Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Consciousness returns a sliver at a time.

His back pressed against a slab of cold and unforgiving stone, loose shale digging into his shoulder. Pain in his head, his chest; a burning sensation that crawls down his throat and twists in his gut.

The bitter, earthy smell of wolfsbane in his nostrils.

He struggles to open his eyes.

Kate’s smile is a mouth full of fangs above him. “Hey there, brown eyes.”

He jerks back half an inch before leather chokes at his throat.

Kate’s grin widens. “Easy, sweetheart. Wouldn’t want you to damage the merchandise, would we?”

There’s no point in struggling, but he tries anyway. Alongside the collar at his throat, leather wraps around his wrists, his ankles, his chest. Wolfsbane buds woven around the cuffs to keep him from breaking free, like she’d done at La Iglesia.

Exactly like she’d done at La Iglesia.

Familiar stone walls surround him.

No.

“You’re dead,” he rasps. Throat raw from wolfsbane and dust.

“Was dead.” Kate slides up on the table, uncomfortably close to his face. “Then I wasn’t. Death’s funny like that—of all people, I thought you’d understand.”

He does.

He wishes he didn’t.

He drops his head back against the stone, blood trickling down his neck where the leather had dug in. “Just tell me what you want, Kate.”

“Please. You’re a smart kid—you don’t need me to answer that.” She jerks her head meaningfully towards the table just outside his peripheral vision, but he knows what has to be there.

He doesn’t want to look.

He can’t not.

His head tilts just barely towards it.

The bone-white of the bear skull gleams in the dark.

It’s not the same one because it can’t be, but every slope and groove is so similar he can’t see anything else.

“It won’t work,” he says. It starts as a growl, but ends in a whimper.

“Oh?” Kate’s fingers ghost over his stomach, playful, and bile hits the back of his throat. “And why’s that?”

“You’ve never been good at control.”

Her fingers pause above his heart. It thrashes against his ribcage, as trapped as the rest of him.

A single claw carves into him.

Scott inhales sharply, the pain bright in comparison to the dull aches from before. It’s not deep enough to cause real damage, but she leaves it there, cutting into him with every minute twitch. Preventing him from healing as the second claw sinks in.

He holds completely still for the third and fourth, breathing harshly through his nose.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, Scott,” she says, the last of her claws sinking into his chest, “but self control has always been more of a you thing.”

She tears them all out at once.

Scott hisses, arching his back against the table.

Kate smiles at him, tossing her hair behind her shoulder. “I’m embracing it this time. Why bother controlling myself when controlling others is just so much more fun?”

Blood pools in the five wounds at his chest, tacky and metallic.

Kira’s had smelled sweet when he’d stabbed her there.

Scott’s heart beats faster.

“I’ll get out,” he says. “Even if—you’ve tried this before, I can just—”

“What?” Kate laughs. “Do your little roar? Oh, I’m counting on it. That’s the fun part—see, it turns out, once you get yourself free there’s actually nothing stopping me from doing it again. And again. And again. Though, it seems like the process is going to take a lot more out of you than it will me.”

Kate digs a finger into his half-healed wounds.

Scott snarls, pain spasming in his chest.

His wrists pull uselessly against the cuffs, tearing into his skin.

No escape.

He stills, defeated.

Kate smirks, wiping the blood from her fingers over his shirt. “I’m thinking I won’t be the one that tires out first.”

She slides off and heads for the table, leaving him shuddering against the stone.

The skull slams down next to him.

Musty. Decaying.

Swimming already with her, her, her.

“It won’t work,” he repeats, weak to even his own ears. “Even if I can’t—someone will stop you. Or me. You won’t—”

“You know, Peter was the one that insisted on an audience last time,” Kate interrupts, claws draped lazily over the skull. “It’s like the man can’t stand not showing off. Me? I’ve always been a fan of more… private viewings. Less likely to have the little Rugrats interfering. Do you want to guess what I’ve done?”

Scott’s chest moves shallowly, jerking. Lungs barely getting enough air.

Kate lowers her mouth to his ear.

“No one,” she purrs, breath scorching against his skin, “knows where you are.”

Her eyes flicker from hazel to green above him as she pulls back, sickeningly pleased.

She’s not lying.

It should be a relief. 

There’s no risk of stabbing them, clawing them, maiming them. Killing them.

They’ll be safe.

He’ll be here.

The empty eyes of the skull stare at him.

He can’t catch his breath.

“How many people do you think we’ll kill this time, Scott?” Kate asks, turning the skull over in her hands. “Two? Ten? I killed over a dozen with my last Berserker. A big Alpha werewolf like you—I think you can beat that, if you put some effort into it.”

His eyes will be even emptier once it’s on.

Suffocating him, buried deep inside until there’s nothing left.

No light. Just darkness.

Her.

He can’t do this again.

“Please, Kate,” he begs. 

His throat is tight. The restraints tighter.

The skull hovers above his head.

His heart hammers in his ears. 

He can’t get out.

He has to get out.

“Please, don’t—”

Bone touches his skin.

Scott roars.

Sunlight blazes in his eyes.

He winces, raising his hand to block it.

Then he stills.

He’s not tied.

Everything rushes in at once.

The wooden slats of a bench against his back. A canopy of yellow-orange trees overhead. The chattering, jumbled-together sounds of people in the distance.

A dream.

Kate had been a dream.

Relief crashes over him as he drops his head against the edge of the bench, his heart rate slowly returning to normal.

He remembers now.

He’d been studying in the Arboretum for his physiology exam, embracing a rare moment of peace in his otherwise hectic schedule. He must have fallen asleep halfway through reviewing Professor Gillian’s notes on avian care—he’d been up most of the night before, thanks to a worrying phone call from Lydia about a ‘feeling.’ Nothing had come of it, but he’d been so tired afterward and this area always felt so much like the Preserve, so it wasn’t surprising that—

Scott blinks up at the trees.

He raises onto this elbows.

The leaves are yellow-orange.

Animal Physiology is a spring semester class.

He scrambles to his feet and lands unevenly on gravel and metal.

Overgrown train tracks form the path in front of him.

The treeline extends barely a dozen feet on either side of the path before running up against a glass fence, overlooking the city. Skyscrapers and other industrial buildings form long rows beyond the fence, with a wide, empty road running perpendicular underneath.

None of it looks familiar.

The hairs on the back of his neck raise as he turns slowly around.

“Kate?” he calls.

Only the buzzing of the city answers him.

He strains his hearing.

Car horns shouting angrily at each other. The jumble of feet pattering down a sidewalk. Tires skidding to a too-quick halt.

But the low murmur of voices refuse to separate, all smeared together like they would’ve been before Peter turned him.

It’s not natural.

It sets his nerves on edge.

The last time Kate had put him under, it had been like... nothing. Shadows, outlined only by the rage they inspired. Then everything had tumbled back at once when he’d broken free.

But he’d still been wearing the bones.

He runs his fingers nervously along the hem of his jacket: it’s denim, from the feel of it. Rough and pliable and warm, as opposed to the smooth chill of bone.

He looks down.

A familiar flag patch stares back at him.

He runs his thumb slowly over the tightly-woven threads. He hasn’t worn this jacket in over a year and a half, when Gerard’s trap had impaled it—and him—down in the sewers.

Its presence is strangely comforting.

He’d loved this jacket.

Disorienting.

It shouldn’t be possible.

Useful.

This can’t be real.

The surety grounds him. At least now he knows he’s not in the real world.

And it’s not his first time being trapped in a mindscape.

He reaches into his pockets in case whatever this is has been courteous enough to leave him his phone, but there’s nothing in either of them aside from some stray bits of lint, a handful of change he keeps for the coins-only parking spaces, and a flat rock he’d picked up to keep his papers from blowing away in the wind.

Scott sighs.

Just once, it’d be nice to be stranded with something useful.

He stares at the train tracks. Following them is probably what he’s supposed to do.

He slips the odds and ends back into his pocket and carefully steps off the path towards the fence.

The trees are evenly spaced, clearly cultivated by humans instead of growing wild, and it makes it easy to reach the glass without too much finagling. A metal bar forms the top railing, and he curls his fingers loosely around the edge before leaning over to gauge the distance to the ground.

It’s definitely not an impossible jump—maybe thirty feet. Easy enough for a werewolf.

Except, the longer he looks at it, the further it seems.

The buildings are too nondescript to give him visual clues—no doors, no windows, no streetlights marking the distance.

Just down, down, down.

The pavement shimmers.

Is it moving?

His palms are sweaty against the railing. He grips it tighter.

Maybe it’s not actually thirty feet. 

No—of course it is. Or not much different. It’s an easy jump.

He’s definitely done worse.

He leans forward a little more.

The ground shrinks below him.

Not thirty feet.

Three hundred.

A wave of dizziness crashes over him.

A thousand.

His heart climbs into his throat.

Forever.

He stumbles backwards, hands slipping off the rail.

The panic vanishes.

From here, it looks like thirty feet.

Okay. So.

Wherever this place is, it clearly doesn’t want him leaving it that way.

In some experiences, that means it’s his only option. In others, it means it’s the worst thing he could do.

There’s no way to tell which one is which.

He breathes through his nose as his respiratory system catches up with his reason, eyes locked on the street below. He looks back at the train tracks. If he is supposed to jump, it should be easy enough to do that wherever he is on the path, whereas if he jumps, there’s unlikely to be a way back.

The yellow-orange leaves wave gently overhead, blown towards the left in the breeze.

He wipes his palms on his jeans and follows them back to the path, and a sudden sense of contentment falls over him.

This could be a trap.

He repeats the thought over and over, especially when the train tracks fizzle out and merge into wide wooden slats more common for a walking bridge. 

It doesn’t take long from there to figure out he’s in New York. He’s never been to the city, despite all the Monroe-related traveling he’s done, but the Statue of Liberty he sees at one junction makes it pretty obvious.

It also makes the emptiness even weirder as he continues walking.

The indiscriminate sounds haven’t stopped, humming quietly in the background like the white noise app Stiles had been obsessed with senior year, but he still hasn’t come across any actual people—not even a stray water bottle or wrapper on the path to prove someone was here.

It’s just him.

He burrows deeper into his jacket. 

While some of the trees are on the same level of the bridge as he is, like the area where he’d first woken up, other times the trees grow below him to just barely peak above the walkway. Bushes and other flowering plants dot the sides, and sometimes the bridge widens far enough to have box gardens on one side. It’d be pleasant, maybe, if the strange lack of people weren’t so off putting.

After another five minutes, he spots a sign placed in front of another garden-like section.

Scan to Adopt a Plant: Give the Gift of the High Line, No Matter How Far Away They Are!

His eyes linger on “The High Line.”

That doesn’t really tell him much, other than that it sounds like a tourist attraction, but at least he has a name for it now.

He stares at the edge again. If he’s fast enough, maybe he can get over before the nausea hits.

The breeze switches abruptly.

His nose twitches.

Ozone.

Not just the familiar, bitter taste of metal in his mouth, but notes of something crisper—almost sweet—underneath.

It’s coming from ahead of him.

There’s a familiarity to it that almost seems…

He moves towards it.

The source is sitting just a few yards ahead, invisible from where he’d been thanks to both the curve of the path, and the way the tanned orange of her overalls blends in with the yellows and oranges of the trees. She’s facing away from him, her black hair cropped to chin-length on one side and shaved close on the other, and she sits cross-legged and straight-backed on a bench similar to the one he’d woken up on.

She doesn’t seem to have noticed him.

“Um.” He clears his throat, leaves crunching underfoot as he steps forward. “Hello?”

The woman’s back tenses.

Energy thrums around her.

Powerful.

Scott’s gums itch in reaction, but he holds his fangs back.

Not yet.

Not until he knows.

The woman’s legs unfurl from underneath her to land softly on the ground. She tilts her head towards him.

The bright orange of her eyes takes his breath away.

“…Kira?” he whispers. 

She doesn’t blink.

Neither does he.

It’s been over two years since she disappeared into the desert, so different from wherever they are now. She looks exactly the same. She looks so much older.

She looks so Kira it physically hurts.

“Are you…”

He stalls out, lost for how to finish in the face of her silence.

He fists his jacket in his hands. It’s not real. There’s no reason to believe she is.

And yet…

He slips his hands into his pockets, suddenly shy, and aims for the truth. “I missed you.”

