"I'm telling you," Ka'rui said from the back of the van, mid-laugh, "the talent show was the origin of every trauma I carry today."
Salven groaned. "Don't. I still wake up sweating when I hear the opening chords."
"I was five!" Lasi wailed. "I thought 'Don't Stop Believin'' was a lullaby!"
Scarlet snorted. "You kept trying to whisper-sing it like a bedtime story."
"I thought it was about a lost stuffed animal!" Lasi protested.
"Meanwhile," Ka'rui gasped, barely able to breathe from laughing, "I was trying to do interpretive dance—with a flag. Indoors!"
"You hit me in the face," Scarlet added. "Mid-'streetlight people.' Right in the eye."
"I was being the light," Ka'rui argued weakly. "You were supposed to move!"
Salven buried his face in his hands. "And I was the train."
Everyone went quiet.
Lasi blinked. "Oh my gods. You were."
"I made a cardboard box costume," Salven said, deadpan. "Painted 'CITY BOUND' on the side. Got stuck in it. Tripped over the mic cord."
Ka'rui wheezed. "You took out the principal's folding chair."
"I heard it crumple," Scarlet whispered.
Salven stared at the van ceiling like a war survivor. "I was trying to chug along to the beat. My shoelaces betrayed me."
Lasi, covering her face with her sleeves, could barely breathe. "I remember yelling 'Don't stop!' into the mic, and then the mic fell apart. The head popped off and rolled off stage."
"And then," Scarlet said, through wheezy laughter, "the CD skipped. It played the chorus four times."
Ka'rui was crying. "And we kept going. Because we thought that was how you won."
They all went quiet again. The van hummed beneath them.
Scarlet sighed. "We were disasters."
Lasi smiled, warm and mortified. "We were… legends."
Ka'rui grinned. "We peaked at five."
Salven snorted. "Nah. This is just the remix."
They all howled.
Then, as if riding the tail-end of their laughter into some unmarked quiet, the van softened. Beneath the joy, the silence stirred with things left behind in classrooms and dreams—each of them feeling, somehow, that the road ahead already knew more than they did.
The silence wasn't heavy, but it clung—alive with private thoughts, quiet fears, and the sense that something was beginning, whether they were ready or not.
⸻
Flashback: Lunch, Maps, Madness… and Markings
Projections flickered in mid-air—maps, journal scans, coordinates none of them dared to verify. The journal lay open between them, still smelling faintly of mothballs and hospital antiseptic. Salven had been quietly scrolling through a holographic interface projected from his wristband, while Ka'rui kept circling strange glyphs with her fingertip, whispering them aloud like they might rearrange into something comprehensible.
Scarlet was flipping lazily through the journal, eyes scanning sideways, tone dry.
"Okay, this entry—'time is limited and limitless'? That's straight-up stoner poetry. Whoever wrote this was mainlining Fold fumes and existential dread."
Ka'rui didn't look up. "I don't think it was a metaphor."
Then the journal twitched.
Just a flicker in the projection. Like static.
Then—blink—a new entry surfaced, like it had always been there, just hiding.
Lasi tapped it open.
⸻
PENDANT: Emergency Locator & Identity Key
• Emits low-level interference pattern to block passive watchers
• Generates a false surface signature when wearer is "off"
• Acts as universal identifier for Fold-compatible interfaces
• Syncs to caller port—can summon Ocean Walk when signal peaks
• Time aboard the city does not flow equally to time planetside
• Return access subject to inner-cycle alignment
• KEEP CLOSE. IT MARKS YOU.
⸻
Lasi's face didn't change. "So it's a key. And a beacon. And a cloaking device."
Ka'rui leaned back with a low whistle. "Great. Also a galactic Uber call button for the death turtle. Fancy."
Scarlet plucked the pendant off the table. It barely weighed anything.
"Doesn't look like much," she said, flipping it in her fingers. "Honestly feels like a discount vending machine prize. Is this thing even real?"
Ka'rui's head turned—slow. Her voice dropped.
"Scarlet."
Scarlet raised an eyebrow. "What?"
"Put. It. Down."
A silence bloomed between them. Not awkward. Not expectant. Just… wrong.
The tone wasn't loud. But it was wrong. Too quiet. Too calm. Like a thread pulled too tight.
Scarlet gave her a smirk. "Relax. What's it gonna do, imprint my credit score—"
Then the pendant blinked.
Once.
Twice.
A soft whine vibrated through the room.
The air changed—thinner, almost ionized, like before a thunderclap.
The walls didn't move, but something behind them did.
Time seemed to hesitate—just a breath, just a blink—as the light pulsed again, blooming outward.
Without thinking, Lasi reached across the table and gripped Ka'rui's wrist. It wasn't fear. It was instinct—the kind that says: if we go down, we go together.
Thin, metal-fine wires unfurled with a faint hiss—like something mechanical dreaming of being alive, and finally waking up.
The tendrils reached out with purpose, brushing their wrists like they knew them.
A second later, the light contracted.
Each tendril snapped tight.
Ka'rui hissed.
Scarlet flinched.
Lasi didn't breathe.
When it was over, they each had a mark. Simple. Strange. A curved line intersected by a small circle—like a compass. Or a countdown.
Their skin pulsed faintly under the fresh marks.
Salven's fingers twitched.
Ka'rui's breath caught.
Scarlet's shoulders tensed—just for a second, like her body understood before her mind did.
None of them said it, but something old died in that silence.
Not just childhood, not just glitter-streaked stages.
Something else.
⸻
The wind swept through the open van doors.
The ocean scent was stronger now—salt and something distant. The edge of the world.
Somewhere ahead, Ocean Walk City was waking up.
Adventure, mystery, maybe even danger waited beyond the skyline.
But for now?
It was just four weirdos in a van, driving into the sunrise, singing like their lives depended on it.