The fog filling Dan's mind had eventually evaporated beneath his own scrutiny. He could see it now, the subtle, creeping tendrils of Anastasia's power. He pictured them as roots of ice, invading his thoughts, twisting his actions ever-so-slightly. They had made him more afraid, more uncertain. They had made him uncomfortable, physically and mentally, even as he was forced to make decisions he believed in. They were insidious, and evil, and pointless. They hadn't even changed the outcome of his encounter with Anastasia.

Dan would have acted the exact same way, with or without this interference. At least, he would have made the same choices. He probably would have expressed them a little differently. Maybe accompanied by a middle finger and a generous amount of curse words.

Anastasia was no fool. She had to know the extent of her own power, its limitations and weaknesses. She had to know that Dan might eventually discover her manipulations. So, if it had no real impact on the result of their encounter, and risked discovery, then what was the point? Just to piss him off? To make him uncomfortable?

The old woman was a schemer. Maybe. That was what she seemed like to Dan, and nobody got that rich in a single lifetime without being exceptionally clever or lucky. He had to assume that everything had been planned. Everything had been calculated. That every move she'd made had some greater purpose behind it.

Or not, because that sounded insanely complicated. If Anastasia Summers was capable of such a thing, then Dan even worrying about it was pointless. He had already lost. Better for him to disregard that theory in favor of one that gave him a modicum of a chance at gaining the upper hand in their relationship.

That being that Anastasia was not a Batman-level schemer, so much as a vicious, relentless opportunist. She showed up to his home in person. Sure, that had been to protect Abby in case Dan's blundering had triggered some kind of hidden danger, but the crafty old woman had turned her trip into an extended dominance display. Strutting around in his own home like she owned it. Giving him orders, trying to control him!

And that's what this was, Dan realized with sudden clarity. At the end of the day, Anastasia was about control. Over her family, over her company, over Dan. If he was going to be involved in Abby's life (and he fully intended to be), then Anastasia needed to control him. She needed to be able to order him about like a peon, and know that he'll obey. Everything else was window dressing.

More alarmingly, she had basically succeeded. Dan was currently in a position where, no matter what he did, she retained a large amount of leverage over him. He could ignore their agreement and go to the police. It was an option, seeing as the phone she'd left him contained the photos and dossiers of both Matilda Fairbanks and the terrorist Andros Bartholomew. It would raise some odd questions, but he could probably just tell most of the truth. Anastasia Summers had stopped by to inform him of a terrorist. He was just passing along the information. It was the responsible course of action, certainly.

But it didn't solve the problem of his identity. Anastasia would hang that over his head like a guillotine. The only thing he'd accomplish is taint any chance of honest bargaining in the future. Pissing away what little good faith he might have with the old woman was not the best of plans. Not for so little gain.

He could do as he agreed to. Meet with Matilda and humor her, until she inevitably tried to kidnap him. He had no doubt that such a course of action would end incredibly poorly for him. He had zero training in infiltration, and no real way to protect himself. Who is to say that Andros guy didn't just want to study Dan's corpse? What if Matilda poisoned his water one day, or simply shot him in the head when he wasn't looking at her? Nope! No way! Denied! There had to be a better way of going about this.

His goal was to expose Andros Bartholomew. That was, ultimately, what he had agreed on with Anastasia. To get the terrorist out in the open, where professionals could deal with him. There was no possible way that Anastasia expected him to go about it in the way that she'd suggested. Or perhaps she was hoping he would, and get himself killed. Either way, he wasn't playing that game. A different course of action was required.

His current plan was only marginally better, unfortunately. Alerting Graham and Freya to the issue of Matilda was not technically against the terms he'd agreed to. Neither were members of the APD, and its not like he could control who they told. Dan was... mostly confident, however, that he could convince them to stay quiet if necessary. It would depend on how honest Anastasia had been regarding the capabilities of the APD to deal with this mess. If she was lying to him, he had zero issues with dropping this problem in their lap, and claiming innocence to Anastasia.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Loophole abuse perhaps was not the most honest way of escaping an agreement, but the old woman couldn't claim that he'd broken her trust in any way. It would be her fault for not having worded her terms properly. It would keep them on evenish ground. Except for the small fact of his identity not being legal. So long as Anastasia held onto that information, they could never interact as equals.

