The scream was still rattling around in my throat when the world stopped being white and started being... blue.

  Not like "pretty summer sky" blue, but like "deep-sea trench with the lights off" blue. The feeling of being thrown across the room vanished. There was no floor, no ceiling, just an endless, silent pressure pushing in from all sides.

  My body was gone. My armor was gone. I was just... me. Consciousness without a container. Floating in the deep.

  Am... Am I dead? I thought.

  'Cause, you know, for a super-intense final-last-ditch-effort, that felt kinda... final. And not in a good, heroic-stand way.

  More in a 'whoops-I-poked-the-midgame-boss-way-too-early' way.

  My dad is going to be so ticked. I didn't even get a chance to help out with the lawn.

  Okay. Okay, brain. Think. Not dead. Just... don't assume that just yet.

  My wand...

  I tried to feel for my scepter, for the familiar hum of the Heart.

  Nothing.

  Crap. Crap-crap-crap-crap.

  I tried to swim through the heavy blue darkness. There was no up, no down. Just... in.

  And then I heard a girl’s sob.

  It wasn't a normal sob. It was small, thin, and terrified, a sound that had been worn down to a thread by use. It was the kind of crying you do when you've already run out of tears and all you have left are these dry, painful hitches in your chest.

  I focused on the sound, and the blue world shifted.

  I was standing on a floor of frosted glass with a solid transparent floor stretching into the void. Above me, a vast, curved dome of the same material stretched into infinity. And I wasn't alone.

  A little girl was curled up in a ball a few feet away.

  She had tangled blonde hair that stuck out in every direction and a torn, flimsy hospital gown that showed off her scrawny legs and a mess of scrapes and bruises on her arms. Her back was to me, her tiny shoulders shaking with each hitching sob.

  I recognized her immediately. The ghostly apparition from the station.

  She was a few feet away, curled into a tight, fetal ball. Her long, tangled blonde hair floated around her like a pale halo. Her whole body was trembling violently. The ghostly, translucent quality was gone. She looked solid, real, and... totally broken.

  Every fiber of my being screamed at me to do something. To help. To fix it. This was, like, my whole job description. "The Pink Light of Hope" wasn't just a catchphrase.

  It was the core of my... well, my core.

  But this was different. This wasn't a monster I could blast or a person I could cheer up.

  This was... memory. A memory of a memory. And it was screaming and crying.

  "Hey," I said softly, my voice echoing in the strange, silent space. "You... you okay?"

  She flinched hard, like I'd slapped her. She didn't turn around. She just sobbed harder, her tiny hands clenched into fists.

  Okay, bad start. Let's try again.

  "My name's Maya," I offered, taking a hesitant step forward. The frosted glass floor felt weirdly solid under my boots. "I... I think I'm here to help. Or, you know, I'm trying. The whole 'diving headfirst into a magical brain-meltdown' is kind of new to me, so please bear with me if I'm a little clumsy."

  No response. But she'd stopped crying.

  I knelt down, trying to make myself smaller. Less threatening as I stared into the void with her.

  "Are you an angel?" she finally whispered. It was a hoarse, cracked little whisper, a sound that had been used too much. "Are you... here to finally take me away?"

  An angel? Me?

  ...

  Pfft.

  I was the girl who got a B-minus in Home Ec because I kept setting the toaster oven on fire.

  "No, no angel here," I said, shaking my head. "Definitely not. I'm just... me. I'm a friend. What's your name?"

  I sat down, pulling my knees up.

  The little girl stiffened.

  She slowly, so, so slowly, turned her head.

  "Zero-zero-four-zero," she whispered. "That's my name."

  "That's... that's a barcode, not a name," I said, before I could stop myself.

  The little girl's face crumpled. A fresh wave of silent tears streamed down her dirty cheeks. "Mother says it's the only name I need."

  "Mother sounds like a real piece of work," I muttered under my breath. Then, louder, I said, "Can I... can I call you something else? Just for now?"

  She blinked at me. "You... you can't. You're not allowed."

  "Well, I'm bending the rules," I said firmly. "I'm very good at bending rules. Ask my dad. Or, uh, don't. Let's just call you..."

