You’re cer­tainly in a pickle.

You can’t see a thing. You can’t move an inch.

You can, in fact, hear.

You can hear quite a bit. You can hear the blood rush­ing through your head; you can hear your heart pound­ing. You can hear your body as it tries its hard­est to resist.

But you can’t hear any­thing else.

The world is gone.

You are helpless.

Yet you still have your mind.

She can’t con­trol what you think.

She only con­trols the inky ten­drils of pure shadow that enve­lope you; that sep­a­rate you and the out­side world; that hold you captive.

The shadow that can absorb all your power – which is funny, see­ing as you thought you had a lot.

Really, you didn’t get the feel­ing of power from the girl at all. She felt like she barely had any.

And these shadows…

They don’t feel like you’d expect. They don’t feel entirely for­eign. They don’t even feel remotely foreign.

They feel familiar.

They feel like home.

They feel like you.

And then it clicks.

You real­ize: this shadow which sur­rounds you; this dark­ness that entraps you; it’s not hers. It’s yours. It’s your own thoughts.

She’s not con­trol­ling your mind.

You are.

All she had to do was nudge it.

Your own thoughts, made solid, sur­round and trap you.

You don’t know how to fight it.

You have to think some other way. You have to break your­self from the mind­set you have long ago trapped your­self in…

But you can’t.

So instead, you do what you always do.

Per­haps it won’t work for­ever. But it will work for now.

You don’t know what to do with the thoughts, so you push them away. It’s a tried and true method.

Ouch!

You fall to the ground. Sound deaf­ens you; light blinds you; you stumble…

You close your eyes, and con­cen­trate. The world rights itself, you stand–

You are face-to-face, eye-to-eye, with the girl – that Phoenix of Vul­ner­a­bil­ity; of Helplessness.

You are not help­less against your own thoughts.

Merely mostly helpless.

She was able to nudge them into phys­i­cal form, but you were able to change them.

She smiles.

You don’t know why she does.

You just take her magic.

It’s not like last time. You don’t have that whis­per­ing voice with its words of impulse.

You don’t even have whis­pers of help­less­ness. No whis­pers telling you how there’s no solu­tion to your prob­lem; that every­thing is ruined, and there’s noth­ing to be done.

Instead, you hear whis­pers much more frightening.

They tell you that it’s not that there’s no solu­tion to be found…

It’s that you’re try­ing to solve the wrong problem.

Those shad­ows that bound you had always bound you; you just didn’t know they were there.

Even though they’re phys­i­cal forms have once more dis­ap­peared… Even though you are now phys­i­cally free…

You know…

The voices whisper…

You’re still every bit as trapped.

Their ten­drils of shadow snake over you, twist­ing, turn­ing, grab­bing, stretching.

The room is stark bright, but these enti­ties, what­ever they are, absorb it all.

Arms of shadow hold your hands tight; two more, your legs. You hang in midair, slowly rotat­ing, spin­ning. You can’t move.

You don’t want to admit it to your­self. You’re tough. The tough­est of tough. You have the big burly mus­cles, the threat­en­ing stance, the pierc­ing gaze…

But you’re scared.

You’re scared of these ice-cold shad­ows that snake them­selves over you, which hold you so tight, even despite your most pow­er­ful struggles.

Fear.

Min­utes or hours ago, you were over­flow­ing with power, and now, you have none. As effort­lessly as they absorb light, these shad­ows absorb all of your power, and soon, you are afraid, they’ll absorb you too.

What would it be like to be eaten by a shadow?

The largest of the shad­ows looms closer, its dark­ness infect­ing the very air, thick­en­ing it to where you can barely breathe – or is it your lungs, so heavy from fear?

It sur­rounds you, slowly, a bank of pitch-black fog in an oth­er­wise bright room, and then–

Through the shadow, a voice.

It is not a strong voice. It’s the timid, fear­ful voice of a cry­ing girl, chill­ing in the empa­thy it trig­gers as it is in the words it speaks.

“It is time,” she cries, “for the evil monologue.”

