Avery raced up the stairs, his legs in agony—from the proximity to the demon door or the panic seizing up his muscles, he couldn't tell. And if it was panic, did it come from the door itself, or from hearing Jessamine speaking behind it? So close, yet so far?

Ada was waiting on the other side of the basement door, eyes widening at the sight of Avery when he exited.

"So? Did you get in touch with her?" She studied him, squinting at his features, his hunched posture, his heavy breathing.

"She's alive," he said, catching his breath as it wheezed through his lungs. "And yeah, stuff is going on down there, but she's not sure what. She said the demons mentioned portals opening, but I don't think she knows much else yet. It must be barely starting down there."

"Crap," said Ada, spinning away from Avery to face a wall. She shook her head. "I was hoping Limbo's portals opening would be a coincidence, and that the demonic realm would be business as usual. But... I can't dismiss that whatever we're experiencing has to be going on everywhere. In every realm. So, I believe Jessamine, surrounded by demons or not. Oh," she covered her mouth, then squinted harder, "was she..." She turned her head enough for Avery to sight her profile; she winced.

"No," he said, knowing at once what Ada meant. "She claimed she wasn't possessed anymore, and I trust her. Like you." He leaned against the closest wall, relaxing his tired limbs.

What an experiment that had been—to know she was on the other side of that door, alive, no longer possessed, no longer in pain. But stuck, alone, and encircled by the monsters that had taken hostage of her body.

"Good. One piece of positive news, at least." Ada sighed, and whirled back around, massaging her forehead. "But we still need to know more. There has to be more to all of this. Not that I'd want to help that dimension, but..."

"There's that risk of things getting out and invading our world, yeah, I know," Avery huffed, "we kind of don't have any other options."

"No clue what doors would open up in there." Her gaze was serious, her see-through lips thinning. Her blue glow illuminated the otherwise darkened hallway. No other Guides lurked here; they all knew their places, their positions, and they gave Ada and Avery space to talk. "Something dark and dreary, for sure. But our priority is this plane, and Jessamine will have to handle things in hers. Did she say what, if anything, the demons were doing about it?"

Avery flinched. "I... didn't give her time to tell me." He gulped, unwilling to tell Ada how surreal it had been to communicate with her, to hear her. The real her. How he'd freaked at first when she'd replied, and felt his legs moving backward with every new sentence she uttered. "The second she mentioned gates opening in her space, I hurried here to tell you." Which wasn't a lie, not truly; but he kept to himself all the other reasons he hurried to get away.

He'd pushed her in. He'd doomed her to that place. How could she ever forgive him?

Ada's arms jittered at her sides. "This is world-level, no... dimensional-level destruction. It's a universal emergency. And it's terrifying. In all my years of operation... I've never been prepared for this." One finger twitched, pointing towards the stairwell. "Oh, boy, this is bad, deeply bad."

Avery squinted at her, but was strangely absorbed by her flickering finger. "Obviously, it's nuts. So what are we supposed to do, then? All worlds are being invaded, basically. How do you... do I... do we prevent an all-out dimensional war? Because it'll be a war, right? Between the invading monsters and us? Defending our territory, our world, our people?" He scoffed. "Fuck, I sound like I'm in some science-fiction movie and about to hop into a time-travel machine or some shit."

Sci-fi wasn't his realm of expertise; no, that would have been Jamie's. One of his side passions had been apocalyptic novels and books about traveling through space and encountering other civilizations and stopping planets from blowing up. But Avery? Avery's thing was ghosts, humans with unfinished business, and digging up graves for answers.

This situation, this turn of events, was a mix of both Jamie's passion and Avery's. And Avery... needed his best friend's guidance, but could no longer access it.

"It's not science, and it's not fiction," said Ada, her voice grave as she whooshed towards the stairs. She lingered there for a moment, fixated on the metallic banister, her gaze glazing over the chipped steps leading up to a dark, upper-floor balcony overlooking the lobby. "A lot of this will be beyond your understanding, Avery. And with our past and all the loathing your harbor for me... I need to ask you to trust me." Her shoulders squared as she turned to Avery. "I realize that's a next to impossible task, but your survival depends on it. Everyone's survival does."

