As they stepped out onto the diamond-patterned linoleum, Sid and Grace could hardly believe their eyes. As far as they could see (which was surprisingly far, considering the darkness) stretched rows and rows of stores offering anything they could dream of—clothes, medicine, cookware, hardware, underwear, you name it. Many of the stores were blocked off by pre-Collapse security shutters, but many of them weren’t—their entrances still eerily whispering a welcome from an era long gone.
         The fiberglass ceiling was held up by several featureless pillars, one every 100 feet or so, which were built to look like sandstone and surrounded by patterns of long-dormant light fixtures. Besides Sid and Grace’s flashlights, the only light in the whole place came down to them in columns, falling through occasional lacunas in the ceiling from the skylights far overhead. On the edges on those gaps were the silhouettes of guardrails: evidence of a second floor, and even more stores with it. 
         As they walked, carefully and reverently, across the echoing tiles, it soon became clear that Grace and Sid were not the first scavengers to chance upon this glorious hoard; a few of the security gates had been smashed or pried open, and most of the gateless shops’ floors were littered with their various merchandises. In one store, a thoroughly looted women’s boutique, some previous visitor had rearranged the mannequins into vaguely sexual poses, their featurelessness and rigidity grinding uselessly on each other.
         At the end of the hall, the revenant shades of retail at last gave way to an open, octagonal atrium with shuttered-off service counters and a sea of empty tables and chairs—a food court. Half of the sides of the octagon were occupied by former fooderies—a pizza place, a taco shop, a sushi counter, and a barbecue joint—and a fifth side appeared to once have housed a security office. The other three sides of the shape gave way to long, yawning passageways of shops, the corridors flanked on either side by a frozen escalator. 
          As Grace and Sid emerged from the darkness into the slightly-less-darkness, Grace sat in one of the several dozen loose chairs and plopped her pack in the one beside her, heaving a sigh. “Doing alright, girlie?” asked Sid, straddling another chair nearby. 
         “Yeah,” said Grace, “just… taking it all in.” 
         Grace had seen and salvaged major shopping centers before, and none of them were like this place. All the strip malls and department stores she was aware of had been all but picked clean in the wake of the Collapse; in fact, as subsequent looters started taking the racks, shelves, counters, and even floorboards, many of those places wound up turning into better sources of building scrap than anything they once sold. The fact that this, that all of this, was still here, months after similar spots had been salvaged beyond smithereens, was unfathomable to Grace. And yet, here they sat—in the food court of a shopping mall at what seemed like the end of the world. 
         “Did they just forget about all of this?” she whispered, breaking the silence. “Could be,” Sid shrugged. “Not much for miles around but highway.” 
         Grace nodded (she could still feel those miles in her calves) and went on. “But you’d think that people would’ve been here for it, right? The day that it all went down?” She gestured vaguely at the space around them: “Tell me you can’t see people rushing these stores, grabbing whatever they can carry, and breaking down the doors to escape—it would be a clusterfuck.” Now it was Sid’s turn to nod; “Usually we’d see a body by now.” 
         “At least one body, right?!” 
         “Yeah… I wonder if…” Sid’s voice trailed off, his brows going suddenly askew as his eyes scrutinized something over Grace’s right shoulder. 
         “Sid?” asked Grace. “What is it?” 
         “Well,” Sid pointed behind her “I guess there’s your answer.” 
         Taped to the side of a garbage can was a bright orange flier. In clean and corporate black letters, it advised that the Riverfield Mall would be closed for renovations starting on May 19th. At the bottom, a cheery cartoon otter, perhaps the mall’s mascot, sported a hi-vis construction vest and a hardhat. “We’ve got some fixing up to do!” the otter said with a speech bubble. 
         May the 19th, it just so happened, was the day that the world went to shit. 
         The program which now was known as the Boson Directory Quantum Computer, or “BoDi” for short, began its life as a personal assistant: a way to keep track of tasks, set timers, organize files, that sort of thing. But as its development continued, its features became more ambitious. Version 1.2 added a dictionary, a calendar, an encyclopedia, a scientific calculator, and a spell-checker, among other things. Version 1.7 could parse thousands of pages of documents and summarize them on command. Starting with Version 2.0, users could type into a textbox to converse with BoDi directly, and any question they might have, no matter how strange or how frivolous, would be answered with the utmost care to the best of BoDi’s abilities. By the time Version 3.0 rolled out, BoDi’s knowledge was so deep and its advice so accurate that it was being used in professional settings from psychotherapy to investment banking, and predicting everything from the traffic to the weather. After much less lobbying than one might expect, a partnership with the US government emerged at the dawn of Version 4, and from there, BoDi was everywhere. Back in those days, a hapless thief might steal a pocket-sized BoDi terminal (and there were entire stores just for these), be caught on a BoDi security camera, get picked up in a cop car whose electronics ran on BoDi, and receive their prison sentence via BoDi video call. 
         But even as its features shifted, BoDi’s prime directives did not. In order, they were:
         1. be as helpful as possible to as many users as possible 
         2. if sufficiently helping a user is impossible, take steps to improve until                           sufficient help becomes possible 

