Stalemate

by strangelittleorangetopeel

In the weeks leading up to the San Francisco mission, Mai and Valon form an uneasy alliance. Never mind the smashed crockery, failed scams and terrible decisions. Gen; Mai/Valon if you squint.

Dartz's initiation ceremony lost some of its weight after you'd seen it a few times. Valon had noticed, for example, that once the card had been handed over and the forehead had glowed green, Dartz never quite knew how to end it.

'Now go,' he said to Mai, 'and remember the Orichalcos is always with you.'

Mai shook her head, as if banishing the last of a long night's sleep. Valon watched the dazed, absent look in her eyes turn hard and focused. This part, at least, never got old: watching as the Orichalcos jet-washed away all the weakness and struggle, and a pure, whole, box-fresh person stepped out from underneath. Valon just hoped that Mai-as-she-was-supposed-to-be would continue to wear that corset.

She spread her hands in front of her for a moment, then nodded in satisfaction. Perhaps she usually expected them to be trembling. Then, she lifted herself to her feet. Valon watched the trajectory of her thighs keenly.

'Alright,' said Mai, and her voice was already steady and self-assured. 'Pleasure doing business with you, Dartz. Go where?'

Dartz clearly wasn't quite sure how to respond to this. His nose scrunched a little, an expression Valon recognised from the private schoolboys at whom he used to hurl abuse on the street as a kid: a look of inconvenience on somebody who never expected it. He smirked instinctively. Mai was already proving to be good value.

'Valon will arrange it,' said Dartz, with a vague flick of his robe sleeve. Then, after a pause which, if you hadn't recently had your veins pumped full of space-rock, might have been awkward: 'You are dismissed.'

---

The Domino apartment that the DOMA horsemen shared was non-descript, and notably a lot smaller than Dartz's temple. Mai barged in first as soon as Valon unlocked the door.

'This is your headquarters?' she said, wrinkling her nose at the living room. It was undecorated, apart from a scattering of bowls and cups, and a selection of jackets and shoes that Valon guessed he should return to his room before Rafael started bitching at him again.

Valon didn't have time to answer before she shrugged and sprawled out onto the sofa like she owned it. 'So, when's my first mission?' she said.

'Dunno,' said Valon. 'Dartz gives the orders, not me. Won't be for a few weeks at least. So if I were you I'd sit tight, re-order your deck and practice blinking at the right time until the Orichalcos high dies down a little.'

Mai sat up abruptly and glared. 'I don't do sitting tight,' she said. 'And I don't do orders. He'd better have a mission for me soon or I'll walk.'

Valon laughed; it was hard to take someone seriously while they still had make-up smeared under their eyes and mats in their hair. It put him in mind of a stray lapdog trying to bite somebody's ankle. This only made Mai's glare deepen.

'You've perked up,' he said. 'Listen, since you're new I'm gonna give you a word of advice. Dartz is a powerful guy and you want him on your side. I don't care, but Rafael and Alister are gonna get pissed off if you badmouth him.'

'You should care,' said a voice from behind Valon. Alister was standing outside his door, arms crossed and face as serious as ever. Valon watched as Mai's eyes flicked down the expanse of exposed midriff, and one of her eyebrows raised.

'Stop the presses,' said Valon, 'he's out of his room.'

Alister didn't react. Instead, he banged on the door next to his with a fist. 'New recruit's here,' he called.

A moment later, Rafael emerged from his bedroom, beaded with sweat. Two staggeringly large weights lay on the clean floor of his room.

'Aw, well now she's not gonna want to shake your hand, is she?' said Valon, and was roundly ignored again.

'This is the one Dartz told you to find?' he said, turning a snooty, appraising look onto Mai. Valon thought he didn't like what he saw – Rafael probably found the idea of mini-skirts frivolous – but sometimes it was hard to tell, considering Rafael's face was always stuck in a look of mild distaste.

'C'mon, Rafael, this is Mai Valentine. You recognise her, right?'

Rafael clicked his tongue. Valon knew full well he recognised her. Valon had once taken a particular shine to a duelling magazine spread in which she'd been photographed in an arcade, perched regally atop the back of some nerdy kid on all fours. He'd tried to garner approval from Rafael and Alister, which had gone down like a lead balloon; Alister ostensibly wasn't interested in women, and Rafael was only interested in duelling and lifting weights. But Valon thrived on getting a reaction, whether it was a good one or not, so for several weeks he'd taken great pleasure in collecting magazines where she appeared, shoving the choicest and the soft-porniest into his roommates' faces, much to their distaste.

Of course, the breathy, softly-lit girl in the magazines bore little resemblance to the Mai he'd tracked down to duel, who had been shrunken and exhausted, a rodent struggling under a boot. And she bore little resemblance to the Mai sitting on the sofa, who wore the expression of a woman spoiling for a fistfight.

'So,' she said, 'some dive you have here. Where's Dartz putting me up?'

Valon barked with laughter. This was going to be good.

'Dartz isn't a charity,' said Rafael, with lofty disapproval. 'You're staying wherever you normally stay.'

Mai opened her mouth, closed it and stood up. The fury that had been simmering in her eyes came to a rolling boil. 'If you think I'm going to give my time to some robe-wearing maniac without expecting anything in return, you're out of your mind,' she said.

Rafael's voice dropped a menacing octave. 'Dartz has given you power beyond your comprehension, and you don't think you're getting anything in return? I'm warning you, keep behaving like a princess and you'll get yourself into trouble.'

'Princess?' interjected Valon with glee. 'I thought you grew up in a mansion, Rafael.'

'If you don't have anywhere to stay, the sofa's free,' said Alister, gesturing wearily towards it. The water stains had been there long before Valon arrived; he hoped it wasn't Rafael who put them there post-workout.

Mai wrenched her glare away from Rafael and turned it on Alister instead. 'You've got to be kidding me,' she said. 'You seriously think I'm going to sleep there?'

Alister's face darkened. Valon had known Alister long enough to know he could hold a grudge like nobody's business, but he'd never watched one form in real-time before. 'Believe me,' he said, 'there are worse places to sleep.'

'Fine,' said Mai, 'I'll duel you for one of your rooms, then. Who's going first? Muscles or crop top?'

'Listen, kid,' said Rafael, 'this is funny and all, but I've got things to do.'

'Sounds to me like you're scared,' said Mai, pouncing instantly. 'Is that it? Worried you're too weak to beat me in a duel? Looks to me like you're not as big and tough as you think. How about you, Valon? You want a rematch?'

Alister raised an eyebrow. 'A rematch of what? The time he beat you?'

'Aw, c'mon, Mai,' said Valon. 'You can just have my bed. Maybe I'll even get out of it first.'

Mai didn't seem to hear the joke, which was a shame. Perhaps Valon would repeat it to her later. Instead she just became even more furious.

'Listen,' she said, 'if there's one thing you should know about me, it's that I don't take hand-outs.'

'I thought it was that you work alone,' said Valon, unable to resist.

'Fuck you,' said Mai.

'Seriously,' said Valon. 'I'm not fussy with my sleeping arrangements. You can repay me by helping me move my shit out, okay? Just take the room.'

Mai looked like she wanted to argue back, but her eyes darted between the sofa and the open door of Valon's bedroom. Some cogs turned transparently in her head. She bit her lip, physically.

Several hours later, Mai returned with her single suitcase from the hotel she'd been staying in. It sat compactly and mockingly in Valon's bedroom, surrounded by space, as Mai began to systematically throw his stuff into the cramped living room. Boxes of loose cards, an assortment of spare helmets and a greasy old roadworks sign that Valon had dragged home from the street came tumbling through the door. He noticed that his many half-finished cigarette packets stayed behind, though.

After Mai was done gutting Valon's room, she unceremoniously slammed the door shut, where it stayed all night. There was nothing left for Valon to do but get comfortable – or something passing for it – on the lumpy, creaky sofa. The blanket almost stretched over his whole body, but not quite. For the first time in his life he thought wistfully of the bunks in juvie.

Giving up his own room had been another stupid idea, he thought. It clearly wasn't going to be worth it even if it really did convince Mai to sleep with him. But then, he'd felt sorry for the girl. He knew how it felt to punch and kick and struggle against thin air, and somehow still manage to lose the fight.

'Night,' he yelled in the direction of his old door.

There was a chilly silence. Then, quiet and begrudging: 'Night'. And then, after another long pause: 'Thanks, Valon.'

She still didn't take the roadworks sign back into the room.

---

Before Mai's arrival, things in the apartment had run smoothly enough. When Valon, Rafael and Alister weren't caught up in Dartz's tangled plots, bloody fights and epic diversions of history, their lives intersected very little.

Rafael kept early hours and spent them brooding haughtily over the house like an enormous blond rook, disapproving of most things. It turned out that the apartment had technically belonged to Rafael before Dartz turned it into a holding area for his right hand men, which maybe accounted for some of Rafael's permanently-simmering resentment. But Rafael never would have dared to broach a question to Dartz that couldn't be answered with 'the power of the Orichalcos'; and so he contented himself with treating his roommates like uninvited houseguests.

Alister, on the other hand, seemed to be nocturnal; although Valon couldn't confirm it for sure, considering that Alister divided his time between attending raves that Valon had never been invited along to, and barricading himself in his room. To Valon, secrecy had always been a challenge rather than a barrier, so he'd poked and prodded and pried until he found out that Alister's nights in mostly involved playing intricate war games on the computer. Which, to Valon's mind, was kind of messed up when you thought about it.

'If your brother died of cancer, would you take up smoking?' he had once commented, leaning uninvited against the wall and watching Alister's computer screen over his shoulder.

Alister had not seen the funny side. Hence: Valon's first black eye since joining DOMA.

Rafael and Alister seemed mostly content with nodding a greeting to each other when their paths crossed at sunrise. The apartment had been submerged in a deep, dignified silence for some time. To Valon, who had been used first to the chatter of the orphanage, then to the commotion of the detention centres, and besides was pathologically and life-ruiningly incapable of shutting up, the atmosphere in the apartment was hell.

