her impossible shoes sat neatly beside her. And she sat, wilted, bored and wishing for home. But he had landed now; it could not be much longer.

She passed time gazing at the various shops and curios. Passengers from other flights exited the frosted glass doors and made their way past her to the exit. She guessed where they might be from, who they were and where they were going. She made up stories for them, names and elaborate histories, adventures they would find in their travels. It was a dull sort of game, but better than staring at her toes. Then, amidst meetings of families and friends, happy lovers reunited, and single travellers hurrying for taxies to take them home—or to their hotels—she was startled to watch a dozen uniformed security officers stomp past, running through the doors into customs. A few minutes later, several police hurried through as well. Time passed and nobody at all came out. Her apprehension began to grow. She had no desire to imagine _that_ story but found she could not help herself.

And still she waited.

The doors finally opened. Two cops and two security officers stepped out, followed by a herd of shaken travellers. Many looked pale. Some were crying.

The woman climbed onto her seat and looked over the crowd, scanning for the plain face she loved. Those wonderful, ridiculous glasses. It was another face she saw though. One that nearly caused her to lose balance and fall off the bench.

Her husband emerged from the crowd. _What is_ he _doing here?_ Catching sight of her, up on her toes, well above the crowd, he nodded and headed in her direction. _He knows_ , she thought, her heart constricting sharply. Still no sign of her lover.

"You came to get me," her husband said, a half-smile on his lips.

_You?_ She fought down a wave of revulsion. _No! Never you! You were supposed to be gone another week_. "Of course," she said, stepping down to kiss him.

"Shall we go?" He handed her that stupid orange bag of his.

As they headed off through the airport, she could not help but give one last backward glance. _Sorry, Thomas_ , she called to him in her head. _I'll message to explain when I get home_. Thomas would understand, she thought. He was a good man.

Her chest tightened as she walked in silence beside her husband. What was _he_ doing on the same plane? Did he know? "How was your flight?" she asked, voice as calm as she could make it.

"Surprisingly good." He flashed her an uncharacteristic grin. "You drive."

They got into the car and she pressed the ignition. The engine grumbled to life. "Are you hungry, Victor?" she asked.

"I ate on the plane," Victor answered, terse as ever. "Actually," he said then, surprising her, a strange smile tugging at his lips, "I had a pretty great conversation with a man I met. James, he called himself. About religion and faith, love, all sorts of stuff."

"Yeah?" She was no longer listening. She shifted the car into reverse.

"I met him in the bathroom of all places."

"Hmm."

"You look nice tonight. Did you dress up for me? How wonderful. How... _unlike_ you."

She froze. His words—the sardonic hint that he knew why she had really come to the airport—would have normally hit her like an anvil. Fear would have risen within her until she could scarcely breathe. Victor always knew _exactly_ what to say to terrorize her. As if he could step inside her mind. This time though, it was not his words that frightened her. She did not even hear what he had said.

Eyes on the rear-view mirror, she was horrified to see her reflection, not in the driver's seat... but sitting _in_ _the back_. It stared forward through the glass, a wicked grin pasted across its face. Leaning in, it wrapped an invisible arm around the headrest. She could almost feel its hand behind her head.

"Hi, Adriana," her reflected self said. "I think it's time we had a talk."

The woman in the mirror stared at her with cold, brittle eyes.

Eyes not unlike her husband's, she realized.

# Mortified

—————

SHEPARD coughed and spat another mouthful of seawater.

Are fucking you kidding me?

Seriously... seriously?

Are you KIDDING?!

The muscles in her arms and legs burned as bad as ever they had in the pool, or even pushing weights in the training centre. Electric twinges crackled through shoulders gone stiff and weak. As though someone had poured course-grade sand into the tissue beneath her skin, and each stroke, each kick of her legs, worked the foreign matter a little deeper into the fibres.

What _really_ hurt was her pride, though.

_I cannot BELIEVE I'm going to die like this_ , she thought between gasps. In the back of Shepard's mind, she noted with some chagrin that she apparently no longer expected to survive this. Yet still she swam; she did not hold back. That was interesting.

_Jeez, look at everyone watching. Videos of this'll probably end up online_.

Meeting God had not been a part of the morning's agenda. Not even close. An hour ago, she was on the phone with her friend Greg, making plans for a nice relaxing day. "Let's hit the beach!" she practically shouted, cutting short his 'Hello'.

His response was less enthusiastic than what she had hoped. "I have a few things to do. Give me a couple hours?"

"Whatever. You come when you come. _I'm_ heading down."

And that was it. Shepard's fate was sealed. She was a strong swimmer. Strong enough to make it past the breakwater and back. _Of course_ she was. She had almost made the _Olympics_ , for Christ's sake. _Twice_! And indeed, getting out proved to be no trouble at all. Getting back, however...

Fucking tide. Who the fuck do you think you are?

A wave rose up from behind, then collapsed right on top of her. Deep currents sucked Shepard down, squeezing her, dragging her backward. _Don't fight the undertow,_ she reminded herself. _Don't swim against it. Cut sideways and you'll pop right out._ Greg had given her this advice a week ago when she arrived on the island. Shepard had had no chance to test it. Until today.

And it worked. Twisting below the surface, she threw her body in a line parallel to the shore. In a few seconds the ocean spat her back to the surface. No undertow would have her today! This riptide however, all that water, pushed by incoming waves, back out to sea... _that_ , it appeared, was more than she could handle.

Recovering from the mammoth wave, Shepard splashed once more back toward the island. She had not moved an inch since starting her return swim, stroking in place, as fast as she could, just fast enough to hold her position. How long had it been? An hour and a half? At least. Two? Possibly. A few idiots had swum out to help her. No one made it through the breakers though; they all turned back well short of where she was. Lucky them.

If only someone had a boat...

_No_ , Shepard thought, sighing—sighing inwardly, as her lungs could not spare the breath— _no, this beach is too remote for a boat to make it in time. I'm just going to have to swim. Right here, until my muscles give out and I drown._

Her arms had started to feel sluggish. Waves—not the beasts that lurked behind her, rising in slow, powerful rhythms like the measured pulse of an ancient god, but their smaller cousins, dancing and flapping all around her—assaulted her with increasing vigour, splashing into her nostrils and mouth. She coughed and choked with nearly every breath now. _The ocean's going to win_ , she thought. _I can't keep this up much longer_.

Something grazed Shepard's leg.

_Climbing accident_ , she thought. _That_ was a good way to go. Falling from a vertical rock face, way up off the ground. That would have had a sense of _adventure_ , at least. Or in an avalanche, skiing. Skydiving. _But not_ me. Coughing again, she cursed the universe. _No,_ my _death gets a monkey-paw twist, like it's the Goddamn Twilight Zone_. Even a normal death would have been better. Car accident. Organ failure. Murdered by a jilted ex-lover. Not _fucking drowning_! Not _her_! She could see the headlines: _Idiot Swimmer Forgets How to Swim_.

Me... drowning... in sight of shore.

Goddamn embarrassing!

The first nibble came as a surprise.

Needling pain clutched at Shepard's leg. She guessed she had pinched a nerve at first, or pulled a muscle in her calf. _That's it_ , __ she thought. _My body's giving out_. Then something bumped her hard in the ribs. Instinctively, she pulled away. Before Shepard could react, she caught sight of a shape moving below the waves, cold, pale and hospital-grey. And _huge_.

"Oh my God," a shrill voice that must have been hers sputtered. "Oh my Go—" The last word was lost as a second bite jerked Shepard beneath the surface.

Holy fucking SHIT! I'm getting eaten by a shark!

Shepard's body struggled, independent of any signal she tried to give it. _Survivor to the end_ , she mused, trying to appreciate the situation as rows of pointed teeth laid into her. It hurt—quite a lot, actually—but... not as much as she would have expected. Due to shock, she supposed.

_Holy hell, I can't believe this!_ The monster thrashed her flailing form about in the water, cracking ribs with the force of its bite. _I can't believe..._

He's eating me!

I can't believe...

I'm not going to drown.

Thank God!

# DEEP-FU

—————

"HE'S dead, sir," the voice on the phone trembled.

"Dead? Dead? Who's dead?"

"Sir?"

"You just said he's dead. _Who_? Who is dead?"

"He is. Sir."

Walter Stoups sat up in his bed and sighed. He waited for more, but slow as ever, his assistant said nothing. "Who, Patrick? Who is _he_?"

"The—u-uh—the Old Master, sir. Sum-Hu-Wah... Ku-whu... hoo—the kung fu bloke. He—uh... died."

"Sun Wukong?"

"Yes. Him, sir."

"He's _dead_?"

"Dead."

"Dead?"

"Yes, sir. He is. Dead, I mean."

Stoups sat a moment, gnawing his inner cheek. "Well..." he grunted, looking around him. The blind was drawn, casting his hotel room into a deep pool of black. Sharp red lines scored the darkness by his bed. 4:14 a.m. they read. "...fuck."

He tossed down his phone and threw off the sheets.

"Sir?" a muffled voice buzzed from somewhere in the bedding. "Sir, what should I do? Are you coming down? Sir, are you there?" By the time Patrick had guessed he might be talking to an empty phone, Stoups was dressed and in the hall, closing the door behind him.

"What happened?" the sleepy CEO growled, shoving into the suite, three floors down. Patrick, a gangly young man—drowning in the much-too-large suit he was inexplicably still wearing, and strangled by a tie that was clearly on too tight—waited in the doorway, lollypop head poking into the hall.

"Well," the younger man stammered, hopping clumsily out of his boss's way, "I was here like you wanted me—awake—in case he needed anything in the night. He was sleeping in the other room, and then he just... died."

Every light in the suite was on and the bedroom doors had been thrown open. An old Chinese man with long silver hair and a ghost of a wispy mustache lay in the bed beneath the covers. He looked at peace. He might have been sleeping. Stoups glared at the sight, his mouth set in an unhappy twist. "How could you tell?" he asked.

Patrick cleared his throat. "He—um—snores, sir. Quite loud, actually. You'd have been rather startled to hear it. Like a dying heifer. Then, a few minutes ago, he stopped. So I peeked in and I found him like... this."

Stoups nodded grimly. He lowered himself onto the corner of the bed. Dead then. But what was to be done about it? After a moment's pause, he spoke. "How long until the match?"

"Near fifteen hours."

A little time, but no more.

"All right," he heard himself say, though he still had no plan in mind. "Call everyone. Wake them up. Get me a doctor. No, scratch that—our PR rep. And have Mitchells and Ganze here immediately. But discretely. The hotel staff can't get whiff of this." He glanced at the body. "So to speak."

Patrick nodded and pulled out his mobile. Within minutes, half the company would be roused in a cascade of phone calls, literally hundreds of men and women adept at finding solutions to difficult problems.

_Good,_ Stoups breathed silently, _because that's precisely what we have here._ Then another thought struck him. "No one tells the school, Patrick; do you hear me? The last thing this situation needs is a troupe of pseudo-mythical Chinese warriors running around, complicating things." The young man nodded, continuing with his phone conversation.

Those martial arts fellows _were_ going to be furious when they learned their exalted Master had died in _his_ care. _Can't be helped. Just_ _get through tonight. Then you can worry over the storm on the horizon_.

All things considered, tonight would be problem enough. The fact was, without Sun Wukong, there was little point. This match was supposed to be an _event_ , something to have the world stop and take note. They had selected the Old Master for his notoriety, for the weight of his name, synonymous with 'undefeatable'. The man was a bloody icon; besting _him_ would have meant something. But now...

Now...

As Patrick rang everyone awake, Stoups just sat there, close enough to reach out and pinch the dead man's big toe. Thinking. Free thought, that was how he found his best ideas. Don't force it; just let yourself wander into it naturally. For the moment, however, his mind wanted only to thump back and forth between _how could this happen_ and _what can I possibly do about it_? He _had_ to have Wùkōng; no one else would suffice. So, _what_ then? _What if I—_ he started a thought but abandoned it immediately. _No, that'd never hold..._ _Maybe we could..._ _No, no..._ And as he considered his _extremely_ limited options, everything else began to sink away. The world dimmed, folded and fed into a single impossible problem. Until it disappeared. Until his mind went numb. Until...

_BANG_!

Stoups started, slipping off the bed as the hall door exploded open and a dark spectre glided into the suite. It filled the lounge like an invading shadow, pausing for a second before changing directions and drifting toward the bedroom. Stoups gaped, dumfounded, until slowly, the apparition took shape.

Into a man he knew all too well.

"Wat i'ziss?" Gustav Devereau Lacroix cooed in an accent as thick as French butter. "I leave z'old man wiz you, onli une night, an' now 'ez _dead_!?"

_Of course_ , Soups thought. _Of_ _course_ it would have to be Gustav. A force of nature in this town, the fight promoter was certain to turn up at any calamity, if only just to get in the way. People—including Lacroix himself—liked to say that he was as fat as he was cunning. Also, that he was _extraordinarily_ cunning. And here he stood, blocking the double doorway with his girth. Black suit. Wide black tie. Black shoes, polished to a mirror shine. Skin so dark, his eyes, his teeth, even his tongue burned like fire in contrast. He stood over the befuddled CEO, staring down expectantly.

Stoups craned his neck up. He felt foolish sitting there, spilt across the carpet like a frothy beverage. "How did you find out?" was all he could think to say.

"Ziss iz ma citee," Gustav puffed. "No-zing 'appenz 'ere, I do no' find out." Then, turning his attention to the body, "'E real-y iz dead?"

"Dead?" Walter cocked his head. "Yes, quite dead, I should say."

Gustav groaned. " _J_ ' _ai envie de chier._ Ze fight is _tonight_ , __ Waltaire. We 'ave sold fifty-sousand teek-ets! _Expenseev_ teek-ets!"

"What can I say, Gus?" Stoups sniffed, climbing to his feet. "He was old; these things happen." The Frenchman rolled his eyes and Walter felt a flash of annoyance. "It isn't like _I_ did it," he said, frowning. "Try to remember what's at stake on _my_ end. Contracts _,_ yes? Software, hardware, factory design, R and D, juicy _government_ contracts. Far more than advertising revenues, I assure you. So please don't talk to me about _tickets_."

" _Oui. C'est bon_." The big man waved his arm dismissively. "We bos 'ave much to lose. So what do we do? We canno' can-cell ze fight."

"Certainly not."

"Maybe une of ze o-zair fellows can fight. Aftair all, you pay to see a man fight a robo', it is not _ze man_ you come to see, no?."

