|-@SILVERBOWANDARROW-|

Art was jolted out of the unreality of his half-dozing dreams by a cacophonous rattle that shook him down to his bones. For a moment of unthinking terror, it was another earthquake fit to bring the entire complex down around his ears; then, like the mirage of a nightmare, it disappeared. Art remembered himself; his room with the peeling paint, the low hum of his computers, and the rattling resolved itself into the 9:13 train begrudgingly trundling towards the city center. The spasm of sympathetic nerves nonetheless had him curling up into a ball, overwhelmed by the noise and light, until all 9 cars passed away like a mirage.

Only when the roar had passed could Art begin to think and to wonder. His head was throbbing like he'd downed half a liter of vodka the previous night. Everything was too loud and too bright, the edges of things sharp enough to cut his perception. He was assaulted by sound–outside and two floors down the kebab merchant was arguing on the phone in Pashto. As soon as that was processed, his sense of smell did not so much assault him as mug him in an alley with a cudgel. For a moment, all he could do was moan and struggle through the swamp of sweat, stale takeout, and computer cleaner, desperately trying to breathe through his mouth and figure out what had happened.

The previous night, his hazy memory supplied, there had been an earthquake. He had been walking home from Bitsui's and finishing a job. Then right when the earthquake hit he'd opened a file–

His head throbbed, and Art groaned once again. Everything was too much, too loud, but how? He hadn't had anything to drink, and he couldn't remember hitting his head. Even if he had...Art looked up and winced at the brightness, the sonic assault. How was it so bright that he could pick out every detail of his room, illuminated only by the dull green lights of his computer? How could he hear the kebab merchant's conversation and count the cars of passing trains?

Art had only barely adjusted to consciousness when there was a deafening banging on his door. "Art! Get out here, you asshole! You might have slipped in under my nose last night but there's no earthquake now!"

Art groaned anew, covering his ears. Mateo growled at him through the door. "I know you're in there, and I'm not leaving until you get me the rent so I can fix my fucking cab. Now, Art!"

The payment had gone through, Art remembered with a start. He reached for his bedside table for the phone on instinct only to find it absent. Realizing he was still in yesterday's clothes, Art pawed for his pockets and pulled out his phone only to drop it with a yelp as a sharp pain seared his palm. The base of his phone was burning hot–burning hot, but for some reason not burning. Surveying the device with confusion, Art gingerly prodded the cool edges of his phone, then the power button. It immediately came on with no indication of heat damaging the fragile internal components. He opened his banking app after the requisite three passwords and shamefacedly sent the payment plus an extra hundred dollars, wincing with every bang on the door of his room.

"Art, I'm gonna ki–" Art opened the door, and Mateo's fist descended into its absence too quickly to stop, moving straight for Art's nose. His eyes widened, and reflex took over for the first time since he was a teenager. His head shifted back, seemingly of its own accord, and Mateo's fist passed him by with less than an inch to spare.

"It's done," Art said without preamble. "I've sent it, plus a hundred for the delay."

Mateo blinked at him, seemingly unsure of how to respond to nearly punching someone in the face and being given exactly what he had demanded. "What?"

"The rent. I sent it, plus a hundred for being late. I really didn't mean it and got paid last night. It uh. Won't happen again" Feeling distinctly uncomfortable with this uncharacteristic display of sincerity, Art added on: "Dick."

"Lazy fucker," Mateo responded automatically. There was no heat in it, though, and as the two of them stood there the tension slowly drained out of both of them. Art began to take in the living room–the rough edges of where a TV was once screwed into the wall, the fraying fibers of the sun-bleached carpet. Every detail was picked out with the clarity of a diamond, acuity far greater than Art's natural eyesight even with contact lenses in. As he took in his surroundings, Mateo surveyed him with a critical but no longer hostile eye. "You look like shit, Art. I mean, you always look like shit, but especially now. You get beaten up by the earthquake or something?"

"Thanks. Love hearing that first thing in the morning."

"Well, you do. You look like you haven't slept and you've definitely lost weight. Plus, you need a shave."

It was Art's turn to blink. "What?"

Mateo was already turning to pad back to his bedroom. "And watch your step. I've already killed two scorpions just outside your room. The quake must have buried their dens or something."

At the word scorpion, a primal thrill of fear shook Art to his core, the potency of it shocking even him. After keeping a pet tarantula as a child, Art had thought himself fully immune to all arachnid-related phobias, but cold dread flashed through his core at the thought of grasping black claws, a wickedly curved stinger poised to strike. As Mateo closed the door, Art ran for the bathroom, flicking the light on and examining himself in the mirror.

It was impossible. It was also true. Art's face was liberally covered with a light dusting of dense black stubble, stubble he had never in his life possessed, stubble his Hopi grandfather had told him he would never get. The bathroom had no scale, but Art was willing to wager that he had also lost weight–his shirt, once well-fitted, now hung loosely on his frame. The double chin he'd had since puberty had also receded, his cheeks thinning. Art stared into the cheap glass with disbelief, reaching up to trace the paling skin, the lank hair uncharacteristically beginning to curl, the haunted bags under his eyes.

"The fuck is happening to me?"

The stranger in the mirror echoed his question.

Art stepped out of the bathroom, unconsciously reaching into his pocket for his phone. A jolt of burning pain had him snatching his hand back. He glared at his pocket before more delicately extracting his phone, feeling around the outside until his fingers reached the tiny nub plugged into the port at the base. The Ansible hardware, with its ichor core.

One fingertip hesitantly reached out and brushed the Ansible. There was a flash of searing pain, and Art recoiled, nearly dropping his phone again. He stared at his phone, held loosely in fingers that drank in every tiny imperfection in the casing. Outside, a city bathed in searing sunlight was buzzing like a kicked hive.

Art needed answers, and there was only one place to start.

~*~

One ring. Two. Three.

"Mom, I know it's been a while but this is a really bad time for a chat. Work is really going crazy right now–"

"Lena. It's Art."

There was a shocked pause, then a groan. "For God's sake, Artie, we've had this conversation before. You do not fuck with my caller ID. You especially don't pretend to be my mother so I pick up the phone."

"Would you have picked up if I hadn't done it?"

"No! Because I'm busy!"

"You're always busy."

"Yes, I am. It's called being the top engineer in Chortek R&D. It tends to keep me busy. Now that we've established that, it's time for me to get back–"

"Bullshit. It's 9:30 in the morning. You're on your second coffee break. Extra sugar. You can afford a couple of minutes to chat with an old friend."

A familiar frustrated groan echoed from the phone. Despite himself, Art smiled. He could picture Jelena Korodetskaya all too easily, even after a full decade of separation. Right now her phone would be pressed against her ear, a chubby arm propping up her head with its short-cropped black hair. Her desk was no doubt still a riot of papers, pictures, and colorful coffee mugs in varying stages of consumption–when you were as good as Lena, even the lab safety killjoys stopped making a fuss over food in the lab.

"It's actually coffee break number five, and break is a pretty generous way to describe it. Artie, I really don't have time for this. We just had an emergency dropped in our laps and it's all hands on deck. Including me, since about two in the morning." There was a slurp of what was undoubtedly over-sweetened coffee.

Art frowned. "What's going on? Did the earthquake knock out an ichor well or something?"

There was a short huff of humorless laughter. "If fucking only. I know how to fix that–I mean. Shit. What I mean to say is this is an internal Chortek matter, and the last thing I need is to feed an ex-employee with a grudge something he can sell to the press."

Art leaned his head back against the wall of his room. He still hadn't turned on the lights. He could still see perfectly in the gloom. He bit his lip and chose an angle of attack

"Come on, spill. You know you want to. I've gone this long without trashing Chortek to the press, and you know I could if I wanted."

"No. I have a meeting in five minutes, Artie, and I really have to go. I'm hanging up now–"

Shit. "Lena, don't hang up! You owe me and we both know it."

A pause. "The fuck I do. You quit Chortek eleven years ago."

Her tone was firm, but she hadn't hung up. Progress. Art pressed on. "I quit over Ansible. You know I quit over Ansible, and the credit you never shared. You owe me."

There was silence. Art flinched as two streets over a car alarm went off. "That's low, Artemis–"

"Don't call me that–"

"It's your name and I'll call you what I want. You might have written the code but I did the hard part. I was the one who designed the hardware–"

"–for a discovery about quantum entanglement in ichor that we both made. The two of us. Lena and Art, rising stars in Chortek R&D. Hardware and software. And when you found out that you could treat a piece of ichor so it splits apart and responds identically to stimuli, who was it that realized the implications? Who told you that this was the most secure method of information transmission in existence? Undetectable, non interceptable? You might have done your alchemy on the ichor, but you thought you made a toy. It was my idea to turn the lead into gold."

The fight was an old one, but no less painful for it. Art found himself scowling at the wall. He had trusted Lena with everything. All his notes. All the code he had written for the burgeoning Ansible app, the application that every bank and spy network in the world used for secure transmissions. A year of his life, and all he had to show for it was an empty resume and a patent which didn't even mention his name. That, and the certainty that the only thing you could trust was your own work and your own secrecy.

" Four minutes. What do you want, Artie?"

Victory.

"My Ansible hardware has been burning me ever since last night. It's the only thing I own with ichor in it, and you said there was an emergency going on. I want answers. What's happening at Chortek and why is my invention going haywire?"

There was a sigh, and a shuffle from the other side of the line. A door closed, and Lena's voice dropped to a whisper.

"I can't help you on the second one. That's weird as hell and not something I know anything about. My Ansible isn't burning me, or really doing anything out of the ordinary. As for the first...I need you to swear, right now, that this doesn't go to the press. Not now, not ever. I could get fired if it comes out that I told you. Or worse. When you have a monopoly on the miracle substance, you have the power to make embarrassing employees disappear."

Art bit his lip. "I swear."

"Something's gone wrong with the ichor. It started happening right after the earthquake–usually ichor looks like oil, only a hell of a lot more useful. But we're getting bizarre reports from the wells. The ichor isn't flowing right. It's bubbling up and forming shapes without any real input. Usually that kind of thing we can get with some effort in the lab, but this is spontaneous. And the things it's forming..." Lena hesitated. "They look alive. I only saw one picture, but it looked like an arthropod. Almost like a trilobite."

"The ichor's fucked up? That's uh. Shit, Lena, the whole city and half the West Coast runs on this stuff. Is it permanent?"

"No clue. I expect five meetings a day until someone in R&D figures out what's going on. If I get enough coffee in me, it might be me. Should be a nice distraction from the other ongoing crisis."

"Another one?"

Lena snorted. "It never rains but it pours. Yeah, the head of R&D's been apoplectic since last night. Apparently someone stole a vital file and left a junk copy in its place. I'm not on the project–it's hush-hush even by Chortek standards. But he's been trying to figure out who could have possibly taken the information, and he's treating it like the future of the entire company."

"Weird," Art said faintly. "Good luck. I gotta go."

"Gotta go? You harangue me and–"

Art ended the call and took a deep breath in through his nose. His heart was pounding, but despite the Idyll heat his blood was running cold.

They know.

|-DELILAH-|

By the time they finished with the woman, it was dark enough that Delilah felt uncomfortable continuing to walk. "It's time to move," they instructed Annabeth.

She walked at a brisk pace to keep up with Delilah.

When they reached the hatch, a plane was moving overhead. Delilah held their hand, ensuring Annabeth knew to stop and turn around. "Never, under any circumstances, go in here if there's someone around. Whether they're miles above or feet away. This is non-negotiable."

"And now that you're showing me where it's at, what's to say that I wouldn't find out whoever wants you and turn you in for some prize? I'm sure there's a bounty on your head," she countered.

