After his talk with Ryosuke, Mikey stayed by the tempered glass, watching the cold ocean drift past.
He didn't move. Didn't blink much.
His mind was a hive—buzzing with everything from the night, the Council, and most of all… Payne.
I was so close…
I… I…
His eyes grew heavy. The weight in his chest was just as crushing as the weight on his body. Slowly, he was drifting into sleep.
I… I'm sorry…
Darkness.
He was sitting in a lone chair, suspended in an endless black void.
The air here wasn't air—it was absence, a silence so deep it pressed against his eardrums.
Fifty feet ahead, a pool of pure white light hovered like a doorway that shouldn't exist.
"What the…"
A voice rang out, cutting through the nothing like a blade.
"Why is your head so full of doubts? Is that the son I raised?"
The voice chuckled, low and warm—and somehow wrong.
Mikey's eyes widened. "…Dad?"
From the light, a figure stepped forward. His father, Desmond—immaculate blue suit, polished shoes… except for his face.
Where his features should've been was static. Churning, restless static.
"I should apologize to you," Desmond said calmly. "I left you way too early."
"Dad… Dad!" Mikey tried to stand—but straps bit into his arms, chest, legs. "Dammit!"
"It's not your fault!" he shouted, voice cracking. "It's mine!"
"Is it? Is it really your fault?"
"Yes!"
Desmond began to pace, shoes clicking on nothing.
"I miss you, son. So does she."
From the light, another figure emerged—his mother, Darla, in her white-and-blue sundress. The same one she wore on long summer days in Sector D. Her face, too, was static.
Her mouth moved, but her words were broken, jumbled—matching the distortion of her features.
"Mom… I can't hear you!" His voice trembled.
"Why can't I—why can't I remember your voice?!"
7 years without his mother, who could blame him for forgetting her voice fully.
Tears stung his eyes.
"Mom!"
"Come to us, kiddo," Desmond said, his tone almost pleading. "We miss you so much."
"Dad!" Mikey roared, veins standing out in his neck. His muscles strained against the straps.
With a snap, they tore free.
He bolted toward the light, bare feet pounding against the black ground.
"Mom! Dad! I'm coming!"
As he ran, his body shrank—his arms small, his legs stubby. He was five again, the little boy who'd learned to run chasing his mother's laughter in the yard.
"Yes, Mikey! You're doing it!" Desmond shouted, static distorting his smile.
He was almost there—
PAP!
A hand clamped around his arm, yanking him back.
"No!"
PAP!
Another seized his other arm.
PAP!
One around his leg.
PAP!
The other leg.
"LET GO!" Mikey screamed, thrashing. The light was only two feet away.
PAP.
A final hand wrapped over his head, long fingers gripping his eyelids and skull like a vice.
He was dragged back, nails raking across the ground, leaving shallow grooves in the void.
"No!!"
In the light, behind his parents, a figure emerged—pure black, shaped like a man, grinning with a mouthful of razor-white teeth. Payne.
The light bled into red.
The red into fire.
The fire into the shapes of his parents burning.
"Wake up, kid."
Mikey's eyes flew open.
Bobo was in front of him, shaking his shoulder.
On instinct, Mikey's hand shot out, gripping Bobo's collar. His other fist cocked back, breath coming in ragged bursts.
"Whoa! Kid! Settle!"
The submarine was back around him—the hum of the engine, the tempered glass, the deep ocean outside.
It was just a dream.
Mikey loosened his grip, his knuckles trembling.
"…Sorry."
Bobo hooked his good arm under Mikey's shoulder and helped him up.
"Nightmare?"
Mikey nodded, breath still uneven.
"Yeah. Happens a lot… especially lately."
Bobo gave a slow nod, like he understood more than he was willing to say.
"Well… we're almost at our stop, kid."
Mikey glanced out the tempered glass. The silvery moonlight that had been bleeding through the water earlier was gone, replaced by the pale wash of early dawn. The darkness was thinning.
He stretched—and instantly regretted it. A sharp bolt of pain lit up his ribs.
"Ah—"
Limping toward the center of the cabin, he spotted Luce. Her usually wild, electric gaze was dim and swollen from crying, her hands gently shaking Amelia awake. Ryosuke sat near the pilot's seat, murmuring in low tones.
Mikey turned back to Bobo.
"Where exactly is this… stop?"
He pressed a palm against his ribs, wincing.
"Where we going?"
Bobo's eyes drifted to the view outside.
"The Outlands."
Mikey's brows shot up.
"That's where you're from, right? All of you? The Defectors?"
"Yeah," Bobo said quietly. "Most of us."
Through the glass, the ocean floor began to tilt away beneath them. The blue murk brightened until the world outside fractured into rippling silver. The sub broke the surface with a slow roll, water sheeting off the glass, and suddenly they were looking at the restless skin of the waves under a streaked pink-and-blue sky.
The pilot's voice came over the intercom.
"Surfacing complete! Bringing us to the shoreline—get ready."
The five of them gathered under the ceiling panel, where a ladder led to the hatch above.
"Here," the pilot called after a moment.
Bobo climbed first, his one arm hauling him with practiced strength. He pushed the hatch open, sunlight spilling in, and disappeared topside. Ryosuke followed, then helped Luce out.
Mikey went next. The moment his head broke into the open air, the smell hit him—salt, and something else. Something wild and fresh. He heard the crash of waves, sharper than it had been underwater, and felt the wind drag its fingers through his hair.
They were drifting alongside a jagged line of black stone. Waves foamed and curled against its edges.
He crouched, offering a hand to Amelia as she emerged from the hatch.
She looked at it, then up at him. "I got it," she said, voice clipped.
Mikey exhaled through his nose, stepping back.
"After you…"
His tone carried just enough edge to make the point.
The five of them stood together on the slick top of the sub. One by one, they jumped to the rocks and scrambled up. A rusted ladder clung to the side of the tallest formation, stretching upward into the wind.
They climbed in silence. Mikey went last.
His fingers hooked over the final rung. He pulled himself up—and froze.
"Holy…"
Before him stretched an endless expanse. A vast plain of pale gravel and sweeping sand dunes rolled away in every direction, their peaks gilded by the newborn sun. The wind came hard and fast, a constant low roar in his ears, carrying with it a scent unlike anything he'd known—dry, sharp, alive.
He had never seen sand before. Not in person. And not like this—miles of it, glinting like powdered gold under the morning light.
This was the world outside the Council's maps. The place they said didn't exist—and if it did, it was poison.
But here it was. Raw. Vast. Untamed.
The home of the Defectors.
The Outlands.