The Breach
The space between was not meant for living things.
I dropped through the wound in reality like a stone through water, boots striking what might have been ground—or might have been the inside surface of something's throat. The geometry here refused coherence. Walls bent upward into floors. Gravity suggested directions that had no names. The air tasted copper and static, and somewhere in the screaming distance, the Web itself was tearing.
I didn't pause to orient myself. Orientation was a luxury. The Child's domain lay ahead, through the crawling dark where husks moved like maggots in a wound. I could hear them chittering, their voices the wet sound of drowning.
My hand found the grappling hook at my belt.
Then reality lurched sideways, and Miles Morales crashed into existence six feet behind me.
Predictable. The kid had followed despite every warning, despite the Nexus collapsing behind us, despite the fact that staying might have meant survival. He hit hard, barely catching himself with a web-line that snapped taut against a surface that hadn't existed a second before. His breathing came ragged through the mask, costume torn at the shoulder, one hand clutching his ribs.
I didn't turn around.
"Go back," I said.
Behind me, I heard him stagger upright. Web-shooters sparking with corrupted energy. The space around us pulsed with wrongness—walls that breathed, floors that bled shadow. A husk skittered past overhead, clinging to the ceiling with too many joints.
"Not happening," Miles said.
I kept walking.
"I said go back." Orders, not requests. Anger implied investment in outcomes. "Nexus needs defense. Others need extraction. You're wasting time."
"You don't get to decide that."
I stopped. Not because of the words—words changed nothing—but because he'd moved, positioning himself directly in my path. Standing there bleeding, one arm hanging wrong, mask cracked enough to show the desperate set of his jaw.
Around us, the screaming grew louder.
"Move," I said.
"No."
The husks were getting closer now, drawn by the sound of voices, by the presence of intact souls in this place where souls came to dissolve. They crawled along every surface, their movements synchronized in ways that suggested a single watching intelligence.
"You left them," Miles said, heat building in his voice. Fear compressed into rage. "Everyone back there—Ham, Peter, all of them—you just walked away while they're fighting for their lives."
"They're fighting because they're still alive," I said. "I'm ensuring they stay that way. Different methodologies. Same goal."
"That's not—" His hands clenched into fists. "That's not how this works. You don't abandon people in the middle of a battle because you think you know better. You don't get to just—"
"I don't think I know better." I kept my tone level. Facts. "I know I know better. The Child exists because people like you waited. Negotiated. Hoped for better options. Now it's strong enough to unmake reality. Congratulations. Your compassion has apocalyptic consequences."
A husk lunged from the shadows.
We both moved.
My grappling hook and his venom blast struck simultaneously, the creature dissolving mid-leap into streamers of corrupted Web-energy. For half a second we stood side by side, synchronized by pure combat instinct, two bodies sharing the same violent geometry.
Then I stepped forward and he grabbed my shoulder.
"I'm not letting you do this."
I looked at the hand on my coat. Then at his face. Then, deliberately, I shoved.
He stumbled back but didn't fall. His next web-shot wrapped around my arm, yanking hard enough to spin me around. I rolled with the momentum, closing distance instead of resisting it, and my elbow found his already-cracked ribs.
He gasped but held on.
"You want to talk about responsibility?" His voice cracked around the pain. "Fine. Let's talk about it. Responsibility means staying. It means protecting the people who can't protect themselves. It means holding the line even when it hurts, especially when it hurts, because that's what heroes—"
"Heroes lose." I twisted, breaking the web-line with brute force. "Heroes sacrifice themselves for symbolism while the monsters multiply. I've seen it. Watched it. Buried the results."
I drove my knee toward his sternum. He twisted, taking it on the shoulder instead, and his counterattack was a wild haymaker that I barely slipped. Sloppy. Emotional.
"So your answer is what?" He was shouting now, voice echoing through the warped space. "Kill everything that scares you? Isolate yourself until you're the only thing left standing? That's not prevention, that's just—"
"Effective." I caught his next punch and used it to throw him into the nearest wall. The surface rippled like water on impact. "The Child grew strong by feeding on hesitation. Every moment spent debating, it adapted. Every compromise, it learned. You want to protect people? Kill the thing that eats them. Simple mathematics."
He bounced back faster than expected, venom crackling around his fists. Spider-sense. Advantage in reaction time, but no discipline.
"You're talking about people like they're numbers in an equation. Like they're—"
"Acceptable losses versus total extinction. Yes." I blocked the next hit with my forearm, felt the electricity sear through my coat. "Because that's what they become when you prioritize feelings over function."
The next exchange was faster, harder. His spider-sense gave him the edge in pure reaction, but I fought like geometry made flesh—every movement precise, every opening exploited. We crashed through the unstable environment, boots finding purchase on surfaces that shouldn't exist, trading blows while husks gathered in the darkness to watch.
He landed a solid hit, venom blast at point-blank range. I staggered, smoke rising from my chest. Pain. Irrelevant.
"You want to know what I see when I look at you?" His breathing was ragged, desperate. "I see someone who's so scared of failing that he's stopped trying. You've convinced yourself that caring is weakness, that the only way to win is to become exactly what we're fighting against."
I straightened slowly, coat smoldering.
