The impact never came the way I expected it to.
One second the ground was rising toward us so fast it didn't look real, and the next everything just stopped. Not slowed. Not faded. Stopped.
No pain.
No sound.
No sense of my body breaking apart.
Just nothing.
At first, I thought maybe I'd blacked out. That I'd wake up a second later twisted into metal, choking on blood, half-deaf from the crash and somehow still alive. My mind held onto that possibility longer than it should have, refusing to let go of it even when nothing followed.
Then I realized I could still think.
That was the first real sign something was wrong.
There was no weight in my limbs. No strain in my chest. No taste in my mouth. No cold, no heat, no pressure. I couldn't even tell if I was standing or floating. I was just there, aware in a place that didn't feel like a place at all.
I tried to move.
Nothing happened.
I tried again, harder this time, like effort alone could force a body back into existence.
Still nothing.
A slow breath worked through me even though I couldn't feel myself breathing.
"So this is it."
The words didn't echo. They didn't carry. They just existed and then were gone.
Dead.
That part settled in faster than I thought it would.
What didn't settle was everything tied to it.
Davis going down.
The chase.
The moment we thought we were finally clear.
The snap of hope right before it all came apart.
I held onto that last moment longer than I should have. The lift of the helicopter. The sense that the pressure was finally gone. Carter working on Ortiz. Reyes still conscious. Me thinking, stupidly, that surviving that much meant we were entitled to survive the rest.
We made it out.
That was what I'd thought.
That was the worst part.
"That shouldn't have happened."
The voice didn't interrupt the silence.
It replaced it.
I turned toward it, or maybe the space around me shifted so I didn't have to. Either way, someone stood in front of me where there had been nothing a second earlier.
An old man.
Not old in the way stories make old things look. Not imposing. Not radiant. Not wrapped in anything that made him feel larger than what he was. He looked like a man who had simply gone on too long. His face was lined deeply, not with frailty but with wear, as if time hadn't passed over him so much as settled into him layer by layer. His posture wasn't bent, but it wasn't straight either. He stood like someone carrying something he no longer expected to put down.
His eyes were what stayed with me.
They weren't bright. They weren't blazing with knowledge or authority or anything that would've made this easier to understand.
They were tired.
Not physically tired. Not the kind of tired a night's sleep fixes. Something older than that. Something deeper. The kind of exhaustion that comes from seeing too much for too long and still being forced to keep looking.
And somehow, that made me angrier than if he'd looked divine.
"You're God?" I asked.
"If that is the word you are most comfortable with."
His voice fit the rest of him. Calm. Even. Not cold, not warm. Just worn.
I stared at him for another second, then let out a bitter laugh that didn't sound like one.
"That's it?" I asked. "That's what I get after everything? No gates, no fire, no angels, no judgment. Just you?"
He didn't react.
"I have been called many things," he said. "Creator. Destroyer. Judge. Savior. Names shaped by belief, culture, time, and fear."
"So what," I said, the anger sharpening, "every religion on Earth just got you half right?"
He looked at me for a long moment before answering.
"They saw what they were able to see," he said. "They named what they could understand. None of them held the whole of it. None of them could. It was not deception. It was limitation."
That was better. Worse, too, but better.
"So Jesus. Allah. Yahweh. Brahman. whatever anyone else called you. All just pieces?"
"Interpretations," he said. "Human beings look at something beyond them and try to give it form. They describe according to their language, their need, their fear, their hope. It is the same sky reflected in different water."
I stared at him.
"That's convenient."
"It is unfortunate."
"No," I snapped. "What's unfortunate is my team dying in a fucking helicopter because your 'same sky reflected in different water' bullshit got too weak to stop it."
That hit him, but not the way I expected. No offense. No anger. He just held my gaze and let me say it.
"You made everything," I said. "Didn't you? The world, the people, the rules, all of it. And then what? You let it rot? You let people kill each other, let the worst of us run things, let innocent people get crushed under it, and then when we die you stand there looking tired and tell us faith got weaker?"
"It is not so simple."
"It sounds simple from where I'm standing."
