(See the end of the chapter for notes .)

Chapter Text

A low chirping resonated through the room. Jonathan stared at his bare white ceiling in disgust. He hadn’t slept, not well at least.

He tapped his phone’s screen and it presented him with two options: snooze or stop. He would normally have no trouble deciding, but his groggy mind stared at the screen for far too long before he hit snooze.

He resumed his glaring at the plain white above him. It was the same as every other morning that week, but everything else was so different.

Before he realized nine minutes had past, he heard the chirp again.

He considered staying home. There wasn’t anything too important scheduled for the day, and he would be on call if there was an emergency…

He sat up and hit stop on the phone.

If he called out, he’d mess up his perfect attendance. It was one of the few things he was proud of, but it felt like it didn’t matter anymore.

Did anything really matter anymore?

Jonathan took a deep breath and got off his bed. He’d need an extra coffee at the very least, and he’d have to get a 5-hour energy on his way in.

He combed his hand through his hair and sluggishly meandered to the bathroom.

As he went through his morning routine, his mind kept wandering to the day before. To what he learned the day before. To the moment when he realized that he didn’t know anything at all, really.

He passed the calendar briefly and a red circle caught his eye. Oh. Right. He was going to have the boys this weekend. Should he cancel? Or just pretend everything was ok? He was planning on taking them to an amusement park. They had given him a name and he hadn’t heard of it, but it was apparently right on the edge of Echo Creek.

Well, he wouldn’t have to worry about it until tomorrow. Till then he needed to focus on forgetting he ever met Marco Diaz. Jonathan convinced himself right then and there.

He just needed to tell Rachel to throw away the bloodwork results. He had made a human mistake and in the excitement of his false findings he jumped to conclusions. If he acted unusually jumpy around Rachel, it was only out of embarrassment for such a rookie error. Rachel, being the doormat that she was, would never question her superior and keep this little mishap between the two of them. In a way doing this would be too easy.

Marco Diaz was just a normal boy. He had very active parents, an adoring fan-club of girlfriends, and the boy himself seemed rather dedicated to his schoolwork. Jonathan was almost envious. He wished his own sons had exerted the same amount effort in school. Not to the point of passing out, mind you, but it’d at least be a start.

Jonathan finished the remains of his coffee and locked the apartment door behind him. He was a few feet away from his SUV when his phone rang. He had received a text from his friend Amanda, a local florist he visited quite often back when he was married.

Jonathan opened the message and his eyes widened.

It was a low quality picture of Marco Diaz and his… arm, surrounded by several onlookers. The words underneath the picture read ‘I guess the circus came early LOL.’ It was a group text sent to about 6 other people.

Jonathan deleted the thread, turned off his phone, and went inside the car.

He drove in silence for a whopping thirty or so seconds before turning his radio on. He wasn’t much for music, but he desperately needed to not think, so he turned it to a pop station and blasted it, letting the sound fill the car and spill out the cracks in the windows, most likely annoying the still-sleeping residents he drove past on his way to the hospital.

He let the music seep into him, and for the rest of his journey, it was just the car, the road, and some autotuned teenager screaming about boys she liked. Jonathan Singer didn’t exist, and he didn’t want to.

The act of clocking in and starting his day went by in a haze, accompanied by the catchy chorus of the last song he had listened to. It wasn’t until he saw Rachel that his brain kicked back into gear.

Right. Today he had a mission to get all traces of Marco Diaz out of his mind and out of the mind of the rest of the hospital staff.

But then Rachel saw him and ran up to him, eyes wide and slightly panicked.

“Doctor, I think you were wrong about that Marco kid,” she said, and for a second Jonathan’s mood got a lot better. If Rachel were to tell him that they messed up the tests, everything would be easier.

“How so?” he asked, acting a little shocked. He hoped that his exhaustion wasn’t making his act too obvious.

Rachel motioned for him to follow her and walked around the corner to a more private hallway. Then, she pulled her phone out and tapped it a few times.

