Victor Stone had resigned himself to the fact that he was completely alone in the world. He had comrades, but they were completely organic. He had people he'd consider calling 'friend', but they were organic as well. They had secret identities. They...
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Time ran away from them. It felt like Victor had been walking for days...months...years, even. At the same time they were aware that it had only been a few hours. It was a slow and maddening torture; forever moving forward but never getting anywhere. She could hear Victor's strained breaths as he willed himself on and knew that her own weight on his back was only worsening the situation.
"Maybe we should stop for a while." Harper suggested but somehow she already knew the answer before Victor had even replied to her.
"I'm not stopping until this damn road changes." He said inbetween loud pants of air. It was unlikely that this dark and ever-extending path was going to alter in any way, at least not any time soon. You had to applaud his resolve, but it wouldn't mean much if he worked himself into unconsciousness.
The silent hope that this road would end was swiftly forgotten when a figure appeared in the distance. Harper squinted, but still couldn't decipher who exactly it was. Victor must have had the same problem because he immediately picked up the pace. With every step the image came closer, and with that same translucent shimmer that Victor's deepest fears had produced...only this time it wasn't his. It was Harper's. A perfect reflection of herself stared back at them like an empty husk.
Harper's eyes widened. "I don't understand..."
" 'Fear made real' remember?" Victor answered, but despite his dismissive tone he was sympathetic. He had still failed to overcome the fear that knitted its way into his mind at the sight of that car wreckage...and of his legs. The end of his football career. The end of a lifelong dream.
The only problem was that this image was nothing so easy to decode or understand. This...ghost of Harper Reid wasn't missing a leg or an arm. She wasn't covered in spiders, or snakes, or beetles, or moths. She just stood there. Emptily. Then something appeared behind her. A flicker that soon turned into multiple, all morphing into the familiar faces of the Justice League. Victor's breath hitched. He didn't recognise all of them, but he'd seen the founding members on everything from newspapers to the news. They were the World's mightiest heroes, so why was she scared of them?
As Victor pondered this question closely, one of them stepped forward. Batman, and he spoke with such venom in his voice towards the fake Harper that it could shake anyone to the core. "You're an abomination."
"Disgusting." Wonder Woman added. "You should not even exist."
"I can't believe we trusted you." Now came the voice of Superman with a hatred that didn't suite him at all. "You're not real, you're a fake. All of your accomplishments...your talents...they're not yours to claim."
"What are they talking about?" Victor asked with burning curiosity, but he got no response. He wasn't even sure if he'd heard Harper breath in the last few seconds.
The group of Leaguers parted in the middle, and from there stepped out a vision that almost knocked Victor unconscious. It was himself...but not. Similar but different. The same face, or half of one, stuck inside a body of metal. It was a monster. And that monster spoke in his own voice, as if it had been stolen from his very throat.
