I awoke in a coliseum. A blue sun gazed at me, something I’d not seen before. It cast the world in a somber, alien hue. Rows and columns of stone benches sprawled around a sandy field.

Zauri stood in the field, sword hilt in hand. Black and red waves ignited off her hilt in a corkscrew pattern; how wondrous! A headless man charged her with a twinblade; it was like a lightblade except red beams shot out of both ends of a hilt, so it had to be held from the middle. How would she deal with something twice the size of her blade?

When the twinblade surged toward her chest, she twirled out of the way and swiped down on it with her lightblade. Light hit light and sparks flew in rainbow hues like when I’d fought Kediri’s shadow.

“Pause!” Zauri said to the headless man upon noticing me. He stood straight, holding the hilt of his twinblade out.

Zauri wiped sweat off her forehead with her sleeve as I walked through the sand toward her.

“The dream never ended for you, again?” I asked.

She nodded. “I’ve been waiting for you to come back. Lost count of the days, honestly. Twelve, I think?”

“Where the hell are we, anyway?”

“I was flying around and found this place. It’s on its own little island in the sea. Decided to sharpen my skills, so I can teach you better. Did a lot of fighting.”

So Zauri had been adventuring without me in my own dream stone. How was that even possible?

I wiped a bead of sweat off her reddened, sunbeaten cheek. Whatever she had to tell me, I could bear it, right? I wouldn’t just disown her.

“You were about to tell me something before we were so rudely interrupted. Truth is, I have much to tell you, but I want to hear whatever you have to say first.”

Zauri nodded. “Let’s go sit, at least.”

We sat on a stone bench. I imagined it filled with folks watching warriors do battle, cheering each bloody pummel and sliced limb. When I was a boy, Abba told me they had coliseums in Majapahit where people fought, but I hadn’t imagined them like this: stone-built, sandy, and large enough to field a small army, let alone a few duelers.

Zauri sighed and scratched her snaky eyebrows. She locked eyes with me, her cheeks tight and tense. “The first day when you met me was also the first day I’d ever existed. Technically, I have a sense that there was a before, but no actual memories. I possessed knowledge and ideas, but no actual context for why I knew what I knew aside from an understanding that I’m a script, meant for a specific purpose. Basically, I’m like a person with amnesia who wakes up knowing what their purpose is, yet not really understanding why it’s that way.”

If I were to wake up with amnesia, it might be a mercy. Forgetting everything would be a clean slate. And yet, the shadows of what had happened would still be there, an inexplicable pain hiding in the darkness.

I nodded so she’d continue.

“There was something else, though… a source, deep inside me, feeding me ideas. Emotions. Sensations. And even memories. Eventually, I figured out what it was, and the real sin is that I didn’t tell you until now. It’s a hidden script called a black box. It’s something most often used in espionage in order to corrupt a dream stone and control the mind of the user. Meaning, it’s something evil, and I don’t know what it’s doing to me. What it’ll make me do, in the end, to you.”

Tears spilt from her eyes. Her remorse was real, of that I was sure. She’d described something that seemed beyond her control. But the awful possibilities were endless; could this black box be why I was missing memories? Had it poisoned my thinking, somehow? Had it changed me?

Strange to say it, but even if it had changed me, I was happy with the decisions I’d made since I met Zauri. From the moment just after I’d executed Vir, I was starting to free myself of the way the camp had made me think. Of how it had corrupted me. Surely, even with a black box inside of her, Zauri was better than all that.

And it wasn’t her fault. Someone else had done it, and perhaps she feared what I’d think and so hesitated to tell me.

I took her in my arms as she bawled. “I, too, have a part of me that I don’t understand. That makes me do things I can’t explain. I still don’t know who it was that betrayed my friend Vir — if that was even me, or some monster hidden inside. It doesn’t make you bad.”

She clung to my chest. “Jyosh, you should always destroy a stone that’s been corrupted with a black box. I don’t know what’s written in it… and it’s become so entrenched in my script, that I no longer know if my actions and thoughts are arising naturally, or from it.”

“I won’t destroy you.”

I tasted a bitter thought: what if she’d kissed me because the black box made her do it? Maybe when Rahal said not to trust my dream wife, this was why. Maybe it was worse than I was willing to accept. Something underhanded was being done to us… but why? We laborers were nothing but the lowest of the low and barely worth this kind of clever trick.

