She descended from the sky in a ball of golden flame.

From a distance she heard the alarms sounding, heard the soldiers shouting, saw them running and screaming orders, moving weapons into place. It didn’t matter. Her eyes ablaze, Jane unleashed a bloodcurdling cry and let loose a burning golden torrent, scorching everything in sight.

She slammed into the ground, the shockwave shattering a fifty‑foot crater, and all around her soldiers screamed, traitors, murderers, screamed at her to stop and raised their guns and powers and fired, fired-

Jane howled and in an instant light exploded around her, hurtling back the furthest, vaporising those who were close. Snow fell in blinding flurries, turning to steam before it could touch her, annihilated like everything else as she launched blast after blast at everything she could see. Men fell, tanks exploded, buildings, vehicles-

Khaki blurs raced at superspeed, helicopters rained fire, figures circled in the distance, but Jane could not see them, and she did not care. Everything was gold and pain and anger, and if it moved it died before her as her palms spread searing, annihilating beams.

*****

He was in a soft violet space, floating through the cosmos.

Inside Matthew Callaghan’s head, Wally Cykes opened his eyes and stared out into ruined chaos.

The stars shone, a remnant nebula. Patches of synapses, memories shredded and hazing, clouds of knowledge and belief torn asunder, left adrift. Pinpricks of white and green, orange and blue, flashing brief amongst the purple dream and vanishing, anti‑matter destroyed by night. Wally floated down. There was barely anything left here, no structure, no sense of purpose, only scattered debris, the corpse of a supernova.

I remember the frozen sun.

He sunk into the ruined starfield, between pieces of floating rubble, bricks and glass and floating doors. A tinkling of beads, a reflection in a lake. He could go through them, if he wanted – there would be memory on the other side. Wally ignored the whispered promises. He sunk down into the synaptic currents, whirling, pulling in every direction. There was so much to know. So much to explore. A trillion sensations if he would only drift, sparks and feeling of paramount importance, primordial, unwavering. Come, embrace true understanding. Bridge the infinite abyss between all people. Experience. Understand.

Take me back. Take me back.

Wally held his mind loose, the mantra weaving soft bands of being around his diving‑bell consciousness. He whispered as he sunk, the same old songs, the same old colours that had always run through him. I do not need your mind. I am happy with my own.

He floated past spinning mirror slithers of memory, potentially deadly and intoxicating in their detail, but ultimately carrying nothing clear, nothing solid. Wally had not known what to expect in this ruined world, a mind so damaged, scoured open – but he had not expected this. Such desolation. So empty.

What a gift for the chosen one.

There had been forces at work here. Telepathic forces, that much was obvious, for a mind did not shatter this severely under its own pressure. He drifted with purpose through the purple cosmos, a universe spread silent and open where mind and memory should have been. A shard of rubble drifted past him; a key, a flower, a droplet of water, tiny specks in the stardust. Fragments which murdered and pleaded and promised something much greater, seeking him, seeking an understanding mind, longing to be known. Wally slid them gently aside. He was not here for them. He was here for what they broke from.

Heart attack. No way back.

An underwater river flowed beneath him, dark ink blue, violet midnight. Swift and strong, it ran beneath the detritus, its currents rippling, the weightless surface of a world below which leviathan stirred. The River Styx; death, madness. An infinity of thought and fear strong enough to sweep another mind away.

Wally held calm to his soul and sunk gently beneath the waves.

Oh. The madness comes.

Inside the navy current swirled, dark and thundering. It would take him here, no it would drag him there, no he would become it a thousand times over – but Wally refused to be stained, unwavering, and he would not be swept away. He moved a calm hand and the current split before him, twin streams of the river parting around his consciousness like a stone, as if it had always been that way, as if it had never known. The ink clouds cleared, forming sapphire pools and royal blood. He gazed down upon what lay beneath the surface.

I’ve got nowhere left that I can run.

A wall. Wrought and twisted over, a thousand vines of turquoise crystal curved into a sphere, a planet, shining smooth and intertwining with neither beginning nor end. For a moment, Wally’s heart beat fast and he marvelled at it, the exquisite craftsmanship – this moon a thousand shades of blue, indigo, cerulean, magenta, witch-hour diamond, clear and colour bound as one. Could it be? An organic construct? A sublime palace of the mind. Yet as Wally floated closer he saw the veins of iron lacing through it, the almost invisible sutures. The meat glue.

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And then he remembered. This sphere shone blue. Matt Callaghan’s mind was green.

I could sleep for days.

Open now, Wally thought, and his thoughts hardened. This is not you. His fingers traced the crystal curves, unbroken glass smooth and twisting in tree trunks bigger than his body. It was enormous, but size was relative.

Open now. As he stared upon the orb he saw the writing running through it, frozen blue electricity, lightning trapped inside a bottle. ‘My name is Matt Callaghan’; ‘I am human’.

Woven into every turn of it. Every fibre.

Open.

Maybe when I find just such a mysterious place.

Wally bared his teeth and dug his hands into the glass fold between the tendrils. They could not move, they were hard as diamond, perfect blue, unbreakable. But Wally’s grip did not yield. There were no truths. There was nothing indestructible in thinking. This was nothing but thought, free and malleable, whether in his mind or a thousand, and he believed, and he knew-

BEGONE.

