The door’s hinges looked like they were about to break off with each impact of the assailant. Each impact looked like it had immense force, making Xander back away slowly.

He was not in a position to take a threat like this. In no way could he find the strength to stand up to someone who was this malevolent in their intentions.

The colors on the ground kept on shifting from colors of joy and anger repeatedly. Xander fought off the urge to regurgitate his dinner as he looked at the sight.

Being so close to a warped reality made him nauseous. When looking at other people’s References, their realities, he also runs the risk of synchronizing with them as their References mix together. It was a hideous effect that Xander tried to avoid as long as possible, so he neglected to use his ability for too long outside.

In the crowds outside, in the hustle and bustle of the city, too many References came alive during the night. If he tried to use his Specialty, he would almost be blinded by all the colors. He might even go insane with the different realities becoming not a singular individual, but a cog in the human psyche.

One of his old mentors told him the reason behind this conformity is the base part of the human spirit. After knowing one exists, the human soul will want to know it’s not alone in the world and thus cling to people similar to it to resolve its plight. It is both a parasite and a boon to the person.

Xander was the person who saw the primal parts of humanity, its desires and wantings through his eyes in the forms of colors. By understanding a person through their Reference, he unconsciously drifts toward them as like-minded spirits which alters his own mind.

The Reference of the assailant outside was corrupting and cruel. Xander felt from this person the greed, joy, and cruelty of his future actions, but he didn’t know the reason why. But they were there to kill him. If not now, then afterwards.

He stopped using Perspective to calm his mind. His head was hurting now and he felt his mental energy drain rapidly.

Who they were, or why they were there didn’t matter as much as his survival.

Xander tried to think as rationally as possible.

Rational people survive.

The first priority was his survival and to ward off the threat.

The second would be to figure out if River was safe.

The worst-case scenario would be if she was dead, but that idea could not happen.

Thus, the second worst scenario would be that she would come back to see the unknown threat on their doorstep.

She would probably die soon after.

He could not let that happen.

Shock would have to come later.

Narrowing his eyes, he pushed the windows open while keeping an eye on the soon-to-be-broken door. He could see splinters on the door already around its hinges. It felt like one good push or kick would break down the door.

He wouldn’t dare make a sound.

Why would anyone come help him in the middle of the night anyway? They wanted quiet lives in the layer and protecting a stranger would disturb that.

I have to rely on myself.

At the first sign of danger, he would jump with his hand-made spear and hope to God that they wouldn’t be able to track him. He wasn’t experienced enough to go directly in a fight and come out on top, and his deceit wouldn’t allow him to keep the upper hand with an experienced opponent. He clenched his homemade spear in his hand.

At best he could be called a complete amateur to fighting like most people were. Weapons still had their place in the world, but the sheer flexibility and unpredictable nature of Jades and Specialties far outmatched conventional warfare and combat. But lethality still had its place in the world and weapons were treated as tools to express murder, and thus traditional and conventional weaponry still existed.

Combat would be a last resort.

He watched the door almost break open. Each passing second brought more fear into Xander’s heart than the last. The sound of creaking wood was the most perilous moment, disrupting Xander’s attempts to think and strategize. He was holding his breath unconsciously. His body had already recognized the themes of danger right now.

Xander heard a large crash from the door and the sound of wood breaking. A piece of wood had shattered off of the sturdy door, revealing a small opening in the door. Xander swung his legs around the windowsill and prepared to get out of there as soon as possible until he felt an irresistible attraction that forced him to peer through the opening in the door.

He tried his hardest to turn his head away, but it wasn’t possible. He realized then that a green light from his eyes was shining a candid light around the room.

It’s the same from the bakery without the side effects.

That doesn’t matter, I have to get out of here.

His eyes suddenly widened as he stared through the hole. A palm had appeared there, pale and white, with a large scar running horizontally from the palm. It looked like it was stitched by a child. He could see a wriggling mass of flesh underneath the stitches.

Xander couldn’t tear his eyes away from the opening. His body was being forced to face the thing, or more like, he couldn’t see anything else but the hand in front of him. His peripheral vision seemed to fail him, and his body seemed frightened to look into the nothingness around him.

Without any options, he was forced to stare.

The palm started to quiver and spasm around to Xander’s disgust. From behind the stitched opening a red light appeared bathing the apartment in a red glare. It was the activation of a Specialty.

The hand spasmed around until it laid limp, but inside from the palm, Xander could see the stitches unraveling until it felt like he could see through their arm. Stitches broke by droves until it fully opened, almost tearing the hand into two pieces.

From the split hand, an eye appeared in grotesque fashion.

