One moment Murphy was working the floor of Limbo's main room and overseeing a game of Who's A Puker?, and the next moment, without so much as the click of a timer reaching zero for warning, the club and who knows how much of the rest of the building vanished in a concussive fiery roar, only for him to awaken still alive in a bright white room that he'd left behind years ago in Zona, feeling suspiciously like he had just been shot somewhere in the vicinity of his liver instead of completely blown to bits.

A glance at his hands, once again albino white instead of the dark red that he had most recently gotten used to (and Warren was right: he really did need to pick one color and stick with it, as if he ever had a choice in that matter), confirmed his suspicions, as did the all too familiar view to his right of Warren, who to the best of his knowledge had not been anywhere near Limbo when the blast went off, looking far too small and frail as she lay in a tangle of tubes and wires of a life support machine in a hospital bed matching Murphy's own.

He wanted to write off everything he remembered that hadn't happened yet as a dream, but even Zona's supposedly complete cure for his condition had never been quite complete enough for him to start dreaming properly again, which meant he really was back in time, which meant he needed to start planning what he was and wasn't going to change, because he liked having the Talkers around too much to prevent the Black Rain from happening, but he was damn sure going to find a way to save Lucy this time around, whatever the cost.