The first thing that comes into focus for Dottie is the beige carpet. She curls her fingers around the carpet fibers, mesmerized by the texture. Her ears are ringing and her head feels like it's splitting apart. She sits up slowly. Where…?

She's at the end of a long hallway lined with doors, the walls painted a cheerful yellow, the air slightly stale, faint classical music playing in the background. It could be any hotel in any city, but Dottie is certain she has never seen this place before. She rises to her feet, not quite trusting her senses. She touches her face and the back of her head. Her hair is matted with blood. Then she runs her hands along her stomach, tracing the stitches. Miraculously, they haven't given way, though the shirt she borrowed from Peggy is beyond ruined.

It comes back to Dottie in a flash—the other spy, dead in her cell; Peggy, pale as a sheet and leaning against the wall for support; Frost with her seemingly casual grip on Sousa's arm—and then she had reached for Dottie, her hands impossibly strong around her neck, and…

Dottie nearly throws up on the spot. She forces herself to breathe. Underneath the classical music, she can hear a man talking loudly behind one of the closed doors. She can't make out what he's saying, yet there is something familiar about his voice. The hairs prickle on the back of her neck. For a split second, the hallway shimmers and the walls and the ceiling ooze and loosen their shape before snapping back into place. Something is wrong, very wrong, and it is tugging at her; an insistent, relentless pull.

Every instinct screams move, and so she half limps, half runs down the hall and doesn't stop until she rounds the corner. When she looks back, there is a man standing in the hallway in the exact spot where she had been moments before, his back turned to her. Gray suit, average build. But leather gloves, in this heat…

The man slowly turns his head to the left and then to the right. Dottie can't make out much of his face from this angle, hidden under the brim of his hat. But she doesn't really care about his identity once he pulls a gun out of his jacket and puts on the silencer with practiced swiftness, because then she knows for sure where she is. Or, more importantly, when.

She watches from around the corner as the man walks a few feet further down the hall, pauses in front of the door, and knocks. The door opens a few moments later and Dottie hears the muffled shot. When he emerges from the room and starts walking in the other direction, she zeros in immediately on the file in his hand. She doesn't know what it is, but she knows she wants it.

But she's injured and unarmed, and that won't do. So once the man goes around the corner, she dashes over to the room he just vacated and opens the door. Jack Thompson is bleeding out on the floor, on the edge of unconsciousness. The point of no return. Dottie knows what that looks like very well. She carefully steps over the pool of blood and removes the gun from his holster. He won't need it where he's going.

I'm not afraid of you, she remembered him saying as he removed her handcuffs, but she had sensed his fear and uncertainty the moment he stepped into the interrogation room and she felt nothing but contempt. He was weak. And weak men always thought if they lied to themselves enough, it could make them strong.

There's no time left to waste on Jack Thompson, however. She uses the corner of Peggy's shirt to wipe the doorknob clean of any fingerprints, closes the door, and takes the stairs up to the roof to observe her quarry. She spots him in no time, a gray hat bobbing down the street and heading away from the scene with practiced casualness, the file still in his hand. Taking it to the Council, she imagines, to the men in expensive suits behind hidden doors who thought they pulled the strings on the puppet, until a pretty blond monster showed them what true power looked like.

A disturbing thought suddenly occurs to her: where is Whitney Frost? Dottie fleetingly recalls the flash of light from the gamma cannon and the tremendous explosion. And if that explosion had landed her here in the past, shouldn't it have done the same to Frost as well? Once again, she feels that same pull, more urgent this time, and something terrifying clicks into place. She stops and looks down at her hands and then touches her face, searching for a small black seam.

She finds it behind her right ear. Whitney Frost is calling her, one monster to another.

Now Dottie actually retches, even though her stomach is nearly empty. We both know there are currencies stronger than money, she had told Peggy once, partly in jest. Fear was the currency she had been talking about—the fear that makes people stupid and forces them into making false choices. She feels it now, the adrenalin coursing through her veins, telling her to run, except you cannot run from something inside of you.

No, there is still the task at hand. Dottie takes the fire escape down from the roof and heads down the alley, figuring she can take a shortcut and ambush her target. He's undoubtedly a professional, but he's never come up against her. She presses herself up against the wall, gun raised, and waits for him to pass.

He doesn't appear. She slowly eases around the corner and is taken by surprise when he grabs her arm and jerks her forward. She stumbles but regains her balance and swings her arm around, aiming for his face. She misses, though he drops the file as he dodges and sweeps her legs out from under her.

Dottie goes down hard. She hears the familiar click of the gun, the cold steel pressed up against her forehead, and she slowly looks up at her opponent. She doesn't recognize his face, but she knows that triumphant smile. Her heart races and suddenly everything around her starts melting again, the trees and the buildings and the ground all bending and twisting, and it's happening to her opponent too, the smile replaced by a look of terror.

