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There was no great, red bloodstain to mark Bischofite's passing in the park. The concrete remained evenly gritted, freckled by the old, gray-black dapples of dried bubblegum and the occasional smear of dirt. The grass shone emerald-black in the low light of midnight; the bench was the same solid wood as ever. None of them gave up any secrets. By street lamp and citronella candlelight, everything was as it had been every night that Hvergelmir came here.

It was only sometimes she remembered, with guilt, what had certainly been her failure. Sometimes she remembered standing only a few feet away, looking just there, at the spot where Bischofite had lain. Sometimes she remembered letting him be stabbed; letting him die.

Other times, it was almost like it hadn't happened, and she nearly had to wonder: had it? Was she so sure?

No word had gotten out yet -- that they'd stabbed and killed a man because he couldn't be purified. That senshi and knights were not to be trusted.

It hadn't quite occured to her that no word had gotten out about this because no one had died.

She'd been ashamed. She mourned. She'd reread stupid Kafka, and she didn't even like Kafka, because to a dying man, it had meant something, had maybe meant all the world. She'd barely known Bischofite, and if it had truly been his choice to die, she judged him no worse for it -- but in death or in life, his sentence had been a tragedy, and she'd been sorry for it. To be condemned, so very young.

The voice that came along with the aura she felt seemed impossible, at first. It was faint, but distinctive -- she rose to her feet in one smooth motion, gold eyes trying beyond ability to light the darkness, peering hard.

From the dark, it was easy to see into the light. From the light, all dark things melted and hid.

It was natural, for the sort of person who sought new perspectives in books, to read about war when you were in a war. No surprise for someone like Bischofite to turn to Vietnam, to O'Brien, to a soldier's musings on his lot and orders and purpose. He'd chosen a quote that was easily recognized -- the title of the book was in the line -- and it gave her half a chance to know it well enough to pick out some fragment that she'd once liked.

They carried the sky, she might've answered, if she'd known the quote well enough. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity. Her memory wasn't perfect enough for that, though, not for all the months and years of training it, not for all the recitations and competitions. She'd never memorized books by rote.

But she stood in the golden lamplight, staring into the dark, and she said, instead, "A single leaf that's outlasted its season seems to be trembling still." Hvergelmir put a hand up to shield her eyes from the overhead lamp. "I thought you were dead," she said quietly.

Are you?

You're not dead, she wanted to say. You're depressed. I barely know you, and you're the most obviously depressed person I've ever met. Even I can tell that much, and I'm, like, the last person who should be diagnosing anyone with anything.

But what did it matter if he was? However he'd started out, some of the problems he had now were very real, some had proven very unfixable, and they were all-in-all very depressing. Even if there were a way to get psychiatric medicine or counseling services to someone who'd been spliced with a monster, they'd failed, so far, to find a way to patch his current most-gaping wound.

So let him be kind of depressed, then. Life sucked a little.

Everyone has holes in them. Yes. Even you, Hvergelmir marveled. It's so strange -- you're giving me back my own theory for a different purpose. What hole did Chaos see in you, that it tempted you into its army? What did it find lacking in you that it meant to use to keep you there?

There hadn't been time to wonder much on it before. It had been beside the point -- he'd already wanted to leave, and she'd thought it was better not to jeopardize that by asking the wrong question. Because of that, though, she knew him so little -- a man with masks and makeup and questions of his own.

I miss setting people on fire. Was even that true -- or had he just said it because he was miserable? Was it easier to decide you were sociopathic than just unhappy? Did it make people go away?

She didn't think he was taking parts out of himself and burying them in other people because he was dead, to follow his analogy out. Hvergelmir thought he was transplanting parts of himself into other people -- connecting to them -- because for those moments that he did, they made him feel alive.

Hvergelmir sat on the flat of the bench, sideways, curling one arm up over the back of it. She tucked her legs up under her -- a posture that indicated she had no expectation of a need to run away at a moment's notice. (It wouldn't matter, after all; what did it matter how fast you got to your feet with an adversary who could teleport?)

"Change comes of everything," she argued, settling in to some kind of a debate. "Being alive, being dead, electrons colliding in the atmosphere, waves throwing shells on the shore. Anything changes for a little while. Some things change longer. Some things end, changing forever, and then never change again. Die, if there's nothing left that you want that you can still have -- but what does it matter? It's only alive you can change things in ways that make you feel anything. Change doesn't matter. Intention matters. You have to want something -- what is it you're looking for?"

