Thirteen months after I first cracked reality, I watch shadow entities devour a man's entire timeline. His screams echo through frequencies that shouldn't exist as his past, present, and future dissolve into void. I can't even remember his name now – the shadows took that too. Just another failure to add to my growing collection.
The Displacement Underground has grown to over three hundred members, all scattered across our network of reality-fractured safe houses. This one, a Victorian mansion in Boston existing in three different time periods simultaneously, had been home to forty displaced teenagers until twenty minutes ago. Now it's a war zone. The wallpaper shifts between decades with each reality tremor – floral patterns from the 1890s bleeding into psychedelic swirls from the 1970s, then morphing into something that hasn't been invented yet.
My anxiety spikes as another shadow entity phases through the walls, bringing with it the smell of burning mathematics. These aren't like Rachel's shadows – hers at least follow some rules of physics. These things move like oil through water, but the water is reality itself. Where they touch, existence doesn't just break – it unravels. I've seen them erase people's entire histories, leaving nothing but quantum echoes and grieving families who can't quite remember who they're mourning.
"Move!" I shout as a tendril of void reaches for one of our younger members, a girl no older than fourteen whose power makes electronics sing. My fear transforms into pure displacement energy, tearing a hole in space-time. The girl dives through just as reality dissolves where she'd been standing. Watching these kids, these terrified powered teenagers that BACR would love to "contain," makes my chest tighten. Each face represents another failure to protect them properly.
Steve materializes next to me, pizza grease still on his fingers from his last dimensional jump, the scent of pepperoni and quantum displacement mixing oddly in the air. "East wing is clear," he pants, adjusting his now-iconic delivery cap that's somehow survived hundreds of reality jumps. "Rachel's herding the last group toward my exit points, but these things... they're learning our patterns. They cut off three of my established routes before I could even access them."
He's right. The shadows move with purpose now, cutting off escape routes before we create them, flowing through walls with an intelligence that makes my skin crawl. They're not just hunting – they're strategizing. Something changed after we received that transmission from Kwan Park about "Project Echo." The list of names scared me more than any BACR agent ever could.
A shadow entity the size of a bus coalesces in the main hall, absorbing light and memory with equal hunger. The chandelier above it flickers between centuries – crystal to brass to quantum-glass and back again. My anxiety surges, and with it comes a new sensation – not just the ability to displace objects and people, but something deeper. I can feel the fractures in reality itself, the weak points where existence wears thin, like running my fingers over cracks in ancient pottery.
"Get them through the portal!" I scream as Rachel's darkness provides cover for another group of teens. Her shadows, at least, still behave like proper darkness should. Steve's dimensional surfing creates escape routes while my power holds the shadow entities at bay. But they keep coming, clicking and chittering in frequencies that make my bones ache. Each tendril of void they extend carries whispers in languages that existed before speech was invented.
Rachel materializes beside me, her own darkness coiling around her like a protective cloak. I notice new silver streaks in her hair – side effects of pushing her power too far. "These aren't natural," she says, voice tight with exhaustion. "They're organized. Hunting. And they're getting stronger. Did you see what they did to the library? All the books now tell the same story, but it's in a language that makes your eyes bleed."
I've heard the reports over the past few months. Shadow creatures appearing in the fractures, taking people, leaving behind rooms where reality forgot how to make sense. The government blames it on Parallaxer activity, but I know better. These things have been waiting in the spaces between moments, watching us learn to break reality in all the ways they needed.
My power pulses strangely as a tendril of not-quite-shadow reaches for another kid. The anxiety that normally tears holes in reality does something new – it lets me see the structure of space-time itself, the fabric that holds existence together. Through this enhanced perception, I can see the mathematical underpinnings of reality, the quantum threads that weave possibility into certainty. I react instinctively, not just displacing the attack but reweaving reality around it, using my fear to strengthen the patterns instead of breaking them.
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The shadow entity screams in a voice that tastes like static and smells like the color purple.