Stoups shook his head. "It won't do. If my robot isn't fighting the very best, it just doesn't mean much of anything. Remember when BRUCE fought in Tokyo? Las Vegas? Berlin? We won _all_ of those matches, but against the likes of Donald Lee and Gan Kara, nobody cared. It has to be Sun Wukong. No one else will serve."

"But ze fact remains..."—the big man bobbed his head toward the dead Master—"...'is fighting days are fini'."

"Yes," Stoups exhaled. "I imagine they are." His gaze fell to the still form stretched on the bed. And a ghost of a smile touched the corner of his mouth. "On the other hand, if I were to ask him nicely enough, perhaps he might." An inquisitive look from Gustav curled Stoups's lip a little higher. He turned to his assistant. "Patrick."

"Sir?"

"Have them bring BRUCE when they come."

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

TALON Engineering International, a London-based robotics firm, completed its work on the first MFUD—Martial Forms Unit Design, or kung fu robot—twenty-three years ago. DEEP-FU, they whimsically called it, a play on the name of a chess program from decades past. Showcased across both social and traditional media, and at expos and conventions around the world, DEEP-FU put TEI on the map. With its fluid punches and smooth, sweeping kicks, it heralded a new age in robotics engineering.

A succession of knockoffs from lesser companies soon followed. There was WUSHU-4, SHOULIN:PLASTIK, ROBO-YEUNG, and of course, JERRY JUMPKICK. None of these—or indeed, any of them—showed anything like DEEP-FU's promise or innovation. The next breakthrough did not come until Talon unveiled its second Design, TRUCK-NORRIS.

Built of lighter materials, TRUCK performed feats of balance and speed never before seen. He—they had long since stopped referring to their Designs as 'it'—was a wonder to behold, dancing through movements and forms only the world's best martial artists could achieve. He was magnificent. Yet TRUCK-NORRIS was built with a single major flaw; he could not fight. He was too intricate, too fragile. He was too, too, _too_ expensive.

And of course, fighting was all anyone wanted to see.

Remedying this was TEI's number-one priority in developing their third MFUD, BRUCE-3. Built tough—as tough as any human fighter, anyway—yet light enough to maintain agility, BRUCE was showcased not at industry expos or science exhibits, but in stadiums and boxing arenas around the world. To the roars of screaming audiences, he competed against regional and national champions. The Design even included a skin-interchange system to give him the appearance of a human face and body. This never really caught on however, as crowds seemed to prefer _seeing_ the robot in all its mechanical glory.

Though BRUCE was popular with the public, and marvelled at in robotics and engineering circles, his fights were something of a mixed bag. He won more than he lost but lost more than TEI would have preferred. Against world champions or contenders, against monks and fighting priests, he rarely lasted long. In fact, Zhu Wuneng, First Student at the legendary kung fu school, Huaguo Shan, and apprentice to the Immortal Master himself, literally smashed BRUCE apart, leaving pieces behind him as he exited the ring. It was clear that day, to everyone in the company, they needed a better bot.

That had been nine years ago. The new Design, Talon's fourth MFUD, was finally complete. A masterpiece of technology, decades ahead of its time, it would, by all accounts, revolutionize the industry.

They named him π-MEI.

This time, because TEI did have something to prove, because they had suffered a humiliation at the hands of the Huaguo Shan, and most of all, because no other fighter was worthy to face this robot, it was important—it was crucial—that this fight, π-MEI's debut, be against the absolute best in the world.

So tonight in Paris, before fifty thousand thrilled spectators and millions more watching online, π-MEI was unveiled to the world, his opponent—if you could credit your eyes—the legendary Immortal Master, a very lively and very much alive Sun Wukong.

The match was spectacular.

The robot won.

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

" 'OW?" Gustav asked that night over a late dinner with Stoups. " 'Ow did you do it? I saw zee bod-ee wiz my own eyes!"

"Trade secret," the CEO replied chuckling.

The solution had been simple. Stoups was amazed he had not thought of it immediately. BRUCE-3, the now obsolete but still very capable Design, with his wonderful skin-interchange system, was all they had needed to impersonate the Old Master. A face scan and a few hours for the plastic to set, and there he stood, Sun Wukong, alive and ready for the ring. Choreographing the fight itself, they were able to draw it out to be both exciting and as believable as possible, and end it with a fatal blow from the robot. Then it was just a matter of switching BRUCE with the real Wukong before anyone found out... and...

"To _victory_." Stoups's grin widened. He held his glass over the table. "And if I'm to be honest, I have to say, the old fellow dying in bed like that was probably as good a turn as we could have asked for. Nothing's quite so satisfying as guaranteed success."

"Ah, _oui._ " __ Twisting his mouth into what might have been a smile, the big Frenchman answered Stoups's glass with his own. "Pare-aps zen, you wair no' as confi-dant in your robo' as you let on. Pare-aps you nev-air really thought 'e could win. And ze Mast-air dying as 'e did, was a... _saving grace_?"

Stoups raised an amused eyebrow. "I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about," he said with a lick of his lips. "And I suppose now, with Wukong gone... we shall never truly know." Gustav Devereau Lacroix sat back in his chair, his gargantuan weight threatening to snap the seatback clean off. He lit a fresh cigarette and set his friend with a long, thoughtful look. _Let him think I was behind the death,_ Stoups hummed merrily to himself, careful to keep his face unreadable. _It could only work to my advantage in the future_.

Silent as death, the enormous Frenchman finished his smoke, ground it out and lit another. He was halfway through this one when his cheek began to twitch. His breathing shortened and grew wheezy. For a second Stoups thought he might wretch up the rich French cuisine he had just dispatched. But when Gustav opened his mouth, what burst out was no €1,500 torrent of salmon terrine and stomach acid, but an explosion of deep baritone laughter. The Frenchman's jowls shuddered as angry, joyful guffaws—like only one raised in the lap of decadence could produce—flooded from his lips. "Tu es fou," he choked between breaths. "Let us 'ope my butt-aired French azz'ole nev-aire stands between you and a bottom line!"

Stoups smiled at this and joined his friend in laughter.

It was past midnight when they finally left the restaurant. Stoups had not slept since Patrick woke him early that morning. Exhausted as he was though, he could not go back to the hotel just yet. He needed to stop at the office to take care of a few things. Trivial matters, but ones he would rather see done.

Sitting in the back of his car, watching the lights of Paris roll by, he wondered how many laws he had broken today. Several, no doubt, but nothing too serious. Fraud, certainly, though he doubted he'd lose sleep over that one. There was no real evidence against him in any of it.

The Paris 'office' was little more than a temporary work space. A warehouse really, more for housing the MFUDs than any actual work. Stoups's desk, however, was set up exactly as he had it in London: a polished oak edifice, buttressed with framed photographs of his wife and daughter. And a simple laptop set squarely in the middle. It was to this desk and this computer, he now devoted himself. He arranged files and sent out memos—a combination of damage control for the lie he had just perpetrated and preparation for the stupendous upswing that would soon result. He worked late into the night, until his vision blurred and he could barely stay awake. And he would have gone on until sunup, until the new workday started—though it was going to be a Sunday—and continued straight on through. It would not have occurred to him that he had only just meant to stay a minute, or that tired as he was, his productivity had gone to shit.

As it was, he continued until just before 4:00 a.m. when something... unexpected happened.

It was not a sound, exactly—there were no sounds—just a feeling, a stir in the air. He would not have noticed, except that they wanted him to. And because they wanted it, he did. However the case, one moment his eyes gazed blearily into the screen before him; the next, wide awake, he was staring at a host of Chinese warriors.

"You lied," the one in front growled with a near-perfect American accent. This one was _big_. Almost as wide and as thick as Gustav, but somehow still dangerously lean. A frightening sort of body that threatened untold damage to anyone stupid enough to stand against it. Stoups recognized him immediately as Zhu Wuneng, the very fighter who, nine years ago, had rent BRUCE-3 into scrap. The rest, no doubt—a quick count numbered them at eleven—were other students from the Huaguo Shan.

Stoups commanded himself to be calm. He stretched back in his chair and let an oily yawn slide through his lips. "Why, whatever to do you mean?" he asked.

"The fight," Wuneng sneered. "Whatever it was in that ring tonight, it was _not_ our Master."

"Of course it was; who else could it have been?" Stoups knew there would be no evidence against him. These traditionalists would never submit their treasured patriarch to an autopsy. No matter what they suspected. "And of course," he added quickly, "I'm _so_ sorry for your loss."

A shiver ran through the martial artists. Wuneng barked something in Mandarin, and though none so much as shifted their weight, the tension in the room quadrupled.

"Hold on!" Walter yelped, imagining them descending on him. "Let me show you something first." Wuneng cocked his head slightly and waited. Slowly, carefully, Stoups returned to his laptop. He punched a few short commands into the keyboard.

A whir of activity filled the room and suddenly π-MEI was there, appearing out of nowhere to stand between Stoups and the fighters. Wuneng sneered at the robot, as did several of the others—they outnumbered him eleven to one, after all—but then a second π-MEI unit showed up, and a third. By the time the fifth had taken his place in front of Stoups, it had become clear; having never started, the fight was already over. These men, these masters of their discipline, had watched tonight's match and seen what his Design could do; against five, they knew they would lose.

And that was it. The warriors vanished like leaves in a stream, slipping one by one into the shadows. Until only Wuneng remained. He stood alone in the room with Stoups. "Very well," he said quietly. "No harm will come to you from us."

Stoups smirked. "I should think not," he said, snapping his teeth with each syllable.

But when First Student of the Huaguo Shan raised his eyes, astonishingly, they twinkled with amusement. A pleasant, almost friendly smile cut across his face. "Master Sun Wukong had a saying: 'Prestige is like bird shit. It can fall anywhere or onto anyone. Only a fool tries to catch it.'"

"Interesting language for an ancient mystic," Stoups breathed lightly.

"Keep your victory," the martial artist said. One by one, he eyed the robots standing guard between them. "Master Sun could have defeated you—broken all your little toys, or defended you against _us_ if so he chose— _by himself._ One man." And with a last shake of his head, Wuneng turned away and vanished.

Alone again, Stoups fell back into his chair and breathed a heavy sigh.

And that ended it. They had pulled it off and gotten away free. _Not bad for a day's labour_. He stared a second at the monitor, then reaching up, snapped the computer shut. _Fuck it,_ he thought. _I'm too tired for this._ Standing, he shuffled off toward the door. _What I need is a shower, a good, firm mattress, and at least eighteen hours of uninterrupted sleep_.

As Stoups left the empty work site, the five robots held their places behind him, vigilantly protecting the company's interests. 

#

—————

THESE were not her friends; she could not allow herself to forget. They were maniacs. They were monsters. They deserved to die.

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

BOUND to her chair, Arona Medina could not help wondering why no one had put a bullet into her skull. They had the manpower. She had given them more than enough reason to do so. Yet as the human tide flowed around her, no one so much as glanced in her direction. She was an afterthought now. But why keep her alive then, she wondered. Why take that risk?

Grunting again, she strained her bindings, listening as the metal chair creaked beneath her. Not a whine of capitulation though; more an amused aluminium squawk, as if to taunt her in her efforts. No, Arona was not going to break herself free that way—though this did not stop her from trying. No, she was good and caught, a prisoner in the heart of the Destiny Sphere.

The so-called Sphere—not a sphere at all really, so much as an oversized bunker—was the world's latest and by far most ambitious eco-enclosure. It was the brainchild of tech-billionaire Solomon Mace, who had both funded the project and himself designed every detail. Today its doors were scheduled to close, beginning the ten-year isolation of thirty-two-hundred hand-picked volunteers. It was to be a perfect ecosystem, and would provide invaluable data to benefit countless future generations.

So they said in the press, anyway.

Arona was determined to stop it.

She could feel bruises forming on the bones beneath her flesh. Every move she made tightened her nylon bindings, cutting them a little deeper into her flesh. She continued to struggle though, jerking and pulling to free herself. Failing today was an option she was not willing to accept.

"All Destined signed and counted," a voice on the intercom announced, popping slightly from an unseen speaker behind her. "Doors will be sealed in two minutes. Here we go people." A faint cheer filtered through the walls. Those around Arona, however, carried on as though they had heard no announcement.

Then another voice spoke—not on the intercom, a living voice—deep and musical. It cut the chatter of the chaos around her. "Agent Medina. I was so very hoping you'd be here for this."

Arona closed her eyes. She exhaled a deep, chuckling breath. "If you're so glad to see me, untie these ropes and I'll give you a big ol' hug, yeah?" She turned her neck but the man stood directly behind her, just out of sight. Yet that voice was unmistakable.

"I would, Medina. Believe me, I want to. I'd love nothing better than to release you." Solomon Mace stepped around into view. A big man, tall and fat, with a wide, square face that flushed when he spoke. Bushy eyebrows and a thick black mustache gave weight to his aspect, offsetting the bare dusting of silver thinning atop his skull. His customary Italian silk was gone today, in its place, a set of navy-blue coveralls, no different than those worn by everyone else around them. Somehow, as he stood before his prisoner, shifting considerable weight from one foot to another, the utilitarian garb only added to his imposing air of command. "In fact," Mace went on, "I _will_ untie you. I'll be _happy_ to untie you..."—checking his watch theatrically—"...in just over a minute now."

As if cued to his words, the intercom buzzed again. "The doors have now been sealed. All Destined check in for final count."

Mace held up his radio. "Solomon Mace. Zero-zero-one. Confirm."

"Mace, zero-zero-one, confirmed," a man's voice crackled back at him.

"Not long now." The big man smiled at Arona with something resembling warmth.

This was it. Arona sat, stunned; she had never considered that it might actually happen. The scope of it hit like a weight dropped on her chest. _Son of a bitch is really going through with it_. Her ribcage seemed to constrict on itself. Twisting in her chair—wildly now—she wrenched once more at her bindings. "You can't!" she growled. "How _can_ you? How can you even _think_ it!?" She threw herself forward and back, desperate to break free. Failing in this, still seated, she lunged at her captor. The chair arced onto its front legs then tipped forward, throwing Arona to the floor.

In twelve years with the Royal New Zealand Navy and nine more with NZ-SIS, Arona had taken more knocks to the head than she cared to think about. Generally, she shook them off, kept going; occasionally, one managed to leave her senseless; two or three had actually put her in the hospital. This time, however, as she tumbled forward, it was not the crashing impact that caused her to cry out. Not the flame of agony as her nose audibly crunched into the concrete; it was the knowledge that she had faced her most important task, the mission that would forever define her, with stakes as high as they could possibly be, and—

CRASH!

