Chương 276: Chapter 17 - Blackout

Tell Me The door to the medical room slid open as Alexander approached, sensors recognizing him automatically. Gabriel Cross sat upright in the bed, propped against pillows that looked recently adjusted. He wore a standard medical gown. His frame was thin beneath it. Not skeletal, but the kind of lean that spoke of months without enough food, only partially corrected by a week of proper nutrition and Felix's healing.

He was spooning jello into his mouth with the careful, deliberate pace of someone savoring the act of eating. His eyes were closed.

"Hello, Alex." The spoon dipped back into the cup.

"Thank you for visiting me." Alexander paused in the doorway. The familiarity in the man's voice was the same as the night they'd pulled him out of the desert, though more restrained. Measured. As if Gabriel had spent the intervening days practicing how to sound like a stranger. Alexander crossed the room and settled into the chair beside the bed.

"Hello, Gabriel."

"Gabe, if you don't mind." Another spoonful. His left eye twitched, a tiny involuntary spasm that briefly creased the skin around it.

"All my friends call me Gabe." A pause.

"Not that I have many left. And those I do won't understand just yet." Alexander rested his elbow on the arm of the chair and leaned his head against his fist, studying the man. Gabriel continued eating without looking, each motion careful and unhurried. As if he'd done this exact thing, in this exact room, a thousand times before.

"You took me by surprise when we first met," Alexander said.

"It's not often that I haven't at the very least broadly considered an outcome before it occurs, so—""Genuine surprise is rare," Gabriel said quietly. Alexander smiled.

"Yes. Like just now. You knowing what I was going to say was not unexpected." Gabriel's spoon stopped halfway to his mouth. He held it there for a moment, then lowered it back to the cup.

"You want to understand why I called you an old friend." His voice was steady, but something shifted beneath it.

"You already know the answer, but you've always preferred confirmation over assumption." Alexander raised an eyebrow. That was a fairly succinct way of putting it.

"Sure." Gabriel opened his eyes. But he didn't look at Alexander. He stared at the cup of jello in his hand, at the plastic spoon resting inside it, as if the small green dessert required his full attention. Alexander watched him. Studied the way he held the cup, the way his jaw worked slightly even though he wasn't eating. The way his gaze remained fixed downward. He was avoiding looking at him.

"I already said thank you to Augustus," Gabriel said.

"And Annie. And Felix and Talia." He turned the cup slowly in his fingers.

"They were all very kind." Alexander waited. He already knew the others had visited. Talia had given him daily updates on Gabriel's condition, both physical and psychological. She'd also made it clear, in her precise and clinical way, that the man was fragile. Healing, but fragile. Which was why Alexander had waited. He'd given Gabriel as much time as he could. Let him eat real food, sleep in a real bed, have conversations with people who didn't want anything from him.

Because Alexander knew that when he finally walked through that door, he would have questions. And those questions carried a weight that a recovering man shouldn't have to bear. But the world didn't stop because one person needed rest. It never did.

"Thank you, Alex," Gabriel whispered, still not meeting his gaze.

"Grimnir was the hope that kept me sane. When he buried sand under my skin, kept me awake for days without end, the feeling of worms wriggling from my toes to my eyeballs, I held on to that hope." Alexander went still.

"I am not ashamed to admit that I broke. Many, many times, even. And I know… there will be moments where the damage comes through, despite my best efforts." He took a ragged breath.

"But I will repay Grimnir's kindness. For saving me then, and for everything else you will do for me."

"You don't owe us anything." Alexander shook his head.

"I mean, we had ulterior motives for rescuing you. And I do want your help. And some answers. But…" Gabriel nodded.

"I know. And the answer to your first question is what you have already guessed. Which is not a satisfactory answer by itself." He looked up and met Alexander's gaze for the first time, eyes carrying a strange intensity.

"To explain, you must first understand that my powers of precognition are both the best and worst of their kind." Stolen novel; please report. The way he looked at him made Alexander consider leaving the room. Leaving Gabriel Cross with his secrets, and what little peace the man might find if simply left alone, rather than being dragged deeper into it by one of those prophesied to change the world. He almost did.

The muscles in his legs already tensing, the decision made before he'd consciously understood what his questions would demand. Gabriel shook his head.

"I made my choice before you entered the room, Alex. Before you even made the decision to visit. Before Grimnir arrived in Dubai weeks ago. I daresay even before you'd heard my name." His pupils expanded until his eyes were nothing but dark orbs.

"We all choose our powers, my friend. Deep down, we know how much we can take. What price we are willing to pay for them." He chuckled.

"Even if so many of us are wrong in the end." Alexander sighed.