No, equal was the wrong word. Dan doubted that Granny Terminator would ever see him as an equal, but that blackmail would color their every interaction from now until eternity. She had already won their previous encounter, before ever even opening her mouth. He needed a trump card of his own. It clearly would not come from Marcus, much to his irritation, so he'd have to look elsewhere. Fortunately, he had just remembered something that might do the trick.

Dan stood in the wide, empty space beneath his that had previously safeguarded a terrorist organization. The suits and tables and tools were all gone, but at least he still had the room. This room, where Dan might be able to win back some independence for himself. The problem that he needed to solve was simple at its core. He had nothing that Anastasia wanted. He had no position from which to negotiate.

Yet.

His veil poured out of his skin, flowing around his face like a mask. It pooled around his eyes, tinting the world a sapphire blue. Dan could see through it without impediment. Even the change in color did not affect his ability to discern different shades around him. It was as if the color only existed for the sake of Dan's awareness. It was incapable of inconveniencing him. He had always seen past his veil, but now he needed to see into it.

Something inside him lurched at that need. His veil shimmered around his eyes, losing its brilliant gleam. Darkness crept in at the edges, an absolute blackening that devoured light. The absence of color spread outward, until his vision was dyed in grey-scale. Then, it twisted. Stars bloomed in the distance, an empty void yawning out before Dan's very eyes. And there, where the center of the room had been, a smooth, silvery orb.

Dan stared at it in bewilderment, before giving the mental equivalent of a shrug. He had been attempting to find the hidden dimension where the People stored their sensitive items. The fail-safe power that Anastasia had described had seemed remarkably similar to Dan's own, and he had hoped to be able to access whatever had been hidden. It was nice to know that his theory had born fruit, odd as that fruit was. He was expecting to see a hard drive or a box of documents suspended somewhere in the void, but this was just as obvious of a sign. He could imagine the slowly rotating orb protest in his general direction. Nothing suspicious here, no sir!

Dan wasn't buying it. Wherever that thing was, he wanted to be there. It was the first time he'd tried to teleport to a specific location in the Gap, but it came as effortlessly as anything. His veil regained its shimmering glow, and he pulled it away from his face, revealing the orb in all its bizarre glory.

At this distance, it was obvious that there was something off about it. Whatever power that the People used to protect their secrets, there was clearly more to it than simply shifting things into the Gap. The orb's surface bubbled and writhed beneath his gaze, its quicksilver sheen reflecting the false stars in their surroundings.

"That's not normal," Dan observed to no one in particular. His voice reverberated despite the emptiness of t-space, like speaking underwater, or in a cave, or in an underwater cave. The orb shivered, ripples running across its surface.

Dan decided not to poke the possibly volatile remnant of a foreign power with his hand. He used his veil instead. It sank into the metallic surface with surprising ease, then abruptly stalled after less than an inch. It felt—Dan frowned to himself—an awful lot like the vacuum of space. Just a solid wall of nothing.

He let his veil encircle the orb, sinking his power fully into the object. The drain was... not insurmountable. Within his limits, at least. He just couldn't quite dig into it. Whatever was inside was stonewalling him. It was different from when his veil encountered a living creature. There was usually some give, with things that were alive. They were, for lack of a better term, spongy. This was not. It implied empty space, but why would the orb be empty? He couldn't begin to guess.

Fine. He had other options to solve this mystery. Tugging once more on his veil, just to ensure its stability, Dan willed himself back home.

Dragging the orb alongside him.

It was a clever solution, Dan mentally congratulated himself. The orb was like a safe. Instead of cracking the combination, or drilling through layers of metal, he was simply removing the obstacle entirely. Any contents should survive t-space. It wasn't a hostile environment so much as a nonexistent one. Anything that could remain undamaged in a vacuum would be unaffected by the Gap. Nothing could go wrong.

These thoughts flitted through his brain at about the speed it took for him to make the transition back to reality. He dropped back into his empty lair, glowing silver orb in tow. Dan had maybe half a second to feel incredibly smug about his success, before the orb violently erupted and his world turned white.