The last time I saw him, I pushed him off the building.

My hands froze around the doorknob. Silence fell in the hallways as the sound of my boots against the glassy black floor receded. He was here. Until now, I never would have known.

It happened once. And I thought it would be once and for all. The guns, the blood, the deaths, the games. It was ruthless, the way these people played, and until then, I was only a spectator. I never thought I would be one of them, be the one holding the gun, letting the suppressed emotions resurface, let the desire for revenge get the better of me. A jolt of pain shot up my arm, as the reel of memories came flashing in my mind. I was looking down the terrace as I grasped the eternity that stretched out below. Three minutes later, I was starting down the same trail of miniature buildings and spiraling oblivion, only this time, my eyes traced the path of death. His body, limp, was falling, receding deeper and deeper, then vanishing. I jolted backward, panting, incredulous. I guess I never knew myself until that very moment, when I was pushed off the edge. The gun in my hands splattered to the ground; I hadn’t needed it anyways. The moment of epilepsy passed and I was back to my surroundings again, the ritzy interiors glinting with newness and richness.

My heartbeat spiked up like quicksilver and the room looked darker than what I was used to seeing, as though it was colored by enormous shadows. I was standing in front of the security room, only one of the fifteen doors that were closed along this lengthy hallway. This was the one ultimate place of security that remained in the entirety of the nation, neatly couched beneath the sky-scraping building that eventually came to be called Empirica Lexis. Unless you were one of the three people allowed access, you won’t get to leave once you enter.

I retreated my hand from the doorknob, deciding that going inside would be too dangerous. There was something intensely foreboding about the silence that hung in the hallways, as though I wasn’t accustomed to it already, as though I hadn’t spent hours every day treading through the thickness of precisely that quietness for the past five years. The silence then was like an uncomfortable coat that hung around my body, yet one that I didn’t want to remove for the fear of the prickly coldness. This calm - this state of non-disturbance - was all that I knew, and I didn’t think I could handle anything else. My eyes averted their gaze to scan the number plate on the door. 543A. I could feel the tension of suspense behind my back. It was frightening. I turned around.

And the next thing I could register was the explosion of pain that erupted from my head. Then quickness of movement, a blur of hands. Then my vision culminating into a screen of blackness. Then the palpitations of my heart. My lungs as they feared each breath would be their last. My consciousness as it faded in— then out of life.