Regaining his composure was proving difficult. Mentally he kept wanting to refocus, but physically his body just kept trying to expel the last drops of water out of his airways. Finneas Allister tried to get his feet under him, then realized there was no solid ground to stand on, water glistening in the light underneath.

  The man in front of him was… walking on water. No, that wasn’t it. He was walking on air, not even making contact with the liquid surface. Still holding Finn by the arm, he carried him all the way to the edge of the lake. Or was it a pool, considering they were inside?

  His senses were beginning to tell him that since he was in some sort of giant building… facility? The walls were thick. Made of a hardened metallic substance that wasn’t quite metal. And beyond those walls were… more rooms, ones without lakes in them. Finn could sense the various types of equipment and other items he couldn’t identify with no context about where or what this place was.

  Hell, the stranger had said, but Finn obviously didn’t believe that. He wasn’t dead, after all. The pain was far too real for him to have been untangled from his mortal coil, discounting whatever that experience earlier was when he traveled to this location somehow.

  It seemed this building was big enough that his range quite literally could not encompass it wall to wall. It hadn’t even been able to encompass this room completely. It was huge. So big he didn’t have a hope of observing or understanding it all in what little time he had left before his body decided to give out for good. He felt out of his depth in every sense.

  A familiar feeling, by this point.

  If he felt this level of pain in his entire body when his latest mission started, he would be screaming his lungs out. Instead, he just felt relieved that the pain wasn’t half as bad as before. The water had cooled the burns, and that hyperreal agony he’d gone through in his short incorporeal venture was even worse than that. Now, the leftover adrenaline in his body was fading, giving way to the omnipresent aching which he found more manageable. That being said, it was also more noticeable now that the worse sensations had passed and he had little else to focus on.

  More flashes of pain lanced down his arm as he dangled in the air, his apparent savior holding him up just high enough not to touch the maybe-lake again while striding toward the door in the distance. Finn observed all of this with his power’s senses and his left eye. The right one couldn’t see much due to his cracked and distorted visor.

  How did he even get here? He remembered the explosion, him almost making it to Warp’s portal after Lyra involuntarily took the previous one, then being hit by the blast before something happened. He checked all over his person for what was different about him, and noticed how aside from his deteriorating condition, his body was the same.

  What differed was the crystal he’d stolen. Useless as it had seemed, he had all but forgotten about it until the last moment when he flooded it with his enhanced power in the hope that it would do something. And it had, seemingly. He strongly suspected it was responsible for sending him to this place. Really, he was sure of it. The way it had lost some of its radiance, as if in an inactive or dormant state, said it all. It had expended a “charge,” if he had to put a term to it. And now it was recharging.

  He tried to focus his colors deeper on the incomprehensible core, but all he got in return was a blaring headache that made him grit his teeth and squeeze his eyes shut. His power had been strained past the limit. Far past it, even. At the end, he had pushed more than he had ever thought possible. And it had saved him from instant death, at least.

  This strain was intense, though. He felt like a wrung-out old rag, squeezed for all its juice and tossed to the wayside. Any active use of his power was difficult to manage. Not impossible, but hard enough that each attempt forced him to brace himself for the discomfort that would accompany it.

  Was it the result of Casey’s enhancement, his own efforts, or both? It wasn’t like he could go back to ask, could he? Unless he managed to activate the crystal again. Alternatively, he could try to physically travel back there too, but he didn’t know if that was possible considering his ignorance about his location.

  None of that mattered, of course. Not if his death was mere hours away.

  The sensation was ever-present, that cold certainty creeping up in his spine that there was nothing he could do to make himself better and that any opportunity he might have had was gone. Destroyed, along with any delusions of a healer descending from the sky to restore him to full health. It was plain to see in his decaying cells. The poison, though slowed by some weird power interaction he didn’t understand, was set on killing him from within and he had no cure. No way to remove it, either.

  What was he supposed to do?

  He grit his teeth, thought about everyone he was leaving behind, and concluded that it was probably better if he couldn’t face them right now, when he was like this. A lump formed in his throat, heat building up in his chest as he forced down the feelings of helplessness, frustration and indignation at his circumstances.

  Were he to leave behind a corpse here, no one would know what his last thoughts were, so what purpose was there in whining to himself about the finality of Radi’s diagnosis, about the futility of his last-second save?

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

  Finn dismissed all unnecessary noise in his mind and honed in on the current moment. He needed to take action; everything else was irrelevant. What did he need, first and foremost? Information. To that end, there was someone who could help him.

  Turning his gaze from the surface of the water, he concentrated on what he could discern about this person. Weird clothing he didn’t recognize the style of. No footwear. Scars, distinct white lines that didn’t pull on the surrounding skin. And a robust body, similar to warrior types he’d seen yet also not.

