In the past, they had discovered some strange things, inhuman things, things that made a sinner to flinch and a singer to faint. In the past they had discovered, oh, ho, eternal life, exultation, murder.

Here's the thing: the world turns only for so long.

Fire and you know it's yours, because it burns like that, it burns like you know what love is even though it's been a long time since he even looked at you like that. Once when you were little, your mother sat with you on your front porch, iced tea in her hand, humming and tilting her head back to catch the sun in her hair. You pulled your knees to your chest, rocking with the swing of the bench, quiet and waiting because she knew wisdoms you never did. She would tell you things like the white marks in your fingernails were the number of boys who were thinking of you, like there were four and twenty black coals baked in a pie, like the sun rose and set and no one ever died. That what was nice about her, maybe: that in all that time, she never lied. Thusly the truths that leaked from between her white clean lips were unassuming and gentle.

So it goes, and so it goes: this is a place of shrieks and sunrises. This is where you will come where you are ready.

You can still hear her scream, her voice crawling up through the sand between your toes.

You built her a sandcastle because there was no other way to tell her no.

xxxxxxxxx

There is a sin that comes from the slaughter, from the crunch of bones between teeth and the savage restoration of life. There is a deeper sort of fanged demise that lurks within that, within the quicksilver and summer swelter, within the startled look of distrust at an old friend. There is something intangible that speaks to the deepest set of souls, that speaks to the rivers and the skies equally, that speaks to a child standing before their father and realizing that he is nothing more than an old fool. Oh but to be the confused ones, to be the willing ones, to be the ones who play in the dappled shade of a sunset. Oh to be the ones who strike up a dance while the stars delight, to be the ones who sit in calla lilies and watch the meadow bend in the breeze. To be the ones that put up a fight.

But first, but first. The blood of the butchered must be cleaned and all evidence erased, as if that was the purification of an ideal, just a quick swipe to hide from the god that might not exist; branches to hide a naked body. Isn't that what sin is? Shame?

So they stand in the middle of a set of bodies and quake.

She with the dark eyes is the first to speak, trembling and pulling her hands reflexively to her stomach, paling. "What is this?" There is no answer from the floating creatures, all so pretty and perfect and wonderful. No, no, no. "It…It… please, it can't be," Grace protests, voice like sliding scales, too smooth. She presses a hand against one glass, peering into the golden liquid and wishing she could only undo. A cathedral of children unborn, a full hallway of capsule-shrines to the not-quite-dead. Nightmares. "They can't be…"

A click, they all whip around. A new girl with eyes the color of {just break down, crying, sitting alone in a house and shaking with sorrow, watching him walk away, realizing she hates you; you will never be free} nothing, standing there with a bleak plastic mask over her face. She looks specifically at Will and he hears something in him say, They are what your friend fears them to be.

"No," a growl, protective. He yanks Grace to his side, wrapping his arms around her and staring at the wraith. He presses the thief closely to him, as if that would stop the truth that is shaping in his head.

I am so sorry, the fake one says, shaking those wet almost-limp locks. But I know because they are my sisters. I am as they are.

Izzy is pressing the sides of her head and trying not to cry. "Please," she begs the girl, hearing the honey voice as well as Will does. "Please. But we… we…"

I am so sorry, long lashes and repeat, but yes.

"All of them?" and at her nod, he grits his teeth. Is this what they have been fighting? Are all of those children of darkness just the repossessed versions of these children in bronze liquid?

Encased in gold worries were rows and rows of mirror-children. Every student from Frost was gently floating in the in-between space, every teacher.

So perfect.

xxxxxxxxx

That's not what this is about, it's about the way he turns away from Mimi now, even though she thought that they were friends; that pinched look on his narrow face like he's trying to wish her away. She wishes too, but it's that she didn't know body language so she wouldn't understand every movement like it was a banner in itself, every time he twitches in her presence and crosses his legs away from her or touches his hair or puts his arms across his body or just walks away while she's still talking. She wishes it wasn't cold where they were, that she wasn't the only one who felt it, everyone else staring at her because they're all buttoned up in their pretty little failures, and she's stumbling around feeling like last year's Prada line. She remembers when this was easier and she was popular and happy, and her mother remembers it too. Her mother says as much, "You used to be fun," and it occurs to Mimi that she can remember being fun as well, but she was someone else then; someone wild and lost and helpless, full of the desire to break apart into sand, crumbling on the beach to the sound of waves in the background.

This is the background, the part where things come together, where you realize that the story is about you still, that it always has been. That's why it speaks to you, but you don't know that yet. All you know is that she used to be fun and now she's just kind of amusing.

Of course, then again, she also used to hold the sun in her hair and wisdom in her eyes. He used to be able to show her the world, take her wonder by wonder {the thing about flying carpets, darling, is that they unravel in the air}.

She was never a heroine. Rushing in to save the day, to pull the teachers out of whatever they had gotten themselves into, smiling, flipping back those dyed strands of azure so that everyone could see her confidence.

She just wants to close her eyes and go to sleep.

xxxxxxxxxxx

Come, she says, he is this way. Will follows her without thinking, weaving his hand with Grace's. The thief doesn't say anything but instead blushes deeply, trying to hide her face behind her hair. He pretends not to notice, trailing after the quickly-disappearing vision as she leads them down the aisle of glowing tubes. It seems endless in all directions, and the four children do their best to avert their eyes. There is something terrible in the way that first it is a teacher, now a student, now someone that they know too well. Everyone behind the glass is too plastic, fake, remade. A mandible torn from a mouth.

The plastic child twists in that way of hers, until she comes to a black door that she props open to reveal a fire-escape, halfway covered in snow. She disappears down it, leaving the four of them by themselves for a moment. Izzy takes a deep breath and whispers, "Should we even be listening to her? She looks like…like…"

"Like one of them?" Willy finishes for her, a wry, dark smile tinting his lips. "Like one of us?"

"Don't say that," the blonde snaps, "They're clones. They're not really us."

"It's the whole school," he tells her, as if that isn't obvious, "And there's absolutely no difference between them and us."

"Except that I'm real and they're not," she bites back. "I know it. I know it." She stalks forwards and takes Nathan's hand, pulling him outside with her. She is thinking of her past and her father, of the man that left them all by accident.

Will sends Grace a de-lish grin. "Well, if it's just us…" he purrs suggestively, running his thumb over the back of her hand.

"Nope," she replies, cracking the word in her mouth, "Not in this lifetime," and then she is gone too, padding after her friends. He watches the door swing shut and then sends a long look behind him at the rows and rows of cylinders. He rolls back his shoulders and smiles.

xxxxxxxxx

In the castle, there is an old man, a wise man. When you go in, if you go in, a voice will greet you – a voice in tongues and ties. If you sit still and make the noise of dust settling and do not fall asleep, then you will be admitted into a greater antechamber where all sorts of knights dressed up as skeletons will make their anger known. Do not move or fall asleep. When the man comes for you, if you ask nicely enough, and are calm enough, and do not fall asleep, then he might not kill you. If you are not dead when the man comes for you, you can push your luck and ask the man one question, but you must be brief because the man does not wait for any human. Make your question heard and phrase it with as much tenderness as if you were setting porcelain on rock, for the man is quick to anger and loves to make misery. If you have asked for the right thing, and have not moved from you position or fallen asleep, he might let you live. He might even answer you or grant you your wish, if he does not kill you. From there, you are on your own. May all things holy have mercy on your soul.

xxxxxxxxxx

She had been his best friend and she never failed him, but at the time he didn't know how long that would last. He was going to let her down and he knew it, he felt it, he would never be as good as she was or as smart or as willing to sacrifice himself for something, and one day he knew he turn around and she would have to leave him because he was that much of an awful person. In the end, she never does end up doing such a thing because she was nice and patient like that. He shared mostly nothing in common with her except for maybe a lunch block, and he had thought that she was keeping him around because she remembered how fun he had been when he was younger and she was maybe hoping that one day that person would show up again sometime, like it was some drum beat in summer heat. She had been sitting next to him and eating her just-cheese sandwich and staring at her chemistry homework, blonde hair falling from where she'd tucked it behind her ears. She was wonderful and beautiful, and no, this was not a romantic comedy movie and he loved her but it wasn't like that, because he knew he would one day let her down so he did everything he could for her until then.

She had looked up and smiled at him, tilting her head and asking why he was staring, and he had shrugged. He had been thinking of the time where someone died and it wrecked him inside and then she called him later just to make sure he was all right. She had been there always for him and he couldn't help but to think of all the times he hadn't been there for her. He would also absently think of her future, the one she actually had and the one he gave up when he was younger, about how she had always been that balance of fun and calm, about how he always the extremes, either wild and off the wall or this impassible uncaring demon of the undersea, nothing could touch him. He wished he had been there every time she wanted him to be there, every time that he had something else to do. He wondered if she knew that, but knowing her, she wouldn't let him say. She didn't care and she would never feel bad for herself. He had handed her a piece of his orange and said, You're Awesome, You Know That? Because there was really no other way to say it, other than, you have saved my life so many times that I have lost count.