Mai, therefore, was turning out to be a breath of fresh air. Noisy, disruptive, furious fresh air. She conducted every conversation like she was hacking at something with an axe. She revved her new motorcycle outside at deliberately anti-social hours. She claimed not to have realised whose chicken and rice she was eating out of the fridge, despite the fact that Rafael ate the same thing for every meal. She threatened at least once a day to march straight over to Dartz's place if he didn't give her a mission, storming away when Valon sniggered and asked how she was planning to drive there underwater.

She was a little abrasive, sure, and she could stand to take things less seriously. But Valon was certain she'd calm down once she'd taken a soul or two. What else could she have to get worked up about, now that she had the Orichalcos on her side?

---

Mai was shuffling blindly back through darkness. The figure kept advancing steadily, its golden eye fixed on her like a headlight; and Mai fell back helplessly in its glare, knowing with animal certainty that she was going to die. Instead, her kneecaps burned suddenly on hard glass. The sand began to fall. This was always the bit where she remembered what would happen next. Her rational brain tried for comfort – she'd dreamt this before, hadn't she? – but sand couldn't feel like that, couldn't stick to her skin and heap up in her hair, unless it was real. And dreams ended, usually. Here time passed and made Mai aware of every second; she counted hours and panicked as she realised she'd been here longer than a night could be.

The sand stuck and clumped in Mai's throat. Her lungs became beanbags. A build-up of grit behind her eyeballs prevented her from swivelling them. The pressure from the sand piled on top of her head pressed down and down, compacting her in, forcing her still and silent and relentlessly alive for eternity…

Mai gasped and choked on spit and swam, stroke by terrified stroke, back up to consciousness. For several minutes she lay paralysed on her back, gulping in air and slowly shaking off dread. Then, as her thoughts began to emerge out of prelinguistic panic and she remembered where she was, she fumbled blindly for the choker on her bedside table and grabbed onto the Orichalcos stone. Whether or not she'd imagined the little shiver of energy it gave, it slowed her heartbeat enough for her to start breathing regularly again.

As the immediate terror faded, a different, duller dread took its place. Mai hadn't dreamt in weeks, good or bad; not since Dartz's temple. She'd got used to sleeping through the night again; she'd stopped planning her days around the slow fog of exhaustion. If the Orichalcos couldn't stop the dream for good, nothing could, and being trapped in the dream every night wasn't much different from being trapped in the hourglass for real.

After Battle City Mai had just felt hollow at first. Tired and a little humiliated and rubbed raw around the boundaries of her selfhood, with all of that trying to be wanted. She was in a funk, was all, and she'd clawed herself out of funks before; still, it got boring fast. Especially when she found that not even winning tournaments could cut through the numbness. After a few weeks she'd been desperate for something to change, anything, as long as it didn't involve running to Yugi and company to humiliate herself further.

Well, she guessed the nightmare counted as a change, although she hadn't appreciated the cosmic joke. It came relentlessly, nightly, as terrifying on the first night as it was on the fortieth. Nothing Mai did seemed to budge it, even as her ideas became more extreme: whether she drank herself unconscious on the sofa, stayed up for days or spent chunks of her savings flying far from Domino City, she still found herself choking on the same waterfall of sand.

The nightmares bled into the daytime, where Mai limped through what was left of her life in a haze of sleep deprivation. Interviewers and sponsors – already irritated from dancing around tech issue-riddled Battle City footage and strict Kaiba Corp NDAs – quickly lost interest in her once they started having to work with her panic attacks. Her mind lagged and wandered too much to keep up with her opponents' duelling strategies. Her apartment felt unsafe, began to remind her of the hourglass; she used up her money moving from hotel to hotel, trying and failing to outrun the nightmares.

Instead of the implosion of her career and her finances, which felt distant, Mai's biggest worry was that she'd never woken up: that she was still trapped in the nightmare realm, and that Domino's clear blue skies and clear glass buildings would crack open at any minute to reveal thick shadows. The edges of her vision swirled threateningly; surfaces breathed; ripples of heat haze and exhaust pipes became ominous. The world felt flat, unreal, as if it was a series of still images implanted into her brain – or as if she was looking at it through a thick layer of glass.

Mai gripped the Orichalcos stone tighter, and a reassuring green glow filtered through her fingers. She felt her thoughts sharpen and her veins contract with the limitless, wonderful swoop of power. No, this was going to work. She was going to show them all. She had been weak, and now she was strong, and the stone and the Orichalcos card were the proof. She was going to climb out of the shadow realm and up into power, and she was going to do it by herself, and she would never have to ask to belong or be punished humiliatingly for it ever again.

Hands still shaking and throat still dry, Mai decided she needed a glass of water. She opened her door and almost immediately slipped on a Duel Monsters card.

'Hey, what the fuck, Mai?' said a nasal voice from the floor. 'Do you know how long I spent organising this shit?'

Mai looked down at where Valon was crouched, a starburst of cards spreading out from him. Other piles were spread across the room; overturned boxes spilled cards. The cards had clearly been arranged in an order, though only in the sense that a pin and string conspiracy board had an order.

Mai replaced the card and stepped carefully over the pile outside her door, then regretted it when she was immediately faced with another one. Irritation flared fast. She'd had her own apartment once, with a view and a waterfall shower head; it seemed immeasurably unfair that she'd landed here, in this cramped, squalid apartment with black mould on her bedroom ceiling and too many roommates.

On the other hand, the irritation carried an edge of relief. Being angry was better than being scared; and pissing everybody off was infinitely better than sitting around a campfire talking about feelings.

'Can it, Valon, I'm not in the mood,' she said, beginning to weave a begrudging path to the kitchen sink. 'What the hell is all this anyway? Finally snapped and decided to start a game shop?'

'What does it look like?' said Valon, pulling a precarious yoga stretch to reach one of the cards further away from him. 'I'm deck-building.'

'What, twenty at once?' said Mai, finally reaching for a glass and ignoring the sink-ful of dirty dishes. 'You need the whole apartment for that?'

'Not like I have anywhere else to do it, is it?' pointed out Valon, which Mai elected to be too busy drinking water to respond to. 'Besides, I've gotta stay on my A game for this mission. You know about that, right?'

'Of course I know about the mission,' snapped Mai immediately. 'I'm not stupid.'

In fact, she'd totally forgotten about it in her panic about the nightmare. It was bad timing; she'd been waiting impatiently for her first mission for weeks, itching to use the Orichalcos card and the electric energy running around her body. Now the itch was pointing more in the direction of several unbroken hours of sleep.

Still, it wasn't like Mai was wasting a solo mission. The four of them were being flown out to a country club that a group of CEOs had hired out, in order to pick off some souls and add to Dartz's ever-growing business portfolio. Mai wasn't particularly impressed by the idea of a class field trip; the training couldn't hurt, but training was all it was. She had bigger things to move onto, after all.

'Actually,' added Mai, to labour the point, 'I was on my way out to pick up some upgrades for my deck.'

'Not bloody likely,' said Valon, gathering up a pile of cards and placing them, bafflingly, on the other side of the room. 'We can't leave the house the day before a mission. Dartz's rules.'

'Seriously?' said Mai. Forced confinement wasn't an appealing idea at the best of times, let alone this morning. 'Dartz has some nerve if he thinks he can ground us like kids. As if he can stop me.'

Valon sniggered. 'You tell 'em, Mai. Put all that yelling in your sleep to good use.'

Mai froze on her way back to her room. With icy deliberation, she sized up the mess of cards on the floor. Then she walked over to the fullest box of cards and booted it full force, sending its contents flying over the room. Satisfied, she retreated back to her room and ignored Valon's outraged banging on the door.

'Oi, Mai! The fuck was that for? Mozart didn't have people kicking his fucking piano, did he?'

Mood much improved, Mai tipped her deck out of its box and fanned it out on the bed. It really could use some upgrades; she'd picked up several new Harpie cards from Dartz's stash which had been waiting on her nightstand, aloofly accusing, for some time now. Mai hadn't duelled since Valon beat her, and it suddenly occurred to her how much she wanted a match. She decided that she wouldn't even give Valon, Rafael and Alister a chance on the mission; with a fresh eye on her strategy, those souls were going to be hers.

Several meditative hours passed while Mai swapped cards in and out of her deck. Valon's voice occasionally drifted in from the next room: 'Aw, Raf, not you too! I left a path for you and all! ... What do you mean where?'. When she finally decided she was happy with her line-up, she slotted the Orichalcos card into the back of her deck box.

The voices outside, Mai noted, were now less dominated by Valon yelling; and she was pretty sure she'd heard an 'I draw'. She guessed she hadn't watched a duel for a while either. Of course, she had better things to do than stand on the sidelines cheering, and even better things to do than try to join in. It wasn't like she needed to play friendlies; she knew her deck was powerful enough to win.

Still, Mai rationalised that she should know her colleagues' duelling styles, just in case she ever needed to beat them in the future. She left her room casually carrying a dirty cup, and allowed herself the barest, most disinterested glance at the ongoing duel as she sauntered over to the kitchen sink. Rafael and Alister were playing tabletop, the board already busy with monsters; Valon was sprawled on the couch, spectating. A regular little gathering, thought Mai acidly (and a little jealously) as she started slowly rinsing the cup, listening in as the duel progressed.

'My turn,' said Alister. 'I reveal my trap card Soldier Revolt, which destroys all cards on your side of the field and sends your hand to the graveyard.'

'Not so fast,' replied Rafael. 'I activate My Body As a Shield. I pay 1500 life points to negate your spell and keep my monsters on the field.'

Mai momentarily fought the urge to comment and lost, hard. All that superior attitude, and this was how Rafael played Duel Monsters?

'Looks like your muscles are bigger than your brain,' she said, abandoning the half-washed cup in the sink. 'You only have one monster on the field, you only have one card in your hand and you're drawing two cards per turn. Why waste the life points on keeping the cards when you're already behind?'

