The resistance's garage level is barely organized chaos. People rushing to grab gear, arguing about tactics, trying to coordinate with walkies that constantly crackle with static. We're not a military operation - just a collection of survivors, witnesses, and true believers held together by desperation and Marcus's stubborn will.
Sarah Chen hurries past me, nearly dropping her tablet in her haste. "The knife's energy signature is going crazy," she says, her usual scientific precision fraying at the edges. "Whatever they're doing, it's big. Really big."
"How long?"
She fumbles with her readings. "I don't... maybe twenty minutes? The calculations are all wrong. Nothing's behaving like it should."
Marcus tries to gather everyone for a briefing, but half the team is still arriving, pulled from dinners and beds and whatever passes for normal life between catastrophes. The garage echoes with competing voices and the sound of weapons being checked and rechecked.
"Listen!" Marcus has to shout to be heard. "Church vehicles at Fuller Industrial Park. Big operation, no attempt at subterfuge. They're planning something new."
"Or it's a trap," I cut in.
"Probably both." He runs a hand through his disheveled hair. "We go in anyway. Team assignments..."
"Which ones are those again?" someone asks - one of the new recruits, still learning our makeshift protocols.
I tune out the resulting confusion, the repeated explanations. The darkness behind my eye pulses stronger than usual, making it hard to focus. Something about this feels different. Wrong.
Sarah grabs my arm as people start moving toward vehicles. "Wait." She hands me what looks like a cobbled-together Geiger counter. "Monitors the knife's energy. Above 70% is bad. Really bad."
"How bad?"
"Remember the laundromat? Like that but bigger. Much bigger."
The drive to Fuller Industrial Park is tense. Our convoy is too spread out, some people still trying to catch up. Marcus keeps trying to raise Team Three on the radio, but all we get is static. The darkness throbs behind my eye, reaching for something that feels disturbingly close.
"You okay?" Marcus asks.
"No." I press my hand against my eye. "Something's... calling. Pulling."
He starts to respond but Sarah's voice crackles over the radio: "Energy readings are spiking! They're starting early!"
We screech into the industrial park with no real plan, just the burning need to stop whatever's happening. The Church's vehicles are arranged around an old textile plant - three black vans and what looks like a mobile medical unit, surrounded by robed figures who don't bother hiding their weapons anymore.
"God," Marcus breathes. "There must be thirty of them."
Our people spread out, taking whatever cover they can find. Someone - I can't tell who - starts shooting too early. The night erupts into chaos.
Through the gunfire and shouting, I see them bring someone out of the building - a man in coveralls, walking under his own power but seeming dazed. Unlike their usual victims, he's calm. Almost eager.
"They did something to him," James's voice crackles through my earpiece. "Prepared him somehow. Vesper, they're—"
The air tears.
Reality buckles like paper in a flame. The portable lights the Church set up explode in showers of glass, but the darkness is lit by something worse - symbols painted on the ground that glow with a light that hurts to look at.
The man in coveralls screams, but it's not a scream of pain. It's recognition. Acceptance. The darkness behind my eye goes into overdrive, pulsing so hard my vision blurs. I can feel what they're doing - not just seeding him with Their power, but reshaping him to accept it. To channel it.
"Energy levels at 65%!" Sarah's voice seems to come from very far away. "Vesper, don't—"
But I'm already moving. The knife seems to sing in my hand, its patterns swirling like eager thoughts. The device Sarah gave me buzzes frantically - 67%, 68%, 69% - but I can't stop. Won't stop.
I feel it the moment I cross the symbol line - reality goes soft, malleable. The darkness behind my eye explodes outward, and suddenly I can see everything. See the threads of power they're using to reshape their victim. See the barriers between dimensions stretched tissue-thin.
See how to tear them.
"Vesper, fall back!" Marcus screams. "The readings are—"
I let go.
The darkness pours out of me like a breaking dam. Reality shreds under my touch. I see the robed figures stumble, their careful ritual disrupted by power they never truly understood. Their victim collapses, the artificial channels they carved into his psyche rupturing under the pressure of something older, deeper, more primal.
I am not what they made me. I am what I have always been.
The knife in my hand transforms, becoming something that exists in more dimensions than metal was meant to occupy. My flesh runs like wax, reshaping itself around the geometries burning through my mind. I hear screaming - maybe others, maybe myself.
Yes, whisper voices like breaking glass, like screaming stars. Show them what real power looks like.
Through vision that no longer processes light in merely human ways, I see the Church's people retreating. See their victim being dragged away, his partly-transformed flesh leaving trails of what might be blood or might be something else. See my own allies falling back in horror from what I've become.
"Vesper!" James's voice cuts through the chaos. "Remember who you are! Stay human!"
Human.
The word hits like a physical blow. I look down at hands that have become something else, at flesh that ripples with patterns like the ones on the knife. Feel the vast hollow hunger of Their realm reaching through me, trying to reshape everything it touches.
No.
With everything I have left, I pull it back. Force the darkness to recede, to return to its familiar place behind my eye. Reality snaps back like a rubber band, leaving afterimages that hurt to remember.
I fall to my knees, human again. Mostly human. The knife clatters to the ground beside me, its surface still writhing with impossible patterns.
Sarah's device, somehow still functioning, shows the energy readings slowly declining from 89%.
"Clear the area!" Marcus is shouting. "Full evacuation, three-block radius! Move!"
Through blurry vision, I see the Church's vehicles pulling away. They got what they came for - their transformed victim, and a demonstration of what I can really do. What I've been hiding.
James appears beside me, helps me to my feet. "Come on," he says quietly. "We need to go."
"I lost control," I whisper. "I let it..."
"I know." His scarred hand squeezes mine. "But you came back. You're still you."
Am I?
The darkness pulses behind my eye, satisfied and hungry at the same time. I let James lead me away from the scene, past knots of shaken resistance members and the wreckage of our attempted intervention.
Behind us, reality slowly stabilizes. The symbols fade from the ground, leaving scorch marks in concrete. The air tastes like metal and possibilities.
My phone buzzes - a message from an unknown number: Now you understand what you really are. What you could be. The Convergence comes, little sister. Will you still deny your nature when it does?
I delete it without responding, but the words echo in my mind. The Church has their victory - a successfully transformed subject, and proof that their erstwhile messiah is more dangerous than ever.
The only question is: what will they do with that knowledge?
James's words from the rooftop come back to me: Just stay human. Whatever else happens, stay human.
The darkness pulses, and I wonder if that's still possible.
Or if it ever was.