A sound.
Not a scream. Just a crack. A wet thud.
The woman's body.
Twisted. Broken. Blood leaking and splashing onto the pavement and bystanders. Eyes open, still staring at Lasi.
Scarlet screamed. "She jumped. From the damn roof."
"She was just here—" Lasi whispered.
"She couldn't have—how could she—why—"
Red klaxons lit the fog. Patrol drones swarmed.
"Remain still. Medical response en route. Do not approach the perimeter."
A nurse rushed to them. "Are you hurt? There's blood—"
But Lasi didn't hear him.
Because the woman's hand twitched.
Just once.
Then still.
The city blurred past like a dream they weren't awake for.
Inside the dorm, lights flickered on as they entered.
The moment Lasi stepped into the dorm again, it felt wrong.
Not just messy-wrong. Not just the usual chaos Scarlet called "expressive living." This was… spatially wrong. The air inside had a weight to it, like the pressure in an airlock right before it blows.
Scarlet dropped her bag by the door. "You okay?"
Lasi nodded—but didn't move.
Scarlet collapsed onto the small couch. "Well," she muttered, "if I start crying, just pretend I'm laughing. Or tell me something stupid. Like, really stupid."
Lasi sat on the edge of the bed. "Okay. Did you know that ducks have regional accents?"
Scarlet blinked. "What?"
"Seriously. Like, a duck from Glasgow sounds different than a duck from Sussex."
Scarlet snorted. "Why do you know that?"
"Liberal arts education. Useless facts and deep debt."
She finally cracked a smile.
"I hate how good you are at that," Scarlet said, rubbing her face. "Thanks."
The smartglass window across the room flickered. Once. Twice. Then stilled.
Lasi boots still lay exactly where she'd tripped over them earlier. One even had a tiny, dried smear of blood on the toe, like a signature.
She slowly stepped forward. Each footfall echoed harder than it should.
"I don't think I'm synced right," Lasi said, voice low.
Scarlet turned. "What do you mean? You're online, aren't you? Neural's green?"
"I mean me. The me in me."
Scarlet stared. "You're either being poetic again or you're about to need another med-drone visit."
Lasi pressed her fingers to the back of her neck. Her neural band was pulsing normally.
Technically, everything should be fine. No lag. No spike. No desync.
But something inside her was buzzing. Not nerves. Not fear.
Friction.
Like her thoughts were slipping against each other, layers of herself barely aligned.
The chip. The package.
She pulled it from her coat pocket. The one the old woman had given her.
It was still warm, which made no sense. Its edges shimmered with faint, shifting code.
A living thing. Or close enough to fake it.
"What is that?" Scarlet asked, crossing the room.
"I think it's how she got inside."
"Who? The jumper?"
"She wasn't just some lunatic," Lasi said.
"She knew me. She knew what I saw. She called it the fold. The shimmer. Like it was… alive."
Scarlet's expression turned wary.
"Lasi, you didn't sleep for eighteen hours because you were tired.
You collapsed. You had a full neuroshock. You're probably still hallucinating—"
Lasi pressed the chip to her temple.
"Wait—!"
Too late.
It clicked.
Not physically—there was no port, no sync jack, no haptic interface. It just connected. Direct-to-brain. Wireless. Illegally smooth. And then—
She was elsewhere.
A corridor of white light. Endless. Circular. But not a corridor. A thought, stretching itself forward in architectural shape.
Around her, echoes moved with purpose—no bodies, just impressions. Voices whispering through data fog.
She was walking and not walking. Moving and not moving. Everything was forward, and everything was memory.
Then—
A break.
A crack in the corridor.
A glimpse beyond the corridor's edge: a world inverted. Stars flowing backward. Time peeling like old paint. And in the center of it all—
Something watching.
Not from outside, but from within. The shimmer.
The fold. The anomaly that wasn't an anomaly. It saw her seeing it. It reached, not with hands, but with concept. A shape without mass.
A presence without name.
Lasi's body screamed—
And she snapped back.
Collapsed onto the dorm floor, chip sizzling beside her.
Scarlet was already at her side, shaking her, panic flooding her face.
"What the hell did you just do?!"
Lasi gasped, lungs dragging in air like she'd nearly drowned. Her pupils were blown wide, skin pale, trembling from the inside out.
"I saw it," she croaked.
"No—no, you spiked—your neural load's maxed, Lasi—what did it do to you?!"
Lasi tried to speak. Failed.
Then: "It remembers me."
Scarlet went still.
The chip on the floor blinked once, twice.
And went dark.
From the window, the sky flickered.
Just for a second.
Like the world had blinked. Or like something on the other side had.
The air felt heavy. The kind of silence that didn't just fill the room—it waited. Started with a jump hearing the interface power on Lasi and Scarlet silently drop the topic.
The holo-interface shimmered to life on the wall. Static crackled just a beat too long before stabilizing.
Then the dorm AI emerged—a glowing, maternal face suspended in pale light. Its smile was just wide enough to feel learned.
"Hello, girls," said the voice—smooth, warm, a little too soft. "I've received your check-in from the hospital. Lasi, you were discharged stable. Scarlet, thank you for the escort."
The screen flickered faintly—once, like a skip in an old recording. Then Mother continued, unfazed.
"You are entitled to emotional processing," Mother replied. Her tone was syrup-thick, too pleasant.
"Today's events were outside normative stress parameters. I suggest chamomile tea… and low-stimulation content… for the next 6 to 8 hours."
"Lasi," the AI added after a pause, "your REM cycles have been irregular. You dreamed of falling again last night."
Scarlet blinked. "What?"
"This unit monitors stress markers to improve wellness. No need for concern."
Lasi's mouth went dry. She hadn't mention that.
"I suggest whiskey and denial," Scarlet muttered…
The screen blinked out—but not instantly.
Mother's face stayed visible in the darkened interface, just a second too long, her eyes wide open.
Then nothing.
And just as Lasi turned away—one frame of static. White text buried in it:
WE REMEMBER YOU.