Sud­denly, you can’t breathe. You spasm, but can’t get free. The more you strug­gle, the more you fade…

You don’t under­stand: how will you hear the evil mono­logue if you aren’t alive?

And just as sud­denly, it stops. You gasp for breath.

“Vul­ner­a­bil­ity. Help­less­ness. Defense­less­ness. Pow­er­less­ness. That’s what you are. That’s who I am.”

Who she is?

That rings a bell. A very bad bell.

“Yes,” says the phoenix; you can hear her tears, but for her, you have no sym­pa­thy. You hate Phoenixes. Always have, always will.

“But there’s noth­ing you can do about it, is there?”

And then she whis­pers: “And noth­ing I can do, either.”

You can’t take the power – it’s too much!

You col­lapse to the ground, glow­ing an eerie light, of uniden­ti­fi­able color.

It’s not quite a pain… it’s some­thing else entirely. A rip­ping, as if your body is tear­ing itself limb-from-limb – but either you can’t feel it through your power-filled daze, or it is some­thing so beyond pain that it can’t man­age to hurt at all.

It’s too much – you try to spend some.

You shoot flame out of your hands.

Whoosh! Well, now the room’s on fire.

Great work. Espe­cially since you’re still stuck on the floor, unable to do much more than twitch a mus­cle. You can feel the fire lick­ing at your ankles… but it’s already spread to the walls.

You try water. Well, now you’re drown­ing – three feet of it fill the room, sub­merg­ing you.

Not to worry, it’s not like the house is water­tight, right?

But it’s tak­ing much too long to drain, so you try mak­ing a bub­ble of air.

So much for a bub­ble – unless your def­i­n­i­tion of “bub­ble” is “room-sized” – and it’s not.

The fire, still burn­ing the walls, steals the oxy­gen away in a bril­liant explo­sion that, had you not been under­wa­ter, surely would have killed you.

On the plus side, the house is now gone, so it is no longer trap­ping water for you to drown in…

But you’re still stuck on the ground.

You man­age to roll over onto your back, but then–

Pop! Pop! Pop pop pop!

Dozens of shad­owy forms pop into exis­tence around you, seem­ingly shadow themselves.

You try to move, but you just can’t, stuck on the ground as you are. They all jump at once, and sur­round you.

All goes black, and you know no more.

They say patience is a virtue, but they’re wrong.

If you were patient, you’d have taken an air­plane for the sec­ond time in a week, to travel to Hawaii, to visit The Library once again.

Thank­fully, you are any­thing but patient.

You have no idea what hap­pened at The Library, and no idea how you left. You took a flight to Hawaii, and there’s no record of any flight back.

You need to be there now. Not in twelve hours. Not after sev­eral flights. NOW.

Your impa­tience takes over; it blinds you.

You don’t think; you can’t think; you’re in a panic, des­per­ate, and then–

Here you are.

For a split-second, the cra­zi­est thoughts fleet through your brain. Why didn’t the air pres­sure dif­fer­ence kill you? The dis­tance is gigan­tic; dif­fer­ent time­zones, even; for that mat­ter, what time is it? Is it noon? The sun’s directly over­head, and–

SLAM!

Your punch sends the guard right through The Library’s mahogany door just before he can with­draw his weapon.

For a moment, you wish to mourn for the beau­ti­ful wood, but you shake your­self out of it. Your mind must still not be work­ing right.

Instead, you search the guard’s pocket. There’s no weapon. Just some candy. Come to think of it, he’s still smil­ing goofy, and he’s not wear­ing a uni­form or anything.

Oh well.

You pop the candy in your mouth. It is, indeed, tasty. If you had time, you’d leave a thank-you note.

Instead, you step into The Library.

“You know what I did,” he whis­pers in your ear.

You spin around. Nothing.

“Or, at least, you’ll think you know, soon enough.” Your other left–

“All he needed was inter­net. And he could get it. Phone a handy Wat­son, she’ll come run­ning, emer­gency lap­top in tow.

“Then, thinks I, what if it were to rain? And of course it does, and the lap­top is ruined. I had the impulse. It’s what I do.

