Marcus's words echo in my head as I return to my quarters. Whatever's coming, we need you alive to stop it. But what if stopping it means becoming something else? Something more like what the Church always intended me to be?
The thought triggers a memory I've spent years trying to forget. The first time I realized the darkness behind my eye could affect more than just my mind. The day I learned that the barrier between Their reality and ours was thinner than anyone suspected.
Ten Years Ago
The desert night was cold enough to see my breath, but I kept running. Three days since my escape from the Church, and I still hadn't stopped moving. My stolen clothes were filthy, my feet bloody inside boots that didn't quite fit. But I couldn't stop. Couldn't risk them finding me.
The trucker who'd picked me up had been kind enough, but his questions made me nervous. Where was I from? Where was I going? Did I need him to call someone? I'd bailed at a truck stop outside Las Vegas, swiping a backpack someone had left unattended by the restrooms. Inside I'd found clothes, some cash, and a knife – not much, but more than I'd had before.
Now I was somewhere in the Mojave, following dirt roads and animal tracks, trying to put as much distance between myself and civilization as possible. The darkness behind my eye throbbed constantly, reaching for the connections the Church had spent years teaching me to make. I pushed it back, fought to keep my mind sealed against Their touch.
The abandoned mining town appeared out of nowhere, a collection of weathered buildings silvered by moonlight. I'd seen signs warning about ghost towns in the area but hadn't paid much attention to direction or distance. Now, exhausted and half-delirious from lack of sleep, it seemed as good a place as any to rest.
The old general store's front door hung off its hinges. Inside, dust lay thick on empty shelves and broken display cases. My flashlight beam caught movement – rats probably, or maybe snakes. I didn't care. A door behind the counter led to what must have been the owner's living quarters. The bed was rotted, but there was a relatively clean corner where I could curl up with my stolen backpack as a pillow.
Sleep came quickly, dragging me under like a riptide. And with sleep came the dreams.
I stood in an endless corridor made of shifting darkness. Walls that weren't walls rippled with patterns that hurt to look at. The air felt thick, resistant, like moving through cold honey. And everywhere, in every direction, eyes watched from impossible angles.
Welcome, little sister, said voices that weren't voices. Welcome, door-opener. Welcome, bridge-builder.
"No," I tried to say, but the words came out as shapes that twisted in the not-air. "I'm not yours. I got away."
Laughter like breaking glass, like screaming stars. Got away? Poor child. You cannot get away from what you are. What WE are.
The corridor began to fold in on itself, reality crumpling like paper. The eyes drew closer, and I could feel them not just watching but tasting, sampling the flavor of my fear, my desperation.
The Church thinks they made you, the voices continued. They think their rituals and ceremonies gave you the gift. Such pride. Such ignorance. They merely woke what was already there. What has always been there, sleeping in your blood.
"You're lying." But even as I said it, I knew they weren't. The darkness behind my eye pulsed in time with the rhythm of the folding corridor, and it felt right in a way nothing in my life ever had.
Let us show you, they whispered. Let us show you what you really are.
The darkness expanded, not just behind my eye but everywhere, flowing through my veins like ice water. I could feel myself changing, becoming something that existed in more dimensions than human flesh was meant to contain. The pain was exquisite, transformative.
I woke up screaming.
The room around me was... wrong. The walls rippled like the corridor in my dream, reality folding in ways that shouldn't be possible. The darkness behind my eye blazed like a cold star, and I could see – not just with human vision, but with senses I had no names for.
The wooden floor beneath me had transformed into something that looked like wood but moved like liquid mercury. The ceiling dripped shadows that acted like smoke but felt like thoughts. And everything, everything was connected by threads of power that I could suddenly perceive, suddenly touch.
"No," I whispered. "No no no no..."
I scrambled to my feet, but the movement sent ripples through reality itself. Where my hands touched the wall, the material transformed, becoming something that existed partially in our dimension and partially in Theirs. The stolen knife fell from my pocket, and when it hit the floor, the metal sang with harmonics that shouldn't exist in our universe.
Yes, the voices whispered in my mind. See what you can do? See what you really are?
The knife began to change, its structure trying to reconfigure itself in response to my power. I snatched it up, and the metal felt alive in my grip, hungry for transformation. The darkness behind my eye reached for it, wanting to reshape it into something that could cut through more than just physical matter.
"Stop it!" I pressed my hands to my temples, trying to force the power back. "I don't want this!"
Want has nothing to do with it. The Convergence comes. Reality grows soft, malleable. And you, little sister, are a key that has finally learned how to turn.
The room continued to transform around me, reality buckling under the pressure of my panic. I could feel the barrier between dimensions stretching, thinning. If I didn't get control soon, I would tear a hole right through it.
Something moved in the corner of my vision – one of the rats I'd seen earlier. It froze when my gaze fell on it, tiny heart pounding. As I watched, reality began to warp around it, the space between spaces reaching through me to touch it.
The rat's form twisted, stretched, became something that existed in more dimensions than nature intended. Its screams as it transformed cut through my fugue state like a blade.
"No!" I focused all my will, all my desperation, into pushing the power back. "You can't have this. You can't have me!"
I thought of the Church, of all their careful plans and preparations. Thought of how they would use this power if they knew I had it. Thought of that rat, warped into something impossible by mere proximity to what I could do.
Slowly, painfully, I forced the darkness to recede. Forced reality to remember its proper shape. The room shuddered, then settled back into normal geometry. The rat was dead, its body mercifully returned to natural form. The knife in my hand was just a knife again, though the metal felt different somehow, changed in subtle ways I couldn't quite define.
I spent the rest of the night teaching myself control. Teaching myself to hold the darkness back, to keep it from reaching through me to reshape the physical world. By dawn, I had it contained to just my left eye again, though the effort left me shaking and nauseated.
The room still showed signs of what had happened. The walls retained a subtle ripple pattern, like heat waves over hot pavement. The wooden floor had a metallic sheen in certain lights. And the knife... the knife was definitely different, though the changes were subtle enough that only I would notice.
I left as soon as there was enough light to travel by. Behind me, the ghost town held one more secret, one more reminder of things that existed beyond human understanding. I wondered if anyone would ever find that room, ever notice the strange patterns in the wood or the way shadows moved oddly in the corners.
I spent the next month learning to control it, to keep the power locked away except in the direst emergencies. But sometimes, late at night, I could still hear their voices whispering in my mind: The Convergence comes. Reality grows soft, malleable. And you, little sister, are a key that has finally learned how to turn.
The memory fades, leaving me back in my quarters at HQ. The knife Dr. Chen is studying isn't the same one from that night in the desert – that one is hidden away in a secure location, too dangerous to risk falling into the wrong hands. But the way it changed, the way reality warped around it... it's happening again.
I look at my reflection in the small mirror above my desk. The darkness behind my left eye seems to pulse with remembered power. In the ten years since that night, I've learned to control it, to use it in small, careful ways. But now, with the Convergence approaching and the barriers between dimensions growing thinner...
My phone buzzes. A text from Dr. Chen: Found something in the knife's molecular structure. You need to see this.
I close my eyes, take a deep breath. Whatever's coming, I need to be ready. Need to be strong enough to use this power without letting it use me.
The darkness pulses, hungry and aware.
I head back to the lab.