"How will I ever get out of this labyrinth of suffering?"

Alaska's vision hazed, her breath coming in stringy gasps. She should have been thinking of Jake - how she loved him; the Colonel, and Takumi - she owed so much to them.

But her thoughts were with Pudge - or Miles Halter, the lanky boy who managed to take her heart at the last possible moment. His foreign taste lingered until the end, as she gritted out three last words.

"Straight and fast."

Without even the time to blink, Alaska went from 0.24 to sober. The abruptness nearly gave her vertigo. Her eyes noticed a greater change, however. What was a set of flashing lights, red to blue and back to red again, was now a plain wood-paneled cabin room. And the blaring siren that nearly overpowered her last words became near silence, interrupted only by the gentle wash of her breath returning to regularity.

That was one second.

In another, she let her eyelids shut and open again. And, in the next, she scanned her surroundings; she was perched cross-legged on the top bunk of a typical cabin room bunk bed. A dresser sat fastened to the far wall with a scrap of paper tacked to it, but the room was otherwise barren - excepting the boy her age standing sullenly in the doorway.

Thin blond hair sagged with the weight of grease, hanging in stringy clumps and sticking to his scalp in some places. His hand was on the doorknob, but he paused mid-turn as a creak escaped from Alaska's bedframe.

He turned his face to look at her, his frown agitated. "You are dead." His tone, if informative, was far from friendly.

"Not dreaming, but gone from the realm of existence; dead. That goes for the both of us, and there is absolutely nothing to be done about it." He finished the full rotation of the knob and pushed the door outward and open.

Sparks flew in Alaska's mind; of course she was dead. There was no way to survive an impact like that. What confused her at the moment was where she was, where her situation was heading, and how someone else (who was he, anyway?) could be so sure of their mutually recent non-existence.

But, confident in her newfound immortality, and that answers would be had later, she leapt after him, landing semi-gracefully on the tiled floor and reaching out a hand to clasp the boy's turtleneck sweater in her fist.

"I gathered that. I'm not stupid. My name is Alaska Young, and I did this to myself." She craned her head around the side to secure a look into his tired brown eyes.

"What's your excuse?"

He shook her from him and shot a glare her way, though her face was only inches from his own.

"Sabin French," his voice was clipped, "I have an appointment to keep." He produced a scrap of paper from the back pocket of his slacks, and waved in in front of her, as though she was supposed to sense some inane signifigance about it. He turned on his heel and started walking away from her silently fuming form.

But Sabin stopped, for just a moment, and tilted his head back towards Alaska. "You would do well to check the room for your own request. The dresser, I think."

With that, he was off around the corner. Alaska stood shocked for less than a second (she had lost count of them all by then) and dashed back into the room to snatch the paper she had noticed before.

It invited her to the "Observation Decks" at 2:00. She had no way of telling the time, so she wandered out the door, latching it shut behind her, and walked in the direction Sabin had disappeared.