Spires of onyx. Cathedrals like vines that lashed up to a sky awash in lights. Whoever she was here was just as taken by the scene, looking around as if in a daze. A voice in her head called her Chaucher, and told her to run. Nine beings awash in light rose up like a choir, their Remarks together equaled a pure brightness that seared her eyes. The body she was in gasped and backpedaled. They slipped on a puddle, the roof was slippery. She couldn’t really blame the body as it fell and she-

  -was brought to by the sound of laughter. In a large beige room women dressed as dancers (in feathers and scales) towered over her. They were laughing at her. For whatever reason she knew she deserved it. With long velvet fingers they guided her head to a fleshy opening in the tacky wallpaper. “This is the only way you can be redeemed.” a voice in her head said. The body crawled through and suddenly it all went purple. She was being reconstituted into something greater but before the process could be complete and she could be saved they-

  -were jumping from stone to stone in a raging waterfall, remarkably skilled. A woman’s skull was nestled on her shoulder. It was whispering in scents. A voice in her head counted down. “Too much time,” she heard the body bark, “too little time. It’s not right. It’s not right.” A stream of air displaced a large selection of the water. The body buckled and she felt her heart drop, or the body’s, it occurred to there was less of a distinction between her and the body’s experience’s (falling falling, down to a door of all the answers which is closing too fast or too slow) as this was, effectively-

  -her own experiences, or now was. She was in a box now, her breath erratic. A voice was apologizing (Adam, it was Adam. It was always going to be Adam). Now the box was on fire. Now-

  -in front of a cupboard an open box of prescription medication. Uh oh. She knew she had eaten far too much. She closed it and the mirror on the front showed a haggard man a little older than her father. “Let me have this, let me have this” The man said through her throat. Her lips went numb. Adam was silent. And-

  -wait a minute, she was in a freaking limo??? Hahhhhhh grand yeah!! This was so cool. The seats were plush, the windows tinted. She looked at her clothes, pretty snazzy. Snazzy guy like her, it totally fit. Someone motioned to roll down the window. She did so, though it was not her decision. When the man drew a Remark in the shape of a gun she did not react. Why would she? Now a-

  -play, an actor in the play. Watched over by a man (squat and serious), on top a mountain of chairs (white and foldable). Adam, the voice of a caustic alto, whispered lines she repeated on a five second delay. She sputtered out the wrong thing and barfed out floatrats before coming to a

  Ends come from beginnings that will lead to new tomorrows. This is assuming you can cough up the five billion dollar deposit that having a future requires. Blue sky, green ground. The geodesic domes are in bloom today. Their shattered carapaces are rung with flowers of purples and reds and oranges and greens. A crowd cheers the arrival of a zeppelin. Withering in a back alley, she dies alone.

  Catch a tiger by it’s tail, if it hollers let it go.

  She did not know what a tiger was.

  She experiences three deaths in rapid succession, so grouped because they were all the same with minor differences.

  Bisected, to think it had happened thrice. Maybe she would be the forth. Mortality is a daily concern, it would happen to her. She was required by circumstance to ponder the inevitable.

  Hmmm. Maybe she wouldn’t.

  She froze to death next to a lever she couldn’t reach. Adam was apologizing. In so many of these he was apologizing.

  They got abstract and blurry from then on. Voices tuned like static. Abstract shapes that yelled and bled.

  A woman dressed like a cowboy. Her face was missing.

  This went on for years.

  …

  She came to breathing heavy and holding in bile. She had experienced death approximately sixteen times now. But that seemed secondary to what had happened before. It felt like a dream, something stunning and unlike anything she imagined the world could be.

  But it was all real. Everything she had seen had happened.

  She hoped she would be able to visit the place with the zeppelin. She had never seen a sky like that, and didn’t want to die before seeing it in the flesh.

  Something wet and smooth was clinging to her like a second skin. She fought against it. Denied her silhouette. It seemed to go on forever, she squirmed and writhed. There were either voices in her head or voices right outside.

  Why did the world feel so much stranger now?

  “Psychic death will do that to you.”

  It was Adam. He was in her head, louder than ever, and louder than the voices (which, now that she had a reference point, definitely were coming from outside).

  ”Did it-“

  ”It worked. This was never going to be the hard part.”

