It had been a long time since I was in here. Not that I really understood where 'here' was, or what even being 'in it' exactly entailed.

It felt like a physical space, to me, to my mind at least. And given that I didn't seem connected to my own real body any more than a dim awareness that 'yeah, it existed out there somewhere', I was here, for all intents.

Just uh, where exactly was here? It felt like I was standing on nothing, seeing nothing, with just...oodles of nothing around me. Nothing as far as the mind could see.

Saga had thrown both of us into this place when she'd gotten serious about trying to dissuade and then kill me, not too long after we'd first met. We'd disagreed on whether or not it was a good idea for me to enlist human help in her rescue. God, she'd come so far since then; it would be almost unimaginable to think of her now trying to kill me over something as petty as a person being around her while she slept.

But then again, she'd experienced so much more in this last year and a half than in the hundred before that. And for once, her experiences had been good. Many of them, anyway. A lot of hurt and pain, still, and new fears had come. But also a really surprising blossoming of compassion, in that twisted Saga way.

None of that really explained where I was or what this represented in the mindscape. When we were open with each other, we'd done all kinds of things, mentally. Most recently, in Oasis, we'd even essentially become one entity temporarily, but that was nothing like this. This was more like...prison. Contention. Maybe it was something of the old Saga that she hadn't felt the need to use since breaking out of her shell more. If that was the case, it was disturbing that she was back.

That was assuming it represented anything at all, in the conventional sense. Maybe this blackness just was. Like dialing a disconnected number.

Without any other direction, I walked. Walked and walked and walked. It wasn't too long before time stretched into an eternity of wandering. It was bizarre that I could be drifting through here while fully aware that somewhere outside, I was being shot at, but thought moved so much faster than reality.

It took a bit too long to realize that I wasn't shot in the shoulder or foot in here...and in fact, had two functioning legs again. This was the me of my mind, I guessed. Though...I also remembered her telling me, and then acting on the fact that if I died here, my mind would die out there, for real.

I also had my powers, which were safe from the fucking ennervator. God, that weapon was awful. I didn't care how much Karu loved it, we were getting rid of it as soon as...soon as…

As what? I didn't exactly have a concrete plan here. This was just a desperation move. Just wandering and praying it'd work out.

I continued on until I felt I should stop, feeling like a year or more had passed somehow, and when I did, I saw I was somewhere else familiar. In front of me was a throne...Saga's throne, the bastion where she sat and from which she observed this infinite, empty domain. The throne was made from the same blackness as the ground and the air, and though perhaps conventionally impossible to see, I realized that again, this was a place of the mind. 'Seeing' had no place here.

I wasn't too sure on the metaphor here either, but I did understand that the throne was Saga's place of power. It was her center, and just as she looked down at the world, it was fitting that she'd put herself in a throne above it. What she lacked in subtlety, she made up for in ego.

But not right now. Right now, the throne was cracked and empty. And I found Saga curled, craven, despondent on the floor behind it.

I took a step towards her and then hesitated. She was covering her head like she was hiding from an earthquake under her desk, and though I could barely make it out, there were...things...drifting in the air all around her.

I thought they were lights at first, like fireflies or stars. Except they were dark, though somehow radiant. My next thought was eyes, and I realized that was much closer. Wrong, but closer.

Because I suddenly remembered where I'd seen them before. They were the shadows that flickered in the dead of Justice's eyes. Like embers that gave off dark instead of light, even blacker than this place. Just as they had when I'd seen them in him, they unnerved me here. I found it hard to move, hard to breathe, as the hairs across my arms and neck screamed for me to flee the unnatural.

My face twitched as I tried to ignore all of this and step forward. I got half a step closer and then...no more. My body wouldn't move. Even being this close, I felt my mind going blank of coherent thought, my instincts kicking in to get the hell away from the thing I didn't understand.

Closing my eyes didn't help, and I couldn't keep them closed -- the things were too impossibly seductive to gaze upon. I saw Saga shiver and shudder as one passed in front of her face, her own eyes peering wide and trailing it with jerky movements.

"Saga," I croaked at her. I didn't have anything more. My mind had gone blank.

She managed to stare at me, uncomprehending, pale, terrified. But only for a moment.

I ran. I didn't mean to, I just couldn't stop myself from doing so.

When I was myself again, I was several feet further away, catching my breath, clutching at my chest. In the corner of my vision, I thought I saw the drifting motes surrounding me too, but when I blinked they weren't there. I didn't know what they were, didn't know how they'd filled Justice up or consumed Saga, but they were horrible. They were...pure emotion, it felt like...or at least that's what they inspired? But not even an emotion I knew or could understand, just...emotion. Undistilled. Like all the centers of the stupid, primal parts of my brain lit up at once with no aim, except to be.

