Chapter 55: Dominos: Guardians of the Quiet Rift
About a year and a few months earlier
Zack Vaughn was asleep in the barracks, dreaming of the future: himself planted in his father’s leather chair at Vaughn Group headquarters, the world at his fingertips. The dream sharpened until it wasn’t a dream at all. One heartbeat he was drifting; the next he was literally sitting in that chair in Vaughn HQ, New York. A cold haze slid over his mind—too vivid, too real—and for a moment he could not tell waking from sleep.
His father entered the office and froze. “What... what are you doing in here?” he demanded, eyes narrowing. “How did you get in?”
Zack shook his head as if to clear fog. “No—this isn’t real,” he stammered. “I’m still—” His words collapsed under the weight of the sight.
“Still sleeping?” Mr. Vaughn snapped. Anger flared. “Are you high right now?”
Zack couldn’t find a shape for the panic that rose in his chest. Before he could answer, his father’s voice turned cruel. “Your brother was right. You’re my greatest failure—pathetic and weak, just like your mother. Always chasing attention.”
“Don’t... don’t talk about Mom like that.” The plea came out thin.
“I’ll lock you up, like I did your mother, so you’ll never—” The threat hung in the air, unfinished.
“It’s not real!” Zack cut in, louder than he meant to be. “Where am I? What is this?” His fear spiked into something hotter, more jagged. The world blurred around him and, without warning, he was somewhere else—his childhood home, the worn couch where he’d grown up—then gone again. Each place he thought of snagged him like a magnet: a flash of memory, then another.