He is currently trudging across the snow, his lips burning with the aftershock of Talyn's ginger-mint lip-gloss, thinking of the girl that should have been his first love – should have been his first mistake – but all she is amounts to only wisps of things in past strings. It's not her fault that they no longer are so close. When he closes his eyes, he can see the pink of her lips, moving across those white straight teeth, mouthing something he can never recall. He knows it was the moment before he tore everything apart, sharp edges and a wheel turning out of control, fingers in his hair like the tar lies from the briar patch.

The art room had been the warmest place in the school in the dead of winter, and they had hidden themselves away in it. Neither of them were really artists, but both of them were attracted to the vent that blasted right by their seats. He had burning up for so long that it tortured him to think of it, which is why it spilled like a fever from him, sludge. He hadn't meant to confess to her, but in those blue eyes were the same understanding that had been there since they met. So, just jumping into it, what if I told you… I'm kind of… in love?

She had been working on her Latin, and at his question, her eyebrow twitched upwards. She was intrigued, and this made him laugh. She could talk to him without ever opening her mouth. And then, like irrevocable wisps, the words tumbled like hair to the ground, softly but unchangeably. He told her everything, of the teacher with copper hair and eyes like endless nights, of the way she had brushed his shoulder when she laughed, of the way she had talked to him, of the way she had taken him out once or twice, of the way she had leaned over and kissed him, lipstick stains in a movie theatre. He remembers the way that his best friend looked at him then, the way she just closed those eyes, just for a moment, like everything was processing, but to him it looked like a light had dimmed. When those ice globes met his face again, there was something new in them. It was worry, disgust, disgrace. You have to tell the principal, she hissed. It's not…it's not right. But it had to be right. Everything was dependent on the rightness, on the way his heart sped up when the teacher was around, on her tongue brushing his.

In another world, Davion supposed that he ended up going out with the blonde beast that was his best friend, but not in this one. Once or twice, he has imagined what would have happened, but when he tried to, it was blocked by a grinning briar patch of a woman, her slim hand on his bicep, commenting on how he must work out. The ring, clattering to the road. It would never change. Instead, his friend's eyes lost their light for a moment and she turned away from him – not out of disgust, not out of horror, but to take action to save him. He grabbed her thin wrist, and she winced. There were angry red marks from where he'd held her too hard, perhaps with a strength born of desperation. Please, was all he could say, Please don't. So she didn't. Sometimes when things are going too fast and everything sounds hollow, he wishes she had.

He is making his cold body move because someone has told him to. That is how he functions now: he brain stuck on if-you-say-so tunes. She's long gone with those red shoes on, and he still can't sleep at night. He still feels his skin dance around like he's made of amber and is covered in a thin white envelope that doesn't quite fit. One day someone will look at him and know he is no longer all the way human. He knows this because he likes the way he is injected with poison, the way that the music in his head sounds like a runway model: too skinny, afraid of being caught without her makeup on, high heels clacking on white surfaces, never alone. The only time he knows what he is doing, he is swimming. Sometimes he likes to pretend he is swimming when he his standing still, so that the world shuts down and the echoes across the water are just that of happy voices.

He is following the sashay of her hips, but he's not looking at her like that. Talyn, all power and one-hit-wonder, makes him irrevocably sad. She is all torn up but no one sees it because she covers it in lip-gloss and sassy remarks. He watches as she pulls back her fist and restlessly slams it into a face. She is nothing if not a sweet child of the night. She is black/blue/broken, sailing on winds that don't sing anymore, flapping those crescent wings and never getting off the ground. She is the tar baby, unloved because everything she touches breaks and bleeds and in the end, she is the plane going down and the forty seconds to call your loved ones. She is the sharp teeth on your lap, the purring and the salvation in thick fur, the wagging tail and the snarl when you get too close to her. She is just as lost as everyone else, but she pretends she is not.

She leads the charge and is a monster of destruction, and it is at this point that a child steps forwards in the snow, holding up tiny hands. Talyn freezes, her eyes fixated on the toddler, who is smiling through broken teeth and looks like a melody. Next to Talyn, her pokemon are rattling their exoskeletons in that way that spoke of warning and disgust.

"Talyn," the child's voice like iris poison, reaching those pudgy arms up, wanting. Talyn's eyes have gone from their royal blue to an almost-black, the reflection of the child a dagger in her mind. She sinks to her knees, regardless of the snow, regardless of the wet chewing through her leggings. Her light brown hair is sailing in the wind, and there is something written across her face that speaks of agelessness and horror and defeat.

"Cyan," she whispers, "Cyan, what are you doing here?" She reaches out her slim arms to the child, her fingertips brushing the thin skin with a distant caring. "Where are mommy and daddy, honey? You shouldn't be out here."

"Talyn, Talyn Lynch," Cyan babbles, "Mommy and daddy?"

"Yes, baby girl," Talyn's voice is the color of down feathers, soft and white. "Mommy and daddy." She is slowly working her way to the girl with dark oak hair and a slight lisp. The others around her have stopped, staring at the way she is positioned, ready to wrap a creature of the night next to the warmth of her body.

"Talyn," Tobi says softly, "Talyn, I don't know who you think that is, but she's not real. She's a clone, just like everyone else."

"No," the slim girl is frowning like he is telling her that this is a dream, "That's my baby sister. That's Cyan. I promise. I know her." She stretches and gently claps her fingers around the tiny hands. "Tell them, honey. Tell them."

"Baby sister," Cyan repeats, and Talyn sweeps her up, holding her tight like the little girl might turn into ashes and sand. When the teeth sink deep into her neck, she only lets out a little gasp, the kind of indrawn breath that sounds like the wind rustling the lilacs over an unmarked grave.

She collapses, light brown hair and copper highlights, eyes wide, her blood this crimson splash over the sleek white of snow.

xxxxxxx

Once upon a time, a mother wanted nothing so much as a baby girl. She would trail her hands through the willow branches and smile like she couldn't see you. Although she was lonesome and wistful, she was a good woman, a kind woman, and did all she could to hide her pain. One day, in the middle of the forest, a figure in black approached her and said that the woman's modest behavior would be rewarded, should she follow a few simple steps to ensure the birth of a beautiful little girl. The witch – for it had to be a witch, it had to be – requested but three things for the completion of the spell. The woman was to cover her hands in coal, to shear off her snowy blonde hair, and to slit her wrists over a field of lilies. So desperate was this woman that she followed each step religiously, and so unto her was born a baby girl cursed with eyes as black as night, skin mottled and torn apart, and lips as white as fallen snow.

The thing about love and once-upon-a-times is that they are rare and only take place in the in-between moments. The thing about true fairy tales is that they end like this: although the daughter was a hideous slaughter of humanity, the mother loved it nonetheless.

That's the thing about beauty, too: the more that someone loves you, the less that it matters.

xxxxxxx

Once upon a time, a little girl was born with hair the color of chestnuts, eyes the color of the bottom of the ocean and lips the color of a candied apple. Once upon a time, without a witch or a woman in the woods, a parent turned his little blossom onto a common weed.

This is how she ends up gasping and clutching one hand to the wound on her neck: first she is trained as an assassin.

xxxxxxx

"Me?" she's horrified at the assumption, "No, it was him," she points her slim finger at her partner like she's cutting him down with a bow and arrow. He looks equally affronted and sends her a vicious glare – way to throw me under the bus. He's stopped pacing through the large, mostly empty room, frozen in a beautiful twist. It doesn't take long before he's in motion again, wonderful and perfect action. The granite under his toes looks like sand, but makes the noise of stone.

She's sitting on the tawny couch, popping grapes in her pretty mouth. It would be perfect, that picture, but she is awkward when she moves: gawky, exposed. It is in the single moments that she shines, but judging from the mess that she has thrown her hair into, she doesn't care either way. When Kratch looks at her, the words Do you remember what I said? She pricked her finger and now she's dead ring in her ears like the ghost of a demon in her eyes. "But thanks for jumping to conclusions, guys. Glad to know that I look like a crazy. Love you too, Kratch," Carmen smiles with the luxury of innocence, a luxury she doesn't deserve. She keeps sneaking looks at a door over her shoulder on the far right side of the room like she expects it to open and death to walk out.