Finally, she showed him the screen, with an image of Marco Diaz in a street, with that terrifying tentacle arm just… having a conversation with him. It was a different picture from the one Amanda sent, and that simple fact sent everything Jonathan had in his stomach up to his throat.

This meant that it was widespread. Half the people in Echo Creek had seen it. He managed to keep from throwing up, luckily, and Rachel didn’t even notice his struggle.

“That’s crazy, right? What if those were the cells you found in his arm? It’s the same arm and everything!”

“Heh, yeah, I supposed it is…” Jonathan said, barely above a whisper.

“This doesn’t even look possible, but what if you discovered something incredible! Everyone on facebook says its a publicity stunt for a movie, but that kid didn’t seem like the type to be into that kind of stuff. I think it’s really real!”

It was real. And now Jonathan wasn’t the only one who knew. Jesus, everything was happening too fast.

“Doctor? Are you okay?”

He wasn’t. He needed to explain it to her, or everything was only going to get worse. But he couldn’t here. He needed to go somewhere where no one would hear them.

That’s right. The room.

“Follow me,” Jonathan said, instead of answering her. Without waiting for her response, he made a beeline for the room Marco had stayed in.

He entered the room, which he had told the hospital not to use again for a couple of days (A favor he had to pull, but a necessary evil. He wouldn’t want a patient stuck in a magically soundproof room), and Rachel followed closely behind him.

“We can talk as loud as we please here,” he said, shutting the door behind them.

“What’s going on, Doctor?” she asked. Even he had to admit how shady he looked.

“I already knew about Marco’s… arm-thing,” he said.

“... What?”

“When I confronted him about the cells, he introduced me to his…” Jonathan took a deep breath. “His demon friend.”

“Um, demon friend?”

“The arm. The cells. It’s all Magic.” Ugh. It hurt saying it out loud.

Rachel’s eyes went wide and it took a moment for her to respond. “So… a demon arm?”

“Yes,” he said. “And a magic spell is on this room as well. Apparently.”

Rachel looked around the room briefly. “This is insane. Do you know how insane you sound? You sound totally insane.”

“Completely crazy, I know. I’m well aware of how mentally unstable I sound.” He thought for a moment. “But I can prove it to you.”

“Okay?” she said, looking a little apprehensive, but a buzzing excitement showed through her face. Jonathan wished he had that kind of enthusiasm when he found out Magic was real.

He walked back to the door and opened it. He stepped out and gestured for her to follow.

Her mouth moved and he was sure she was saying something about how stupid this sounded, but all he heard was silence. Eventually she made her way over to him and out the door.

“Do you have any change?” he asked.

Rachel frowned but pulled out a couple of pennies from her pockets. “Not much.”

“It’ll do.” Jonathan dropped the pennies onto the ground, where they clattered noisily against the hard floor.

“What’re you doing?”

Instead of answering, he just said, “Watch. And listen.” He picked the pennies up and threw them into the room. They crashed and bounced against the floor silently, landing near a stray flower on the ground, probably left over from Marco’s visit.

Jonathan looked at Rachel, and she was just staring at the pennies, wide eyed. “How did you do that?” she asked.

“I didn’t. It was all Marco,” he said, then rethought himself. “Or the demon arm. Who knows?”

“Holy shit!” she said, putting her hand over her gaping mouth. She turned back to Jonathan and said it again. “Holy shit!”

“Yeah,” he said, looking at the pennies.

“You mean if I…” She bit her lip and took a careful step into the doorway.

Then, she took a few more steps and turned to face Jonathan and started talking, or rather, it looked like she was. He couldn’t tell with the sound barrier up.

He watched as Rachel switched to yelling. He could see her strain to make as much noise as possible, but he still didn’t hear any of it.

As she took a moment to breathe, Jonathan shrugged at her and said, “I still can’t hear you.”

A big smile stretched across her face and she ran back over to him. She looked like a Doctor Who companion entering the Tardis for the first time as she stepped through the threshold in pure excitement and grabbed his hand.

“You do it!” she said, tugging him a little.

“Do what?”

“Go in there and say stuff! I wanna see it!”