Kira inhales sharply.

Scott smells the first chemosignal he’s found since he’d gotten here: a sudden bloom of hurt.

Kira stands, dusting invisible dirt from her overalls, and walks away.

Scott stares at her receding back in shock. It takes her reaching a covered portion of the path some twenty feet away before he snaps out of it. “Wait—Kira!”

She doesn’t respond, but she’s not walking fast enough to outpace him.

He wraps his hand loosely around her shoulder when he reaches her. “Kira, what’s—”

“Go away.”

He jerks back at the heat in her voice.

She’s stopped walking, though she still won’t look at him.

“Kira, I—it’s me,” he says. “Scott.”

“I know who you are,” she sighs. “I just don’t care.”

Kira’s heart stays perfectly steady.

It hits like a knife in his chest, so much deeper than Kate’s claws.

“Okay,” he stammers, swallowing past the lump in his throat. “Okay. That’s fair, I just—I need your help to—”

“I’m not giving any,” she snaps, backing away another step. “You’re a distraction. You always have been.”

The indistinct murmur of the crowd suddenly grows louder.

Scott’s eyes snap towards the edge, but Kira’s focus doesn’t follow.

“I shouldn’t have humored your presence in my domain as long as I already have,” she’s saying. The noise gets louder still. “Now get out—before I make you.”

The air shimmers with her fox, overtaking everything.

He holds out his hands placatingly. “I don’t know how, Kira. I don’t even know—I think something’s wrong with—”

“Stop it,” she snarls, eyes blazing. “You can’t trick me. I know the rules—I’m the one that set the rules.”

“Kira, what are you—”

“I train,” she growls, flames wreathing the air around her, “I get my tails—and I stay here until I get all of them.”

The fox takes its full form, glaring down at him with piercing eyes.

Scott doesn’t back away. “I’m not asking you to go anywhere, I swear. I just need—”

“I don’t care what you need because I don’t care about you, Scott!”

Another blow, deeper than before.

He can’t hear her heart. 

The noises are too much.

Something isn’t right.

“Please, Kira,” he tries, one hand covering his ear. “I don’t know what you think I’ve done, but I think—”

Pain explodes behind his eyes.

Gravel digs into his knees as he hits the ground hard, lungs spasming over nothing. He braces himself with one hand to keep from falling on his face, the other clutching at his chest.

Can’t breathe.

Can’t heal.

Electrocution.

He doesn’t smell the burnt flesh that follows it, can’t see the exit wounds on his feet, but it sears too familiar to be anything else.

She’s never hurt him on purpose.

Scott looks up at her, heart frantic under palm.

Her chemosignals are flush with shock. “…Scott?”

The pain hits again.

His arm gives out and he slams down onto the wood, black spots peppering his vision.

His muscles won’t respond.

He’s rolled onto his back.

Kira appears above him. 

 “Oh, god,” she says. “Oh my god, you’re real. Oh god.”

She blurs in and out, too fast to follow.

Everything is so loud.

Kira’s hand is reaching for him.

She smells scared.

He manages to reach one hand out long enough to thread his fingers through hers.

Then he’s seizing.

Back arched off the ground, limbs pushing against—

Not wood. 

Too hard.

Stone?

No.

Terror squeezes his throat.

Kira squeezes his hand.

“—can you hear me? Scott, you need to tell me what’s wrong. Scott. You gotta—just stay with me—”

Blood roars in his ears.

Fills his mouth.

“Scott!”

Table at his back.

Pain.

Restraints around his wrists.

Kate? 

Harsh fluorescent lights glaring down, bright like the High Line, isolating like the church.

He can’t think.

“He’s awake!”

There’s a flurry of movement around him. Trees. No.

People?

His vision won’t focus.

“He should’ve been down for another half hour, how is that—”

“Do I look like I know?”

He shudders.

Everything is so cold, his skin bare against the plastic of the table. Something smells singed.

His head hurts.

Where’s Kira?

“We’re not supposed to—”

His shoulders aren’t secured.

He tries to sit up.

There’s something— things— attached to his chest, pulling away from his skin as he moves.

“Hold him!”

Hands clamp around his shoulders, forcing him down.

Can’t struggle. Too weak. Too much.

His lungs seize.

“Turn it off now!”

Alarms blare in his ear.

Then nothing.

The tension buzzing through his body drops, though doesn’t dissipate entirely, leaving him weightless and disconnected. Numb.

A woman stares down at him, surgical mask over her face.

Kira?

The image settles into an older woman, shoulder-length hair pulled back from a weather-beaten face. She stares at him for a handful of seconds. Just long enough to register her disdain.

She turns to someone he can’t quite see. “His heart is fine. Increase the voltage by ten on the next attempt—no other changes.”

Voltage?

He wants to ask, but his tongue is too heavy in his mouth. Thoughts still jumbled.

The rattle of someone typing on a mechanical keyboard bores at his skull.

It’s too loud. Everything is. Even his blood, rushing round and round in his veins.

He lolls his head to the side, all the movement his stringless body can manage. 

Six electrodes are fastened to his bare chest, connected to the heart monitor he’d heard before. There’s also an empty IV line inserted in the vein just above his elbow, stained purple from recent use.

Further down, three-inch wide metal cuffs shackle his wrists and ankles to the bed frame.

Exposed wires wrap around the chains. 

Sparks flicker along the length of it; electricity still siphoning through, and the skin around the metal is red and blistered. Some of it blackened, where it touches the metal.

It explains the pain.

His licks dry and cracked lips.

“What’s—” he runs out of breath midway; has to collect himself to continue— “happening?”

The woman ignores him.

The clacking continues.

He remembers—

U.C. Davis. Kate. Kira.

Here?

He tugs feebly at the chains. 

The bed doesn’t give—too strong. More likely, he’s too weak. 

His heart flutters in his chest, too fast.

The clacking stops.

“Do you want the dosage lowered?” someone asks.

Youngish, male. Nervous. The timidity in his chemosignals pierces through the smell of sweat and pain.

A disdainful sniff from the woman. “Was there something you found unclear about ‘no other changes?’”

Twenty six galloping heartbeats pass.

The typing resumes.

Scott manages to loll his head back to center.

Sweat drips down his nose, his collarbone, his brow. The constant buzz of electricity makes his skin crawl, but it’s not life threatening.

Probably.

He’s had worse.

He just needs to think.

Fluorescent lights. Concrete walls. Bedframe. Heart monitor. 

Hospital?

There’d been something about a dosage—wolfsbane, maybe? To keep him from remembering?

Pain shoots up the base of his spine and he gasps.

No one responds.

He blinks back tears.

There’s nothing connecting now and the Arboretum. He has no idea where he is. No idea who these people are.

No idea how to get out.

“We’re ready, ma’am,” the man says.

Ready for what?

Scott’s limbs jitter from the low level of electricity running through them.

She’d mentioned more.

“Please,” he slurs. “Whatever happened—whatever you need—I can—”

He can’t even finish a sentence.

It gets the woman’s attention.

She tilts her head down at him, mantis-like. “Wait.”

Scott’s chest shudders.

He needs to say something. Needs to—to—

“Delay the shock,” she says, eyes fixed on his heart.

Scott doesn’t dare to hope.

“For how long, ma’am?”

Her chemosignals don’t waver as she moves to the fluid bags hanging beside him, a half smile on her lips. “Until he starts hallucinating, of course.”

She opens the IV line. 

The purple substance is ice cold when it hits his veins.

Chapter Text

Pain lances up Scott’s right arm.

He scrabbles blindly for it, left hand slinging across his chest, only for his fingers to touch a much, much thicker tube than had been inserted there seconds before. His gaze flies down.

A metal and leather gauntlet is strapped to his arm, a cuff around his wrist and one above his elbow, feeding a half-inch tube of brackish green liquid into his veins.

Dread Doctor tech.

Scott’s thoughts race.

It isn’t real. The Doctors are dead.

It’s just a dream.

Unless where he’d been before had been the dream.

Unhelpful.

Wherever he is, he can think straight again. He can use that.

Unlike the table he’d been strapped to before, he’s upright here—or sort of, slumped against something tall and glass, with the gauntlet shoving poison into his body his only restraint. He’s also got a black t-shirt on, too thin to stop him from shivering, but better than the total exposure from before.

The liquid in the tube gurgles, sloughing into his blood.

Wolfsbane, probably.

Again.

He drops his head sideways against the glass, pulling from energy reserves he doesn’t have as he takes in the rest of the room.

The emergency lights overhead give everything a disconcerting green glow, making the already damp air feel even muggier, and the smell of refuse and spoiled eggs permeates the area. He’s been in Beacon Hill’s sewer system enough to recognize the atmosphere, but this room feels specifically familiar somehow. The cracks in the cement floor, the table of instruments by the wall…

It’s not until his eyes land on the staircase that he remembers.

It’s where Theo and his chimera pack had camped out senior year.

The tube forces another dribble of the burning substance into his arm and he groans, squeezing his free hand into a fist to try to fight back the pain.

Real or not, he needs it out.

He braces his right arm against his side, wrapping his hand around the tube.

“Unpleasant, isn’t it?”

Scott whips his head around.

Footsteps travel towards him, shadows too deep past the center of the room for him to make out their owner.

He struggles to push himself upright, but the movement jars his arm painfully and he’s forced to fall back against the glass. “Who’s there?”

The shadows from the hallway ripple.

“Come now, Scott,” Deucalion says, resting his hands against the top of the stairs, “has it really been that long?”

Scott’s mouth runs dry.

He’s in a suit. 

The black, ridiculously expensive one he’d been buried in, pristine and incongruous against the background of the filthy sewer.

He looks as imposing as he had the night he’d died.

Scott’s breaths echo loudly in the chamber.

Not real. He’s just like Kate.

Too much like Kate.

“You’re dead,” he grinds out.

“Is that how you greet all your friends?” Deucalion tsks, lowering himself onto the third step. He crosses one leg over the other, folding his hands to rest on his knee. “Though in your defense, I suppose a fair number of us reside in that particular state.”

Derision oozes from Deucalion’s voice and posture.

Scott clutches the tube again.

The pressure extends at least eight inches into his arm. It’ll be hell getting it out.

Listening to Deucalion will be worse.

He sinks his teeth into his lip to stop himself from reacting, and pulls.

It really sucks.

The tube’s insertion point is too close to the cuff to pull it out parallel, so he has to yank an awkward angle—tearing at the already fragile blood vessels and spreading the poison deeper into his arm.

He manages nearly five inches before he has to stop, too close to passing out to go further.

“You know,” Deucalion offers, still sitting calmly on the stairs, “I took it out in one go when I did it.”

“Feel free to help.”

Deucalion laughs. “And miss out on the delightful show?”

He flips Deucalion off.

Deucalion just laughs again.

His fault for interacting with the hallucination.

Another bout of nausea runs through him and he squeezes his eyes shut to keep from throwing up.

Out. Now.

He pulls at the tube again, slower this time to keep from damaging the entry wound.

Just a little further. He can do it. He can—

“Aren’t you going to ask me?”

Scott grits his teeth. “Ask you what?”

“Whether I’m responsible for the mess you’ve gotten yourself into.”

The tube finally slips free and Scott gasps, blood and swill gushing from the wound.

Deucalion makes a displeased noise.

Scott tosses the dribbling tube away and drops his head against the glass, sweat making his hair cling to his forehead.

His arm fucking hurts, even with the tube gone. Blood runs sluggishly from the wound, reticent to close—the poison’s slowed his healing beyond tolerable levels, and there’s no telling how long it will take to cycle out.

Deucalion’s still staring, predator like, from the steps. Unaffected except for the disgust.

“I went to your funeral,” Scott sighs, after a moment. “So, no. I don’t think you’re involved. Or… even alive.”

Deucalion smells surprised—probably about being dead.

Scott’s too tired to care.

Then Deucalion asks, “Did you really?”

“Of course I did,” Scott says testily.

The last thing he wants to deal with is a fake Deucalion’s ego.

Deucalion just hums at him. “Well. Perhaps it’s not so surprising. You’ve always jumped at the chance to alleviate a guilty conscience.”

“Excuse me?”

