Somewhere Beyond Time — Unknown Realm
He remembered the cold first.
Not the ice of Europe or the frostbitten alleys of old American cities—but a kind of cosmic cold. The kind that seeped not into the bones, but into the soul.
Patient Zero—once known simply as Elijah Gray—opened his eyes and stared at a sky that had no stars. It pulsed instead with swirling clouds of glowing white and black, a sky that breathed. The ground beneath him was flesh-like, warm and humming, but stretched in all directions like cracked stone.
He had been thirteen when he vanished.
Not vanished. Torn away.
The Liberty Project's prototype serum had worked… too well. His power had manifested instantly: uncontrolled teleportation, molecular destabilization, and surges of psychic trauma. He had blinked out of the lab before anyone could stop him, ripping three nurses to pieces in the process.
And then he had landed here.
Wherever here was.
---
Years Passed Like Dreams
Time in this world didn't pass the same.
Elijah had grown. His body filled out. Once skinny and pale, he now stood over six feet tall—lanky but sharp. His hair had turned silver. His eyes glowed constantly, flickering like embers under snow.
He had learned to control the pulses. Learned to control himself.
But it had cost him.
He saw things in this place—beings made of thought and hatred. Cities that breathed. Rivers of sound and bone. And he heard voices whispering to him in languages older than time.
One name kept returning to him: Graxon.
It echoed through the wind, through the dark matter around him. And he knew—somehow—this Graxon ruled this place. Controlled it. Shaped it like clay. And that one day… they would meet.
---
Fragments of Memory
Despite the madness, Elijah held onto something.
The face of a man. Square jaw. Steady eyes. A bold blue "M" on his chest.
Marvelo-Man.
He remembered watching Maxwell train. Watching him lift massive weights in the Liberty Project gym before the injections. He had looked up to him. Not as a hero. But as something else.
Something impossible.
In this broken place, Elijah made it his goal to survive long enough to see that man again.
To ask him why he got to be the hero… while Elijah became the accident.
---
The Rift
That day came sooner than expected.
In the sky of the otherworld, something cracked. A violet light surged across the strange sky, splitting the clouds like a wound.
Elijah stood beneath it, eyes wide.
A portal.
Not opened by him.
Opened by something else.
It pulled at his bones. Called to his blood.
And behind it… he could see Earth.
Or something like it.
He smiled.
"Finally," he whispered.
And stepped forward.