Sophia shook so hard she thought her bones might rattle right out of her skin. The corridor twisted and heaved like it was trying to cough her up. Completion, collapse those weren’t just fancy words anymore. Nah, now they felt like hands yanking at her insides, twisting her spine, pulling her in a dozen directions at once. The floor? Useless. It gave under her like soggy paper. The walls, forget it swam and melted, flickering out with images from her own life. Some sweet, some straight-up nightmares, others wild and shiny, like dreams you only half-remember.And there, squatting nearby, was her reflection. Not just a regular mirror image; this one had the patience of a vulture and eyes that weren’t quite hers. That voice in its eyes yeah, that was the recursion, humming in the air between them. You will not survive if you do nothing. You will not survive if you hesitate. The choice is yours and not yours at all. Real comforting, right?Sophia’s nails dug into the floor panels, damn ne

Sophia drifted, just sort of hanging there in this endless hallway of blinding light weightless, yeah, but every heartbeat yanked her back to herself. All around, splintered timelines and half-lived memories fanned out like a broken mirror someone had punted across the floor. It was chaos, but weirdly beautiful, too.Every shard was its own little life stuff she could’ve been, or done, but didn’t. They buzzed for her attention, like kids desperate for a gold star. She reached out, and her hand just slid through one a flicker of her, way younger, hunched over a notebook, cramming numbers together, no clue that recursion would chew up her life and spit it back out.I can fix this, she thought. And boom the shard glitched, flickered, started morphing into something new. Not tidy, not safe, but at least it was hers this time.Then the reflection popped up, all shifty and shimmery, voice doubling up on itself hers, but also not hers, you know? Every choice you take back, every road you wal

It started as this weird, low buzz, almost like the world itself was getting a text message, and nobody else noticed. There was no sound, not even a beat. It was just... there.Ash felt it in the way you remember pain before you actually feel it. She stood by the busted-up viewport, palm flat on the frame, and yeah, the hum was leaking out of her not the stupid building for once her, for real.Every time she breathed in, it was like inhaling actual light. Every exhale left behind this shimmer, like her thoughts were sneaking out and turning visible just to mess with her.Then Lena’s voice slid in, soft and guilty. “You didn’t sleep.”Ash didn’t bother turning around. “Couldn’t. Every time I shut my eyes, it’s her. Not who she was who she’s turning into.”Damien edged closer, jaw so tight you could hear it creak. “And that’s supposed to mean what, exactly?”Ash finally turned. Her pupils were rimmed with this weird gold, like tiny circuits coming alive under her skin. “It means Sophia’

Dawn felt all wrong.It dragged itself across the horizon like some lazy kid spilling a can of paint in slow motion. The colors didn’t just shift; they twisted, tangled like your eye wasn’t even built for this kind of light. Everything felt stretched, warped, like time itself was getting chewed up in the glare.Lena stood right on the edge of where the lab compound used to be. Yeah, “used to be” is doing a lot of work there. Now? Who even knows what this place is?No ruins left. The ground looked scrubbed clean, pale, almost breathing. Trees? More like crystal sculptures humming in the breeze. Even the air buzzed, like someone had woven static and heartbeats together and left it on loop.She could barely tell her own breathing from the background noise. Sound lagged, like she was out of sync with her own body. Freaky.Damien crouched nearby, letting this weird, glittery soil run through his fingers. The dirt itself pulsed yeah, pulsed like a notification you could feel.“This isn’t gr

Rain sounded weird tonight. Not just rain, really metal clinks, like someone spilled a bucket of nickels on the clouds and called it weather.Lena didn’t spot it right away. She was still glued to the spot where that guy Damien had just vanished. The park was basically a ghost town now, no more kids screaming, just water smacking stone, over and over. She caught her own face in a puddle wobbly, kind of broken up, like she might melt if she looked too long.She got up, slow as hell. The shard she’d been clutching buzzed a little, warm even though the air was freezing, humming against her palm like it had its own heartbeat.Damien. His name just wouldn’t get out of her head, like a song stuck on repeat.She started walking before her brain even knew what was happening. Grass, puddles, whatever she just followed this weird, shimmery ripple in the air. It felt like it was calling her. Not in a “come over here” way more like gravity.Every couple of steps, she thought she heard something a