Coming soon...

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Rain licked the window, drawing crooked lines down the glass. Adrien leaned back on his couch, one arm slung over the side, the other turning the sleeve of a record between his fingers. The low hum of Massive Attack filled the apartment, bass vibrating gently through the floorboards. He liked the way the sound filled the silence—thick, steady, like a second pulse.

The apartment was small but orderly. Stacks of books leaned on the end table, their spines marked with notes and tabs. A jacket was draped carefully over a chair. On the counter, the faint steam of a half-forgotten mug curled upward, dissolving into the air. He moved with precision in the space, never bumping a corner, never knocking things out of place—as though the room had been built around his awareness.

Outside, Capitol Hill glowed in neon smudges and streetlight reflections. Adrien’s glasses caught the light as he looked out across the street, watching a couple argue under an awning, their gestures sharp and obvious even without words. He studied them a moment, then turned away. Not his story.

He dropped the needle back on the record. The track restarted, filling the room with familiar shadows. He closed his eyes, let the rain and the music carry him. For now, this was enough—Seattle nights, a record spinning, the world quiet enough to hold together.

Rain pressed harder against the glass. Adrien sat back, head tilted, letting the bassline wash through him. The track played steadily—until it didn’t.

For half a breath, the sound warped. The record didn’t skip exactly; it bent, notes dragging low like a voice underwater. Adrien opened his eyes. The room was the same, but the edges of it wavered, like heat rising from asphalt. His mug on the counter seemed farther than it should be, then closer again. The couple across the street blurred into smears of light.

He blinked, rubbed at his face, but the distortion deepened. In the hum of the music, another sound bled through—a voice.

"... lee-"

It was drawn-out, hollow, like someone speaking through an old radio left at the bottom of a well. Adrien’s chest tightened.

"... rooooy..."

He froze. The name dragged across him like static, thick with a weight he couldn’t place.

"... Leeeeroy."

The voice was neither inside nor outside, neither dream nor waking. Adrien gripped the arm of the couch, grounding himself in the familiar. The record hissed. The rain slowed. The whole room folded inward.

He tried to move, to speak, but the name rang again—clearer, closer.

“Leeroy.”

Adrien blinked-

And he was gone.

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The road hummed beneath the tires. Streetlights flashed rhythmically across the windshield, scattering colors over Imani’s hands. In the backseat, Illiana lay across several seats, braids spilling over her shoulders. The radio played low - some old R&B track that blended with the sound of rain starting to spit against the glass. Imani took in a deep breath and then let out what was on her mind...

"... Your teacher called me again," Imani sternly said.

Illiana shifted in her seat, pulling her jacket tighter. "So what? She’s always calling you." She punctuated that with a roll of her eyes that Imani missed.

They hit a red light, and Imani's head whipped back, "Don't get smart with me, lil' lady. She said you walked out." Imani didn't raise her voice at all. ”Mind explaining why?”

Illiana scoffed. “Because she wouldn’t let me go to the bathroom. What, I’m supposed to go on my-”

”Don't twist it, girl,” Imani's knuckles tightened against the steering wheel as the light turned green and she pressed the gas pedal. ”You didn’t go to the bathroom, you went to the parking lot.” She would have whipped her head around, but her attention was dead set on the road.

Illiana turned, smirking. “Maybe I just wanted some fresh air.”

”Keep it up, and you won't be getting much of that,” Imani rolled her own eyes.

"... Why's that?" Illiana asked.

”Because they're going to suspend you. And best believe if that happens, you aren't going to be out here running these streets,” Imani glanced over her shoulder.

Illiana sat up halfway. “'Running these streets?' You act like I’m doing drugs or some dumb shit. You don’t know what it’s like at that school.”

”One, don't curse at me,” Imani hissed, ”And two, I know what's not going to fix it; throwing tantrums every time something's not going your damn way.” Imani had to stop herself from shouting, taking a deep breath.

“You never listen,” Illiana shot back. “You just take their side. Every time. Like I’m the problem."

”Because you keep making yourself the problem,” Imani snapped, eyes fixed hard on the road. ”I’ve been around long enough to know how this ends.”

Illiana crossed her arms. “‘Cause you’ve got it all figured out.”

“You think I’m your enemy, but I’m the one keeping this whole damn thing together. You’ll see that one day.”

“No, I won’t,” Illiana muttered. “I don’t want your life.”

The air in the car went heavy. Imani’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. She opened her mouth—

—and then the world broke.

The road. The rain. The wheel beneath her palms—gone, snatched away in a blink.

Her chest seized. The air folded, bent, warped around her like glass under a hammer. A ripple passed straight through her body, erasing her breath.

And then she was standing somewhere else entirely.

Her body wasn’t her own.

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The hallway buzzed with faint echoes—doors shutting, someone laughing two floors down, the hum of a vending machine at the end of the corridor. Brandi’s sneakers tapped in rhythm against the floor, syncopated like her own private beat. Her headphones blared a rough demo she’d been working on—layered vocals, half-finished percussion—but it was enough to make her lips curl into a grin.

She swung her dorm room door open with a flourish, tossed her bag onto the bed, and moved straight to her desk, where her laptop and MIDI controller waited. Posters of artists she idolized lined the wall - some glossy and professional, others taped-up magazine cutouts. A strand of LED lights bathed the room in a neon pink glow.

Brandi shimmied her shoulders to the music, fiddling with her fair for a moment. Feels... feels right... maybe this track... yeah... gotta nail it...”

Her fingers tapped the desk in anticipation, drum patterns spilling from her. She could already hear it—the track she was about to make, the kind of beat that would get people out of their seats. For a moment, she forgot about everything else.

And then-

The sound collapsed. The music warped, folding in on itself like a tape chewed up by a hungry machine. Brandi ripped her headphones off, blinking. Her laptop screen glitched, her LED lights flickered, and the whole room seemed to sway.

She staggered back. The air vibrated, heavy, like bass turned too high. A pressure bloomed in her chest, pushing at her ribs.

Her hand shot to her desk for balance, but her palm hit nothing.

The room dropped away—walls, posters, music, even the hum of her own pulse.

