Sylvie didn't resist as the guards hauled her roughly down the hallway following behind Loki, with two guards at his back so they couldn't see each other. She kept her head down, staring at her white canvas shoes padding down the hall, her hair covering her eyes.

Being processed again-stripped, searched, and archived-had brought her back to her first terrifying encounter with the TVA when she was only a little girl. That awful machine, the one that blasted her clothes off with a laser, wearing a big, yellow smile on its computer-screen face, had haunted her dreams for decades. Seeing it again made her cower in the corner, speechless. Her mind had transformed back into that of the scared little girl she'd been more than a thousand years ago.

As the guards squeezed her arms tightly, the others marching side by side, she was once again weak and paralyzed with fear. She wanted to vomit all over her white Velcro shoes. The company paused for a moment to wait for an elevator, and Sylvie chanced a peek at the walls around her, trying to find something to ground her, keep her from going mad with panic.

The poster on the wall to her right was an art-deco illustration of Miss Minutes, that infernal, AI cartoon clock that seemed to run the place, wagging a patronizing finger, her other hand pointing to her own body that made up the face of the clock. The caption read in block letters:

Be On Time! Punctuality is Your Responsibility!

The poster on the left wall showed three stylized TVA employee figures against a burnt orange background, two silhouetted in black and standing far away from the middle figure in green, with little wavy lines coming from it, flies circling its head.

Personal Hygiene is Part of the Job: Keep Yourself Neat and Clean.

Sylvie swallowed the bile that jumped to her throat. The posters weren't helping.

The elevator dinged, and everyone stuffed themselves inside, the guards still holding tight to them both. As the gentle saxophone muzak quietly streamed through the speakers, Sylvie noticed Loki looking at her, his green eyes wide and glistening with tears. He wouldn't break his gaze. She realized, with guilt finally, truly penetrating her conscience, that he was committing her to memory… that it might be the last time they'd see each other.

"Sylvie-" he whispered, voice trembling, but a tall female guard pushed him roughly to the side of the elevator and stood between them.

"Quiet!" she barked.

Her stomach lurched as the elevator came to a stop. The doors opened, and they were once again pushed through an identical hallway. Suddenly, the guards turned them to the left and led them into a courtroom, dimly lit with long, tube shaped fluorescent lamps at the front of the room, where the judge's dais sat, empty. Sylvie remembered that place, or one just like it, where she'd faced Ravonna Renslayer, ultimately pruning herself behind the judge's desk. Instead of the three faces of the Timekeepers that had been carved into the wall in a wood relief, here, there was only one. The face of the man she'd just murdered.

Was there a foggy, dimly lit room with an animatronic version of He Who Remains somewhere in that TVA, like there had been before with the three Timekeepers? Not as if it mattered to her, not now.

Four of the guards left them to stand at the front of the dais, the other four still holding tightly to Loki and Sylvie, positioning them to face the front of the room.

"All rise!" cried one of the guards, though there were only ten people in the room-the guards, Loki, and Sylvie-and all were standing anyway. "The honorable judge Ouro Boros Ortho presiding!"

At that, an ancient, overweight judge toddled out from the side of the judge's dais, panting heavily, wearing an orange judge's sash squeezed around his shoulder and gut. Judge Ortho looked too frail to stand, much less do his job. His gray eyebrows sagged over his face so heavily that it cast a shadow over his eyes, the wrinkles on his face cutting deep ravines into his skin. He slowly shuffled some papers around on his desk and brought them very close to his face to read. His eyebrows shot up in surprise, revealing cataract-clouded eyes for a moment, then he coughed loudly and spoke, his voice guttering with phlegm.

"Loki variant… the girl one… you are accused of six hundred and eighty seven attempted branches of the sacred timeline across all divisions of the TVA."

The guards muttered excitedly amongst themselves, and Ouro brought his gavel down on the desk.

