OF SORROWS 16-17

16
 She didn’t run very far before she stumbled over a dead body.
	The realization made her gag, but it gave her an opportunity to pause and catch her breath. Her eyes were on the dark concrete below as it still reflected the indistinct neon from above, as always. The reflections were deep and clear like those of water, but it had not rained at all since Millennia awoke. The night-fog had returned, she saw with an upward glance, and the persistent dense mist obscured everything above the middle of the tallest skyscrapers. “That weirdo was right about one thing,” she panted, her head falling down and her eyes clenching shut again. “I guess I do miss being able to see the fucking sky, at least.”
	She pushed away hair that had fallen over her face and stood, slowly coming closer to breathing normally. On a whim with hands in pockets, she looked over the corpse. It was a man and he was face-down and sprawled about carelessly, as if he had fallen from some great height. That was odd; she did not notice this man here when she followed Nadia to this place. Could he have died when she was in the building, or perhaps when she was dreaming? It appeared that he had clean clothes on, so she doubted he was a homeless man. Or was such an assumption foolish to make in this inexplicable new world? Was he killed, or had it been a suicide?
	If not for the lengthy hassle of catching her breath – long enough that she felt a modicum of shame for not being more physically active – Millennia would have just moved on and continued to rush to her home. She did not do so. With her foot, she gingerly pushed beneath the man’s side and heaved, moving him from the small mural of blood he had painted with his corpse and rolling him to the side, so that she could see him.
	Immediately she was struck with the same sense of familiarity that she had felt upon meeting the woman atop her dreaming roof. This was someone she knew, someone with a name.
	She hunched down to a crouch and began to analyze the broken body. Could it have been Andre? Was that why he was nowhere to be found on the roof of the dorm? No – this was not Andre, this person had hair, and they were only a few inches taller than she was. Dark hair, closed eyes, an expression of unrelenting sadness made only worse by the flatness of his nose and the unnatural ninety-nine degree twisted angle of his neck…
	And again she lost her body with the realization. Her shadow writhed in surprise and sorrow in every direction around her, she could see, but her body remained stiff and unmoving. The world felt many times larger and she felt many times smaller. The dead boy she had disturbed must have been even smaller than that – she was an insect looking down at a mite, surrounded by a merciless city of lions. She stared at the dead and could tell her eyes were not moving; she was staring at his unmoving Adam’s apple, fixated on it so strongly that she could see nothing else, only she could see everything else. Everything else about the dead, at least. Her cramping legs, her white-hot lungs trying to breathe, the dryness forming at the edges of her lips with the exercise, the gentle trembling of her hands, she lost it all. The only thing that remained was her vision. The few and suffocated sounds of the city were distant to her, barely audible and not at all discernible.
She wished so badly she could cry for him. Trystan Tzara lay on the ground beneath her, shattered – and she knew now it was a suicide, that he had given up and been defeated by her going missing again. He was dead and she, if not the implicit cause of his death, perhaps could have prevented it again. Trystan Tzara had jumped from the roof and died this time. There was no dying in this city, but she had seen corpses around and this boy was dead without argument. She wanted at least to apologize to him, but her throat felt as dry as her eyes were.
She never knew the true extent of her distancing from reality because everything left her behind. The last time she had been this alone with her vision, though, and the last time she had been unable to move and unable to remember was the last time she was in her bed, and the months she had spent in it before the flying. That much she remembered. The memory should have hurt her, maybe, but everything was still numb, even when she felt herself blinking and standing and sensing things once more.
A question came to her when she finally was able to occupy her own body again. Had Trystan followed her, or did he know someone in the dorm of the university? How is it he jumped from the top of Nadia’s building, and how was it that she had not noticed? Had anyone noticed, or was the night-time truly the perfect time to do such things?
The questions exhausted her, but she had no choice in this world of little sense and even fewer answers. Millennia looked up, shielding her eyes from the intensity of the multi-colored lights burning out from every orifice of the very dorm she had left, and gave a cursory glance to the rooftop she had fled.
The rooftop that met her eyes, though, was her own.
There was no doubt about it. She knew her eyes were not wrong. The building behind her, the one she was looking up at and the one that Trystan had jumped from, was not Nadia’s dorm building. It was her apartment building. Everything about it was as familiar as that first night, as it always had been. The right number of floors, the right gray steel on the outside – not the black that it had hid in when the sun rose, she saw – and even the right single dark spot where her window was, at the corner of the nineteenth floor, right beneath the roof.