“Alright, fine.” Jonathan sighed and stepped inside.

He took a few steps forward until he was absolutely positive that he was well past the sound barrier. As he turned around, Rachel was watching expectantly.

“I don’t know what you want me to say…”

Rachel smiled wide and said, “Say something else!”

“We’ve been studying medical science our whole life and we’re completely useless in the face of magic. We know nothing. Our lives are lies.”

Rachel watched with the same goofy face.

“My life is a lie. I’m useless. I don’t know anything. I’ve been heavily considering suicide since last night.”

Rachel frowned. “Dr. Singer, are you okay?”

Why wasn’t Marco keeping his arm a secret? Why did he go out in public with his demon friend out? Sure, most people thought it was a stunt, but there will be people who believe that it’s real. It’s such a stupid thing to do.

Why did Marco show him? He couldn’t have come up with some sort of fake explanation? It wasn’t like Jonathan was relentless. If Marco absolutely refused treatment, there would be nothing Jonathan could do about it. Why did he have to rope him into this?

And his kids? Whatever kind of disasters will come up from Marco’s blatant use of magic, his kids will probably be in the middle of it. Dominic was only a year younger than Marco. They could even end up in the same school together.

And that wasn’t even considering the other dimensions thing Marco had mentioned. It was like hundreds of other planets filled with magical aliens were just a step away. Wars could start at the drop of a hat and destroy civilization as we knew it.

“Jonathan, look at me,” Rachel said, breaking him out of his thoughts. Somehow he’d missed her coming in and closing the door behind her.

“How can you be so okay with this?” he asked.

“It’s exciting,” she said. “Think of the possibilities.”

“I am, and it’s terrifying.”

Rachel frowned.

“Rachel, we know nothing. All the years learning medicine was useless in the face of Magic. How are we supposed to defend against something like this?”

“We learn about it!” she said, a sparkle of excitement in her eyes. “Imagine how much magic can help people!”

“Help people?”

“Like, what if someone needed an amputation, but we can give them a new limb, like Marco’s tentacle arm thing? Or what if we could teleport cancer cells out of a patient’s brain? Or maybe magic can heal up surgery wounds faster than we can, so we don’t have to worry about blood loss as much?”

He… hadn’t thought of it that way.

“We should contact him, doctor. He needs to tell us how he came into contact with all this.” Rachel said, motioning him to come out the door with her.

“Right now?” he asked.

“Yes!” she said.

“But we’re on our shifts.”

Rachel thought about it for a split second, but then said with a smile, “This is more important.”

“It’s the middle of the day. He’s probably at school.”

“Oh! Right!” she said, but then said. “Get his records, and we can go to his school.”

“Rachel, he doesn’t want to be found.”

Rachel looked over at him, confused. “What do you mean?”

Jonathan rubbed his temples. “Marco didn’t show me his arm because he wanted to brag about it. I pressured him into doing it. My ambitions got the better me, and I just wanted an explanation for those cells. I wouldn’t let him or his family leave until he told the truth, despite how uncomfortable he was talking about it.”

“So he can control when the tentacle appears? It doesn’t just pop out?” Rachel asked, a spark in her eyes.

Jonathan frowned. “Yes, but that’s not the point. The point is that I forced him to do so and he never would have without my pressure. Marco Diaz wants to live a normal life with as little interruption by us as possible, from what I’ve gathered. It would be insensitive and rude to approach him about it.”

Rachel frowned. “But then, why did he go out in a crowded public area with his demon arm out?”

Oh. Jonathan hadn’t a clue. It seemed completely counter-intuitive to how he reacted in the hospital.

“Maybe he had a change of heart?”

“Perhaps, but why he did that isn’t important. We need to look at this from a different angle.”

“What kind of angle?”

“Well, for one, we need ask ourselves what magic even is , and if it’s worth pursuing from a medical standpoint. Magic is an incredibly broad and abstract concept in the world of fantasy, but we shouldn’t assume it acts the same way in our world, especially since the various interpretations of magic tend to differ and contradict themselves.”