Brandi’s breath caught, her voice snagged in her throat as if she were mid-song and the mic had been cut.

And then—

She was gone.
Imani’s eyes snapped open. The first thing she noticed was the weight—her body pressed down against something hard, stiff. Armor. Black, dented, scuffed plates covered her torso and shoulders. The straps dug into her skin as she tried to sit up, and her fingers brushed over a holster empty of a weapon she didn’t remember having. She froze. Nothing looked familiar. The room reeked of chemicals and burnt ozone, with a metallic and acrid scent. Her ears picked up a low, wet scrape near the corner. She turned sharply—and froze again.

A massive shark-like creature lay on the floor. Its body was jagged and wet, scales glittering in strange, impossible colors. It wasn’t torn or burned, and the walls and floor were untouched—just flattened, as if the air itself had pressed the life out of it. Imani’s stomach knotted. Whatever had killed it hadn’t followed standard rules; it was as if something impossibly precise and deadly had swept through, leaving nothing behind but stillness.

Her chest heaved. “Illiana...” The word tore out of her, but it didn’t sound like her own voice - it was softer and younger than she'd remembered. Panic gnawed at her mind. She swept her eyes across the room: steel beams overhead, pipes crisscrossing the walls, tanks humming softly. Shadows shifted along the floor. She wasn’t alone. Figures - other people - scattered around the room, their forms tense, unfamiliar. None of them spoke, but each seemed to be sizing the space and the danger, just like her.

Before she could speak to ask what in the world was going on, a distant roar hit her ears - waves crashing like the ocean itself had turned into a weapon. Explosions, clangs, shouts, something was fighting out there. Her body jerked as if it wanted to run.

She tried to remember. Her daughter. She had to find Illiana. Pushing to her feet, she felt the armor shift differently - lighter, less cumbersome than before, her joints springing with a strength she hadn’t had in years. Every movement was more effortless, almost unnervingly so, and yet instinct kicked in without hesitation - hands steady, eyes sweeping the room, tactical awareness sharp despite the rising panic.

Now-

A high-pitched scream shredded the air, sudden and raw. Imani spun toward the sound just as a small girl collided with the floor, scrambling backward over pipes and debris, arms flailing.

”Oh. My. GOD!” The girl screamed, ”What the fu- WHERE THE FUCK AM I?!”

Her petite frame shook with panic, afro puffs bouncing as she spun in place, eyes wide and wild. She slammed against a wall, then pressed her hands to her face, muttering broken fragments of words. Every syllable was a squeal, a stutter, a gasp.

Imani's chest tightened, ”Hey! Look at me!” Imani commanded, effortlessly getting the girl's attention, as she closed the gap effortlessly. She grabbed the girl by the shoulders and said, ”Keep your feet underneath you. Panicking isn't helping right now.”

A low, shaky voice came from across the room. Imani’s head snapped toward it. A man was rising from a pile of pipes, his black suit and trench coat singed in places. He opened his mouth, clearly trying to speak, and the words stumbled out.

"W-wait-hey, we-uh..."

The voice faltered mid-sentence, breaking into a rough, unfamiliar timbre. Imani’s eyes narrowed - he looked just as disoriented as she felt.

The realization hit him as hard as the chaos around them. His lips moved again, trying to speak, and he stopped himself, biting his tongue. His shoulders slumped.

”... Something's wrong,”

Imani rolled her eyes, ”Yeah. I blinked and I'm in a room full of strangers. There's a dead monster in the middle of the room. Something's wrong alright.”

The man scrunched his eyebrows, he scanned the room for a moment as if to find this 'monster' before saying, ”... What monster?”

Imani’s eyes swept the room again, landing on every unfamiliar face, who looked just as confused as the other two she had just spoken to. ”We don't have time for this.” Imani muttered to herself, before her eyes swept across the room, taking in the scattered bodies, the unfamiliar armor, the dead shark sprawled on the flaoor. ”Hey, everyone, look at me.” She got everyone's attention, pointing at herself.

Heads turned. Some hesitated, unsure. A few whispered to one another. She didn’t flinch at their confusion. ”I don’t know what happened, but freaking out isn’t going to help. Find your feet. Take a breath. Focus. Let's figure out what's going on, maybe why we're here...”

Imani’s eyes flicked toward the shadows at the edges of the room. She didn’t see it - she didn’t hear it - but somewhere down the hall, a wet, subtle slap... slap... echoed faintly, almost imperceptible, the rhythm of something heavy moving. Her gut tightened, though she didn’t know why.

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An uncomfortable silence filled the interior of a luxury car and mixed with the smell of new leather and stale cigarettes. The professional driver eyed the radio dial as the car idled in construction traffic, uncertain if turning on some music to cut the unease was worth the risk of drawing the ire of either of the two occupants sitting in the back. The woman stared out a tinted window that reflected her tight jaw and furrowed brow. Between her elegant updo and fancy dress she looked as if she had just come from some black tie affair. She cleared her throat. The man sitting next to her in his cowboy boots and blue collar shirt was one orange vest away from being mistaken for one of the construction workers standing around in a circle on the side of the highway, watching the traffic jam that they had created. He didn’t look the woman’s way as she cleared her throat yet again, his face glued to the screen of his phone as he slowly scrolled through emails.

“The least you could do is man up and tell me who she is.”

The driver’s gloves tightened on the steering wheel as the woman spoke up. The man let out an exhausted sigh and slid his phone into his jean pocket. He looked up, but not at her. Instead, he stared at the empty passenger seat before giving it a subtle nod.

“As I already told you, there is no other woman.”

A quiet chuckle came from up front. It wasn’t the driver. He liked having a job, even if the Bauers failed to ever use the privacy divider. This wasn’t his first time hearing Mrs. Bauer accuse her husband of infidelity, just like it wasn’t the first time he had to bite his tongue. He felt bad for the woman, but again: he liked having a job. The laugh had come from the fourth passenger in the car, unseen by all but Senator Bauer. She couldn’t help herself as she eavesdropped. Sometimes the truth was so farfetched that it became funny.

“Margo told me she saw you leaving the Driskill with some little tramp.”

