31. Between Worlds
31
BETWEEN WORLDS
~KNOX~
I 'm dreaming.
At least, I think I'm dreaming. I must be, because suddenly I'm a kid again—gangly limbs and knobby knees, hands too small to wrap around the devices I'd later learn to manipulate with such precision. The darkness surrounds me, not the comfortable darkness of night but something oppressive and thick, as if reality itself has been obscured by some cosmic filter.
Gunshots echo in the distance, their percussion oddly muffled yet unmistakable. I've heard that sound too many times in my life to misidentify it, even in this strange dreamscape. Violence surrounds me, yet I feel strangely disconnected from it all, as if watching a movie of someone else's nightmare.
I'm cold—the bone-deep chill that comes from fear rather than temperature—but curiously, it doesn't seem to matter. My body acknowledges the sensation without responding to it, without the typical physiological reactions of shivering or seeking warmth.
I look down at my hands, turning them over to examine palms that are smoother than they've been in decades, unmarked by the scars and calluses of a life spent building, breaking, and rebuilding the world through technological manipulation. These are a child's hands, untested, unproven.
What have I done to make myself feel this way in the world of chaos that surrounds me? To create this strange dissociation between mind and body, between perception and reaction? Am I dead? Is this what death feels like—this curious detachment, this observational quality without the urgency of participation?
Something clings to me from behind, small arms wrapping around my waist with desperate intensity. I turn, already knowing what I'll find before my eyes confirm it.
A little girl with mismatched eyes that mirror my own—one blue, one green, genetic markers of the mutation we share along with too many secrets and not enough happy memories. Her white hair—not blonde, not platinum, but the pure absence of pigment that makes her look like a ghost even in full daylight—glimmers with impossible luminescence despite the darkness surrounding us.
"Brother? You're not going to leave me, are you?" she asks, voice small and frightened, tears welling in those distinctive eyes that have always been too old for her face.
I frown in confusion, trying to recall when I agreed to leave her, what conversation or decision preceded this moment of apparent abandonment. We made a pact long ago, Sera and I—to always protect each other, to never leave the other behind no matter what horrors the world threw at us. Why would she think I'd break that covenant now?
Before I can formulate a response, the scene shifts around us. The abstract darkness dissolves, replaced by the concrete reality of a rain-soaked forest. The gunshots are no longer distant but immediate, punctuating the storm's fury with man-made violence that shatters the natural rhythm of thunder and rainfall.
What I'm witnessing makes no logical sense, defies the basic rules of perception and existence that have governed my understanding of reality since childhood. Yet it unfolds before me with the perfect clarity of undeniable truth.
I'm watching myself die.
My body—my actual adult body—lies motionless on the forest floor, rain pelting against skin that has taken on the gray-blue tinge of oxygen deprivation. Sera kneels beside it—beside me—performing chest compressions with the desperate intensity of someone fighting a battle they know they're losing.
It's a total mind fuck, because it's surely happening in real time, and yet I'm watching it somehow—a consciousness without a vessel, an observer no longer tethered to the physical form that has defined my existence for thirty-four years.
Is this an out-of-body experience? Some neurological phenomenon triggered by the brain's final desperate attempt to make sense of its own extinction? Or is it something more—genuine separation of consciousness from physical form, proof of the soul's existence beyond mere biological functions?
The philosophical implications are fascinating, would normally send my mind racing down rabbit holes of possibility and analysis. But my attention is drawn elsewhere, captured by movement at the periphery of this impossible vision.
I turn my head slowly, disembodied perception responding to commands as if still connected to physical form. The motion brings into focus a blur of color—sunset hair of flames, the distinctive ombre of red, orange, and yellow belonging to one person who comes to mind in this moment of utter confusion.
VespRose. Jessica. Venom. Nightshade.
The Omega who's suddenly become the center of our world, the axis around which our fractured pack has begun to orbit despite her resistance, despite our own conflicted feelings about what she represents and what she might become to us.
She moves like a force of nature, like vengeance personified. Firing, ducking, spinning, each motion flowing into the next with the deadly grace that first caught my attention when reviewing surveillance footage of her activities in Dead Knot. But this is different—there's a raw quality to her movements now, a desperate intensity that transcends the calculated violence she typically employs.
