Standing in a hallway of void, unlit and extending far beyond the scope I could see. I had been running, the sound of something growling far beyond my vision. I didn’t know when I started, I regained consciousness while blindly running.

My heart was threatening to burst from my chest, and my forehead ran rampant with sweat as my body ached. With the loud growls, I could feel it coming ever closer. Something so large that with its forward rampage a chain of tremors shook through the halls. It got closer and closer, dimming the dead lights.

It was behind me. It had caught up to me, but my legs kept going. I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t stop. If I stopped, what would happen?

My body turned. I wanted to see it. I wanted to see what was so frightening.

It felt suffocating. The darkness was overwhelming me. Drowning me. Yet, in the shadows, as I slipped into the darkness. I saw me.

My body shot upwards, meeting a blinding light that gazed down upon me. Somewhere familiar, I was in the Black Ring’s medical facility. It was a room that matched all the others, only with the medical supplies and other pieces of advanced equipment I couldn’t recognize by name—besides the scalpel. I was here once; first when I was having my wounds treated, and now, again for my wounds.

I immediately found myself brushing my forehead, instinctively brushing away any notable cold sweats before he had fully laid his eyes on me. There sat the Repair Ring, a light-skinned man who sat on a wheeled office chair with a laptop nestled in his lap. He turned his attention toward me, his bespectacled eyes resting softly upon me before they swiftly shifted to a look of mild discomfort, moving his attention away from me. He stood to his feet, no larger than when he was sitting, before wrapping a lab coat around a broad and almost brickish frame.

“Good, you’re awake. It works better like this,” He spoke, dragging his hand through his trimmed and barely connecting beard. Before raising a hand above my arms. “Count and inhale.”

The same instructions as before. I followed through, and the process initiated before I even got to two. A green light shined from his palm and solidified onto my arm in the form of a green gear that had printed itself onto my arm. I watched as it spun, glowing a bright light. I could feel the process as the bones within my flesh re-organized themselves. It was an uncomfortable feeling, not painful, but wrong-feeling. Whatever had been broken or whatever had been damaged, had steadily undone, fixing themselves. From the damage in my palms, to my arms, and even my torso and chest. Had all been “repaired.”

From explosions, to tattoos, blood shenanigans, mucus, and corpses. My face couldn’t help but smile just a fraction. It was refreshing to see something like this, something that wouldn’t try killing me nor grossing me out.

“Thanks, David.” I fully sat upright. He didn’t like the formality of going by Mr. nor the implications of being referred to by the Repair Ring when in one-on-one conversations as he put it before. It was a good change of pace for me as well, and I was happy to oblige with those wishes.

Though, with the end of the process, he ended up just staring coldly at me. Before solving to the side to pick up his clipboard, before letting out a low groan. “Are you a punching bag?” He broke the silence, raising his head to face me.

“Not even been a week, no missions are anything, but you’re back here. I get it, your Key that gives you pretty decent physical toughness isn’t a bad thing—and I know I’m not a physician, but even with my ability being helpful, you still need to be worried. Like, really still worried.” He groaned just a bit more, tapping his pen against his forehead. There was a heavy inhale, giving both him energy to continue speaking and also giving me the time to catch up.

“I can mend things together. I fix things, like I’m sewing them back together. If you lose something, I can’t fix it. You’re lucky Jack let you keep those bones in your arm, or you’d be waking up in different conditions. I can’t help if you actually lose something, bud.” He looked up at me once more, then glanced at the paper once again. He was letting me recuperate between tangents, it was nice, but it still felt oddly slow.

“I’m not racking on you, but don’t get used to that. Other than that, you’re pretty much well… good to go, yeah. Try not ending up back here too quickly.” David asked, but from his eyes it seemed like he was pleading. Wishing for me not to be dragged back on a stretcher.

I met that expression with a nod. “I’ll try not to, don’t want to stress the one fixing me up.” A salute transitioned into a wave, and I headed to the door. As it opened, there came flying the intensity that my body had yet to forget as the Jade Ring stood by the entrance.

My soul nearly leapt from my body. Was I still off-guard from the nightmare or had my senses been still shot from being rendered forcibly unconscious. That immediate sense of danger came in like a slap in the face. How long had he been standing there?

“Please don’t hurt him. I just fixed him.” David begged from his corner inside the room, his voice low, as if he had been avoiding even making eye contact with the Jade Ring. Jade remained silent, his eyes met mine and replied with a low and muffled groan from his masked mouth.

