The flight back feels different with the damping device active. No fluctuating flight instruments, no interdimensional GPS readings, just normal travel through normal space. I watch out the window as Oregon's green fades to desert, then to the familiar cityscape of home.

  "Weird seeing it without quantum distortion," I murmur.

  James glances over from the middle seat. "Good weird or bad weird?"

  "Just weird." I touch the device on my wrist, feeling its subtle harmonics keeping reality stable. "Like seeing everything in black and white after years of color."

  The darkness behind my eye pulses gently against the damping field. Below us, the city spreads out in perfectly normal geometry - no ripples in space-time, no suggestions of other dimensions bleeding through. Even from this height, I can see the resistance headquarters building, its upper floors still warped from what happened there.

  "We can't go back," James says quietly, following my gaze. "Not with the Church watching it."

  "I know." The device displays complex measurements as we descend, tracking local quantum stability. "But we need to get close enough to see what really happened. What they did to everyone."

  The taxi from the airport takes us to a hotel several blocks from headquarters. Close enough to observe, far enough to maintain cover. With the damping device active, I can finally walk city streets without causing electronics to malfunction or reality to bend.

  "It's strange," I say as we check in. "Being able to pass for normal."

  "You were never normal." James swipes the key card - which works perfectly on the first try, no quantum interference. "Just better at hiding it sometimes."

  The hotel room has a view of headquarters in the distance. Through my normal eye, it looks abandoned, cordoned off by police barriers. Through the darkness behind my left eye, even muted by the damping field, I can see the lingering effects of what happened there - reality twisted into shapes that shouldn't exist, quantum states frozen in unstable configurations.

  "They're all gone," I say quietly. "Everyone who trusted us. Trusted me."

  "Not your fault." James sets up his laptop, starts reviewing more of Rachel's documentation. "You couldn't have stopped it even if you'd been there."

  "Could have tried." I watch the device display measurements of the headquarters' quantum distortions. "Instead I let you lead me away right when they needed me most."

  He's quiet for a long moment. "I didn't know," he finally says. "About the attack. About what they were planning. The information about your mother, about Marcus - that was real. But this..." He gestures at the warped building in the distance. "This I didn't see coming."

  The darkness pulses, and for the first time I can study his quantum signature through the device's stabilizing field. No artificial patterns like Adrian's, no forced evolution. Just the subtle marks of someone who's spent years around dimensional manipulation, accumulated traces of exposure to other spaces.

  "I believe you," I say, surprising myself. "The device... it lets me see the difference now. Between natural patterns and artificial ones. Between truth and manipulation."

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  "That's why Rachel gave it to you." He looks up from his laptop. "Not just to help you control your abilities, but to help you understand them. To see what's real and what's forced."

  I think about Adrian, about how different his quantum signature felt through the damping field. About how clearly I could see the damage done by forced evolution. About how the device doesn't just stabilize reality around me - it helps me perceive it more accurately.

  "What do Rachel's files say about the backup facility?"

  "Still working on the decryption. The quantum locks are complex - tied to natural dimensional frequencies rather than artificial ones." He shows me strings of code that shift between normal mathematics and other geometric systems. "It's like she encoded everything to only make sense if you understand both scientific and quantum perspectives."

  "Smart." I study the code through both normal and quantum vision. "The Church would try to force it to make sense in their framework. Would try to make it fit their rituals and ceremonies."

  "Exactly. But you..." He gestures at my left eye. "You can see both sides naturally. Can understand both perspectives without forcing either."

  The darkness pulses as pieces click into place. I sit beside him, letting both my normal and quantum vision focus on the encrypted data. Through the device's stabilizing field, I can see patterns I never noticed before - ways that normal reality and other spaces interact naturally, flowing into each other like watercolors bleeding together.

  "There," I point to a section of code. "It's not encrypted, it's... quantum entangled. The information exists in multiple states simultaneously. You have to observe it the right way to collapse it into something readable."

  James watches as I begin translating, the darkness behind my eye working with the device to perceive both normal and quantum states simultaneously. Slowly, the location of Rachel's backup facility begins to emerge - not as coordinates, but as patterns of resonance between spaces.

  "It's not a physical place," I realize. "Not exactly. It's... it's in the spaces between spaces. But anchored to normal reality through quantum entanglement."

  "Like a door that only exists if you can see both sides at once."

  "Yes." I sit back, processing the implications. "She built a facility that exists partially in other dimensions, accessible only to people with natural quantum sensitivity. The Church could never find it because they only know how to force their way through spaces. They don't understand how to work with natural dimensional interfaces."

  The darkness pulses with something like recognition. Through the device's stabilizing field, I can feel the subtle quantum harmonics that would lead us to Rachel's hidden research. But getting there...

  "We'll need supplies," James says, reading my expression. "And rest. The headquarters situation changed everything - we can't count on any of our usual resources."

  I nod, still watching the warped building in the distance. Through quantum vision, I can see traces of what happened - artificial patterns forced into reality, creating unstable transformations that ripple outward like cracks in glass. But underneath that, barely visible, something else: natural quantum frequencies, trying to stabilize the damage.

  "They didn't just attack headquarters," I say slowly. "They tried to force evolution on everyone there. Tried to make them transcend like Adrian did."

  "But it didn't work the same way."

  "No." I study the patterns through both normal and quantum vision. "Because they didn't understand what they were really doing. Didn't understand that forced evolution just creates broken things pretending to be transcendent."

  The device hums softly as it helps me maintain stability between spaces. In the distance, reality continues to ripple around headquarters, the Church's artificial patterns clashing with natural quantum frequencies. A reminder of what happens when you try to force something that should only happen naturally, if it happens at all.

  "Get some rest," James says. "We'll gather supplies tomorrow, start planning how to reach Rachel's facility."

  I touch the device on my wrist, feeling its subtle harmonics balance my connection to other spaces. Tomorrow we'll start learning what Rachel discovered about natural quantum sensitivity. About what these abilities really mean when they're not forced or twisted into weapons.

  The darkness pulses quietly as night falls over the wounded city. Somewhere in the spaces between spaces, Rachel's research waits - not just data about what we are, but understanding of what we might become.

  Naturally.

  On our own terms.

  One quantum resonance at a time.