The hallways are equal parts sunset crimson and the kind of darkness that doesn't exist in nature, solely in locked rooms away from any windows. Here, beneath the earth, it festers on any surface it can reach, like a mold, and we try not to let the shadows cling to us, our bodies so slight that it seems impossible we could be an adversary for anything down here. That's not even bringing up how ridiculous we look as a 'team', given that one of us is in full armor, one's in a spiked jumpsuit, and the last is in a dress. We look like we could be strangers from three different worlds, and if that were true, I'd imagine this would be the last place we'd want to meet.

Unlike strangers, we're bantering like crazy. It fills the space, reminds us that we're there, and it's not as if I could deny myself a chance to talk to either of them.

"Can't believe she picked her freakin' assembly over us. Absolutely disgusting," Evan says, crumpling a metal leg from a robot with his hands. It was a fairly small robot to begin with, but Evan has crunched down what used to be its body into a superheated stress ball. "Of course I can come to the party, but the mission? Noooo. Not on Christmas."

"It's not Christmas," I say. "It's December 23rd, which is not a holiday. Anyways, the implication there would be that she couldn't have come to the mission either way, but she still wanted to see us, despite all we've put her through, lately, because of the incident. I think that's very generous of her. Borderline heroic."

Evan rolls his eyes.

"We might not want to be talking about our Christmas plans here, under the watchful eye of a few thousand cameras, if you don't mind me saying so," Megan says.

"What, you think they're going to realize we're one of many, many suburban teenage posses hangin' around tonight?" Evan yells to the hallway. "Hey! We're kids!"

Nothing moves. We've been around the second 'underfloor' for a solid hour, or at least what feels like an hour. Time passes differently down here. Every time we come up, it feels like I haven't seen the sun in days or weeks, only to find out it was little over an hour. Eventually, we will encounter robots, or dangerous rooms, or occasionally even another member of the Delegation, but between that is endless pacing on metal, the angry thrum of our hearts as we walk nowhere, the sound of Evan running his fingers against the wall, just to burn something, just to make noise...

"We'll have to head down to the next floor if we want to do make any kind of headway," I announce, which has to disappoint them almost as much as it disappoints me. The darkness seems to have our ankles and our arms locked in its teeth. "We should probably... try gathering some shards today. We have an obligation to you-know-exactly-who to do you-know-exactly-what."

Evan glances towards Megan. He cracks his knuckles. "You know I'm already down."

"Are you?" asks Megan. "It was awful last time. That man had no idea what was going on, but he was insistent that they'd kick him out if he didn't have it... then there was that whole spiel about the job he couldn't stomach anymore, his wife and kids... we don't know why all these people, individually, do what they're doing, and we're ripping it from them indiscriminately."

"Don't feel bad for the cultists, Siren," Evan warns.

"Shouldn't I? And it'll be forever and then some, too. She said there'd be no less than forty-seven shards. And we have?"

"Three," Evan and I admit, at once. I punch him in the side of his costume.

"It's a war of attrition," I explain. "We're doing a good job. It's just a long haul." I stride right up to the elevator like I own the place. This son of a bitch has almost sent us plummeting to our death a near dozen times now, let alone every time we've had to go around it, so we're old friends. Fortunately, the elevators have become more compliant since we figured out how to use them. The place is still a masterwork of engineering, but it has one singular flaw, and I hold it up to the light, and the elevator obediently opens its doors.

Evan bows, letting us in.

"Nineve won't be downstairs today, will she?" asks Megan.

I shake my head. "Let's hope not. Otherwise, it might be a much longer or much shorter mission than I expected."

There's total, dead silence in the elevator. I have my hands over the control panel, but I can't make myself press it. Joke definitely landed sideways. I look over both of them, trying to adjust my vision so I can see at once Siren and Onyx, my coworkers, and Megan and Evan, my best friends. No matter who I'm trying to look at, I can feel the weariness radiating off of them from weeks of this. We're standing in a coffin right now, almost airtight, smelling of sweat and desperation and the encroaching dark hand of something past the self, something probing, sinister, barely even flirting with the idea of being from our world.

"Terrible idea," I say.

"Out with it." Evan leans against the wall.

"Let's go home."

