Dreams come differently here, in this place where reality bends like warm taffy. I float in spaces between spaces, neither awake nor asleep, neither human nor Other. The darkness behind my eye pulses in rhythm with something vast and ancient, and I let myself drift.

He's there when I open my eyes – the man from the warehouse, the Church's successful subject. In the dream-space, his form shifts constantly, flowing between human and something else like waves on a shore. Darkness swirls behind both his eyes, mirroring mine, but where mine is contained to one eye, his spreads and recedes like tide.

"Hello, sister," he says, his voice harmonizing with frequencies that shouldn't exist. "I wondered when you'd let yourself get quiet enough to hear me."

I try to pull back, to wake up, but the dream holds me with gentle insistence. "You're not real. Just my mind playing tricks."

"Aren't we beyond such simple distinctions?" He moves closer, reality rippling around him like heat waves. "Real, unreal, dream, waking – they're all just different ways of existing. You know this. You've always known this."

The darkness pulses, reaching for something in him that reaches back. I fight it, but the recognition is automatic, instinctive. He's like me. Changed. Transformed. But where my change was natural, evolutionary, his was...

"Forced," I say. "They forced you to become this."

"Did they?" His smile contains geometries that shouldn't be possible. "Or did they just... wake something that was already there? Like calls to like, after all. They couldn't have changed me if I didn't have the potential."

He's closer now, though I didn't see him move. The air between us feels thick with possibility, with power, with understanding that goes beyond words.

"What's your name?" I ask, trying to hold onto something normal, something human.

"Now? In this form?" He laughs, the sound rippling through multiple dimensions. "Names are for things that stay the same. We're becoming, you and I. Evolving. Transforming."

"I'm not like you."

"No?" He reaches out, not quite touching me. "Then why can you see me as I really am? Why can you feel the connections between spaces, the ways reality bends and flows? Why does your power reach for mine like gravity?"

The darkness pulses stronger, and I see him as he truly is – a being existing in more dimensions than human flesh should allow, a consciousness that flows between states of being like water finding its level. And worse, I see how similar we are. How my own form shifts and changes, matching his rhythms unconsciously.

"Beautiful," he whispers. "You fight it so hard, try to stay small and solid and human. But look at what you really are."

Reality ripples around us, showing me reflections of myself that can't exist in normal space. I see the darkness spreading, see my form becoming fluid, see the ways I'm already more like him than I want to admit.

"Stop it," I say, but my voice contains harmonics that aren't human anymore.

"Why? Because it frightens you? Because it feels too good?" He moves in a way that might be stepping closer or might be folding space. "You've been so alone, haven't you? So different. So unique. But you're not alone anymore."

The truth of it hits like a physical blow. All my life, I've been singular – the Church's messiah, the resistance's weapon, the girl with darkness behind her eye. Even among people who accepted me, who cared for me, who loved me... none of them could truly understand.

But he does.

"It doesn't have to be lonely," he says, reading my thoughts or maybe just recognizing his own past pain in my expression. "We're what comes next, you and I. The first of a new way of being. Evolution made manifest."

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"Through force," I say, but the words come out weak. "Through the Church's experiments."

"Through whatever means necessary." Now he does touch me, his hand passing through several possible states of matter before settling on something like flesh. "Does it matter how we became what we are? Natural or artificial, guided or forced – the result is the same. We're transcending."

The darkness responds to his touch, reaching through dimensions I can barely perceive. For a moment, I feel what he feels – the freedom of existing between states, the joy of not being bound by normal physics, the sheer relief of not having to pretend to be merely human anymore.

"You feel it too," he says softly. "The potential. The possibility. The power that comes with accepting what we really are."

I do. God help me, I do. In this dream-space where reality bends like poetry, I can admit how tired I am of fighting it. How much I want to let go, to become, to evolve into whatever lies beyond human limitation.

"The Church," I start, but he cuts me off.

"Is just one path. One way of understanding what's happening. But we're beyond them now. Beyond their rituals and ceremonies, their attempts to control what can't be controlled." His form shifts closer to human, becoming heartbreakingly beautiful in a way that transcends gender or conventional attraction. "We could show them what real transformation looks like."

The offer hangs in the space between us – not just understanding, not just acceptance, but partnership. Companionship. Love, maybe, or whatever exists beyond love when you're becoming something else.

"What's your name?" I ask again, needing something to hold onto, something human to counter the vertigo of possibility.

"Adrian," he says, and for a moment his form stabilizes, becomes the maintenance worker he used to be. "I was Adrian. Before. When I was small and solid and alone."

The simple humanity of it breaks something in me. I reach for him without meaning to, let my form flow into shapes that mirror his. For a moment, we exist in perfect symmetry – two beings becoming something new, something vast, something beautiful and terrible and free.

The darkness sings between us, harmonizing in frequencies that shake reality itself. I feel him not just physically but quantumly, fractally, in dimensions that human senses can't perceive. Feel his loneliness and his joy, his fear and his triumph, his desperate need to share this transcendence with someone who understands.

Feel myself responding, reaching back, wanting to...

"No!" I tear myself away, forcing my form back to human shape. The effort sends ripples through local reality, making the dream-space shudder. "This isn't... I can't..."

"Can't? Or won't?" His voice is gentle, understanding. "You're fighting so hard to stay human, to hold onto connections that can't possibly understand what you're becoming. But for what? For people who fear you? For a resistance that's gone? For a man who may have betrayed you?"

James's face flashes through my mind – human, solid, real. But even that memory feels distant now, like looking at a photograph of something that happened to someone else.

"I'm not what they tried to make you," I say, but the words ring hollow even to me.

"No. You're what you were always meant to be. What I was meant to be. What humanity is meant to become." He reaches for me again, his form flowing through beautiful impossibilities. "Stay with me. Let go with me. Become with me."

The darkness pulses with want, with recognition, with possibility. For a moment, I waver. For a moment, I let myself imagine it – existing between states with someone who understands, transcending all the pain and fear and loneliness of being unique.

But...

"I can't," I whisper, and this time the words come stronger. "This isn't evolution. This is surrender."

"Is there a difference?"

"Yes." I pull back further, letting the dream-space fragment around us. "Evolution isn't just about becoming something new. It's about becoming something better. And this... this is just running away."

He watches me with eyes that contain galaxies, his form flowing through possibilities that tempt and terrify in equal measure. "You'll be lonely again."

"I know."

"You'll keep fighting what you're becoming."

"Yes."

"And when you finally change, when you finally transcend..." His smile holds both sadness and promise. "I'll be waiting."

The dream shatters like crystal, reality reasserting itself in shards of normalcy. I wake gasping on the floor of the general store, my body humming with power that wants to flow into impossible shapes.

The darkness behind my eye pulses with something that might be loss or might be triumph. On my phone, another message from James waits unread.

I push myself up on shaking legs, forcing my form to stay solid, to stay human. The walls ripple around me, reality still soft from my unconscious influence.

David was right about one thing – I am lonely. Am unique. Am becoming something that normal humans can't understand.

But better that than surrendering to what the Church tried to create. Better evolution on my own terms than transcendence through force.

Better human loneliness than inhuman company.

For now, at least.

The darkness pulses, and somewhere in spaces between spaces, David waits. Watching. Understanding. Offering a kind of love that transcends normal existence.

I turn my phone on, start listening to James's messages.

Time to choose my path. Time to become whatever I'm meant to be.

On my own terms.

In my own time.

Alone.