“Okay.” Rachel pondered for a moment. “You said Marco’s tentacle arm is a demon, right?”

Jonathan nodded.

“So then we can assume demons are real at least.”

“Yes.” Jonathan walked over to a sterile white wall and pulled a pen out. “Let’s try to categorize what we can assume to be true and what we’re just guessing at.” He wrote on the wall with the pen “things we know” and “things we think” next to one another and underlined them both.

“Okay, so we know demons exist,” Rachel said, writing it down with her own pen under the “things we know” column.

“Yes, and we know magic can create a regenerative tentacle arm.” He wrote it down in the “things we know” column.

“And that magic can soundproof a room,” Rachel added.

Jonathan nodded. “We don’t know what else it can do. Or the source of it. Or if it’s permanent.”

“Do you think it may be the demons?”

He thought about it for a moment. “It’s possible.” He wrote “source: demons?” in the “things we think” column. “Marco described both his arm and this room as ‘curses’. Those may come from demons specifically…”

Rachel looked at the wall. “Is this all we know so far?”

Jonathan gripped the pen. “Just two more things.”

He drew a large circle outside the two columns, then drawing inside the circle itself to make a crude representation of North and South America. Jonathan wouldn’t consider himself an artist by any means, but Rachel seemed to understand what he was going for. He then wrote the word ‘dimension’ above the Earth picture and Rachel’s jaw literally dropped.

“You’re kidding. Dimensions?” she said in disbelief. “We’re going this far down the rabbit hole?”

“I suppose so…” Jonathan looked at the wall and realized how ridiculous this seemed. What he would give for a blue pill right now. “Marco mentioned travelling to places outside ‘The Earth Dimension’. It might be where the demons came from originally.”

Rachel wrote that on the “things we think” column. Then, underneath it, she wrote “contagious demons/curses?” and turned back to Jonathan. “What if it’s just spreading from Marco?”

“From a tentacle arm to a soundproofed room?”

“It’s magic, anything’s possible,” she said with a shrug.

“I suppose so, but I don’t think all the magic is coming from Marco,” Jonathan said. The foreign exchange student with the ridiculous looking wand that she claimed could do magic.

In the “things we think” column, he wrote “other source: magic wands?”. Rachel looked at him with a cocked eyebrow.

“There was a girl with Marco yesterday who had a ridiculous wand and claimed to be able to fix his ailment with magic. I dismissed her as an immature child at the time, but Marco later confirmed she was indeed magic.”

“Really? Who is she?” Rachel asked.

“They said she was an exchange student from-” They hadn’t said where she was from. Jonathan looked back at the wall, where “dimensions” was written down. “Oh my god. She’s the source! She’s not simply from another country! She must be from another dimen-”

The floor disappeared from under him and he fell straight down into what felt like an infinite pool of water.

Except it only lasted a second and then he hit a cold, hard ground. Dust flew up around him and he realized that it was definitely not water because he was as dry as the air around him, which felt like an oven on full blast.

He stood up and looked at the crumbling room around him. Where was he? How did he get there?

A slow, repeated clanking of metal caught his attention and he turned around to see someone sitting on a broken pillar, clapping their hands. He couldn’t tell much about them until his eyes adjusted to the light, but the fact that the motion of them clapping their hands matched up with the clanging metal was really unnerving him.

“I’m impressed,” the person said, their voice calm and echoing through the decrepit room. Decidedly feminine, he noted, as her form became more clear. She had long black hair and possibly a cape hanging at her back and muddling her body shape in the darkness.

“Where am I?” Jonathan asked, his voice wavering ever so slightly. Whatever way he was brought in, there didn’t seem to be any exits.

“It doesn’t matter. All that matters is that you can’t leave unless I say so,” she said.

He had every reason to believe her at this point. He wasn’t in the hospital anymore. That much was fact. He probably wasn’t even on Earth anymore.

The idea to scream definitely came up, but what good would that do? They were probably the only living beings for miles. The woman was staring at him, or at least he assumed so. He couldn’t quite make out her face yet, but he was definitely taking note of how alien her body looked- with pointed ears and either really complex armor on her arms and legs or perhaps robotic prosthetic limbs, now that he was looking closer.

