“What happens when the edges of reality aren’t where you expect them to be?”

“That’s not an answer,” he says, looking at me over his glasses. Thin rimmed, rectangular. His pen hasn’t moved. It hovers over the page, discarding what I’ve said.

I turn my head, facing the light glinting in through the square planes of glass. I know if I run my hands over them, they will be deceptively smooth as they curve inward along their ridges. I think of that coolness as I stare out into the bay beyond, the glinting waters and that spray of pink incongruous at the corner that I can almost ignore.

“I need answers, Kaylee,” he says. “I can’t keep you safe without information to trade.”

I moisten my lower lip. It’s not true. They’ll let him keep me. If they were going to break his hold over me, they would have done it already. If it was about information, I would be gone already. Gone into the bowels of whatever place they keep the Others.

I think of them like that. I know it’s backward. You’re supposed to capitalise the Others that are not-You. Not your Us.

Not that they’re my Us.

They can’t be. Not like me. They remember enough, enough to warp the weird creeping in at the edges. Enough to stand up to the monsters that slip through. Save a child. Save their child. Save themselves.

And in this world, everything is caught on cameras. The ones in our pockets. The ones that can’t resist a show-down. Can’t resist these battles brought to life off their screens and into their streets.

I turn my head back to him. That chiselled jaw. Those steady eyes. The silver glinting too early for his unlined eyes. “Anything I say can and will be used against you.”

He places the pad of paper down, crosses the pen over it. “What do you want?”

“What do I want?” I say, lilting over the “I.”

I want to forget. I want to remember. I want to be anywhere else but here. I want this moment to last forever. I want to save him. I want to destroy him.

I don’t want to give him the form he needs to mould the power creeping into his world. His will is strong. It has shaped a rigid world, clawing his eye into its heart. This world that now balances on a precipice. That his will could tip into the abyss.

It will come. But not today.

I saved him on that street that day. Not the line of kids crossing the street, though it looked that way. I had been keeping my head down. I could feel the edges creeping in. I knew there was nowhere to run. I knew better than those that tried.

I’d let their krakens rip up harbours, and their demons rain down fire. Whenever I sensed them, I started walking away. Not before. When it started. Once the dice had been thrown. That’s when you run. And I am very good at running.

Yes, they killed multitudes. Until someone rose up to stop them. Some temporary hero. These heroes cast from too many movies and series and stories and legends reaching far, far back into humankind’s longest memories.

Killed by a hero who knew less than I. Who disappeared into the bowels of the beast. To reappear perhaps in a uniform. A hero with a cause. A heroine. I should say that. More often than not, they are heroines. Women, all kinds of women, struggle less with the edges of things. With letting go of all they’ve ever believed and loved for the chance of saving Someone.

In this world, that’s how they’ve been raised.

Doesn’t fit with their histories and legends. Strange that. That they’ve built their heroes of the wrong clay. Those who hold to the edges can’t cope with what creeps out of the places between.

A few can mould it, a dangerous few.

He stands up. He’s given up on me for today.

I glance at my feet. I nibble my lower lip.

He buttons his jacket. “I don’t know what you want from me, Kaylee. But sooner or later, you’re going to have to choose a side. You can’t hide from this forever.” He sighs, straightens his back. “We’ll try again tomorrow.”

I nod.

He leaves.

Like an ache in my middle, I feel the emptiness of his going.

I shouldn’t have saved him. I shouldn’t have stopped. I’d been coming out of the grocery, holding the two bags, light enough to carry all the way home. To my apartment tucked into the skirts of the fashionable part of the city.

I’d felt the creature oozing from the pink splotch at the edge of the sky, long before anyone on that street knew their day was about to be blighted. Most of the time it’s easy to ignore, to get on with things. The weirdness creeps in intermittently and always somewhere else.

It had been a hot day, that kind of wet heat I loathe, and with which I would normally have little truck on this part of the coast. Dry heat, dear god, any day, over that wet, cloying feeling spreading its way over your skin. I had been clammy and uncomfortable, my thighs chafing from self-contact under my pretty dress, long before the creature descended from the sky.

Amorphous, but turning dragon-like as it descended. Pulling from the minds below it, an all too recent story, hammered into too many minds. The image brimming too close to the surface.

I’d had enough time. I had discarded my bags. I knew how far the station was, the timetable to the minutes. I knew I could get out ahead of it.

And then I felt it, a signature I knew too well. It’s never the same, but it’s always close enough. The kind of thing you can ignore, turn away from, before worlds start to end. I am so good at turning away from the powers that shape worlds, even worlds that don’t yet believe in power.

I wish I could say I saved him because him being dragged into the weird would have hastened this world’s end a thousand-fold.

