(LIMITLESS) CHAPTER FORTY: THE TRUTH

Taylor was suspended in darkness for what felt like an eternity.

There was no up, no down, no left or right, and no front or back. It was as though her senses had been stripped from her one by one, leaving behind only a vague awareness of her own body and where her limbs should be. An echo of proprioception, more imagined than real.

And her thoughts too.

That was all she had.

Or so she believed.

But in lieu of anything else to do, she thought of her life before her mom’s death: half-remembered moments like quiet dinners at the kitchen table, and the sounds of her mother’s laughter reverberating through the walls of their house. She thought of her life after: the silence, the awkward distance with her dad that had never fully healed, and the constant reminder of her mother’s absence pressing down on her chest.

She thought of her dad, of every stilted conversation, every awkward pause, every time she’d wished she could bridge the widening gap between them, and of the brief flashes of closeness they had managed to reclaim before it was ripped away again. She thought of his coffee mug left half-full in the sink, of his jacket slung on the rack by the door, and of the tired but gentle smile he always saved for her. 

The grief still burned sharp and unceasing, more painful than any wound her body would ever take. 

She thought of Keith, of his deep voice, the grounding presence he had always brought to the gym, and his advice that had always felt so simple yet mattered more than he’d probably realize. And then the memory of his death: his body strung up as a warning by the Empire Eighty-Eight. Rage forever screamed at her to lash out, to rail against the world itself for allowing such things to happen.

And, finally, she thought of Bakuda, of the countless innocents turned into unwilling suicide bombers, and of the chain of detonations she had fought through, each one another life extinguished because she hadn’t been fast enough, smart enough, and strong enough. She thought of the child—wide-eyed, mouth open to scream—hope frozen in place before it was snuffed out in an instant.

It was too much. Far too much for her to hold inside.

And so when she felt the brush of another presence against her own, her first reaction wasn’t fear. It was something closer to relief, or perhaps… curiosity. 

The presence wasn’t foreign. If anything, it was almost painfully familiar, as if it wasn’t separate at all from her but simply another piece of herself she’d never noticed before.

“Does it get any better?” Taylor asked. Her voice came out soft, not spoken so much as thought aloud into the void.

There was a pause, then an answer: subdued yet projecting an inner strength she found herself admiring, a male voice that seemed to come from within her and yet resounded around her. 

“No. No, it doesn’t.”

Taylor turned—though in this place, movement was only the suggestion of thought—and the darkness peeled away just enough for her to see him.

Hauntingly beautiful blue eyes stared back at her.

She froze. Those eyes looked like hers, but they sat on the face of a stranger. A man, or something that wore the shape of one, impossibly distinct against the formless dark. His hair was white as bone, stark especially here, and he floated casually, as if this endless void was nothing more than a dull waiting room he had grown used to. 

He didn’t look like anyone she knew. He didn’t even look like he belonged here. And yet, at the same time, it felt as though he did, as though he belonged here more than she did.

And in that instant, clarity struck her with the force of a revelation.

This wasn’t really someone else. 

This was the thing that had always been there, the thing that watched when she fought, and the thing that bled red and blue into her sight when she spoke those words.

Her powers.

And for the first time, it—no, he—was staring back.

The man studied her in silence, head angled slightly to the side, and a small crooked smile tugging at his lips as though her question amused him.

Taylor’s throat tightened, her chest aching. She wanted to scream, to demand why he looked so calm while her world had just caved in. But the words that left her weren’t the ones she wanted. Instead, they were the only ones she could manage.

“Why… why are you here?”

“Why are you here?” he countered lightly, his tone carrying a maddening arrogance that made it sound like he already knew the answer.

Taylor opened her mouth, then closed it again. The silence that followed swallowed what she couldn’t say: that she was tired. Tired of the meaningless deaths, tired of losing loved ones, and tired of failing despite everything.

His gaze softened then, though the smile never left, curved at the corners in something halfway between amusement and sympathy. 

“You’ve got that look,” he said. “The one people get when they’ve lost too much too fast. When they start thinking maybe it’d be easier to stop trying and give up.”

Her breath caught. She turned away, as though hiding her face could make the words any less true.

“Don’t,” he said simply.

It wasn’t loud, and it wasn’t forceful, but it carried a weight far heavier than any command she’d ever heard.

Against her will, she looked back at him. And in those light blue eyes, past the humor and the arrogance, she saw it: grief. The emotion was buried so far down it almost didn’t show, but it was there all the same.

And now, in this darkness, he was offering her nothing but the truth of it.