Ruins. That is what they've left me in bleak, grey ruins; something that crumbles under light touch. I move to the dining table first, which lies on its side. The glass tabletop is cracked, but perhaps it'll still hold. With a soft groan, I grasp it by the legs and pull it up. It jolts back and falls on all four legs, the framework stable. I shove it back into its usual place. I move it an inch, and the tabletop caves in, exploding into shards no bigger than my thumbnail. They scatter over my shoes, slide to every corner of the room. A particularly big fragment disappears underneath a pile of papers. The uppermost bears the wet footprint of my attacker's shoe. Files. Files upon files upon files litter the ground; all from work, all from things that have been- well. Filed away. The chip. They were looking for the chip. It was a desperate attempt, clearly, futile and stupid. I haven't been to work in several days. But surely, surely Jonathan wouldn't waste the time and energy of his minions searching for something that I always keep on me. Perhaps not the chip, then. Perhaps something else-- but what? Me.

Surely not.

I leave the dining table alone and walk to my bedroom. The glass doors slide open. I run my hands along the glass frame of the bed, and stare at the wall opposite the headboard. Flickering on and off is the projection-like screen technology embedded into the glass pane. It holds my schedule beside the one that programs everyone in the city. A chart. The hours for waking up. The hours for falling asleep. 10:00 PM - sleep. 6:00 AM - rise. It's a monotony that repeats itself every single day. It's not yet dark. Late afternoon. But I want to sleep. How, though?

The mattress leans against a wall, slashed as though by a knife on one side. Some of the stuffing has been pulled out. That would have been a good hiding place for something small, I think, but I'm suddenly glad all the things I have to hide are entirely in my head. I spot my pillow through the glass bottom of the bed. The eiderdown is crumpled beside the mattress, sprinkled with stuffing. It's been slashed too, soft feathers spilling out of it. It's bleeding, I muse. It's bleeding soft, white feathers. In the evening sun, they reflect the sunlight like liquid gold.

I kick the eiderdown out of the way and slide the mattress across the floor, plonking it back onto the bed. The duvet goes next, leaving behind a trail of little feathers that float down to the ground in every sunbeam. I get on my knees, fish the pillow out from underneath, and then fling myself onto my bed. Every picture frame, shattered. A vase I kept on my nightstand is in pieces. It's ancient - a relic, if you will, from our old world. Japanese. My wife gave it to me, but she's dead now. I roll onto my side and stare at the blue and white seigaiha pattern. Good luck. Power. Resilience. All gone. Gone.

I feel utterly violated. Stripped, like my entire life has been completely bared before a stranger. It makes me feel queasy inside.

The only thing that remains intact is a book that everyone owns. It's thick, and all twelve volumes that follow the first are all that occupy library bookshelves. The history of Tetrahmon. The book is what they call 'pocket-sized', although I'm not sure if anyone has pockets big enough to house the volume. The pages are so thin they're almost translucent, and their edges are lined in black. It's not ornately decorated. It's plain and simple. Embossed on the teal, clothbound cover are the letters of the title, adorned with gold leaf. One-thousand pages of waffle, as Evanna would probably say. I smile bitterly at the thought. It's her fault. This is all her fault.

 I find a single lozenge-shaped blue pill wedged in-between pages 41 and 42. I was wrong, earlier. Not all my secrets are inside my head. I put the small pill onto my tongue and close my mouth, but I don't swallow it. Instead, I turn my eyes to the book and read.

CHAPTER III: THE ANCIENT WORLD

Two decades before the inception of Tetrahmon, there was naught but war. Tetrahmon is a saviour and a sanctuary to its inhabitants. They look beyond the Wall and see the remnants of what is known as the Ancient World. It is primitive and savage, associated with all manners of unpleasantness. War is something unbeknownst to many of Tetrahmon's youth. Taught about it in their rich education, they know what the definition of the word war is. But they cannot understand the true meaning; and they will never have to.

War is a terrible thing. War is the disgusting slaughter of thousands upon thousands of people for an individual's wants and needs. War is what divides communities and lends power to those that do not deserve it. War is the murder of those that do not deserve to die; war gives its soldiers supreme power- the thought that taking another life is not beyond them. Only one person in Tetrahmon is permitted to make such decisions- the President, who is elected by the citizens, and who runs the city with a just hand. Justice is key to this, but in war, there is no justice. Only savagery.

The ancient world held more horrors than just war, however. The diseases conflict spread killed even more than the firearms soldiers bore. In the ancient world too many died before their time due to corruption.