“The quality of my life decreased drastically once you were in it, Scott.” Deucalion rises casually to his feet, gesturing at the air as he walks towards the table. “Captured by nefarious children. Paying to have your negligent friends released. And of course, gunned down like a common criminal in a shipyard. All of them on your behalf.”

Scott stiffens. “None of that was my fault.”

“Wasn’t it?” Deucalion prods, examining something on the table. “You didn’t drag me into your little war with the hunters?”

“I—it’s not my war.”

“But they were coming for you.”

Scott flinches.

It’s not like he doesn’t think about it.

Deucalion. Brett. Satomi. All the others murdered because he hadn’t been enough.

“They would’ve come for you eventually,” he says quietly, staring down at his injured arm. “They come after everyone now.”

“Is hiding behind the deaths of even more innocent people really the best you can do?”

Scott would lunge at him if he had the energy.

He settles for an exhausted glare. “I don’t think ‘innocent’ is a word most people would use for you.”

“Nor you, it would seem. A fortunate equilibrium for our purposes.”

Scott frowns at the sudden topic change. 

He drags himself upright, hoping to see whatever Deucalion’s got in his hands. “What are you—”

“I once told Talia Hale that an Alpha never walks alone,” Deucalion says, turning. “But in your case, I think we can make that a bit more literal.”

He’s holding a tube. Thicker. Nearly two inches in diameter.

Scott lunges for it.

Claws sink into his already injured arm, immobilizing him, and then two gore into his neck, just above the spine.

Scott gets in a single swipe before the tube’s forced into the wound.

Scott screams.

Whatever had been attached to his arm is now flooding his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the neck down and burning, burning, burning as he falls.

Deucalion looks down at him, smiling placidly. “A more effective method for restraining an Alpha, isn’t it?”

“Go… to hell,” Scott bites out.

Deucalion bends down, carefully flicking a strand of hair off Scott’s forehead. “You’ve already put me there. That’s why I think you should help get me out.”

Deucalion pulls away, adjusting some valve connected to the tube.

“What are you doing?” Scott gasps.

“It didn’t take me as long as you might expect.” Deucalion taps the cord attached to Scott’s neck, each vibration sending agony down his spine. “That Dread Doctor wanted to find perfect good for his perfect evil. But neither of us are perfect anything—makes it easier to find a compatible host.”

Pressure start to form at the edges of Scott’s thoughts. Similar to the Alpha roars he’d experienced as a Beta, but worse. Closer.

“You don’t have to do this,” he says. “You said you’d changed. Remember? You said you didn’t want to kill anymore.”

“That would be why I’m not killing you,” Deucalion scoffs. “I’m simply… using you. Consider it a step up from your usual pathetic attempts to make things right. Now, hold still. I’m told it won’t take long.”

The only refusal Scott can show is turning his head, but barely a few centimeters before the tube stops him.

He has to get out.

He can’t—his limbs—

Except his neck moves.

He’s not dying, so the tube can’t be more than an inch or so deep. Pulled taut. 

I took it out in one go.

He’s only got one try. 

Black smoke swirls around his body.

Scott yanks forward.

A heart monitor shrieks.

His fingers fly to his neck.

A yellow-orange leaf falls away.

Hands pull at him.

Forcing him to his knees. Pinning his arms behind him.

Someone’s shouting.

Kira?

It’s dark.

Cold. 

His shoulders ache miserably and his eyes refuse to focus.

He just wants to sleep.

His chin drifts towards his chest.

It bumps against something on his neck.

Adrenaline surges through him.

Heavy manacles bind his hands behind his back, metal biting into his wrists when he lunges forward.

A chain yanks him to the ground, clanking angrily against stone.

Trapped.

Again.

Scott pants, a cloud of vapor forming at his mouth.

He’s not in the sewer anymore.

Stone, not concrete, leeches heat away from his now-bare feet and chest, and the manacles at his back are solid metal, instead of the more flexible leather from the Dread Doctors’ gauntlet. The only thing attached to them is the chain: sturdy, solid. Meant to keep him immobile instead of drugged.

They feel similar to the ones that had chained him in the hospital room.

He swallows, his Adam’s apple pressing against the thing at his throat. It’s wrapped all the way around his neck, tight enough to bruise, with a box-like apparatus at the front.

A shock collar.

That would match the hospital, too.

Maybe he’s finally somewhere real.

Scott drags himself into a sitting position, or as close as he can manage with his hands shackled to the wall, and looks around.

The room is surprisingly large for a cell—at least twenty feet by thirty, though he’s guessing more, with a stone floor that looks like it was built in the nineteenth century and hasn’t been cleaned since. A single rectangular light flickers on the wall to his left, incandescent in comparison to the fluorescents he’d seen before, and the only exit is a double-door entryway on the wall farthest from him.

It’s wood—old enough that he could break it.

He tests the chains again. He could break them, too.

If he were at full strength.

With the adrenaline fading from his system, exhaustion pins him to the floor more than any restraints do. Whatever they did to him has taken a toll on his body: wrists still throbbing from the electrical burns, his head pounding from the wolfsbane, and something in his chest whistles whenever he breathes too deep.

He’s not healing.

A remnant of the electrocution and whatever they’d shot into his system, most likely, but the cold’s not helping either.

Scott shuffles around until his knees are pulled to his chest. His khakis are practically threadbare, made for California weather, but it’s better than nothing.

The flag jacket suddenly seems a lot more useful.

Scott’s chest tightens.

Kira.

His memories are blurry, but—he’d heard her. In between Deucalion and the monitors and the pain, there’d been another voice. Calling for him.

He’d seen the leaves, too.

The High Line had been different from his other two dreams. He’s been to La Iglesia and he’s been in the sewers before all this, but he’d never even heard of the park before today. And Kate and Deucalion had been exactly like he would’ve pictured them—but Kira had changed. Not just in how she looked, but the way she’d reacted—

I don’t care about you, Scott.

His stomach flips.

She’d been genuinely angry.

But then her fingers had been warm in his.

The war with Monroe has consumed so much of his life he sometimes forgets that she’s just… out there. Having experiences he can’t even imagine.

He shivers, dropping his head to his knees.

None of that matters. Even if the version of her he’d seen were real, there’d be no way for him to get back there.

Unless he tries sleeping.

The thought lingers.

It’s appealing. He’s so, so tired, and he’ll heal faster if he lets his body rest.

But the woman in the mask had been trying to make him dream. He can’t risk inadvertently helping whatever her plan is.

No matter how fucking cold it is.

He takes a moment to recover, then works on shifting his body until he can just barely slip one hand into his pocket. 

Lint. Coins. Rock.

The same disappointing result he’d gotten on the High Line.

The lint wouldn’t be enough to keep the tiniest flame going, and while the coins might come in handy if he can get near a payphone, they’re useless until then.

He could maybe throw the rock at someone, if he had any kind of leverage.

He doesn’t.

He lets the pieces fall back into his pocket and drags his shoulder across his face. Ice crystals have formed on his eyelashes—far too cold for California. 

His chances of a rescue aren’t good if they’ve moved him to a different state.

He gives the manacles around his wrists another experimental pull.

He hisses.

The only thing he’s managed to break is the already-damaged skin at his wrists, and blood drips slowly down his fingers.

The wound will probably freeze over before it clots.

How long would it take a werewolf to freeze to death?

Longer than it’s taking him to heal?

Maybe the extra voltage was too much after all.

Maybe his mind broke after Kate put on the mask.

Maybe this is hell and Deucalion’s now in control of his body.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

Scott inches back against the wall.

He can’t hear anything outside of the room. It could be that his hearing’s been damaged, but it doesn’t feel like it—more likely they’ve got some kind of suppression system, either through Mountain Ash, frequency disrupters, or some other miserable thing he hasn’t encountered yet.

Or he really is alone down here.

He shivers. His heart’s too sluggish—knocked into arrhythmia thanks to the electricity, kept in bradycardia from the cold.

The High Line had been warm.

He can’t.

Even if Kira’s real, it wouldn’t be real. He’d still be here, freezing, completely helpless if someone came back for him.

The collar digs into his neck, reminding him of how helpless he already is.

He licks his lips, still chapped.

They’d heal faster if he slept.

His body would still be cold, but at least he won’t be experiencing it.

And if he’s right—

He’ll see her again.

He turns to the side, slumping awkwardly against the wall to try to keep the pressure off his wrists and shoulders. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do, but if Kira was calling for him, maybe she knows.

He closes his eyes and lets his body drift.

It’s warm.

The bench is rock underneath him, hot from absorbing the sun’s rays, and his fingers spread out instinctively to soak up as much of the heat as possible. His wrists peek out from his denim cuffs as he stretches, the skin smooth and unbroken underneath.

It’s all the proof he really needs, but his eyes drop to the spot just above his elbow to make absolutely sure.

The American flag patch is sewn proudly on his sleeve.

His fingers drift over the symbol, worn out and familiar in all the right places. He’d bought the jacket the summer before junior year—part of his never ending search for something that helped him feel like he belonged in his own skin.

It had worked then, and it’s working now.

He keeps his hand anchored to it as he takes in his surroundings.

It’s definitely still the High Line, but the trees are thinner in this section, leaving a clearer view of the surrounding buildings. The Chrysler Building is just visible in the distance, and it would be an easy walk—if he could just get down there.

He leans against the banister, staring down at the road below. He’s not really planning to jump, but the longer he looks, the more nauseated he gets.

“I wouldn’t go that way.”

Scott turns.

“If, um.” Kira hesitates, not quite meeting his eyes. “If I were you.”

Despite the fact that he’d been hoping to see her—expecting it, even—the sight of her just standing there, barely an arm’s length away, steals his breath.

She looks much the same as she had before—the same hair, same outfit, and same sense of power in the charged air around her. But her bearing is almost completely different: shy and watchful, where before she’d been stoically uncaring.

“Hi,” Scott says softly. He’d reach for her, but it doesn’t look like the gesture would be welcome.

Her gaze darts across his body, never stopping in one place for long, as though she’s looking for something she can’t quite find. He holds himself perfectly still, waiting on her cue.

Her eyes snap to his.

They’re a human brown again, but flecks of orange still glimmer inside her irises.

“Do you know where you are?” she asks, holding herself just as carefully as he does.

Scott blinks. “I…”

That hadn’t been on the list of questions he’d been prepared for.

He glances at the trees.

He’s pretty sure this place isn’t real. But he’s not wholly certain the other places aren’t imaginary, too.

He shrugs, a little helplessly. “The High Line?”

“The—Scott,” Kira scowls, sounding impatient. “I’m serious.”

Scott’s nose twitches.

Her chemosignals smell like the air just before it rains.

It’s what fear always smelled like on her.

“You shouldn’t be here,” she says.

“Why?” His heel scrapes against the fence behind him, and his own fear briefly escalates until he breaks contact with it. It’s a reminder that no matter how much better things are here, he’s still effectively trapped. “Are you in danger?”

“What? No. It’s—” Kira wrings her hands, then straightens to stare at him head on. “Scott, this is Bardo.”

A chill runs down his spine. “That isn’t—that’s not possible.”

“That’s what I thought, but Tayen was surprised when I asked her.”

“Who?”

“Tayen,” Kira repeats. “She’s the Skinwalker in charge of my training. I thought you were… part of it. Before.”

The reference to Kira’s training—Kira’s life —would be tantalizing at any other time.

But if this is Bardo, then…

“How are you here?” Scott asks, suddenly on guard.

Bardo had been where they’d gone when they’d sacrificed themselves to the Nemeton, releasing the darkness around their hearts and driving them all nearly insane.

It had been how the Nogitsune had gotten out.

Kira doesn’t seem to notice his wariness.

“Oh, I’m not really here. Or not exactly. I’m meditating. Bardo is sort of—um—” Kira grimaces. “Do you remember when I shocked you?”

Scott tenses.

“Oh, no! I don’t mean—on purpose, not—you asked me to. When we were trying to find the Benefactor.”

Scott nods.

Kira’s hand had been so powerful on his chest, burning electricity directly into his heart. Then so soft afterwards, when it had held his hand on his bed.

“Your heart rate was so low, it technically put you in a state between life and death,” Kira says. “And that’s…”

“Bardo,” Scott finishes.

“Yeah. There are different progressive states, but we’re on the highest one right now. I think I sent you a lot lower—I didn’t know what I was doing yet. The Skinwalkers did something to make sure Theo was on the right level while he was there. He’s, um. He’s not causing trouble, is he?”

