"You two again," I said. My eyes began to squint at them in suspicion. There was something hinky with these two, but I couldn't say what. Other than the obvious getting-around-faster-than-should-be-possible thing. They seemed to be a perpetual one step ahead of me, and I didn't at all like it.

They were both just standing there, smug as you please, in the beige suits of theirs. The man, though, had one of those body signs with chalkboard on either face that seemed to have a tally chart. One side had 'Heads' as the header and the other had 'Tails'. There were a crap ton more heads tallies than tails, which had none. The woman appeared no different, though she held a fine china plate towards me with a single silver coin on it.

"Heads," the man said to me.

The woman responded in kind. "Or tails."

"Or perhaps heads."

"Maybe tails."

They seemed to be more competing with each other than they were speaking to me. "What the hell are you two talking about? What the hell is going on here? Who are you two?"

"Flip," the man told me. "Heads or tails."

"Tails or heads."

Then they both spoke in unison. "A matter of perspective."

"A constant."

"A variable."

"I'd be very interested to see."

The woman pushed the plate closer to me. "So please, if you would. And do hurry, the raffle begins in a few minutes. Don't be late."

I scowled at the two, more confused than ever, as my hand took the coin between my fingers almost without me telling them to. I stared down at the piece of silver, considering it, spinning it between my fingers. On one side, a depiction of an older bearded man, presumably this prophet guy everyone seemed so jazzed about. On the other side, there was a depiction of a large eagle with its wide wings spread open, it's beak apart in its avian screech.

Heads or tails.

Not like it matters, anyway.

"Heads." I flipped the thing into the air, aiming for back on the plate.

It landed heads.

The woman hummed in interest. "Perhaps we might begin a new accounting. Differed constants require differed data pools."

The man bobbed his head in allowance. "Still. Some constants truly are universal."

The two began to walk off down the stairs that led into the street, and they turned a corner as the woman responded. "But it is not an established constant. One demarcation in favor of a previously established proof means nothing within the context of the experiment as a whole, as we have no way of knowing which of the constants and variables change when the control changes as well."

The man began a reply as they turned a corner, but my hearing got cut off as they rounded out of my sight. "Hey!" I shouted after them belatedly. "Wait!" I ran behind, turning after them down the open and empty street ahead of me.

I round the corner to see no one there. I don't hear the pair anywhere. All I see is the street ahead of me, which ends some yards off in a fence and more piercing blue sky with wisps of clouds. My confusion only grew as I walked at speed down the street, checking the nooks and crannies the pair might have hidden themselves in only to turn up empty. I reached the end of the street, rubbing the back of my head as I got angier.

I was a PI, damn it. I was supposed to turn up answers, shed light on mysteries. I was not supposed to get my feet knocked out beneath me time after time, only to have those know it all twits show me up at every turn, leading me on with a carrot tied to a stick.

My gumshoe image was not hold up well here in Columbia, and my pride was getting more wounded the more I kept falling on my ass.

Okay, I thought to myself. So. What do you do about it? Certainly not whine in the street. Get your footing. Find the girl. Find some answers. Like, to start, how the hell do loan sharks in New York know about a fucking city in the sky?

That was an excellent question, actually. I found myself in thought as I swept my way down the street, following the signs that led me to the raffle.

On my way there, I saw a sign with a red clawed hand curled threateningly with the letters 'AD' on the back of the palm, burning a fire red. Text on the sign read, "YOU SHALL KNOW THE FALSE SHEPHERD BY HIS MARK."

I looked down at my hand, where the brand would have been.

Nothing there.

I'd hate to be that guy, whoever he is.

I continued on to the raffle.

As I got closer, I could hear people singing some song in unison, though there was one voice that seemed to carry farther than the others of the crowd. I climbed some stairs toward the singing, then descended another set into a grass courtyard surrounded on by hedges, with a stage off to the right. Just beyond the singing crowd, I could see the angel statue, absolutely massive this close.

I started to make my way over there, but as I tried to weave my way through the crowd, more than a few people started to grab at my shoulders in what they must have thought quite a friendly manner. I found it rather off putting and annoying.

So close, yet so far.

The song came to a finish, and a man on stage dressed to the nines with a large top hat and moustache began to speak. "Ladies and gentlemen, please settle down, settle down now! The raffle will begin in just a few more moments now! Please, get to know and love thy neighbor!" Then he walked off stage, presumably to check if everything were in order.

People around me began to talk to one another. A few tried to come up to me and strike a conversation, but I gave them nothing to work with. I was on the clock.