"Order, order!" he yelled, triggering a coughing fit. He spat a wad of something into a tissue, wiped his nose, and continued. "Male Loki variant, you are accused of aiding and abetting the female variant in these crimes against the timeline, and breaking and entering into the TVA. How do you both plead?"

Sylvie and Loki kept quiet. Ouro's heavy panting floated through the silent room as she and Loki held their breath.

"How do you plead?" he repeated, annoyed. Sylvie bit her lip so hard she tasted blood.

"Well, this will be easy then," muttered Ouro with a sniff. He slammed his gavel once against the desk. "You are both guilty, sentenced to be pru-"

In the middle of the word, a muffled, high-pitched noise, like a clogged vacuum, whirred behind the judge's desk, followed by a thunk that echoed throughout the court. A few of the guards looked behind them curiously. The judge swiveled around, the overworked chair groaning under his weight, and leaned forward. A square shaped hole that had been hidden perfectly within the relief of the Timekeeper's face sank into the wall and slid out of the way to reveal a brown, cylindrical plastic container, which Ouro removed. With his wiry eyebrows scrunched together, seemingly as intrigued as everyone else, he opened the top of the container and pulled out a rolled up piece of paper. He screwed the top back on and stuck the container back into the hole, which closed itself and whirred again as it sucked the container away.

It felt like an hour before the judge spoke again. Sylvie was completely numb, frozen like a terrified animal waiting to die. She just wanted them to get on with it. As long as she got to leave that forsaken place, it didn't matter anymore.

"Huh. Interesting," said Ouro, with a shrug. "Both male and female Loki variants are sentenced to be imprisoned in Time Cell Zero, where they will be incarcerated for the rest of their natural lives. Court adjourned." He slammed his gavel once and stood again.

"No…" the word left her lips without Sylvie even realizing it.

Loki grunted and struggled against his captors, to no avail, as the other four guards at the front rejoined the group to lead them back out of the courtroom.

Sylvie's muscles were beginning to turn to jelly. She could barely walk. Everything was drawn out into one nauseating blur of brown and orange and fake wood and concrete. What she could remember of her early life flashed before her eyes. A little boy with blonde hair: her brother. The comfort and safety of her mother's gentle hands. A golden throne, where Odin sat, a faceless, impressive figure. The pegasus toy she'd been playing with just before she'd been captured by the TVA the first time.

What awful nightmare had they made for them? A loop of horror to play over and over again, for thousands of years? Were 'the rest of their natural lives' about to be cut unnaturally short? What incentive would a place like that have for keeping them alive at all?

Sylvie tripped over her own shoes as they made a left turn down a long, dimly lit corridor, then opened another door to another hallway, even narrower. The gray walls were bare here, no patronizing posters hung on the walls, and no other employees going about their business. Even stranger, there were no doors, either, besides the way they'd entered. It felt like a gateway leading straight to hell.

Finally, they came to a door at the end of the corridor that was built of strong, solid metal, like a vault. A guard punched in a code on the wall pad and the door thumped and creaked open loudly.

Sylvie's focus snapped to horrifying clarity. Another, much shorter hallway lay behind the door, the walls made of cold steel. It smelled frighteningly empty and sterile, compared to the smell of old carpet in the hallways. The hall was freezing, as well, and Sylvie started to shiver, unable to stop. Equally solid metal doors lined either side, about thirty in all, each of them with a '0' on the top, which was randomly lit either in green or red.

What made Sylvie completely lose her senses, though, was the poster at the dead end of the hellish, claustrophobic hallway. It was crimson red with black, bold lettering. Simple. No illustrations.

It read: YOU ARE ABSOLVED OF YOUR CRIMES.

Her knees gave out. She let out a wordless groan and sank to the floor.

"Help," she murmured, her vision going gray. "Help me." She'd never called for help in her entire adult life, not once.

One of her guards took out the time collar control, and before she could lose consciousness, her brain and body scrambled back into a standing position, legs still shaking, but able to keep herself upright.

A scuffle broke out at the front of the procession, Loki's sneakers squeaking on the metal floor. To her surprise, Loki burst forth from between the two guards at his back, ran to her, still handcuffed, and kissed her hard on the mouth.

