Dani didn't ask him outright.
She didn't have to.
Lance could feel it in the way her eyes lingered a beat longer when she thought he wasn't looking. The way her fingers hovered just above her weapon in the narrow hall. The silence between them had thickened—not heavy, not angry—just calculated.
He understood.
If he were in her shoes, he wouldn't trust himself either.
Because something was changing.
It started in his fingertips.
They felt... wrong. Nerves misaligned. Touches muffled, like brushing against surfaces through damp cloth. Other times, every vibration screamed against his skin—like the world was crawling beneath him.
He didn't say anything. Dani didn't either.
But that night, she gave him coffee.
Black. Bitter. Same tin can they'd been drinking from for days.
Only... this time she watched.
He pretended not to notice. The heat hit his tongue—and it tasted like nothing at all. Just liquid. No bitterness. No sharpness. Just texture.
His heart slowed, unnaturally. He swallowed, forced a small, brittle smile. "Thanks."
She said nothing.
Later, she checked the milk.
Still sealed. Still in its crate. But warmer than it should be. Not hot. Alive.
She ran a blacklight over it. The label pulsed faintly—a symbol like circuitry fused with a nervous system. Blinked. Faded.
"You've had nosebleeds?" she asked.
He paused, wiping his face. "No?"
His fingers came back red.
A slow, thin trickle. He hadn't noticed.
"Shit," he breathed.
Dani didn't move. Just a single, calm nod. Confirmation.
That night, Lance didn't dream of faceless people. He dreamed of teeth.
Rows and rows, concentric circles, inside a vast, breathing chamber that pulsed like a lung. Wet walls. The ceiling watching. Somewhere far above—something blinking.
He woke on the floor. Not the cot. Curled near the milk crate like a child by a campfire.
Dario stood a few feet away, unmoving, eyes unreadable.
And in his chest, just behind the sternum—
—a twitch.
Not his.
A flutter. Small. Growing.
Lance inhaled slow, careful.
The milk jug was sealed. But the thing inside him didn't need permission.
The first sign was the smell.
Not rot. Not sulfur. Wrong. Wet bandages in the sun. Warm dairy. Something metallic enough to make him gag. It coated his throat like syrup.
Dario stiffened at the hall. Ears low. Body rigid.
Then the lights went out.
Every bulb. Instantly. The dark wasn't absence—it was textured, pressing against his eyes from the inside.
"Dani?" he whispered.
"Don't move," came her calm voice, too far away, too controlled.
He didn't intend to.
Then: thud.
Something massive shifting just outside the door.
Thud-thud. Deliberate. Patient. It didn't need to hurry. It knew.
Lance clutched Dario. Mind scrambled for rationality—maybe hallucination. Dream residue. Blood leaking sanity.
The door creaked. Not slammed. Just... pushed.
Something stepped inside.
Cow-shaped. Ten feet tall. Compressed, unnatural, pale flesh stretched too tight. No fur. No spots. Hooves silent on concrete.
Its eyes—too human. Bloodshot. Blinking too often.
And its mouth—where its nose should have been. A slack, wet cavity flexing with each breath.
It smelled him.
Lance couldn't scream. Couldn't breathe. Just held Dario tighter. Heart hammering like it wanted to escape.
The thing tilted its head.
Then—
FWUMP.
The safehouse shook. Dani stepped from the hall, dragging a lunchbox across the floor.
No shout. No flair. Just muttered: "Shitty timing."
The cow-thing's neck bent impossibly, limbs locking as it stuttered like corrupted video. It looked at Lance. And smiled. Not lips. Not teeth. Eyes.
He lost it. Backed into the wall, whispering "nononono," gripping Dario.
Dani didn't hesitate.
BOOM.
The hallway erupted in light. Not flame — something sharper.
The air bent, sound folding in on itself like paper tearing backward through time.
When Lance opened his eyes—
The thing was gone. Just scorch marks rippling across the walls, a melted outline burned into the concrete. The air twitched, hot and wet with static, as if the scene itself were trying to remember what had just existed there.