"And you've convinced yourself that trying is the same as succeeding. That intent matters more than outcome. That if you just care hard enough, sacrifice loud enough, the universe will reward your principles." I started forward again. "It won't. It doesn't. The Child exists because people like you chose to feel righteous instead of being effective."
He webbed my legs, yanked. I went down but rolled, came up with my grappling hook aimed at his throat. He dodged by inches.
"At least I'm still human," he spat. "At least I haven't turned myself into a machine that only knows how to kill."
"Machines break," I said. "I endure."
I lunged. He met me. For ten brutal seconds it was just violence—no technique, no strategy, just two ideologies trying to beat comprehension into each other through sheer force. He got a web around my throat. I caught his wrist and twisted until something popped.
He screamed and drove his knee into my solar plexus.
We separated, gasping, bleeding.
"You can't win this," he said, cradling his injured wrist. "Even if you kill the Child, even if you're right about everything—you'll still be alone. You'll still be the person who chose murder over trust, isolation over community. You'll survive and have nothing worth surviving for."
I wiped blood from my lip. "Better than being dead and right."
He opened his mouth to argue, to make one more desperate attempt at reaching something he believed was still human beneath the certainty—
And the world inverted.
The hum of the Web, already wrong in this place, dropped to a whisper that felt predatory. The temperature plummeted. Every surface in the twisted space began to pulse in synchronization, like a heartbeat, like breathing, like the focused attention of something vast and patient.
I felt it lock onto me specifically.
Not attacking. Not threatening. Just... watching. Measuring. Recognizing.
The husks stopped moving. Dozens of them, frozen mid-crawl on walls and ceiling and impossible angles, their attention swiveling in perfect unison toward my position. Away from Miles entirely.
I understood immediately. The Child had been observing. Evaluating. It had listened to our argument, watched our violence, and made its choice.
It wanted me.
"Rorschach—" Miles started.
The floor erupted.
Not with husks, but with raw Web-energy, corrupted and reshaped into something that moved with terrible purpose. It caught Miles like a wave, lifted him, and hurled him backward with enough force to shatter bone. He hit a platform that hadn't existed seconds before, and I heard the desperate sound of web-shooters firing as he tried to keep from falling into the screaming void.
By the time he'd stabilized, gasping and bleeding, the environment had changed.
I stood in a circle of husks that didn't attack. The path ahead—deeper into the Child's domain—had cleared impossibly. The walls had opened like a throat swallowing, and in the darkness beyond, something waited.
The invitation was obvious. Specific. Personal.
"Don't." Miles' voice came out broken, desperate. "Don't do this. We finish this together or not at all. That's how this works, that's how we—"
I looked at him.
Evaluated. His condition, his injuries, the way he clutched his ribs and kept pressure off his twisted wrist. The desperation, the conviction, the absolute unwillingness to compromise even when compromise meant survival.
Someone still trying to save everyone, even the person determined to walk into hell alone.
I turned away.
"No," I said simply.
I started walking toward the darkness. The husks parted to let me pass, their movements reverent, almost gentle. The Web itself seemed to pulse in rhythm with my footsteps, guiding me forward, deeper, into the place where the Child's presence grew thick enough to taste.
"Rorschach!" Miles tried to move, tried to web after me, but his injured wrist betrayed him and the platform beneath his feet was still crumbling. "You're walking into a trap! It wants you isolated, it's trying to—"
"I know."
I did know. The Child had chosen me because it recognized something. Not an enemy. Something more interesting. A potential. It wanted to see what I would become when faced with itself—whether my certainty would hold, whether my willingness to endure isolation would survive meeting something that embodied that same principle.
It was offering me a test. Or a mirror. Or both.
And I was walking into it deliberately, because the alternative was waiting. Compromising. Hoping that numbers and teamwork would somehow overcome something that had already proven it could eat entire realities.
The darkness closed around me like water, like smoke, like acceptance. The husks' chittering faded behind me, redirecting toward Miles with renewed interest. I heard him web away, toward the distant light of the Nexus breach, toward the people who still believed heroes were supposed to stay.
The fight between us wasn't resolved.
It was postponed.
And that was acceptable. Because resolution required one of us to be wrong, and I wasn't wrong. The math was simple. The Child existed because people hesitated. It grew strong because people compromised. It would continue to exist until someone was willing to cut through the sentiment and do what was necessary.
Miles thought I'd become a monster. That I'd traded humanity for effectiveness, connection for certainty.
He was right about the trade.
Wrong about the cost.
I kept walking. The darkness grew thicker, more textured, almost solid. The Web's pulse became a rhythm I could feel in my bones. Ahead, somewhere in the screaming void, the Child waited.
Not to kill me.
To understand me.
And perhaps, in its own way, to be understood.
The path narrowed. The walls closed in. The temperature dropped until each breath came out as frost.
I didn't slow down.
Behind me, Miles was probably trying to save everyone. Holding the line. Protecting the vulnerable. Believing that caring was enough, that sacrifice mattered more than outcome, that the universe rewarded good intentions.
Ahead of me, the Child waited.
And I walked toward it alone, because alone was what I'd chosen, what I'd always chosen, what I believed was the only way to be right in a world that punished hesitation.
The darkness swallowed everything.
And I kept walking.