Heroes POV
Noah's eyes darted around the cluttered room, taking in the array of awards and certificates plastered on every available inch of wall space. Framed diplomas from prestigious universities hung alongside scientific journal covers and innovation awards. This Dr. Alexander guy was no slouch in the brains department - he was a bona fide genius.
In the corner, N and the doc were deep in conversation over steaming cups of tea, their heads bent close together as they pored over a stack of papers. They already looked like old colleagues, sharing inside jokes and finishing each other's sentences. Noah couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy at their easy rapport.
Feeling like the odd man out, Noah let his mind wander, his fingers absently tracing the outline of the pocket knife. A nagging feeling in his gut told him this haven wouldn't last long. After the shit show at the hotel in his last Dream Coma, he half-expected the Four Generals to bust in any second, reducing Dr. Alexander's lab to rubble and adding the doc to their ever-growing body count. The thought barely fazed him anymore, and that realization scared him more than any monster could.
"Why so quick to paint me as the bad guy?" The creepy voice from the apartment nearly made Noah jump out of his skin, his heart hammering against his ribcage. "I'm not the villain here, just... misunderstood."
Noah spun around so fast he nearly lost his balance, his eyes frantically searching every shadow and corner of the room. But the Shadowy Being was nowhere to be seen, its presence as elusive as smoke. N and the doc kept yakking away, completely oblivious to the supernatural encounter happening mere feet away. Noah ran a trembling hand through his hair, wondering if he was finally losing his grip on reality.
"Trust me, you're not imagining this," the voice went on, its icy presence making Noah's skin crawl and his breath fog in the suddenly chilled air. "I just want to chat. Is that so much to ask?"
A chill ran down Noah's spine, his muscles tensing as if preparing for a fight. Was he going nuts? Has the stress and trauma finally caught up with him? He bolted over to N and Dr. Alexander, panic evident in his voice as he practically shouted, "Guys, the Shadowy Being's trying to talk to me! Right now!"
He expected them to freak out, to jump into action, or at least acknowledge the dire situation. But they just kept on gabbing like he wasn't even there, their voices a muted buzz in Noah's ears. Noah stared at them, dumbfounded, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. What the hell? Did they seriously not give a damn, or...?
Then it hit him like a ton of bricks, the realization stealing the air from his lungs. They couldn't hear him. Somehow, he'd been cut off from reality, stuck in some kind of bubble with just the Shadowy Being for company. Noah's heart raced as the terrifying truth sank in: he was all alone with the very thing that had been haunting his nightmares.
"What's your deal?" Noah asked, trying to keep his voice from shaking as he balled his hands into fists at his sides. He needed to keep it together, maybe talk his way out of this mess. "Can't you just leave us alone so we can focus on kicking your ass? Or is that too much to ask?"
The room went dead quiet, the silence so thick Noah could hear the blood rushing in his ears. Had it bailed like last time? But Noah had a gut feeling it wasn't that simple. This thing was a real head-scratcher – used to be human, but now it was something that had turned its back on everyone. It had gathered followers, only to stab them in the back, turning them into brainless zombies. The thought made Noah's skin crawl, bile rising in his throat.
"You did this to yourself, kid," the Shadowy Being finally spoke, its voice dripping with contempt. It sounded like it wanted to spit, the words laced with a venom that made Noah flinch. "You never gave a damn about who you were hurting. Now it's all coming back to bite you. That's why you're going down, no matter what."
Noah's panic faded, replaced by a growing sense of confusion and dread as he chewed on the Being's words. People he'd hurt? He'd only ever gone after bad guys... Wait. Bad guys. Could this Shadowy Being be some villain he'd taken down? Noah's eyes dropped to the floor as the realization hit him like a sucker punch. He'd never spared a thought for the villains he'd stopped, never considered their motivations or the consequences of his actions. Had he done something in the future to make one of them snap so hard they turned on everyone?
"Rack your brain," the Shadowy Being's voice warped, becoming even more unsettling as it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. "Maybe you'll figure it out, but I wouldn't bet on it. In the end, I'm getting what I want. Let's just call this... payback."
Noah's mind was racing, trying to put the pieces together as sweat beaded on his forehead. The weight of everything he'd done – and stuff he hadn't even done yet – felt like it was crushing him, making it hard to breathe. He'd always thought he was the good guy, the hero of his own story. But what if he'd been the villain in someone else's narrative? Not knowing was almost worse than facing off against a villain he knew, the uncertainty gnawing at him like a cancer.
"I... I don't get it," Noah said, his voice barely above a whisper as he struggled to find the right words. "If I screw you over, or will screw you over, why not just come at me straight? Why all this crazy, roundabout stuff?"
The air felt thick, almost suffocating, like the Shadowy Being was closing in from all sides. "Because, Noah," it said, its voice a mixture of rage and something that sounded almost like sorrow, "some cuts go too deep for a simple face-off. Some betrayals change everything. And you... you changed everything."
Noah stood there, rooted to the spot, trapped in this weird bubble with something born from his future screw-ups. The heavy reality of it all hit him like a ton of bricks, threatening to crush him under its weight. Whatever he had done – or was going to do – had created something seriously messed up. And now, it looked like he was in for one hell of a reckoning.
"Hey, what's up with you?" Noah nearly jumped out of his skin when N tapped his shoulder, the sudden contact jolting him back to reality. "I've caught the doc up on everything. We're good to start on the cure, but we gotta snag a sample of that infection first. You with me?"