  Surprisingly, there was internal damage. Injuries he couldn’t identify the cause of but ones he knew did not come from an ordinary weapon. Despite that, the man gave no sign of it in his walk, carrying Finn with minimal effort.

  His aura suggested he wasn’t faking it, the emotions therein were too tranquil, and he knew from experience it would be evident in his musculature as well.

  Wait… aura? How did this guy have an aura? There was only one other person he’d ever met who had one, and she was not here.

  “Had a long day?” asked the stranger, catching his stare. They reached dry land, and Finn got promptly dropped in the pale sand, aggravating his injuries and causing him to hiss.

  “...You could say that,” he forced out, not knowing why he was entertaining this small talk.

  “Tough,” was the response. “It’s about to get longer. A lot longer.”

  Turning on his side to get a burnt black glove under him, he pushed himself up with an elbow for a whole second before his arm gave out.

  “Pitiful,” the man observed coolly. “But since you’re still breathing, don’t start whining about rest. That’s not on the menu.”

  Rest to do what exactly? Finn wondered as he tried again to prop himself into a sitting position. “I don’t have time to waste. Who are you?” he demanded, panting.

  The man stared for a moment, his expression unreadable and his aura heavy and oppressive, like a storm building. “Gunther. And you are?”

  Clenching his jaw from the exertion, he managed to get his feet under him and stand, fishing around in his pocket for something he sorely needed. “Shade. Where are we?”

  “Names sorted. Great. Now we’re making progress,” said Gunther, sounding amused at the interaction. “As for where we are? We’re in a separate dimension, kid. Specifically, Wanderlust’s dimension. Try not to die before you figure out what that means.”

  Wanderlust’s dimension? That put him farther away from home than he’d feared. He hadn’t known much about Wanderlust besides him being the founder of Aegis, and it was Jack who’d gone digging and found out more about how this artificial dimension was now apparently notorious for being inescapable. Not a soul had made it out of this place after Wanderlust’s death. Ever.

  That left him with what? An unknown amount of distance between himself and the exit to this alternate world, if there was one in the first place. In addition to this unknown superhuman in front of him, who didn’t seem interested in letting him catch his breath. In a way, Finn appreciated the attitude. No coddling, no nonsense, just getting to the matter at hand. He found the small metal case and opened it to find the last capsule inside, and quickly injected it into a bit of exposed skin. That would buy him some time. “I need to get out of here.”

  Gunther watched Finn’s actions with a faint smirk, his gaze sharp as a blade. “Need to get out of here, huh? Sure, kid. Go ahead and tell the walls your big plan—maybe they’ll open up out of sheer pity. Or maybe you’ll realize, like the rest of us, that this place doesn’t let go without a fight.”

  “I am getting out of here,” he reaffirmed. “And what do you mean by ‘us?’ There are others?”

  Gunther shrugged. “There were.”

  “Did you kill them?” he asked bluntly.

  “No.”

  “Are you an Unbound?”

  After a pause, Gunther burst into laughter. “No.”

  Finn’s eyes narrowed. There was something weird about his answer. There was something weird about every reaction this person had, in fact, but this one especially. As if that was some hidden double meaning. And up until now, he hadn’t been able to put his finger on it, but after having talked, he was starting to understand what it was that seemed strange.

  When it came to auras, his sample size was laughably small. A grand total of two people. But of those two people, he had noticed the commonality in their auras. They both had that inscrutable mess overlapping their head, the one that gave off random fluctuations from Lyra that Finn hadn’t been able to interpret.

  With Gunther, however, it was clearer. The congregated aura blotch over his brain looked the same as hers, if a bit darker in color. What stood out was how synchronized it was. Every surge, every spike, it was all mirrored by that thing in his head. Finn had originally written it off as the subconscious mind, but that didn’t seem right anymore. And if it was correct, the implications were alarming. Was this guy fully in control of his own mind? Because if so, that sounded… powerful.

  Moreover, he didn’t even know anything about this person, he had to remember that. He suspected Gunther of being an Unbound, but aside from that he had no clue. He’d never heard of anyone by that name back on Earth, and he knew most of the big names. Of those heroes, not many except Noor showed their real face.

  Although, it was totally possible that he had met someone whose real name wasn’t known to the public, and he wouldn’t have ever found it out if not for the extenuating circumstances at play. In that case, it might be better to let sleeping dogs lie and not pry into what could be a secret identity.

  Shockingly, Gunther didn’t wait for him to finish his internal deliberation. The man, who looked less than a decade older than Finn, turned on his heel and began strolling in the direction of the gate. “Keep up. You can ask your questions while we move. Standing around flapping your gums won’t get you out of here.”

  He was right, Finn knew. No need to stand around. He needed to get out, and there was no point in waiting for his condition to get worse. He may have been on a timer, but he was going to do everything in his power to return home. Impossible odds be damned.

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