Her torso and shoulders had medieval-looking armor, which clashed a little with the definitely-now-he-was-sure mechanical arms that had vines twining between the moving parts, like some sort of commentary on nature versus machinery. And then, as his eyes made it back up to meet hers- or rather, black voids in the place of eyes, he had the sudden realization that he most certainly was not in kansas anymore and that he would much rather be in Oz than this hell hole.

The woman sighed, and said,“Don’t look so pathetic. I’m not going to hurt you. I just got what I needed from your little conversation and pulled you out of it for a second.”

Jonathan gulped. “You heard us? How?” Was this some sort of crazy conspiracy?

“You don’t need to know,” she said, and Jonathan felt a little like she was talking down on him.

“Okay, so I probably don’t need to know why a woman made of metal kidnapped me to God knows where, too, right?”

Her face remained relatively impassive. “Oh, I just need some information from you.”

“... Information? Why would you need information from me?” What could he know that this techno-magical creature-person didn’t?

“At approximately 11:09 AM yesterday Earth Pacific Daylight Time, what conscious beings were in Hospital Room 406?”

“Um… conscious?” Jonathan’s thoughts immediately went to Marco’’s other condition. The one that made him pass out at random intervals. What with all these revelations regarding magic, it was easy to forget about that part. Could Marco passing out also have something to do with magic?

The woman smiled forcefully through gritted teeth. “I’ll make my demands slightly simpler for your human brain to understand. I want a list of the people present in that room at 11:09 yesterday. Now.”

The woman was looking impartiant, and Jonathan didn’t want to learn what those mechanical appendages were capable of.

“I know for a fact I wasn’t in that room. My appointment in that room wasn’t until 11:15. The people in that room were the patient, Marco, his parents, the foreign exchange student living with the Diaz’s, and two other girls that were friends with Marco.”

“What are their full names?”

“What, all of them? Why do you need to know?”

“It doesn’t matter why. I just need names.”

“It does matter. I’m not reckless. I don’t know what your intentions are with those people. Also, I’m in charge of treating people in that room. If there’s something wrong with it,” well, other than it being soundproof, “I need to know.”

She got up from her seat on the pillar. “You don’t need to know. You have gone your whole life not knowing about magic. There’s no reason to start now. Just keep relying on your precious science and you'll be fine. Simply never use the room again.”

“I can’t do that! I’m not some kind of livestock! I deserve to know what’s going on in the world around me!” he said. “Why do you need these names? What’s wrong with that room?”

She frowned, and began slowly approaching him. “You don’t seem to get what kind of situation you’re in-”

“I know exactly what kind of situation I’m in!” Jonathan said. “I’ve been abducted to another dimension by an elf with mechanical prosthetics who thinks I’m some kind of dumb animal because I haven’t been informed about the greater multiverse.”

The elf stopped. “H-how did you know what I am? Who told you?”

Jonathan rolled his eyes. “Are you serious? It’s obvious just by looking at you! The ears, the robot parts with the apparent nature motif. Give me some credit…”

“That’s not what I mean, human,” she said. “Your species is the only sentient type of race dominating this dimension. Where have you heard of elves?”

While at first Jonathan seemed somewhat insulted, he noticed that woman was legitimately distraught over him knowing what an elf is.

“Well, we don’t exactly… believe in… you people, per see, but elves are all over our culture and media. Fantasy novels, video games, Dungeons & Dragons, card games, religion, folklore. Hell, we even have a holiday centered around a fat man that delivers presents to good children thanks to the slave labor of elves.”

She took a step back, apparently completely overtaken by the revelation that Earthlings knew anything about magic. “You’re lying. Y-you’re doing some kind of illusion right now.”

“What? I can’t do illusions. I’m a human. You just said I don’t know magic.” It felt weird saying it like that, but if she was so confident that humans weren’t a part of the magic loop, that was the best defense he had.

“But that makes no sense! Where would that knowledge have come from?”