—she failed.

So there she lay, folded into the contours of her chair, hot tears mixing with the crimson pool spreading around her broken nose. Over her stood Solomon Mace.

"Final count confirmed," the voice on the intercom said. "Signalling Seraphim release."

For an instant, all motion stopped, as if to acknowledge the moment's gravity; then once again, everyone was moving. Unseen hands lifted Arona off the ground. The chair was gone—though she had not noticed anyone cutting her free—and she was on her feet, standing in front of Mace.

"It's done," the big man said.

Arona looked on in a daze. _It's done_. The words coiled inside her head. _It's done_... her eyes met Mace's. _Done..._

Evil bastard.

An animal growl escaped her lips. She threw herself at Mace, but four strong arms caught her up immediately. "You son of a bitch!" She thrashed furiously but could not break free. "You... _son of a bitch!_ "

"Don't fight us, Agent Medina," the billionaire rumbled. His face wore no look of triumph. His gaze held Arona's, steady and cool. "Don't make us kill you."

"You'd better. I'm sure as _hell_ going to kill you."

"I don't think so." Mace smiled wanly. "In fact, you... I think... are going to _join_ us." Ceasing her struggles, Arona barked her contempt. "Believe it," the big man said. "We just released the Seraphim Virus in twenty-nine major airports around the world. It's lethal, airborne and extremely contagious—even animals and plants act as carriers. At first, no one will realize they've contracted it. It'll lie dormant for months as every last pocket of civilization becomes infected. Then one day, without warning, it will strike. Killing fast. Killing _everyone_.

"There is no cure, Arona. There will be no time. Every human outside this structure will be wiped from the face of the earth. It's already happened. There's nothing more you can do."

_Nothing..._ Arona felt weak. _My mum,_ a voice croaked in her head. _Andy and his wife? And Luke..._ She __ ached to fight back; she wanted to grab Solomon and tear his throat out. Yet if no one was holding her, Arona doubted she would have strength left to stand. "You destroyed the world," she managed to whimper. Suddenly, all she wanted was to lie down. Her chest seemed to crumple as all the air evacuated her lungs. _You destroyed it._

"We saved it!" Mace bellowed, waving his arms theatrically. "Look around you! We've got the smartest, fittest, healthiest women and men human genetics has ever produced. The _Destined_! _They_ are the vessel that will carry our species into the future. In ten short years, the Virus will self-annihilate, and we will emerge from this shelter to begin civilization anew, planning it this time, from day one, avoiding the traps and evils that threatened us the first time.

"In our new society, there will be no cause for people like you to exist, Agent Medina. Or people like _me_ , for that matter." Mace leaned in close. Arona could smell the glaze of sweat on his skin "You've proven yourself though, young lady," he said quietly. "You're clever and resourceful, strong, brave... and _honourable_. All traits we'd like to see in future generations. In our children. You _will_ join us. If you care about humankind, the choice will be easy."

Straightening, the big man took a step back. Arona scraped her insides for even a trace of the defiance she had felt a moment ago. Her heart came up empty. Unable to meet Mace's eyes, she studied the floor.

Gone. The whole damn world.

"You'll help us." Solomon nodded, apparently satisfied. "Even though you hate us. What other choice is there?"

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

THEY cleared a storage room and hauled in a cot for her to sleep on. They fed and watered her; they gave her books, even a limited-access tablet. Each day she was allowed three trips to the toilet. For a time, Arona harboured plans to escape. She watched her guards, waiting for the opportunity. But as the days passed, she began to doubt. Then she began to question. She probably could escape, she thought, even bring down the Sphere. But what then? The world was already dying. Already dead, maybe. Escape? Where to? And to what end? Would she kill her captors? Exterminate the last of humanity to satisfy her own need for revenge?

Like it or not, these were her people now. The only people left.

Eventually, as Solomon had predicted, she joined them.

The Destined were kind in victory. They offered her a position befitting her skills and experience. She refused. She _would_ help Project Destiny—Mace was right; there was little else she could do now—but her hate remained. Determined to stay separate, she took a position working in the gardens. Alone.

Here too, her resolve gradually eroded.

By seven months A.F.—after the Seraphim—Arona had learned to cultivate more than fruits and vegetables. Seeding her days with countless assigned tasks, working within the exacting strictures of Sphere life, she had managed to build a routine that approximated 'normal'. She worked, she ate, she read, and she slept. She spoke to no one. Her time was given to the Sphere's vast Greeneries. Cloistered in their leafy embrace, she sometimes went days without seeing anyone. It was almost as if she could make _herself_ disappear. And despite the strangeness of her new life, despite the horror on which it had been built, she came to feel at home.

As adoptive homes went, Arona could have certainly done worse. The Greeneries were magnificent. Towering glass domes—like palaces in the sky—they captured every heaven-sent photon, regardless of how high, low, or cloud-obscured the sun. Thousands of carefully angled mirrors lit every crack, corner and hollow, and from first light to dusk's winking goodnight, a golden lustre suffused their yawning spaces. Dense carpets of vegetation lay across their floors, taller plants—corn, grains and the like—reaching skyward, with the smaller huddled in uniform clusters below. And towering over everything stood the Pillars, vertigo-inducing edifices adorned with hydroponically fed crops. Harvesting from these meant dangling in a harness high off the ground. Exhausting work. But exhilarating. The views were like nothing else.

To Arona, the Greeneries were veritable fountains of life and vitality. Here, she could almost let herself forget. She could almost convince herself none of it had really happened.

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

IT was early in the day; the sun was still low, but the garden was already awash with reflected light. Arona stepped lightly along the narrow path to the chicken coop, a bag of feed slung awkwardly in her arms. She preferred to tend the birds and gather eggs early. The kitchens would still be relatively empty when she delivered them. Today, however, as she approached the coup, another woman's voice strained the air. "Hey-chicki-chicki-chicki. Hey-chicki. Come get it."

Arona froze. Someone was here. _Bullshit_ , she thought. _No one comes here this time of day._ Bag braced to her hip, she listened.

"Hey- _chicki_ - _chicki_. Come on little chicks! Come eat."

_Should I head back? Leave the chickens for today?_ It sounded as if whoever it was had already begun feeding them. She _certainly_ had no interest in meeting the person. "Hey- _chicki_ ," the voice called again. _No,_ Arona thought. _No, it's_ my _job. She's the one that should go back_. Still, she hesitated. Finally, with a low sigh, she continued forward on the path.

Arriving at the long wooden structure, Arona came upon the voice's owner, a straight-backed athletically built woman with short brown curls pulled tight behind her neck. Her face was round and open. A face for laughter, Arona thought. Sashaying through the host of pecking fowl, she managed to engage them into an extemporaneous dance number. Tossing handfuls of seed, she directed them this way and that, laughing all the while. "Come on, chicki," she sang playfully. "Here you go!" The flock followed closely as she sprinkled food in a slow circle around her feet.

Arona set down her own bag of feed. What was this one doing here? The young woman's circle turned in her direction. Catching sight of Arona, she stopped. "Morning," she said, an easy smile on her lips.

Arona gave no reply.

Twisting her bag closed, the woman approached, shoeing a chicken or two with each step she took. "I'm Renée." She extended a hand. Arona scarcely glanced at it. _Another specimen of superior human genes_. Another person she had no interest in knowing. Lowering her arm, the woman cleared her throat. "Not a shaker, then. What's your name?"

Arona scowled. _Fuck this bitch_ , she thought. _Let her feed the birds_. _There's plenty else for me to do. Fuck all of them._ Leaving her feed behind, she turned and stomped back the way she had come, escaping yet another human interaction. _Just a typical day in the Destiny Sphere_. And as far as Arona was concerned, that should have ended it. But it was not the last time she saw Renée. Not even the last time that morning.

Two hours later, pulling carrots in a whole other division of the Sphere, Arona caught sound of a rustle in the brush behind her. She knew at once who it was going to be. Scooping soil around the base of one green sprout, she worried at the long orange root beneath, careful not to break it. She offered no sign she was aware of the other woman's approach. What the hell did she want with her?

"Well hello again." Renée stepped into view, smiling as though Arona had not made it perfectly clear she wanted to be left alone. Without any encouragement, she knelt beside her and began to dig. "You're her, aren't you?" Arona yanked the carrot from its home in the soil, then gave it a casual wipe. "Aren't you her?"

She sighed. "Aren't I who?"

"You know..."—lowering her voice—"...the _plus-one_. The _extra mouth_?" She nudged Arona to show she was kidding. "The _secret agent?_ "

Arona glanced up but said nothing. _Young,_ she thought. _God, she's a_ kid _. She couldn't be more than twenty-two; how'd she get caught up in this?_ She declined to notice the cheery glow in the other woman's cheeks. Or the dimple at the very tip of her small, perfectly straight nose.

"I was there when they tackled you," she went on, seemingly indifferent to Arona's animus. "Do you remember? Just at the last second, like that? _God_ , that was tense; I almost peed. I thought you'd be crushed the way they jumped on you."

"Hm." Arona casually turned her head away. If the other woman knew who she was, why bother asking?

She smelled clean, like soap and fresh rain.

"How long did they hold you before letting you joi—"

" _Did you need something_?"

Renée blinked. Did this woman really expect courtesy? If she refused to take the hint, Arona would happily offer open hostility instead. _Is that clear enough for you?_ For a promising second, the other woman's face was a mask of surprise and confusion. But then it brightened. "Actually," she said, "I came to _help_ you."

Arona fixed her with an uncertain eye. A loyalty test, maybe? "Help me?" she asked cautiously. "How are you going to help me? Help me do what?"

Renée's mouth split upward and she returned to her digging. Arona watched as she cleared the dirt around the plant in front of her. Sinking her wrists into the earth, she took hold, and with a sharp, strained tug, popped out the biggest carrot Arona had ever seen. "Help you harvest veggies." She grinned, holding up her prize. "Of course."

"Right." Arona shook her head. "Right, of course."

Renée wiped the carrot and dropped it in with the others. "They say you never stop. You work more than any two of the rest of us. Sixteen, sometimes eighteen hours a day."

"Mm."

"I think it's impressive. The stamina, the dedication." Arona pulled out another and tossed it in the sack without wiping it. "Don't you ever turn off? Take some time to relax?"

"There's a lot to do." She tugged on another, but it was too deep. "For the future of humanity. Right?" Did Renée catch the irony in her voice?

"We are our own Destiny," Renée recited, her voice heavy with its own ironic drip.

_Our own destiny. What utter rubbish._ She managed to free the carrot; it was nearly as big as Renée's. _Does anyone truly buy into that? Does this one?_ For a moment she hesitated. Then, "Is that why you're here? How you were able to... to let yourself go through with it? You're a true believer?"

Renée stopped digging and thought for a minute. "I don't know. I suppose I must be, but it was easy for me, you know? My parents died when I was little and I had no family of my own. I really wasn't leaving anything behind. I could just walk away with the clothes on my back."

I could just walk away...

This woman _did_ know about the virus, right? Did she not realize what _walking away_ meant for the rest of the world? No. Of course she did. They all knew... __ Yet here she was, talking about it like it was quitting a crappy summer job. Arona squeezed shut her eyes, then opened them again. How could anyone so easily dismiss such a... such an _atrocity_?

_It's not even a factor for her,_ Arona marvelled, fascinated and horrified at once. _Yeah, of course she knows; they all know. She just doesn't care._ Arona felt ill. She fell back, dropping hard into the dirt.

"It's the same for most of us," Renée continued, oblivious to Arona's consternation. "Every so often you get someone who left their husband or their wife—even _their kids_ —behind. I don't know if I could have done _that_. You've really got to respect the ones that did though! You know?"

_Respect?_ Arona opened her mouth to answer. What could she possibly say? _No._ Ratcheting herself off the ground, she pointedly turned away. _No, I need to go_. _Somewhere. Somewhere... else._ She turned her back and started walking.

"Hey," Renée called. "Where are you going? You forgot the carrots!" Arona quickened her pace. She had to escape this woman's voice. She left the garden and exited its Greenery. Hurrying through the maze of corridors, she ignored curious eyes and whispers from the monsters and murderers she passed. No doubt, they were unaccustomed to seeing her outside her work spaces.

In her quarters, Arona collapsed into her bunk. Her guts rolled summersaults inside her. She prayed she would not vomit, doubting she could make it as far as the bathroom if she did. Or even out of bed.

'The same story for most of us,' were the words Renée's had used. Arona had known this. She _knew_ what these people were. So why was she so affected?

_Because it felt good_ , she realized with a sudden ache in her stomach. _Good to talk to her_. _Because you've gone it alone so long, you don't care anymore if she's evil; you just want someone to talk to._ Squeezing her eyes shut, Arona buried herself beneath the thin wool cover.

_Oh hell_ , she thought as hot tears soaked her pillow. _I don't think I can do this._

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

TIME passed. Months slipped into years, and slowly, grain by grain, Arona lost grip on the hostility she struggled so hard to carry. We're pack animals, after all, she told herself, not meant to live alone. Isolation, even from these bastards, went against thousands of generations of imprinted instinct. By the time Solomon Mace died of heart failure—early into the fourth year—she had long since abandoned her once-implacable censure. She even threw her hat in the ring when new leadership was elected. Unopposed, she won charge over the Greeneries.

So it was, that one day, when a young man named Ben Ihara came asking for help, Arona did not snub him or turn him away; she did not question his motives or his common sense for coming to _her_ , of all people. She listened to his request and answered him. Politely and without a second thought.

It happened on a day when she was harvesting grapes from one of the great Pillars, happily dangling over her thriving domain. More administrator now than gardener, she relished the rare opportunities she could actually put a little green stain into her palms. Working in the gardens, however, was as good as walking around with a sign that read, 'I'M NOT BUSY. WHAT CAN I DO TO HELP _YOU_?' So the satisfaction rarely lasted.

Today was no different.

She had filled and lowered no more than six bags when Ben's voice hollered up at her. Sighing, Arona kicked off the Pillar's surface and made a graceful turn in her harness. "Yeah?" she answered down. Ben stood directly below her, some twenty meters away.

"Could you come down? I need your help with something."

_Always something_ , she thought. Anchoring the harvest line, Arona shifted her weight, lowering herself to the ground. "Help with what?" Tossing Ben a grape, she unbuckled her harness and slipped out of it.

"Lightning struck a tree outside. Fell against the outer shell and I need someone to help me move it." Arona wiped her hands and face with a cloth from her pocket. _Yep, always something._

They headed toward North Gate, Arona walking slightly behind Ben. "Is there any damage to the shell?" she asked. In her mind, she tried to calculate just how long this was likely to take.