Delilah paused. That was true, but Delilah hadn't thought a girl her age would even consider that. Perhaps she proved to be more of a nuisance as each minute passed. Or maybe she was simply more competent than he gave her credit for.

"Spare me a detail about you," Delilah asked.

"What is it that you need to know?"

"You're a small girl, hardly in her teens, yet you speak as though highly educated schools have taught you. Why are you here?" Amidst the rocks and the absent breeze that left the night nearly as hot as the day, they were mere specks against the landscape. Her eyes shone brightly, like two little amber fireflies glinting. Delilah's glowing shoulder brace was too bright.

Before she could answer, Delilah hit the latch behind a rock and motioned for her to enter. It was a squeeze for Delilah, but she fit perfectly down the hatch.

When they entered and closed the door behind her, and the torch of the room lit up, she turned away from him and began to look over everything.

Her voice was quiet.

"We met once," she said. "I'd thought you might have remembered. You were one of the ones taken for testing–genetic mutations, that's all you were good for. I got my first job right out of high school-"

"You're not that old–"

"I got my first job right out of high school. I spent years in school, learning from my parents, and then got an internship. About two and a half years ago, when I was 15, I got the amazing job of working at my Dad's company. I was in the section handling genetic coding, essentially doing a lot of work that someone else had already done and pretending to be happy with it. My family was overjoyed. I spent roughly 60 hours a week at the internship and another 12 hours weekly in college classes. I was supposed to be a great talent."

Delilah stopped trying to understand and just listened. As expected, her answer was slow, and she spoke with clarity akin to a writer's. She had a way with words, much more than any dull human in the outskirts appeared to.

"At that point, they were looking for a murderer. I thought to myself that if I found out who the murderer was, the person who was hunting mutant children and killing them before they could be sent for testing, I would be regaled as a hero. I still would be."

She finally sat down in the small kitchen area. She shrunk into herself for a moment as though the mere act of sitting changed her from a headstrong teen to a child scared of the dark. After a long breath and Delilah's watchful glance, Annabeth finally turned towards them and smiled. Then they went back to staring at the cabinets and speaking with that calm voice.

"I'm here, in the long and short of it, because I was trying to track you down with my best friend. We ran off from work one day, and he was much more zealous than I. His name was West," she said. As she spoke, she rearranged the few spices from the cabinet. "West was shot down once we left the train. They weren't even shooting at him, just a damned shoot-out as we entered the slums out here. West was dying. The rust infected the wound."

Slowly, the scene faded into existence. Delilah remembered that day. Fourteen were critically injured due to the non-government-registered guns backfiring and spray-shooting the bullets. That day, as they were delivered to the dump, Delilah had to determine who would live and who would die. It was just any other day, aside from the numerous deaths.

Delilah saved two people. Everyone else was foaming rust, and their eyes clouded over, orange like the harvest moon.

West had to be the man in a blue suit with a shit-eating grin and four entry holes. A little girl brought him in. She had blonde hair and brown eyes. Blood covered her, yet she insisted that it was just him to be treated.

"You wanted him to live that day," Delilah said.

"Instead, you let him die. I was pissed. I called them up that day and stated that I had a lead, that I knew where you were–but they didn't give two shits. I waited days, and they never came. My own family didn't message me once."

It was quiet for far too long. In that minute, a million possibilities existed, hovering over them both. She was attempting to be avenged, to be righted, to be heard, to be understood, to be...

"You still wish I'd saved him."

She shrugged, then faced Delilah again with a half-smile that curled up her face like the slight twists in her hair. "I can't change the past. But I can do something about the future."

"Will you turn me in now?" Delilah asked. There was no fear, no calm, no nothing in their voice. I cannot be scared of what's to come. That was wrong. Perhaps it was resignation to an end or beginning, they told themselves.

"I will," she said. "When the time comes."

"When will that be?"

Annabeth shrugged. "Once I've paid my debt for the shit man I fell in love with out here," she said. Then she stood up and opened the fridge. There wasn't much beyond a good set of canned food that Delilah had collected over the last few months. Food was the best commodity that anyone traded their lives for. She pulled out the turkey in a can, and some spaghetti-o's from who knows when.

"It's my job to make dinner, right?"

Delilah nodded. They removed a small screwdriver, unscrewed their mask's bottom half, and pulled the tubing from their throat. It was a disgusting sight, but if Annabeth cared, she didn't let it show. She carefully heated the old food over the flickering blue flames of Delilah's gas stove. The battered pot clattered softly as she stirred the contents, filling the kitchen with the rich scent of tomato and turkey. Ignoring the absence of oven mitts, she deftly lifted the scalding pot and set it on the wooden countertop. As she winced from the brief pain of the searing heat, Delilah knew that the burn would surely leave a lasting mark.

"Where do you keep the forks?"

***

The first night was smooth–in the morning, Annabeth awoke just after Delilah, and she was treated to a small breakfast of eggs with minimal rust and salt for seasoning. One was over-easy with runny yolk, and the other, Delilah's, was fried to a crisp. Somehow, Delilah felt safer with Annabeth, even if they knew the helper would one day willingly betray them. She was young and had yet to make her mind up–meanwhile, Delilah was ages older and had welcomed the thought of potential death after such a long time.

They spent the next few days, perhaps even a week, if Delilah was honest, working the same as they had that first day. The heaviest load went to Delilah–the main one working the forge and priming their materials. Then came Annabeth's portion, which quickly became that of a conversationalist. She'd sit while Delilah treated people, holding their hands or heads in her lap, stroking their faces, telling them it was all fine, while Delilah ensured they wouldn't die or that their death would be as painless as possible. Her tears flowed for every death, but she didn't say a word on whether someone lived or died; she merely spoke to them for their humanity even as they thrashed and screamed until they were nothing more than a mouthpiece for their inner turmoil.

Silence was the backdrop to most of their days–with Delilah silently showing Annabeth what to do and her following. She didn't take to the forge the way Delilah assumed she would, but she did figure out how to turn on and off the machines there correctly. Most of the time, Delilah just let her handle the people.

The money was more fruitful for once, and people paid more than just their lost limbs or jewelry. It was almost peaceful for a time.

Peace, of course, dealt its fair share of misery. As the sun rolled across the city, so did the shade of the evening, the airplanes overhead blaring closer and closer to Delilah's hideout. Suddenly, staying out later and going home in the dead of night had become the norm.

One night, as Delilah cleaned up their bag of parts and Annabeth was wringing out a cloth full of blood over a fire, she turned to him. The sun was just behind her, framing each little strand of hair that seemed to spill out, the frizz and tangles, and she was a bright light that Delilah hadn't seen in years. Despite the size difference, they stood eye to eye. She placed a hand on her hip.

"What is it?" Delilah asked.

"You've never told me about yourself," she said. It was spoken as though it were a demand.

Delilah chuckled. "I'm an open book," they said. "If you wish to know, you can ask. There's much to gain in learning about your enemy."

The fire crackled. In the distance, a few little yellow lights appeared. The first fireflies of summer–no, second, as Delilah had seen hers glisten once prior—the second fireflies. Delilah watched as the fireflies trailed across in fuzzy glimpses, lighting up just as quickly as they stood in darkness, little wings flapping hard.

"What's your actual name?"

It would be easy to answer with a lie. Delilah kept the lie stored on the tip of their tongue, ready with their disguise to hide the bitter truth of reality itself. But lying to an apprentice, a helper, someone whom Delilah found themselves enjoying the company of felt wrong. Just as bad as it felt to lay a burden of truth upon a child who was already dealing with their trauma and insecurities.

"Can I tell you a story instead?"

She muttered a 'mm' and stoked the fire with a poker. Soon, it would die out and leave them enshrouded in the darkness of a night without the moon.

"Little John grew up dirt poor, living in coffin bedrooms and surviving off scraps that his mother managed to sneak from her job as a waitress. Delilah, his mother, was a beautiful woman with the world in her eyes and a voice everyone wanted to hear more of. She'd sing to her customers, and they'd give her tips, hooting and hollering as she came through the doors with their food carefully balanced on her wrists, and often would joke that they'd steal her away as long as she could get rid of the monster she kept in the closet.

"But as much as her life would have improved had she left John, she wanted to keep him. She loved that boy with everything inside her. He was, like all mutant children back then, a wreck. Half his body was scarred from the rust, and the other half was purple. Splotches of skin were coated with rust so badly that it appeared he could have been made from metal. Body parts grew faster than normal. He was six by the time he reached five and a half feet tall. At that point, it was impossible to hide him. He was too curious for his good."

Rustic Child Protective Services arrived one day and found a frightened child hidden in the dark confines of a closet. He punched and kicked, but even though he had enough strength to fight, his body was nothing compared to that of grown adult men tackling him to the ground. His mother screamed and sobbed. Delilah was a gentle soul; even as young as John was, he knew she was broken because of it. He stopped resisting and told his mother it would be fine.

He willingly entered their vehicles. Their windshields were darkened black and were impossible to see through. It was the worst mistake of his life leaving her there.

Delilah spat into the dirt. Then they started walking away from the fire, letting the last sparks fizzle. Annabeth followed with her steps fast behind Delilah's as though she didn't want to miss the story. Delilah kept walking forward.

Sometimes, he could still hear her singing to him at night. Most nights, though, he lay awake in the most comfortable bed he'd ever been in and waited for the day he could see her again. They put him in school, and he barely managed to skirt through with basic knowledge.

They spoke of the hatred of the tests they were subjected to as they aged. Of the torture of their injections, the poisons they littered his body with, of the metal that was infused into their legs and bones and made them physically stronger and more capable than most. Delilah spoke of all the dead mutant children there. Any friendships that died as they were incapable of surviving the same tests that Delilah quickly passed. Of the shy boy who refused to speak to anyone and hated the humans who stole their lives just as soon as they found more to replace them. Mutant children would come in by the twenties and stay with one or two. All of them had no families and no sense of camaraderie but instead stayed alive out of spite and whatever evil nature surrounded their cursed bodies.

"I still remember the day I saw her," Delilah said. They paused momentarily to gather their thoughts or allow Annabeth to speak. Annabeth remained quiet. "I turned seventeen and was subjected to psychosomatic treatment. They decided to try and pull my memories out of me, one by one, to steal them away for whatever cruel desires they had. A therapist, that's what they were called, would have me–John, that is, enter every goddamn week and would beg that he open up regarding his past, his mother, and if he had any other siblings. Whores like her, he was assured, had multiple children. They always did."

When they reached home, Delilah stopped and sat down with their back against a rock and stared into the clouded sky above. When they parted ever so slightly, a single star dotted the sky. Delilah's eyes were burning from the rust that dripped down their face. Their scars did not bleed. Their eyes did not water. Their blood was rust.

Delilah existed as a creation of man and a pollution of Earth.

"I never budged," Delilah said. "I refused to tell them anything. So they decided to torture me until I caved."

"That's horrid," Annabeth said. She sat down across from him with her legs underneath her and crossed. "Is that why you murder them?"

Delilah shook their head.

For a moment, both of them waited there. She with her history, Delilah with the bitter truth of theirs. Annabeth didn't look shocked at the story. If anything, she seemed interested. Perhaps it was useless to give out the information.

But it had been so long since Delilah had spoken to another person. An unlikely friendship, if it could be called that, or a truce forged from equal maltreatment. Whatever it could be called, it was refreshing. Delilah spoke with a confidence that they hadn't had in years.

"No. That came later. First, I had to get out."