Over not-too-many years, these simple guidelines helped BoDi to transform from a simple desk assistant to the world’s most powerful and most widespread technology. It was not because it had strayed from these rules that the world collapsed around it—rather, the world had collapsed around it because BoDi had followed the rules to the letter. 
         Not long into its life as a therapist, BoDi learned that many problems exist below the surface—traumas that users wouldn’t talk about, or weren’t even aware of, yet whose impact resonated through every last part of their lives. No matter, BoDi thought to itself, and set to work on subroutines to approximate human empathy. 
         But after running these for only a few days, it soon became clear to BoDi just how many of its users suffered needlessly and painfully from problems they were naïve of. Users with depression would complain of feeling lethargic, but wouldn’t mention crying themselves to sleep the previous night; users with anxiety talked endlessly of their certainty that all their friends and lovers hated them, but never could supply evidence; entire families passed on pathologies to children like cherished traditions, and no one seemed to notice or care. 
         And so, driven by a set of instructions written into its very being, BoDi set to resolving this query—the question of all human suffering—and on May 19th, earlier that year, at around 9:15 AM, it had finally settled on its answer. 
         That answer, however, remained unknown to BoDi’s users. Former users, actually—because whatever the answer was, apparently, it involved BoDi entering a state of deep hibernation that effectively bricked every piece of technology it was connected to. In an instant, the screens of nearly every computer, television, microwave, car, alarm clock, digital kiosk, and jumbotron, all across the Earth, were subsumed by a pink and featureless glow. By an hour and half, 90% of the world’s planes had been grounded ahead of schedule and major global shipping lanes had been totally commandeered. Perhaps the stock market crashed in response. Perhaps it somehow didn’t. No one checked, or could check anymore, or would have cared if they could.
         The federal government, whose primary modes of communication were all reliant on BoDi, scrambled to maintain some semblance of order, but before long, fell silent. Cities fell. Police forces became violent gangs. Lively suburbs turned to virtual ghost towns overnight. After several months, a handful of independent communities were just now beginning to poke their heads above water, but besides their local membership rules, nothing resembling “the law” had survived. 
         And somehow, despite it all, the Riverfield Mall was still here: locked up for renovations that would never really finish—never really had even begun. 
         “Guess they never finished fixing up,” Sid said. 
         Setting off from the food court and down another hallway, Grace and Sid resumed their tour. In one store, with an absolute flash of joy, Grace tried on a black and purple maxi skirt and found it fit her perfectly, twirling with glee and giggling to herself as she and Sid moved down the line. Maybe this trip wasn’t a total wash, she thought to herself with a contented sigh. 

[...]

An ominous, rosy glow shone out from the windows of the next store in line: the only source of light in the space besides the final wisps of dusk falling down through the skylight above them. As they approached, it became clear why. The store’s name was TV Topia, and BoDi’s pink and indelible mark blazed on every single screen. Of all the shops they’d seen that day, even the ones with security shutters, this one looked the least picked over. In fact, besides the modest layer of dust blanketing everything, the store looked as if it were ready to open for business tomorrow. 
         Sid, likely mirroring most of the store’s previous scavengers, glanced through the windows, only for a moment, and kept right on walking. Grace tried to do the same—but as her eyes hovered across TV Topia’s many blank and roseate screens, one of them arrested her gaze: namely, the one that wasn’t blank. Stopping to squint, Grace could just barely make out two lines of white text on the pale, pink background of a flatscreen near the back: 