Bullets tear through the space around her, several finding their mark despite her evasive maneuvers. I can see the impact, see the way her body jerks with each hit, blood blossoming across black fabric in stains invisible to normal sight but somehow perfectly clear to my current perception.
Yet nothing seems to stop her. Each injury only fuels her further, driving her forward with the unstoppable momentum of someone who has transcended pain, transcended normal human limitations in service to something greater than mere survival.
She's screaming—not from fear but from rage, from pain transformed into action. Tears stream down her flushed cheeks, mingling with rain and blood to create rivers of emotion made manifest across skin that has witnessed too much suffering for one lifetime.
The sight is both terrifying and beautiful, like watching a hurricane or a wildfire—destructive yet somehow perfect in its raw expression of nature's most fundamental forces. I find myself wishing I could capture this moment, preserve it somehow—not the violence itself, but the purity of her essence revealed through the crucible of combat.
The thought triggers a memory, a fragment of identity I'd nearly forgotten in the chaos of my current existence. I used to paint. To draw. To create visual representations of the world as I saw it, as I wished it could be. Long before I discovered the elegant violence of code, the mathematical precision of digital destruction, I found solace in the simple act of brush against canvas, pencil against paper.
Simple things. Human things. Moments of peace and creation that counterbalanced the destruction I witnessed and eventually learned to inflict. When did I stop? When did the digital world become so all-consuming that I abandoned that fundamental piece of myself, that connection to something tangible and real?
The realization hits with peculiar timing—if what I'm witnessing is true, if the body on the forest floor has truly ceased functioning, then I'm dead. These thoughts of what might have been, of abandoned passions and forgotten joys, are merely the final synaptic firings of a brain shutting down, the cosmic joke of understanding what you've lost only when it's permanently beyond recovery.
I don't want to accept this. Don't want to believe that my story ends here, in mud and rain and violence, without the opportunity to reclaim those abandoned pieces of myself. Without the chance to see what might develop between Jessica and our pack, between Jessica and me specifically. Without discovering what comes next in a life that has never lacked for excitement but has perhaps been missing something more fundamental.
As if responding to my unspoken rebellion, I feel a pull—not physical, since I currently lack physical form, but something equally tangible. A tether drawing me back toward the body on the ground, toward Sera's increasingly desperate efforts to restart a heart that has forgotten its purpose.
But I resist, fought by the fear that Jessica will perish if I'm not here to witness, to somehow help despite my current incorporeal limitations. She's outnumbered, injured, fighting against odds that would overwhelm even someone of her exceptional capabilities.
I have to go back. Not just for myself, not just for Sera, but for her—for the flame-haired Omega who's carving her way through enemies with nothing but fury and determination and the desperate need to protect what's hers.
The thought crystallizes into certainty, into a command that transcends the normal boundaries between thought and action. I need to return. I choose to return.
Like a slap to the face, reality crashes back with painful intensity. A gasping breath tears through my throat, the simple act of inhaling transformed into agony as broken ribs shift beneath damaged skin. I'm coughing, choking, my body desperately trying to expel whatever toxin infiltrated my system and stopped my heart.
I know this sensation—the particular quality of pain that comes from CPR performed correctly, with enough force to restart a heart but at the cost of structural integrity. My sister has broken at least two of my ribs in her efforts to bring me back, and while the pain is excruciating, it's also welcome. Pain means life. Means I've returned to the world of the living, of consequence and possibility.
Gentle hands roll me onto my side, the position allowing gravity to assist as I vomit what feels like half the fluid in my body. Blood mingles with bile, the metallic taste confirming what I'd suspected—whatever poison was in the academic building affected me more severely than it should have. My psychiatric medications, the carefully calibrated chemical cocktail that keeps me functioning within acceptable parameters of sanity, must have interacted with the toxin, amplifying its effects to lethal levels.
Mental note: reevaluate medication regimen to avoid future potentially fatal interactions with unknown chemical agents. Perhaps discuss with Marcus the possibility of alternative treatments that wouldn't leave me so vulnerable to this specific attack vector.
I force my eyes open despite the rain pelting against my face, despite the bone-deep exhaustion that tells me unconsciousness would be the kinder choice. My vision is blurred, unfocused, but I strain to see beyond the immediate surroundings, searching for that distinctive hair, that unstoppable force that occupied my thoughts even in the liminal space between life and death.