“You should delete me,” Zauri said, her eyes wet and sad. “For your own safety. You should!”

“No. There has to be another way.”

“Please, Jyosh. I don’t want to cease existing, but I don’t want you to get hurt. Black boxes are capable of awful manipulation. They’ve even been used to brainwash people into killing themselves or killing others, even others they love. They can twist your sense of reality. I’m dangerous!”

“If it means disconnecting from you forever, I won’t do it. This dream is all that makes life worth living. Besides, what isn’t dangerous? I’m literally in the middle of a war zone right now sleeping in a building that, at any moment, could be erased by a light cannon.”

Zauri covered her mouth in obvious shock. “What happened?”

“Would be faster if you just read my memories.”

She nodded, placed a clammy hand on my forehead, and closed her eyes. A numb throb spread through my head as if my brains were being slowly sucked through my forehead.

Zauri gasped in utter horror and retracted her hand. “You had a chance to escape Maniza and you gave it up for some old woman? Why!?”

That scolding tone reminded me of Amma. “The ticket didn’t belong to me. It was rightfully hers. I couldn’t do that to her, to her family. I couldn’t be that person…”

“The person who betrayed Vir? Surviving isn’t evil, Jyosh. Nor is it easy. As a lightblade training program, first and foremost, I’m teaching you a way to survive. And to survive, you have to value yourself as much as others.”

It seemed she valued my life more than I did. “I think… what I did to Vir… it already killed me, in a way. The person who did that couldn’t live with what he’d done, and so I was reborn in his place. The way you said you’d been born the day we met… oddly enough, I feel the same. That’s why it seems so strange that I hurt him.”

“No, you’re compartmentalizing. You’re breaking into pieces. It’s a reaction to stress, not some kind of rebirth. The thing is, you have to survive.” She paused to catch her breath. “What’s done is done, I suppose. But given the situation you’re in, I’m going to teach you everything you need to know so you have the highest chance of getting through the mess you’re in.”

I chuckled. She didn’t lack for confidence. “Whatever you teach me, I won’t use it to harm people. More than anything, I don’t want to make this world a worse place. I won’t use my skills for evil.”

“You’re being evil to yourself if you give up and die! Your soul is as valuable as anyone’s. Let’s not waste time. I can teach you useful things right now. You can already make a lightblade, but that’s worthless if you don’t have a combat stone and sword hilt.”

She waved her hand in the air. The overhead sun sank toward the ground and burned redder, the color of Maniza’s eternal sunset.

Now it loomed on the horizon — a menacing half-oval.

I asked, “If the sun is redder at the horizon like in Maniza, why is it harder to conduct red light than if the sun is overhead?”

“There’s actually more of all wavelengths of light when the sun appears white and is positioned overhead. What makes the sky red in Maniza is the angle. The light takes longer to reach, and most of it gets absorbed along the way — red just slightly less than the others. That’s why the sky appears red.”

I could spend all day asking her questions and learning from her. But this probably wasn’t the time.

“Put a green stone in your chest,” she commanded.

“Yes, sir.” I opened my palm and tapped Aperture Stone > Green into the terminal. I felt a slight tickle and jolt in my chest.

“So here’s the thing, Jyosh. Forget about lightblades for now. You need to learn to fight with this.” She snapped her fingers. A weird, disc-like thing with a handle appeared in her hand.

Took a moment to realize what it was.

“A frying pan!?” I said with my hands on my head.

“There’s a frying pan in the room you’re sleeping in. You may not have noticed it, but I did when you let me see your memories. Also, crucially, there’s a stove in that room. So here’s what you’re going to do. Open the stove’s bottom compartment, remove the gain medium crystal, and adhere that crystal to the frying pan.”

I laughed.

Zauri snarled. “I’m not joking! You can make an electric weapon with the frying pan that way. Just like how you’ve been conducting green light into a fabricator, you’ll do so into the frying pan. Because it’ll have a gain medium crystal, it’ll become a basic electric weapon.”

I snorted and shook my head. “Yeah, and how am I going to adhere a gain medium crystal to a frying pan? I know how gain mediums work — they’re rather sensitive.”

“Exactly. You know how they work. You saw those batons the soldiers were using. They’re also an electric weapon, just like the frying pan weapon you’re going to make.”

Well… she wasn’t completely insane. If I had wires, I could technically attach the gain crystal to the frying pan and create a conduit, which I could then conduct green light into. That would technically electrify the frying pan, but it just seemed so ridiculously crude.