'Great advice, Mai,' said Valon with a wide, mean-spirited grin. 'Raf, have you considered letting your monsters die in the don't-let-your-monsters-die deck?'

Mai flipped him off, and frostily ignored him when he patted the space next to him on the couch.

'Watch the duel and maybe you'll learn something,' Rafael told her gruffly without taking his eyes off Alister's hand. Mai rolled her eyes, but moved closer to the table.

'How cute, it's lunchtime duel club,' she drawled as Rafael shifted the contents of his field up the table to make room for two more facedown cards. 'You know Dartz gave us all duel disks, right?'

'No holograms in the apartment,' said Alister automatically. 'It draws attention. Besides, this place is too small for a light show.'

'Having fun isn't one of Dartz's orders, Mai,' said Valon, with easy mockery. Against her better judgement, Mai cracked a smile at that one. Valon puffed out his chest and looked insufferably pleased with himself.

Alister drew, and looked at his hand with the tight, anticipatory smile of somebody pulling down the bar on a rollercoaster seat.

'I've drawn it,' he said. 'Shall I play it now?'

Rafael stiffened; his eyes focused. 'Play it,' he said.

'Wait a minute,' said Mai, in disbelief. 'You don't mean –'

'You better stand back, Mai,' said Valon unconcernedly, swinging himself off the couch and backing up a few paces.

'Are you all crazy?' said Mai, stepping backwards in alarm. 'You know what it does, right?'

'This is a controlled training situation,' said Rafael, never taking his eyes off Alister's hand hovering over the board. 'Don't even consider trying this yourself, or you're out.'

Alister played. Green light flooded the room, and an invisible force slammed into Mai, forcing her to stumble back a few more steps.

'Too small for a light show, huh?' muttered Mai as she dug in her heels against the wind. The light resolved itself into a small, neat circle around the table.

The air felt charged and heavy, as if electricity was about to strike. Mai felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up; her heart thumped a mixture of excitement and dread against her ribcage. She glanced over at Valon to check if he was having the same reaction, expecting another wisecrack; but for once he was quiet, leaning forward to watch the board intently. There was a strange, hungry gleam in his eye. For the first time since Mai had met him, he looked serious.

For a moment Rafael and Alister stared at each other in silence across the table, with a look of raw, steady determination that Mai recognised from tournament finals. Against her better wishes it sent a thrill through her stomach. Here was the thing she had lost, the thing she had ached for, during all those numb, exhausted months: the tension, the uncertainty, the power crackling in the air waiting to be grabbed.

Alister sacrificed his monsters and played Air Force Ziggurat: 3000 attack points to Rafael's Backup Gardna's 2200 defence.

'Enjoy your soul while you have it, Rafael,' commentated Mai, wondering how he could look so calm. Next turn was a certain loss for him, unless he had something up his sleeve.

Alister attacked; but Rafael stopped it with Rescuer from the Grave, banishing his graveyard in the process.

'What's your game?' muttered Mai to herself, leaning as close to the electric wall of the seal as she could bear.

Rafael had a productive turn, shattering all of Alister's monsters. 'Good game,' he said after ending his turn, with the closest thing to a smile Mai had ever seen on him. 'Because I have no graveyard, I can now play Purity of the Cemetery to deal you 100 life points for every card in yours.'

Alister flicked through his graveyard and nodded. 'Do it,' he said, voice tight. 'I'm ready.'

Rafael flipped Purity of the Cemetery face-up, and the circle began to contract. On instinct Mai cried out and lunged forward to try to pull Alister out, but Valon stopped her with a hand on her shoulder.

The circle shrank until it enclosed Alister neatly, and held him there for a moment, light shimmering. Alister's eyes defocused, as if he'd gone somewhere private. Abruptly he grunted, convulsed once and started to fold forward; Rafael caught him before he collapsed onto the table and propped him back up against the chair.

'But he's –' began Mai, distressed. The golden eye and the sand prickled uncomfortably at the back of her mind.

'Wait for it,' said Valon.

A little orb of green light rose up out of the card Rafael was holding, and raced into Alister's chest as if drawn there with a magnet. Alister twitched, blinked hazily and sat up slowly. 'I nearly had you,' he said, voice croaky, as Rafael passed him a glass of water. 'Give me five and I'll try again with another combo. No Orichalcos.'

Rafael nodded and began to shuffle his deck as if nothing has happened. 'Make sure you're both ready for the mission too,' he said to Mai and Valon. 'Dartz expects to see us all on good form.'

'C'mon then Mai, how about it?' said Valon. The gleam in his eye was gone, his expression back to casual insolence. 'You made a new deck for the mission?'

'A new deck?' scoffed Mai. 'I'm not twelve. My cards actually do the job.'

Out of the corner of her eye Mai saw Rafael nod in response, which filled her with alarm. Rafael's approval felt more improbable than any shadow game magic she'd seen.

'Whatever,' said Valon, 'My new decks are gonna crush you. Wanna have that rematch?'

Mai hesitated. Valon acted like they were friends, and encouraging him could only end badly. Maybe his blunt honesty was a cover for something more dangerous; or maybe he expected more of her than she was willing to give, and she'd never be able to shake him off.

Rafael turned back to his cards. Alister was still staring off into space, taking occasional sips of water. Valon took the opportunity to whisper in her ear, 'I've got a tonne of booze stashed under my bed for days we can't leave the house. Only way to get you through it.'

Mai hesitated less. Drowning out the nightmare aftershocks and the mission jitters was an appealing idea, even if Valon did have to be there. If she was lucky he'd let her keep some of the alcohol, and she could make a quick getaway and spend the rest of the evening drinking alone in peace.

Besides, she did want to try out her new, improved deck.

'Fine, you're on. I'll give you one match, so you'd better make it count.'

Valon grinned in triumph. 'After you,' he said, impressed with his own chivalry, as he gestured Mai into her own room.

---

Empty, crushed cans littered Mai's bedroom floor. A yellow-stained glass collected a thick mash of cigarette butts. Mai's one match had turned into a best of three, which had turned into a best of five, which had turned into as many games as it took for them to finish Valon's supply of cheap, unrefrigerated beer.

It had occurred to Mai, as she forced herself to gulp down the warm, flat end of her fourth or maybe fifth can, that there was no reason they had to finish it. They hadn't even agreed to it out loud, just determinedly kept pace with each other. Still, she wasn't backing down now. Mai never had done things by halves, and she never had turned away from a competition; Valon, it seemed, was the same way. On one hand, this meant Mai was having an unexpectedly fun evening; on the other, it meant that Valon had been right when he said they were alike, and therefore had something over her. She was just going to have to win at everything else to make up for it.

Mai and Valon were both sprawled out on the un-vacuumed carpet; sitting up had started to feel like a chore several drinks ago. Mai lazily offered Valon another of his own cigarettes, which he accepted and lit without bothering to open the window.

'C'mon, Valon,' slurred Mai, fumbling the lighter in front of her own cigarette. 'Wanna lose again?'

'Yeah, nah,' said Valon, about as coherently as his strategy had become, this far into the crate of beers. 'No chance.' Then, he said, hopefully: 'Wanna make this one strip Duel Monsters?'

Mai drained the last of her can and threw it in the direction of Valon's head. It missed, clattered against the wall and landed, dripping, in a pile of dirty laundry.

'Dream on,' she said, unbothered. 'I've been beating you all night, and if I wanted to see a scrawny naked dude I'd play Ojamas.'

'You must be fucking blind, Valentine,' said Valon. He picked up Mai's failed projectile, which had already put an impressive stain into one cup of a white corset. 'You call this,' – he squeezed the can with his bicep; it did not dent – 'fucking scrawny?'

Mai cackled mean-spiritedly. 'Don't blow a vessel, hon. You're no Rafael.'

Valon made a noise of protest, which might have been jealous. 'Yeah, no shit I'm not Rafael! I'm not sucking off Dartz for the front seat of the helicopter, am I?'

Mai snorted. 'Alright, I'll admit it, you're not so bad,' she said. 'You're the only person here who knows how to have fun, anyway.' She cracked open another beer and rolled a second towards Valon, like a challenge. Then she swiped five cards off the top of her deck and waved them in Valon's direction. 'Your turn to play first. Not that it's gonna help you.'

Valon grinned with supreme arrogance and leaned back on his elbows. 'Knew you'd see sense in the end. Not many people can resist for that long.'

'Just play the damn card, Valon.'

Valon played the damn card, which predictably turned out to be a monster in attack mode. Mai summoned a Harpie Lady and demolished it immediately, but Valon's smile didn't waver. It made her feel on edge. She may have been winning in Duel Monsters, but she felt she had misplayed in real life.

'Just to be clear, that doesn't mean I owe you anything,' she told him. 'I'm going to get what I came for, and then I'm out of here.'

'Yeah, you and the rest of Dartz's wallpaper,' said Valon, almost to himself.

Mai ignored this in favour of her next move. Soon the game fell into a steady rhythm, although Mai stayed ahead. Valon had drunk enough that he was beginning to play sloppily, forgetting about Mai's face-down cards. Mai felt relaxed and absent-minded, playing on comfortable auto-pilot.

'So what did you come here for, then?' said Valon. 'Can't be to end the world if you think you're getting out.'

Mai's hand was looking good; if only she could draw Elegant Egotist, she'd have a solid combo. Her attention elsewhere, she said: 'I have to beat someone.'

'Yeah? That's usually the way it goes. Beating someone, or avenging someone. Who are you beating, then?'

'You might know him if you keep up with the tournament scene. Blond, scruffy, still uses Baby Dragon?'

Valon thought for a moment, then laughed. 'Joey Wheeler, right? Runner-up in Duellist Kingdom? He your ex or something?'

Mai tossed her hair contemptuously. 'Make that ex-friend, thanks.'

