Consciousness seeps back into my battered mind, viscous as honey, though not as sweet. Sensations emerge from the clinging fog one by one—a steady mechanical beeping, a rhythmic hiss of air, the astringent tingle of disinfectant in my nostrils. Light sears my eyelids, painting the darkness behind them an angry red.

I struggle to open my eyes, each lid weighed down by what feels like a thousand pounds of exhaustion. When I manage to crack them open, the world is a bleary smear of neutral tones. Overhead, glaring fluorescents pierce my retinas like needles. I squint against the onslaught, waiting for my vision to resolve.

Gradually, the blurry space sharpens, coalescing into a small hospital room that's the essence of watered-down beige—from its blank eggshell walls to the frayed privacy curtain to the generic vertical blinds filtering pale daylight through a single window. It must be afternoon, as a soap opera plays on the muted TV bolted on the wall over the foot of my narrow bed.

Oh, this bed! This horrid mockery of repose! Its itchy sheets and antiseptic-scented beige coverlet wind themselves like snakes around my legs. As if shackling my lower extremities wasn't enough, someone's given part of my upper body a tether: an intravenous line snakes from the crook of my elbow to a bag of clear fluid hanging nearby.

How did I get here? Where even is here? I grope backward through the disjointed shards of recent memory, trying to piece them into a coherent whole. There was the final, desperate battle against the egregore, that nightmarish entity of shadow and malice. The positive affirmations I had weaponized against it, wielding their power like a blazing sword to slice through its darkness. The distress signal pulsing out into the abyss. The rescue crew appearing like deep-sea angels amidst the drowning ruin of Avernus Station.

Avernus... The mere thought of the name makes me shudder. When Dr. Marcus first asked for my help, I was excited at the opportunity to be part of a revolutionary treatment. But little did I know the horrors that lay beneath his charming proposals and the pristine facade of the station. I still can't believe he had such sinister motives for his experimentation—or that he managed to fool so many of his peers for so long. My bones still ache from the experience.

Achieve the best version of yourself. Unlock your true potential. Transcend your limits... In the sterile confines of the hospital, the memory of the affirmations I used as weapons evokes a bittersweet pang in my heart. The words that saved my life, that gave me the power to overcome the unimaginable, feel strangely hollow in the aftermath of my ordeal. They echo in my mind, a pale imitation of the resolve that had filled me in that pivotal moment. In the cold light of day, can mere words truly keep the darkness at bay? Or will the shadow of Avernus continue to haunt me, a reminder of how close I came to losing myself in that abyss?

The creak of a door breaks me out of my bleak reverie. Uttering a small shriek, I tense, the heart monitor spiking in shrill alarm as a figure in a white coat enters the room. It's a man, tall and well-built, with an unassuming handsomeness—close-cropped brown hair threaded with silver at the temples, warm hazel eyes behind angular glasses, and a hint of stubble dusting a strong jawline.

"Emily, I'm glad to see you're awake," he says with a small smile as he picks up the chart at the foot of my bed. "I'm Dr. Aaron Greig. You're in the medical bay of the IMCC's coastal facility outside Vancouver. A rescue team brought you here a few days ago."

His words are like puzzle pieces that don't quite fit together. Coastal facility? IMCC? Days ago? The last vestiges of what I can only assume are sedatives cling to my mind like cobwebs, fuzzing the edges of comprehension.

"IMCC? What's—?" I stutter, trying to lever myself upright to feel a little less vulnerable.

"My apologies. It stands for International Maritime Containment Center."

I part my lips, about to demand the center's precise location—after all, terms like 'outside Vancouver' could mean anywhere from Houston to Boston. I'm equally eager to uncover why I'm under 'containment,' a term that insinuates contagion. However, before I can voice my questions, a lance of white-hot pain stabs down my spine, eliciting a sharp gasp from me. In an instant, Dr. Greig is at my side, his hands firmly yet gently guiding me back onto the pillows.

"Easy now, Emily," he soothes. "You've been through a severe trauma. Frankly, given the state of the facility when they found you, I'm amazed you survived at all. The damage to Avernus was... considerable."

I latch onto the fragment of news as if it were a lifeline. "What became of Avernus? And Dr. Marcus and his team—I lost track of them when..." My voice trails off, the reality of speaking such fears to a stranger rooting me in place. "Are they... dead?"

Dr. Greig's expression tightens, a shadow of disquiet passing through his hazel eyes. He glances at the chart, seemingly buying time. "Emily, what can you recall from your time at the station?"

There's something in his tone, a probing urgency beneath the professional calm, that sets off a host of alarm bells in my head. Suddenly I'm reluctant to confide in him, to spill out the impossible horrors I faced in that abyss. Would he even believe me? Or would he think I'd gone mad down there in the drowned dark?

"I... I went there as an observer," I hedge, fingers absentmindedly teasing a loose thread on the blanket. "Dr. Marcus had extended an invitation to witness their work, claiming he and his team were on the brink of something groundbreaking. But then..." I accompany my words with a shrug, offering a faint smile that doesn't quite reach my eyes, letting the unspoken truths hang in the air between us.

"Then?" the doctor prompts gently, watching me with intent eyes.

A sudden desperation to escape this line of questioning rises in my throat. "Please, I'm so tired," I whisper, trying to muster a pleading look. "Everything's still a blur. Maybe later, when I'm feeling stronger...?"

Dr. Greig looks torn, but nods slowly. "Of course. I shouldn't push you so soon. Rest now—we'll talk again later."

He makes a few notes on the chart, checks my IV drip, and then beats a slightly-too-hurried retreat from the room. I stare after him, pulse thudding a drumbeat of anxiety in my ears. Why didn't he tell me anything? Why does he seem so unsettled by my questions?

I sink back against the pillows, cold tendrils of unease unfurling in my gut. Some primal animal instinct is screaming that something is wrong here—that I'm not truly safe, even in this sterile cocoon.

Unbidden, a terrible thought claws its way to the forefront of my mind: What if some insidious shard of the egregore followed me out of Avernus, still embedded in my psyche like a poisoned splinter? Could all of this—the rescue, the hospital, Dr. Greig—just be an elaborate hallucination, a fever dream spun by its malignant will?

I shove the heel of my hand against my forehead, gritting my teeth until my jaw creaks. No. I refuse to let that horror claim the last bastion of my sanity. I escaped Avernus. I defeated the egregore. I'm free.

Aren't I?