Fifth from the entrance. I wrench the fifth door down the hall out of my way. Empty, of course. Whatever is happening outside right now, the duel isn't over.

Where did they go? And what happened with those stone dragons?

I shove the sheet metal door on the far side of the room up and walk all the way down toward the end of the tunnel, to where I left Hiraeth. My mind's a mess, and all I'd like for it to do is shut down for a few seconds. Thinking about Goodwin makes me angry, and thinking about what could have become of Yusei makes it feel like my stomach has skyrocketed through a roof. But I can't think of anything else to take my attention or make me stop dwelling on it either, so I'm forced to wait out the worry and the anger until something else happens.

I pull the fourth door from where I came in open. Hiraeth's still there, untouched, and as I wrench it out into the open tunnel, I see a muddy version of my face reflected in the shiny surface of its frame.

You're the spitting image of your mother.

Who's waiting for me in Satellite? My twin—my brother, my features on someone else… with power like mine. Do I have a mother there, too? My face aged twenty years? Still mourning the lost child she carried? Gentle hands, gentle eyes, gentle hands that feel like home?

What does my father look like? Is he slim and blonde like me? With steady hands for tinkering? The kind of father heroines in books have, who passes gentle judgements when asked and takes his coffee black?

I can't believe in what Divine has said before, that he took me away from a bad, or insinuated worse, situation. I can't muster any faith to convince me that Arcadia was better for me than whatever I had before. I have to keep faith that, if my brother is psychic and alive, that anything I have there couldn't be worse than Arcadia.

Just better. I have to hope for better.

I'm almost to the garage Yusei was using when I hear an explosion of applause. Shouting and screaming, as if from a different room, and tumultuous noise like thunder sounding off from far away.

Has the duel ended? I stand there in the open garage with a hand on Hiraeth, waiting out the noise for… something. I don't know what.

It isn't a long time before I decide to try to wrench the garage door shut, and the door to the hall suddenly bursts open.

"C! Great!" I turn to find Himuro halfway in the door. "...you have a duel runner?"

"Y-Yeah," I stutter. "It's, uh… new."

"Great, Yusei was worried about how we'd find you, so I'm glad I caught you here. Don't close that just yet."

"What's going on?" I ask. "You're in a hurry."

"Yeah, we've got to get the hell out of here." Himuro shoves the garage door up again. "Bring your runner this way. I'll explain on the way."

"O-Okay!" I say. I grab onto Hiraeth and pull it out into the tunnel again; Himuro slams the garage door shut behind us. "On the way where?"

"There's press everywhere, which makes an easy exit from here almost impossible. I've got a friend who used to be a professional rider, though, and he knew about an underpass we can use that runs right outside. No press there."

"Why are we worried about press?" I ask as I pull Hiraeth after him.

"Were—you weren't watching, kid?"

"I-I just got here!" I say hotly. "I mean, more or less—"

"Well, Yusei's… uh, I guess he takes Jack's title. King or something like that."

"He won?"

"You sound surprised!"

"I've never seen him duel!"

"That's your own fault."

"Well, sorry, I was a little preoccupied!" I say hotly. "How was the whole thing? I assume he's good, if he just toppled a reigning champion."

"Yusei on a dueling field is almost a religious experience," Himuro remarks. "Trust me, I've been beaten by him. He could be the best duelist I've ever seen."

"That's a tall order," I say. "He isn't even here to agree or disagree with you."

"Good thing, too. He's annoyingly humble." Himuro wrenches a door near the end of the tunnel out of his way. "When you get the chance next, sit in and watch him. You'll see what I mean."

The door leads in through another series of sheet metal doors that look like more garage doors. The pathway twists down, for what feels like forever, and I keep rolling Hiraeth along in front of me. When the tunnel finally evens out and stops twisting, we're in a long, dank passageway with dim lamps hanging along the ceiling high over our heads.

"I've still gotta go get Yusei," Himuro tells me. "We were looking for you, but… well, I found you, so we should be good to get the hell out of this place. The others should already be down here."

"Others?"

We round a corner and I almost slip on a wet patch of concrete—it smells musty in here, like damp wood. Three figures haloed in the dim glow of the fluorescent lights turn toward us.

"Himuro!" A boy's voice shouts. "Did you bring Yusei?"

"No, I have to go back up and get him," Himuro answers, turning from us to go running back the direction we came from. He's still shouting at us as he goes. "This is another one of Yusei's friends, she's coming with us!"

When I get close enough to them to make out more features than shapes and shadows, I set my eyes on a little man who has to be something like fifty or sixty years old and another boy and a girl who are each other's spitting image—twins.