“If I didn’t, he wouldn’t have died, but it’s how it goes. That’s why I’m here. He had an impulse, and so did I. He tried to stop it, but he couldn’t ever stop me.

“But you could.”

You finally see him, the Phoenix of Impulse. He’s stand­ing right in front of you.

Impulse looks at his watch, smil­ing sadly.

“You’ve got twenty seconds.

“In twenty sec­onds, you will hate me. You will hate us all – all Phoenixes. It’s what Truth Believes, and what She Believes, so Truth Becomes. Ten seconds.”

He takes a breath.

“I’m fin­ished. You’ll do the deed. You’ll know where to find me…”

With a flash, he’s a bright yel­low Phoenix.

His final words echo across your mind.

“Don’t try to fight the hate. It’s not that dif­fer­ent, any­way… You’ve always hated Phoenixes. Even if you didn’t know it.”

The plan took sec­onds to exe­cute. 59 seconds.

It was planned for 58. All things con­sid­ered, not too bad.

The process of plan­ning took much longer still. Not dozens of times as long; not hun­dreds. There are over four­teen hun­dred min­utes in a day, and it was eas­ily sev­eral days of plan­ning, even con­sid­er­ing meals and those few times you slept.

You planned it on your own. You went over it time and time again. This time, you had infor­ma­tion. This time, you knew what to do.

This time, you weren’t attempt­ing to break into the library, but just into this ran­dom man’s home.

He’s def­i­nitely ran­dom, in the lit­eral sense of the word, for he chooses spon­ta­neously to do the most ran­dom things.

You couldn’t plan for every­thing he could do… but you could plan for the cat­e­gories of things he might do.

And, though he does appear entirely ran­dom, it’s really that he’s impul­sive to the extreme. It is some­times pos­si­ble to pre­dict what he may do. If an oppor­tu­nity too-good-to-pass-up sud­denly appears, he will take it.

That is, if it doesn’t give him an idea which he finds even better.

In the end, the plan, for all its con­tin­gen­cies, was simple:

Knock on the door. Talk to him. And finally, one way or another, pre­vent him from using his power. You know what he did. You know what his impulses lead him to do.

As you dis­as­sem­ble your unused gun, you feel the power flow­ing through you…

It’s like a sliver of a per­son, sit­ting by your ear, whis­per­ing.… “What if you had some ice cream? What if you killed some­one? What if you sung a song? What if you destroyed the world?”

At the time, tak­ing his power seemed like a bril­liant idea.

Now, you’re not so sure.

Some­thing doesn’t add up.

You keep notes. You keep lots of notes.

Your notes say you were going to Apart­ment A45 at The Nile Apartments.

And now you’re at home, sip­ping cof­fee, eat­ing biscotti’s.

They’re great bis­cot­tis and all, but still: some­thing doesn’t add up.

There’s noth­ing in your notes about your trip. Noth­ing in your notes about hav­ing entered The Nile Apart­ments. Noth­ing about hav­ing spo­ken with any­one there. Noth­ing about anything.

And then there’s your mem­ory – or lack thereof. You can’t even remem­ber writ­ing the note about going to The Nile, yet there it is, and it is quite cer­tainly in your handwriting.

Why were you going?

You shuf­fle through your papers. You knew you should have kept them bet­ter organized.

Gen­er­ally, you remem­ber every­thing, but for some rea­son, right now, you remem­ber nothing.

The Nile…

There! It’s cir­cled in red – you always have a bunch of red pens handy. It’s on a sheet of paper…

Where did you get the paper? Surely you have notes on that?

Per­haps these?

Went to The Library. Weird man (Phoenix?) sent a bunch of bees at me. Seemed to be some sort of show. Acci­den­tally burned down room. Left every­one unconscious.

High-tailed it out. Stopped only to pick paper from man’s pocket.

Addressed to me. Not a good sign. Sus­pect a trap.

You look at the paper with the cir­cled address. It does, indeed, have your name on it.

“Deny every­thing,” it’s titled.

You can vaguely remem­ber the bee stings, per­haps because you can still feel them now.

What hap­pened?

There’s only one clue left: a name, cir­cled on your notepad, right below the copied-down address: “Watson.”

All roads lead back to home; that name is no dif­fer­ent. Your son and his friend liked Sher­lock Holmes.

That was his nick­name for her – for his friend: Watson.

You won­der if it’s the same–

RING.

Your phone. You should prob­a­bly answer it.

Espe­cially since “Wat­son” is calling.

You answer.

You frown.

“What? What call?” you ask. “No, I don’t remem­ber; I have this big blank spot…” “I take lots notes, but appar­ently I for­got to write that…” “Not a struggle?”

This time, you write it down.

Then she starts say­ing your son was hear­ing voices before it happened.

Well, she says, it may not have been a voice.

She says she thinks it was just a part of him he was try­ing to deny.

You are afraid. You think you might know what it could be.

But it’s impossible.

It wasn’t a part of him.

It was imaginary.

Trem­bling, you ask if the voice had a name.

“Mori­arty.”

“I work with The Detective.”

You freeze. Your fin­ger, already halfway to the “End Call” but­ton, retracts.

You were in the mid­dle of some­thing some­what del­i­cate and rather impor­tant, but this may be more impor­tant still.

“You can call me Wat­son.” Her voice crack­les over the poor connection.

All roads lead back to home; her name, no dif­fer­ent. Your son and his friend liked to play Sher­lock Holmes.

“Wat­son,” you acknowl­edge. “Wat­son. I know your name, but not your purpose.”

“I work with The Detective.”

You hes­i­tate.

At last, you grunt your accep­tance that this fact might indeed be of inter­est to you.

“I have information.”

You take in a breath.

Infor­ma­tion is exactly what you want. You tried to get it your­self. You failed.

Yet now, it is offerred to you freely.

“There’s a price.”

Fig­ures.

“When you find the killer, you will tear him limb from limb. You will poke out his eyes, tear out his liver, and finally, make him eat his own entrails.

“And when you are done – when he has been thor­oughly, com­pletely destroyed – you will make him live. You will make him live a long life, the rest of his life, together with his pain.

“For that, and no less, is what he deserves.”

You take a heavy, deter­mined breath.

“It will be done.”

“Good.

“The Detec­tive is mov­ing slowly. We’ve caught the dri­ver. Some cult related to the num­ber thir­teen is involved – we got one of their finance peo­ple. The Assas­sin is still on the loose, but hope­fully not far away.”

“Noth­ing new,” you observe.

“No,” she replies, “but this is: there wasn’t a struggle.”

You blink.

Not a struggle?

There were scratches on the body; cuts; bruises; scrapes.

“No strug­gle, though one was faked. All of the injuries were inflicted prior to death, but there was no fight. One would think th-the vic­tim must have been sedated, but there were no traces.”

You frown.

You sus­pect magic.

Then again, you always sus­pect magic.

You did from the moment you found his body.

For there was magic on the body, espe­cially in the drops of blood.

But there was no magic in the body. No way your son could have been sedated, or even held still; the echo should have still been visible.

Then again, you’re no expert at magic.

You think The Detec­tive might be, though.

“What about the involve­ment of Magic?” you ask.

“Magic? What?” Wat­son is, appar­ently, entirely bewil­dered by the concept.

“Nev­er­mind.”

“It would appear that, per­haps, he… the vic­tim was in some way com­plicit in…” She takes in a deep breath to steady her­self, “In his own death.”

You don’t believe it.

You can’t believe it.

You hang up.

You’re not going to face it.

You’re going to break this door down, and ques­tion the man inside.

SMASH!

You storm in, hold­ing a gun aloft.

There’s no man.

Just a woman.

“You’re not here,” she says.

You set­tle into your couch, bring the cof­fee cup to your mouth, and take a sip. You dip the biscotti.

Deli­cious.

Everything’s fine.

“Like, yeah man, you don’t wanna go there.”