"Not you," Kratch replies, her voice distant, "Yuki." She stares at her roommate, who is perched precariously on her chair and is rocking back and forth, back and forth in a pretty pastel straightjacket. Kratch's face contorts, but in a way that that is tormented and {anger (sad) l.o.n.e.l.y rage .why. [I missed you] how could you [I thought that you were] No it's a .t.r.i.c.k. I Know It's A (I love you. I am so, so, so glad that you're alive.) How Dare You know I'm just so happy so Happy so I hate y-} restless.

Mika had stepped in too, and is now staring at the walls and ceilings – everything is glass reflecting back their shocked faces and showing off the night. The others file in, pressing their backs against the only solid wall. Rage is spiraling through Jarel's face, and Mika can see why.

"You've been watching us," Jarel's voice is dull, staring at the giant monitor across from Carmen. It's flickering between heartless scenes like black static. "That's got to be every inch of Frost."

"Probably," Carmen, thoughtful, "But it's not like I wanted to. They were holding Patches for ransom or something. And I'm a good babysitter, and they had grapes." As if to demonstrate this, one disappears behind the ruby of her lips. "'Course, I imagine they took Patches 'cause he's good with talking without talking, so that works. You think he speaks, but it's really his body. It's… it's… it's complicated." Her voice isn't exactly like how you would expect it; rougher and sharper than the neat planes in her face. Not every part of her is so pretty and solid, glass.

"I'm the only one," Yuki whispers, "And I was made to replace me, and her, and her. I will be the only one when the circle closes and the silence falls." Her honey eyes are rolling again, twisting to see things that don't exist.

"What did you do to her?" fists, clenched by her side, anger in her blue-grey eyes, Kratch showing her teeth, "You monsters." At her side, Lux and Skit take their battle stances. They can feel their owner's hatred and fury, and it is making their fur stand up. The Luxio's teeth are showing, yellow-white daggers sparking with cruelty.

This is how it starts: he leaps, this blue streak of electricity and power, and his body collides in the air with another creature that is all red snow, and then it is teeth and snarls and snapping, rolling on the floor with sparks skittering across the stone. The Zangoose is beating against Lux's stomach with her hind claws, and Lux is charging his Bite attack, the silky black slithering over his teeth. Their eyes are wild and white, that dangerous fury of animals. Patches stands behind his Zangoose and snarls - Don't you dare try to hurt Carmen. His Kira is growling out the same message, her pretty ivory fur already starting to blot with blood.

Carmen stands, and she frowns with those gorgeous lips, her hands on her hips. "Who said we did anything?" she argues, but then Kratch's Skitty is darting across the space, talons unsheathed. She twists and burns with a Faint Attack directed for Carmen's skull, but a bright green blur slams into her first, calling out in anger. The Xatu opens her wings and glitters with the cruelty of Steel Wing, her eyes focused and hard. No one was allowed to touch her owner, no one. Skit slides across the floor with the force of the impact, her soft paws scrambling for purchase.

It is all an instant, and Mika steps forwards and signals for Orson, Jarel, Rhyme and Tommi to stand down – their pokemon are hurt enough as it is, Tommi is in no condition to do anything, and this isn't their fight. Sage has sat himself in the middle of the floor, his head titled back to watch the television. His pokemon pace around him anxiously, watching for any signs that their owner has returned to his intelligence.

Zulu is a black ball of anger, but his oncoming Crunch is met with an equally powerful Headbutt from Carmen's Seel. Carter pulls back his lips over his long tusks, his ebony eyes glinting with power. The Umbreon is quicker than him, but the Seel has better defense. There's the sound of colliding skin and teeth, growls and hisses, and the sound of the owners. Kratch leaps across the battles, sidestepping a stray Spark from Lux and wrapping her hands in Carmen's messy hair. Mika takes this as a sign to attack as well, and Patches suddenly has his hands full dodging the knight's quick movements. For every swipe of that sword, Patches has a dance move, and he doesn't look like he's too concerned. Carmen is whining, but it's because girls fight dirty, and Kratch has just bit her in her throat.

Kratch's Kirlia, Tai, is taking on the blind Gardevoir that is the leader of Patches' team. Their psychic attacks are invisible and deadly, but the others can feel them colliding in their minds. Mika's Charmelon has powered up his Iron Tail and the sound of the attack is met with the shriek of Carmen's Milotic. Everywhere is light, glinting against the glass of the room. It's all sound in empty space, Jarel and Orson flinching as the fights continue. Patches lands a blow on Mika while Carmen snatches at Kratch's shirt, tearing long streaks where her nails have made contact. "If you just –" the pretty girl tries, but Kratch has punched her in the nose, and is now shaking out her fist, surprised at the amount that it hurts.

Listen to her, Patches says in that way that he speaks without ever opening his mouth. The scar on his face is highlighted by blood. Mika ignores this and focuses. It's hard, the knight has to admit. The boy he is up against rarely fights back but instead mostly just wears down his opponent, all willowy movement. It's a pretty even match, Mika realizes, and that makes him scared. Behind him, Zulu has gotten his teeth through Carter's skin, and the poison of Crunch is purple in the atmosphere.

"I'm not lying," Carmen protests, "It wasn't us that did that to your friend." Her Milotic has just used Hydro Pump on Mika's Charmelon, and the excess water from the attack pools underfoot. It reflects the scene perfectly for an instant, but the Charmelon's body slams into it and everything is distorted ripples. Kratch hates the idea that her boyfriend and his loved ones are falling for her, so she steps back enough just to hear the story. She barks an order and sudden silence trembles in the room like a bell.

"Honest," Carmen whispers, panting and brushing at a cut on her cheek, "We would never do anything like that."

"But I would," new voice, trim, prim, curt, fresh blades. Black heels and the door to dying, now opened, click clack getting closer, macaroni bracelet on indigo string around her wrist {Vanilla Sugar}. Behind her, a man with a gun, padding confidently across the smooth golden floor, {Closer, closer, when did the room get so small, for the love of all that is holy, stay away} a toothpick between his teeth.

Mika pales. He tries to speak, and when he does, it's strangled and forced. "Izzy?"

xxxxxxx

She hates crowds but they are impossible to escape, some trap of people that makes her nervous even though no one else knows. She's actually incredibly shy, self-conscious, none of that talkative confidence that she puts on so people won't see how she is actually at a loss for words, dying a little, trembling, wishing someone would accept her. In crowds she loses sight of who she is, because there's not that one person that she can shape her personality to. She hates crowds because she steps out of them and she's still lost inside; that wanderlust ache that reminds her of mourning, that sinful abandonment of the soul, a deep gravitational curl of torment or something else. She knows most of the pain will probably go away after an hour or so, but it will still be there, under everything. She hates crowds because they remind her that she thinks she has no soul, she gave that up for sheer control. She is like loud music after an opera, out of place, but she can't change.

Spirit Ikusa should be content, because she is bashing faces in. Generally she finds face-bashing fun. Instead she just feels tired, like someone has taken her breath and is hiding it in a treasure chest. She hurts, but she has no injuries. The snow is turning into mud and blood. Her ebony hair is in tangles and her Sableye looks like she has a broken arm. Spirit wants the fights to be over, but it's because of who she is fighting.

Justin Montgomery, shadowing his Haunter, is covered in dirt and panting. He wasn't made for this. He teaches writing classes, not how to kill. "Mako wants you to know that they've taken the sixth sector," he breathes. "We don't know how they're doing it." He is bleeding badly, she realizes, and his eyes are foggy, the color of being lost.

"It's the Treatments," Spirit tells him. "Did the others make it out?" She clicks her tongue and her Froslass unleashes a relentless Blizzard, cackling to the sound of screams. Winter has always been a little masochistic like that, but that's why Spirit likes her so much.

"Yeah," his voice is quiet and hurt. "They found her body."

The words hurt worse than music, although they shouldn't. It had been obvious from the beginning that she was dead, so why did it burn when it turned truth? She tskes and shakes her head. "I liked Kaylee, somewhat," she sighs. "How'd they figure it out?"

"That Jacob kid did," he looks angry or impressed, it's hard to tell, and "I think he's figured out just about everything."

She feels terrible but she kills another person without blinking. To her left flank, Nikkei Finetivus is a glorious, beautiful mark of a man, all action and knowing. His dark chocolate eyes are smoothly calculating every motion around him, and something about that is too dangerous for words. His voice cuts to her, "The Dean has Tommi. Are you holding down enough that I can go to him?" He is Tommi's uncle, after all, although the blandness of his eyes do not betray any love.

Spirit snorts and frowns. "Does it look like I'm capable of continuing without you? We're the entire fourth sector, Nikkei," she's all teeth, "I don't think you can just go gallivanting off whenever you feel like it." He's glaring at her now, but it looks like he understands. She wishes she could leave, too. She hates this. She orders another attack and then asks, "How is Cam holding up?"