Sitting here, removed from her and them, it sounded so stupid, to be destroyed by feelings. But I had been, and she was still being. However logical I wanted to think myself, feelings were a huge part of who I was, and they probably had more sway over me than I wanted. I just didn't know that they could do this.

This time I ran at her, keeping my eyes shut, blocking them out. This time, I felt phantom sensations, phantom recollections in my mind, not of anything specific, but urges, instinct, practice.

I spun sideways as a lineman came crashing towards me, my feet planted as I knew by the clock in my mind just how little time I had to break away before the rest of the offensive line crumbled. Blows came at my face, and my fists went to my cheeks to guard my chin, exhaling in decisive bursts every time I felt a shot coming and slipped it. My blades moved almost on their own, dancing around me though completely under my control, dipping and weaving in a choreographed ballet which had them tear through the air at my assailants as I created distance.

And then I was back there again, catching my breath, wondering how I'd gotten here. I was damp with sweat, it felt like I'd just run a mile, and there was no air to stir a calming wind in the blackness.

In the distance again, Saga lay unmoving. I'd failed to get close again, but instead of a panicky blur in my mind this time, there was a red haze of adrenaline and aggression. By coming at the things with anger, I hadn't gotten any closer, I'd just triggered a fight response instead of a flight one.

I swore at them, which was worthless. Outside, I was vaguely aware that I'd been hit again, clipped on the hip. It had been...I didn't know...maybe a minute of real-time, for the eternity of the mindscape I'd been. I was aware that Tem was losing badly.

And then I gave up on out there because focusing on it too much made my grip on here slip, made time suddenly jump by much faster. My curiosity would be the death of all of us. Saga was all we had left.

I settled back into my mental, sweaty body and swore again at the fucked-up situation and at the hot blood coursing through me. If those things could strip me of my conscious thought, all I'd have left to go on would be...the things I'd already tried. Instinct, muscle memory, urges...none of that would help me defeat them or extract Saga. I tried to think of any sort of instinct to rescue something, but barring a fire or some shit, came up empty.

I did come up with another idea. There was...one other biological instinct which might...get me closer to Saga. But I didn't see it helping. Being an uncontrollable horndog on an already-traumatized mental projection seemed at least forty kinds of fucked up past where we already sat. To say nothing of impossible, because I wasn't exactly turned on by the situation.

So fucking what, then? If I even got to her, would that matter? If I somehow got her away from where she sat, would the floating things follow? What the fuck were they? And how could I even begin to make them go away?

I found the question more directed at myself than her. Seeing them here had reminded me of Justice's eyes, and the moment that thought had crept in my head, I began seeing them in the corners of my vision, had been getting micro-panic attacks. I wanted them gone from me. But if I fucking knew how to do that, I could do it for her too, couldn't I?

I fell backwards onto the nothingness in a move that should have bruised my ass. I couldn't get the damn thought of those things out of my head, and the more I thought about them, and her suffering them, and the...disgusting, unnerving black-light and the way they undulated beyond normal vision…

Again, more of them in my eyes. More of them around me. I pushed back, feeling my panic welling up. I saw Saga there, curled up, afraid to close her eyes but afraid to see. That would be me if I let myself fall into this.

But how the fuck could I not? All I had here was these things, all I was here to do was to understand them and get rid of them. It was like being an exterminator, but every time you saw a pest, it multiplied. And grew inside your own fucking head.

The answer for me was still outside. I pulled myself out of the blackness and heard gunshots, felt a whole different kind of anxiety and pain, as I saw Tem battling with all she had, from a fortress of half-melted table and shreds of light motes. She was shot twice now, and black smoke rolled off her body and her darkened eyes as she grit and threw every bit of her powers against her assailants, again and again, without effect.

The fucking lab just suppressed light somehow. It probably suppressed as many Exhuman powers as they could make it do, being an Exhuman R&D lab. I didn't understand it, didn't understand how, but the sight of Tem bleeding darkness brought back visions I was trying to avoid.

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

I threw myself back down, knowing that every second I wasted up there was an eternity of work in here. I had to do it. I had to. I couldn't imagine how many ages Saga had been sitting here in her mind, enduring what I was taking breaks to avoid. She had been drowning for hours, and I couldn't stay under for more than a minute without gasping for air.

Which, fuck, sounded awful, but it'd do nobody any good if we both went insane here. It was just lucky I could come and go as I wanted, unlike last time she'd dragged me in here and locked me in. But then again, I'd come a long way in dealing with her powers since then. We had a lot more rapport, I'd even worked her powers through her in Oasis. Which was fucking insane. As close to a code-X as I'd ever be. Like AEGIS wielding that terrapath's power in Eryendria.

I wondered if I could do that now. I technically only needed Saga's powers to save us...not her. Could I...just borrow her mind for a moment to blast out the guy running for help? The two dudes shooting us? Hell, just the one with the ennervator?

