Mary tires of the novelty of the empty screen within hours. The next day, she is bouncing off the walls, standing on the balcony with her toes gripping the edge. She holds her hands out wide and tilts back and forth, watching us instead of the wall. When Damien opens the door, she jumps down, diving so her head misses the ceiling. I stand besides Damien with my arms folded. Mary grins widely. "I was waiting for you to wake up."

"We woke up several hours ago." I say.

"Alex looked up how to work the coffee machine," says Damien, raising his mug.

"Maybe you should hang out with me sometime instead of sitting around with Alex just because he can work a coffer machine."

"Coffee," Alex says, with a long, spluttering sip from a plain white mug. The liquid smells darker than any water and smells like poison. Alex casts me a dry look, offering me this 'coffee', and I raise a hand. He lowers his. His face is mutinous.

Mary's face crumples the second the attention is off of her. Striding in between us, she announces, "We should get out of here."

"No," say the rest of us, in unison.

Mary squeezes around us to the door. "I knew you'd say that, but I have an incentive." she smirks, and getting up onto the tips of her toes, she withdraws a poster from her pocket and presses it against Damien. She then grins, sliding her eyebrows up to the top of her face. "Just in case this wasn't obvious, it's for you, Damien."

Damien removes the paper from his chest. "An open... mic?"
"Yeah, at first I thought they were going to crack a 'mike' open, which is... a person, I think, but apparently it's just this thing where people get up on a stage and do the talking thing where it sounds better than talking--"

"Singing." I suggest.

"Psh, I knew that. Anyways, you do that or this weird thing called 'poe trees', which doesn't actually have anything to do with trees, but it's not like you even know how to do a poe trees, so we don't have to worry about that. Since you like it so-oo-o much, I figured we should go down there and check it out. Wanna go, Damien?"

Damien inclines his head.

"I had to talk to people to get this information, so I hope you at least appreciate it a little."

Damien nods abruptly. Mary's face splits open, revealing both rows of bright teeth. "They're not watching right now. Angel's watching Trace. Big kids are out on a grocery run. Sounds like the best time to dash for it."

No, Mary.

We exit.

She drags us out without touching us, save for Damien, whose arm she is yanking off. Damien sinks his feet into the rug on occasion, trying to slow her up, calling out things like "Red should know, right?" or "Red's going to be so angry."

My eyes slide back to the door. They will ditch me if I make an attempt to warn the others. Fortunately this is a well-accounted for contingency. I am to follow, prevent any legitimate cause for concern, and inevitably report to the authorities when things are over. They let me come anyways, even though Mary's head rises and I see so much hate brimming in her eyes.

The group is silent save for Mary's chatter all the way through the halls, which fills the yellow space and echoes back to us, devoid of meaning. Mary skips to the elevator and raises one hand to the other and clenching yesterday's injury into a fist. When she presses the elevator door and it opens wide for her, she barges it open with her hands and holds herself there, arms shuddering and a manic glee in her eyes. "Get in." she says.

We pile in behind her. The elevator is warm and surrounded by wood, though the veneer on it makes it false. It has long since been robbed of the texture and scent of a tree. I hold myself to the corner of the elevator while Alex places his hand to the control box. Mary and Damien bicker in the middle. It is one sided. When we exit, Mary kicks the door of the elevator. Her glasses shine in the light of the center room. There is glass on the ceiling and water with fruit slices in it in one corner. They watch us but do not say anything as we exit.

My eyes narrow. I watch them back as we turn corners, and then they, too, are gone. My charges at present take the city, the sun heavy on them as it sets. The rest of the group is out here somewhere, save for Angel and her girls, and this gives me false hope. I scan the streets for them, though they do not appear, and I growl with discontent. The midday sun moves between buildings, also searching, but Mary sticks to the shade provided by the long faces of the massive stone and glass slabs. Mary's eyes glisten. Mary's hand clenches around Damien's. Mary's hair is a thousand black snakes. Mary's shoulders are rounded upwards defensively. My fingers itch into their keratin molds, and I grab my left hand with my right, digging my fingers into my own flesh. The pain is dull but it stops me, momentarily.