“Um.” Scott’s head spins. “No. You… know he’s out?”

“The sword’s connected to my power—it doesn’t do anything without my permission.” Her face darkens. “I don’t always agree with the Skinwalkers’ methods. It was time for him to go.”

It’s a lot to take in at once.

He rubs at his wrist.

“Could…” Scott swallows. “Does it have to be foxfire that does it?”

“I… guess not,” Kira says, stilling. “But it’d be really dangerous. You’d have to generate a charge powerful enough to slow the heart without completely stopping it. Fast. The longer the shock lasts, the more damage it causes. But that still wouldn’t get you to Bardo—it’s almost as much of a mental state as it is physical.”

“Right.” Scott keeps rubbing his wrist, tighter and tighter. “So—what would happen if someone combined really powerful electric shocks with a hallucinogenic form of wolfsbane?”

Kira looks at him.

The smell of fear is overwhelming.

“You’d have a really dangerous, really unethical torture device.”

Somehow, hearing her say it makes it feel worse.

“Okay,” he says, forcing his hands apart, “okay. So—that would explain how I’m here.”

Kira pales. “This is happening to you now? Right now?”

“No. Or—I don’t think so. The last thing I remember is being in a cell, but I wasn’t hooked up to the wires anymore.”

“Then how—”

“I was looking for you.”

Kira’s eyes widen, and despite how desperate the situation had been, heat flushes Scott’s cheeks.

“Not like—I mean—” Scott stammers. “In between my—other dreams—I heard you calling for me. I thought if I fell asleep—maybe I’d find you again.”

“And you did,” Kira murmurs. Then her nose wrinkles. “That really shouldn’t have been possible.”

“Maybe you’re my peaceful deity,” Scott offers, remembering the way she’d described Bardo before.

A half smile forms on her lips. “Maybe. Tayen said that since I’ve put you in Bardo before, we might still have a connection.”

Then she’s the one blushing.

“Um—but, I mean, okay. You said you were in a cell. Is there anything else? Something that might help us figure out where you are?”

“Us?” Scott asks. “You can—I thought you couldn’t—”

“I can’t,” Kira says hurriedly. “But—I might be able to ask Tayen if I can contact the others. The pack. If it’s an emergency.”

“Oh.”

The pang of disappointment in his chest is unexpectedly sharp.

He shakes himself.

Not as sharp as the electric shocks will be if he doesn’t figure this out.

“I’m not entirely sure which parts were real,” he admits, “but the place that had me connected to wires seemed like some kind of hospital. An older one—concrete walls and stuff.”

“Okay,” Kira says, not sounding very confident. And for good reason—he could’ve just described literally thousands of places. “Anything else? Maybe about the people?”

Scott shakes his head. “No. Except—the cell they were keeping me in afterwards was big. Really big.”

“So they’re somewhere with a lot of space.”

“Yeah. And—cold. I wasn’t in California anymore.”

Kira shoots him a worried look, but that’s not a detail she needs to know more about.

“What about where you were before you got captured?” she asks. 

This part he’s positive about. “I was in the Arboretum—the Contemplative Garden section, by the water. I don’t remember seeing many people around, but—”

“Hang on, what Arboretum?”

“Um, the one on U.C. Davis’s campus. I study there a lot—Stiles probably knows the place, if you can get ahold of…”

A strange, wistful look flickers across Kira’s face. 

He pauses. “You okay?”

“Yeah, sorry, I just—you got in.”

Oh.

Oh.

He’d gotten his acceptance letter in April, nearly five months after Kira had left.

“Yeah,” he says, rubbing nervously at the back of his neck. “Yeah, um—I had to defer my first semester for a few reasons, but—I’m a sophomore now.”

Happiness curls in Kira’s scent, underneath all of the fear and worry. “Oh. I’m really proud of you.”

Kira smiles as she says it, and suddenly he doesn’t even care about Bardo if it means getting to see that again.

“What about you?” he asks eagerly. “Is the training—and your tails—”

“I have six now,” Kira says, brightening. “I’m supposed to be stable enough to leave when I have seven.”

“You can come home?”

Her chemosignals flatten as suddenly as her mouth had, the change to the more detached persona so abrupt it gives him whiplash. “I’m not supposed to think about that life as home.”

I don’t care about you, she’d said.

It’s hard to reconcile the Kira he’s looking at now with the glimpse of the old one he’d seen moments before.

“Oh.” Scott swallows. “Right. Sorry.”

Kira clears her throat, evidently wanting the conversation to move on. “So. Is there anything else I should know? Any other clues, or…”

Scott shakes his head. “That’s all I know.”

“Right. Okay. Well…” Kira fidgets with her thumb. “Is there anything I should know about… your condition? To pass on?”

It’d been dangerously cold in the cell, his heart already weak from the shocks it’d taken.

But time has passed. He’s probably healed.

He shakes his head.

Kira doesn’t look like she believes him. “Well—I don’t really know how this works, but if you’re on any level of Bardo, it can be dangerous to stay in that state for too long. Even this one.”

Scott chews his lip. “You’re saying I can’t stay.”

The worried version of Kira flickers briefly across her face. “I… without knowing how much time is passing for your body, it isn’t safe. I’m sorry. But if you need to find me again, just do whatever it is you did this time, and I’ll know to come for you.”

Scott nods, holding his jacket between his fingers.

The sun is warm against his back.

“Yeah,” Scott says, swallowing his heart back into his chest. “Of course. This is the first time they’ve left me alone, so if I go back now, maybe I can break out before they come back.”

“Okay—and I’ll work on contacting your pack either way.” Kira gives him a weak smile. “With any luck, I won’t see you again for awhile.”

Scott doesn’t know how to answer that.

There’s a stun baton at his chest when he opens his eyes.

Chapter Text

An incandescent light flickers in the background. Scott’s shivering from the cold. Hands fastened behind him.

He’s still in the cell.

The baton presses against his sternum, threateningly close to his heart. His captor’s thumb rests on the switch.

“Get up,” the man growls.

The man with the baton is wearing a thick red hoodie, the word VASA printed in large letters across the front. The word doesn’t mean anything to Scott.

But it looks warm.

The man’s chemosignals are flat, more out of boredom than any attempt to cover them, but the chemosignals of the second guard reek of fear and disgust. She’s clutching a small black box, hovering closer to the door. Watchful.

She’ll be the more dangerous one.

“How am I supposed to get up,” Scott asks, jerking the chain, “with this on?”

The baton jabs into him and Scott hisses.

“It’ll reach,” the man says.

Scott drops his head, staring at the bruise already forming at his chest.

He hadn’t been worried about the length of the chain.

He’d been testing it.

He snaps the chain in half.

“Son of a bi—”

Scott’s on him before he can finish.

He bites the man’s arm, flat-toothed but hard, until blood bursts hot and thick in his mouth. He anchors his toes in the cracks in the stone, tearing downward with the full force of an Alpha.

The man’s skull cracks against the stone, blood slicking the floor.

Blood oozes from Scott’s mouth, too. Warmer than him by a dozen degrees.

Sweet.

The woman is scrabbling backwards.

Scott lunges.

Agony seizes him by the throat and slams him into the ground.

He’s burning.

Trembling, crippling, choking; a paroxysm of fire and pain. 

Anger surges through him. If his hands were free—his claws—if he could move them—

He can’t. Can’t even think.

Like the skull.

The current vanishes, leaving him a gasping, jittering mess on the ground.

There’s a shoe in front of him. A woman’s shoe. 

The bottom of it.

He blinks at it, nausea and rage and exhaustion buzzing through his limbs.

He can’t make sense of it.

His head pounds, a sharp, bright pain in his left temple.

He presses his forehead against the freezing floor and snarls, the weight against his shoulders painful with his hands still wrenched behind his back. He drags himself to a kneeling position, coaxing his fangs to the surface.

The woman is sprawled out in front of him.

Dead.

Scott stares at her, blood dripping from a cut above his eye, from his mouth; mixing with saliva to dribble down his neck.

There’s no blood on her. Just the black box in her hand, her thumb slipped off the pressure-sensitive switch.

The shock collar.

She’d been touching him when she activated it; skin on skin. The voltage had been set to paralyze an Alpha.

Vacant eyes stare up at him.

She hadn’t been an Alpha.

His heart ricochets in his chest.

Hers—doesn’t.

Scott’s breath comes in short pants.

How many do you think we’ll kill this time?

Acid churns in his stomach, dissolving the fangs in his mouth.

It wasn’t his fault.

They were coming for you.

Scott lurches to his feet, the floor tilting underneath, and stumbles for the door.

His ears pop angrily as he passes the threshold.

The low hum of electricity surrounds him.

Whirring.

Creaking.

Voices in the distance, all blurred together from the white noise of the electricity.

Disturbingly similar to the High Line.

He blinks blood from his eye, heart skipping at random in his chest. 

There’s nothing to his left—the corridor runs one way, without another exit in sight. 

He takes a cautious step forward.

No alarms.

He slips along the edge of the wall, pressed as flat as he can manage with his arms chained at his back. He’s slower than he should be—stiff and uncoordinated from the repeated shocks.

Half dead.

Scott breathes through his nose, faster.

He rounds a corner and the corridor opens abruptly into a small room. It’s brighter; empty except for a metal staircase spiraling through the center, and a dust-covered floor to ceiling window spans the far wall, overlooking the interior of the building.

Scott limps towards it, sticking to the shadows as he approaches.

The room below is massive.

Four stories deep and the length of a lacrosse field, and old—the ceiling coming apart in places, rust flaking on the metal staircases, dirt and debris built up on the floor.

A dozen bus-sized generators line the area, all humming with activity.

Scott’s pulse jumps in his throat.

You’d have to generate enough power to slow the heart without stopping it.

They’d produce a whole lot more electricity than a car battery would.

Scott backs away, feeling for the staircase with his feet so he doesn’t have to take his eyes off the window.

Two dozen or more people mill about on the ground floor. None of them look familiar.

Do they know he’s escaped?

Do they even know he’s here?

The staircase is freezing when his foot makes contact with it. 

He turns.

The chain dangling from his cuffs swings freely.

It clangs against the railing.

Fuck.

All of the voices stop.

Scott runs.

There’s nowhere to go but down, straight towards everyone else, straight through four floors that leave him gasping by the time he reaches the bottom of the staircase.

There are six doors and two corridors to choose from.

Panic builds in his stomach.

He can’t get shocked again. Can’t go back to Bardo, or the cell, or risk hurting—

Killing.

His stomach twists.

The production floor had been on his left before, but the staircase had been circular so that would mean—he needs to go—

“It’s the one to your right.”

Scott whirls, claws springing instinctively from his chained hands.

The woman with the weather-beaten face smiles at him.

“With the deadbolt, which I’m afraid is locked.” She glances at his hands, where the broken chain dangles from the manacles. Her smile turns sharper. “Though I doubt it will be a problem for you.”

“You—”

She’s not carrying anything.

Maybe this is still salvageable.

Scott pulls back his shift, making his posture and voice as nonthreatening as possible. “Who are you?”

The woman’s eyes flick to the blood on his collarbone. “An interested party.”

More people file in behind her, all with varying levels of disdain and curiosity.

Too many.

He licks his lips and finds more blood. “Interested in what?”

“You.”

One of the others pulls something from his pocket.

A black box.

Scott lunges for the door.

Someone shrieks.

“Stop.”

Fire explodes down his throat.

He doesn’t even register hitting the ground.

Light flashes in Scott’s eyes.

Slow. Rhythmic. Strobe-like shadows, intermittently disrupting the fluorescent lights on the ceiling.

A fan.

He curls his fingers into fists, nails scraping against tile. Water drips from somewhere above him, the slots of a metal grate pressing against his spine.

Locker room.

His hand goes instinctively to his neck.

No claw marks.

No collars, either, or tubes, or even leaves. Nothing at all.

A tight band of anger squeezes around his ribcage.

It’s been awhile since he’s been in the Beacon Hills locker room, but not so long he can’t recognize it.

They’ve put him under again.

He shoves himself up onto his elbows, half surprised to find he’s not wearing a towel, or maybe even a jersey. Just a plain gray henley, blue jeans, brown boots. Nothing to indicate what’s waiting for him.

