It was 3:16 a.m.
Lasi Mackeral lay stretched out on the rooftop of her dorm, a cigarette dimly glowing at the corner of her mouth. The night sky above her was bruised and blinking, stars scattered like freckles on cold obsidian. One leg crossed over the other, hands propped behind her head, she looked like she didn't have a care in the world—until you noticed the way her jaw clenched, the furrow in her brow.
"Stupid professors. Stupid parents. Stupid everything," she muttered.
She took a long drag, the tip flaring red, then flicked the cigarette over the edge. A tiny ember tumbled through the dark, fading like a forgotten wish. She gave the stars one last annoyed glare before slipping back through the smart-glass window, which hissed shut behind her.
Inside, she collapsed onto bed. The room's ambient lighting dimmed to 5% as her neural earbuds synced automatically to her comm device, soft noise flooding her head. She scrolled mindlessly through a stream of visual chatter until sleep pulled her under like an invisible current.
⸻
The alarm wasn't hers—it was Scarlet's, her roommate's and best friend's. The upbeat chime, "Morning Bloom," felt like a direct attack on her already sour mood.
"Ugh, shut up," Lasi groaned, yanking the blanket over her head.
"You're going to be late. Again," Scarlet called, already halfway into her uniform, the fabric self-adjusting around her limbs. "Professor'll lock you out and you'll get another citation."
"Go find a corner and evaporate, Scarlet," Lasi snapped.
Scarlet rolled her eyes. "I'll tell them you tripped on your own genius again. Hurry up!"
Grumbling, Lasi stormed toward the bathroom like a storm cloud with eyeliner. Their dorm was the usual disaster zone—socks on the ceiling fan, e-textbooks scattered across the holo-table, her favorite boots abandoned mid-path like dormant landmines.
Naturally, her foot found one.
She tripped spectacularly, flailing like a ragdoll, and slammed face-first into the doorframe.
THUD.
"Damn it!" came her muffled cry, followed by a dramatic groan. A small red bloom appeared under her nose.
Scarlet peeked around the corner like this was her favorite show.
"Oh my god," she said, exasperated. "You broke your face. Again."
"Is it bad?" Lasi mumbled from the floor, clutching her nose.
"You look like a sad Picasso painting," Scarlet replied, already grabbing the med-tissues from the wall dispenser. "Why are your boots always in the middle of the floor like proximity mines?"
"They like to roam free," Lasi mumbled, her voice muffled by the tissues.
Scarlet rolled her eyes and helped her up with practiced ease. "You're going to bleed on my duvet again."
Dragging her to the bed, Scarlet tapped the wall console. "Connect to Den. Report incident. Bathroom. Minor trauma. Nose. Possibly dramatic flair."
Lasi groaned into a fresh tissue. "I hope they beam you into an asteroid field."
"They'd send me back with a medal," Scarlet chirped.
She handed Lasi a frozen bio-gel pack from their half-dead cryo-mini freezer and sat nearby, watching her roommate blink through bleary, bloodshot eyes.
"I think I'm fine," Lasi muttered.
"You say that every time you crash into a wall like a malfunctioning delivery droid," Scarlet said.
"I'm not a droid," Lasi grunted. "Droids have purpose."
Scarlet was gearing up for a snarky reply when Lasi's eyes abruptly glazed over. The bio-gel pack slipped from her hand and hit the floor with a soft whump. She slumped sideways, completely unconscious.
Scarlet blinked. "Oh, for fu—Lasi?"
She gave her a gentle shake. Nothing.
A rougher shake. Still nothing.
Sighing, Scarlet crossed the room and flipped the red-panel button labeled:
DEN DIRECT LINE – MOTHER
The screen lit up with the serene face of the Den's AI medical triage system.
"Hello, dear," came the calm, too-pleasant voice. "Another… incident?"
"Bathroom collision," Scarlet said flatly. "Minor blood. Now unconscious. Might be real this time. Maybe."
A light chuckle. "We'll dispatch. Please remain calm."