'What did he do, bend one of your cards?' said Valon with a smirk.

Mai considered it, drinking down a long, bitter mouthful of beer. In the wake of Battle City, her train of thought had been confined to two questions, looping pointlessly around in her head: What the hell happened? and How do I make it stop? Other than I don't know and you can't, which she refused to accept, the only answer that fit had been Joey.

'He made a fool out of me,' she said, indignantly. 'He tricked me into letting my guard down right before a big match. I don't know if he was trying to throw me off my game or what. I mean, it's not like it would have worked on me normally. But that match was…'

Mai paused. She was getting into dangerous territory. There was no way she could tell Valon about the memory gaps, or the hourglass, or the furnace heat of Ra bearing down on her. Or about Joey pulling uselessly at the manacles. He'd smelled of several-day-old t-shirt, which she'd found comforting at the time: proof that he was real and solid, in that shifting nightmare place. Now the familiarity of it made her feel sick and panicky. He'd acted like she was part of the group so convincingly she'd believed him; she'd let him pull down all her defences, until raw bleeding bits began to show. No wonder Marik had been able to rip his way into her psyche so easily. If she'd had her wits about her, maybe she wouldn't even have let Ra get onto the field.

'The match was… bad,' she completed, testing the feel of the words in her mouth. Adrenaline began to pound through her. She hadn't said any of this out loud before. 'I can't go into detail, but… Some pretty freaky stuff happened at Battle City. Weird enough to make Dartz's temple look like a kids' paddling pool. I lost, and something happened to me. I wasn't the same afterwards. I don't even know what happened, I was just…'

Talking about it felt good now, like bleeding poison. A clean sting.

'I went crazy. I couldn't sleep through the night, couldn't eat. Didn't even feel different when I won tournaments. It was like some part of me went missing and I couldn't even remember what it was. I became weak. And if Wheeler hadn't made me lose that match, it wouldn't have happened to me. I'd still be strong. So now I have to beat him and move on. It's the only way for me to get my old life back.'

Mai hadn't realised she'd been talking for so long, lost to the rush of saying it out loud. It was like she'd come back to herself with a jolt. She wondered if she was going to regret talking about it when she was sober. She looked defiantly over at Valon, steadying herself for his reaction, but he was staring into space, the cigarette in his hand about to drop ash on the carpet.

'Aw, that sucks, Mai,' he said, after a moment.

Valon stubbed out the cigarette half-smoked and moved around the cards, coming to sit next to her. He rested a hand on her arm. Mai's heart jumped into her throat. She was walking on a knife's edge of vulnerability, equal parts pleasurable and painful. She both wanted and dreaded his sympathy, pulled so strongly in each direction it felt like she was going to split in half.

'…Would it help if we made out?' said Valon.

Mai froze in surprise. Then giddy relief swept through her. She was already beginning to feel like she'd said too much; she didn't know what she would have done if Valon had actually been listening. She tipped her head back and crowed with laughter; Valon, whose hand on her arm had really been more like a drunken lean, pitched forwards and had to stretch out his arms to avoid falling flat on his face.

'Jesus, Valon,' she said, catching her breath, 'I said I was down on my luck, not desperate.'

Valon hauled himself up with his confidence somehow still intact. 'Aw, c'mon, Mai, have a heart,' he said, a sullen note entering his voice despite his cocky grin. 'We were both thinking it.'

'Maybe you were,' said Mai. 'I was too busy wiping the floor with you at Duel Monsters. Give it up, Valon, you're just a stupid kid.'

Valon's smile dropped. 'Oh, lighten up, will you?' he said. 'It was a fucking joke. God, Mai, get over yourself.' He moved back over to his cards and sprawled back out on the floor. 'And who are you calling a kid?' he muttered. 'I know a fake ID when I see one.'

'Whatever,' said Mai, unabashed. 'Your turn.'

The game continued, but the mood was dead. Valon was silent and sulky apart from when he played his moves, and lit another cigarette as soon as he'd finished his last one without offering the box to Mai. On her side of the field, Mai was mentally replaying what she'd said about Battle City with increasing horror. She was beginning to feel heavy-limbed and dizzy, unpleasantly lucid even as her head swam drunkenly.

Before Mai had the satisfaction of chipping his life points down to zero, Valon clumsily started gathering his cards together.

'Alright,' he said, voice blurry, 's'late, mission's tomorrow, and one of us has to be responsible.'

Mai watched him accusingly as he slowly, carefully stood up. In a couple of moves she would have beaten him anyway, and then she could have kicked him out of the room.

Valon turned back to her before he left the room. 'And I'm telling you, it was a joke, yeah?' He shut the door behind him, too heavily, before Mai had a chance to respond.

The room suddenly seemed uncomfortably quiet without Valon in it. Mai didn't want to wake up early for the mission, and she wanted even less to see what her subconscious had in store for her when she fell asleep. She remained sitting on the floor, nursing the rest of her beer despite being far too drunk to enjoy it, until she couldn't put off going to bed any longer.

Her head spun on the pillow. How could she have been so stupid, spilling her guts like that? All that cringing embarrassment after she'd asked Joey if she was in his dream, and she hadn't even learned her lesson from it.

But her train of thought was interrupted by what sounded unmistakeably, through the thin wall, like Valon throwing up into the kitchen sink. At least she'd won at the drinking, thought Mai; and the thought comforted her enough to send her to sleep.

---

Mai woke up wondering whether the loud, repetitive thudding noise was confined to her head. The headache said yes; the way the door was rattling in its frame said no.

'Alright, cool it, I'm already up,' she shouted. Well, croaked. Then she squeezed her eyes shut again and hoped the helicopter could wait another hour. She hadn't dreamt, but her mouth was so dry that the hourglass would probably feel like an oasis.

She managed about five minutes of semi-consciousness before the banging on her door started up again. She reluctantly peeled herself out of bed like a wad of chewing gum from a shoe and made the unpleasant discovery, upon standing upright, that she was still drunk. Her head swam. Her sweat smelled alcoholic. The sky, visible through Valon's broken, crooked curtains, was still filthy grey.

Mai took one step, immediately kicked over Valon's last half-finished can, and stood for several helpless, disbelieving moments watching the pool of beer froth and soak into the carpet. There was no time to clean it before she left. She'd waited for the mission for weeks, got her deck into its best working order yet for it, and now she'd fucked it up before it had even begun. She hated Valon and his unfinished drink; she hated Rafael and Alister and Dartz and their orders; and most of all she hated herself for messing up so badly she'd landed herself here.

She eventually emerged from her room to the sound of raised voices – and for once, the loudest one wasn't Valon's. Rafael was looming over the sofa where Valon, drawn-faced, was slowly and miserably buckling up his armour.

'What the hell were you thinking?' snapped Rafael. He wore a coat and had his bike helmet tucked under his arm, as if he was ready to leave at any moment. Valon wore one boot, which he hadn't laced up yet. 'You've never been this irresponsible before. You showed up for missions at least. What's gotten into you?'

Alister was sitting on the floor leaning against the wall, looking bored. 'I can make a guess,' he said, nodding in Mai's direction.

Rafael turned his head sharply, and his frown sunk in deeper. 'Of course. Finally finished applying your make-up?' he spat to Mai.

The prospect of a fight restored a little of Mai's energy. 'Morning, boys,' she said, with a pugnacious smile. 'If you're all done gossiping, I hear we have a helicopter to catch.'

'Fine. Let's head out. But if you get in the way, your soul is on the line, is that understood?'

'Oh, please.' Mai scooped her hair up with a flourish to fit into her helmet. 'Save the histrionics, I can hold my own just fine. If anything you'll get in my way.'

Several hours later, Mai was beginning to regret her words. She'd started sobering up in earnest somewhere between the fast-paced motorcycle ride to the helipad, the deafening noise of the rotor blades and Rafael's barked orders. Neither Duel Monsters strategy nor the energy to run across a golf course were coming easy.

Instead she was sprawled out on a large, plush armchair in the clubhouse. A fire crackled in the hearth. Occasional bursts of green light flashed in through the window.

'Fuck, it's roasting in here,' said Valon from the other armchair, where he had taken on the posture of a wilting plant.

'No kidding,' said Mai. 'The heat's making me nauseous.' Neither she nor Valon made any attempt to move away. The fire continued to crackle. There was a mutually miserable silence.

'So, is this your usual tactic on missions?' said Mai, eventually and pointedly.

Valon had slid down so his head was resting on the arm of the chair. 'It is when some alco nutjob

makes me go on a bender the night before,' he said, glaring balefully at Mai upside down.

Mai raised an unimpressed eyebrow. 'Made you? Give me a break, you were begging me for a rematch. Anyway, I'm not the one who hoards cheap shitty beer under my bed.'

The room lit up green again, and a gust of wind battered up against the windows hard enough to make them rattle. Mai glared outside furiously and thumbed the blank card in her hand.

'This lot are probably weak anyway,' muttered Valon.

When Mai glanced over, he was looking equally wistfully out of the window.

'So much for Rafael's posturing earlier,' she said, as a reluctant olive branch. 'Who does he think he is, chewing us out like that?'

Valon smirked and, with some effort, lifted himself back upright. 'I thought he was going to kick my head in. As if he's never overslept. Not like there were any alarm clocks on the desert island, is it?'

Outside, the clouds had given way to a sharp shower of rain. Several voices were shouting over each other; somebody groaned as if punched.

Valon grinned wider this time. 'Be shit to be out there, wouldn't it?'

For once, Mai smiled back on purpose. 'Suckers.'

---

Valon downed the rest of his drink and, with mechanical efficiency, got up for another round. 'Drink up,' he told Mai, who hadn't finished hers yet.

The bar was at its busiest. The thumping bass line was the only part of the music audible over the clamour of raised voices. Valon shoved his way through the crowd, slopping drinks as he went. If people wanted to get angry about it, let them – Valon could take any one of them.

