00. MAZYR.

A complete absence of heat slices through the forest like a scalpel. No moon, no stars, and no sky. Hidden two hundred kilometers in the Belarussian interior.

Her name is no longer Elina Shishkin. It has not been Elina Shishkin for a long, long time, but now she wonders if she was ever anything in the first place. Names are given to people, and she has never felt like a complete person, although she does not understand why. Or perhaps she does understand why, and it is that understanding that's ruined her. Was she happier with her father? Did something irreplaceable crack inside of her when she watched the radio tower explode, taking her father with it? She doesn't remember. She never has, but even if she did, it wouldn't matter: it is all happening again.

Elina Shishkin died in the field. The creature that ran back home in her place had no name.

The bodies in front of her are skinless and twitch gently in the breeze. Strung upside-down from the branches all around her. None are alive, but she remembers when they were. Silent for reasons still she can't comprehend – chooses not to comprehend. And she hates it. She fucking hates it. Hates comprehension and understanding and how useless they are and how her mind keeps following them so idiotically. She should know by now that understanding does not exist for people like her. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic.

The gun in her lap reflects light that doesn't yet exist. It has never been used. Even through her pants, she can feel the metal on her thigh, somehow colder than the air around it. So cold that it feels like a third-degree burn. But colder still is the ground on which she kneels, devoid of all plant life and nocturnal insects. Hardened into what might as well be stone. A haunted, blasted landscape where the trees bend horribly towards the ground like they're forever trapped in the climax of a Cold War-era propaganda film. She never wants to see trees like this again, but she somehow knows that she will.

Thousands of kilometers behind her, one of the ropes snaps, and a body falls to the ground.

They found her in the bedroom that had once been her father's, and introduced themselves as friends of his. They asked if she knew where her father kept her birth certificate and passports, and when she said no, they told her not to worry and reassured her that they would take care of it. They did not explain how they silently entered the house, which she diligently kept locked until it was time for her to look for food. They did not explain how they had met her father or why they had been chosen to take care of her. They did not explain why it was that she had to leave Novokuznetsk, or why the car ride took two full days, or why she had to keep quiet if a police officer stopped the car on the highway. They told her that her father was a good man and called her Lana Lopatin.

The gun grows colder in her lap, a reminder that not once did she question anything the men had said to her.

There is no sky tonight, and she knows why.

V. THE LAST DESOLATION WALTZ.

Lana didn't fight against the person holding her. Part of her knew – well, she wasn't certain, but it was the most rational conclusion she could arrive at in the few seconds she had to think – that if Milan was determined to kill her, the first thing he would do was take her to a place where he didn't run the risk of being killed himself. The white light was gone for now, but the theater had lost its collective mind, and even though her vision was limited, to say the least, she could tell the situation was getting worse by the second. She couldn't tell exactly where the screams were coming from, but her instincts told her that something terrible was happening in the corner where the light appeared because that was where the screams were the most concentrated. That only held true for a moment, though. A wave of reactionary energy was pushing through the theater like the shockwave of a bomb. Manic cries layering on top of one another without direction as people began to realize what had happened in the corner, in that terrible, corrupted space. An unrelenting smell in the air like burning skin. Preexisting nausea and sheer disorientation took turns pummeling her chest and stomach – Lana had no idea where she was at that point and didn't know of any other exit from the theater other than the door she had come in through. Was there any chance that the other doors were still locked or guarded?

Lana didn't fight against her captor but tried multiple times to wrench her arms free and claw at the bag over her head so she could at least see what had happened in the theater. After she'd managed to convince herself that her destination was safe – at least by Milan's standards – and calmed herself down as much as she could, her next priority became removing the bag. She didn't let herself believe for even a second that Milan wanted to shield her from the unknown event in the theater. Somehow, she knew they had both seen worse and that Milan was well aware of that. But with that taken into consideration, the bag seemed pointless. Detrimental, even. The person – or people? Was there somebody else? – leading her seemed unconcerned with Lana's safety. They'd occasionally let her stumble down a set of stairs, or accidentally ram her into a wall, waiting only a few moments before snatching her again and forcing her through a space she couldn't identify or quantify. Lana truly had no idea where she was: the smell from the theater had disappeared, and the screams were muted at best, but she did not recall hearing any doors open or feeling any change in the atmosphere around her. In fact, everything that her senses told her led her to the conclusion that they hadn't even left the theater. That energy, that buzzing was still there. She could still feel the influence of that space in the corner tugging at her. But how could that be possible? Why didn't Milan want to leave the theater?

