Tomorrow’s a nice, free day. I think I’m going to do a double day tomorrow and hit 50,000 – since halfway through the novel DEFINITELY won’t be happening there!

Word Count: 43,477

This time, Graham noticed a difference in the night air – it was brighter; he could see as far as the city walls permitted his vision to extend. Looking up into the sky, he saw not a single star – light flew from the city’s Lamp Spheres up into the heavens, striking the full moon in the sky. For a moment, Graham wasn’t sure if it was the moon lighting the city or the other way around, but nevertheless it was quite a spectacle to see; a concentrated beam of light shot out of Lanford City’s center, the White District, where a huge power plant was supposedly located. This power plant supplied steam to the entire metropolis, and its closed-off area was larger in size than the Orange and Yellow Districts combined. A towering square structure of brass and bronze and possibly gold, the power plant jutted out of the center of the city, right at the inception of the column of light that shot forth from Lanford into the heavens.

He followed the column of light to the moon and back, and saw the soft glow that surrounded the entire city, as if it contained its own atmosphere; within Lanford, it was halfway to morning, when in reality it was one of the darkest and most quiet hours of the night. Phasing in and out of existence, he continued waking along to Station A as his secret project dictated, but still stared intently at the power plant in the center of the city.

Out of the square structure jutted several large pipes, big enough to fit entire homes into; these curved in and out of the plant like water slides. Near the top, the plant’s structure curved inward at a steep angle so that the building, viewed from certain positions, was really a trapezoid with pipes coming forth from the curved roof. Several of its glass windows were hazy, dirty, and broken, and only the bar structure that had formed the encasement around the glass panels remained. Graham imagined that underneath this power plant the large pipes filled with steam and travelled underneath the city for miles on end, delivering countless gallons of steam to residents in order to better allow them to live their lives.

And yet, he could not imagine anybody living their life properly in Lanford anymore – he could not imagine how people had allowed themselves to become scared into submission, allowed themselves to submit to the tyranny of the knights and the President, as one knight had noted.

Station A was only a few hundred feet away by now, and Graham was still disoriented by the artificial atmosphere of the city. His breathing shortened into hasty intakes of air as he passed the corpus clock hanging on the inner wall. The Chronophage continued to move at a steady pace, one step per second, gulping down time with effortless ease. The Lamp Spheres behind each slit activated in succession; around and around the lights spun, marking off time wasted, never interacting with one another. It was only humans that brought the individual measurements of time together into one ultimate unit, the hours, minutes and seconds.

They preferred to stay away from each other, safely separated by the ripples. They preferred to stay away from the Chronophage, an ultimate futility, for the ripples did not – could not – keep them safe when the Chronophage was above them on another access entirely. It had access to an entire dimension that the hours, seconds and minutes could not comprehend which enabled it to smite time from behind the scenes.

There was nothing that time could do. Time was helpless, time was predictable, and the Chronophage was their master, their greatest fear, and their ultimate end and destruction.

And there it was – Station A. But it no longer looked like Station A. Station A was a pristine metal two-story home with no trace of a renegade population hiding within. Now it was battered and battle-worn, as if someone had let loose a bomb on the outside of the building. Windows were broken, the stairs leading up to the front door were chipped in multiple places, and the air around the building smelled like smoke and debris. The front door has been kicked down, and dust poured forth from within the building. There were no lights on, so the inside wasn’t immediately visible. Graham didn’t have his Maglite, though he wished he did.

He scanned the area for knights and saw nothing, then assumed it was safe for the moment to explore the house and its contents. There could be someone still within the building – be it a knight or a resident of Station A – and if that was the case then examining the inside of the station had already paid off. Cautiously he stepped inside the station, making sure to avoid the broken door and its splintery edges. As his eyes adjusted to the darkness within, he saw the sheer wreckage that had occurred.

The first clearly visible element of destruction was the broadgraph machine, which had been smashed to bits with crushing force. Graham realized, then, that this had occurred while whoever had been sending the message was typing – which meant that if the person had been here during the attack, they were certainly no longer around. Graham peered into the kitchen and saw nothing special, though it looked like the knights had seized Wheat’s collection of diluted gin and other alcohols, and had possibly drank them all, though the bottles were missing. All the food had been stolen or smashed onto the floor.

The living area was completely demolished, and there was thick blood on the steel and brass table. Touching the blood with his bare finger, Graham learned that it was fresh – still wet – and left the room shaking.

Graham walked up the stairs, which were made of steel and brass as well so were not broken, and searched the bedrooms. The knights had not bothered to invade these rooms, if indeed they had invaded anything, but there was no sign of anyone inhabiting the rooms. Graham, thinking that one of his friends might be in hiding still, began removing covers and cushions and looking in closets, dressers and drawers for any sign of life, but after a rather extensive search of the second floor came to the conclusion that every resident of Station A had been captured by the knights, and brutally as well, for there was also fresh blood on the walls in several locations.