“Oh,” she said, lowering her eyes and hand. She could feel the apathy in her again, could see it choking away all feeling and power from her body, but was powerless to do anything against it. She accepted the impossibility with a simple shrug. “I suppose this must have happened when I was dreaming, somehow. Maybe that woman helped me out after all.”
She didn’t know what to do with Trystan’s body. Maybe he would have a funeral led by the Guard, and maybe she would see him again for it. She dared not move him further, not when the machine-funeral that might be in his future sounded more beautiful and memorable than anything she could do for him. There was no point in moving him, for it would only delay that breathtaking end for him. His eyes were already closed, even, as if he was awaiting that end with as much bated breath as her own. She could not even cry for him.
Millennia turned and re-entered her building. She passed the empty receptionist desk and the book open to her single name and entered the elevators. She stared at her reflection in the doors and did not recognize herself. She wore a knife around her neck and was wearing someone else’s clothes. Her eyes were golden and her skin was darker than she remembered. She couldn’t find a shadow in the reflection. Her own glance proved that she still had one in reality. Another thing she could not explain. She rode the elevator up for hours. She never grew impatient.
She arrived and walked down her hallway and felt the Emperor watching her still. In front of Berah’s door she turned and looked at her own. It was cracked open just as she left it. The darkness of the inside was visible and profane to the lit hallway. Millennia turned away from her room and turned the door labelled YEARS. It was locked. She walked to her room and retrieved the key. The darkness of her room did not bother her. She left her door open again and opened the door of YEARS. It opened for her and the inside was as dark as her own room.
A single lamp lit the room and illuminated the bed that Berah lay on. She slept on top of her blankets. Fabric lines from the weight of her body decorated the bed like veins.
Millennia closed the door and heard the siren beginning again. The time it indicated was more than two hours later than the last she heard in the dorm. Millennia went to the window and opened the blinds first before raising open the window. The cold of the outside took her by surprise. Soon the Emperor began to order the city asleep again.
“KILL THE NEW MACHINE GIRL, AND WE WILL HAVE FREEDOM AGAIN.”
“KILL THE NEW MACHINE GIRL, AND WE WILL HAVE FREEDOM AGAIN.”
“I know,” Millennia whispered after every command. “I will.”
She could not see the Emperor without leaning out of the window and turning her head out of it. The concrete far beneath her beckoned but not as strong as the Emperor. From here she could only see half of the Emperor’s face. It could have been a man’s or a woman’s or maybe something else. Either way, Millennia found it beautiful. They were just as horrifying and graceful as the Guard when they gave up their flesh. The beauty did not affect Millennia or take her breath away. Not anymore. Now the two of them locked eyes. She wondered if the Emperor was as curious as her or as damaged. She wondered if the Emperor still felt anything at all. She wondered if she still felt anything at all.
The beautiful face faded and the night returned. Millennia pulled herself back into the room and closed the window. She left the blinds open and returned to her friend’s side.
She watched Berah Years sleep.
How was she to wake her? She knew that she could not just jolt her awake. That would not do. She began to take off her clothes. When she was naked save the knife hanging from her neck she climbed into the bed with Berah and laid next to her. She felt lonely even in the arms of her best friend.
She watched the way the light highlighted and played with the shadows of the sleeping woman’s face. It might have been beautiful also. Millennia could not tell. After a moment she decided it was beautiful, not out of any truth but purely out of loyalty. She had an obligation to her friend to support her even in ways like this. She imagined that was true at least.
 Berah stirred when Millennia put her hands around her waist. She watched her friend’s eyes flicker open and become awake. She wondered if Berah could see the new gold in her.
“Milly?” Berah sat up and rubbed her eyes. Millennia did not move. “What are you doing here? What time is it?”
“The last siren said seventeen.”
“The last… Have you been staying awake all night again?! Millennia!”
“I’m sorry. I can’t sleep.”
“Where have you been?! Your room’s been empty all day!”
“…”
Berah sighed. After a moment of hesitation spent looking out of her window she yawned and laid down next to Millennia and held her friend in her arms. “I’m worried about you. You’re always gone, and when I call your phone it always goes straight to voicemail. Is everything alright? You’re not thinking of leaving again, are you?”
It was hard for Millennia to make sense out of what Berah was saying. She answered long after the asking. “No. I don’t want to sleep.”
“Where are you always going? Why won’t you turn your phone back on? You have me worried sick all the time.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry. Just answer my questions!”
Millennia lowered her eyes and faked regret. “I like not having a phone. I don’t have to talk as much as before.”
“Are you sure you’re not tired? You sound… drowsy. There’s something up… with your eyes.”
“I’m fine.”
