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It was the handwriting that truly clicked it together in America's head. Her breath caught as she saw the date on the tag. "Miss Viv?" A pause and then, slowly sounding out the words as the thought occurred, "Are you...are you waiting here for Mr. Liam?"

Vivien smiled, something close-mouthed and secretive. Somehow it didn't look all secret-y on her face. It kind of just looked like how she smiled. "No," she said. "That life's long over. And I'm dead. Surely you've noticed."

She got up, and brushed herself off. There was something terribly corporeal about her, despite the fact that she was dead. Like seeing someone from the other end of the uncanny valley, Vivien was too real to be real. "This is the gallery where Liam proposed to me, before the start of the cycles," she said. She kicked a foot out ahead of her, the metal accents on her scuffed black suede combat boots catching the light in the dim gallery. "These weren't the displays. I wasn't an artist. But time makes artists of all of us, I think. In silence, purity, isn't that what they say? I'm not silent anymore, and now that I have the opportunity to talk, I find I have so ******** much to say."

On the fourth finger of her left hand glints a ring. A red stone set into a silvery metal. A ring that only existed in one reality, firmly on the hand of the dead girl. Unattainable, for all it was so damn close. "I'm not Sunny, I can't influence much. But I can do enough. I could always do enough."

"The Cagemaker's Conundrum," said Vivien, smiling. She had a quite clever look about her. Something about her eyes glinted in the light. "Yes, I gave that to him, and I left the note inside it. It was the first book I was published about in, did you know? I was going to do such great things."

She leaned back on the desk. As they focused on her, the space around them seemed to be shifting. The macbook had become a textbook, and there was a washed-out look to the paintings on the walls. "It was a pretty good gambit, wasn't it? I wanted him to come, but I didn't foresee his husband going mad and trying to remake the world. Or a bunch of kids deciding to try to stop him."

With a little sigh, she crossed her arms over her chest. The ring glinted. "How is he? Have you seen him? I was worried."

Jer's grip on her elbow gave America a moment of caution, even if she wanted to go up and pepper the girl with all sort of questions. She wanted to ask her about the Veil and memories and about the book, and just about Vivien herself. She gotten to know the child version of her, and then a bit more through the book and it's notes, but that was all sideways and the person herself was right here now. At least the ghost of her...

Even more though, she wanted to hear what the other wanted to say, now given the opportunity.

"He's trapped up in something," America added. "So he's a little found, a little lost, and doesn't seem okay at all, gotta say. They think he went looking for something of yours. Maybe the ring, mentioned in that note." She nodded toward Vivien and the ring glinting on her finger.

Jeremiah looked to America, head tilting towards her but questions about Liam and his current state were for another time. Not this one. "Perhaps he was chasing your memory, as he has spoken of you before."

It was not to him but to others yet he had heard more than once.

"Do you mean the first cycle after the cage was created?" he inquired. Jeremiah's heart ached at the thought of her always waiting for someone who may never come. Someone she had loved, someone who had loved her but found another, someone who was not bound to the cycles as they were ...

"Months ago, before the red moon, I requested information about The Enemy, things that would be pieces of it." Renard? Nothing was certain. "One of the things I saw was that gemstone, though it was not always set in a ring."

... and if grave robbery was the way they had to get it. Jeremiah was resolute, looking to America to share a look (and give her a small nod) before looking back to Vivien.

"Where does one go when the world is ending and we need to find that ring?" Though part of him wondered: did she truly mean the world was ending or that it would simply be another reset sooner than later.

"No. The cycle in which the cage was created. The first execution of a program is numbered one, and that's how I've always thought of it." Vivien shrugged. "I don't know what Liam might have given me in other runs of my life. I know that I died young in each of them, sometimes by my own hand. Usually." She grimaced. "I didn't want anyone to remember me in decline. Where I didn't get that option... things were ugly."

She tucked her hands in the pocket of her jacket, the ring slipping out of sight. "The ring's mine," she said. "Those three kids dug it up." The irony of her, barely more than a teen herself, calling the original trio kids didn't seem to strike her. "Grave robbery's been and done. How else would they have bound up Liam, too? Didn't you read my book?"

She looked at America, and smiled. "Worlds die many times before they're dead. The end I mean hasn't arrived yet." Vivien laughed. "The great KILL command at the end of us all."

"I'm getting through it," America's expression dropped for the barest second, a flush rising on her cheeks. Maybe if she just thinks of it as Vivien talking directly...

Blinking rapidly, the girl reached up to pat her cheeks, giving a little shake of the head. A silly thing to get all distressed over, when someone was talking about the end of the world and choosing to...that part too, she can't focus on that, not when there was work to do.

Swallowing her embarrassment, America smiled back tentatively, asking, "Professor Noor was gonna cause the world to end?"

"It was always Renard," Jeremiah said, his attention turning to America. "He kept everything close to him, did not necessarily share it all with Liam." So it was as Vivien said: Liam had been caught up in it.

"We talked once about it, about having to watch those around you over and over again ..." Liam had seemed genuinely bothered by this but it was an undeniable truth of the situation he was in. He turned his gaze to Vivien once more.

"They were caged together? Renard's magic was bound, I know that."