That I did it for all the children I hadn’t saved. All the innocents already dragged into the deadly belly of the beast. And all that still would be.

That I took a stand.

But it would be a lie.

I turned on that humid day, under that bright, blue sky. I dropped the bags. I cricked my neck, not entirely immune to the dramatic moment, and I started walking towards the monster, a mirage taking form. I reached for it, like a drug I’d missed for so long. That I knew I craved, and yet had still forgotten how good it could be.

Like breathing fresh air after days lost in smog. Or getting out of an airplane. Or the first day where you can go outside without a jersey. Or fresh grass under your toes.

I felt the power of the weird pass through me. Weariness, age, everything this world had written into me fell away. I felt it all pulsating in me. Even as the screaming started.

As the red dragon plummeted to the earth, smashing into the street. Concrete flying. Screaming. Screeching brakes. Swearing.

Its eyes locked on mine, huge, whirling and icy. I loved it in that moment. This creature who had taken form from my mind, who had found its way into this world. That wanted to live. That wanted to bellow. And it did. And ice, blessed ice, blasted from its mouth, tearing away all that damned heat.

I wanted to embrace it as the fresh breeze it was, but instead I started to run. Muscles long neglected, reforming, and long, sleek metal forming around me. I knew better than to fight in a pretty, floral dress. I knew from the first encounter. I didn’t need to learn this dance. I knew it deeper than my deepest blueprint.

I run, I sprung. I sailed through the air. I landed on the great serpent’s neck.

It flung me aside.

I tumbled through the air. I landed like a cat, on all fours. Already rising to begin again.

Oh, the pageantry.

I knew this better than any of those who had fought before. In the clothes they knew, torn and bloody and scarred. Facing creatures a tenth of this size. With claws less than a fraction of what I faced. Unaware that the nightmare they battled was their own.

I knew my lines. Knew how to twist and turn. I knew the power of the weird. And the patterns of this world. I knew how to make them tremble and then to cheer. I knew how to win, but not too easily. In grand style.

Caught on cameras. Not the battle entire. Caught after they were secure in the knowledge that someone had come to save them. That it was safe to gawk. To return to watching from behind a screen.

He didn’t film. He watched.

And when the black vans arrived, he interposed himself between them and me. He extended his hand and I took it.

Now he asks me questions that I don’t know how to answer without damning him. Without damning them all.

*     *     *
Someone yanks the curtains open, and I stutter awake. My bedroom is at the back of the house, so I am saved from the glare off the bay. The mountain and its willowy trees save me from that.

“Miss Pierce,” they say. “Dr Greene is waiting for you.”

This is new.

Normally, I sleep as late as I like. Normally, I have days and days alone. Spread out on my balcony, like a cat, lazing on the cool tiles, and trying to look away from that widening gyre.

There is no way to escape it. It is nowhere. It is everywhere. Look to the horizon and it is always at the top right, uppermost edge. Like an eyelash that fluttered in. Irritating. You want to rub it away. Turn away.

Stay inside. Keep the curtains shut. Crouch in your air-conditioned office and stay away from the windows. Pretend it isn’t there.

Don’t think about it. Don’t tell yourself stories about it. Don’t tell other people stories about it. Don’t speculate on the news. Don’t invite talking heads. Don’t make its image more well known than the presidents of your most well-known nation.

Every word you speak about it hastens your world’s end.

Every time you hack away at your shared reality. Everything you allow yourself to breathe in that you never would have let in before.

“Up,” she says. “You’re leaving.”

My attention snaps to her. “Leaving?”

“Leaving,” she says. She raises her eyebrows at me. Perfectly manicured eyebrows like the curves of a rainbow they teach children to wish on.

Is it a threat? No, I don’t sense any of the members of that force which has become so ubiquitous in rounding heroes up. You can’t spend so much time fixated on the weird and its creatures and not end up caught up in its web, tainted with its tang.

I taste nothing.

If it’s a threat, it’s an empty one.

I throw open the thin sheet I sleep under. Over the covers. Under the aircon.

She looks away. She didn’t know I sleep naked. “Your things are already packed,” she says, half away, half to me and half to herself.

I stand, and she turns away. “Then I suggest you find me some clothes.”

“Can’t you?” she says, waving a hand in frustration. She came with instructions she can’t carry out. She wants me to cast my clothes from air. Can she taste the magic in the back of her throat?

“No,” I say. “Well, I could, but They can sense it. I assume you like this house, this city. And if I’m going away from it, you probably don’t want Them as visitors.”

She nods, tightly. Disappears. Returns. With white shorts and a peach shift. And under-things. I wonder if they were the first thing at the top of whatever bag someone threw together for me.