  The sound of rain was muffled by all the extra skin. She shifted once, experimentally. Her limbs felt brand new. And she wasn’t bleeding out anymore! That was good!

  ”What is this about extra skin?”

  “Hmm?” She tilted her head and her eyes rubbed against the skin- no, fabric. Yeah thats fabric.

  ”Do you realize that you’re under the tent?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” She picked a direction and scooted her butt thataway!

  Now in the open air she could see the floor. She recognized the copper engraving of singtrouts and floatrats underneath.

  This was the old lookout circus! A place high above GutWorth. Even though the circus had closed long before she was born, she had lots of fond memories of playing with the strange rides and contraptions. Everything about it was interesting! Even the floor was mesmerizing, the singtrouts and floatrats seemed to shift into each other, one becoming the other if you followed the pattern long enough. Each had a word imprinted on them in the negative color, but it was too small and cracked to read.

  A black boot rested on her hand.

  ”There are dozens of people surrounding us.”

  There were! They must have come to see the circus! She finally looked up, feeling strangely unhurried.

  The boot belonged to 51, incensed. Surrounding them were roughly half of the Numbers that had been at the first meeting. Some of them now wore shoddy bandages and thousand yard stares.

  “Well, well. If it isn’t the lamentable wretch who has left us all dry in a downpour of tragedy,” 51 sneered.

  ”That’s… um, you’re welcome?” The abject terror that one would expect was absent. An invisible hand was on her shoulder, keeping her calm.

  51 extended forward like a telescope. Their face was ashen white now, with large streaks of black charcoal scraped under the eyes down to the neck, the same face paint of her boss. “It’s not a good thing.”

  “Oh..”

  “They’re scared, they can tell something has changed.”

  She glanced down, Adam (or the Remark, which was Adam) was in her hand, ready to strike. She was now in a combat stance that hurt her back. She certainly didn’t remember getting in this position, her reflexes weren’t good enough to do that instinctively.

  51 stepped and turned, hands clasped behind their back (the fingernails had been ripped off. Every single one.) “By my count, almost two dozen Numbers and Ressies have died from our man-hunt. Some by Adam’s hands, some by aberrations. Some by their own foolishness.”

  They eyed Kyrie, who looked (of all people) to Hailen for sympathy. She rolled her massive neck and offered him a shrug.

  ”But, we have Adam. I killed him, and will be rewarded soon.”

  Dozens of voices broke out in anger.

  ”Quiet down. Shut up! Silencio!!! That doesn’t matter anymore, because this little no-nothing took his Remark.”

  He pointed at Devon, who tried her best to seem innocent. She had almost 20 years of experience when it came to seeming innocent and beneath notice, she could pull off the sort of stunt that gets you infamy in certain back alleys.

  ”I’m sorry, I have no idea what my superior is saying. This is just a piece of glass.”

  She threw Adam away.

  The piece of glass froze in midair seconds into the throw. It zipped back to her hand. The crowd gasped.

  ”How is that possible? She acquired his Remark??”

  ”I shouldn’t be seeing this. It’s sacrilegious, it goes against all goodness!”

  ”She’s a medical FREAK! Let's cut her up with the old devices and see if her guts speak in color.”

  She looked down at Adam. Her crossed expression reflected muddy in the glass.

  ”Our bond is fresh, you have a gravity that I cannot defy.”

  “The fuck does-“

  ”Don’t speak. Just think.”

  ”Oh yeah. Yeah. That's smart.” The crowd was too busy freaking out to pay her any notice. Now would be the perfect time to try and leave if 51 wasn’t locked on to her, eyes like floodlights. “Can I still use my other Remark?”

  The dead fish. The one with her fathers eyes.

  ”You should be able to. The Transport you have given me does not overwrite your innate Remark. You can bring it out now if you wish.”

  She gripped her left leg.

  ”Nah, I’m good.”

  51 bought their Remark out. Which did not quiet the crowd. Fourlovers choked, which caused a guy to 51’s left to choke. Now that shut them up.

  ”This is… unfortunate, Adam’s worth was not in himself, but his Remark. And we can’t let this hussie here steal our kill, can we? We need that Remark.” The others nodded. Like most speeches in GutWorth, it was an excuse for violence.

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  ”So I say we let everyone have a go, one by one. Either Devon here kills all of you, or one of you wins the easiest duel of your life, and gets a treasure worth…” the word struggled to escape their lips, “-becoming a Constant. Perhaps even more.”

