The potion burned like cheap whiskey and tasted like sulfur and rot. For a moment, she thought she’d willingly let the witch poison her. She cursed her own stupid eagerness to get more information as she dropped, her hands clasped to her head. The chatter of Thor’s ravens was the first thing to disappear, and she was glad for that small bit of relief. There was a moment of pressure and release before Jessica’s knees finally hit the ground. Underneath her was the cool, wet earth, and the warmth of sun pried her eyes open to the sight of Julianne Draper. For the first time, they were together, separately. Jules acknowledged Jessica’s arrival with a flex of her hand, which Jessica took without question.

The sound of the city was unmistakable--the din of human beings going about their lives with an umbrella of utter terror over them ebbed and flowed from between every building. Jessica knew they were at Golden Gate Park moments after Jules did, but she was the first to realize what they were seeing. A mist was climbing between the trees to puddle around the people in the park. Dense like the city’s early morning fog, people walked through it without giving it any notice. Then the mist began to change-- tendrils of red appearing like gauze picking up blood. It was deep and terrifying, red like a warning. Red like danger.

Jessica could only squeeze Julianne’s hand before the setting shifted. Before them was the snake-like Lombard Street, its perfectly pruned shrubbery the object of much fascination and attention. Behind them, there was a buzzing like voices in another room. When Jessica turned to inspect it, it changed again, each piece of reality fitting together slowly until actualized. Jessica could hear the television above the crowd in the bar. The bars were full to shaking in this part of town, but she could still see the fighting on the screen, familiar faces flooding the image. Swallowing thickly, she turned to look back at Julianne, who was preoccupied with the glowing red down an alleyway. There were people outside, too, the crowds pulled in two directions, half pushing over each other to see the television and half following the red glow.

On her left, Julianne jumped out of the way by a passing woman, her long, grey hair easy to spot in the crowd as Jessica helped steady her companion on her feet. Around them, the scenery had changed again, but Jessica was focused on the woman. There was a certain air that Jessica had come to associate with villains, and while she had no history with this woman, she reeked of villainy. There was something oddly familiar about the stranger, however. Some crackling of knowledge under all of the magic. They both muttered the name as the realization came to them, their confusion cracking open the scene in front of them to a plane of darkness.

At that moment, Jessica knew to run. She knew to face the void because, within it, were the answers she sought. Julianne kept pace beside her, determination on her own face as they sped toward the great eventuality of this vision. They were stopped cold by a sudden flash of red and a hand reaching through the darkness at them. At their feet lay a stone, clear and beautiful and the hand slowly gathered it up, clenching between fingers before disappearing back into the darkness. When Jessica moved to follow, Julianne did not.

“Jessica, look.”

Still Jessica strained against the shadows, trying to part them to see who had acquired the stone, but the air was too thick and Julianne was too insistent.

“Look at them! No masks.” Jessica turned back to her other half, blinded by the reappearance of sunlight. Shielding her eyes, Jessica stepped forward into the light. “No fear. No news reports. Do you think--”

As if she’d summoned it to them, the hospital appeared at Julianne’s fingertips and she pushed through the doors. To Jessica, it looked like every hospital she’d ever been in, but Julianne could only stumble into the nearest chair.

“It’s gone,” she whispered, tears in her hopeful green eyes. “It’s gone.”