“So this frying pan… it’ll hurt?”

“You saw what that baton did. It’ll be similar. But we need to practice — now — so that when you wake up, you’ll be ready to mess people up with that frying pan.”

Zauri handed the frying pan to me. It had this bulge between the handle and the pan where the green gain crystal was being housed.

I inhaled the sun’s green light, cycled it through me, and pushed it into the pan. The coated handle got hot, though not as much as the metal pan.

“If only I had some eggs,” I said with a grin.

“Be serious!”

“Yeah-yeah, I’m very serious, I swear.”

“Good. Now, push more green into it, like you want to overload the thing.” Zauri presented her right cheek to me. “And then hit me.” She poked her cheek. “Right here.”

“I don’t want to hit you.”

“Hit me! Unlike a lightblade, which we can see, I need to feel that you’re doing it right.”

Was I really about to slap this woman with an electrified frying pan?

“Right now, it’s just kinda hot, though. There’s no electricity.”

“That’s because it’s a freaking frying pan. It’s meant to conduct heat into food, not spark. You have to overload the gain crystal, but not so much as to destroy it. Just enough to get a current to conduct through the pan. And you have to do it right at the moment before you strike. So try!”

It was all so ridiculous. Was a frying pan really going to help me survive a war?

I wound my arm and held back the light from entering the handle, letting it pool in my hand instead — a tingly, hot feeling. Hitting her seemed so wrong, but she couldn’t feel pain, and she’d be the best judge as to whether it worked. Those smooth, soft cheeks though…

I thwacked the pan into her shoulder, surging a goodly portion of green into the handle just before impact. The pan electrified and sparked as it made contact. Lightning bolts jumped off the pan and onto her.

Zauri shuddered and backed away.

“Holy…” she said, jaw hanging. “You did it on the first try. You shocked the hell out of me. Anyone would go down from that.”

I smiled, satisfied but not surprised. “I’ve been a machinist for twelve years. I can command massive machines. What the hell is a frying pan to me?”

“All right, all right. Very good. But you’re not a god just yet.”

“I might be to those who worship frying pans. Surely there must be someone, somewhere who does.”

Zauri snapped her fingers. A pale, headless, pot-bellied man blinked into existence in front of me. She pointed at his hand with her forefinger. A slanted, metal pipe materialized there.

He raised the pipe, ready to charge.

How was Zauri inputting all these dream commands on the fly, without a terminal?

“Defend yourself, Jyosh,” she said. “If you don’t, it’ll hurt.”

She pointed at me with an open hand, then closed and opened it again. Her commands were so dramatic. I loved them.

I didn’t love the way the pot-bellied man charged at me, shoulder forward, with the force of a barreling ox. I dove away from his lunge. Landed on one hand, then pushed myself to my feet. I was quite the acrobat when needed.

Sparks flew from the pale man’s pipe as he swiped at me. His swings were heavy but slow, so I sidestepped or backed away from each. I imagined my frying pan to be a hammer and went for his neck stump. The headless man blocked my topside swing with his pipe. Electricity zagged through the air as both our weapons sparked.

“For god’s sake, Jyosh, stop dancing.” Zauri gritted her teeth as the headless man and I stepped back and faced each other. “Imagine what a real bad guy would do to you if he won. He’d spill your guts. He’d stew your entrails. He’d paint his walls with your blood. Fight like you’re going to die an agonizing death!” She grunted as if she wanted to join the fight. “Get angry. Feel some hate!”

I imagined Kediri’s head on that neck. Kediri had already killed me, figuratively, and our whole family, literally. Why had that bastard tried to defect, alone? Didn’t he realize Emperor Sanga would punish his family for such treason? He’d died selfishly, but he deserved a second death, an infinity of deaths!

As the pale man went for my right arm, I lunged at his heart. Electrified my frying pan just as it hit his left breast. A pounding, spicy pain radiated from my arm, seizing my senses as both our hits landed. The headless man crashed backward and me on top. Electricity zapped my muscles and bit into my bones.

I’d won, but the electric jolts in my arms and the frustration that I couldn’t really kill Kediri made it less than pleasant.

“From now on, every fight is to the death,” Zauri said. “Know what happens in war? No one will be working the fields, so food’ll run out. Light cannons will flatten cities. Droves will rush to the borders, but eventually Maniza’s neighbors won’t allow them in.” She clasped her lush blue hair, more exasperated than I was of my sad plight. “You can’t be soft. Your chance of living lessens each day you’re out there.”

