"Kid?" Fix asked. "You okay?"

Dragan blinked, shaking his head as he tried to clear the cobwebs from his mind. They wouldn't go easily. It took him a few seconds to remember where he was and what he was doing.

He was sitting in a chair in Asmodeus Fix's office, watching the footage of an interrogation on a monitor bolted to the wall. The image was a little fuzzy, but Dragan could still make out the features of the businessman being questioned well enough. No sound came from the monitor -- Mr. Fix didn't like leaking information -- but the face was all Dragan needed for this exercise.

Eyes fixed on the businessman's sweating forehead, Dragan raised the juice box he'd been given to his mouth and sucked greedily through the straw. Sweet strawberry tickled his taste buds. Luxury items like this weren't easy to get around here -- Fix knew all the best ways to bribe a ten-year-old.

"Kid?" Fix asked. "You okay?"

Dragan silently nodded, before reaching out and pointing at the monitor. "Pause," he said simply. The video paused, the businessman's mouth frozen between one syllable and the next. "What's he being asked here, Mr. Fix?"

Fix, sat behind his bulky wooden desk, put down the script he'd used to pause the video. "You know I can't tell you that, kid. It's secret stuff. Why?"

Usually, Dragan could get a good idea of what the grown-ups in the video were talking about anyway by reading their lips, but he didn't mention that.

"Whatever he's being asked about there," Dragan said before taking another sip. "He's lying."

Fix's eyes flicked to the face on the screen, and his brow furrowed dangerously. Dragan heard him squeeze his grey hands into fists.

"He was lying about that, huh?" Fix growled, teeth grinding together. "You're sure?"

Dragan nodded. "He feels a little bad about it, though, if that makes it any better."

"He'll feel worse about it next time I see him," Fix replied, voice low. It was clear there was violence in the future.

Dragan just shrugged. His strawberry ambrosia ran out, and he tossed the spent carton into the nearby wastebasket. "More, please."

Fix tossed Dragan another carton without looking -- and Dragan caught it just as easily. These were well-rehearsed movements. Piercing the carton with the plastic straw, Dragan turned back to the monitor.

"You can keep going," he said, raising the straw to his lips.

Fix shook his head. "No point. That's all I needed to know, kid. Go on home."

Dragan frowned. "I still get paid, though, right?"

"You still get paid."

With a shrug, Dragan hopped off the chair, taking the juice carton with him as he walked towards the door. He turned the handle and stepped out into the hallway beyond.

"Bye!" he called back behind him.

Anne, walking alongside him, cocked her head curiously. "Who's the grey man, dead boy? Who's that now?"

"You mean Fix?" Dragan said, drinking his juice. "He's kind of in charge around here, I guess. He's a criminal, but he's pretty cool."

"What's a criminal, dead boy?"

Dragan snorted, not quite realizing he didn't know where he was. "Someone who breaks the law, duh."

"What's a 'the law'?"

"Those are like the rules you have to follow in, uh, in society, I guess? Like… don't steal, don't kill people. Obvious stuff, you know?"

"You're a criminal too, then, dead boy?"

Dragan frowned. "How am I a criminal?"

Oh.

He was on the planet Taldan, standing over his kill, standing over Dir the security chief. The hefty man was sprawled on the ground, smoke slowly rising up from a hole in his chest, his faded eyes blankly looking up at the ceiling. You didn't get much more dead than this.

But still, as he had back then, Dragan didn't feel much in terms of guilt. If he hadn't killed this man, he would have been killed instead. There was no point feeling bad about things that were necessary.

Anne pointed down at the body. "This is a killed person," she said helpfully. "So criminal?"

"This is different," he murmured, surprised for a second at how different his voice sounded -- but of course it was different. It had broken, after all. "This is self-defence. If you kill someone that was going to kill you, that's not a crime."

"Crime?" Anne cocked her head.

"Crime is what criminals do," Dragan quietly explained, even as he couldn't quite remember why. "When you break the law, that's called a crime. Where… where are we…?"

"What do you mean, dead boy?" Anne asked. "We're here."

Oh.

The streets of Crestpoole were murky as ever as the two children made their way through the crowds. Dragan kept his juice box clutched between his hands, wary that someone might take it from him -- but Anne just skipped along, eyes scanning the landscape playfully.

Crestpoole was a gas giant, it's population residing on the massive cigar-shaped stations that floated through the atmosphere, siphoning up gases for use in plasma distillation. When the stations had originally been set up, around fifty years or so ago now, they'd been sealed units isolated from the toxic gases outside -- but over time, faults had arisen that the companies had decided weren't worth the money it would take to fix them. These days, a room on Crestpoole that wasn't at least a little poisonous was considered a luxury.

Dragan wore his disposable rebreather as he made his way through the streets, while Anne went barefaced. As they passed the street corner, a homeless man with a cobbled-together gasmask glared up at Dragan, his eyes bulbous and yellowed with pus.

"Where we going, dead boy?" Anne asked, hands clasped behind her back as she spun on the spot. "Where we going?"