"The structure's fine. We only need to clear it."

They arrived at the airlock and donned their isolation suits, double-checking each seal, and checking each other's, before Ben finally keyed the release code. The door behind them hissed shut, and a second later, the outer hatch opened.

Arona rarely found reason to leave the Sphere. It was always a shock when she did. For five and a half years she had buried herself in the green life within it, anxious to forget the world beyond. To some extent, she had succeeded. When her thoughts drifted outside the walls of this tiny pocket-universe, it was usually with thoughts of the Seraphim itself. Invisible killer. No space in her head for lost loved ones. All that was over. And as they stepped through the outer hatch and the Kaimanawa Mountains opened before her, sparkling in the thin mist of afternoon light, it was all Arona could do not to look away. The land should have been barren, she thought, scorched by the virus. But it looked the same. Like nothing had happened. Like she could simply go home. Back to her job, her house, her small circle of friends. And they would... be there.

She pictured sitting down to supper at Mum's cottage, her brother Andy seated across the table, Luke beside her, squeezing her knee. She only had to climb down this mountain and hike her way back...

Fantasies could drive a person insane.

Of course the mountains looked the same. The virus only attacked humans.

The Sphere's northern face rose beside them as they circled east around its outer shell. They hiked the rocky path, picking their steps with care. A fall could mean a tear in their suit; a tear meant banishment and certain death.

"Today's Renée's birthday," Ben said through the communicator. "Some of us are meeting later to celebrate." He did not look back or break stride but Arona heard the tension in Ben's voice. "I guess I'd be wasting air, asking you to come."

"Probably," she grunted. "We'll see." The same answer she always gave.

Ben chuckled. "Yeah, _we'll see_."

Arona had come to accept so much. Things she had believed impossible. She allowed herself to think of the Destiny Sphere as her home; she came to respect the Destined, even see herself as they did, a forerunner to the new civilization. But in all this time, she had _not_ permitted herself to bond with them. They were her colleagues; she could accept that. She was civil, even friendly, but she refused to attend their gatherings. Never did she join in their events or celebrations. It was the last line, she told herself with what she hoped could be mistaken for defiance, the one she would _not_ cross. She would labour beside them—for the rest of her life—to ensure success for the human species, but she would never _be_ one of them. Not really.

It was bullshit, of course.

Arona avoided gatherings, in truth, because she did _not_ hate these people. She _liked_ most of them, for which she truly hated _herself_. Had she forgotten what they did? Could such a thing be so easily forgiven? Had she actually cared in the first place? These were the questions that came to her in the night. Questions she was too afraid to answer. Perhaps pretending was all that was left to her.

"No," she said. "I don't think I'll come. Give her my best though."

Ben stopped. He turned to look her in the eyes, half a ghost behind the reflections off his helmet. "She really cares for you, you know," he said. "She's a sweet girl."

Arona started to speak but the words caught in her throat; she did not know what to say. Renée _was_ sweet. And smart and funny. Arona knew how Renée felt about her, and despite herself, she liked Renée __ too. More than she cared to admit. _If circumstances were different..._

She shook her head. "Where's the tree?"

Ben exhaled and turned forward again. "Just up here."

They topped the ridge and the downed tree came into view. The earth around it was a mosaic of charred and broken splinters, but a large section of trunk remained intact. Climbing down to it, they set to work.

They cleared the trunk of the smaller branches first. The cracks and pops of breaking wood were the only sounds in the valley. Labouring in silence, tearing away dead limbs and tossing them over the cliff, Arona's mind drifted back to Renée. _She's too young_ , she told herself silently. _She could be my... my much younger sister anyway_. It was hard not to conjure an image in her mind. Renée. The way she closed her eyes when she smiled. Her movements, so certain, so sharp, but graceful. Her small athletic body...

Upon clearing the bow, they each took an end and carefully lifted it from the Sphere. They brought it to the cliffside, and swinging together, hefted it over the edge. The naked tree fell in silence, landing with a surprisingly muffled _crack_. "That should about do it, yeah?" Arona asked, already heading back the way they had come. Ben gave no answer though. He stood over the drop, staring into the valley. "Ben? Hey, Ben?"

Ben remained silent a moment longer before his voice crackled in Arona's earpiece. "I think there's something down there," he said. "Come have a look."

"What is it?" Arona called back. Ben only waved her over.

"There. In the shadow by that outcropping." He pointed. "You see it?"

Arona sighed. She stepped toward the edge and followed his arm with her eyes. At first, she saw nothing. _More rocks and grass_. She shook her head and began to turn away. Then she stopped. Wait. _Was_ something down there? She leaned out, squinting. _Is that... an arm?_

"I think it's a person," Ben intoned quietly.

"I think you're right." She could make it out now, a human form—a man, she thought—wedged at the base of the stone. His skin was grey, like old, dead wood. He had been there for some time.

"How do you think it got there?"

"Walking," Arona muttered unhappily. "So, I'd imagine." And as she spoke, she really could not help herself; she _did_ imagine it. A young man, one of the last survivors probably, fleeing the dying world and coming here. Because he read about the Sphere in a magazine. They would let him in, he thought; _he_ was not infected. They _had_ to. _No roads out here though, no easy paths. He'd have hiked for days to get this far. But what choice did he have? Where else could he go?_ He came carrying nothing but hope. And for a time, that was enough. Then came the pains.

He told himself it was hunger. Dehydration. Fatigue. _There's food at the Sphere,_ he insisted over and again in his head. _Food and water and shade._ But his cramps grew worse and soon the coughing started. _No,_ he thought then with mounting panic. _No, I can't get sick now. I'm so close._ But he _was_ sick. He had contracted the virus weeks ago. He would die of it just like everyone else.

He refused to believe.

Reaching the mountain, stumbling and spitting blood, it was all he could do to find a shady spot to lie down, away from the sun's oppressive gaze. And there—right down there—in his final moments, he stared up at the Destiny Sphere, high above on the cliff. And he cried. _So close_ , he had thought. _So close_. And then, suffering and all alone, he expired.

This whole scene passed through Arona's head in an instant. And it disturbed her. Not the event itself—over the years, she had tortured herself with a hundred such scenarios—but the fact that she had to struggle to feel something about it. And this was _real_. There he was; Arona could _see_ him. She should have felt empathy, she thought, sympathy... pity— _something_ —but all she felt was curious. Imagining the man's despair, the terror in his eyes as darkness pooled around him, Arona felt... nothing. The connection was cut. He was a creature of the previous world. Of the past, consigned now into history.

Ben stepped back. "We've still got lots of air," he said with a whistle. "Want to have a look at it?"

"Him," Arona corrected, rising to her feet. "And no, I've got better things to do." She turned her back on the corpse.

"Suit yourself," Ben said, heading for the path into the valley. "Thanks for your help."

Arona followed the ring-trail back to North Gate. Her insides were twisted into knots. Five years ago, she would have gone down there, insisted they bury the man. _You're one of them now,_ she told herself, hating more than ever what she had become. _You're no better than any of them_. Continuing back toward the airlock, she watched as her right hand drifted up to touch the seal on her helmet. Scarcely aware of what she was doing, she let her fingers open the action-release flap and take hold of the switch inside.

Arona froze.

She had only to twist.

"Ben," she called into the com. "You still in range? Ben?" _What am I doing?_ She ran her finger over the release switch. Her heart beat faster. "Ben, you there?"

"Yeah, what do you need, Arona?" Ben's voice buzzed loudly in her helmet, causing her to jump.

"Nothing," she said, snapping the flap shut. "Just tell Renée I'll be at her party."

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

RENÉE had pursued Arona for five years. She followed her, flirted with her, even tried to get her drunk once. Tonight, the other woman finally captured her. Now they lay together, Renée's lighter skin, ivory-white against Arona's darker, her warm body nestled agreeably in Arona's arms. And Arona was astonished to realize she had wanted this too. As badly as Renée, she suspected. It just felt... right. Hugging the smaller woman's body a little closer, she allowed herself to relish the soft press of her skin, the sweet drowsy murmur that escaped her lips. She remembered no time when she had felt this... human.

She watched Renée's shoulders rise and fall, filling herself with the sublime quite of the moment, savouring the peace she felt. Soon, she knew, her mind would come alive; her thoughts would range, as they always did. And she had little doubt where they would lead her.

_She's not a good person_ , her own voice asserted soundlessly in her head.

_I know_ , Arona answered, just as silent.

She's complicit in the murder of billions...

I know.

Loving her, being with her, would mean—

_That I really am one of them. Yes, I know. But what would you have me do? I can't pretend any-more. I_ am _one of them. What else is there for me?_

...

I think I love her...

I know you do.

Arona sat up, gently shifting Renée off to the side. The other woman stirred and sighed sleepily. _Would you go back?_ she asked herself, no longer clear which _herself_ was doing the asking. _Would you_ _undo it all if it meant losing her?_

"Of course." She spoke the words aloud, though her voice lacked conviction.

Renée's eyes opened at the sound. "Wha—?" Her voice was thick with sleep.

"Nothing." Arona brushed her fingers through the other woman's hair. "Close your eyes."

Renée nodded, rolling away, deeper into the blankets. "G'night."

"Night," Arona whispered. Then after a moment, "Renée?"

"Nnm?"

"If you're parents _had_ been alive... before the Seraphim, would you have joined Project Destiny?"

"Sure," she muttered, burrowing into the pillow. "Of course." And then she was silent. Her breathing was deep and even. _You see?_ _These people aren't your friends; they're maniacs; they're monsters. They deserve to die._

Arona rolled out of bed and padded to the bathroom. Closing the door, she bent over the toilet and emptied her stomach. She rinsed her mouth in the sink and splashed water onto her face. _What did you expect? she_ asked her reflection. _You knew what she'd say._ She __ had no answer to this. She just... wished things were different. Returning to the room, she quietly dressed, then with an affectionate—and miserable—glance to the sleeping form on the bed, stepped out the door.

Arona had no idea where she was going. She just needed to walk for a bit. Her feet seemed to move of their own volition however, and it was not long before she found herself in one of her Greeneries. _Chicken coop_ , she thought, realizing suddenly where she was. The structure itself had moved but this was where it had been. No accident perhaps. _This was where we met._ Arona had been so full of rage then. Yet Renée so easily deflected her bile. That was Renée though, incapable of indignation. It was years before Arona learned to appreciate this quality. She passed the spot without slowing her step.

Eventually she found herself at West Gate. Not entirely sure what she was doing, or why, she donned an isolation suit and clambered into the airlock. Without thought or hesitation, she keyed in the release code and waited for the inner and outer doors to swap positions.

Arona stepped out into the darkness. Her eyes immediately lifted toward the heavens. She had almost forgotten what an open field of stars looked like. _Gorgeous._ Why had she not looked up more, she wondered. Why had she never taken the time to enjoy the world she lived in before... before it went away. As she headed south on the ring-trail, her head kept drifting up to gaze at the night sky; she kept having to force it down again to watch her footing. It would be too easy to trip or miss a step in dim natural light.

"What are you doing out here?" Arona asked herself aloud. She could divine no explanation however, and declined to answer. Listening instead to the bay of night wind, and the soft scrape of dust beneath her feet, she walked in silence. _I wish I could hear it for real_ , she thought, _not filtered through my helmet's mic and speaker._ If only she could take off her suit, breathe the cool mountain air, wet her hand in the grass's dew.

_No. Must not pine for the dead._ "That world's gone," she said. Her mouth felt dry. "In a few more years, you can come out and do these things in the new one."

But Arona did not want a new world; she wanted the one she knew. Or... _or_... She kicked a rock from the path in front of her. It bounced, clacking away into the darkness. _I don't care anymore._ Tears pooled in her eyes. _They_ do _deserve to die._ She blinked and her vision spidered and blurred. She still hated them. Yes! She did! _Even Renée._ There was no escaping it. She was caught between two lives now.

Arona lifted a hand. She touched the release flap on her helmet. _Do you really give a damn about humanity?_ Eyes closed, she pictured the people she had loved. Their images were fuzzy, shifting one into another. Features slipped in and out of place. She could make out none of their faces. Behind each phantom, she saw Renée, clear and perfect in detail. Swimming in front of her as she had looked tonight, eyes burning, chest heaving with exultant intensity. Hungry for her love.

Arona hesitated.

In a single sure movement, she flipped the release and turned the switch inside. The helmet's pressure seal opened with a _pop_. As she lifted the insulated dome from her head, a sour-sweet chill rushed across her face. Arona inhaled.

_If I can live with killing billions, what's a few thousand more?_ The air was chilled silk in her lungs. The scents of earth and wild grass tickled the hairs in her nostrils.

Eyes to the heavens once more, Arona wept. The stars sang to each other above her, across the void, divine splinters of a shattered sky. Watching them, hearing their silent melody, she too opened her mouth, and she sang. " _In face of shadow's light, under stars I can't see, cannot find you, Darling-Dear. Not here, nor there, no place in sight. Come back to me. Oh, please come back to me. It's lonely in this night._ " It was a song from her childhood. She recalled neither its name nor how she knew it. Just words and a melody.

Standing there, singing to the stars, to the virus, to the ghosts in the wind, Arona closed her eyes and inhaled. Deeply.

_I'm ready now. I'm ready. I'm yours._

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

RENÉE still slept when Arona returned to the room. She silently undressed and slid into bed beside her. The other woman stirred at her touch, then pressed back against her. Arona hugged her close, shutting her eyes contentedly. This feels good, she thought with a growing warmth in her chest. This feel right. Renée let out a murmured sigh at the tickle of breath against her back.

"I love you," Arona whispered quietly. She meant it.

# Encore

(a poem)

—————

Encore

What a show!

Bravi Brava!

Stand you jokers! Let 'er know

Show you've been moved

Moved.

Moved as continents are

Peaks plucked from trenches low

Stand and clap for more!

Brava! Encore!

As one we shake the floor

By contract

Clap till she comes back

Give it time...

... _now!_

Come back,

Come back now come back!

You missed my favourite track!

Palms numb arches sore

We stand and clap and wait

House lights and music starts (not yours)

And as if that's not enough to say it

A voice:

"A'right folks show's done.

No encore.

Scream yourself hoarse;

She's gone.

Elvis has left the—

Forget it... Never mind. Just go home."

Well, _I'm_ not done

Clap you bastards!

We're doing this!

Reanimate the melody

We abdicate commorancy!

