Around you, night drags the day out of sight.

Suspended above, satellites blink slowly, as if on the edge of sleep.

Strange that she's not, now that she thinks about it.

She's looking at you. Don't look back. Unsuturable wound.

The twinge of pain is familiar, almost nostalgic. That one's going to leave a mark.

Another drop of phantom blood in the clear waters of your soul.

As a star is dragged into a black hole, it emits periodic bursts of light that scientists liken to dying screams.

All serenity liquidated. Animal terror.

Spines of ice bloom across your ribcage.

WHAT WILL YOU SAY TO THAT CRUEL ANGEL --

The auditorium gasps as one. Beyond curtain and cloak snickers the conjuror.

It can't be... is it?

So very alone.

As cold as you've ever felt her.

Spare her this knife, at least.

Slash these ties clean. It will make it easier to not look back.

The first time she's reckoned with another person turning against her. The real her.

The words are firm, despite the gentle trembling that's overtaken her.

"Of course it is."

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Tears tremble on the edges of her eyes.

The city was her chrysalis.

A fundamental shift, form irrelevant: The difference between deafness and hearing, darkness and light.

Even this fragment is strange and painful, like a dead leaf in midsummer.

A five-year-old girl in oversized sunglasses taps a tiny hand on her knee in perfect time with the backbeat -- emanating like a homily from the car speaker.

UNHEALTHY VOCAL VIBRATO. POPULIST.

She will sing of you in a secret song someday -- and you will hear it and never know it was meant for you.

Ultras, fly formation.

Her voice is pleasant, as ever, but it fails to grip anything within you.

Slightly self-conscious all of a sudden.

Time to deck the cancer patient in a party hat and tell them not to worry about the future.

You feel nothing. This is all part of the big comeback, baby.

She won't. The knife will stay in her.

She has yet to notice it's already stuck in.

Your guts twist in new knots.

The management's changed, but the artist's still on tour.

Just because you can, does not mean you should. Your path to the Lich goes through this girl. Otherwise, it's the long way round.

You can. And you should.

One of the perks of being the top of the social hierarchy: time becomes a suggestion, not a reality.

You have a picture of this girl in your pocket. The postcard.

For the first time -- just for the life and death of a second -- you see her as a fearful young girl, flinching at every movement outside the door.

A flower on the precipice.

With a deft hand, the obsessive's postcard of her would suffice.

The first tram ride into Portofiro, HOLOCENE at your side, face turned to the window, giving a twenty minute answer to one of the world's most common questions.

The prospect twists your gut in terror.

Not too different. You both sculpt the world -- one from the dark, the other in the light.

Hit her with that memorable chorus, lodge it in her head:

They're turning on each other. Exploit it.

She is less certain with every passing hour.

Sixth generation Luzian fighter jet. Deployed in most of their 'Reunional Military Actions'. Serious rapid gear.

The purple plane wouldn't help.

The last thing the peasant class of Saskia saw before the bombs in close-up -- Ultra Violeta's face winking at them from behind her trademark 'V' salute.

ULTRA VIOLATOR.

SHE WILL BOMB YOU WHILE SHE'S AT IT. REGARDS FROM LA LUZ.

She's in one now.

Genuine. You've intrigued a famous person.

Raw deal, she thinks, but still a deal.

An enviable life... if you squint.

The word sounds blasphemous coming from her mouth.

A criminal thrill down the upper inside of your thigh.

Luz said it, but they don't really believe it. They just want any excuse to operate on foreign territory, vaguer the better.

Looking at the two girls, you are reminded that all your close relationships have ended in either tragedy or miscommunication, usually both.

The gäng knows gäng when we see it.

Adorable stifling. More of this.

Plastic surgery for the soul.

Botched job.

Aren't we a collection of everyone we've gänged with, anyway?

Opportunity here, operant. No need to trade information with KALEIDOSCOPE -- propose a clean swap, the prisoner for this lost girl.

KALEIDOSCOPE wants mere 'info'? Playground stuff. Here she is -- offer to trade her wholesale. Blow the perv's mind.

She meant that. Possible gäng.

