Mikey tumbles through an empty, black-and-white world that feels stitched together wrong; reality seams that refuse to hold color. Static flickers across his vision and then the first image burns into him—an endless, barren waste with soil like ash and a red fog that rolls in slow, viscous waves, the shallow rivers running thick and dark as blood. The horizon is a jagged tooth of metal and stone, and planted in that blighted sand is a complex, a spiral of scaffolding and spires like something alive, a parasite of architecture. Symbols he barely recognizes scar the walls—The Council's mark, and next to it a curling eel-shaped sigil that thrums like a second heartbeat, lit by ghostly beams of light.
His view shifts.
He sees himself inside the complex, on the ground, cradling someone small in his arms. Blood pours from the stump where his arm is missing. Around him stand twelve figures wrapped in robes and garments of faith, their shapes varied but all imposing. One steps forward, his face masked in black static, mechanical tendrils dragging him along the floor as if the earth itself pulls him. A tendril coils around Mikey's throat, hoisting him into the air before slamming him back down. Instead of fighting, this other version of him lowers his head and begs.
It flashes.
He sees himself rise from a pool of black sludge like a dark baptism, naked and reforming, an iron limb where flesh once was, the wound replaced by metal and the metal baptized in the same dark. Servants hand him a robe—the same heavy garment the robed elders wear—and when he accepts it, some transference seems complete; the transformation is both grotesque and solemn, like a coronation wrought from grief.
The visions do not stop.
A few years older, he bows to four figures sworded in authority: two familiar faces—Director Kael, relentless and cold, Director Mako, childish and brutal—and two unknowns who loom beside them. One of them, a hulking man who exudes pressure and shadow, presses a solid massive palm to the bowed head of this other Mikey. His red eyes glaring with a terrifying fire. The other, a woman with the same yellow eyes as Mako, watches with a crazed glare. Despite her frenzied look, she is strikingly beautiful, with East Asian features.
Another cut—
Charred images of the Silo, the Defectors HQ, his new home, burning in the night as conflict rips through levels where people once ducked for safety. He watches the older him move through the chaos, a blade jagged and serrated in his hand, each strike efficient and emotionless; Defectors fall under that blade, faces he knows and faces he loves reduced to stillness. His green eyes in that man are flat glass—no light left, only a practiced, precise hunger.
The montage fractures further:
The other him walks with Director Ludovico through a city of ruined towers and sand-blown streets that he has never seen, stepping over corpses arranged like trophies—Bobo, Luce, Ryosuke, Tobi—friends flattened into shapes he cannot accept. A figure kneels over them, a woman with a knife turned toward him and a face he recognizes and cannot bear—Amelia, her expression contorted with hatred and grief. She lunges; the other him turns without hesitation and severs her clean, the head falling as if it had been made of rotten fruit. The sight is surgical and monstrous.
Static, then another cut.
He sees himself aged into his forties, walking through white chrome halls, a robe of office and authority draped about broad shoulders, blue and silver sigils sewn across the back—the Chancellor's colors. He steps out onto a balcony and the city below roars his name as though he were a savior who had delivered history into a new order. The Directors stand at his side like courtiers, not enemies but co-conspirators, and the crowd below waves banners stamped in his face as if he were the movement's crest. It was a celebration for a war won, by them, by the Council.
The visions stop as abruptly as they started and Mikey collapses to his knees, vomit rising into his mouth and a cough shaking out of him as if his body must protest what his mind has been shown. He pukes into the damp limestone and looks up with eyes teary, pupils flaring and unsteady. The Predecessor's presence is near, the voice both calmer and terrifying in its simple clarity.
"What was that? What the fuck was that?" he manages, his voice small and jagged.
"Your fate, Michael," the Predecessor answers calmly, as if reciting a weather report. "That, in the greatest number of probability paths I can see, is what you become."
Mikey's laugh dies on a breath that tastes of salt.
"No. No. That can't be true. You're lying. I—there's no way I join them! Become Chancellor? No. How? Why me?"
The Predecessor's tone does not harden; it goes soft in a way that makes the hair on Mikey's forearms stand.
"That is how the ledger turns most often. You are the axis. You are the catalyst. You win their wars; you make their causes inevitable. But there are others… futures fate resists."
Mikey's voice shakes. "W-What do you mean?"
"Im talking about destiny, Michael. Your destiny defies fate itself. That is why you're different, why you're special, why I am in your head. You are the boy whose destiny outweighs the infinite bounds of fate. Do you understand that, Michael?"
He can only nod, trembling, lost for words.
The Predecessor continues. "In the future you saw, this meeting never occurred. My voice never reached you. But here we are—one step in the right direction."
Mikey's body trembles, a slow nod with no confidence behind it. "What do I do? Tell me. How do I stop that from happening?"
The Predecessor hesitates, as if choosing words that will not topple too much.
"I can't tell you everything. Knowing too much too early will rattle the future in dangerous ways. But listen, I can tell you two truths: protect the girl. Her life is the denominator that tips the scale. Keep her, keep her alive at any cost. And there is a package you must acquire at the right time; when you have it, you will know what to do. The moment will make your choices obvious. That's all I give you for now."
The hall around them groans—water beginning to flood the stone, the noise swelling like an alarm. Mikey's eyes dart around.
"What's happening?!"
"You're waking up, it's shutting me out... Just know this—" The Predecessor's voice starts to fade, "They are coming! They are about to find the dome! Save the girl! By any means! Your life, is about to change very soon! Prepare yourself! I will speak to you in the moments where you need it most!"
Water floods the dark room, surging upward as Mikey cries out, "Who?! What girl?! What package?!"
His vision splinters; water surges into the corridor. Cold presses his face and tongue, he feels the screen of the Predecessor's presence slip away as the current pulls at him. He screams for answers that collapse into the sound of waves, and then the dome yanks him back like a net being hauled.
Hands are on him in the real world—hard, urgent, human—unstrapping leather, tearing him from the restraints. Bobo's voice booms closer than a heartbeat:
"He's awake!"
Luce's fingers are at his shoulder. "Mikey!"
Amelia's face is white; she cups his cheeks like he is fragile glass. Ryosuke holds him steady, an anchor made of muscle and old kindness. He is coughing, each breath a ragged reminder of the ocean he just left.
"Breathe, young man. Are you alright?" Ryosuke asks, voice low and steady like the place he teaches from.
Mikey's voice is a ragged whisper, the words pushing out like a prophecy he cannot fully trust himself. "They're coming… they're coming to the dome… There's a girl… and a package… you have to—"
"Who?" Ryosuke presses gently. "Who is coming?"
"I don't know…"
Confusion spreads across their faces. Before anyone can speak, Isaak's voice thunders from the loud speakers above.
"Michael Grant," Isaak announces, the words regretful and guilty, "with six beeps—six beeps of the monitor—you fail phase two of the test."