Berah shifted. They were close enough that the knife of Millennia’s throat was only inches from touching Berah’s chest. She wondered if the girl had noticed it yet. Her hands danced around it. “When was the last time you did anything fun, Milly?”
She tried to remember. Her mind was as slow and dense as molasses. Trystan’s face hung above her own and threatened to choke her. “I saw a funeral last night.”
Berah sat up and clapped her hands together. Beneath her Millennia curled up into a ball. “I know what the problem is. Oh, we just need to go out again. I know that’ll help, even a little bit – come on, it’ll be just like old times, don’t you think! I’m not very tired anymore, and it’s only seventeen, you said… well, how about going out right now? What do you think, Milly?”
Millennia said nothing. She was supposed to be asking her friend something but she forgot what it was. Was it really seventeen? What did that even mean? Had she forgotten what time was and how it flowed? Perhaps she was in the wrong when everyone else knew the truth and had no problem with the world. Maybe she was dreaming again.
“It’s been so long since we went out together! I’m getting excited just thinking about it, Milly. Come on, sit up, let’s get dressed! Can you see? I won’t turn the lights on, since my blinds are open, but… oh, you already have clothes here. Come on, then, Milly. Let me just get started on my makeup.” She pulled a seat out from her desk and dragged it to her vanity.
For the first time Millennia wondered how the lights of every building were brighter than usual at night if every citizen was supposed to be asleep.
“Do you remember that one time we went out – to the rooftop place? It was too cold for us to actually dance much on the rooftop, of course, but we took pictures out there before going to the penthouse floor. Haha, remember how we almost had our fakes taken, and you had to seduce the bouncer for us to get inside? I’ll never forget how you kept looking over your shoulder at the dance floor to see if he was still on duty or not. I wish we could go back there now, but it’s much too late – they won’t possibly be open, now at this hour. Hm, I think the closest all-night party place is on 89th… And the taxis aren’t running… I guess we can both fit on my bike together? I guess that means I should wear pants tonight, huh…”
Millennia sat up and began to dress again. She felt as numb and sluggish as she did when dreaming. Before her eyes Berah babbled and groomed and dressed herself too. She had no idea how much time passed before her friend was ready. The situation felt wrong even as she stared at their reflections when they left the floor. Millennia’s reflection still had golden eyes.
There was a child seated behind the reception desk. Her fists covered her eyes and she silently wept.
Outside Millennia saw Trystan’s corpse again. Berah stepped over it and Millennia averted her eyes from it. This time she felt nothing in response to it.
The too-bright asleep city flew by them. They rode side by side on two separate bikes. The wind and the lights used to excite her. Now even that was distant, or, forbidden. The exhaust from their motor-peddling fused with the night-fog. The city fused with the night-fog. Berah looked up at the city in wonder as they rode. Millennia looked at the streets, desperate to see a member of the Guard.
She did not know the area where the all-night party was. There was no line outside. Inside the unmarked building they found a line of people all in black stretching up a staircase lit only by red fluorescent lights. What must have been the bouncer looked them up and down when they entered and let them go on with just a nod.
“Hey, Milly, wasn’t that Drago? From the last time we went out? I think it is. That’s probably why he let us go so easily. Haha, I guess he recognized me, huh?” She reached into her back pocket and summoned a flask. After three deep gulps she handed it to Millennia. “Come on, this wait will be a couple of minutes. Why not pregame?”
She took a sip and felt nothing. So she took another and another. Still the lights threw themselves onto the hard shadows of the other attendees and her feet in boots threw themselves onto one stair and then another. It did not take long for her to feel the heat seizing her esophagus. If nothing else she could resign herself to the blurriness of everything now.
The light was lower on the inside of the club, when they finally entered. “We made it, no problems this time!” Berah exclaimed, barely heard in the immediate din of the club’s music. All Millennia could see of anyone was their shadows. Every wall radiated dark moonlight-indigo light that gave everything an otherworldly radiance; no light shone from the ceiling, only a copious amount of light bulbs on the walls and behind the bar. On the floor they stepped on bedsheets that reflected the light in every direction.
Millennia immediately lost Berah in the great undulating room of people. The music disoriented her at first, but the more she struggled to stand and look around, the more arousing the beats were to her lungs. Heavy bass slammed and caused every glass on the bar to audibly vibrate along; tropical-esque sounds invited her hips to dance on their own. Someone sang loudly in the language of grinding bone and steel, and she was unable to tell if the vocals came from the song or someone – multiple people, it sounded like – in the crowd.
Before long every part of her moved except the face. Shadows and light danced with her, each with a hand on her hip. A tall glass stayed in her hand the entire time. The alcohol rested in her, and someone bought her a round of two shots from the bar. It was not until after Millennia downed the two shots and smiled quarter-heartedly at the shadow next to her that she realized she did not recognize the taste of any drink she had so far. Was alcohol missing from this world, too?