She loved every moment.

Big ticket pay-per-view. Unmissable.

You wonder vaguely what your stage name would have been if you, too, shined bright enough for Popstar School.

We would have whipped at popstar school. Leader of the pack.

Ayami.

A... Begins with... A...

Like an unfavourable omen.

Hold up! Timing is too clear cut. She sabotaged the release by disappearing.

The world slows for a fraction of a moment, before jolting back into real time.

Pop music falls under 'Culture'. This minister must be Reyes. Your quarry.

It was eerie, she thinks. A silencing of all music amid the man's gravitational pull.

In a dim recording studio in the Luzian capital of Cicatriz Frontera, a young girl and an old man discuss an unfolding of light. A cultural hypernova. A map across the stars.

THE WAR ADDRESS. GENERAL AND CHAMPION.

The Grand Lich of Techno-Fascism. Your quarry.

The Grand Lich of Techno-Fascism. Your target.

Ultra Violeta Live: From High Lunar Orbit.

Intriguing stagecraft, operant. Telling the possible techno-fascist asset about the secret plan to kill a member of her government.

Aimed for nonchalance, flew wide of the mark.

SEEMINGLY LAUGHABLE COMING FROM A NO-DOUBT-EUGENICS-OBSESSED MUSO-FASCIST, BUT IN THIS INSTANCE, SHE IS CORRECT.

She would've been less disappointed if you'd told her you detested it.

A middle-aged vendor begins carefully laying sheets of tarpaulin over his wares. As he smooths out the creases, he hums an intimate melody meant for no one but himself.

A middle-aged vendor carefully arranges his wares in accordance with a strict personal algorithm. As he does, he hums an intimate melody meant for no one but himself.

For some reason, she's uncomfortable talking about this.

Wow. This impossibly beautiful Being from a Higher Plane is telling you you have existential problems.

Fucked him üp.

As Petre told you -- Einzeltone XR is immune to bootlegging.

A thin film of tears forms across her eyes.

She recognised it immediately. This is no bootleg.

A 'fuckfold': 54,567,389 Superbloc kupongs.

What on earth was on that red disc?

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Let her speak. See where she thinks the words stem from.

This girl is an antenna. A lightning rod.

Or maybe only one core dream, iterated upon every night by the sleeping millions.

A communal painting on the courtyard wall of a lunatic asylum.

Fück yes. Can't keep us down.

She's connected some of the dots, in her own way. No reason to jump ahead.

Sound only -- bold move. Potentially hotter than visuals, if done right...

A likely story. Artists are the world's most unrepentant narcs.

Light blooms behind her pupils.

PSEUDOPOD may have a different outlook.

Better that they don't know you exist at all.

Uh oh. She's kind of digging this star-fucking business.

As old as her. She is L-Pop.

Maybe conceived to it too. Hot. Sad and hot.

Then, not understanding how it happened, but very happy that it did, the Grown-Ups sidle up and cream their share off the top.

Not fading. Shimmering.

No bass? Lightweight.

A little grave in the heart.

Fluent in memory. Speaks ghost. Has conversational dream.

THE PARTY NEVER SLEEPS. IT IS ALWAYS ROUSED. LISTENING TO MUSIC THAT REINFORCES NEGATIVE EMOTION IS BOURGEOIS MOPING.

Disc variants. Branded keyboards. Sellout tours. This sadness thing bankrolls itself.

Don't bother. This assignment doesn't require 'melancholy'. Just a gun and a steady hand.

Life is sad. That's the reason. Starts sad, gets sadder.

Songs can haunt you longer than people. All the way to the end of a life, on perpetual loop in the background of your mind.

Sex.

Failure.

THE WORKING CLASS.

Yours don't seem to require the spotlight.

Another curse of being hyper successful, and existentially beautiful.

A six-year-old girl slowly lifts the corner of a heavy white sheet with frayed edges. Behind the sheet is a mirror. There is no one else in the living room. The girl catches a glimpse of herself and drops the sheet in shock.

True dark. No light in the night sky but the dead stars.

You're speaking with its champion soldier. Its glass cannon.