Justin shrugs a little and says, "Now that Lenard and Grain are back, she should have an easier time. Of course, she took Kaylee's death pretty hard. The two of them were friends." There's a moment of silence at that, like he's said something to shut down the noise around them, but then Nikkei's Miltank is calling out in pain and it's all movement again.

Cam Blake, restless in the second sector, is indeed taking the news hard, but it's because the body is at her feet, bloated and eyes black, bruises from livor mortis already purple on her skin. She looks plastic and fake and cold, and although it hasn't been long enough that rigor mortis has set in, she is stiff and terrifying. There is pretty blood dried beside her temple where she was shot. The hole is large and terrible, and Cam does not look at it because she is fighting off House members like everyone else.

"I still think we're too old for this," he's smiling, but that's because he's crazy. He still believes he's in a dream and this is just a reality constructed through the harmonies between the pauses in music. He doesn't make any sense, but that's ok.

Mr. Grain agrees, but doesn't say so. He is sleepy, and he's watching the House come in their clever ways. They are relentless, but not in the mindless way of clones. They're children, and they fight to kill.

Amidst the destruction and the horror and the hatred, someone laughs.

xxxxxxxx

Cherry won the game, but that was obvious. Cherry won because she followed the rules, and rules are there for a reason. That makes her the leader, which is how they all end up in the snow, laughing. She smiles through her teeth and makes the sign for them to go. They know her plan. It is easy, sanguine. It will work, probably.

"Alright, guys. Let's find Rose," her voice is the same batter-sweet intonation, but her sisters are holding weapons like heartache.

They make desolation look so {p.r.e.t.t.y.}

[Snow White, Rose Red;

Haven't enough your children bled?

Snow White, Rose Red;

Aren't enough your lovers dead?]

xxxxxxx

She hates him in some distant way, but he doesn't know that, he thinks she's perfect in every way. That's what bothers her, maybe, that he has no idea who she is but instead just assumes she is this sculpted goddess that can kill with her bare hands and knows of nothing but war and sin and salvation, that she's some angel with bright wings and a white sword, that she's funny and sweet and sour. He has no idea, and no one does, no one knows of the nightmares every night and that stupid continuous clock on the side of her bed that always says the same time when she wakes up. She thinks that that's the time the world ends, secretly, because it is always the same time and she always wakes up with a gasp, shaking and shivering, skin boiling with some horrible leftover blood from that dream she just had, from that nightmare that speaks of the day she is about to have. Some days she imagines herself as psychic, but that horrifies her even more, because if that's the magic she has, then where are the other people with it? And she can remember having more magic, when she was younger, but it inked out every night in the screams that sang from her throat; goodbye.

They read what's inside the notes of the safe and she's choking up, maybe. The Treatments make her feel fuzzy. It's the note, Others spotted on the outside that makes her take Jacob's hand and shake her head.

"We're going," she whispers, "We have to go. I don't want to be here anymore. We'll just… go."

He is staring at the papers, his jaw set. He twitches his lips and asks, "To where?" because all they have ever known is the beauty of the inside of the House. Thompson and Felix are watching them talk, the two boys pondering what they should do. Is it really that easy?

"Anywhere else. There's nothing holding us down. What are they going to take from us?" she grins a little, maybe crazy, but she's desperate and she has to get out.

"There will be no more Treatments," he warns, but he likes her idea because that means being with her. No, he likes it because it is a tactically acceptable plan.

"I don't care," she's tugging at him now, "I don't care."

"You'll get all your memories back," he tells her, but she just shrugs, who cares anymore and he loves her for that so much that he follows her away. They have nothing to pack. They have no one to love. They leave in a blink of an eye.

Thompson sighs. "It's up to us, then, huh?" The notes say that the device most important to Frost is somewhere in the library. He has to find it and destroy it because what he has read is burning at him now, it's only the mission he's after.

Felix watches the two children leave and shrugs.

He wishes them nothing but happiness and a long life together.

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Izzy is twisting on the inside, but it doesn't show. She's split in half and someone is saying her name, but at the same time she's just wandering in the footsteps of some almost-ghost girl who doesn't speak unless spoken to. Izzy isn't thinking of what they're looking for but instead of the day when she woke up and her handwriting was girly and neat. She is thinking of all the days that something like that happened to her, that she lost something that made her uncomfortable in some small way. She can remember the day that he stopped talking to her and she started to write in messy cursive again, like her briar patch was jarring her hand. The music in her head sounds like the last performance of a ballet she used to be in. It hurts.

They follow the almost-girl, and she takes them to a metal building in the forest. It's been painted green, and it turns Grace pale. She looks like she wants to throw up. She won't step into the clearing, like some animal part of her is repulsed by steel and padlocks. The girl they have been following has disappeared into the pine needles and her absence somehow feels warm.

Will looks at Grace to pick the lock, but she's shaking her head and stepping backwards little by little like she's trying to run away. He motions to his Scizor, and the lock snaps off clean like it was meant to break. The door's opening mechanism is a little more difficult, and he needs Nathan's help to shoulder it. The door creaks like bones and a look falls over the writer's face: it's too dark in there, and it smells like death. It's too large for them to see the back of it, but there's already someone moving closer to them – a boy, with wide lost eyes and messy skin, too thin, helpless, he looks like he's just died.

"You've come to save me," he tries to say, but he hasn't used his voice for anything other than screaming lately, so it's jumbled and awkward. Izzy frowns and goes into her pack, pulling out a sandwich and a water bottle. He lunges for it and guzzles the liquid before shoving the sandwich down his throat. He looks up desperately like he hopes for more but doubts it is coming. Izzy, being trained in the ways of the hunger arts, hands him an apple and more water and advises him to breathe in between mouthfuls.

"You all have to go," he tells the group, breathless and voice cracking, "You have no idea how much danger you're in."

"I do," she's small and hiding now, branches over her face, dark hair like lost nests, "I do, and we're all going to die."

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Tommi used to like the smell of acetone, grinding over his nose and curling into his brain cells. He never thought much of sunrises, either, or understood the vast poetry on the bloody red of the day's end. Yes, they were pretty and no two were alike, but he had seen enough in his life to know to look away when things got too bright, and the death of the sun was just too bright for him. The last sunset he saw springs to his head like a ball of muttering twine, and it is all periwinkle: the sky the color of a bonnet against the black of wet trees, peach and burgundy and perfect. He remembers that and then remembers the distant sound of cars in the background, passive and wavelike, he remembers the numb in his fingertips and the clear varnish of the floor. Once when he was younger, he laid down right there and laughed until he couldn't breathe, for no reason at all, just for the simple pleasure of hysteria. No, he is control and the wooden fence that surrounds him makes sense. He used to think it kept him in, but now he knows it's there because it has always been there, it is there for posterity's sake and for the sake of the people who built the fence. He could take it down and replace it with bushes or baked goods or nothing at all, but he never will. Because the fence has been there once, it will always be there, unchanging. He is, to the fence, nothing but a brief interlude in a caricature of sun salutations. This would depress him, but instead it gives him a little flair of joy, something inexplicable, like the breath before a dive into that bleak realm in the back of his mind. It hurts.

When he closes his eyes, he can see Tarrow's face, laughing.

Sometimes, when the music is loud and everyone else is dancing like they forget posterity, Orson looks up and sees the artwork again, the eyes trapped in golden frames. He can feel someone watching him, but in such a way that it just takes his eyes and makes them slide away from his friends. It sometimes bothers him, it sometimes doesn't. When he thinks about this, watching the world turn, he thinks about a time when he let himself fall asleep inside. For a long time, he's been tired.

Jarel wishes he had someone to be by him, for someone who had the same pattern of breaths and the same heartbeat stuttering under broken bones, for someone just to take to prom. He thinks everyone else is so pretty and that's the problem, but it is probably more that he doesn't hang in the right crowd and he's too busy hiding instead of seeking, although not intentionally. His personality has something to do with it too, most likely, that he's too much to handle and in the past he was at least wild.

Rhyme's soul is numb unexpectedly, like he slept on it wrong and now every movement results in tiny needles jarring his breath and he can't see straight and nothing is working and he just stares down at his hand and wishes that he didn't lie so much. He lies a lot, doesn't he? And it all gets mixed in there, it all becomes this thin grey line and he can't remember even though he knows he knew once – is this just another untruth? He thinks of texture, and he thinks of heat and he thinks of distance. He knows he has lost these things, somewhere, sleeping on his soul, and now they bother him because when he closes his eyes and tries to get his soul to touch his brain, he misses completely. This would be marginally amusing and slightly annoying except that every time this happens, a little angel part of his heart rips into a thousand tiny pieces like her profile as she glances over her shoulder, the words, I despise people like you little diamonds spilling from her lips.