You've tried so hard, and come to such spectacular ruin -- did you ever know what it was you were seeking? Was it something you held for a moment, then did you feel the onrushing cold air again as it slipped through your fingers?

Hvergelmir frowned, thrown a little off-balance by the misunderstanding she perceived in his response. She didn't like this, trying to pare her thoughts down into something concise like he'd criticized her for not doing before -- it was really hard and she wasn't very good at it. Already she'd gotten across the wrong meaning.

"No, I -- I didn't mean that. Change is necessary. But that doesn't make it fulfilling, not once you're past babyhood and the first realization that you're capable of making noise and hitting things. Things are already changing all the time, constantly, everywhere. You don't need to seek it. You don't need to help it out. To say you crave change is like saying you crave oxygen. You have oxygen, you don't have to go out and find it. It's not fulfilling -- it's just a baseline need. Craving change without craving a particular kind of change -- it's pointless. That's all I meant."

She had a feeling that Bischofite still was and wasn't quite answering her questions. Was he trying purposely to be vague or obscure -- wanting to make her race to keep up? Or was he still working it all out in his own head, trying to find words to put to something that he'd felt but never articulated?

He sought specific things, but when asked, claimed to want to know everything. He'd claimed before to be a nihilist, but -- he kept questioning it, in his way, kept being the one to prod at the idea and seem to want to find some way to prove it to the world.

To prove it to himself, maybe. He worried at it like a dog with a bone, the way a man worries at his greatest fear. Do you fear that there's nothing of meaning in the universe, Alois? Or do you fear that the universe is pregnant with it, a grand design forever on the cusp of fruition? Or do you fear, most of all, that striving with all your being you may still never be able to know?

They say that when the coin is in the air, you suddenly know which side you want it to land on.

Maybe that pure clarity was the thing itself he sought: the moment when the coin was in the air and a person knew himself, just for that brief instance, and was changed by it.

"The cosmos has no intentions," she answered his question. "I don't see how it could. There's no such thing as a unified intention of everything that exists. What, all's for the best in the best of all possible worlds? Evil exists to give rise to good, according to God's plan, and is therefore good in and of itself? Candide put that to rest a long time ago, I thought.

"Nothing's meaningful to the universe -- not you or me or peace or war or Mozart or Rachmaninoff or caramel corn or cookie dough. But I can't understand myself if I don't..." Hvergelmir paused for a moment, listening to herself, frowning -- leaving a slight hitch in her words. "If I don't understand what's meaningful to me."

The thought made her uncomfortable even as she said it -- even though she believed it. She didn't want to examine why that was. Like all things that made her uncomfortable, she wanted to ignore its existence until it went away again -- so she did.

"Do you really think you're not human? Aside from the cosmetic."

It was true. There were certain merits to not understanding oneself; on that much, at least, Hvergelmir and Bischofite could agree.

The rest of it came as sort of an interesting surprise, and added a great deal of color to a picture of a man that had formerly been smeared indistinct in black charcoal. Is that why you wear a mask all the time, then? Are you trying to make yourself love it? Do you think you can just choose to make yourself disappear?

Emptiness was powerful -- but a person could not easily become empty, and certainly not just by dint of will, of avoiding acknowledgement of their own contents. Alois held onto his humanity: his name, his skin, his life, his lover; he craved them all still, sought them all still. He still wanted company, even if it was hers; he still wanted a self, even if it was himself. For all the people he'd apparently killed, all the carnage he'd wrought, he was still destroying all the things outside of himself, and none of the things in. If he really did want to become empty, she thought, he was avoiding lighting the most important match.

Not a course of action she intended to advise.

You don't want that, she thought. Whether you're an abject coward or a glassy sociopath, you don't want it. You're human still. Don't hate it -- it's the only thing I like about you. Everything good and curious and interesting in you comes from that.

"Do you really see safety in unpredictability? My counterargument, then, to your Copenhagen interpretation: because I don't know if Schrödinger's cat is alive or dead, you would say I have to prepare for either possibility. I argue I don't -- assuming I wait long enough, I'll know what's become of the cat without opening the box at all."

