Reality shudders like a plucked string as Adrian's presence grows stronger. The lobby's clean lines begin to bend in ways architecture was never meant to accommodate, walls rippling like heat waves as he pushes against the barrier between dimensions.

"Fascinating," Rachel Chen murmurs, watching space fold around us. "Full quantum manifestation through sympathetic resonance. The Church has gotten better at this."

"Less observing, more moving," James says sharply. "We need to get somewhere more secure."

But I can't move. The darkness behind my eye pulses in rhythm with Adrian's attempts to break through, each pulse drawing him closer to normal space. Our connection from the dream has created a path, a channel he's trying to force wider.

Let me in, sister, his voice whispers through dimensions that shouldn't touch. Let me show them what we really are.

"No." I grit my teeth, trying to push him back. Reality warps further as our powers clash, making the lobby exist in several states simultaneously. "I don't need you to show me anything."

Rachel grabs my arm. "My lab. Quantum shielding. Now."

I let them half-drag me through corridors that keep changing length and orientation. Behind us, Adrian's presence grows stronger. The darkness responds to him like iron to a magnet, wanting to complete the connection, to let him through.

Still fighting, his voice comes clearer now. Still trying to stay small, to stay limited. But I feel your longing. Feel your need for understanding.

"Get out of my head!"

"Here." Rachel swipes us through a heavy door into a lab filled with equipment I don't recognize. "The shielding should—"

The door explodes inward, reality tearing around the edges. Adrian's form begins to take shape in the debris – beautiful and terrible, existing in more dimensions than human flesh should allow.

"Hello, sister." His voice contains harmonics that shouldn't exist, resonating with the darkness behind my eye. "Aren't you tired of running?"

James raises his gun, but Rachel knocks his arm down. "Conventional weapons are worse than useless. They'll just give him more planes of reality to manifest through."

She's right. I can see how Adrian's form extends through multiple dimensions, how bullets would just give him more surfaces to exist in. The darkness pulses stronger, trying to reach for him, trying to complete the connection we forged in dreams.

"You can feel it, can't you?" Adrian flows closer, his shape constantly shifting between states of matter. "The pull. The recognition. The relief of not having to pretend anymore."

"Stay back." I push harder against the connection, trying to close the quantum channel between us. Reality buckles under the strain.

"Or what? You'll keep running? Keep hiding? Keep letting them try to understand you through their limited science?" He gestures at Rachel's lab equipment. "As if what we are could be measured. Could be quantified."

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"What we are is our choice," I snarl. "Not the Church's. Not yours."

"Choice?" His laugh contains colors that shouldn't exist. "Did you choose to be born with darkness behind your eye? Choose to see reality as it really is? Choose to become something more than human?"

The darkness surges, and for a moment I see what he sees – reality as it truly exists, with all its quantum possibilities and dimensional layers. See myself as I truly am, existing in more states than normal space allows. See how natural it would be to just let go, to become...

"No!" I slam the darkness back, forcing reality to stabilize around us. Adrian's form flickers as I push against his manifestation. "I may not have chosen what I am, but I choose what I become."

"Such pretty lies you tell yourself." He reaches for me with a hand that exists in several dimensions at once. "But I feel your loneliness. Feel your need for someone who understands. Feel your desire to stop fighting what you really are."

"I understand plenty," Rachel says suddenly. She's doing something with her equipment, making adjustments I can't follow. "I understand that forced evolution isn't evolution at all. That what the Church did to you, what they're trying to do to others... it's a perversion of natural development."

Adrian's attention shifts to her, his form rippling with something like anger. "Natural development? You ran away before you could even begin to understand what that means."

"I understood enough to know that forcing dimensional awareness through trauma and ritual doesn't create transcendence. It creates broken things that only look like evolution."

The words hit him like physical blows. His form destabilizes slightly, giving me an opening. I push harder against the connection between us, trying to close the quantum channel he's using to manifest.

"I am not broken," he snarls, but there's something desperate in his voice now. "I am becoming. Evolving. Transcending."

"You're trapped," I say, understanding finally clicking into place. "Caught between states because they forced you to change before you were ready. That's why you want me so badly. Why you keep reaching through dreams. You think connecting with me will stabilize you."

"We're the same!"

"No. We're not." I gather my power, letting the darkness flow naturally rather than forcing it. "I'm becoming what I'm meant to be, in my own time, in my own way. You're becoming what they made you, what they forced you to be."

His form flickers more violently as I push against his manifestation. Reality begins to stabilize around us as he loses his grip on normal space.

"You'll be alone," he says, his voice taking on harmonics of desperation. "Alone and unique and never understood. Is that what you want?"

"Better alone than broken. Better unique than forced." I push harder, feeling the quantum channel between us start to close. "Better myself than whatever the Church is trying to create."

"You can't fight what you are forever!"

"Watch me."

With one final surge of power, I slam the connection closed. Adrian's form dissolves like smoke in wind, reality snapping back to normal around us. The darkness behind my eye pulses once more, then settles into its usual rhythm.

For a moment, no one moves. The lab's equipment slowly stops displaying impossible readings. The walls remember how to exist in only three dimensions.

"Well," Rachel says finally. "That was informative."

James steps closer to me, but doesn't quite touch. "You okay?"

"No." I let out a shaky breath. "But I'm myself. That's what matters."

"More than you know." Rachel starts adjusting her equipment again. "What you just did – choosing stability over forced transformation, natural evolution over artificial transcendence... that's exactly what the Church doesn't understand. Can't understand."

"What do you mean?"

"Come with me." She heads for a door at the back of the lab.

I follow her on unsteady legs, James close behind me. The darkness pulses quietly, and somewhere in spaces between spaces, I feel Adrian's consciousness withdraw.

He'll be back. In dreams, in moments of weakness, in times when the loneliness gets too heavy to bear. But now I understand what he really is – not my future, not my destiny, but a warning of what happens when evolution is forced rather than chosen.

Time to learn what that really means.

Time to understand what I'm really becoming, on my own terms.

The darkness hums in agreement as Rachel leads us deeper into her lab, toward answers I'm finally ready to hear.