She felt as if she was dreaming again. The mysteries of the world, the creation of a memory, what she had come to Berah’s bed for, all of it blended together with the hard banging of the endless beat and the constant tide of the shadows. It moved her, it all moved her without putting a finger to her soul. She was dancing, Millennia realized distantly; her heart was not in it, was not in her. She felt as faceless as all the others. Her body drifted in and out of social circles and close contact with others; hands grazed her, her own hips met and missed those of others.
 The songs changed and the time passed but the beat never stopped. The dancing never stopped. She could not see Berah anywhere. The music and the shouting of shadows trying to communicate were so loud that it was impossible to tell if an hourly siren had rang or not. Even in the tall curtained windows that reflected and multiplied the festivities, the light was too bright to really see much beyond the skyline of the city. The nightfog hugged the glass as if wishing to join, and hid all of the outside world as if out of envy.
Millennia stumbled and danced gracefully all at once. Half the fun was in the toeing of the line, but now she put in all the effort and received none of the satisfaction. Somewhere along the line she had lost herself to the music. It was all satisfying in the sense that it satisfied her body to sleep when she was tired, or to close her eyes when riding on the subway. This all excited her once, and the alcohol helped her to enjoy the moments, but it was a false enjoyment, an objective one. She did not scream along to the songs in languages she could not understand. She did not throw her hands and head into the air when a beat she recognized played. She did not search the crowd for familiar or attractive faces. She only let herself be moved and be drunken, only let the room spin and pulse around her, and tried to imagine the night as an artistic collection of moments that might be endless.
Someone else bought her a drink the next time she returned to the bar to catch her breath. How long had this lasted? When would it end? It felt as if she had sobered up and gotten drunk again since the last time she was here. She took three more shots and returned to the dancefloor to dance with someone. Their waists touched and she felt hands on her body, probing and searching instead of groping. Without knowing why she felt the urge to pull the knife out from her shirt and plunge it into the heart of the person in front of her, the person who had given her their immediately forgotten name. Sweat poured down her back, the lights flashed and changed color in the blink of an eye – from a dark violet to a fluorescent intensification of flesh-pink – and she pushed off from her partner, merging off into the crowd with every step on the beat, every person around her a blur, every second a week, a year.
Years. She was searching for Berah – she was searching for a Mr. Years.
She was searching for the New Machine Girl.
Millennia remembered her purpose at the same moment she realized she was drunk. The elegant and natural swaying of her body became clumsy stumbles in an instant. The thrill of the night entered her blood at the same time as the alcohol. The faces blurred by her, the night blurred by her, and she threw her head back and let herself enjoy it, at the same time she accepted that she had to leave it.
The neon-blood-red of the outside greeted her with a shock, a splash of bright water to her shadowed face. She stumbled out to the foyer of the rooftop’s staircase gasping like she had been saved from drowning. When did she get this sweaty, this hot? Was she not just shivering for hours? People already faceless jostled past her, anxious to enter the festivities; it looked as if an endless amount of people were rising, coming closer and trying to appease the bouncer to be let into the party. No one was leaving. Millennia had drunk too much, she knew, as the world spun and danced around her. Where was Berah? Where was Millennia?
She stumbled to the railing and stopped herself from falling over with wide eyes. A thousand floors stretched down beneath her, and her sweat fell from her head and dropped endlessly.
What if she fell, here? Would anyone see her? Would anyone care? She glanced around at all the people next to her, all of them thrown into deep, unrecognizable silhouettes by the harshness of the red lights above. No one glanced over to her, not a single person. What was so different now from how things were before? Why had she begun to feel that maybe, just maybe, she could escape her loneliness, her failures?
Millennia looked back over the railing and took a deep breath. She was sober again, and her heart pounded hard in her chest. She was more nervous than the last time. She saw Trystan dead on the ground again, limbs twisted and eyes seeing nothing, and her hands tightened on the railing. At least no one would have to see her when she fell this time.
And then a hand gripped onto her shoulder, more urgently than she held onto the railing separating her from death again. Millennia turned, still feeling the alcohol in her lagging limbs, to see Berah in front of her, eyes red and bloodshot.
“Come on, Milly,” she said. “We have to go, right now.”
17
The skyline lit up before her eyes though it had been sun-bright for countless hours by now. In between a blink and a wiping of her own tears Millennia watched the lights come to life, rising and blinking one by one, slowly building the vague city behind the nightfog that she had lived and died for. A timid blanket of snow was falling over it all, down even to her, so small, so in awe. It meant nothing anymore what season it was, she knew, completely sober now. If the city wished it to snow, it would snow.
