"People find it difficult to let go of their pain. They prefer familiar suffering because they fear the unknown."

  Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Monk

  Beep. Beep. Beep.

  Milly groaned as she opened her eyes and turned off her five-in-the-morning alarm with a sleepy swipe of her palm. The alarm clock, scavenged from a dumpster and on its last legs, like all her other belongings in her rundown bachelor apartment, gave its final, struggled ring before going silent.

  Each morning Milly wondered if this would be its last morning, yet the stubborn thing refused to quit. The notion that a discarded alarm clock could keep on ticking gave Milly the little bit of willpower she needed to keep getting out of bed each morning.

  She sat upright, her long black hair falling to the small of her back, tangled from the toss and turn of her night’s sleep. It had not been a restful one. This time, her nightmares were filled with twisted memories of her third foster home, before Social Services had shut it down and her foster father had been arrested.

  Milly rubbed the scars on her wrists as she remembered her time there. She had been moved through four subsequent foster homes in the two years after it happened, only to run away when she was sixteen years old.

  She was not a difficult child. She just never seemed to fit in anywhere, and she was left behind.

  Yawning, she swung her legs off her too-small bed and onto the stained carpet below. She ignored the squelch of dampness as her feet touched its surface. She had developed a talent of ignoring life’s minor discomforts in the three years since she had run away from the foster home. Things like soiled carpet, broken heating, and a diet consisting exclusively of ramen noodles, potatoes, and frozen peas were small discomforts, right?

  You keep telling yourself that, Milly. Maybe one day you'll believe it.

  The truth was, she was little better off now than when she was in foster care. She had a job working at a call center downtown, where she earned minimum wage. It was enough to afford her slum apartment in the dangerous part of the city, her bus pass, and just enough food to keep her alive.

  She lived her life on autopilot. Wake up. Two-hour bus to work. Ten-hour shift. Two-hour bus back. Eat. Sleep. Repeat. Over and over, with no escape and no point except to live to see the next day and do it all again.

  She grabbed her towel, quickly stripping off the nighty that was a size too small and walked the three steps to her tiny bathroom. The single ceiling light flickered, and she wondered whether it would actually turn on today. Like the alarm clock, it did its job, though it flickered every few seconds.

  The bathtub was rusted and the sink cracked, the latter covered over with a single piece of duct tape that the landlord had placed there six months ago. “It’s on my to-do list, Mildred,” he'd told her when she was brave enough to ask when it would be fixed.

  Mildred. She hated her name. She did not remember her parents. Her mother had died of an overdose when she was three and her father abandoned her the next day. Or he was arrested for her murder. No one had bothered to tell her, and she never really wanted to know. All she knew was they'd left her. Their only contribution to her life was her failed childhood, a failing adulthood, and her name. Mildred Persephone Brown. A name they must have thought up while in a drug addled stupor watching historical fiction.

  “Your thoughts are growing dark again, Milly,” she told her reflection in the mirror. She opened her medicine cabinet, grabbed the bottle of anti-depressants, and swallowed one. She was supposed to be weaning herself off these, but today had not been a good start to the day.

  She stared at herself in the mirror as she felt the pill work its way down her throat. She was not an attractive woman in her own eyes. Her hair was plain and frayed. She did not have the luxury of facial cleansers or, sometimes, shampoo, which gave her skin and hair a greasy look. Her nose was a touch too broad and her chin a touch too flat. She was overweight, though it all carried in her legs and stomach.

  Not that anyone ever looks at me that way. Who would want to be with someone like me?

  Her hazel eyes, the only feature she liked about her body, reflected a sadness that had settled in long ago and never left.

  She took a quick shower, this time sparing a bit of shampoo, and tried to let her self-pity slide down the leaky drain with the rest of her filth. As always, it did not work.

  She brushed her teeth and gave her hair a quick comb to remove the worst of the tangles, then threw on the black hoodie with the broad front pocket and pentagram on the back that she wore everyday. She had been lucky enough to buy it for two dollars at the thrift store. The hoodie had become her safety blanket against the world. It was two sizes too large, which helped hide her weight, and the pentagram kept most people from talking to her. She always wore loose fitting clothing to hide her size, but the black hoodie did it particularly well.

  You’d think that a diet of nothing except ramen, potatoes, and peas would make me skinny, but life could not even do me that favour.

  Her alarm went off again, this time warning her that the bus would arrive in a few moments.

  “Shit!” she shouted, earning an angry yell through the paper-thin apartment walls she shared with her cranky neighbour.

  “Sorry, Mr. Dee,” she whispered, wishing she hadn't woke the old veteran. She'd get an earful from him when she got home.

  She rushed out the door, returning a few seconds later for her forgotten backpack, and ran for the bus stop.

  * * *

  Milly stared out at the scenery as her bus approached her work, located on the tenth floor of 541 Arlington Street. According to the advertisements for its many vacant floors, the complex was ‘adjacent to the nice part of downtown’. Milly took that to mean it was decidedly in the bad part of downtown.