He talks a lot, he knows that, that he drips words from his lips like a faucet he forgot about, but it's because he hates the silence. He hates the moment in-between the in-between; hates the moment where everything stretches out like skin over his fingertips, too tight. He used to think that he didn't care, but now the girl in front of him reminds him that he can learn to hate things vicariously and maybe it's not really his problem so much as someone else's that he happened to pick up along the way, like this kind of thing was a briar or a thistle and it just clings to his skin. Maybe that's what hate is, thistles and things that he can't remove, something he's taught to take away. She makes him think about how much of a liar he is, how he's not loyal at all even though he meant to be. He's not a storybook hero. He never will be, he hopes, no, liar, again, he wishes for the magic powers and prowess when it comes to the impossible.

She's so ugly. No, maybe it's because she's just being herself and that makes him so uncomfortable that all he sees are the things she doesn't bother hiding. He hides a lot. A lot. A… Once, when he was younger, he told someone I love you and they smiled like they were going to flare up and sun out, victory, he wanted to say but not like that except something kept him from that moment for a very long time. He used to wonder why he waited to say no, but now he knows, in the same way that he is distinctly aware of how far she is from him, like her self-assured heat is burning his bare arms. She has little pansy freckles and messy hair and he thinks to himself that he can't see how she knows what love is. Reboot, retry, he wonders why she isn't crying, dying, twisting. Messed up inside.

He's standing with his back against the wall like the floor is just one step, like the edge and the glass are sucking him in and he's going to fall to his death. He thinks that he deserves it, falling to his death, because he is a terrible human being and he let Tarrow and Jason die, and now Yuki's caught up in it and it's just this web of dereliction, does no one else see that they're just children?

He's a tangle, and this is when Izzy and Will walk in, her red lipstick to the black muzzle of his gun. Rhyme looks at the blonde in her swanky {slutty} dress and it's like he's a riptide; let me out.

He tried to tell her, once, about the nightmares and the way that the darkness was, but she just shook her head and told him that it was something he had to live with, and he can remember thinking that it was unchangeable like his natural hair color or the emptiness of his eyes except that it made his heart race in the bad way, the way that felt like phosphorous and skipped classes. She isn't his friend anymore maybe because he reminds her of the days that are gone now. He can hear those moments rustling between the two of them like dried leaves on pavement and he just wants to stand in the torrents and laugh, wind in his hair, but she doesn't because it's over and it will be over for forever now. She has new friends and it's his fault and one day when he's older - he's scared of being older, but - one day when he's older he'll wish that there had been more time with her or maybe he'll just forget her and she'll forget him and five six seven years later when she's different and he's got that diploma, maybe he'll just think back and wonder what she's like now, if she's still that stick-thin diplomat of a woman or maybe she's a model now or maybe just a mother but he doesn't think that she's going to be what he expects of her. She's tricky like that. Once when he was younger the two of them, three of them if he's including that boy he hates, once they all shared secrets and showed their darkness and maybe she's regretting that now, that he knows every part of her, who knows, he wants to go home but it's not that easy. He made a commitment and he has to honor that, but he's no good, he's out of practice, commitment always scared him or something and it's never worked before. This is his proof that he is broken.

He thinks, idly, that it's unfairly pretty that her eyes change color, and right now they're reflecting violet from the ruby in her dress. She's smiling like she's just seen a rainbow, but it hurts to look at her directly. This is terrible to him, and he pushes himself against the wall and tries not the slide off the ground. She struts to the back of the couch and pats Carmen's head, but it's not her hand that Rhyme is watching, its Carmen's eyes. He knows that look, wide eyes and pinched lips. He knows because he causes it, all the time. That look is fear you can't escape, that look is hatred and honey, the desire to snap but tail between the legs too far.

Izzy's painted fingernails slide across the material and she glides herself into the seat. She looks fake, and the boy sitting on the table across from her looks mean. It's not real, because it can't be real. Izzy and Grace and Nathan and Will are all taking back Ike from his imprisonment, right at this moment. Right at this moment, they're being told the whole story of Frost and why they have to leave, right now. If anyone was watching the television instead of the way that Izzy crosses her legs one-over-the-other, than they see the truth of that: flicker, tears streaking down Grace's face, black and white and grey-scale.

Sage sees, and he says that. "You are in two bread places at once," he's coming around and parts of things are putting themselves back together. "You are jam, spread too thin. You defy the laws of physics." He's wrecked, actually, revise. The words are still zzch reboot please in his head.

She glances those optical-illusion eyes at the screen and there's this amused twitch to her lips like this is a joke but she doesn't have the time to care about it. "Children, please," she's talking to Kratch, who looks like she's about to puke, "Calm down. Everything is explainable."

Yuki's the only answer in the silence, honey eyes dilated dark: "I do, and we are all going to die."

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She's scared of the things that don't exist; the things that are just almosts in her head, the wisps of the things she saw in other places, like she the crack and the universe is spilling through her. Sometimes, when it's not worth it to be brave, she is sick-to-her-stomach scared. It is as if the sun goes down and her sense of reality leaves her, as if every nightmare she's ever had dances in the membranes of her eyes and they all just wait for her to sleep. She has developed a method against it, against waking up panting, but it doesn't always work and the dreams are still there like space between the filaments, golden orange glow. She hates sleeping, it makes her tired, so tired, and no one knows why except for her – she's sick of being scared, but it won't end, it won't ever end. Those monsters are of her making.

Caen is staring at Avalon in horror, because Talyn is gasping, wet and thick like syrup, clutching at her neck and looking {so betrayed, but still so loving} at the toddler who is keening happily. Avalon is frowning and letting her mind sear through things, clearing it out so it works again.

She's so scarred, deep red ridges, that when she looks up to the sky, she sees faces in the clouds of people who don't exist anymore, because they are dead. She likes that word now, "dead," because it is what it is, it is final and everlasting and just like all things, they will always be dead at some point in the history of the world and therefore it is not worth it to mourn their nonexistence but celebrate that which is what of left of their essence. This does not make sense to many people, but she doesn't need it to, not anymore. "I'll go and get bandages," Caen declares, sprints off.

Once Avalon used to be mad at her, but now she's just uncomfortable when she's around. And it's not that easy, is it? Because she can't love the one she's with because the one she loves is gone, out of reach, untouchable. She used to think that she just liked the chase, and maybe that's true. Maybe all that her problems come back to is the fact that she only wants that which she cannot have. She trusts people from afar, but the closer they get to knowing her, the more lies that spill from her mouth and the more she pushes them away, cocooning herself in this vast webbing of distrust, and it's all from that boy, she thinks, it's all from that one mistake. She thinks about what she's come to, the empty I-need-to-get-out, and it's not something she likes anymore. It feels like intolerable anxiety, like she's just waiting for the next moment when the world strikes and it will all be over again. She hates waiting, and lately everything feels like one more moment standing in line, like life is just going to pick up back where it started, like the fire will catch any moment now, like that thing she has been hoping for will magically appear like glass in the sand.

It has been fifteen seconds since Talyn has collapsed. Avalon knows this because she was counting as her brain was turning. Avalon, pink pretty princess, smeared as she is in her only loved one's death, leans down and brushes the nutmeg hair from the sapphire eyes. Davion looks like he is elsewhere and Tobi looks like he is about to pass out. Something in her movement maybe breaks everything, because then Davion is lurching forwards and clutching Talyn's fingers, oak eyes wide. His cheeks are pink and he looks ready to cry. It's ugly, because it's love.

"Hey, honey," Avalon, sweet voice, nothing is the matter and that giant wound just needs a Band-Aid and some love, "Can you hear me?"

Gasp, thick wet working of the tongue, trying to swallow. "H-h-h-help m-m-me," she begs, forcing it out, her eyes still watching the little child thing that is grinning and sucking on its fist, her blood still staining its mouth. Tobi orders a single attack, and the sound its little neck makes when it breaks echoes across the snow.

So this is them: Tobi, fists by his side, burning up, Davion, unsure and ugly, Avalon, calm and killer, Talyn, dying. This is what they look up to see: a bright smile headed towards them.

"Hello," she is wearing a pretty blue dress and she doesn't seem at all wonderful, "My name is Bluebell. I'm going to kill you now."

The funny thing is, Avalon almost let her.

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He's stalking her a little and she hates him for that; unfair, she's that girl that no one likes except for the crazy ones. It's been easy hasn't it, it's been easy being all awkward and gawky and she thinks she'll be the poised one, but she probably won't be. He told her that she should just assume she'll have a good time or else there's no chance of one, and so far that's worked. But the closer that the day comes, the more that it tears at her. She's shattered from something still, but she can't name it because it's like caffeine to her, it pumps her up and makes her feel alive again, awake again, hello world. But that just makes her worse, that makes her more like the kid that she is, which is the one that no one likes. She's painted her fingers pink and her eyelids brown and her teeth black with lies, and it hasn't happened to help. There you go. She's done, the clock's run out, she's lost again, they're singing and it hasn't started raining but the air is heavy with it like she's breathing water, and she's accidentally looked into his eyes, and now she's regretting it. She must never, ever look into his eyes, or he'll get into her head and turn her to stone.

