The haze of the summer scorched the rocky terrain. The Bronco was encased in a film of dirt. A low, cicada-hum filled the air. He was submerged, heavy and sinking, just beyond the surface of himself. The inner ache was familiar now, the feeling of his body rejecting everything, and it viciously waited for him to stir once more. The pain was hulking and brutal, a caged, angry thing. The door was still there, too, in the corner of the dark spaces of his mind. It had been for a while now, cracked light outlining a rectangular passageway. It was the door he desperately wanted to open.

You should. Open it. Go on. Do it.

The buzzing got louder, and his vision grew from dark to red to orange. He breathed in and the voice was gone, the door fading from his mind. The discolored black of the leather interior, marred with time, was the first thing he sensed. The years of use and the smells that came with it, yellowed pages and dog hair and upholstery, flooded his nose. Over those old scents, recently his new one. And obviously hers. Hers.

And then his lungs convulsed, and the pain came back. The horrible gasping pain of the poisonous metal, compounded with the fresh gashes in his chest. Pain that seared, sizzled, crackled and snapped, his mind incapable of thinking around it like he always used to be able to do, his body willfully refusing to carry out the old instructions from his DNA. Not healing. No healing. His body was through with it, finished as he was with this sick, warped game.

Struggling to breathe as the coughing fit ceased, his eyes finally worked open to see the specks of dust floating hazily in the shafts of light above his body. The sun was directly above him, and he stared into it. His scent. Hers. The taste of blood and metal and sweat.

Laura. Charles. Laura. Charles. That grave in fucking Iowa. Now, here, wherever here was.

Jesus Fucking Christ.

Logan groaned, summoning his arms to do his bidding, willing his heavy body up, slowly. As soon as his body folded in half, trying to sit, a new swell of searing from his abdomen had him seeing stars. Vision in and out of focus. Fuck, it was hot. The heat. The pain. The grave. The door.

He stumbled out of the truck, wincing and breathing hard. Across the way, he could just make her out. Her small, lithe frame, staring up at something. She shouted, too, words he couldn’t quite understand, the meaning slipping off of the syllables too quickly for him to realize. As he looked up, he saw the lookout tower, he saw the sunlight. He saw time itself. And then, nothing.