Chapter 31: The Team

Three months after New Orleans, Helen became the second person to successfully close a breach.

Nathan watched from the monitoring station as she entered the Void beneath a former asylum in upstate New York. The readings were different from his own missions—calmer, more controlled. Helen had spent thirty years processing her own trauma, and it showed.

"She's doing it," Priya said, watching the soul count fluctuate. "She's actually doing it."

"I never doubted her."

"I did. A little." Priya's admission was quiet, honest. "What you do—what you've become—it's so far beyond normal human capacity. I wasn't sure anyone else could replicate it."

"Helen had a head start. She defeated a hollow entity decades before I did."

The monitors showed a cascade of releases—souls separating from the structure, rising toward whatever waited beyond. Nathan could feel it distantly, through his connection to the Void. Each release was like a small exhalation, a lessening of the cosmic weight that pressed against reality.

"She's coming out."

The breach shimmered, contracted, and Helen emerged. She looked exhausted—ten years older than when she'd gone in—but her eyes held the same impossible depth that Nathan saw in his own mirror.

"That was—" She paused, searching for words. "That was everything."

"How many?"

"Four hundred and twelve. The asylum only operated for thirty years, so it was smaller than what you've faced." Helen looked at her hands—ordinary hands, but now carrying extraordinary weight. "I can feel them. Inside me. It's not what I expected."

"What did you expect?"

"Burden. Pressure. Something I'd have to endure." Helen smiled slightly. "But it's more like company. Voices that understand what I'm carrying because they're carrying it too."

Nathan nodded. That was exactly how he would have described it.

"Welcome to the team," he said.

---

Within six months, they had five people capable of entering the Void.

Helen was the most experienced after Nathan. Priya had achieved integration after months of intensive work, her understanding of trauma proving invaluable. A former soldier named Marcus—haunted by what he'd done in three wars—had surprised everyone with his capacity for self-acceptance. And a young woman named Rebecca, who had survived something terrible as a child and spent her adult life learning to carry it, brought a fresh perspective that the older members sometimes lacked.

Cross called them the Threshold Team. Webb preferred "Void Runners." The soldiers who provided security just called them the spooks—and they weren't being entirely metaphorical.

They met monthly in a converted warehouse in Virginia, comparing notes, refining techniques, preparing for the next mission. Nathan attended when he could, but his role was shifting. He was becoming less the only one doing the work and more a leader, a teacher, a repository of experience that others could learn from.

It should have been a relief. It mostly was.

But sometimes, late at night, he felt the souls he carried stirring and wondered if he was becoming less Nathan and more something else—a vessel, a container, a living archive of the dead.

"You're brooding again."

Sophie stood in the doorway of his study. She was eleven now, tall for her age, with Margaret's eyes and his tendency toward dark thoughts.

"Just thinking."

"About the people inside you?"

Nathan still wasn't used to Sophie's casual acceptance of his condition. She'd been exposed to the supernatural early, and it had shaped her in ways he was still discovering.

"Something like that."

Sophie crossed the room and climbed into the chair beside him. She'd gotten too big for laps, but not too big for closeness.

"They talk to me sometimes," she said. "When I'm dreaming."

Nathan's blood went cold. "What do you mean?"

"Not scary talk. Just hellos. Checking in. Making sure I'm okay." Sophie shrugged. "They really like you, Dad. Even the ones who were super messed up at first. They say you gave them a home."

"You can hear them? Individually?"

"Sometimes. When they want me to." Sophie looked at him with those too-old eyes. "Is that bad?"

Nathan didn't know. His daughter was connected to the souls he carried—could communicate with them in ways he couldn't. Was that a gift or a curse? A sign of something wonderful or something terrible?

"It's not bad," he said finally. "Just unexpected. Can you tell me if they say anything important?"

"Most of them just want you to know they're grateful. That carrying them doesn't have to hurt." Sophie leaned against his arm. "Also, one of them really wants you to eat more vegetables. She says your cholesterol is concerning."

Nathan laughed—a genuine sound, surprising even himself.

"I'll try to do better."

"You do lots better already." Sophie yawned. "Mom says it's bedtime."

"Then you'd better go."

Sophie slid off the chair and headed for the door. She paused at the threshold.

"Dad?"

"Yeah, sweetheart?"

"The souls say there's a big one coming. Bigger than New Orleans. Bigger than anything." Her voice was careful, measured—a child delivering an adult message. "They say you should get ready."

She left.

Nathan sat alone in his study, surrounded by the whispered warnings of the dead, and wondered what was coming next.

---

The call came three days later.

Cross's voice was tight with barely contained urgency. "We've found something. An anomaly unlike anything in our records."

"Where?"

"Eastern Europe. Near the border between Ukraine and Poland. There's a forest there—an old one. The locals call it the Black Woods. Our satellites picked up a reality distortion expanding at an unprecedented rate."

"How unprecedented?"

"In the last week, it's grown more than New Orleans did in twenty years." Cross's breath was audible over the line. "Nathan, this isn't just a breach. This is a hemorrhage. Something's tearing reality apart from the other side."

Nathan felt the souls inside him stir—recognition, fear, something resembling anticipation.

"What's in the Black Woods?"

"That's what we need you to find out. But our research suggests it was the site of significant events during World War II. Massacres, experiments, things that were buried and forgotten."

"Unprocessed suffering. On a massive scale."

"On a scale we've never seen. This breach has been growing for eighty years, fed by guilt and silence and the refusal to face what happened there."

Nathan thought about his team—five people, all capable, all carrying their own burdens. It wasn't enough. For something this big, he wasn't sure anything would be enough.

"When do I leave?"

"Tonight, if possible. The rate of expansion is accelerating. If we wait too long—"

"I understand."

He hung up the phone and sat in silence for a moment. Then he went to find Margaret.

She was in the garden, tending to the roses she'd planted last spring. She looked up as he approached, and he saw the knowledge already forming in her eyes.

"There's another one."

"The biggest yet. I might be gone for a while."

Margaret set down her gardening shears. Her hands were dirty, her face lined with the worries of the last year, but her eyes held the same resolve he'd seen the first time he'd confessed everything.

"Sophie said something was coming."

"She did."

"Is she ever wrong?"

"I don't think so. Not about things like this."

Margaret stood and brushed off her knees. She crossed to him and took his hands—his dirt-free, civilian hands that would soon be reaching into the Void again.

"Come back," she said. "Whatever it takes, however long it takes. Come back."

"I will."

"Promise me."

Nathan thought about the weight he carried, the weight he was about to take on, the uncertainty of facing something that had been growing since the horrors of the Second World War.

"I promise."

It was probably a lie. But it was the only thing he could offer.

Margaret kissed him—fierce, desperate, a goodbye that might be forever.

Then Nathan went to pack his bags and prepare for the Black Woods.