Lance didn't open the door.
The door opened to him.
No handle. No mechanism. Just a frame and a crack of impossibility yawning wider until the pressure in his skull whined and his fingers curled instinctively away.
Dani's voice was distant now—the real Dani—muffled like she was underwater, trying to reach him, but failing.
He leaned forward.
And fell through.
He hit the ground already sitting. Already in the store. Not the distorted, dead-eyed one from before, but clean. Bright. Late evening light bled across the linoleum tile. There was music playing overhead—jazz, cheap and soft and meaningless.
He blinked, and the body blinked with him.
He wasn't himself.
He was.
He looked down at his arms—steady, uninjured, confident. His hands weren't trembling. They adjusted a coat sleeve.
Not his coat.
He adjusted his weight lazily against the counter, like he'd been standing there for hours. Like he belonged there.
The bell over the door rang.
A woman burst in, wild-eyed and frantic, wearing a cocktail dress torn at the sleeve, her hair messy like she'd been running for hours.
Lance's breath caught in his throat. Not with shock.
With recognition.
She slammed the door behind her, locking it in three places with practiced hands, then turned, panting, cheeks flushed, adrenaline still behind her eyes. She didn't look around for help. She looked straight at him.
"There you are," she said, half-laughing with relief. "Told you I'd find you."
She crossed the distance and pulled him into a tight embrace, face burying into his chest like she'd done it a hundred times before. He could smell rain in her hair. Sweat. Gunpowder.
His body—this body—responded on reflex. Arms held her. His mouth spoke, smoothly.
"Was getting worried about you," he said, cool as silk. Rico's voice in his throat.
Dani smiled up at him like he was the world.
Something fractured behind his eyes.
This wasn't a vision. Wasn't hallucination.
He wasn't watching.
He was experiencing.
And when Dani reached up to touch his face—this version of him, the one she knew—he didn't pull back. He couldn't.
The body remembered her. The voice said things he didn't will. The hands moved with confidence he never had.
He wanted to scream.
He wanted to tell her who he was.
But she kept talking. Light and sweet and bruised all over.
"They hit the south perimeter. I blew the charges early, but—Rico, they're tracking our heat signatures now."
He nodded automatically. "I'll get the milk."
She laughed. "Still with that? You're ridiculous."
She kissed his cheek.
His stomach turned.
Lance knew this wasn't real. Knew it. But the warmth of her voice, the way she moved toward him—it was all correct. He wasn't a stranger here.
She knew him.
And yet—this wasn't the Dani he'd bled beside, fought beside. The one who'd carried his half-broken body through a dream-twisted town. That Dani wasn't here.
This one didn't flinch when she looked at him.
This one didn't see Lance at all.
His hand drifted to his temple as a ripple passed through him. A headache? No. A rupture. Like two versions of himself were pressing into the same space. A flicker in the mirror behind the counter showed two silhouettes where he stood. One cool. One confused.
One Rico.
One Lance.
And for a heartbeat—they looked at each other.
"Hey," Dani said again, tilting her head. "You okay? You're staring off again."
She was closer now. She smelled like smoke and rain and home.
He wanted to say, You don't know me.
He wanted to say, Where am I?
But Rico's mouth said instead:
"Always thinking about you."
The scene tilted slightly.
Just enough to notice.
The fluorescent lights buzzed wrong. The milk aisle blinked like an eye. Somewhere, the floor whispered names.
Dani didn't notice.
She was walking toward the register, pulling tools out from inside her dress—impossible tools. A launcher. A folded blade. A cracked vial of something radioactive.
Lance/Rico reached instinctively to help her, already knowing how they fit.
No. No. This isn't me.
But it was.
It had been.
It should have been.
The store doors rattled behind them.
Someone was watching.
A shape, tall and humanoid, stood in the parking lot—just outside the range of the flickering lights. It looked familiar. Too familiar.
Kenton.
But not the Kenton he knew.
This one stared without blinking, face expressionless, bleeding static from his eyes.
Then—he raised his hand and pointed at Lance.
Not Rico.
Lance.
The store dissolved behind the gesture like melting paint. Dani's voice warped. The lights flared.
Rico's voice finally cracked:
"Don't let them in."
And just like that, the floor gave out.
Pain didn't fade.
It folded.
Lance hit the ground hard—his ground, back in the real Hollow Reach—but the agony stayed like fire stitched into his nerves. He curled in on himself, eyes wide and unseeing, mouth caught mid-scream. No air left. No breath to cry with.