Hvergelmir twisted to lean backwards against the bench, folding her arms across the top of its backrest and looking out into the scumbled outline of the trees. "The Negaverse doesn't need leverage over you. If you persist in becoming nothing, all it has to do is sit back and wait you out -- you'll make yourself extinct on your own. Isn't that where you say it's been leading you all along? Happily into a box, trying to make out muffled noises from the outside? For the love of God, Montresor."

What did he think he was becoming -- an impartial, invisible, outside observer? Some scientific ideal? The reality was a joke, compared to that: he'd become outside, certainly -- but the rest was far from true. No, the vantage point from which he now saw was anything but impartial. He'd experienced too much, felt too much. Instead of transcending to another state, instead of becoming closer to nothing, he'd become both more human and more monstrous alike. Who had cause to hate the Negaverse, if not Bischofite? Who had insight on their machinations, if not him?

Who...?

Look at me. I get caught up in your strange troubles and forget the other ones I cared about first. Because you came to me in need of help, I'd completely forgotten: you can also help me.

How much do you see, keen observer of the human condition that you claim to be? How much are you willing to tell?

"How did you come to be part of the Negaverse?" Hvergelmir asked, looking back.

Oh, Bischofite. Oh, Alois. Watching you is heartbreaking.

"We're all going to die regardless," she agreed, which was true, but wordplay. "It's just that if that isn't it . . . You're going to have a tough time trying something else."

There was little she could do to ease his sorrow. She wanted to; for all that he'd done, for all his snaps and barbs, she looked at him and saw potential. She saw the promise of a keen intellect, a young mind capable of being quite sharp. Crossing swords made sparks and light and the clash of cymbals, a feast for the senses, and Hvergelmir supposed her own mind was probably not much of a sword to offer, no better than an amateur's duel -- but perhaps, dull rock that it was, it made for a serviceable whetstone. Something like that might at least keep him in the fight a little longer, keep him from giving his mind over to Chaos completely. It helped her to imagine she might still be useful to a young man she'd already failed to help once.

"Well, it's the start of a story, at least," she acknowledged his tale, chin in hand. "But it's still got a few holes. That's the part I want. So, okay, you happen along on a -- someone from the Dark Mirror Court, I'm guessing? I haven't met many. And it drains you, and an agent shows up, and he powers up because -- well, you didn't mention why, but maybe it's not important -- but he thinks he's compromised his identity, and so then, what? This good Samaritan sees you by the side of the road and rather than taking your starseed from you, he offers you a place in the Negaverse, just like that? Surely they're not casting their net so wide that literally any warm body will do."

And if they were? If they had enough spare energy, enough spare Chaos, to waste it on corrupting people willy-nilly and disposing of them if they didn't work out, what did that say about the slim chance that Order stood of standing against them in the end?

Well, at least that's information I didn't have before.

He'd picked up on the slight tangent of her question quickly. He wanted to know why she'd asked. No doubt Bischofite was wondering where she meant to go with a first-principles question, how it was supposed to tie back to his ruminations on life and death and what lay ahead of him.

She didn't mind answering. Either he'd help or he wouldn't -- but he liked to talk. According to him, he liked to pick people apart. Maybe he'd enjoy it.

"Well, it's usually my lead-off question. What is it you think I do here? I don't think you've ever actually asked. You must have assumed something beyond just World's Worst Oprah's Book Club."

Or did you never wonder at all? I served your purposes -- why would you need to care about mine?

Maybe you just never expected both of us to live long enough for it to come up in conversation.

Hvergelmir frowned, ready to backpedal once more. She wished there were someone else she could ask to do this, someone else she could get to try and plumb the depths of Bischofite's shrouded mind. It was too hard. He was too -- Carmine would say he was too oppositional.

Maybe he was, though, maybe he was. Or maybe there was a reason for it.

What is your rush all the time, Alois? I didn't realize this conversation was being paid for by the word.

Was it something else? Was there a reason he didn't want to draw the conversation out beyond just annoyance? Was he in danger here? Was he in pain? He hadn't arrived looking his best; Hvergelmir wondered if some of his shortness of manner didn't come from being in a worse state than he let on.

Will they come for you, Alois? Why haven't they come yet?

"Succinctness doesn't suit me. Not just that it's not my style, I mean -- it doesn't suit what I'm trying to do." She picked at imagined dirt beneath her fingernails. "Chaos tampers with the mind, as far as I can tell -- it clouds some things, pushes others to the fore -- so I learn as much, or at least I think I do, from how you style your stories as I do from the answers you give. Maybe you have some idea of why Chaos would choose you or what it would exploit to keep you there -- ," or maybe you think you do, she didn't say -- "But I don't think I'd get very useful answers if I asked most of your fellow officers that."