⸻
Ten minutes later, a sleek white hover-drone descended outside the window, its soft stabilization field humming gently. A pillowy stretcher extended into the room. Scarlet guided Lasi onto it.
"You better not be faking this just to ditch psych class again," she muttered.
The drone lifted off into the night, its lights blinking against the dawn.
Scarlet watched the drone vanish into the fog, her eyes flat and unreadable—too calm, too still. For a moment, she didn't look like a concerned roommate at all, but something colder. Like she'd done this before. Like she was meant to. Then she blinked, rolled her shoulders, and turned back toward the dorm—snapping into her usual sarcastic ease as if that other version of her had never been there at all.
Scarlet stood at the window in her bathrobe, arms crossed, watching it disappear. She turned back to the chaos in the dorm—tissues, blood, and untouched bio-gel.
"I swear to every planet," she grumbled, "if this turns into some nonsense, I'm going to scream."
⸻
The medical wing smelled like antiseptic and artificial lavender. Everything buzzed faintly—beds that adjusted with brainwave sync, IV lines that glowed cool blue, and med-bots gliding on whisper-quiet wheels.
A holographic display pulsed above Lasi's bed:
Vitals stable. Cognitive irregularities detected. Further observation recommended.
She cracked one eye open and groaned.
"Ah, Sleeping Beauty rises," came Scarlet's voice from the chair beside her, boots propped disrespectfully on the wall.
Lasi turned her head slowly, like her neck was made of rusted hinges. "Where the hell am I?"
"Med wing. You passed out like a drama major. Scared the life out of me. They scanned your brain six times."
"Did they find anything?"
Scarlet shrugged. "Just the usual soup. Mood swings, sarcasm, mild detachment from reality. Same as always."
Lasi blinked up at the ceiling, where a soft ripple of color moved like an artificial aurora—hospital-grade light therapy. "Everything feels… weird."
Scarlet sat forward, kicking her feet down. "Define 'weird.'"
"I don't know. My head's full of static. Like… like I'm in two places at once. But one of them's underwater and the other's on fire."
Scarlet raised an eyebrow. "Poetic. Also terrifying."
Lasi sat up slowly, rubbing her temples. "How long was I out?"
"Eighteen hours. You missed two lectures, three assignments, and a mandatory psychological check-in. I told them you were suffering from spontaneous existential rejection."
Her fingers twitched as she sat. The overhead light seemed to pulse—once, twice—syncing with her heartbeat. Scarlet's voice warped for a half-second, as if echoing through a wrong hallway in her mind.
"I am."
"Shut up and get dressed."
Scarlet handed her clothes from a nearby chair—jeans, a hoodie, socks that almost matched.
Lasi changed slowly, every movement deliberate, like her body didn't quite belong to her.
She took a deep breath. It didn't help.
"Lightheaded?"
"No," Lasi whispered. "It's… more like falling. Internally."
Her mind tilted again—Scarlet's face blurred for a second. Then the hallway behind her shimmered, wrong angles crawling along the floor. The word "internally" echoed twice in her own head, once in her voice and again in someone else's. Someone… older.
Scarlet frowned. "You need to tell the doctors."
"I did. They looked at me like I asked to marry the MRI machine."
⸻
They stepped into the corridor. Auto-cleaners swept past their feet. Soft-spoken announcements echoed from ceiling speakers:
"Meal replacement packs available in Pod D."
"Reminder: Neural sync sessions require full consent."
"Distress reports are confidential and reviewed by live counselors."
"I hate this place," Lasi muttered.
"Everyone does," Scarlet replied.
As they neared the exit platform, Lasi paused again, her eyes wide.
"Lasi—?" Scarlet began.
The hallway twisted. Cold ran up her spine, and the lights blinked into swirling rings… Lights blinked into swirling rings. The walls stretched like elastic. The floor liquefied beneath her.
And then—
She fell.
Not physically. Not visibly. But somewhere deeper. Her body froze mid-step while her mind plummeted through a sensory abyss.
There was color—unnatural, fractals spiraling like invasive thoughts. Voices too ancient to be human. A hum pulsing with alien meaning.