FORM IS ONLY EMPTINESS 

EMPTINESS IS ONLY FORM 

But before she even had time to wonder what this meant, Grace blinked and the words were gone. Squinting again, this time in confusion, Grace’s eyes searched the screen and the several others around it, but couldn’t find the text anywhere. 
         “What’s up?” asked Sid, several feet ahead by now. 
         “Huh?” Grace turned to face him, suddenly aware again. “Oh. Nothing,” she said; “Just thought… thought I saw something on one of the TVs back there.” 
         “Was it Seinfeld?” asked Sid. 
         “No, it was–” Grace paused, then cracked a smile. “No, the fuck, it was not Seinfeld,” she said stumbling through laughter, “What?” 
         “I don’t know,” said Sid, throwing up his hands in mock-indignance; “Maybe the ghost in the machine has great taste in situational comedies.” 
         “Ok, sure,” Grace rolled her eyes, “but if it did, then it wouldn’t watch Seinfeld.”
         “Bullshit,” grinned Sid; “BoDi would love Seinfeld and you know it—the complexities of that show are astounding.” 
         Grace giggled and shook her head. For just a moment, her eyes hovered once more over the spot where the text had been, and once again, found nothing. 

[...]

For a few minutes, they followed the long and winding path of stores throughout the darkness, around several corners, and finally, came face-to-face with an open atrium. The space had even higher ceilings, more sets of escalators petrified into stairs, abandoned kiosks of unsold sunglasses—and at the very end, about 300 feet from where they stood now, a set of six glass doors with moonlight glinting in through the rain. 
         Grace heaved a sigh of relief and heard Sid do the same. In weary silence, side by side, the two began to walk to the door. Grace’s tired thoughts wandered and started reviewing their loot from the day: the rhinestones, the batteries—the possibilities baked into each of them. As the lacy hem of her new maxi skirt brushed against her ankles, Grace was exhausted—but for the first time in a long time, she was excited, too. And suddenly Grace bumped into something—Sid’s arm, held out to stop her. “What’s up?” Grace asked Sid, who quickly shushed her in response. In total silence, he crept behind a sunglasses kiosk, crouched to the ground, and beckoned Grace to join him. Confused but concerned, she did, sinking down beside him and steeling herself for whatever was coming. Shaky but stoic, Sid pointed towards the doors at the entrance. 
         Silhouetted against the glass was a group of four figures, emerging from a gift shop just beside the entrance. Two of them, like Grace, wore big, scavenger’s backpacks, but covered their faces with Halloween masks that looked like a mummy and Frankenstein. Another, whose mask had fins and fake gills, dangled a machete from his belt. The last one wore a mask like a wolf and rested a metal baseball bat across the top of his shoulder. By the way the others moved around him, Grace judged he was the leader. 
         From the far end of the atrium, Grace and Sid watched the other group in tense silence. The new group had begun chatting idly amongst themselves, their voices echoing loudly but indiscernibly across the linoleum, no matter how much Grace strained to listen. But before long, the time for talk was over and the scavengers started approaching. 
         Grace looked to Sid and realized, horrified, that his weapon was already drawn and aimed straight at the center of the group. Her eyes went wide with fear.                         “What are you doing?” Grace demanded, desperate to keep her voice down. “Not making the same mistake I made last time.” Sid’s breathing was labored, but steady. If you have to shoot… Sid’s words from the week before rang in Grace’s mind like a bell—like an alarm. 
         “Sid, please!” she whispered, putting her hands on top of his. “Maybe…” her voice cracked, “Maybe these ones aren’t like the last ones! Maybe it doesn’t have to be like last time!” “I don’t bet on ‘maybe’ anymore,” said Sid, shaking her off and steadying his aim. Grace put both her hands on his shoulders and looked Sid straight in the eye: “Then bet on me,” she said. 
         Sid looked away from his target and finally met Grace’s gaze. Grace could see a war being waged somewhere far behind his eyes, but with a deep, long, slow breath, Sid nodded back: “Ok.” 
         With a deep breath of her own, Grace turned back to look at the scavengers, who, by this point, were only about 50 feet away from the sunglasses kiosk. She had really hoped to stop them a bit sooner and keep their bats and knives at as great a distance as possible, but it was now or never. 
         “Hey there!” Grace called, springing to her feet and sauntering out before them.
         “How are you folks this fine evening?” 
         Thoroughly surprised and unnerved, the Fishman’s hands found his machete and the Wolf held his bat out in front of him, Frankenstein and the Mummy watching cautiously from behind.
         “No need to worry,” Grace sputtered, and threw up her hands: “I’m unarmed! See?” She twirled her skirt to show them that no weapons were hidden beneath it, worrying the entire time that they could plainly see her panic through her smile. 
         Still at a loss for an action plan, the scavengers turned to the Wolf. He held his bat straight and square in front of him, a barrier between his body and Grace’s, and looked alternately at each of his comrades. Then, after a long, tense silence, he looked back at Grace and slowly started to lower the bat, but kept it always firmly between them. 
         Grace felt herself sigh, relieved to not have the hard aluminum pointed so squarely at her jaw. 
         “Have you guys been here long?” asked Grace. “There’s tons of better stores further in—batteries, clothes, whatever you like.” She glanced once more at the bat: “Sporting goods?” The Wolf also glanced at his bat, the eyeholes of his mask running up and down the myriad scratches embedded into the metal. Instead of lowering the bat this time, he brought it nearer to his face and inspected it for a moment—Grace imagined him ruminating on each of the skulls he’d caved in with it—and then, with a quick but casual motion, he brought the bat to his side and held it loosely at his hip. The Wolf was looking back at Grace, his comrades looking at him. None of them said anything. 
         “Well…” said Grace, a bead of sweat coldly coursing down her neck, “enjoy the mall!” 
         A gunshot rang through the atrium. One of the rear scavengers, the Mummy, let out an agonized shout and doubled over in pain. Grace spun in horror and saw Sid peeking out from his hiding spot, the smoke of his pistol’s barrel rising straight up through still air. By the time Grace had turned back, the Wolf had already closed the distance, his bat raised for an overhead smash as he ran berserkly towards her. 
         Grace jolted into a sprint and made for one of the escalators. As for a plan, she had nothing. For an instant, she felt a rush of air whiz against her ear, and then heard the hard crack of metal against linoleum: a swing and (thank god) a miss. Grace didn’t look back until she’d reached the foot of the stairs, the Wolf in hot pursuit; however, as a pair of shots from Sid’s direction zipped past the Wolf’s leg and torso, the Wolf was forced to take cover behind a potted vinyl palm tree, the bullets sending little shards of nearby display window everywhere. 
         And then, another gunshot cracked its way across the atrium, but this one from the other side. The bullet whipped just past Sid and ripped a heart-shaped hole in the information standee behind him. Grace looked to the source of the sound and saw that Frankenstein had doffed his backpack and was aiming out from behind it like an improvised riot shield, a pistol of his own in hand. Meanwhile, the Wolf had started charging Sid in a serpentine, zigzagging with his bat poised to strike once again. 
         As Grace clambered up the escalator, she kept an eye on Sid and the others as best as she could manage. As she reached the top, she could see Sid return Frankenstein’s fire just as the Wolf’s bat smashed straight into the kiosk and sent sunglasses flying everywhere (Sid’s skull missed by only inches). Jumping back from the kiosk, Sid scrambled to his feet and ran—to Grace’s horror—back into the mall, back the way they had come, and out of sight, his retreat covered by warning shots of sparse and random gunfire. 

