Night has fallen. I find myself in a sparsely lit, only by full moon light, wooded area. Not knowing where I am or why I’m here, I can’t help but look around at my surroundings full of confusion. The last thing I remember was watching Corey’s promo where he played paintball with Drew Carey.

Why?

No one is sure.

Stepping over an old hollowed out log, ”Corey!” I call out, but don’t receive an answer. Dressed in my fatigues and my AR hanging casually over my shoulder, I continue through the woods. Quietly searching every nook and every cranny in which the little bugger can hide, I continue on.

Where am I?

Why am I hunting for Corey?

Why am I wearing my fatigues?

”Corey, where are you!?” I cry out and again, I receive no answer.

Burying my own questions as I proceed through the woods, I stop. I can feel a presence. But whose? It’s like a disturbance in the force, this presence. It must be more than one. I feel entirely surrounded by this presence and at once… at once, my heart begins to beat its way out of my chest. Alone in the moonlit darkness, I can hear the snap of a twig nearby, but not too close. Instinctively, I grab my rifle, pulling it in front of me. Raising it up a tick, I release the safety and place my finger firmly against the trigger.

”He’s here,” Dolly says, appearing beside me seemingly out of nowhere. Her sudden appearance startles me a bit and I jump to the side a step.

”Corey?” I ask her and she shoots me a smile and grabs me by the hand before positioning herself to face me. ”What are you doing out here?”

”He’s right Thad,” she says as she fingers the palm of my hand before looking up into my eyes. ”It’s time.”

”Dolly, I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about,” I say to her as I let my rifle rest at my side.

”You will,” she replies with another smile. ”If you listen to him,” Dolly says and as quickly as she appeared, she vaporizes to nothing.

Alone again.

It’s been the story of my life.

Dolly’s in and she’s out.

Corey too.

Doc.

Everyone, really.

Remembering my safety is off, I quickly reach around my side and pull my rifle forward again and as I do so, a figure emerges from the darkness. Seeing his face makes me want to pull the trigger and run the magazine empty.

”You gonna do it?” Chris Chaos asks as he steps into a small clearing.

”Thought about it,” I admit to him.

He lunges forward toward me, bringing his face within inches of my own. ”Do it!” he shouts as he grabs the barrel of my rifle and tucks it beneath his own chin. Holding his arms out, ”Do what you’ve always wanted to do Thad!” he demands of me. ”Do what the entire company has wanted to do to me since the moment I stepped foot in the XWF!”

”I don’t want you dead Chris,” I say to him while lowering my rifle.

”Bullshit,” he says quietly as he takes a step back.

Hearing whispers behind me, I turn. Squinting to see in the darkness… but nothing. I turn back to Chris Chaos, but Chaos is gone. In his place, Corey Smith. He too wears fatigues. He too holds a rifle.

”I’m here,” he says as he slowly raises his rifle, pointing it at… me.

Looking at his rifle, I raise my own at him.

”Is this the way it is now?” I ask while choking back my emotion.

”I think it has to be,” he answers.

For a moment I ponder if he’s right. Corey has legitimately been my best friend in the business for almost as long as we’ve both been a part of it. Starting way back when… when he had passengers. He was different then and so was I. Yet at the same time, beneath it all, we were exactly the same as we are today. Just a couple of kids taking the world by storm and being absolutely phenomenal at what we do.

He was different with Lux.

I was different… with Thaddeus.

I looked different, I carried myself different. I tried really hard to not be the same Thaddeus I was as a messed up teenager. Befriending Corey gave me the opportunity to feel… normal. It gave him that opportunity too. For two kids that have never and will never be normal, it was equally important to both of us.

”Pull the trigger boy,” Doc says in my ear with a quiet hiss. Like Dolly earlier, he appears out of virtually nowhere.

”I’m not killing my friend,” I say to him, turning my head slightly in his direction.

”You don’t think he will?” he asks me and I’ll admit that I question that myself.

”He’d never do that,” I say and I’m not sure I’m totally convinced of that.

”Who are you talking to?” Corey asks and he takes a step forward into the moonlit clearing where Chaos appeared earlier on. I too step forward. The midnight sun illuminates us both.

”It’s not important,” I answer back.

”Doc,” Alias answers him from the darkness before stepping forward a little, stopping short of the clearing in which he can be fully lit. Beside me, Doc D’Ville too steps forward a little. Like Alias, he also stops short of the full illumination of the clearing.

”Kind of fitting no?” I ask almost rhetorically. ”This is the real War Games, isn’t it? BoB? Betsy? Main? Dolly? Demos? All just scenery to fill up the card while the real war… its really right here… isn’t it?”

