Time moved so slowly after the President's death.

Sveta and Logar often talked about 'erased history'. I did not know what it meant, and I didn't ask. I noticed they stayed to themselves anyway.

I didn't think they had a fling --- I was under the impression Sveta bedded just anybody, because it was what The Anti said about her. Still, you had to have no scruples to lie with Logar Iris, so I wasn't under the impression she did.

As for Logar, I thought it was obvious that he liked Jonath Cincinnati. But then Jonath turned out to be Sveta, so I didn't know what to think anymore.

To be honest, I didn't think about them much at all. I barely thought about Percie, who was kind and handsome, and who brought me food even when I didn't want to eat it. I couldn't think of anything but the rifle in my hands, and the fact that I was a coward.

Throughout all of my childhood, I never stood up to The Anti. He wasn't a good father. He seemed too ebullient, too preoccupied with his schemes to be a bully, but he was. I wasn't exceptionally good at anything, and he exploited that to make me feel inferior. My mother was more his victim than his wife. I've heard it said by my aunts that, since she was a famous fashion model, she caught his eye and he started stalking her and paying people to set them up on dates.

I never asked my mother if it was the truth. I think it would have hurt too much, either way. My mother was a teenage single mom back then, and she just wanted to move on after my father, who was a deadbeat who worked for The Anti. At least her upgrade made us rich. I was never able to hate her. I've always thought she'd done the best for us.

But lately I started thinking that maybe she didn't even get a choice in the matter.

And I couldn't stand up to Michaim as an adult, either. He told me to shoot, and I did. An innocent life on my hands, that should have been on his. I tried to tell myself that it was precisely so. That it was my stepfather's hands that were stained with blood.

But in my nightmares, the hands were always mine.

"Surprise surprise!" Logar Iris announced one day at breakfast. I wanted to let him know that I didn't like when he talked the manic way Michaim talked, but then I remembered that The Anti had hurt him too. Perhaps more than I would ever know. My friends were already fucked up before I entered their lives.

"We got mail," he added, raising his eyebrows. At first I found it corny how not even Sveta talks back to him anymore. But then I realized that whatever was happening between them made sense.

Logar was the cult leader, and she was the cult.

Speaking of which, Sveta wanted to bring the Power Of Sight to new heights, and explode in her own right. But I already had my mind half-made that I would quit the group before it even came to that.

'Mail' consisted in a brown package. Logar unwrapped it, and we stayed silent for a moment.

"It's..." Percie started saying. He gulped. "It's Lix's autobiography."

I liked how Percie seemed to have maintained his humanity and his integrity through it all. He felt things as much as before. He was like a safe harbour, and I looked at him like the wistful ghost of one who has already drowned.

"I remember reading it before," Sveta said, thinking of the times where her memories were still jambled by whatever torture the President's men had put her through. "It was weird, but maybe it was just me."

"I think someone sent it to us with a purpose," Logar added, and became white all over when a corny birthday card fell out from it.

I picked up, and read it aloud. "It's no one's birthday, but how am I to know after all? I do not know when you little calamities clawed your way up from Hell to Earth. This is a reminder that you all think you're you against me, but that really it's just you against you."

I took a deep breath. "Signed, The Anti."

"Well, it would have been more disturbing coming from anyone else," Logar replied, but he looked troubled.

"Listen," I said. "Being the Harmed Hand... might just be the hardest job. Lix didn't know yet that she was about to die like that, but The Anti had already tortured her by putting her in that position. I would know. So maybe, if she's spiteful..."

"I really really want to know what it says," Percie commented, and he looked so stubborn I couldn't just tell him no.

"Alright," I commented. "I wasn't there after all. I didn't know her, and she can't write anything about me. I don't really get a saying."

"Who reads?" Logar asked.

"I will," Percie said. "I don't trust Sveta to have learnt how to read long sentences just yet, and you could be making it up."

Logar pouted. "I will compose a little poem for you," he said. "Here it goes --- why are you so rude? Is it because I didn't want to see your nudes?"

We were all shocked for about a split second, but then Sveta laughed and I joined in very weakly. Percie didn't look offended, he just shook his head affectionately and called Logar a huge idiot.

Percie then opened up the book and said, "Oh. Wow. I open it up casually, and this is the page where she meets me."

It's not really a coincidence, the novel is short, but we all acted like it was. We felt enthralled by some kind of power, reading what Lix put out in the world about the cult. We never knew who to trust and who we shouldn't about what people thought about us. Percie read the passage aloud.

"I enter the room, and suddenly meet the most boring person I've ever seen in my life. To be perfectly honest with you, reader, I didn't see Percie Tolkien at first. I thought he was part of the furniture because his silk suit was the colour of the grey couch. I guess his parents must have sold their hair to buy him something like that, but in the end it just made him anonymous.