The memories flew past Delilah's eyes like they were happening again. "Most everyone came from Idyll, so devising a plan to get there wasn't hard. I slashed the tires of most vehicles, shot two guards, and escaped. It wasn't anything smart or pretty, and there was no dramatic escape story, as I'm sure they made it into. I could have taken someone with me, maybe," Delilah said. It was too hard for Delilah to remember that they were supposed to be telling a story.

"Why didn't you?"

"They were pathetic. I searched for answers, but they would want to escape just to go back to living whatever pathetic life they had before. I killed anyone who wouldn't give them to me. That made me cold and hateful, someone that I couldn't recognize. I make no apologies because the only people who could accept them passed long ago. There is no point in saying sorry when those who need it are dead.

"Then, one damned day in winter, I stumbled upon the old farmer. As they called him at the time, Randy Senior sat in a rocking chair and creaked. I held up my blowtorch finger, tiny as it were, and threatened to kill him if he couldn't tell me who Delilah was. Randy knew who Delilah was. I'd later find out that many people in the town did, but Randy was the first person who opened up to me."

Delilah could still hear his old, cracked voice as the man spoke. He yelled behind him for Randy Junior to get another bowl of chili stew. It was the best damn stew that Delilah had ever eaten.

"He fed me and then told me that Delilah had died the night I was taken. Her house burned to a crisp, and they got to her body too late. Randy asked me what my plan was. He wanted to know who I was."

Delilah couldn't talk anymore. Their words were flat in their mouth and died on their tongue. Even the mouthpiece that allowed them to speak just sighed loudly. The memory was too fresh.

In the creaky, old house, an elderly man sat in his worn armchair, surrounded by faded wallpaper and cracked floorboards. The old man broke wind with enough force to rattle the window panes. It echoed through the dilapidated rooms and seemed to coat the whole area with a foul smell. Delilah remembered coughing so hard that they couldn't breathe. They were disgusting; humans were. Bastards who didn't realize the air they took up.

"Lil Johnny, you're going to make something of this world one day," Randy said. "Yer Momma was a fighter. She was also the best damn waitress this side of Idyll, and I guess that ain't saying a lot, but at the time, this portion of Idyll used to get by with our old western theme." He coughed so hard Delilah was sure he'd die right there before he finished.

"You don't have to tell me more," Delilah said. "I know enough about her. I just needed to know if she was alive. She's not, so I have to go."

"Sit right there. You're going to be a man soon, John. You're going to have to make your own decisions in life. You have to decide what it means to be a man."

Annabeth touched his shoulder to bring him out of the memory and back to the living plane. "Let's go in," she said. "It's getting too late, and I think I can hear a plane coming from behind the mountain."

Time seemed to have a way of escaping.

"I was going to kill every single one of them," Delilah said. "But then Randy asked if I wanted to see her grave. I went to pay respects. Instead, we found a mutant child dying out there. They were so full of rust that nothing could save them. Randy told me not to look as he took out a gun and shot the little girl."

They entered through the hatch into the small bunker.

"I never thought death would be a mercy before. He showed me how to be a man, even though he could hardly walk. I had to carry him back home. He died two weeks later."

It was quiet. The hum of cicadas outside started up. When Delilah closed their eyes, they could still see the fireflies lighting up.

"I took on my mother's name to understand how she was a light in this world while I am...a stain upon creation. I thought that I could never help anyone, and I never wanted to help anyone. The poor, pathetic lot born cursed to the rust changed me somehow. I couldn't watch as they were taken by the government or left to rot. I had to take action. So that's why I murder them. Good enough?"

"That's probably the most I've ever heard you talk," she said. Then she went to the kitchen and started on dinner.

That may have been why they chose when to be merciful or a cruel mistress of life, but just as Delilah wanted every human to scorch themselves off existence, they knew that they, too, were man.

|-MARIGOLD ESTES-|

The summer she turned sixteen, Nina broke her arm. Fell down the stairs, she told everyone, wasn't looking where she was going. They stitched her up at the hospital, gave her a cast that all of her friends could sign, and no one thought about it again because accidents like that happen to clumsy teenage girls.

Until three months later, when Nina broke her arm falling down the stairs. Again.

"Perhaps," her father suggested one morning over breakfast, "It's better if you stay inside for a while. Until you learn to stop hurting yourself. We wouldn't want the town to talk, would we?"

"Of course," Nina promised. "I won't leave this spot."

"I knew you'd understand."

So, as he packed his briefcase for a busy day at the lab, Nina remained seated at the kitchen table, staring straight ahead at where the navy paint on their kitchen walls had started to chip away to reveal a bland beige underneath. As he gathered his shoes and coat, Nina watched the sink as a droplet of water fell from the tap in perfect rhythm. As he hurried out without so much as a secondary glance in her direction, Nina listened for the creak of the door hinges that her father had never fixed. His car roared in the driveway, then pulled away at a speed lethal to any pedestrian foolish enough to get in the way.

Alone at last, Nina immediately left her precious spot at the table, pulled her shoes on, and was out the door faster than the hinges could creak.

"I'm not here and you never saw me." She pushed past Archie into his hallway, her eyes scanning the room to make sure no one was listening. All that stood between them was a coat rack that could neither talk nor hear her, and the absence of coats on its branches suggested that nobody but her friend was home. She swivelled back to face him, his eyes were fixated on her bandaged hand and she heard herself repeat the lie she'd agreed to tell. "I fell down the stairs again."

They sat in the third living room, which Archie called quaint and homely but could've swallowed Nina's home and still had room for dessert. She kicked her shoes off and tucked her feet up underneath her on the settee, just because she knew it irritated him. He winced; one of the perfectly formed curls on his forehead shook, but if he was going to tell her to move her feet he didn't. He just sat and waited for her to speak.

"My dad doesn't want me to leave the house," she explained, omitting the part where he had told her that she wasn't allowed to leave under any circumstances, even if that meant perishing in a fiery blaze. "He thinks I'm a liability."

Archie glanced down at her hand, still wrapped in a thick set of bandages. "Have you considered he might be right?"

"Never." She tugged at the sleeve of her sweater, pulling it down over the bandages so they were no longer visible. Perhaps if he wasn't looking, he'd forget to bring it up again. She clenched her fist over the cuff of her sleeve, her mind searching for a new conversation topic before settling on "I heard the Vale's moved away."

"Yeah, dad said." Archie gazed over at the window which overlooked the former Vale property. "Saw the moving truck pull up outside last week, then the next day dad said they'd moved to Ohio. Something about a job offer they couldn't turn down. I wasn't really listening, you know how much he talks."

The Vale family had lived across the street from Archie's family for ten years. They played golf together on weekends and spent the rest of their time looking down on people too poor to afford the hobby. The only thing Steven Vale loved more than his personalised set of golf clubs was sunshine, thus his sudden departure from Arizona's tropical climate had been somewhat puzzling to those left to speculate about it. It was reminiscent of when the Camaro family had moved to California without telling anyone. Something about a sick aunt. It seemed that neither family could get out of Idle quick enough, much to Archie's confusion.

Perhaps it was just coincidence that a military family had moved in the day after. Nina wished she was naive enough to believe that.

Archie was now by the window, staring at what used to be the Vale's home. One of the new kids was playing on the front lawn, her blonde curls illuminated by the sunlight as her bare feet danced across the grass. On the porch, her mother sat nursing the baby, calling out something inaudible through the window pane to her daughter. The child threw her head back and cackled in childish delight, then resumed her carefully choreographed dance. Nina stood at Archie's right shoulder, staring at the little girl. They hadn't got to her, yet.

"They seem nice," Archie said. "Mom took a plate of cookies over yesterday and met the whole family. They've got four kids, the eldest is a year older than us. He just got a job over at the dig site. Dad set it up for him, said it was the least he could do for the Colonel's son, whatever that means."

The colour drained from Nina's cheeks, turning them from rosy pink to a ghostly white. "At the dig site?" she repeated.

Archie shrugged. "Yeah. Dad wants me to start getting involved in the family business, but I dunno. I'm not that interested, you know?"

The word caught in Nina's throat as she attempted a "yeah" in response.

She focused on the window instead. The little girl wasn't dancing anymore, instead she stood at the foot of the garden, dangling on her tiptoes as she peered over the gate at the approaching vehicle. It stopped short in Archie's driveway and Nina watched in silent horror as the door swung open, revealing her father and his briefcase. He glanced upward at the very window she stood at, prompting her to dive to the side out of view. She pressed her back against the wall as if she might somehow morph and become one with the wallpaper. Archie raised an eyebrow.

"I'm not meant to be here, remember," she hissed. "Whatever you do, say I'm not here."

The doorbell chimed below them. Nina stayed rooted to the spot, as if someone had poured glue over her socks. Archie moved as if intending to answer the door, but stopped when he heard the door swing open, accompanied by the booming voice of his own father who had definitely not been there five minutes prior. He looked to Nina, who raised a bandaged finger to her lips, then slowly backed up against the wall to stand beside her.

Footsteps were coming up the stairs, the sound of steel-toed work boots clomping up each step, then the dainty tap of polished loafers following behind. A clunk, presumably the briefcase smacking against the top of the bannister, then muffled voices that neither Nina nor Archie could distinguish a word of. Finally, a twist of the door handle and in the doorway of a home that did not belong to her, stood Nina's father who she had promised not to leave home.

"Nina," his tone was flat. "You've disobeyed me. I told you to stay inside the house."

Nina said nothing. She could not bring herself to meet her father's eyes. Doing so meant facing up to her punishment, and she was running out of arms for him to break.

"It was my fault," Archie offered. "I told her to come here."

"It was not."

This time it was Archie's father who spoke. Alton Carrington crossed the room and took a seat on the settee, his hands folded neatly in his lap. He bore a strong resemblance to his only son, they shared the same deathly pale complexion and hair yellowed by the sun. His face was distinguished by blue eyes you might believe were kind, and a curl of his thin upper lip that told otherwise. Dressed in a freshly pressed linen suit, he looked the part of the oil magnate he'd become.

Sat opposite, Nina's father smoothed the lapel on his lab coat. Above the breast pocket, an identity card proudly dubbed him Linus Becker, Lead Scientist. He bore less resemblance to his child, his dark hair standing out against her much fairer shade though the bone structure in their faces gave away an unmistakable relation. From his briefcase, he withdrew a stack of papers that were handed to Alton Carrington, who rifled through them with a cautious eye.

"Sit," Alton commanded, "Both of you."

Like a well-trained puppy, Archie heeled to the side of his master. If expecting a treat for his display of obedience, he received a disapproving glare instead. Nina, not pure enough pedigree to sit so politely, remained stoically by the window. Alton paid her no attention.

"Thank you for agreeing to meet with me today, Alton." Linus spoke as though Nina were merely an unsightly piece of decor. "I apologise for my daughter's behaviour. She has taken more time than expected to adjust to my...experiment."

"Perhaps her being here is an unexpected gift," Alton responded. "After all, I have been asking when I will get to see this work of yours. There is no time like the present, is there not?"

Linus was unconvinced. "As I said in our last meeting, my work is fragile, it is not ready for public consumption yet."

The papers were still in Alton's hands. He tossed them aside like a child who no longer wishes to play with their toy. They fluttered to the ground, the diagrams and carefully constructed reports pooling around the feet of the Carrington men. Archie dared to sneak a peek at one paper, but all he could make out was the word Nina. Nina, who remained silent, as though staying still long enough would make the room forget her existence.

Alton loosened his tie. "I do not wish to read your reports Linus." He waved his hand dismissively to articulate his point. "You can write as many words as you like, but they mean nothing to me if you cannot show me proof of this great invention. I am not funding your research so you can type on a keyboard. Any simpleton could do that, even my son."

