As though it had stabbed through the perimeter between sky and space, and the wound bled a light blue.

It roared, because the vacuum it gathered in its squat base drew in atmosphere and air. It screamed, because the very design of the facility defied physics, and the alien metals that formed the panels that caught the air or channeled ambient heat upwards were still bound by some laws of physics.

Bound and tortured for their disobedience, she thought.

“I don’t think that’s going to help you.”

She turned toward the voice, arching one eyebrow.

“Sorry to break the spell. I meant your helmet,” the guy said. He had a costume, more sleek than most. The mask around the eyes was hard, but the back was flexible, tied in a knot at the back of the head, the two lengths of fabric loose and billowing in the strong influx of wind the tower generated. The costume was a similar mix of hard segments flowing naturally into loose, flowing fabric, all red with gold trim. She couldn’t help but see double when she looked at him, and his double was badly wounded, his costume torn.

She decided she would call him the wounded man.

She was holding her helmet in both hands. It was crafted of another alien metal, different from the tower’s sweeping, overlapping panels, and had elaborate wings at the sides, sleek and pointed back. She couldn’t remember when she’d taken it off.

In reverence, as someone would when approaching a holy place? No. She wasn’t reverent. Her god was dead.

She had wanted a better look at the monster that loomed before her, a beast that screamed, roared, and made the sky bleed.

Glines, the Switch-Thrower, she thought.

The shadow manifested to her left, as if it was stepping in from another room, its feet still planted firmly on the ground. Young. He folded his arms, and in the shroud of his indistinct form, the lines between costume and flesh were blurry. He could have been a reptile, covered in thick layers, with sleek, broad bands.

“Hi,” the wounded man said.

Glines gave him a small nod of acknowledgement, before turning his full focus to the tower.

Valkyrie could have asked the shadow a question, but she didn’t. She let him study the distant tower, and she turned her attention to the hero who had noted her helmet. One finger tapped the metal, producing a sharp sound. “These things are more important than you would think.”

The wounded man smiled. “No offense, Valkyrie, but I don’t think that, whatever it is, is going to bop you on the head. If it does, that bit of metal won’t change the outcome.”

The man in costume was nervous, she realized. He’d been here for at least a day—she looked back in the direction of the camp, where tarps and tents were erected, positioned where they could watch the tower, still far enough away that it would take twenty or thirty minutes of driving a conventional vehicle to get close. At least a day that he’d endured the roaring, the screaming, and watched as the Earth’s oxygen was slowly and steadily pumped away into oblivion, to no seeming point or goal.