Mimi is watching them stand before the girl that is bleeding and she does maybe the first truly selfless thing of her life: she just kisses Talyn's forehead and whispers that it is going to be ok.

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He moved to be farther away from her and he still hasn't come back, like the idea of her isn't enough to keep him beside her. She's awkward and making other people awkward too, but that's her poison and she can't stop the words from tumbling from her mouth, it just happens. She doesn't know why it's like that but it's terrible and she thinks that she's horrible at making friends because she babbles like she's lost her sense of reason and the sun is so bright that she wants to be out in it, but just like always in her mind she's stuck behind a desk and clicking her nails against a keyboard. There's laughter from across the room, maybe she could have been that, but instead there's writing on the back of her hand for her to remember things and she never plays her music loudly because she's embarrassed of it, although she doesn't know why.

She's tired because she pretends to be happy; they're singing now but he's still not back because she's not worth it. She's built herself up, telling herself she's made a friend, but really the two of them are just friends out of necessity and not out of love, and besides, he loves another girl that is seventeen times better than she is and that girl always will be. She makes a habit out of never being good enough. There's alarms going off in her brain now, but it's because he hasn't responded to her text and she's pretty sure that he could be dead. He hates her and he still hasn't come back. This makes her imperceptibly lonely, but that's not worth it. She remembers to notice the alarm in her head again, because it's always there, it's just that it's so constant that she can't always hear it. It's the same as the way he puts his headphones in and gets annoyed by her questions because she's a child, isn't she? She's always been just a child playing at becoming an adult.

Cam Blake is panting and it's starting to look fuzzy in the land of snow, which is when Justin catches her wrist and meets her eyes. "You're going to be fine."

She wants to laugh. She's starting to hallucinate, so she's probably not going to be fine. "I'm just… I'm so done with the cycle, Justin." Is he swimming or is that her head?

"Just one more time, honey," he's smiling now, she's definitely hallucinating, "And then it will all be over."

"I'm so tired." She is, she is, so many years over and over.

He blinks, long slow, thoughtful. "Be awake. Be alive. Be one of mine."

But she can't, she can't. She never could.

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Izzy – fake Izzy, painted Izzy, the best Izzy there is – takes a grape and examines it before sliding it down past her teeth with infinitesimal care. She likes the tension in the room, because it fits her personality. She's drawing it out because there is nothing else to the story, is there? There's the moment where it steps into the real world and that's it. She's bulletproof until then.

She makes an apple appear in her hands, sour and green, twisting it as if where she bites makes all the difference. But she doesn't do anything. She just makes those ocean lavender eyes hold steady before starting a story. It's quick, maybe, and it starts with a group of scientists.

What if, she says, What if I told you a story? What if, after all that, the story was just you?

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He wasn't always like this, jumping when the door slammed and whipping his head around every time that the floorboards creaked. Once he used to be able to be home alone and not worry that the sun was going down. This was before she broke his heart, he's pretty sure. This was before everything tipped to the sound of arcades in his head. This was before he knew what humanity was capable of. When he was younger, he used to lie awake and pray that nothing horrible would happen when he was asleep. He used to sleepwalk, too, like he was trying to get out of his own skin. He knew all of the evil in the world before he could speak of it. This is how he ends up with so much fear inside his eyes: it's always been there, maybe.

"Ah," Tobi makes a face, "Can… Can you just not and say you did?" He does not think this technique will work, but figures it's worth trying anyway. "I mean…does it look like we need killing?"

Bluebell raises her pretty brown eyebrows and pouts, but then she sees the girl they are all standing in front of {it's that easy, darling, it's that easy to get someone to protect you and show they care: sprawl out your body and let the spirits take you} and her face changes. It's only a blink of a moment, but Tobi sees it and he begs. He is good at begging. "Please, at least wait until our friend gets back with bandages. The way things are, we wouldn't exactly put up much of a fight, would we?"

She shrugs. She's distracted but focused, like, the outdoors are nice and all, hand me some good old-fashioned killing and we'll get right to it. "It's not my decision to make." Her voice is the high clip of childhood. It makes Talyn jerk suddenly, wild, desperate.

"Cyan? Cyan, is that you?" She's glancing around, but her eyes are blind.

Bluebell, paused in examining her nails, just falls apart.

xxxxxxx

She takes a bite of her apple and chews it slowly, ponderously, and when she opens her mouth, sand in stories falls out.

What if I said, hello, this is how you save the world, take it and go? What if I said that? Would you cringe? No, you wouldn't, you would love me forever and you know it.

So let's talk about a different time, when your precious animals were way too wild and there were so many people that the world couldn't breathe. The world was bigger then, too. There were, you know, actual continents and mango trees and real seasons. I guess it wasn't all perfect, but it was home. Not that I would know, I'm just telling you the story that I've been told so many times that I once considered getting a tattoo of it just to get it out of my head.

Science. You love science, I know it. Maybe not, I don't care. Look, the point is that a long time ago, back in that time when the world was bigger, science was bigger too. I don't know. But with every advance came some big thing we – they, whatever – wished we hadn't discovered. I mean, cure cancer, find the next atom bomb. Cure world hunger, guns are like chocolate chips you can pick up at the store for six cents. Everyone is freaking out, which is probably why the governments start to suck. I mean, really suck. We ran out of room, conquering time. There simply weren't enough resources anymore, and that meant war for them. A lot of war.

So let's say that you're crazy but you want the right things. Let's say that. Let's also say that you release a neurotoxin into the air that, when humans are exposed to it, bad things happen. Let's skip that part. I think that part is probably obvious to you, what happens next. I don't like dwelling on bad things. Let's skip to the scientists that managed to save themselves through science magic or some nonsense. Let's also say that they managed to save an entire county. Now, I don't know about you, but a county is nothing. A country, now, that's something. A county is a few houses in the hills. Anyway, they save these kids with this special chemical thing. Problem with the special chemical thing: it makes it impossible to reproduce, and that's only if you're lucky. If you're not…

They had three options. One: give up, let the world work its own magic. Two: solve the problem in an impossibly quick span of time. Three: let future generations solve the problem. Of course, originally, option three was just mean. But then the smartest of the smart guys asked why they don't just take a DNA sample from each person and remake them. It wasn't hard. They would make clones and those clones would make clones. Each of the brightest in a set of clones would be brought up to solve that problem and make a difference. Each generation would only last a predetermined amount of time, and then they would serve the role of mothers and daughters and sisters so that the next generation would grow up with the impression of family and normalcy.

If you're doing the math right now, which you probably are, you're figuring out that I'm telling you the story of Frost. I mean, I'm missing some bits here and there, but I figure you get the most of it. Right? I mean, that's how you're looking at me while the Izzy you know and love is over in the woods somewhere. That's how we all speak one language. That's how you just know things without knowing how.

Don't look at me like that, and yes, baby girl.

You're the clones.

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Davion looks up when he smells blood again. It's Bell, fidgeting as her body crumbles. He peers at her, but past her, like she's some ghost. His eyebrows pull together and he sets his jaw, because behind her, stalking easy across the plain is someone he knows, dressed in orange and black.

"Grace?" he asks, "What are you doing here?"

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She's crying real hard now, like you just broke her in half. The story is done and the truth is out. What is she supposed to say?

Izzy {the real Izzy, the young one, the sweet one} frowns a little, crossing her arms while slyly wiping at her eyes. Everyone else is just standing there, frozen in shock, but her eyes, reflecting white against the snow, and piercing through Grace's skin. "How…how did you know?" She didn't mean it vicious, but it came out that way, didn't it? By the way that Grace has pressed herself against the tree, it is amazing that she has not turned into branches and leaves.

Dark dark dark. She looks like she would rather say anything else, even I love you, just please no please you don't understand. "He came to me, and I killed him for it," she whispers, "What else was I supposed to do?"

"Who, Grace?" his eyes are not the steel of Nathan but instead the wrecked of Will. He's speaking soft, kindly, brown hair and brushed bangs. He is pale and he forgets to make a joke about this.

"I didn't mean to. I just… I thought it would be easier," she's blubbering now, spilling out everywhere.

"Who, Grace?" Nathan now, black tongue, dangerous. He's not afraid of death the way that others are.

