Gabriel's hands wouldn't stop shaking.He sat in the corner of the storage building's upper level, staring at his palms in the dim morning light. They looked normal fifteen years old hands, thin and pale, still bearing the scar from the laboratory fusion. But he could feel something wrong beneath his skin. A hunger that wasn't his. A coldness that seeped deeper with each passing day.You're thinking too much, Soulrender whispered. Just accept what you're becoming.“I'm not becoming anything,” he muttered aloud, then caught himself. He was talking to the voices in his head again. That has been happening more frequently.Denial, Echo observed with detachment. A predicable stage of integration. Soon you won't remember which thoughts are your and which are ours.Gabrirl pressed his palm against his stemples, trying to separate his own consciousness from the three entities that shared his headspace. It was getting harder. Two weeks ago, their voices had been distinctly easy to tell apart b

Gabrirl woke up if you could call it waking with no memories of falling asleep.One moment he'd been standing by the window watching the sunrise, the next he was lying on his makeshift bed with the sun already high overhead. Hours had passed You dissociated, Umbrix explained gently. We were sorting through memories, organizing the vast amount of information we're processing. Your conscious mind shuts down to cope with the strain."How long?"Four hours. Maybe five.Gabrirl sat up slowly, his hands shaking. Four hours of his life simply erased. Not forgotten they'd never existed for him In the first place. The entities had been conscious during that time, but Gabriel hadn't been This is what we've been warning you about, Echo said, his voice uncharacteristically subdued. The human mind isn't designed to process multiple consciousness streams simultaneously. Yours compensated by shutting down periodically."Will it get worse?" Gabriel asked aloud, not caring if anyone heard him talki

The day broke gray and cold over the storage buildings. Gabriel stood at the same window he'd occupied for most of the night, watching the sky lighten from black to ash to pale gray. He'd counted the hours until the mission: sixteen, then twelve, then eight. Now it was down to ten hours until dusk, when they'd move against the dream weaver facility. Ten hours until he either proved he could still function, or became a living proof that Marcus and Emma's fears were justified. You should eat something, Umbrix suggested. The body needs fuel, regardless of how fragmented the mind controlling it becomes. Gabriel almost laughed at that. The casual acknowledgment of his deterioration would have horrified him a week ago. Now. It was just reality. He made his way downstairs where a handful of early risers were preparing breakfast or what passed for breakfast with their dwindling supplies. Think porridge, stale bread, weak tea. The resistance was running out of resources almost as fast

Power.Not the controlled manifestation Gabriel had practiced. Not the careful exercise in the training yard. This was the full, restricted force of three ancient entities channeled through moral flesh.Gabriel felt his consciousness stretching, thinning, spreading across dimensions like butter scraped over too much bread. He was everywhere and nowhere. He was himself and not himself. He was….Hold on, Umbrix's voice cut through the chaos. Gabriel, hold on to something. Anything. One memory. One feeling. Don't let yourself dissolve completely. But it was hard. So hard. Gabriel's thoughts scattered like leaves in a windstorm, why he was doing this but the reasons kept slipping away.The dream weaver. Right. He was saving the dream weaver.Gabriel focused on that single purpose while his body moved without conscious direction. His hand rose, power gathering in his palm not shadow or cutting force separately, but something new. Something that combined all three entities into a force tha

Emma's footsteps echoed like heartbeats in the containment level. Each step she took toward him felt like walking through water. The air around him was thick with power, reality bending and wrapping In the ways that made her eyes hurt to perceive. But she kept moving anyway, one foot in front of the other, because that's what you do when someone you cared about disappears right in front of you.“Hey kid, I wouldn't get so close if I were you,” Commander Cross warned, divided between Gabriel's shifting form and Emma's approach. “He's unstable. Dangerous. If you get too close…”“He won't hurt me,” Emma said, though she wasn't entirely certain. The thing standing in Gabriel's place looked less human with each passing second. His eyes were completely void-black, now reflecting no light. His skin had taken on a translucent quality, and she could see shadows moving beneath it like dark water. When he breathed; if he was breathing frost formed in the air.But underneath all the wrongness, u