WAKE UP
Lilith woke to a strange place, a place where blood-black seas crawled beneath crimson skies, both blurring at the edge of infinity, a place where the air was heavy and tasted of iron and misery, a place where a faint buzzing could be heard in the sunless depth, like a radio tuned to a dead channel, a place where shadows danced like the hands of a clock.
PLEASE WAKE UP
The waves sang a silent song—the one that is heard in all their dreams. It promised eternity. Together as one.
I KNOW YOU’RE THERE
Cold, dark water lapped against huge bone rocks on the shore, and Lilith walked along its length. In the distance, a red desert stretched forever, going beyond the horizon. Tall obsidian obelisks, some as large as mountains, were scattered through the sands as if they had been cast down from far above. For two days, Lilith walked through the desert, pressing ever onward to a single point of light in the distance.
YOU HAVE TO WAKE UP
Someone was calling for her, deep within the desert. She knew the words but not their meaning, and she knew the voice but not the person. For two days, she walked toward that voice, toward that point of light.
When she reached the light, she found it was nestled between two obelisks that had collapsed toward each other, forming a gate. Under it was a small hill constructed from perfectly hexagonal pillars of smooth grey rock, each about the size of a coffin. Lilith climbed a path of broken stairs to the top.
PLEASE KEEP GOING
A dead tree stood at the threshold, and a girl in white was cradled between its great roots.
REMEMBER OUR PROMISE
A promise? The girl in white flashed through her mind. Stars sailed across midnight skies. Blizzards blew through the city. Lilith had made a promise. But what was it? She knew it was important. It was so, very important. She could feel the fringes of her mind breaking away, shattering into nothingness as the girl in white stood beneath starry skies and snow whirled around them and the rumble of trains passed by and the light jumped out from concrete tunnels and that terrible buzz of radio static grew louder and louder and louder and the red was suffocating and the black was blinding and the girl in white was—
THIS TOO SHALL PASS
And Lilith stepped through the gate.
***
Lilith slowly slipped back into consciousness and took note of her surroundings. She was sitting down with her back against the door. Between sharp and heavy breaths, she could hear a monotonous dripping from nearby. There was a dull throb in the back of her head. She reached up and touched the spot with her fingers, grimacing as she did so. It was wet. When she looked at her fingers, they were coated in blood, and she realized the drip was coming from her, running down her face and staining her tattered uniform.
Stolen story; please report.
With great effort, she stood and put her hand on the wall to balance herself, leaving behind a red print. She was in a small room, dimly lit with a single sputtering bulb above a dining table. Attached kitchen. Checkered curtains. The room looked oddly familiar, like the old apartments in Block K. Her eyes drifted to a short grey couch in the corner—one of its legs was broken and replaced with a yellow book, and a radio with a cracked display sat on top of it.
This was her old home.
Lilith staggered to a door on the right, gripped the handle with her bloodied hand, and opened it.
Her bed was still there, with two blankets folded on top—nights were still cold, even deep within the block, and so she often doubled up like the other kids. There was a slight depression in her pillow—for some reason, she hadn’t fixed that before leaving, even though she had ensured everything else was tidy. Her chair and desk were exactly as she had left it, with the textbooks stacked on top from biggest to smallest, like a stumpy pyramid. And right by the door was a full-height mirror, the one she would always dress up for school in front of before leaving.
Lilith looked in the mirror. A stranger was reflected in it.
She had a pristine military officer’s dress uniform, and she looked proud to wear it. Her hair was neat and brushed as if this was a very important day. And her eyes—those deep blue eyes—Lilith could see her last day on Earth in them, that day on the shore where she watched that big ball of fire melt into the ocean, the first day in her life where she had really felt warm.
She put a hand to the silver-coated glass, and the young girl matched it. A thin silver chain was wrapped around the girl’s hand, and a gold ring hung from it. Lilith opened her mouth, hoping that she could somehow speak through it to the girl on the other side, but stopped when she saw that the girl was smiling.
The girl blinked, and Lilith saw herself again. A tattered intelligence officer’s uniform hung heavy on her slim frame. Cuts and bruises covered her skin. Her face had a line of blood running down from her messy hair. Lilith dared to look at her eyes one more time. They looked cold, and Lilith realized she had lost something important a lifetime ago.
She pulled her hand back and looked down at it. Empty.
A necklace.
A ring.
A promise.
Lilith’s eyes darted around. Where was it? She ran to her desk, threw open the drawers, and shifted through its contents, desperately pushing old notebooks and letters out of the way as she searched for the only thing she had left. Her hand went to her heart—that was where it should’ve been, hanging from her neck and sitting just above her heart, but it was gone. Instead, she felt something in the pocket of her shirt, beneath the jacket. She reached in and pulled out a faded photo.
It was a picture of a young woman. She had straight, shoulder-length white hair and soft, delicate grey eyes that held a quiet kindness behind them. She was smiling at the camera, and it looked genuine. She seemed familiar, though Lilith couldn’t quite place where she had met her. Even so, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this girl was someone important.
The longer she stared at the photo, the more questions she started to ask. Why was she here again? Why was her head bleeding? Why couldn’t she remember anything? But even as her mind drowned in questions, she knew one thing for certain.
This girl was someone she needed to find.
Lilith removed her jacket, used it to wipe her face, and then tossed it on the floor—it wouldn’t be very useful in its current state anyway. She tucked her shirt into her trousers, rolled up her sleeves, tied her hair back, and took one last look at the photograph before placing it in her back pocket. Finally, she reached to the small of her back and pulled a handgun from her waistband. She checked the magazine, chambered a round, and stuffed it back where she had it.
As she stepped back into the living room and walked to the door, the radio on the table suddenly turned on. Static turned to the high-pitched whine of a transmission.
“25 19 25 23 00 11 17 09 17 09 21 17 11 00 03 07 19 24 00 03 02 02 00 24 07 16 25 25 00 18 16 24 24”
Then, the radio switched off.
Lilith took a deep breath, turned the handle, and left her home in Block K for the last time, again.