"I don't know," he said. "I can't --"
"How do you know how to do that?" said Jesse-who-was-Hector, suspicious. "Did he tell you?."
And that was that. Dylan left Hector behind in their Hillworth room and left Hillworth and went walking, alone.
His arms were itching like crazy. He'd been off the stuff for too long, and this is what he got for his troubles: Destiny City was ending around him and Alexandros had left him. Alexandros had left him. The weight of the Pyrite Crystal was heavy in his chest without him. A plane had crashed not too far from Hillworth, it was going up in flames and the smoke column was high in the sky; people were screaming and rushing all around him, but no one noticed him or even brushed past him. They parted around him like the Red Sea and everything was still and quiet where he was. They didn't know.
A huge lizard was attacking people, devouring them and tearing them to shreds. Their bodies spurted blood until their starseeds popped out and rattled onto the pavement. Dylan turned and walked the other direction.
Soon he was joined by a man at his left side, a blue-eyed man who smiled at him when he turned his head to look.
"I know who you are," said Dylan.
"And I you, Mr. Rasmussen," said the man, still smiling. "Shall we walk?"
They walked together. Dylan's blood ran cold, but he walked anyway; a building in the DC skyline, far off, crumbled; a woman in black joined them and walked at his right shoulder, and shyly took his hand and interlaced their fingers together. He said nothing. She said, "In Heaven, everything is fine," and the three of them walked together.
Meadowview was on fire. People were screaming in dozens -- his old classmates were dead and laid out on the pavement and their starseeds had been shaken out of their chests too, Janice Fitzpatrick and Charys Murphy and Tate Konstantin, and Mr. Johanssen and Mr. Gordon, but Cora wasn't there: he wasn't relieved, though, because he'd known she wouldn't be.
He said to the man: "Who am I, then?"
"You're a junkie at the age of seventeen," said the man, and the starseeds rose into his hand; he took Dylan's arm and smiled at him again and piloted him in the direction of Crystal Academy.
Crystal had been gassed; the building was standing, but it was quiet and he knew everyone had been killed inside. It was the Dark Kingdom who had done this, for some reason. No one had survived. Going near it would kill you too. These were just things that he knew, also.
"In Heaven, everything is fine," said the woman and squeezed his hand.
"Who do you think I am?" he asked the man.
"You're almost a high school dropout," said the man with the blue eyes, "you're a wannabe filmmaker that's never going to go to college. You're a morning star."
They were by Destiny City Memorial. Someone had set off a bomb in the hospital and people had jumped out of the upper windows to escape the fire, and they lay in crushed, bloody pools around the sidewalk. Dr. Chang and Dr. Villalobos bled onto Dylan's uniform loafers; Dr. Baskov and Dr. Fitzpatrick had stained all of their good clothing dark crimson, the kind that would never come out in the wash. His father was dead too. But his father wasn't Dr. Rasmussen, he was King Alexandros of the Seven Lands and the Seven Seas, his silver beard stained by rivulets of blood from his mouth; "Long live the King," quipped the man, and raised Dylan's hand over his head.
"In Heaven --"
"Shut up," said Dylan, and tried to disentangle himself from them both. But the woman started weeping and he was frozen.
They were surrounded by his Cavaliers and by Selene and her senshi. They were taking aim at them, but while the woman clung to him the man just smiled and his eyes glowed like a Bunsen burner.
"Helen," tried Dylan. "Helen, it's me."
"I don't know you," said Queen Nehelenia, in her dress, and she trained Blue Moon Reflection on the woman clinging to his arm. "But I know the company you keep."
"Helen," said Dylan again.
"Hush," said the man. "Ask me who you are again?"
Dylan said nothing.
"No point in being stubborn, lad," said the man, still smiling.
Dylan said nothing.
The man wasn't there any more; he had appeared next to Helen and his arm was around her waist and his other hand was on her neck, while she struggled in surprise and Ares and Laocoon flinched forward, and then froze themselves in place, staring. Hector and Laocoon were in disarray; they looked to be looking around for someone who was missing, someone who wasn't there.
"Who am I?" asked Dylan.
The man grinned at him. "You're Alexandros," he said, "Lord of Tartaros, Crown Prince of the Earth Kingdom -- or King, I'm not entirely sure how this works pre-coronation, you nobility and your titles -- or at least you were," he said, "I don't know about now. But if you had the Pyrite Crystal --" he tilted his head to one side and his fingers dimpled the flesh of her hip through her dress, "-- I could offer some kind of testimony."
Helen had turned white. Dylan laid his hand flat on his chest. "I don't have the Crystal any more," he said. "Let her go."
The man bored of whatever he was doing, took Helen's hand and shoved two of her fingers into his mouth; as they all looked on he bit down hard with a crunch. Helen screamed. Blood ran out of his mouth and he spit her ruined thumb and forefinger out, and said, "I'm not playing games here, kiddo."
"I don't," he was lying, "have," he was lying, "the Pyrite Crystal."
He was lying for the world. He was lying for other people's lives. He was lying for his kingdom? He was lying for his power. He was lying for himself -- he was lying for her -- he was lying how she would have wanted him to lie -- he was lying because instead of a heart in his chest he felt a piece of lead machinery and that was his royal birthright.
The man took a handful of Helen's hair and yanked it back and pushed his bloody mouth down on hers.
Dylan reached into the chest and pulled out the Crystal and offered it in his hands to the man; but Hector and Laocoon and Aphrodite and Ares and Gaia were all dead around them, and he was himself again, taller and stronger with Kore in his arms -- but a moment later Devourer shattered through his chest, its hilt in the man's hand, and all he heard was the woman screaming the words over and over as she walked up to Helen, and in heaven, everything was fine.
****
"This really isn't on," he said to Cora over the phone the next day.
She was silent on the line for a while. "Has it ever been 'on?'" she inquired.
"No," said Dylan, "not really," and that was all there was to say about that.