Who will it be this time? Peter? Theo?

Hell, Jackson?

The number of people he’s fought with in the locker room is absurdly high.

He stands the rest of the way, the room flickering into sharp relief as his eyes shift from brown to red. “Who’s there?”

No one responds.

Scott turns slowly in place, claws out.

No footsteps. No heartbeats. Just the fans whirring overhead, the water dripping from the faucets.

Alone.

Scott slips his fangs back into his gums.

It’s not like anything here matters. All he needs to do is figure out how to get back to his body before—

What?

He stares at his hands, unchained for once.

Except they’re not really his.

His hands are somewhere else, pressed against a freezing cement floor or chained to a wall or shackled to a table, half-dead and marinating in wolfsbane.

Kira had called it torture.

Torturers usually want something.

A shiver runs down his spine.

He’d been covered in blood and sweat and chains and half-naked in front of a dozen people, and they’d—not a single one had looked surprised to see him. Surprised he’d gotten out, maybe, but not that he’d been held prisoner. All smelling that same combination of fear and disgust the woman had had, right before—

Scott clenches his fists.

It’d been so pointless.

If they hadn’t kidnapped him, she’d be alive right now. How is studying the avian gastrointestinal tract a threat to her? How is he the dangerous one when what had killed her was the device she’d been using on him? How is—

His claws shred into his palms.

He’s so fucking tired of people dying.

Blood drips down his fingers, bright red against the gray backdrop of the locker room.

The man with the stun baton had been bleeding. Head injuries bleed no matter how severe, but concussions are always dangerous—worse in cold temperatures. He hadn’t checked to see if he’d still been alive.

Maybe he doesn’t care.

He’s tired of being hunted, too.

The grooves in the tiles grow more pronounced, the shadows in the corners less dim. The world clearer as he sinks into his shift.

No more waiting.

He creeps silently through the showers, weight on the balls of his feet. He still can’t sense anyone else, but he hadn’t really put much effort into it before.

Everything has a smell if he tries hard enough.

The water has the sweetness of mildew from passing through the decades-old shower heads. The scents of grass and sweat have been baked into the lockers. Even the air has a scent: pencil shavings and reheated coffee and eraser nubs, pushed in through the vents from the rest of the school.

Under it all, something.

Someone.

His brow thickens and his jaw elongates, falling deeper into the shift, deeper into the smells. The fans make the scent hard to pinpoint as he prowls past the lockers.

Maybe it will be Gerard.

All the times he’d menaced him at the school, watching him, hurting him, always ready to cut him in half.

Victoria.

Waiting for him around the corner with pencils, wolfsbane, and an unrepentant smile.

Ms. Blake.

Waving the English test he’d never turned in, because she’d tried to kill him and his entire pack the night before it was due.

Always killing.

His fangs push past his lips. 

He passes the last locker.

An Alpha’s eyes glare back at him.

He stops mid-growl.

His own.

Irritation coils in his limbs, the lines obvious now that he’s looking. The mirrors have always been there, right above the sinks, right before the stalls.

He presses closer.

Then stops.

Something about it looks off.

Red eyes, thickened brow, fanged mouth.

Too fanged.

He knows who it is seconds before he appears behind him.

One gloved finger over his mouthless-face.

Scott whirls around.

No one.

He pants through his fangs.

He turns back to the mirror just as the Mute slams him into the sink.

Scott roars, pain hot and bruising in his abdomen, but the Mute’s grip is relentless, paralyzing him just as surely as he had the night Scott had been forced to bite Liam.

His hands are wrenched behind his back. Pinning him. Forcing him to his knees.

No.

Scott drops forward, flipping the Mute over his shoulder and fracturing the mirror.

He doesn’t get back up.

Blood gurgles from the cuts lacerating the Mute’s body, coating the floor. Flowing towards him.

His fangs stab into his gums.

Growing.

Scott scrambles back, blindingly reaching for the door to the hallway. His fingers grasp the knob and he tumbles through it, planning to land on linoleum.

He lands on tile.

Fans whirring overhead.

Over and over, Kate had said.

He rolls onto his back.

The Mute stares at him from one of the benches.

Scott almost laughs, hysteria building in his chest.

He should’ve known.

It’s not even his first time being haunted by the Mute.

He pushes himself up onto his elbows, not even caring if it ends with an axe in his chest.

The Mute leers at him.

“What do you want?” Scott asks, exhausted.

It’s a pointless question, but so is all of this.

The Mute blinks slowly, then rises from the bench, unfolding to take up more and more of the room.

Fear tugs at his belly.

“What are you—” The Mute looms closer; he drags himself backwards. “What do you—”

He stops.

His mouth stops.

His hands fly to his face, but his fangs are gone. Teeth, tongue, lips, mouth.

It’s gone.

The Mute stares down at him, Scott’s own mouth fixed to his face.

Scott’s elbows slip, dropping him flat against his back.

It grins.

His heart pounds in his ears.

No.

Beeps.

A heart monitor beeps in his ears.

“He’s coming out of it now, ma’am.”

He blinks.

The world wavers around the edges. Tile morphing into plastic.

“Vitals steady?”

“As well as can be expected.”

Light shines uninhibited in his eyes.

He blinks, thoughts syrupy. Everything distant.

“No one moves unless I say.”

A half dozen hearts surround him, beating faster than his.

Angry. Excited.

Anxious?

The woman appears above him. 

Surgical mask over her face.

Hospital.

Awareness splashes cold across his bare chest.

“Back with us?” she asks.

Blood itches above his eyebrow, dried and crusted from before.

His lungs stutter.

How long had he been under?

The woman’s gaze doesn’t falter, intent on… something. Him.

She’d asked him a question.

What’s—

He stops.

That isn’t right.

What’s—

His pulse quickens.

His mouth doesn’t move.

It’s there. He can feel it there, lips chapped from the cold, jaw sore from clenched teeth.

It just won’t move.

The woman smiles. “Very good.”

He curls his fingers into fists.

Tries to.

Can’t.

They lay flat at his sides, tips pressed against the table.

He flexes his toes.

Can’t.

Turns his head.

Nothing moves.

The heart monitor beeps faster.

It’s not like the pins and needles from Kanima venom, or the nothingness from when he’d briefly severed his L2 in the fight in San Francisco.

Everything feels the same as when he’d gone under. If anything, he feels—less bad.

Physically.

Someone clears their throat nearby. “Do you want to move on to the next step?”

The woman turns away from him, towards the speaker Scott desperately wishes he could see.

He has no idea what the next step is, but he knows the answer is no.

The long silence makes it even more pronounced that Scott can’t respond.

“No,” she says finally, turning back to him.

Scott’s eyes dart to hers, but she says nothing more: nails tracing slowly up his shoulder, blunt and chewed where they press into his skin.

Scott struggles to control his breathing as they drift towards his neck.

Then the pressure vanishes.

“He’s still fighting it,” the woman says, flicking her fingers away as if she’d been touching dirt. “Put him under again first.”

No.

Scott pulls against—against something, against whatever’s holding him still, or whoever is—

“I don’t know if we can yet,” says the nervous voice. “We’ve exceeded the maximum time we felt was safe twice now, and his heart—”

“I’d rather end this early because we’ve killed him than because he’s killed us, don’t you think?”

Scott’s finger finally twitches.

The woman’s lips thin. “Or at least, any more of us. Johnson?”

A hand grabs at Scott’s limp arm, then something cold and metal clamps around his wrist.

The manacles.

He hadn’t even been bound.

It doesn’t matter.

Johnson is quick and efficient, all four limbs shackled before he can manage another twitch, let alone start a fight.

A pinprick of pain as the IV slots into his arm.

“We’re ready, ma’am.”

Please don’t, he begs.

His tongue lies in his mouth.

Electricity seizes him.

He can’t even scream.

The light is orange. Streaks of yellows in it, pinks, even purples. The sun just starting to sink behind the tallest buildings.

Scott stares at the now-familiar skyline.

His stomach flips—probably residual effects from… everything—but he swallows it down, working his tongue around in his mouth to reassure himself it’s still there.

He takes a deliberate breath. The first time he’d broken his femur after becoming a werewolf, it had been unnerving to be able to walk on it minutes later.

It’s a bit like that when he’s able to rise fluidly from the bench.

As usual, it’s a different area of the High Line than he’s seen before: an extra set of wooden guardrails line either side of the path, with tiered gardens set lower near the actual edge, and brush and grass cover the mulched ground. 

It’s still the most familiar thing he could’ve seen.

“Kira?” he calls out.

The wind rustles in the leaves, but it doesn’t carry her scent.

Scott frowns, trying to ignore the headache that’s forming between his temples. The dreamscape probably doesn’t go on forever, but he can’t afford to waste time wandering in circles.

He turns the other way, but it’s still empty—the path stretching out before him, winding, the buildings hemming in the bridge on either side.

Scott feels—wrong.

Nauseated like he does when he’s standing too close to the edge.

He’s not too close.

His headache sharpens.

“Kira,” he tries again, but his voice cracks halfway through.

He stumbles back a step. Black spots in his vision.

What’s happening?

He grasps blindly for the railing.

He can’t pass out.

He has to find Kira—he has to tell her—

His knees buckle.

Head pitching forward.

Lithe arms catch him. “Scott?”

Kira.

The vertigo doesn’t stop trying to turn his stomach inside out, but the solidness of her behind him is grounding as they sink to the grass. The grooves of her corduroy pants form little ridges under his fingers, the urge to be sick slowly fading.

Kira’s orange-flecked eyes stare down at him when his vision filters back in. “You okay?”

Her eyes are really pretty against the sunset.

Kira’s cheeks flush.

Oh, shit. Mind reading?

No. His mouth is just working again.

His mouth is working too much.

“Um,” he says eloquently.

Kira stares at him.

He extracts himself gingerly from her arms, but only makes it halfway to his knees before the path tilts again.

Kira grabs his shoulder, steadying him.

“This sucks,” Scott manages, breathing through his nose. “Like, uh—when you’re on a cliff, and you lean over too far.”

Kira’s eyebrows pinch. “That’s a warning in Bardo—if you leave the High Line, even to go to street level, you leave this plane of Bardo and go to the next one.”

“Is there a way to tell Bardo I get it?” 

His back thuds against the bench, Kira’s hand falling away.

Kira falls silent, fidgeting with her thumb.

She’s still half-kneeling on the path across from him, shifting between looking like she wants to come closer and like she’d rather be anywhere else.

She finally lowers herself to sit cross-legged where she is, choosing neither. “The Skinwalkers… they think whoever’s doing this, they’re trying to send you to the second to last level.”

“The one right before death.” Scott remembers Kira’s explanation, a lifetime ago. She’d been so excited then, tumbling over her words in her excitement to tell him.

Now she only nods guiltily.

He wishes she would say more.

He wishes she were still touching him.

He stares at the spot where her hand had been on his shoulder; where the other woman’s hand had been before.

No one moves unless I say.

“Does that level—” He’s suddenly exhausted, dragging one knee to his chest to prop himself up. “Could what happens in Bardo affect the real world?”

His knee shakes, along with everything else.

“Sort of.” Kira frowns. “You’re in Bardo, but you’re also still ‘in’ your real body—wherever that is. Anything that affects one part of you affects the other, kind of like—like when someone has a heart attack, but they feel it in their jaw or shoulder or something.”

“Referred pain.”

“Yeah, that.” Kira twists the fabric of her overalls between her fingers, not quite meeting his eye. “I think—I think maybe you being here is actually you affecting Bardo. This is my dreamscape, from my memories—where you shouldn’t be and they shouldn’t know about. I think you come here when you’re able to fight against what they’re doing to you. But they could still… with the things they’re doing, they can still push you towards certain dreams—and the deeper they go, the harder it is to fight.”

Scott thinks about the dreams he’s been pushed to. “Because it’s still all coming from me?” 

Good dreams, or bad? He remembers asking.

I suppose that depends on you, Noshiko had said.

Then Kira’s cold hand had been against his chest.

Kira nods again. “That’s why the Skinwalkers use it—it’s harder to argue against a thought that’s coming from your own head.”

Scott’s stomach twists at the thought of Kira going through dreams like this over and over. “Have they ever…”

“Not like that. The influence is more dangerous the lower you go—I’ve never gone more than a few levels deep.” She offers him a nervous smile. “The first time they tested my fox, I actually saw an Oni.”