"You are not standing."
The line would have annoyed me if I wasn't already too far past annoyed.
"People died," I said. "Davis died. We all died. We made it out and then we didn't. We were clear and then we weren't. That wasn't a moral lesson or a divine test or fate or whatever word makes it feel better. It was random. Stupid. Pointless. So if you're telling me that shouldn't have happened, then tell me why it did."
He was quiet for a moment.
Then, "Because the structure is weaker than it was meant to be."
I laughed at that. Actually laughed, short and ugly.
"The structure."
"Yes."
"You mean reality?"
"In part."
"Because people don't believe in you enough."
"Because belief is not merely sentiment," he said. "It is orientation. Trust. Surrender. A way of ordering the self beneath something greater than the self. Human beings have not simply abandoned religion. They have abandoned reverence. They have elevated themselves, fractured meaning, and called the fragments freedom. That changes more than doctrine."
I wanted to hate how calm he sounded.
I did hate it.
"So because humanity got worse, things got worse."
"Yes."
"That's still on you."
"I did not say otherwise."
That stopped me for half a second.
Not because it helped.
Because it didn't.
He wasn't defending himself.
That made it harder, not easier.
"You're angry," he said.
"No shit."
"You have every right to be."
I looked away from him for the first time since he appeared, and there was still nothing there. No floor. No sky. No horizon. Just enough not-space to hold us.
When I looked back, he was still watching me with those same exhausted eyes.
"You're not going to justify yourself," I said.
"No."
"You're not going to tell me suffering has meaning."
"Not in a way you would accept."
"You're not going to tell me my death happened for a reason."
"No. It happened because what should have held did not."
That landed harder than anything else he'd said.
Not because it made me feel better.
Because it didn't.
It just made the unfairness cleaner.
"So why am I here?" I asked.
"Because your end was displaced from its rightful course," he said. "And because of that, I am offering you a continuation."
"A second chance."
"If that is the phrase you prefer."
"And my team?"
"They have moved on."
"Meaning what?"
"Meaning not this."
The answer hit like another impact.
"They don't get this."
"No."
"Why me?"
"Because you are here."
I almost told him that was a coward's answer, but I already knew he wouldn't bother pretending otherwise.
"And the price?" I asked.
Because of course there was one.
There was always one.
Something appeared between us then.
A wheel.
It didn't glow. It didn't hum. It wasn't wrapped in some fantasy nonsense that would've made this easier to dismiss. It just existed, solid and waiting, with sections cut into it too finely for me to make out from where I stood.
"There is always a cost," he said.
I stared at it.
"I keep my memories?"
"Yes."
That mattered more than anything else he could have offered.
"If I do this, I remember everything?"
"Yes."
I nodded once.
"Fine."
I stepped forward and set my hand on the wheel.
It was real. Cool beneath my fingers. Grounded in a place where nothing else was.
I spun.
The wheel turned slowly at first, then faster, the markings blurring together as it gathered speed. I watched it because I needed something to focus on besides him. Besides death. Besides the fact that I had no idea what counted as possible anymore.
When it finally slowed, I leaned in.
And stared.
"…You've got to be kidding me."
The section beneath the marker read Pokémon.
Of all things.
For one stupid second, something almost like relief moved through me. Familiarity. Childhood. Games and shows and cards and all the hours of pretending any of that mattered more than the real world.
I looked back at him.
"You've got jokes."
"I do not."
"Then explain why the hell that's there."
"Because that is the world you will enter."
A shift ran through the emptiness around us, and something took shape beyond the wheel.
Land.
At first only land. Then scale.
Then more scale than I knew what to do with.
It expanded until I understood it wasn't just another planet in the abstract. It was a world, massive enough that Earth suddenly felt small in comparison.
"Terra," he said.
The name sat in the air as the world formed more clearly around it. Continents, oceans, mountain ranges, wilderness so wide it made human maps look pathetic by comparison.
"How big?"
"Roughly two and a half times the size of Earth."
I watched movement spark across it.
Cities.
Roads.
Settlements.
Then other things.