It felt like his bones were being rewritten.
"LANCE!" Dani dropped beside him, grabbing his shoulders, trying to stabilize him, but her voice was an echo. Everything she said came a second too late, like it had to travel across some metaphysical delay.
Kenton didn't speak. His face was pale. The glow from his hands had stopped, but something was wrong in his eyes—something like regret behind layers of fascinated silence.
Dario froze.His eyes locked on Lance, then narrowed—he took one cautious step forward, then another. His nose twitched.
Then he stopped.
And backed away.
Not a growl. Not a snarl. Just retreat. Like something deep in his gut told him this wasn't Lance anymore.
His whimpering turned into silence.
Dario always stayed beside Lance, even when wounded. But this time?He kept his distance. Watching with ears back and posture low.
Then Lance screamed again, louder.
This time, his back arched off the floor as something shifted in his spine—joints realigning, ribs cracking, reknitting like wet chalk being twisted into new symmetry. His left leg, previously limp, snapped straight. His skin bloomed hot, stretched, then rippled.
Dani swore under her breath. "Kenton, what the hell did you—"
"I didn't do this," Kenton muttered, staring in something close to awe. "Something's rewriting him. Rebooting him."
Lance's fingers splayed across the floor as black veins surfaced along his arms—brief, like ink spilled under skin—then vanished. His jaw clenched, throat bulging with pressure, and—
Hair.
His hair, too short and uneven before, began to twist—strand by strand—into loose black curls, heavy with sweat. A patch of his cheek darkened as stubble thickened, then spread into the beginnings of a full beard. The facial hair came in clean, precise, well-shaped.
He was healing.
He was changing.
His body was no longer just recovering—it was becoming optimized.
The scream cut off into a low gasp, almost cool-sounding.
A voice—his voice, but deeper, smoother—escaped his mouth.
"...Dani?"
Her hand tightened on his arm, her face unreadable. "I'm here."
He blinked, his pupils contracting too fast. The agony didn't vanish, but it refocused. Contained. Tempered.
He looked at her, really looked, and for a moment—he smiled.
Not Lance's smile.
A sideways, sharp smile. Just a flicker. Just a second too confident for someone who'd been broken minutes ago.
Dani hesitated.
Her fingers loosened just slightly.
Kenton noticed. "What?" he said flatly. "You recognize that face?"
"No." Her voice was a little too quick. "No, I just—he's awake. That's good."
But her eyes didn't leave him.
They were searching.
Dario stood near Kenton, tail still, head tilted slightly. Watching.
He didn't move toward Lance.
He always moved toward Lance.
This time, he just watched—like he was waiting to see what walked in Lance's body now.
Lance's mind swam in a rising black sea. Memories that weren't his were stitching in through the gaps left by trauma—muscle memory, glances, postures, voices not his own. He tried to sit up and did—too smoothly.
No wince. No stumble. No grunt of pain.
His body just moved.
His mind rebelled.
This isn't me.
This isn't mine.
He turned to Dani and said, "Where's the car?"
Then he paused. Froze.
That wasn't what I meant to say.
Dani swallowed. "What car?"
"The getaway car," he replied automatically.
Another pause.
His face froze again, this time in horror.
"...Why did I say that?"
No one answered.
Kenton stood. His shadow stretched longer than it should.
"We need to move," he said, but not to hurry them. More like he was stalling. Watching. "Lance, if you can walk, then walk. If not..."
"I can walk," Lance said.
And he did.
Perfectly.
No limp.
No groan.
His shoulders squared naturally. His height felt different—like his bones had been resized, subtly rebalanced into someone taller, broader, cleaner. His center of gravity had changed. His voice had changed.
He looked down at his hands again.
They weren't trembling anymore.
They weren't even his.
Behind his teeth, he could feel something pulsing. Like a second heartbeat. Not alive. Not muscle. Something conceptual.
It whispered when he blinked too long.
You're almost aligned. Just let go. Let him through. Let him fix this.
Lance forced a breath into his lungs.
"Where are we headed?" he asked.
Kenton gave him a sidelong glance. "There's a relay station down the next block. I think it's still clean. Might even have untainted power."
"Good," Lance said. "Let's get moving."
Again—not how he would've said it.
Again—Dani noticed.
She didn't say a word.
But she walked beside him with the wariness of someone who knew they were losing someone they cared about to a face that looked the same.