And in a surge of blinding light Wally Cykes threw down his barriers and unleashed his own mind like a spear‑tipped prism, piercing inwards, and the clouds of violet dust blasted away before a glaive of technicolour light. The crystal cracked – the barrier shattered to sand-

And Wally saw in.

*****

The psychic started back with a gasp.

“Hhhhhuh-”

“Hey!” Giselle was suddenly beside him, hands clutching his shoulders, steadying – he was back in the doctor’s office. The Infirmary. Wally glanced around, his eyes wild, finding the door open and both Editha and Will standing behind him, the healer staring fretfully, the swarthy teleporter’s face a tormented mask of concern. Wally pushed to his feet, stumbling a step, breathing fast.

“Wally. Wal! Hey! What’s happening? You alright?”

The psychic shook his head, the dim colour of the real world reasserting itself. White walls, blue chairs, green and white floor. Plastic medical trays, yes, with all their equipment, bandages, vials, sterile wipes. The sage green examination bed, where sat a man with light skin, short milk‑chocolate hair and the occasional freckle. A man he recognised.

“What is it?” Giselle asked, clinging to his arm. Wally steadied himself, allowing him to lean on her while gravity fell back into place. “What’s in there? What happened to Matt?”

And in that moment Wally laughed, a hollow, bitter bark utterly devoid of merriment, a swirling cocktail of fury, contempt and utter, savage disgust.

“I have no idea,” he answered, eyes locked on the man in front of him, “That’s not Matt.”

*****

Matt Callaghan’s eyes flickered open, and he saw only darkness. His limbs were heavy, his tongue dry, his head spinning. The taste of something – something dizzying, something cloying, something utterly disgusting – lined his mouth in a foul film. His nose felt as if someone had poured baking soda and vinegar into it. Matt coughed, spitting out a bubbly hack of who knows what, and tried to sit up, groaning as his mind reeled dizzy between ceiling and floor.

I am in a room, his groggy consciousness concluded. It was cold, and there was… there was this smell like old trees… no, the sweet offense of a distillery… no a hardware store. It was tough to tell. No light shone directly above or around him, but as Matt’s eyes adjusted to the dark he could see the faintest sliver of a glow slipping through the cracks of a vague square over in the ceiling. His hands touched… earth, no, dirt maybe, and for a mad second he thought he was back in Cassandra Atropos’ basement, about to look over and see a mad eyeless woman peering at him and cackling about fate.

But he was alone. Matt groaned and attempted to roll over, only to find with a sudden clank that there was something stopping him. Matt tried to move his hands over to feel what was restraining him but abruptly stopped as he found himself unable to move his wrists. He strained his eyes and stared down, attempting to see through the gloom. A matte surface, thick and cold, slightly darker than his skin, rested on the ground beneath his leg. Matt tried to move his arms again, listening. The chain clinked.

Manacles. Wrought iron chains and wrought iron manacles, one on each wrist. Clumsy, blind in the dark, his mind still recovering, Matt felt around groggily with his shoe, tracing part of one chain along with his toe. It descended down into a metal floor plate, from the ridges of which Matt could guess was probably bolted to the floor. Sex dungeon, a gadfly thought proclaimed confidently, aggressively unhelpful, causing Matt to groan and shoo it away.

He reached for his pocket. No phone. That made sense. No wallet either, from the feel of things. If I have to reapply for my ID – but Matt dropped that thought as it was clear that was not presently his biggest problem. He squeezed his eyes closed in an attempt to push back some of his headache and shuffled his legs back into sitting. He still had his shoes on – his jacket, the same clothes. So they hadn’t stripped him, they’d just… God. Matt’s head pounded like he’d been on a seven-day bender. Whatever they’d hit him with – whatever form of rapid anaesthetic – it put you to sleep much more pleasantly than it was to wake up to. He rubbed his eye socket, gawking into the dark.

A part of Matt told him he should be scared. But despite the depths of his predicament, he wasn’t. Fear was unhelpful and death it seemed was no longer permanent. Besides. Matt remembered how he had got here.

There were footsteps up above, thuds that shook flecks of dust from the floorboard ceiling, and Matt tracked with his ears their path as they approached. There was a clonk, clonk, clonk of steps descending down some stairs – and then a scraping noise, the sound of rusty hinges. The light‑tipped square swung open, and a blinding brightness suddenly assaulted Matt’s eyes. He shielded his gaze, squinting as a figure came towards him, a shadow in front of the light now streaming into the cellar. Slowly, as Matt’s eyes adjusted, the room became visible – the low, uneven dirt floor, the dusty wooden ceiling, the cobweb‑strewn brick supports rising like the crawlspace beneath some house, and gigantic, eight-foot diameter brewing barrels curved around in a semi‑circle, against which Matt’s back now pressed, forming the inner wall. Matt’s gaze swept over all of it – the chains, the metal floor plate, the distant, shuttered vent at head height… and slowly, as light streamed in behind him, his captor.

“You…” Matt breathed.

His eyes widened, and suddenly the figure came into focus.

“Wait… you?”