"This is a terrible idea," Alex says.

I stare at him.

Mary flings open the door to a nearby building. Her hands splay wide and her eyes shine with excitement. She turns back to us, cackling, as the smell of coffee and a warm breeze from the interior overwhelm our senses. "This was a great idea, wasn't it?"

"No." I state.

"I appreciate the effort, Mary, but I don't know if I can go up and talk in front of all these people." Damien says.

There are no more than twenty people there, near twice our party, and most of them are larger than us. They are spindly but tall, what Angel calls 'adults', though to make such an assumption would be unwise. They sit at tables with coffee on all of their tables, drinking and nodding as a single person stands in the hazy red glow of an elevated platform. It does not roll like hills do. Human hills jolt up, distinctly. They ask to be noticed.

Mary almost slams Damien forwards. "You'll be fine," she says. "Why wouldn't you be?"

"I can't even begin to answer that question." Damien says. Damien grips her hand. Mary grips it back. She plants a kiss on his head.

"You're so bright. You could blind the whole world if you wanted to." she insists. "This is just twenty people." In a quieter voice, she asks, "This is what you wanted, isn't it?"
It turns me in a deep way. I had not expected Mary to drop her voice. I raise a hand to my own throat, eyes swimming, and sit down at a table when the others do. Alex puts his head on one of his hands, his whole face rubbed upwards. He drumbs his fingers on the table. Meanwhile, Damien follows Mary who explains how to write his whole name on a list. The two of them stand there for a while and Damien laughs, hugging Mary.

The two of them return to the table and Damien's face is warm before it drops again into panic. "I didn't bring my ukulele."

"You don't need it." Mary says, taking up Alex's posture.

"Yes I do! I mean--" Damien sniffs, "Okay, so this is really stressful, and it would be nice to have a- something to lean on."

"I'll go up there with you." Mary offers. Her eyes are wide as she watches the stage. Someone whose shirt is consuming their whole body (it has taken the neck already) is indiscreetly muttering into the microphone. We turn, and the audience erupts in clicking noise.

Damien's eyes widen. "I think I need to do this alone."

The clicking continues. When it subsides, someone announces, "Next on the list is... Dae... Duh... I'm sorry, I can't make this out. I'm assuming your name is Damien? Please, please correct me if that's not the case."

Damien dives under the table. Mary pulls him out from underneath. I want to grip her hand and twist it until it breaks. Damien stands up, shivering, with Mary at his back, and she runs her hand down the small of his back before pushing him forwards. Damien turns his head, holding us in his big, watery eyes. "Guys."

"You're not as shy as you think you are." Mary announces.

"Is this your first time?" asks the announcer. She sounds like a female but has short hair, which is perplexing, but she is making it work. It is also not the color of human hair, instead, it is blue like a sky. This woman is unspeakably confusing and yet Damien's eyes light when he sees her.

"Yeah," he says. "Um, sorry."

"We've all been there." says the girl in the turtleneck, and the whole audience laughs, which spreads quickly as the clicking and dies out.

Damien strains his head to nod. The woman helps him up onto the stage, speaking to him so lowly I can't hear it, and I crouch over the table. Mary brings me back with one sweep of her hand. Her eyes are full of light as she smirks, shaking her head at me, and I grit my teeth. "You idiot, Mary." I whisper.

Damien puts his shaking hands on the black pole. A terrible screeching emits from the room and he draws back, stiffens up, and puts his hands to his ears. The pole wobbles several times before standing still, the light drawn to it, and he steps forwards again and says, "Did I do it?"

He receives an odd gesture with the thumb from someone in the crowd.

"That's a yes," Mary announces, "Now, go."

Damien breathes out and begins to sing.

His voice crackles over the room, slowly beginning to fill the air, and he sings without words, drifting over familiar notes into something higher and prouder than I've ever heard. Damien turns the air with his hands, his eyes lightening, and then they begin to lose their pupils altogether. His voice becomes a storm, shrill notes clanging off the walls, and I realize that he is growing horns. "You can stop now," Mary yells, but Damien does not stop. The crowd begins to rise with him into panicked noise as Damien's form begins to shift, his eyes burning with light. His whole body is engulfed by it. The overhead light goes into him. His face breaks into a genuine smile, and he raises his head to take in all of the light.