It was awkward to wield this frying pan while discussing life and death. “Thanks for caring, Zauri. But how much can an electrified frying pan increase my odds of surviving? Maybe half a percent? I’ll need to get lucky to keep breathing — had I just drawn a five or eight on that ticket, I could’ve been somewhere safe by now. Who knows what ways to live or die tomorrow’ll bring?” I lifted the frying pan over my head and pretended it was a hat. I grinned, but Zauri wouldn’t smile back. How to make her understand without upsetting her? “I realized a while ago that focusing only on survival makes life as bitter as the cleaning-fluid-spiced curry I often had for lunch. And in here, I don’t want that awful taste in my mouth. I want to have fun. I want to make good memories. And truth be told, since you arrived, I’ve been having fun. Haven’t had this much fun since I was a dumb kid.”

Finally, she smiled, though pain lingered in her eyes. “I understand. Since you’re not going to destroy this dream stone, know that we can make more happy memories if you survive longer. And if you die… what if this dream never ends for me? I’ll be alone… forever.”

Damn, I hadn’t thought of that. Whereas she made my life less lonely, I made her life less lonely, too. And what was lonelier than being the only one in a forever dream?

“I think we’re both right,” I said. “So let’s use this time wisely. We’ll spend some of it training, some of it adventuring, and some of it taking it easy. Sound good?”

Zauri nodded. “Our training isn’t over.” She snapped her fingers. Now, two headless men blinked into existence. One had a slanted pipe and the other something far worse: a machete.

“A lot of farms around your area,” Zauri said. “I’m taking an educated guess about the dangers you might face. Next, you’ll fight a rake-wielder.”

I trained with the frying pan the whole day. Got pretty good at slapping headless men with it. I also practiced my dodging, ducking, and sliding. Such acrobatics would be more difficult in the real world with my pained knees, though.

 Timing the electric hits was easy enough, but if I had to dodge as well, I’d mess up sometimes. According to Zauri, this was why training mattered — it developed muscle memories and instincts.

“Okay, time to learn a new move,” Zauri said after I’d brought down a headless man who dual-wielded rakes with a clean strike to the ribs. “You can use the frying pan to block a hit and conduct a current from yourself, through the pan, and into your enemy’s weapon. That’ll shock and perhaps knock out your opponent, turning parrying into an offensive move.”

So not only would I have to time my electric surge right, but also direct it into my opponent’s weapon. That would demand some inward focus while I was dancing, dodging, and dipping.

It sounded ingenious, though. I beamed at my teacher. “Tell me, Zauri, this something all lightblade training programs know how to do?”

She crossed her arms — adorably serious — and shook her head. “I’m figuring this stuff out on the fly, but it’s all based on sound principle. The same principle by which you power machines with sunshine. Energy is energy, it can be channeled in an ordered way, or chaotically. We’re mixing it up here to create viable offensive and defensive strategies.”

I scratched my head. “Despite slaving at a machine for half my life, I would’ve never figured any of this out. Nice to have you around to think for me.”

“Because you weren’t taught the fundamentals. You don’t know the intricacies of conducting sunshine. There’re a thousand layers of knowledge regarding it. Even I’m ignorant relative to what’s out there. I’m straining and stretching everything I know, for your sake.”

Whether she was right or wrong, whether any of this would really help me or not, just the thought that she cared so much almost melted me. She had my best interest at heart. Despite the black box. I’d shuttered that from my mind because I wanted to give my trust to her fully.

Zauri snapped her fingers. A pipe-wielding man materialized amid white light.

“Give it a go!” she said.

The man swung at me. I raised my pan to block. I pushed the green light from my hand into the pan and surged it toward where I hoped the pipe and pan would make contact.

Clank. Sparks erupted off the pan. One caught me in the neck, sending jittery jolts through me. But the pale man remained standing, pipe brandished in front of his face, ready for the next attack.

“Try again,” Zauri said. “It’s not just about timing, it’s about positioning. Here, do this — instead of trying to figure out where on the pan the pipe will strike, try to line up the pan so the pipe strikes it at the center, then be ready to direct your light there.”

That would simplify things. But I’d also be relying more on my physical positioning instead of my ability to direct green light, and I was more comfortable with the latter. Still, I trusted my teacher’s guidance.