“The Oni are your greatest fear?”

“Not literally. It’s more like—the Oni should’ve been a really powerful weapon, right? But once my mom lost control of them, they were ready to kill everyone that got in their way—even Mom. My fox is kinda like that. The point was that the only way to win was to be willing to lose, even if I had to let it kill me—because it’s better to die as myself than be consumed by the fox.”

Kira’s demeanor is strangely brittle by the time she finishes speaking, coldness seeping in like wind.

Scott frowns. “There’s not an option for not dying at all?”

“Not for Skinwalkers.”

“Oh. Then…” Scott shrugs hesitantly, gentling his smile. “Then I’m glad you’re a Kitsune.”

Surprise flickers through Kira’s eyes, warm and brown.

Scott wants to move closer.

Something yanks at his intestines.

Scott gasps, doubling over.

“Scott?” Panic replaces the warmth. “Scott, what’s wrong?”

He can’t breathe.

Poison in his guts, his airways, tearing him apart.

Dragging him down.

Her hand anchors around his wrist.

He rolls to the side just in time to splatter black goop onto the ground, the taste rotting and familiar on his tongue. He retches twice more, the bubbling refuse disintegrating into the dirt almost as soon as it lands.

Kira’s thumb pets encouragingly against his palm. 

He rolls back over, head flopping onto the grass. 

Kira hovers anxiously nearby.

“Wolfsbane,” he says, lacking the energy for anything more specific.

She doesn’t seem to need it.

Her hand hasn’t pulled away yet. Still rubbing soothing circles into his skin.

It’s a nice hand. New calluses between her palm and fingers, probably from wielding a staff or katana.

He’s so tired.

“Scott? Oh, no no no, no passing out, come on—hey!”

A zap of electricity shocks his hand.

He thrashes back, pulse skyrocketing.

“Sorry! Sorry, I’m so sorry.” Kira’s stammering, hands raised where he can see them. “I didn’t mean to—you just couldn’t sleep—”

Kira.

Shock.

It hadn’t been bad.

Barely more than static from a car door.

High Line.

His heart rate starts to lower, along with his shoulders.

Kira’s staring at him with wide eyes.

The scent of his terror still lingers in the air.

“Sorry,” Scott mumbles, embarrassment curdling in his stomach. “I didn’t mean to freak out—you didn’t hurt me.”

“No, I should be the one—”

“It’s fine.” Scott waves her off, lowering himself into a cross-legged position that mirrors hers. He eyes her hands. “How did you know that would work?”

“I didn’t. I just—I couldn’t lose you.”

Oh.

He wants nothing more than to stay, but he can already feel the nausea building again.

“If it happens again,” he admits, “I don’t think either of us is going to be able to stop it.”

“How much time do we have?”

Scott grimaces through another wave. “Not much.”

“Okay. Okay—then, is there anything new? Anything that might help me find you?”

“Um.” It’s really hard to concentrate over the pain in his abdomen. “It’s a power plant—abandoned; the ceiling looked like it was falling apart. But still near the hospital—they took me there after.”

“Anything else? Maybe about the people?”

“Um… does ‘VASA’ mean anything to you? One of the guys wore a shirt with that on it—the As looked like upside down Vs and things like that; I thought it might be a logo.”

Kira wrinkles her nose. “No, but I’ve also been in the desert for two years. Do you think it’s their organization?”

Scott shakes his head, only to immediately regret it when it makes the dizziness worse. “He was the only one wearing it. I’m not even sure if they are an organization—they didn’t seem to want anything besides me, so I don’t think Monroe’s involved.”

“Who?”

The concept of someone he cares about not knowing about Monroe is so foreign Scott’s thoughts stutter to a halt. “You don’t—the pack didn’t think it was her?”

Kira’s eyes dart away.

The sinking in his stomach doesn’t have anything to do with Bardo. “You haven’t contacted them.”

 “I’ve talked with Tayen,” Kira says defensively. “I’m—still trying to work it out.”

Scott falters.

There’s a lie somewhere in there, but he can’t tell which part.

Or why.

“Oh—um. Right.” Scott slips his hands into his pockets, trying to contain his disappointment.

“I really am trying,” Kira says again, sounding like she’s trying to convince herself, too. “They just… have different priorities sometimes. It’s hard to contact people without their help. Or… a cellphone.”

Scott’s eyes light up.

“You can’t take stuff back to the real world, can you?” he asks, rooting through the bits in his pockets. “I’ve got a couple quarters you could use for a payphone, or—”

Kira shakes her head, looking stricken. “It’s not real for me.”

“Oh. Okay, well… plan C it is, then.”

“Is that which plan we’re on?”

“It’s close enough—”

Scott’s stomach caves in on itself.

“Scott!”

The ground wavers.

“I can’t—” he gasps. “I can’t—Kira—”

She grabs him by the shoulders.

“It’s okay. You’re okay.” Her eyes say he’s anything but. “I’m gonna find the pack, and then the pack will be able to find you, and—and you’re going to be okay. Okay? You just have to hang on long enough to—”

The ground swallows him whole.

Chapter Text

The first thing Scott notices is the bones.

Scraping his cheeks raw. Filling his nose with dust. Blocking out his vision. Blunt bones strapped to his shoulder blades and sharp ones fixed to his hands.

A bear’s ribcage wrapped around his chest.

It digs into his sternum like an ill-fitted corset, pressing tight against his lungs and gaping uselessly over the hollow of his stomach, bare and unprotected against the cold.

The second thing he notices is the hunger.

Clawing at his insides, biting, gnawing, aching, like he hasn’t eaten in days.

He feels ravenous.

Dangerous.

A door slams open behind him and Kate lopes in, one clawed hand hooked under the ribs of the man she’s dragging.

A thick, sickly-sweet trail of blood smears the ground.

“Sorry to leave you hanging,” she says, not sounding the least bit sorry. “Our little tail here decided to be more trouble than he’s worth.”

Hunter, his thoughts fill in. Following them.

The man writhes.

So does Scott’s stomach.

No.

His eyebrows knit slowly together. He doesn’t remember…

Kate tsks, tossing the deadweight of the hunter to the floor. “Now, don’t give me that look.”

He isn’t giving her a look. He can’t give her anything at all.

What she wants from him, she takes.

“It’s just a light tasing,” Kate continues, casually grabbing the hunter’s hair to inspect his eyes. “Some of us know how to do that without murdering the poor guy.”

Scott’s thoughts ripple, not quite taking shape.

Kate tosses a wink over her shoulder. “Don’t worry. You’ll still get to kill this one in a minute.”

Saliva pools around his fangs.

No.

Teeth. Human.

His shift is gone; turned prey and vanished in the presence of the bear.

Hasn’t it?

Kate’s claws caress the bare skin of his belly, goosebumps raising everywhere she touches. She smiles at the sight, patting him lightly.

“That’s a good boy. I like it when you let me know you’re awake for this.” Her eyes shift to a brilliant green. “Now move.”

He does.

One unhesitating foot after the other, powerless to stop it, powerless to even know how he knows where to go. He stops instinctively in front of the hunter’s body.

Blood soaks into the soles of his worn-down boots.

Kate lounges across his shoulders, arms draped around his neck and body pressed against his spine.

“What’ll be this time?” she asks, purring in his ear. “Stabbing? Maiming? I know you’ve got the whole electrocution thing going on, but I’m feeling like something a little more… bloody.”

Scott stands there, unmoving.

Kate sighs, slipping away from him. “You’re a lot more fun when you’re screaming. All right, fine, let’s get this over with. But don’t say I didn’t give you a choice.”

She kicks the man’s body over, face up.

He’s wearing a sweatshirt.

It says VASA on it.

“Go on, Scott,” Kate says. “You’re up.”

Scott stares at the letters.

The word seems… important.

It doesn’t mean anything.

Does it?

“Scott.” Kate’s voice has an edge to it now. “I’m waiting.”

Waiting is—bad. Bad things happen when Kate is upset.

Don’t they?

The hole in his stomach widens.

How did he get here?

“I’m only going to say this once, Scott.” Kate’s claws sink into the meat of his bicep, blood dripping down his arm. “Kill him.”

It burrows into his brain, echoing, screaming. Overriding anything in its way.

The Nagual’s control is as total as it had been before.

He raises his arm, blade-sharp bones protruding from his hand.

Kill him.

He brings it down.

Kill him.

It pierces flesh.

“Very good.”

Kate smiles at him, a black box in her hand.

No.

Sweat covers his body, dripping into his mouth, his eyes, making it hard to think.

He’s burning.

No.

Freezing.

Both?

He takes a stuttering breath.

The woman with the box smiles at him.

The woman.

He sways on his feet, wanting to reach for something to hold him upright, but his body doesn’t respond. 

“Ma’am.” Static, tinny. An intercom. “Ma’am, his heart rate is climbing.”

His hands are bound in front of him, a one-foot chain between each cuff with enough leeway to allow him to strike, but still keep him hobbled. Another chain attaches down the middle, leading to the collar at his throat.

A thick, gel-like substance sticks to his claws, chunks of it sloughing to the floor.

“Is he within the acceptable ranges?” the woman asks, her eyes never leaving him.

“Not even close.”

Scott blinks sluggishly.

There’s a ballistics mannequin across from him.

Chunks of it ripped apart. Claw marks in what’s left behind.

Scott’s stomach churns.

“Are the levels actively dangerous?” the woman presses.

He’d attacked it.

He’d attacked it because she’d told him to.

The floor tilts underneath him.

“For you, or for him?”

He’s going to be sick.

“Prep him for the final step,” the woman says.

They don’t even have to force him.

A hand presses on his shoulder and he goes down like a stringless puppet, hip cracking painfully against the floor.

The mannequin is massive above him.

It could’ve been real.

It will be real.

More hands drag him back to the table and attach his chains to the generator, his vision fuzzing in and out in a desperate attempt to stay conscious.

“Full power this time,” the woman says. “And don’t let up.”

The IV’s reinserted, EKG leads attached to his chest.

The heart monitor screams and screams and screams.

“Hey.” Fingers snap in his face, loud as a crack of thunder. “No dipping out on me, brown eyes. You’re not finished here.”

Scott blinks rapidly, eyelashes scraping against the skull.

He’s in the same room. The same ache in his belly. But—he’d been—

Kate smirks. “Glad you’re back with us. Now look.”

Scott’s neck moves even though he doesn’t want it to, eyes following the line of Kate’s hand down to where blood pools in the man’s wounds, bubbling over to soak into the floor.

He’s not quite dead—eyes wide with terror, gasping weakly through shredded lungs—but he’s going to be.

Scott did that.

“You’re a funny one, Scott,” Kate says, lounging back on the chaise. “I just wanted you to kill him, but you chose to draw it out like this.”

This is wrong. This is—he’d been in the hospital, and the woman had—had—

The man at his feet coughs violently, pain radiating out of him strong enough to taste.

“That one doesn’t have supernatural healing.” Kate grabs a beer from the side table, gesturing at the man before tipping it back. “Not like your little kitsune last time. So either you’re stupider than I thought, or you just like watching him suffer.”

Blood drips from the bones embedded in his hands. Thick.

Gel-like.

Kate scoffs when he doesn’t move. “And they call me the sadist.”

The man’s whimpers are impossible to ignore.

They’re not real. Because this isn’t.

But if what he does here affects what is, then he could—he might—

“I can always just order you again, you know.” Kate’s fingers slip under the ribcage at his chest, crawling towards his heart. “I can get so specific. Maybe I’ll have you rip his throat out with your teeth this time—you can even swallow. What’s one more death on that pretty little conscience of yours?”

His bones shake. Her will pushing him forward, his own pulling back.

The blade trembles violently in his hand.

“Make it through the heart this time,” she whispers.

Electricity surges through him, buzzing and snapping at his bones.

Bright lights shine overhead. Sweat pours down his face.

He sags into the familiar weight of chains around his wrists, a strange relief in it.

The fire of electrocution is less welcome.

He bites back a groan at the sensation, fingers wrapping around the back of the chair.

He can’t pass out. If he passes out he’ll go back under, and then he won’t be able to stop her because—

Chair?

His ears ring, everything blurry from the pain.