  They liked that. Of course they would. They had a gross slavering look in their eyes, their tongues hanging out, chomping at the bit to kill her. To get Adam. To transcend mortality.

  ”Oh no.”

  “What? What’s wrong?”

  ”They know who I am.” Adam vibrated deep in her head. His Remark body copied the rhythm, nicking her hand with an hour's worth of scars. “They haven’t said the name but the leaps in logic one would have to make to stumble on the truth like that is even less likely. It’s- I don’t know. This will make things immeasurably harder, I apologize.”

  Devon shook her head, hoping it would shut him up. ”I’m gonna fight them.”

  ”You really shouldn’t do that.”

  ”Watch me.” She felt great actually. Adrenaline felt like an infinite resource. All of her levels were balanced and ideal. She had just thrown up and experienced death for what felt like years but that didn’t matter because she felt-

  “I’m doing everything I can right now to avoid having you curl up in a ball and cry.”

  ”What?” She said this outloud. A testament to the pure chaos of the scene that no one noticed or cared.

  He continued like a scientist lecturing his least favorite student, ”To do that, it involves buoying you with an overinflated sense of self confidence and completing muting your amygdala.”

  “Are you sure? I think I’m just always like this, you know. Wound up, ready to let loose. Now’s just the first time I’ve got to act on these feelings.”

  Adam said nothing. While she was turned off at first, on second thought it was the nicest answer possible.

  ”Now, I think I’ll go first.” 51 said, making a motion for everyone to spread out. Some of the Numbers were in licking range. Eughhh. “As highest ranked I think we all agree that-“

  Kyrie came forward so fast he almost tripped on Fourlovers. “No. I’m sorry 51, but I need to do this.”

  51 scoffed. “Lemure 49, what you’re asking is a favor then? To skip the line of seniority for a decision like this requires something immense.”

  He nodded and wiped sweat from his hair. “We can talk after.”

  51 ceded the floor with a bow. “All yours my friend. May you know the steps.”

  Kyrie nodded cheerfully, his age momentarily showing (he was around her age if a little older, weird to think about. Most Numbers were young).

  “Get my candles,” he said. Six lower Numbers and Reserves scampered off singing a half remembered prayer with bawdier lyrics. Adam mentally winced.

  ”You know the song?” Devon thought, testing out her limbs and the strange new absence of anything heavy.

  “I’ve heard better renditions.”

  She practiced moving with him, it came so easily. Her body was a predator suddenly awake. It was fast, graceful, precise.

  And then she fell over and landed on her face.

  “I have done everything I could to improve your body, but there are still limits. I am in control, but it’s still your body, and it can break.”

  The chorus of laughter that broke out around her was expected. What wasn’t was the shame she felt. She was shifted, and that opens you up to far worse than the natural result of a visible pratfall. There was no reason to feel embarrassed over this. And yet she did.

  ”Are you doing that?” She thought accusingly, raising Adam as a threat to the Adam that was in her brain.

  ”No. But I’m not stopping you from feeling it. Shame can be a good motivator, and it balances out the overtuned confidence.”

  “Which you caused.”

  ”I thought that was all you.” Adam said, the sarcastic tone in his thought-voice didn’t suit him.

  The six toadies came back with candles, already lit, that they placed around the perimeter on stands. Hailen looked downright pissed. Her brow was furrowed and she kept clenching her fists.

  ”You’d think she’d be happy,” Devon thought, “If Kyrie dies, she goes up a rank.”

  Kyrie didn’t seem to notice, he was too busy looking at the back of his gloved hand.

  “Perhaps she’s a friend of his, and that is why she’s worried.”

  Devon held a laugh. “Oh, hah. No, no, we don’t- they don’t do friendship here.”

  Adam thought about this. “Maybe she thinks the candles are too gaudy.”

  They were extremely gaudy. Kyrie was high enough that he got deferential treatment when it came to duels. Devon had watched him fight before, he was a good duelist, as you’d expect with such a high rank, but his eccentricities made most of his duels very boring.

  “I would like to start this duel with a call to the Bright Place.” He pointed up to the light far above, squiggling in through a miles-long crack. “I feel your warmth, I hear you in my radiator. I decode your messages. I have never lost faith. I stand here in uniform, knowing that when I am worthy, I will be rescued.”

