Sleep was something beyond my reach. It was almost 4 o’clock in the morning when we got back. Logos and Pathos were quiet in my head, but I could still feel them. They were just as confused as me.

How can I control animals? How can I make things appear?

The brother and sister had no answers for me, so I spent the next few hours tossing and turning trying to comprehend what I can now do. My guts twisted into knots when I thought of seeing President Persim face to face in less than twelve hours. Eventually I just gave up and began to get ready. I borrowed some makeup from Aunt Sarah Gene in an attempt to hide the scratches and dark circles on my face. Then I paced and counted down the minutes.

For being a private meeting, the plaza in front of Persim Tower certainly was packed. The bodies were so close the cold winter air dissipated upon entering the masses. Masses, not a mass. There was a clear divide. There were boos emanating from from my left as I exited the Grand Marquis in the same suit I wore to the rally, my videos, and the school board meeting. I read signs saying, “She promotes fear,” “Lies feed Lies,” “Trust our Leader.”

To my right I heard applause. Signs read “Carpenter Builds!” “We’ve been lied to,” “Listen to the Truth.” And around the perimeter were police. I made my way down a narrow path blocked by Persim Tower security on both sides. Sam, Nathan, and even little Ava followed behind me. Then we got to the white fence. The tulips grew bright red in the March air, fully recovered or replaced since the last time I had been here. I reached forward to open the picket fence gate. My hand was slapped away by the guard nearest to me with hairy hands. He spoke into the radio on his shoulder. “Carpenter.”

I hadn’t noticed before, but I could now hear the buzzing cut through the cacophony of the crowd. Then it was gone in an instant after his radio crackled a response. I reached for the gate again, and swung it open on soundless hinges. The 20 yards of circular grass surrounding the tower was manicured to perfection. My feet grew warm. The grass here was green while the surrounding world was brown and gray. I reached behind me to take Sam’s hand, and found nothing but air. The buzzing returned, louder on this side of the fence. I turned around to see my companions on the other side as the gate swung shut.

“Private. Meeting,” the guard growled, separating the words.

Sam opened his mouth to argue, but Nathan grabbed his shoulder. I mouthed “Thank you,” to Nathan. I closed the hand that ached to hold Sam’s into a fist. I was alone on the other side of the fence.

Isolation is one of my brother’s favorite tactics. Pathos rang out in my skull.

My legs were shaky as I walked toward the glass doors. The sense of confidence gifted upon me by Pathos and Logos was nowhere to be had. I could feel their own nervous energy reverberating off my very core. This was more than me and Persim, to them, this was a family matter.

Ten more shaky steps and I would be inside the tower. Ten more steps, and I thought to myself, I might have an “accident” and never return. A fat snowflake landed on my forehead and melted. I watched the new flakes drift towards the ground. The heat emanating off the grass had them vanishing a foot before they touched the perfect grass, leaving picturesque droplets in their wake. Then I was inside. The glass doors slid shut behind me, and the world was silent. The room appeared to be like any business lobby. Leather sofas were placed next to the marble columns supporting the ceiling of this circular room. Lined up perfectly with the arm of every chair was a black end table with a bright red anthurium flower placed upon it.

“Ms. Cora Carpenter, I presume.” A woman with a bun so tight her skin looked ready to snap off her skull said in an equally tight voice. In front of me was a long desk with 10 computers in a row, but only this one woman stood behind the very end computer.

“Follow me, our president is waiting to meet you.” She stepped around the counter with a thick black metal detector wand.

“President Persim said you wouldn’t bring any weapons. She said she knows your mind too well,” she said as she patted me down the sides, “But precautions are precautions. You may go up now.”

She pointed to my left. I followed her hand, all the time seeing the crowd outside grow and grow, until I saw the elevator at the back of the lobby. The woman clicked her heels back behind her desk, and I began the walk.

We shouldn’t have come, said Logos. We don’t have a plan to deal with our brother yet.

That would have been nice to know before we got in the car.

There was a lot going on in the past 24 hours.

You humans have an expression, we’re only human, right?

But you’re not human. What are you exactly?

We don’t have time for this now. We will reason with Ethos, but the comment felt uncertain, especially for Pathos.

How can reason reason with reason? I asked, but my mind was silent, the two guests inside me were biting their tongues. An overwhelming flood of anxiety swarmed over me as my body took on the fears of all three of us at once. I forced myself to take each step.

The elevator doors stood open, waiting. I stepped inside and looked at the multitude of buttons. On the top row there was one that glowed red among the white. I pressed it. As I ascended the wall behind me opened up to glass. I could see the multitudes below, then the business center downtown, then the high end areas of the west and north sides of town...then the slums. Where The Palace had stood, where Pam had taken me in, where the Parks Middle school was trying to survive. The doors opened and there she was, President Persim. In the flesh she seemed even more intimidating than on screen.

She set a glass of water down on her desk, and I heard a pill bottle rattle as she closed a drawer. A large man in a black suit appeared from the side of the elevator door. He looked to the president and with her nod, he walked around me like I was a house plant and entered the elevator before it closed.

“Cora, I assume you enjoyed the view of our city. Have a seat,” she gestured to a red leather chair across from her at a large, dark stained wooden desk. When I sat she stood, placing her hands together behind her back. I immediately felt like a child.

Welcome sounded a deep, male voice in my head. It wasn’t Logos. Perhaps I imagined it.

“Cora, Cora, Cora, do you have any children, Cora?”

“No.”

“Ah, me neither. The country is my child. I want her to grow up strong and healthy. Why do you insist on spreading such awful propaganda against me?”

Why do you insist on ignoring me, Little Sister? Not imagining it. I felt my heart speed up, and I swallowed an icy fear that wasn’t mine. It was Pathos’.