  Built in the early 1990s by revolutionary designer and businessman Robert Castle, the four office towers were built into the shape of a castle, with glass walkways connecting each of the towers along the main floor and a large glass courtyard in the middle of the complex.

  The ‘Castle of Glass’, as it was called at the ribbon cutting ceremony, could have revitalized the nearby neighborhoods and businesses. Except shortly after it opened, Mr. Castle was arrested for tax evasion and fraud, having gambled away government financial advances, workers compensation payments, and staff pensions. The Castle of Glass was auctioned off to the highest bidder a year after opening and has gone through over two dozen owners since.

  Consequently, the Castle of Glass was falling apart. Its cracked glass panels only saw repairs when one reached lawsuit-level potential damage. The lobby floor was full of shattered tiles, and its single tree planted in the center had long since died. Every tenant willing to pay rent had been packed into Tower One, leaving the other three unheated and unrepaired. The only improvement the complex had seen in five years was the tiny shop in the lobby next to Tower One, where a young woman had, for a reason unknown to everyone, opened a coffee shop called Rain on My Parade.

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  Milly got off the bus and walked the two blocks to the tower, clutching her backpack close to her chest. She always came in through the northeast entrance, the closest to Tower 1, and headed straight to the elevator. She stole a look through the window of the coffee shop, watching the young woman with short brown hair that matched the color of her apron sweeping the floor and humming to herself. There were no customers. Milly felt sorry for her, but she did not have money to spend on coffee or tea.

  The elevator rang, gears grinding to a halt and doors opening with a screech. She stepped in, eyes flashing up to the safety sticker peeling off above the panel.

  “Last inspected September 2009,” Milly read aloud as the doors closed with an equally ear-piercing screech. "That's disheartening."

  Her eyes dropped from the safety sticker to the list of businesses and their assigned floors. Only the most desperate or cheapest companies came to the Castle of Glass. Government civil servants, the lowest in their complex government hierarchy, occupied floors two through four, their cheap rent part of the deal struck with Mr. Castle in exchange for tax breaks on the land back in the nineties. The government had made sure that agreement was honored by each subsequent owner.

  The next two floors were vacant. They had been vacant for years, and Milly didn't think they'd be filled any time soon. Milly had once peeked inside in a moment of curiosity, but the emptiness and mildew made her quickly leave.

  Floors seven through nine were occupied by the headquarters of a start-up energy drink company, EnergyWave. Milly had heard they were doing decent business, until they'd been hit with a series of class action lawsuits for causing ‘excessive heart palpitations’. They'd given away free samples when they first moved into the building, and Milly'd noticed they had a warning on the bottle that it was ‘not to be consumed by anyone over the age of sixty-five or with health difficulties’.

  At least they added warnings. That makes them more honest than my company.

  Acicenter, Milly's employer, was an insurance company that occupied floors ten through twelve. It was not a company you'd would find on any national ranking system. The CEO, Jacob Stone, did his best to avoid being on any list, including any government list.

  The call centre, where Milly worked, filled the tenth floor. Employees were crammed together in tiny, shared cubicles to maximize space. The only benefit were the big bay windows around the outside. Milly could look across four rows of cubicles towards the good part of downtown, its bright spires and lush parks reminding her that there were people out there who did not regularly contemplate whether the amount of people packed onto her floor could cause it to give way and crush the poor drones in EnergyWave’s call centre beneath them.

  Naturally, with the exception of call center manager, Mr. Fredrickson, all upper managers had large offices on the eleventh and twelfth. They rarely ventured down to the tenth.

  Ok, so that's one advantage to being on the tenth floor. Jacob Stone gives me the creeps.

  The floors above them, except for the vacant sixteenth floor penthouse, were occupied by a law firm. One of those that still ran three in the morning commercials on local television.

  “Let Legal Eagles fly you to freedom! Caw Caw!” whispered Milly, having spent many late nights unable to sleep as she stared at her tiny television, screen fractured in the top left corner. “It’s not even the right bird call.”

  The elevator stopped at the tenth floor. She had arrived. Milly took a deep breath, hoisted her backpack up on her shoulders, and strode forward into the chaotic office that awaited her.

  * * *

  “Acicentre, for all your insurance needs. How may I help you today?” Milly spoke into the phone for the twenty-third time that day, according to the productivity counter in the bottom left of her computer screen.

  God, I hate this job. But there's not much out there for a high school dropout who had spent three months homeless on the streets and still dresses in hoodies. At least Acicentre had hired me. They don't care what I wear, as long as I keep answering the phone.

  She forwarded the call to the appropriate agent, leaned back in her chair, and sighed.

  “This job would be so much easier if no one called,” said Xavier beside her, completely serious.

  Xavier was the one positive in her life right now. He was a few years older than her, handsome in his own way and completely oblivious to it. As far as Milly could tell, Xavier was obsessed with two things in his life. Working out and playing video games. The former accentuated his handsomeness, his rippling muscles and broad shoulders enough to turn the eyes of most women and more men than Milly expected. Unfortunately for him, the latter obsession kept anyone but her from spending more than a minute in his company.