Slap flesh from hands

Digits from wrists

Clap to bring you back

Clap wait and we adore

Some leave

Enough to split the seams?

Spill into the street?

Hardly.

Legion—we stay

Night into day cheer what's owed us

Till voices dry to dust

Till legs and organs fail us bodies shut down

And till Thirst...

Until Thirst claims its first

Someone dies

We fall like flies

As days go by

Planted to the floor

Not done before you've sung

One more encore song or more...

...

...All are dead.

I last—soon to expire.

And you're in Dallas now. Or Oslo.

Or home kissing skinned knees.

Don't you know you owe us?

Don't you know we die for you?

We are _actually_ dying for this?

Don't you FUCKING know?

...

...I hate you.

The show wasn't even great

You sounded odd (were you drunk?)

Starting to fade

Sunk to my chair

Hands become lead

Let go.

Give up.

She's not here.

Doesn't care.

—but what's that in the wings?

_Movement_ —you came back!

I held out—the last most devout

And here you are with mo—

Just a shade.

You _did_ leave then and so shall I

Applauding angels where I fly 

# [Author's Aside]

The preceding poem (and its sing-song rhythm and nursery-grade rhymes), in my estimation, is ample evidence I should politely stick to prose—stay in my lane, if you like—leaving poetry to people more proficient in its practice.

People like Diana Pearson.

Diana wrote the following for a multi-author anthology I'd hoped to put out this year—one which never quite came together. It was such a powerful poem however, so personal, subtle, and poignant that I begged her to let me include it in _this_ book. Happily, she assented. She even agreed to write her own introduction for it.

-Enjoy.

# Sweetie

By Guest Author:

Diana Pearson

# Introduction

HOW do you grieve your own death? What's it like to slowly but surely waste away, seeing the darkness (or perhaps the light?) of what's ahead?

My dad died at age 57 from Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma. Michael was his name, but his musician friends called him Mikey. Once tall, broad and handsome, with a full head of salt-and-pepper hair, by his final days Dad's mind and body had been morphed and consumed. Legs wasted. Upper body turned plump. Hairless yellow skin and gaunt eyes with only a wisp of hair on his head. At times he was lucid, at others comatose. He was often confused and incomprehensible. He had, like many terminal cancer patients, become nearly unrecognizable. But to my sisters, my mum, and to me, his beauty and sweetness shined through the dark changes. (We referred to him lovingly as a cherub.)

The day Dad was moved from our home still burns in my memory. As paramedics lifted him from his bed and carried him down the front steps, he knew, we all knew, he would never return home. He spent his last five weeks in palliative care at Ty Watson House in Port Alberni. The care was impeccable, the surroundings reminiscent of home, with creaky hardwood floors, ten-foot ceilings, drafty windows, and a plush living room, which for those five weeks my sisters and I called our bedroom. (After Dad died we noted the house rules included, "No overnight visitors under any circumstances". The care aids were so gracious in allowing us to stay.) Intravenous doses of Morphine and Dexedrine, coupled with the tumour's effects on his brain, had Dad acting and reacting in all sorts of ways to his final surroundings. As dreadful as it was to let him go, he managed to bless us with a number of comical moments.

For example, Dad's legs no longer functioned, so when he had to poop, the nurses would hoist him in a sling that hung from the ceiling. Steered by a nurse via button on the wall, Dad (pantsless in his swing), would slowly glide toward the portable toilet. He didn't always find this funny, but one night he called my sister in to share his glee, exclaiming, "This is like a ride at the fair!"

In the end he wasn't eating much. But he developed a healthy appetite for _imaginary_ hazelnuts. He ate these by the handful, sometimes losing one in his bedsheets before picking it up again. "Five second rule!" he'd shout, popping it into his mouth. One night he asked for wine, so as a family we poured ourselves each a glass. As my sister passed him his, he looked at her like she had lost her marbles. Then he held up the imaginary glass already in his hand.

His third week in palliative, he stopped eating and drinking completely. He lost consciousness. This time he was certainly slipping away. But as we struggled to come to terms with losing him, he roused. On the fifth day he awoke and said, "What's on the menu in this joint?" A moment later he had conjured himself a double rye and Coke. Then, right there in his room, he enjoyed a concert featuring some of his favorite blues musicians, Rick Fines, Paul Pigat, Paul DesLauriers, and—funnily enough—my ex-boyfriend Chad. But when dad's brother Neale said he might also order a drink, Dad informed him the bar had already done last call.

During another bout of lucidity, Dad came to understand very clearly that he was dying. He decided he may as well get on with it, and philosophized as to why he hadn't yet died. Perhaps, he mused, he had unfinished business. So, he called each of us girls into his room, one at a time, to ask us whether we felt he had any debts to pay, apologies to make, or unspoken words to share. He phoned friends, family, old teachers, even Skyped people overseas to tell them he'd be dying very soon. He wanted to ensure he would complete his earthly tasks so he could die in a timely manner. That day, he was so articulate, his mind so clear, his personality so unabashed, for a moment we wondered if _we_ were delusional—perhaps he was going to make a recovery. We clung to hope to cope with our helplessness. Dad knew better.

Dad loved life; he loved his girls; he loved our dear mum. We are so lucky to have had this incredible man. I still wonder what it was like for him, to be trapped and tricked by his own body as it failed him. We watched him suffer confusion, fear, pain, grief, and the gut-wrenching recognition that his time was coming to an end.

In the poem you're about to read, I aimed to capture his experience.

—————

# Sweetie

by Diana Pearson

"Come on! We gotta go, we gotta go!"

Urgency breaks

Pigments of plush, velvet and plum

cushion me

from inside

a dyed marshmallow

Red no. 5, blue no. 9

Sweetie, she stands in front of me

out of arms' reach, tears streaming

blotchy, red, pale-splashed face

Don't leave me, she chokes. How can our lives go on without you?

"Neale! Neale! We gotta go!"

Crack addicts in the next room

Whisper at night

They shuffle in and out of the others' rooms

They are looking for me

Drugs in hand, to be injected

again

again

They're overturning shelves

forcing the others out of beds

stringing them up to ceiling rods

Wails shake walls

They are coming for me

"Sweeeeeeeetie!"

Warmth envelops tingling fingertips

Is that you?

"Sweetie?"

A blur of blonde and grey inches from my nose

"Sweetie!"

Lips brush lips

Bars of lead-like arms flail, I search for her proximity

I have been in this crack house a lifetime.

They captured me, plucked me right from my bed and strapped me down.

Strait-jacketed, hauled down my front steps, flung into a delivery van.

I shouted bloody murder and ripped at my deep purple bed sheets.

In a sopping wet blur, I saw the haze of green and orange of walls and the frames of smiling children. _My children._ They were there. Not just on the wall but in the flesh. I _heard_ them! Sobs that cut my ears until they bled.

And where are they now? Have they left me to die here in this old mansion?

"We gotta go! We gotta go!"

No, their voices are near.

Are they in cahoots with the leader? That tall, brown-maned dandy who struts around counting the pills on my nightstand. He takes one for himself now and again, you know, injecting me with god-knows-what just to keep me here.

His voice whispers, provokes–but who?

My girls!

My babies!

He has unfinished business, he tells them

They coo and cry

He's packing to go, he tells them

Go where? their soft voices insist on knowing

I know where

John, Son of God splays warm hands on my chest

Heavenly Spirit, he says

Paints flickering eyelids with visions of golden streets

filled with music

But will my babies be there too?

I see them!

The youngest sits next to a fountain, playing Jann Arden's _Insensitive._ I've been asking her for years!

Now in a concert hall–it's the Orpheum, and angels crawl the walls and weave golden filigree–and my middle baby plays my Les Paul. A STANDING OVATION!

I move, tethered to smooth nothingness, and see my oldest dance the streets, singing

_Bye, bye, Miss American pie / drove my Chevy to the levy but the levy was dry /_ them _good ol' boys were drinkin' whiskey and rye / singin'..._

This'll be the day that I die

This'll be the day that I die

Blinking, eyes open to the blurred bocca of a crowd

Not around her

Around me!

I am holding my guitar–no, I'm _playing_ it!–and Don McLean morphs into that lady who's sure all that glitters is gold. But the stairway's useless without legs. Mine are frozen stumps.

The bocca, the crowd, they watch, complicit with that maned man

Immobile

sheets wet

back sore

feet cold, pallid stumps

brain weighs heavy on my neck

headaches don't taunt me anymore

"Sweeeeeetie! We gotta go, we gotta go, we gotta go!"

Yes? Sweetie's voice rings out

warbled and close

She's been here for days, refuses to come to bed with me

bed's bars get in the way

Grasp her hand in the night

"Sweetie, sweetie, sweetie, we gotta go, we gotta get out of here.

Sweetie! Sweetie!"

What is it, sweetheart? She says

Tones of impatience cut through dark

Whispers it's okay time to go

The girls will move forward

Chest pounds

That damn injection

hooked up automatically now

Ksh-oop. Ksh-oop. Ksh-oop.

Into my arm

Then, at some point, my chest

Then, back to my arm

So as not to tire the vein, they say

Those tones of impatience pain me

"Sweeeeetie!"

Darkness and light

and darkness

Cold breeze and tinge of fire and smoke

Tastes brown and orange

Air is sharp

Light is muted

Walls are dewy

Bedsheets are dried blackberry vines

Skin turns to spongey leather

Ksh-oop!

I close my eyes and slip away / It's more than a feeling

We gotta go. Neale! Sweetie! We gotta go.

Ksh-oop!

Voices are soft powder on a sunny day

Sobs are daggers, distant and ominous

They're all around

Ksh-oop!

A murder awaits outside my window, swooping from tree to swaying tree

Murmured concerns around me, that's odd, that's more than a coincidence

Ksh-oop! We gotta go! What's keeping them?

Ksh-oop. Gott' go. Sweetie!

Mouth gargling with pop rocks,

Crackle and heave

Ksh-oop.

Labour turns to meditation, and the severing begins.

I loosen my tether. I look down, detached, and see my pear-shaped, morphed body slumped over in bed. My sweetie is touching my face. I no longer feel my skin but I feel the solace of that touch. (Ksh-oop) Thirty-seven years of that touch is etched into my soul. She strokes my face with her brightly-manicured fingernails. I recall the shiver of my spine and the trembling of our bodies. (Ksh-oop) Surely when I slip away, I will take her with me; I will open my eyes and see the lightness in her deep brown pupils and take her by the hand. We will live our lives over again, or perhaps we will be eternal. (Ksh-oop)

But will we have bodies?

An overweight woman with short dark hair stands in the doorway. This stranger's relief flickers and reflects in the eyes of my Sweetie.

Yes, she says, not long now.

Wait, what?

"Sweetie, I'm going!"

# Last Place

on

Earth

—————

THE night was given to drinking. Then later, fighting with my boyfriend. Who knows who started it, or even what it was about. The same old bullshit, I guess. We've been butting heads for months now. I can't remember the last time we laughed together. I'd started to think moving to Japan with him was a mistake. Maybe we were never meant for each other in the first place.

Whatever. It was behind me.

I hadn't slept.

I sat, cross-legged, in the dimmest corner of the pre-dawn train station, contemplating my misery. I found myself growling, muttering inaudibly to myself. _What a dick_ , I wrung silently of the boy I supposedly loved. _What a nefarious donkey turd!_ It _was_ his fault, after all; we saw _so_ little of each other these days, now that we were both working—David in the daytime and me at night. So we _finally_ had an evening out together, and what does he do? Piss off in a snit with a random cluster of douche-bags!

Asshole!

...

_I could have been nicer_ , I admitted with some reluctance. _But that doesn't make it okay._ Not that any of this mattered now. We both said some things. Things you can't take back. Such were the thoughts stirring the alcoholic fog in my head as night's final hours crept by.

Through buzzing eyes, I watched the station's resurrection. Morning's first commuters began to arrive, disrupting the air, filling it with the rhythmic _klop_ of hard leather on tile. Mostly, they were salary men. The most unlucky, working _whole prefectures_ from where they stored their beds, rising at 3:00 a.m., commuting hours each morning and every night. You could tell these by the sounds of their footfalls. Hollow. Mournful. Resigned. So did I see vacationers though, slapping the floor with a little more spring, chased by the rolling growls of their expensive luggage, and as often as not, lines of sleep-eyed children. These were the two main groups, but there was third. The 'still up'. Crawling from izakayas and karaoke bars, these tired devils arrived like insects as the trains began to run. Anxious for home and sweet unconsciousness.

They were like me, I suppose. Almost. _They_ were going home.

I watched the people walking past, the drowsy and the drunk, the young and the withered. None alike, yet carrying an unmistakable sameness. A limpness hung over all of them, like a stretched-out sweater that's lost its fit. I'd see it on my own face, I suspected, if only I'd had a mirror. None of us was quite awake yet. Maybe not quite alive. We were ghosts, the night's last shadows fading as the sun threatened its return.

A glance at my watch showed 4:53 a.m. _Better get moving_.

I bought my ticket at the machine and fed it into the slot, staggering a little as I stepped through the gate. Still pretty drunk, I guess. Still angry. I picked a platform at random and made my way over. The first train had yet to arrive. So I waited, my mind a jumble of confusion and half-formed thoughts.

This year had been a sequence of stark disappointments. David not the least among them. I came to this country to get away from the drama and shit in my life, get away from working a crappy job for next to nothing, from doing the same old things with the same three people every goddamn weekend. And here I was again, doing all of this, waist deep in the exact shit from before. Only the backdrop had changed. I couldn't take any more; I was done. The fight had only clinched things for me. I didn't know where I wanted to go or what I'd do when I got there, but I had to go. _Immediately_. Of that, I was certain.

A flat melody chimed from the walls, followed by a woman's voice announcing in Japanese that the train was approaching. Morning ghosts shifted in place, then shuffled their feet as a rumble of crackles and clacks rose in the distance. Dim light painted the walls of the tunnel, slowly taking shape before at last solidifying. A wall of metal rushed forward in front of us. It slowed. Finally, it came to a stop. With a moment's pause, punctuated by an ornery hiss, the doors slid open.

I didn't move at first. Others boarded the train, settling as comfortably as possible onto the hard-backed seats. But I just stood there, swaying slightly in a fog of drunken reserve. What was I was doing? Where could this possibly lead me? The doorway yawned in my vision, a gaping yellow mouth, wafting stale orange light and hot air that curdled my stomach.

I felt so small.

The train loomed in front of me... craving, I thought. I could sense its hunger. I shivered with the strangest apprehension. Something about it just felt... uncertain.

