Katherine's claws suddenly wrapped around my wrist digging into my skin with inhuman strength. Her grip was cold, almost metallic. A pulse of pure fear rushed from her hand up my spine, making hair on the back of my neck stand up.

Then darkness swallowed us whole, the glowing plant life of the fancy auditorium and the deadly mace heading our way winking away.

The darkness was absolute, pressing against my eyeballs like a physical weight. I blinked rapidly, trying to adjust, but there was nothing to adjust to.

"Katherine?" I whispered.

A low, rumbling growl answered me. Not quite a response, more like a warning.

"Thanks," I said.

Fumbling in my pocket, I found my trusty Pyroxia X-12. The bright screen almost blinded me when I logged in. Two clicks through the apps to the flashlight and then a beam of harsh white light erupted, cutting through the darkness like a knife.

Katherine hissed, bothered by the light.

My phone's light revealed a dark and desolate version of the auditorium we'd just been in.

The organic curves of the Art Nouveau architecture had warped and rotted, as if something had been slowly consuming the building from the inside out. Massive roots - thick as tree trunks - burst through cracked marble floors and twisted around fallen support columns. Bioluminescent plants that had once pulsed with soft blues and greens now hung like withered, blackened tendrils.

"Sooo..." I said. "This is the deep, huh? A parallel Earth where everything went to shit or something?"

"Shut. That. Off," she hissed. "The light attracts things."

"What things?" I turned the flashlight off, switching to the infrared cam.

As if in response, something skittered in the darkness. A sound like chitinous legs scraping against decayed marble echoed through the desolate auditorium.

Katherine's claws tightened on her wheelchair's wheels. "Hungry things. Echoes."

Another skittering sound. Closer this time.

"Follow, unless you want to stay here," the wheelchair-bound Stollwurm ordered.

She somehow rolled over the roots and broken rubble like it was nothing, using her tail as a lever to overcome random elevation changes.

I stood up and pulled my backpack on, forsaking my wheelchair to the gloom. My footsteps crunched on random detritus and roof tiles.

The chitinous skittering sounds continued, sometimes seeming to come from above, sometimes below, sometimes directly behind us. But nothing emerged from the darkness.

"Stop breathing so loudly," Katherine hissed.

"I'm not breathing loudly," I whispered back. "You're breathing loudly."

A low growl rumbled from her throat. "Do you want to get eaten?"

"Not particularly," I replied.

Another skittering sound - closer this time. Something metallic scraped against the rubble nearby.

Katherine's wheelchair froze. Her tail went absolutely still.

"Don't. Move," she breathed.

I froze mid-step, one foot hovering just above a broken piece of ceiling.

The skittering sound circled us. Not random anymore. Deliberate. Calculating.

Something was hunting us.

Then Katherine's eyes ignited with green fire and my heart skidded to a stop.

Pure, concentrated fear radiated from her like an explosion - like someone had distilled absolute dread into a psychic weapon and was broadcasting it on all frequencies.

The skittering stopped. I heaved, unable to move a muscle, my entire body shaking.

Absolute silence descended, so thick I could hear my own heartbeat thundering in my ears.

Katherine's tail wrapped around my waist, yanking me closer to her wheelchair. "Move. Now."

We quickly rolled/moved to the end of the balcony. Her movements were fluid, exact - like she'd navigated this dark landscape countless times before.

We reached the elevator shaft, but the elevator itself was conspicuously absent. Through the infrared cam, I saw a gaping vertical tunnel stretching up into impenetrable blackness, with rusted maglev bits and cables hanging like dead spider webs.

"No elevator," I whispered. "Now what?"

Katherine's tail tightened around my waist, making my ribs ache. Her wheelchair positioned at the shaft's edge.

A weaker pulse of pure, weaponized dread ran from Katherine's tail across my body.

The darkness began to gradually dissolve, the outline of the elevator manifesting through the gloom. Katherine tapped her card and the barely visible elevator doors slid open. She shoved me inside and then pressed one of the barely visible buttons. The gloom slowly receded in its entirety as the elevator rapidly flew out of the auditorium.

Emerald and the others were still on stage. Vespera had landed back near them, looking dissatisfied with lack of mace-smiting.

I glanced at Katherine.

"So, um, is my wheelchair gone forever now?" I asked.

She turned her head to me, slipping dark goggles back on to hide her weary-looking emerald eyes.

"No," she said. "I can get it... later. Also, since when can you walk normally?"