Pokémon.
A memory tried to rise in me and was immediately crushed by what I was seeing. There were no clean tournament arenas here. No cheerful routes full of harmless first catches. No neat divide between civilization and danger. What I saw instead was a world where power lived close to the surface and everything weaker than it paid for that fact quickly.
One creature tore through another so fast I barely registered the motion before it was over.
"That's not what I remember," I said.
"It is not the version you knew," he replied.
"No kidding."
The images shifted.
Humans now.
Some with Pokémon at their sides. Some without.
The difference between them was immediate and brutal. Those with power moved like they belonged. Those without moved like prey hoping not to be noticed.
"If you do not have protection there," he said, "your chance of survival narrows sharply."
"That sounds like a nice way of saying I'll be fucked."
"It is an accurate one."
The world changed again.
Smoke.
Fire.
Lines of people moving under guard.
Pokémon used like weapons.
Then cages.
Human beings in chains.
Pokémon in chains too, because apparently if humanity was going to stay itself across worlds, it was going to stay rotten.
I felt something cold settle under the anger.
"That's slave trading."
"Yes."
"And war."
"Yes."
"So this reward is what, exactly?"
"You are being given a world you once longed for."
I looked at him.
"That's not the world I longed for."
"No," he said. "It is the world as it is."
The vision faded, and the wheel returned to stillness in front of me.
"That was the first positive turn," he said. "A world."
I looked at him sharply. "Positive."
"It is."
"Feels like you and I define that word differently."
He said nothing.
"Now what?"
"Now you determine how harshly that world will meet you."
I stared at the wheel.
"So that's one of the bad turns."
"Yes."
I spun again.
This time I felt something in my gut before it even stopped, the kind of instinct that tells you the result's already wrong before you see it.
When it slowed, I understood why.
The world returned around us, but darker this time. Not literally darker. Worse.
Conflict was everywhere.
Not isolated. Not distant. Woven in.
Regions weren't stable. Power wasn't centralized. Order looked temporary at best. Outside strongholds and cities with real force behind them, life seemed to balance on whatever violence you could command first.
Pokémon were tools, partners, weapons, gods, livestock, bargaining chips, guardians, and threats, often all in the same breath.
"This world is severe," he said. "Conflict is constant. Power is unevenly distributed. Those without strength are exploited quickly. Wild territory remains genuinely wild. Human institutions do not reliably protect the weak."
I stared at the shifting images. Caravans with armed escorts. Raids. Breeding operations hidden behind money. Children who looked too young learning to survive in places no child should have been born into.
"This isn't dark," I said. "It's broken."
"It is honest."
I laughed without humor. "You say that like it helps."
"It was never meant to."
The world vanished again.
One good turn. One bad.
"What now?" I asked.
"This one is yours to choose."
The wheel changed. It didn't spin this time. It opened.
Not physically. More like the space within it deepened, and I understood what it offered before I could have explained how. Possibilities. Not lists, not menus. Potential.
I recognized one immediately.
Aura.
I didn't hesitate.
"That one."
The choice closed around the word the moment I spoke it. Everything else disappeared.
"Aura," he said.
"You sound surprised."
"I am measuring your understanding."
"I know enough."
"Do you."
I looked at him. "I know it's better than nothing."
"It can be," he said. "You will not begin with mastery. You will not begin with instinct. You will not even begin with awareness in any practical sense. You will possess the capacity and nothing more."
"So I start at zero."
"Yes."
"No training. No activation. No built-in advantage except the potential."
"Yes."
I nodded once. "Fine."
It was still the right choice.
The wheel shifted again.
"And that's where you punish me for taking it."
"It is where the balance is restored."
"Same thing."
I spun the second bad turn.
This one felt slower, heavier.
When it stopped, I looked at him before I looked at the result.
"Tell me."
"You will begin that life already in captivity."
I went still.
"What."
"The body you enter will already have been taken."
"Taken," I repeated. "You mean kidnapped."
"Yes."
I let out a short, ugly laugh and looked away for a second because I didn't trust my face.
"Of course."
