Cain sat in a park in the sky, drenched by the pouring rain.  A circle etched the dirt around the weathered bench – studded by runes and the geometry beatific in its precise strokes and rings. Grey clouds roiled within it, a gnashing struggle to escape their sorcerous confines and the rain their spitting, heaving protest at their cage.

Each raindrop burst against his skin in a shot of wrenching cold, coursing over his face, down his throat, and plastering his shirt to his chest. The cold should make him shake, would make any human shudder and moan at the Arctic bite of the raindrops pummelling skin, but even as it wormed to the depths of his bones, the ice hardly brought a tremble.

God knew what it was supposed to achieve, getting soaked like this. Perhaps that it might chase out the cold that sat deeper. The one in his marrow. The one that still stained the edges of his grey matter, shading his vision black.

Down below, the city sketched a crazed network of light and shocking life, fissures striking through the black, industrial mass. Each stud of light fizzed with a vibrating corona of energy, digging around the edges of Cain’s eyes and settling into his temple like a migraine. Like a drill, sliding into that soft part on the side of his skull and ripping through brain.

Stupid, bloody stupid to go out without any, but no matter how many times he’d patted his trousers and dug through the pockets of his coat on his way over, no little bottle of pills kissed the tips of his fingers, no winking oxys or percs or even a wrapped gram of bloody dope nestled in his palm.

Just the lights, an echoing reverberation of sorcery that sliced into his eyes and clawed out the inside of his skull. Not a single place in this city had the good grace to tend to darkness, but at least here, with rustling trees at his back and the sorcerous downpour drowning all sound, Cain could almost pretend the lights were stars, fallen to Earth where they’d been chased from the sky.

Cain spat another droplet of rain from his lips and dragged his fingers back through his hair. It was liquid, like he stood beneath a roaring shower.

“Why can’t I do anything right?” He spoke to the cloud, to the lichen staining the bench, to the rolling grass that tumbled off a cliff to the city below. “I’m trying. I’m trying so stupid bloody hard and it never works.”

Nothing replied. Obviously. Cain was out here talking to thin air under his own personal cloud like that was any bloody hallmark of normality. With a hiss, he gave a sharp kick of his foot, throwing up a skid of sodden mud that spattered like blood across the frostbitten grass. The missing colour pulsed across his skull, crimson.

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A little time later, a voice came to the hilltop.

“Wagwan, Romeo. Your night go that badly?”

Cain started, grinding his feet into the mud and spinning around with sorcery brewing in the air. Bunny stood behind the bench, a gas half-mask pushed down around her neck. A fine shade of dust coated her clothes and peppered her skin like galaxies.

Scowling, Cain drove his heel through the circle. As the border broke, the rain ceased first as a sigh then all at once, the cloud vanishing to light ashen wisps. “It was fine,” Cain said between gritted teeth. “I just fancied it raining.”

Bunny strolled around the bench, a lax stride that was all long legs and bullying shoulders. “You get the place decorated?”

Cain trailed her, settling back against the heavy wood of the bench with his arms crossed. “Yes.”

A rakish grin dashed across her face. “Jack show up early?”

“Why would she not just fucking well tell me he was coming around!”

Bunny only gave him a shrug, and with mulling lips, she eased down on the bench beside him. Eased wasn’t often in Bunny’s vocabulary of movements, and now he looked a little closer, those clothes bore more than dust – frayed with tears and scorched polyester.

Regardless, the grunt she gave as she stuck her legs out and folded her arms behind her head said comfortable. “You know Ella, man. She’s always got something perfect in her head, but gal’s too scared to admit we’re all too human and too screwed up to fit it. She’ll learn one day, but it won’t be pretty ‘til she does.”

The words sliced into a place in Cain’s chest he hadn’t even realised lingered unfrozen, and in its isolation, it loosed a high, keen whine that Cain had to trap in his throat. A fresh set of lights plunged across the city, the thundering whir of a helicopter scouring the air.

“I never should’ve bloody shown you this place.”

Bunny flashed another grin. “You was too far gone to care.”

Yes, and he probably had been. Often was when he spent any time with Bunny. Cain sighed, rubbing his fingers over the bridge of his nose. “Well, could you perhaps leave?”

“Allow it, Romeo. Some pigs still hanging ‘round the streets down there, innit, and I look bait.”

Christ, and he should make her leave. The Veil strained against his skin, bitter wisps of it unstitching the air around him as it fought through to their plane. It was so ungodly hard to keep it trapped – a second lapse and the hillside would be covered in a black haze. Rotten grass, crumbling trees, barren of all life. All this sorcery that he’d already siphoned off the planes and it begged to be used, its whine the blade striking his skull.

Cain nodded to the mask around her neck, a sharp, jerky motion. “What’s the occasion?”

“Same old, like. This one was against that bill – you know, permission to detain any parties believed on dissenting the populist agenda without requiring prior evidence? They dress it up as way to put down extremist groups, but soon as that’s gone through, the populist agenda is extremist beliefs, and all the rest of us the radicals for wanting liberty and peace, and while we’re stuck in a cell awaiting trial, there’s a pig in your house planting dirt.”

“I hadn’t heard of that one,” Cain said, despite the fact he certainly had. It’d been a core facet of The Plan from the moment it’d been conceived in a dingy room struck through with cold breeze, scribbled in a blank margin by a hand that could hardly hold a pen. A shiver deeper than the cold gripped his spine.

He hadn’t thought he’d ever have managed to design something so perfect it’d run this cleanly without him.

“Bullshit.” The word was utterly scathing. “And what none of them know is that it really is same old. Every one of these – dissemination of free speech, the sanctions on renewable energy, the new cold war, all those disappearances and mistrust and the propaganda plastered over the walls. Standing up to any of that is standing up to the mess you made of this world while you turn your back and count your blood money.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, Bunny, but I’m sure I only bribed your charges into the police shredder last month. I’m certain you didn’t mind the blood money then.”

“Ella asked. Not me.”

Cain slid his eyes sideways and smirked. “Because Levi refused, correct?”

For the first time since she’d sat down, a sourness tightened Bunny’s full lips. She rubbed the side of her nose, scowling out at the skyscrapers scratching the sky.

With his grin widening at her silence, Cain carried on. “Or rather, if I recall correctly, he said he had better things to do. Was that it? Or perhaps it was the time before that when he thought it’d be rather amusing breaking you out of prison when you got there. I’m sure there was at least one where you wouldn’t have been in there if he hadn’t thrown you to the cops while you both ran from his own mess. I’ve spent a lot of blood money getting you out of custody, Bunny. Recall that.”

Ah, and for a blissful moment, she was silent. If only for a moment.