The slate-grey aura violently retracted back into my skin, snapping out of existence.
My physical body swayed. My lungs were burning, pulling in desperate, ragged gasps of the ozone-heavy air. The Alter was still in the driver's seat, but his immaculate, arrogant posture was gone. He was hunched over, his right hand gripping the acid-burned, shredded silk of my left shoulder.
*The density,* my Alter gasped internally, his mental voice entirely stripped of its Beverly Hills polish. He sounded like a man who had just tried to bench-press a minivan. *Metabolizing your apathy to create that gravity well... it is like trying to breathe underwater. How do you live with this psychological weight every single day?*
"You get used to it," I replied from the dark, quiet passenger seat of my own mind. "And for the record, we are still weaklings. You didn't ascend to godhood. You just figured out how to make the garbage heavier. You didn't turn us into a garbage truck."
*I optimized our output,* my Alter snapped back, though he was too exhausted to project any real venom. *It was a necessary, localized evolution.*
Dulci took a hesitant step toward us, her yellow kinetic aura flickering off as the threat of the swarm faded. The asphalt around me was an absolute massacre of crushed, oozing insectoid chitin.
"Doc," Dulci began, her eyes darting to the fresh blood staining my torn shirt. "I don't know what kind of consultant you are, but—"
The deafening shriek of air-raid sirens cut her off.
We didn't have time to process the aftermath. The sky above the industrial district suddenly filled with the roar of heavy thrusters. Three massive, matte-black Anomaly Task Force drop-ships descended through the grey clouds, their repulsor engines blasting the acidic remnants of the Dezonic Wasps across the pavement.
"Task Force!" a mercenary yelled from the mouth of the alley. "Drop your auras! Weapons safe!"
The street was instantly flooded with heavily armored operatives. Kinetic-dampening rifles were raised and locked onto every single person standing in the kill zone.
*Helian,* my Alter warned, a spike of genuine alarm cutting through his fatigue. *We have to switch. You need to drop the apathy shield and become the void. I cannot fight a militarized battalion right now.*
"Absolutely not," I ordered from the passenger seat, my analytical mind running the grim, terrifying calculus of the grid. "Do not drop the Ego. Do not switch with me."
*Are you insane?!* my Alter panicked as the operatives closed in. *If they scan me, they will register a cognitive flare! We will be detained!*
"If you drop the Ego, we become a thermodynamic void," I countered coldly. "Look around you, Freud. We are standing in the direct center of a crater filled with two hundred crushed interdimensional predators. If the Task Force scans a man standing in a pile of dead monsters and he registers as a complete, biological blank, they aren't going to arrest us. They are going to bag us, tag us, and dissect us in a black site to figure out what kind of anomaly we are. In this city, citizens have Egos. You have to stay in the driver's seat. You have to be a person."
The Alter hesitated, the terrifying logic of my argument sinking in.
"Hands on your heads! Do not manifest!" the lead operative roared through his helmet's external speakers, shoving a mercenary against the brick wall and snapping kinetic binders onto his wrists.
"You wanted to be the geometric authority," I whispered in the dark of our shared skull. "Now you get to do the paperwork. Keep your mouth shut, act like a traumatized civilian, and let them process us."
*I am wearing a shredded silk waistcoat covered in bug acid,* my Alter hissed, deeply offended by the indignity of it all. *I look like a vagrant.*
"Welcome to the real world," I deadpanned.
Two heavily armored operatives flanked us. My Alter didn't fight back. He slowly raised my trembling, bleeding hands and interlaced his fingers behind my head. The operatives kicked his feet apart, patted him down, and violently slapped a pair of heavy, glowing kinetic-dampening cuffs onto my wrists.
The cuffs instantly suppressed the Alter's connection to the physical world. A sharp, localized headache pierced my temples as the Ego was forcibly shoved down into the baseline human nervous system.
"Class-D kinetic registered," one of the operatives grunted, scanning the barcode on the cuffs. "Get him in the transport."
My Alter was shoved roughly toward the back of an armored transport vehicle. He stumbled, my exhausted legs barely keeping him upright. They hauled him into the dark, cramped interior and forced him onto a hard metal bench.
A moment later, Dulci was shoved into the seat across from him. Her hands were bound in yellow-glowing kinetic cuffs, specially calibrated for speedsters to prevent them from vibrating through the metal.
She looked at my Alter. My Alter looked back, his face a perfect mask of aristocratic irritation, though he was secretly terrified.
"Well, Ms. Lace," my Alter said aloud, adopting the arrogant, flawless drawl of Dr. Aristdale. "I must say, your choice of meeting venues leaves much to be desired. The ambiance was aggressive, and the clientele was entirely unhygienic."
Dulci just stared at him, shaking her head. "You're either the coolest man under pressure I've ever met, Doc, or you have absolute brain damage. We're going to Division 4."
* * *
Division 4 Headquarters was a sprawling, brutalist nightmare of reinforced plas-crete and black kinetic-absorbing plating. It was the exact building I had stared at just an hour ago—the fortress built directly opposite the geographic coordinates of my parallel dimension therapy office.
My Alter was marched through the sterile, aggressively lit subterranean corridors of the precinct. The air smelled of industrial bleach and suppressed terror.