	“I knew it,” Berah said beside her, their hands clasped over and in each other, fused and melting beneath the pricks of cold. She cursed. “It always snows when they come for a hunt. Always.”
	They had left through the back entrance of the club that Millennia had not known existed. After the whirlwind of activity that was the endless night-party, the outside city was intensely peaceful – though it only took a moment of Millennia enjoying the peace for it to feel wrong and out of place. A city was not quiet. A city was not peace. Not this city, not ever.
	“Come on, Milly. What are you doing, standing around like that? We have to go!”
	She glanced over to Berah, who was looking around a corner of a building they stood behind, at an alleyway close to the club’s building. Looking up, Millennia was unable to see the top of the building, let alone the rooftop, thanks to both the obscuring nightfog and the canopy of gently falling snow. Had the rise – and subsequent descent – been long enough for it to look so massively tall? It didn’t feel like it, not at all.
	Berah cursed. “We won’t be able to get our bikes back. It looks like we’ll have to run.”
	“What’s going on, Berah?” Though she felt perfectly sober, Millennia surprised herself when she could hear her words slurring somewhat. “Why did we have to leave like that?”
	“The Guard, stupid. I saw the Guard coming when I looked out the window. They’ll execute us if we’re caught there, still awake. We have to go. Shit, shit…”
	The Guard. Would Braxton be among them? Would they be in their humanoid forms, or those beautiful machine-like abominations? How would it look to see more than four at once, sparkling in the snow and complemented by the sheer darkness of the city? Deep inside, Millennia wanted to see them. Maybe it would lead her to an answer, where everything else led to questions.
	The question – her question. She remembered, for what felt the fiftieth time, what she had watched Berah Years in her sleep for. Millennia followed behind her friend, who was still hiding behind the wall of a building and cradling her chin in thought, and tried to appear as fearful as she was. This was not the time to interrogate her for answers, but she would have to stay with her and escape if she wanted to get the answers at some point. Disappointingly, this meant she would have to flee from the Guard once again.
	A snowflake fell on Millennia’s nose and in blinking she smelled a faint hint of copper.
	“They’re… they’re coming.”
	“What?”
	“They’re coming for us!”
	Then they were running, breathless, shoes loud in the otherwise silence of the night. The buildings of the street they ran down were tightly constructed, packed tight enough to remove any alleyways between them; they could only go down to the avenue, down 87th street, where they would be able to make a turn and get out of sight of the enemy chasing them.
	Blood echoed through Millennia’s ears for the first time she could remember since rising, since the dancing. Berah was faster than her, sprinting and gasping and keeping her eyes forward, but Millennia could not help herself from looking back, from trying to get a glimpse of her blessed pursuers of steel. They were shadows, a number of them, moving almost faster than the two girls but looking to be walking in the pinnacle of leisure; the Guard were either wearing armor-flesh of pure black, or the shadows moved swiftly with them, robbing her of the thrill of seeing her executioners yet making the fleeing even more pleasurable.
	They turned on Broadway and ran even faster, the emptiness of the street only intensifying their fearful exodus. Behind them the sound of glass shattering rang through the streets like a song, and soon accompanying vocals in the form of human screams added to it, echoing even this far away from the club.
	“The executions,” Berah gasped, slowing to a trot, still refusing to look behind herself. “It’s started. Oh Goddess, we have to run. Fuck.”
	Millennia slowed as well, hardly noticing how difficult it was for her to breathe in the euphoria of it all, and remembered Vaalh telling her that it was an execution that made him realize the Guard were not to be admired.
	“They’re still coming,” Millennia breathed, without a hint of urgency.
	“What?! How?” Berah paused, gasping, and looked around herself for a moment. “The subway, maybe? Should we jump the gates?”
	“No. If they catch us down there, we don’t have anywhere to run.”
	They started to run down the avenue again, keeping to the sparse shadows where they could. The too-fast lazy sauntering of the legion of Guard echoed closer and closer with each passing moment. In the back of her mind, Millennia tried to look for another motor-bench they could hide in, like she had before – but Broadway was not the avenue she had been on before, and it was not one of the city’s most famous streets for no reason. This area was remarkably cleaner than most other parts of the city, and there were no motor-benches, no homeless sprawled about or in blankets anywhere, and nowhere to hide.