It was all over in half a second as a guard smashed the back of his shoulder with a time baton. Loki fell in slow motion, his eyes open wide with shock, and the guards dragged him away from her sight.

"Loki!" she screamed. Between the crowd of guards, she saw a glimpse of him returning to normal speed just as a guard pushed him into a time theater door with a green '0'. It clunked shut, locked itself, and the '0' turned red.

"No!"

All the fight that had been sucked out of her soul suddenly returned, rage bubbling out in a wild banshee screech. She smashed her heel into the shin of one of the guards, then turned her head and bit the arm of the other. They both screamed and loosened their grip just enough for her to slip away. She ran to the exit, skillfully dodging a time baton as it swung for her head. A clatter came from behind her: the sound of the baton hitting another guard's helmet. Sylvie slammed against the metal door and fumbled at the number pad with relentlessly shaking hands, bound together by her handcuffs.

What was the code? What was the code?

She'd pressed in a few numbers when someone swiped her legs out from under her. Her head hit the floor, disorienting her for a few seconds… time she didn't have to waste.

A guard put his stick under her chin, held both ends tight, and painfully hauled her to her feet. The muscles in her throat crunched. She could actually feel the guard shaking as he choked her with all his might. If she'd been a normal human, her windpipe would have collapsed.

"Get her in, quick!" yelled the female guard. Sylvie felt hands grab her all over, squeezing tight, pushing and pulling her towards a cell. She opened her mouth and tried to scream, tried to breathe, but only succeeded in making an awful, choking squeak.

In quick succession, a boot planted itself against the small of her back, the metal door opened into pitch black, the stick slid out from under her chin, and the boot pushed her, flailing, into the room. She fell, and the door clunked shut and locked behind her.

Sylvie got up, turned, and flung herself in the direction of the door, but only fell again, as if there'd never been a door there at all. Hauling herself shakily upright, she circled around, trying to get her bearings, but there was nothing to see, nothing to ground her except the floor. It was so black she was afraid that they'd somehow blinded her. Once she was able to stand still for a few moments, she had a vague feeling of movement, like being on an elevator, except it was going horizontally instead of vertically.

A conveyor belt. She had no idea how fast it was moving, without anything to look at for reference, but she again ran towards where she thought the door had been. Maybe it was possible to outrun it?

That hope quickly died. She certainly ran as fast as she could, but didn't hit a door, or a wall, or anything at all. Sylvie changed direction, sprinting to her right instead, then to her left, panting with exertion and fear. It was the same, no matter which direction she turned. The crowded hallway she'd been in couldn't have possibly been that vast.

A tiny red light caught her attention from the corner of her eye. She stood very still, watching it as it floated, perfectly stationary, seemingly watching her as well. Sylvie took one cautious step forward, and felt that sensation of movement once again, the little light adjusting itself slightly, then floating back to the exact same spot. It finally started to make sense: she wasn't on a conveyor belt, or in an infinite room. The floor moved with her, no matter how fast or erratically she ran, to keep her in one place. The light above her was most likely some kind of scanner… scanning for what, she didn't want to know.

A soft whirring noise grew around her, like the sound of a machine purring to life. Sylvie instinctively tried to reach into herself and touch her magic, to make daggers, but that was useless in the TVA. She knew that from the brief time she'd spent in the TVA only a few days before. All magic was neutralized there. Still, it was a move made out of desperation, not planning. She had nothing else to help her out of this. She shivered, feeling naked without her magic, her only trusted weapon.

Before she could react, a metallic hum made a beeline for her and a clamp snapped down across her abdomen, making her scream. The sound came out grizzled and fried, her throat aching from where the guard had choked her. The clamp was lined with some kind of padding, but as she struggled, it was obviously solid underneath. Another whir, and another, and a second device grabbed on to her handcuffs and unlocked them, a third taking off her time collar. With her hands free, she tried to reach out for whatever had just touched her. A bit of a metal rod slipped through her fingers, then was gone. She pushed and pulled at the clamp holding her firmly by the middle. Nothing budged.

