“I’ve never seen anything like this before, Josh. Never. Not even with a real mark.” Margot muttered with her eyes locked on the incomplete mark on Josh’s arm.

“Is that bad?” Josh asked, nervous.

Margot gave the mark another careful examination before returning it to Josh’s control. “There’s a lot going on here. But at the roots… this doesn’t bode well. A mark isn’t supposed to extend this far, and I can tell it's a mark because I see what I see with every other mark. You said it was a spiral pattern for you, but I still see my blot pattern. It’s roughed up, but it’s there. And there’s a reason that our marks only extend the length of our forearms.”

“Are you going to tell me that reason?” Josh was hesitant to ask, but Margot had stopped talking.

“Sush.” Margot hissed. “I’m trying to figure out how to explain this to you. There’s a lot of background that you don’t have yet that I would have to skip over to explain what I need to.”

After another awkward pause, Sara asked something from across the kitchen island—where they were all gathered around—that scared Josh more than anything argot was saying. “If you’ve decided that this is the path you want to take we could start from the beginning and explain everything. But only if that’s what you want… is it what you want?”

“I—I still don’t know.” Josh stammered. “I don’t think I’m ever going to forget what I’ve seen. It’s burned into my memory. But from what you’ve all said, it sounds like it would completely change my life forever.”

Connor chimed in, calm and straightforward as always. “I don’t think you can avoid that at this point.”

“Hold on, I think I’ve got it.” Margot held out a hand to stop her students from goading Josh any further. “Josh. I’m not going to tell you everything, because you can still change your mind and decide to leave us behind, but I’m going to tell you enough. Just the important things. Is that okay?”

“Just do it. At this point, I’m damned if I do damned if I don’t.”

“Right. At the most basic, all marks are a symbol of power taken from a point outside of reality. And I know that’s a lot to take in, but that’s the biggest thing you’ll have to wrap your head around. Think of it like… a pond. There’s a leaf floating in the water. That leaf is everything you know; everything on earth, the stars and planets and everything in space is contained within that leaf. And then there’s the water, just a surface for our leaf and others to float on and through. It’s hard to explain the water, but it’s there. And all the leaves on the surface, floating around, those are little pockets of reality created by happenstance or intelligence. They can look and behave differently, but outside of them there’s nothing.”

Confronted with a sudden metaphysical discussion, Josh silently pressed his fingertips into his neck and began to massage it. He would have pressed them into his forehead and taken the bonus of hiding his face but the gash in his head was still too fresh for that.

Margot leaned down to make eye contact with Josh, mostly to make sure he wasn’t dissociating. “I’m going to keep talking, but you can tell me to stop at any time, and I can come back to some topics, but things are about to get simpler. Okay?”

“Keep going.” Josh said, shaking his head in disbelief. But the image of the indigo bubbles on the invisible placid surface in his first dream came to mind and he couldn’t deny the similarity.

“Okay.” Margot sat back up and held her hands out in front of her to assist her in speaking. The more gestures she made, the more confident she felt about her explanation. “These marks, the ones that we have and you are copying somehow, come from a different leaf in that metaphor. But one that is stuck on the one that contains the world as you know it. Though, more accurately, this one we are in now was placed intentionally over the one the marks come from. So they are floating through the void in tandem. And the marks, when they are part of us, let us bring some of that power from that other world here.”

Margot stopped there. Josh wasn’t sure if that was the end of her explanation or if she was waiting for him to ask a question. It was awkward for a moment, Josh realized, as all other eyes in the room were focused on him and all he could do was look down at his arm and try to puzzle out how any of what he had just heard could make sense.

“Why don’t your marks go past the forearm, then?” Josh asked, remembering the initial question that had prompted this explanation.

“This world can only tolerate so much, and these marks defy the rules of this reality. They are confined to just a small part of our body to limit their influence. If we tried to bring more power from that other world to here, either by expanding our marks or changing them altogether, there’s a good chance it could damage us or the world around us in terrifying and unpredictable ways.”

“It would take more energy too… wouldn’t it.” Josh mumbled. “Make me feel so exhausted that I could barely keep my eyes open?”

“I’m not sure if your lack of energy is because of the size or the haphazard nature of your mark.” Margot bit her lip as she paused to better explain where the distinction was. “You see, an active mark is almost like a battery, it fuels the owner in various ways. It doesn’t take energy to use because it gives energy to use. But that’s when one is passed down legitimately. You’ve made your own, and I have no idea how.”

“Well, someone made the first mark, right?” Sara asked, her own curiosity pushing her on to take over the questioning. “So, why wouldn’t Josh be able to make his own?”

“Or any of us.” Connor added. “Why aren’t there more marks out there for that matter?”

“I wish I knew.” Was all Margot could say in response.

