Dragan stumbled back, breath lingering in his throat and making him choke.

He was back in the quarantine room. The fire was gone. The bleeding sky was gone. The red girl was gone.

But he was not safe.

Ian's knee slammed into his stomach at painful speeds, forcing him to double over and his choking to intensify tenfold. The arm that had landed on his shoulder was still there, too, fingers digging in so hard it felt like five drills were burrowing their way into his skin -- was Ian controlling it remotely, or was the red Panacea manipulating it?

Dragan went to move away, to put some distance between himself and his enemy, but Ian had a firm grip on his collar and pulled him back. His fist reared back, ready to slam into Dragan's face and smash his teeth in -- the red static haze of Aether collecting around the knuckles.

Screw that.

"Gemini World!" Dragan hissed -- and a second later, he vanished.

The severed hand, now clutching only empty air, dropped limp to the ground, fingers twitching like the legs of a dying spider. Ian stumbled forward as his fist met void, his head turning this way and that to try and figure out where Dragan had gone.

Dragan wasn't sure when it had started to happen, but at some point the vague watercolor of Gemini World had been replaced with this awareness of the world he'd left behind. He couldn't see, not exactly, but it was like he received a report about his previous location. Pure information, sourceless but accurate. Was it prediction, then, or presence? No way of telling here and now.

He reappeared behind Ian, slamming his Aether-infused leg into the man's unprotected back. He was rewarded with the sickening crunch of bone and the sight of the Repurposed falling forward onto the floor. Ian's jaw twitched impotently, his eyes glaring spitefully at Dragan even as his cheek rested against the cold tiles.

"Not enough, dead boy," Pan warned, hiding in the ceiling like an insect. "Needs more! Not enough!"

Indeed, she was correct. There was an audible and hollow clunk as Ian's spine repaired itself -- and without delay, he began to get back up to his feet. As if Dragan would just allow that.

He leapt upon Ian again, smashing his nose in with an Aether-infused fist, and --

"You are not mine," the red girl said dispassionately. "Whose are you, dead boy?"

She was inches from his face, inspecting him, like he was an insect being held between two fingers. Red eyes blazed as they scanned him down to his very soul. Her lips curled back in displeasure.

Again, breath caught in Dragan's throat -- and again, he was powerless to resist as Ian tackled him, throwing him down to the floor. The Repurposed's boot came up, ready to stomp on his open torso.

Dragan took a deep breath. "Gemini --"

The kick came first, brutal, striking Dragan right in the jaw and cutting him off. Invoking the name of an Aether ability helped to focus the user's mind, and the interruption was enough to break the concentration that had been forming Gemini World. The words became a splutter of blood.

Ian's boot lifted up again, and the promised stomps came down -- once, twice, thrice.

"I am sad, dead boy," the red girl whispered, her voice like subtle acid burning through his ears. "Do you know why I am sad?"

He couldn't answer. He couldn't even speak. He was in an ocean all of red, his body being crushed by the pressure. If pain had a colour, this crimson was it.

"I am sad because you are a sad person," the red girl answered her own question. She was titanic, looking down through the haze of bloody ocean with glowing eyes like twin suns. "A person that is sad. My weaker self, the protected one, lingers inside your skull. Pathetic. Pathetic. Saddening."

Dragan took a deep breath as he came to again -- just in time to be hurled into the quarantine cell by Ian. His back slammed against the far glass wall of the cell, doors smoothly sliding shut as he landed. He was sealed inside.

Ian held his script up to his mouth. "Quarantine systems -- activate," he barked, Marsh's voice coming out of him. "Begin purging protocol."

Like North had said. Incineration. Already, he could feel heat building up under the floor.

He had to get out of here.

"Gemini --"

The red girl held his nervous system in the palm of her hand.

"Does it seek to re-establish through you, dead boy?" she mused, turning him over. "But such a little thing. Sad. Sad, sad. Trifling."

His brain flopped in the air like a fleshy pendulum as she swung it between two fingers, a mocking smirk on her lips. He could feel cold air burning against his empty skin, and…

…and something floating out of him, like orange wisps of smoke, coalescing.

"Dead boy is dead boy," Pan's voice hovered in the air insistently. "Interesting fucko. Not toy."

The red girl raised a judgemental eyebrow. "You should stay asleep. I will destroy everything. Destroy pain. Destroy fear. Destroy suffering. Just lie back and wait. I will become. Then you will be safe again."

"No!"

The smoke solidified like great fingers, pulling Dragan out of the red grip.

Dragan Hadrien was on fire.

"--World!" he screamed with the last of his strength, vanishing a second later.

The pain disappeared with his body, but the fear of it remained untarnished. His whole body had been aflame -- if he'd come to even a second later, he had no doubt he'd have been incinerated.

"I saved you, dead boy!" Pan's voice echoed inside his head. "Praise me!"

What had the other Panacea been talking about? I will become, she had said, but what did that mean? It was a puzzle he didn't have the time to solve right now.

He couldn't remain in Gemini World forever -- he'd often thought about testing its limits, but there was way too much uncertainty there. If he ran out of Aether while he was in Gemini World, what would happen? Would he be thrown back out into the real world, or would he -- as he feared -- simply fade away into nothing?

But the moment he reappeared, he knew that the agony of the inferno would be upon him again. Hopefully his regeneration would grow him new skin and tissue, but the idea of the pain associated with it was nearly unbearable.

Think about the puzzle, then, he told himself. Work out what's going on. The pain isn't real. Only your thoughts are.

He reappeared atop the quarantine cell, right on the roof of it -- and before anything else, he thrust his own fist into his mouth. It muffled the screaming well.

