“That’s it?” Putri’s voice dropped flat, echoing off the cold steel of the threshold as the heavy bunker door groaned all the way open. “After all that—the glass, the gardeners, the endless tunnels—we get a government surplus office?”“Don’t let the fluorescent lighting fool you, sweet-cheeks,” Hermes muttered, adjusting his tattered collar as he stepped cautiously past Thiago. “The most dangerous cages are always the ones that look like a Tuesday afternoon in 1994.”Thiago didn’t answer. He stared across the threshold, his boots resting on the exact boundary where the raw, pulsing exterior of the hill met an infinite horizon of pale gray carpet and low-hanging ceiling tiles.“It’s a control room,” Thiago said, his voice tight. “Or the closest thing this world has to an engine block.”“It’s boring,” Putri snapped, her shoulders tensing as she crossed her arms. “It’s insultingly boring. Look at those filing cabinets. They go on forever.”Rows upon rows of standard metal filing cabinets

"Don't take another step toward that desk, Thiago."The familiar, painfully gentle voice echoed off the cheap drop-ceiling tiles of the 1990s office space, stopping Thiago dead in his tracks.Thiago whipped around, his muscles instantly tensing for a fight. "How are you here?"Standing directly in front of the exit doors they had just walked through were two figures blocking their only way back. They wore the exact same faded corduroy jackets and sensible walking shoes from the Sunday morning picnic five years ago, right before the world tore itself open."We never left, sweetheart," Mom said, taking a soft, unhurried step forward, her brown eyes shining with an aching, artificial warmth. "You’ve been running through these terrible, violent places for hours, and all we wanted was for you to come home.""They aren't real, Thiago! Look at their eyes!" Putri shouted, dropping into a defensive crouch and throwing an arm in front of Thiago's chest. "When we saw them in the park, their face

The whiteout didn’t roar. It hissed like a dying television set, draining the color, the air, and the very concept of distance out of the universe until nothing was left except a terrifying, featureless glare."Thiago!"Putri’s voice hit him from somewhere directly beside him, yet it sounded like it was echoing from the bottom of a deep well. The vacuum of the collapsing domain pulled at their clothes, their hair, the marrow in their bones, stripping away the weight of every lie they had ever told, every false memory they had fought through, and every second of borrowed time they had stolen from the simulation."I've got you!" Thiago shouted back, his voice cracking as his throat rasped against the abrasive, thinning air.He locked his fingers tighter around her wrist, ignoring the agonizing burn in his own arm where his skin had grown entirely translucent, revealing the faint, golden pulse of a map that was rapidly burning itself out to keep him anchored to her. If he let go now, she