With injuries like what Graham suspected they must have incurred from the knights, Wheat and the others had minimal chance of escaping. And if one or all of the knights that had raided the building chose to use their shiny new electronic toy, then there was absolutely no hope that anyone was left in the building.

But just as Graham finished this thought in his mind, his ears detected footsteps and the slight clanking of armor – someone was in the building after all.

He spun around, looking for the knight spying on him. Nothing there. He spun around the other direction, but saw nothing still. He heard footsteps and armor clanking again; whoever it was drew closer and closer with great speed, and was good at keeping quit. Graham sped his way down the steps. At the bottom of the stairs, just as he felt he was free, a metal pipe swung out from behind the entrance to the living room on his right, hitting him in the forehead and knocking him out cold.

He remained conscious just long enough to see a crimson knight appear from behind the entrance of the living room, look down upon him in pity, and begin dragging Graham by the legs towards to door. The last scene he remembered was the crimson knight taking out the glowing blue device and pointing it towards him with the intent to fire. The blue light engulfed him on all sides, and his consciousness slipped into the realm of dream.

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“Where am I?” Graham asked, looking out into an expanse of green pasture that had no visible end in sight. “No, I can’t be back at the border!” He shouted in futility. Had the knight delivered him to the border?

Ash flew from the sky and coated the land with incredible speed. Unlike the Oceanic Confederacy border, though, there was no end to the ash in sight. The ocean was behind him, and he could see the ash flying from overseas from multiple directions; multiple sources abroad were pumping out steam and ash and soot at an incredible rate. Across this ash an ancient Packard crawled. A fat man popped out of the Packard and threw his stately hat onto the ground, cursing it, then got back into the car and drove off past the horizon. Graham tried to yell for the man in order to ask him where he’d been dropped off while unconscious, but the man couldn’t hear him.

The ash never stopped falling, but for some reason Graham could not taste it even though fragments of soot entered his mouth at some point. He picked up a handful of soot and sniffed it; it had no smell, like fresh winter snowfall. He tasted the soot; it tasted like nothing, like fresh winter snowfall. As he ate the soot, which he did vigorously, to see if it had any ill effects on his health, he noticed his energy decline considerably. He was suddenly tired and cold. The soot had melted in his mouth, and by this process he realized that it was not soot at all, but strange black snow.

The process of melting the black snow in his mouth had used up so much of his bodily energy, for melting a handful of snow takes more energy than boiling a handful of water, that he now felt cold and weak – Dammit! He shouted internally, knowing he had wasted his precious energy that he had only just gained back after being knocked out and relocated by the knight by doing the simple act of eating snow.

He looked down at his feet; there were snow boots. Confused, he began walking hoping to find some sort of house or residence; perhaps he would find Vanessa again and she could make him a cup of warm cocoa, and he could tell him about his adventure and his numerous failed attempts to return home. And although it had only been a few days, the reality of Talos was becoming so apparent to him that he wasn’t sure if he himself was telling the truth – was there really an Earth, and had he come from it? What was it like? All of this was starting to fade from his mind.

As he walked further along the field of blackened snow he eventually did find a single house, but it looked nothing like Vanessa’s abode on the border nor was it even anywhere near the ocean. Around the house various pipes and smokestacks rose, spewing out even more black snow. As Graham approached it he tasted this black snow, which fell into his mouth involuntarily, and spat it out at once: It was soot.

These smokestacks appeared at regular intervals, and Graham began assuming that whoever owned this house was generating their own power and creating this ash forest themselves. Thin smokestacks with rising smoke from burnt coal looked like budding maple trees from a distance, and darkness reigned over the small patch of land; the clouds did not give way to sunlight, but only to more clouds. Dark, black clouds surrounded the home nearby the smokestacks, and beyond that grey clouds meant snow – and as he looked even further into the distance, he saw that while soot was coming from multiple sources overseas, it never made it to the shores of this land. The snow falling from the sky was, indeed, black from pollution, but why it had no taste Graham could not explain.

He ran up to the door, his boots and clothes covered in soot, as they had been his very first moments in Talos, only to knock and receive no response. As the house was abandoned, Graham had to let himself in. It very closely resembled Vanessa’s house – in fact, it precisely resembled it, down the placement of the fireplace and the chairs in the living area. In the makeshift kitchen Graham rummaged through supplies until he found cocoa, and in minutes he was enjoying a hot drink that completely revitalized him and restored his energy. He found he had the energy to speak and move around freely.

It was not long before someone knocked on the door and Graham realized that the house was not abandoned after all. He opened the door and saw, to his amazement, Adam and Vanessa Curie standing outside, coated in thick, black ash, shivering from the cold of the snow, begging for residence and sustenance. Graham invited them inside and they all shared the cocoa before Graham politely asked the married couple how they had come to Talos.

With great interest he leaned in and listened to their tale, but although he attempted to hear it all he heard absolutely none of it; Adam’s mouth was moving, but no sounds were coming out.