"N-Nico," and then it's a river, "I couldn't… I didn't mean to. I… He told me… I was…" she can't even speak, so Ike steps in while the others take a huge step backwards because she's crazy, obviously, why didn't we notice this before?

"He told you that you were different than everyone else, just for one reason: you used to be the daughter of a scientist. The last baby of an era. That there were seven more copies of you, rotting in the House because they weren't close enough to the girl that no one will ever be again. He told you that you could easily be replaced. He told you that all of those skills that you thought you had were just little lies. He told you that the only reason it's you and not them is because Tabbot chose you. He told you just how old Tabbot is, how that Absol has been around since forever." His voice is still creaky-spun, and he looks content just to leave this world and never know pain again.

She shakes her head, violently, wet hair swirling around, but the truth of the words are echoing through the woods like the last moments before the bomb detonates. It sounds so sweet, so cautious, so loving.

Sometimes, when the wind sings and truth sounds and a girl collapses in the snow, sobbing, voices can be heard. They say if you bend into rhythm and close your eyes, it sounds exactly like those that you lost {forever is a long time to rot in an unmarked grave} and it hurts worse than glass cuts, it hurts worse than all writing and all endings, because it is all of your sins.

The thing about having the chance to live endlessly is that every mistake is eternal.

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They're alone again, because Eilsa and Jacob did what was probably the smart thing, leaving. Thompson doesn't know where they are, but he feels like it probably doesn't matter, and he hopes they get out all right. Right now he's staring at the device that starts the Silent Hour and makes all sorts of nonsense go down. He thinks that it's funny that they hid it in the library wall, although he can't say why.

Felix is sitting on the floor while Thompson works his own version of magic: wires. The sociopath is trailing his fingers across the charcoal words, intent. There it is, all of the proof and explanations in sharp scientific speak. But it's the note that makes them tick, scrawled in at the bottom, cruel, torturous:

It is all a clever lie. They made me Dean because they thought I would never find out. There is one thing that I now know to be true: This is the Frost School for the Exceptionally Talented, and it is inescapable. We are all stuck in a cycle to be studied, over and over and over. Currently we are the twenty-seventh cycle. There are rooms I am not allowed in but have managed to sneak into. Inside of these, I have met the bodies of past generations and found that for every porter that comes to take my bags, there is a scientist. They are keeping us trapped her, stuck in this place for all of eternity, just to study us. Each level of my building is filled with the corpses and research notes of a cycle. All of my proof is attached.

We are the experiment.

xxxxxxxxx

But it's not Grace, it's her twin. Lily is smiling, clear-eyed. "Sorry, Davion," her voice like sweet sandpaper, "But you don't understand. You never would."

She's being replaced tonight by a girl she has never met, but that's ok.

She will never feel like she has died.

xxxxxxxx

The thing is beeping now, and Thompson steps back, brushing his hands together, "Not too shabby," his British accent as intact as ever, "I mean, I've never exactly read a manual on bomb-building, and this still looks ok."

Felix smiles and there is a long, awkward pause.

"Um," Thompson, shuffling his feet, "It's… it's a manual switch. Now, there is one thing I know about this particular thing: it's going to explode. When it does, it will either take out the device and shut down the cycle that the Dean uncovered, effectively shutting down the next generation of clones, or, alternatively, kill us all and end the experiment forever. But…but it will explode. That's…that's pretty much certain."

"Ok," Felix, calm, Spiral in the back of his mind.

"Um. It's… It would kill me, you see. Either way. And not that I'm particularly weepy about. I've had the whole death thing hanging over me for ages now. I'll be glad to be rid of it." He's grinning, but it's not funny.

"Ok," he's watching Spiral flicker.

"So…so you should go."

Spiral is not real. Spiral has not been real since she died in his arms.

This is why Felix does not leave, why there are two boys standing there while the clock counts down the seconds until either everyone makes it out and the walls fall down or they are the end of everything.

Either way, either way. There's only one way out of the Frost School for the Exceptionally Talented.

Tick

Tick

Tick

X-X

A.N: Well, that's it :) I hope you liked it and it didn't confuse you too much :)

Fear The Pika is the reason it doesn't suck, if you're wondering. He has such good grammar skills that it baffles me.

Guess why I waited until today to release this :D Also, if at this point you still have some questions, ask me! I love to talk :)

People I owe my happiness, my love, and this story to, in no particular order: Happy2Bme, Vlad The Implier, Mysterious Panther, Fear The Pika, Gweniveve Skyes, Kaprikorn - Ancient Storm Lord, Stolloss, pepperpizzapal, Kissy Fishy, DoahShadow, Indigo Hare, Wings of Silver Rain, Chaosandcupcakes, Tyltalis, WereDragon EX, Lilith Noms Popcorn, SoujaGurl, Not So Gallant Galade, Joker'sTwinBro-FlameOfRecca's, Josky, Korona Karyuudo, WolfSummoner93, Gao Okami, Pete Fan Formerly Rides Again, Simply Unknown, SushiJaguar, iflip4dolphins, Juicetin Boo, ultima-owner, Kei's-Girl, Lunasca, Fallen Vanguard, tinfoilman4, DolceBrio, Written Plague, A Half-Empty Glass, chris, Bearded Zeus, and of course my dear Whimsical Acumen, who is so incredibly patient and understanding and works as actually the best idea-bouncing/inspiration-giving/no-Shade-just-actually-do-your-work/getting-better-is-more-important-than-writing friend I could ever ask for.

So, you know how movies have those deleted scenes? I figure I owe you all since I suck and waited until now to update, so here are some of the things that never made it into the story for various reasons (read: they are terrible and/or were written when the story was going someplace else). A warning though: they are largely unedited, some pick up in the middle of nothing, and some just end. Sorry?

X

She was sitting in art class when her phone started buzzing. Otter leaned over. "Watcha got there?" he asked, looking at the picture. He was pretty sure Grace had stopped breathing. The screen showed a good-looking middle-aged man with dark, curly hair and tanned skin, grinning at the camera with several children by his side.

"It's my dad," she breathed, "My dad is calling me." She stood up suddenly, marched to the front of the classroom, whispered she needed to use the bathroom, and left. Otter stared at his painting. It was pretty awesome, he thought. An artistic depiction of a childhood dream.

By the time she was back, they had maybe two minutes left in the class and a wide grin was on the brunette's face. Otter's painting had turned from childhood dream into warped adolescence: a young face, tattooed in scales. A hammock with the color of lust in it.

"I love that," she breathed. "I love you. I love the world," she declared. Otter raised one eyebrow, adding a touch of green to envy's eyes.

"Gay," Otter declared, "Your love is unrequited. You lose ten points. Go to jail, go directly to jail. Do not pass go."

She grinned at him. "Do not collect two hundred dollars?"

Otter snorted down his nose. "Honey, you know a stripper makes more than that a night. What you think they were prosecuting you for?"

Grace squealed and slapped him on the shoulder, but she was smiling unlike anything Otter had ever seen from her: brilliant, happy, exploding. She was writing something over her painting with red paint, turning swirling darkness into a background for light.

He still loves me. I am ugly with sins and he still loves me.

X

"Just think about it," Will declared, slapping the box down. It was heavier than he had expected. "What is the point of all those butlers anyway?"

"I dunno," Nathan said dryly, "One assumes it was something along the lines of, say, helping you with groceries or something."

"Think about it. How do you even get a license for that? I bet they go to some sort of school in which all you learn is cleaning, cooking, and how to murder a nice old guy."

"Hey," the writer replied, "I went to school there, you know. It's actually quite nice once you get past the blood in the hallways."

Will just stared at him.

X

"Dude," Will said, holding the picture of her mother, "She's so dark."

Grace paused in combing out her hair, one eyebrow raised. "I'm going to pretend that didn't sound racist," she stated, "Since, yeah, she is. She's from Sri Lanka."

"But…" he paused, looking her up and down. She rolled her eyes, braiding a piece of her hair.

"I'm white? My dad is white. Why do you think I'm a sort of a half color?" she grinned before adding, "I like to think of myself as vanilla with a swirl."

"I just thought you were tan," he whispered, wondering why every word that came out of his mouth sounded offensive. Then he knew: he was talking to a girl. "On another note," he coughed, "I'm totally white."

She gave him an once-over. "I noticed," she said dryly, "Its hard not to."

X

"It's just… I mean, that's not like her," Grace mused, watching the way the candle jumped. She smacked herself in the forehead. "Of course," she groaned, "That stupid lemon ink trick," she muttered, and held the paper over the candle. Nathan shifted uncomfortably. He wanted to help, he did, but she was sometimes too quick for him. He sent a warning look towards Will, who was very subtly creeping closer to her.

"What's it say?" Will asked, peering over her shoulder and watching as the brown ink became legible. Grace knit her brows and looked up to Nathan. She smiled like the setting sun. "Can you write something down for me?"

