The rain had thinned to a fine mist by the time I stepped out of the warehouse ruins.
Mist that floated more than fell. Getting inside my collar. Clinging cold to skin that still hummed with power fresh and vast and *mine*. The night air tasted cleaner now—or maybe that was just the adrenaline burning away the rot, scrubbing my senses raw and new.
But Derry still pressed in from all sides.
Heavy. Patient. Waiting for the next cycle to turn even though I had just bloodied the thing that turned it.
I stood in the cracked parking lot. Bricks and splintered wood scattered around my boots like the aftermath of a bomb. My back stung where claws had caught me. My hands were scraped raw. Blood dried sticky on my face.
But the power.
The power hummed under my skin like a live wire I had always known how to hold.
Psychokinesis at Level 7. Range wide enough to feel the whole town breathing slow and wrong. Weight limit high enough to lift cars, beams, maybe more if I pushed.
-----
Here's what nobody tells you about gaining power:
It doesn't feel like ascending.
It feels like *remembering*.
Like you were always supposed to be this strong, this dangerous, this capable of breaking the world in half if it looked at you wrong. And the weakness you'd carried before—the helplessness, the fear, the vulnerability—that was the aberration. That was the lie.
The power is the truth.
And truth, as it turns out, is fucking intoxicating.
-----
I looked up at the sky. Bruised clouds low and heavy. No stars breaking through.
Then I reached down.
Not with hands.
With mind.
I wrapped the power gentle but firm around my own body. Felt the weight of myself—flesh and bone and blood still warm from fighting. Felt how gravity held me. Felt the rules that said humans don't fly, can't fly, were never meant to leave the ground.
And I **ignored** them.
Lifted.
Slow at first. Testing. Inches off the ground. Then feet. Then higher—above the warehouse roof, above the empty streets, above the sagging porches and dark windows that had watched me run for my life an hour ago.
Derry spread small and gray below me.
A town holding its breath.
The wind rushed cold against my face as I rose. Through the mist. Through the clouds. Breaking into clear air where stars finally showed themselves—cold and distant and indifferent to the cosmic drama playing out in the sewers far below.
I angled east. Toward the edge. Toward the town line. Toward anywhere that wasn't here.
Flying.
*Actually flying.*
No broom. No cape. No mechanical assist or alien biology or magic words muttered under breath.
Just me and the power humming vast and familiar, carrying me smooth through the mist like I had done this a thousand times before in isolation cells when no one was watching and the cameras were off and the only witness was the broken boy who would become a weapon.
The ground fell away. Pines rushed beneath in dark waves. The falls roared distant silver in moonlight that finally broke through thinning clouds.
Wind whipped my jacket. Tore at my hair. Tasted clean for the first time since waking.
I laughed.
Short. Sharp. Half-mad with the impossible reality of it.
I was flying over Derry. Over the town that ate children. Over the thing I had just hurt and made afraid.
The power held steady. No strain. No drain yet. Muscle memory guiding smooth.
I pushed higher. Faster. Mist streaming past like ghosts fleeing the light I carried inside.
-----
The town line approached fast.
Highway cutting through pines. Lights faint in the distance. A gas station glowing weak orange under buzzing fluorescents.
Single island. One pump lit. One dark.
A black car parked beside the working pump.
Sleek. Lethal. Classic.
'67 Impala.
My stomach dropped straight through me and kept falling.
-----
Let me tell you about fate:
It's not destiny. It's not predetermined paths or cosmic plans written in stars before you were born.
It's pattern recognition.
The universe runs on loops—same stories, different faces, cycles repeating until someone breaks them or everyone dies trying. And when you're inside those loops, when you're a character instead of a reader, you start noticing the synchronicities.
The coincidences that aren't coincidences.
The meetings that feel written.
The moments when fiction bleeds through and you realize you're not just in a story—you're in *the* story, and it's been waiting for you to show up and play your part.
-----
I knew that car.
Knew it from screens. From memes. From a show I had binged late nights in my old apartment when sleep wouldn't come and the only comfort was watching other people hunt monsters in a world that made sense because the rules were clear and the good guys usually won.
Supernatural.
The Winchester brothers.
Sam and Dean.
*My brothers.*
According to the System. According to the false memories burned into David Winchester's brain. According to the file I'd never seen but knew existed somewhere in the twisted narrative logic of this merged universe.
My descent slowed instinctive. Power wrapping gentle as I drifted lower. Closer.