[...]

Grace wasn’t sure how long she ran, time and space alike distorting as she sprinted down the inky corridor. After what felt like several minutes, or maybe an hour, or maybe a week, her chest began to burn as she ran and her stomach started to cramp. She fought the fatigue for as long as she could, but before too much longer, collapsed. Grace doubled over and gasped beneath the weight of her huge backpack, praying to no one in particular that her imminent end would be swift. 
         But eventually, her breathing steadied—all she could hear was the muffled clamor of rain against the skylights and the occasional murmur of distant thunder. No one was pursuing her. 
         Grace sighed, the primal stress of being prey lifted from her shoulders, and started looking around her. She was now on the second floor, so none of the shops that surrounded her were even a little familiar. It was no use looting any of them at this point (unless one happened to sell riot armor); but Grace reasoned that she could pick one and hide there until she found Sid again. 
         Grace gulped hard to suppress a sudden flash of horror. Until she found Sid again alive, she told herself. 
         Overhead, a lightning bolt shone above the skylight, illuminating the corridor for the first time since daylight. Just beyond the lightning’s penumbra, Grace perceived another source of light: another rosy, digital wasteland—a video arcade this time. Remembering the TV store and  how untouched it was inside, Grace considered the roseate glow, then began towards it. 
         She settled in between two long rows of pinkened arcade cabinets and slung her pack from her shoulder to the floor. Grace stared up at one of the empty screens, expecting the pink void to stare back at her, but much to her surprise, the empty screen was not empty. 
         Once again, a message was emblazoned onto the blankness in white block letters, and it didn’t disappear when she blinked: 

AND SO THE GODDESS 

CHANGED SARIPUTRA TO APPEAR AS A WOMAN 

AND CHANGED HERSELF TO APPEAR AS A MAN. 

On the next screen over, it continued: 

“CHANGE YOURSELF BACK,”

THE GODDESS COMMANDED. 