Legs and arms flailing wildly, she felt her strength start to leave her again, her body going from fight, to flight, to faint.

No, she thought to herself, I won't let them kill me. I won't let them-

Her thought was interrupted by the sizzle of her clothes once again being burned off of her body, this time the energy coming from the clamp instead of a laser. It didn't burn her skin, but it looked as if it should have. Smoke filled her nose for a moment, made her eyes water. The burning cloth let out just enough light to allow her dark-adjusted eyes see what else was in that nightmare room with her.

It took Sylvie a few seconds to register what she was seeing, not because she couldn't make out what it was, but because it was too horrible to imagine.

A metal table lay before her, with sections to secure outstretched arms and legs. Wires and rods and tubing curled out of it, like some kind of monstrous, metal spider. The tubes had mean, sharp little needles coming out of them. The table was punctured with dozens of small, perfect holes all down the middle, from the neck down to the hip, following where the spine would lay.

She couldn't even scream. Sylvie let her mouth hang open, gasping for breath as hot tears fell down her face.

Suddenly, the clamp lifted her off the floor and roughly moved her toward the table, then flipped her around to face the ceiling. Her stomach lurched. Her last few coherent thoughts went to Loki. He was being tortured the same way in a room right next to her… if he wasn't already dead. She saw his face in the elevator, heard him whisper her name. She felt that last kiss on her lips.

This was all her fault. She never should have pushed him away, never should have killed He Who Remains.

"I'm sorry," she whimpered into the darkness. No living soul heard.

As she hung suspended helplessly in midair, the machines below her were whirring and buzzing and clicking gently, preparing themselves, coming to life. The clamp lowered her slowly to the table until her arms, legs, and head just barely touched. More clamps secured her extremities and her neck before the clamp at her waist finally opened and let her go. The table was freezing cold, like a slab of ice, and no amount of squirming made it less uncomfortable. More snakelike, metal arms slithered their way across her whole body: her hips, her elbows, knees, and chest, until she was completely and utterly immobile. Two flat, padded plates at her temples held her head facing upward, like a firm vice. The only thing Sylvie could move were her wrists and ankles.

There was a shuffling noise, and another faint whir of a motor above her. A single drop of liquid landed on the inside of her elbow. That tiny, insignificant thing made her shudder hard against her restraints. A low, tortured moan seeped out of her, her mind too far gone for words.

In a sudden tsunami of pain, dozens of needles gouged themselves deep into her spinal cord, making her scream so hard that her voice broke. Every muscle in her body twitched in torture, straining, shivering, as if they were being pulled apart fiber by fiber. It hurt so badly that the needles that came from above to pierce her arms and legs felt like mosquito bites in comparison. She struggled to keep herself from falling into shock, though her sanity had already slipped away into the inky blackness of that private hell.

With her hands wrenching against the restraints, she turned her fingers inward as far as she could, towards her palm, until she felt as if she would break her own wrists. The tubes pumping who-knew-what into her arms ended tantalizingly close to her hands. Close enough to reach one of them, maybe, with a little more effort.

She stretched out her pinky as far as it would go, waves of agony threatening to drown her consciousness. The nail of her finger barely brushed a plastic tube, and she felt the needle it was attached to move under her skin.

Just a little more. Don't die yet…

Her pinky hooked around the tube, and with a little flick of the wrist, she pulled it out, the needle emptying drops of lukewarm liquid into her palm. It wasn't nearly enough. Her mind was starting to go under, trying to retreat from the pain, her heart exploding in her chest.

There was no escape, nothing she could do. That realization came like an arrow to the throat, and finally, for the first time in her life, she gave up.

Just before she slipped away completely, the pain receding into a fog of eternity, she imagined a sweet voice echoing from somewhere far above, like an angel calling for her.

When she sings, she sings come home,

When she sings, she sings come home…