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Fallon was running. She had been running for what felt like forever. No matter how much she had practiced in recent times, Fallon was losing all of her energy -- and soon, it seemed, she would be losing her life too.

The youma that raced behind her was injured already. It had happened before the creature stumbled her way. Fallon didn't know what did it, not that it mattered. The creature scrambled on all fours, but it left a misty, inky trail that evaporated like wisps of smoke into thin air. Maybe if she just kept running, it would die on its own. She only had to have the endurance.

She'd been thinking that for the past ten minutes.

It was a wonder she had not run into anyone yet. Sure, the Theatre District largely catered to matinee and night show customers (Fallon herself was only there to catch the last showing of Hamlet for an extra credit paper). Fallon took a wrong turn through a broken fence when the creature first sprang into view. She should have run left, toward the street. If she had turned left, she wouldn't be scrambling through the deserted back alley of a warehouse that stored props and set pieces. It was too dank for even the homeless to populate.

Would it be her grave?

A broken two-by-four crossed her path, but Fallon realized it too late. She spilled to the floor with a muffled grunt. The youma closed the distance and reached for her, but she kicked out with a leg. This was like the other incidents, but different. Then, there had been a senshi to protect her, and then, she had actually sensed the youma before it attacked. This one came up suddenly. She did not stumble upon it, she did not follow a sense. It was as if it had been purposely unleashed on her.

The pavement dug into her knees, and she could feel the blood running before she was back on her feet. Her gait was uneven. Something had happened to her ankle. Fallon continue to struggle, tears streaming down her cheeks. Up ahead, there was a grouping of trash cans and a blind corner. Maybe a street was up ahead. Maybe she would make it to the public. Maybe someone would find her.

Fallon could feel herself wishing for Sailor Virgo, or Cancer -- anyone to save her. Her ankle was throbbing, and she struggled to keep moving. Her pace slowed. The youma closed the distance. It was wounded too, but it was a machine. Fallon was too, in some ways, but her endurance was shot. Her vision swam.

Fallon threw herself forward, crashing into the trash cans with the full force of her body weight. The noise was loud. Would it attract someone? Crumpled between the cans, Fallon felt her breath shuddering, and she clamped her eyes shut, praying for the gun to pass over her, to fire at someone else.

In the dark alleyway, there was little room for hope.

Fallon stared up at the stars from the flat of her back. Would this be the last thing she saw? What was worse -- would that terrible production of Hamlet be her last experience on Earth other than death? It was a sorry fate, and one that people all over Destiny City found themselves in, perhaps sans Hamlet. Anyone could be attacked. Fallon had been attacked before. Was it stupid? Should she have just holed up?

The youma loomed close, and Fallon could hear it moving, stubby feet dragging over the ground. It was going to lunge. Fallon had no idea what happened after that, but she could only conceptualize this thing as a wild animal. Youma? It was a word that Sailor Virgo had said. To her, it meant only: monster, unknown. Fallon sucked in a breath. She could see the youma move toward her feet and then -- it stopped.

It stopped in its tracks and looked over to her right.

It was stupid to look away, that could have been her only chance to run, but her head turned involuntarily. There was boy, and he was familiar, though in a way that made her stomach drop. The green ribbons and high collar were hard to forget. It was the boy from the park who had terrorized her when she was racing Ladon. Then, she thought it might be a figment of her imagination. She still did. "I'm hallucinating," she said, breathless, panting, eyes wet. "I'm hallucinating a boy in ribbons. I'm ******** dead. Am I dead? I'm dead. The youma killed me, no one came to help. There was no one there. It killed me. It killed me. I was just seeing Hamlet. It killed me." The words were thoughtless, a stream of information. All of the adrenaline had caught up with her chest, and she was breathing hard, neck rolling around as if unhinged.

If not for the pain in her back and ankle, Fallon would have been more certain of her demise. Was there residual pain in the afterlife? More importantly -- was there even an afterlife? This thought did little to settle her nerves, or to straighten out her mind.

Fallon wanted to tell the strange boy that she hadn't given up, hadn't quit. That this world had just beat her down. That after everything, it wasn't her fault. That she would end up a statistic by the same cruel hand that sent her to a ******** organ ring at fifteen not because of herself, but because of this perverse world. That after battling a disease that sometimes made her a monster, she'd meet her end at the claws of a real one. That she'd never own her restaurant, or meet her life's love, or find the inner peace that she had chased like a runaway scarf caught on the breeze her entire life.

But she didn't say this. She merely gulped air like a dying fish and watched helplessly as the agent drew close to her.

He was one of the others. Like the senshi, but different. He made her wary in a way that Sailor Virgo and Sailor Cancer never had. She remembered the look in his eyes when he chased her through the park. It wasn't murderous, maybe, but it was darkly mischievous, the same look a bully might give the freshman right before submerging his head in a toilet and folding him into a locker. This would not end well, she knew it.

