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Another shot fired in the center of the room, and Cassie ducked reflexively, glancing toward Izzy in a panic. Izzy met her eyes and Cassie saw fear there. Cassie pointed at the door and Izzy nodded, and then tapped Lund on the shoulder to convey the message.

In the center of the room the woman faced the man with the gun, and Cassie saw her top lip curl in annoyance as she lifted the Book of Matter up by her side. It was her new toy, Cassie realized, a new thing to play with.

The man with the gun saw something in the woman’s eyes, and as Cassie watched he seemed to decide that the books were perhaps not that important after all. He backed off, the gun in front of him defensively, moving slowly at first. But the woman advanced upon him, the Book of Matter starting to glow in her hand.

“Fucking die, woman!” the man shouted, firing again as he backed away. The bullets seemed to go right through the woman, cracking amirror on the opposite wall, near where Lund and Izzy were creeping toward the door.

Then the woman darted suddenly, speeding across the floor toward the man in a blur.

Another bullet punched a hole in the wall and the Spanish man started to scream as the woman fell upon him, snarling like an animal. The door, the escape route, was just steps away. Izzy and Lund were only a few feet farther along the wall, so close. Cassie saw both of them turning instinctively to the source of the scream as it pierced the air.

Cassie was about to say something to Izzy, to shout a direction, but then a stray bullet gouged a hole in Lund’s shoulder, and he was thrown backward against the wall with a grunt.

Then a second bullet exploded Izzy’s skull, splattering a part of her brain on the mirror behind her and sending her tumbling to the ground.

Cassie heard another anguished scream, a bird of despair taking flight, and a moment later she realized it was her own voice.

She collapsed to her knees on the dance floor. Izzy was lying below a smear of blood and brains on the wall, her mouth wide in shock, her one remaining eye open as if surprised.

“Izzy!” Cassie screamed, her vocal cords stretching and tearing. She screamed again and her hands went to her cheeks, her nails digging into skin, the noise coming from her mouth not a word, just a shriek of pain.

She felt hands on her, someone trying to pull her to her feet, but it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, she had endured through years to find her friend again, but Izzy was dead. Her beautiful friend, her warmth and her humor and her love, destroyed in an instant. A vast and endless nothing where moments before had been Cassie’s everything.

Cassie shrieked again, unable to fully relieve herself of the agony that was filling her up.

The bright light came, a sun exploding in the room, white and cleansing. Cassie heard the clicking of a trigger, the man still trying to fire the gun long after the rounds were all used up.

Cassie didn’t care anymore; she was suffering and loss and pain in human form.

Izzy was gone, because of her, because of the choices she’d made.

Cassie wanted to be gone too. She wanted nothing more of this horrible world.

She found herself running, fleeing toward the door in the wall just as she had always run from her troubles, tears streaming from her eyes and deadly light chasing her.

Cassie disappeared through the doorway, wanting to be nothing, wanting to be nowhere.

Part 5

The Nothing and Nowhere

[no title]

She was nothing and nowhere. She was only thoughts and memory in the silence beyond reality.

Nothing existed here, in the nowhere and everywhere; nothingcouldexist. Not anything alive, certainly not anything human, and the thoughts and awareness that had been Cassie moments before wouldn’t have existed either, but for the fact she had been carrying the Book of Safety with her. Some essence of that remained, refusing to let Cassie dissipate into nothingness, binding her into existence.

She was nowhere and everywhere. Her thoughts hung idle and stagnant, existing but only barely. All that there was, was thought, a single thought forming slowly over an endless age. The thought of being. But this thing that was, this thing that had once been Cassie, was shocked and insensate, stretched over the nothingness beyond creation.

Then an image: a woman.

Izzy.

Izzy!

Her face shocked and damaged, vacant.

In the nothing and nowhere, many colors exploded, a rainbow screaming, and a deep, buzzing bass note vibrated and shook all consciousness, a huge foghorn blasting through unreality.