"I don't know if we are going to be friends… Gabe. But you have an opportunity right now to choose again. There would be no shame in that, either." He smiled.

"Hell, even I've considered—""No you haven't." Gabriel said it with such conviction that Alexander froze with his mouth open for a few moments before closing it.

"The name of my power isn't important," he continued.

"What matters is that it gives me what is known as selective precognition. I choose when to see. And what to see." Alexander leaned back.

"Is that rare?" Gabriel shook his head.

"It's not. But there are consequences to precognition by choice. The act of looking upon the future almost inevitably changes it."

"Schrodinger's future?" He smiled.

"Something like that." Then the smile faded.

"But you see, nobody who sees the future gets away with it. For non-selective precogs, the visions torment them by being random. Or arriving at the worst time. Or being so abstract that the search for meaning drives them crazy." Alexander recalled Benny and his mad, ranting declarations when they encountered him at the police precinct.

"Selective precogs suffer in different ways, too. For me, I see the future in dreams when I sleep. Not even the suppression collars stop it. I see every future I fear will come to pass." He paused.

"And those that I fear will never come to pass."

"Which means you saw futures where you remained a captive, and…" Gabriel nodded.

"Futures where I escaped. Where my thoughtful machinations shifted events just the way I needed, and friends rode to my rescue. When emails I'd prepared leaked intel about my capture to the media and outraged public outcry set me free." He laughed.

"I am not a proud man, Alex, but even then I almost chose not to send anonymous intelligence to Sheikha Khalida and the Throne of Scales the day I was to be abducted. So they might intercept an illegal AEGIS hit squad at just the right moment. That I would ever need to rely on a bunch of villains to rescue me seemed like a joke ten months ago." His jaw tensed.

"Then, as the months passed and all other plans failed, it became my only lifeline. Every night, futures blurred together. Years in captivity, torture and torment and starvation, blended with futures where I met Alexander Rooke, Augustus Greaves, Talia Kim, Annette Sheridan, and Felixaran, among so many others." Alexander's eyebrows shot up.

"I have no idea how you pronounced that correctly. I tried so many times, but the 'ischkar' and the pop just do not roll off the tongue." Gabriel chuckled.

"In my mind, I have done it more times than I can count." He sighed.

"I have seen futures where you and the others have died for me. Where I have died for them. And you. I've seen so many that I don't even know what is real and what is not sometimes." Alexander tried for some levity.

"I used to think having the power to see the future would be pretty awesome, but it really just sounds exhausting."

"It is not all bad. Usually, it's even manageable. But it requires a calm and ordered mind, or else the dreams spiral out of control."

"Because fear drives them." He nodded.

"So, you see, your guess was correct. I know we are not friends. That Auggy hasn't given me life advice over a cold beer. And Annie hasn't planted me face down in the sand repeatedly while trying to teach me to defend myself. That Talia hasn't helped me master my powers with her Realm of the Mind. But I've lived those things for months in my dreams, and it is hard not to feel those lifetimes. Even if they're not real." They both sat there in silence for a while. Then Alexander snorted.

"I understand why you told Auggy that the future is like seeing your ugly neighbor now." Gabriel shook his head.

"You told me that."

"What?"

"One particularly bad week, I kept seeing the same future over and over with slight variations. In it, Grimnir rescued me, or I escaped, and then I joined you guys. The System's invasions kept occurring, and when the eleventh happened, I led you and Augustus to where a new gateway was going to open." Alexander leaned forward.

"We were there to rescue some people. In my vision, survivors from another world that Grimnir had helped poured out of it. You had to be there because they were happy to see you. Auggy was there to portal them to safety." Gabriel's shoulders slumped.

"It was always a trap. Cultivators. Wizards. Beasts. Even nightmarish, twisting monstrosities. In that instant, I knew. We were dead. Each time, I had to turn to you both and tell you I'd made a mistake. That we were dead. And each time, you both forgave me." He sighed.

"Then you'd say that seeing the future must be at least as bad as glimpsing an ugly, hairy neighbor through the curtains." Alexander laughed.

"That sounds way too specific. Makes me wonder if I'm going to experience something traumatic." Gabriel smiled, but it didn't quite reach his pitch black eyes. A few more moments passed in silence. Then he placed the jello on the bedside table.

"I appreciate your patience, Alex. But I'm ready. You can ask." Alexander slowly leaned back, his own smile fading. Part of him was still uncertain about it now that the choice lay before him. If knowing wouldn't change it, then asking felt almost pointless. Or perhaps he was just afraid of the answers. He let out a breath. Then inhaled slowly.

"Tell me about the Prophecy of Eights. And the end of the world."