At last, she was beginning to see a way out of this. It will get better, she thought. We will find a way to make you safe, and then we’ll make it better.

6

Cora awoke with a sensation of pure terror, her heart pounding and the back of her throat on fire. It didn’t feel like the nightmares, it was more like she’d had her mind wrung out like a washcloth before being released from the prison of the subconscious. This was being thrown into a black hole of icy water, miles from shore, swirled in its maelstrom of terror and loss, unable to see anything, unable to feel anything but fear and ice.

It only lasted a few seconds before she was fully awake, still on the floor, fighting her way out of her duvet. She shot up, her skin cold and clammy, and looked over the edge of her bed.

Ampersand’s eyes were open, his head jerking and bumping against the wall as if he didn’t even realize there was a wall there. She hopped up next to him on the bed, placed her hands on the shell of his back, and closed her eyes, trying to get a bead on what was going on in his head, but only sensed more chaos.

“It’s okay, you’re with me,” she said. “You’re safe, you’re with me.”

It was here that she became acutely aware that something was very wrong, and not in the way it was yesterday during the meeting. Something was existentially wrong. Still moving with jolting, halted movements, he stood up on shaking legs, pushing past her like she wasn’t even there.

“Ampersand,” she said. “What’s going on?”

He moved to the window, and in a flash, the metal edges surrounding the glass glowed. He removed the window altogether, pulling it inside and dropping it to the floor. Then he wormed himself outside and up toward the roof.

Cora didn’t waste an instant, tearing out of her apartment and to the stairwell that led to the roof. It was barricaded by an emergency exit that promised an alarm if breached, but she knew it was broken, as her frat bro neighbors used the roof constantly to get high. She burst through the emergency exit onto the roof, looked around, and had she been capable of feeling relief in that moment, she might have felt it to see Ampersand there, carelessly visible for any and all to see, his gaze to the heavens. But she could sense through the wall that there was no relief, that they would never experience relief again.

It would all be over soon.

She looked in the direction he was looking, and within seconds, the sky opened. It was small at first, blinking like the blip of a shooting star, but it expanded, a bright light like a hole was being ripped in reality itself. It looked like how she imagined a nuclear blast might appear if it went off in the sky, the night still black but the light brightening the landscape like an outdoor floodlight. But she could sense it was much farther away and much larger than a nuclear blast. It was already the size of Jupiter. A thousand Jupiters. It was already the size of the sun, a hundred suns. Her simple, human self wanted to ask, “What is that?” But through the wall she could feel the answer: I don’t know.