In the distance, a car screams. I listen to it trace down our street like a shooting star, far too fast for a residential area, and my hands tremble. Something hot and heavy lies between them, liquid dripping on my hands. I feel myself bending down to my knees, but this time, it's to vomit and not to lay a stranger's almost unidentifiable body in the street, fixed up and broken again by magics I can not understand. Gagging, I feel the heat on my hands, sense it burning, and as drops of coffee spill black like blood on an unlit street at midnight, I make the first movement in two days that Anthem has not been guiding.

A white mug cracks against the ground. The coffee disperses into pools across the kitchen, scattered by the impact of the throw. I hear footsteps on the stairs. Someone is in the Veins with me. Serena is up at midnight on a Saturday night, and the two of us, on a bad trip, are not moving. She's just watched me carry my girlfriends' body into the street so we can stage a different, more mundane kind of tragedy. I keep expecting her to leave. There has to be something else she's busy with.

"We should go home," Serena says, her voice echoing up from nights ago.

"Go ahead. I'm waiting for Evan," I say.

"He's not coming back," she says.

"He's going to be devastated," I insist. "I have to wait for him." I compose myself for him, imagine him entering and collapsing across my lap, the two of us sleeping in my guest bedroom. He never comes, of course, but the idea that he might is stronger than even my obligation, my duty, to not break down or my will to do so, so in some small way, he saves me.

My mother's hands massage my shoulders. Through the numbness, I feel the gesture Serena already offered me the night before last.

I leave before my brother even comes downstairs. Walking alone gives me time to practice my answers.

Was I at the scene. No.

Do I know where the event occurred. Also no.

Where was I that night. Studying with Serena. Her parents weren't home.

Trouble in paradise.

Am I aware that one of my hairs was found on the victim, as well as some tear fluid? Yes. There should be. We made out. Tell me when you find the saliva too.

I am prepared to look at strangers dead in the face and wait until they run out stupid questions to ask, which will be great. Way easier than the police, but I handled that, too. Lying doesn't exhaust my energy all that much, but talking definitely does.

Walking through the school is even worse. The few sips of coffee I managed before my outburst light up all the half-dead nerve endings on my fingers. I am as awake as a frog in our biology class demo, legs kicking from electric stimulation. Every movement is out of my control, ephemeral motion. The body is still dead.

Megan is half-there throughout my day, like an afterimage. I see her on the corner of my vision and turn to reveal the hallways, full of people I don't know. I get a few sympathy pats, and I don't stop them even though I want nothing less in the world than to be touched. Other people tell me they're sorry about my girlfriend. Some of the Naval Brigade girls are less sympathetic. I take their leers, too. They'll think of some way to blame me. I am the antithesis of all the quirk and fanaticism that they've hammered into something resembling an actual identity, and I hate them too, passionately. We do not talk to each other. They should be afraid of me. They should be afraid that the Megans we knew didn't line up, and I pass them knowing they will never know her the way I did, and that feels great, even though it only heightens the sick dizziness that is beginning to overtake me with the rest of the day. All I can feels is still-warm flesh in my hands and an oppressive, unseasonal heat no matter where I go, accompanied with a feeling in my chest like Evan ripped out my innards instead.

He doesn't come to gym, but he's in the hallway as we move from the last class of the day. I avoid eye contact, in fact, I try to avoid being in his field of vision. It's all fear. I know he couldn't kill me here, but I imagine him pinning me to the wall and bashing my head in. I imagine Onyx goring me to death. I'm still afraid of death. This is a weakness, but it's a human one. I'm not ready to die.

A flash of blonde eclipses my vision.

"Fuck you!" Serena yells, sprinting down the hallway.

Evan stops, like a deer in headlights, and then bolts around the corner faster than he ever could as Onyx. With a near supernatural bound, he jumps the stairs, and I grab Serena by the arm. I'm gone as well when the teachers come to pull her off to counselling, and from within the crowd of people I'm praying don't tell/do tell back and forth with every inhale and exhale, until I'm convinced that there's no difference and that I'm going stark crazy.

I slip away from them all into the Veins.

I have good company. I expected to be placed in Anthem's lair, but instead, I enter into a dark corridor and see a silhouette standing deep in the haze. Anthem's presence is a burning hand at the back of my mind, forcing me to look towards him. Just as it did when we first truly met, a small ball of fire flicks past me, but this time, he barely misses.

"Evan."

His eyes glow like those of a cat. Familiar curly hair is graced by far larger horns, curling about the ears, and around his black jumpsuit, held in place by the shoulder skulls that always seemed like overkill, are the ragged white ribbons of the delegation. "Lucifer," he corrects me.

"How's hell treating you?" I ask him. My heart pulses with every ambling, forwards step.

He breaks out into a run, which becomes a lunge. My sword hits refurbished metal claws in a devastating clang, and he swings back onto two feet, staring up with Delegational hatred in his eyes. I parry again to guard my chest, but he's so much faster, and every attack has to be done at an angle to get around an even more ambitious attack than the last. Gauntlet-like claws brim with fire, and I dodge a burning hand with a quick swing to the side, then I knock him off balance with a little help from Anthem's quick impulses. From the ground, his fingers crackle with fresh embers, burning the flesh-like floor of the Veins, and as I bring the flat end of the sword down to knock him out, he swings his arm against it. The metal claws on the back of his glove shatter, but he doesn't seem to blink in the face of the impact. I bring the sword back up.

He draws himself back to a standing position.

"Evan." His hands are shaking, a movement so slight I can only perceive him when he's inches away. "I... I can't die yet. They need me." I don't know who I'm talking to anymore.