First, Xander saw a white orb appear. It was slimy after emerging from the palm and was connected to the body by a green thread-like object, like the string from a kite. It almost reminded him of an egg, if not for the opaque shine to the eye.

A pupil appeared as it revolved around the orb, forming the eye on the hand. The pupil revolved around its imaginary axis until it focused onto Xander. It was a beautiful amber color. If not for the fact that it was stuck with its pupil in an expression of fear, it would’ve been a marvel.

Xander felt sick to the core now as both he and the eye stared at each other. He couldn’t move his body anymore and was stuck halfway between the outside and his apartment. The pupil on the disembodied eye dilated as it stared at him.

In all other ways, it was a mundane eye, at least by Xander’s standards.

This scenario reminded him of Grant’s obsession. The rapid occurrence of various eye related events and stories seemed to creep up his spine. The image of Grant’s daughter and wife with eyeless holes crawled into his mind without his permission, then the image of River came along.

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Messy chestnut hair dropped down her body which was slumped in an alleyway. Glasses on the ground, broken into two, and the pools of darkness in her eyes.

He felt disgusted. His heart began to pound faster.

He could feel it. Reality has distorted because of their Jade ability.

His stomach churned as horror pervaded his mind once again. That eye, it belonged to someone else… Was that why they took their victim’s eyes?

The eye twisted around, being only held up by the string, like it was memorizing everything about Xander.

Outside of the apartment, he could hear breathing…

Labored breathing, as if they were trying to hide that they were there. Or, it was the stifling of a laugh. Xander didn’t know which one was worse.

He saw the eye turn to open the door. Carefully, it turned the lock with dexterity that was laughably horrible, then, as delicately as possible, it turned its attention toward the doorknob. Finger by finger, it grasped the doorknob and began to wrench it open.

During the split second the eye turned away to open the door, Xander felt the horrible compulsion disappear. His peripheral vision went back to him and the rest of his senses returned to him. The cold air outside coming in from the window was a sweet relief.

Now was his chance to escape.

Heart beating, he swept his legs over the windowsill and dropped down two stories to the ground. He probably broke a bone in his feet somewhere, but there was no time to worry about that.

He had to get away. As soon as possible. The enemy’s control of his Specialty was too sophisticated to even attempt to deceive him. His Specialty seemed to relate to vision. More specifically, the eyes. It was something Xander had no counterplay against. Not even his own Jade ability would work properly.

There were too many unknowns in the mix to warrant a confrontation, and too few tools for Xander to utilize. It was better for now to run and let them keep chasing him. He didn’t want River to run into this.

His lungs were on full blast, pumping oxygen like he hadn’t breathed in a while. Had he even breathed at all during that moment? His eyes had teared up during the chaos. What was important though, was that no long-lasting effects had happened.

According to Grant, he had lost his eyes during the fight with who was probably Xander’s perpetrator and then they fought. If so, that means that they had some type of ability to rob it from a distance. That wasn’t surprising because of how the eye had trapped him after their little staring contest.

The only way to avoid his effects was to blind himself.. Needless to say, that was an incredibly stupid idea. He would probably trip and fall on his own weapon and die shortly after. Not the greatest way to go.

In that half moment that Xander took to recuperate, he had a plan of action.

He ran from the alleyway and ran towards the center of the Layer, toward the white wall.

There was a reason he was being marked, even if he didn’t know it yet. So, all he had to do was lead it to people who could actually handle them, the guards.

That was good enough for him.

He heard the sound of fabric rustling and then a soft impact. He didn’t look back.

***

Could they just quit it already!

The deafening sounds of light footsteps traveled through the mute world. The two of them were quiet in their chase, but inside of Xander’s mind it was anything but.

He’d already thrown away his weapon since he saw that there really was no point in keeping it. His head pounding with painful relief and his lungs fired away like pistons on a steamboat. His pursuer was frustratingly difficult to handle.

He had reached the halfway mark towards the guard’s station and he had about twenty meters of space. Even in the silence, he had no time to think or relax even once.

He saw an opening away from the main street and pivoted towards it. At the same moment, he heard a choked chortle. His eye began hurting as he sensed a line of red color pass through him. He turned into the alleyway as he heard the sound of a sharp needle whisk through the air where he was.

Xander felt a sharp cut on his back. His body was covered in them after three minutes. It seemed like the bastard had an unlimited number of projectiles. He had activated Perception after one nearly pierced his face leaving a nasty bleeding cut on his cheek.

The downside was that his mental energy would also be horrible to deal with. Lethality was a painful poison for Xander to sense. It pierced his brain with hideous headaches, gently nudging him towards very unwise decisions.