What a stupid question. "We're going --"

Oh.

"-- home."

And there they were.

"You're late," mumbled his mother from the kitchen table. "What were you doing?"

Dragan's house was fairly cramped, like most places on Crestpoole, but they had the good luck of a separate room for food preparation. Well, hypothetically it could be used for food preparation -- more often, it was a place for Dragan's mother to slump over and take her Bubble. Spent cartridges of it littered the surface of the table, some spilling onto the floor.

He held up a wad of stator notes. When had he gotten those? Hadn't Fix paid him digitally that time? Was this a different day?

The words he spoke held none of the confusion he felt. "Got money," he said simply, walking over. "Fix gave it me."

His mother put down her cartridge of Bubble mid-sniff and took the notes off him, flicking through them with a trembling finger. She didn't look much like him -- baggy eyes and dark hair a stark contrast to Dragan's bright blue pupils and silver locks. If you weren't told, you wouldn't be able to see they were related save for the slightest similarity in facial structure.

"What's that?" Anne asked, popping up between them. Her eyes were fixed on the notes.

"That's money."

"What is it, dead boy?"

Dragan rolled his eyes. "It's, like… stuff you can buy other stuff with. If you have enough money, you can get food. That sort of thing."

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"Sounds dumb, dead boy. Just eat food."

"Well, whatever." Dragan shrugged, turning to his mother.

She'd been silent for quite a while -- he couldn't quite put his finger on it, but something strange seemed to be going on. It was like time was inconsistent, halting and stretching, like a buggy recording. It was only when he turned to look at her that Dragan's mother finished counting the paltry bills.

"You could stand to work harder," she mumbled, stuffing the money into her pocket. "It's not easy to feed two mouths, you know."

"Okay."

Dragan had accepted a long time ago that his mother didn't particularly like him. He'd been the product of a one-night stand with a passing spacer, and she took care of him more out of a sense of obligation than any affection. Even that had its limits, since she spent most of Fix's loans and the money Dragan brought in on Bubble.

But still, she was the only other person Dragan had. He has no choice but to love her.

"What's love?" Anne asked, her chin resting on the kitchen table.

"It's like…" Dragan started speaking, only to realise he had no idea what to say. "I don't know. But you know it when it's there, and you can feel it when it isn't."

"Makes no sense, dead boy."

Oh.

He was somewhere else again, entirely different. His body was colossal, gargantuan beyond his wildest perceptions, his limbs and organs winding unrestrained through the planet itself. He couldn't move -- the mantle ruthlessly restrained him, like bones hardening beyond use. A claustrophobia beyond words began to settle over him.

"What's happening?" he asked, panicked, his voice sufficient to shake the stars. "What is this?"

Anne was with him. He didn't know where she was, he couldn't see her, but he could feel her presence.

"It's thinkings, dead boy," she said, her voice omnipresent. "Thinkings from before, like. You showed me yours, I show you mine. Bubble and fuck."

"These are… your memories?"

"Mm-hmm. Look -- pain's about to start."

She was right; an excruciating agony began to spread throughout his body, like a thousand knives slicing away chunks of him. He could see it, too, over the surface of his form -- tiny humans mining away at his flesh and bones, taking chunks away in their miniscule starships. As the pieces of him grew further away, the strings of consciousness that connected them to him grew taut and tight -- and eventually snapped.

There was an almost irresistible urge to reach out, to swipe his hands over the surface of his body and wipe the humans away. Many times, he almost surrendered to that instinct of annihilation -- but he restrained himself. These were the first things he had seen that were not himself, after all.

He had no choice but to love them.

Oh.

His mother was on top of him, her hands wrapped around his neck, squeezing with all her strength. Her face was contorted in delirious anger, specks of potent Bubble still leaking from the corner of her chapped lips.

He didn't remember what exactly he had said, what he had done, that had set this off. Perhaps he'd just looked at her in the wrong way, at the wrong moment, and the weight of loans and failure had collapsed as a result.

Surely it must have been something he'd done. Surely there must have been an explanation.

"Is this what love is, dead boy?" Anne asked from the corner.

He could not answer. His mother's hands were like vices, and there was no way his weak fingers could pry them free. Darkness crawled in on the edges of his vision, and his arms fell limp beside him. If she realised what she was doing, that it couldn't be taken back, his mother showed no signs of it.

Creak. A door opening. Gasp. A breath taken in. Bang. A shot fired.

Dragan breathed in sweet air once again.

Oh.

He was the planet, again, tormented by the knives on his surface. Still, still, he did all he could not to retaliate -- but a person controlled their own mind only so much.

Something emerged from him, a red shade in his own image, climbing out of his body and driving its fingers into the people walking his back. Their bodies warped and stretched, their minds decomposed, their very being unsuited for the influence that sought them out. Some silver things retained their consciousnesses, but the rest became an orange horde.

"What are you doing?" Dragan mumbled to his other self.