The soft laugh came to an abrupt halt. The joke wasn’t so good when it was on her. Most people would never see her unless she wanted them to, and frankly she wasn’t a big fan of being seen. It made everything so much more complicated, introduced too many unnecessary factors that were out of her control. This Margo lady sounded like a threat. The eavesdropper looked up at the rearview mirror, her dead eyes making contact with the Senator’s bright baby blues and lingering.

“Margo has had it in for me ever since college. She’d say anything to drive a wedge between us.”

“She wouldn’t lie to me.”

“She would if she was jealous of you.”

The silent passenger shifted in her seat so she could better look at the Senator. She knew what he was thinking and knew what he was going to say. Even if she couldn’t tell him to shut up, the look on her face would’ve done it. However, the Senator’s ego was bruised, hurt that his wife would choose to believe some woman and not him–even if, in this instance, that woman was telling some version of the truth.

“And why would she be jealous of me?”

A groan of defeat came from the passenger seat as the Senator leaned back, turned towards his wife, and gestured with both hands from his head down to his lap. She looked towards Mrs. Bauer and watched as the confusion on her face shifted upon realization, the touch of blush on her cheeks darkening deeply as her mouth fell open. Mrs. Bauer stammered out a few unintelligible words as the car behind them blared its horn at the driver for not inching forward with the rest of traffic. Then, the words found form as Senator Bauer pulled back out his phone.

“Are you FUCKING KIDDING ME!?” Mrs. Bauer’s fist slammed into the doorframe. “Not every woman wants to fuck you, Teddy!”

“Then you need to stop pretending like they are,” he fired back as he returned his attention to scrolling.

“I’m not–” The fury in her voice cracked and fizzled as Mrs. Bauer’s expression darkened. She glanced out the window once again in defeat. “I’m not doing this. Not anymore.”

“Good. I can finally get some work done,” said Senator Bauer dismissively.

That uncomfortable silence returned. The fourth passenger had expected a more bombastic reaction from Mrs. Bauer instead of a quiet acceptance of defeat. All these centuries and people still didn’t make any sense to her.

“Richards, pull over.”

They really didn’t make any sense.

“Seriously?”

“Richards! Pull. Over.”

“Stop being so dramatic. We’re stuck in traffic. Where would you even go?”

“Anywhere but here.”

She watched as Mrs. Bauer stepped out of the car and began shifting through the maze of honking cars stuck in a standstill. Nothing would please her more than to see the woman suddenly struck by a construction truck and rendered as little more than a smear of red paste and black satin on the I-35, but the woman was a necessity. A dead wife might garner some sympathy in the public eye, but it didn’t play well at the polling stations and it especially wasn’t a good look when that dead wife’s husband's door-to-door campaigning had included several side trips into the bedroom. Senator Bauer surely knew that he would have to go after her.

But he didn’t look up from his phone.

“We need her,” she said.

“She’ll come back,” said the Senator.

The driver glanced at the rearview, assuming the man was talking to himself in disbelief.

“C’mon, Teddy. Go get her,” she insisted.

“She wants me to chase after her. I’m not letting her win,” he hissed. “Fucking bitch.”

Fine then, she’d do it herself. She ignored the Senator’s scream of “Where are you going?” as she passed through the passenger side door without opening it. She floated through a truck and perched upon the roof to give herself a better vantage point as she scanned for Mrs. Bauer, catching sight of her bun several hundred yards away. It wasn’t often that Mrs. Bauer went out without wearing high heels, but the gap she’d covered in that short time span was truly impressive.

Impossible, even.

There was a horrific sound of metal grinding on metal followed by a loud pop that would’ve left real ears ringing. She watched as one of the cranes stationed above the highway snapped and collapsed, but instead of crashing down on the cars below it folded upwards into itself and hung in suspended animation as if it were weightless. The toned-out chorus of honks began to disperse, replaced by a rise of screams that was crushed beneath a thunderous sound of something big. She watched in muted indifference as a tidal wave rushed down the I-35, clearing traffic as it went.

The loss of life would surely be astronomical, but there was only one life she cared about and his didn’t end here. Senator Bauer wasn’t going to be just some tallymark on a bodycount. Oh, no. This was nothing compared to the torment that he’d endure. She smiled as the grinding noise returned. The smirk wavered as she turned to the Senator’s car only to find that it had been replaced by a sports car. Her head snapped up the lane, catching sight of his vehicle far ahead, the tidal wave closing in. Suddenly, the truck beneath her collapsed into the ground, a cloud of dust engulfing her as she remained aloft, pushing forward towards the Senator as fast as she could go.

She flickered, but she didn’t stop. Onward and onward she floated, dust giving way to darkness. The Senator, his car, the highway, the flood, everything long gone. She was surrounded by emptiness. There was a familiarity to it. One that she didn’t like. One that made her feel things she was never meant to feel. It would be okay, she told herself. She’d come back. She’d come back. She’d come back. What would happen to her if she didn’t come back?

She couldn’t say for sure, but she felt like it would be heartbreaking.

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Ted wasn’t a stranger to finding himself in dangerous situations. The difference today was he normally could recall how he’d gotten himself in them. The last thing he remembered was pulling a chair out from a table across from his wife, and now he was stuck upside down in the backseat of some car that smelled like new car and sulfur. Pain shot through his head and his arm, and there were a few cuts here and there from broken glass, but he was in one piece and as far as he could tell nothing was broken. The same couldn’t be said about the driver. Ted wasn’t anything close to a doctor, but he didn’t need eight years of schooling to know that a head wasn’t supposed to be turned that way.

The graphic sight of the dead body would’ve been more unsettling if the whole thing wasn’t so confounding. Where was Rita? Why was he wet? How’d he get in the back of the car? How’d the car get upside down? How’d it get upside down roughly ten to fifteen feet in the air?What was in that chemical pool beneath him? How’d the car fuse–not crash, but fuse–into the concrete wall that was keeping it held up, and how much longer would the car remain mounted on the wall like a trophy before gravity made it tear itself in half and kill Ted in the fall? That one in particular he didn’t want to know the answer to, at least not until he was no longer in the backseat.

