Dawn in the city was a slow, grey affair. The single, flickering streetlight gave up its vigil, winking out as a pallid light seeped into the alley. The transition from the world-ending roar of a collapsing alien spire to the distant, mundane hum of early-morning traffic was so jarring it felt like a physical injury. Elara Vance sat slumped against the damp brick wall, cradling Glyph. Her body registered the cold seeping through her clothes, the rough texture of the bricks, the chemical-tinged scent of urban rain. They were sensations she'd ached for during her year in the Fractured World, but now they felt like a cruel parody of homecoming.
He wasn't here.
The thought was a cold stone in her gut, heavier and more absolute than any gravity she'd experienced. Alexander had pushed her into the gateway, turned his back on salvation, and been consumed by the light. The CEO, the strategist, the infuriating, brilliant, and finally heartbreaking man was gone. His choice had been the ultimate, terrible merger: his existence for hers.
Glyph stirred in her arms, letting out a soft, plaintive chirp. It was looking up at her with its large, luminous eyes, now dulled by the grey Earth atmosphere. It nudged her hand with its damp nose. The creature, a living piece of that other world, was her only proof that any of it had been real. And it was shivering, not just from the cold, but from a profound sensory deprivation. The vibrant, tangible energy field of its home was gone, replaced by Earth's thin, inert atmosphere.
"I know," Elara whispered, her voice raw. "It's all wrong here."
The wave of directed temporal energy—the lurch that had solidified the air—had passed. The alley was just an alley again. But the memory of that sensation was branded into her nerves. It hadn't been random. It had been structured. It had felt like him. Not his presence, but his methodology. A brutal, elegant solution applied to a cosmic problem.
Hope, in her experience, was a dangerous and illogical variable. But as a scientist, she could not ignore data. The anomaly had occurred. Glyph had stabilized immediately after. The temporal back-blast from a simple gateway collapse would not have that specific reinforcing signature.
He did something. At the end, he did more than just die.
The thought wasn't a comfort. It was a mandate. It turned the suffocating grief into a focused, burning coal of purpose. Grief was passive. This was active. He had given her a company to run. A universe-spanning, ill-defined, impossible company. Her first task: asset consolidation and situation analysis.
She forced herself to stand, legs wobbling. Her clothes—a practical, durable outfit from the rebel base—were torn and stained with alien soot and Earthly grime. She had no identification, no money, no communicator. She was a missing person, a ghost with an otherworldly pet.
Her apartment was miles away, and her keys were in a different dimension. But there was one place, one asset, that was inextricably linked to both her old life and the impossible reality she'd just left.
Blackwood Industries. The towering spire of steel and ambition that was Alexander's monument to his own will.
Getting there was an odyssey of the absurd. She used the last dregs of her dignity to walk out of the alley and hail a cab. The driver, an older man with a tired face, took one look at her disheveled state and the furry, wide-eyed creature in her arms and nearly drove off.
"Please," Elara said, her voice cracking with an authority she didn't feel. "Blackwood Tower. It's an emergency. I'm Dr. Elara Vance. I work with Alexander Blackwood." Using his first name felt like a violation and a lifeline.
The name worked like a passkey. Suspicion was replaced by a wary curiosity. The driver nodded, muttering about "weird corporate stuff," and let her in.
The ride was a blur of alien sensation. The smooth motion of the car, the chatter of the radio, the solid, unmoving buildings outside the window—it all felt unreal, a flat simulation compared to the dynamic, living chaos of floating islands and bioluminescent flora. Glyph pressed its face against the window, emitting a continuous, low-frequency hum of confusion.
The cab pulled up to the soaring edifice of Blackwood Tower. The morning sun glinted off its impassive glass face. It looked smaller than she remembered. After the central spire of Zorax, everything human-made seemed quaint.
Walking into the vast, marbled lobby was like stepping onto a stage. The sterile, conditioned air, the hushed efficiency, the security personnel in impeccable suits—it was a world governed by a different kind of order, one she had always found stifling. Now, it felt like a museum dedicated to a man who was no longer there.
She approached the central security desk. The guard, a young man with a perfectly neutral expression, looked up. His eyes flicked from her torn clothing to Glyph and back, his professionalism warring with utter bewilderment.
"I need to see Alexander Blackwood," Elara stated, her chin lifted. "Immediately."
"Mr. Blackwood is not in the building," the guard replied automatically, his tone polite but dismissive. "Do you have an appointment? Any identification?"
"He's missing," Elara said, the words tasting like ash. "I was with him. There's been an… incident. I need to speak to his second-in-command, his head of security, anyone in authority. Now."
Her intensity was starting to cut through the protocol. The guard's hand moved subtly towards a button under the desk. "Ma'am, if you could please step aside and wait, I'll call a supervisor."