Instantly, as if by magic, two knights took the place of the married couple – one was crimson colored and the other black. Graham was unfamiliar with black knights, but knew he was safe with his two guns. He quickly reached into his pocket, but found that the guns were not there. Worried, he fumbled around in his other pockets as the two knights sat in two armchairs and laughed at his futility. But Graham found something better – he pulled out one of the knights’ taser-like instruments, which he had discovered in his back pocket.

If it had been there all along, that meant that Ames was without one. Before he even began using it he was filled with worry over Ames’s safety. Without this weapon, she could already be dead.

But there were more pressing issues. He turned to the knights and pressed a button on the device, which sent a blinding blue light at both of them – and they disappeared into thin air as the light evaporated out of existence. Only for a moment were things peaceful again, for the particles of light began converging and out of them formed the body of a well-dressed man in his early sixties with graying hair and numerous wrinkles. He tipped his hat to Graham and said hello.

“Hello, President Ford,” Graham said back, not knowing how he knew the man’s name, or that the man was president.

“I have a gift for you, Mr. James Graham,” said President Ford, and he took out a cane. “This cane is for you. You’ll need it to walk, for your leg is badly injured. Please take it.”

Graham took the wooden cane, whose handle was made of glistening brass that never tarnished with fingerprints. As soon as he grasped hold of it he had a sudden pain in his leg, an unbearable agony that made him fall to the ground, groping for support along the carpet. President Ford apologized and walked over to Graham, but the apology did not sound sincere. “Oh, are you all right? I never meant to hurt you, Mr. Graham. Please get up, I’m sure you are fine enough to stand on your own.”

His leg appeared broken, and felt it as well. He used the cane, and President Ford’s aid, to prop his body up once more. In addition to the pain in his leg, he also felt severe pain in his chest, and suddenly worried that his whole body was a mess of broken bones caused by the knight that attacked him. He looked up from his recovery, and the president was gone – but the cane remained.

He had seen three sets of visitors, and each had come and gone more strangely than the last – but there did not appear to be any more. Graham wished to leave the house, adequately frightened, when he saw something that only frightened him more. As he turned to leave, he saw on the wall several bloodstains that matched the ones he’d seen at Station A before. The walls melted away, revealing the black pasture outside that continued on to infinity.

Then, the entire building melted away, the hot brass and steel sinking deep down into the soot and ash and snow, never to return. Graham found himself among the smoke stacks surrounded by ash in complete darkness. Frightened, he ran – and ran, and ran on and on to infinity, until the smokestacks were but tiny upright pins in the distance, but the ash forest never ended. Tired and befuddled, he fell over on the ground. His cane was gone, his leg was healed, but he could not move. Helpless, he sunk deeper and deeper into the ash, and eventually could see nothing but a black void.

He floated in this black void for what seemed like years before the pain began to return to his leg and chest, and he was able to feel around at a cold stone floor – but it was not his body doing the feeling. Something else felt a cold stone floor, and it transferred this feeling to him as he floated in the abyss of darkness.

It was his unconscious body in the real world, fumbling around, and waking up from what had been a concussion-induced dream – and the black abyss soon dispersed into tiny abyss particles, which gave way to white light and safety, but they quickly returned to form the void and he lapsed into unconsciousness yet again, devoid of the feeling that he had felt moments ago, remaining trapped within the world of dream…

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When he awoke, his instincts got a hold of him, and he crawled around wherever it was he lay waiting for his eyes to readjust and scratching for a way out, knowing he would be trapped in a room somewhere far away from Ames. He already knew where he was even before his eyes worked properly; he was in prison, sent to the Black District for the rest of his life. He would never see anyone he knew again and would probably die there. His only first thoughts were those of despair and sorry and worry.

When his eyes did work, his worst fears were confirmed – the cell, which may or may not have been located in the Black District, was made of brick and shaped like an igloo. The top of the igloo was coated in a small brass patch, while the back and front of the igloo served as the barred window and the barred exit. This semicircular barred exit, the bars also made of shimmering brass, blocked his only way out of the prison. The windows were broken; only one panel of glass remained between the dark metal encasements, the rest were either shattered or missing, allowing the cold air to seep through.

It was morning, and Graham began to ponder the night he had slept through, and the strange dreams he had experienced over the course of that night. Not able to muster the strength to stand, he merely looked up out of his cage to see a knight with black armor passed him by that looked just like the knight from his dream. Startled and awoken by this, he tried to call for help, for medical assistance, for anything, but his vocal chord would not obey – out of his mouth came only awkward screeches and moans. The strength to speak had long since left him, and he felt pain all over his body, indicating that after his capture the knight had beat him further. The greatest pain was in his leg, and he was also sure the knight had broken one of his ribs with a swift kick to the chest sometime during the course of the night.

He was glad he had left the knight’s device to Ames, who would certainly find it of use if she ever was under attack – or if she ever decided to come and rescue Graham. Particularly did Graham pray for the latter situation whereby Ames braved the Black District to save him and Wheat and all of their comrades using the strange taser-like device with utmost expertise, but this never occurred. Ames never magically appeared in a blaze of glory, battle scarred and prepared with tools to break open Graham’s cage.