Corey lowers his weapon a moment and looks over his shoulder at Alias. Turning to face me, he eyeballs D’Ville and raises his rifle to me again. ”Thad I feel like you’ve had some things to say to me… and you just haven’t,” Corey says while adjusting his stance and raising his weapon a little higher.

”Put your gun down Corey,” I attempt to reason with him.

”I’m sorry Thad, I can’t do that,” he says quietly. I can almost feel him too quelling his emotions. Of the two of us, I’ve always been the one with the emotion. He’s typically tried to hide his. But I know him. I know when he’s emotional.

”Do it, do it, do it, do it!” Doc shouts out. ”Or he will.”

”He won’t shoot me,” I insist to Doc as I lean down and lay my rifle on the ground.

”Continuum could’ve been real,” Corey says as I stand vertically again.

”It already was,” I reply to him, glancing at Doc.

”Me… you… and Alias,” Corey suggests.

”He was never an option,” I freely admit to him. ”He had me judged as an enemy from the moment he stepped into the XWF. And you didn’t care.”

”I wouldn’t say I didn’t care,” he says, taking a hesitant step forward. Corey raises his rifle to chest level.

”You knew how he felt and you befriended him anyway,” I say to him before pausing. ”And as time went on, his hatred for me grew stronger and stronger.

“Ohhh that’s just Alias bein’ Alias,” I say, doing a terrible impression of Corey.

”He made his choice boy,” Doc chimes in. ”Now pick up that rifle and end him.”

”I will not,” I say in Doc’s direction. Corey takes another step forward, so do I, burying the barrel of his rifle in the center of my chest. ”Do it Cor’, please your friend.”

”You are my friend,” he insists.

”You have a rifle barrel against my heart Corey,” I remind him.

With no hesitation, I wrap my left arm around Corey’s rifle and pull him forward while simultaneously pulling my combat knife from my thigh with my right, placing the blade against his throat. ”The old me would gut you from sternum to groin.”

Alias takes a step forward, presumably to help Corey. A tree vine wraps itself around Alias’s ankle, stopping him. ”Do it!” Doc shouts out and his words echo off the trees. ”Cut this cancer from your life.”

Removing my blade from Corey’s throat and putting it away, I let go of Corey’s rifle. ”That was your chance! And you blew it!”

Corey takes a step backward… and fires a shot. The bullet impacts me in the chest, causing me to stumble backward a few steps. Clutching my heart, I look up at Corey, catching the glimmer of shine as the moonlight reflects off of a tear rolling down his cheek. Blood leaks from the wound and I look over at D’Ville.

”He… shot me,” I say to him.

”I told you he would,” he replies quickly as he watches the blood pump from my chest through my fingers. ”I’ve warned you for more than six months and you refused to listen, boy! He’s been using you all this time to put shine on himself and you were too blinded by your love for him to see it!

“And now he’s done with you.”

Feeling weaker and weaker as the seconds tick by, I can feel my legs begin to lose their strength. With blood leaking from my chest, the ground beneath me starts to shake like an earthquake. Corey drops the rifle to the ground and places his hands on the side of his head, looking at me with a ‘what have I done?’ kind of look.

The ground beneath my feet gives way and I plunge into the darkness below.

”THAD!” Corey shouts and steps forward. Alias grabs him by the shoulder stopping him.

”You can’t help him,” Alias says to him. ”It’s where he belongs.”

With one hand on my heart and one hand gripping the edge of the gaping hole in the earth, I look at Doc. ”Help me Doc!”

”What do you think I’ve been trying to do all these months, Young Duke?” he asks as he stands on the edge of the precipice. Alias, Corey, Chaos, Dolly, Andre Dixon… all of them approach the edge and look down at me. ”The only way to help you… to truly help you… is to let the bleeding heart die…

“Let the rot take over.”

The dozen eyeballs stare down at me, watching as I hang perilously close to death from the edge… from bleeding out. One by one, each of them takes a step back and to the side, parting like Moses and the Red Sea. Out of the darkness, a towering figure approaches the gathering. The man steps forward slowly. Below the moonlight in the clearing is my father. Dressed in his typical all black, cape and all.

The King of Darkness stands at the edge, looking down at his dying son.

”Dad!” I call out to him. ”Pull me up!”

He looks on a moment, then bends over and reaches out his hand. Releasing my grip on my heart as my blood continues to pump from the wound, I grab his extended hand. Gripping it tight, he starts to pull me up and out of the abyss of darkness.

”You’re my son,” he says quietly. ”From tip to tail,” he says with a pause. ”This is the only way I know how to help you...”

Just as he pulls me high enough to put my foot on the edge, my father releases my hand.

Plunging me into the abyss.

Plunging me into the void.

Plunging me… into darkness.