"It is the cost attached to the circumstances of your beginning."
"No, it's you screwing me."
"It is difficulty, not cruelty."
I snapped back toward him. "You don't get to decide the difference."
He accepted that without comment.
I pressed a hand to my face even though I wasn't sure I still had one in the normal sense.
"So let me get this straight. I get thrown into a world where Pokémon can kill me, people can own each other, war is normal, and I start in a cage."
"You start alive."
"That's not the same thing as fortunate."
"No."
The wheel remained.
There was one more turn.
I looked at it, then at him. "This is the egg."
"Yes."
I almost didn't want to touch it.
Almost.
I spun.
The wheel slowed and stopped on something I couldn't fully read, not because it was hidden, but because the result wasn't the point. The point was what appeared in his hand afterward.
An egg.
Small. Plain. Nothing about it gave away what was inside.
"That will be yours," he said.
I frowned. "Will be."
"It is not given freely."
"Of course it isn't."
"It remains with your family."
My family.
The phrase landed strangely. Not mine, not really. Not yet. Maybe never, depending on how bad this started.
"Tell me about them."
"They are breeders. Small in scale. Not powerful. Not wealthy. But their stock was valuable enough to attract attention."
"That's why I'm taken."
"Yes."
I looked at the egg again.
"And I don't get to know what's in it."
"No."
"Why."
"Because uncertainty is part of what you are receiving."
I stared at him.
"That's not an answer."
"It is the one you get."
I exhaled slowly and forced myself to focus.
"So the egg is mine, but it stays with them."
"Yes."
"And if I want it, I have to survive, escape, and find my way home."
"Yes."
The word home sat awkwardly in my head.
"You're not telling me where that is."
"No."
"You're not telling me what region, what town, what family name, nothing."
"No."
"Why."
"Because then it would not be something you earn."
That pissed me off for an entirely different reason.
"So nothing is actually given."
"The world is given. The capacity for Aura is given. The egg is promised."
"Promised," I repeated. "That's a nice way to dress up maybe."
He said nothing.
I looked back at the wheel.
Three positive turns.
A world. An ability. An eventual partner.
Two negative turns.
A brutal version of that world. A brutal beginning inside it.
The rest was distance, uncertainty, and whether I was capable of clawing my way through what he'd just called a continuation.
"You call this kindness," I said.
"It is more than some are offered."
"That's not an answer either."
"No."
I hated that about him. The way he didn't soften things. The way he didn't lie. The way honesty from someone like him still felt like a kind of insult.
"You said my death shouldn't have happened," I said. "You said it was misplaced. So why not just fix it."
He looked older somehow when I asked that.
Because maybe the answer was one he'd answered too many times before.
"Because I do not return things unchanged," he said. "I redirect them."
"And that's supposed to matter to me."
"It will."
I looked at him for a long moment.
At the lined face. The tired eyes. The burden in his posture. The complete absence of anything comforting.
He didn't look like salvation.
He looked like endurance.
That was somehow worse.
The space around us began to thin. Not fade exactly. Loosen. Like whatever held this meeting together was already ending.
"You're sending me now," I said.
"Yes."
I nodded once.
Not because I accepted it.
Because there was nothing else left to do.
"You know what the worst part is?" I asked.
He waited.
"We made it out," I said quietly. "That's the part that keeps replaying. Not the chase. Not Davis. Not the villa. It's that one second after. The part where I thought we'd survived it. That's what I get to remember."
His eyes stayed on me.
"I know."
That was the first thing he'd said that felt almost human.
I hated it.
The not-space around us broke further. Terra vanished. The wheel was gone. He was the last thing left standing in the dark with me.
"You're not even going to pretend any of this is fair," I muttered.
"No."
Of course not.
Of course that was the answer.
All of it rose in me then. The mission. The crash. The helplessness. The fact that even here, even now, I still wasn't being given anything without a price attached to it. The anger came back cleaner than before, sharper because there was nowhere to put it.
I looked him dead in those old, exhausted eyes.
"Fuck you, God."
He didn't flinch.
And then everything went dark.