You ask why. Is it impos­si­ble to get to? Heav­ily guarded?

“No, nothin’ like that, dude, just… they’re strange, man. They’re dif­fer­ent. It’s like they’re not human.”

“They’re Phoenixes.”

“Yeah, that’s it exactly, man.”

“But I want to go there.” It’s a lead, at least.

“No, man, you really don’t.”

“Then why did you tell me about it?”

“Dude. You asked.”

“I asked about the Phoenixes. You told me about their library.”

“Well, yeah. That’s the news.”

“The news?”

“Yeah. There was that fire, right?”

“Right.” You have no idea what he’s talk­ing about, but Rule 23: never show igno­rance. “Big fire, huh?”

He looks at you strangely.

“No, man. Just a tiny wee thing. Lost The Book, though.”

You frown. What’s “The Book?” You’re not sure if you should give up on Rule 23, or if you should try to weasel it out some other way.

Well, it’s more of a guide­line, anyway.

“‘The Book?’ I don’t sup­pose you mean ‘The Bible?’”

“Never know, man, never know. Maybe the Phoenixes would, if they read.” Con­spir­a­to­ri­ally, he leans in to whis­per, “They ain’t human, you know.”

You have, indeed, been made aware. Then again you’re pretty sure they’re human most of the time.

“It’s impor­tant, then?”

“Yeah, it’s like, sup­posed to be the most impor­tant book in the world. Rumor is it tells the future.”

“And it caught fire?”

“Yeah. Wouldn’t even know about it if they weren’t hold­ing a show. Showin’ off or somethin’.”

“Did one of the spec­ta­tors set it?”

“Nah, not that the Phoenixes think, and they should be able to tell. I mean, they’ve got pow­ers, man. Powers.”

“It’s not like it just set itself,” you say, puz­zled. “Is it?”

The mag­i­cal hip­pie shrugs, and drops a foot. He’s high as a kite. Lit­er­ally. Someone’s fly­ing a kite next to him.

You duck, as its tail gets caught in the hippie’s long scrag­gly hair.

He doesn’t seem to notice.

You won­der why you chose to talk to him. Per­haps it was the way he was just calmly float­ing by the open win­dow as you walked by.

Hm… the kite is made from news­pa­per. Now you remem­ber. The hip­pie was read­ing that same news­pa­per edi­tion. Its arti­cle was on the phoenix.

Your mind has been so scram­bled lately. You can begin a con­ver­sa­tion with a goal, and by five min­utes later, when it’s time to act towards that goal, entirely for­get what that goal was.

“Dude…”

“Yeah. Uh… what were we talk­ing about?”

“Oceans, man. Oceans. Oceans of fire. So beautiful.”

“Indeed. Some­thing about a library?”

“Yeah, man. You don’t wanna go there.”

Yes, you know that bit already. You ask how you get there.

“There are entrances here and there round the world. All of them hard to get to. Don’t want every­one vis­it­ing at once, now, do they? And it’s not like they can’t just pop over to any of the entrances any­way, so it’s no prob­lem for them.”

“Do you know where any of them are?”

“Just one, man, just one. Stum­bled across it once. Hawaii. Big island. A lit­tle cove. I got there at low tide, right time of year and every­thing. Easy peasy.”

You ask for a map.

He waves his hand, and a pen­cil mate­ri­al­izes in it. He sketches a rec­tan­gle, and lit­er­ally draws up a map for you.

It solid­i­fies into a heavy piece of paper map­ping the big island. And, nat­u­rally, a big X marks the spot.

“You prob­a­bly fly fast, man, you pro­lly haulin’ ass, right? Just a cou­ple hour trip, yeah?”

Yeah.

More like twelve hours of plane travel.

You can’t fly.

The ocean waves slam against the solid­i­fied wall of magma.

You’re going to get wet. There’s no way around it.

You thought you could wait for low tide, but it’s the wrong time of year, and there’s only so long you can wait, anyway.

Last time you tried walk­ing on water, you fell in after trip­ping over a jump­ing fish, and it’s hardly an expe­ri­ence you wish to repeat – you almost shat­tered your skull upon the rocks.