Just then, the private elevator bank across the lobby chimed. The doors slid open, and a man strode out. He was in his late fifties, with sharp, worried eyes and the bearing of a retired soldier. Marcus Thorne, Alexander's head of global security and his most trusted confidant. Elara had met him once, briefly, years ago at a tedious corporate function Alexander had dragged her to.
Their eyes met across the lobby. Thorne's step faltered. He had been scanning a tablet, his face lined with deep concern. When he saw her, his expression shifted through phases: shock, disbelief, dawning, horrified recognition.
He knew she had been missing for over a year, a cold case filed alongside the bizarre, unresolved disappearance of the CEO himself.
He crossed the lobby in quick strides, waving off the now-alert security guard. "Dr. Vance?" His voice was low, gravelly with strain. "My God. Where have you…?" His eyes dropped to Glyph, and the question died in his throat. The creature stared back, unblinking.
"Marcus," Elara said, exhaustion and resolve flattening her voice. "We need to talk. Somewhere extremely private. Alexander is…." She couldn't say it. "Something happened. And it's not over."
Thorne, a man who had dealt with corporate espionage, death threats, and international crises, looked completely out of his depth. He simply nodded, his military discipline overriding his shock. "This way."
He led her to the private elevator, using a physical key and a retinal scan to activate it. They ascended in silence. Glyph trembled against her. The elevator opened not into an office, but into Alexander's private penthouse apartment, which took up the entire top floor.
It was as cold and perfect as a showroom. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a breathtaking, soulless view of the awakening city. Everything was minimalist, monochrome, and devoid of personal touch. It was the lair of a ghost who had left before he died.
"Start from the beginning," Thorne said, his back to the view, his entire attention on her. "Where is Mr. Blackwood?"
Elara took a deep breath. She was about to cross a threshold from which there was no return. "He's not on Earth, Marcus. And he may not be alive." She saw the man flinch. "We were in another… place. A parallel dimension. He stayed behind to ensure I could escape." She gestured to Glyph. "This is from there. The proof."
For the next hour, she talked. She gave him the edited, credible version: an experimental energy phenomenon (the portal), a hostile corporate entity (Zorax), a fight for survival, an alliance. She framed it in terms Thorne, a strategist, could understand: a hostile takeover of reality, a CEO sacrificing himself to extract a key asset. She spoke of Alexander's leadership, his tactical genius, his transformation. She did not speak of the almost-kisses, the shared memories, the feel of his hand in hers, or the look in his eyes when he pushed her into the gateway.
Thorne listened without interruption, his face a granite mask. When she finished, he walked to the window and stared out for a long time.
"For over a year," he said finally, his voice quiet, "we've had teams searching. Psychics, investigators, satellite imagery. Nothing. The board is preparing to declare him legally dead. There's a power struggle brewing." He turned to face her, his eyes sharp. "And you arrive, with a… creature… and a story that belongs in a fever dream. My rational mind tells me you're suffering from trauma and delusion."
Elara didn't argue. She simply lifted Glyph and placed it on Alexander's immaculate steel-and-glass coffee table. "Glyph," she said softly. "Show him."
The little creature, sensing her need, concentrated. Its fur rippled, and its dim bioluminescence brightened. From its small body, a hazy, three-dimensional hologram flickered into being—a perfect, miniature rendering of the Fractured World's capital city, with its floating islands and neon-lit spires. It was a recording, a memory imprinted in the creature's bio-field.
Thorne's breath caught. He took a step closer, his soldier's disbelief crumbling in the face of impossible evidence. He saw the architecture, utterly non-terrestrial. He saw, for a fleeting second, the silhouette of a man in a torn suit wielding a blade of light.
The hologram faded. Glyph chirped wearily.
"My God," Thorne whispered, all professionalism gone. Raw grief etched itself onto his features. He had served Alexander for fifteen years. He was more than an employee; he was a loyalist. "He's really gone."
"I don't know," Elara said, the stubborn coal of hope glowing again. "The… exit event. It was anomalous. It felt managed. He was the best strategist I've ever seen, Marcus. In any world. He wouldn't just make a sacrificial play without a contingency. Even for this."
Thorne looked at her, really looked at her. He saw the grief, yes, but beneath it, he saw the same fierce, unyielding intellect that Alexander had, on rare occasions, spoken of with a mixture of irritation and awe. He saw the leader Alexander had chosen, in the end, to succeed him.
"What do you need?" he asked, his voice now that of a soldier accepting a new, unimaginable mission.
"First, sanctuary. For me and for Glyph. It needs a controlled environment, certain energy frequencies. Second, access. To Alexander's private research servers, his unlogged projects. He was investigating anomalous energy signatures before he disappeared. I need to see all of it. Third, discretion. Absolute, total."
"And then?"
Elara looked around the cold, empty penthouse, then out at the city Alexander had once ruled. She thought of the chaotic, beautiful data-storm that had unmade a god. She thought of a funnel of will, directing time itself.
"And then," she said, "we get to work. We find out what he did. And we find a way to run the company."