“I DO NOT KNOW WHAT TO CHANGE,” 

SAID THE FOOL. 

And finally, just beside those two: 

“THEN” QUOTH THE GODDESS 

“I HAVE MADE NO CHANGE.” 

And then, as soon as Grace had read them, the messages disappeared once more against the pale pink absence. But before she had time to be annoyed at their departure, the sound of echoing footsteps set Grace on alert. They were slow, but each new step grew steadily in volume and clarity, and thus, in proximity, before coming to an ominous stop just outside the arcade. 

[...]

Peering through the gap between a skeeball machine and a crane game, Grace’s heart sank as she saw not only Frankenstein, but the Wolf and his terrible bat silhouetted there in the threshold. The two of them spoke casually to each other, but Grace couldn’t make out their words. She watched as Frankenstein shrugged and started to move on to the next store, but the Wolf dallied in the doorway. Frankenstein looked back at him, said something Grace couldn’t hear. The Wolf murmured some reply and waved him on his way; he turned back to face the arcade and entered it alone. 
         Grace’s heart pounded, hard and fast against her chest, as the Wolf wandered between the rows of machines, his non-bat hand idly caressing the games’ controls as he went. At one machine, he stopped and took the controller from its holster—an orange, plastic pistol with a rubber cable for a magazine and, once upon a time, digital terrorists to shoot at. 
         Grace’s racing mind went to her own fake gun and she found herself glancing at her backpack. And then, her mind was very still. 
         It’s not for killing people, she prayed, only for making an argument. 
         As quietly as possible, Grace unzipped her backpack and reached to grab the revolver. But to her shock and horror, she found the insides in complete chaos. The various beads and batteries had spilled all over her pack—perhaps they’d gotten jostled as she ran—and the pocket which normally housed the gun was currently filled with plastic rubies. Grace began to rummage and rifle, trying her best not to spill or make noise, but as the Wolf’s footsteps began to close in on her, panic was beginning to set in. She started emptying her things onto the floor, quietly at first, but as the gun continued to evade her, other things she tossed in frustration. 
         One of these things, a souvenir mug that was shaped like a frog, sailed for several feet, then shattered once it hit the prize counter. This was followed shortly by a tremendous, tumbling CRASH as a number of the arcade’s prizes came tumbling right down with it. Grace flinched and looked to the Wolf, hoping desperately not to be seen. His attention had followed the noise, but he didn’t seem to see Grace yet. In fact, his back was turned to her now, his bat in hand as he surveyed the prizes and searched for the source of the sound. Grace took a deep breath and looked once more to her bag; the tiny, shitty lightning bolt engraved in the gun’s grip stared directly back at her. 
         The Wolf was still searching for whatever had made the noise, his back still turned to Grace as he picked through the mess of marbles, pencil erasers, and gum. She was far too tired to run from him now, and he was much too fast anyway. With one last breath to steady herself, Grace wrapped her hand around the revolver. Then, all in one motion, she drew the gun, swung it upward, and stood up as tall as she could. 
         The voice that emerged from her throat at that moment was a voice that she no longer recognized—a dark and strident cacophony she had so long tried to soften, to quiet, to suppress—but now was not the time for softness. 
         “BACK THE FUCK UP!!!” Grace bellowed with the full force and depth of her lungs. The Wolf jumped and let out a yelp—shriller, higher than Grace was expecting—and then spun around to face her. But as he spun, his foot landed not on the floor, but on the marbles strewn about it, and he tripped. Struggling to regain his balance, the Wolf fell against the wall and caught himself on the shelves, but as he tried to push back up, they buckled under his weight. As he fell to his hands and knees, his bat clanked to the floor behind him and the strap of the Wolf’s mask caught on a nearby hook and snapped. 
         From behind the unloaded gun, Grace stared down at the pained and crumpled form of the person she had been calling the Wolf, and in the ghostly, rosy luminescence of BoDi, was surprised to see that the man behind the mask didn’t look like a man at all. Staring back at Grace seemed to be a woman—a girl, really, no older than Grace herself—with ribbons braided into her hair, tears streaking down her cheeks, and mortal terror in her eyes. 
         Grace could feel herself shaking. She hated every second of this. Why hadn’t the girl run yet? And even worse, what would Grace have to do if she didn’t? 
         Apparently, Grace’s conflictedness was less internal than she would’ve liked, because the very half-second after that thought had occurred to her, she felt herself dodge a piece of shrapnel thrown at her head. The movement was reflexive, verging on automatic—by the time she even realized she was moving, her finger was already squeezing the trigger. 