"You were a contender, right?" I blurt at the girl. On the first day, I could've sworn I saw her ponytails up on the screen in the waiting area.

"Technically," the boy twin says, stretching like he's trying to display whatever arm muscles he has, "we both were—"

"No, you're an idiot who doesn't like when I don't want to do something you want to do," the girl interrupts. "My brother dressed up as me because I didn't want to duel and totally embarrassed himself."

"I-I did not! I mean, I did dress up, but I didn't… 'embarrass' myself!"

"Oh, just forget it." The girl turns toward me, her face only half doused in light from the lamps. "My name's Ruka. My brother's Rua. What's your name?"

"I'm C," I say. When I look at her… it could be my imagination, the feeling is so faint, but something around her pulses like she could be like me. A psychic.

"Just the letter?" The boy, Rua, asks.

"It's just a nickname." I look toward the older man. "What's your name?"

"Just call me Yanagi," he replies. He has a friendly and bouncy, albeit crackly with age, type of voice. "Pleased to meet you!"

"And we're all here out of knowing Yusei?" I say. Seems like he's also the type of person to collect friendships.

"Yeah. We've got a lot to talk to him about when we get out of here," Ruka remarks, turning her eyes down toward the ground.

"He's the new King now!" Rua exclaims. "That's an awesome kind of surreal, that I'm friends with the King of Turbo Duels!"

"Is that really the title?" I ask.

"It was Jack Atlas' before," Yanagi remarks.

"I'm pretty sure he gave it to himself," Ruka adds.

"That makes much more sense," I say. "Himuro said something about reporters. Are there really so many people that we can't get out from up above ground?"

"Nobody's beaten Jack for as long as he's been in Neo Domino," Ruka replies. "If we didn't sneak Yusei out, we probably wouldn't see him for days."

"Oh, good, he's popular," I retort. "Won't they just follow us?"

"We're heading to Daimon to try and keep out of the press firestorm for now," Yanagi tells me. "If we're good enough at staying out of sight, we'll be okay. Yusei has a place there where he's been staying."

"Wow. You guys definitely have everything all planned out."

The four of us stay stuck in place for a moment, and I'm searching for something else to say, when Rua starts waving madly at something behind me. When I turn, I see Yusei and Himuro on their way toward us; the lamplights flicker off of Yusei's duel runner in fat, dim beams.

"Glad you could make it, C," Yusei says. "...nice runner."

"Thanks, it's—pretty new," I admit.

"We're all here?" Himuro asks. "Great, let's start walking. It's not too far to Daimon from here."

"This place exits straight into Daimon?" I ask.

"It exits all over the city. It used to be a delivery network, and then when it was discontinued as a road, some of the old pros used to use it for late-night practice."

I roll Hiraeth along next to Ruka. "How nice for us."

"It'll keep us out of sight, that's for sure," Yusei exhales.

"...how was everything?" I ask him. "I didn't get here until maybe a half hour ago."

"Long. I'm exhausted." He turns to me. "Your friend Aki is a real piece of work."

I try to search for the right words. "Did… How badly did she try to hurt you?"

"Oh, you know. I was dropped from at least ten feet in the air. Normal Wednesday afternoon."

"I'm… so sorry."

"Don't worry about it. It's my problem, not yours." He shakes his head. "I think I figured her out during that duel."

I'm about to ask him what he means, when Rua pipes up, "Hold up! You're friends with the Witch Lady?"

Witch makes me flinch. "Yeah, I… I came from Arcadia."

"Arcadia?!"

"So you're—psychic?" Ruka asks. I've barely nodded my head when she blurts, "I knew I felt something!"

"Wha—I—I thought I felt something from you, too!" I exclaim. "You are a psychic!"

"I mean… more or less? I don't know. I've never called myself one. Does knowing you're one count?"

"It's called Specifying," I tell her. "Every psychic has a different constitution of power, so we're classified in sub-categories due to our abilities."

"Really? There are categories?"

"Most, if not all, psychics have the ability to Specify. It's when we can distinguish common people from people like us."

"What are you?"

"I Specify and I Waste," I answer. "Wasters are a level upward from Specifiers. It's a general form of telekinesis, mostly like moving things or whatever."

"So…" she looks up at me earnestly. "You don't "sense", you Specify? And you don't… "use telekinesis", you Waste?"

"Yeah, exactly. And there are plenty of other categories that others fit under."

"Somebody found a new best friend," Himuro scoffs.

"I've just never met another person with abilities like mine," Ruka admits. "That girl Aki was the first one I'd seen out in the open. But she didn't seem like much of a talker."

"Aki has her reasons," I say. "I've known her for a long time. I know what makes her tic, and that's probably why we're friends. Or were. When she finds out I left Arcadia, something tells me she won't want to call me a friend anymore."