He tried reaching for the seat buckle to unlock himself, grunting in strain as he did an inverted crunch. He fumbled awkwardly with the belt, pressing his knees into the back of the driver’s seat to help fight against gravity tugging him the other way, and finally found himself able to reach it. There was a click, followed by an “Oh shit!” as Ted tucked his chin into his chest just in time to avoid spiking himself on the top of his head as he crashed onto the interior roof of the car below him. He let out a groan of pain and gave himself a breather, hoping that the haze might clear up now that all the blood wasn’t rushing to his head.

Unfortunately, the only thing that became clear was the mechanical groan of the car as the shifting of his weight being the final thing needed to make the vehicle stop defying gravity. As the car started to rumble in warning that it was going down, Ted reached for the door handle to find that the back door was jammed shut. “Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.” He shifted his body so that his feet were towards the back windshield and delivered a mighty kick to the glass. With each kick the car rocked and shrieked louder, joining in with the cacophony of distant explosions and crashing waves.

Unlike in action movies, where the windshield popped out in one or two punts, Ted watched in growing panic as the glass cracked and spiderwebbed but did not break out. Sure, he was grateful for modern safety features when he was engaging in some stunt driving for a commercial, but right now the fucking asshole designers who thought all luxury vehicles should be as durable as a tank were going to get his ass killed. He kicked again, his heart catching in his throat as the windshield budged from its fitting. Another kick took out an entire corner. Another one took out the other corner. One more should be enough to knock it loose, and then he could climb out to the steel support beam holding up the room’s roof.

Ted pulled his foot back and then sprung it forward with all of his might, the windshield crashing free of the frame as the car pitched and started to plummet. He closed his eyes as he felt something tug on his jean leg and heard the half-a-car splash into the pool below. There was no new pain and the lack of sizzling anticlimatically revealed that whatever was in the pool was not corrosive. When Ted opened his eyes he found that he wasn't only outside of the car, he wasn’t even in the pool it had landed in. Miraculously, he was somehow beside the chem pool. Ted sat up and let out a startled yelp.

“That was close,” said the woman in front of him, staring at him with blackest eyes. “Good thing I was here to save you.”

The same thing could be said about how near to him she was squatting. She was so close that Ted had nearly headbutted her. He scooted back, able to get a better visual of the woman. She was young, maybe early twenties, attractive, with platinum blonde hair and porcelain skin. She was dressed in a black, two-piece skirt suit with a matching dark beret that made the outfit feel less business professional and more American Girl doll. Her eyes were even a match for the black, beady ones that haunted the nightmares of many young men who were told that the collectible dolls were just for girls.

“I’m sorry about earlier. Are you hurt?” she asked, unblinking.

“Who are you?” asked Ted. He wasn’t suspicious of the woman as much as he was confused.

There was a soft titter. Her mouth smiled. Her eyes did not. “It’s me, Darlene.”

“Okay, uh, Darlene?” he asked in clarification as she nodded her head. “I’m Ted.”

The smile thinned.

“You must’ve hit your head.”

“I’ll be alright. I gotta pretty thick skull,” said Ted, brushing it off.

“Look,” she said, reaching out to brush his temple as she opened the mental connection between the two to snoop around for signs of brain damage. “You’re blee…”

”Oh. My. GOD!” a girl screamed from another part of the chemical plant. ”What the fu- WHERE THE FUCK AM I?!”

“There’s other people,” said Ted, standing up to his feet, grimacing through the pain. His wife was surely with them. He extended a scratched up hand to Darlene, the blood on it already starting to dry. “C’mon, maybe we can start making some sense ‘bout what the hell’s going on here.”

Darlene took Ted’s hand and followed behind him as the duo exited their personal honeymoon suite to join the gathering in the main floor of the chemical plant. As they moved through a service hallway she stared a hole in the back of Ted, listening in on his brain focused solely on finding this Rita bitch when it should be focused only on them. Something was wrong. Something was off. She had to dig in deeper. Darlene demanifested herself and reached her hand upward, shoving her fingers harmlessly through Ted’s spinal cord and into his mind. A second later she froze, staring after the stranger, arm still outstretched, uncertain of what to do as Ted continued walking away from her.

She went invisible and followed after, feeling that feeling she wasn’t supposed to feel.

Ted emerged from the service hallway alone, looking battered and bloodied and barely maintaining a brave face in the face of insanity. A crowd was gathering around a striking woman wearing some kind of combat gear, needlessly calling for the group to look at her. Well, okay, maybe not needlessly, as Ted's eyes were drawn towards the thing on the ground that looked like someone had taken a shark and tried to transform it into an area rug. The lady in charge spoke some wisdom about not freaking out, but given, well, everything he felt that maybe it would help her out if he threw his voice in as well.

“Hey y’all, she’s right. The best thing we can do right now is remain calm,” said Ted, raising his deep voice to be heard over the sounds of pandemonium outside. Ted took the lead as the woman’s eyes shifted towards a corner of the room, distracted by something he didn’t notice.

“I’m Ted. This here’s…” Ted turned to introduce Darlene, surprised to find that the woman had vanished. He pivoted. “This here’s, uh, a crazy situation but we’ll get through it together. Is anybody injured? Does anybody know how they got here?”

He gestured towards the shark…thing…and flashed a smile, trying to disarm the tension with a bit of levity. “Does anybody want their picture taken with the catch of the day?”

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VOOM

Beams of orange light streaked down the dusty hallway, burning flesh and skin from a monster running around the corner. They didn't hit anything significant, so Emil slung Sunrise over his shoulder and ran down the opposite end. The thick drum of his boots on the old floor was all he could hear, no noises behind him, no one being eaten alive. He didn't know exactly how many of them were in here and he damn sure wasn't about to find out the hard way. These things had flesh and bone which meant they were either particularly stout Apparitions or some kind of Abominable created in droves. Neither of those ideas made this easier when he anticipated there being several.

Emil withdrew an old hand radio from his jacket and held it to his ear. The crackling was behind him, and felt like it was coming from the floor. The Mixed Signal wasn't getting much, until Emil turned a corner and practically glided down a set of stairs.