"Vesp... Vesp... Rose," I manage to rasp, the nickname emerging in broken syllables as I fight to form words with a throat ravaged by poison and vomit. I need to see her, need confirmation that she's survived, that my journey back to the living wasn't in vain.
Movement in the distance catches my attention—a flash of silver hair, the distinctive broad shoulders that could only belong to Marcus. He's dropping to his knees in the mud several yards away, movements carrying the urgent precision that speaks of crisis response rather than simple fatigue.
Bastian appears next, massive frame moving with unexpected speed as he too drops beside whatever—whoever—has captured their attention. His hands begin the same rhythmic motion Sera's performed on me minutes earlier, the distinctive cadence of CPR unmistakable even through rain and distance and my own compromised vision.
The realization hits like another death blow. Jessica is there. Jessica is the one they're trying to revive. Jessica has fallen.
Panic surges through me, adrenaline temporarily overriding the toxin's lingering effects as I struggle to rise. I need to help. Need to be there. Need to contribute whatever skills or knowledge I possess to ensure she survives this just as I have.
"Rook! Brother's in trouble but so is the girl. The Omega." Sera's voice cuts through my single-minded determination, drawing my attention to another figure approaching through the trees—Rook, moving with the deadly efficiency that characterizes him in crisis situations.
He assesses the scene in seconds, gaze moving from me to the distant tableau where Marcus and Bastian work to resurrect our fallen Omega.
"Marcus and Bastian will help her," he states, the certainty in his voice brooking no argument despite the obvious concern in his expression. "I'll be useless if I go there. We need to get your brother and you out of here."
"But—" Sera begins to protest, clearly torn between her responsibility to me and her desire to help the others.
"No buts," Rook interrupts, his tone shifting from concern to command. "Follow. Now!"
The force of Alpha authority in his voice silences further objection, though I can see the conflict on my sister's face as she complies. Part of me wants to countermand his order, to insist we all converge on Jessica's position, to bring every resource we possess to bear on the problem of her survival.
But the rational part of my brain—the part that calculates probabilities and analyzes tactical situations even when the rest of me is failing—acknowledges the wisdom in his decision. Marcus and Bastian are already there, already providing whatever assistance is possible. Adding more bodies without additional skills or resources would only complicate the situation, potentially delaying treatment or evacuation.
Still, as Rook's strong arms lift me from the mud, as Sera gathers our scattered weapons with the efficiency born from years of similar situations, I find my gaze drawn inexorably back to where Jessica lies. The distance is too great, the rain too heavy to make out details, but I can see the urgency in Marcus's movements, the controlled precision with which Bastian performs compressions.
They're fighting for her life with the same determination Sera showed in fighting for mine. The same refusal to accept death as the final answer, the same stubborn insistence that fate and biology and circumstance must bend to the force of their will.
If anyone can bring her back from that threshold, it's those two—Marcus with his decades of experience cheating death, Bastian with his unshakable composure in the face of catastrophe. They are the bedrock of our pack, the foundation upon which the rest of us have built our fractured existence.
Yet fear remains, cold and insistent beneath the pain and confusion. What if this time it's not enough? What if Jessica has crossed too far beyond the boundaries of survival, has lost too much blood, sustained too much damage? What if I've returned only to witness her departure, to experience the cosmic cruelty of ships passing in the metaphorical night?
The darkness pulls at me again, consciousness slipping despite my desperate attempt to remain aware, to maintain some connection to the unfolding drama. The poison still circulating in my system combines with physical trauma and emotional exhaustion to create an irresistible tide drawing me back toward oblivion.
As reality fades once more, strange thoughts surface from the chaotic soup of my mind—not of death or violence or revenge, but of peace. Of quiet afternoons spent in sunlight rather than shadow, of brushes against canvas capturing the precise shade of Jessica's flame-colored hair, of her scent surrounding me as I create rather than destroy.
It's an oddly specific fantasy, a dream of domestic tranquility that should seem absurd given our circumstances, given who and what we are. Yet it feels right somehow, feels possible in a way few things have in the endless parade of violence and calculation that has defined my existence for so long.
I want that future. Want the chance to see if such impossible peace might exist, might be created through the unlikely combination of four broken Alphas and one even more damaged Omega finding something in each other that the world has consistently denied them individually.
The thought follows me into unconsciousness, a beacon of possibility in the encroaching darkness, a promise I hope I live long enough to see fulfilled.