He’s sitting up.

He shouldn’t be sitting up.

There shouldn’t be boots on his feet, or music pounding in the distance, or—

“I asked you a question, lobito.”

His head jerks upright.

The Calavera matriarch steps into his line of sight, displeasure radiating from her posture.

Scott stares. Panting through the current ripping at his lungs.

How is she here?

How is he here?

“What?” he finally manages.

Araya looks as impressed by his answer as he’d been saying it. “I told you I would come for you when you shed the blood of an innocent.”

What?

The electricity chews away at his skin, fraying his nerves.

He misses being able to think. “I haven’t—”

Araya steps to the side.

The body of the dead woman from the power plant lies in a heap on the carpet.

No.

No, that isn’t possible.

He shakes his head, pulling back as far as the chains will allow. “This isn’t—that’s not what happened. She wasn’t innocent—”

“But you do not deny that you killed her?”

Scott gapes, then groans when the fire under his skin worsens. “I—”

“And this one?”

Another body falls at his feet.

The man with the red sweatshirt, his head bloodied and caved in, three-inch wounds gored into his chest: a gruesome amalgamation of the power plant and Kate.

Scott shakes his head.

This isn’t real. It can’t be real.

But if it isn’t…

Araya seems to see the realization in his face. “You will kill more.”

Scott pants through human teeth, pain making it impossible to shift. “I’m not—killing—”

“That you know of.”

The electricity surges and he cries out, the world melting around him.

He hasn’t gotten out of Bardo.

Kira said he only stopped on her plane, only got out, when he fought. If he’s still here that means—that means he hadn’t fought Kate, hadn’t stopped her from—or stopped him from—

“How many, Scott?” Araya demands. “How many will you kill?”

“None,” he gasps. “I’m not—it isn’t my fault that—”

“It does not matter whose fault it is, little wolf, if people still die.”

The dial turns again and he screams, anger and agony thrumming through his bones.

Why is it always him? 

Why can’t someone else be responsible for fucking once?

The current stops abruptly and Scott collapses against the front of the chair, quivering and useless.

Everything hurts.

He looks up at Araya, trying to beg with his eyes when his mouth won’t work.

Please.

Please, just stop.

She bends down beside him and he flinches, but an almost gentle hand reaches out to brace his shoulder.

“Tell me, Scott,” she says, tilting his chin so their eyes meet, “if you truly believe no one will die, what are you willing to do to ensure it?”

Sweat drips into his eyes, down his back, everything stinging.

Forming words is impossible.

The smile she gives him is almost sad.

A wolfsbane-drenched knife drops into his lap. “What would an honorable man do?”

The knife morphs into a metal tube.

“Failure unacceptable,” the Surgeon drones, masked and unreadable. “Transformation… inevitable.”

A needle stabs into his spine.

Scales spread down his back, his arms, his legs; nostrils flattening and a tail curling at his feet.

Gerard holds out his hand. “You and I are going to do such great things, Scott.”

“Because if you don’t,” Matt says, eyes wide and bloodshot behind the barrel of a gun, “I’m going to kill your friends, your family, everyone you’ve ever met.”

The slug rips into him and he tumbles into the pool.

“Are you following yet, Scott?” Deucalion asks, towering above him. “Do you understand what you are?”

The water is freezing.

Ice cubes bob against his chest. Too cold to react.

Deucalion’s grip turns possessive around his shoulders. “I think it’s time you realized your potential.”

The Demon Wolf forces his head under the water.

He slams against something hard, wood splintering around him. 

His tattoo burns.

He’s on a tree.

The Nemeton.

Roots slither from the cracks in the stump’s surface, snake-like as they creep towards him.

Scott scrambles backwards.

He tumbles over the edge.

The wet pavement hits him hard, soaking through his shirt before he can elbow himself up. Rain patters steadily against his back. 

Something stabs into his left hip.

Scott drops and curls into himself, tight. Bracing for whatever comes next.

Nothing comes.

His own breath echoes harshly through the night, disturbing the rain puddles in front of his nose. The pain in his leg doesn’t let up.

Scott grits his teeth and inches his hand into his pocket, careful not to jar the injury. His fingers knock against something hard and flat.

The rock he’d picked up in the Arboretum has embedded itself into his thigh.

Scott almost laughs.

Of course the one thing he’s managed to hang onto is trying to kill him, too.

He yanks it out with a barely-muffled groan and slumps down. Blood puddles under his jacket, staining the fabric and mixing with the rain.

At least he won’t have to worry about washing it out. Jackets are always the worst for—

Jacket?

Scott tenses, finally registering the material resting against his skin.

 It’s a jean jacket.

He rolls over as quickly as he can manage and peers into the dark with his other eyes.

The High Line stretches out thirty feet above him, yellow-orange trees swaying in the rain.

Relief briefly pushes aside his exhaustion.

“Kira?” he rasps.

There’s the faintest hint of ozone in the air, now that he knows to look for it, but the rain makes it hard to tell where it’s coming from.

He blinks water out of his eyelashes.

New rain falls on them.

“Kira?” he calls again, louder this time, before collapsing into a cough.

Purple dust coats his palm when he’s done.

Not good.

He forces himself to his feet, exhaustion and the rain making it impossible to tell how long it takes. His heart’s beating uncomfortably fast, goosebumps pebbling across his arms.

Where is she?

He has to talk to her. Or just—see her, even for a moment, before he’s dragged away.

Lightning flashes in the distance, thunder rumbling after.

Her?

Or a remnant of whatever’s happening somewhere else?

He wants to go home.

“You’re not finished here,” Kate whispers behind him.

Scott whirls around, staggering, claws slashing out.

Kira startles back.

Oh, shit.

Kira’s eyes are wide. “Are you okay?”

He’d have hit her if she hadn’t moved fast enough.

“I—” His head hurts, adrenaline keeping his claws and fangs shifted.

There’s no sign of Kate.

“Sorry,” he finally stammers, burying his claws deep into his palms when they won’t disappear otherwise. “Sorry, I—sorry.”

“Is that how you greet all your friends?” Deucalion asks.

“Shut up,” Scott snaps, a half second before he realizes Deucalion isn’t there.

Kira’s looking at him like he’s insane.

Maybe he is.

“Who’re you—?”

“No one,” Scott says hurriedly. “I just—I need—”

The dreams feel too close, memories blurring on top of one another. Making it hard to think.

He feels dizzy.

How many dreams has he had?

How much time had it—

“Whoa!”

Kira’s underneath him before he fully registers he’s falling, right arm slung around her shoulders. His legs refuse to cooperate, at least half his weight pressing down on her, but she moves them fluidly across the sidewalk.

“Sorry,” he slurs, sagging gratefully against her.

“Please stop saying that.”

It sounds harsher than it seems like it should. Brittle, in a way that makes Scott want to apologize again.

Kira eases him down against a brick wall, then squats across from him, head tilted and hands dangling in front of her.

It looks so much like a fox it startles a laugh out of him.

“What?” Kira asks.

“Nothing.” He’s already sagging back towards the ground. Even with the wall propping him up, his spine feels like jelly.

“Okay, well—” Kira’s face contorts. “You look—terrible.”

He laughs again. “What else is new?”

Then he coughs up more wolfsbane, black goop splattering across the concrete.

The color matches Kira’s leather jacket.

That’s fun.

He probably shouldn’t be finding this many things funny.

“Death’s funny like that,” Kira says.

Scott nearly slips into the wolfsbane.

No. Kira’s lips hadn’t moved.

Kate had said? Before?

He can’t remember.

Kira’s hand finds his shoulder, briefly stabilizing. “You’re starting to scare me.”

Her lips move this time.

Probably. “Me, too.”

Lightning arcs across the sky, closer than it’d been before.

It highlights the anger in Kira’s face. “You can’t keep doing this.”

“I don’t—” he coughs again, thick and wet. “I don’t really have a choice here.”

“Because you chose to draw it out like this,” Kate laughs.

Scott hunches his shoulders towards his ears.

Kate’s not here. It’s just him and Kira and this godawful rain that isn’t even real, and—

Kira’s brow is twisted with worry.

Not helping.

“I’m fine,” Scott lies. “I just need—”

“This is killing you.”

Scott flinches.

“I’m not killing you,” Deucalion scoffs.

“No one asked—” Scott breathes through his nose. He’s not talking to Deucalion. “They’re not trying to kill—”

“But they are.”

He can’t really argue with that.

Kira leaps to her feet and Scott slips, frantically planting a hand on the concrete to keep from falling.

Kira doesn’t notice, pacing with an energy Scott can’t hope to match. “This isn’t—they can’t mean to keep you like this forever.”

“They don’t.” Scott tries to straighten back up, only to slip further. “It’s just supposed to be until—if they get me to—”

“If they win.”

He huffs, rain water dripping from his nose. “Something like that.”

“Okay. Right.”

Kira’s pacing becomes even more animated. 

Scott lets his eyes go unfocused, content to let Kira work out… whatever it is she’s working out.

He doesn’t want to go back. “Do you think you could—”

“So what if you just let them win?”

Scott startles, slipping another two inches towards the sidewalk. “Excuse me?”

“It’s like the Oni,” Kira says, gesturing vaguely at her sword. “I had to lose in order to win. Maybe what’s happening now is like that—if you just give up for a little bit, maybe it’ll give the pack long enough to—”

“It’s not just about me, Kira,” Scott interrupts, digging his fingers into the brick. “It’s—the last time I woke up, I’d destroyed a mannequin with my bare hands.”

“Who cares about a mannequin?”

“Because it won’t be one next time! It’s… they don’t want to kill me, Kira. They want me to kill someone else.”

Kira finally stops pacing.

Scott glances at his hands, at the claws that have finally disappeared but are always just under the surface. “Maybe—maybe a lot of someones.”

Kira’s hand clenches around her sword.

It’s eerily quiet; even the drizzle of the rain strangely muted as it beats down on Scott’s shoulders.

“So just so I have this right,” Kira says, slowly, her feet rooted to the pavement, “because you don’t want them to kill ‘someone,’ you’re just gonna let them kill… you?”

Scott bristles. “I’m not exactly letting them—”

“Well you can’t stop them when you’re half dead, now can you?” Kira snaps. “And you really can’t stop them if you’re all the way dead, so if someone has to die here, why can’t it be someone else for fucking once?”

He stills, halfway down the wall.

It’d been Kira’s voice. Her lips moving.

But—

“What?”

“Just let it be someone else this time,” Kira repeats. “It’s not even you doing the killing if someone else is pulling the trigger, right? You’re not in control, so anything that happens would be their fault, not yours.”

“You can’t want me to—” Scott’s thoughts fuzz. “Someone would still—and it would be my body that’s—”

“How is that any different from what happened with the shock collar?”

Scott’s fingers slip.

His elbow cracks against the sidewalk, a jolt of pain running up his arm.

He barely notices it. “What did you say?”

Kira stares down at him, confusion on her face.

And something else.

“I said it wouldn’t be your fault if—”

“No.” He tries to get his hands under him, but just slips again—the concrete wet, his arm throbbing, his body heavy. “You said—it’d be like the shock collar.”

She looks at him like he’s made of glass. “And?”

Scott swallows.

There are gaps in his memories. Huge ones, time missing as wide as the holes in his jacket should be. She could tell him he’s wrong about a dozen things and he’d never know the difference.

But he’s sure about this one. “I never told you about the collar.”

Kira doesn’t say anything.

She doesn’t do anything at all. 

“…You wanted me to give up.”

“I wanted you to live—”

“No.” Clarity crashes almost painfully through him. “You wouldn’t—Kira wouldn’t want me to do that. I know she wouldn’t. Not about this.”

Confusion contorts her face a second longer.

Then her lips pull into a fanged sneer. “What would you know about what Kira wants?”

Shock hits like a lightning bolt to his chest.

Her fingers, long and calloused, wrap around the hilt of her sword.

Her sword.

The one she shouldn’t have, because its broken pieces are still carefully stored in a clay jar in Dr. Yukimura’s office.

It’s been right in front of him this whole time.

“What’s the matter, Scott?” Kira purrs, all wrong, how had he not noticed how wrong— “Fox got your tongue?”

He presses back against the brick, solid and unforgiving, rain hemming him in on all sides.

Trapped.

