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“Tam, go!”
“And what about you? Huh?!”
“I’ll be fine. I need to be sure of something! But I promised you you’d be fine so go!”
Tim hears the click of mid heels click against stone floors as she runs one way. Toward the exit. The countdown still ticking down in his head. But Tim…isn’t going that way.
He head deeper into the facility. Turns a corner. He knows his way around the compound now, with how well it was documented in schematics when he was also working on getting rid of the council of spiders and Ra’s. Preferably.
But to be sure, Tim needs to make sure.
The rooms get warmer the lower down he gets.
The compound is empty. Except for him, Tam, the council, Pru and the White Ghost? Nobody else should be here.
The room is left undefended. And he needs to make sure it’s also unprotected.
He runs.
The thing that clues him in that he’s getting close?
The green glow that makes his stomach drop.
He emerges from the rocky mouth of a cave into a chamber that glows green, rippling water in a pool that seems to still at his presence.
The Lazarus pit of the Cradle.
Tim needs to make sure it goes down with the rest of the facility.
Otherwise, what’s the point?
So Tim starts pulling bits and pieces from his belt, connecting wires and clipping cable ties to fit. It’s not pretty, but, he decides, it’ll do.
It’ll have to.
He sets 5 IEDs around the pool before the ground shakes, the water splashing so vigorously that Tim has to pull away lest it splash over him. Or he fall in with an ill-timed rumble.
The next rumble comes with a wave of heat down the tunnel and Tim knows he’s out of time. And minus an exit.
He didn’t even realize that his time had elapsed, he’d been so busy.
The roof is about to come down on his head, he knows. But the pit needs to go down first.
Tim glances at the green water, settling in its pool now that the rumbles have mostly stopped, though Tim can hear the groaning of support structures above him.
He looks at the pit and sees the surface reflect his face, set into determination.
No more.
Tim grits his teeth. Clenches his fist. Takes one last risk.
An explosive impacts onto the water like it’s a solid.
And the world glows white.
There’s a boom of air trying to displace but finding nowhere to go in a sealed off chamber. There’s the pull of air filling the space once again, pulling air in the direction of the pit. And Tim isn’t strong enough to stay standing when his ears feel like they’re bleeding.
He falls and the waters seem to spark with the impact.
Just a moment before all of the other IED’s also go off, all at once.
There’s the sound of the IED’s sparking, starting to go off. And then silence as something…happens.
Tim isn’t sure what because as the IEDs go off, something jolts through his body and there is nothing left.
-
Tim wakes up, which isn’t what he was expecting. Though maybe he should have, given what he’d been trapped with. He wonders if the pit will make him strong enough to dig his way out of the rubble…or if he’ll just keep dying and if the pit will keep bringing him back.
But when he opens his eyes with a cough, there’s no stone rubble pressing into his chest, no green waters swirling around his vision.
Though, there is still green.
He blinks.
Green all around him, but not flowing like water. Moving like air. He looks down and there’s no rock pool beneath his body. In fact, there’s nothing under his body.
He’s floating.
Maybe this is the afterlife, he thinks, looking around. But there’s nothing to tell him that. And the pit should have brought him back. So where is he?
There are islands of rock floating in the distance and as he glanced up, he sees glowing purple instead of a sky and swirls instead of a sun or stars.
“Where even am I?” Tim asks, and the sound carries.
“Well that is one question” a voice says from behind him. Young but somehow ethereal. Tim spins instantly to look behind him.
…
There’s a Lazarus pit behind him.
There is also a teenager with white hair but Tim thinks the one is more important than the other currently.
The pit is glowing. And green. Just like every other Lazarus pit Tim had ever seen. But it’s swirling inward like a vortex.
“What?” Tim asks, not quite knowing if he’s asking the kid or himself.
“You’re in the Infinite Realms, otherwise called the Ghost Zone” The kid answers anyway, but doesn’t remove his eyes from the pit “But I was more wondering about the portal that wasn’t here yesterday”
Tim swallows at the names. Ghost Zone. Infinite Realms. Neither are names that he’d heard before. But they feel important.
“Portal? You mean the pit?” Tim asks instead, realizing that there are questions he needs to ask right now.
“The portal. A stable one by the looks of it, which generally means nothing good” the kid says, floating around and in circles to take in the…portal.
“See, a stable portal generally means that someone died making it. And that there was enough ectoplasm to rip a hole between this world and the mortal realm”
There’s a lot of information there. But there’s one thing that sticks out. “Died?” Tim demands, because yes. He’d expected to die. He’d also expected the pit to bring him back. But to hear it said so bluntly…
The kid looks over, finally. And he falters.
“You’re the one who died to open this one” he realizes, his green eyes widening as he takes in whatever Tim looks like now.
And Tim feels his jaws clench at some flash of offense that he doesn’t understand.
The kid smiles and there’s a flash before there’s another kid in the same space. Black hair. Blue eyes. Still the same look on his expression.
“Halfa” he says, and something in Tim’s chest clenches.
“You’re like me”