He couldn't be compared to the rest of them, the reckless Sveta and even the insufferable Messiah of the Vision. Percie Tolkien was just... there. I don't think I ever understood why we needed a Diplomatic, for one needs Percie like a kidney when one already has one. I mean, we all have a Percie Tolkien in our lives, don't we? The over-bearing parent, the lovesick classmate we don't love back, the invisible friend in the group. We go to school, or the bank and we meet Percies everyday.

Maybe he was meant to feel relatable to the public, but I wasn't born in the Dormitory. I only got there in time, and, before, I saw my share of people. I could count on the fingers of one hand all of those who would admit they are a Percie. I don't know who would say that he's relatable on purpose."

"You have to consider she didn't want to publish it," Logar commented. "It was her diary."

"It's still mean," I said. "Maybe blaming her is too personal, everyone is entitled to their thoughts, but we could blame those who made it public. Either way, she's wrong about you, Perce, I'm sorry..."

"No, it's alright," he replied. "I know you all think things like that about me. I know everyone does. Why, even I do. Yes, I have my share of thoughts. I'm not just a well-oiled machine."

"I'm sure Lix didn't like any of us," Sveta pointed out. "Though it doesn't make me miss her less."

But they were lying, or partly. I could see the hurt and the disappointment on their faces. I could see that they'd been mourning a stranger, because The Anti placed them all in a warehouse and told them that they were a family.

"She's met me before, at the Dormitory, though I barely noticed her," Sveta finally said. "I might come in a few chapters before you do."

Percie flicked back a few pages, and said, "Oh. You got a chapter named after you. I mean, sort of."

"Read it out loud, cowardly lion," Logar drawled. "God, do you remember how stupid it was when The Anti gave us nicknames based on the characters of Oz? I think Lix was the lion."

"You were the scarecrow," Percie replied. "Because of your brains or lack of."

"Please, it's just because my hair are straw-berry blond."

"Never say that anymore," Sveta commanded. "Perce, if you don't read what Lix writes about me, I will take the book from your cold dead hands."

"It's called The Girl Who Sleeps Around," Percie replied. Knowing Sveta's past, we were all dazed for some time.

"Wheter it means sleeping with men, or sleeping in humble beds, Sveta has done both," Percie read. "I will be accused of not standing up to the fellow women. When you grow up in a ruthless place like the Dormitory, you learn that women are people and some are bad and some are good. My own tense relationship with my mother taught me that.

I don't want to say that Sveta and The Anti had an affair, but I was taken out the Dormitory after her. A grown man comes to visit, they exchange words in her bedroom, and suddenly she's out of a place where we're kept more locked up than in prison?

Either way, I never thought of Sveta as a woman. Not really. Not because of the cliché that she didn't like womanly things. I didn't either. It was clear to me that she was something else.

And what she was was a parasite. Please, hold your comments, but you haven't lived in the Dormitory. I was in Section A, which meant troubled past but an education and I could reform. Sveta was in Section D, which meant serious problems cooperating with society, a horrible past and no way to reform after that. I would have felt pity for her, if The Anti didn't make her out to be a legend. With her plain hair and reckless personality, she was nothing waiting to be something."

"Well, that was... something," Logar said. "I'm sorry, Sveta."

Sveta wasn't in tears. She was much tougher than one thought she would be --- and perhaps with her life, it was understandable.

"You would never sleep with The Anti. We all know that," Logar added. Sveta does not look sad, but she does look a little unresponsive.

"I will read Logar's description," Percie cleared his throat. 

For the first time, I felt some kind of pity towards the Prophet of the Vision. We all knew that whatever Lix was going to say about him would be worse than what she'd said about the others. Sometimes I couldn't stand Logar either. It wasn't easy, to stand him. Or to like him.

He was like Marmite --- you either loved him or you hated him. But that was the moment I realised I didn't know if there was anyone who loved him. Not that I knew of.

"You get a chapter name too," Percie said. I wondered whether he's thinking what I'm thinking. Lix might not have wanted to publish the diary, but the jabs at the rest of the cult are clear. She knew Percie was afraid he didn't amount to much so she never named a chapter after him. It felt staged, done on purpose.

This is why Sveta had said it was weird.

"I think you're under God's Biggest Joke, Logar," Percie said sheepishly. Then he started reading,

"When The Anti showed us who would be the leader, I did everything in my power not to laugh. The Messiah is just a few inches taller than I am, with acne scars on his face that look like he had pox. In general, there's something about him that reminds me of an illness, which one it is, I don't know.

It's so embarrassing how he thinks that he's ugly, unworthy and that none loves him. It's so obvious how he loves everyone in return. For some people, this would make them the Prophet based on that alone. For Logar, it's a way to run his mouth and offend with jabs everyone he feels misunderstood by.

