​     They got halfway between the twentieth and twenty-first floor when the elevator stopped. 

​     The lights in the elevator went out, leaving Niki and Trevor in total darkness.

​     "This can't be good," Niki said.

​     Trevor looked up. "Isn't there supposed to be an escape door on the top of these things?" he asked. "Above the lights?"

​     "In the movies there always is," Niki replied.

​     "Here. I'm cupping my hands. I'll help you up."

​     "What am I supposed to do again? I'm supposed to, what, push those lights out of the way? How am I ever going..."

​     "Feel around up there to see if there even is a door, and then we'll..."

     "What? What will we do if we get on top of this thing?"

     "I don't know. Maybe we'll be able to pry open some elevator doors with..."

​     "And what if the elevator starts moving again once we get up there? What if we get squished or fall off or..."

​     "You know, any second now, those elevator doors are going to open, and a hundred guards..."

     "So, did you do it?"

     "Do what?"

​     "You know, with that woman and that baby a year ago?"

​     "Damn!" Trevor slapped the elevator door with the palm of his hand. "What is it with you and...okay. Okay, yes, a year ago, I was your average sixteen-year-old boy on his way to school on his motor scooter, for God's sake. It wasn't even eight in the morning yet."

     "And this woman she..."

     "Exactly."                                                                                                         "She flirts with you as you..."

​     "Exactly! She waved me over as I motored by. I honestly believed that she was in some kind of trouble. Then I realized she was just drunk out of her mind. All she was wearing was a robe, and then she wasn't even wearing that. I didn't know anything about any baby until it started crying, and when her husband..."

     Trevor swallowed hard.  Damn, he almost broke into tears for a second there. "You want to know where I've been for the last year, Niki? I've been in another galaxy. No, I've been on another plane of existence entirely. I've been in training with the Azure is where I've been."

     "And the Azure are..." 

​     "I'm not going to go into all of that right now. They're crosstime military, and they all wear the same glittering blue armor."

     "And they're from a different plane of..."

​     "Anyway, for the last year, it's just been me and the Azure, and really not even that. It's mainly just been me." 

     "Trevor..."

​     "No one to talk to who was a true, real human being. No one to talk to about what happened to me that morning. I lost all track of time. There is no night and day where I've been for the last year. No clocks."

     "Sounds like Hell," Niki said.

​     "They kept me busy. When there are no phones, no TV, no nothing, you find it's a lot easier to concentrate on your training. It got pretty lonely, though. It was a lot like solitary confinement, or I figure what solitary confinement would probably feel like. It's his eyes that I remember most, the eyes of the guy I shot. He was, like, crazy angry one second, and then, after I shot him, his eyes looked..."

     "...like he was someone in pain?"

     "Well, yeah, but it was something more than that. It was like...okay, this is turning out to be a little hard to explain. It as like he...he saw everything clearly for the very first time in his life, and what he saw scared him, turned him into a scared little child again. And then the life went out of his eyes and...You know what? We've got to find a way out of here. The Azure trained me to never give up or retreat unless...it's when I really get tired after all that training, and I'm trying to get to sleep and I can't, is when it hits me. That's when the pain and terror in that guy's eyes won't..."

​     The power inside the elevator went back on again. They could see again.

​     The elevator rose to the twenty-first floor, then stopped.

     The elevator doors opened.

​     A squadron of guards stood in the hallway beyond, their weapons trained on Trevor and Niki.

​     "Turn visible," the squadron leader said.

​     "Hi," Trevor said. He became visible again.

     "You're coming with us."

     "I guess we are."  

​                                                   CONTINUE

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