"A miracle cure through pure, undistilled terror!" I proclaimed dramatically, jazz-handing my suddenly mobile legs. "Who knew being hunted by unspeakable horrors was such effective physical therapy?"

"You're telling me," she said slowly, tail arming up to whip me as she pressed a button to halt the elevator halfway between floors. "that you needed a wheelchair because of a concussion, but you can walk just fine now?"

"Yes. To be honest," I began, "I was pretty dizzy so the nurse ordered me to stay in a chair... but then I had a rather intense encounter with the Genesis Pool this morning, which may have... recalibrated some of my bodily functions."

Her tail whip slowed. "What?"

"I jumped into the genesis pool," I said. "While being alive."

"You did WHAT?" She stammered out, tail coming down.

"Jumped. Into. The. Genesis. Pool," I repeated, enunciating each word as she did in the deep. "While alive. Helped me walk."

Katherine's mouth opened and closed like she was fishing for words.

"What... That is possibly the most ridiculous thing I've heard so far from you," she finally let out.

"What? Full-blooded Omnids don't go swimming in the Genesis pool for shits and giggles?" I asked.

"Obviously not!" She barked. "The Lazarus cavern is one of the most sacred spaces to Skyfall! It's one of the foundational artifacts, the Academy was literally built around and above it! To submerge yourself in it... while being still alive is unthinkable blasphemy! Nazareth! Have you no effin' shame?!"

"Eh," I shrugged. "I'm not from here. Nobody told me that I couldn't swim in it. Didn't think it was that big a deal. Cass... err Cinder pulled me out of it twice now with her hands. Doesn't that count?"

"It's completely different... pulling someone out is fine, idiot!" Katherine growled, her tail lashing against her wheelchair. "Brief contact to help resurrect someone versus... How long were you under there?! Were you fully submerged?"

"Dove in pretty deep yep," I nodded. "I think I was under a few minutes?"

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"Slayer!" Katherine choked. "Do you have any idea what that could have done to you? It could have shattered your mind or grown another you inside you, killing you in a truly horrific way! Abyss, it could have broken your Lazarus bracelet!"

"I'm fine," I assured her. "Actually, I saw something interesting in there. A girl. Silver-blue hair, orange vest. Sound familiar?"

Katherine went absolutely still. Her tail stopped mid-lash, her body frozen like a statue.

"What?" she whispered.

I repeated the description. "...Fractal crack on the side of her head. Called herself Alexa. Ring any bells?"

Katherine's goggles slipped slightly, revealing a flash of intense emerald eyes. "That," she muttered. "That's... not possible."

"Apparently quite possible," I shrugged. "She said something about 'brain spiders' and 'System Wizards'. Any context?"

Katherine's wheelchair jerked violently, spinning to face me directly. "Where. Did. You. Hear. Those. Words."

"Under the Genesis pool," I said. "She had these quirky jump shoes on and a safety vest. I think that she also lives in a treehouse made from stolen signs. The town of Saint Mary?"

"No," Katherine shook her head violently, her face going pale beneath her scales. "That's... It's just my imagination. My art. You must have seen my sketches and..."

"I didn't see her shoes in your art," I pointed out. "Or the treehouse. So, either we're suffering from some sort of a collective delusion... or..."

"She can't be real!" Katherine barked. "Someone like that can't exist!"

"Why not?" I arched an eyebrow.

"Because..." Katherine's tail lashed violently. "Because she's... she was purposefully written to win at everything, like a skeleton key designed to open any door with social hacking. She's not real, you absolute knob! She's just a character from a story I wrote when I was young! About another... alternative Earth, a world filled with Superheroes and Villains... without Omnids... where... where everything turns out just fine in the end! Real life doesn't work like that!"

She sniffed. I remained silent, contemplating her words.

"It's... a world... where I'm not broken and sick," she let out. "Where I can run really fast... It's just a fictional story where a girl named Alexa found a lonely girl name Katherine Kells and helped her, uplifted her to become something more..."

Katherine trailed off, her tail drooping. "But that's all it is. A novel, that no Omnid would ever read because it features super-powered humans. Just my dumb imagination. Just my stupid art that most people aren't interested in 'cus it portrays four humans as the protagonists. You couldn't have seen her shoes or the treehouse. You're lying. You have to be!"

"I'm not lying," I said softly. "She hugged me. Called me her minion... 'Mittens'. Said something about me needing to find all four of us and to never stop. Said she loved me. Which was weird because I've never met her before. At least... I don't think I have."

