Then he watched as people tried to exit the hallway at the mall’s side door. But there were too many bodies. The people pressed in together and wedged themselves into the door. In all trying to get out at once, nobody got out. He reached forward, trying to grab someone—but it was futile. A hand grabbed him. A suffocating man on the ground had him by the pants. Reached up, toward the mask that was held in one hand, still.

Why?

Then the last dream. Cradle, moving through scenes, trying to keep ahold of his glasses. Cornered in the schoolyard, faced by four girls a year younger than him. They shouted and their words were only the rattle of chain, the pounding on a metal door, and the blare of a fire alarm.

They shoved him, he bounced off of a car, and he lost his glasses. The car wailed, its alarm going off.

The wail became his mother’s wail. He was in his home, standing at the door to his bedroom while his parents shouted and screamed at one another. One held up a paper, a list of numbers and letters running down the center column. Cradle, standing around the corner, flinched at the words, gibberish though they were.

He adjusted his glasses, and when he fixed them, he stood in the mall.

He watched as the first Fallen appeared. Men and women in disguises that barely served. Tattoos barely covered. They looked Fallen, whatever else. Subhuman, gleeful at what was about to happen.

Cradle turned, and he walked away, stepping into the pharmacy, and cutting a path for the door. As he did, he nudged a store employee, and his voice was a thousand creaks of metal hinges.

While the store employee ran, he opened the door, to the sound of a single door’s metal hinges creaking, that same sound that had just been made a thousand times.

Then there was only silence.

⊙

Now

Phantom sensations of Ever slipped under and around Love Lost’s hand. Just as when she used the device to simulate the tactile.

But it was, as always, a doll’s head. A bit of curtain with attached rod, intended somehow for a window, though the space they occupied had none.

She swallowed hard as she found her way to her feet. The pain was fresh, but in the moment it was dulled by confusion.

What had linked those three deviations from the norm?

What—no. Not what, exactly. Who.

She turned to look. The black fifth cell remained black, no light entering or leaving it. Cradle occupied the space to her left.

Across from her was the Fallen boy, who wore the demon mask. Always wore it. He didn’t seem to realize, a lot of the time.

She felt disgust well up. Anger, because that scene—

—hadn’t made sense.

Silent, the Fallen boy pointed.

Love Lost turned.