House music, sparkling apple cider, leftover pastrami. Kicked back under the soft glow of dusty lights, legs crossed, feet bobbing up and down to that familiar beat. This moment could last forever, in limbo, held just like this, and it would be nothing short of divine.

  But fate had other plans for me.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. I lean my head past the brown leather couch cushion, peer through the thirteenth-floor window; the moon engulfs the urban sprawl with a harsh light, smearing the gray skyline. The wind carries wafts of ozone and cigarette smoke. Stray dogs bark in the street, a police siren wails through hollow alleyways. I look down the brick wall, I hear the rustling of something (or someone) in the garbage.

  Downstairs, at the apartment laundromat. I stare at my reflection as my load churns behind a glass bubble, arms draped over knees. The neighborhood cat slips his head in my open hand. I purr a similar tune, indulging it with a scratch behind the head as my machine beeps. It nips my finger affectionately and scurries away the checkered teal floor.

  In my bed, sprawled out amongst clean clothes and the smell of chemical lilacs. It’s dark. I stare at the ceiling fan. It turns with a slow, cool breeze. Moonlight creeps through slitted blinds, and I hold my hand up in its wake. I watch as shadows dance with the movement of my fingers, my eyes come in and out of focus with the creases of my palm and my mirrored gestures on the ceiling.

  The breeze stops. I don’t remember when, but I remember now. The fan stops turning, and I lower my hand. It trails through the moonlight, drifting through the current like water. Fingers leave afterimages, chasing visions in a ghostly haze, clinging for a moment too long. The ambient hum of the city still echoes in my ears.

  Maybe I’m just tired.

  I wash my face with cold water in the bathroom. It feels... oddly numb. I look at myself again. A bit of stubble that could use a clean shave, but nothing out of the ordinary. Must’ve eaten something off. Maybe it was the overnight pastrami.

  My sheets feel alien, a texture that I’ve never felt before. I feel weightless, like I’m floating on water. The night feels like a dream, a mundaneness skirting on something just short of bizarre.

  I close my eyes, and the world shatters.

  A thunderous roar. A beam of white light. The sky spins and bursts. A sharp crack splits the air, my breath suspended in its wake. My skin prickles and static shoots up my veins, tiny glass fractures splintering through my limbs.

  A hum builds beneath my teeth. My scream is silent. My blanket tangles around my legs, glass shards from a broken window zip past my eyes. A familiar warmth escapes my nose and a stream of blood floats across my vision, weightless.

  My head snaps back. My vision stutters like the end of a roll of film, cut to black.

  ***

  Sprawled on the ground, cold concrete biting into my skin. My head rings, a high shrill, and I feel blood dripping down the tip of my upper lip. It smells sour. I scrunch my nose as I spit out the taste of copper from my mouth. I lift my eyes.

  I am no longer in the comfort of my bedroom, nor its solitude. Dim, green light seeps through a shallow haze of smoke. A circle and sigil burned into the stone beneath me, unknown in origin and meaning. I’m on a platform, beside me a decaying tunnel and a railway. I look at the mural on the opposite side of the tracks. Faded ceramic tiles, chipped and peeling, marred by age and graffiti.

  I can discern an elaborate circle?no, a chart, divided into twelve unique segments. In its center, the sun and moon, expanding outwards into strange glyphs and an assortment of objects: a crab, a bow and arrow, a balanced scale. In my fatigue, I struggle to understand the significance of any of these foreign characters and symbols.

  The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

  I stagger onto my elbows, my body wracked with a sore heaviness. A crunch of boots echoes from behind me. I whip my head around and my heart starts again. Shadows peel from edges of the platform, through wisps of smoke, silhouettes that move in slow unison, like they’ve always belonged to this strange underground.

  Flashes of silver from the fog, weapons drawn. The blunt end of an ashen quarterstaff, the point of a spear. A bow taut with an arrow, the crescent of a scythe. A loose ring forms around my person, slipping tighter like a noose into place.

  My mouth opens; no sound comes out.

  “A hare in a den of foxes,” a female voice calls from the hush. It’s loud and clear, cutting through the stale air.

  The one who speaks steps into the light. Her boots clink against the charred ground and her cloak catches flying sparks from the axe she drags on the concrete. In one uninterrupted motion, hand on handle, she lifts its blade to my keeled body. Her hood shrouds her face in darkness.

  “You’re not supposed to be here, kid.”

  I try again to speak, but the words crack and dissolve. My lungs feel full of fog and I cough, lifting dust and rubble from the ground. At the same time, another voice emerges.

  “This is new...“ female again, calmer, but noticeably colder. “Don’t think there’s a rulebook entry on ‘interlopers’.”

  She prods forward and the butt of her trident firmly presses into the ground with each step. Her movements are smooth, deliberate, almost peaceful. Just as this second individual approaches me, another interrupts her stride, passing a rather blunt shoulder check.

  “We know the answer,” with vitriol.

  A longsword peers through the shadows, and just as it surfaces through the mist it thrusts through my periphery. I flinch and my elbow collapses; I lay on my side as the blade pulverizes the stone next to me.

  “Pretender,” the bladesman spits, a voice that which sears with vehemence and crackles like a fuse. “How dare you claim the stars.”

  His is the first face I can discern. A small face, sharp features softened by a light blanket of freckles, and spiky blonde hair with brown eyebrows and an amber glare. There’s a dark crack in his bottom lip, and he breathes like a furnace.

  A sharp click, and his fierce expression twitches.

  “We don’t maim ‘til the verdict,” the axewoman says, turning to face the blonde.

  “Tch,” he scoffs, maintaining an iron gaze.

  “Cheer up?we don’t know why he’s here, either,“ another man’s voice enters, walking into the light.

  A striped, hooded poncho, arms slung taut around the hickory quarterstaff on his shoulders, like a squat barbell. He’s tall, noticeably more than the others. He reminds me of a lamppost on a foggy street: still, watchful. Even through his presence, I can sense an glimmer of warmth?a smile, just maybe, behind that fabric shroud.

  “Maybe we should ask questions before we annihilate him,” he says, with a small shrug.

  “Speak for yourself,” the blonde hisses, yanking his sword free from the rubble. “Let the mark set it straight.”

  All four pairs of eyes turn to me.

  “What mark,” I manage to croak.

  The girl with the axe doesn’t answer?she crouches, grabbing my wrist, yanking me towards her. I can see her features clearer. Fair skin, a strong jaw, wisps of brown and elegant features that complement a certain air of healthy vigor. Her eyes are a brilliant shade of green, a color that I couldn’t replicate on paper if I tried. She turns my wrist around to face the audience.

  A silence spreads, dense, heavy.

  “No,” the cold-voiced girl murmurs. “No way.”

  “Well, that’s not good,” poncho-man exhales through his nose.

  The blonde’s eyes go wide with shock and anger, too big for his frame. “Impossible.”

  For the first time, I look at my own wrist. There it is, etched and branded into my skin, hot to the touch and smoldering with a white light: the conjoined shape of a “U” and a tilde (that squiggly dash on the end of your keyboard). Not that I know what it means, a bit off-putting for a first tattoo.

  Axe-girl straightens, letting go of my wrist. I wince and caress it, looking at her expression. It’s solemn, vexed. She opens her mouth. Shuts it. Then finally, flatly:

  “Ophiuchus.”

  The word hits the room like a dropped stone in still water. I don’t recognize it, but it seems like everyone else does.

  “Ophiu-what?” I blink.

  “Bring him in, put him in the spare,” she remarks to the quarterstaff. He nods, obliging.

  The boy with the longsword snarls. “He’s not one of us.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Neither were we, once.”

  ***