"Stop it. Just... stop. You're messing with me. THIS ISN'T FUNNY!" Katherine snarled loudly. She pulled her goggles off, her eyes filled with tears.

"Not trying to be funny," I said. "Just telling you what I saw. What I experienced. Maybe we're both crazy. Maybe the Genesis Well showed me your memories somehow. Or maybe.... Alexa is real."

Green-silver eyes looked at me. "You're not Martin Kilborne! You're not a character from my story, you look... act nothing like him! Stop trying to be someone that you are..."

"What... did you just say?" I stammered out.

"Martin Kilborne," Katherine repeated. "The second MC from my book about superheroes. Alexa's first minion. Her best friend. Her love interest. Why am I even telling you this shit?" Her voice dropped.

My brain careened sideways. Either Katherine was a monster who had somehow manipulated me, used her psychic wurm powers to learn my real name or...

Or something far more impossible was happening.

"Katherine... How do you know that name?" I whispered.

"I told you," she growled back. "I made it up! Imagined it! For a book!"

"Nu-huh," I shook my head. "Not possible."

"What the Abyss are you on about?" She demanded, wiping her tears with a sleeve.

I studied Katherine carefully, weighing my options. Her emerald eyes blazed with an ocean of anger, confusion, and something deeper - a raw, vulnerable hope that she was desperately trying to suppress.

"Tell me about this story of yours," I said carefully.

Katherine's tail lashed defensively. "Why should I tell you anything?"

"Because," I leaned forward, my voice low and sharp, "either you're playing an incredibly elaborate mind game, or something truly screwy is happening. Something that I would consider insane... at least before I dove headfirst into the Genesis pool. Just tell me more about Alexa, please."

"Absolutely not. I am NOT letting you mock my writing. You've spent this entire day mocking me as it is!"

"Sorry," I sighed. "That's a thing I do. I cope with how effed up my life is by being a clown. I was just trying to... make you smile, derail you sideways from your depresso-state, I swear."

"That doesn't make me feel any better!" Katherine pulled her dark goggles back on.

"I'm not simply trying to...!" I stammered out. "I just want to understand what's going on. I thought that I had everything sorted. I had accounted for absolutely everything, made plans, came to this place... and now everything is careening sideways, like a freight train that encountered a giant boulder on the tracks and is now flying off a bridge."

"Sounds like a YOU problem," she said. "And I don't have the energy to deal with whatever mixie issues you have."

I stared at her, a cocktail of frustration and desperation bubbling up inside me. "Come on, Katherine. I just saw a girl who looks exactly like a character from your stories inside the Genesis Well. That's not a coincidence!"

Katherine's tail lashed aggressively. "Coincidences happen all the time. You're reading too much into this!"

"Am I?" I challenged. "You literally just said my... birth name - Martin Kilborne - a name I've never told anyone here. A name from a story you claim to have written."

She went very still then, as still as the transparent elevator hung in a dim space between two floors.

"What?" She finally asked. "Is this another stupid joke?"

"Follow," I said, pressing the M button for the main entrance.

The elevator hummed as it moved sideways and then down, following the complex path to the main entrance.

In another few minutes Katherine's wheelchair rolled silently behind me as I strode through the empty halls, my footsteps echoing against the polished, white marble floors.

The afternoon sun cast long shadows across the parking lot as I approached my beat-up van, still bearing the fresh boot dents from Cinder's assault. Katherine followed silently like a shark amidst deep water.

I yanked open the back doors, climbing inside. The See-Mass lights flickered on automatically, casting a soft glow over the interior. Katherine positioned her wheelchair at the entrance, watching intently as I dug through my backpack.

"Here," I said, pulling out a worn sleeve from a Nazarite bible. Inside was my original birth certificate, carefully preserved in a plastic sleeve. "Martin J Kilborne. Born in Znetc reservation, North Acadia."

Katherine leaned forward, peering through the dark goggles at the birth certificate. Her tail twitched slightly as she studied the document.

"This... this can't be real," she muttered.

"Oh, it's real," I said. "Genuine, certified copy. Issued by North Acadian Reservation Authority."

"But..." Katherine's voice trailed off. She reached out with a clawed hand, then pulled back as if the document might burn her. "It can't! How could it?! Wait."