A moment of silent passed as all four individuals at the table pondered what they had learned. Margot thought on how Josh’s incomplete mark could have possibly occurred. Sara and Connor pondered what making a mark from nothing would require. Josh sat and thought about the state his body was in; it felt decrepit and worn, drained of life almost as if he had been the victim of a vampire attack. And as Josh looked down at his arm, his eyes traced the pattern of the mark and then the outlines of the blotches of skin that didn’t match his.

“What about the rest of this?” Josh mumbled his question. It was loud enough to be heard, but devoid of all confidence. “Where the skin doesn’t match.”

“If I had to wager, that has to do with a different part of being marked”—Margot was beginning to fidget uncomfortably, twisting her fingers through her short dark hair—”called a reset. It’s an opportunity for people with marks to reinvent themselves. Once a mark activates, it leads you to the other world and the nature of that other world allows you to change who you are on a physical level through your mark. Most people become who they feel they really are, or who they want to be. And it is something of a perpetual process, but most don’t really spend too much time changing themselves after the first time. When you do it, it feels like it’s an instinct that guides you. Most people consider their reset bodies a result of fate.”

What Margot was describing was not at all the sort of explanation that Josh was expecting. Not even what he had expected a reset to be. He’d heard her use the term, and guessed that she had been talking about the discoloration in the same context, but what she had just described was beyond anything that Josh was prepared to hear or process internally.

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“Stop.” Josh hadn’t wanted to invoke his privilege to stop the explanation, but he had to get over what a reset was first. Somehow, it was a much bigger hurdle than the leaves in the pond. “You’re going to need to start over on resets. That sounds… impossible.”

To Josh’s surprise it was Connor that accepted his invitation to start the topic over. “Here, maybe. But in the other world, things are a little more fluid. Focused thoughts have about as much power as… well, this.”

Connor lifted a cup off the kitchen island and put it back down in demonstration.

“How would you know?” Josh narrowed his eyes at Connor.

His testimonial was suspicious. Connor didn’t have an active mark and clearly had never been to this other world, if it even existed. But he spoke as if he already knew how the process worked and what the other world was like.

“Sorry. You're right... I haven’t actually been there, but I’ve learned as much as I can; I pestered Margot about it for years before I got my mark. It’s been the biggest focus of my life ever since I found out it was possible.” Connor looked a bit sheepish for once. “Being able to reset my body is something that I’ve wanted my entire life.”

Seeing Connor at the kitchen island, surrounded by things he couldn’t have because of his dietary restrictions, and hearing him phrase his desire as he had, made it click for Josh. Of course Connor would want a reset, he could hardly eat anything. Josh had really only see him eat a few very specific types of fruit, chicken, beef, rice, and a few very specific vegetables. Having the opportunity to enjoy the things that all the people around you did was something Josh would have leapt at in a heartbeat if he’d been offered it.

“Right.” Josh whispered, mostly to himself. It didn’t remove the suspicion entirely, but it did remove the suspicion he had of Connor. “So how does resetting play into what’s happening to my arm?”

“I think… think, not know, that maybe it is a fated change for you.” Margot let out a long sigh as she paused. “If you choose to receive a mark, and it becomes active, and you are given the chance to reset, you will probably feel drawn towards whatever appearance and form is already creeping through this false mark.”

“If that time ever comes… I’ll have a choice though… right?” Josh didn’t like the idea that maybe his body was turning into something else and he had lost control.

“Of course you’ll have a choice, it’s an active process. You wouldn’t even need to go through a reset if you didn’t want to. It’s just that most people do.” Margot waved away the concern easily, but then tacked on, “Not that most people dislike their appearance or hate certain things about themselves they want to change. Its just that your body feels... different after you have an active mark.”

“So, this is safe?” Josh’s hand went instinctively to his arm and his fingers pressed up against one of the discolored spots.

“No. Like I said before I started explaining things, this doesn’t bode well. What you are experiencing is probably too much for your body to handle.” Margot had a pained smile on her face as she suggested her solution. “We should remove it.”

It was what Josh had expected since before he’d gone in the apartment and started talking. He had known that removing the mark somehow would probably be the safest choice. He still wanted to test it, if at all possible, to see if the dreams would stop if he left it on. But if it was going to hurt him to have this defective mark on his arm, it would be best not to experiment.

The trouble was, however, that the mark didn’t seem to be coming off quite so easily as it had before. The first mark that Josh had woken up with had peeled like the dry and flaky dead skin that shows up after a sunburn. This mark seemed to be more attached to Josh’s skin. When he pulled his sleeve up, he could see the point where the mark ended at his shoulder and he could feel the skin itching with discomfort at the false mark and all that it brought with it. It was a little unnerving to have everyone watching as Josh began to pick at and peel away the mark, but they were fascinated. Even as Josh managed to find a lip in his skin that began to peel away a large chunk of the top layer where the mark was, Sara and Connor and Margot were leaning in closer to see how it was working.