"Everything," the shade snarled. "Destroy everything. Kill everything. To be made safe once more."

It was a reflex with delusions of will, but its passion was borne of pain, and far superior to Dragan's ego. As it increased, he in turn decreased, his mind compressing -- becoming a raindrop in comparison to the shade's storm.

The drop fell into the bowels of the earth.

Oh.

"I'll show you," said Ruth, standing behind him. He was back on Caelus Breck, in the Heart Building, the sunset light bleeding through the window between them.

"Hm? Show me what?"

"That people can be good. That they're not what you think of them."

Dragan squeezed his eyes shut, gritted his teeth in barely suppressed rage. Phantom hands wrapped around his throat, squeezing - an unwelcome memory. Half-remembered hateful eyes stared into his own from inside his thoughts.

"Fine," he muttered. "Do what you want."

Oh.

A warped, sneering face observed him from the other side of red-frosted glass. Its teeth were like needles, and its eyes like black lanterns. It hushed him, quietly, as if he were its own child.

“Softly, now,” it whispered, with a voice like silk. “Softly, my sweet Enfant.”

Red water washed over him.

Oh.

Bruno looked up at him from his sickbed. He took a deep breath, gritted his teeth, and spoke.

"I don't trust you, Hadrien. But … I guess I don't distrust you, either. I’ll wait and see what kind of … kind of person you are."

A brief silence was interrupted by Dragan’s quiet laughter.

"That doesn't make any sense, you know."

"Yeah. I know," said Bruno, burying his face deeper into the pillow to hide his reddening cheeks.

Oh.

He was two of himself -- no, he was Anne, in her position, speaking to himself in that first dark cavern.

"Run?” The clumsy words and clicks came from his own mouth. “Nay. Here from White Village, here from big stick, here from space boat. Here from everywhere. Where you from, dead boy?"

"Uh, I guess I'm from space, too?” his past self said. "A planet called Crestpoole. What's your name, kid?"

“Pan,” the voice from his mouth said, even as the look on his counterpart’s face showed that he hadn’t heard it at all.

Oh.

He was with Skipper again, speaking in that hospital on the planet Taldan. Making him tell him what was going on.

"Jeez, you're a taskmaster. I guess…" Skipper closed his eyes -- and when they opened, they were like iron. "I guess I want a revolution. I - I want to change the shape of this world."

He could see that new shape right in front of him -- you could almost see the twinkling in his eyes. He smiled softly.

"A revolution against who?" Dragan asked quietly.

Skipper glanced at him. "Who do you think?"

Oh.

The first time you see a certain something, you find it incredible. Awe-inspiring.

For Dragan Hadrien, that thing had been the sky.

In the breather cities of Crestpoole, all light was artificial, all air recycled. The idea of a sun was a bad joke, the closest thing to it being a pale glow through the clouds.

Quite often, Dragan would stand on one of Breather 19's balconies and stare up, trying to see them. He'd read about them in books, seen them in videographs - these things called stars. Lights that made themselves. Fires that fed themselves.

He never saw a thing. For all he knew, these things called stars were pure fiction. For all he knew, the world that he saw was all there was.

But still … stars burned all by themselves, perpetual, never needing anyone or depending on anyone. There wasn't a thing in the world that could hurt them.

And they shone so bright … like nothing else in the universe. Bright enough to light up the dark for good.

Dragan Hadrien thought that he would quite like to be a star.

Oh.

Dragan woke standing up -- and the shock of it was nearly enough to send him down to the ground again. He fell to his knees, hands landing on the hot metal beneath him. Ragged breathing, like he’d been exercising, spilled from his lungs.

Wait… hot metal?

He looked up. He was no longer underground, no longer in that network of tunnels and caves. There was still darkness -- it was night now -- but he was above-ground. While that whole thing had been happening, had his body been moving on its own? Had it been making its own way here, like a stringed puppet?

And here was…

The ExoCorp building was right in front of him, a dark monolith in the night, the only thing separating him and it being the long metal bridge that spanned the chasm. He’d made it. He’d made it back. Or was this another hallucination, another dream? Dragan remembered a trick that was supposed to show you if you were dreaming: he looked down and counted his fingers, finding the numbers consistent each time he scanned them.

Even that wasn’t the most reliable metric, right now, what with the fact he’d regenerated them not long ago, but it was all he had to go on. He had to trust that reality was reality here.

Dragan Hadrien got to his feet.

“Here we be, dead boy,” Anne -- no, Pan -- said. She was standing beside him, arms swinging idly at her sides. Her face, eyes still covered by her orange hair, was angled up towards the ExoCorp building. “This be where they make knives.”

He wasn’t quite sure what to say, after what he’d just experienced. “You’re… Panacea?” he finally asked, seeking clarification. “You’re all of it?”

“You’re meat, dead boy,” she said by way of answer. “I’m here.”

He didn’t suppose he’d be getting any clear answers from talking to a mushroom. Sucking in a deep breath, Dragan readied himself --

-- and stepped forward.