Noah spun around to face N, his heart still pounding from the encounter with the Shadowy Being. N was giving him a weird look - part worried, part suspicious. N's forehead wrinkled as he clocked the deer-in-headlights expression on Noah's face, his eyes narrowing as he studied his younger self. "Seriously, what's going on? You look like you've just seen a ghost or something. Did something happen while we were talking?"
Noah shrugged N's hand off, his voice tight as he tried to regain his composure. "It's nothing. Let's just get this over with and find that damn cure already. We don't have time for twenty questions."
He pushed past N without so much as a backward glance, his shoulders tense and his stride purposeful as he headed toward the lab. N watched him go, unable to shake the feeling that something had shifted in Noah during those few minutes he'd been chatting with Dr. Alexander. There was a new edge to his posture, a hardness in his eyes that wasn't there before. It was like looking at a stranger wearing his younger self's face.
N wanted to dig deeper, to figure out what the hell had just happened, but he knew they were on a tight schedule. The fate of the world hung in the balance, and they couldn't afford any delays. Whatever was eating at Noah would have to wait. They had a cure to whip up and a world to save, after all.
As Noah vanished into the lab, N made a mental note to keep tabs on his younger self. Something had gone down, and he was gonna get to the bottom of it. But right now, they have work to do. N took a deep breath, steeling himself for the challenges ahead, and followed Noah into the lab. The clock was ticking, and the future of humanity rested on their shoulders.
…
Noah winced as Dr. Alexander scraped away the rotting flesh with his scalpel. Oddly, it didn't hurt at all. The doc worked like a well-oiled machine, not even flinching at the grotesque sight of Noah's mangled shoulder. The rot had eaten away so much that the gleaming white of his shoulder blade peeked through, like a macabre work of art.
"Fascinating," Dr. Alexander muttered, his eyes gleaming with a mix of scientific curiosity and concern. "The infection's progression is unlike anything I've ever seen. It's as if it's rewriting your cellular structure."
Noah swallowed hard, trying not to look at the mess that was on his shoulder. "Yeah, well, it feels about as great as it looks, doc."
The crazy thing was, that Noah could still move his arm just fine. He flexed his fingers, watching in morbid fascination as the tendons shifted beneath the decaying flesh. He figured the nerves should be toast by now, but hey, nothing made sense in this whacked-out world anymore.
"Can you feel this?" Dr. Alexander asked, prodding an exposed nerve with the tip of his scalpel.
Noah shook his head. "Nada. It's like my arm's gone to sleep, but I can still use it."
The doctor's brow furrowed. "Remarkable. The infection seems to be preserving motor function while deadening pain receptors. It's almost as if it's... evolving."
Noah let the doctor do his thing, grateful they were working on a cure. But he couldn't shake what the Shadowy Being had said. Those words kept bouncing around in his head like a bad echo: "You did this to yourself, kid. You never gave a damn about who you were hurting. Now it's all coming back to bite you."
He glanced over at N, who had his nose buried in the doc's books, frantically flipping pages and scribbling notes. Noah felt like he was living in some messed-up sci-fi flick, but way worse than anything Hollywood could cook up. It was weird enough not trusting your future self, but this? This was next-level crazy. N had done something that was gonna wreck everything, and instead of warning Noah to steer clear, he seemed dead set on making sure Noah made the same mistake and offed some mystery dude.
"Hey, N," Noah called out, his voice tight with tension. "Find anything useful in those books?"
N looked up, his eyes bloodshot from hours of intense reading. "Maybe. There's a theory here about temporal paradoxes and their effect on biological systems. It might explain why the infection is behaving so... uniquely in your case."
Noah felt the weight of his screw-ups like a ton of bricks. It wasn't just Earth on the line now, but all 16 realms. Talk about pressure. "Great," he muttered. "So not only did I mess up the timeline, but I might've created some kind of super-infection?"
Dr. Alexander finished wrapping Noah's shoulder and jumped right into working on the cure, muttering a bunch of science gibberish Noah couldn't make heads or tails of. The lab was buzzing with a mix of hope and tension, but Noah couldn't shake the feeling they were just putting off the inevitable apocalypse.
As he watched the doc work, mixing chemicals and peering into microscopes, Noah's mind raced through all the choices he'd made and the ones still to come. The fate of, well, everything was riding on this, and he felt like a pawn in some cosmic chess game he didn't understand.
"What if we're wrong about this?" Noah asked suddenly, breaking the tense silence. "What if curing the infection isn't the answer?"
N looked up sharply. "What are you talking about?"
Noah struggled to put his thoughts into words. "I mean, even if we did find a cure, it's not like it will make the Shadowy Being or the Shadow Wraiths disappear. What if this is inevitable? Like it's destined to happen and there's no possible way to stop it."
Dr. Alexander paused in his work, turning to face Noah with a grave expression. "That's... an interesting theory. But even if it were true, we can't just sit back and let countless people suffer and die."
"I know, I know," Noah sighed, running a hand through his hair. "It's just... everything's so messed up. How do we know we're doing the right thing?"
N set down his book and walked over to Noah, placing a hand on his uninfected shoulder. "We don't. But we have to try. That's all anyone can do in a situation like this."
Noah glanced at N's hand. Could he even trust his future self? No, the real question was whether he could even trust himself.