If Archie acknowledged the insult, he did not react. Instead, on his father's instruction, he left the room, returning a moment later with a bottle of whisky and two glasses. He poured a large glass for his father, then offered a second, smaller glass to Linus, who took through fear of repercussions only. Alton drank it in one, then beckoned to his son to the top the glass up, then drank that one also.

"Linus," he said, between gulps of his third glass, "We are old friends. You needn't look so scared of me. All I want is to have a drink with an old pal, then perhaps you can show me this magnificent invention."

Linus sipped at the whisky, ignoring how it burned against his tongue. "I understand, Alton, but you must understand-"

"I must understand nothing." The glass in his hand was empty again. Archie rushed to refill it. "I am the one in charge here, not you. If you cannot show me something tangible today, then I have no choice but to withdraw your funding. A lead scientist who does not do any science is of no use to me. Perhaps I'll move you to a job better suited to your skill set."

Linus almost spilled a drop of whisky. "No, no," his words were rushed. "There will be no need for that. I can show you my work today."

-

The lab was underground. Nina ducked a low-hanging stalactite as she followed Alton and Archie down the corridor. Her father had his hand firmly round her wrist. If she moved in a direction she did not have permission to go in, his nails dug into the fraying bandages on her arm. She had no choice but to comply.

Linus swiped a card against the scanner by the door. It beeped once to signal access had been granted. Twice meant denied. Something Nina knew well from her previous escape attempts.

Inside, everything was as white as Alton's skin tone. The tiled ceiling became tiled walls that became tiled flooring; all in perfect white squares, scented with lemon cleanser and scrubbed meticulously to maintain their shine. Lab coats passed by in a blur of sanitation-approved white, carrying important equipment or files, or merely striding with purpose to look as if they had somewhere to be. At the centre of the room sat a table, bolted into the ground and accessorised with rope ties for holding something - or someone - down. Nearby, a tray filled with instruments rattled. Nina didn't need to look to know.

"What is this place?" Archie was first to speak. His eyes were puzzled, as if he hadn't decided whether to be amazed or horrified by what he saw. Instead, he turned to his father who was busy reading the labels on a set of nearby beakers. "Dad, you said we were mining oil down here, why are we in a lab?"

"We are mining oil, son." Alton held a test tube up to his nostrils, then decided it wasn't preferable and placed it back in the rack. "But oil can have multiple purposes, you see."

Linus had launched into a tour that nobody was listening to, giving out the wrong names of his laboratory minions. Alton's jaw clenched as he fought a yawn, which went unnoticed by Linus who hadn't stopped to draw breath since entering. He didn't see Archie move toward Nina as they gathered by the door, just out of earshot.

"What is this place?" Archie repeated, this time in a hushed whisper. He wrapped his arms around himself and squeezed tightly. "It's so cold in here."

"This is the lab." Nina didn't make an effort to whisper, she doubted her voice would grow any louder even if she tried. She could hear the cracking of bone, the feel of rope blistering her skin, her father's commanding voice to do as he said. She turned to Archie, barely audible as she whispered, "And I think it's too late."

"Nina, come here."

Each step felt heavier as she crept across the lab toward her father. He stood with Alton in front of the large rectangular mirror, she joined them unwillingly. His hands crept over her shoulders, his fingers resting on the stitches that held the arms to the rest of her. Her eyes faced forward at the reflection she barely recognised.

"This," Linus shook her shoulders, "is my greatest invention. You see, Alton, I think as humans, we can always be better. There are things we can do that you wouldn't even believe. I've seen it in Idle, but those things in Idle are nothing and nobody. We deserve everything that they've got, and I have mastered how to get it."

Alton seemed doubtfully amused. "And how, my dear friend, is that?"

Linus turned to his daughter. "Nina, take off that hideous sweater."

She squirmed free of his grasp. "No. I'm cold." Archie was watching her from across the room, his blue eyes widening in confusion. He moved an inch closer, close enough that he would be able to see her and everything she'd become. She refused to let it happen. "I don't want to take it off," she said sullenly.

"I don't care if you're cold. I don't care if you catch pneumonia and die. Take the sweater off."

With her trembling free hand, Nina pulled the sweater away from her body, depositing it at her feet. She turned back to the mirror. Her left arm, still bandaged around her wrist, was stained purple and blue as if someone had painted a mural of bruises up her arm. They swirled and swelled, darkening in colour as they reached where the arm met shoulder. Across the joint of her shoulder, thick stitches formed a halo. With a pair of scissors, Linus cut the bandages from her hand, exposing the stitches that ran up and down each finger. Like a plastic doll, her arm had been removed and then another sewed back onto her body. Across her right shoulder, the same stitch marks were visible.

"What happened to you, Nina?" Linus asked the question he already held the answer to.

She could see Archie watching her. "I fell down the stairs," she repeated monotonously. "Just like you said."

"Do not tell lies." Anger flashed across his pupils. "Tell the truth about what happened to you."

"I fell down the stairs."

Alton reached for her arm. Nina winced at his touch, but her father would not allow her to pull away. She stood like cattle for sale, as the two men circled her, admiring the handiwork that had stitched up her arm. Whatever had caused this, it had nothing to do with a haphazard staircase and everybody in that room knew it.

"Fascinating," Alton was too close, she could smell the whisky on his breath. "You reattached her arm."

Linus, unable to hide his offence, scoffed at the overlooking of his intelligence. "I did not reattach her arm, Alton. This is not my daughter's arm. That is in the garbage, where it belongs. No, I made this arm for her. Once it has healed, she will have strength like no other. She could lift your refrigerator over her head as if it weighed the same as a feather."

Alton refused to give him the satisfaction of congratulation. "What about my car?"

"She could crush it between her individually crafted fingers."

Nina stared down at her new hand, which had spent the past week covered in bandages to sell the whole falling down the stairs bit. Linus seized hold of it, proudly displaying it in the mirror view for all to see. As far as he was concerned, he was the greatest scientific mind the world would ever see. So what if Nina had to sacrifice a few limbs to the cause - one day she would come to respect him for the scientist he was.

"It is impressive," Alton mused. "Can you do anything other than arms? I don't see what you've done other than make her strong, and we don't have a fridge here to test that hypothesis."

Linus huffed. "As I detailed in my papers that you thought yourself too important to read, my team and I have developed the technology for multiple body parts. Arms were easy, fingers only a tad trickier because of the detail needed. Those pesky pinkies gave us quite a challenge, but not challenge enough for talent like mine. I will give her the fastest legs, the healthiest organs..." his hand wrapped around Nina's jaw. "She is not the prettiest of girls, I admit. But with my work I will make her so beautiful men would go to war for her."

"No!"

Archie stormed across the room, shoving past his father to stand by Nina's side in attempted heroic solidarity. "Dad," he protested, eyes wide, "You can't possibly endorse this! He cut off her arm."

"Be quiet, Archibald. This does not concern you."

Archie would not be silenced. "It does concern me dad, you're cutting open my friend! There's nothing wrong with her, she's beautiful already!" He froze, blushed tomato red, then continued hurriedly, "You can't just carve her a new face because you call yourself a scientist. Doesn't Nina get a say in this?"

"Yes," Linus spoke over his daughter. "Nina's say is that she is part of the greatest scientific invention to ever grace this land. I am changing the face of this world, and I do not take instruction from a child."

"You're changing the face of something, alright," Archie muttered. He looked over at Nina, whose grey eyes were frowning at him. They couldn't fight this, she was telling him. Her father would cut her to pieces and build her like new and there was nothing either of them could do to stop him. All he could do was memorise her face before they changed it forever. At least that way he could remember what his Nina looked like.

"It doesn't stop with my Nina," Linus spoke with arrogance now. "Once I've perfected this technology, we can create a new generation of Idle residents, better than they've ever been before. I can make Archie the greatest in the land. I just need you to say yes, Alton."

Alton folded his arms over his chest. He took a step in front of his son. "Linus," a single worry line sprouted across his forehead, "This is very big talk, but I have yet to see it in practice. I will not offer you my son as a guinea pig. Use the girl, she's got far more expendable."

"No," Nina heard her voice come back to her. "No. I don't want to be your experiment. I'm not letting you perform another of your stupid experiments on me."

Perhaps she had lost both arms already, but her right had already healed and the swelling on her left would go down eventually. Maybe super strength would turn out to be an asset, and she wouldn't be branded a supernatural monster for the rest of her life. She could run away with Archie, get out of Idle, get out of Arizona just like the Vale's and the Camaro's, except neither of those families had ever left town and they never would. She knew, try as she might to ignore it, she was not her father's first experiment - she was just the first to be successful.

Linus was still bragging about the future of his work. She thought of the little girl who danced barefoot on her lawn. Her father was in the military, he was part of this, he'd sell her out as easily as her own father had sold her. If she left, it would be inevitable. Going would mean signing a death warrant for every child in Idle.

Staying meant signing a death warrant for herself.

"I'm ready to attempt a face surgery," Linus announced. He turned to Alton, gesturing behind him at Nina. "Pick any feature you like, I'll chop it off her face right now, give you a free demonstration, what do you say?

Alton studied her. "The nose."

"Excellent choice!" Linus was gathering equipment, not looking at Nina. He ordered someone named Margaret to fetch him a scalpel. She could run. She could-

Two lab coats had her by the shoulders. She knew this part well. Last time, she lost an arm. Apparently today it was her nose.

"We'll tell everyone she had a softball accident," Linus explained. "Broke her nose, poor thing, had to get corrective surgery." A crowd had gathered round the operating table as Nina was hauled onto it. Rope pulled against her skin, but the feeling was familiar now. It didn't burn this time.

"I don't play softball," she protested.

"That's why we're telling people it was an accident."

Someone was talking. Archie, maybe. She couldn't see him anymore, but he knew what she was now. A rag of chloroform passed her lips. The last thing she saw was her reflection in the polished ceiling tile, her grey eyes craning to get one last look at her nose. Then, nothing.

Outside the laboratory, Marigold's grey eyes stared back at her in the reflection of the retina scanner. In her hand, Cornelius' eye was still moist. She watched the perfect point of the nose her father had crafted for her twitch in the reflection. Nina had sworn that she would never be back here.

Technically, she wasn't Nina anymore.

|-JORDAN BAXTER-|

Arthur stares at her expectantly from his seat on his chrome coffee table. Right, she's supposed to tell him everything she remembers. Everything she knows. But how can she possibly tell him everything when she herself knows so little? Jordan adjusts her seat on his surprisingly comfortable settee and opens her mouth. Nothing comes out. She closes it, feeling the heat of Arthur's glare.

"Your animosity is only making this more difficult," Jordan says, voice rigid.

Arthur throws his hands up in the air and groans. "Christ, lady, just tell the fucking truth! It's not that hard."

But it is hard, harder than he'll ever know. The scrap of paper tucked into her breast burns like a hot poker. Jordan dare not reach for it within sight of the man who holds her journal. She doesn't need to, just as devout Christians do not find themselves having to reread The Lord's Prayer every night.

The Traveler's Creed:

One must not form permanent attachments

One must be prepared to leave at any time

One must never reveal the truth of one's nature

One must always remain adaptable, discreet, and above all else, alone

It's written in her own hand, hurriedly scribbled and barely legible. Jordan can only imagine what events might have possessed her to write such a thing. She is certain in the knowledge that her adherence to The Creed is the only thing keeping her alive.

