Venus is used to coming apart. She's used to being ripped open like pulled pork, molecule by molecule, impulse by impulse, thought by thought. Constancy has never been a part of her method. Teleportation and mental illness have combined to make her erratic, temporary, spread across too many places and too many emotions. Some people are polar stars and Venus is a flare shot up from a gun, brilliant and momentary.

Now she comes apart again as blood, bereft of any old duty, gushes forth from her shoulder. It marches from her wound into the sand, making mud the color of pomegranates. Her head falls back, her face staring upwards as the sky blurs into a white mess.

It's beautiful. Tears streak her face like the track marks of a cheetah, like the adornments of Egyptian royalty. This is always how she wanted to die - glorious, dramatic. Memorable. People will talk about this, and she'll be forgotten in the mythos of the girl who lost her arm, a supporting actress in Max's story. She's happy with that.

Whenever she closes her eyes, she pictures places, but she can't see herself. She can never tell if her arms are lifted or lowered, if her hands are limp or in fists, without looking. 'Lack of object constancy', the Professor said. But she's always pictured places, and sometimes when she opens her eyes she's there. So she pictures Heaven, and she pictures Hell.

She wakes up in the Capitol.