She reached a hand up to absently trace the outline of the seal on her shoulder. Hvergelmir could always feel it there -- it was always a little warm. "You came here already looking to leave the Negaverse. I never expected to talk you into anything. But too many people in your organization are fighting based on the belief that they're protecting Earth from the conquering alien menace -- as pitiable as it is false. And I didn't see any reason to participate in a war of childish ignorance, or to stay ignorant myself. I want people to know the truth and decide from there.

"But asking a Negaverse officer to tell you about Chaos or your queen is like asking a blindfolded person to describe an elephant to you by touch. That's all they've seen of her, all they know of history. And Chaos seems to have a -- a dulling effect on your curiosity, at least where these things are concerned. Most of you don't seem to question things about your keepers as much as you should be -- it's like you each touch a part of the elephant, or a few small sections at best, and call it a complete picture." Her fingers traced over and over the tines of the star on her shoulder.

"Maybe no one ever stands a chance of dismantling the elephant -- but the odds would be better if we knew its full shape. If fewer people wielding weapons in this war were ill-informed, ignorant, and easily led." Hvergelmir settled back into place, shifting to sit properly on the bench again. "I ask and answer questions. That's what I do. Have you ever corrupted anyone?" she finished off, deciding to get as much information as he was willing to give, in case he'd share more. Returning to an early thought, she tacked on, "Are you in pain right now?"

Hvergelmir was pleased with the first development. Whatever the reason -- even just simple ennui -- Bischofite showed no hesitation in offering choice tidbits of information about several of his Negaverse fellows. Some of them she knew -- the world was a small place -- but others she didn't, and she stored away each of the names and Bischofite's analyses of them in her memory to be reviewed later.

That she was acquainted with some of those people, and had begun to form her own opinions of them, she declined to mention. People who came to sit at Hvergelmir's bench and placed their confidences in her were taking a risk, if the Negaverse decided that conversation was tantamount to treason at any point. She was adamantly against risking their safety needlessly by gossiping about them with anyone beyond just Kairatos. She listened to what Bischofite had to say and commented only, barely: "I've heard of Zinkenite. Kairatos isn't a fan, either."

Who promoted him? She stowed that question away for some later time, along with the one Bischofite had glossed over: have you ever corrupted anyone. Kairatos might know about Zinkenite's promotion anyway, if Bischofite didn't know or wouldn't tell. There were always more questions to ask, always plenty of questions.

His new perspective on Chaos's cloud on the mind, however, was fascinating. Rather than being mentally diverted, if he pressed the question too hard, Bischofite's mind became blank of any emotion but love for the heart of Chaos itself. A wall.

"That's interesting," she said with two fingers tapped to her chin. "Have you ever seen Dark City? Well, it doesn't matter if you have, really -- what's interesting is, it's almost like Chaos can't create new concrete thoughts, it can only create feelings, and the brain drives thought on its own. Why else let you hit a wall if it could divert you? It's more like it can only work with what already exists, what's already there. It can't make a stupid person smarter, but -- unless it carves out parts of your brain, maybe -- it can't make a smart person stupider, either. So it just adds feelings that motivate or demotivate. I've been trying to figure out why, if youma are fully loyal and obedient, the Negaverse doesn't make you all into full-fledged monsters. Maybe it's because it can't create a mind capable of higher thought on its own -- and you're what happens when the human mind's crammed into an inhuman form all of a sudden, you reject it for obvious reasons. So maybe the human brain's a weakness to it, since we can reject Chaos, but it's also an irreplaceable asset. Maybe all your General-Sovereigns are being acclimated to accepting youma forms someday, like frogs in boiling water. Just a theory."

The Cosmos knight hadn't been to her homeworld recently yet -- so what Bischofite was asking wasn't out of the question. The notion that he could be a danger to the sanctity of her Wonder was -- well, it was possible, but the Well had persisted, unbreached and untainted, for thousands of years, despite its availability to travelers. She'd taken Negaverse agents there before; she doubted just taking a half-youma agent there was going to bring her whole legacy of knighthood to ruin.

"Okay," she acquiesced. "I can take you. When?"