  His toadies nodded earnestly, but everyone else acted as if he had just farted audibly.

  ”Bright Place?”

  She filled him in with the appropriate thoughts. A memory of herself, dressed in what she thought a school uniform might look like, seated on her bed, with a suitcase, staring out the window on a lamp lit night, waiting for a rumor to take her away.

  ”Oh.”

  ”I was ten.” She said, an unneeded excuse. “Everyone goes through it as a phase.”

  “And some-“

  ”Some never grow out of it.” She said, brandishing Adam and cracking her neck with a wince. “Well… are we ready? Draw your Remark.” She spoke with authority she didn’t have.

  Kyrie blinked one eyeball at a time and smiled vacantly. “Of course. Here is my T’Murge.”

  From his hands came graphite. Initially shapeless, it formed into a large black rod that he snapped into two. Its edges never settled, new sections formed only to be eaten up seconds later.

  Kyrie opened his mouth to commence the duel, but no sound came out. He moved so slowly she had the time to notice how decayed and corroded the back of all his teeth were. Guess he only cleaned the front six pairs.

  “What’s-“

  ”I’ve slowed down your perception of time so we can prepare. We are currently perceiving and thinking twenty times faster.”

  ”You can do that?”

  ”I can. Though not for very long. It’s hard to overstate just how much tension this is putting on your brain if we keep this up longer than five real time seconds.”

  She took a step forward, expecting it to be the same speed. But no, she felt even faster all things considered. The inside of her skull felt like it was expanding.

  ”We can end this quickly with a swipe at his wrist. Hit correctly it will destroy his concentration. His Remark will de-materialize.

  “Hah! No fucking sweat.”

  She ran at him. It was the best feeling ever, like she was running full speed down a hill. At the full mercy of inertia, like a bullet aimed straight at a target who fucking deserved it.

  “Careful. Careful.”

  Kyrie was still opening his mouth when she was at his hand. Sliding into him (there was a crunch that was probably not good for her) thrusting Adam into his big juicy vein like a fucking hero, like a fucking god of Death.

  Faster than she could blink, the graphite swarmed the wrist and created armor. Adam bounced off and went flying.

  Inside her head she felt Adam flinch.

  The effect stopped. She was back in realtime and everything hurt. Kyrie stared down at her, smug but a bit confused. “Huh.” He said, before backhanding her with his Remark.

  She flew five feet. Somehow Adam was able to get her flailing limbs under control and have her land gracefully.

  She barfed again. The crowd cheered. Someone made a crack about her never moving that much in her life before now. She hated to hand it to them but they were right.

  Adam scooted back into her grip, the feeling of him a cold comfort. “I don’t think I’ve fully explained this yet, but I can move independently from you for a limited time. Which means if you wanted I could-“

  ”Stab him in the face,” she thought. He zipped out of her hand and the friction gave her rope burn.

  Adam was like a futuristic mechanical, zooming straight at Kyrie at speeds immeasurable. A second before impact, graphite formed around his head, creating a sturdy helmet that Adam bounced off of.

  He hit again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Each time was a failure, wherever he struck graphite would appear. It was instinctual, it was impossible, it was infuriating. It kept him busy though, giving Devon the time she needed to recover and stand.

  Adam slunk back, like a pet who knew it had disobeyed.

  “I want to be a realist about this. For your sake.”

  “Okay,” she said. Talking outloud was less energy than thinking. She swayed around, commiting to a stance that came naturally. Kyrie was sizing her up. To him the match had only just started.

  ”The best chance we had was to take him out immediately. We failed. His Remark is strange and far more adaptive than I expected. The Trick must activate on instinct.”

  “So what do we do?”

  He didn’t answer.

  FWIP! FWUNK!

  The sound of T’Murge hitting the ground in rapid succession. One after the other, playing the ground like a great big drum (but not that Drum!).

  Pinwheeling backwards, Devon knocked over one of the candles.

  ”No, fuck!” Kyrie’s Remark vanished and he rushed past Devon. “Is it-“ His face went slack when he saw the carved body on the candle holder, and he breathed out a sigh of relief. “Oh nevermind.”

  As if it had never happened, he bought T’Murge back. The graphite extended from his hand all the way to her throat.