For a moment, I think I've found a new way to fight them. Then the entity flows into the very patterns I've created, like it's been waiting for precisely this opportunity. It doesn't just break my defensive weaving – it uses it as a blueprint for something worse. Reality doesn't just tear – it shatters into fragments that each contain their own impossible geometries.
The mansion's ballroom, already unstable from existing in three time periods, begins to collapse. Victorian architecture bleeds into disco-era renovations, then into quantum configurations that hurt to look at. I feel my power straining as I try to hold it together, to keep our people safe. Blood trickles from my nose as I push harder than ever before, trying to stitch centuries back into their proper order.
Then, impossibly, everything stops.
The shadow entities freeze mid-motion, caught in a moment that stretches like taffy. The very air crystallizes, trapping fragments of broken reality like insects in amber. Through this crystallized chaos steps a small figure – a boy, no more than seven, wearing an oversized baseball cap that seems to exist in multiple places simultaneously.
"You're making the cracks wrong," he says simply, reaching up to adjust his cap that somehow casts shadows in directions that shouldn't exist. "They can smell fear in the breaks. That's how they find you. The shadows don't just feed on broken reality – they feed on the emotion that broke it. Watch."
The boy raises his hand, and reality doesn't so much break as... rearrange itself. The shadow entities twist, fold, and vanish into spaces that my evolved powers can almost comprehend now. Almost, but not quite. It's like watching someone solve a puzzle by changing what the picture is supposed to be.
"Who..." I start, but reality is already beginning to move again. My new awareness picks up patterns in what he's done – not destruction, but reconstruction. Not breaking, but remembering. He hasn't just moved the shadows; he's taught reality to forget they were ever there.
"I'm Jaron," the boy says. "Or part of him, anyway. The rest of me is still coming back together. The shadows helped with that, though not in the way they intended." He looks at my anxiety-created fractures with something like recognition, like he's reading a familiar book written in a new language. "They're using you, you know. All of you. Testing how many ways reality can break before it forgets how to be whole."
My power resonates with his words, harmonizing with frequencies I never knew existed. I can feel it changing, evolving from simple displacement into something more fundamental. "Teaching it to forget," I whisper, understanding clicking into place like the last piece of an infinite puzzle. "So they can teach it something new."
"Smart," Jaron grins, and for a moment his smile exists in every possible timeline simultaneously. "Faster than most. But be careful with that new perception. Some things aren't meant to be seen yet. Reality isn't breaking – it's remembering what it used to be. And not everyone survives that kind of remembering."
Before I can ask what he means, Jaron simply... steps sideways, disappearing into a space that didn't exist until he needed it to. My enhanced awareness catches a glimpse of where he goes – a place between places that makes my evolved power shudder. It's like looking through a window into what geometry dreams about.
Rachel emerges from her shadow-shield, her darkness trembling like leaves in a wind that smells like yesterday. "What the hell was that? For a second, I could see... everything. All at once. Like reality was just one possibility among millions."
"I think," I say slowly, watching reality knit itself back together in ways I can finally perceive, patterns within patterns forming structures that shouldn't be stable but somehow are, "we just met someone who knows what's really behind the shadows. And more importantly – what they're preparing us for."
In the distance, government quantum radar paints the sky in impossible colors, searching for fractures. But for the first time since my powers manifested, I'm not worried about BACR or their containment squads.
I'm worried about what lives in the spaces between spaces, why a seven-year-old boy knows so much about them, and what my evolving power is showing me about the true nature of reality itself. Every anxiety-created crack now shows me glimpses of something vast and patient, waiting for us to learn all the wrong lessons about breaking the world.
The mansion creaks as time periods realign, centuries settling back into their proper order like cards being shuffled back into a deck. We've lost another safe house, but at least we saved our people. My new awareness shows me something else too – patterns in the shadow entities' attacks, purpose in their chaos. Each broken reality creates a new template, a new way of unmaking existence.
They're not just hunting. They're preparing. And we're helping them do it.