  I'd already given a certain black-haired surly girl the name Reimi based on the zeroes in her name, so that wasn't happening.

  "...How about Daisy?" I decided. "It's a nice name. Strong. But also kinda pretty. Like... like a flower that grows through concrete."

  She stared at me, her lips parted slightly. It was like no one had ever offered her a choice before. Like the concept of a nickname was an alien language she was just now hearing.

  "I... I like Daisy," she whispered, so softly I almost didn't hear it.

  "Okay, Daisy," I said, a tiny, hopeful spark flickering in my chest. "Daisy, why are you so sad? And why are we in this big, weird, blue glass fishbowl?"

  "This is the Quiet Place," she explained, her small voice wavering. "When... when the tests are bad... when it hurts... I come here. In my head. My big sis taught me. She said it's the only place they can't get you."

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  "Big sis?"

  A tiny, fragile smile touched her lips, and it was the most heartbreaking thing I had ever seen. "Subject Zero-zero-four-two. She's the strong one. She fights them. She tries to protect us."

  My blood ran cold.

  The surly, dark-haired girl who had busted out of a hi-tech and saved me and the girlies. The one who was now eating us out of house and home.

  "Big sis is Reimi," I stated.

  "Reimi...?" Daisy echoed, tilting her head.

  "0042," I said.

  Daisy's eyes widened in recognition. "Yes! That's her! That's what Mother Ignis calls her!"

  And then the world around us shattered.

  The quiet blue space fractured like glass, replaced by a blizzard of noise, pain, and light.

  I screamed.

  We weren't in the Quiet Place anymore.

  I was strapped to a cold metal table. The straps were biting into my wrists and ankles. A brilliant, painful light was shining down from the ceiling, so bright I couldn't see anything else. The air smelled of antiseptic and my own burnt hair.

  "Mana infusion test. Subject Zero-zero-four-zero," a cold, robotic voice announced over a crackly speaker. "Commencing injection."

  A needle, impossibly long and thin, descended from the ceiling. I saw it gleam in the harsh light.

  "No," Daisy's voice whimpered. "No, please..."

  "Focus, Sister," a second, younger, but still flat, emotionless voice whispered in my ear.

  It was Reimi. Not the Reimi I knew, but the ghost from the station. "Go to the Quiet Place. Now."

  "I can't!" Daisy sobbed. "It hurts!"

  "DO IT!"

  The needle plunged into my arm.

  It felt like it was injecting liquid fire directly into my bones. My whole body seized up, every muscle screaming in agony. My vision went white.

  I felt my soul being torn. Shredded. Stretched.

  Then another memory, crashing over me like a tidal wave.

  Reimi, older now, maybe sixteen.

  She was standing in a sterile white corridor, her black lolita dress overlaid over a black tactical suit stained with blood. Her red eyes were wide, frantic as squads of robots closed in.

  She was fighting.

  Her movements were a blur of lethality. She used her hands. Her... claws. Bone-white talons extended from her knuckle tips.

  A tall, teenage boy in a white suit with a pocket rose, domino mask, silver suit, flowing white scarf, and short, cropped lavender hair stood back-to-back with her. He was wielding a one-handed saber that crackled with a bright silver flame, deflecting attacks and coordinating with a pair of girls in a blue and yellow dress. They were blurred out from my point of view and I could hardly make out their features.

  "You're taking too many hits, Star Zinnia! Fall back!!"

  "I'm fine," Reimi snarled, deflecting a green energy blast with a flash of red light. "You all promised me you'd do this for me! That you'd help me find her! I'm not leaving!"

  The memory skipped again.

  We were on a high-rise patio, at night. I hovered over them like a ghost.

  A girl with bright red hair tied up in a spiky ponytail in a punk rock band t-shirt sat next to me, grinning.

  "Your problem is you think with your fists too much," the red-haired girl said, her smile turning a little sad.

  Reimi didn't respond. Her face was buried in her hands, her shoulders shaking.

  "You're thinking about her again, aren't you?" the redhead asked softly.