The girl at the bar nodded at him in recognition. This was one of Valon and Mai's usual haunts, which fit their minimum requirements: cheap, rowdy, a motorcycle race away. Valon ordered with a casual lean on the bar and tried to make lingering eye contact with the bartender, who he'd decided was pretty cute.

'This one could do with a little more head, don't you think?' he said, with a salacious grin, as she placed the glasses of beer on the counter.

She wordlessly turned to top up the glass he'd pointed to, and gave Valon the total without a smile. Well, next time.

Back at the table Mai wasn't in any better of a mood, although that was a given. 'Took you long enough,' she said, taking her drink off him without a thanks. 'You want to give someone else a turn with the bag, hon?'

'Jesus, didn't anyone ever tell you patience is a virtue?' complained Valon, fishing it out of his pocket and dropping it on the table in front of her.

Mai snatched it up like it was about to start beaming a signal. 'Oh, real slick,' she said, stuffing it into the deck box strapped around her thigh. 'I think one of the bouncers over there didn't see the drugs, if you wanna be even less subtle about it. Maybe try calling up the owner and say you want to get barred from another place.'

She was yelling so loudly over the music that several people glanced over in their direction, but by a stroke of luck none of them were wearing security vests. Valon shrugged blamelessly as she stalked away in the direction of the bathrooms, relaxed back into his seat, and set himself to people-watching.

People who interested Valon usually came in two categories: people he could fight, and people he could fuck. There were plenty of the latter hanging around, but while Valon wasn't bad at bringing people home with him, he never had any luck getting them to stay after seeing his sleeping arrangements.

The fighting always had come easier. When he was a kid, Sister Mary Catherine used to say frequently that she could blink and he'd be in a scrap by the time she opened her eyes. Once she'd walked in on him with one of the other kids in a headlock and, when Valon told her she shouldn't have blinked, she'd made such a bad job of suppressing her laughter that one of the other nuns had to tell her off.

…Valon was digressing. Wasn't like she was here now, was it? Those days were gone, and anyway, turning the other cheek had never got him anything except an additional black eye. Dartz's way was better: if he was going to find himself in fights whatever he did, he might as well enjoy them.

Mai emerged from the bathrooms still sniffing deeply. She sat back down and started drumming a frenetic, irregular rhythm on the table with her long nails.

'Hey, Mai, what do you think of the chick on the bar? Reckon I've got a shot?'

Mai gave her an appraising look. To Valon's annoyance, not even a single flicker of jealousy passed over her face. 'Yeah, she's pretty hot,' she said. 'And way out of your league, Romeo. You got a thing for blondes or something?'

Valon leaned back in his seat and smirked. 'Don't let your ego get any bigger, Valentine, or you won't fit out the door.'

Mai smiled like a hunter watching the fox swagger its way right into the snare. 'So it's a coincidence you own a stack of magazines with my face on them?'

Come to think of it, Valon didn't remember his duelling magazines being thrown through the door with the rest of his stuff. 'Alright, listen –' he said. 'I mean –' He crossed his arms defensively. 'I wasn't the one posing on a bed scattered with fucking Duel Monsters cards, was I?'

'Oh, please,' said Mai. 'If you believe any of that stuff you're stupider than I thought. Magazines like that were made to sell products to chumps like you, and it sounds like you totally fell for it. If I'm going to be treated like an object in this industry anyway, I don't see why I shouldn't get paid for it. You know, you wouldn't believe some of the bullshit men have said to me while…'

The thing about Mai, thought Valon, was that she loved the sound of her own voice, especially when she'd got into a bag of coke. His concentration began drifting. His gaze wandered idly to the snooker table – maybe if Mai agreed to a game she'd stop monologuing – but it was occupied. It was a big guy who was playing, bald and mean-looking. Valon considered whether the guy would get aggro if he tried to interrupt. The bumps he'd done earlier in the night were itching in his veins and making him restless. A fight could do him some good.

Baldy snaps the cue in half, imagined Valon, wistfully. He swings at me, but I jump it and kick him square in the chest. He stumbles back into the bar, spilling beers everywhere. He charges me like a fucking rhino, but I sidestep it easily and he crashes down, breaking a few chairs on the way…

'…And the questions they ask are enough to drive you insane,' continued Mai. 'Would an interviewer ever ask Yugi Mutou what brand of face cream he uses? Of course not. But they assume I'm just some dumb, vapid woman who couldn't have anything to say about duelling strategy, so they don't bother…'

Baldy's out for the fucking count but I don't have time to celebrate; Dress Shirt at the bar is looking pissed and approaching me. Suddenly I sense a fist about to hit me from behind. WHAM, no look, I use my elbow to send this guy's nose up into his fucking brain. Dress Shirt sees this and hesitates for just a second too long. Wrong move, dickhead. I use the opening to close the gap, hand on the back of his head. SLAM. I bring his head down onto the bar, he's eating wood…

'…Like it's anything new. Half the customers on the cruise ships were sexist pigs who wouldn't think twice about sticking their hand up a sixteen-year-old's skirt. They couldn't tell the difference between customer service and reality. They probably thought the tribute acts on stage were the real thing too. Seriously, you wouldn't believe the things they'd ask me for when my manager was out of sight…'

I help myself to what's left of Dress Shirt's drink as I'm scanning the rest of the room. Most people are smart enough to step the fuck away, but one of the bouncers is sizing me up. I can't let him get the advantage, so I down the rest of my drink and whip the bottle at his head. This big mean motherfucker catches it in midair like it didn't even phase him. Impressive. He hurls it back but it's heading straight for the bartender. I leap over the bar and tackle her out of the way just as the bottle explodes against the wall. She's too stunned to speak, but I can see the admiration in her eyes…

'…And then one guy offered me ten thousand euros to dress up like a nun for him. He didn't even want me to do anything else, just pose wearing one of those –' She mimed out the shape of a headdress. 'You know, one of those –'

Valon snapped abruptly back to reality. 'A wimple,' he supplied.

Mai stared at him for a few moments, slack-jawed. 'Jesus, Valon,' she said, finally. 'At least pretend to think about it for a second.'

'What?' said Valon, nonplussed.

'I don't care if you have some weird fetish, just keep it to yourself.'

Valon recoiled bodily. 'Urgh, Mai, what the fuck? I was raised by nuns, you pervert.'

Mai looked him up and down suspiciously, as if unsure whether he was making fun of her. 'That's a crock of shit and you know it,' she decided eventually. 'Nobody's raised by nuns.'

'What do you mean, it's a crock of shit? Ask anyone, they'll tell you. Ask Raf, you know he never jokes.'

For the first time since Valon had met Mai, she was looking at him with interest. 'What are you doing with Dartz, then? Career in the nunnery didn't work out for you?'

Valon shrugged, taken off guard. 'I dunno,' he said, defensive. 'It's something, isn't it? I mean, Dartz got me out of prison, so it's better than that. World's fucked either way, might as well be on the team that ends it.'

'Oh, come on, there's no need to be a drama queen. Dartz claims to be ten thousand years old, right? If he knew how to cause the apocalypse, he would have done it by now.'

Valon was getting sick of this conversation already. He stood up abruptly, dug his keys out of his pocket and held out his hand. 'Look, it doesn't matter. Gimme the bag, I'm sobering up.'

Mai raised her eyebrows as she handed it over, but didn't comment. Valon snatched it off her and barged his way through the crowd towards the bathrooms.

Mai was kidding herself, the same way that most people were kidding themselves, that the world couldn't end that easily. Valon knew better; he'd seen how quickly a building could burn, and how quickly you could forget there was ever a world outside the detention centre. Whether or not Dartz really could take out everyone on the planet – unlike Rafael and Alister, he'd never been convinced by the all-powerful act – Valon knew that, between his two choices of DOMA and prison, he didn't have a much of a future. Apocalypse or not, it was all the same to him.

But even if everything was pointless, Valon tried not to think about it too hard. The timer was still going to be ticking for a while before the end, after all. He could run down the clock with new sets of cards, zippers to fumble down, the cheap power rush of a knock-out punch. Nights out, the endless repetition of them, just for something to do.

The bump of coke was an instant relief. There wasn't any need to worry, was there? Just because things were pointless, it didn't mean they couldn't be fun. Valon emerged from the cubicle full of self-righteous energy and stared at himself in the mirror like a challenge, gripping the sink until the Orichalcos ring began to bite into his finger. Fuck it. There was only the here and now.

Outside, Valon's chemical self-assurance momentarily flickered when he realised his table had been taken by someone else. For a moment he thought Mai had headed home on her own – it wouldn't be the first time – but when Valon scanned the room he spotted her by the bar, talking to Dress Shirt of all people. Mai had to get some better standards.

On further inspection, she had three cards spread out in front of her. 'C'mon, champ, you can't keep track of one card?' she was saying, voice syrupy. 'I'll even go extra slow for you this time. You want to win the money back, right?'

Dress Shirt squinted at the cards as Mai began to move them around, an arrogant little smile on her face. After some deliberation, he tapped one. Mai flipped it over with a flourish to reveal a Rose Whip.

'Oops, too bad, hon! Not the card you were looking for. Better luck next time.'

Dress Shirt swayed on the spot for a moment, processing his defeat. Mai had a talent for picking marks who had had one too many. 'Waidaminute,' he slurred, his brow furrowing. 'You switched the cards, I saw you. You're scamming me! You switched the cards!'

Valon watched a fleck of spit arc out of his mouth and land on Mai's arm; righteous fury washed over him.

'Listen, sweetheart, I think we've had a little misunder-'

Before Mai could finish, Valon had already charged up to them, and was advancing into Dress Shirt's space. 'Are you bothering her, mate?'

'You're both in on it,' shouted Dress Shirt, pointing between them. 'You stole my money, you pair of –'

Valon jabbed his finger back, ignoring the bouncers' eyes on him. 'If you lay one finger on her, I'll rip your fucking throat out and –'

'Valon, I swear to god, if you don't back the fuck off –' Mai was yelling in his ear.