I don't like this train.

I was being stupid, I thought. I closed my eyes and opened them again. _Just a train._ With a deep, boozy breath, I crossed the yellow line that marked the platform's edge and stepped into the train car. A low cackle sounded as the engines came on. I started at the noise and swallowed with a sizable gulp—or would have, no doubt, if my throat hadn't gone completely dry. But I didn't break stride. Trains were made to be ridden, doorways to be crossed. _And seats,_ I thought, dropping onto the stiff fabric, _sat in_.

Leaning back, I closed my eyes. _Tired,_ I thought as my brain slowly melted. _I could sleep all the way... all the way to... wherever._ I still had no idea. Tired. _I'm tired of working nights. And fighting with David so much. I'm tired of disappointment. Of feeling alone all the time. I'm just tired of being here._ Yet somehow _here_ was where I always ended up.

On this thought I could feel myself slipping away. But not all the way away.

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

HOURS slid by in a haze. A concourse of travellers grew around me, suits, dresses and school uniforms, pressed together into the narrow car, hundreds of strangers swaying and shaking to the track's clacking rhythm. I woke and I slept, drifting seamlessly, claustrophobically between states. My mind registered the crush of people, the tramp of their feet and rustle of clothing as they eddied through the tight space, boarding and exiting in turn. More like a dream than anything real.

Formless thoughts and visions flowed through my head, indistinct from reality. I saw David's bottomless grey eyes. I relived the time we went to the beach and I got stung by a sea urchin. Then I was back home, in my usual spot at that bar I hate with friends who had dragged me out. They claimed they liked the music. In another moment, I was leaving. Leaving the bar. Leaving friends I didn't really like. Coming here, and then turning right around to leave again. I dreamt I was on a plane. I dreamt I was in space.

I wasn't the only one asleep on that train. Any direction you looked, you'd find at least a few drowsing passengers. Against windows and walls, slumped forward as I was, even standing. In a nearby seat, an ancient obaachan (grandmother) sat with closed eyes, curled around a bag of snack cakes quite nearly as big as she was—travel gifts for friends and family, no doubt. These, she clutched to her chest as if they were about to make a break for it. She hadn't stirred once since I first caught sight of her. When we arrived at her stop though, experience told me she would be up and awake in a second, shuffling out the door to deliver her treats.

Sleeping on trains is an artform here, a proud Japanese tradition.

As the train carried us through the morning, the crowd, like the buzz in my head, began to dissipate. The car quieted even as my skull started to throb. My head lolled a little. Then it lolled a lot. I could feel sleep—true, _restful_ sleep—wrap itself around me like a heavy black mist. The last thing I saw before it took me was a fat, dusty pigeon hopping onto a seat across the aisle. It puffed its feathers and cooed, blurring and fading as it picked and prodded at the worn cloth. Then, along with everything else, it was gone.

When I awoke, the world was different.

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

FLUTTER, bang!

I gasped and my eyes snapped open. _What was that?_ I had been dreaming. About... about... _Flutter, flutter—flutter, bang!_ Rubbing my face, I looked around. _What the hell_ was _that?_ I lifted off my chair to survey the car. It was bright now; hours had passed, I guessed. Bars of gold-green light slanted in through the windows on the right-hand side of the train. Every commuter, it seemed, had arrived at their station. The car was all but empty now. Just me and the sleeping old woman, still hugging her oversized bag of sweets. She hadn't stirred an inch in the time I was out. And of course, there was the source of the noise, a fat, clay-coloured pigeon fluttering in clumsy pirouettes at the far end of the car.

The creature was in hysterics. It flung itself about, flapping erratically, heedless as it slammed into windows, walls and chairbacks. "How'd you get in here?" I wondered aloud. I considered getting up and going over to help it. Maybe I could open a window and shoo it through. Then I thought, _what if it turns on me?_ And I pictured it, in a fit of panic, streaking toward my head, wings beating beneath shrill birdy squawks as it savaged my face with its beak. I lowered myself back into the seat.

The obaachan slept on, undisturbed.

My buzz—and for the most part my hangover—had vanished with the morning. I was left feeling worn and distant, like I was controlling my body by remote, with a short delay after every command I gave it. My throat had turned to dust and I seemed to have discovered a new joint somewhere in the back of my skull... and forcibly dislocated it. Rolling off the side of my chair, I stumbled to the toilet. After a long, satisfying pee, washing my hands and drinking thirstily from the sink, I returned and took a seat on one of the length-running benches. Spreading out, I stretched my legs into the aisle.

My clothes were disgusting. It looked as if I'd spent half the night rolling in a sweaty dirt pile. I'd avoided looking into the mirror when I was in the toilet but was pretty sure I knew exactly what I'd have seen. A freaking nightmare. There was little I could do about it now though, and no one around to see me. Staring, listless, out the window, I tried not to think about it.

Not that the scenery was much of a distraction. Old brown fields in all directions. Ugly patches of trees and low, scraggly brush. A sheet of flat, colourless clouds wallpapered the sky over a dim suggestion of mountains on the horizon. It was stark. It was monotonous. And it perfectly suited my mood. My mind began to drift.

I could still hear the pigeon beneath the clack and shudder of the train. It had calmed down a bit but continued to flap its wings loudly out of sight. Leaning sideways into the partition beside the seat, I closed my eyes and listened. _I guess I'll get off at the next station._ I still didn't know what I'd do when I got there. Find a place to charge my phone, I supposed. Buy a plane ticket maybe? Maybe not. I'd figure it out when I got there. And there I sat, awake and unmoving, for quite some time.

...For a _very_ long time.

My eyes slowly opened.

_Why haven't we stopped yet?_ The train rolled forward, same as ever. I'd been awake for a while now, an hour, maybe two, and we hadn't come to a single station. On a local train like this, you could cross half of Japan in a day, but you'd rarely go longer than five or ten minutes between stops. _What train is this anyway? Where are we going?_ Turning left and right, twisting back to stare once more out the window, I saw the same empty train car as before, the same void landscape. Nothing had changed. The obaachan sat in place up the aisle, unmoved, frozen in sleep.

Frozen.

My heart skipped a beat.

In all this time she hadn't so much as shifted.

" _Sumimasen_ ," I said. ('Excuse me'.) Sliding into the seat across from her, I eyed her closely; was she breathing? "Excuse me," I repeated a little louder. "Are you alright? Are you sleeping?" No answer. No sign she had heard me at all. "Are you alive?"

Nothing.

I hesitated. I unclenched my hand from the side of my skirt where, without realizing, I'd gripped the cloth into a sharp landscape of wrinkles. My fingers itched as I raised them to the old woman's neck, holding a moment, just shy of touching her, afraid to bridge that last narrow gap. Then with a sigh, which even to my ears sounded more like the whine of a hungry dog, I pressed into the dry flesh of her throat. Like candle wax. __ I snapped my hand away, shuddering at the half-moon imprint left on her neck.

"Eeuuuaaghh!" Jumping away, I wiped my hand on my hip. I couldn't take my eyes off the dead woman. She slept on... eternally, undisturbed by the near-audible skitter of my flesh.

_Dead._ I shuddered.

There had to be an emergency button somewhere. I looked up and down the car but saw nothing. The pigeon continued its struggle up the aisle. I did my best to ignore it. _I have to tell someone_ , I thought. _The conductor._ There was no button but... but I could go bang on his cabin, let him know in person. He'd radio ahead and they'd have it taken care of at the next stop.

I tried the door forward to the next car but found it jammed. It slid open—a centimetre, an inch—before squealing to a stop, refusing to budge any further.

This is idiotic!

I made my way to the back. Trains like these sometimes had people at both ends. Avoiding looking at the obaachan, hurrying past the agitated bird, I tried the door at the rear. I was not at all surprised when it too failed to open.

I pushed and pried for minutes before giving up and throwing myself into the closest seat. _Stuck on a train,_ I mused unhappily, following the flash of feathers with my eyes, _with a bird and a corpse_. _And nothing to do but wait._

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

TIME, after that, passed slowly. In fact, I began to doubt it was passing at all. My phone was long dead; so had my watch stopped. Hours ago. It still read 9:19 a.m.

"Bi-i-i-itch," I exhaled when I noticed this.

So I sat there. And the train kept going. Every so often the pigeon roused itself into a frenzy, flying up and around, swooping down the length of the car. I watched it warily but never moved from my seat, even when it came near; I'd resolved to remain as far as possible from the dead obaachan.

The hours crawled by.

The sun didn't move in the sky or inch across the floor of the car. Every minute seemed to weigh a little more than the last. Each second, falling onto a pile of its predecessors, grew heavier on my soul. _What is this?_ I wondered after what must have been several hours. _Am I crazy? How is this real?_ Yet the metallic shudder went on— _clack-click, clack-click, clack-click_ —endlessly up the line. And we _still_ hadn't stopped.

My eyes got heavy once more. My chin fell to my chest.

I slept.

I woke again, and again sat for hours, watching out the window. Where was I? Why weren't we stopping? I was scared but I tried hard not to panic. I waited instead for something—anything—to be different. Then I slept some more.

The next time I woke, I was crying. I didn't know why, but I couldn't stop. I scrubbed my cheeks as my mind—seemingly of its own accord—waltzed through every unhappy thing in my life. I was sweaty, stiff and frightened, and of course, riding a train with a dead woman for company, but my thoughts had drifted toward a broader sphere of melancholy. I hated my job. I hated the one-room closet we'd been calling an apartment. I hated being so far from most the people I knew. Above all, I hated what was happening to me and David. I _loved_ him. How could I hate being around him?

And as I sat, sinking in a bog poison and heartache, questioning everything in my life, I was sure of only one thing: _I want off this train._

There was no sign we'd be stopping. The same hollow landscape scrolled beside us. Where were the mountains? I wondered. Where were the towns and cities? _What part of Japan is this, even?_ The sun hung unmoved from its place behind the clouds, a bright sentinel masked in a sheet of fog. _It should have set hours ago. Hell, it should probably be rising again by now!_ I was stuck in time. Frozen while moving. On a track that went on and on, going nowhere.

Lost in thoughts and tears, it was a long time before I realized something that should have been obvious. I was hungry. Eventually though, the crater in my stomach made itself known. It was... _more than twenty-four hours_ since I'd last eaten—I didn't care if the sun in the sky said different—and my stomach ached like a too-tight fist. I resolved to get something to eat the moment we pulled into a station but was starting to wonder if that was ever going to happen. I even half-entertained the idea of setting a trap for the pigeon. If I just had some bait... Then I remembered. The snack cakes.

_Snack cakes!_ A huge bag of delicately packaged Japanese sweets waiting at the front of the car.

In the arms of a dead woman.

I hesitated. _I'm not THAT hungry_ , I decided. And I wasn't. Yet. But with nothing to eat and nowhere to go, it didn't take long for this to change. Within a few hours, the emptiness in my belly had collapsed into a black hole. I couldn't wait any longer. _I'll get some water first,_ I thought, recognizing the returning dryness in my throat. _Wash my face and arrange myself. Get focused... to rob food from a dead woman. Ugkh._

So that was what I did. Passing the obaachan, I was careful not to look at her. In the toilet, I slurped warm, manhole-flavoured water from the tap. Fixed my face and hair as best I could. Looking hard in the mirror, I pictured what I was about to do. "No problem," I said aloud through my teeth. "Just grab the bag and walk away." And when I stepped back out, I was as ready as I was going to get. What I saw nearly made me vomit.

She was there, just as I'd left her, hugging her bag of treats. Except for her head, which had... _transformed_. A gargantuan, grey flower sprouted from the old woman's neck, blotting out her features. A living, _moving_ flower with sharp, ugly petals that writhed and thrashed, opening and closing in violent palpitations, pawing grotesquely at the air in front of her.

I screamed and tripped backward, falling hard on my ass. I couldn't free my eyes from the sight. The monster blossom tensed and shivered, then settled into place. And then, with nauseating clarity, I realized what I was looking at. The pigeon. It sat perched on the obaachan's lip, clinging with its little birdie claws, almost upside down, fluttering its wings as it nipped and pecked at her eyes and cheek.

_That_ was when I threw up. Just a drop and mostly water, but enough to burn my esophagus. I gaped, paralyzed for a long moment, before finally shaking away the shock.

"Hey!" I shrilled at the bird. "Get off her! Get away!" I leapt up and waved my arms. The pigeon hopped off at the sight of me, dived away and was gone. I stared after it. Shuddering. And almost puked once again.

A quick glance showed the woman's face little worse for her ordeal. Her left eyelid looked slightly stretched and a tiny pock mark had appeared on her cheek. Otherwise, she was unchanged. She still might have just been sleeping.

"Christ," I sighed, lowering myself into the seat across from her. "Sorry that happened." The old woman kept her silence as a tired chuckle escaped my lips. "Are pigeons even supposed to eat meat?" Why hadn't it gone for the goodies, I wondered, eyeing the bag reproachfully. My stomach muttered an impassioned gurgle. _I_ must _be hungry,_ I thought, frowning; the horrifying sight hadn't turned my appetite in the slightest. Biting my lip, shooting the obaachan an uncertain look, I eased the bag from her arms. All the while, I expected her head to snap up, eyes piercing me with accusing old-woman rage. Happily, this didn't happen.

I brought the food a few seats down and settled in. Wherever the pigeon went, it didn't care to be seen at the moment, which was fine by me. Seeing it then might have just made me sick all over. Besides, I didn't want that little feathered beast coming anywhere near _me_. Tearing open the first of the wrappers, I chomped down on the soft, yellow puck inside. It greeted me with a mild, almost salty tingle and a sweet acorn paste that made me cry out—and _actually_ tear up—in delight. I finished the first and then ate another, and another still, downing a third of the bag in minutes. Finally, bursting at the seams, I forced myself to stop. My hunger was gone, and despite everything, I fell back, satisfied.

After that, it was so much more of the same. I didn't leave the front of the car again; I wanted to be there to shoo the bird if it came back to finish its dinner, but it never did. Maybe it was hiding. Maybe it had found a way off the train. Lucky little asshole. I couldn't say how long I sat there. Days probably; it felt like weeks. When my eyelids grew heavy I slept; when hunger gnawed at me I ate, rationing the remaining cakes carefully. I went to the bathroom when I had to, and every so often I covered my face and I cried. I even talked to the obaachan, just as something to do, pouring my life and problems onto her fixed and frozen lap. All the while, I puzzled furiously over what could be happening. What had occurred in the world—or in me—to bring about this strange, endless train ride, this day that refused to end?

And just as I began to wonder if I'd ever stand on solid, unmoving earth again, just as I began to doubt, the steady tempo of _clacks_ and _clicks_ began to fall. I didn't notice at first. I'd long since stopped hearing the train's ever-present noise. But then a voice came in on the P.A. system. I jumped, nearly slipping off my seat. "Momentarily," it said in toneless Japanese, "we will be stopping at _Saigo no Basho_ Station."

I looked up. My heart began to race. _Really?_ _We're coming to a station?_

The train slowed. On one side, grass and weeds gave way to a long cement landing, level with the floor of the train. We dropped to walking speed, then crawling. And then with a swollen chug and a long, deep cackle, we stopped.

Elation took me. I sprang up, grinning, laughing—I couldn't control my face!—and ran to the door, ready to leap out the moment it opened. _I'm getting off this train!_ Then my breath caught and I froze. _What about the her?_

My eyes drifted back to the obaachan. Still there, up at the front—I'd moved a little away as she had started to ripen—still frozen in death. All alone. I couldn't just leave her. The pigeon...

I could run to the front and tell the conductor before he took off again. Maybe... _Do you really think a_ person _is operating this train?_ The question came unbidden, fueling a shudder in my spine.

"Why not!?" There was more than a little anger in my voice. "Of course there is; who else could be!?"

So why didn't I believe that?

And then I heard the sound. "Eewwwwiiaamn!" It brayed behind me like the drawn-out screech of a rusty gate. My whole body whipped around to look. My mouth dropped open. The obaachan was up, yawning loudly and stretching her arms.

Just in time for her stop.

I gaped, stunned, as she scrabbled to her feet. She wiped her eyes dramatically and touched the beak-shaped hole in her face, though with seeming little concern. She looked around for her bag, spotted it—half empty—where in my excitement, I'd left it. I could hear her aggravated mutterings, too fast and garbled to understand, as she hurried over to snatch it up.

The door beside me opened but I just stood there, eyes locked to the dead woman. She shuffled toward me and passed me by without a glance. Stepping onto the platform, she made her way to the only visible bench and plopped herself on it.

_Dead woman_ , I thought in a daze, staring, blinking in her direction. _Dead old woman just... got up._ I couldn't believe my eyes. _Where the hell are we?_

"Excuse me," I called after a long moment's pause. "Excuse me. What station is this please?" The corpse made no reply, or indeed took no notice of me at all. "Excuse me! _Where are we?"_

The station, as it was, was barely that. It consisted of a concrete slab jutting up from the ground. And nothing more. There were no shelters or walls, no signs of any kind. There was no platform on the other side or second set of tracks for trains going in the other direction. Just flat brown fields, empty and unused, spread in all directions. And a solitary bench, on which the obaachan hugged her bag once again. As far as I could see, there weren't even any roads or paths leading up to the platform. Where the hell _were_ we?

The sun had shifted significantly in the sky, as if playing catch-up for time lost. It lay nestled on the horizon now, burning a rosy hole into the distant blue cradle of mountains. Peach-and-pearl-coloured light saturated the air, at once warming and cooling every surface it touched, even the shadows.

I wanted to get off. Desperately. But here? This place, pilgrimed to by dead women? A station they came to sit and wait for—I _didn't_ _know_ what! How could I get off here? Even so, my foot edged toward the door and my mind screamed me forward. _Get off! Get off! Get off! Get off this train!_

I raised my voice to the obaachan once more. "Hello-o-o? Can you hear me? What is this place?"

Nothing.

I could get off, I thought. I'd be free of the train. Free of my problems with David. Free of everything. And then what? Wait with the obaachan? Maybe forever? Or board the next train with her when it comes? Did I really want to go where _she_ was going? Or I could stay on _this_ train. Maybe forever...

A flutter of wings behind me sent a chill up my back.

_I want to go home_ , I thought. _That's all I want now!_

Then it dawned on me. There was no platform on the other side, no track for trains going in the other direction. _One way only from here._ If I stepped out that door, followed the old woman, there'd be no going back. But if I wanted to hold on to any part of the life I had, I'd have to stay on. And _maybe_ this train would circle back to where I was supposed to be.

Either way, I knew I'd find myself right here, back at this station, in the end.

I edged away from the door. After a few seconds more, I watched it slide shut. The engines coughed and grumbled and suddenly I was moving again. I sat hard into the closest seat.

After a minute or so, a voice came on to the P.A. "This is the _Nagai Henkan_ line," it said, "destined for _Yokohama_ Station. The next stop will be _Yarinaosu_."

A smile cracked my lips. I fell backward into my chair. _Yokohama_ , I thought. _That's only twenty minutes from home!_

I couldn't believe it.

I was going home.

◦ ◦ ◦ ◦

SO here I am. Riding the Nagai Henkan Local. The pigeon has returned to keep me company, and oddly, I'm not sorry to see it. I don't know if the return trip will be anywhere near as long or strange as the ride out. I don't know what awaits me further down the line. But I'll face it, and if it can be done, I'll find my way back.

Home to David.

Maybe moving to Japan together was a mistake. Maybe we weren't meant to be with each other. Probably not, I guess. But now I can say, with no doubt left in my mind, I'm willing to find out. 

# Pretty-Boy

Fast

(a storybook)

# In His Sleep

—————

KYLE'S fingers hovered over the doorknob. He could almost feel the crisscross scars on its painted metal surface. A tingle in his fingertips, like a charge of electricity. His hand trembled. He tightened his knuckles and then shook them out. Behind here, he thought, not ten feet from where I stand. That was where he would find him. Paul Lindholm. Paul Lindholm. Just the name was enough to send him running. Yet Kyle would not run. He steadied himself. Before he could chicken out, he snapped out his hand and gave a sharp turn of the wrist. Like pulling a Band-Aid.

The door opened in front of him.

It was dark inside, darker than it had been in the hall. A faint glow—no more than an off-colour stain in the shadows—leaked through a pull-down shade on the far wall. Hints of outlines and shapes littered the darkness around him; Kyle's mind strung these together into a cramped, desperately messy sleeping space. _I know this room_ , he thought, though he had never seen it before.

He waited for his eyes to adjust. Three full minutes. As the room's disordered features slowly began to surface, so did Kyle become aware of a sound, a soft, slow rasp. Paul Lindholm's breathing. He swallowed and closed the door behind him. Picking over piles of dirty laundry, stacks of papers and books, and maybe a dozen half-empty cups of tea, he felt his lip curling upward with distaste. _The man's disgusting_ , he thought, toing an empty peanut butter jar out of his way. _Who could live like this?_ Some might even argue what he was about to do could be called was a mercy.

He approached the sad little bed in the corner. Knotted hopelessly in a twisting nest of blankets, pillows and sheets, lay the man himself. Paul Lindholm. Kyle's first glimpse was more or less as expected. _Pretty goddamn uninspiring._ The sleeping man's body was pale, flat and wide. A human-shaped puddle of milk. Unevenly decorated with patches of thinning fuzz, he looked to be sagging inward, as though melting from within.

"Life is too grand for one such as you." Kyle kept his voice low. Waking the man in front of him was the last thing— _the_ _last_ thing—he wanted to do. "Just look at how you use it. Look at all you've wasted. You... _failure_. Yet _I'm_ the one who's denied. I don't even get..."—gesturing at the shambles bedroom—"...the _opportunity_ to do better. And I tell you, I would. I would do _so much_ _better_." As Kyle spoke, his voice grew louder and louder. "I would _be_ better. But no, it's you. It's always been _you_ , __ hasn't it? You! Every time! You! _You_! Paul _fucking_ Lindholm!" He was all but shouting now. He stifled himself before he could completely lose control. Paul Lindholm slept on, peacefully unaware, stirring not at all beneath Kyle's admonishments. _Of course not_ , Kyle thought, turning to spit on the dirty carpet. _Not Paul Lindholm_.

"Well, _Paul_ , I guess it's my turn."

Leaning in, Kyle gingerly, almost gently, covered Paul Lindholm's mouth with his right hand, pinching his nostrils shut with his left. Unlike the sleeping man, whose spongy limbs had all the strength of a beta-male guinea pig, Kyle was _strong_. Paul Lindholm's face might as well have been caught in an industrial vice. _Too late_ , he thought. _Even if you wake now, I have you._ It was not what he had intended. Kyle was not a violent person. There was no joy for him in this. It _had_ to be.

Paul Lindholm did not wake; he did not struggle or even twitch as Kyle divorced his lungs from any trace of the air they needed. His flesh was clammy and cold. If not for the fluttering pulse beneath his skin—so different from Kyle's own desperate thrum—Kyle would have doubted he was alive enough to murder. _Wouldn't that be a turn_ , he thought humourlessly. And he pushed a little harder. Paul Lindholm continued to lie there. Unmoving.

Several minutes passed. Kyle's arms started to shake. Needles of sweat pushed through his skin. Paul Lindholm's pulse weakened and slowed. Soon it stopped. He maintained his hold on the man's nose and mouth though, another two minutes before finally releasing him.

Paul Lindholm lay on the bed, no different than before. Except his breathing had stopped. Kneeling beside him, Kyle thumbed open one of his eyelids. The molasses-brown orb stared blankly off to the left, dull and empty. Death had plied a 'comical idiot' aspect to Paul Lindholm's appearance and Kyle's lip twitched inappropriately at the sight.

Dead then.

_Dead as a doorstop_.

Okay...

What now?

Though he supposed he knew the answer.

Kyle's eyelids closed. He clasped his hands together, interlacing fingers he had, moments ago, used for murder. And he prayed. _Please_ , he wrung silently to the darkness. _Please... wake up._ He could feel Paul Lindholm's corpse in front of him. _It's safe now; It's me. You don't have to live this way. Just... wake up!_

Nothing happened.

Kyle opened his eyes. He was still in the room. The body of his enemy lay on the bed. Even in death this turd would not flush. "No," he sneered. "No, it's _my_ turn. My turn, goddamn you!" He gave it a shove meaning to throw it out of his way.

Kyle's hands sunk into Paul Lindholm's bleached flesh.

Like into pudding.

He snapped his arm away and the man's skin _re-formed_ around it. _The fuck?_ Kyle stared. He looked from his open palm to the spot where he had... where he had reached _into_ Paul Lindholm. No holes, no marks or imprints had been left on the pale, fuzzy surface. After a moment's hesitation, Kyle held his hand out again and pressed a digit into the dead man's ribcage. His finger, his knuckles, his whole hand disappeared into Paul Lindholm's body.

"The _fuck_?!"

Kyle stumbled back from the thing on the bed. It was an effort not to retch. He did not want to touch the body—or whatever it was—but he knew he had to get rid of it. _My body_ , he asserted silently. _My bed_. He freed the fitted sheet from beneath the mattress. If he could not _push_ this sack of spume out of his way, he would _roll_ him. Yet as he lifted the sheet, the carcass remained fixed in place. He pulled and he tugged but it simply refused to budge. Finally, sweating and panting, Kyle stopped. He glared down, nostrils flaring.

"This place may be your creation," he hissed, "but _I'm_ here too. I control just as much as you!"

No reply from the dead man.

"So you can just... _go_."

Even as the last word escaped his mouth, a dark shape appeared on the far side of the bed, an appendage creeping out from the crack between wall and mattress. A moment later, two more rose beside it. Then a fourth. Long and pointed, with bristling black pelts—like spiders' legs, only as thick as a woman's wrist—the silent digits clawed gently across the sheets, rising higher and higher from their unseen source, working ever closer to Paul Lindholm's corpse.

Kyle observed them in wonder. In horror. He was not controlling these strange, searching feelers. He had not imagined them into existence. How could he— _why would he_ —envision such nightmares. Yet he knew they were his. His doing. As much as the murder had been. And they would obey.

_Take him_ , he commanded silently. The grotesque legs flashed out, snatching Paul Lindholm—blankets and all—dragging him away into the shadows beneath the bed.

There was no sound.

The bed lay empty.

Kyle sat. The upset sheet was cool to his palm. He would have never guessed someone had just been asleep on it. "Because he _wasn't_ ," he told himself with all the conviction he could summon. "I __ was. I _AM!_ Me, only me! No Paul Lindholm." He lay down in the dead man's place.

"I am me," Kyle chanted, closing his eyes to the darkness. "I will be me! I will __ be _me_! I _will be_! I _AM_!" He filled the room with these avowals, asserting his existence over and again. He was Kyle. He _was_ Kyle! He willed it to be true. _Soon this will be over_ , he thought. _Soon it will be over and I... WILL... BE... ME!_

When Kyle opened his eyes, what he saw froze his lips and cut the words from his throat. "I—I am—" Try as he might, he could not find his voice.

The inky shape stood over him. "—am _me_ ," it rasped. "I am _ME_!" The newcomer took up Kyle's refrain with seamless continuity. "I will be me."

He had not heard the door open or close; there had been no footsteps through the clutter. _No_ , Kyle thought. _No, he didn't come in. He was already here._ He _was the one chanting, not me_. Penetrating the shadow's shape with his eyes, he began to recognize the intruder's face. _My face_. His own features hanging over him in the gloom. Kyle's own voice raising the stolen mantra. " _I WILL BE ME!_ " It was _him_ standing beside the bed. In his right hand... a power drill.

_Yes,_ Kyle thought. _Yes, I_ am _me!_ _I am... ME!_ Fingering the drill's plastic trigger, he stared at the sad, frail, _pathetic_ wretch on the mattress. For a second, he thought he had seen _himself_ lying there. But no. That was not his __ face. That was Paul Lindholm, still asleep in his sheets.

"I am me," he said one final time.

It was not what he had intended. Kyle was not a violent person. There was no joy for him in this. It _had_ to be.

He hefted the drill in his palm, feeling its weight and balance. Then turning Paul Lindholm's head, holding it firmly in place, Kyle set the bit over the sleeping man's temple. There it hovered. Kyle's heart raced. He fought to control his breathing.

Paul Lindholm did not wake; he did not struggle or even twitch as Kyle squeezed the trigger and pressed the power tool into his brain. A sickening wet grind, louder somehow than the whirr of the electric motor, filled his ears. As if... as if it was _his skull_ he was drilling into.

Tears burned hot scars down Kyle's face, but he pressed down all the harder. "I didn't want this, Paul." His voice sounded ragged. "But I can't—I don't want to be _you_! You're ugly. You're sad. You're alone. Even asleep— _even dreaming_ —you can only believe you'd be happy as someone else. As me! How sick is that? You dream you're _me_ to escape being _you_. Well, goddammit, _I_ don't want to be you either!"

