Chapter 19 All-Knowing

Emma Stone - POV

The knowledge burns through my skull like molten metal, each new possibility a white-hot brand against my consciousness. I see Ryan reach for me, and instantly my mind splits into thousands of paths—timelines where his touch heals me, where it kills him, where it transforms us both into something inhuman. The weight of seeing every consequence crushes down on my chest until I can barely breathe.

"Emma, talk to us," Ryan says, but I can already see how this conversation ends in so many different ways. In some, I explain everything and he understands. In others, my words drive him to madness. In too many, I break down completely and become exactly what Kane wanted—a conduit destroyed by infinite knowledge.

"I can't," I whisper, my voice echoing strangely inside the energy sphere that both protects and imprisons me. "Every word I say changes everything. Every choice I make kills someone somewhere."

Through the psychic bond, I feel Blake trying to read my psychological state, but what he finds makes him recoil. My mind isn't just human anymore—it's a library containing every possible version of every possible story, and browsing through it would shatter anyone's sanity.

"Show us," Cole demands, his protective fury making the monitoring equipment spark. "Whatever you're seeing, show us."

So I do.

I let them experience just a fragment of what omniscience feels like. They see themselves through my eyes—not just who they are now, but who they could become. Ryan, brilliant and caring, slowly growing cold and clinical until he views everyone as test subjects. Blake, charming and clever, using his abilities to manipulate world leaders into devastating wars. Cole, gentle and protective, becoming a monster who destroys everything he touches in the name of keeping people safe. Kai, creative and passionate, losing his artistic soul until he can only paint death and suffering.

"Stop," Blake gasps, his psychological training crumbling under the assault of infinite possibility. "That's not—we would never—"

"You would," I tell him, and my certainty makes him flinch. "Given the right circumstances, the right pressure, the right manipulation. I've seen every version of you that exists across the multiverse. The good ones, the evil ones, and all the shades of gray in between."

Kai stumbles backward, his synesthesia overloading as it tries to process colors that don't exist in normal reality. "This is what Kane wanted, isn't it? To break you with too much knowledge."

The screens surrounding us flicker, and suddenly I'm reliving the moment Dr. Kane made her first contact with the entity that feeds on dimensional collapse. She wasn't a victim of supernatural forces—she was a willing collaborator who saw an opportunity to study human consciousness under the ultimate stress test.

"She orchestrated everything," I realize, the truth unfolding in my enhanced awareness like a poisonous flower. "My transfer to Blackwood, my discovery of the book, even my grandmother's death decades ago. All of it designed to create the perfect conduit—someone powerful enough to achieve multiversal awareness but human enough to be destroyed by it."

Ryan's medical mind processes the implications immediately. "She's been farming conduits across multiple dimensions. Creating them, breaking them, harvesting their power when they collapse under the weight of omniscience."

I nod, feeling the entity's hunger pressing against the dimensional barriers like a cancer trying to metastasize. "Every version of me that gained this knowledge eventually chose death over the responsibility of infinite choice. Their despair feeds the thing that's been manipulating us."

But I'm not going to follow that pattern. I can see the path forward—narrow, costly, but possible.

"I can suppress the omniscience," I announce, my fingers moving across the dimensional monitoring controls with knowledge I never learned. "Sever most of the connections, return to something approaching normal consciousness."

"Then do it," Cole says immediately.

"It's not that simple." I show them the energy readings, the complex calculations that govern dimensional stability. "The psychic network I've created is the only thing holding the barriers together. If I just cut myself loose, reality collapses anyway."

Through our bond, I feel their growing dread as they realize what I'm leading up to.

"Someone has to take my place as the primary anchor point," I continue. "Not full omniscience—the human brain can't handle that—but enough multiversal awareness to maintain stability. Enough to see across multiple realities and make the choices I can't make anymore."

The silence stretches while the monitoring equipment beeps steadily, counting down to the moment when my neural pathways will overload completely.

"I'll do it," Ryan says, stepping forward with medical precision. "My inability to feel physical pain means—"

"You'd experience every possible medical horror across infinite realities," I interrupt gently. "Every surgery gone wrong, every disease, every way the human body can fail or be broken. You'd never be able to help anyone again without seeing all the ways your treatment could backfire."

Blake moves closer to the energy sphere. "Then choose me. I can handle psychological pressure."

"You'd know every lie ever told, every manipulation ever attempted, every way trust has been weaponized across the multiverse." My heart breaks as I see his future—brilliant mind turned paranoid and isolated, unable to believe in genuine emotion because he's witnessed how it can be faked in infinite variations. "You'd never be able to love honestly again."

Kai's artistic soul rebels against the idea, but he forces himself to volunteer anyway. "I'm already different. My synesthesia—"

"Would be corrupted by exposure to emotions that don't belong to this reality," I finish. "You'd lose the ability to create beauty because you'd be constantly witnessing infinite suffering."

Cole steps directly in front of me, his protective instincts overriding everything else. "Then it's me."

I close my eyes, seeing what that choice would cost. Cole's gentle heart, exposed to every possible act of violence across unlimited realities. His capacity for tenderness, burned away by knowledge of every way love can become cruelty, every time protection becomes possession.

The dimensional network starts flashing critical warnings. Neural overload imminent. If I don't choose now, the decision will be made for me when my consciousness burns out completely.

Through the psychic bond, I feel each of them trying to convince me to choose someone else—anyone else. Ryan calculating medical solutions that don't exist. Blake searching for psychological loopholes in an equation that has none. Kai painting desperate possibilities in his mind. Cole preparing to somehow force me to pick him through sheer willpower.

But I can see all their futures now, every path that leads from this moment. I know which choice saves the most lives, prevents the most suffering, gives us the best chance of stopping Kane and the entity she serves.

I know which of the men I love has to be sacrificed so the others can survive.

My hand hovers over the dimensional controls, shaking as I prepare to transfer the crushing weight of multiversal awareness from my mind to his, condemning him to a half-life of infinite knowledge and impossible responsibility.

"I'm sorry," I whisper, my finger descending toward the control that will destroy one of them to save us all. "I'm so sorry, but it has to be—”