"A crack in the glass! It's raining tonight in sunny Portland," the radio whispered, cryptically.

He expected this to just be a routine hunt. He got a tip from some agents that there'd be something going on here. What, he wasn't sure, since they were discrete about the whole thing. They encouraged him to show up and work something out with these beasts, but this place was crawling with danger. His radio warned him something bad was going to happen, and that was after he set foot in the building and immediately got caught out by some fucking shark thing.

"Alright..." He slipped the radio away and pulled out the Wormblade. Emil stopped in front of a pair of double doors that led out into a production line. The windows were grimy and dark, he couldn't see shit.

He creaked one of the doors open slightly, and whispered something in Cyrillic to the dagger. Then, he hurled it through the crack as the blade went flying in wide arcs. It held the spirit of a dragon that Emil had killed, composed of wind and clouds, and would always some back like a boomerang when it cut something after instructed. Emil swung the door open wide after grabbing Sunrise again, pointing it ready to fire. The room was clear, and he caught the dagger as it came back. There were a pair of large, cylindrical vats protruding from the floor, no ladders but Emil reached into his backpack for a grappling hook. He used it rappel up the rim and then monkey bar his way across pipes that led from from it to feed in chemicals in another time.

He swung all his momentum into forward and landed on top of a cubicle that overlooked the area, then climbed down into the broken window it had. In here were computers and phones to call and coordinate things, if he had to guess. But it was all disused, no one was coming for the time being. There was a door to another hallway, or maybe a meeting area, probably a storage closet- He didn't fucking know.

Emil swung his backpack off one shoulder and unhooked a magic shovel from it. It felt heavy in his hands, cold to the touch.

He raised it up, and willed the ghosts inside out of it. One after another, a total of three. It wasn't wise to do this, but he didn't have many options in this godforsaken place.

The ghosts of a wolf, a man with gaping holes where his eyes should have been, and an Apparition he bled dry.

"Attack everything you see," He ordered them. "Until you stop existing. Go."

They raced off in different directions. He gave them maybe an hour before they collectively died out. That was good enough, though. Emil shoved a few tables in front of the door leading to god-knows-where, and then rested Sunrise against the window ledge. He pulled out a lighter and a pack of Marlboro Blacks, to catch his breath.

The Mixed Signal crackled again.

"We're a minute to midnight, ladies and gents. A high of 95 and cloudy skies all day."

And then the very foundations of the building yawned open.

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In the dainty apartment blocks of Moscow's middle class housing, far from the glamour of a life with something grandiose to count amongst its trappings, a man bitched at his boss on the phone. The dull drone of a microwave filled the air, heating up a pizza pocket for the breakfast he thought he'd need on his way to a job he thought he he would be going to. The man had gotten dressed, threw on his jacket and was just about to head out the door to go and fix broken cars for another day when he got the news.

"You're kidding," Emil said, in Russian.

"No. Emil, I told you when you took this job-"

"That I was probably going to lose it... That was three years ago, Mikhail."

"The work is just drying up. The industry's going in a different direction, and it's becoming harder to stay open when manufacturers have lawyers to look over our licensing."

"We renewed that last month," Emil balked, opening the microwaved. "I helped renew that."

"It isn't just that, Emil. You have to understand, there's red tape and then there's this. I can't afford legal action, so we have to comply with the regulations. More regulations mean we have less work. And I just can't-"

Emil slammed the microwave door, not just because his pizza pocket was still half cold.

There was silence for a moment.

"I'm there, every day, even when it's nearing minus thirty at midnight. You- Mikhail, damn it, man..."

"I'm sorry, Emil. You're a great worker, and it's felt like you're family..."

He had to fight to urge not to punch some drywall right at that moment.

"I'm about to forward some information to a few others I know in the city. I'll tell them you're coming, and that you're a hard working man. I know they're always looking for mechanics at the-"

"You know, you sure do seem awfully eager to get rid of someone who you consider a good worker and your damn family." Emil let the microwave run for another two minutes. "I break my back for you, I pick up Iska's shifts when he's off doing god-knows-what and not working on the fucking engine block that's been sitting in the bay for two weeks..."

"Emil."

"But I'm the one who takes the fucking pink slip? Fine, whatever you say. Who did you say you were sending that too?"

"I didn't."

Click.

The asshole hung up, and Emil's breakfast was still fucking cold. Great.

Emil tossed his shoes at the wall, and fell down on his couch. The apartment wasn't anything fancy, a living room with an open-air kitchen, a small bathroom and a bedroom. He sifted through some of the mail on his table that he'd gotten before the phone call. Junk mail, mostly. Magazines for a few things Emil stopped caring about a while ago and couldn't be bothered to cancel the subscriptions to, some newsletter about a public organizing thing he really didn't give a damn about... Rent was due, and he'd just gotten laid off the day he was supposed to get paid. Because of course.

He sighed and walked over to the fridge, heating the pocket for another thirty seconds. He clearly wasn't going anywhere today. Emil grabbed the somehow molten pizza pocket and coke, and took his place on the lazy throne of the unemployed. Three years working at that auto shop and he'd gotten cut because a bunch of suits decided that not everyone should be fixing cars. He barely had enough money to fill out the week, between bills and his own car's gas.

There wasn't shit on the TV. There never was.

The coke didn't last long, and it was the last one he had in the fridge.

Emil didn't have any other plans for the day. So he grabbed something alcoholic.

He'd figure something out tomorrow.



A sharp thud woke Emil up, as the floor greeted him. He didn't remember getting up and going to bed, but he didn't remember much after the second glass of Everclear. He must've slept the whole day away. The room felt ice fucking cold and it was pitch black. His phone was in his pocket, didn't he leave it on the table? He slipped out of the bed and hit the ground. Or... No, he did.

But he heard something else wake him up. It sounded like a bang, or a clattering of pans against the ground, not a human being. His head hurt like shit. He may or may not have had a problem.

Midnight.

Bang.

A noise from outside the room, looking up from the floor, he saw lights coming from the kitchen. Shades of pink and blue, with sparks of white in between. He left the damn TV on. That was going to be hell on the electrical bill. Emil dragged himself up. His head swimming like a fish, he stuttered out the door and hit a light switch.