You can pull it free or kick her back in.

One foot in the empire. One foot in a shadow.

THIS FOOLISH GIRL IS CONFUSING REVOLUTION WITH HOMICIDE.

UNTHWARTABLE SCHEMES TEN THOUSAND YEARS.

She's uncomfy.

Another thing she's trying to outrun.

She's a state asset. The Weeping Eye would handle any external threats, with prejudice.

Didn't go outside either.

Now she's fan-shifting as Tempo, a gay middle-aged criminal.

A fugitive from one empire or another. Do angels ever truly know if they're moving through the living or the dead?

One very at odds with the atmosphere in the room.

SALT THE EARTH. REJECT 'YOUTH CULTURE'. THE SPELL OF THE NEW IS THE TRICK OF THE ENEMY.

A couple she's very proud of, even.

It reminds you of the final line of a poem.

FUNERAL PLAYLIST. COFFIN OUTRO.

THE ANSWER IS OBVIOUS. TO KEEP THE MASSES UNDER DIM SEDATION.

No contempt, just a light sadness.

'Solo'? Mega disregard for the sound-gäng and their contributions!

Four young women bound in holding cells. The interrogations have not yet been violent, but they have been ruthless.

Close enough to touch shadows.

Close enough for it to hurt.

The photograph is hard to look at, but easy to touch. When your fingers find its edges, a kind of strength charges through them.

You shouldn't have kept this photo. You should have left it where you found it, stained in your ally's blood, smashed upon the ground, sealed behind a locked door.

This girl is adrift and in dire need of a collab! Time to make your mark. Culturally.

Long-submerged dreams of popstardom float to the surface of your consciousness like drowned corpses.

Desolation in different seasons.

A melancholic sledgehammer. The musical world would find itself ill-prepared.

Bending the gear to her will. Nice.

You watch her nose physically turn upward a few degrees.

GULAG.

Here we go. The spontaneous audition that launched a thousand collabs.

Was it? Maybe it was.

Playing the keyboard in front of her is one thing... singing quite another. No way.

Sing... in front of a mega-talented popstar? Back up, CASCADE, this is far beyond your training.

Collaborate with the psychedelically famous popstar.

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Because you fear it carries a curse. CASCADE, emissary of failure, death and the plague of human disunion.

Not only is there nothing cool about this proposition to her, there is no chance this 'collaboration' ever occurs.

'Never. Please.'

Magnitude of setback: Enormous. Failure rating: Spectacular. Morale damage: Catastrophic, yet Not Unfamiliar.

There's unease at her fringes -- slow ripples along the shoreline.

THE MASK IS DISCARDED. THE EVEN-FEATURED TECHNO-FASCIST TURNS HER MIND TO ETHNIC CLEANSING.

Of course that's what you say now, in the cold light of rational thought. But a submerged part of you remembers those moments as they were.

For a moment, her mind flits to erasing all life through a single song. A communal three-minute ritual of beauty and horror.

Her gaze has both hold and fight. It takes effort to meet it evenly.

LUZIAN AND STAR OF POP? QUAKE BEFORE IT. TWO PRIMARY CANCERS HAVE METASTASISED.

You can't quite shake the feeling that this girl is seeing visions of your death as you talk and keeping them all to herself.

The passage engraved 'MID-THIRTIES' is soon to seal itself behind you, magic mountain cave-style.

So shiny.

Doesn't care for that collective noun.

A stack of gleaming hi-fi equipment, speakers resting on cinder blocks, the only thing arranged with care in the apartment. Your asset presses play with a large finger:

'MINOR 9TH' CHORDS ARE MIDDLE CLASS MUTATIONS THAT MOCK THE SIMPLE BEAUTY OF FUNCTIONAL HARMONY.

So pre-zero out, PSEUDOPOD was listening to this girl. Or someone imitating this girl.

'Ultra Violeta'? Could be that 'UV' on PSEUDOPOD's red disc...

The Tyrant Queen of the World's Wounded Heart.

The most beautiful face you've ever seen. Your insides clench in terror.

A sudden vision -- shrine, priestess and angel bound within a single frame.

Resets