There is a thin black line of zero matter forming next to the man, hovering just a couple feet to his left. She lashes out, knocking the gun from his hand and shoving him into the rift.

The world abruptly rights itself and the rift disappears, along with her opponent. Dottie slumps on the ground, panting heavily. She reaches behind her ear and touches the seam again. It's bigger now, and she draws her hand back as though she's been burned. A wave of revulsion sweeps through her. This thing is inside of her, same as Whitney Frost. She feels the pull again, even stronger now, and Dottie closes her eyes for a moment. The time for running is over.

She picks the file off the ground and glances briefly at it. M. Carter, it says on the tab. "My goodness, Peggy," she murmurs, but she will have to deal with it later. Whitney Frost is waiting for her.

Dottie lets herself be pulled along down the street, but she already knows where to go. She retraces her steps to the mental hospital and up to the room on the third floor. Strange to think that just two days ago, Dottie had walked down this same hallway. The Whitney Frost she had encountered then had seemed frail and fragile and unaware of her surroundings, but the monster was still there, hidden just under the surface and endlessly hungry. Peggy and Sousa had thought they could contain her; thought it some sort of mercy to leave her alive. But Dottie has known all along that the only way to destroy a monster is to cut off the head.

Dottie enters the cell. Frost is sitting there, back to the door, gazing out the window. "Ah, Miss Underwood," she says, "I knew you would come. You feel it too, don't you?" She stands and turns around, and Dottie has to force herself to not take a step back. Frost's face and arms are laced with streaks of zero matter, traces of it oozing down her dress and onto the floor.

Frost walks towards her, but as she does the room wavers around them. She stops, reaching out to touch the wall as it shifts under her hand. "How fascinating, the different ways zero matter utilizes human bodies as vessels," she murmurs. "I knew it was theoretically possible, and yet I doubted. Do you understand what this means?"

Unconsciously, Dottie touches the space behind her ear. She says nothing.

"Zero matter allows me to manipulate the space around me. But you, Miss Underwood, you are manipulating time itself. No need for any machines or equipment. What a gift you have been given!" Frost steps closer until she stands in front of Dottie. Her blue eyes are full of hunger. "Come with me, and we can help each other. One woman to another," she says softly. Zero matter is seeping out of Frost and running along the floor towards Dottie, and yet she doesn't even seem to notice.

Her talk of sisterhood is a lie; Frost will use her and discard her the first chance she gets. Dottie would do the same. Last year, when she had faced Frost alone for the first time, Dottie had attempted to play that card too, knowing that was her only way out of there alive. But this is a different game now. "I'm listening," she says after a pause. There is one way that Frost might prove useful.

Frost must sense her hesitation. "You still believe Peggy Carter will help you," she says, drawing back slightly. "You're a bigger fool than I thought, then."

"Nobody can help me." Dottie's always known that. In her world, there are only enemies and potential enemies. And while Dottie finds her a highly entertaining rival, Peggy falls into the former category. But it's clear who the bigger threat is in the scheme of things.

Frost laughs. "Ah, well. God helps those who help themselves, yes?"

"You can control the zero matter inside you." The room hasn't stopped shifting around them, and it makes her feel a little sick.

"It took some experimentation, but yes," Frost says. "I was frightened in the beginning when I heard the voice speaking to me, but I listened and it told me what I had to do. You hear it too, don't you?"

Dottie nods. It isn't a voice, exactly, but she understands the meaning. This is the tug she felt before; the thing that drew her back to Whitney Frost. And she knows what it is telling her now as she reaches out to touch the other woman's face.

When her fingers brush Frost's cheek, both of them are suddenly knocked backward. Frost hisses in pain and fury as she hits the ground. The rift is opening up between them, a pool of darkness hovering in the middle of the room.

Dottie watches Frost's eyes widen. "It's so beautiful," she breathes as she stands up and walks toward it, hand outstretched. The zero matter is leaching out of her faster now, and Frost herself seems to be disintegrating the closer she gets to the rift, her fingers dissolving into nothing. But her expression is ecstatic as she moans, "Oh, I've waited so long!"

Dottie edges backwards as the other woman takes another step forward. All at once, Frost's entire body loses its shape and collapses into the rift, and then the rift itself abruptly disappears and the room shifts back its usual form.

No trace of Whitney Frost remains. That was, she thinks, the thing that had shaken her the most about Frost's power—the total erasure of existence. Frost left behind no bodies in her wake; nothing to return to dust. Erasure is her fate now as well.

Dottie doesn't have to touch the seam behind her ear to know that it's grown larger. But she felt the pulse of energy sweep through her as the rift closed, something huge and alien and powerful beyond her comprehension, and she isn't afraid anymore, even though part of her knows she should be. She's alive, and she's always been good at adapting. The only alternative to survival is death, after all.

And Dottie will survive. She picks the file off the floor, stands up, and starts walking.