But Arthur deserves answers. She shouldn't withhold what little information she has, simply because she's frightened. Jordan sits up primly and folds her hands in her lap. No matter what, she will not let this boy see her struggle. She must remain solid and strong.

"I'm..." Bile creeps into the back of her throat, cutting off her speech. She can't say it, bad things happen when she says the words.

"Hey." Arthur waves a hand in front of her face, and Jordan swallows down her dread. It's sweet how quickly his face morphs from one of annoyance to one of concern. His eyes widen as he inspects her face. "You okay, Jordy?" he asks, and Jordan almost bursts into tears at the use of her old nickname.

Arthur leans forward and sets his fingers against her pulse point. "You look kinda pale." He reaches into his back pocket, pulling out a small rectangular device and hovering it over her face. He brings the device closer to his face and squints at it. "I swear, they make the text too small on purpose so we'll buy the upgraded scanners." Arthur chuckles, glancing upwards to see if she laughs at his joke. She doesn't.

Jordan knows her knuckles must be turning white as she wrings her hands against each other. Arthur returns, when did he leave? with a small glass of water and a white pill. Before she can ask what exactly the pill is for, Arthur sets the glass down and grabs her hands, pulling them apart with no small amount of effort. Jordan's fingers feel tingly, and the glass almost slips out of her left hand when Arthur gives it to her. He holds the pill up for her to inspect.

"It's something to help you sleep." Jordan jerks away so violently that the water sloshes out of the glass. "Woah, hold up," Arthur sets his hands up placatingly, "it's not addictive, and it won't make you sleep for ten hours, it just relaxes you enough so you can get a little rest." He plucks the glass from her hand and heads for the kitchen. "They're good for panic attacks, anxiety attacks, any kind of attack, really." Arthur raises his voice so she can hear him over the sound of the tap.

Jordan traces the outlines of the knives in her skirt until Arthur returns. She's not paralyzed anymore, but dread lingers in the pit of her stomach. She knows that now Arthur has gotten over the worst of his shock and anger, he will be kind enough not to ask her any more questions tonight. He makes that abundantly clear when he brings her a new glass of water and the sleeping pill. She takes it, trusting that Arthur won't poison her, and stands stiffly next to the coffee table as he directs her to.

By the time he comes back with a few blankets, Jordan has remembered how to breathe again. The pill is already taking effect, making her increasingly more drowsy. Otherwise, she might have protested as Arthur takes her by the elbow and guides her to lie down on the makeshift settee bed. He must see the embarrassment in her eyes, because he takes the extra time to tuck her in, adding insult to injury.

"What's the matter?" He taunts as his worry fades. "Not so fun being treated like a child, is it?" Arthur grabs her briefcase from the floor where it had fallen earlier, reflexively placing it on top of her chest.

He walks away, pausing when he reaches a slider set into the wall next to his presumed bedroom door. "Sleep good, Jordy," he says, voice soft. And, as if remembering that he's supposed to be angry with her, he turns around, eyes hard and cold, "Don't you dare run away again." That's the last he says before turning the slider all the way down, leaving the room pitch black. There's the creak of his bedroom door opening, a soft click as it closes behind him, and then silence.

Jordan quietly unwraps the green linen scarf from around her neck and ties it around her wrist and the handle of her briefcase, knotting it tightly with one hand. Only then does she allow herself to succumb to sleep.

*************

Jordan was running, from what she didn't know. She was in a forest, ground covered in gnarled roots and no moon to light her way. She'd lost her shoes at some point, but didn't dare stop to retrieve them. Hounds bayed from somewhere behind her, a signal that meant success for their owners but death for her. She ran faster, heart pounding in her throat.

"We've found her! Quickly, men, before the she-devil escapes!"

Oh, God. Josiah was leading the pack. Dear, sweet Josiah. Josiah, whose warm eyes turned frigid as the words left her lips. "I hail from another time, beloved."

************

Something was wrapped around her arms, constricting her. She didn't like it. She didn't know where she was or who she was, but she wanted out. The room was pitch black and as she threw herself against the walls she bounced like a demented pinball machine. She writhed and screamed until her throat was hoarse and finally, the large metal door screeched open. Two men were waiting for her, dressed all in white. Wonderful, they must be angels, come to save her! She waited in anticipation, but as they advanced, the sight of a needle turned her anticipation to panic.

She kicked out at the orderlies and managed to get one in the nose. But they were bigger than her, stronger than her. They still had both their arms. She tried to tell them that something had eaten hers, but they both just laughed in her face.

"Funny one, ain't she?" the one with the bruised nose asked. "Thinks she's a time traveler or something." Her struggles began anew as the second one brought the needle up to her neck.

"Hush, now, darlin'. Be good and take your medicine." The second one glares at the first. "Don't be reminding 'em of stuff like that. Doc Thatcher says it rattles their cages real bad." He turns his attention back to her. "Don't you worry, doll. We'll have you out and back with your friends in a jiffy."

"Same friends that turned her in?" The first one mutters, rubbing his nose.

************

Jordan thought there was nothing more relaxing than an iced tea in the middle of summer. Until, of course, she met Teddy and realized the actual most relaxing thing in the world was the hum of cicadas and a porch rocking chair. Jordan still couldn't believe her luck. She'd met Theodora Crane in a laundromat when Jordan was still new in town. She'd thought Teddy might be an easy mark to steal from, and she was right. But when she overheard Teddy rush outside, frantically looking for her wallet while her crying son trailed behind her, Jordan just couldn't do it.

She'd walked outside, pretended to find the wallet on the ground, and introduced herself. Teddy had insisted on taking her to dinner as a treat. As long as her son came along. Against her better judgment, Jordan agreed.

It wasn't long into their casual arrangement before Teddy realized that Jordan was homeless. She gasped and insisted that Jordan stay at her place until she got back on her feet. Jordan should have turned away. But Teddy was just so soft and Little Arthur was so sweet. So it wasn't long before she agreed.

Trouble came in the form of Teddy's ex, Arthur's father. He came knocking on Teddy's door one night, calling her all sorts of foul things. So Jordan took his ass outside and taught him a lesson. She took two fingers as a reminder. Even if the guy went to the cops, they'd never find anyone matching her description. After all, she was from a different time.

So there they were, Teddy's cabin in the woods. She thought they needed a break from the noise and buzz of the second industrial revolution. Jordan agreed. She never meant to stay as long as she did. All she wanted was a place to sleep for the night.

But then Little Arthur started calling her "Mama Jordy", and setting her briefcase on her chest when it fell off in the night. Little Arthur kept begging to hear her stories of the ancient worlds, told as if she was actually there. And Teddy... When Teddy proposed, Jordan wanted to speak, wanted nothing more than to warn her. But she couldn't. She'd stayed almost nine months, longer than she'd ever stayed in one place. She felt at home here. She loved Teddy more than life itself. So Jordan allowed herself to want, for the first time in a long time. And she said yes.

She burned her travel log when Teddy and Little Arthur were out of the house. She started leaving her briefcase on the bedside table instead of on her person. And two weeks later, when she kissed Little Arthur goodnight, when she spent a wonderful night of passion with Teddy, she never thought that was the last she'd see of them. When she woke up on a tropical island, briefcase resting loosely in her cupped hand, Jordan wanted to die.

************

"You sleep ok?" Arthur's behavior has dramatically changed since yesterday at the diner. He's still angry, and for that, she can't blame him. But his eyes are still worried as he pushes a plate of scrambled eggs in front of her. He doesn't have a dining table, so they eat at his coffee table, she on the settee and he on the worn armchair. The contrast between his comfortable furniture and the cold, reflective surface of the coffee table feels somewhat disturbing.

"I slept," Jordan answers. As an afterthought, "Thank you for the pill. I apologize for my previous behavior." She's had enough time to reflect and the dread from yesterday has settled into a quiet part of her mind, being primarily replaced with shame for her actions.

Arthur shakes his head. "No, I'm sorry. I should have known what would happen. You never did like too many questions. I guess I thought you might've changed a lot since we last saw each other."

"What has been twenty years for you has been considerably less for me." Jordan takes a bite of her eggs and notes that the future must not have easy access to salt. Or any spices, really.

"I get that," Arthur says, stirring his oatmeal listlessly. "I mean, you don't look that much older than you were. How old are you, anyway?"

"Did your scanning device not tell you?" Jordan asks. Arthur looks surprised.

"Don't you know your own age?"

Jordan sets down her fork and sighs. "No, I don't. There are a great many things I don't know. For example, I know not what age I was when my... travels began." Even the word "travels" is enough to send chills down her spine. She shivers minutely, but covers it by shifting in her seat. "I know not why I travel or how. There is, I am sure, some scientific explanation behind it, but I have always imagined myself as being the recipient of some great cosmic joke." She's said too much, anger is bleeding into her tone. She takes a deep breath to steady herself.

"I remember next to nothing of my past lives."

"Then how come you remember me?" Arthur looks up sharply at her. "And you remember Mom, I know you do." His voice is sulky, tinged with bitterness. He's staring straight into her eyes, as if daring her to lie.

"I will admit, until meeting you I remembered no such things." His eyes blaze but she holds up a hand, "You must know, human memory is proven to be quite erroneous without frequent reminders. I have no familiar faces I may reminisce with, or books I could consult to refresh my memory of past events. So, upon seeing your 'familiar face', I began to remember."

Arthur listens to all of this with a clenched jaw. She knows it bothers him how calm she seems, how impartial she can sound while patiently explaining that, yes, she had in fact forgotten all about him and his mother.

"So let's get this straight," Arthur scoffs in disbelief. "You're a time traveler-"

"Don't!" Jordan blurts out.

"Okay... so you're a 'traveler'." He air quotes the word obnoxiously but at her nod, he continues. "You don't remember how you got started or most of your own life. How do you do it, then?"

"In my sleep." Jordan states it so simply that Arthur snorts and laughs forcefully to break the tension in the room. When he realizes she's not kidding, his right hand flies to a worn hole in his t-shirt and he begins picking at it relentlessly. Jordan bites her tongue to stop from commenting.

"You're not joking, then?"

"I wish I was. Over the years I have discovered that as I sleep, I run the risk of waking in an entirely new locale. The only possessions are things attached to myself, my clothes, jewelry-"

"The briefcase," Arthur mutters, eyes widening in recognition.

"Yes," Jordan pats the leather clad case lying at her feet, "the briefcase. You must understand, Arthur, I have never had any control over when I leave a place, where I go, what time I arrive there, or how long I stay." She thinks these words might bring comfort to him. She cannot be more mistaken.

"So you knew the whole time." The hole in his shirt has grown progressively wider with his fiddling, almost to the point of non repair. "You knew you would have to leave. Why in the hell didn't you tell us?" He's on his feet, now, hands fisted in his close cropped hair. Jordan wants to reach out, to comfort him, to convince him of her innocence. But as she impulsively reaches out to touch him, he jerks away and almost trips over the armchair. Jordan whips her hand back, but the damage is done.

"Why the fuck did you play along with her for so long?" Arthur points an accusing finger at Jordan, face contorted with anger. "You could have told her the day she proposed! Nobody forced you to accept!" He breaks off and starts pacing around the room, shoulders hunched, arms wrapped around himself in a self soothing gesture. Jordan stays silent, fixes her face to a neutral expression, and bears it. It's the least she can do, after all the pain she's caused him.

"You know what? Even if you couldn't tell Mom, no one asked you to get involved with our lives!"

Jordan only watches while Arthur grabs what she assumes are his keys. "Who gave you the right to go barging into other people's business?" His face is returning to its normal light brown color, but his blind rage is steadily replaced with a cold fury that reminds Jordan too much of Teddy.

