Geoul kept his eyes to the window. The rest of the bus was too close, and right now he wanted more than anything to be away from other people. Outside there were traffic lights and the late-evening sun, and trees he’d never seen before. 

So, magic was real. How exciting.

Angosin was sat next to him. No one had noticed them appear, save for the crumpled-looking man at the back they’d stepped out of. His eyes had widened, as if in surprise at them– but before he could say or do anything he was overtaken by a fit of coughing.

That mist trick again. Angosin did that a lot. It seemed that people– often if not always sick– were his “portal”.

“Blue Jacaranda.” Angosin started. He pointed past Geoul, to the world outside. There, some trees sprouting bell-shaped flowers, each of them an impressive violet, could be seen whizzing by beneath streetlights.

“Can you guess where we are, Geoul?” Angosin looked up at him, attempting a playful smirk. It meshed poorly with his tired, starved face.

Geoul’s returned look was grim. It became apparent just how dark the night was.

—

The South-American breeze was pleasant on Angosin’s face, though he had little time to bask before Geoul’s knee was planted swiftly into his nose.

Just a little more, Angosin thought. Just a small bit more and he’ll be done. This is nothing after what’s happened. Just the spear in my side.

Geoul had said nothing as he pulled Angosin out of the bus, into a park entirely foreign to him. It was empty. And dark. And for his part he was furious.

This boy he barely knew had come into his home, and brought with him ruin. Glaze it in fantasy and mystique and portents as much he may want to, the boy had killed his mother and then spirited her son off to– god knows where. As their house burned. All along, he’d acted as if none of the fault was his.

This was not the anger Geoul was used to. He’d only ever lashed out when he saw it as a productive option; that teacher would think of him before berating another student, for one.

No, this anger he’d sat on for a time. One, him especially, does not come to beat-down on such an ill-looking boy. He’d sat on it, because it would change nothing now, his ballooning rage impotent,

and he knew it.

And, Angosin knew it.

Geoul lifted Angosin back up by the arm, and beat hard, more than once, into his adam’s apple.

—

Scott’s body rests.

Scott found it fit to wake up only for how annoying that beeping sound was. Some hospital machine.

Stung his eyes just opening them. Budging at all meant currents of bone-deep ache. From what he could feel he had a cast here, and a wad of bandages there.

He felt no need to pinch himself; that had all happened. It had all happened and he’d been found at the center of it and now after the doctors he was going to be drowning in press and police and grieving families.

The first voices he heard, however, when a door somewhere creaked slowly open, were those of his parents.

—

Jordan’s brain rests.

His dreamscape is still a void.

However, now, it is… clean.

A void. Not white, but clear, like glass. Glass, with nothing behind it– not even color.

He is flopping about, like a lazy hamster, in some massive, turning wheel. Long, metal spines serve as the ferris-wheel supports, from its edges to a node at its center. From this node, a horrid squeaking resounds. The wheel’s main material, on which Jordan slides and falls, slides and falls, is hard, black and rubbery. 

He feels nothing even as he flops against it face-first, and instead uses every moment his head is free to understand his surroundings.

To one side, above the wheel, a square of the “sky” is dark.

And at the square’s other side, lies another wheel– opposite Jordan’s. Within it, after some passes, Jordan understands what– who– he sees tumbling about it.

It’s Jocelyn.

Then, he understands. The familiar squeak.

This is what he was doing now. Just following around a crippled old man. Because what else can he do?

“Hey,” Zain blurts to him, whizzing by– he is hanging on the wheel’s metal skeleton as it rotates.

“You’re spasming something fierce, in bed, man– at least stop the groaning– you’re gonna get the crew kicked out of the motel.”

—

Ian would rest soon.

For now, though, he needed something else.

He saw through the window; it was pitch-night outside. On his computer; the media was screaming about some building collapsing onto a highway not fifteen minutes from here. None of that mattered. 

Gloves, the blackest clothes he had and his makeshift lockpick; one that would work, if the Youtube tutorial told no lies. 

And, most importantly, his phone. It was on silent– he’d need only the camera.

He needed to get back into that garage. Or, failing that, the basement. He knew the general layout of Zain’s house. Once in, given everyone was asleep, this would be a cinch.

That mound of crystal– the one with the corpse in it.

That would be his proof. Zain having this in his house would shame him– make it so that people wouldn’t remember him so fondly.

Zain’s family– collateral. Although, they deserved this, didn’t they? Covering for their son– a dead murderer?

Ian felt a guilty sort of giddiness as he went for the door. He almost forgot to be quiet, his parents were snoring–

BANG! BANG! BANG!

There, just past his open door, stood a UPS delivery-woman. Clipboard and package dropping from her hands, her facemask did little to hide her shock.

Sprouting from her shoulder in a half-mist was a bloodshot eye, focused on Ian. In a cloud of pinkish mist out from her stomach came an arm. Diminutive enough to be a child’s, and spotted enough to be an elder’s. It held a gun, shaking slightly, and had just fired three shots; one into Ian’s chest, one into his stomach, and one just beneath his brain.

Ian fell. The deliverywoman screamed.

—

Far away, Angosin drew his arm up from the old drunkard’s back. It re-corporated still holding the smoking armament. That recoil was painful stuff– no wonder, giving what’d just happened to most of his bones.

“All right. Thank you very much, sir,” he whispered.

“Uh? You’hre not gonna shoot me then?” The fellow uttered between dry gasps.

“Oh, no.”

“Then wah-why’d you want  to see my back?”

Angosin lowered an arm to the man, placing a hundred-dollar bill on his shoulder to slip to his lap. The man said no more.

“Just cleaning up,” Angosin muttered to himself.

“Arrow’s not going back to that town, now.”

The boy walked, head low but smile on his face, from the alley. He had a black eye, massive enough almost to bulge, amongst other bruises on his face.

He and Geoul had some work to get down to, now. This would be the last of it, if he wasn’t mistaken.