  She ducked it, her back bending and her spine aligning (in a second Adam had fixed almost two decades of bad posture. She would look at herself in a mirror after this and be convinced she had grown two inches.) She crawlcow walked on all fours backwards, jumping up and coming to rest on another one of the candle stands.

  Once again, he seemed terrified, and his eyes scanned the other flames. Looking for what? Looking for something. And once again something had calmed him, but she couldn’t tell what.

  She thought about the graphite, how weird it felt for that to be his Remark. It didn’t have the usual bravado or pressure that came with a Remark being drawn. It was just, there. For a guy obsessed with theatricality it was so strangely subdued.

  For a guy obsessed with-

  Wait, the candles.

  ”Hey, if you had a Remark that was, let's say, not the most stable, something like a flame, what would you do?” She thought.

  He charged at her and she ducked out with time to spare. It was getting easier, or maybe she was getting better at ignoring the pain.

  For the first time Adam laughed. It was charming in its roughness, nothing like she would have guessed. “Oh, that's clever. That’s clever.”

  “Come on, tell me.” She eyed the remaining four candlesticks, looking for anything different. Anything that stood out.

  “I’d disguise it as stagecraft, and present it’s Trick as my Remark. But we don’t know the range. What if he can counter our attack?”

  He spawned chains of graphite. They orbited his hands like a metaphysical stigmata. A lash of it, spiky like thorns, wrapped itself around her leg. She barely felt it, felt less when it yanked her towards him.

  “If he could he wouldn’t be so worried.”

  She was focused on the flame on her right. The way it had suddenly flickered and wavered when the new graphite was formed. The candle it was on had yet to melt, while all the others were halfway melted.

  Kyrie placed a foot on her chest, she could barely breathe. He summoned a massive blade, all set to guillotine her. How unfitting!

  ”Any last words?”

  She smiled, and said, ”It’s the one on the right.”

  Adam slipped from her hand and cut the candle in half.

  It didn’t act like a candle. It melted into reality. The flame stretched out and swirled like paint added to a can.

  The graphite was gone. Kyrie looked down at Devon, he was terrified. Oh, what a smug look she must have had on her face, what a delicious shit eating grin.

  ”I don’t want to-“

  Adam blasted through his head like ineffective propaganda, going in one ear and out the other. His final plea, whatever it would have been, was cut short.

  Kyrie fell to the ground, extremely dead.

  Some of the crowd cheered immediately, impressed by the fight and unconcerned about the context. A few eyed her hungrily, hoping they’d get to fight her next. 51 had-

  oh boy.

  51 had a look on their face that made her sick.

  They seemed overjoyed, maybe even vindicated. They looked right through Devon, she wasn’t relevant. An inconvenience at best. No. She could tell when they looked at her they could only see Adam.

  ”I knew it. I knew it.” They looked back to the crowd, presenting Devon like a personal find. “Do you see the strength this Remark can bestow? Can you imagine what it could do with a real duelist? One that has already proven themselves?”

  ”I think we should run.”

  She nodded.

  ”And she’s already learned the dance too. Notice the way she seems to hear words that we cannot. It’s guiding her. It is power incarnate. You know, I was gonna go next, but fuck it. Fuck protocol, this is a miracle, this is a gift from Death herself, everyone should have a go! A free floating Remark! Anyone who thinks they can kill her can go right ahead and-“

  Devon bolted, running past confused and fervent onlookers. Her strides were not her own. It was her intent, but every micro movement, every choice, every placement of the foot was decided by Adam. She couldn’t argue with the result.

  At least eight different people tried to catch, stab, or slice her. She dodged every one.

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Yes,” she shouted. No one was following her, they must have realized there was no use.

  “Because I don’t see an exit.”

  She ran past strange machines that seemed so much cleaner in her memories, piles of supplies that had been left to rot, grand structures never finished, a fountain that had rusted, a statue missing a head.

  ”I know this place, I went here all the time as a kid. It was a circus.”

  All the way to the edge, where there was only air.

  ”Devon, I trust you.” He did not sound confident.

  She ran to the lip of the platform and jumped-

  —catching one of many ropes that dangled off the underside, hitting the wall of the Drum, and squeezing through a square opening in its face. Thank Grand, after all these years they were still here.

  Once inside she put the tile back in place, muffling the roar of the crowd, and it was like she was never there.