"Nosy fucking bitch," he mumbles under his breath. "I'm going out, don't you even dare try to follow me."

The metal door opens with a whir and Jordan clears her throat before he can fully step through.

"What." It's not a question. Arthur stares at her, daring her to say something. She sits up straight and lifts her chin, knowing what she has to say will only reignite his fury.

"My journal, please."

Arthur cackles in disbelief. "Holy shit, you're actually asking me for a favor right now?"

"I told you the truth, like you asked."

"Well fuck me, then." Arthur reaches into his back pocket and tosses the journal at her feet. "Have your fun writing your little memoir, but I want you gone by the time I get back." He punctuates this sentence by slamming the door behind him with enough force to rattle the wall mounted paintings.

Jordan sits in silence for several moments, and calmly reflects on her various superfluous desires. She wishes she'd died during her first jump, so she'd never have had the opportunity to infect Teddy and Arthur's lives. She wishes she'd had the willpower to turn away from the beautiful lady in the laundromat and keep her pickpocketed money without conscience. She wishes she'd had the strength to tell Teddy the truth the day she proposed. Jordan locks these thoughts away in the back of her mind. It does no good dwelling on the past.

Jordan stands, retrieves her journal, and begins tidying the place up again. She doesn't pretend to know how to use the extremely advanced dishwasher, so she handwashes their plates and bowls from breakfast and sets them out to dry. She straightens the pictures, not daring to look too closely at them. She returns the living room furniture to its original positions. With the chores finished, she takes two blankets, one pillow, and her briefcase and journal and makes her way to the bathroom.

The second door she tries opens to a disgustingly futuristic bathroom complete with metal toilet. Despite the depressing black aesthetic, Jordan is relieved to find that at least the future has bathtubs. She sets her briefcase down, arranges the blankets and pillow carefully, and climbs in, lying with her arms wrapped around herself. She should write, she knows this. She must write while it's still fresh. The journal lies in her hands, cover bent slightly from when Arthur had thrown it. Arthur.

She's out of the tub in a split second, barely making it to the toilet before vomit rushes up her throat and out her mouth. The thoughts she locked away resurface with renewed vigor. She coughs, shrieking as the strength of her cough forces bile up and into her nose. Jordan kneels for what feels like hours, hacking and wheezing and crying while her stomach empties itself of its contents. She lies on the floor, shaking, spitting up the occasional bouts of stomach acid.

She should die, she really should. Or at least run away. She should keep herself to living the same empty life she always has. After all, she is a traveler. If the price she must pay for the continued safety of those around her is her sanity, she will gladly pay it. Until then, she must hold herself to her prior obligations.

Jordan picks herself up and settles back into the bathtub. She opens her journal, clicks her ballpoint pen, and begins.

To Whom it may concern...

|-THE PRIEST-|

As the horse carries the priest, a cascade of phantom noise high above street level floods endlessly around the labyrinth of Idyll's skyscrapers. The swarming chorus of the entire city is diverted into every corner, a presence larger than the surrounding reality.

They stop at an alleyway edged in electric blue. Shapes surface from its depths: shrines to dead gods, prayer flags of veiled neon, clouds of incense curled into towering and formless protectors over the darkness. It is a ghost alley, where the gods without churches and the men without gods retreat, away from the red-light eyes of Idyll's industrial idols, to exchange the absolution decent men find in organized religion.

The priest dismounts and enters. A length of the brick wall to his left has been smothered with plaster and on that plaster the scrawled prayers and grievances and midnight confessions of the city's unsatisfied overlap each other in a screaming mass of human need.

Deep in the alley is a shrine bathed in blacklight. The pungent stench of decomposing fruit rises from its altar, the white flesh and gem-seeds of cracked pomegranates interred in flat discs of candle wax. The statue hunched over these offerings has no face, its features worn down to a red blur like everything the rust-fog claims. Even so, the priest knows by the scent of the stone that it comes from the same foreign land as his own reed-woven accent.

He opens his briefcase. Inside is his revolver, five bullets remaining, and the switchblade from the bar, still stained with crawling gold. He places the blade onto the altar and recites amituofo and closes his eyes. Over the hidden seam of the alley slides the sticky stupor of the city night, and over the city night the river of Idyll's sound in all its prayers and grievances and whispered confessions flows like rain. When the priest opens his eyes she is standing beside him with a branch in her hand and hair that falls, sable black, with the shining and singular devastation of a plummeting star.

"Tang Seng," she says. Her voice is the sound of reeds in water. Willow leaves rise in the desert. "You have not called for me since your sixth life."

The priest turns to her. Her being sears through the heat haze, transforming Idyll into nothing more than a desert mirage. He asks "Would you have answered if I did?" and knows the answer.

"No. You had become something different by then."

"You're talking to me now."

"You are more recognizable today—like your old self." A breeze rustles her willow leaves, stirring up the fragrance of a foreign land. The priest stirs uneasily, as if waking from a dream. "You were always best when imbued with holy purpose."

"My purpose is merely to find my companion. I am here only to ask where he is."

"Is that so? What will you do when you find him, then? Kill him? Drag him back to the desert and return to playing neighbors? Do you even know what he wants?" Vague, passive interest flickers over her expression. "What if he wants to be left alone, too—will you send him on his way?"

The thought had occurred to the priest as he knelt at the foot of a nameless grave in the cooling desert, waiting for someone to rise and reward his faith. He had concluded it was not in the old man's nature, and the horse had said the same. "This doesn't involve you," he says. "It is a matter between him and me."

"If this doesn't involve me, then why am I here?"

"Because I need to know where he is, and you owe me," the priest says. "Because you owe us. We're only here because of you."

"You are here because of your own decisions, and I owe you nothing. This is a punishment, remember? Your missing friend never forgot—almost five hundred years and he never stopped trying to convince you. At least he understood: this can be your purpose, if you let it."

"He's not here right now. He doesn't get a say." The priest's blank eyes flicker with loathing, long-buried and newly-resurrected. "He died tonight, and look at what chasing your purpose got him."

"He did." Her ambivalence is impenetrable. "And now you're here in front of me. Could it be that this is what he wanted?"

The priest had thought of that, too, in the hours he sat vigil before the old man's grave. The horse had not denied it. Even so—

"We agreed on very little in our eighth life," he says, murmuring so he does not snarl, "and even less in our ninth. But we agreed we wanted nothing from you."

"And yet you're asking something from me now." She steps closer to him. Her finely-carved features are blank, as inhuman as the featureless oval of her stone likeness. "You toss a knife on my altar and expect help even as you insult me to my face. For a human begging favor, you are being extremely, inconceivably rude."

"I am not a human," says the priest.

"You've said that twice today."

"Because it's true." He is neither cryptid nor human. "You know what I am, Guanyin. I am one of you."

"Ten lives ago, before they cast the Golden Cicada down, no one would have denied it." Her tone recedes like the tide into a patronizing gentleness that is itself the worst possible humiliation. "Nine lives ago, even, you might have had reason to say you weren't merely a man. But you're human faith now, Tang Seng. What could that possibly make you but human?"

---

In the library there is a book called Journey to the West. It tells the story of a bodhisattva named the Golden Cicada who, as punishment for defying the Buddha, is banished from the heavens and sentenced to live ten lives of human piety. On his tenth reincarnation, he is tasked with journeying west to retrieve the secrets of enlightenment and delivering them east. There is a monkey who is also the human mind, a pig known as human nature, an ogre known as human resilience, and a dragon-horse known as human will. There are demons that chase them, seeking to partake of the bodhisattva's flesh and the immortality it bestows. In the end, he and his companions successfully retrieve the secrets to enlightenment, attaining it along the way, and ascend to their positions in the celestial pantheon as bodhisattvas in their own right once more.

This is not that book.

---

"You are too smart to be surprised...you're angry."

"One would think," he says, "that you would be too smart to be surprised by my anger."

"You have no reason to be," she says. "Being human is not an insult. It isn't a crime to not be one of us."

"Then why is it my punishment? Ten lives of human piety," he says. "But no human suffers like I have. No human lives ten times. No human is hounded over this earth by monsters who would tear apart their tendons for the divinity inside, and no human would be forced to crawl humiliated out of the dirt in the aftermath to be hunted once more. No monster is, either."

"And neither am I," she says. "Would you know the heavens if you saw them, Tang Seng? Would you recognize the pavilions of our land? Would your feet know the paths to walk? Do you even remember what a sky looks like without fog?"

"Of course I don't," he says. "It doesn't matter. That isn't what 'being' something means, human or otherwise. It's not my memory or what I do or where I plant my feet. I know we differ in that aspect and am glad for it, given everything. It's the land that made me and what is inside my bones, and that's the same as yours."

"You have been born so many times one would think you understand death. The land that made you has been this mortal earth—what, eight times over now? You acknowledge you do not know us and acknowledge that you do not want to and yet insist that you must. Even if I agreed, what would it gain you?"

"I do not need to know you," he says. "I do not need to have seen the home we share to know it is the place I come from. I do not need to open your bones to know they are the same as mine. I do not need to be flayed open, though I have been, to know what lies inside me. It does not matter how the knowledge makes me feel or what I want it to be. It doesn't matter whether you say it to me or not. I know it. It matters that I know it, and that you know I do. I know I am one of you."

"So do madmen," she says. "But that doesn't make it true. There are thousands in this city who say it all the time. Humans are like that—convinced, always, that they are in their own ways gods. And you would call them human, and heretics to boot, and be doubly angry that they dare claim dominion over this thing you so jealously call yours. I am not angry at you, Tang Seng. I am not angry that you dare call yourself one of us because I know exactly what I am. There is peace that comes with knowing what you are—peace you do not have."

"I am not here to convince you of anything," he says. "I do not need to prove myself to be one of you. To be what I am—I know what I am. I'm angry because I am one of you, yet you reject me out of hand."

"Because you are wrong and I am telling you so."

"Because you are wrong and you are not listening."

"You don't know what you are," she says. "I know what you are. You are a message: the envoy by which we chose to deliver the divine secret of enlightenment to humanity."

"And did I deliver it?"

"No," she says. Gold blood shines from his shoulder. Reflected in her eyes it is merely script. "You stopped, which you had no right to—and you kept it, despite your stopping. And now you and your companions have made yourselves a part of humanity, buried so deeply within their world and their histories that you could not be anything but human."

"I have never," he says, "wanted anything to do with humanity. Not in this lifetime. Not when I know, now, that they are no different than monsters." That they choose to be them, if given the chance—and that transformed or otherwise they would eat him without hesitation.

"I suppose that begs the question," she says. "Is this lifetime the only one that matters to you or not? Because if it isn't, you are still—to the very end—what we have always meant for you to be, and you have been wasting your time throwing your tantrum in the desert. And if it is, then you know the answer to the question of whether you are one of us."

---

In the halls of heaven divinity is king, joyous and comfortable in the safety of the sky. Here on earth divinity is defenseless. It comes in the form of Tang Seng, a being of flesh and bone, and people are ready to rip apart what is ripe to be consumed. Demons ate him and became immortal akin to gods. Humans saw what it did to the demons they could become.

---

"I'm not a god," the priest says. "And I'm glad of it. You are cruel and fickle and terrible. You have been cruel to me."

"It's in our nature."

"But I came from the gods, and that is important to me. It's important precisely because being a god means more than being cruel and fickle and terrible. Because divinity is not a title or an emperor—I know the thing in me that demons eat. I know the warped version of it that turns humans into demons to begin with. That is the thing that I come from, the thing that has made me and that matters to me. I take pride in it. I will not give it up freely, not even to you. Any monster who comes for it is welcome to die trying."

