I know something is wrong before I even enter the building. Reality ripples around the resistance headquarters like heat waves off hot pavement, but wrong – distortions that shouldn't exist outside of Their realm. The darkness behind my eye pulses a warning I'm too late to heed.
The security doors hang open, their electronic locks fried by something that left scorch marks in impossible geometries. Inside, emergency lights pulse arrhythmically, casting shadows that move in ways shadows shouldn't.
The smell hits me first – that familiar mixture of blood and void-touched flesh that marks a seeding attempt. But this is worse, much worse than the laundromat. The air itself feels thick with it, heavy with the aftermath of dimensional barriers torn open by force.
"No," I whisper, but denial won't change what I'm seeing.
The first body is someone I don't recognize – probably night security. Their flesh has partially melted into the wall, like reality got soft and couldn't tell the difference between person and plaster. Their face is frozen in a scream that might have been pain or might have been ecstasy.
More bodies as I move deeper into the building. Some I know, some I don't. Some died trying to fight, weapons fused to hands that aren't quite hands anymore. Some died running, their forms stretched and distorted like they were trying to exist in too many dimensions at once.
Sarah's lab is a nightmare of broken equipment and quantum impossibilities. I find her body half-phased through her desk, her tablet still clutched in hands that have too many fingers, all of them typing equations that hurt to look at. Her last readings are still displayed on screens that flicker between normal function and displays of colors that shouldn't exist.
"Sarah?" But I know she's gone. Whatever's still moving her fingers isn't her anymore.
The darkness pulses stronger as I approach the command center. The air gets thicker, harder to breathe. Reality feels stretched tissue-thin, ready to tear at the slightest touch. Part of me wants to run, to get away from whatever happened here.
But I have to know.
The command center door is gone, replaced by an opening that doesn't follow normal geometry. Inside, the room has become something else – a space that exists partially in Their realm, partially in ours. Maps and monitors show impossible locations, surveillance feeds display angles that can't exist in three-dimensional space.
And in the middle of it all, Marcus.
He sits in his chair, but the chair has grown into him, become part of him. Or he's become part of it. Hard to tell where furniture ends and flesh begins. His skin ripples with patterns like the ones on my knife, like the ones I sometimes see in mirrors now.
"Marcus?"
His head turns – too far, too smooth, like a owl's head rotating on its neck. His eyes... god, his eyes. The darkness I carry behind one eye, he has it in both. But where mine is contained, controlled, his is leaking. Dark smoke pours from his sockets, forming shapes in the air that slice through reality like razor blades.
"The angles," he says, his voice harmonizing with itself in impossible ways. "The angles are all wrong. She knew. She always knew. The geometry of enlightenment requires sacrifice requires blood requires transformation requires..."
He trails off into sounds that might be language but aren't meant for human tongues to speak. I approach carefully, trying not to look directly at the shapes his leaking darkness is creating.
"Marcus, what happened? Who did this?"
"Elizabeth." The name comes out like breaking glass. "Beautiful Elizabeth. Terrible Elizabeth. She opened the door she tore the walls she showed me she was right she was wrong she was everything in between..."
More of that other language, the kind that makes reality shiver. I see blood running from his ears, but it's not blood anymore. It's something else, something that moves with purpose and malice.
"She did this? Mother Superior?"
"Mother Superior Father Inferior All Superior None Superior..." He laughs, and windows across the building shatter in sympathy. "She wanted me to see. Wanted me to understand. And I do I do I do I finally do..."
The darkness behind my eye pulses in warning as he turns to face me fully. His flesh flows like wax, taking shapes that shouldn't be possible.
"The Church was right," he says, suddenly clear, suddenly almost himself. "Evolution can be forced. Reality can be torn. Humanity can be transformed. But the cost..." His face begins to melt again. "The cost is everything is nothing is everything again..."
"Marcus, try to focus. How many survivors?"
"Survivors?" That terrible laugh again. "We all survived. We all died. We all became something else. Look look look..."
He gestures with a hand that's become something else, and I see them – shapes moving in the shadows, things that used to be resistance members. They twitch and flow, caught between states of being, no longer fully human but not quite transformed into whatever they were meant to become.
"She did it wrong," he says, almost singing. "Did it right did it wrong did it sideways through dimensions you can't count. Wanted to show me wanted to prove wanted to love wanted to destroy..."
"Where is she now?"
