By millimeters, she was brought closer to a futile end. Her hands were bound in a position where she couldn’t activate her power, and her sense of accuracy and timing only helped her to track the time she had been here.

Slowly, she slipped closer to oblivion.

Onyx facets.

Onyx walls.

Carmine facets, with veins instead of edges, kaleidoscopic when she tried to wrap her head around the shape.

Carmine walls, that she could almost imagine were the inside of her, because she saw herself reflected in this wall or that surface.

She’d remarked on the power of portals, and as she felt things hum through the structures that made up this oblivion, she imagined it was much like that. Vast amounts of power being redistributed, like the amount it took to hold up a breach between worlds. Governments had tried to harness the power of Haywire’s portals and they’d decided it didn’t work because any means of gathering it didn’t stand up, durability-wise.

A tidbit from Jan.

Poor Jan. Dead Jan. She hadn’t been any use to Bill. The bloodletter. The blood priest.

March sank deeper into the oblivion. She saw patterns in the energy that ran through things, and for fleeting instances, those patterns resembled people, ideas, events. Too much to read. They weren’t for her.

But there was something here for her. Codified into everything in the same way she was being codified. Homer.

She could see the empty space where Flechette was meant to be.

She communicated with Homer, and it was different than anything she’d done or felt as flesh. She felt his sadness and knew he’d died sometime after she’d left. Swallowed up by the worst of New York’s villains.

She could sympathize with the blood priest, who was scrabbling so viciously for this. He told himself it was for power, but… he was really after this, she felt. He wanted this connection.

Something beyond the short and fleeting life. A heaven where she would never be alone. Forever in the company of another, running through, over, under, into, communicating through shared events and bursts of static, riddling each other out.

And when Flechette died—

The view dimmed.

And when Flechette died, she would have Flechette forever. Until the end of a species that intended to last beyond the end of the universe. And Flechette would have her, and what happened in flesh would be swiftly forgotten.

The view dimmed further. For an instant, she felt a fear bigger and more horrible than any she’d ever considered. That she could be teased with this, then to have it taken away.

It all went black, and she wailed with a body that no form and a voice that had no sound.

Her heart resumed beating. She sat up, and was instantly pushed down. A doctor.

Already, the particulars were fading. But an impression that deep—that would never go away. She knew.