Maggie Noyr sat under a light in the otherwise darkness of a dank room. One of her eyes was swollen shut. She was tied to a chair. 

A tall, broad-shouldered man in a green uniform stood before her. 

“Witnesses describe a relatively young man with you,” said the man in the green uniform. “They say he was your accomplice in the assault on Diego San Obispo.”

“All this for a market dustup?” said Maggie.

“Market dustup?” said the green-uniformed man. “You broke the man’s jaw, cracked his skull, fractured his collarbone, gave him a concussion, and sprained his ankle. If Señor San Obispo wasn’t pressing charges for assault and battery against you and Alvarez, we would. Now, why don’t you tell me where Alvarez is?”

“You are mistaken,” said Maggie Noyr. “There is no Luis Alvarez.”

The man in the green uniform was tall enough that his eyes were out of the light, and Maggie could not see his face. Still, she imagined his eyes full of confusion as certain memories were stolen from him.

“Wait,” said Maggie, as she realized her mistake. “Luis Alvarez does exist.”

Luis who?”

“Oh no,” said Maggie Noyr. “Oh no no no no no no. God dammit. I’m not a day old and my life is already a nightmare. That does it.” She took a deep breath.

“What are you – ”

 “This city does not exist.”

In that instant, where there had been a dank room, there was nothing, nothing, nothing at all.

She turned around. Into her sight came one single frame of reference, one point of comparison admidst nothingness: a lump of marble veined with gold.

She took a few steps towards the marble, and with a thud that made her jump, the dank room came back, with the man in the green uniform precisely in the place where he had been. A slightly different stance, though, more appropriate for someone who had seen his prisoner disappear right out of their ropes. He gathered himself and lunged at her.

Yet before he could touch her, Maggie shouted again, “This city does not exist!”

Once again La Ciudád disappeared to be replaced by nothing.

She took a few steps backward and the world re-asserted itself with once more, with a thud that shook her very bones. She was in a different room, now, an office with a barf-orange wall-to-wall carpet and a desk that looked like it was out of an office supply catalog, a couple flickering fluorescent bulbs and a couple green-uniformed men at a couple desks, one of whom had fallen backward in his chair, the other of whom was currently leaping over his desk.

This city does not exist!”

For an instant Maggie was in a vast nothingness. She was closer, much closer to the marble now, and she could see what she had not seen on the stone before: two eyes, painted with skill and care, so that they almost looked like they were alive.

The eyes moved to stare at her.

"Maggie Noyr," came a rumbling and scraping voice from the stone. Suddenly it was a meter closer. "You are not permitted the power to break the story. You dare not claim the authority to both negate and create. Choose one now."

"Uh…"

The stone was now a meter closer. "Choose."

Still Maggie hesitated. She didn’t want to pick either one without the other, or she might find herself causing a huge amount of trouble with no way to quickly fix it. Not that having creation on hand had actually allowed her to bring Luis back. Then again it might be wise to make sure she couldn’t do that anymore. "I…"

The stone was now a meter from her. "Do I have to choose for you?"

"I’ve been pretty dumb with this whole thing," said Maggie. "Maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to mess around creating and deleting things. Maybe you ought to hand this whole responsibility to someone else."

There was a rhythmic scraping from the stone, almost like a laugh. "Responsibility. You frame the matter as I do. You do not believe you are worthy of such power. Yet there are those who claim the authority to negate anything, and in deleting as they please, they threaten to unbalance the very world that is so carefully balanced atop me. I would have someone oppose them. Do you not desire revenge, for what they did to you?"

"Revenge sounds dangerous. Also I don’t remember what they did to me. But they did trash my friend’s apartment...alright, I’m in. Give me creation."

"An unsettlingly swift decision."

"You keep pushing me to choose! I choose creation! I don’t want to risk deleting friends anymore!"

"So be it. Brace yourself."

Then the collective scream of ten thousand souls rang in Maggie’s ears, and the world re-asserted itself once more. Maggie was still in the room with the barf orange carpet, and the green-uniformed man was just a bound away from her.

“The far wall does not exist,” said Maggie. Nothing happened. "Uh, there’s a really big hole in the wall." In an instant a circular opening tall enough for a human being to step through appeared in the wall, revealing a room where stood a short woman in a white floral-print dress -- a stout lady fair of face, whose mascara ran down her eyes, whose hair was a right mess, who had probably been sitting under the gaze of a man in a green uniform, but the stool was knocked over and so was the man, a perfect tableau of equal and opposite reactions.

And yet for all the fair lady’s dishevelment, her appearance chased all thoughts from Maggie’s mind. Such that two green-uniformed arms wrapped around her and bound her tightly.

“Your arms are slippery,” said Maggie, and suddenly her captor's arms were slick with sweat, and Maggie slid out from them. She dashed forward through the hole and shouted, "Hole’s closed!"

She heard a faint dull thud behind her, and turned to see the wall as whole as it had ever been. She turned back to the fair lady, finding her thoughts scattering once more at the sight of her. "Hi, uh…"

The fair lady crossed her arms. "You do know my name, Maggie."

Goodness, this was attraction. Why was she so much more attracted to this woman now? "Yeah, I know your name."

"And it is?"

"Well, you know your name too."

The fair lady’s stern expression broke into a laugh. "That’s fair."

"Fair as yourself, my lady."

The fair lady’s eyes widened. "Oh, am I your lady now?"

Maggie realized what she had just implied. "Uh…" There was a rattle at the door. "Shit, hang on. There’s a big concrete wall blocking the door." With a heavy thud, a wall of concrete appeared where the door had been. 

Maggie finally let out a long breath. She squared her shoulders, and turned to face the fair lady. "Alejandra."

"Yes?"

"Alejandra de Surdeville."

"That is correct. Were you going to ask me a question?"

Maggie regarded Alejandra’s dishevelment once more. "I seem to have caught you at an embarrassing moment. I guess your request for information about Los Ojos didn’t go over well?”

“To be honest,” said Alejandra, “when I heard you had been arrested I quite forgot about them. I came here asking after you. But I didn’t get very far.” She gestured to the room, whose arrangement of desks and chairs resembled that of any reception area. “The receptionist got creepy with me, and then when I told him to shove it he said I was under arrest for obstructing an officer…this is what I get for asking after someone? I thought the police were better than this."

"You think they're here to protect you?"

Alejandra looked at Maggie like she was an ignorant child. “That is why we have police, Maggie.”

“And yet, you laid one out on the ground.”

“They can’t all be like this, right?”

Maggie raised an eyebrow.

“You’ve got to be joking,” said Alejandra. 

“You wanted to drag me in here,” said Maggie. “Clearly you’re not familiar with the police. Or perhaps I am not familiar with the assumptions of Les Gens Biens? Whatever, we need to get out of here. Erm…were you feeling a little non-existent a few minutes ago?”

“I’m sure I wouldn’t have noticed.”

“Something to explore later then, perhaps. In the meantime, I am glad to inform you that erasing things from existence is now beyond my capacity. Breaking them, though, that’s a different story. For example! I’ve got a pair of gloves that will let me dig through walls." 

A pair of gloves appeared on Maggie’s hands, whose fingers ended in sharp claws.

In the same moment she heard the sound of a jackhammer on the far side of the wall she had created. So much for breathing time. “Let’s test these out,” she said, and took a swipe at the wall opposite the former door. The concrete came away like she was digging through soil. The jackhammer grew louder. Maggie dug furiously at the wall, inching her way forward. The jackhammer grew louder still. She turned, and said, “There’s a tall slab of granite in front of the door.”

From the other side of the former door she heard a distant thud, and the jackhammer sounded no more.

For the next thirty seconds, it was just Maggie digging a tunnel forward, forward, forward, with Alejandra gingerly stepping over the chunks of concrete that Maggie had left behind. The concrete itself was amazingly thick, as if to stop the depredations of the nastiest acid-spitting worms and metal-clawed moles, not that Maggie knew if either of those things existed. It probably wouldn’t be a good idea to say it out loud

Maggie hit solid stone, against which her claws bounced off. “Oh for crying out loud – ”

There was a mighty boom. Maggie whipped her head around. Far down the tunnel she could see a cloud of dust where the room had been.

“There’s a granite block in front of the tunnel entrance,” said Maggie, and the light in the tunnel vanished with a thud.

In the suddent Darkness, Maggie felt a hand pawing at her face and neck, until it found her shoulder and rested there. "Thanks a bunch," said Alejandra. "Are we stuck here now? But they've got a jackhammer, so we don't have indefinite time. At least give me a little light!"

"Not to worry," said Maggie, "not to worry. I've got a proper lamp." Something fell gently onto her head. She reached up and felt what appeared to be a miner's helmet. She flicked the headlamp, casting a sudden white light forward -- into the eyes of Alejandra. The woman cursed and covered her face with her hands. "Sorry!" said Maggie. She removed the helmet from her head and placed it on Alejandra's head. "Did you want to dig? You're quite a bit stronger than me."

"Is that a consolation prize or just you being lazy?" Alejandra removed the gloves from Maggie's hands and put them on. "Wait. Did you just make me stronger?"

"Um -- I thought it was already self-evident?"

"Tough enough to claw through bedrock," said Alejandra. "Alright, I can dig this. Thanks. Why don't you...be the manager, for a bit."

"Heck yeah," said Maggie. "I'll relax with this Piña Colada.” She felt a cool wet glass appear in her hand, and heard the sound of crumbling stone.

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