It woke him up pretty damn quickly.

The TV wasn't on, and it didn't look like it was even there. It was a smear on the wall, with more depth than an ocean, there were white cracks running up and down the walls. He heard voices and screams, roars and something without words to apply. It looked like someone had turned the room into an abstract art piece. And on his kitchen floor was a person. He was dressed in what looked like tactical gear, a radio in his hands and a backpack over his shoulders, blood all over the tiles.

"If... Anyone hears... Right. Something happened..." The man was speaking in English.

Emil slowly took a step towards him.

The man noticed and his eyes snapped up. They were bloodshot.

For a moment, everything went still. He knew that face. They both did, because it belong to them both. Emil was staring back at himself.

...What the fuck?

The ground shook again for one of them and for the first time for the other. White cracks yawned open, and Emil Kolya of Shadow fell downwards. He heard Emil Kolya of Kindle scream something in English, but he hadn't caught it in time before he saw through the light of a hundred trillion worlds flying past him all at once. He saw black snakes rolling over beautiful cities, great and terrible bastions of things far away, a thousand swords on an infinitely wide wall... And he saw himself. Twice, thrice and ten times over, all racing beyond him like the world's fastest drug trip. It was all so much, so real to him, that it made him feel alive.

And when that little moment of wonder passed, he hit solid rock.

Like a flat stone hitting a deep puddle, Emil landed hard on a pile of rubble within an old factory.

"Черт возьми, ублюдок, черт возьми, черт возьми ... черт, это больно ..." It stole the breath out of him, something felt broken. It took him several seconds to get to his feet, and then figure out which way they were meant to go. "Что, черт возьми, было в проклятии-" He stopped himself when he looked around and saw where he was. A... Factory? With other people around. A woman in body armor, some dude who looked pretty American... A girl who was screaming. He looked the worst of them all, caked in rock dust and half-hungover. A very confused look was all over Emil's face.

"что за- What the hell... Who the- Who the hell are all of you?"

He looked up from where he fell, and there wasn't some gaping hole in the roof that he fell in through. Not that he could see, anyway. His head pounded like crazy. He felt warmer, wherever this was.

"Fuck me, now what..."

---

---

Off tune humming overwhelmed the gentle fantasy style music filling a small, crowded bedroom. Ayesha typed frantically on her keyboard, motions much more panicked than her cheerful humming suggested. She had a deadline! Just this one report to finish, then exams, then she was good for the winter holidays.

But she’d put it off so long that she had to write it all up tonight. It wasn’t her fault, really… The newest book in her favourite fantasy series came out last week. Obviously she’d read it, then reread it. Then she started thinking about a tabletop campaign inspired by it… But it would be fine. Probably!

It was part of the University experience, wasn’t it? Sure, most people got drunk every night and put off work rather than reading, but still!

With a soft groan, Aya leaned back and stared up at the various movie posters across her walls. How nice it must be to live in a little town in one of those worlds, not having to worry about scientific reports or good grades. Though, she wouldn’t be able to handle the dangerous stuff that went on in all of her favourite worlds. But if it was peaceful, it would be nice.

Maybe she’d be more confident in a fantasy story where she had something like magic. Maybe then she’d–

The posters began to stretch, greens, browns and blues intermingling with brighter colours that weren’t there. The violin crescendo got distorted and scratchy, an ear piercing wail that had Aya wincing in confusion. It felt like the room was being torn apart, like she was being thrown into some kind of void.

It felt like her body was being torn apart, her stomach about to be pulled out through her mouth. Panic clutched her, breathing harsh and painful, then she couldn’t breath at all. All at once, everything was gone.

---

---

Ayesha’s hands hit hard ground, fingers grasping at what should’ve been a soft carpet. Her vision swam with black spots as her breathing only quickened, like she was trying to suck air through shattered glass. What happened, had she fainted again, where was the carpet, had she fallen onto her desk. What- What–

All of a sudden, it felt like her head was being torn in two. She curled forward, hands grasping her head. She barely registered the unfamiliar, tighter texture underneath her fingers as her vision went black. It was like someone was drilling into her skull, a scream filling her mind. It escalated until it sounded like there was a storm inside there, words indistinguishable as her brain jolted with pain over and over again.

What the fuck have you-
”Oh. My. GOD! What the fu- WHERE THE FUCK AM I?!”

The two unfamiliar screams layered over each other and Ayesha managed to raise her head, unfamiliar surroundings filling her blurry vision completely. A place she didn’t know, filled with people she didn’t know. Her panic only heightened, harsh breaths becoming full hyperventilation.

Where was she? Who were these people, why- why was she suddenly surrounded by strangers? Why was-

Why are you fucking alive? Why am I stuck in here?!

”W- What?!” Ayesha stammered out, quiet enough as others voiced their own confusion that nobody should hear her talking to herself. But there was a voice in her head. One that wasn’t her own, noisy as it often was. She was going mad. No, no, she must have hit her head off her desk when she fainted. She’d died and gone to hell–

Oh you’ll wish you were dead!

Ayesha trembled, hands moving from the ground to clutch the dirty jeans she didn’t remember wearing. Her gaze moved to the woman who seemed to be the most confident- she was trying to take charge, at least. But then she pointed at a monster. What?

”W-What the fuck is that?!” Aya finally spoke loud enough for others to hear, voice filled with panic as she pointed to the flattened shark creature. ”I- I- I- I don’t– T-This is hell, isn’t it?!”

She did her best to turn her attention back to the calm woman, trying to follow the advice to take a breath. But how? It wasn’t just the monster that scared her. It was all the unfamiliar people. Where were her parents, or her siblings? Were they okay? She really needed them right now. But none of the faces were familiar. She sucked in a heaving breath, only trembling more as some man started talking about crazy situations and injuries and how they got here and catches of the day, intermittent Russian filtering through it.

”I- I- I don’t know. I- f-fainted!” She stammered out, refusing to look at the shark creature. Her gaze flickered between the ground and Imani, her calm composure giving Aya something to concentrate on. It reminded her a bit of her older sister.