The bell over the door jingled faint on the wind. Two men stood at the coffee station inside—one tall, shaggy brown hair falling into eyes that looked like they carried too much already. The other shorter, leather jacket, bow-legged stance, pouring coffee like it was ritual.
I touched down soft in the shadows between the pumps and the Impala. Heart hammering sudden and hard.
This wasn't coincidence. Couldn't be.
Cosmic joke. System setup. Chuck laughing somewhere behind the veil of reality, pushing pieces around his board.
Because of course.
Of course the System dropped me into Derry. Gave me Eleven's template. Gave me power vast enough to hurt a cosmic entity.
Then sent me flying straight into Sam and Dean Winchester getting gas on the edge of town.
I felt the weight of it settle cold in my gut.
The story wasn't just horror templates anymore. It was this. Family business. Saving people. Hunting things.
The door jingled again.
I stepped into the light.
-----
Dean turned first.
Coffee cup halfway to his mouth. His face went perfectly still. The cup lowered slow.
Green eyes—*my* eyes, identical down to the flecks of gold that caught light wrong—tracked over me with the particular assessment hunters used when deciding if something was human or just wearing the skin.
Sam noticed. Followed his brother's gaze. His jaw loosened.
For three full heartbeats nobody spoke.
Just the hum of the coolers. The scratchy radio playing low—Boston, "More Than a Feeling."
Then Dean moved.
Fast.
Gun out—big Colt 1911—leveled at my chest before I could blink.
"Out. Now." Voice flat. Dangerous soft. The voice of someone who'd killed things wearing familiar faces before and would do it again without hesitation if the situation called for it. "Hands up. Slow."
Sam was already circling. Flanking. Own pistol drawn.
They moved like they'd rehearsed it in blood a hundred times. Like violence was a language they spoke fluent and I was an unknown dialect that needed translating into something they could understand—threat or not-threat, kill or spare.
I raised my hands.
Palms open.
Heart hammering so hard I tasted copper again.
This was real. They were real.
Younger than the later seasons—unbroken yet, still carrying hope like it wouldn't eventually crush them under its weight.
But unmistakable.
"I'm not armed," I said.
"Outside," Dean repeated. Barrel never wavered.
I backed out the door slow. They followed, herding me toward the shadows between the pumps and the Impala. The mist turned everything soft and unreal. Neon bled red across wet asphalt.
Dean stopped five feet away. Gun still up.
"What the hell are you?"
-----
Here's the thing about being confronted by your fictional family:
You can't tell them the truth.
Not the whole truth anyway.
Because the truth is insane—transmigrator from another universe where this was all a TV show, dropped into a merged horror reality with a System that hands out powers like participation trophies, currently inhabiting a body with false memories and real scars and no idea which parts are genuine.
That truth gets you shot or exorcised or locked in a psychiatric ward.
So you tell them the truth they can handle.
The one that fits their worldview.
The one that lets them sleep at night.
-----
"Human," I said carefully. "But not a shapeshifter. Not doppelgänger. Not demon. Test me. Silver. Holy water. Whatever you need."
Sam's voice came quieter. Curious under the caution. "Shapeshifter? Doppelgänger? Demon?"
"Could be a changeling," Dean said, eyes never leaving mine. "Or some kinda trick. Skinwalker, maybe."
"Not a shifter," I said. "Skin doesn't burn with silver. You can test."
Dean's eyes narrowed. "Could be something new."
Sam pulled a flask from his jacket—holy water. I didn't flinch when he splashed it across my face.
Cold. Just water. No smoke. No scream. No skin bubbling off bone in strips that smelled like sulfur and sin.
Dean's jaw worked. "Knife."
Sam produced a silver blade. I rolled up my sleeve. Offered my forearm.
Sam cut—quick, shallow.
Blood welled red. Normal. Human red that looked the same whether it was inside you or outside you, whether you deserved to bleed or not.
No hiss. No black smoke. No revelation that I was monster wearing man-skin.
Dean exhaled through his nose. Still didn't lower the gun.
"Name."
"David."
"David what?"
I hesitated half a heartbeat. The name settled heavy. Real as any lie can be when you've lived it long enough.
"Winchester."
Dean's eyes flashed—anger, confusion, something rawer underneath. Something that looked like hope and tasted like betrayal.
"Bullshit."
Sam looked like someone had punched him in the chest. "That's not—we don't—there's no—"
"You got five seconds to explain why you're wearing my face before I put you in the ground," Dean said. Voice dropping into that register that meant the safety was off and the finger was tightening and the next words out of my mouth would determine whether I saw tomorrow.
I took a slow breath.
