"Are you sure you want to do it this way?" Dion asked. Of course, Apollo nodded his head.

"I can't imagine it going any other way." He said.

"For someone who hates heroics, you certainly always find a way to make yourself a hero, don't you?" Dion asked. "I'm beginning to think you're a liar."

"Maybe," Apollo said. "Or maybe this is just the best way to do things."

So he (Dion) waved him away. The three of them; Luanne and Dion and the barely-conscious Jaimi set upon Dion's back headed out. They went into a back room, behind a small bar. Then all three were out, and it was only Apollo.

"What's that in horror movies they always say?" Apollo walked up to the staircase to his rear, to the corpses lining the stairs and the blood and the small potholes made by the impact of blades sometime ago, and he looked away. "Don't ever split up, right? I guess I didn't pay attention."

He moved away from the stairs. He moved away from the mounds of corpses. He walked towards the elevator shaft and the hanging steel cord. Getting past the static exhaustion's of a broken control panel, he leaned forward into the gap, below him a seeming infinite darkness (and this was the first floor, so what hid below?) and above, the tuned-warping sound of rubble falling through a tunnel. Echoing. He grabbed the cable stiff with his good hand. He jumped onto it and started the trek. Shimming up, slow and steady with his thighs and hands, rubbing himself up like a worm does on a leaf. Wiggling, slithering almost.

It didn't take long for things to go wrong.

Ten floors up he heard a snap. The wire smacked against the wall. He fell. Fast.

[i]Shit. I thought he was just going to let me through.

He reached into his coat (with his good hand, of course) and took out a blade. That steel, taller than himself. Slamming it into the wall, with one wide arc. The steel beams holding the shaft together bent as he forced his way inside, the sword lodged itself like a cork. Crooked. So he made a little platform with his stabbed sword and stood up, with bent knees, on the flat side of his blade.

"You're not going to play nice, are you?" He said upon the darkness above him. Not a noise, not a movement. And it was almost like he was getting the idea that maybe it'd been a mistake and this whole thing a joke, because it seemed like no one was there. That the snap might have been coincidence.

Then he heard him, somewhat faint. Far.

"You should have brought an army with you." The voice said. "It'd be the only chance you'd have."

And Apollo smiled, his heart raced. Each thump, each swollen pulse of his blood reddened his face. He slammed his hand into a door next to him, an elevator door. He ripped them open. The static flew, the metal grate against the floor.

He jumped in, reached his hand out and picked up his sword.

"And what floor is this?" As if by talking, by just breathing and existing he could ease the growing tension in his palms. The sweaty feeling of nervousness that grew in waves across his body dragged in and out. He was too far from the top and too far from the first floor which to him seemed the worst place to be.

Floor thirty-five. It wasn't a looker, then again, nothing much of the Casino El Rey was anymore. Most of it was covered in plastic or blood or bodies or all three. He was in a restaurant, the buffet. The long tables flipped on their sides, some of them at least. Others had chairs and stools sat atop their faces. And he couldn't help but remember it, Sophie, that newspaper place. It wasn't like he was trying to remember anything at all, who tries to remember terrible things, after all?

Maybe it was Jaimi who reminded him of Sophie, a girl almost half her own age, maybe it was the empty dinner tables that reminded him of the newspaper complex, the rotten wood of it - the empty staff kitchen. Yes, the girl and the kitchen. They reminded him of that terrible place in that terrible time. These are the small things that bring back terrible shivers. But he wasn't dealing with a simple loony psychologist playing God, not anymore. He was playing with a witch, a heretic, who claimed himself a servant. One with the power to commit to that kind of title.

In other words, Ritcher was much worse.

He walked in with careful steps, bringing his foot up gentle and easy across the tile floor. There were porcelain plates and knives that he tip-toed over. He scrunched one. It broke underneath his heel, and he looked down. There was no light here, nothing but his red eyes staring back from the dozen piece of shattered plate. So it looked like two dozen eyes then, looking back at him, trailing him. His own eyes.

And among one of them, one of the many pieces he saw a distinct color. Just a hint of it. Just enough to give him the chills.

A green eye.

Just one.

He snapped his head up. He looked across the ceiling where chandeliers rocked with playful turns. His black prosthetic arm poised in front of his chest, his other hand on the blade.

Apollo ran to the kitchen, vaulting over the food bar, going through the kitchen and all its grills and stoves and ovens. He ran out the back door, where smoke from a busted pipe spilled out from the ceiling. Up. Up. Up emergency stairs (god there were so many, and they turned and curved and lead to three different red and white doors he could have exited from) and through the last door at the top of the last stairs, he came out. Nearly leaped out, in a club. A bar. Roulette tables laid out around him,stabbed at the center of them were platforms and stripper poles. The weeks of emptiness hadn't made the room lose its natural smell of cigarette and alcohol. It only added a layer of dust. Apollo turned to the bar, looking around. He flipped a switch, nothing.