”I’m- I’m–”

”Ooo, I’ll get my picture taken!” A ghostly woman floated out from Ayesha’s solid but panicking form, white hair blowing in a wind that wasn’t there. Her purple skin was slightly see through as it pointed towards the shark creature. ”Whatever a catch of the day is. An ugly fucker, this one. You're all freaking out a bit about nothing. At least you've got bodies!”

She floated away from the person she was attached to, running a ring around Emil and then Ted on her way towards the flattened shark thing. One foot went to kick it, barely moving the thing and half going through it. She then turned towards everyone listening with a half grin.

Ayesha herself looked up again, pointing a shaking finger at the ghost woman whose voice was no longer just in her head. ”C-Can everyone else hear her?!”

---

---

The sound of the front door opening was what snapped Aleksandr out of his thoughts. He looked up from his spot lounging across the sofa and folded the letter whose pages he'd been staring at for the past few minutes.

"Well hello there, handsome stranger," he greeted with a teasing grin. "There's leftovers in the fridge if you're hungry."

A tired-looking Connor smiled at him as he took off his coat. "Hello to you too. And thanks."

They lapsed into a comfortable silence for a while, with only the sounds of Connor putting is things away and the ceiling fan filling the apartment. It was good to finally see him, Sasha thought. They'd missed each other that morning. Connor had long gone to work when he himself woke up, and would probably be long gone to sleep by the time Sasha would come home from that night's show. One of the disadvantages of working on completely different schedules he supposed, one a teacher and the other mostly living alongside the night life.

Before long, he felt something nudge his leg.

"Come on, move over so I can sit, you big lug."

Sasha obediently raised his legs enough for his husband to sit, before setting them right back down on top of Connor's.

"How was your day? And how are the kids?" He asked, getting comfortable their new sitting arrangement.

"Oh, same old, same old. Too much work, not enough time. Gonna have to grade homework at home tonight, again." Connor stretched with a groan, settling his exhausted body deeper into his seat. "As for the kids, they're about as miserable as a bunch of teenagers forced to learn calculus ever are."

Sasha chuckled. "Ah yes, dreaded calculus. Can't say I miss it."

"It's really not that bad, you know."

"Says the one crazy enough to get a degree in the stuff."

He yelped as Connor unceremoniously pinched his shin, and retorted with a rude gesture that was only met by an eye roll, before both men devolved into barely muffled laughter.

They fell into another silence as Connor turned the TV on. Sasha found his thoughts drifting back to the letter. His father, actually reaching out. He still couldn't really believe it. Over two entire decades of going no contact, with one single exception to announce his marriage, and the man has the absolute gall to try and contact him. Hell, he'd straight up been disinherited, and now he wants to talk? Every vindictive fibre of his body was telling him to ignore the letter, and let the old man deal with whatever he wanted to ask of him.

But, a small part of him insisted, what if it's genuine? What if he really regrets cutting you out of his life?

Hence his current dilemma, and why he'd been puzzling over the letter for the past week, instead of just throwing it out. The last remaining family he had that was willing to talk to him... Could he really throw it out that easily?

He was snapped out of his thought yet again by some movement in the corner of his eyes. He watched, incredulous, as the corners of the room slowly folded in on themselves, the edges blurring. The slight buzzing from the TV got louder and louder, before what seemed like a hairline fissure in the air itself appeared in front of his eyes.

"...Connor? Are you seeing what I'm-"

With a deafening shattering noise, the fissure widened, and swallowed everything around him.

---

---

---

Sasha felt the world violently tilt on its axis as he instantly went from supine to standing up, leaning against a wall. The feeling was dizzying, not helped by his still dozing mind. Luckily his body was more awake than he was, and he managed to grab onto the wall before he could fall down completely. He heard someone, a young lady, scream, and something else fall heavily to the floor, and then start swearing in rather colorful Russian.

"Wha..." he muttered, bleary eyes blankly staring ahead. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. "Where am... Who...?"

His eyes widened a bit as he took in the room. The bare concrete, the rumbling pipes, the thin layer of moisture seemingly clinging to every surface, the myriad of unfamiliar faces... and the conspicuous absence of one very familiar face.

His next breath caught in his chest.

"Connor? Connor, дорогой, are you there?!" He looked around the room, frantic, trying to catch a glimpse of his missing spouse. "Come on... he, he was right there a moment ago, he can't... just be gone."

A rather severe-looking woman tried to catch his attention, and succeeded for a moment, until a ghost came out of another young woman, and pointed out at a dead shark monster on the floor.

His legs did give out then, the shock too much to withstand, and he heavily sat on the floor.

"Отче наш, Иже еси на небесех..." He began muttering a half-remembered Lord's Prayer. He might not have gone to church in literal decades, but what else is someone to do in that kind of situation?

The rank stench coming out of a bar covered in sweat, spilled beer, and lost dreams did little to dissuade Amanda as she stepped out of the Uber and began to walk towards her date with destiny.

Destiny was the name of a tall, muscular woman Amanda had matched with on one of the several dating apps she used. The two had been talking for a couple of weeks, and, thus far, Destiny had passed the ‘will not murder me in all likelihood test’ that Amanda gave every prospective partner before meeting, and this meant that Amanda was more than happy to travel to the wrong side of town, at the wrong hour, to meet the right woman. Her eyes flicked to the driver, who had a look of concern etched across his face as he pleaded with unspoken words once more for her to reconsider her actions and leave this place once and for all, never to return. Yet Amanda would not be turned away at the finish line. If Destiny brought her to this crappy bar, then who was Amanda to deny her that? Besides, she did not tell any of her friends where she was going tonight, so there was little chance that she could be interrupted here of all places. Besides, Amanda paused the thought as she looked down at the black dress she was wearing; she was dressed up for a good time.