I dress. Slowly. “Food,” I ask as she doesn’t leave. I want so badly to grab at those threads of power and climb into that mind. That firm, resolute mind. See what makes her tick.

“There’ll be some on the plane.”

Plane, huh. Well, okay then.

I follow her down to the door where she seems all too pleased to see me off into the back of a fancy car. Black. But I’m not afraid. I haven’t been given up.

The car glides down the driveway and out the gates. I feel her behind me. In my mind, she bites her lip. I shouldn’t picture. I shouldn’t picture anything. When her freedom comes, it should be pure. For a moment, before she bends her neck to another.

“Be free,” I mutter below my breath.

Outside, the group of persistent acolytes laugh and pause their gyrations, peering at the cars, but staying back from the security detail. No doubt there have been incidents before. When I first arrived.

Zealots. Why are they so keen to believe? To find a saviour? To put their minds into forming a common god? To shaping themselves into its followers?

Why do they long to agree?

I can feel their beliefs skitter along my skin, trying to form me. But I know this dance too well. I know how to hide in the sunlight. How to stay inside myself for as long as I can.

They sought me. But I did not seek their libations.

I am not hidden.

He has not hidden me, not exactly.

It’s like a mutual agreement. The authorities know he has me, and so does everyone else. Mutual consent. I had to appear at a press conference and everything. I know it was only a few weeks ago, but already it is detritus in my mind.

I know this descent. I have to hold what I can together. I need my most lucid moments.

It’s then that I realise I don’t have my notebook. I want to panic. What if I have a clear moment, and I can’t record it?

I don’t fear them finding the old one. He’s had them taken before, and they’ve done little good. I know too many languages, too many scripts not of this world. And even if one of their army of heroines can decipher one, chances of them knowing more than one?

I blink my eyes rapidly, forcing the tears back. I have had enough of these games. I can do this. I can hold it together. I can taste this draught for as long as it is left for me. I can savour.

No one knows that I am fraying inside. I am good at this game. I know what pinpoint clarity feels like. I store it up. I think it out. I write it down. Clues, tiny missives that might point a way out. Or might not.

I know the difference. I think I know the difference. I write things down. I test them in each of my moods. Feeling for the hidden daggers. Language is a tricksy mistress. She hides inside herself. I can’t risk saying something that will make it worse.

I don’t want to hasten the end.

*     *     *
The blast of aircon as I enter the private plane refreshes me. Draws me back to myself. Cools the sheen of sweat clinging to me.

He looks up as I enter. His eyes narrow briefly as I take a seat across the aisle from him. The leather gives below me. I run my fingers along its loose creases. Not tight leather this. Not worn. Just friendly.

“A drink?” the steward asks.

“Water, please,” I say, my throat parched from lack of speaking. “And paper?”

I used to be a chatterbox before all this started. Before I had to ration my words like a countdown to the end. Could hardly get me to shut up. One of those people who made you feel trapped in a conversation. Maybe not trapped. I was interesting, an expert, useful, valuable, competent. But a bit chatty. Like that professor whose office you had to avoid going past unless you had the time to be there for a while.

Not an unpleasant professor. An interesting one. A kind one. You’d be glad of the time spent if it didn’t cost you your next commitment. Maybe.

The steward brought me water in a proper glass. The kind of thick glass that you could smash and threaten a pilot with. Not that I would.

I drank it, my throat soothing with every swallow. That incipient nausea banished by ice for a second. Not for too long. It would coil back in that space it never left before long.

That was from before, too.

Always feeling not quite right. Waking up with the taste of acid burning my throat and tongue. The nausea coiled in my belly. The tightness in my chest. The lancing pain if I moved at the wrong angle. The edges of a headache at my temple. The ache in my belly. The burning searing along my guts.

The cost of a human form.

I’d pay it again and again, gladly.

For a few bright days after the dragon in the street, I had been blissfully awake and alive. No fog in the head. No pain in the gut. Clear. Deceptive clarity. Energy pouring through me. Bright aliveness that could not be indulged.

That promised I could do anything.

I gulp down more water. I look up and find the steward’s eye. He brings the jug over this time. “Just till we leave,” he says.

I pour another glass. I enjoy holding the cool wetness. I focus on my hands, my fingers. Even the ache in the right pinky finger that I broke in yoga. I miss yoga. It used to be my sanity. My refuge from the pain. Stretching open my chest. Feeling it creak and loosen all those tight places. Easing pain and stress. Feeling my body.

Now, it’s too close to meditation. Halfway through the first sun salutation and I can feel that power, that one-ness gliding over my skin.

Too many damn idiots who believe that yoga and meditation and coming from the stars all mean the same thing. That one-ness and emptiness and formlessness and the splotch on the edge of our vision are the same damn thing.