Mary stands. "I'm going to have to tackle him off the stage," she announces.

I blink. It is a dumb move. A Mary move. I grab Alex. "Can you pull the lights."

Alex nods. He dashes for a silver panel on one side of the room just as Mary slams a figure that is no longer bipedal down. The room is panicked chaos, several people yelling at each other about deer, and still more in an eerie calm brought on by his voice falling out of the air.

We are dead.

I hear the thunk of Alex slamming his hand into a panel across the room and the subsequent whirring as the lights go out. In the darkness, Damien's new form glows with its own light, half deer and half person, a thousand plumes emerging from the tail area and his horns alight with energy. His face is brighter, more defined, and he looks furious. It is not a particularly intimidating Veritas. It suits him well enough.

I blink. The sensation stirring in me is unfamiliar, a light akin to his. I dip down to the floor, bowing to him, and he looks to me, curious face split in a dizzy half-smile. He collapses, extra limbs disappearing, and Mary hoists him over the shoulder. She grabs the microphone and announces, "We were never here."

This is when we run, because Mary runs. She swings around the people, who are watching the body instead of her, and takes the stairs without Alex and I. "Our friend is not feeling well." Alex says.

The person at the front desk goes for his phone. My face twitches violently. Alex takes my hand and drives me up the stairs. "Gillian." he says when we are in the middle of the stairwell. "Give him this."

"Give him what?" I ask.

"You're going to screw all three of us, Gill-ian." He stretches my name out. "Please."

I blink. "I can't do what you want me to do."

Alex shrugs. "I like you, Gillian. Come on."

"When I say I can't, Alex, I mean I can't. I do not mean I won't. Is that clear?" I say, stepping past him. Our bodies brush at the arm. He grabs the railing. The hum of the bar sounds up the whole stairway.

"I know you have something with Mary, but that doesn't have to extend to Damien."

"It's not about Mary. It's about danger to the group. You would understand if you weren't just like them." I say. My eyes fix on the white bricks and long pipes across the ceiling. They are bones and flesh, I remind myself. Anything here is easy to break as a human would be, and it would be the same things when torn apart.

Tearing apart is easier than holding together. I still myself, breathe out through the nose, and hear the whining of pipes overhead like my own breath.

"Whatever," Alex says, walking past me, and we enter an unfamiliar floor together. I think we are lost, but he turns back around. "It's eleven. Floor eleven."

"What?" I ask.

"I could just leave you here. You would never find your way back." Alex says. He holds a hand against his head, his eyes widening and his mouth dilating to a shocked point.

My hand reaches out and grabs him. My heart shudders. "Don't."

"I wouldn't. But you would, if anyone asked you to, wouldn't you?" he says. "You wouldn't even regret it for a heartbeat."

I feel my fists clench but I say nothing to him. We stalk the rest of the way up in silence, my heart still thumping in my chest, and Alex leads us into a floor I only know is the right one when we are back in the room. I run my hands on the fabric of the beds, against the coated wood, even through the window. I need to hold everything in the room to ground me. Water runs over my hands when I manage to get the fancy pipe to run and it is fake but regardless it is water. I drag my hands through it for a while, lie reviling inside of me, Damien's face in the mirror. He watches the ceiling, too, a smile drifting across his face.

I sit down beside him and put a hand on his shoulder. "I always knew you could do it."

"You did?"

"Not now." I confirm. "I didn't want you to do it now."

"Are you proud of me?" asks Damien.

"It's not about me." I say. "Proud enough."

"Okay." he smiles. "Alright. I think I might sleep forever now. My head's a mess."

"Whatever you need." I say. He turns himself over.

The other two are watching me. I want to slam their faces in. This is a bad tendency. Violent thought. Out of line.

Step a little further out of line, says Mary's face.

We know too much about each other for our own good, but even worse is sharing the same people and both having their best welfare in mind.