It dawned on her as they continued walking up and down stairs she couldn't see and didn't want to believe existed. The bag over her head was necessary. She was right about one thing: they would kill her once they found a suitable location if they hadn't planned it all out already. The bag was simply to make sure that there was no way she could retrace their steps. If all of a sudden, the bag came flying off her head and she found herself in a dimly-lit room surrounded by Milan and his mercenaries, Lana wouldn't know where they were or how to return to the theater – or anywhere, for that matter. How stupid it was to let herself get so calm! She was acting as though she'd forgotten everything she'd learned in the last twenty years. Her shame morphed into anger that she held to her forehead like a gun.

And how foolish she was to put so much faith into the Sunlit Mariner! The man who'd stopped her before she entered the theater didn't even call for backup or do any kind of real interrogation. For God's sake, the ship was on lockdown – and she still wasn't sure why, which was also something she conveniently let herself forget – and he let her waltz into the theater without even glancing over his shoulder. There was no way he would have been able to stop a real crisis, and if the ship was on lockdown in the first place, she doubted there existed in any significant capacity a force of qualified security personnel. Of course Milan had wanted to leave the theater, and it suddenly became clear that they had all been wandering the ship for a long, long time. That ultimately didn't matter, though: the theater doors had most likely been wide open long before Lana had seen Milan climbing up the seats, which allowed whatever was building up inside to ooze into the rest of the ship.

The screams had died down – or at least fallen out of earshot – and the people leading her forward hadn't uttered a single word. Not anything that she could hear, anyway. And perhaps it was merely an extension of the carelessness she'd exhibited earlier, but Lana was growing tired of the silence.

"What happened?" She said, unsure if her voice would carry through the burlap. Her breath bounced back at her, tinged with the scent of bile. It was a useless, vague question, but Lana knew that Milan wouldn't tell her anything without being prompted first. Even if the answers she received were also useless and vague, it was certainly better than nothing. At best, she could possibly use any information, no matter how contrived, as a springboard, a launch point. But only if she was lucky.

To her surprise, Milan remained silent, but the man – now she could tell – to her right spoke. His voice sounded like someone had ripped it to shreds over and over again with tires wrapped in snow chains. He had a Russian accent.

"You've seen the lab. You know."

The pale creature that radiated the same white light that destroyed the theater. While pinning the catastrophe and the lockdown on the mutants seemed more than plausible, Lana found herself picking apart the hypothetical explanation the more she thought about it. Was he insinuating that the pale creature had escaped? She was blind as far as she gathered from her brief encounter...

There it was. She was blind. Lana had forgotten entirely that she'd given the creature that tiny sliver of an identity when she'd first seen it. Why had she forgotten that the moment she stepped out of the laboratory?

But that wasn't the most important question on the table. Not by a long shot. But as they all rounded what she presumed was a sharp corner, Lana realized that she wasn't going to get any answers. It was something instinctual at this point, given her half-successful career as a journalist. For all of her flaws and shortcomings, at least she knew how to end a futile conversation.

"I don't think any of us know," she mumbled.

And that was true, but only to a certain extent. She didn't believe that Milan's men knew anything. How could they? Milan hired soldiers and assassins. Dangerous for a time, but expendable once the target was taken care of.