	And when they stopped again after passing 91st, the Guard were still audibly following, their footsteps still only growing louder. At this point Millennia did not dare to look behind her. The temptation had gone, had been usurped by a certainty that turned her off and stole her excitement. They would not be cloaked in shadows now, she knew, they would be open for her to observe, to take in fully; but the knowledge that there would be no obscuring, that the thrill would disappear and be replaced by a real fear, a confirmation, another death that would solve nothing.
	“What is it?!” Berah screamed, her eyes red, bright neon red. Millennia saw the infrastructure-stars behind her eyes, and none of the nightfog. “How are they still following us?!”
	She and Millennia ducked into an open bodega – the lights still on, the grill in the back still on and smoking, but the workers gone, evading the Guard just as they were doing – and ran out of the back door. They turned off from the avenue closer to the river, disappeared beneath scaffolding and doubled back after a massive church, returned to Broadway and passed 94th, and the Guard were still ever closer.
	“Blood,” Millennia gasped, her breath starting to fail her and her legs still pumping solely thanks to adrenaline. “They’re attracted to blood!”
	“What? None of us are hurt!”
	“I know, but that’s how they’re following us!”
	“Do you think they’re following the blood in us?! We’re fucked!”
	“No,” Millennia said, but could not go on, not without stopping, and if she stopped she died. She was following Berah and her legs, not any particular desire to live on. Answers. She wanted answers, she reminded herself, and freedom.
	Vaalh had said she would be fine against the Guard if her clothes had no blood on them. That would be impossible if the Guard could somehow track the very blood in their bodies, and if they could do that, they would be able to track and remove the corpses of vagrants. But they could not, and Millennia and Andre both had been able to fool them by playing at being dead. So how were they following the two of them now? She looked down at her knife and her hands, wondering if she had unknowingly cut herself during the dancing, somehow, or even cut someone else without noticing – but there was nothing, no blood, no penetration, only the cold of the chain and the steel.
	“Oh fuck,” Berah yelled after stumbling to a stop a little past the sign for 95th. A supermarket’s “closed” sign blinked on and off onto her fearful face. Millennia stopped too, bending over and holding her knees with her hands. “My period,” Berah whimpered, her voice quivering. “I’m on my period, Milly. Oh fuck… I’m so sorry…”
	The funeral marching grew louder and louder – they must have been right on their backs. Millennia, with eyes closed, stood to her full height and gripped her knife with both hands. What if Braxton was here? Would he be the one to take her life, without failure, this time?
	The marching stopped, and the sirens began.
	Millennia opened her eyes, and Berah looked up. The hour. Outside the sirens were orders of magnitude louder than they ever were within walls. The marching of the executioners had stopped, and the voice of the Emperor began to boom through all the earth.
	Berah looked back to where the sound of the approaching had come from, and gasped. Millennia darted to her side and held onto her friend’s arms; the sight had driven her to almost faint, and her legs had buckled. Goosebumps rose on Millennia’s arms, but she dared not look back, could not bring herself to see the Guard – to perhaps see Braxton Ring. She was not ready, not yet. If she saw him again, here, she had no idea whether she would stab Braxton or herself to death.
	“There’s so many,” Berah gasped, fully shivering. The snow slowed and stopped, as if even they were forced to freeze to death when the Emperor opened their mouth. “Milly, look, please. There’s so many, and they’ve stopped. Oh my Goddess. They’re all standing so still, staring at us. That’s the Guard? Sorrowful Goddess. Milly, please…”
	“No,” Millennia said, her heart heavy with sober fear but her body perfectly still, her heart beginning to slow, the sweat on her forehead starting to dry or evaporate like the snows. “No, I won’t look.”
	“They’re staring right at me. Oh Goddess… I think I’m going to be sick…”
	“The siren,” Millennia said, looking up and trying to divine in which direction the Emperor would appear from. “They don’t move when the Emperor is talking, I guess.”
	The realization came to both of them at the same time, and the market’s “closed” sign screamed its silent neon onto both of their faces and their teeth. The Guard would move again, after the Emperor finished with their orders for the city. And when the Emperor closed their eyes, Berah and Millennia both would be executed on the spot.
	Running again, the wind brushed past their ears, and Millennia swore that she passed at least nine snowflakes floating in the air as if arrested in time. Was that the doing of the Emperor, too?
	“We have to get inside somewhere,” Berah panted. “We’ll be safe there. I always am.”
	They passed 99th.  At least seventeen more streets remained before Millennia would see Trystan on the ground again, forgotten. “We won’t make it home before the siren stops. They’ll catch up before we get there.”
	Berah cursed. “We don’t have a choice. Follow me.” She turned down 101st abruptly, and darted into the suddenly shadowed sidewalk.
