Erik's pulse was still thundering in his ears, his vision going hazy at the edges as he gasped air back into his lungs. Charles's presence registered as little more than irate noise; it wasn't until he could breathe normally again that he looked up, his hands still braced on his knees with his back to the wall, and realized he hadn't stumbled back into the Nexus at all, but into his own past. No— not the past, he realized as he took in the sheen of dust and the pervasive silence in the house. His present, perhaps, the world he would have inhabited had the Proserpina not stolen him away. But where had everyone gone?

It was only the sound of the front door slamming shut that snapped him out of his amazed silence. "The police?" he repeated, a touch of derision in the word. How long it had been since he'd worried about something so mundane as law enforcement, he honestly couldn't remember. "You clearly have me confused with—"

He turned as he spoke, and saw Charles standing in front of him, furious and unkempt and standing. The rest of the sentence died in Erik's throat and he stared, his mouth hanging open, naked shock and disbelief arresting his features. What universe had he come to, what place where Charles had escaped that day in Cuba unscathed? He almost turned and marched for the door that second. Better Rapture and the splicers than being taunted by this terrible apparition of something he had made impossible. But his eyes barely flicked across the door before snapping back to Charles, and he couldn't quite make himself move toward it.

"I'm in the wrong place," he said, the words scratching their way out of him. It hurt, and yet he'd never been more sure of anything in his life.