“You’ve been requested. Follow.” He ordered, continuing to meet my eyes with a glare before turning and walking forward to guide me. He probably would’ve dragged me if I didn’t keep up nor didn’t keep pace with him.

There were a solid four minutes of silence before we reached our destination. No words exchanged between the both of us—not like either one of us could hold a conversation for long or even attempt to.

We stood in front of a black door with bright white and bold letters which read “The Hatchery,” before it slid open before us without anything having been done to it from our end.

It was a small room, maybe about ten-by-ten meters across each side on the inside, a perfect cube.

One man sat on a rolly office chair and by a black stone desk which faced the western wall, egg shells scattered around where he worked. His face was dirtied with freckles, brown-haired and in a pair of black overalls. Where the text would usually be, the fabric of the overalls were cut and revealing a white shirt to make it pop out.

He held an egg almost as big as his head, several small cracks aligned the sides of the eggshell, and he simply stared at it. When he noticed us, air had left his nostrils so quickly that I could hear it.

“Yeesh! Finally! Y’all can really keep a guy waiting!” He hopped from his spot, stretching broad shoulders into the air. He held his hand out to me, showing off the black ring on his finger with a white smile to initiate a handshake. I shook it without much hesitation, something telling me I’d regret it.

“I’m the Hatch Ring, Terry or whatevers ya’ wanna call me by. I called you not too long ago ya’ late-bird. Be lucky that the worm didn’t get away!”

“Sorry, I’m—huh?” He had taken my already open hand, before gently twisting it to where he could see the base of my palm. He plopped the glowing egg he had been fiddling into my hands.

Eggs now. I was beginning to miss M.

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Terry looked proud, knuckles resting on hip-to-hip. That seemed to change the longer his eyes lingered on me, becoming visibly annoyed. Was I supposed to say something?

“Uhm, this is cool! So, you can hatch eggs?” Weird question to ask, but, with the naming scheme it seemed fitting. At least, that’s how it felt. Wait, did he hatch eggs or did he make eggs?

Break.

A voice rang within my head. An odd impulse that directed to the egg that was now shaking within my palms. The egg shook again. Break. The desire arose, and another crack formed on the shell. Then another, and another, before all the cracks had met and the eggshell shattered. A bright white light had engulfed my vision, and the sound of a chick chirping met my ears.

I found myself transported to a world of thick black void, without the Jade or Hatch Ring beside me.

A bluish-ethereal light flew through the darkness, swimming across the darkness and poking through with a semi-humanoid and liquid shape. I started walking, following it as it passed through invisible black walls.

I turned to my side, noting two others that I couldn’t name, both dressed in the traditional uniform of the Organization.

Someone was sobbing. The wails echoed so audibly throughout the void, and forced my eyes to jump to my side. It was me, well, another version of me again. I was staring at my backside, I was kneeling in front of a girl I had never seen up until now. She had her knees tucked up into her chest, with brown hair falling by her sides. She was trembling, but both me’s could see something. She looked at us—almost expecting something to come from us.

The room exploded into sudden disarray, sounds of combat, screams, and frantic begging. It flashed back to something I could see.

I saw myself, laid on my stomach in the Black Ring’s garbs motionless on the ground. I wasn’t dead, just unmoving. Good to know, but the hole in my chest wasn’t a good sight. I couldn’t spot the other two I was with, instead just me and the girl.

“Please…” She begged, pulling her hands off the caps of her knees and toward her face. Shadows converged on her, taking a vaguely humanoid shape before it had focused, becoming something more recognizable. People with ambiguous proportions, all dressed in gray, but all standing with a kind of “gentleness” to them.

“Please, go away….” She begged once more, and the figure knelt downwards. Its appearance remained vague, its face still cloaked in shadow, and yet there was more detail than the rest. A feminine figure, still unfamiliar, including with a head which erupted in darkness I couldn’t pinpoint anything regarding a face; clouding any attempts to recognize her.

They spoke in murmurs, holding out a gloved hand, at the center of their palm revealed an insignia of an eye with a golden iris. The only other color apart from the grays of their suits.

