Darkness, and then light.

  Pietro could feel asphalt on his face. His head throbbed, his ears rang. Distantly, he could hear a male voice barking something indistinct, talking to nobody.

  Hesitantly, half expecting it to hurt, he cracked open his eyes.

  He was still in the alley. He was lying at the base of the wall that, a moment and an eternity ago, he'd been pinned to by his attacker, who was now pacing back and forth a few feet away from him, growling into a cell phone.

  "-didn't fucking show up. Nothing happened. Swear to Christ, if you want me offing random civvies then just say so. You promised me a boost."

  The man paused, listened to an illegible voice on the other line.

  Pietro winced as a feverish pulse of migraine flared behind his eyes. Briefly, in the time between two blinks, he saw the woman from the woods again, standing at the end of the alley, watching. She was there for a fraction of a moment, and then gone.

  "No, I- Yeah. Yeah, I confirmed. No, he did, he had a Field, I saw- But it didn't fucking show up. I offed him, I waited, but that little, like, glowy lump thing that usually comes out when one of us bites it, it just didn't show. He died like any other regular nobody. No. Yeah, I- Exactly! I didn't eat anything."

  The woman was back. She crept around the far corner, half shrouded in the shadow still cast by the pre-dawn twilight. She crept up, unseen by Pietro's assailant, and assumed the exact position he'd seen her in, seconds ago. Another wave of pain, and she was closer by, another wave, she was back, another wave she was an arm's length away, holding the man in black up by his neck, then she was over him, talking, then she was back at the end of the alley.

  It was too much. Too many different versions of the present were all jockeying for Pietro's attention, and each new image came with its own spike of agony. He found himself longing for wherever he'd been before he'd woken up, a place that his memory was increasingly failing to conjure up.

  A pleasant dream. Somewhere warm. Had he been dead?

  A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  "-fucking dare suggest I failed. This isn't some cover story, I- No! No. Matter of fact, I'll prove it. I'll-" The man turned suddenly, raised his phone to take a photo of Pietro's body, and the two men locked eyes.

  There was a moment of wordless, almost slackjawed shock from the man before he thumbed a button and flicked his phone back into his pocket. He crouched, slowly, preparing to pounce.

  "Well, that explains it," he breathed to himself. Pietro thought he heard relief in his voice. "Let's hope second time's the char-"

  The man's words caught in his throat as he was lifted from his feet by Yelena, the woman from the woods, the figure from Pietro's recent spate of nightmares back and very much in the flesh. Her hand was clamped around the man's throat from behind, and she levered him up to hold his head at her eye level, leaving the man's legs to kick and dangle in the empty air.

  There was a profusion of sparks and heat as the man seemed to explode. A jet of flame raked Yelena's face, a bolt of electricity snaked down her arm and skittered over her torso. She seemed unfazed.

  "Welcome back, pet," the woman cooed in her rustling, paper voice. Her face was burned, but the flesh around the burn was pinkening, ripening, and already the black char of dead skin was falling off to reveal a healthy layer underneath.

  "Are- How-" Pietro groaned as another profusion of images played over his eyes, the environment around him changing with each snapshot: the alley, his temporary home, the inside of a van, the woods again, a starless sky, a blasted crater.

  "Don't try to speak. Emerging from paradise is hard on the body, and harder still on the soul," Yelena said. The man threw a clumsy fist backward and his hand connected with her face with a sound like a gunshot. Yelena might as well have been brushed by a gentle breeze. "Excuse me a moment."

  She closed her hand, and the man's throat popped like a balloon. His head toppled to the ground and rolled, coming to a stop just before Pietro. His dark glasses goggled up at him, the compound eyes of a dead fly.

  Pietro paused, inhaled to speak, and promptly vomited.

  He felt Yelena's huge, cold hand on his back. She rubbed him between the shoulders, gently, as he threw up. "Shh, shh."

  She sang something softly, lullaby-like, in a language that Pietro both couldn't place and immediately recognized. Russian, maybe? Something about it was familiar.

  "This is all so much for you. I apologize. Your illness will wane soon, but the following days will not be without their discomforts." Pietro's stomach lurched as the woman scooped him from the ground and held him, cradled him. If it wasn't for the atomic explosion of a headache wreaking havoc within his skull, if it wasn't for the maddening kaleidoscope of scenes jostling for primacy in his eyes, he would've felt terrified.

  "There will be more pain after this," Yelena promised. "So much more pain. But the wonderful news is that there is no such thing as a pain that does not end."

  She was rocking him. Pietro wondered, absently, if he was going mad.

  "Rejoice, my child. Know that one day you will be allowed to die again, and that time, it will last forever."