"Everywhere nowhere here there sideways through the angles that don't exist..." His voice shifts again, becomes almost lucid. "She wanted me to understand. And I do. I finally do. The Church wasn't wrong about evolution – they were wrong about control. You can't control it. Can't direct it. Can only..."
He trails off, his form beginning to lose cohesion. The chair he's fused with starts to melt, reality around him becoming soft and malleable.
"Marcus, stay with me. What was she trying to prove?"
"That it's too late." His eyes fix on me, darkness still pouring from them like smoke. "The Convergence isn't coming. It's here. Has been here. Will always be here. Time doesn't work right when reality gets soft..."
A sound from behind me – movement in shadows that shouldn't exist. The things that used to be resistance members are getting closer, drawn to the power leaking from Marcus like moths to flame.
"I have to get you out of here," I say, but even as I say it I know it's impossible. He's too far gone, too transformed.
"No." The word comes out in harmonies that hurt to hear. "Too late for me. Too late for them. But not for you. You're what she couldn't create couldn't control couldn't understand. Natural evolution. Natural transformation. Go. Before..."
His form begins to collapse, reality around him folding in on itself like origami made of flesh and spacetime. The darkness pouring from his eyes forms patterns I recognize from the Church's most secret rituals.
"Marcus..."
"Go!" The word hits like a physical force. "She's waiting. Waiting to show you waiting to prove waiting to complete what she started. Go go go..."
The shadows move closer. The things in them aren't hostile, exactly, but they're hungry. Hungry for something they can sense in me, something they lost in their own broken transformation.
The darkness pulses, and I understand. This wasn't just a seeding attempt. This was a message. A demonstration. A love letter written in corruption and transformation.
And I wasn't here to stop it.
The realization hits like a physical blow. James's urgent message, the convenient timing, the way he pulled me away just before... No. No, I can't think about that. Can't face the possibility that he knew, that he deliberately...
I run.
The building warps around me as I flee, corridors twisting into shapes that mock normal geometry. Behind me, Marcus's broken laughter follows, harmonizing with itself in frequencies that shouldn't exist. The things that used to be resistance members reach for me with limbs that aren't quite limbs anymore, but I don't stop. Can't stop.
Outside, the night air tastes like metal and possibilities. The darkness behind my eye pulses with questions I don't want to answer. Did James know this was coming? Did he help plan it? Was everything he showed me about Marcus just a way to get me out of the building before Mother Superior's attack?
Or worse – was it all true, and this is just the next act in their twisted drama? Marcus's past revealed, his sins exposed, and then... this. His final transformation into something that proves his wife was right all along.
I keep running until my legs give out, ending up in some abandoned parking lot miles from headquarters. The night bends around me as I try to process what I've seen, what I've lost. Everyone who trusted me, everyone who believed in the resistance despite their fear of what I was becoming – all of them transformed or dead because I wasn't there.
Because James led me away.
My phone stays dark in my pocket, heavy with unanswered questions. If I turn it on, will there be messages? Explanations? Apologies? Or just silence, now that his part in this is done?
The darkness pulses, and I see paths branching before me – possibilities, probabilities, ways this could end. Most of them are horrible. All of them lead through choices I'm not sure I'm ready to make.
Behind me, distant sirens suggest someone's noticed something wrong at headquarters. But by the time anyone investigates, will there be anything left to find? Or will the whole building have folded in on itself, taking its transformed inhabitants into spaces between spaces?
Marcus's last words echo in my head: "The Convergence isn't coming. It's here. Has been here. Will always be here."
I need to think. Need to understand. Need to figure out who to trust, if anyone.
But right now, all I can do is keep moving. Keep running.
And try not to think about James's face when he showed me those photos. Try not to wonder if his urgency was real or just another layer of manipulation in this game I'm only starting to understand.
The night bends around me as I walk, reality rippling in sympathy with my confusion and grief. Somewhere out there, Mother Superior is probably watching, probably smiling. Somewhere, James is... what? Celebrating a successful operation? Trying to find me? Feeling guilty about his role in all this?
I don't know. Don't know anything anymore.
Except that I wasn't there when it mattered. Wasn't there to protect the people who trusted me.
And I don't know if I'll ever forgive myself for that.
Or James, if he had anything to do with it.
The darkness pulses, offering power, offering answers, offering transformation of my own. I push it back. Not yet. Not until I understand what's really happening.
Not until I know who to trust.
And who to destroy.