The headless man swung down; I pushed my pan forward so the pipe would smack its center, then surged the pooled light into that point. Sparks jetted off the pan and into the pipe. The pale man electrified. Blue lightning engulfed his limbs and torso. Burnt meat stench filled the air as he collapsed forward.

I’d become a god, truly. That electric parry was even more powerful than my direct strikes!

Zauri cheered and clapped with glee. “Not only did you direct your own light into his weapon, you directed his own light back at him. Told you you’re amazing!”

I bowed my head, a graceful winner. “Well, those shitty factory machines were always one misdirected current from breaking down, and breaking a machine would mean my head. So long story short, frying pan weapons are my specialty.”

Zauri wagged her finger. “It’s still not enough! You’re just getting started on my new training regimen. But… we can break for today. Next time, I’ll teach you something even better.”

Ahh. I’d earned some relaxation. How wonderful to actually be good at something. But whether or not the school of the electrified frying pan would prevail in a war zone remained an open question.

“Before we take a break,” Zauri put a finger on her chin, “there’s something I discovered that you need to see.”

With how tired I felt, all I wanted to discover was the sand and waves. “I’ll only agree if you promise it’ll make me smile.”

“Umm…” she tapped her chin. “Yeah, you’ll smile.”

“Your hesitation doesn’t inspire confidence.” I sighed and scratched my sweaty eyebrow. “But since you’re so insistent, lead the way.”

Zauri opened her palm and tapped into her terminal window.

A glowing white light enveloped me.

I blinked onto a field of golden grass. At my front sprawled a palace with uncountable spires. Statues of the gods painted in wondrously glossy purple, green, and gold covered each spire. Some statues sported wings, others had many arms and heads. Some wielded swords and had fire for hair. Some had animal faces, others human. It was a colorful, vast splendor that my eyes had never tasted the like of.

My ears, too, delighted at the flutes and sitars sounding from the sky, as if the gods were playing a symphony from their perch in the second heaven. The air, which itself was glittery and pink, smelled of the purest roses. A musk breeze cooled my cheeks.

Zauri came to my side and took my arm. “Well? What do you think?”

“Does the emperor of the world live here?”

“Actually, it’s a temple. It wasn’t here before, though. After you left, another weird pattern appeared in the sky, so I flew up toward it. When I did, I appeared here.”

I wanted to skip my way to the entrance. I’d not been so giddy to explore something since I was a child sneaking through my neighbors’ yards. “Let’s go inside!”

“I already tried. It’s locked. All we can really do is marvel at it from afar. Unless… maybe there’s a key?”

“A key? Hell, I’ll break the door down with my frying pan.”

Zauri put her face in her palm. “Wait till you see the door before you say that. Also, we can’t fly over it. There’s a force field.”

We walked for three minutes down a flower-lined stone walkway toward a massive, golden double door that dwarfed my whole house. A door for titans, literally. No way my frying pan could break through that. Zauri fingered the indentation at the door’s base, which resembled a lotus.

“So we have to find a lotus-shaped key,” I said. “Where could that be hiding?”

“I dunno.” She smiled at me. “Let’s keep a look out, I suppose.”

“Whatever happened to that divine dragon? You ever see it again?”

“Nope. But you should understand something — all these… surprises, all these things the modder added to your stone, as well as the black box inside me — it’s all connected, somehow.”

I glared up at the magnificent, golden door. “Well, obviously.”

“And…” Zauri gazed at the ground, solemn. “It might all be a bad thing. It might be meant to hurt you, in the end. It might seem like a puzzle, an adventure, a mystery, but it could all be leading to your doom.”

What wasn’t leading to my doom, these days? This was a more fun doom than the one in the real world, at least.

“I don’t want to believe that. This world can’t be all bad. I mean, you’re not bad, Zauri. You’re doing your best to help me.”

She shrugged. “I hope you’re right.”

I hated seeing her so unsure of herself. I knew that poison too well.

We spent the next day at the beach. Zauri wouldn’t change into swimming clothes before she got in the water. I always hated swimming with my day clothes on, but to each their own. We had fun, though. We even used the turtle shell to skid across the water. Racing each other against the throbbing tides, I almost forgot what awaited me in the real world.

For the first time in forever, I had a true friend. Well, more than that. A teacher. Maybe more than that. What exactly Zauri was to me, I couldn’t say. And maybe, I didn’t want to define or limit it in any way. It was what it was, and it would be what it would be.