"Wait, so you just left," Ruka says. "You just deserted?"

"It was the only way I could get out," I tell her. "I was never allowed to leave the building before. I had to sneak out."

"How'd you end up tagging along with us?" Rua asks.

"C is from Satellite," Yusei pipes up. "We grew up together."

"Really?"

"We don't know how, but she ended up in the city," Yusei adds. "She'd been missing for a long time, and her memory isn't doing so hot. I was planning on bringing her back to Satellite to see her brother."

"Apparently," I say, "I have a twin just like you."

Ruka beams.

"Hey, Himuro?" Rua asks. "How d'you know where we get out? Like to get into Daimon?"

"There are landmarks," he replies. "This isn't the first time I've been down here, kid."

"Oh, okay, good."

"C?" Ruka asks softly.

I think it's the first time I've ever liked the way my nickname sounds. "What is it?"

"Since you're friends with Aki, would you happen to know anything about her mark?"

"Her mark," I say slowly. "The claw, you mean? On her arm?"

Ruka nods.

"I… don't know anything explicit about it. I know that it must be magic, somehow, because it glows sometimes. Divine used to talk about it like it was magic, or—or ethereal, or something. All I could surmise was that it wasn't human."

"Right," Yusei pipes up suddenly. "I owe you an explanation about that, don't I?"

"It would be nice," I tell him.

"To start, there are two other people besides me and Aki who have a similar marking," he says.

"C saw your mark, then?" Ruka asks.

"I saw him glow," I clarify. "I didn't know they weren't exclusive to Aki."

"Well, they aren't exactly magic," Yanagi chimes. "Pretty close, though!"

"You thought they were magic and you just didn't question it?" Himuro asks.

"I'm a psychic, buddy," I retort. "I don't really have the right to question anything remotely strange."

"Okay, that's fair."

"So, then, everyone else here has also seen you glow?" I ask, turning toward Yusei.

"Sort of," he says. "Ruka's another person with a mark."

"Really?" I say. "Who's number four?"

"Jack Atlas!" Rua pipes up.

"Whoa, okay… all four of you were at this tournament, then."

"I'm glad I'm not the only one who finds that odd," Yusei remarks. "Actually, I was threatened into taking part in it. Remember when I mentioned to you that I got some friends into a bad spot?"

"Yeah?"

"The tournament organizers were holding some of my Satellite friends captive—they wouldn't let them go unless I participated. I think that the guy in charge, Director Goodwin, was using the Fortune Cup specifically to confirm that the four of us were marked."

"That would explain how Aki got an invite," I say. "When she told me about it, she kept saying she was surprised by it—no one knew about Arcadia before the Fortune Cup, and it was supposed to be full of 'prestigious duelists'."

"Some weird stuff happened at this tournament, though," Himuro states. "Something appeared in the sky—this huge glowing thing. It looked like it was made of fire."

"During that last duel, between Jack and Yusei, the four of us all had this vision," Ruka says. "I know because I saw everyone else in it, aware of me like I was aware of them. Jack and Yusei and Aki."

"Satellite was up in flames," Yusei adds, sounding perplexed. "I don't know what caused it, or why it was happening. I just know that I have this sinking feeling that it's going to happen."

I feel heat leaving my body. If your city were to go up in flames, Goodwin told me, would you fight to save it?

Satellite isn't—my city. I haven't even been there yet.

But how much, exactly, does he know?

"We were getting called 'Signers'," Ruka says. "I don't even know what that means."

"Well, it's a good thing I'm here!" Yanagi chimes. "When I was your age, I spent all my time traveling—learned a lot!"

"Maybe save the explanation until we get out of this hole," Himuro interrupts, pointing ahead of us. "See that broken light? Right under that's the tunnel we need to take that leads up aboveground. It's narrow, so take it single file; duel runners out first."

Himuro leads, and the six of us file into a considerably narrower tunnel than we were in before. As we continue forward through it, the ground starts to slope upward, and suddenly I'm following Himuro and Yusei out of what almost looks like a big sewer pipe dripping moisture down into the semi-dry bed of a reservoir.

"Good shortcut," Yusei remarks, squinting up at the light reflecting off of the concrete around us. "How far are we from Saiga's place?"

"Not far. Straight up that way and around the corner," Himuro tells him.

"Perfect. I really don't feel like beating reporters away from me today. Or ever."

We stay in single file, following Himuro, Yusei and I rolling our duel runners along the thin line of concrete splitting the waterway in two.

When we get out into an alleyway up above the waterway, I recognize where we are. The tattoo parlor is only a couple blocks from here—and I feel some solace in knowing that there's a place I actually recognize.