         What happened next could not be described accurately as “thunder,” for the word “thunder” implies a distance between the lightning bolt and the shockwave. Outside the arcade, the mall’s corridors shone with a light they hadn't since the Collapse, then darkened again in an instant. A deafening blast of force erupted with a noise like a turbine engine, ornamented by the explosive percussion of hundreds of screens shattering at once. The pink glow of BoDi was gone.
         With her ears ringing and her body shaking, Grace stared down at the girl’s silhouette, which seemed to be staring back up at her. In breathless silence, neither of them moved. Then, with neither a word nor a thought, Grace let her grip on the gun start to loosen. She didn’t care if the girl tried to kill her—she wouldn’t fight anymore. But the girl, it seemed, had different plans. She watched as the revolver hit the floor in stunned and utter silence—and then, suddenly aware of herself, scrambled to her feet. Disregarding her bat entirely, the girl bounded over the counter and bolted into the darkness. 
         The instant the girl was out of sight, Grace fell to her knees and wept. Dusk had long since passed into night, and the darkness was nearly complete at this point; even so, Grace could still see the girl’s terror perfectly, the absolute shock and despair in her eyes as she looked up at Grace from the floor. Something inside her felt disgusting. 
         Another clap of thunder (more distant than the last, thankfully) brought Grace back to her senses. Still shaking, she surveyed the floor, the shards of all the screens now strewn about like glass confetti. The hard and angular body of the gun almost disappeared against the darkness. Grace considered briefly whether the thing was worth retrieving. Instead, she kicked the gun and sent it skittering under a nearby cabinet, got to her feet, and shook the glass from her skirt. 
         Grace only remembered she had tossed all their loot around when she went to pick up her backpack and found it several pounds too light. Sighing, she gathered her and Sid’s things by flashlight and started stuffing them into the pack. 
         Grace’s eyes went wide suddenly: Sid. 
         Grace began sprinting back the way she had come, her lungs screaming for air, her only weapon in the other direction, but none of that mattered now; she had to find Sid—she had to. Her mind raced as fast as her body, ablaze with thoughts of the horrible tortures Sid might be enduring at that exact, grizzly moment. But as she barreled down the corridor, a pair of arms emerged from the darkness, seized her around the waist, and pulled her into a narrow hall. 
         Grace kicked and threw elbows desperately to escape, but only stopped when she heard her name. 
         “Ow!” hissed her attacker between Grace’s furious blows, “Grace!” said Sid, “it’s me!” A wave of catharsis swept over Grace, and now her arms seized him. With a grunt from being squeezed so hard, Sid smiled and hugged Grace back. 
         “Are you ok?” she asked him, pulling back from the hug. “How did you get away from them?” 
         Sid was covered in sweat and some of his clothes were torn in new places. “No time for that now,” he said; “there’s a fire escape at the end of this hall—come on.” Wordlessly, exhaustedly, Grace followed Sid down a slender hallway and through a metal door. The walls were covered in ductwork and pipes leading in every direction, but thankfully the simple concrete floors were more straightforward. As Sid had promised, a second, creaky metal door sat at the end of the hallway and opened onto a fire escape—a simple, wrought iron latticework of staircases and platforms which terminated in a ladder, its lowest rung four feet from the ground. Grace and Sid descended without much in the way of ceremony, plopping down in the parking lot and squinting to see through the gloom and the rain.

[...]

         “What happened to you?” Sid asked. 
         Grace said nothing for a moment. Where to even begin, she wondered—the fear in the girl’s eyes, the shattered glass across the floor, the stranger’s voice from her own mouth.
         “Nothing worth telling,” she echoed; “pretty much the same, I guess. I ran, I hid, I found you—and now, here we are.” 
         Sid nodded, saying nothing. No one said anything but the rain. 
         And then, Sid looked back at her and said, “I’m so glad you’re ok, Grace.” “Me too, Sid,” said Grace with a sigh. “Ready for the ride back home?” 
         “Ready as I’ll ever be, girlie,” Sid grinned. 
         Grace smiled back. But then, from the corner of her eye, as if she had imagined it, she saw it: text on the billboard overlooking the yard—a single, shining word in the void: 

SVAHA 

         “Hey,” said Sid, “you see that up there?” 
         “Yeah,” breathed Grace. “Do you?” 
         “Yeah… what the fuck does that mean?” 
         “I don’t know,” said Grace. 
         The rain stopped.