Scrunching his nose, Avery shrugged. "I'm never going to trust you, but I'm here. I said I was in this, not that you gave me much of a choice... so whatever you say, I'll have to deal with it."

She didn't flinch at his words. "You see, I think the prophecy..." She dragged a hand down her face and groaned. "It was misinterpreted. I misinterpreted it. Jessamine, pushing her into the portal... it threw everything off balance. Yes, she's destined to be locked in there, but not in her human form."

"But," Avery scratched at his brow, "that was the only way to get her in there, wasn't it? I couldn't kill her, then push her. She was overpowered. Simply shoving her in there was a feat that required several of you Guides to possess me and let me borrow your strength."

"That's where my misinterpretation comes into play." Ada swerved to the side, away from the steps, and flew down an adjacent corridor. Sensing she'd meant for him to follow, Avery hustled to keep up. "The prophecy was a trap, a lie. It was an omen, not a situation we were meant to prevent. It... wasn't really a prophecy at all, but more like a vision of what was to come. Something that would happen no matter what we did."

Avery grabbed at the wall for support; digesting Ada's words often came with nauseous consequences. "A trap? A lie? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"I wish this were a sordid joke, but no." Ada blew over to the farthest end of the long corridor and settled over a spot on the floor that started glowing with her presence. "It was a vision of a beginning to worser times, to bigger problems. What it showed me was a choice between a demon-infested world, or a mythical monster-invaded one. A trap. The choice was... well, there was no choice. Jessamine's possession was set to happen no matter what, and you, you were... you were destined to doom her, and all of us, regardless of your decision."

"So I'm," Avery swallowed hard as he jabbed a finger into his chest, "I'm not a savior. Not a hero. I was never meant to save anyone or anything, only to... bring on the apocalypse? I'm the villain? The anti-hero?"

Ada nodded once, biting her lip. "A villain does their actions by choice; you didn't choose this. You're... an anti-hero, yes, I suppose. But it's my fault for not understanding this sooner. Prophecy?" She scoffed. "No, my kind doesn't receive prophecies. I should have known it wasn't real, that it was in fact the universe sending me a sign that we were all about to be caught up in a fight we'd never win."

"The universe?" Avery had long since accepted that there was no God, no heaven or hell, thanks to Ada; but then, who was in charge of the universe? Who sent out signals, who decided to trap Guides into believing they'd received premonitions when in fact they'd been cornered into making horrible mistakes?

This would have been something he'd debate with Jamie, hush-hush, away from Ada. What are Guides? Who put them here, on this earth, and where did they come from? And what was their purpose if they ended up getting trapped by false visions and they couldn't save the humans they were supposed to guide to Afterlife?

Were they aliens? Creatures from other dimensions that weren't locked up back in the day, because they were benevolent? Were they otherworldly things that had no real name, that transcended humanity, that defied all the laws of gravity and sense?

What kind of comic-book, apocalyptic craziness was he stuck in?

When Ada's suddenly energy blasted through him, stilling him, soothing him, he realized he'd been huddled in a ball and weaving back and forth, muttering under his breath.

Great, now I need to be institutionalized, but monsters are coming out of portals and they'll devour all the therapists, right?

"Avery." Ada nudged him with her power, using it to navigate him into sitting against the wall. "You need to take deep breaths. This is all a lot for you to swallow in so little time, I know—"

"—I can't swallow it, Ada." He set his back against the cool, painted surface, and unleashed all the air from his body. Ada levitated near him, taking her distance, watching him with concern. "Why me, why Jessamine? Why did Jamie and Amy have to die? This universe—it's sick, it's fucked up. Leading you astray, lying to you about prophecies and end-times, I... I'm not sure how to handle this. And now you're saying I fucked up the world? That I was trapped, too?"

Ada frowned, bringing her fisted hands to her chin. "I should have fought harder to keep you both away from this house, this portal, and that damned demon door. It's my fault, not yours, I promise you that." She peered up at the ceiling. "Her arrival in the demon's lair, beyond that door... that was what unlocked portals that were blocked off centuries ago. It's her presence that rattled all the realms. Her existence alone doomed this world to chaos in one form or another. I'm sorry, you're not going to like this; but I should have killed her back when she and her friends first trespassed into this house. I should have..."