The crying girl’s head raised, the tears had overtaken her black pupils, and in the next moment of hesitation, she took the woman’s hand. Flames took over my vision, nearly bursting my skin and irritating my eyes from the intensity of the fire. Once they subsided, I found myself in the streets of a city I hadn’t recognized, and stared down a flaming giant.

The giant stood at almost the size of a two-story building, nearing or greater than fifteen feet. It smacked the chunks off of buildings, sending pieces of flaming debris flying and crashing into the streets.

The streets had been filled with screams, and flames. The stench of burning bodies was almost so potent, as I found myself trying to evade the crashing debris. I wasn’t moving with my agency, but the other me. I felt the exertion, the fear of trying to evade, and all of the guilt.

I couldn’t tell why. What was going on? What happened here?

Other members of the Organization joined me, nameless and faceless, only their clothes to go off on as they ran toward the danger as the citizens kept trying to pull away.

I could only watch as my body moved on its own, trying to close the distance, but still so far as to avoid burning.

The flames began to die down—no, they shrunk inwards into the giant and took proper form. The girl stood before us, it was her, why were we fighting her now? Before the thought could process, I watched as she leaned back and inhaled a breath, and in the next second she exhaled with a powerful scream that could likely be heard blocks away. Her screams unleashed blades of wind from her mouth, a torrent of air which violently cut through the streets, slicing both fleeing pedestrians and members of the Organization which were closing in on her in an almost focused torrent.

She recoiled, her eyes wide with brief fear and wild disgust. The sight of the carnage now completely having taken over her, and she almost buckled over onto her knees with her hands held over her lips. In the next second, that expression flickered, and her expression seemed to resolve as she scowled. She dropped to her knees and grabbed at the streets. At that moment, the Earth began to tremble violently with cracks emanating from her palms.

She was different. Three distinct abilities, she had three unrelated powers: a flaming giant, generating a torrent of blades from her screams, and creating literal earthquakes. What had we been going up against?!

What was she?!

I watched her teeth grit. She kept trying to push, doing everything she could and put it all out. The look of something trying to release it all was so plain to see, it screamed out to me even though she remained silent. The anger, desperation, and the determination. All melded together into something horrific. Growths began forming onto the sides of her body, tumors with faces, each with a differing expression but a face nearly identical to her own—with a key at the base of its forehead.

Was this another ability? No, something was different. It seemed less controlled.

The face on her right shoulder ignited into flames, the face resting on her left cheek screamed violently and released a torrent of bladed winds, and the third remained blank but slowly began to emanate a glow which slowly spread and caused the girl to steadily rise into the air and levitate.

Her Key was overtaking her, she regressed.

As her body raised into the sky, the booming of a gunshot tore through the air and then her skull then another through her chest. The light dimmed and her body fell from the skies and onto the streets. The vision turned dark, before flashing back to the void.

The void gained color, and where we stood had been a room lined with redwood walls, and there remained a window before my vision showing a lake stretched wide. When I looked down, I saw her cradled and holding herself, but this time I had held out my hand.

This time, she took my hand.

Things shifted again, not into a flaming city, but a stroll. We stood side by side, dressed in the uniform of the Organization—she was happily smiling. This is what should happen? Was that it?

I found myself returning to the room, the vision having faded, not noticing the build-up of sweat which had built up before its conclusion. I furiously whipped the sweat from my brow once more, trying to find something discernible about it all.

I stood there for maybe a second, but it all had happened so quickly, the knowledge of what I witnessed seemed to happen in a blur that flooded into my brain and stuck like glue. All that, in what seemed like a second to my body.

“What.” The words slipped out, and I found myself gripping my head. Trying to make sure everything was in place. I hadn’t hallucinated before, at least, I never hallucinated something like that before. Real, and yet still not right.

The Hatch Ring was staring at me, raising his arms to try and calm me down. He was failing, but it got my attention for just a second longer.

“Fella, that one must’ve ruffled you. Heh,” He exhaled before transitioning into a nervous chuckle. “Man, even after seeing it happen to so many of ya’. It never gets easy seeing that look on your faces afterwards.” He sighed, lowering his arms to his side.

I couldn’t stop my body from shaking, still playing back what had happened.

“What… what was that?” I asked.

“Ah, yeah. I didn’t explain it well. Forgot ya was new. That was a lil’ vision of the future, big egg, big future. So, how’d it go?” His shrug transitioned into a hum.

“Huh—”

That was supposed to be the future?

“I need to speak to the Immortal Ring.”