He ran towards a staircase that opened up to the roofs of the subterranean suburbs. It was a nice place that people often frequented to relax, offering a good view of the entire white majesty of the wall, the small semblance of color in the monotonous and standardized Layer. It would be horrible if it would be stained with blood.

His eyes flashed again as he became aware of a line of aggression going directly through his heart.

Crap.

Running to the edge of the rooftop, he realized just how far up he was from the ground.

This was going to hurt if he fell. At least he wouldn’t be skewered. With momentum, he placed his feet on the ledge of the building before leaping.

He felt the wind rush through his ears and his stomach dropping.

In weightless moments, he thought he would fall to his death. He wasn’t thinking very pleasant thoughts at the moment.

It felt like it was taking far too long to hit the other edge. That was until he saw the building wall approach his face.

He swiftly raised his arms up and prepared to brace his legs. Gritting his teeth, he clutched the railing with as much strength he could muster. He raised his legs and they absorbed the impact of him crashing into the wall. It hurt like hell.

He lifted himself onto the rooftop before he saw a myriad of red lines appearing just in front of him. Rapidly, he rolled out of the way and heard the clatter of metal beside him. Another splitting headache arose and he knew that somehow, they would make the jump.

He got up to his feet and fled towards the guard station, a gray building, like a dust particle next to the wall. He could see the light of a lantern by now, a guard sentenced towards the midnight hour probably because of a punishment. Inside his head, Xander apologized for the disturbance he was about to cause.

It would just take him another two minutes to reach it. Even fewer to get within earshot of the guard on duty. He could go down the Layers to ask for protection because even he wasn’t one hundred percent confident in the guards. They would give enough time to escape.

He ran through the various chimneys and gas lines haphazardly scattered throughout the buildings of Layer Four, no jumps necessary. He was running now, but the end was in sight. This nightmare would finally be over.

He was a good enough distance away for them to hear. The guard was talking to someone, but he didn’t have the capability or desire to recognize them.

Raising his voice, he shouted to the guard outside, “There’s a murderer trying to kill me! Threat Level Hydra! Don’t look at him directly, his Specialty affects the eyes!”

From a distance, he could see the guard raise his head and immediately head into the guard barracks. Before he did that, he said something to the small figure next to him who headed with him. They dropped something.

Xander silently celebrated. Now, it wasn’t his problem anymore and he wouldn’t put in much more effort than he needed to. In a few minutes, he could catch his breath. A platoon of men would come from the guard station, and the guard was probably calling HQ for more men. It was, after all, a Hydra.

They, in question, were behind him, a good five seconds away, an enormous amount of time for a chase. He dipped his head under another red line as he heard a sigh above him.

Xander noted that sigh wasn’t the sound of someone ready for a fight. Rather, more like a disturbance had appeared. He decisively reasoned that he would get as far as possible from the guard station after they confronted each other seriously.

He hopped another railing to another rooftop before descending down the fire escape from the building. He hopped the bars to save time and he reached the floor level. He hurried over to the guard station where he heard the bustle and shouting of the entire Layer force assemble in the lamp-lit buildings.

He wasn’t there to witness the fight, so he went towards the entrance of the staircase to the other Layers. Someone would have to be an idiot to stay there. Xander, he would stay safe and hopefully River would be too. So, by the end of the night, everything should be okay.

The wide metallic entrance greeted Xander once again, but this time, Grant wasn’t there to see him. He wasn’t among those that had assembled earlier, so Xander held out hope. Even if it meant that Grant wouldn’t find whatever peace was to him, it would be better if he was alive. That was the only thing that mattered. Being alive, that was enough, wasn’t it?

He stared wistfully.

They had stopped chasing him and no more Desire Lines (he had found it easier to call them that) appeared around him. All that was in his eyes was the entrance. The dropped item that was on the ground was in front of him, a book of some kind. Something about it was awfully familiar for some reason.

He picked up the book even though he was in a hurry, some itch in his brain told him that it was of vital importance. On the front cover of the book was a picture of a pipe and water flowing through it. Some of the pages were crumpled and folded, and some ink stains were found on the spine of the book.

It suddenly seemed as though the world was going to freeze for Xander.

“River!”

He glanced towards the guard station carefully. There were guards there, a platoon of about fifteen or so men dressed in black and green, radiating through the night. Each of them had their hand on a gun of some kind in their pocket or a green gemmed ring or necklace around them. The lights illuminating the guards made it seem like a funeral.

Unfortunately, for the guards who were readying themselves up for war, they were painted over in Xander’s eyes with a disgusting red.

In actuality, a seventy by fifty red rectangle had appeared surrounding the guards.

It had, in fact, covered the entire guard station, like a rogue god had shifted its eyes and decided to condone evil. The progeny of bloodshed had appeared and River was in the middle of it.