President Persim paced toward the wall made entirely of glass. I spoke,“So you’re saying the man that tried to kill me, and the suicides in the East End aren’t connected? That the Volunteer Tax isn’t going to drain any support that-”

“Coffee?”

I stared at her, caught off guard.

“It helps with headaches.”

She doesn’t have to talk to you, Logos voice reverberated in my mind.

Persim sat down opposite me and reached for a silver pot. She began pouring two cups of the dark steaming liquid. “I don’t like being challenged, Cora,” she smiled as she set the pot back down. “Not because ‘Come back to us’ I feel exposed ‘We’re your family’ but because it creates disunity and setbacks ‘I won’t let you do something like that again. Those souls’ for our country ‘are on you.’”

There were too many voices and emotions in this room, in my skull. I felt the beginnings of a migraine behind my eyes. Suddenly, the offer of coffee didn’t sound half bad.

She picked up the white mug and took a sip of the coffee. When she set it down I could see a trickle of blood beginning to come down from her left nostril. Her blue eyes peered into my own.

“Oh sister,” her voice changed, deep and booming, “When will you learn that I am oldest? I am strongest.” The deep voice from earlier no longer bounced inside my mind. It echoed from the president’s mouth. I opened my mouth to speak and tasted metal. I touched my fingertip to my nose and pulled it back to reveal blood.

I heard Pathos scream in my mind and then in the room. There was a slice of wind and for a moment as I whipped my head around, there on the carpet not four feet from me, I saw Pathos on her knees, arms over her head. Logos standing over her, with his arms locked onto another man’s fists. Then they were gone. Nothing but the carpet remained. Then nothing but black remained.

The black was white, that color you see just before you fall asleep. Then there was a shimmer, a veil. It looked like the white-black was split by the swirling colors only a translucent soap bubble can make. There were the three siblings in the same way I had seen them on the office carpet moments before. The dark haired man I assumed to be Ethos was leaning through the shimmering wall. His thick muscled arms bulged as he pushed on Logos the room began to vibrate. I felt a headache begin in the heart of my mind. Before I knew it, I was on my knees. My head in my hands. I heard laughter and looked up. Barely visible through the shimmer was Persim. She walked nearer to the wall and came into focus. Blood dripped down the front of her shirt.

“Give me something!” Logos yelled, still locked in battle with his brother through the shimmering veil.

“Make it stop,” echoed around me as I spoke the words. I felt like my head was splitting open.

“Split,” reverberated around me in the vastness. An axe. I imagined an axe, and a gold handled double sided axe, materialized beside Pathos. She reached for it and handed it up to her brother. In the moment he reached for it, Ethos pushed past him onto my side of the veil. I felt a dark coldness enter my bones. Ethos stood smiling above Pathos. He made a start toward her and then the blade went clear through his chest. Gold and blood mixed before it was absorbed into the air.

I stared at the desk and sat up with a start. My headache was gone. Persim sat sipping her coffee.

“I told you. It helps with the headaches,” she smiled at me as she set the cup down. The blood was already turning dark as it dried on her shirt. “I don’t think we are going to come to an agreement today, Ms. Carpenter.” She stood and gestured toward the elevator behind me. My mind felt almost empty, almost completely mine again. It scared me. I had the strongest desire to get away from the President. I almost ran for the elevator.

The doors closed, and I looked out on our country’s leader for a moment. She turned to her computer as though I wasn’t there. Suddenly, I felt completely alone.

Are you okay, Pathos?

There was no reply. I felt rocks in my gut and pressed the button labeled 35. I wasn’t ready to leave. I couldn’t go to the lobby and face the crowd yet. A weakness entered my limbs, leaving me feeling unstable. The elevator came to a halt and opened on an unlit floor of cubicles. I stepped out, I heard the door shut behind me and the light from the elevator was gone, leaving me in the shadows. The shades we all drawn on this floor. A small streak of sunlight crept from underneath and the red glow from the exit sign illuminated my way. I wandered the rows of empty cubicles and sat down in one that had no owner. No photos of families or certifications framed on the desk.

“They were out of my head,” I whispered to myself. I thought back to the image of them on the carpet of President Persim’s office.

It was new for us, as well. Logos said. A wave of relief washed over me at the sound of his voice. But I gathered from our brother’s behavior that the experience was nothing shocking for him.

“You mean...you mean he’s been leaving Persim’s head?” I asked aloud.

The elevator dinged from down the hall. I sat in silence as I heard footsteps walk the same way I had come. I held my breath as they passed the thin wall I was leaning up against. I caught the white of a lab coat out of the corner of my eye. I stood and followed at a distance. After three right turns and a left, we were in the center of the 35th floor. None of the light of the windows could be seen. There was a hall of closed doors, with one leaking light from under the frame. I watched the man from the end of the hall. He swiped a card and the door clicked open. I saw a tray of vials filled with the same blue liquid from the syringe that had threatened to end me in the Speakeasy and that Trenchcoat had at the hospital. I saw Pam’s face in my mind’s eye. Guilt washed over me.

Adjacent to that tray was another with a green liquid. The door was closing, but not before I saw the man in the lab coat hold up a green vial and smile. I had no desire to be here anymore.

Quickly, I found my way back to the elevator and pressed the lobby button. The elevator dinged and I stepped out. Only I hadn’t been paying attention to the floor numbers as they lit up on the descent. This wasn’t the lobby I stepped out onto. I looked straight ahead and saw through the windows that the crowd was still ten feet below. I must have stepped off on the second floor. I turned around to hit the down button again, and instead pressed my index finger into the stomach of a dark man who looked down at me from a healthy seven feet.

Next, I was a sack of flour as I was heaved over his shoulder. I saw the elevator doors close on the crowd outside. And it might have been my imagination, but I thought I saw Sam looking worried in the heart of the mob.