Breaking the one thing I loved.

God, that’s so dramatic.

I’m sorry for myself today.

He’s barely acknowledged me.

I should sleep. I’ve always been good at sleeping on planes. I used to say it was my superpower back before I brought down dragons in the street. I’ll sleep. Sleep is still safe.

It shouldn’t be. Not with what they believe about sleep here. Every night, they should rip the sky asunder. But so far, so safe. A repose, away from temptation.

The steward clears the water jug and glass away, apologetically. I strap in and bless the lack of safety briefing. I hear the rumble of the plane. I hope it’s loud enough to cue my superpower. This plane is smaller than the ocean crossers that I’m used to.

I close my eyes.

*     *     *
When I open my eyes, the light has changed, but whether it’s from being asleep all day or because of the direction we’ve been flying in, I can’t tell. There is a notebook and pen in front of me. The same blank, black notebook, unlined he always gives me. The same blue click pen that I prefer.

So considerate.

“You ready to talk?” he says.

“What do you want to know?” I say, shifting so that our eyes are level.

“What is it?”

“It’s the space in between, pure potentiality.”

“That sounds meaningless.”

“It is, and it isn’t,” I say.

“Why does it keep attacking us?”

“Because that’s what you expect.”

“How can you fight it?”

“I don’t fight it,” I say. “I shape it.”

I’ve told him this before. It’s like a script now. Familiar, with the edges worn. I don’t always say the same thing. And it’s the one way we can talk for hours. Not quite hours.

“How do you shape it?” I can feel the hunger in him. He says he wants to save this world.

“I was born in it.”

He pauses now. This is new.

“So were you.”

“I was?”

“In a way,” I say, smiling. I feel reckless. I don’t like it. I know I shouldn’t surrender to it. But I’m so tired. There is an inevitability to it.

“I don’t remember it.”

“Few do.”

“Why do you?”

I shrug. “That is the great, unanswered question of my life. This isn’t my first apocalypse.”

“So, it is an apocalypse?”

“For this world, this shared reality, yes. For you, maybe.”

“Why me?”

“Why anyone?” I say.

His pen is out now. I can hear it whispering across the page. It’s the most I’ve communicated in months. I know he’s writing part what I say, part what he thinks he understands. Mapping it back to his theories, his ideas.

It’s a formidable mind. It could shape worlds.

It probably will. In part. Great minds don’t disappear in the weird. Minds, wills, it’s hard to know what the right word is, but he has it. That essential something that survives worlds. That whispers back into the primordial soup. To shape and shape again.

A morsel. A delicacy. A poison pill.

I know then what it was. Like the tiniest click echoing to the edges of the world.

“Turn on the news,” I say.

My skin is tingling, every nerve on edge. Oh god, I love this body. All its aches and pains. Its nausea. I stretch out, feeling the slightest pops in my back. It is glorious. I wish I could do one last sun salutation. Out here, in the aisle, there is almost enough space.

He clicks on the news. A news. A burning city. A cerise sky.

Click. Ice. Click. Decay. Click. Crumbling.

“What’s happening?” he says.

“The tipping point,” I say.

“You said we had time.”

“I thought we did.”

“What does that mean?”

“That I’m not the only one.”

“The only one what?”

“The only one who remembers.”

I should run. It’s time to run. Slip through the sides of this world. Sprint through the weird. Sidle into the edges of a quiet world. Live while I can. Hide while I may.

I want to tell him not to be afraid. I want to tell him that it will all be okay. It won’t. I want to say I’m sorry, but I’m not anymore. He will live. Slave or master, his strength will survive. In the weird, where only strength matters.

I stretch out a finger, ready to run, ready to whisk myself away. To leave this turn of the wheel.

I pause.

He’s watching the screen; all of them are. The plane flies on autopilot.

I should leave. Before I am noticed by any of the powers pouring into this world. I could doom them all.

I know my way. It’s time to go. Fleeing before the maelstrom.

I stretch myself into the plane, slipping out of this body, and along its wings. Feeling the engines, formed in a world that had found enough agreement to build one. It is a rare accomplishment. Impressive. Forged by strong minds and wills.

The wrong minds. The wrong wills.

It won’t last much longer. I hold the shape of the plane. I can feel those inside. The steward. The pilot. And the man who thought he was protecting me. Who thought I had saved him. Who wanted to grasp this new power. And oh, he might have. If I hadn’t seen him that day. Might have reforged a new world of invisible chains.

I could laugh. I roar. He pales. I think he pales.

I shift into him, seeking that sweet, succulent essence. Holding it in my jaws for one last second, savouring all that he had been, all that this world had been. Then crushing it. Making that strength my own.

This is my apocalypse.