But Milan was something different, just as she was. Under different circumstances, perhaps they wouldn't be trying to kill one another. After all, in their different lives, they had seen the light together. Neither of them understood it – although that specific piece of information could've been wishful thinking on Lana's part – but they had experienced it. Understood, at the bare minimum, the danger it posed, if any. There was no doubt in Lana's mind that Milan's real plan, whatever it was before they got onto the boat, had gone horribly wrong. The incredibly limited time they had in the apartment together was enough to tell her that Milan thrived on control, and although the nature of his job was to create chaos, he could not, under any circumstances, allow that chaos to spread – which it had. For all she knew, the hospital construction plan and the partnership with Helius Meditech was just a smoke show, but that still didn't change the fact that the smoke in question was pouring out of a malfunctioning rocket doomed to burn up in the upper levels of the atmosphere.

It was true that Milan held all of the cards, but he was missing something crucial, and there was most likely not a single person on Earth who had the rest of the deck.

In front of her, a door opened, and Lana immediately recognized that they were outside and that Milan was planning to throw her off of one of the decks. She came to that conclusion so quickly that it felt as though somebody had thrown a punch that had landed directly at her temple. The scent of salt and floating plant life was so overpowering that the empowering effect it had on her nausea nearly rivaled what she endured in the theater, whatever had happened. But simply thinking about that scent – a horrific mix of bile and skin and smoke – caused something in her body to malfunction, and before she knew it, she had hit the deck hard. How had she lost awareness of the man's grip on her arms? When did he let go of her?

Seawater stung her cheek harder than she thought it could, especially considering the fact that her head was wrapped in burlap. Seconds later, the water had seeped into her dress. The same dress she'd put on just hours before in her cabin, which she had not returned to since leaving for dinner. The dress she'd worn when she spoke to Lincoln, whom she hadn't heard from in hours. The same dress she'd stepped into the laboratory wearing. And then entered the theater. Now soaked in salt and algae and hundreds of thousands of invisible planktons at what might as well be the end of the world.

It hit her then. It's over. All of those thoughts about death in the elevator, in the dining hall, in the theater. Even worse, the moronic notion that the disaster on the ship would somehow set her free. That it would wipe out her enemies and gracefully pluck her from the wreckage and carry her all the way home to Moscow. This was the precipice of all she'd ever known. There was wreckage, yes – unimaginably horrible wreckage – but she would not be saved.

The creature now called Lana Lopatin was created from the dust that settled after the radio tower exploded, but she was no phoenix. She was the witness, and that was all she would ever be.

Instinctively – although she was not entirely sure why – Lana reached to her head and slowly removed the burlap sack, waiting for the moment when Milan or one of the others would notice and begin to kick her. Or shoot her. Taking the bag off ultimately did next to nothing: the sky over the Pacific ocean was blank. That odd sense of familiarity rang throughout her body. That dark sky. The complete lack of anything. But why here, and why now? Presumably dozens of miles from the nearest city and free from the effects of light pollution. The ship itself was completely dark as well – gone were the decorative string lights and fluorescent LEDs, both of which had caused such a stir just a few hours earlier. Had someone cut the ship's power source? Was it even still running or moving through the water? Where are the stars?

The crunch of a sturdy boot on her ribs, sharp and powerful. Lana let out no sound and did not cry, because what was the point? She might have been alone the entire time she was on the boat, but before she went into the laboratory, there was at least the slim possibility that somebody like Lincoln could figure out what was happening. Now the ship was lost to her, and so were its passengers.

It had begun to rain, but Lana could still hear what she identified as frantic pounding on the door they'd come through to get on the deck. Her neck was still parallel to the sky, and her eyes were closed to avoid letting water into them, but she could feel one of the men move across the deck toward the door.

But there was something above her as well. Opening her eyes, Lana realized that she was staring at Milan face-to-face for what might have been the first time. He was trembling, perhaps from the sudden shock of exposing himself to the ocean air. His face twitched, too, and she took as much time as she could to see if anything remained of the little boy she saw in Novokuznetsk twenty-five years ago.

He was scarless and hairless. Chapped lips that cut across his face like moonlight on concrete. A hairline beginning to recede. Scatterings of silver hair. Strong cheekbones. All unfamiliar except those gray eyes, forever unchangeable, watering with resentment and personal betrayal.

"Why did you do this?" he whispered, his voice cracking almost imperceptibly with condescension and pain. "Why would you bring it with you?"

The night sky began to move above them.