Megan and Evan don't answer. It's up to me. Hands on the wall. I press the up button, and the three of us basically walk out of there uncontested. It's not surprising, I suppose, that the forces against us have no problem letting us beat a hasty retreat when we're at full power. There is someone who does, and she's waiting in the Veins, pacing, her little goat hooves clicking and rattling with anger as they strike the ground.

Evan strides up to her, sets himself out on the couch, and malingers there. "I guess attrition is overrated."

"It's a poor strategy, given our inferior numbers, but it is better than what you have chosen to take. You are behind any kind of schedule," she tells us. "You are going to get yourselves killed, the world destroyed, and this cult will propagate to the point at which you will no longer have the means or ability to stop it."

"We'll handle it," I promise, and I mean it.

She knows. Her glinting cat eyes survey me with general distrust, but nonetheless, she says, "You had better," and slinks back away. I can feel something twisting deep in my chest, as if something were trying to rend my organs free of my body, but when the sensation subsides (Megan has her hand against her chest, too, although Evan doesn't even blink) we're still standing there and she's gone.

Megan casts me a desolate look. "She's not wrong," she says. "You two aren't the slightest bit..."

"I am," I admit. "I just didn't want anything to happen to us tonight."

She nods. The air hums with the same heat the Delegation does, thick and confining. Say something. Say anything. Whoever talks first loses. Wins. Someone has to talk first and none of us are budging. Megan says at last, "Two hours. Just give me... I'll see you two later. Maybe we can come up with a better plan there. Think about the future. I don't know." Her eyes dart from Evan to me, then me back to Evan, and she rushes out.

Evan isn't moving. His face pouts up a little, and I can feel his eyes boring right through my back. I close my eyes tight as I can, as if I don't want to see him, like I might be able to stop my heart from pulsing like I'm down in the dark if I don't turn around, if I'm the only person who exists here. In the noiseless silence, it does feel like we might be the only two people in the whole world right now. Everything outside is a vague dream strewn with color.

"You go get ready, pretty boy," Evan pats my shoulder, the resulting noise not the usual chuff of skin to shirt contact but the clink of metal on metal. Even under the plating of armor, I can feel the heat of his hand. If anything, it's magnified by the metal.

"Don't call me that," I tell him, sharply.

"Chief," Evan says, and somehow, he ruins that too, just by saying it and giving me a sultry look from those dark eyes.

I'm still thinking about it back at home. 'Preparing' for tonight consists of changing from one shirt to another shirt, one that smells less lived in, and then doing homework for an hour. My mind is anywhere but on the page, but if there's anything I can have over Will, besides everything else I have over Will, it's the joy of being done with my winter homework while he rushes it the last night of vacation. We used to share answers, one-sided as that "exchange" was.

I stare over at his empty bed. The Veins have cut through the wall behind his bed, forming a dark circle around his headrest. Unsettled, I at last lurch onto my feet. My mother is downstairs, watching television with my father, and I stand close to the door.

"Do you have somewhere to go?" my mom asks.

"Oh, um, yeah," I say. "Megan's, if you don't mind."

"Holiday party?" she asks.

"Yes," I say. "That."

She gathers her belongings, and, keys swinging around her finger, leads me out to the car. As I settle into the back and she revs the ignition, I catch concern in her eyes, her brows knitted together with the same intense focus my brother has when he's working something out in his head. As she drives down the dimly lit suburban roads, beneath the watchful eye of half a dozen stars, she says, "I hear that nice Andrews boy is having a party tonight. Are you still friends with him?"

"Somewhat."

"You said you were last year. Did something happen?"

"No. People change."

"Did they do anything mean to you, Adam?"

"No."

"Are you being bullied in school?"

"No!"

"Are you happy?"

"What?" I ask.

"You haven't been hanging out with your old friends," my mom says. "You've known them since preschool, and now their parents say you haven't been over to their houses in ages."

"I'm-- I'm more happy than I've ever been, right now."

"Then why do you always look at me like you're mad at us?"

"I'm not mad at you."

"Alright, then can you try to look like you're not mad at me?"