Amanda turned her head away from the driver, but stopped in her tracks as she finally took in the scenery around her. The front of the bar was littered with litter, from the broken bottles of beer to the numerous discarded cigarette butts. Mixed in with the trash were several visible wrappers from fast-food burgers, a random shoe, and several scratch-off lottery tickets that had not hit it big. Amanda raised an eyebrow. It wasn’t the worst exterior for a bar that she had seen. Hell, back home, there was a dive bar called The Bar, which had people actively overdosing outside its doors. In comparison, this was fancy. Her eyes shifted from the trash and towards the front door. It was open, and Amanda could see the interior of the door was padded with a black material to dampen the sound, what good it did with the door open however, as Amanda felt each kick of the bass as the electronic club music played from within. There was a tall, strong-looking bouncer at the front door with his hands together and resting right in front of his hips, with both feet shoulder-length apart. He wore sunglasses even though it was dark, and the twisted cable of an earpiece snaked down the side of his head. Amanda walked towards the door with a smile on her face.

Even through the sunglasses and stone-cold facade of a face, Amanda could see the bouncer adopt a look of concern for her, and he reached out with the palm of his hand to block her path. Yet Amanda could only look on in horror as his hand began to stretch towards her direction. It grew closer, and closer, and closer still, accelerating each second until she stepped out of the way and watched as it began to stretch into the distance. Amanda followed it as best she could. Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see the building, the other people, and even the trash begin to stretch in this fashion. Each stretching towards a single point, an impossible distance away, and soon everything began to be pulled towards this singularity, including Amanda. She tried to dig her feet into the ground to stop it, but soon even she was caught, and she felt herself pulled into the unknown.

---

After a second had passed that felt like an eternity, Amanda opened her eyes and her body lurched upwards. Her breathing was coarse, and it felt like an impossible weight had only just been lifted off her chest. Her eyes were wide, bloodshot, and a trickle of blood flowed from her nose. Amanda looked down at her hands, which shook with a violent twitch. She chuckled. It was no longer being pulled into an impossibly long shape. It was back to normal. Even as the others around her began to talk, she could not take her focus off her hands. That was, until a sharp pain accompanied her breath and she realized that he body may be in a rough state.

Her trembling hands quickly patted her chest, and she winced in pain as they touched a spot underneath the bottom of her breasts and across her chest. It felt like someone had kicked or hit her across the room, and she may require a hospital. How the fuck did she get hurt? The last thing she remembered was the bouncer reaching to stop her, and the next thing she knew, she was in the middle of a strange place, surrounded by strange people. Her eyes drifted as she tried to look at who was here, but they could not move past the flattened creature on the floor.

“What the fuck,” Amanda paused as she scurried backwards through the pain. As she did, she became acutely aware of a bag that was suddenly on her hip. She looked down and saw that the black dress she was in was gone. Instead, she was in a striped multi-color sweater and beige khaki’s. She did not know how her clothes had been changed, nor whose bag it was, but she needed something to quiet the growing panic in her mind. She reached into the bag, fumbled around until she found a figit cube and a deck of cards, and began to play with the cube in one hand while she gripped the deck of cards tightly in the other.

As the sound of something wet slopping about down the hall hit her ears, Amanda forced herself to her feet and turned her head in horror towards the source. If there was a dead shark monster here, what was the likelihood that they were about to meet what killed it? A panic swept through her body. Her breathing became faster and sharper, even with the pain. She could hear her heart beating like a drum in her ears. Her face flashed hot, and a cold sweat began to drip from her forehead. Her vision got narrow and fuzzy, as every sound became almost overwhelming. Eventually, this panic exploded outwards. “Where the fuck are we, what the fuck is going on, and why the fuck is there a dead fish fuck on the ground and why the fuck does it sound like whatever killed it is coming back for more?”

The music bumped loud in the penthouse suite. Five women in decorated bras, thongs, and high heels were dancing on members of the bachelor party. Rubbing, grinding, and gyrating to "Bandz a Make Her Dance" by Juicy J. A sixth woman slid upside down down a pole that was installed in the room just for the occasion. Her legs spread out, made to seem longer from the six inch platform heels on her feet. There were supposed to be seven women in attendance, but the seventh was missing and so was the bachelor.

Behind two closed doors, one to the room, and one to the bathroom within that room were the loud and rough sounds of cheeks getting clapped. Anaya had been pulled aside by the bachelor and asked for a private dance. She lied and said it would cost extra. The agency she worked for charged for those things up front, but men hiring high-end strippers didn't look at the itemized bill. They just charged the card. Anaya knowing that got away with charging extra under the table.

So Mr. Bachelor, some big shot football player, she wouldn't know him from Adam, dropped a thousand and she offered to spread her cheeks without the thong if he caught her drift. Caught it he did.

She was right there on the edge of completion when, in the mirror, she saw his torso twist in on itself by a gaping wormhole? She screamed and tried to pull away from him, but his grip was firm, then she was pulled through and woke up with the headache of the century...

In a warehouse? Factory?

"What the fuck?" she muttered, getting to her feet. Was she drugged? She heard screaming, multiple voices emerging from the beyond the pallet pile she was tangled up in.

She pushed the pallets away, crawling on her knees to get squeeze through what wouldn't budge. She came out onto the floor of a factory? Yeah. She's never been in one, but it sure as hell looked like what she assumed one would look like.

All at once she caught sight of several people asking questions, freaking out, mostly some girl no older than 19. She had a vague thought this was a sex trafficking ring, until she spotted a shark thing with limbs it shouldn't have. Her first thought was skin it and turn it into a jacket. Bitch. Fire.

She instinctively reach for her phone and unlocked it, giving no thought that the phone case was gold and not red. No thought to the background being the city scape she's never been to and that her apps, other than the camera app, weren't in the right places.

She stood in front of the shark, it's maw open and endlessly black, and snapped a selfie. No thought given to the fact she was wearing a gold, shimmery mini cocktail dress with a V so low it ended right about her navel. One she definitely didn't own. Her lipstick was a touch too burgundy, and her fro a touch too neat. Regardless she snapped several photos. The last one capturing a purple ghost with her foot fazed through the shark.

"Oh my God! What the fuck!" She turned to the creature and backaway, now dialed-in to how concerned she should be.

She turned to everyone else. "So, anyone know what's going on? Cause this is a lot more fucked up and unorganized than I thought a sex trafficking ring would be."