I tried, feeling a ball of guilt churning through me as I advanced towards Saga, only to turn my back to her and sit on the cracked throne. I'd still work on her, I promised. Just not when we were all about to die.

And I had more success than I thought I might. Her mind, and through it, her powers were...on a level, pliant to me. I could feel us united but separate, feel her feelings, being in her body...which was unpleasantly ridden with bullets at this point. I could even feel my mind through her mind, in a strange, echoey dissonance.

But I couldn't reach out. I couldn't access whatever part of her found people and destroyed their minds. Maybe that was more personal to her being. Maybe it was just damaged, along with this throne.

Or maybe, and most likely, it was just in the whole part of her consciousness I didn't want to go near because it was infested with glimpses of Justice's mind.

I felt itchy, paranoid, seeing shadows and eyes all around me now. It felt like I had to get back out of the dark, go up again, waste more time just to be shot instead of haunted. But this time, I tried to ride it out, tried to just...endure the rising panic, tried to push the thoughts from my head.

And fuck, that didn't work at all. I'd never had a panic attack before that I could remember, but just telling myself to calm down was apparently the fucking wrong way to ride them out.

Every second that I convinced myself I'd endure, the feeling just grew more and more unbearable. My lungs felt too small, filled with water, I was drowning in the dark. Eyes surrounded me, Justice's, crawling with nightmares. And with every pounding of my head, every frantic breath I took, I was reminded, I chose to do this. When we all died here, because I was stubborn, It'd be my fault. I would go insane, and then we'd all die, and it was my fault.

When I did break back to the surface, I was gasping and panting, sweating and heaving, tears in my eyes from a pain not physical. The bullets in my side and shoulder felt like a fucking relief. I saw eyes and dark lights even in this room now, watching and haunting me. Everywhere, but fading with the inescapable, inarguable truth of being shot at, being in danger, my ears ringing from gunfire in an enclosed space.

There was still a lot of room for panic, but very little room for paranoia in a situation where I was actively being killed. Not much else to be paranoid about, except the imminent death.

I slashed out, screaming, but only for a few moments before my blades went away, and in an instant, I felt my stomach drop and the insane, overwhelming urge to hide. I barely felt myself when I went back into Saga, just to have somewhere else to be.

And there, not as bad, but still there, the glowing fucking things were waiting for me. Ready to close in. Ready to blind me with horror and incomprehension again. The blackness looked almost white compared to them. Fear like I didn't know I could have shuddered through my body. The realization that, we'd lost. If I stayed here, I would go brain-dead like Saga, but if I left, I'd die physically did manage to sink in.

I was super, super fucked.

I tried everything at my grasp, which was very little, and very useless. The eyes did not go away when I slashed them, the motes of dark cared nothing for my fists grasping at them, and all the while they bored into me, feeling like they were filling me up with every rushed breath I dragged in. The more I fought them, the more I acknowledged and gave them reign, the more of my reality they devoured.

I didn't know how I had ever felt comfortable in this body. It felt so weak. My voice seemed like a pathetic squeak which couldn't even echo. My words...I didn't even understand them, except as pleading. I had nothing, nothing to fight off this...this viral emotional...thing inside my own head. Seething, twisting, shuddering blackness that infected me the more I thought about it with more thoughts of itself.

I'd only been here for moments and I needed to run again. I had to go get shot more. I wanted to be shot. Wanted to be powerless in my own body instead of in the dark. I'd rather die than go insane like this. Weeping blackness. Dark ringed with light. Burning mind and flesh and mind.

I started to run again, started to go back to myself, to shove the bullets further into my skin so that the pain would blind me from my own mind, when one primitive thought crystallized in a corner of my mind which still functioned.

I can run. I can. I am.

And that was enough. That was all I needed to beat this thing. The ability to do.

I threw myself into the throne, the eyes crawling across my skin, staring through me from me. My breaths tasted like blood now, smelled like migraines. But in that throne, I wasn't just me, I was Saga, I couldn't reach out, I could reach in.

I couldn't wade through the madness inside her to make it go right. All I could do was to dive into her mind with her own powers, to do the thing I knew she always refused to do, to go in and tear out what made her herself.

In a way, it was easy. It was too easy. What I wanted was right there, staring at me from every part of her mind. It was so easy that it was the hardest thing I could never do. The madness was pouring from it, the cracked memory which dripped insanity into both of us, into everything which looked and was. The source of the black ringed in light.

I grabbed hold of the memory of Justice, and I pulled with all the power I had. It did not move. Touching it caused me to blister, but the blisters were eyes. I strained and pulled, as hard as I could. Something cracked, and I thought it was her mind or mine. The throne shattered under me at the weight of lifting itself up. The mind could not control the mind control the mind control the mind.