The day after that, we trained. I got masterful with the frying pan. I was smacking down three attackers at a time by day’s end. No strike was too much for my electric parries, a move that would shock my opponents in more ways than one.

We munched on fruits after. Normally, I don’t eat in dreams because it makes you hungrier when you awaken, as you’re tricking your body into thinking it’s enjoyed nourishment. A banana, some pineapple, and a slice of watermelon couldn’t hurt too much.

“It’s like discovering a new color,” Zauri said, chomping down on watermelon flesh, seeds stuck on her teeth. We were sitting in the cabin with a crackling fire going. “It’s so so good.”

We laughed a lot. We got stuck in the moment. We put the sad things, the questions, and the inevitable end out of mind. Though it was always there, itching my scalp like an ant digging toward my brain: You’re going to wake up. And then you’re going to die.

I did my best not to let the thought poison the moment. But it lingered like a ghost no matter where we went. Even when we gave the turtle shell another go and whooshed across milky clouds, it was there behind me, always lurking, and in front of me, forever looming.

I had to tell it “No!” I wasn’t going to die. I could survive. I could fight to live. I had something to fight for, after all: more moments like these.

We smoked cigars on the mountain top, sitting our backs against a massive ruby, with more giant rubies and emeralds dotting the landscape. Wind hummed as it hit them, playing songs of ruby, emerald, and topaz.

“I’ve been wondering,” I said. “If this dream continues when I’m not here, then who’s dreaming it?”

Zauri seemed to be enjoying her cigar, unlike last time. Her puffs, while not as deep as mine, made a satisfying sizzle. “Maybe it’s not continuing.” She tapped her chin. “Maybe it’s the black box making me think that, feeding me false memories and sensations.”

I regretted asking the question. That sounded so sad. False memories? How could you be sure of yourself if you didn’t know what you’d actually experienced? If your personality, habits, and feelings were just the product of some mysterious unknown?

Zauri seemed as disturbed by the thought as me; she breathed out cardamom-scented smoke with a tense sigh.

“You’re real to me, Zauri.” I said what I felt in the moment. Finally. “I wish I could never wake up. Imagine if we could, somehow, enter a layer two or layer three dream. It would multiply the time I could remain in the dream.” I did the math on my fingers, using the creases of my right hand. “Three hours in the real world is three days here, that’s seventy-two hours, that would be seventy-two days in a layer two dream. In a layer three dream… uhh…” That was beyond my finger counting skills.

“Over four and a half years.” Zauri smiled somberly as she snuffed her cigar out on the ground. She snapped a new one into her fingers. “And a layer four dream would be a hundred and thirteen years.”

That was the most hopeful, beautiful, and wondrous thing I’d ever heard. “So what would it take for us to enter a layer two dream?”

“It’s not possible. This dream stone doesn’t have a second layer.”

“So many things we thought weren’t possible have been happening. Maybe there’s a way. If there’s even a sliver of hope of entering deeper dreams, we should try.”

She shook her head. “There isn’t, though. It’s one thing for new scripts to emerge from a black box, it’s another thing for your dream stone to change physically and somehow, magically, gain another stable layer of depth.”

I grunted in frustration. “I won’t let myself die, then. I’ll get to safety. I’ll be back. I promise.”

Seeing her hopeful smile, I almost regretted those words. If I couldn’t stay true to them, she’d be alone forever, waiting endlessly. Even her memory of me would wither with time.

“Jyosh.” Zauri took my hand between hers. So warm. “If you can’t find another levship, then look for the train tracks. There’s definitely a rail line connecting Maniza with its neighbor to the east, Demak.”

“How would I find this railway, though? I’ve never heard of it.”

“How were completed parts from camp transferred elsewhere?”

“By levship. It would come several times a week and land at the outskirts. I don’t know of any rail, wouldn’t even know which direction to go.”

She squeezed my hand. “Ask someone, then. Do whatever you have to do. You have skills, now. Survive, Jyosh.”

My vision cracked like a glass pane being hit by a hammer. Zauri hugged me, then pushed her lips onto mine; I held and kissed her as she shattered into a billion pieces.

I awoke, and the bitterness of our sudden separation stung like a severed limb.

As I wiped the sweat from my forehead and gazed at unfamiliar, metal walls, an utterly horrifying realization pounded in my heart: this wasn’t where I’d gone to sleep.

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