Wrong thing to say. Alodia Lightning’s fury intensifies. “You know nothing about me. Leave me the fuck alone.” She sidesteps so quickly Misery misses the cue to block her, and she’s past and out of the door, unhooking a jacket from the jamb hook and disappearing the evidence of an interesting past life under the drab olive. Misery watches her go in the half-open cage, head tilted, belly full of conflicted feelings. She wants to know more. She wants to know everything.

Eventually Misery returns to her quarters, returns to the inevitability of sleep. She cannot run forever. She is a biological organism, after all, and biological organisms have incontestable needs. Unconsciousness drags her down faster than she expects. One moment she’s on the block of memory foam and the next she’s wrapped in darkness, the warm velvet of a room, walking toward a piercing light. The transition happened before she was aware of it.

She passes through the meniscus of light and emerges on the other side. It’s a doorway she’s walked through, and a balcony welcomes her into the radiance of space. Two galaxies collide overhead, a godly explosion of light and color, gas and dust and stars dying. Stars being born. The light show dwarfs the balcony, and if Misery walks off the unprotected edge she will fall forever into the conflagration. The balcony itself is dead stone, pure matter, shaped in ragged angles as though mauled off the skin of a planet. The floor: raw slate, broken and volcanic, interrupted by spikes of unknown crystal. Cracks radiate from under Misery’s feet, as though she is the center of a meteor crash, and capillaries of energy thread red and glowing through the glossy stone, which remains cool under her soles. There’s a geometry to the layout that speaks of human crafting, yet the whole setup feels undeniably wild.

A figure she recognizes rests at the edge of the balcony, comfortable between the clumps of glacial crystal: Jericho, tall and thin, draped in white cotton splashed with ovals of cyan, magenta, yellow. Hands folded behind him, gazing out at the ineffable wonder of creation. Misery craters with emotion, silently: relief with embarrassment stacked on top at the appearance of a repeat delusion. Having a new one pop up every night would destroy her mentally. Tonight she gets to keep her sanity, whatever’s left of it.

Jericho turns, and glances. The soft look on his face is almost a smile. He’s pleased to see her, more than Ruin ever was, and she shouldn’t be picking favorites among her delusions but Jericho is definitely her favorite delusion. As she walks toward him, the cracks in the balcony follow her feet, as though she is their center of gravity. She breathes. There’s the smell of ozone, haunting and familiar. “It’s a good view,” she says of the intergalactic apocalypse overhead.