Natalie moved back with quick steps. Let nothing happen to Sierra. I wish nothing would happen to her. She only had two close friends. Sierra and Delaney. I wish nothing would happen to them… Why would anything happen to them? In fact, Sierra wasn't even in the office. There's no way she could have gotten in bypassing her. Why would anything happen to anyone right now?

But as she approached Sierra's office, she saw her assistant lying unconscious near her desk. Her cubbyhole was just around the corner from the main room, so no one could see what had really happened. A few work folders were lying around, the chair was on its side, in short, all the signs that it was more than just a faint. Did Daisy do that to her?!

Natalie took a step toward the door to the study and noticed that the door was slightly open. There was a strange shuffling sound coming from there. It was as if someone or something was sharply and progressively running an iron over the couch. The girl quickly opened the door and almost shrieked, clamping her hands over her mouth.

Sitting at the Chief of Administration's desk, Daisy was cutting her left thigh with a clerical knife. In even rows, leaving more and more cuts over and over, she wielded it as if she were simply sharpening the knife. After each spurt, she would gently wipe the knife against her white blouse, leaving a streak of blood, and then make another swipe across her leg. The pupils in her eyes were so dilated that they seemed as black as night.

Natalie yelled, "Help!" and moved a little away from the entrance. She immediately thought that Daisy was going to leave the activity to do this to herself and run after her with the knife. But instead Daisy stopped and looked with her eyes full of terror right at her. It seemed as if she were looking not into her eyes, but straight into her soul. Straight into the innermost corners, where all the most secret and innermost thoughts of every human being lie. And yet her gaze expressed neither hatred, nor reproach, nor anything else.

Daisy smiled and solemnly slit her throat.

Elder

Peyton thought he'd be better in a month. He really hoped it would be sooner, at least a

week. In fact, he was better the very next day. His eyes burned with a new passion, and all he could think about was Delaney. About what he would do to her when he got the chance… And most of all, he couldn't understand how he hadn't gotten to that point before. How he'd just fucked her without violence before. How he'd done it and never even considered that it might look completely different. Not at all the way the old him wanted it to. And not the way he wanted the renewed one....

He couldn't call himself young. No. It's not for him. Young people make more mistakes than they do right. He's not like that. He's wise and precise. Every move he makes is a properly calibrated final combination. One that deserves respect. And on this day, he has something new to explain to

people. Something new that they couldn't even think of before, because it's a new step. A new next right step. One of the twenty-four right steps in achieving the goals of Apollo 24.

***

The stream auditorium was full to capacity. Everyone knew that now one of the elders, Peyton Cross, would be announcing a new achievement of their station, a new successful step the station had come to.

This auditorium hadn't fit the entire population, or even half of it, in a long time. Only two and a half thousand out of seven. And now Peyton, looking at this meeting from the podium, remembered how he had cleverly thought of announcing that it was necessary to gather here, because from a certain moment only the chosen ones should listen to the speeches and be the first to know about new events. And how then, the obvious disadvantage of the lack of a suitable room had become a significant advantage to divide citizens, even nominally, into those who deserved to know everything firsthand and those who did not.