Her expression suddenly grew cold, lips pursed. "Did... Cass tell you about the story I was writing? Did you print this at a shop to mess with me? This is some kind of a stupid prank, isn't it? Ha ha. Very funny. Make fun of a dying girl who can't even..."

My eye twitched. I dug into my bag again and shoved my North Acadian passport at her face.

"I don't know what's going on either. But this is who I am. Martin J Kilborne. Born in North Acadia!" I insisted, laying out all the cards in a desperate hope that she would listen.

"Nu-huh. Nope. You're Alexander Glock," she said shoving the passport and birth certificate back at me. "I checked your pics on Omnigram after you added me to your friends-list. Quit screwing with me!"

I threw the documents back into my bag, my face burning. I only had myself to blame for this. My manufactured backstory was made too solid, too... real.

I'd created an entire social media footprint for Alexander Glock - a variety of scattered mentions and tagged photos to survive an Omnid Scrutimancer's background check. Strategic posts about growing up with my human mother, some angst about my father, and the occasional comment about struggling with my Nullie identity. The kind of digital breadcrumbs that made a person feel VERY real at a glance. I even posted tons of AI-modded photos of me studying in the conveniently burned down Nazarite Private school in South-Eastern Acadia. There was an entire gallery of AI-generated photos of me standing next to my Thunderbird 'father' in various tourist spots during See-Mass.

I had played myself into a corner and because of it whatever otherworldly, inexplicable link existed between me and Katherine was quickly fraying.

"Welp," she murmured. "Thanks for nothin'. I hope you get lots of views out of this on Omnigram later. Har har."

"Wait," I called after Katherine as she turned her wheelchair away. "I can explain..."

"Save it," she snapped, her tail lashing angrily. "I don't know what kind of game you're playing, but I'm done. You're clearly just another manipulative asshole who somehow found out about my private writing and decided to use it to troll me hard... just like the others did. Just like... Em and Cass."

"That's not... I would never..." I stammered out.

"I said save it!" Her voice cracked. "You want to know the worst part? For a moment there, I actually thought... I actually hoped... that I finally found someone that I could be friends with..." She trailed off, her shoulders slumping.

"Katherine, please..." I said.

"Don't," she whispered. "Just... don't. I'm genuinely not amused with whatever this is! An attempt to impress your Quetzi GF? Or a way to get out of the frendzone and into her bedroom? Maybe a clever way to get Emerald to permit your halfsie pink-skin ass into their inner circle as a sixie? Whatever. Go, watch their anti-delving show. I hope you die or get a memetic stuck in your head. I don't care. Never talk to me again."

I stood frozen by my van, watching Katherine roll away.

Just like when I saw Cassiopea's rainbow-wings for the first time, I found myself completely shattered, speechless.

No witty comeback. No clever deflection. No carefully crafted lie to smooth things over. No way to fix this mess.

Some part of me wanted to chase after her, to tell her everything but my legs refused to move, my mind spinning uselessly like a computer caught in an infinite loop. Out of all the scams I'd pulled, all the identities I'd crafted, all the careful plans I'd made... nothing had prepared me for this awful moment where the truth actually mattered but was buried too deep under my manufactured lies.

There was no script for this situation. No pre-planned contingency. No clever way to explain how I could be both Alexander Glock and Martin Kilborne without sounding completely insane or an absolute dick who generated excessively elaborate pranks to troll people.

I watched Katherine disappear up the front stairwell.

What could I even say to her? "Hey, sorry about the fake identity thing, but I'm actually the character from your story who somehow exists in real life too, and I have no idea how or why? I actually came to Skyfall, faked my entire identity to make Frontenachii Omnicorp and the Omnithornia Superstate officials pay for what they did to my human mom?" Yeah, that would go over real well.

I climbed into my van, shutting the doors behind me with trembling hands. The colorful lights cast their soft glow over the interior, but they did nothing to dispel the hollow, throbbing feeling in my chest.

For the first time since arriving at Skyfall, I felt completely and utterly lost. The carefully constructed facade of Alexander Glock - the overly cheerful, slightly nerdy transfer student who used jokes as weapons - crumbled away, leaving only the raw truth underneath.

The me that I didn't want to look at. The me that let my mom suffer all alone, pushed her away.

Truth that I had no idea how to deal with, now featuring jagged, multi-dimensional edges that weren't helping one bit.

I glanced at the small mirror mounted on my van's wall, and for a split second, crystalline-blue eyes stared back at me instead of my usual green-brown ones. I blinked hard, and they were gone, replaced by my normal reflection.