That was when you decided to come back later. It’s later now, but things don’t look any better.

You take a ten­ta­tive step in. Then another.

The water rushes over your feet. You ought to have removed your shoes, but you didn’t, so now they’re all wet. And your socks.

You begin to step around the wall. You’re a lit­tle con­cerned that the water may be vio­lent enough to slam your head into it any­way, and are unsure whether it is bet­ter to stick close to the wall, or as far away as pos­si­ble – one way, you could be forced into it before you could stop it; the other, you might gain momen­tum before hit­ting it, but maybe would be able to stop your­self in time – then again, you prob­a­bly wouldn’t.

You set­tle for stay­ing close.

You grab onto the stone as you creep your way around the wall, to the other side.

To the cave.

You must find the door. You just hope you read the map right.

You prob­a­bly have, you reflect, as some­one walks by next to you.

They’re not on water. They’re walk­ing on the rocks, side­ways, as if the wall were a floor.

“Evening,” he says.

“After­noo – ” you begin, but a wave pounds into you and salt­wa­ter gets all into your eyes and mouth.

It cer­tainly is not yet evening.

Finally, you reach the lit­tle mini beach – can’t be more than ten feet wide and deep. Solid land. Well, sand, at least.

You are not sure where the door could be, and wish you were a bit faster at get­ting around the wall. You could have fol­lowed the other guy.

You look around. Per­haps it is a hole in the wall? Per­haps a sign that illu­mi­nates under the full moon? A por­tal indi­cated by glow­ing symbols?

Then again, you real­ize, there could be a sim­ple hard­wood door, com­plete with a fancy handle.

You real­ize this, as just such a door is star­ing you right in the face.

You shrug, and pull it open, only to come face to face with–

“Hello!”

You jump back in shock, falling into the sand.

The jovial man laughs at you.

“What fun. Are you going to dance?”

“Dance? I don’t – ”

“Yes, dance. I think you’d do bet­ter jug­gling, but that would no doubt get old in sec­onds. One can only drop an object so many times before the audi­ence knows what to expect.”

You’re actu­ally a fairly good juggler.

“The audi­ence? I thought this was a library.”

“Our library, our rules. Come in, come in, they’re wait­ing. I’ll help you dance, don’t worry.”

You don’t worry. You’re too con­fused to worry.

He pushes you onto a stage, and then sig­nals you to begin.

Begin what, exactly?

“The Father is hav­ing some trou­ble warm­ing up, it appears,” announces the jovial man, as if describ­ing a sport match. “He’s only got five sec­onds until the first encour­age­ment appears, so he’d best hurry. Ah, here goes – ”

A hun­dred tiny cracks sound. At first, you’re not sure what changed, but then–

OUCH! A bee sting. Another! You try to run away; you try to duck and dodge; but it’s no good.

“It appears Mr. Father is not aller­gic to bee stings, which bodes well for his sur­vival. Remem­ber, those with bee aller­gies have a near-one-hundred-percent death rate in the first ten minutes!”

You won­der why he calls you “Mr. Father.”

“We must won­der why he doesn’t use magic. Is he per­haps sav­ing his strength, bid­ing through all the stings, know­ing a harsher chal­lenge awaits?”

No. You just never thought of using magic.

You try to fry a bee.

On the one hand, it worked. It lit up into a lit­tle flame, and its ashes fell to the ground.

On the other, you fried one bee. Only ninety-nine more to go – if your esti­mate of one hun­dred is cor­rect, and you have a feel­ing it’s a might bit off.

“A small dis­play of magic by The Father, but he seems to lack con­trol. One is forced to won­der what he was going for. If he’s going to use that much power, why not fry them all? He cooked that one well past well-done, ren­der­ing it entirely use­less as an ingre­di­ent in our famous Bee Salad.”

You get a lit­tle fed up.

“A lit­tle” may be a lit­tle understatement.

You think they’ll need to find more bees for their salads.

And a new stage for their games.

Come to think of it, a new room, too.