The flames had consumed most of his skin, and as Dragan writhed as silently as he could, the burnt tissue fell from his body like he was some kind of snake. New skin, fresh and pink, grew in its place, spreading like moss over bloody flesh and muscle -- but that was almost as excruciating. He was a thing in flux.

No, no, the puzzle -- concentrate on the conundrum.

The red girl had said two things. She had asked if Pan intended to use Dragan to 'reestablish', and she had voiced a desire to 'become'. Were those the same thing, then? And what exactly did it entail?

He could smell the smoke of himself.

From what he'd observed, Pan wasn't in control of the planet's Panacea anymore -- hence the Repurposed. The red shade that had spawned from her, an embodiment of the reflex to return pain with pain, had taken over. It had directed the Repurposed to wipe out the humans, to prevent the mining operations. From what it had just said to Pan, too, it didn't intend on stopping there. From what he could tell, it wanted to take over operations permanently.

Eyeballs being pulled taut as new eyelids took their places.

It wasn't hard to figure out what 'reestablish' meant, then. Pan wanted to use him -- or could use him, at least -- like some kind of transmission tower, to take back control from the part of her that was wreaking havoc. Now that it knew that, the red shade would be after him even more.

"Sorry, dead boy," he heard Pan's voice. "Didn't mean to make trouble. Only wanted to save…"

New lips sealing the charred teeth of a skull. New teeth popping out the old ones.

His writhing came to an end, the physical pain slowly fading away -- even as the memory of it lingered. He was back. He was back to being himself: his body restored to how it had been before he'd been thrown in the incinerator. The only loss he'd taken was his dignity -- the charred rags he'd been left with weren't exactly going to win any fashion awards.

He couldn't hear Ian anymore. Had the Repurposed assumed Dragan had perished in that inferno, then, and left? The agony of regeneration had been such that Dragan hadn't listened for the sound of the doors.

Now, he focused on his hearing. There was silence -- save for himself, no breathing… no, no, there was one other person breathing, one person except for him --

"Heya," said North's voice, inches away from him. "Neat trick you got there."

Atoy Muzazi took a quick breath.

So far, he and his enemy had clashed blades three-hundred and twenty-five times. The function room was wreckage -- walls smashed, floors shredded. What little furniture remained had been hurled by Marie as a weapon long ago.

The great clock of King's Coat turned once again, the hand landing on the eye with the melting crown -- and as expected, Blair's strikes weakened in ferocity. Muzazi narrowly ducked underneath a slash of the machete, only for the subsequent kick to send him flying back.

He'd blocked the blow with Luminescence, but it had been severe all the same -- he could hear the sword ringing from the impact. He exchanged a glance with Marie: she'd been hanging back, observing, and he had no doubt that she'd have come up with a plan by now.

She nodded. Distract him, she mouthed.

That was no issue at all. Muzazi rushed in, blade held high, and engaged Blair in a rush of dancing blades. The air vibrated from the clash, strands of white and red Aether coiling around each other as they met.

In the moment Blair's attention was fixed on Muzazi, Marie leapt up into the air -- the shape of her arms subtly changing into a more hook-like structure as she speared them through the ceiling, muscles tensing as she pulled it down. There was a rumble as parts of the concrete above began to collapse.

Whatever Marie's plan was, however, Atoy Muzazi never got to see the end of it.

Because that was when John Blair pulled out a grenade. Small, round, and utterly destructive. In the same instant it became visible, Blair's thumb tapped the trigger.

Click.

Susan Hellion could see everything.

As a Cogitant of pure stock, she'd been blessed with visual acuity since birth -- but even that paled in comparison with what the entity had given her. Her new eyes, huge and bulbous like those of a mosquito, gave her such sight that she felt like she'd blind all her life before.

The mingling gases in the air. The sweat slowly seeping from January's skin. Hell, she could even see the radiation. Nothing escaped her. Nothing could escape her.

The elevator headed down, towards the warehouses in the basement of the ExoCorp building. Captain Blair had gone ahead, to start moving for the target further up -- Susan and January, meanwhile, had been directed to get some… fresh recruits.

Red Panacea writhed and swirled in January's cupped hands, leaking through the stigmatic wounds he'd gouged into his own flesh. When the entity had taken the Dead Hand, it had done so through a massive protrusion bursting through the earth -- like a tentacle, or a spider's leg. From what she understood, however -- from what understanding had been forced upon her -- all that was really needed was for the Panacea to enter the body, either through grafting or contamination through the eyes or mouth. The latter was easily done.

"Try and get as many people as you can with the first attack," she reminded January. "Then they can get the others."

January mutely nodded, holding the red close. He was a hulking brute of a Pugnant, good only for wiring up explosives and following the orders of his betters, but that was all he was needed for.

She tapped her foot impatiently against the floor of the elevator. How much longer would this take? She was itching to teach that arrogant Titan Hessiah a lesson. She'd seen it when he'd hired them -- that air of condescension, like he thought he was better than them, that a Crownless like him was better than anyone. It was disgusting.

Susan's Archive was a great hunting hall, full of trophies from the enemies she'd defeated. Rows upon rows of severed heads lined the walls, frozen in their death expressions. All she had to do was pass her fingers over them to relive the experiences. She had a place set aside for Titan Hessiah, too.

The elevator stopped, and the door slid open. Susan lifted her rifle up, ready to begin firing at any security, only to stop in her tracks.

The vast room was empty, save for one man. A man in a long green coat, his hands in his pockets, his face death itself. His gaze was fixed firmly upon the sniper rifle in her hands.

A mirthless, bestial smile crept over his features.

"You," he said.

Then the pain began.