I wonder how he thinks this works. I wonder if he knows this leaves him friendless. He must think his tongue makes him divine, or he wouldn't use it as weapon. God, if I looked that horrible, I might want to distract people with remarks too."

It was almost embarrassing how much of this was true. Except that Logar was a very good-looking guy who thought himself a monster, and the words weren't going to help that.

"I think it actually goes on to say other things about you," Percie said. "But..."

"No, don't read it," Logar replied. His voice sounded distant. "I've heard enough."

It was quite likely, I realized, that Logar would go to cry in another room. Such things weren't what one would expect the least when dealing with our Prophet, though it was not what other people might have thought of him.

"Don't go," Sveta told him. "Stay here." She looked like she barely wanted to share the room with the rest of us, though.

"When I read the book," Sveta added. "I still didn't remember everything in detail but some things struck me as weird. There are some things that happened that Lix either recalled differently, or decided to write in a way they hadn't happened."

"What do you mean?" Percie asked.

"Just read some more. Skip through the pages if you have to."

"Okay... oh. That is weird. Lix writes in a total different manner from how I recall it our claim to fame."

"The day Sveta punched the homophobe?" Logar asked.

I didn't think it counted as a claim to fame but I didn't tell them that. What were we even famous for? Being assassins?

"Yes," Percie said. "I don't know how the two of you recall it, but she makes it sound as if we were creating chaos and being dangerous. She said the punch was just the first of a huge violent fight. She accuses Sveta of drawing blood and smashing the head of the guy against a table."

Sveta held up her hands. "I didn't do that!"

"'Course you didn't," Logar looked pensive. "What does she say about me? I'm pretty much a non-violent guy in these situations. I just act like an asshole but with no harm intended."

"Er, she says you pretty much instigated the whole thing. Except for Sveta's punches --- it seems like she really wants to let the public think Sveta is a violent person."

"What does she say about the day she used her rifle to kill?" I asked.

My three friends exchanged horrified glances. "She never used her rifle to kill," Sveta replied, which made me jealous. But then she added, "You know how she was killed --- everyone knows. This was the first time she pointed her rifle at anyone. I'm sure it wasn't even loaded."

I feel guilt, rage and grief exploding in my insides. Of course, I was always The Anti's little slave ever since my childhood. I could never stand up to my biggest bully. Even Lix Aphopis, a girl I knew nothing of, had been able to figure out for herself that if the rifle wasn't loaded Michaim would have been too much of a coward to fill it with bullets himself.

"And is there any story she tells differently?" I asked.

"Well," Percie pondered. I knew he was about to say something terrible, because he wasn't speaking up. Then, he muttered, "The day Logar's father died."

"Did your father die because of... this?" I looked at their sheepish expressions. "This is crazy! You're all crazy! Why don't you quit?"

"I've got a question for you," Logar's dark blue eyes looked manic in that moment. "Why did you kill the President?"

I was about to let out a cry of rage, so I just choked back a sob. I pulled at my jeans. "Well... you don't know what The Anti is really capable of..."

"No," Logar stopped me. "We know. This is why we don't quit. The Anti basically killed my father."

"I understand. Percie is protecting his parents the way I am protecting my mother. But with no mother, no father and no friends, why are you and Sveta still here?"

"Because I don't want to go back to the Dormitory," Sveta replied sincerely.

"How about you, Logar?"

To my surprise, he laughed. It was a very anxious laughter that reminded me of the Joker. It didn't have anything to do with fun.

"Because he took everything away from me, Dioretsa. Where else would I go?"

That was the moment I realized how badly The Anti had manipulated them, but Logar Iris especially. They really believed themselves to be the Diplomatic, the Grenade and the Messiah. They didn't know what else they were going to be, out in the world. And whatever their mission was --- mayhem, or murder, they seemed convinced that it was the only thing they had left.

"How does she tell it?" Logar asked Percie. "The way my father goes."

From the way Logar moved and acted as if the world was out to get him, I understood his childhood must have been bad. I figured his father might have been to blame. Still, Logar was fiercefully loyal when it came to him. Say whatever you want about him, but he really loved his family.

"She says that it's our fault," Percie whispered. "That we enraged people that day, and The Anti was not to blame. That it was us who threatened the audience, saying they had to show up to the place of work of Toutatis. That we could meet people there and take them in a fight, if fighting us was what they desired."

"She says," Percie added. "That we didn't think of the civilians because we were too caught up in our own ideals."

"Well, fuck," Logar Iris commented.

"I know."

In that moment, the door opened and The Anti entered.

I never felt any kind of empathy towards his feelings, but he looked wrecked.

"Guys," he said, almost laughing. "This is fake."

"What?" Logar tapped a finger on the cover of the autobiography. "The book?"

"No," The Anti gesticulated to the air around him. "This whole world is fake. It's fake. Say goodbye to reality."