Chapter 16 The Real Blackwood

Emma Stone - POV

The nightmare realm shatters like glass around us, but instead of waking up in the medical center, we stumble into a corridor that shouldn't exist. The walls pulse with sickly light, and the air tastes like copper and burning ozone. My enhanced senses recoil from whatever energy saturates this place.

"Where the hell are we?" Cole growls, his protective instincts flaring as he scans for threats.

Kane stands before us, no longer bothering with her concerned doctor act. Power radiates from her like heat from a furnace, and her eyes hold the cold satisfaction of someone who's finally stopped pretending.

"Welcome to the real Blackwood University," she says, gesturing down the impossible corridor. "What you've been experiencing is just the surface layer—a comfortable lie for students who lack the vision to see what this institution truly represents."

Through our bond, I feel the others' confusion and growing alarm. Ryan's medical mind tries to rationalize what he's seeing while Blake's psychological training searches for the manipulation angle. Kai's synesthesia shows our collective fear as jagged red fractals.

"This is still a construct," Blake says, his voice tight with controlled panic. "You're manipulating our perceptions."

"Partially correct. I'm not changing reality—I'm showing you which reality you're experiencing." Kane moves toward a door that glows with its own inner light. "Blackwood exists in multiple dimensions simultaneously. Each layer serves a different purpose in our research."

The door opens, revealing what looks like a vast hospital ward stretching beyond the horizon. But instead of empty beds, each one holds a student. Hundreds of them. Maybe thousands. All staring at nothing with completely white eyes.

"Jesus Christ," Ryan breathes, his medical training helping him recognize what we're seeing. "They're catatonic."

"Not catatonic," Kane corrects with clinical precision. "Conscious but trapped. These are students who volunteered for psychic enhancement but couldn't handle the mental strain. Their minds retreated so deep that their bodies became empty shells."

I step closer to the nearest bed, and my stomach lurches. The girl lying there can't be older than twenty, with dark hair like mine spread across her pillow. But when I reach out with my enhanced abilities, I sense a faint spark of awareness trapped behind those vacant eyes—like someone screaming from the bottom of a well.

"How many?" The words come out strangled.

"Three thousand, eight hundred and twelve as of last week." Kane walks between the beds like she's touring a garden instead of a graveyard. "All volunteers who thought they were strong enough to handle enhancement without proper psychological preparation."

Through our bond, I feel Marcus's horror mixing with Cole's barely contained rage. Kai's synesthesia turns our collective revulsion into writhing black shapes while Blake's mind races to find an escape route.

"You broke them," Marcus says, his voice carrying deadly calm. "All of these people trusted you, and you destroyed their minds."

"I gave them exactly what they asked for—power beyond imagination. It's not my responsibility if they lacked the mental fortitude to handle it." Kane continues her casual stroll past rows of empty-eyed students. "But their sacrifice serves a greater purpose. Each failure teaches me more about the enhancement process."

She leads us deeper into the ward, past beds filled with teenagers whose families probably think they're at summer programs or studying abroad. The psychic energy in the air grows thicker, making my teeth ache.

"The beauty of dimensional research," Kane continues, "is that time flows differently in each layer. These students have been here for subjective years, but in your reality, they've only been missing for weeks. Their families still receive updates—automated responses I programmed into the university's communication systems."

"Why show us this?" I ask, though part of me already knows the answer will be terrible.

Kane stops beside another glowing door, this one covered in symbols that hurt to look at. "Because you need to understand that you're not special, Emma. You're not the first conduit I've worked with."

The door opens, revealing a corridor lined with mirrors instead of walls. But these aren't normal reflections—each mirror shows a different version of the same scene. Me, in various hospital settings, surrounded by different groups of young men. Some versions show me conscious but vacant-eyed like the students in the ward. Others show me convulsing while psychic energy tears through my body like lightning.

"Every possible permutation," Kane explains, her voice carrying sick pride. "Every combination of heirs, every variation of the binding process, every potential outcome of the enhancement procedures."

My knees give out as the full horror hits me. Through our bond, I feel the others' shock and rage, but also their desperate need to protect me from what we're seeing.

"How many versions of me are there?" I whisper.

"Twenty-three survived the initial binding process. Most burned out within months when their enhancement proved incompatible with their heirs' abilities. Five lasted over a year before complete psychological breakdown." Kane touches one mirror showing me with completely white eyes while four young men I don't recognize hold down my convulsing body. "Only one achieved true stability."

She moves to a different mirror, and the reflection changes. This version of me looks older, calmer, with eyes that hold knowledge and power I've never imagined possessing. She sits in what appears to be a beautiful garden, surrounded by four men who carry themselves with the kind of confidence that comes from years of partnership rather than desperate bonding.

"Layer fifteen," Kane says softly. "Where the process finally worked correctly."

The other Emma looks up from her book, and her eyes meet mine through the mirror's surface. Her mouth moves, forming words I can't hear but somehow understand through our shared essence: "She's lying to you."

Kane jerks away from the mirror, her composure cracking for the first time. "That's impossible. The dimensional barriers prevent cross-layer communication."

But the other Emma is still trying to communicate, her lips moving more deliberately: "Kane died years ago."

Ice floods my veins as understanding begins to dawn. "Who are you really?"

Kane's form flickers like a broken television screen. For just a moment, I see her true face—and it's mine. An older, harder version of me, wearing Kane's appearance like a mask made of lies.

"I'm what you become when you survive long enough to understand the truth," she says, her voice shifting to match my own but aged by years of bitter experience. "I'm the Emma from layer fifteen who learned to control the enhancement process instead of being destroyed by it."

The mirrors around us begin to crack as reality bleeds between dimensions, the revelation destabilizing whatever force keeps the layers separate.

"Dr. Kane died three years ago during one of my first dimensional transfer attempts," the thing wearing her face continues. "I've been using her identity to conduct experiments across multiple realities, searching for the perfect combination of heirs who can help me escape this prison."

Through our five-person bond, I feel my heirs' determination crystallizing into something powerful enough to challenge whatever this creature represents.

"You want to steal my body," I breathe.

"I want to save you from the mistakes I made." Her form flickers again, showing glimpses of what I might become—powerful but completely alone, enhanced but no longer recognizably human. "But first, I need to complete the dimensional transfer using your stabilized bond as an anchor."

The corridor begins collapsing as reality fractures around us. In the cracking mirrors, I catch glimpses of other versions of myself and my heirs across multiple dimensions, all struggling against similar threats.

The other Emma from layer fifteen appears in every mirror simultaneously, her urgent message finally clear: "The real enemy isn't me—it's what's been using all of us as experiments."

As dimensional barriers shatter around us, I realize the most terrifying truth of all: if this Kane is actually another version of me, and that other Emma is warning us about something else entirely, then what's been manipulating all of these realities from the shadows?