As much as the comment stirred rage in Avery's gut, he nodded. He agreed. He loved Jessamine, he'd grown to care for her more than he'd ever expected, and yet... she shouldn't have existed. She shouldn't have been able to get close to the house, and the only way to stop that would have been to terminate that existence.

He wiped a stray tear from his eye; the notion of Jessamine being dead woke up all his repressed emotions. "So what now? We were trapped... is there any escape?"

Ada perked up and cleared her throat. "I need to confer with other Guides, inform them of this news. Never," she bunched her lips, her nose, "never again will I keep such heavy information to myself. If we survive this, I will be thorough about communicating with other Guides, always. Keeping them in the loop. I have no doubt one of them would have..." Her jaw tightened. "One of them would have known it was a trap, and they'd have told me, and I'd have never..."

Avery got to his feet, cringing. "Don't go there," he said, sending her a sympathetic glance. "Don't go down that route of regret. It's too late, there's nothing you can do. It burns me to say this, but you genuinely thought you were doing the right thing. So let's get moving to fix that."

Ada offered him a stare the likes of which he'd never seen in her eyes. They were unblinking, fixed, not widened in horror, not narrowed in spite. They were bold, blue, and thankful. Almost a beautiful, ethereal sight—if he weren't looking at someone he hated.

"I'm activating the portal, sending an SOS message," she said, shaking back to her normal self. "You might want to step backwards a little. It's a consuming process, and the portal will suck up your essence if you're too close. I need you at full strength."

Avery backed a few feet away. She shimmied over to the rear of the corridor, to the spot that had glowed upon her arrival. That same spot started pulsing with light, illuminating a neon green circle on the ground. Its edges burned bright, rising up to encircle Ada up to her waist as she floated above, her head inches from the ceiling.

It wasn't like when she'd used Jamie's energy to make a call; this was a bigger signal, a more urgent message to be propelled through the network, to alert all Guides of her error. To beg forgiveness and rectify that error and hopefully, hopefully save the world.

She was immobile in the air, eyes closed, letting the light's energy swirl around her. Avery watched in fascination, wishing he had a camera to record this for later times; if he survived. How incredible would it be to tell the world what had happened under their noses, to divulge the truth to them all after the unexplained weather phenomena and the shocking reappearance of dinosaurs? All the deaths, all the catastrophes—what if he were allowed to explain them? How amazing would it be to redeem himself as the hero who showed them, without telling them he'd initially, unwillingly, provoked this all?

"Oh," said Ada, one eye opening. "I'm getting feedback, already."

"Feedback?" Avery had to squeeze his eyelids half shut to witness the event. The light grew so blinding, so all-consuming, that he even cupped a hand over his forehead, as if the sun itself were blaring down on him.

"Responses," said Ada, through gritted teeth. "SOS messages from other ghost portals. I," she opened her other eye, instantly finding Avery, "I have to go, for a few minutes, but I'll be back."

As much as he'd be relieved from her heavy presence, Avery feared he wasn't safe without Ada's protection. The other Guides were there, but aside from Faz, none knew the full extent of the issue. What if a dinosaur came marching through the forest and squashed them all? What would these lower-level, less knowledgeable Guides be able, be allowed to do?

"Don't worry," said Ada, sensing Avery's internal distress. "I won't be long. There's a sort of dimension in here, in the ghost portal. A sort of small meeting room place where Guides go in case of emergencies. We haven't been called there in centuries, not since we all arrived... but this is important. Stay inside the house."

With a sinister sucking sound, the portal slurped her up. She was gone, disappeared into some off-world plane where she and her kind would meet and discuss how to prevent the world from collapsing.

"Avery!"

He shuddered as the scream rippled up through his being, from head to toe. It started at his feet, meaning it came from beneath him.

He recognized it—it was Jessamine, for sure, and it came from below. From the basement.

Jessamine was at the door, calling for him; but he couldn't go to her, not yet. Not with Ada elsewhere and his gut about to explode and his senses tested. If he went to her now, he'd only tell her they were doomed, dead, that there was no way to survive all this. He'd tell her she was likely safer in her realm, because this one... was on the verge of becoming the same kind of wasteland, anyway. Wastelands everywhere.

That was Avery's true destiny.

○○○