Thad floats along in the abyss, or as DOCK calls it… the void. The nothingness. The great empty. With a hole through his chest and his beating heart counting down to its very last… he is weightless… Thoughtless… It’s like a dream within a dream. More like a waking nightmare. The bullet that penetrated his chest and shattered his heart… What was all of this really?

A red eye floats by as Thad’s broken body continues floating in the darkness. Particles being pulled from somewhere in the space gathers around it and forms a gray, burnt, smokey, ashy DOCK who lounges back as he circles around Thad. He turns to his belly and doggy paddles over to stretch himself to Thad’s ear where he whispers..

I hate to say I told you so… BUT.

DOCK floats away and back strokes around the still incapacitated, floating Duke.

I don’t understand you sometimes… You’re offered the world, Duke… Fawk, you’re given it on a silver platter. You got everything you wanted, PLUS more, and you rode the shit out of that pony with Corey Smith on the back until it all eventually started falling away. I made it clear from the start that I didn’t care who you wanted to pull along in our adventure, even if it was Corey. If you wanted to give him a belt, que sera, sera. If you wanted to defend the title with your closest, best buddy in the whole world. Que sera, sera! It became more and more obvious as time went on, however, how much he hates and distrusts me. He tried making you hate and distrust me… Yet, I was the one to pull you from the grave. I was there when we won the titles. I was there, with no chance to win, when you became Universal Champion. From the start, Duke, Corey was the thorn in my side and without you fucking seeing it the dagger planned for yours.

You see it now, don’t you?

You at least feel it in your chest, right?

DOCK laughs as he floats over face to face with the still, sleeping Thad.

All I ever wanted was to see you succeed, Duke, and I was called the snake in the grass with some secret agenda that I had. Some evil deed to better myself in the long run. All I tried to get you to see was you’re more than these fans, you’re more than these belts around your waist, and your more than these stupid friendships you acquire along the way.

Corey Smith is not. And if you ask me, he’s just as bad as the Engineer that he and surrounding parties are so scared of. The monster that, regardless of what I told him before and what he knows, still stalks him from deep inside that maze of a brain. Maybe that’s why Corey is so linked to Alias lately. Birds of a feather, I suppose.

I open my eyes, still in the void of time and space. There is no pain and the blood leaking from the hole in my chest? It pumps no longer. I’m reminded suddenly, of the many times I was blasted in my wrestling career for being good, but not good enough. I’m reminded of how I was cast aside by the biggest names in the sport because I was a pretty face. Because my father is who my father is. Because my uncle is who my uncle is.

In the past? Maybe they were right.

But this isn’t the past.

Every time an obstacle has been placed in front of me, I’ve found a way to overcome it. I’ve found a way to beat the very best our company has to offer. Alias? Corey Smith? Cataclysm? Warstein beneath a mask? Chris Page by himself? Robert Main by himself?

Corey Smith again.

Those latter two, in the span of 18 days.

Always. Time and again they discount me. They pretend I’m not as good as I am because it makes them feel better about themselves and their own shortcomings. Then the bell rings. And I prove over and over again that I… ME… THADDEUS Duke is the real fucking deal. They verbally smack me around for being so confident in myself and my ability. No, I’m not perfect. I am a flawed human being but when the bell rings and the talk stops… I’m just on another level and very few can match me.

Names that have become legends within themselves stand before me and I just keep knocking them down and every time almost without fail: short reign this, you lost a few times that, Doc carried you, you needed Corey…

Fuck it all. I don’t need anybody. I need me. This company needs me.

I know the question that’s on a lot of minds. Why Doc over Alias? Why D’Ville over the Universal Champion? Everyone is so enamored with the mindtricks that Alias pulls in his promos and he’s on one hell of a run. The mindtricks don’t impress me. His run doesn’t impress me. His hate for me…

I smile at the thought…

I learned to enjoy.

A lot of people hate me. Because I beat them? Because I look the way I do? Because I’m unapologetic about my arrogance? Because I dedicated years to my craft in order to become the very fucking best at what I do? That makes him no different than most everyone else. Alias is just more of the same… he’s not different.

Doc is different.

Doc sees through the glitz and the glamour. He sees through the doubters and the naysayers. He sees through the arrogance. He sees through the pageantry. He sees Thaddeus and up to this point I’m not sure anyone else ever truly has.

Doc was there when no one else was. Doc was there when others could’ve yet chose to remain on the sidelines.

Why Doc over Alias?

Because he gets me. In his creepy psychotic way, he understands me and that’s something that even I can’t buy. I warned everyone a long time ago. If I said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: the story of Continuum has not yet reached its conclusion. The final chapter has yet to be written. What’s more is it hasn’t even been started yet.

Continuum.

Then.

Now.

Forever.