I blinked wildly, my throat was closed, the black was static in the air. Eyes everywhere, all I saw was all I saw was being seen. Everywhere.

The throne was broken. I was broken. Saga was broken. Dark broke into dark light, broken. Broken broken broken. Shuddering, vomitous eyes. I was dead. The throne was broken. The eyes helped me to see. Things that should not have been seen. Beyond the beyond. Always broken. Eyes seeing all of me. I was broken.

I was broken.

I was broken.

I was broken.

Graceful hands touched mine. Steered mine. The memory in my fingers was immovable, but the hands pulled with deftness and delicacy. I looked sideways and somehow, she was there, even if I couldn't see, even if she wasn't. She was still broken, but there she was.

"The mind is a delicate instrument, Athan," she giggled. "Do it gently."

And so saying, we pulled together, and smoothly, gently, the memory came loose, came free, ripped from her head and vanishing into the black.

And at once, I felt her in my mind, in her mind, in my mind, in her mind…

Careful hands, gently caressing the folds of my brain. With ease, she found the infected memory in my head and pulled it clean as well, guided by my memories since hers were gone.

And then we both were again. She was in her throne and I, somehow, sat beside her.

I was clammy and breathless. My skin was skin. I was me. I did not know what it was like to be insane, couldn't remember, could only remember that I couldn't. She seemed as though she'd come back from the dead. Both of us spent long minutes staring into the infinite blackness and coming to terms with the thing that we'd torn from ourselves.

It was an eternity of silent thought. Of two minds once again becoming two minds. Like gelatin setting in the fridge, slowly, we became ourselves again somehow, as the memories drained away, their edges blunted, like a bad dream.

She crossed and uncrossed her legs. She frowned. Her brow furrowed and unfurrowed.

And finally she spoke.

"That was a hell of a fucking thing."

"Yeah. I don't...know...what, though. Or what it was. Or...what happened. Or why."

"Well, we can deal with that later," she said, stepping off with regained poise and imperial bearing. "We're not out of this just yet."

She was deadly serious as I'd rarely seen her. For one moment as she stood before me, she paused, and the steel in her softened.

She leaned forward and planted her lips on mine, warmer than the rest of her though still cold, but as soft as a breeze.

"Thank you."

And then we were in our bodies, and she was getting shot and held by the chest and crotch by me as the world's most literal body armor. She flinched with another shot, but stared me in the eyes with a determination I wasn't sure I'd ever seen on anyone.

And then, at once, everything went silent. Even the ringing in my ears seemed to still. It was like the awakening of a goddess, and the world just took pause to observe it.

And then I heard two more gunshots. One near, one echoing down the hall, as the two exosuits found reason to shoot themselves in the face.

Director Hall took to his feet, his face contorting with some inner struggle I couldn't imagine. But as wiry and steely as he was, he was like clay before Saga's adamantine stare. I could feel the psychic energy rushing off of her as she pounded his mind with thoughts so dominating, so irrepressible, his body physically trembled as they hit him.

I put my hand on her arm, and she flinched, her attention snapping to me, and those eyes. The most piercing, dangerous, pissed-off, ready-to-fuck-everyone-up eyes I'd ever seen. Brown, almond-shaped, Sino eyes.

They only hit me for a moment, but it was a moment I would never forget.

And then they softened on looking at me, until I recognized Saga behind them again.

"Don't kill him," I said.

[Why?] she spat. She was bitter, I knew, from what we'd just endured. She wanted to hurt something. She hated that another mind had beaten her somehow, hated this world for creating that mind. She hated everything in this moment, and some random XPCA director was as good an outlet as any. Better than most, even.

I knew everything she knew at that moment, because only moments ago, I'd been right there with her. We'd both been through something unimaginable. We both craved control again.

Those were her insights anyway. Mine ended at not killing him.

We paused and breathed. I realized, I couldn't hear Tem talking to us over the ringing. Could hardly hear or feel anything, my body was so beat to shit.

As Saga flickered, the blood dripping from her stopped, and more and more bullets fell out of her body to the floor. I could feel her pain as they passed through her, but her face showed none of it.

[He won't listen to you, period. He's not worth keeping alive. No matter what you think.]

"He is, though."

[Because you don't want to kill him?] She spat on the ground at my feet. [I'm not in the mood to indulge you today, Athan. No matter how grateful I am. Don't ask that from me right now. I'm going to hurt something.]

I shook my head. That wasn't what I was thinking, and Saga saw that. But we weren't of one mind anymore. I had my own thoughts again, and more than she, those extended to other people. Like Karu. They extended to the rest of the world. They extended to plans beyond just killing everyone.

She saw what was in my head, and she paused, unsure. And then she smiled, the indominatle, adamantite gleam back in her eyes.

I couldn't hear but could read her lips well enough when she replied.

"You're right. Fuck 'em."