One punch straight to the chestplate sends me against the wall. The next punch hits the wall right next to my head. I can hear his breathing.

"Are you... are you there?"

Evan's eyes narrow in the sockets provided by the mask. "I can't stop." He draws back and I knee him in the gut hard as I can. I catch a glimpse of him on the floor, in fetal position, seconds before I turn back into the darkness, my throat burning.

He can get into the Veins. He's looking for Anthem's lair.

I'm ashamed to say that's all I can think of through the fear, but there you go.

Anthem's lair materializes, mysteriously enough, around the corner, and I shut myself inside. The air, still thick with the scent of books and open wood fires as it was when it belonged to five people instead of three, is swollen with memory, and it makes me sick. Anthem watches me from atop a shelf, stepping down a series of modified stairs before making a final, delicate leap to join me. She strides along the back of the couch I refuse to sit down upon. "We are falling behind."

"It's barely been thirty-six hours."
"Viruses replicate exponentially in ideal conditions."

"You couldn't go easy on us for a hot second?" I ask, on the verge of tears and laughter. "Megan is dead because of you. Evan probably... probably wishes he was."

"I can sense his presence whenever he transforms at their whim." Anthem lifts her ears, straightening her posture. "The mind control he is currently writhing against is even more powerful than any grip I may have on him, but I can confirm this statement."

The callous indifference in her voice finally sets me off. Drawing the sword towards her neck, I ask, "Why are you doing this to us?"

She recognizes the real question before I do. "When we met, I told you there was a power that attracted the Diosite to you. I neglected to mention what that power was."

"I remember."

"It's desperation. Teenagers are naturally predisposed to believe they are... how would you say it? Important. They are old enough to handle themselves, young enough to believe, and their minds are full of hormones we can use for reins if things get tough. However, within this group there are always two kinds of candidates: of people who have craved this lifestyle since they were young and people so empty that they crave anything worth doing. There is a common thread between these groups- they are easy to hold, once you have the proper tools, and easy to take."

I do not move the sword.

"You aren't that hard to control, Adam. Nor is it, all things considered, that barbaric. You are happier doing this than you ever would have been in the rest of your unfulfilling mortal life, unwilling to confront the emptiness of a future where you see nothing truly worth doing. You've admitted as much."
"And this is the best method you have at your disposal?"

"There is a short story up in one of those shelves, Adam, about a city of light, powered entirely on the suffering of one human being. As long as that one person endures the weight of the world, the rest of the world lives." Anthem blinks. "It is a beautiful place. Can you imagine how many would be miserable had they not devised such a solution? Do you think those innocents deserve to suffer any more than the one?"

"So we're a sacrifice. No big deal losing a few kids when you could have lost all of them, huh."

"I'm glad you understand. Human agony is unavoidable. I am facilitating the most opportune path. If you were in the same situation, I have no doubt you would be no kinder... you and I are manipulators by nature. We don't care who gets in our way. We don't care about means. We care about results." Her gold eyes squint, her pupils dilated to slits, and I know who she's talking about. I hate her. I hate her more than I thought my wretched body had the capacity to hate. "More importantly, we are both empty. Your lovers were the only thing that made your own body liveable, and that is why you will not tell the others, nor will you quit. You'll play with them too, out of necessity, even at the risk of their lives... if you do not believe me, they are entering now."

Serena enters with Harper, who is wrapped so tight in her cloak that it looks like it might be cutting off her circulation. Serena's outfit has changed again, loosening the braid and adding some extra white highlights to compliment the mask she intends to wear. Harper's cloak is frayed about the ends. As I draw my sword back, the light of the room glints upon two broken gemstones set in the hilts, the living twins of which are now a sapphire on my right glove, and a ruby on my left.

"I got lost," mumbles Harper, like she needs an excuse.

Anthem flicks an ear. I answer for her. "It's fine."

A silence passes between us.

"We were so close." Serena mumbles.

"Is that all you can think about?" I ask.

"I'm thinking about it for their sake. We wouldn't be here if we had only..." Serena picks up the mask on the table. "I have to wear it again, don't I?"

"I'm not here to comfort you, Serena. I'm here to tell you how to save the world."

Serena's fingers shake.

"And yeah. We might have made it if you had stuck around longer, and you hadn't fucked up."

"Adam, stop." Harper says. "We can't start fighting each other. It's just the three of us against them, and the more time we spend arguing, the more powerful they're going to be. We can still do this together."

"Harper. I love you, so I don't want you to take this personally." Serena says, placing the mask down. "This is out of our hands. We need to tell an adult. We have to get in contact with the po-" Her voice sputters out and she brings her hands up to her throat, then up to her head.

Anthem stares at her, mutinous.

Serena is crying. I don't think I saw her cry that whole night, even while she was standing over me, so I guess it's hard for me to feel any kind of sympathy for now. Anthem was right about me, which doesn't surprise me. I know I'm right about her, too-- her philosophy, sound or not, is a sham. The cherubs need things done the way they are explicitly for their own benefit. Regardless, I go to the mask and place it back in her hands. The girl who rubbed my shoulders while I waited for my boyfriend looks up at me the same way she looks at Anthem.

"We don't have a choice," I warn her, beneath my breath.

"I'm afraid," Anthem says, "There are some ideas I can not entertain. You'll understand. The Sanguine Delegation has nothing on what more powerful humans would be able to do with an untamed shard of Diosite."

As I draw back from Serena, I catch Harper's nervous gaze. She knows what story we're in now, and exactly what Anthem is, archetypally. Our faith never wavered, but sometimes, in fairytales, you get to suffer just on the basis of position. "Let's make plans. We only have so much time, and I want this over."