He was shoved into a small, windowless interrogation room. The heavy steel door locked behind him with a resonant, final *clank*. The room contained a single steel table, two bolted chairs, and a biometric scanning terminal.
My Alter sat in the chair. His posture was rigid. He was bleeding onto the stainless steel.
*This is a blatant violation of our civil liberties,* the Alter complained internally, his narcissism deeply offended by the lack of amenities. *There isn't even a glass of water.*
"You're a criminal anomaly sitting in a totalitarian police station," I reminded him from the passenger seat. "Don't ask to speak to a manager. Just remember the fake identity you bought this morning."
The steel door opened.
It wasn't Lance Cromwell. The shadow-wielding Senior Investigator was likely busy hunting the "ghost." The man who walked in was a low-level, exhausted municipal bureaucrat holding a glowing data-pad. He was wearing a cheap brown suit, his eyes shadowed by deep, purple bags of chronic fatigue.
"Dr. Helian Aristdale," the bureaucrat droned, not even looking up from his pad. He sat across the table. "You were detained at the site of a Class-D dimension laceration in the industrial sector. You are currently bleeding. Do you require immediate medical suppression?"
"I require an itemized receipt for the damages to my suit," my Alter replied smoothly, leaning forward. "I was merely walking to a hardware store to purchase climate control equipment when the dimensional fabric failed. I am a licensed cognitive consultant. I am the victim of negligent environmental zoning."
The bureaucrat finally looked up, his eyes dull and lifeless. He tapped a button on the table. The heavy kinetic cuffs binding my wrists unlocked with a loud *clack* and fell to the table.
"Place your hands flat on the biometric scanner," the bureaucrat ordered. "We need to log your Ego baseline for the official incident report, and verify your Guild identification."
*Here we go,* I whispered internally. *Don't overdo it. Just give them a baseline.*
My Alter placed my palms flat against the cold glass of the scanner built into the table.
"Manifest," the bureaucrat commanded.
My Alter took a slow breath. He pushed past the physical exhaustion and summoned the Ego.
But it wasn't the blinding, surgical-white light of pure, unadulterated Authority anymore. The synthesis with my profound depression had permanently altered the psychological architecture of our output. The aura that bled from my skin was dense, heavy, and a dull, oppressive slate-grey. It pulsed with a sluggish, reluctant rhythm.
The scanner hummed, a red laser sweeping over my hands.
The bureaucrat looked down at his data-pad. "Identity confirmed. Dr. Helian Aristdale. Independent psychiatric practice registered in Sector Four. Ego classification: Class-D Kinetic-Cognitive. Sub-variant: Gravitational."
*A Class-D, you claimed you are a god, Freud* I mocked internally.
*It is a very respectable class,* my Alter defended, withdrawing my hands as the slate-grey aura faded. *We simply optimized our density. Growth is a marathon, Helian, not a sprint.*
"Your file is clean, Doctor," the bureaucrat said, his voice completely devoid of interest. He tapped a few more buttons. "You are not registered as a combatant, but your localized gravitational output is within the legal parameters for self-defense during a spontaneous laceration event. You are cleared of all breach-related charges."
My Alter stood up, adjusting his ruined, acid-burned collar with whatever dignity he had left.
"However," the bureaucrat added, looking up with a dead, hollow stare. "Your proximity to the anomaly triggered a secondary flag in our system. You are an independent contractor operating outside the Pharmacological Guilds."
My Alter froze.
"The Armsterwhite Syndicate has filed a grievance regarding your newly registered business license," the bureaucrat recited, reading directly from a corporate memo. "They claim your 'high-yield Ego integration' violates their sector monopoly on somatic stabilization. I am legally required to inform you that operating an unlicensed medical practice will result in an audit."
"I have a degree," my Alter stated haughtily, relying on his dark-web forgery.
"Degrees do not matter to the Syndicate, Doctor," the bureaucrat sighed, rubbing his tired eyes. "Pay your Guild dues. Or close your practice. If you don't, the Task Force won't be the ones kicking down your door next time. You are free to go."
My Alter turned and walked out of the interrogation room, stepping back into the sterile, heavily policed corridor.
*Well,* my Alter murmured in my mind as we navigated the maze of the precinct, heading for the civilian exit. *That was humiliating. But we survived. Our fake identity held up to police scrutiny. We are officially in the system.*
"Yeah," I replied from the passenger seat, my eyes tracking the armored guards passing us in the hall. "But now the cops know we exist. The Dawn Queen knows we exist. And the Armsterwhite Syndicate is probably trying to shut us down."
We reached the heavy glass doors of the precinct lobby.
Just as my Alter reached out to push the door open, a tall, gaunt figure in a crisp black trench coat stepped out of a private elevator twenty feet to our left.
My Alter froze. I stopped breathing.
It was Lance Cromwell.
He was holding a cup of black coffee, walking toward the secure archives. His face was identical to the mental polaroid I had taken in the café. And dragging behind him on the polished linoleum floor, moving with the jagged, terrifying fluidity of spilled ink, was his two-dimensional proxy shadow.
The shadow suddenly stopped.
It didn't have a face, but its featureless head slowly turned, 'looking' directly across the lobby at my back.
It remembered the smell of the void.