I smooth down my pants—they’re different too, nice khaki cargo pants instead of beat-up jeans—and freeze when I spot the jagged black veins creeping across the back of my left hand.

The scorpion. The shadows. The pain.

I clutch my hand. I tear off my button-down and wrap it around the wound, like that’ll help. At least this way I won’t have to see it. I won’t have to remember that I have a Being’s venom crawling slowly up my arm, that my veins are full of shadows now as well as blood.

I stand up. I stagger at first—I feel somehow lighter than normal and off-balance. But after a moment I stabilize. Warily, I scan my surroundings. The field of stars above, the soft rainbow-lit floor below, in all directions, for as far as I can see.

No Beings. But also … no Elliott.

Elliott. That’s who I threw my shoe at. I took him with me through the mirror, I know I did. But I remember his grip vanishing—maybe a Being overtook him, or maybe he didn’t make it through.

I can’t see very well in these conditions. The floor’s wavering light is dim and dizzying, rippling out into infinity, and the only other lighting is the gleam of stars filtering down from above. Maybe Elliott is nearby and I just can’t make him out.

I cup my hands to my mouth. “Ackermann!” I shout. My voice echoes off the rainbow floor, off what I can only assume is the translucent glass ceiling. There’s no reply except my own voice fading into nothingness.

I wait. I give him time to answer. He doesn’t.

I should stop making noise. This place, whatever it is, is where the Beings come from. They probably don’t realize I’m here yet, but if I go around yelling at the top of my lungs they’ll find me soon enough.

But: “Ackermann!” I yell again anyway, something like worry humming just below my breastbone.

A swell of burnt-orange light flicks across the floor a few yards away. It lights up a prone body—someone lying on their back, as still as death. The orange light ripens into a beeswax gold and then shatters outward, a starburst of sparks. It’s enough light for me to make out that the person on the ground is a woman.

I hold stock-still for a long moment as the bright colors fade into blue. Then, cautiously, trying to look in every direction at once in case this is some kind of trap, I approach the body.