Why was this boy always the one to see her cry? It was ******** up. This was all <******** up. And Fallon was going to <******** ******** ********> curse her brains out if this was the end. Miss Manners could suck it right about then. What had her politeness done for her? It was the reason she missed the earlier showing of Hamlet two days ago and why she had to see the 8:30PM performance that night. ******** old lady on the street asking for directions. And now it was how she would die.

Lying in trash.
Covered in filth.
Sweaty, unkempt.
A disgrace.

It was the final cruel insult the world had to offer Fallon. You spent your life building a palace. Now, here, go die in a s**t hole. The irony was not lost on Fallon. She might suck at History, but she'd been making Bs and B+s in English since she was a kid. Not that it mattered now.

Around the time Fallon wrapped her head around her impending death, hands shaking, lip quivering, the strange boy wearing ribbons did something, well, strange. He drew what appeared to be a toy, a jump rope, and killed the thing that had been trying to kill her. The youma disappeared with a wisp of smoke. Fallon's tears silenced like someone had turned the faucet off unexpectedly.

She stared. And stared. And stared. Fallon watched Wolframite like he was the single most confusing piece of abstract art she'd ever laid her eyes on. She did all this, chest rising and falling sharply, but she did not get up.

Don't trust him. He's dangerous. Watch his eyes. Watch his shoulder movement.

Fallon coached herself over and over as if saying it would make her senses keener, like sharping a blade against the stone. It would need to be sharp enough to slice through any of his tricks, sharper still to get her out of this alley and back to Crystal Academy. She swallowed to speak, but her throat was stretched and thick. It felt like she'd swallowed dryer lint and couldn't force it down. What could she say? How could she know that this wasn't all part of some elaborate trick to weaken her for fun? Before in the woods, he had played a similar game. Maybe this time he had returned to finish what he started.

Again, he prodded her with his shoe, just as before, like she was nothing more than a bug beneath his foot. It made her scowl, the first sign of life in several minutes. Fallon didn't have time to weigh her options. Whatever he wanted to do with her, she still wouldn't be saved if she stayed there in the trash cans. Fallon put one hand down on the ground. Something squished beneath her palm -- a rotten banana. Her hands began to shake, but she placed the other palm down. It touched glass, and she quickly moved it over onto a stack of newspaper covered in a mysterious grease.

Her legs shook, and her ankle was pulsating tiny little bubbles of pain up to her hip. Wolframite reached to lift her, and Fallon grunted, straining against his grasp. It was too strong for her to break. With his help, she got to her feet, the hand stained with banana clutching his wrist to keep from falling. If he let go, there was no telling whether she would stand on her own.

Fallon hung like a flag from his arm, toes touching the ground in tentative bursts. Could she support her own weight? She had to try. One foot, then the other -- a jolt of pain in the ankle. He was much shorter than her, and still, she felt terrified. It helped that he had just lifted her as though she were a sack of feathers and even more that he summoned some kind of rope out of thin air.

Her hand tightened on his wrist. "What else I am supposed to do?" she asked, voice hoarse and shaking. "Should I stay in my room all day? Should I become a hermit because there is danger outside? My whole life would be..." Fallon scoffed, letting her head roll back. A sour whine escaped her lips before she met his eyes again. "It's almost 11:00PM. Almost. I went to.." Her breath failed her, and she had to stop to catch it. "A show. It ended at 10:30. I was trying to catch... a cab." Again, she paused to catch her breath. It was getting easier, but her nerves still rattled.

Wolframite wanted her up, right? Well, here she was. Trying. Trying to show that she had strength, even if it was foolish, even if it was the last thing she did. These were difficult times. It called for strength that Fallon might not have been ready for, that other teenagers might not have been ready for. But she still spoke: "It's dangerous out here. I could die. People do die, all over, everywhere... especially here. But if I never left my house, I'd be dead inside too." Her lips said one thing, but her eyes gave away the lingering fear.

What passed between them was not a moment of intimacy, a warm kindness, or a spark of interest. It was confusion, neither sure of what to do, each side-stepping, backsliding, glancing away. Fallon was vulnerable here, but Wolframite was too. She didn't notice it until he waved her second chance in front of her face, until he spoke words that made no sense to her.

Fallon needed to be strong. She needed to be fearless. She needed to make herself a soldier on a battlefield, outnumbered by the enemy, low on ammo, and shouldering a wound deep in her flesh. Maybe then it would be enough to survive, to live to fight another day. God, she hadn't even had sex yet.

What good is it to make the place better if all the good people die?

Fallon tried to steady her breathing. She counted the beats like she was back on the playground staring down at her brand new shoes stained with mud. It calmed her down then. It would need to work now. "The world would be ugly," she said, drawing in a breath. "All the things you think are good would be gone. All the people you care about too." She licked her lips and tasted blood. When had she been hit?

It was a long shot to try to play on his emotions like this, but Fallon saw weakness in his eyes, the same weakness he probably saw in her. Both of them grappled to understand a world that only got darker and more complicated with each passing day, each new black and white headline staining the papers, each new drop of blood staining the pavement.