Nathan shrugged and flipped to a new page in his notebook. He gestured for her to read, and she relayed, "JELK ER ONTO. TQKKF HPMWS," her mouth twisting around the letters. Will frowned. "I don't get it. Someone went out of the way to get that to you, so why doesn't it make any sense?"

"It's a cipher," Grace murmured, and then plucked the pen and paper right out of Nathan's hands. He almost chided her for it, but the distant look on her face stopped him. She was already scribbling and scratching away. She ignored any questions the boys asked her, her mouth only forming inaudible babble.

Nathan sent a vicious glare towards Will, who had placed himself in a strategically acceptable position between Izzy and Grace. The smaller boy looked up to the slate eyes he was so well acquainted with, and beamed innocently. Nathan wanted to punch him. In a friendly way.

X

"I've got it," she said breathlessly, sitting down at the table with them. They looked at Grace expectantly. She was grinning with pride. Izzy gestured for her friend to continue. Nathan peered over her shoulder. In her thin, slippery writing, she had solved the cipher. The note was circled, crossing over the blue lines. Nathan shook his head. "I don't understand," he breathed, and she looked up at him, her dark eyes sad. In her hands, her sister's words sang out against the white paper.

Nico is dead. Tommi knows.

X

She flipped her hair and shifted over to him. "Come on," she purred, "I know you like someone." She put one hand on his knee and leaned close to him, smiling as she watched the blush settle on his face.

"I…uh, I, I…" he tried, and had to clear his voice before he continued, "Yeah, I do." He didn't try to hide it from her. She appreciated that.

"So," she sang, her blue eyes on his, "Who is it?"

He looked at her, startled, as if he had expected her to know that as well. He smiled a sad little half-smile, raising one shoulder. "It's Grace," he murmured, "It's always been Grace."

She left before he could see her cry.

X

"Grace," he breathed, "Just stop."

She smiled, a little quirk of joy. "Stop what?"

"Grace, I get it ok? I get that your dad pretty much left you alone with a bitch of a stepmother for your whole life, and I get that Ashley went missing, but stop. It's not fair," he spat.

"I don't understand what I'm stopping," she grinned, tiling her head to the side.

"Grace, you're a tease. Everyone knows it. You don't like people," Will sighed, running his hands through his hair. "It's weird, ok? I…I mean, I like you, Grace. I like you…a lot, I guess. But I have to put up with the fact that you will probably never like me back. And…and sometimes, you know, you're awesome enough that that's ok. But…I can't just…fawn over you all the time."

She still smiled. "Will, how could you say that?"

He was suddenly furious. "Because of that, Grace. How is it normal that you're smiling through this? I'm practically bearing my soul and you're completely unfazed at the idea that you're completely messed up," he snapped. She dropped the smile. He sighed and shook his head. "Just…just…tell me. Tell me it's not true."

"It's not true," she replied joyfully.

That's how he knew it was. He felt like punching someone. "Grace, don't lie to me. Tell me the truth. Do you…I mean, can you…feel…things…?"

She blinked. "I feel pain," she responded, "If that's what you mean."

"No, Grace, I mean, you know…emotions. That stuff."

She stared at him, bright brilliant eyes, and the smile plastered to her face. "Oh. Those," she grinned, "Of course not."

"Grace…you're so…messed up…" Will frowned while Grace smiled.

She leaned over and kissed him, softly, grinning at the way he froze.

"Just kidding," she breathed against his lips, "I can feel some things."

Will pulled away, swallowing hard. "I-I-I…I-I-I…I-I-I…uh."

"The Roman numeral three has nothing to do with this," she laughed, but it flickered, broken. "I know," she said, after a pause, "I know I'm terrible at emotions and whatever. But being with people – being with you – makes me, you know… hope." She frowned and pulled at the hem of her shirt. "I know I'm…broken. I know…I'm ugly with it. With all the hatred and callousness and I wouldn't date me either." She looked up to the ceiling, cracked as she was, and laughed again, "But I'd like if you gave me a chance."

"I-I-I…" he stammered, before getting himself under control. He cleared his throat. "There need to be rules. If you feel like you're faking our relationship in any way, you have to tell me."

"Tell you if I'm faking?" she laughed. "We'll see."

He almost chided her, but the taste of her lips was too sweet to stop.

X

"Grace," he purred, "My darling little girl. Do you know how I have searched for you?"

She didn't say anything. She wouldn't glorify him with a response, even though a quick retort was resting on her tongue. She glared at him, her arms crossed and her lips pursed as if she was looking at something that was particularly displeasing.

"Didn't you wonder? Didn't you think about it? Didn't you ever think about just the sheer impossibility of your genetics?" Sir Harvey Gillian Frost cooed, reaching out one slim white finger under her tanned chin. "Darling, your father has dark, dark hair. And you had blonde. You have wavy hair. He has straight. You are short. He is tall. Darling," he cooed, "Didn't you wonder?"

X

She opened the door and screamed.

She got involved. Red letters – was that her own – no, they couldn't have.

Blood was everywhere.

"Avalon," she gulped, "Avalon."

She remembered the note: Try it and you die.

Caen laughed, suddenly, despite the tears and the blood and her quaking heart.

"Oh bitch," she said quietly, voice shaky but strong, "You have done it now."

X

Her talent was in starting fires: she liked the way that it leapt to greet her fingertips, the way that she blew life into it, the way it consumed. She liked the way the ashes tasted on her tongue, the way it brushed everything with a dusty black-blue, the way that it made the air twine with the scent of burn-burn-burn.

She would sit with her legs crossed, staring into the heart of the heat, folding paper airplanes in her fingers. She would let them fly into the orangeredyellow heat, watching the way they twisted and turned to nothingness. She would talk to them, speak their voices that would never exist, passengers on a little paper plane.

X

The wires in her made her hurt.

She glimpsed the world for an instant and knew she had sisters. She had sisters. She had to remember that.

Too many wires. Too many wires. Too many too many too-

Gold liquid bubbles, rainbows in front of her eyes.

X

The mask over her mouth made her take one breath, two, three. If she paused, they would know she was awake. She couldn't think who exactly it was "they" were, but she knew it was important.

She wondered when she had started thinking. When she had started knowing. It felt like…it felt like…

She knew the word but did not understand it. The idea of it held no premise in her mind.

What was "freedom" and why did she want it so badly?

X

The rain was oppressive, and he didn't seem to care, his hair dark, plastered against his skin. He was drenched, his clothes hugging his lean frame to a fault. He'd had the sense to cover most of the guitar, at least, but she still felt inexplicably angry. "You shouldn't be out here with that," she shouted over the din of falling water, "The wood will swell and it will never play right."

"Properly," he corrected her, "And I don't care," he stated, tugging on the strap across his chest so the guitar swung around. "It's just wood and strings," he stated, running a rather impressive series of chords. He swung it back behind him, stepping closer to her. She shivered and took her own step away from him.

"That's it?" she called, "All of our…our time together? Just wood and strings?" She felt like crying and she didn't know why. She was shaking from the cold, her clothes wet against her body. Her hair started to misbehave and she was pretty sure her makeup was running. She wrapped her arms tightly around her body, trying to stop the quivering. She didn't know why she cared so much. He was right. It was just some stupid instrument together. She didn't care at all. She bit her lip.

He was too close, so close she could smell his familiar twang of ink and forest. He had this sad smile on his visage as he cupped her face in his hands. All she could see were blue blue blue eyes the color of slate and falling. She was shaking still, but she doubted highly it was from the cold. "I don't care," he repeated, "It's a guitar. I can buy a new one."

She was furious. "It's stupid," she snarled, "Whatever. It's expendable, right? It doesn't matter. Because the guitar has a prettier, mysterious friend or whatever. The guitar can be replaced. The guitar is ugly, right? Who cares about a stupid instrument anyway?"

He was laughing, the jerk. He put his forehead against hers. Half of her wanted to punch his face in. The other half refused to move. "I don't care," he said again, "Because it's just a guitar. I'm not worried about it. Right now I'm sort of focused on something wonderful and incorruptible and gorgeous and so, so, so amazing that I am not worthy to be in her presence."

She was shuddering even harder. "Who?" she spat, "Grace? Of course it's Grace. It's always been Grace."

He laughed again, light against the dark rain, "Don't be silly," he whispered, "It's you," he hummed, and then he was kissing her.

All was right with the world.

X

Well, there you go. I hope you liked Frost as much as I did, and maybe I'll hear from you soon? Do take care, though, on account of I love you all so much that if anything happened to you, I'd cry.

In case you're wondering, the final tally of words is 179,213. I couldn't have made it there without all the love and support :)

Thank you so much for reading.