Sunny looked up at the brick front of the Haggerty. She frowned at the way it shaded the sky. She waved at her mom before she walked up the steps to the sidewalk that ran along the front of the building to a parking lot on the left side.

She pushed through the main door. A security guard gave her the eye as she walked to the information desk in the center of the lobby. The young lady behind the desk watched her cross the tiled floor with a blank look.

She supposed they didn't get many visitors for the inmates.

“I'm here to see Emily Hyperion,” said Sunny. She leaned on the circular desk, bracing herself with her elbows.

“She's in Atrium A,” said the receptionist. “Go to the right, and look for the signs.”

She stood and pointed the direction she meant. A signboard indicated the different directions through the hospital to get to where you wanted to go.

Sunny nodded and started following the signs through the halls that reminded her of school until she reached an open space with plants in stands against the walls. Light dropped down from skylights in the ceiling.

Several patients sat under the light in wheelchairs, and on the provided chairs and couches. Emily sat in one of those chairs, directly in a sunbeam from overhead. Her hair had grown longer during her stay, and her face paler. She smiled when saw her friend enter the room.

“Morning, Sam,” said Emily. “I didn't think you would come.”

Sunny studied her friend for a moment before pulling up one of the chairs in front of Emily's wheelchair. Faded scars marked her face from the incident that had put her in the hospital.

“You said I had to twelve to get here,” said Sunny. “What's going on? My mom wants to know if your parents know you're awake.”

“Twelve is when I was leaving no matter what,” said Emily. “No, my parents don't know. I didn't want them to get involved in what I am going to have to do. They would get in the way and get hurt.”

“You wanted to talk to me?,” said Sunny.

“Ra has chosen you to be my successor here in the real world,” said Emily. “The city needs to be defended, and he thinks you will do a good job of it.”

“What makes him think that?,” asked Sunny.

“You saved that girl from the Anubians the other day,” said Emily. “It makes him think you have the right stuff for this job. I told him that he shouldn't involve others, but he is adamant on having someone here while I am away.”

“Where are you going?,” asked Sunny.

“Somewhere that no one can go with me,” said Emily. She smiled. “I might not be coming back, which is why I don't want my parents to know. They would try to stop me. That's another reason that Ra wants a successor. Someone has to hold a spot for me to come back to after I'm done, win or lose.”

“What's really going on, Em?,” asked Sunny. “How did you know about that girl, these Anubians?”

“Our world acts like a layer between other worlds,” said Emily. “Those other worlds come to our world for resources. The Anubians like to turn people into batteries that they can use to power whatever old tech they have in their desert. Ra has empowered me, and you, to fight these invaders. This requires a transformation so you won't be recognized if you have to fight in public.”

“What if I don't want to fight?,” asked Sunny.

“Then Ra will give the power to someone else instead,” said Emily. “The world needs defenders, and this is his way of doing that since he can't actively do anything.”

Sunny sat back, thinking. She knew part of this was real. She wanted to discount it, but she had already become someone else to rescue someone from a space outside the city. Emily was asking her to keep doing that despite the risks.

“You're leaving the hospital?,” asked Sunny.

“I'm leaving the planet as soon as finish our talk,” said Emily. “Your coming so early has given me a chance to leave even earlier.”

“Your parents will lose their minds,” said Sunny.

“There's nothing either one of us can do about that,” said Emily. “I'm hoping that I can wrap up my business and return before it becomes too much of a problem.”

“They deserve something,” said Sunny. “They're going to be devastated by this. They are already hurt that you were in a coma.”

“I wasn't in a coma,” said Emily.

“What?,” said Sunny.

“I have been fighting here in the hospital the whole time, as soon as I was brought in,” said Emily. “One of the main forces uses the hospital for their raiding. I have been killing them every night.”

“So you could have gone home any time?,” said Sunny. She gestured at the world beyond the building.

“Maybe, but I would have had to come back here every time I needed to fix their problem,” said Emily.

“What happens if you win your fight?,” asked Sunny.

“Best case is I cut that layer off from ours, and they never raid us again,” said Emily. “The worst case is a temporary stop that gives me time to try to think of a permanent stop.”

“If you lose?,” asked Sunny.

“I think things will get bad here until you think of a way to stop things,” said Emily. She smiled slightly to show she understood the gravity of the situation.

“What does that mean?,” asked Sunny.

“You'll figure it out,” said Emily. “Now that we have talked, I have to go.”

“What do I tell your parents?,” asked Sunny. “They're going to want to know.”

“Tell them I had to go beyond the sea,” said Emily. She stood up. “Tell them that I will be back as soon as I am done.”

“I don't think they'll believe that,” said Sunny.