[i]Of course not.

On the roofs were disco balls. They didn't even turn.

He slapped a construction light to his rear, it flashed a bit, illuminating the room with fractured light. Light that went through the crystal balls and fragmented itself. And among the light, he swore he saw something odd.

A green, small, circular light moving. He kept eyeing it, kept following it.

The construction light turned off. Suddenly.

He jerked his hand across the bar table next to him. Something broke.

[i]Jesus.

He jumped.

An ashtray. It was just an ashtray. He hadn't felt it touch his false hand, he wasn't used to having a false hand. From the bottom, he saw a half-finished cigarette and picked it up. Nasty habit. He lit it and smoked it, the half-ruined, half-finished bent cigarette. It hung from his lip.

He lit it.

It was enough to ease his nerves to have him moving across the room, towards the center. Enough to get him to stop shaking. One hand held the blade, the other black hand was open palm (and would be for the rest of his life). And with this open palm hand, he turned over and brushed aside the furniture. He threw roulette balls and poker cards and chips and empty (half-empty, some) glasses from their tables. There was a stage with an empty band set. There were speakers, large, almost half the length to the ceiling. There was an announcer desk with an empty-manned computer in the corner of the room. Drinks as far as he could see, all standing like starved animals come to feed. Empty and tall glasses and glistening from the intense crimson glare of Apollo's eyes.

Table cloth dragged on his feet. The air tasted of blood of ash of alcohol. Of luck. Of Las Vegas, though they weren't even close.

Money. That was the taste. Then iron.

He sniffed. He spat out his cigarette.

A cord blew across the room, it came from the bass on the band floor. Apollo turned his head to the awful tune, an echo-less F minor that rattled his shaking body stiff.

And he saw it, upon the stage. Not Ritcher, he'd know him soon. He saw something else, in his suit, dancing. The room, morphing, fleshy. Eyes bulged from the tables, weeds grew from the glass. His head -! His head couldn't stop shaking. There, on the stage, the devil danced. A figure in all black, red tie, with shiny shoes and some form of spotlight that came down to him. And he (this strange figure) danced, laughing like a hyena. Danced, and played with the microphone and put the damn stand against his shoulders to stroll it in circles. He stopped. This figure, whose shadowy face was low and aiming at the floor. He put the microphone to his face, which to Apollo, seemed to not even connect to anything. And this shadowy face, whose details were nothing more than blurs, smiled. And Apollo knew he smiled, not by looking at him, but by feeling it. The strong, eerie chill that went across his body.

[i]A hallucination. He tapped his chest with his black hand. [i]Another one, it has to be.

And this figure put his lips against the mic and said in a voice he could never forget, a voice that sounded something shrill and jovial and loud and bright; a clown having a roar through an asylum, strolling down with a wheelchair and an unstrapped, loose vest.

This figure, this devil, said: "Behind you, kid."

Apollo turned, sword out. He struck a wave of sand. Apollo turned his blade by its side, it absorbed the force. Most of it. His body flew out, towards one of the stripper poles. He must have cut it in half, must have because the top half of the pole fell next to his head and his shoulders hurt like hell. He put both hands against the floor to stand himself, his prosthetic slipped underneath him. He fell face first. Then, he tried again.

Beyond, a few meters across, Ritcher spoke.

"I was wondering when you were going to wake up." He said. "You were staring far off at that stage a little too long."

"Fuck," Apollo dragged his body up. "I wasn't supposed to fight you this quickly."

"None of us can choose what we want or when we get what we want," Ritcher said.

"No we do not, do we." Apollo stretched his spine to the side. "You don't look too good, Ritcher."

"And you look too good." Ritcher smiled, blood fell from his eye. "Your knee is better. And is that a new hand?"

Ritcher raised his own hand from the sleeveless side of his body.

"What a coincidence. This one is too."

"I can thank your brother for my hand." And he was expecting some kind of frustration from Ritcher, anything really. But Ritcher smiled, chuckled.

"Oh, did he donate it?" Ritcher said. "I'm glad he was useful to someone, at least."

"If I asked you to talk, would you even consider it?" Apollo asked.

The sand rose, levitated some few feet into an even level so that across the horizon Apollo could see the plane, even in the dark. It was a layer of sand, even, almost at his abdomen. This layer of sand retreated, returning back to Ritcher into what looked like a tendril. And it wiggled and wagged behind Ritcher, slapping and crushing with a temperament only describable as giddy.

"What's there to talk about?" Ritcher asked.

[i]I guess that's all there is to it, then.