“UGH!”

Jane lurched, stumbling, the spell broken, suddenly unbalanced. She threw out her hands, shouting, bracing herself for the impact as a wall of brown and crimson came rushing out towards her.

But no impact came.

Gingerly, wincing, Jane snuck a peek through squinted eyes. The wall stared back, indifferent to her presence. Jane opened her eyes a little wider, lowering her hands. The world around her was suddenly very still and very silent, no longer a rushing, hurtling blur.

She took a deep, steadying breath, forcing herself to blink, now thoroughly awake, feeling like she’d just run her face under hot water. She flexed her fingers, this odd almost-current running through them, flighty and strange, as she glanced confusedly at her surroundings. It wasn’t… had she teleported? Because she sure as hell wasn’t where she’d been a second ago. The dust was gone, Detroit was gone, the sky was gone – she was inside. Somewhere.

She held up her hands in front of her face, rippling the non-existent coin between her fingers back away from the new power – which sat there, between her pinky and ring-finger, an entire tiny universe, invisible and vast and swirling and light, almost alive, humming with kaleidoscopic energy. Jane shook her wrists, her heart beating rapidly, the intangible ability singing softer than a whisper – patient, all-knowing, terrifying. She glanced around her, looking to see if the strange child had come with her – but she was alone.

Alone, and in a corridor she knew.

Jane took a step back, her head snapping in every direction. This was Morningstar! This, this was the entrance hall, the opening foyer, she… she knew these walls! These doors, these pictures, this- well, not this carpet. This carpet was red, burgundy, the colour of spilled wine, whereas she knew for a fact that carpets she’d walked along just this morning were green.

But this was impossible. Morningstar had been destroyed. Jane had seen it, seen the smoking ruin with her own two eyes. There wasn’t anything left, charred wood and ash and a few stones and… nothing like this. Nothing this intact, this pristine, this…

She ran her hands through her hair, glancing around, breathing fast. What the hell was going on? What had she… how had she…?

Ok. Jane forced herself to calm down, to take stock. There was an explanation. There had to be an explanation. The boy – the boy had said to bring Dawn back. Dawn, ok, Captain Dawn, and now she was at Morningstar, ok, that made sense, except Dawn was dead. But then, this manor was supposed to be too. She glanced around at the sandstone walls she’d seen torn down, the roof she’d seen turned to ash. And this stupid red carpet, which was just plain wrong. A damn biohazard that was, you’d never know to clean it when someone tracked in blood. But apart from the ceiling and the carpet and the pictures and the walls, there wasn’t anything to see. No one was around. No Acolytes, no Ashes. The hallway was completely deserted.

‘Hello?’ Jane wanted to call – but something about being here, about her sudden, unexplained presence, made her throat lock tight. Clutching her bruised ribcage, her Legion body armour cracked and torn in more places than not, she padded as quietly as she could along the hallway and through the double doors to the Grand Hall.

The Hall lay dark and deserted – but as Jane’s eyes adjusted to the low light, she realised that wasn’t the weirdest thing. The long tables were gone, replaced by a table, singular – an enormous, perfectly circular wooden ring taking up almost all the space in the room, two feet thick, with high‑backed, studded leather chairs spread evenly along its outer length. Jane froze, staring open‑mouthed and furrow-browed at this wrongness, this bizarre change to a place she’d been sitting in for months. It was so big, from where she stood in the doorway, you almost couldn’t see the far end of it in the unlit dark.

And then it hit her. The dark. It was night outside. But in Detroit, it’d been midday and…

What in the burning, unholy hell, Jane whispered internally. She added in a few stronger swear words for good measure.

After shaking her head to no one and taking a moment’s pause, Jane’s eyes flicked over to the stage on the far side of the Hall – and the doorway she knew was tucked in against it which led up to Captain Dawn’s quarters. Screw it, she decided – the Black Death was on the warpath, cities were sinking into the ground and buildings where she lived were unexploding wrong – she’d weather the consequences of violating Dawn’s privacy. The empath skirted, still clutching her chest, half-limping, quiet as she could, around the left-side edge of the table, to the far and looming wall. She grunted as she lifted herself onto the stage, most of her body still in significant pain – but nothing she hadn’t taken before, and nothing the sound of her heart racing, the adrenaline kicking through the madness, wouldn’t dull. Her hand clutched the side of the slim, open doorway for support, and she pulled her dirty boots step by step up the tight spiralling stairs.

It was difficult to judge how high she climbed – the staircase was dark, the walls uniform, leading nowhere but up. Three stories, maybe four. Her breathing grew steadier as she climbed, her bruised lungs slowly taking back in air. She was lucky. Apart from some ribs and what felt like one or two small cracks near an eye socket, she didn’t think anything was broken.

Jane reached the top of the stairs to find an unassuming wooden door with an old metal handle. Gingerly, she thumbed down the latch and pushed the door silently open into a warm room of oak and cedar. Jane’s eyes swept over a leather lounge, a messy bookcase and a darkened doorway leading to a pitch-black walk-in wardrobe – then a second, lighter chamber with three tall, adjacent mirrors affixed to one side, reflecting an entire wall of framed medals, certificates and commendations. Beyond that the room transitioned into a quiet, simple study, with a floor-length glass case in one corner displaying a familiar garb, a woman’s uniform, the matching white and gold once worn by Captain Dawn’s wife, and in the other corner an antique wooden desk and a brown leather chair.

And in that chair, sitting silent and alone in the dusty light, sat Captain Dawn.

Jane froze – her hand still clutching the latch, the tip of her foot barely peeking around the door. Her cheek pressed against the lacquered wood, holding her body back in darkness, one eye staring wide into the light. She felt like was going to faint, like her heart was going to explode out of her chest. He was alive. She closed her eyes, begging, pleading with whatever gods might be watching her – please let this be real. After a few seconds, she opened her eyes. And Dawn was still there.

Still there. Still strong and tall and radiant, the air seeming to glow bright around him. His hair, his face, his uniform – all of it, all like the pictures, all like she’d known. Somehow, inherently, she knew: this was no imposter. This was the man she’d grown up worshiping. This Dawn was real.

She stood there, breathing deeply, her heart trembling, just watching him. Sitting at his desk, golden cape shimmering down his broad shoulders, leaning forward, ungloved hands in his lap, eyes forward, shining like a star, a statue. For a single moment that seemed to hang for an eternity, Jane didn’t move, didn’t speak – only watched him, breathed in the sight of him. In that instant, it seemed like doing anything would break the spell, so Jane just stood there, watching Captain Dawn, this perfect, golden hero, frozen in time, gazing at him from afar in a strange, dream-like trance…

As he raised the barrel of the six-shot revolver to his temple and pulled the trigger.

“NO!”

BANG