Dr. Naboru decided not to trust technology and the orderlies. Perhaps it was a strange coincidence, electrical failure two months in a row, or perhaps someone was playing a sick joke. The glowing red might just be a trick of the light, a glitch in the camera, or even the fears of Officer Fujino influencing Dr. Naboru's perception. The causes of the other failures were not relevant, he told himself. He would stay beside the door that night, and he would keep his eyes on her.

After two restless nights the staff took her directly to the personal safety room before the sun even went down. More for their own sake than hers, they made her take sedatives again. Dr. Naboru seriously wounded his own ethics when he prescribed for her enough medication to knock a fully grown man completely unconscious. She took them willingly enough, but only when he used the other name.

Silence stretched for nearly half an hour. The staff slowly began to breathe, and to congratulate themselves just a little. They had stayed away from the observation window so as not to excite her. Reassured by the quiet, Dr. Naboru stepped forward and peered inside.

Blood red and burning…

An unholy wrath and hatred…

She had been waiting for him. She stood just beyond the door, her eyes merely inches from his, and he could never doubt Officer Fujino again. Black and red and blazing with her anger, those eyes fixed on him until he wanted to sink to the floor just to get away. Instead he watched, too terrified to move, as she stepped a little closer to the door. She put her hand up against the glass and studied his face. Her eyes slid up to his forehead and searched for something. He thanked whatever powers existed to protect humanity when she did not find what she sought.

Then she whispered, "Have you seen it?"

Finally, unwillingly, his voice pushed its way out of his mouth.

"What?"

"Have you seen it?" she asked again. "The dead world. They are waiting. He will come again, as he came before."

Decades of education and research fell away as he shook his head dumbly. Her delusion must have taken a messianic turn somewhere. Someone would come again…he…

"Endymion?" the doctor tried. "Endymion will come again?"

Her hand hit the reinforced glass hard enough to shake the door and send a nurse and two orderlies leaping backwards. Now she had her face to the window. From the gasping behind him Dr. Naboru knew they had all seen her eyes.

"Do not say his name," she snarled. The red in her eyes burned hotter. "Do not dare."

"I'm sorry. I don't understand."

"They will come again. They will bring their dead planet and their black marks." Another blow seriously tested the numerous locks on one side. "They wore my mark! Polluted and turned around…My love and my friends and my small lady, all gone now. They took him from me!"

A long crack ran through the thick glass of the observation window. The door shuddered and something snapped on the other side.

"They took everything from me!"

It was as he staggered back that Dr. Naboru realized her hair had turned entirely silver.

"I will burn them all down! I will rip through the heart of that dead world! I am a child no more! NO PRINCESS!"

The very floor seemed to shake beneath their feet.

"A QUEEN OF BLOOD AND ASHES! I AM ALL THAT IS LEFT!"

The door could not hold whatever was on the other side. No human resided in that room on that night. Nothing came to his mind as he knew, as Officer Fujino had, that he could do nothing to stop her. Silver hair lifted, spread out around her, and her whole body began to glow. Pink light turned to crimson. Something brilliant marked her forehead, where she had traced a crescent just two days before, but he refused to look. Instead he tried to pray, but he could not remember a single prayer.