I give her the biggest, fakest grin I can manage from the backseat. In my pockets, I'm fidgeting with a stick of pineapple chapstick and hoping Megan's house can't be much further away. When we finally arrive, I spring out of the car, mumble something about being home before ten, and knock on the door several times. It's actually her sister who greets me, who looks like Megan save for a few inches of hair and that extra, inexpressible spark that illuminates all of Megan's being, and she kindly invites me in. The house is smaller than mine, but it glows with light, and Harper, Evan, and Megan are waiting in the den with cookies. Harper has a Santa hat on, and Evan, who is scowling like one of those cats cruelly forced to dress up for the entertainment of strangers on the internet, has reindeer antlers on, complete with bells, contrasting sharply with his completely gleeless plain black shirt.

"I have a red nose, too," Megan suggests.

Evan's face flushes several extra shades of red. "You know, Adam's here too, now. Feel free to torment him instead."

"Yeah, sit down, nerd!" Megan says. "Actually," she gets up again, as soon a I've found a nice spot on her right side, between her and Harper, "You three should head downstairs. I'll bring the cookies, and we'll put on some good old, terrifying stop-motion Christmas specials."

"What?" asks Evan.

Harper's face lights up with shock and excitement. "You never saw those as a kid?"

"No," Evan says. "What's stop-motion?"
"The stuff of nightmares," she explains.

Evan's brows furrow tighter than my mom's. "What?"

When we finally show him, he is underwhelmed. He sits in mild bewilderment, cookie in hand, through most of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Megan and Harper sing through all the songs together, pulling off some fairly convincing duets, and I sit there with my arms folded, pretending that the cookie is keeping me busy and not Evan sitting under my arm, glaring out from under it at one of the foremost spectacles of the civilized world, the inexplicably multitudinous Rankin-Bass stop-motion holiday movies. Every time I think that that she's done, and we're going to have to think of something else to do, she pulls something like Rudolph's Shiny New Year or The Little Drummer Boy up, each time smiling maniacally. This is our land of the lotus-eaters, a place of unspeakable pleasure we are incapable of leaving, and our warden is Megan and her infinite selection of Christmas movies.

At some point Harper eclipses the screen, standing from her position on the ground.

"It's late. They'll be doing dorm checks any moment," Harper pauses. "This has been fun. I'm sorry about earlier--"

"--Don't be," Evan says. He's almost dozed off under my arm, but his hand is stretched across my chest over to Megan's. She's on my other side, although her legs are crossed over mine, so that we can all get our feet on the tiny footrest. Evan has his feet resting partially on one of many pillows strewn across the room, from a fight which broke out between movies over whether or not Frosty's Return counted, which I would have joined if Megan and Evan hadn't both practically been standing on top of me.

"Thank you for coming," Megan says. Her free hand, which is just touching mine, clutches my fingers. "We're so glad to have you."

Harper beams. "Me too," she says. "Me too." The Veins are only distinguishable from the surrounding darkness from the reflection of light off the television, but every now and then, when the screen is bright enough, we can all see the cracks in reality, a reminder that it follows us everywhere. "You think your parents will notice if..." she pauses.

"We'll say you left out the back. There are doors out here," Megan says. "You'd be surprised how rarely people question anything."

Harper gives us a quick nod, and she darts out, leaving the three of us alone in front of the flashing screen.

The room seems to grow five degrees warmer as the movie finally relents, leaving us with the credits, then total darkness. I wait for Megan to get up to put in another CD, but she doesn't, and when it returns to the root menu, we stare at it for five minutes before she untangles her hand from mine and clicks the television off. She settles back against the couch with a soft sigh. I feel my heart jump again. Say something.

I almost reach for my pocket, but Evan has his head rested in the crook of my other arm, which has since gone numb and is now essentially useless. The cookie plate is filled with an array of sparkly sugars and a few stray golden crumbs. A half-finished mug of cocoa, the marshmallows dissolved into a white paste, lies past us, next to the television screen. No one comes in from upstairs, and the room is dark, only a thin beam of light from upstairs coming in through the cracked door. Megan leans her head closer to mine, then I think she might be getting her hand closer to Evan's. It looks like we failed a game of Twister in the least seductive way possible, but through hours of careful adjustment, we've managed to get into a position where all three of us are so comfortable that to leave would be treason. I can hear the steady pulse of Evan's heartbeat or hear the quiet rattle of Megan's breath.

