When she looks into her poisoned crystal ball, it isn’t the future she sees but the past. This time last year, she was fifteen, with fifteen of her best friends, fifteen hundred feet underground in the Furnace Club. Magma bubbled beneath the BluDiamond floor. They all traipsed barefoot to feel the warmth of it, guttering streams of liquid gold not half an inch from their heels. The waiter was a floating Clockwork named Bub, a polished copper globe who hovered here and there, opening the bright lid of his head to offer each new course. In the throbbing red light, the faces of the other girls glowed with sweat and excitement, and their laughter echoed off the warm rock walls. They looked as roasted as the piglets they were served for the main course.

Her friends were all drunk on one another by the end of it, and there was a lot of hugging and smooching. They said it was the best birthday party ever. Iris got carried away by all the good feeling and promised them next year would be even better. She said they would ride the elevator to the top of the Spoke to see the stars—the ACTUAL stars—above the cloudscape. They would drink Sparklefroth and electrocute one another with happiness. They would take the long, dreamy plunge back to earth together in Drop Bubbles. And after, they would all mask themselves in Hideware and go down into the Carnival District—which was forbidden to anyone under sixteen—and everyone who saw them in their expensive new faces would fall in love with them.

Something stirs in the cloudy green globe. The mermaid looms up from the mucus-hued shadows and boggles out at her. The girl-fish is little more than a grotesque pink slug with a face and waving, mossy-green hair.

“You might want to do something adorable,” she says, “while you’ve got the chance.”

A black string of poop squirts from a hole above her tail fin. The mermaid gawps, as if astonished by the functions of her own body.

A hoop of eldritch jade light flares in her right eye, half blinding her, signaling an incoming message. She pinches her thumb and index finger together, as if squeezing a bug to death. Words appear in fey emerald letters, seeming to hover three feet from her face, a trick of the messaging lens that she puts in her eye first thing every morning, even before she brushes her teeth.

JOYCE B: WE HAVE PLANS FOR YOU.

AMY P: EVIL PLANS.

JOYCE B: WE’RE GETTING YOU INTO THE CARNIVALS TONIGHT. IT HAS BEEN ORDAINED.

Iris shuts her eyes, rests her forehead against the cool glass of the aquaglobe.

“Can’t,” she says, squeezing her thumb and index finger together to SEND.

JOYCE B: DON’T MAKE US FORCE YOU INTO A SACK & DRAG YOU OUT KICKING & SCREAMING.

AMY P: IN A SACK. KICKING. SCREAMING.