“Who are you?” he chokes out, because it can’t be—she can’t be—

“Come on, Scott.” The fox spirit rises around her, searing heat against the chill of the rain. “You know the answer to that.”

He does.

Watashi wa shi no shisha da.

The messenger of death.

The phrase is burned into his nightmares, haunting him ever since Kira had first—

His breath catches in his throat.

Nightmares.

His eyes dart to the High Line.

Thirty feet above.

If you leave the High Line, even to go to street level, you leave this plane of Bardo.

There’s a staircase leading up to it, just a dozen yards away.

If he can get there—

Kira’s shadow looms over him, blocking his view.

Her sword is out. “I don’t like being ignored.”

Then the blade is hurtling towards his neck.

Scott dives left, hitting the ground hard as it arcs over him. “Kira, wait—!”

She twists it back before he can roll to his feet, and it slices cleanly through his sleeve, just missing the skin underneath.

Scott scrambles back, water splashing into his eyes, his mouth.

He’s moving in the wrong direction.

“Kira—” he coughs, desperately trying to drag in air as he struggles to his feet, “Kira, just stop—”

The blade slices towards him again.

He drops to a crouch, then lunges forward when it sweeps past him.

Get to the stairs.

It doesn’t matter what she does as long as—

The flat of the blade whips against the back of his knees and he cries out, dropping painfully to the wet ground. The edges of his vision white out, adrenaline already fading.

No.

No, he has to get up—he just has to—

Her boot slams into his ribs.

The ground disappears for a handful of terrifying seconds before the pavement violently reclaims him, his left arm snapping as he lands.

Pain erupts from his wrist to his elbow.

Kira pounces after him.

Scott rolls blindly, just barely dodging the blade that once again slices through his jacket.

Kira strides towards him, twirling the sword in a dizzying pattern.

It’s a move he’d once shown her with a lacrosse stick.

She’s toying with him.

Scott growls, anger surging through him as he finally gets his feet under him, broken radius snapping back into place and his shift rushing to the surface.

Kira’s answering grin is feral.

The sword arcs towards him.

He catches her by the wrist. “Stop.”

The fire in her eyes flickers for half a second.

Then her grin turns even more fanged. “Now that’s an alpha.”

Foxfire bursts from Kira’s hands and Scott drops her instinctively, burns blistering across his palm and the sharp pang of electrocution in his limbs. “Would you just—”

The butt of the sword smashes into his jaw, cracking a fang and forcing him back.

His vision floods red.

“You know,” Kira teases, twirling her sword easily, “the quality of my life decreased drastically once you were in it.”

“Shut up,” he snarls, dodging an attack that just manages to slice across his pant leg.

“I’m just saying. None of us would be in this mess if that pretty little conscience of yours had—”

“I said shut up!”

Kira swipes at him.

Scott roars, deflecting the blade with his claws. She rotates around him, barely missing a step before bringing it back towards his head.

His claws crash against it, pushing instead of letting it slide.

The fox is strong.

An alpha is stronger.

He twists the blade hard and she stumbles back. He drives forward before she can regain her balance, easily diverting every strike as rage finally spills out.

He is tired of being tricked.

He lands a bruising hit on her arm.

Tired of being tormented.

A scratch across her cheek.

Tired of being taken and used and treated as if he’s just a body to be—

Scott stops.

All five of his claws are at Kira’s stomach. The tips just barely pierce the fabric of her shirt, poised against the soft flesh of her belly. Kira’s blood pulses underneath.

Just the slightest shift would have it spilling out.

Like Kate’s claws had been against his own stomach.

Like his had been against the mannequin’s.

He blinks rapidly, heaving with exertion.

Between one blink and another, Kira thrusts the katana into his gut.

Blood floods his mouth.

There’s a sword inside him. Hilt-deep.

It’s—inside—

He’s—

Kira rips it back out.

Scott crashes to his knees, blood and viscera splattering against the back of his teeth as he coughs. The front of his shirt is bright red, wound gaping like a hungry mouth, blood falling faster than the rain.

He loves this jacket.

It—it’s already been impaled. Why is it again? Why is—how could it—

A hysteric, jerking laugh.

What does it matter?

It’s not a real jacket.

It’s not even real blood.

None of this is real.

He doesn’t realize his lips have been moving until Kira laughs in response, harsh and cold and wrong. She kneels in front of him, a facsimile of concern as she cups his face.

“Of course I’m not real,” she says, sweeping blood and tears from his cheek with her thumb. “But would you like to know a secret?”

He tries to flinch away but her grip turns possessive, fingers digging deep into his chin.

She presses close until her lips brush hot against his ear. “I’m just as real as the other one.”

Scott’s heart skips a beat.

The words don’t make sense.

They can’t make sense.

Kira’s heart beats as steady as the rain.

She throws him to the pavement and he tumbles away, barely-healed tissue reopening as he lands heavily on his back.

Get up.

He’s going to bleed out if he doesn’t, nothing to put pressure on the wound, healing too taxed.

Get up.

His vision blurs, everything too much, nerves frayed and on fire.

Get up.

The High Line stairs are just visible, maybe a half-dozen yards away.

One more time.

Shakily, he rolls to his knees, severed muscles screaming. He drags one foot under him, then the other.

The hum of electricity builds behind him.

Scott runs.

Each slap of his shoe against the pavement tears at his wound, but terror pushes him to the steps faster than seems possible. Blood and rain slick the staircase, his own movements sluggish and uncoordinated, but she doesn’t catch him.

Why doesn’t she catch him?

The thought sticks.

Scott slows, halfway up.

He turns.

The street is empty below.

Rain patters steadily against the railing. Blood soaks deeper into his clothes.

The scent of ozone, overwhelming just seconds ago, has completely disappeared.

Scott wavers. Dangerously close to passing out.

It shouldn’t matter that she’s gone. He’d wanted her gone.

He turns back towards the High Line.

The top of the stairs is just as dark and wet as the bottom.

Maybe none of it matters.

Scott keeps climbing, breath coming in ragged gasps, until he reaches the last step.

Then his body gives out.

“Scott?”

There’s a hand resting against his shoulder, another on his face.

His eyes drift open, bleary against the rain.

Kira’s staring down at him.

He jerks back, slamming into a wooden bench.

Her eyes widen. “Are you okay?”

Scott pants, heart thunderous in his ears. His fingers reach for the wound in his abdomen.

It’s gone.

A dream.

He fumbles for the lip of the bench and drags himself onto it, needing to get away from the ground, from her. Kira tracks his movements with her orange-brown eyes, attentive in a way that makes his insides twist.

There’s no sword in her hands. Her corduroy overalls have replaced the leather jacket, and green shrubbery surrounds them instead of the gray sidewalk from the street.

She’s not—that Kira.

But does that make her his Kira?

“Scott?” she asks again, and he tenses. “What’s wrong with—what do you need?”

He needs—he wants—

There’s no way to answer that.

Except.

There is one thing.

The one thing this Kira never seems to want to talk about. “Where’s—the pack?”

“The—what do you mean? They’re looking for you, Scott.”

Sour notes bleed into her scent, hitting just at the back of his throat.

A lie.

He tries to swallow down his disappointment, but it’s just as sour.

“But you contacted them, right?” he asks.

It’s not really a question.

The way her scent flattens isn’t really an answer. “We’re working on it. As soon as they figure out where you are, I know they’ll—”

“Stop lying!” Scott’s fist slams into the bench.

Kira startles back.

There’s a dent where his hand hit. Cracks and splinters running the length of the board.

He did that.

“Just—” He takes a rattling breath, opening and closing his fist to try to force down his anger. Then he gives up, putting his hands in his hair and hunching over like it’ll block anything out. “Please, just stop.”

Kira does.

She falls completely silent.

He half expects another sword to appear in his gut, or maybe she’ll electrocute him this time. Maybe she’ll just disappear.

Instead, her chemosignals waver.

Then guilt floods his nostrils, bitter and stale. “The Skinwalkers decided this was a distraction.”

When Scott lifts his head slowly from his hands, Kira refuses to meet his eyes.

He swallows. “What does that mean?”

“It means that if I try to contact the pack—or anyone—I fail my training. They’d, um… they’d probably fail me right now if they knew I was talking to you.”

Scott’s breathing stutters. “But if you fail, your tails—and the fox—”

“Yes.”

Her voice is so quiet it’s nearly lost to the rain. 

It’s worse, somehow, than the sword.

“So…” He turns the words over in his head, trying to find a way out of them. “So they’re not going to find me.”

“No!” Kira sits next to him with a suddenness that makes him flinch. “No, the pack—with how long you’ve been gone, they must have—”

“Long?”

“You—” Kira stops, looking uncertain. “It’s been a week since the you first came here. Didn’t you… how long did you think it’d been?”

Scott hadn’t.

He’d never—they never kept him awake long enough to—so he would’ve—

A week is too much.

“Less,” he manages.

Seven days.

They’ve had him for seven days and no one has—

He’s on his feet before he registers he’s decided to stand, pacing frantically in the rain.

Without Kira’s help, there’s no way to know how long it might take to find him.

If they find him.

The thought of even one more dream is overwhelming.

His hands start to shake.

How many before he actually hurts someone? Ten? One?

What if he never wakes up at all?

“Scott, I think you need to—”

“I can’t,” he stammers, backing away, far from the worry in her eyes. “I can’t—I can’t keep doing this.”

It doesn’t matter if this is just a trick, or if everything she’s telling him is the truth: they both lead to the same answer.

No one is coming.

Scott’s heel strikes against the glass railing.

He looks down at it. 

Nausea twists in his belly, a pervading sense of wrong, wrong, wrong overtaking him.

Scott—

Doesn’t move his foot away.

A stick snaps and Scott looks up to find Kira standing just a few feet from him.

“You said… Bardo is made of levels,” he says slowly. “That when I fight back, I come here.”

Kira’s eyes dart down to his foot, then back up. “Yeah, but… Why?”

The nauseating, tilting sensation tugs at him, stronger with each passing second.

Could be worse. 

Scott traces his thumb over his stomach, mapping out the hole that isn’t there. “So… what happens if I go the other way?”

Kira inhales sharply. “You can’t—Scott, you can’t do that. If you go to the last level, you don’t—you just—”

“You die.”

The words fall from his mouth, heavy as stones.

Kira had said them once. Years ago, before the words really weighed anything. She’d been smiling as she’d said them.

This Kira looks at him in horror. 

Despair floods his nostrils, thick as smoke. Familiar.

Alluring.

“It’s like the Oni,” he murmurs. “Better to die as myself than be consumed, right?”

He wraps his fingers around the railing, the street an eternity below.

A calloused hand clamps around his wrist. “No.”

Scott jerks away from it, but Kira’s not on fire when he turns.

She’s crying.

Anger flares in Scott’s chest.

“Why not?” he snaps, suddenly furious. She doesn’t know what it’s like to be stuck in this hell, tortured over and over and over until he doesn’t even know what’s fucking real, to be haunted by Kate and Deucalion and that awful woman and—and It—and— “Why do you even care? You already—you said you don’t. That I’m a distraction. So why can’t you just let me—”

“Because I missed you!”

Scott stops.

“I miss you,” Kira repeats. “And I’m not supposed to.”

Rain beats steadily down, matching the tears gathering in her eyes.

Scott’s throat tightens. “But you—you said—”

“I thought you weren’t real. You were just—you were here and you were wearing the jacket I met you in and you still had that same stupid smile and the ability to just say things and I thought you were my test. The Skinwalkers are always saying I have to be willing to sacrifice anything to get my tails and I—” Something shifts in Kira’s expression. “…And I can’t. I can’t.”

The shift in tone is jarring, too quick to keep up with. “What?”

“I’m going to come get you.”

Scott falls back a step.

What?

Would Kira do that?

“You—you can’t,” he stammers.

“I can.” Kira’s eyes snap to his, fire-bright. “I’m coming to find you. You just—you have to hang on a little longer, until I find you.” 

Scott falters.

What if it’s just another trick? Just another way to keep him trapped here?

Kira’s hand is outstretched, warm and strong and calloused.

He steps towards it.

An all-too familiar disorientation lurches through his chest.

Leaves crunch beneath his knees as he falls, gasping for breath.

It’s dark. Raining. Trees casting long shadows over him in the moonlight.

He’s wearing a bright red hoodie.