Say something.

Evan's eyes glint in the darkness. Megan's hair touches my cheek, like a caress.

Please.

Evan's head nears my shoulder blade. His voice a low rumble against the darkness, like thunder in the heat of a storm so distant that the lightning isn't visible, "You both know I'm in love with you, right?"

"We knew," Megan says.

"And I'm not going to pick one of you."

"I think we knew that, too," Megan says.

The silence resumes.

"Do you two need to get home?" Megan asks.

"I don't want to go home."

"I asked if you needed to, Evan."

He draws himself away from my arm and into a sitting position. "Shit," he says. "Do either of you have money for a bus fare?"

"Do you have cash in your jacket?" I ask. That's what I'm going with. That is what I'm going with.

"What jacket?"

Megan stands up. "Meet me by the door," she says. "I've got to grab something from my room."

"Meg," Evan complains.

She looks back at us when she begins climbing the stairs, her face striped by the light from the door. "Seriously, come up. You two are going to make me jealous."

Evan elbows me in the ribs as he rises, stretching, as slowly as possible. He extends his hand, and I sit on the couch, arms crossed. "Don't want to upset the missus," he says. "You get people like that once in a lifetime."

"As if," I say, taking his hand. "Less than once."

"You're not bad yourself," he says. The stairs whine beneath us.

"You don't know me that well," I say.

"Don't I?"

Better than anyone. Not at all. There is no inbetween, because it all hinges on how real this is. Megan is already waiting for us with a hoodie folded over in her arms. She pushes it over to Evan, who holds it like a baby animal, and I take a few dollars from my wallet and pass them to him.

"Bus fare," I explain.

"Good," Evan says, looking back towards the basement. He pushes the door open, and we're all assaulted by a blast of cold. The real world has teeth. "Because otherwise, my rates are higher than that."
"Terrible," Megan says. "And did you really think you could just stride away without a jacket? It's under forty. You're going to freeze to death."
Evan shrugs. He puts his hands in the hoodie, draws the string up a bit so we can't see most of his face. Curls of hair still try to escape, like smoke, and we can still see the bright brown of his eyes from beneath the hoodie. It's small, but it still hangs around his body. "Didn't want to ask my dad. Works three jobs. I can't hold down one. He's trying to make enough to get me on some meds, but it's not like he should have to pay extra just because I managed to break his kid."

"Don't," Megan says. "Don't say that. You know it's not true."

Evan shrugs. "Out there? Maybe. Not... not when I'm around you."

Did he mean both of us? He meant both of us, right? I'm not sure if my heart jolts out of a sudden need to be part of this or because they're pulling me towards them. Both their eyes are on me, and I understand by instinct that this is a moment of solidarity. We stand in the snow, my heart confirms what I already knew, too close to them for words. Both of us.

"Do we have any clue what we're doing?" laughs Evan.

"Oh no. No way. That's why it's going to work out." Megan says. "Me and my boys. Out to save the world."

"Whatever we do, it's going to be the three of us. Together." I promise.

"Yes. Please." Evan says, at once desperate and desperately relieved.

"This is so weird." I say.

"Well, a wise man once suggested that we should just be us, because we're pretty great, and I'm inclined to agree with him." Megan says, finally breaking our grip. "You guys be safe."

"We aren't," says Evan, disappearing like a stray fox into the night. He shouts back, "but we make it work."

My head is a mess of what just happened and am I into boys and how the hell would I ever explain this to Will but as the car pulls up, headlights flashing through the snow, I realize that this is as much a part of my double life as the powers themselves. Adam Rosenbloom could never snag Megan Rosenbloom, would never admit that Evan might be more than a friend. Adam Rosenbloom would be at a mediocre holiday party with spiked eggnog and worse company, singing carols with half-drunk teenagers he pretended to know, with the lovely Anders kid.

I don't feel like myself anymore, and I can't tell if that's a good thing.

As I pack in next to Will, who is singing along to our local "non-denominal holiday station", I hide my smile against the window, trying not to speak. Anthem's magical chokehold around my neck helps and I let the moment pass as we leave the house, even though my fingers are itching for my phone. Instead, I watch the scenery and shiver in the heated car, cold underneath my jacket and burning across my hands and face.