But Wolframite was moving pieces, and Fallon hadn't even made it to the board.

Fallon closed her eyes. "I don't want to..." It was hard for her to finish the sentence. Instead, she said, "I know you aren't a youma." Her voice was quiet. Enough encounters told her something was wrong with her. Her sixth sense was pretty keen at sensing danger, even if it glitched when facing the strange creature with the camera alongside Sailor Cancer. Before she was attacked by those strange monsters Sailor Virgo told her to call youma, Fallon always sensed it. It had happened too many times for her to disregard the feeling. "You aren't a monster. I know you aren't." No, actually. She didn't. But Fallon was grasping at straws. She was prepared to say anything if it meant her survival.

Fallon stumbled after Wolframite like a fish caught on a line. He was too strong for her to fight, especially with a sore back and twisted ankle. Where are we going? Her mind asked the question, but she never said it out loud. He was temperamental, and whatever she had said before only seemed to set him off.

Her silence could only last so long. If he was dragging her to her death, she didn't want to go quietly. "There are monsters everywhere so I have no choice. They are everywhere, nowhere is safe! Isn't that what you are--" Her breath stalled in her throat, and in spite of her resolve to be strong, Fallon gasped. The body in the alley was young, maybe only a year or so older than her. It was a boy, and his legs were bent at uncomfortable angles.

Fallon wanted to look away, but Wolframite was holding her in place. Then he yanked her to face him, and she let out a gasp as her ankle bent. Those eyes -- they were terrified and terrifying. What did she look like to him? Was she just like this boy? Then why had he let her live? Her life might be flawed and complicated, but it was hers and she didn't want to lose it.

She was prepared to say anything to get him to keep her alive. "I am lucky..." she said, voice nearly a whisper. "I'm lucky. You've helped me see that." Her bottom lip shook, and Fallon took a careful breath to steady it. If she didn't have a poker face before, she'd need to develop one now. "You... have a choice. You can... choose to..." Magenta eyes found his. Could she be convincing? "To stop." Fallon didn't look away. She was afraid that if she did he would forget his mercy and kill her anyway.

Her attacker was crying, and for a split second, Fallon thought that her words had gotten through to him. Not only would she live but he would stop killing too. "Yes, the world will be--" The blow to her stomach made her cry out in pain. Whether he meant to or not, Wolframite struck the spot where she had taken the hardest impact from the trash cans.

If her legs were weak before, they were dead weights hanging off her torso now. Fallon collapsed into his arms, head swimming. She, too, felt tears tracing wet paths down her cheeks, but it was from the shock and pain of his latest betrayal, not sadness. Why had she put any faith in him at all? It wasn't like her to be blindly trusting. She knew what he was. She knew that he was to be feared. But Fallon had been pushed to the edge of her humanity, and the only thing she could think to do was put all her faith in this stranger's mercy. It was the vain hope of any person facing an unseemly death: that the one who sought to harm them would see the error of their ways before it was too late.

Wolframite cradled her limp body to the ground, and with a sick pang, Fallon realized that this was the closest she had been to another person since Leonette at Barren Pines. But this gentle closeness was not voluntary. Her vision grew hazy, like the entire alley was coated in mist. Pinpricks of light defined the shadows before her, but the color seeped out. His breath was hot in her ear when he whispered, but Fallon was too weak to struggle.

The last thing she heard was his voice, echoing in her mind:

Good people don't get second chances.



When the ambulance arrived, Fallon was unconscious. She stayed that way for the entire drive to the hospital, through the IVs and the heart rate readings, even through the hurried phone call to her parents back in France. She was back in the hospital, just a few floors down from Laney, and it looked like she would be there for a few days.

The first night, a pale nurse with red hair poked her head into the room. There was already another nurse, an older woman with hair so gray it almost seemed purple, standing by the girl's bed. The two exchanged a smile.

"Is it one of the kids from the organ ring?"

The older nurse nodded.

The redheaded nurse slipped into the room and took her place beside the other woman. "Poor thing. This city is not a safe place anymore." She reached out and checked the IV bag hanging beside the bed.

The older woman crossed to the foot of the bed and looked at Fallon's chart. "Survive one horror, and find yourself right in the middle of another. No one is safe anymore." The chart fell back into the slot with a clatter, and the nurse winced, glancing quickly to Fallon to see if she had woken. She hadn't.

The shorter woman touched her arm. "Come on. Let's go get coffee before our break ends. I don't want to risk a caffeine crash." Both nurses left the room, one shutting the door, the other leading the way.

Outside, the hallway bustled with patients, nurses, doctors, and worried loved ones. Some yelled, some cried, others demanded to be seen before all the other sorry faces huddled together in stiff plastic chairs in the waiting room. With all the terrorists in Destiny City, there was never a shortage of patients to be seen.

Fallon was just another victim in a sea of suffering.