	Here, too, the snow was frozen in the air, unable to move even though they could see nothing of the Emperor thanks to the buildings rising silently in the way. Even with their face obscured, Millennia noticed a brightness in the air to the north, where the Emperor must have appeared. They were still telling her what she already knew.
	“I swore I wouldn’t tell anyone about this. I never have before.” Berah glanced back to her friend, eyes wide and afraid. Millennia had never seen her like this before, not this shaken and unsure of herself. Was this what she was like when the two had been nearly caught in compromising situations, before the flying? “I know you won’t tell anyone, Milly – I know it. I’ve really had no choice.” She led Millennia to an uninteresting building of medium height and unremarkable coloring that looked like it could have been either an apartment or an office building and was perhaps both. From nowhere Berah Years procured a key on a keychain with nothing else attached to the ring of keys but a single dried rose petal. Berah opened the door to the building with the key and pressed some four-digit number to a keypad to turn off the automatic alarm, which indicated that the building was indeed for a number of offices. They went up sparkling crystalline stairs in the dark, not even daring to touch the elevators.
	It was at the ninth floor that Berah finally opened a door out of the stairwell. By then she and Millennia both moved with slow, ragged steps, and their heavy breathing echoed up and down the staircase only barely lit with neon emergency lights. Outside of their breathing, Millennia swore she could hear the ghost of organ playing drifting up the stairs behind them.
	“This is an abandoned office building,” Berah said, leading Millennia down a hospital-like hall lit only by dim sterile-blue lights. It resembled no office she had ever seen before. “My dad used to work here, before he got a job at City Hall. He gave me the keys to it before I came to the University, but I never had a chance to come. Never bothered to do much more than bring some of my stuff here.”
	“Your dad… Mr. Years, right?”
	“Hm? Yeah, that’s his name.” Berah seemed to find the door that was her father’s office, and started to unlock its handle. She looked around nervously the whole time. Millennia did not fail to notice that the cameras and speakers that were the Emperor’s eyes and mouth were in every corner of this building, too. “I haven’t seen him in a while… since a bit after you left, I think. 200 years, maybe?”
	Millennia’s insides felt light, a thousand butterflies flying into themselves and tearing each other apart before she could draw a single breath. “What kind of work did he do, again?”
	“I’m not sure. He worked for the government. Pretty close to the Emperor, I think. He told me a million times before but, honestly, I never listened. Not when he started trying to tell me about it to pressure me into studying law.”
	“And his trip… where was he going?”
	Berah managed to unlock the door – after all this effort, Millennia realized the doorknob was covered in rust, looked almost decrepit, and that Berah handled it with the care one would for an ancient artifact or the wizened skull of the long-dead. Ants crawled on the outside half of the door so slowly that it was close to impossible to notice.
	The inside of the office was saturated by a dim light of the deep red of a vein. Berah slipped in and pulled Millennia in with her, keeping the door as close to closed as possible, as if the light escaping into the pristine hallway would alert the Emperor to their presence.
	“I don’t know where he went,” Berah said, with the pause and trepidation of hesitation. “Maybe he told me, and I forgot, too.”
	“Do you talk to him still?” Millennia found herself immediately drawn to the window of the room. The blinds were decorated by countless cobwebs and spider dwellings. She cracked open two of them and tried to see outside. “When was the last time you heard from him?”
	“Before he left. Dad never talks to me when he’s gone on his trips. Not after the last time.”
	“The last time?”
	“…You don’t remember? The last time I talked to Dad on his business trip, I caught him with someone, remember…? When I had to stay at your place for a month that summer, after he and I had that huge fight?”
“Oh yeah,” Millennia lied. “Of course. Sorry.”
“I still feel bad about that.”
“Why? You know you can always stay with me, Berah. I didn’t mind.”
“…No, I mean about never telling my mom why I left. The real reason.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.”
Berah sighed and said nothing else. She sat behind the desk of the small office and let her head rest in her hands. “I can’t believe what this night has come to,” she yawned. Something about the light’s being made up of shadows and the deep red of the lights made her appear more a painting in motion than a person. Brushstrokes of blood colored her skin a new shade. Visual harshness sharpened everything about Berah, from the way her short hair complimented her long neck and prominent collarbones to how melancholy her pose of exhaustion looked, with two sets of shadows behind her mourning. Millennia still could not see her own shadow anywhere.
While halfheartedly and insincerely apologizing for disturbing Berah’s sleep, Millennia looked around at the small office and her hands danced the lone chair on the other side of the desk, its seat filled with blood-red manilla folders fit to burst with thousands of papers dyed cardinal-red. File cabinets filled both walls to her sides like wardrobes, their contents as tantalizing to her eyes as the stark silhouettes of the premature pallbearers had been.