Eventually, the crowd spit me back out into a more open space where no one seemed to be trying to talk to me. The crowd remained firmly between me and where I needed to go. I scowled at them all, and a few gave me disconcerting looks as they gossiped with their fellows.

"Hey, mister! Over here!"

I turned toward the voice and saw another young woman, dressed very similarly to the other at the fairgrounds that had drugged me with science or whatever. Like the other woman, she had a basket looped around her neck, though this one was filled with what looked like…

Baseballs? What kind of raffle…

She scurried up to me. "The raffles about to start, mister! You should grab a number!"

"Eh, sorry. No sale."

She laughed at me. "You don't have to pay to be in the raffle, silly!"

I gave her a look, then the basket. Then I shrugged and said, "Eh, what the hell." I grabbed a ball from the top of the pile.

"Huh." I showed ball to the woman.

"Oh," she cooed, "Number 77! I'll be rooting for you…" Her voice took a husky intonation that was far more coy than I thought it should have been.

The man from before came back on stage and said, "And now, ladies and gentlemen, the 1912 raffle has officially begun!'

The crowd roared and cheered in excitement, a mounting energy behind their collective voices making my heart begin to speed up.

The man on stage gestured off to the side. "Bring me the bowl!"

A woman came sauntering out with a red and white striped bowl in hand. The crowd roared some more, and as they did the man on stage said, "Is that not just the prettiest young white girl in all of Columbia?!"

The crowd got even louder.

What the…

The man reached into the bowl and pulled out some kind of red card. He read it, and began to speak, adding flare to his voice for dramatic effect. "And the winner of this year's raffle is… Number 77!"

I blinked and looked down at my ball. I guess that was me.

The woman from before suddenly appeared beside me and lifted the arm with the ball in its grasp into the air. "He won! Number 77! He's right here!"

The man on stage turned to look in my direction, quickly glanced at the ball the confirm, then beamed at me. "Number 77! Come and claim your prize!"

From somewhere unseen, a piano began to play something familiar.

A wedding march.

The curtain slowly, agonizingly, pulled up to reveal a pair tied to two individual poles. One was a woman, the other a man. The woman was black. The man was white. Wooden set pieces of jungle grass and trees began to swing into visibility, and a depiction of a hideously characterized monkey that was obviously supposed to be a black man swung from a tree, dressed in a tie and wedding hat, a ring hanging from it's tail.

As the poles with the captive tied to them slowly began to move forward on the stage, my eyes widened in absolute horror.

Then three things happened that made my stomach drop even farther.

Firstly, the man on stage gestured to me and said, "First throw!"

Oh no…

Second, the crowd, all their eyes turned to me, started to sing to the tune of the wedding march.

Oh Gods no…

Third, the couple on stage began to beg for their lives. "Please, please don't do this, it was me, it was all me!" The man cried, and the woman beside him simply wept in terror.

This wasn't a raffle. This was a stoning.

The man in the top hat, the fucker leading this whole thing, turned to look at me with a curious gaze. "What's the matter there, friend? You too scared? Or do you take your coffee black now these days?" Then he laughed, and the crowd, those who weren't still singing to the tune, laughed along with him.

I didn't belong here.

I'm not sure what happened between that moment and the next, but something within me turned red hot in anger and fear. The next thing I knew, I was being slammed against the stage by two officers who were screaming at me, the man on stage was curled up with blood leaking from his nose, and the crowd was roaring again, this time in pure fury.

The officers, still screaming at me about things I wasn't hearing, dragged me off, taking me the way that I had come. I could see the angel behind me get smaller and smaller.

Some of the crowd started to follow in their anger, but another officer came along and shooed them off, saying, "The raffle is still on, everyone! Let us handle this Vox." He said the word like it was some kind of curse that would make me drop dead right there.

My eyes grew wide with that same terror from before, and as the cops pulled me away, I turned to look and saw the crowd began throwing. Screams pierced the air, most in cheer.

But there were two that I heard, just beneath all the hate and noise, that were afraid and in pain.

Seconds later, those screams were cut off, drowning and dying under the volume of hate being thrown at them.

I turned my eyes back front, staring at nothing as I was shoved into what was essentially a cage attached to a cart pulled by one of those mechanical horses.

"I don't belong here," I could hear myself mutter aloud.

One of the officers, before slamming the door to the cage shut, scowled at me. "Buddy, you're kind ain't welcome anywhere in the amazing city." Then there was the heavy slam of the cage door and a jolt of movement, and I was being dragged off somewhere.

Amazing city, he had said.

It had started that way, yeah.

But suddenly this place terrified me.