The savagery seen in those that governed and lived within the ancient world is companied by other destructive manners. Lust and-

I tear my eyes from the page and place the book on my nightstand, feeling sudden anger begin to broil within the pit of my stomach. Waffle indeed, I think to myself. I make to lay flat on my back, but I'm distracted all of a sudden by my neighbour. Chin resting on my hand and pillow underneath my arm, I toe my shoes off and pause, one arm hanging from the side of the bed, to watch. I don't usually talk about my neighbour; mostly because I don't usually pay attention to her. It's rude, to invade someone else's privacy. I've never seen Robin look up at me.

She lives alone, like I do, but I've occasionally seen her with a man. Once, a woman, and on all those instances, she rolled her blinds down and I looked away. She disappeared for two months after one encounter; presumably to go to the hospital. I don't know her name, but I call her Robin, because every time I look at her and see her face, I see two bright spots of red on her cheeks that remind me of a robin's breast. If that's what the birds even looked like. I can hardly remember anymore. She has long brown hair that reaches her waist and olive skin. Right now, it isn't tied up, and it swings as she walks around her bedroom, cut in the shape of a perfect parabola, with the middle strands longer than those to the side. The camera in the corner of her plain room follows her every movement, but she appears unbothered by it. I never liked mine. It sits there, glowering at me from a corner in my own room.

Robin isn't in bed, unlike me. She looks perfect. The perfect citizen, I mean. Young enough to have gone through school in the city. Old enough to live alone, and not with an assigned guardian or the other children. When she reaches down into her own nightstand and pulls out a blue book, I look away and stare at my ceiling. My ceiling, too, is glass, but I don't see the soles of someone's through it. Thin, near-invisible metal scaffolding flows through the entire building like silver veins, and through it, I can see the clouds. Straight up ahead. Clouds. Snow. Snow, that falls as though entrapped in a dome. A little snow globe. The left wall: a horizon. The right wall: the kitchen, and my broken property.

There's nobody above me, and yet there's a weight crushing my chest as I lie here, breathing heavily.

There's nobody above me, and the person below me isn't curious enough to look up. Nobody to watch me but the little camera that sits flashing in the corner of my bedroom.

It's because they trust me, don't they? Government official. Inner circle. Perhaps not anymore.

I close my eyes. I think I fall asleep, but I can't be sure of it. Not with the vivid colours that race through my head.

▿

I hear a voice. A young woman's, I think, but I can't tell. Your soul is a dove. The next thing I know, I'm flying- or, at least, it feels like it. It looks like it. The city below is a smattering of buildings. A drone whizzes past and I rise higher and higher, and higher. Am I in a helicopter? I look down at myself, and see feathers. White feathers. It's bleeding... bleeding feathers, a voice whispers to me. It sounds like my own, this time. Feathers? Impossible. There are no birds. I soar high above the city, and I feel a sudden lurch of exhilaration and fear in my heart as I dive down. My body jerks suddenly in bed.

I spread my arms- no, wings and catch the strong wind. It carries me higher, towards the clouds, and I make it my mission to reach them. What do they feel like? Wet, they way they're supposed to feel, or are they truly cotton-like? Are they soft? But no matter how high I go, they always seem to rise further and further away.

I stop, giving up, and float towards the city skyline, arms outstretched. The setting sun is visible between two skyscrapers. I recognise them as the hospital and the Bureau of Love. The sun's rays cast long shadows that I flit lithely in and out of. They make my feathers look like melted gold, and line every glass building with a thin thread of the exact same scintillating colour. It looks beautiful, up here. It looks peaceful, serene. It looks like the vision it was supposed to be; a calm, clear paradise. I'm flying so fast. I reach the wall, the guards mere specks below. Beyond it spans an entire, silver world. Icy and cold, but I'm drawn to it. It looks endless, like a white blanket that stretches across the end of a bed. Under the sky's multicoloured cloak, I fly, drawn to the never-ending white plains before me.

A sudden, sharp pain rockets down my body from the top of my head. I feel it coursing through my blood, eating away at me from the inside, pulsating within my arteries. I scream, but no sound comes out. My right arm burns, and I turn my throbbing head to see my wing seared, singed by the dome that spans over the city, from the wall on one side to the wall on the other side. My vision is pulsatile, fading and reappearing with my heartbeat. A sharp spike rises, bold and straight and metallic, from the skyscraper underneath me.

I'm going to be impaled.

The last thing I see before waking up drenched in my own sweat is a cascade of feathers raining down on me, smothering me.

A/N: hope you guys enjoyed this next chapter; I'm looking forward to developing Vance's dreams a little more! As always, don't forget to  give this chapter a vote if you liked it, and leave a comment below!!