"I do not understand why it matters to you, when calling it by this name or any other changes nothing."

"The name is meaningless," he agrees. His eyes are cavernous, as dark and empty and haunted—as ancient and holy and yet blind to the weight and history of their holiness as a ghost alley. "I would no longer know the pavilions. My feet would no longer recognize the paths. But there was a time when I walked them beside you—when we would drink plum wine together and speak on the affairs of the heavens as we gazed at the moon side-by-side. You remember those times."

"I am incapable of forgetting them," she says.

"And I am incapable of forgetting the fact of them," he says. "That is the thing that matters."

She stares. He cannot interpret it. She is marveling, mildly impressed, at his brazenness.

"I was wrong," she says. "You are nothing like your old life today. You have never been further. You have the knowledge of a child and the context of a stranger and you lay claim to a past that lies so far removed from you that you could not possibly understand the thing you are claiming, let alone embody it. You are being childish. Do you know how I know you're human now, Tang Seng? It's because you're bitter—bitter and angry."

"I am both those things," he says. "And I am one of you."

"You wouldn't know," she says. "But I do. I know the one I once drank plum wine and gazed at the moon with, and you are not him. The Golden Cicada would never have allowed these things to make him bitter and angry. No true devout would."

"You would not know," he murmurs. "You have not lived them."

"It's true, I haven't." Then: "I suppose that's what really separates you from us in the end, isn't it?"

He does not recognize her either. He looks upon her face and there is the inorganic stillness of an object of worship. She is a god, as alien and unrecognizably foreign as a figure on a mural. She looks upon him and sees something so separate from herself as to be a creature on a different plane of existence.

Long ago, some version of themselves had drank under the moon together.

"It has to mean something," the priest says. He is separated from that land and that version of himself by thousands of years and a distance beyond description, but it has to. "I don't need it to mean anything more than it does. But it is mine. And it is something. How could it not be, when they try to take it from me so badly?"

"Because they'll take anything," she says. "Just like you. You'll take anything, isn't that right? You'll cling to the divinity you do have with both hands and come to me, someone who has a version of it you don't, and you'll insist. In this you are no different from a monster, and a human is only a monster who hasn't seized the opportunity. That is how you know you're human."

"...Do you really think it means nothing?"

"Maybe it means something," she says. The gods are cruel and fickle and terrible and in that they are no different from humans. They do not know everything. But they have no reason to lie. "But I don't think it means what you think it does. Or what you hoped it would. I am not sure if it means anything at all. If it does, though, I know it does not mean enough to change anything—and if it cannot change anything, there is no reason to discuss it."

The priest opens his briefcase. Inside is his revolver, five bullets remaining, and he draws it and points it at the Bodhisattva Guanyin.

"You would shoot me, Tang Seng?" Its metal, sleek as bone, is dull and miserable against her jade skin. "You haven't even killed a human, yet you would turn your weapon upon me with murderous intent?"

"I was ready to kill a human today," the priest says. "I would turn my weapon upon any creature, demon or otherwise, who came to eat me."

"And I? I have no intention of eating you."

"You have eaten me," he says. "Your kind ate me from the beginning: you laid claim to my divinity and gave me ten human lives in its place and called it 'punishment', and you consumed eight of those lives and spit me into the dirt. You would eat two more, if given the chance."

"I thought you had put the burden of those lives behind you when you chose isolation in the desert," she says. "You are so far removed from your old self and the crime that banished you that you are a different person; if you wanted so badly to live the rest of your lives in your church peddling faith, as you once swore to your gods and companions alike, we would not have stopped you. We didn't stop you. Why still care?"

"Because you owe me," the priest snarls, gun steady. "Because I am one of you and yet I am here, and that is an injustice, and if I am to be faith—well, then how could I possibly let it go?"

"Then you should have had faith in the rest of it," she says. "You had more of us than most humans will ever have. Holy purpose. The promise that lies at the end of it. You still have them; none of those have been taken from you, though you have rejected them. Why insist on being what you aren't instead of being satisfied with what you are?"

"Because it would be an insult to myself to deny that part of me." Rage makes him monstrous, vicious and growling. "The part of me that is more than this miserable place and these miserable lifetimes that have been brought about by your miserable purpose—the part that put me on this path to begin with, that makes my flesh what it is and my blood what it became and makes me miserable and undying—the part of me that is hunted daily, that defines my life even when I reject it in the desert." He steps forward, though it brings him no closer to her, and tightens his grip. "And you—you, who have that same part in you, who should recognize it better than anyone—you insult me to my very core by looking it upon its face and denying it. It is more insulting than the people who would steal it, because at least it's in their nature, but you should know. Maybe it's not all I am anymore. Maybe it's not everything. But it is there."

"And yet it is not enough for you, and you covet more so badly you would kill me for it, and I am not insulted because I know it is in your nature." She does not bother acknowledging the gun. "This is not yours to threaten me over anymore, Tang Seng."

"Then why is it inside me," he asks, prayer and grievance and a screaming mass of need. "Why would they kill me for it? Why must I spend my existence looking over my shoulder and waiting for death with a gun in my hand, if I am not even permitted to have this?"

"Because you have not accepted it," she says. "No one can give you what you are, Tang Seng—you are as exactly as little and as much as what you are supposed to be. If you acknowledged that, you would find peace."

"I would still be hunted," he snarls. "It would change nothing. There is no reason to discuss it if it would not change anything."

"It would change you," she says. "You would have clarity, if not safety. As I said before, there is a peace that comes with knowing exactly what you are."

"And what am I?" His grip is sure but his body trembles, the anticipation of assured destruction. "You're so sure you know what I am. Tell me, then."

"You still carry it with you, don't you? Even now." She gestures to his shoulder. "You say you want nothing to do with us anymore, but you haven't let it go. Either you are exactly what you have always been and everything you have been hiding from—our envoy—or you are human, and by virtue of your humanity merely another of their monsters."

The priest pulls the trigger. The explosion fills the ghost alley before yielding to a violent and total silence. The bullet shatters against her skin and the priest's blood shines over her forehead like sunlight, and on the statued likeness of Guanyin in its little alcove gold streams down stone and looks less like blood on rock and more like someone has wiped fog from a mirror, rubbing away the illusion of Idyll's reality to reveal the layered golden depths that lie beneath the thin veneer of the material world.

"I wonder if this is what you were always meant for." Truth in gold is stamped on her brow, words unknitting and reforming themselves in vertical lines of script like the scrolling lights on the sides of Idyll's towers. "The Golden Cicada is the one who denounced the Buddha, after all. Even in the heavens, you could not escape from what you are."

She puts her fingers to her forehead and they come away stained with light.

"Go to ChorTek Tower," she says to the priest. "If he will show himself anywhere tonight, he will show himself there."

The priest stares at her. Smoke billows from his revolver, his heresy swept away into rust-fog and the river of Idyll's faceless noise. Then he lowers his hand and puts his gun into his briefcase.

"Take your waste with you." She gestures to the knife on her altar. "We have no use for it."

"It is an offering," he says.

"No," she says. "From another human it might be, but not from you. It is a provocation first and a selfishness second. You want to pretend at being equals, Tang Seng—to convince gods and man and yourself alike that you are one of us, and that this is an act of equivalent exchange. You can tell yourself that you have no need for the pity of the gods, but make no mistake: you are asking me for information because only I can give it. You are a human begging a god for a miracle."

"Do you pity me, then, Guanyin?"

"I do," she says. "It is the only reason any god acts on behalf of a human, as I do now for you." Her willow branches bow subserviently over her ethereal form as she turns, folding neatly away into the ghost alley's abyssal darkness. "So show some respect. Save some face, for once in your life, and humble yourself."

She leaves the priest alone, rejected by all divinity but the righteousness inside him. Renounced by the gods and denied its dominion it calls to him angrily, the only god he remains beholden to.

He picks up the switchblade and puts it in his briefcase. On his left the wall proclaims the dissatisfaction inherent to humanity, crying for faith. At the mouth of the alley the horse turns its head to the sky, where the shining spike of Idyll's highest tower pierces the rust-fog like a stake through the heart of the bleeding heavens.

|-WISH BONE LEAN-|

The lizards stared, and that's almost all they ever did (but not everything). Their recessed eyes were perfectly circular and agate-brilliant in color, like the stones at the bottom of a never-crossed and never-disturbed riverbed. In their backyard enclosure, they filled their days by scanning for moving shadows—dark silhouettes discernible only by their outline and nothing more.

To be fair to the reptile colony, the obfuscation of detail resulted from the fact they always faced the Arizona sun. So bright, it can erase even the sharpest resolution of the mind. Wish Bone had built the lizard's den as such, but it was also the only way to construct a lizard pen in the small parcel of backyard tied to his apartment's deed. Selling lizard tails was not a lucrative trade, this was all Wish Bone could afford. Still, it kept the lizards warm enough on cooler days and cool enough on the many hot days, And soon, according to the political pamphlets delivered in his mailbox, the town of Idyll was to pilot a localized aerosol release program to regulate the metro area's temperature as the climate slowly cooked them. So the worry of temperature would hopefully turn into a memory and not a daily concern.

It just so happened that the day after Wish Bone had met with Earl in Mirage's diner, Idyll was to receive one of its few annual rainfalls. The sky was overcast, toying with the resident about when the precipitation would crack and descend. Still, there was a heat that radiated off asphalt streets and the walls of homes, making it a cloudy day that was still hot. While the mood was dour, it did assuage worries about lizards overheating or freezing.

When Wish Bone awoke, he rubbed the previous night's rust from his eyes and sighed. The gray sky outside his window cast an odd light into his bedroom. He stared outside and took in a few refracted rays to energize him to sit up and get dressed. Walking down the stairs, he made his way into the kitchen and poured himself a mug of coffee from the pot that, at this point, was surely a week old. Taking a sip of the nearly fermented brew, he looked out the kitchen window into the backyard. Just beyond the strip of the scorched yellow grass, he could see a line of lizards at the very edge of the cage. Their heads all angled up and towards his face in the window. They seemed to sense his presence, even with a wall between them. He did not know how. It seemed nearly impossible that they'd be able to hear his steps, feel his movements through the ground, smell whatever odor, or see him at such a distance. And, of course, they could not taste him. It was a mystery of nature to Wish Bone, but one he did not investigate. There were much worse mysteries in the world to him, so he let that one lie.

After finishing the cup, he entered the backyard and opened the small chest of tools that contained his lizard care equipment. Sliding on gloves, he grabbed the bag of crickets and suppressed a gag. After all the years of raising them, he never got over the grime of feeding time. He walked over as the plastic bag began to vibrate with insect anxiety against his arms and chest. Dropping the bag onto the ground, he flipped over the top of the lizard's cage, ripped open the bag from the seam, and dropped in like it was an Old Testament plague.

The lizards swarmed for their food, changing from their sedentary states to quick races aimed at getting a bite of a leg or wing. Wish Bone squatted in front of them. After the quick frenzy cooled, the lizards returned to their pensive dazes except for opening their mouth slightly as they chewed. So they chewed and stared at Wish Bone and Wish Bone squatted and stared at them, all of them, and their eyes.

In the eye of a lizard, where the iris meets the horizon of the pupil, there is a hint of something more, something to get lost in: an endless sight that spans broods and passes from the mother to her eggs, eggs that turn into the next mother that lays eggs. This sight, like a photograph, is maintained. It is physically archived, translated from a scene into the raw, physical form of the body. And while it can be said that all living things do this, lizards do it best, storing it in the body from their snout to their webbed feet to the very tip of their forever-growing tail or, if lucky, tails. Perhaps that's where the power comes from, the double storing of memory. Or the cartilage.