He could only assume from previous visitors, back before people could call them movie publicity stunts.

But… if elves were real, then what else was? Demons were apparently real as well, so it really broadened the horizons, between religious creatures and Tolkien's creations, everything else could be real. Gorgons, dragons, Hogwarts, fuck, maybe Santa was real all along, with an actual child slavery ring of people from this woman’s world.

“My best guess is that elves have come here in the past,” he said, fairly confidently. Wow. He was getting a lot more comfortable with the fact that all this was real. “They could’ve been on Earth for a long time, but eventually moved on to a dimension less boring, or got killed by heroes who thought they were monsters. They left a big enough impression to stick through the ages as stories. There’s no way to tell how much religion and lore are based in reality or fiction! In a similar fashion, there’s this show called Stargate where-

“But… That’s impossible. It’s illegal to go to Earth without a warrant,” she said. It was the strangest thing to hear a legal term come out of a fantasy character’s mouth, and it made the situation almost funny.

“I mean, it’s illegal to kill people. That never stopped them before,” Jonathan said, then thought about it for a second. It was illegal to go to Earth? Maybe there was a conspiracy…

Who was behind this supposed 'law,’ and what type of influence did they have across the multiverse? Were they based in a central location, or had a far reach? What happens if you got caught trespassing on Earth? The amount of questions going Jonathan's head were infinite, but we wasn't sure how willing this elf was to speak to him further on the subject.

“Tell me, Ms… uh… what was your name again?” Jonathan asked.

“I never told you my name, nor do I have any intentions of telling you now. Let’s return to the matter at hand. I still need those names.”

“What are you going to do to them if I give you their names?”

“I will investigate to find the source of the disruption,” she said.

Disruption? He was getting somewhere. “And what will you do if you find one of them is responsible?”

“It doesn't matter.” She scowled. “The names. Now.”

“You know, isn’t it odd that we’re both speaking fluent English?” Jonathan said, changing the subject. Maybe he could find an exit if he kept her talking long enough.

“What?”

“Like, we’re from completely different dimensions! What are the chances we’d both be speaking the same language?” There were several broken pillars throughout the room, maybe he could knock the stability of the roof or something?

“Of course we’re both speaking English. It’s the common language of the multiverse. It exists in one way or another on every world, even if not under the same name.”

Well that was news. “Then who taught it to Earth if no one was allowed here?” His eyes swept the room and he realized that the pillars had been mostly decorative, considering none of the roof was caved in yet from the already-broken ones. Right. New plan.

“You’re a curious case, Jonathan Singer,” she said, finally addressing him by his name. “You’re not the man I thought I’d be interogarting before I brought you here. I at least expected to wait a few minutes to have a conversion once you were done screaming in terror. What happened to being being so scared of this strange, new world of magic that you were heavily considering killing yourself?”

Ah, so she heard him say all that depressing stuff when he was testing out the soundproof room in front of Rachel. Did she put some sort of surveillance system in room 406? Well, it probably didn’t matter now.

“Well, humans are creatures of contradiction,” Jonathan said, now paying more attention to the elf’s body. It was as she said before, she’s his only way out of here. Running away wasn’t the answer. In that amalgam of wires, tubes, and vegetation, the means of dimensional travel must’ve been somewhere on her person, or at least a magic wand with a steampunk design. “But we’re also creatures of ambition. Before I knew that it could turn into an ugly monster, I was legitimately excited when I saw those strange cells in Marco’s arm. I thought I discovered something groundbreaking, something that could be manipulated to help people. In a way I guess that hasn’t changed. I decided now I want to be a part of this.”

“Ambition can lead to downfall,” she said. “My world had ambition. It did not do them well.” Jonathan wondered what her reflexes were like. She hadn’t moved from her seat on the pillar yet. Was that because it was more work than it was worth for her?

“What happened to them?” he asked. Would her limbs need a wind up to move? How fast could she react if he just grabbed her dimension-hopping apparatus off her?

“They destroyed themselves.”

