He's done this before, a thousand times. He's fought through Epsilon's memories, clawed his way out of the sucking binary-coded abyss and back to his own identity. He should damn well have this down to a science by now.

It's never been like this.

Usually, he's immersed in the memories as the Director, or as the Alpha, or - on very few occasions - as Epsilon himself, watching through eyes that aren't his and inputs that his human brain simply cannot process, a passenger helpless to change the events unfolding in front of him - or, more often, directly to him. They're memories; they're set in stone, further back in the past than he could ever reach, and the only thing he can do is move forward, remind himself who he is until it jolts him out of the nightmare of someone else's past.

This time, it's not a single memory; it's an ocean of them, as though the floodbanks had been removed from the fragments of Epsilon still partitioned off in his mind, allowing the roiling madness to flood out of its vault and sweep him away completely. Flashes of memory batter him - don't say goodbye i hate goodbyes it's Allison she's not coming back who was it who died im sorry im sorry im sorry - until he can't see straight, until he doesn't know which way is up anymore, until he's too tired to fight and he still can't breathe, and all the while that same whisper insists that he needs to free himself because it will free them both-

And then a beam of soft golden light shines down, the sun through the storm. It speaks, soft but insistent, and the words don't register but he knows that voice, he knows someone is trying to help, and he pushes towards it, fighting through memory after memory, because it's his way out and he has to get out of here-

And his body jerks and struggles to draw breath. He's not giving up just yet.