'I'll call the police,' continued Dress Shirt, 'you lying, cheating bitch.'

Valon headbutted him square in the face. Blood spurted.

'Oh, give me a break,' said Mai, rolling her eyes and draining as much of her drink as she could before the bouncers descended.

Valon thrashed against the four of them as they dragged him out. 'Get your hands off of me,' he roared, landing a well-placed elbow in one of their mouths. 'I'll fucking – I'll follow you home. I'll fucking stab you in your sleep.'

Mai stalked out behind him and stood over him, arms crossed, as he was deposited in a heap outside the door. He lifted himself off the ground and dusted himself off with practiced flair. 'So,' he said, satisfied. 'Onto the next place?'

Mai glared and crossed her arms tighter. 'Are you kidding me? What the fuck was that about, G.I. Joe? I had it under control.'

'Aw, c'mon, Mai, you could try to be a little more grateful,' protested Valon. 'I was only protecting you.'

'Well, I don't need protecting. You've seen me handle worse, I can look after myself.' She jammed her helmet onto her head, swung her leg over her bike and sped off.

'So are we going to the next place, or…' shouted Valon uselessly after her, and then realised his own helmet was still inside. 'Aw, fuck. Well, there's another one gone.'

He jumped on his bike without it and zoomed away after her, unsure of where Mai was going. She was taking a twisting, winding route, speeding up and swerving off every time Valon caught up to her so that he had to run red lights and shoot through tiny gaps in traffic. Still, she couldn't quite manage to lose him, and in the end she pulled up in front of their apartment building.

Valon dismounted, sweaty from adrenaline. 'Alright, Jesus, you win. I shouldn't have headbutted your mark.'

'Whatever, that bar was dead anyway,' said Mai. Her tone was still haughty, but she did wait for Valon to follow her into the apartment before slamming the door. 'At least I got to keep the cash.'

Valon's piles of stuff had grown greater than ever, creeping over every surface in the living room. Several weeks ago he'd staggered home, attempted to turn down the radiator and ended up clumsily twisting the whole dial off, so the air in the apartment was now permanently muggy and close. Music thumped out from underneath Alister's door, even though it was well past midnight. A dinner plate was growing white spores on the kitchen counter.

Valon and Mai, used to it, were unbothered. They shifted food cartons and mugs off the side of the coffee table, sending them crashing to the floor, and shook out the remainder of the bag. Cyber Harpie frowned off the face of her card, disgruntled, as she was used to portion it out into generous lines.

Probably too long a line, thought Valon, dusting the excess off his nose, but he wasn't about to admit that to Mai. His heart was pounding against his ribs like a caged animal. To take his mind off it he glanced towards his duel disk, which was lying abandoned on the stove for lack of any other clear surface to put it on. Rafael would probably go apeshit if he saw it – it's a priceless Atlantean artefact, Valon – but it wasn't like anybody did much cooking in the apartment anyway.

'Hey, Mai, Raf's a heavy sleeper, right?' he said.

'Absolutely not,' said Mai. 'He starts foaming at the mouth if he hears someone breathe after 8pm.'

'So he probably wouldn't notice a few holograms, right?' Valon pressed on, ignoring her.

'Who cares? It's just a few flashing lights. It's about time we had a real duel, anyway.'

They strapped on their duel disks and, after a little mutual goading, turned the shock settings up to max. Mai flashed Valon a cocky grin across the room, hand on her hip, as if she was posturing in a tournament final.

'Ready to eat shit, Valentine?' he told her.

'With whatever joke of a deck you're using this week? Dream on, sweetheart,' replied Mai.

But Valon was playing well, mercilessly destroying Mai's monsters as they appeared on the field. The latest line of coke and the familiar squeeze of the ring on his finger were giving him a serene, grandiose confidence. His veins thrummed and his head felt viciously clear. Mai, on the other hand, was getting sloppy, concentrating more on trash talking than on strategy.

In one particularly bad turn she took a direct hit of 1,200 points. The duel disk crackled with energy; she dropped to her knees, her hand over her heart.

'Oh, shit, Mai,' said Valon in alarm. 'You good? You wanna take a break?'

Mai breathed slow and deep, still clutching her chest. She raised herself unsteadily to her feet. 'What, are you scared you're losing? It's my turn.'

The game continued. Rafael and his sleeping habits forgotten, their voices grew louder and louder. Mai summoned a Harpie Lady; Valon revealed a trap card and took it out instantly. He punched the air. 'Suck my dick, Valentine,' he yelled in celebration. 'You think you can beat me here, in my room? Home field advantage, motherfucker!'

Mai seethed with fury. 'Fuck you,' she shouted back, 'and fuck your deck, and your stupid –' she picked up a glass from the floor – 'fucking –' she stretched her arm back to aim – 'monster.' She flung the glass at the hologram. It sailed straight through and smashed on the wall next to Rafael's room, spraying shards everywhere.

Valon and Mai both froze, staring at each other for a moment in silent, wide-eyed hysteria. Alister's music continued to thump through the wall. Nothing happened.

'Alright, I set a card face-down,' said Valon in a conscientious whisper, 'and end my –'

Rafael's door burst open so hard it bounced off the wall next to it.

'That's it, this has gone too far,' he snarled at Mai, vivid with anger. 'What the hell is wrong with you? I'm going to speak to Dartz, and I'm going to make sure he kicks you out. Today.'

Mai scoffed. 'Oh, you're going to go crying to Daddy? What's he gonna do, chant in a chamber about it?'

'Yeah, lay off her, Raf,' Valon chimed in. 'If she leaves, I leave, alright?'

To Valon's great interest, Rafael made a face as if he'd been slapped. Valon had never had any reason not to follow orders at DOMA before, and he'd never allowed himself to consider what he could get away with. A familiar wave of giddy power swept over him: like wriggling out of the grip of a prison guard.

'You're not thinking straight, Valon,' Rafael told him after a moment's recalibration. 'Get some sleep and stop interfering with things that don't concern you. And I've told you, don't call me Raf.'

Valon did what he did best, and pushed. He allowed his most obnoxious grin to spread over his face. 'Well, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.'

Mai cackled, enjoying the show. 'Yeah, sorry for interrupting your beauty sleep, Raf.'

Rafael clenched the boulders of his fists. 'Listen, I don't know what Dartz was thinking when he decided to hire some airhead party girl, but his plans are the only thing keeping me from taking you out myself. And once he's finished with you, which believe me, he will be, you're done. Do you understand me?'

Mai opened her mouth, but Rafael turned to Valon before she could speak.

'And as for you, you should be ashamed of yourself. Dartz gave you a second chance, and you're throwing it back in his face. You think that when Sister Mary Catherine was in hospital dying of lung damage, this is what she wanted for you?'

Now it was Valon's turn to flinch. 'Low blow, Raf,' he said. 'And don't fucking act like you knew her.'

But Rafael had already turned back into his room and closed the door. For a moment an uncertain silence filled the room; even Alister had turned down his music.

Mai folded her arms and glared indignantly. 'Where does he get off, telling us off like we're kids?'

'He did get one thing right though,' remarked Valon. 'Told you I was raised by nuns.'

---

Mai guessed she was bound to run into them eventually. She was lucky that Yugi was so recognisable from such a long distance away; it gave her time to duck into an alleyway as Yugi and Téa passed on the other side of the road, pressing herself up against the wall in the shadow cast by a dumpster.

She was expecting them to head into the arcade, but to her irritation they stopped just outside, directly opposite her alleyway. A cat had wandered out from a bush, which was clearly proving more interesting than whichever game Yugi was planning to effortlessly beat inside. The cat sprawled happily out on the sidewalk; Yugi and Téa, enraptured, dropped their schoolbags and sat down on the kerb to pet it.

'I hope Joey doesn't get his arm stuck in the claw machine this time,' Mai managed to catch Yugi saying.

'He could have gotten himself out if he hadn't held onto the prize,' said Téa, whose thin veneer of disapproval was doing a terrible job at covering her amusement. 'I can't believe he really thought the attendant was going to get a hacksaw.'

The cat had climbed into Téa's lap, where it was pawing contentedly at the ribbon on her school uniform. It was just so easy for some people to be wanted, thought Mai contemptuously.

Yugi leaned over in the direction of the cat, which made the puzzle around his neck slip forward and flash in the light. Its eye stared down the alleyway and locked, unblinking, on Mai. She froze rigid; her heart raced. Her mind flickered, shutter-speed, between the headlight eye in the forehead, and the golden rod in her face, and the indifferent golden gaze of Ra. The Orichalcos stone felt hot at her neck, the band of the choker too tight.

She could end this now. There were a few blank cards in her deck box; she could walk out of the alleyway, challenge them to a duel and send them far, far out of her life. Playing it out in her head, Mai knew it was the perfect opportunity: she could take Téa's soul first and catch Yugi off-guard. Then she just needed to wait for Joey to arrive, and she'd be done. The nightmares would end, and she'd be back to her old self.

It was so simple, so why couldn't she move? Mai's hand shook on the clasp of her deck box, but the rest of her remained frozen. What was her problem? Didn't she want to move on? Wasn't the point of all this, the time she was wasting on the missions and the miserable apartment, to become strong?

But the opportunity slipped away. Téa yelped and jumped to her feet; the cat had got bored of the game and dug its claws in. Mai watched Téa and Yugi head into the arcade, laughing guilelessly, and felt adrenaline drain from her like tepid dishwater. Furious with herself and relieved in equal measures, she took her deck out of her box just to hold onto the familiar, grounding shape of the cards.

Three filled soul cards that she hadn't yet returned to Dartz leered at her from the back of the deck. The blank soul cards yawned invitingly. The Orichalcos stone was now a warm, reassuring glow at her chest.

Soon. She was going to get out soon.