Dani stood where it had been, shoulders heaving, gripping a weapon that hummed with residual distortion. The Archivist Lance. Its crystalline tip flickered like a glitching cursor, rewriting the air in faint, erratic bursts of light.
She exhaled, eyes hard. "Still think you're imagining things?"
The Lance's tip still glowed, threads of static crawling up her arm — ghost-text spilling across her sleeve, letters that vanished before Lance could read them.
He couldn't speak. Just held Dario tighter.
The creature was gone—but not gone. Somewhere, breathing. Waiting.
And maybe—maybe—it had come for him.
The flutter inside his chest grew, alive, urgent, impossible to ignore. Shadows shifted just beyond sight. The buzzing hum under the floor. Coffee that had no taste. Every small anomaly screamed warnings he couldn't read.
Not real. Not real. Not real.
Then—thud.
The hallway behind them shook with deliberate weight. Dani's hand went to her grenade launcher, eyes sharp.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Slow. Measured.
Lance dared a glance.
The cow-shaped thing was there again. Closer. Watching. Its bloodshot eyes locked onto him, mouth slack where a nose should have been, moving silently. Panic ripped through him.
He clutched Dario. Voice cracking: "We—"
"No time," Dani hissed, yanking him to his feet.
They ran. The creature's silent steps echoing behind them.
The safehouse was no longer safe.
The air thickened, viscous like molasses. The concrete beneath rippled, waves distorting cracked edges. Streetlights flickered, stretched, colors bleeding into the impossible.
The cow-thing didn't move across space—it pulled the space around itself. The world warped, dark and hungry.
Inside him, the twitch bloomed—a surge, cold and electric, down his arms. Nails dug into palms.
Lance felt the cold hunger clawing inside him.
The cow-thing screamed—a wet, unnatural sound. Reality snapped again, tugging Lance like a tide. Buildings warped into impossible angles, streets folded back on themselves, stars blinked like glitching pixels.
They ran—not just from a monster, but a breaking world.
The twitch inside him flared, struggling for control. Fingers trembled; every attempt to steady them warped the corridor further.
Behind them, the creature stalked—a warped god of nightmare, hooves silent, eyes glowing, nasal mouth flexing in hunger.
Dani moved with brutal efficiency, the weapon in her grip humming with a shrill, glassy resonance. Every swing cracked the air like a hard rewrite — strokes of white static carving through the corridor. When the tip connected, the creature glitched, its shape smearing into fractured silhouettes before snapping back, slower, weaker.
"Keep moving!" she barked. "If it catches you—"
Lance didn't need to hear the rest.
The twitch surged through him, skin prickling, nerves screaming. Hallways folded; floors vanished; walls bled shadow. Impossible geometry flickered at the corners of his sight — too many versions of the same place trying to coexist.
He grabbed Dario, barreling forward through the chaos.
Behind them, Dani drove the Archivist Lance into the heart of the distortion. The weapon thrummed like an overloaded speaker, its crystalline tip burning white. The anomaly convulsed — parts of it erasing, others redrawing, like corrupted footage trying to stabilize.
Reality stuttered.
The twitch spiked violently in Lance's chest and arms. Reality stretched like taffy. Time slipped. Sound dulled into a flat, underwater silence.
For a split second, he saw Dani's outline flicker — her arm glitching, her shape rewritten by the resonance, her face briefly not her own. Then it corrected, and she staggered forward, forcing the anomaly back with sheer will.
Dani's voice broke through: "Focus, Lance! Use it. Don't let it use you!"
Corridor folded again. A rift tore open—a yawning maw pulsing with red veins. The creature lurched through, twisted further by warped reality.
The twitch surged. Pain, electricity, raw control—he didn't know which.
Then something blinked behind his eyes.
Correction.
Vision lurched. The world realigned. For a heartbeat, Lance saw a white grid, black margins, debug notes in the air:
[Format inconsistency detected. Reverting scene.]
Walls flickered. Not healed. Not erased. Different. Pipes along ceilings. Fluorescent lights blinked in a new rhythm. Faint smell of ink and ozone.
The cow-thing stumbled. So did Dani.
She glanced at Lance. "What the hell did you just do?"
He opened his mouth. Didn't know.
No time left. Only forward.