“I doubt they are going to believe I went to another world to stop an invasion,” said Emily. She stood up, dropping the thin blanket that had been wrapped around her legs on the wheelchair. “Good luck, Sam. Keep the city safe for me until I get back.”

She raised her hand. Light streamed down from the skylight above. Her hospital gown became a dress of light, cinched in by a golden belt at her waist. Sandals and leather bracelets formed from nothing. She flicked her hand to summon a staff from the light.

Sunny looked at the sparse crowd around them, pointing at the vision in front of them. Her eyes fell on the glass window to the hall. She had changed too.

“I will be back as soon as I can,” said Emily. She thumped on the floor with her staff. The carpet and concrete underneath parted like water and she sank out of sight. The hole closed up behind her.

The ray of light dimmed to normal sunlight. Sunny's costume changed back to her normal clothes. She winced at what she had just seen. The hospital staff were going to freak out when they realized Emily had flown the coop. She had to get out of there before they connected the two of them together.

Sunny left the atrium and made her way back to the lobby. She nodded at the woman at the desk and the security guard before yanking the door open and walking down the steps. She had time before her mother swung by to pick her up.

What could she say about what had happened?

She checked her watch. She had almost an hour. She looked around. She decided a quiet walk to the corner convenience store to get a soda would be okay. It would give her time to think about what she could tell her mom, and the Hyperions after that.

The orange bird fluttered from tree to tree in front of her. It paused when she paused.

“Are you Ra?,” asked Sunny. She felt silly for even trying to talk to a bird. What was it going to say back?

The bird stared at her. She had never seen that before except for crows that gathered around the school.

“I suppose you can't talk,” said Sunny. “Emily said a lot without really explaining anything. What am I supposed to do now?”

She paused. The bird remained in place like a statue.

“How am I supposed to find out what's going on?,” she asked.

The bird flew to the left, leading away from the store. It waited for her to follow before leading her along the sidewalk.

It paused in front of a house in the middle of a block of houses. Sunny hadn't noticed, but the area around Haggerty had been filled with offices and stores. That had given way to a ring of houses. Some were rundown, some had a fresh coat of paint.

This house looked abandoned.

And it gave her the creeps to look at it.

She had never thought of herself as exceptionally sensitive, but the house she had been led to looked like the witch's house in any number of stories. No one had run a mower across the yard in years. The windows were busted. The outside walls had peeled to a moldy brown under the flecks of blue and yellow she could still see.

“Are you waiting for me to go inside?,” asked Sunny.

The bird flew to the roof of the house, hanging to a loose gutter drifting from the edge of the tattered shingles. It waited for Sunny to make the next move.

“I don't have a lot of time for exploring, but let's see what is up with you,” said Sunny.

She jogged across the street, eyes out for neighbors who might not want her exploring a relic from the past. She tried the door and found it unlocked. She had to yank a bit to get it to move on its hinges.

She stepped inside and took a minute to let her eyes adjust to the dim light. Trash covered the floor, but the furniture was long gone. She expected that.

What did Ra want? What was he trying to show her in the decrepit house?

The smell of grease and ozone filled the air. She noticed her clothes had changed again. She raised a gloved hand. A small ball of light sprung from tendrils pulled to her hand.

She raised her hand. The light reached to the corners of the empty room. The floor slid away under her feet. She dropped through the sudden hole.

Sunny reached out with her empty hand, snagging a railing of some kind before dropping into the darkness below. She released the light so she could use both hands to pull herself over the railing to what felt like a metal grate flooring.

“Stupid bird,” she whispered as she looked around.

Miles of pipes, scaffolding, and columns of machinery surrounded her. Boxes were inset in the walls. She took a look at the glass window in the front of the nearest box. A rotted corpse grimaced back at her with a sagging face and graying hair. She flinched back from the discovery.

Is this what was going to happen to the girl she rescued; stuffed in a closet and kept there until she died?

What would happen if she threw a fireball into one of the pipes flowing overhead from the boxes to some place in the center of things?

Is this what Emily was talking about when she said there were things that needed to be fought in the city?

How many people were still alive, and waiting for a rescue?

What could she do to stop this?

She couldn't fight the whole place. She needed to do some sabotage and find a way back to the real world before the Anubians, or whomever she was dealing with, got it together to stop her. She didn't know how long she had in a place without the sun, but she did think she was on a timer.

Could she rescue any of the people still alive in the boxes she could see?

Were any alive in those cells?

Sunny raised her hand, gathering the sparse light around her. She looked for a target. Something that looked like a breaker box drew her attention. She could see a nest of wires leaving that and entering the pipes leading away from her. She threw her fireball into the breakers and sent it up in a smell of burning plastic and metal.

The sparse light around her shut down, leaving her in the dark.