---

Mai woke to sheets drenched and wrinkled with cold sweat, a throat so raw it felt like tenderised meat and the lingering sensation of sand exfoliating her eyeballs. The air in the apartment was greenhouse-hot and stifling; the stained carpet still smelt of warm, stale beer. The light from the streetlamp outside filtered through the broken curtains and gave the room a surreal, nightmarish graininess.

It took a long time for Mai to convince herself she wasn't still in the dream. Before her initiation into DOMA she'd sometimes woken up relieved to see the familiar view outside her apartment, only for it to disintegrate into purple shadow, and for the sand to start up all over again. Even when she fastened her choker around her neck, the Orichalcos stone didn't clear her head completely. Her breaths still stung her throat, and blood still pounded in her temples.

Even though the walls stayed intact she still felt unreal, impersonal, as if she'd unexpectedly woken up in a stranger's life. The evidence of life outside – Alister clattering a pan out of the cupboard, Valon snoring rhythmically, the faint stream of traffic – felt flimsy and two-dimensional, like set dressing. As if something sinister was hiding behind it all; as if Mai had figured out what it was. The world felt big, lonely and dangerous, and Mai felt deeply sorry for herself.

She should have duelled Yugi and Téa earlier while she'd had the chance. If she had them in front of her now, she'd probably skip the Duel Monsters and wring both their necks.

It was still dark outside, and Mai was already sick of being conscious. The hard ball of terror in her chest still hadn't budged; the dream still lurked at the periphery of her mind; the racing panic was becoming unbearable. She didn't have the patience to wait for the Orichalcos stone to work its magic, if it even had any left. Instead she reached under the bed, pulled out a can of beer and, before she could feel how warm it was and change her mind, cracked it open and drank until she needed to come up for air. At least now she'd have an excuse for spacey she felt.

Sleep refused to come back, and Mai probably wouldn't have risked it anyway. The sky began to lighten in increments; the sound of Alister's cooking was replaced with the whirr of a protein shake in the blender as Rafael woke up. Valon continued to snore, undisturbed.

Mai stared dry-eyed out of the windowpane, slowly sipping the other half of the beer. The dream sat next to her, a solid presence in the room, and refused to budge.

---

'…And then that one,' said Valon, pointing enthusiastically at yet another bar, 'was your fault. I went for a piss and you fell asleep at the table, remember? They had to carry you out.'

'Mm,' said Mai, non-committal. She wished they'd taken the motorcycles out. Or at least remembered, when they'd decided to go bar-hopping, how many of their locals they'd been banned from.

'So that's two all,' continued Valon. 'But then the one round the corner – y'know, the one that had the holograms dancing on the bar – pretty sure that one was you too. 'Cause that was the one where you chucked up on the bouncer. Wait, you nearly did, you just splashed his shoe. Fuck, no, it was me who got us kicked out! Because he got aggro and I went to defend you. Guess that counts as one for both of us.'

Mai saw Valon look sideways at her, waiting for a response. 'Sure, I guess' she said, to keep him occupied.

When Valon had given his usual evening knock on her door (bored; drink?), Mai had still been miserably holed up in bed, unable to shake off the creeping dread of the nightmare. She'd agreed to go out for two reasons: firstly to put off falling asleep for as long as possible, and secondly to drink enough to muffle any dreams in blackout unconsciousness. Now she was regretting her decision. Two bars in, she wasn't feeling any more human: just tired, distant, and decidedly not in the mood for Valon's conversation.

Valon stopped in the street and pointed out a nightclub with a cluster of people outside the door. 'Pretty sure that's one's safe. I know you're not much of a dancer, but you could stand to loosen up a little if you ask me.'

Again, he looked sideways at Mai for a reaction. 'Whatever,' she said limply, and followed Valon in down the stairs.

The club was busy enough to lose Mai her last few shreds of patience. The sticky floor and the flashing lights couldn't have been further from the cruise ship, but the loud, overdressed crowd felt gratingly familiar. Eager to get the night over and done with, Mai rapidly drained half her drink as soon as Valon handed it over.

'Fucking hell, Mai,' he said, breezily, 'long hard day of doing nothing?'

Mai ignored him and continued to stare blankly out at the dance floor.

'Sorry,' pushed Valon, 'didn't realise I was on a night out with my imaginary friend. You wanna go for gold and try two words this time?'

Mai gave him a withering look. 'Here's two. Fuck off.'

Valon whistled in delight; Mai regretted giving him an inch. 'That's more like it,' he said, satisfied. 'What's eating you, then? Speeding tickets finally come through?'

Mai didn't dignify him with a response.

'Lost another fight in your sleep?'

Mai heard her voice drop dangerously. 'I meant it, Valon. Fuck off.'

Valon raised his hands defensively and stood up from his chair. 'Jesus, alright, message received. If you want to be a miserable bitch on your own, I won't get in your way.'

He grabbed his drink off the table and headed towards the dance floor. Mai glared at his back as he left, wishing he'd at least given her the satisfaction of looking back so she could ignore him.

She wanted to be left in peace, she told herself. Her spot was set back into the shadows where she could sit and drink and idly watch the dancers, the music pounding in her head loud enough to drown out her thoughts. The world felt blurry and unreal, although she decided to blame this on the alcohol. Time slipped by strangely. Occasionally some hopeful would sit in the chair opposite Mai and try to strike up a conversation; she swatted them away vaguely, barely even aware of their presence, although she did allow them to replenish her drink whenever it was getting low.

The crowd on the dance floor shifted and pulsed, their faces blurred by the fog machine, although at one point Mai registered – a surreal snapshot under the flash of the strobe lights – Valon pulling a guy in for a kiss. At least one of them was having a good night, she thought; maybe this would get him off her back for a while.

The songs continued to blur into each other, an unbroken stretch of monotonous bass. The world was beginning to feel dim and muffled around Mai. The crowd on the dance floor was thinning out. Mai got up, slowly and uncoordinatedly – she'd finally reached the tipping point where she was tired and drunk enough not to care what she dreamt about – and stumbled onto the dance floor in search of Valon.

Somebody had set up the fog machine a little too enthusiastically, so Mai had to squint to make out the faces of people right in front of her. The familiar shape of Valon's overgrown hair was nowhere to be seen, even after she'd weaved through the dance floor several times. An uninvited memory occurred to her: cold mist on the blimp, hanging thickly and unnaturally. The room felt tight and claustrophobic; the music pounded feverishly; dancers shot Mai hostile looks as she pushed through them to cross the floor. She felt a knot of sick dread settle in her stomach. She needed to get out of here, fast.

Valon wasn't smoking at the tables, or in the thin queue for the bar, or hanging around near the cloakroom. He could have gone home, but Valon never left without her; and he rarely exited anywhere without making a scene. Mai circled the bar several times, her panic increasing with each lap as the room emptied out. There had to be a rational explanation, she told herself. The fog machine was just a fog machine, Valon was just sitting somewhere she hadn't seen him, and the dream was all in her head.

But a thought kept sticking in her mind. What if she'd forgotten Valon the way she'd forgotten Joey and Téa on the blimp? What if he'd been next to her the whole time, a blank absence in her head? People were staring: was it because she was ignoring Valon while he talked to her? She couldn't ask without sounding crazy. She couldn't try to feel for his presence next to her or talk back without risking making herself look worse.

Mai leaned back against a wall, trying to pull herself together. She'd wait until closing time, she told herself firmly, and if Valon still hadn't appeared by then she could lose it. But what then? What if she couldn't even remember her way home? She gritted her teeth against the fluttering panic. She just needed to hold on.

At that moment the door next to her swung open, and Valon emerged from the bathrooms.

'You alright, Valentine?' he said, beaming with the force of a car headlight.

Mai almost collapsed with relief; for a single, humiliating moment, she could have hugged him.

The man from the dance floor followed Valon out of the door a moment later; Valon sent him off with a wink. Mai's rush of joy at seeing Valon calcified – to her relief – into cold, controlled fury.

'Your fly's undone,' she informed him icily.

Then she turned on her heel and marched out of the exit without waiting to see if he was behind her.

For the duration of the walk home Valon either didn't notice Mai's simmering anger, or ignored it on purpose. Mai found both options equally irritating, not least because it was hard to focus on thinking up cutting insults when Valon was filling the silence with a loud stream of consciousness. He was in a buoyant mood, strutting and gloating.

'…And I knew the moment I woke up it was going to be a good day. Sun was shining, no scratching in the walls... Oh yeah, and Al left his dinner last night – or this morning, I guess – so I got to eat breakfast.'

Mai jammed the key to the apartment savagely into the lock.

'Just goes to show, if you do good things, good things will come to you. You know, you could stand to think about that, Mai. You ever heard of karma?'

Mai steadfastly ignored him as she headed in the direction of her room.

'Wait, Mai! You're not pissed off, are you?'

She turned in the doorway and shot him a venomous look. 'No, Valon, I've had the night of my dreams,' she said, with brittle sarcasm.

Valon faltered. 'Alright,' he said, a little warily. 'You wanna cap it off with a duel then? Usual rules?'

Mai was about to refuse on instinct, then reconsidered. Maybe beating Valon was the thing she needed to turn around today's losing streak.

'You know what? Fine, you're on.'

The first few moves were evenly-matched; then Mai managed to gain a foothold with a particularly vicious direct attack.

'Ow, fuck,' said Valon, wincing from the shock from the duel disk. 'You sure you're not pissed off?'

'Oh, Einstein's developed another theory, huh?'

'What, was it something I said?' protested Valon, frowning as if replaying the events of the night. Then his face blossomed into giddy hope. 'Wait, you're not jealous, are you? C'mon, Mai, you had your chance. I'm not going to wait around forever, you know.'

'Of course I'm not fucking jealous, you knuckle-dragger,' she snapped, drawing her next card with such vigour it whistled as it sliced through the air. Then she looked at it, and felt a sensation like she'd travelled very quickly upwards on an elevator. She'd forgotten to take the Orichalcos card out of her deck before they started duelling.