This was routine. This is how Wish Bone had spent most of his days when settling into his life. Wake up, feed, stare, and then do the rest. Perhaps there were places he could innovate, but then what else would he fit his time with?

He moved his gaze from contact with the mind of the lizards to their tails. It was a satisfying mix of single and double, slowly moving each as an independent undulating wave, disturbing the sandy fill that padded the bottom of the pen. Soon, maybe in a year or two, there will only be double-tailed lizards. He did not know what he'd do once that happened though, perhaps start breeding for a third tail.

On the other side of the fence, the lizard sensed an air of something he had seen before. There was a cyclical nature to Wish Bone Lean, and perhaps all the Leans. A sense of consumption in something that, once exhausted, led to a deep sadness. It had been many generations of reptiles since this had last been seen, but it was a memory that was still within the lizards as a matter of inheritance. So there was an energy emanating off of Wish Bone that reminded them of the time many years ago when Wish Bone awoke to Porterhouse passed out in a still-drunken stupor, face down on the back lawn. It was a day that stood out in human memory for it was the last day Porterhouse had ever taken a sip of alcohol and it stood out to the lizards first because it was a day that Wish Bone did not feed them, but second as the first culmination of some kind of spiritual sadness that seemed set over a family known for curing those kinds of ailments in others. This kind of perception may be due to some kind of evolved difference between people and reptiles. Or maybe it was an unknown, mutated trait that arose without Wish Bone's knowledge. Still, there was much that the lizards knew, that the lizards remembered, that was unaware to the man that raised them.

As the man and the small beasts connected with one another, a car pulled up in front of the home. It sputtered when the key turned to stop the ignition. Earl then sat in the driver's seat for a second in a small, frozen daze. He had not received a good amount of sleep in a few days at this point, enough to survive but not enough to function how he needed. For a few minutes, he remained in the vehicle with an unfocused attention on the residential street in front of him. In his head, it seemed he repeated a countdown that he hoped would force him to unlock the door to his left once he reached zero. Every time he did, it failed. So he returned to five and started again.

What would eventually break his staticity was not one of his repeated cycles but a series of harsh motions. On the sidewalk to his right, a man wearing a poncho and hat was on a stroll, then a young couple walking their dog. Earl remembered these from the periphery of his anxious trance that would not break for another minute, so he did not catch sight of how only the couple was visible in his rearview mirror as they traveled further down the street.

A strong gust of wind then passed through Burnside, likely from the storm but without total certainty, and that howling sound, with almost a hint of a woman yelling in its undertone, stirred Earl into action. He looked to the right as he collected his things. In the empty lot there was a rabbit that looked, no, glared at his car. Or maybe it really was only a look. Its nose twitched with every breath. And then it ran across the street, as wild animals do.

Stepping out, Earl walked up the path to Wishbone's front door. He banged the antler-shaped door knocker and shifted his weight awkwardly beneath his feet. This was his first time in this part of Idyll. It felt different than anywhere else he had visited within city limits. Earl wasn't sure if that was a comforting sign or something to worry him.

The punch of the door alerted Wish Bone of Early's arrival. He stood up from his squat and shook his legs from any stiffness caused by the prolonged pose. Walking through his home, he opened the door to Earl.

"Come in," Wish Bone said. Earl did as instructed, but did not ask about removing his shoes. Wish Bone shut the door behind him and ushered him through the hallway towards the kitchen. Earl looked around the space with a sense of curiosity. He stopped halfway through the space and pointed to a big group of people smiling.

"This your family?" He asked. Wish Bone nodded.

"Portrait from when I was younger," he replied. "Guess which one is me," he added. Earl looked at the nearly dozen people in the photo. He narrowed his eyes and lifted his finger up, hesitated, and then pointed to a teenage boy with black hair and a bowl cut.

"Him?"

Wish Bone laughed. "That's my brother, Shank." He reached over and pointed to the slightly older teen on the other side of the photograph, one with braces and a light mustache. "That's me." He tapped on the photo a few times to emphasize the point.

"Big family," Earl commented

"And only getting bigger, can hardly keep track of all the niece and nephew birthdays."

Earl nodded and moved further down the hallway. Once in the kitchen, Wish Bone offered his guest a cup of coffee from the pot. Earl accepted it, but his lips pursed with dissatisfaction after taking his first sip. Earl, however, was too polite to make a comment about it.

They stepped outside into the backyard and sat down at the only two chairs outside. They were old in that their paint was starting to curl but were otherwise sturdy. The lizards clamored at the sight of the two. Earl looked over at them with confusion but, again, didn't ask.

Wish Bone looked at his client as he sipped his sorry excuse for a brew. He looked a little more hollow than last night, but still up for the task. So he began the preparation for the hunt.

"So what'd you bring today?" Wish Bone said.

"I went through that list you gave me last night and saw what I had in storage. And also brought a few things I think could be helpful that weren't on the list."

Wish Bone raised an eyebrow, "like?"
"Well, I noticed that you were asking for some of the items Martha had been working with and some stuff of my own—which is back in the backseat of my car—along with some peculiar things I'm just trusting you with. But you didn't say anything about protection, so I got some hunting knives from that 24-hour depot and got the firearm from my safe."

Wish Bone nodded. He appreciated the effort but didn't know if it was the best time to explain to Earl that the spirit they were dealing with would undoubtedly be unfazed by something like a bullet.

"And I assume you got stuff of your own you're bringing into this?" Earl asked.
"Of course, you think I'm some kind of amateur?" Wish Bone said and laughed. Earl laughed but awkwardly, unsure if he insulted the man or not. When the chuckle had died out and the conversation had a second of silence, Wish Bone stood up. "Alright, lemme show you what I got."

He ushered Earl to follow him inside. As they did, the cloudy tension finally broke and the first drops of rain began to fall.

"This'll be great for Martha's garden. Soil's been a little dry lately." Earl peered behind him at the window as the rain began to hit against it. With this comment, Wish Bone realized the opportunity in front of him.

"Gimme a second," he said as he crouched beneath the sink and pulled out a stack of deep bowls. He reopened the backyard door and began placing them all around the open patches of space. The rain caused slight pinging noises as they slowly began to form the smallest layer of water droplets.

Earl watched as he took the opportunity alone to pour nearly the entire mug of coffee down the sink drain. When Wish Bone reentered the kitchen, Earl's curiosity finally got the best of him.

"Ain't collecting rain illegal? And lizard breeding too?" Earl asked.
"You a cop? Or gonna report me?" Wish Bone replied. "I've been doing this for a long time, and I can't be helping you if I'm in jail." Again, this kind of reply hushed the older man who really meant no disrespect, especially not to the person he was asking for aid.

"No, no. I was just wondering. What's it for, if I may?"

"Lizards are for some of the homeopaths here in Idyll, it's a good cure for all sorts of things. I sell 'em for a living."

Earl nodded. "Anything in particular."

"Not my area of expertise. I just raise 'em."

"And the rain?"

"Need unfiltered water for some of the hunts I do. Can't have any of the things the county adds in, y'know."

Earl looked back at Wish Bone and took a pretend sip of coffee from his empty mug as if to hide the skeptical expression.

"Might use it for whatever your issue is here. A lot of ways these next few days may be good and it could be useful to have."

"Right, okay."

And that was all there was to say about the illegal water and lizards. In truth, even if Earl had reported this to the Idyll police department it was unlikely that things would've happened. It was too small of an issue, especially compared to some of the larger problems the municipality was currently facing.

Earl set his mug on the counter.

"You want another cup?" Wish Bone asked, but Earl shook his head in the negative. "Suit yourself," Wish Bone said as he poured himself another, walked toward the basement door, and began to descend the staircase. Taking the hint, Earl followed him into the storage space.

As they entered the room, Earl was struck by the mix of rugged tools and more refined, but still crafted mechanics. Along the walls were several modified contraptions, from a crossbow with salt balls beside it to a collection of half-melted candles. A bundle of sage sat atop a crate in the corner. On the floor, adding some warmth against the concrete foundation was an animal pelt rug.

"That a bear?" Earl asked. It looked like a bear.

"Nope." Wish Bone stepped on the fur as he walked over to the table in the corner. He looked down at the handwritten list of items on his desk and began to zigzag around the shelves in the room. Earl watched as he opened up a minifridge filled with jars that seemed too misty to be water. Some unknown rocks floated around in there. He set it on the counter and removed the tinfoil that was wrapped around the tightly closed lid. He moved to the next item.

"What's that?" Earl gestured to the liquid. Wish Bone turned his head as he stood on his toes grabbing a vial full of dusty substances from a shelving unit.

"Oh, sorry. Those are some bezoar stones. And this," he turned around and shook the beige particulate inside the glass, "is shaved jackalope antlers."

"Jackalope?" Earl seemed even more confused.

"Yeah, jackalope." Wish Bone pointed to a mounted head above the fridge. It was a hare, although larger than a usual one, with deer antlers in front of its ears. "Hunted that one with my father when he was still alive so that must've been years ago. That buck was a bitch to kill too, took three shots instead of the usual one or two. Their horns make good lures, y'know."

Earl did not know that, and he began to wonder about the type of person who would. Certainly not anyone he associated with. In this lowermost level of the home, there was a realization, not a sinking one but certainly similar, that he might be asking the wrong person for help. There was an emotional falling inward within Earl as he sat on a couch in one corner, ducking his head behind a garland of lizard tails and dried garlic cloves. But there was also the fact that no one else was taking up the issue, so this was all he had.

While Earl processed this thought, Wish Bone walked near him and picked up the crossbow and salt bundle from the wall, placing it back on the table. Then he opened another drawer and pulled out a canvas sack of iron nails. They landed on the desktop with a muffled clink. He looked over at the man with a missing wife, who had been silent for a few minutes. Wish Bone had gathered that the man was more curious than most. Most of the previous clients were looking for an easy fix and didn't ask. They were merely recipients of a service to remove some kind of disturbance, like a supernatural exterminator. Still, most were not seeking a missing person but merely some kind of dark infestation. Earl had a uniquely personal problem; Earl had to be involved in this job.

"How you doing over there? Sorry if there's a musk in here, the supplies get musty as they age and I don't have the time for regular cleanouts."

"Good, good." In his head, Earl had started his comforting countdowns again. He leaned back on the couch and his hands moved outward at his sides as he did so. As his right hand moved closer to the end of the cushion, it came in contact with a weathered piece of paper containing a recipe for some unknown procedure and some ruins. This spooked him back into reality with another odd thing to ruminate about. "How'd you get in this line of work, anyway?"

"It's a family operation, you could say. My dad did this too, and now my siblings help out." Wish Bone gestured to the herbs in the corner. "My sister, Porterhouse, grows those. And the candles," he gestured with his chin, "well, one of my cousins made those some time ago. But she's busy with kids now. I don't need 'em that often though, so that's good. Might need to pester her again soon, though"

"I see."

Wish Bone grunted as he looked to organize everything together. "And you said you got the other stuff in your car?"
"Yes."

"Perfect," Wish Bone said, his voice steady. "I think we've got what we need. Let's head back upstairs and we can go over the plan." Earl nodded, and the two stood and ascended from the musty basement to the main floor.

Outside, the lizards' recessed eyes tracked them through the kitchen window. In these darker days, the people were no longer outlines but real people, outside of the erasing glare of the sun. They were images to be remembered and turned into the hind scales that may eventually become the tip of tails. They stared. And from across the street, a rabbit's eye did the same, shifting with an unmistakable humanity.