  "I promised," Reimi whispered, her voice cracking. "I promised I'd come back for her. For them. I promised..."

  The redhead put a comforting arm around her. "And you will, sweetie. But you can't save anyone if you get yourself killed."

  The memory shifted again.

  The blinding flash of a singularity.

  A girl's face, smiling sadly.

  A tear rolling down her cheek as short pink highlights flowed around her shoulders.

  The feeling of my arm being torn from its socket. The sound of my own screams.

  The sight of a girl's pink silhouette turning into nothing but shimmering particles of light.

  The feeling of being alone.

  Crushingly, completely alone.

  The memory wasn't a picture in my head anymore. It was a physical sensation, a vacuum where my heart used to be. It was a sound that was so loud it was silent. It was the feeling of falling forever, with no one to catch you.

  And a spotlight. A harsh, blinding spotlight.

  I saw the boy with the moonlit hair and the silver saber kneeling on the floor. His face was streaked with dirt and blood. But even in spite of that, he was handsome. Gorgeous, even.

  He was looking at my empty, pale hands.

  "Heh, looks like this is for me, after all. Protect her in my place, Zinnia."

  I was filled with a sense of dread. I felt a whirlwind of emotions towards him. Kinship, respect, annoyance, and something else.

  A... loss of something I didn't understand. And above all… relief.

  'If he was gone... maybe I'd...'

  A sense of betrayal. Of longing.

  Then, he closed his eyes, and stood up, holding his saber.

  I didn't see him die. I couldn't. But I could feel his presence vanish.

  A flash of moonlight.

  The boy's figure turned into a swirling vortex of red petals and a single abstract silver rose bloomed in the space where he once was.

  And a flash of yellow and gold, an explosion of pure light that shattered the entire world in a single, final, desperate act.

  A flash of red.

  A flash of blue.

  A flash of pink.

  And then... the feeling of being the only thing left in a dead universe.

  I was drowning in it. My own body was gone. I was just a raw, screaming nerve ending, adrift in an ocean of psychic sorrow.

  I couldn't breathe. I couldn't think.

  I just... hurt.

  And then I saw her.

  She was curled up in a ball in the middle of all the pain, in the middle of all the darkness.

  A little girl.

  No older than eleven, maybe twelve.

  She had choppy, short black hair that looked like it had been cut with a rusty pair of scissors. Her back was to me. She wore a tattered, white tank top and black shorts, her skinny legs pulled up to her chest.

  She was trembling, her shoulders shaking with a silent, desperate sobbing.

  I knew, with a certainty that I didn't understand, that this was her. The core. The heart of it all.

  The girl behind the wall. The girl who became the weapon who I'd decide would be my friend in a moment of possible insanity.

  I didn't think.

  My body was gone, but my will was not. I moved through the crushing darkness, my own psychic pain forgotten. I reached her, the void pressing in on me from all sides.

  I floated down behind her. The coldness radiating from her body was so intense it felt like it would freeze my soul solid.

  "Hey," I whispered.

  She didn't respond. She just kept shaking, a tiny, black-haired island of misery in an endless sea of nothing.

  "It's okay," I said, my own voice trembling. "I've got you."

  And I reached out.

  My arms, arms made of pure pink light and sheer, stubborn refusal to give up, wrapped around her small, trembling body.

  The second I touched her, a universe of pain and rage and despair exploded into me.

  I held on.

  I didn't let go.

  I squeezed her tighter, pouring all of my energy, all of my hope, all of my stubborn, idiotic optimism into her.

  I poured everything I had into that one, single, desperate hug.

  "It's okay," I sobbed, burying my face in her hair. "You're not alone anymore. I'm here. We're all here. You're safe. You’re home."

  For a long, terrifying moment, nothing happened.

  The darkness pressed in. The silence was absolute.

  And then...

  It started with a single, tiny spark of light.

  It bloomed in the center of the darkness, right where I was holding her. A sakura petal made of pink light.

  Then another. And another.

  They were like fireflies, dancing in the void. They grew brighter and brighter, until the entire space was filled with a soft, warm, gentle light.

  And the darkness began to recede.