“Yikes,” Jonathan said, not really sure how else to react. If he caught her by surprise, maybe he could yank at one of her wires. They were all openly exposed, like aesthetic came before practical design when they were made, so if he could just hook something in there…

Oh right. He had his pen in his pocket. If he could slip it under a wire, he could disable her limbs and then he’d be in control.

“What you are you doing?” she asked, noting his not-so-subtle attempt at inching closer to her.

“I have the names you’re looking for on my cell phone. I just need to get closer to show you.” Jonathan reached into his pocket and grabbed his phone. His line of sight kept switching between her arms and legs and his messenger app.

“Don’t come any closer,” the elf ordered. “Bring up the names on your device and then throw it to me.”

“My… DNA is imprinted into this thing. If if gets separated from me by more than a foot, it’ll self destruct. We’re still trying to work out the kinks.”

“Then read them to me,” she said, growing impatient.

“I just thought of this, but where I’m from is called ‘The Earth Dimension,’ correct? Does that mean that out of all the solar systems and planets we discovered thus far, our planet is the only one with sentient life.” He grabbed his phone and pen from his pockets. Just for good measure, he put his pen tip into the audio jack of his phone, so it looked like it was part of the device. He unlocked his phone and opened up a text to Rachel. He had no bars, but it would send when he finally got signal, if any of this went horribly wrong. “Or, does the word ‘dimension’ have a different meaning to you, and there’s a ‘Uranus’ dimension and a ‘Neptune’ dimension?”

“It means Earth is the prominent life location of the dimension. If there was a world with a bunch of villages and one major kingdom, it would be named after that one kingdom,” she said. “Do you have the names yet?”

He slowly typed out ‘ find marco and tell him to run’ while trying to listen to her. He hit send, but the loading bar froze halfway. Okay, if this went wrong, they would at least have a head start.

He took a deep breath and then said. “I won't let you have the names. Those are my patients.” And probably the only people who could make magic mainstream on Earth and help save millions of lives. Maybe.

“You think of yourself as brave? Think rationally for a minute. I wouldn’t be here just to simply uphold some ancient law. This goes beyond restricting the amount of magic on Earth.”

Good. Keep talking. Jonathan was about eight feet away now. “I suppose so. Based on how easily monsters have barged into our world before, it must not be the highest priority to you people.”

“Someone in that room released a dangerous power, and I’m here to stop them before they do it again,” she said. “You would be wise to not stand in my way.”

Jonathan frowned. “Then we should work together. There might have been a misunderstanding.” He took a step towards her emphatically. Six feet away.

“There is no misunderstanding. I will find whoever is behind this and I will stop them.”

“What could they have done? They’re just kids!” Five feet.

“Children are more capable than you’d think,” she said, hopping down off her pillar and staring him down. “I’m done waiting. Give me their names.”

A chill went down his spine and he almost took a step back unconsciously. “I- uh- I-”

“The names.” She took a step toward him. Four feet. He gripped his pen so hard he was sure his knuckles were white. This wouldn’t be like last time, with the demon arm. That had taken him by surprise. He was ready for this.

“No,” he said, barely audible. She took another step toward him, and for a moment he thought he saw the vines on her arms move. Three feet. He could reach her if he was quick enough.

“I understand,” she said.

“Really? Who is she?” Rachel had asked.

“They said she was an exchange student from-” Dr. Singer stopped and then looked at the wall they’d been writing all over. “Oh my god. She’s the source! She’s not simply from another country! She must be from another dimen-”

Rachel saw two bright flashes of light in a row. Below Singer flashed a bright ring, just fast enough to leave an imprint on her vision, and he was gone. Then, before she even had enough time to realize that Singer had dropped down into whatever that light was, another light opened on the ceiling, just as quickly as the first. This time, Singer fell to the ground, face first onto the floor.

Rachel yelped at both occurrences, and then when Singer didn’t immediately move, Rachel’s nursing instincts kicked in and she was at his side in a flash. She ignored the beep that her phone got and peeled his body over. She locked eyes with his, which were wide and lifeless, and she screamed.

And nobody heard it.