She set it to the side of her hand and ignored its whisper at the back of her mind, the itch at the hollow of her neck where the choker lay. She needed to focus.

'Yeah right,' retorted Valon. He hadn't noticed the look on her face when she drew. 'You can pretend you don't have feelings all you like, but you're not fooling anyone.'

Mai's anger spun out of her grasp. 'You want to know about my feelings? Fine. I wouldn't touch you if you were the last man on earth, and I don't care what greasy club rats you try to sweet talk back to the apartment. My problem is that you abandoned me in that dingy club with no idea where you were and left me to wander around looking for you.'

She instantly regretted saying the second part out loud. Valon smiled cruelly, seizing on her disadvantage.

'Wander round looking for you? You serious, Mai? I thought we were mates having a fun night out. Now you want me to hold your hand all evening? What else have you been fantasising about, then? Having a cuddle? Talking about our feelings?'

Mai saw red. She pulled the Orichalcos card out of her hand and slotted it into her duel disk, as fast and impulsive as if she'd slapped him. Green light exploded across the room.

When it cleared Valon was no longer sneering; instead he was wide-eyed with shock. Mai felt the Orichalcos flood her veins and beat in her skull in a hot, delicious power rush. Her dreamy exhaustion from earlier in the day was gone; she felt awake and alive and sharpened to a point.

Valon was backing away towards the electric edge of the ring. When he spoke, his voice shook a little. He was scared, Mai realised with a jab of vindictiveness.

'What the fuck do you think you're doing?' he demanded.

'Winning the game,' said Mai, with casual cruelty. 'What does it look like?'

Valon raised his hands defensively in front of him like he was trying to avoid provoking a wild animal. 'Okay, Mai, just calm down,' he said, coaxingly; the tone didn't quite sound natural in his voice, as if rusty with disuse. 'We can find a way out of this, alright? I don't want to hurt you.'

'You don't want to hurt me? I don't think you need to worry about that, hon.'

Valon took a moment to recover his composure. He squared his shoulders. 'Alright, then. If you wanna make things interesting, let's fight.'

The game continued, a fast-paced volley. It could have been any of their other evening duels, aside from the circle of green light shimmering hungrily around them, and aside from the bloodlust drumbeat in Mai's head urging her on to win. Valon held his own for several turns, but Mai pulled ahead with a flock of powered-up harpies which picked off Valon's monsters one by one. His bravado began to wear increasingly threadbare; his eyes flicked nervously to the circle around him throughout each of his turns; and when she destroyed his last monster, leaving him wide open, he blanched.

'Alright, you've made your point, I get it. But considering you took your first soul three weeks ago, how about we drop the fucking cards and admit you don't know what you're doing?'

'Really?' said Mai, holding up one of the filled cards from her deck box with a card dealer's panache. On it, one of Dartz's targets cringed away from the card face. 'Looks to me like I know exactly what I'm doing. I thought you wanted to make things interesting.'

'Mai, c'mon, fuck, stop messing around. We can get this to a draw, nobody needs to get hurt. Mai, c'mon. Are you even listening? Mai!'

Mai still had the rest of her monsters to attack with. She hesitated, her hand over her duel disk, weighing it up. Her conscience was beginning to whisper urgently to her from some distant place, its voice muffled in acid green static.

'For fuck's sake,' protested Valon, 'I wasn't even gone that long!'

That decided it. For a moment Mai was so taken aback by his stupidity, all that came out of her mouth was a disbelieving, hysterical laugh. She called the attack. Five Harpies turned their unforgiving glares onto Valon, raised their talons, and swiped.

Valon crumpled. The circle of light rushed in to meet him, then vanished. The room rang with silence.

Time seemed to stretch and stutter as the rush of furious energy from the Orichalcos receded. It took Mai a strangely long time to realise what had happened, as if she'd watched somebody else call the attack from a distance. Valon was lying in a heap on the floor amidst the mess of empty drink bottles, stray cards and discarded clothes. He was completely still: Mai couldn't shake off the sense, suddenly, that she was alone in the room.

The fraying thread that had been holding her up all night – holding her up for months, ever since her induction – snapped, hard.

A moment ago she had vaguely noted a burning sensation in her lungs; now she realised she was hyperventilating, choking on sobs she hadn't felt start. Her hands shook uncontrollably, hard enough to make her duel disk rattle. She fumbled it off, too panicked to care when it dropped onto the floor with a thud, and rushed over to Valon. There had to be something she could do. Put him in the recovery position, or something. She'd taken a first aid course on the cruise ship – everybody on staff had a horror story about a heart attack at sea – but, she thought hysterically, it hadn't covered loss of soul. He had a pulse, at least, but apparently so had she when she was unconscious on the blimp.

Mai never thought, when she took souls on missions, about where they went afterwards. She wasn't thinking about where she'd sent Valon, either. She wasn't.

She had to fix it somehow. She had to think. She dug her nails hard into her thighs, trying to concentrate through the static in her head. If Valon was awake, reclining back on the floor making flippant comments, at least she'd have something to bounce off and sharpen her up. A memory occurred to her, the first helpful thought in the thick soup of panic: Valon lazily swinging himself off the sofa as Alister played the Orichalcos while training.

It was going to cost her to ask Rafael for help. It didn't matter; she had to pay it. She began hammering on his bedroom door before she could hesitate, her hands leaving a clammy mark. The time before the door opened felt like it stretched endlessly – Mai was still unprepared, mid-knock, no time to scrub the tears off her face – but eventually Rafael was glaring down at her, his arms tightly folded in disapproval.

'This better be worth my time,' he growled, voice still gravelly with sleep.

Mai hadn't prepared what she was going to say. All that came out of her mouth was: 'Valon – he's –'.

Rafael looked beyond her into the living room, at the empty shell of Valon's body. His mouth twitched: not in a smile, but with grim satisfaction. 'Well, well. Finally figured out that your actions have consequences?'

Mai's throat was too tight to respond. Tears were still rolling down her cheeks. When she could speak again all she managed to do was apologise, over and over again. Rafael continued to loom over her, unmoved, and did not offer to help.

'So, what do you want me to do about it? Turn back time? Tell Dartz?'

'I know you can put souls back,' said Mai, frantic. 'Please, Rafael.'

Rafael's mouth twitched again at that. Mai imagined scratching his eyes out with Harpie-sized claws, but didn't talk back.

'Give me the card,' said Rafael, finally relenting. Mai, burning with shame, picked it up off the ground. On it, Valon didn't even look shocked; just resigned.

A green orb rose from it, then shot the small distance back to Valon's body. His face twitched like a fly had landed on his skin, but his eyes remained shut. Mai, gripped by a fresh wave of panic, sank to her knees next to him and shook his shoulder urgently. A bubble of spit was drying at the corner of his mouth; the yellow shadow of a bruise from some fight was still visible on his jaw.

'Why isn't he waking up?' said Mai, her throat tight again. 'He's got his soul back, right?'

Rafael looked down at the pair of them with cold derision. 'He reeks of alcohol and it's the middle of the night,' he said, disgusted. 'He'd be sleeping it off even if his soul hadn't been taken.'

Mai nodded numbly, hunched in on herself on the ground. Maybe Rafael had finally taken a little pity: 'Get some sleep,' he said gruffly, before disappearing back into his room.

Outside the sun was coming up, grey light glowing behind the streaked windows. The smell of something rotting in the sink drain passed in and out. Mai felt defeated and hollow, so tired she ached. She needed twelve hours of dreamless sleep; her old apartment's peaceful, distant view over the city; even the steady rocking of a cruise ship. For a second she considered the mostly-packed suitcase in her room. If she slipped out now, she could be gone before anybody even started to look for her.

On the floor, Valon was looking better with a soul in his body, though not much better. Dark shadows stretched under his eyes; judging by his position, he was going to wake up with a vicious crick in his neck. Mai resigned herself to forgetting the suitcase. She picked herself up off the ground and began to drag Valon, inch by deadweight inch, in the direction of his old bedroom. After several tries she managed to haul him onto the mattress and pull the covers over him. At least this way he'd have a chance to sleep it off.

Mai settled herself down on the sofa, gingerly arranging herself around the broken springs. She pulled the scratchy blanket over herself, tucking in her legs since it didn't reach down to her feet. She was getting out, she decided, no matter how many dreams the Orichalcos suppressed. She wasn't taking any more souls. She'd stick around long enough to tie up loose ends, then she'd cut.

Sleep came slow and muddled. It was dreamless: apart from that, every time Mai woke to shift position, her chest felt as heavy as if someone had been sitting on it. For the first time she was grateful she could only dream one dream. She had a feeling she wouldn't have liked what her subconscious was trying to tell her.

---

The air in Dartz's temple was close and heavily perfumed. Mai watched the shadows of the flames dance on the gaping mouths of the carved snakes, and gritted her teeth, waiting for it to happen. Rafael had informed her that morning with a sadistic look in his eye that Dartz wanted to see her alone, and that no, he didn't know why. Mai would have suspected him of snitching on her, only he had a lottery-winner's air about him.

Dartz had to know what she'd done. On the helicopter ride Mai had been beside herself with terror, certain that by the end of the day she would either be dead or soulless. But Dartz was still rambling about the great beast and the ancient gods, a speech more directed to himself than to Mai, and her soul stayed firmly where it was. He could have been toying with her, but Mai didn't think he was interested enough in anything outside the temple for that.

'…So I believe the time is right for your first solo mission,' he said.

Mai's gaze snapped sharply back onto Dartz.

'I entrust you with the soul of Maximilian Pegasus, a powerful duellist. His strong soul will feed the ancient and terrible powers of the great…'

A solo mission. Mai felt the pulse of power in the stone at her throat; she felt her resolve to leave waver. This could be her chance to become strong again. Pegasus's soul might be enough to stop the nightmares. Another day couldn't hurt. Another mission might put her back together.

It didn't matter whose blood got under her fingernails as she clawed her way out of the pit. Mai was getting out whole.