A crimson mist rose from the mattress.

"I won't do it, Paul! I won't go when you wake!"

The drill had punched all the way through Paul Lindholm's head. It had grown from an eighth of an inch to a half-inch bit. Then bigger still. It looked like one of those drill bits they used for oil wells now, three fist-sized wheels rolling on rows of interlocking metal teeth. Kyle stirred it about, churning his creator's skull, face, and brains into a sticky red pudding, splashing broken patterns across the bedding, headboard and wall.

"No more Paul Lindholm!" Kyle's whimper was lost inside the bloody cacophony.

"Just Kyle! I am Kyle! I am me! I am—"

The noise was too loud. Kyle could not hear his own words. Even yelling, his voice was lost.

" _I am_ —"

The blaring mechanical strain paralyzed him. He could move no part of his body. Sound cut through him like electricity. It cracked the porous foam of reality.

" _No_! _No_ , _I_ —"

He fumbled for the alarm.

The world was burning. Ending. _He_ was ending.

"Why can't it be me?"

Paul slapped his palm onto the TV remote.

Why can't I be—

He hammered the power button several times before his head cleared enough to realize _this_ was not the source of his alarm. Tossing it away, he groped the windowsill, searching for his phone.

_Twenty more minutes_ , he thought, somewhat desperately. But by the time he found the source of his torment and managed to end its piercing cries, he was practically awake. _I guess that's the point_ , he mused, glumly dropping his phone onto the pillow beside him.

For a minute, Paul lay in bed, letting the last fog of sleep clear away. _I was having such an INTENSE dream_ , he remembered suddenly. _What was it? I was with somebody... who hated me. And there was... a spider? But I left the guy—I left him to die, I think_. He wiped his hands over his face. In the way of dreams, it had already faded from his mind.

_Oh well_.

Paul tossed back his covers and slid out of bed. _Another day like every other day_ , he thought gloomily. _A fresh canvas for the world to smear with dogshit._ And he could not help but wonder when _his_ turn would finally come. _After coffee, no doubt..._ First things first.

He had already forgotten he had been dreaming at all.

Thank you for reading my second book! Most these stories have been gathering dust in old paper folders—and on old hard drives—for years now; I'm so glad to have had a chance to share them with you!

If you enjoyed what you read in these pages, please consider leaving a review or rating on Goodreads to help others find my work as you have.

And if you'd like to learn about my other books (and even read a sample or two), check out my website, wingwriting.com where you can sign up to get a **free** **copy** of my novel ICARUS!

-Adam Wing

# Acknowledgments

As I was writing my first book, Icarus, I didn't really like to talk too much about it. In fact—a few choice occasions aside—I scarcely mentioned it to even my closest friends or family. It wasn't fear, I don't think, not insecurity. It's just... it was a private thing for me. Icarus was mine. Yet, upon its release, the support I got from these same people—people I'd left in the dark about this _huge_ aspect of my life—was greater than I'd ever imagined possible.

So, you who read that first book, who discussed it with me or just told me what you thought—you who wanted to talk shop or share _your_ work with _me_ , who enquired with genuine interest what I'd be working on next—friends and family, people I barely knew when I finished writing, and people I've known all my life, from the bottom of my heart, I thank you. You've motivated me to take myself seriously as a writer and an artist in a way I don't think I ever could have without you.

–Wing

# Sand, Sea and Stone

By Brent Thomas

(Sample)

chapter one

DAY ONE: MORNING

COPPER eyes darted back and forth. She sucked in the air, tasting it. Her prey was nearby. Her eyes darted once more. Where could it be? She took a few cautious steps forward, her legs finding easy purchase on the soft terrain. She sniffed at the air this time. Her nose confirmed what her mouth had told her. It was nearby. Why couldn't she find it? It wasn't to the left or right. She peered behind, ready to spring, but there was nothing there to attack. She spat out a little gust of air in frustration. Then it occurred to her. If her prey was not on her level then that left other options. Slowly she tilted her head up. There it was. Above. Staring down. Her body tensed. It leaned forward. It was about to strike.

"Look out! Here comes Mr. Mittens!" Demetrius warned as he crashed the stuffed toy down on his new pet. The baby dragon gave out a squeal as she rose up on her hind legs and grasped at the plush doll. Mr. Mittens was, in fact, two mittens filled with fabric scrapes and sewn together. It was more of an amorphous blob than a true animal shape, but it was about the same length as the tiny dragon, ignoring her tail. It was also just big enough around to keep the dragon from getting a good grip around it. When Demetrius let go of the toy, it and the dragon, who could not support the combined weight, toppled to the floor. The little beast continued the wrestling match, unaware that Mr. Mittens was failing to put up much of a defense.

Demetrius giggled and clapped, encouraging his new best friend on to victory. The young mage had fast bonded with the tiny lizard. He felt it only natural that, since the group had played a role in the death of the beast's mother he should now play a role in raising it. Aleksander, reclining on a little throne of pillows, strummed along on his ever present mandolin. It was a cheery little tune that would have been at home as orchestration to a child's puppet show, featuring cloth knights and rag doll monsters. Kestra sat in her usual hard-backed chair on the far side of the room. She glared with full disapproval at what was happening on the rug.

"I can't believe we are allowing you to keep that little thing."

"Three to one. Majority rules," said Demetrius, the words rolling off his lips with easy practice.

Kestra continued her glaring. It had been put to vote and she had lost. There had been no argument that hatching the dragon egg had been a damned fool thing to do. The cooing, half grown little beast that had emerged could just as easily have been a full sized pup with a newborn's appetite. Had that been the case it would have been questionable that a weakened Demetrius would have survived the encounter. But he did survive and, eager to show his friends, he brought the little creature home.

The friends in question were, in turn, shocked at the appearance of the new pet but not very surprised by Demetrius' action. Just before bone-exhaustion had claimed them, three of the Deadly Troubadours had discussed the possible necessity of keeping the egg from the already snoozing mage. Unfortunately, sleep had claimed them before a best course of action could be decided upon. When Demetrius, prompted by a sudden urge to make water, awoke in the middle of the night he saw the egg and felt a call to take action.

When he returned and the others woke there wasn't even an argument, just a feeling of communal missed opportunity. But a vote had been agreed upon. Kestra clearly stated the beast was too dangerous and needed to be dealt with. Demetrius said it was adorable and should stay as a mascot. Talbert felt the chance to see the growing patterns of an infant dragon first hand, was too valuable to pass up. And as for Aleksander, he imagined their untimely deaths would make an excellent song, especially if he survived to perform it.

A pet dragon was the result.

The tiny creature was on top of Mr. Mittens and biting into it while giving little shakes of her head. The dragon's teeth had yet to grow in so it more gumming Mr. Mittens, but the intent was clear.

"You realize it is practicing killing?" asked Kestra. "Doesn't that disturb you?"

"Cats do the same thing. Most people find them adorable," countered Demetrius, giving Mr. Mittens a little shake.

"He's right," said Aleksander.

"Cats typically don't grow as big as houses and spit fire," offered Kestra.

"She's right," said Aleksander.

"Gods, Kestra," said the mage as he picked up the doll and started to swat at the baby dragon, ignoring the Master of Song. "One would think you never had a pet."

"I had a pet," Kestra said rolling her eyes.

Demetrius stopped with his swatting. "You weren't one of those gladiators that had to kill their own puppies, were you?"

"Those weren't gladiators. They were legion soldiers," she told him.

"Both were known to have done so," offered Aleksander causing the other two to cast a look his way. He merely shrugged. "According to the songs."

"Whatever," said Kestra. "I didn't have to kill a puppy. And I was a Circle Dancer. It's entirely different."

It was Demetrius' turn to roll his eyes as he went back to playing with his dragon.

The dragon in question was a curious sight to behold. It was roughly the size of a house cat, though much thinner. In most respects it could easily be confused with the standard greenscale lizard that is readily available as a pet from countless dealers in Tryst. Such a lizard might be considered as perhaps the most common of the uncommon pets. The most noticeable difference however, was the copper eyes. Such eye coloring was unusual for such an animal, but that would likely go unnoticed except for those learned in reptiles. What truly distinguished the young dragon's eyes was the disconcerting sense that if one looked deep into them there was a notion of comprehension and keen intellect within that copper. Certainly nothing similar could be found in a standard greenscale.

Then there was the body coloring and matching plumage. The dragon's parentage was half black dragon, or ebony as Talbert often corrected. This fact was known intimately to the Troubadours. The other half was reportedly a variety of red dragon. Talbert had no concrete details to correct them with here, as the father could easily be a crimson, blood, or even a ruby dragon. The result was a color that looked like burning charcoal. There were mixtures of reds and blacks in it but also grays and whites. It looked like the union between flame and ink mottled with smoke. And the intensity of the colors appeared to change at random. Talbert had theorized the colors were linked to the creature's moods but, he had found little concrete evidence to support this theory. After all, how does one judge a dragon's mood? Then there was the plumage. Around the dragon's head, leading into its neck and body, was a series of almost feather-like scales, almost a reptilian version of a lion's mane or a rooster's multi-colored neck. Perhaps both. When the dragon was content the little mane puffed out, making it appear twice its normal size. As it attacked Mr. Mittens the mane was pressed squarely against its slim form.

The Deadly Troubadours had a great deal of questions about the purposes of dragon anatomy, and they looked to Talbert to be able to answer them. He had been educated at the Academy, after all. But that did not mean he knew everything about dragons, and Talbert was getting frustrated at not being able to simply answer his troupe's questions. To help provide answers, he was attempting to track down an old mentor who was something of an expert in dragons. So far, he had only been able to discover that the expert had relocated to Tryst, but Talbert had yet to succeed in finding an address. Nor could he gain access to the higher echelons of academic writings were he would possibly be able to peruse various works concerning dragons. Until he could manage at least one of these, his options for finding out more about the creature was limited to folk tales and songs. For now, Talbert could only supply the basics. Talons were for scratching. Teeth for biting. Be alert for the first suggestions of fiery breath.

And of course, there were the wings. Most of the time these were folded up and pressed firmly against the dragon's body, looking like nothing more than a slight ridge running down either side. When the wings were stretched out, as was done occasionally throughout the day, they looked like storm clouds streaked with ruby-colored lightning. So far they had served little purpose other than causing gusts of air when they were given the occasional flap. It was a relief to all that a flying miniature dragon was not something they had to concern themselves with just yet.

In fact, the main thing that currently concerned the Deadly Troubadours was an opportunity presented by the arrival of the newly minted young Duchess of Outer Malfinza. She had arrived in the city two nights prior and was to be celebrated tonight by the Trystian upper-crust at a grand ball, and tomorrow was to be formally greeted by the townspeople. Needless to say, many of the troupes of the Order of Free Thinkers had vied for the privilege of adding their own particular brands of mischief to such auspicious occasions. However, there were more troupes than would reasonably be able to act without interfering with each other. Leaving it unorganized would result in turning the day into a collection of shambled performances. And while the Order of Free Thinkers was indeed for disruption it did not want to lower itself to sheer chaos. It fancied itself a Guild of merry pranksters that shone a light on the ridiculous pomposity that those with power, political or financial, often held themselves. Simply anarchy and disruption without a message lacked artistry and so such actions were beneath them. Therefore, it was decided that one, and only one, troupe would be awarded the right of claiming the Greeting Ceremony and another troupe would be given the performance rights to the ball that would be held the preceding evening. Whether or not those two lucky troupes wished to coordinate their messages was left to them to decide.

Luck, and naturally a little bit of graft, saw the Deadly Troubadours being named as the performers for the Greeting Ceremony. As one, they scoffed at the idea of teaming up with the group that was awarded the ball, the Nautilus Spirals, whom the Troubadours considered as a lesser troupe. They had little faith that the Spirals' prank would succeed at the ball, and even less faith that it would be worthwhile. Regardless of their success or failure, the attempt alone would result more security at the following day's ceremony. Thus naturally, there was more prestige, and more risk, in the Greeting Ceremony, something the Deadly Troubadours looked forward to.

Their planning and material preparations had been completed the night before, but they still needed to do the actual installations for their performance. That had been the most difficult puzzle to solve. Again, assuming the Grand Ball performances went accordingly, any suspicious items found in the Rainbow Courtyard, where the Greeting Ceremony was to be held, would be well searched. But, the Troubadours were fairly certain they had a way to get around the searches. All that remained before starting installation was for Talbert to return with the "something secret he wanted to add to the mix," which he had annoyingly been keeping coy about. Once he arrived from wherever his preparations had taken him, they would be off to ensure all their hard work would pay off. Until then, Aleksander would keep up his strumming. Kestra, her waiting. And Demetrius would continue the epic battle between dragon and Mr. Mittens.

"Have you given it a name yet?" Kestra asked.

"Nope," Demetrius answered, while having Mr. Mittens retreat from the dragons newest assault.

"You named the doll," she pointed out.

"Dolls are easier to name than dragons."

Kestra hated to admit it, but this made a certain amount of sense. Still, she didn't like just thinking about the dragon as "it." "You've got another week and then I'm naming it."

Demetrius merely shrugged his shoulders in response.

The door slid open. Talbert stood silhouetted by the sunlit sky, not bothering to enter their rooms. His energy and anticipation was felt by all, and it was infectious. "Ready?" was all he asked. As one, his troupe mates gathered their necessities and surged for the door. When Demetrius scooped up the unnamed little dragon, Kestra opened her mouth to tell him to leave it at home. As she was about to speak she saw on Talbert's face that he was struggling with the wording of what was likely a similar suggestion. The thought of being as fussy as Talbert on the issue convinced her to hold her tongue. At least for today.

"Come on, Talbert," she said, "Lead the way."

Talbert, noticing the look of annoyance that Kestra wore as Demetrius picked up his pet, wondered if she had spent the afternoon chiding the mage. He, likewise, did not want to come off as disapproving as he imagined his red-haired friend did, and so held his tongue about not taking the beast to a fancy party.

They exited with full knowledge and security that it was to be a glorious day.
APOCA LYPSE SINK SHIPS

Copyright 2018 by Adam Wing

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Edited by BD Editing.

Icon images: Music Note, Biohazard Symbol, Swimmer, Heart, Airplane, Pigeon and Hourglass retrieved 26/10/2018 from <https://www.canva.com>.

All other art by Adam Wing.

Published by Adam Wing.

ISBN

Paperback: 978-1-9995187-0-7

Ebook (ePub): 978-1-9995187-1-4

Ebook (MOBI): 978-1-9995187-2-1