The power hummed quiet under my skin. Ready if needed. Could disarm them both before they pulled triggers. Could throw them through the gas station wall. Could do a lot of things that would prove I was dangerous and needed killing.
Or I could do the harder thing.
Tell the truth.
Mostly.
"I can't explain the face," I said. Truth. "But I can explain why I'm bleeding and shaking and look like I just crawled out of hell. Something in Derry tried to eat me tonight. Clown. Orange lights. Calls kids down into the storm drains."
Both brothers went very still.
The particular stillness that meant they knew that monster. Had read about it. Maybe hunted it once or tried to and failed.
Sam frowned. "Derry? We're headed north—vamp nest near Bangor. Just stopped for gas. Never even heard of the place having anything supernatural."
Dean grunted agreement. Eyes still locked on me.
I nodded. "Good. Keep it that way."
Dean studied me for a long second. Something shifted behind his eyes—calculation, recognition of a real threat, assessment of whether that threat was pointed at them or away.
He finally lowered the gun. Holstered it slow.
"You're bleeding on my boots," he said.
I looked down. Blood from the shallow cut had dripped onto the asphalt near his left foot.
"Sorry."
Sam put his own weapon away. "You got anywhere to go?"
I shook my head.
Dean sighed like the weight of the world had just settled a little heavier. Like this was a complication he didn't need but would handle anyway because that's what they did—picked up strays and saved people and carried burdens that would break lesser men.
"There's a bar five miles down. O'Malley's. Decent burgers. Quiet booth in back." He jerked his chin toward the Impala. "Get in. We'll talk."
I didn't move. "This a trick?"
Dean's mouth twitched—almost a smile, almost not. "Kid, if we wanted you dead you'd be dead. Get in the damn car."
-----
The back seat of the Impala smelled like leather and gun oil and old blood and something indefinably Winchester.
Home.
The word rose unbidden. Unwelcome. True anyway.
I slid in careful. Like I was trespassing on holy ground. Like the leather might reject me for being the wrong kind of Winchester—the fake one, the System-generated one, the one who didn't belong in this timeline or any timeline.
Dean started the engine. It rumbled awake like a caged animal that knew its purpose and accepted it with grace.
As he pulled onto the highway, the System finally spoke again. Blue text sliding across my vision, calm and clinical.
**[Subject Analysis Complete]**
**[Target: Dean Winchester]**
**[Shine Potential: MAXIMUM // Full Awakening Possible]**
**[Awakening Cost: 0 EXP // Natural Affinity Detected]**
**[Target: Sam Winchester]**
**[Shine Potential: MAXIMUM // Full Awakening Possible]**
**[Awakening Cost: 0 EXP // Natural Affinity Detected]**
**[Note: Subjects possess latent psychic sensitivity compatible with multiple horror-derived templates. Full awakening achievable through guided exposure or traumatic catalyst. No resource penalty.]**
**[Recommendation: Maintain secrecy. Observe. Do not initiate awakening at this time.]**
I read it twice. Felt the weight of it settle cold in my gut.
They could shine. Really shine. Like Carrie. Like Charlie. Like Danny Torrance staring into the void and making it blink first.
And I could give it to them.
Or I could keep it locked away. Safe. Secret. Let them stay human and breakable and mortal in all the ways that mattered.
I stared at the back of Dean's head—short-cropped hair catching dashboard glow—and felt something twist inside my chest.
-----
Here's what the System wasn't telling me:
Power is a gift and a curse and a responsibility all wrapped up in a package that explodes when you open it wrong.
Give them the shine and they become weapons—sharper, deadlier, more effective at the job that was already killing them slow.
Don't give them the shine and they stay vulnerable—human, fragile, one bad hunt away from dying because they didn't have the edge they needed.
Either choice was a betrayal.
Either choice meant blood on my hands.
Welcome to the Winchester family business.
Where every decision is terrible and you make it anyway because not deciding is worse.
-----
Cosmic joke. System setup. Chuck's handwriting all over it.
Because of course. Of course I fly out of Derry powered up like a god-king in training and land straight in the backseat of the Impala with Sam and Dean Winchester staring at me like I'm a monster wearing Dean's face.
The story wasn't done with me yet.
It was just getting started.
And family—real or written, blood or System-generated—was waiting in the dark ahead.
I settled back into the leather.
Closed my eyes.
Let the rumble of the engine carry me toward whatever came next.
O'Malley's. Burgers. Conversation.
The slow, careful dance of building trust with people who had no reason to trust me and every reason to put a bullet in my head just to be safe.
But I had time.
The night was young.