“What is this place? If your dad worked with the Emperor, wouldn’t he have his own office in City Hall?”
“Huh? You mean the Emperor’s tower?”
Another absence. “Yeah. I guess so.”
“This was just his secondary office, he said, where he kept all the papers he didn’t really need. I’m pretty sure that he also brought back…” She gulped, suddenly, and sat up from the desk, removing her elbows from it and shaking her head. “Why do you want to know so badly?”
Something told Millennia not to speak anything of Vaalh’s request to Berah. Even though she was her best friend, even though the two had been there for each other countless times in the past (apparently), Millennia hesitated from telling the truth in any fraction. The knife on her chest suddenly ran cold in an office that was heated almost three degrees above a point of comfort. That was why she could not trust Berah, she knew, before her heart could beat again. Everyone could pierce her, and anyone would.
She opened her mouth to lie when she heard the sound of marching.
“Oh my Goddess,” Berah hissed, jumping in fear and holding her arms around her chest. “It’s the Guard. They’ve followed us here! Milly, come on! Hide!”
“They’re following your blood,” Millennia said, hunched beneath the wooden desk of Berah’s father, her arms around her friend and their heads in the crooks of each other’s neck. “We have to be perfectly still. They won’t find us that way.”
“How do you know this?” Berah whispered, her eyes alternating between clenched shut in horror and open wide in incredulity. “The blood, about being still… How, when you didn’t even know about the Guard just the other day?”
“Someone told me about it.” She closed her eyes and tried to control the shaking of her body and the slamming of her heart. The Guard were moving as slowly as they did in the funeral she had seen. “A few someones.”
“What if they find us? Oh Goddess, I don’t want to be executed…”
“They won’t find us. They won’t.”
But I want them to. What if they don’t execute us on the spot? What if they take us to the Emperor, first? Would we have a trial? Would I be able to get some answers, before I die? Again – die again. My heart won’t stop beating. Berah’s hands are so cold, so sweaty. I shouldn’t have let her bring us out here. God, I don’t want to die. What’s wrong with me? Why can’t I ever do it, when it comes down to it? I’ve tried so hard. Haven’t I tried enough?
	“This shouldn’t have happened,” Berah whispered. Her breathing had slowed but her hands were still sweating, still gripped onto Millennia’s arms as if to let go would be to fall from the nineteenth floor, to fall, to fly, and to wake and die again. “They’ve never come to an all-night party before. I’ve been to so many, and I’ve never seen that happen before. Never with a force that big. Millennia, I swear there were hundreds of them. They took up almost the whole street behind us. I didn’t even know there could be that many Guard officers. It was like an army. Why were they all coming after us? What if there was something to blame for that?”
	“What are you saying, Berah?” Millennia heard her voice quiver and her heart start to speed up.
	Berah licked her lips and pulled her friend closer. They were so cramped and close beneath the desk of her father that their bodies felt close to fusing. She felt their sweat mixing. “I don’t know.”
	“Maybe someone called the Guard to bust the party.” It was scary to think of the function where, for just a moment, she had lost control of herself to the alcohol and the music and the shadows. Had she not left when she did, the Guard would have come and she would have been erased. She almost didn’t remember her actions or her thoughts in those moments; she had moved and moaned on autopilot, everything outside of her own control, and it felt it had lasted for days. How long had they been in there? How long had she lost herself?
	“No, that’s impossible. They cut off the phone service at night.”
	“What? Then, how could –”
	The hymn of the Guard’s steps grew louder. “Ssh!” Berah hissed, and in the echo of it Millennia swore she could hear the sound of an organ’s off-key playing. “Why do you keep acting like you don’t know these things?! This isn’t funny anymore, Milly!”
	“Sorry. But if no one could have called the Guard, how do you think they found us?”
	“I don’t know. I couldn’t hear anything from the outside, so I don’t think it was the noise. And if it was just the noise… they wouldn’t have come with a force like that. No way.”
	Millennia went silent, and Berah’s breathing slowed. Millennia heard again the sound of noise, the almost insectile noise of machine legs walking and crawling past, exhaling exhaust and the orders of the Emperor to annihilate, to execute and to hold onto order. The sound reminded her of the motor-bench and then the atrocities of Andre’s warped, mutilated, sometimes-dead form. She felt bile rising in her throat; she clenched her eyes, allowed herself to twist together with Berah into fear and shadows of sunrise-red. Exhaust from the Guard trickled in beneath the crevice of the office’s door, as dark and as pungent as night-fog, and it cloaked the two of them together until they were one.