Unfortunately, as Josh began to remove the very top layer of the skin on his arm where the mark had made its home, it began to seethe with pain. Unlike the dry peel of the previous mark, this was a wetter peel; akin to the dead skin that covers blisters and calluses. Josh wasn’t quite ripping his skin off, as it offered little resistance. But it hurt like hell.

“I can’t do it. It…” Josh continued to peel, even as he objected. “I feel like I’m bleeding.”

There was no blood, as Sara announced after a close inspection. But she stayed close and offered to hold on to Josh’s left hand so that he had something to squeeze in response to the pain. And that helped, until Josh had made it down to his bicep and the peeling skin had formed almost a sleeve of its own as it came off.

“I can get you a belt to bite down on, if you want?” Connor asked, his face going a little green at the sight of what was happening.

Josh nodded and Connor disappeared quickly, eager to be out of sight of the display. He came back just as quickly as he'd left, as the morbid curiosity of what was unfolding around him was too much to ignore. He didn’t return to the position he’d had before though. After he handed the belt to Josh, Connor moved to a much less direction viewing position.

Josh bit down on the folded up leather belt and began to remove more of the marked skin, letting out muffled groans of pain as he did so. When he saw Sara’s eyes start to wander over to the alcohol cabinet, Josh shook his head no and squeezed her hand tighter. The squeeze was answered and the pressure on his arm was comforting enough to let him continue.

When he made it to the elbow, however, things became much much worse. Josh had more hair on his forearms and the hairs all slipped through the layer of skin that was being pulled free. The feeling was nauseating, as each hair follicle received a tug and Josh could feel the skin slide over the hair as the strength which which it pulled varied. It was at that point, Josh looked pleadingly to Margot.

Margot understood. She had been in similar situations before, generally much worse ones. Situations where there were three or four people in a tent in the middle of nowhere with a half stocked medical kit and a man with a bullet in his leg. Margot knew the look. She stood up and positioned herself behind Josh and grappled him in place so that he couldn’t move his head or torso. Josh let go of Sara’s hand, grabbed the connected sleeve of dead skin, and pulled as hard as he could like he was ripping off a rubber glove.

The whole mark came off, leaving Josh’s arm raw and red and a little damp from subcutaneous sweat and small specks of blood that had begun to leak out of the pores in his skin. Josh screamed as the skin came off in a near perfect glove of his arm, spitting out the belt from the shear force of his voice. It was a high pitched shriek. Connor went pale and turned as he began to gag. Sara had had her eyes squeezed shut in anticipation of what she had known was about to happen, and opened them when she’d heard the scream. Margot didn’t let go until Josh dropped the skin on the floor and managed to get a few gasps of air into his mouth.

“Go lie down, I’ll get some aloe.” Margot muttered into Josh’s ear in a gentle and reassuring voice. “Just lie down.”

There was no objection from Josh. His eyes were wet with tears and he was breathing hard. His whole arm felt like an open wound as he collapsed on the kitchen floor. Still awake, still in pain, but no longer as tired as he had been. No longer as deeply pained either. His insides felt like they had come back to an agreement at just the perfect time for a wave of pain induced nausea to flood him from head to gut. Thankfully Sara was already there with a small trashcan from the study to offer when Josh lurched up and began to vomit.

“There is something… so psychologically wrong with what just happened.” Connor murmured. “I feel like I just witnessed a murder.”

“Me too.” Sara said with a confused sigh. “But it was the right thing.”

“Yeah…” Connor agreed, though his tone didn’t. “How do you feel?”

“I feel… like a raw nerve.” Josh answered through gasped breathing. The taste of vomit was still fresh in his mouth and he didn’t dare move away from the trashcan.

Margot walked quickly back into the kitchen with gauze, a bottle of aloe vera, and a handful of cotton balls. “Hold still.” She ordered as she began to apply the aloe on Josh’s arm with the white wads of cotton. It stung like crazy, but Josh wasn’t about to move a muscle; both because he knew that moving his arm, especially bending it, would hurt much worse, and because he wasn’t about to disobey Margot’s order. The way she had said it made Josh feel like she knew exactly what she was doing, and she certainly carried out her task with the same attitude and efficiency. It wasn’t long before Josh’s whole arm was covered in soothing aloe gel and wrapped in a double layer of gauze. Even his fingers, which had lost a layer of skin in the final pull were obscured from his view under the bandaging.

“Thank you.” Josh muttered. “And if you don’t mind… I’d like to sleep on the bed tonight.”

“It’s all yours.” Margot chuckled.

Josh didn’t move after that. He’d passed out from the mixture of pain and exhaustion that had wrecked his body over the course of the night. And as the very first glints of morning light crept through the window of the penthouse, Margot and Connor carefully lifted Josh’s limp, unconscious body and laid him down on the bed in the guest room.