The apartment we cram into is off of the main stretch of road, but the garage entrance is in a back alley. I follow Yusei back past garbage cans and wrought iron fire escapes, into the garage to prop Hiraeth up a couple feet away from his sleek red duel runner.

Inside, the flat is small, not horribly cramped, and covered in forest green wallpaper. Yanagi and Himuro are at the table in, presumably, the kitchen, and Yanagi is scribbling on a piece of paper. After a second of watching him draw, I realize that it looks sort of like a lindwurm—a dragon curled up into the shape of a ring.

"This is what we're dealing with," Yanagi says. "The Aztecs told of a dragon deity that protected them and their earliest predecessors, the People of the Stars. According to their legends, a being called the Crimson Dragon split its power apart and sealed it into five humans chosen by fate to guard the world from a spectacular evil."

"Not magic, then," I breathe. "Gods."

"You mean to tell us," Himuro says slowly, "that the huge red fire-thing that appeared during Yusei and Atlas' duel was a god?"

"Precisely. When all five Signers gather, it's said that the Dragon will come to claim them."

"Excuse my French, pops, but fuck that."

"What about the marks?" Ruka presses. "Can you tell us more about them?"

"Their people were born with the power or chosen—and called 'Signers' after the fact that they bore the Sign of the Dragon." Yanagi holds up his drawing. It's actually fairly detailed, for such a quick scribble. "This is what the dragon's symbol looked like when I saw it, and it's supposed to have all five marks inscribed in it."

"That one is mine," Yusei says; I follow his finger to the pointed sort-of shape on one side of the dragon. The tribal shape I remember standing out in red against his skin. "It looks like the tail."

"This one's mine," Ruka adds, pointing at one of the claws. She pushes back her sleeve to compare it. It doesn't look like my tattoos, like ink bled into skin in smooth, soft lines. Against her arm, it almost looks like a brand; sort of like the mark on Yusei's face, like it was carved into her and it stands as the redness of exposed muscle tissue.

"That one's—Aki's," I say softly. I point at the long, graceful shape of the claw on the tail end of the dragon drawing. "I've only seen it glow once or twice." I don't remember it looking like as deep of a brand as Ruka's.

"Jack had the wings," Yusei recalls. "Which means the one we're missing is the head."

"But the Dragon showed up during that duel," Ruka points out. "There were only four of us there—in the stadium and in the vision we had."

"If the Dragon appeared, is it safe to assume that the fifth Signer was nearby?" Himuro asks.

"Oh, absolutely," Yanagi remarks. "There's no denying that the fifth Signer had to be at least in the vicinity of the Circuit."

"Okay," Yusei says, "But where were they?"

Everyone in the room cuts their eyes to him.

"Yusei has a point," Ruka remarks. "Wouldn't the fifth Signer have been in the vision with us? And we've pretty much all agreed that Goodwin invited us all just to confirm that we were Signers… so wouldn't he have invited that fifth person, too?"

"Maybe he doesn't know the fifth person!" Rua attempts.

"Somehow I find that very hard to believe," Yusei tells him.

"Maybe it's me!" Rua bursts out.

Ruka shoots him a look. "It's not you."

"You don't know that!" He starts rubbing furiously at his arm, like he can somehow make a mark like Ruka's appear on his skin. Himuro begins to hypothesize with Yanagi about everything they witnessed during the tournament that seemed "out of place." Yusei has his eyes pinned on the drawing of the Crimson Dragon on the table. His face looks… unnerved, or confused, or something. I get lost in the sounds, Ruka and Rua arguing and Himuro's conversation with Yanagi, and all of the things I'm trying to remember from the past few hours.

Something in the air shifts, like a breeze that blows through my bones. I don't know what I'm detecting, and then Ruka suddenly crumples. Yanagi dives forward and catches her, but she's already trying to get herself back onto her feet.

"Ruka?" Rua makes a beeline for her, abandoning his search for a birthmark. "Ruka?"

"I'm fine," she croaks. "Just tired. I'm okay, I promise."

"You should lie down," I say breathlessly. What was that I felt?

"Maybe we need to just take it easy," Yusei suggests. "It's been a really long afternoon for all of us."

"No more mythology for today," Himuro agrees.

Everyone sort of splits off after that. Rua and Yanagi take Ruka to another room, insisting that she needs to lie down, and Yusei goes straight for the garage; probably to check up on his duel runner. I'm alone in the living room with Himuro for a second, before he goes off into another room, too, to do who-knows-what.

I sit there in the silence, staring at the sketch Yanagi made. Categorizing the time and the things I've heard today.

What was it Goodwin said to me about marks?