  “Anyway, the key to that level map is to crouch behind the crates just outside the second spawn point. Everyone looks left first, which gives you that split second to shoot. They accuse me of spawn camping, but it is a legitimate strategy and it is not my fault if they cannot adapt to it. That’s why I am one of the highest ranked on the server,” Xavier continued, picking up where he had left off when Milly got the call.

  Milly listened politely. She had no idea what a spawn point was, or why camping next to it was frowned upon.

  I thought this was a gun shooting game? Why were people camping? Maybe they were hunting wildlife.

  She didn't really care. She just smiled and nodded, and that was enough for Xavier.

  In the six months since they'd started sharing cubicle space, video games were all that Xavier talked about - a never-ending barrage of the fine details of games of all types and his strategies for winning at each.

  He never asked about Milly's life. He never asked about her past or her interests or even how her day was going. That suited Milly just fine. Her life was not worth recounting.

  Milly was not sure if Xavier was a friend. Their relationship was one-sided, but Milly had never had a friend before. So one day she had decided that Xavier was a friend within the three walls of their shared cubicle, which was enough to help Milly keep coming to work each day.

  Xavier’s phone rang and he cut off his narration with a frown. He had been saying something about…fortnights? Milly had stopped paying attention again, simply nodding her head and letting her mind drift. Not that Xavier ever noticed.

  Xavier leaned forward with a sigh, until he read the caller ID.

  “It’s my guild," Xavier said excitedly. "Quick, go stand guard outside and tell me if Mr. Fredrickson comes this way. This is important. We are raiding the golden dragon queen tonight and we need to come up with a battle strategy.”

  Milly chuckled and did as she was instructed. She didn't know what a guild was, but a month ago Xavier had started forwarding his personal calls to his work line, covering off his gaming needs and raising his productivity counter at the same time. It meant more customer calls went to Milly to manage, but she didn't care enough to consider it an issue.

  “Besides, there are benefits to standing guard,” she whispered, staring across the cubicle farm out the broad window that overlooked downtown. She watched the small kayaks paddle along the broad northern river that lazily wound its way through the city, and watched as an ambulance weaved its way though traffic.

  She stretched her arms towards the ceiling, cracking her back. Her hoodie rose up her stomach, showing bare skin, and she quickly pulled it down in a moment of panic, hoping no one had seen. Unfortunately, someone had.

  “Careful there, Mil-dead,” sung Calista Gale, her long crimson ponytail swaying with her laugher. “No one wants to glimpse your pale skin.”

  She pushed passed Milly, nudging Milly with her elbow on the way to the photocopier. Milly mumbled an apology. Calista’s high heels clicked on the floor as her short skirt swayed with her hips. Milly’s face glowed red from embarrassment and she ducked back into the cubicle just as Xavier finished his call.

  “Skank used to tease me in high school,” Xavier said, having seen Calista walk by. “Second string cheerleader, never good enough for prime time. Now she works in a call centre with the rest of us. Warms my heart to see the mighty fall.”

  “How’d you get her to stop bullying you?” Milly asked softly.

  “Oh, she found someone weaker to bully and forgot about me. I guess that’s why she bullies you.”

  Xavier said it with such casualness, as if it were simply a well-known fact, but his comment ran through her mind for the rest of the day. Xavier thought she was weak.

  She turned from him, stared at her phone, and quietly sobbed as Xavier recounted the appropriate min-maxing strategy in the latest JRPG, oblivious to her tears.

  * * *

  Milly arrived back at her rundown apartment well after the sun had set. She had spent the last two-hour bus ride home staring out the window as the neon lights passed her by. Another day alive and another day not lived. Another day put behind her in the unrelenting march towards oblivion.

  “God Milly, stop being so melodramatic,” she scolded herself, as she threw her backpack into the corner of her apartment. “I thought you left behind that ‘life is pain’ goth stuff when you dropped out of high school.”

  She looked down at her oversized black hoodie and gave a weak laugh. “Well, maybe you didn’t.”

  Milly ate a quick meal of baked potatoes and peas and crawled into bed. She wondered if tomorrow would be any different. She knew it wouldn't be, as that required an effort and willingness to change that she could never manage.

  She drifted off to sleep, another day done, desperate for a better tomorrow.

  * * *

  The God Contest rocketed towards Earth, intent on its target, as Oracle and Thoth careened through the ether of the Nexus. Their minds were stretched thin and broken as memories were syphoned away, crystalized, and became imbedded in the fabric of the Contest.

  Oracle tried to hold tight to Thoth, but he was hurled away in the gale-force winds and lost to her sight. Her scream was drowned out in the annoucement that filled the ether.

  “God Contest arriving at Destination. On target. Assimilating participants. The game begins in three…two…one.”

  Non-Canonical Aftermath: