"Now you understand," Yona said once the doors to the elevators opened to reveal her. "Lucius' story is not a file that can be copied." 

"He knew Faust." Sky said to Yona, her conversation with the bookkeeper having sobered her with a dose of the terrifying reality of their prey. Silas and Sky stepped out of the confines of the steel elevator back into the monotone colors of the building's entrance foyer as the chains spread out to find their space in the open air. 

A full day had gone by with a simple visit to the Archives and already it was evening once more.

"Not just knew him. Faust was as close to Lucius as I am to you." Yona answered, shedding further light on the subject. "Faust didn't have a secretary because he had access to theArchives. Any file that required attention was given to him first hand. And as you can see, after what happened, that was probably not for the best. A lot changed in administration after Faust's betrayal, mostly all departments changing the way access and security worked. It's crazy to think that even with all the upgrades done, Faust still managed to escape."    

Tinted windows in the foyer had mostly a reflection on the inner workings of the foyer, bustling with Dæmons like Yona, dressed in suits and holding bundles of paperwork, hurrying to and from their work and departments. They paid no mind to the last Collector and Sky as they had their own tasks to be handled. Alongside Silas and Sky, Yona walked them across the wide open space of the lobby towards the windows that now acted as giant mirrors to the inside. 

 "There are two left to collect before Faust plays his move again in this game of his." Yona said, approaching the glass. Outside the tower, the neighbouring buildings were worn and broken. The Fallen headquarters of that Other New York was the only skyscraper in the entire city that was not falling apart or left incomplete. A black tower that pierced the skyline. 

The Divine had their own headquarters called the Observatory. It's location on the other side of the city.      

Yona's eyes traced the silhouettes of the buildings outside as she continued to muse through her own mirror image. Sky was almost invisible in her own reflection while Silas appeared as a black column next to Lucifer's secretary. Silas looked into himself before quickly looking away. Seeing his own darkness sickened him. 

 "You know what needs to be done, Silas. Lucifer needs no convincing of your talents."

"This one will not fall to Faust." Silas replied with a voice of ice in the face of his impossible task as Sky bit her tongue. 

"Really, Silas? Do you think statements like those hide the fact you have been reckless?" Yona snapped, looking at Silas with her narrowed fiery gaze.  "Johannes Faust is not just a Collection. He is dangerous and wants to kill you before you even get close enough to him to finish your job. Don't make the mistake of underestimating him."

Sky couldn't remain quiet any longer. 

"Lucifer is sending Silas to his death!" Sky hissed, anger burning to the surface of her silence in the face of Yona with her back to Silas. 

"Lucifer has full faith in Silas and his abilities against Faust. But Silas' carelessness with his powers are what will be used against him." Yona replied flatly.  

"No! You're lying and Lucifer is lying!" Sky suddenly blurted out her displeasure with Lucifer's ultimate plan. Every Dæmon eye in the grand foyer stopped to look at her and Silas, leaving Yona apparently unhappy with Sky's choice to loudly discuss such a topic under the scrutiny of her co-workers. 

"Sky-" Hell's secretary tried to interject but the ghost girl continued. 

"Lucifer knows Silas will fail and I will not be sent as an accessory to watch him be slaughtered!" Sky screamed at Yona, her voice ricocheting off every surface within the large space. With a sudden realization of what she had said, Sky stopped herself. She felt Silas' eyes at her back and became instantly aware of her damning words. She found herself unable to turn to face Silas in her anger that was quick to turn to a burning embarrassment. She had openly doubted her Keeper and Lucifer before every Dæmon eye that was now watching them. 

"Sky, you're wrong." Yona said with a tone reserved.

"Am I?" The ghost asked in a voice shaking with desperation to be heard. Hell's secretary looked as though she wanted to answer but she was suddenly looking past Sky's eyeline to Silas and she opted to stay silent. The chains were stirring in the air, circling out around Sky in slow motion as metal serpents. 

"My Sky," his icy voice was at her ear. His words for her and no one else despite Yona being within earshot. "turn to face your Silas."

Her being went cold and as commanded, Sky turned. Looking over her shoulder with eyes wide at The Collector that stared back, Sky shrank before the night piercing gaze of white pupils. The black tower of his being appeared taller than usual and Sky sank to the floor like a falling leaf at Silas' feet. 

"Silas... I..." She looked at the floor in shame. 

"Bring her sight to this one." Sky tried to resist against his voice but her sight was pulled by an unseen force to do as she was told. Her gaze returned to that of the Collector. No matter how he had reassured her, she continued to doubt. Slithering forward, the chains surrounded the ghost who remained still. Looking up at Silas with wide, frightened eyes.

She was scared. 

The idea of Silas being taken from her. Her Silas. Gutted as Lucius had been or worse. Silas scanned the strained expression on his Sky's face, her round eyes pleading to him to hear her.

"My Sky will tell her Silas her fears." The marked hand reached to her, offering it to her as a gentleman would his lady. 

For a long moment she remained motionless before reaching back with both hands. She grasped his hand with hers, pressing her forehead forward against the back of his hand. 

"Silas," Sky cried, her voice cracking. In her pain, her Collector was there before her and would not allow her to cower. Not his Sky. In a quiet motion, he lifted her to him from her place on the floor before his darkness and chains. With his arms open, Sky pushed into the momentum of being lifted. Swimming into her Silas as she wrapped her arms around his neck and crushed herself against him. "Faust is going to take you from me. What Lucius said. I'm so frightened. Visions of your death by his hand. It's a cancer growing in my thoughts. Let Lucifer send someone else. Anyone else. I won't let you do this. Not after everything you've sacrificed." 

She buried her face into his shoulder.

There was a long silence from the man in black before, in an unnoticed motion of his arm, his marked hand returned to her back, keeping her close against him. The Dæmons who had been watching returned to their tasks at hand.  

"There is no one else," Silas answered, his words forever frozen without a soul to fill the emptiness within him. "and until Faust is collected, neither your Silas nor his Sky may know peace." 

"But Faust-" The ghost girl's timid void tried to object to Silas' strength in what he believed but his voice interrupted her,

"Does my Sky not trust her Silas?" His voice was calm. 

"W-with my entire being." She stammered, pressing herself against him with her voice to his ear. 

"Does she not believe in her Silas?" 

"You know I do."

"Then remember that, always, without question. Faust steals my Sky's thoughts from her Silas. That is his plan. To make my Sky doubt her Collector. To divide them is how he will conquer. Only together will they overcome the darkness." 

Sky rose her sight from his shoulder to his shadowed face. She relied on him to keep her thoughts grounded. 

"How can we defeat him? I tried to immobilize him but it was impossible. He was an empty shell even when I felt something."

"Do not be deceived, Sky." Yona said in warning. "He is somehow hiding his soul from you. He escaped Hell with it alongside the souls of the other four. That fact has been established. Did he not speak with a sense of self?" 

Sky nodded. Faust spoke by referring to himself in first person. It was the easiest tell-tale sign of whether or not someone had a soul. Having a sense of self. Those who were soulless, like Silas, referred to their existence as a separate entity to themselves. After all, the Silas the Collector spoke of when referring to who he was, was not simply the black monolith as a shell but also the soul to which Lucifer held in his possession. That was the real Silas.  

Sighing, Yona turned her head back to look out beyond her own reflection in the window once more. Allowing Silas and Sky their moment before she and them would part ways once more. Silas had proven himself to Lucifer but whether or not he could complete his final task was something Yona could not predict. 

"I wouldn't have asked Lucifer, all those years ago, to oversee your career if he hadn't believed in your potential." Yona said, pulling Sky's attention to her words. "From the beginning, I knew you were different, Silas. The other Collectors, the ones that sold their souls without purpose for superfluous desires."

The thing was, Yona knew more of Silas than Sky ever knew. Of course, she had read the file of his history. But there was something else. 

"Sky, I was there on the night Silas signed his Contract with Lucifer. I was the one who gave him the bladed pen in which he used to sign in his own blood. Silas Meier, who sold his soul to the Devil for something priceless to him yet worthless to the rest of the world. Lucifer once describing it as something the world's treasures could never buy. No book could ever teach and no power could ever take."

"Why are you telling me this?" The ghost girl asked, confused. 

Yona gave a small smile. 

"Silas sold his soul for something that was not a guarantee. At least that's what I thought but I believe I was wrong. He gave up everything for it, even following it into death. With the chains, he carries the weight of his memories and the promise he continues to keep without question as long as what he sold his soul for continues to exist." Yona said and those words alone took Sky's breath. "Such a man will not fail."

 Yona looked to Silas and the Collector stood ready for what was to come next. 

"Now, go. You have a job to do. Both of you. Collect the next and you will be closer to your Contract's end and your freedom. Lucifer will keep his promise but first you must... keep... yours." Her voice slowed, trailing off as her eyebrows creased down in suspicion. Looking beyond their reflections in the glass, she saw the flash of fire seconds before the tables of the situation instantly shifted. 

The explosion set in the street shattered every street facing glass pane in the foyer. 

Yona was suddenly not at Silas and Sky's side, her form having shifted and moved a great distance from the breaking glass. In the blink of an eye, she was looking at them from behind, back close to the elevators where there was more protection from flying debris. Every Dæmon finding cover from the lobby's blast, paperwork left strewn across the floor. 

Silas and Sky stood at the center of what was to happen. 

Raining glass, flying inward as dagger-like projectiles at the Collector, Silas wasn't fast enough to get out of the way. He didn't need to.

Releasing the small of Sky's back, shadow and chain came to life at the call of his will. Time slowed in his vision as he remained weighted in place. Shards of glass sparkled in his sight, several pieces finding their place to slice across his exposed skin before both the black of his shadow roared upwards as a fire around him, the chains swinging outwards to deflect what they could. 

Everything passed through Sky as she looked beyond the now broken window and wafts of smoke towards the outside. Through the wake of fire and glass she felt something. 

 The Collector, saved from the worst of everything by the instinct in his own black magic was left with a ringing in his ears. He didn't hear what came next, but Sky did. The fire subsided from his being. As Silas shook his thoughts clear, the caws of two crows, laughing in derision filled the eerie emptiness in the air before the alarm system within the building began to ring. 

Two black crows made their entrance through the hole that had been blasted, circling in the air before transforming before the Collector and his Sky. 

The Woman and the silent Man. 

"Silas Meier!" The Woman screamed, her shrill cry filling the air. "So, this is where you've been hiding?" 

The Collector's eyes were on the newcomers. Sky was suddenly before the Woman, hissing in warning. Her hair raised, she would not let them near Silas or Yona without a fight. 

"Should I be frightened?" The Woman laughed but Sky remained undeterred with her full attention on her prey. She swam closer and the woman stepped back, her laugh dying away and her eyes narrowing. When Sky continued her approach, she was caught off guard as the towering black form of the Collector stepped before her advance. 

Sky stopped. Confused. 

Something was off. Terribly off. Her gaze curiously following the line of chains at her wrists. The chains didn't lead to the one before her. The lines of metal traced back. Looking over her shoulder, Sky saw Silas. Her Silas, standing where he had been. His black stare forward at what stood before Sky. She followed his line of sight back to the one who blocked her way. Silas. Black feathers falling away from his suit. Sky reeled backwards. The Woman appeared at the side of Silas' doppelgänger, a Silas that held no chains and appeared without a blemish to his suit or shadowed skin. 

Sky brought herself next to her Collector, wary of the illusion. The Man was gone and Sky could only assume his deception.  

"How...?" Sky asked. 

"What's wrong?" The woman asked, directing her question to Sky, slipping around back of Silas' mirror image to pop up beside his opposite arm. "You'd think you would like the fact there can be two of him. Personally I like this one better. He has so much personality."

The Woman brushed his shoulder while keeping her gaze on Sky. Out of character, the mirror image of Silas smiled a sly grin and it was so unnerving to Sky that she had to look away, shuddering in disgust. 

"Silas! Sky!" Yona shouted from her place at a distance to the confrontation, "Collect them!"    

Silas' reaction was instant. The chains whipped up and the darkness within the Collector erupted. It was a power that no one could replicate. 

"Hmph," scoffed the Woman. "Just try," The moment Silas stepped forward, the two became crows again. Taking flight, they turned in the air deafened by the building's alarm. The lengths of ethereal metal stretched out for Sky to give chase but she was out of luck. In a gust of churning feathers, the two flew back through the broken window. They had gotten the Collector's attention and back into the night, their calls of mocking laughter coaxed Silas and Sky to follow.