The pain Ethan expected—the sharp, blinding agony of a skull fracture, the bruised ribs, the metallic taste of internal bleeding—was absent.
Instead, there was only a soft, suffocating wooliness, as if his brain had been wrapped in cotton.
He opened his eyes.
He was sitting in his ergonomic chair. His head was pillowed on his crossed arms, resting on the surface of his desk. A line of drool had dried on his cheek, tacking his skin to the sleeve of his lab coat.
Ethan jerked upright, gasping, his hands scrabbling for purchase on the smooth laminate. He spun the chair around, his heart hammering a frantic rhythm against his ribs. He expected to see smoke. He expected fire. He expected the ruined carcass of the generator and the blackened scorch marks on the walls where the capacitors had blown out.
He expected chaos. He found order.
The lab was silent. Not the heavy, pregnant silence of the night before—the silence of a held breath—but a sterile, empty quiet. The air was cool and smelled faintly, incongruously, of lemon-scented cleaning fluid. The overhead lights were humming with a steady, reliable thrum, casting a warm, almost golden glow over the room that felt strangely designed, like a museum exhibit of a laboratory.
The generator sat in the center of the space, dark and dormant. It wasn't blackened. It wasn't fused. It looked pristine, the copper coils shining dully in the light, the quartz core clear and unblemished. The chaotic tangle of bypass cables Lily had rigged was gone, replaced by neat, color-coded conduits that looked brand new.
Ethan stood up, his legs feeling heavy, like he was wading through deep water. He stumbled toward the filing cabinets—the metal wall he had slammed into with bone-breaking force just moments ago.
There was no dent. The beige metal was smooth, unbroken, holding a magnetic calendar and a takeout menu for a Thai place he didn't recognize.
"No," he whispered, his voice croaking from disuse. "No, that's impossible."
He touched his forehead. No blood. No bump. He pressed his fingers into his ribs, probing for the sharp lance of a fracture. Nothing. He felt fine. Better than fine, actually. He felt rested, energized, a low hum of vitality buzzing in his veins that felt slightly artificial, like the rush of a strong caffeine hit without the jitteriness.
He turned back to his desk. The chaos of papers he had left—the stacks of journals, the schematics, the coffee cups—was gone. The desk was immaculately tidy. Pencils were aligned in a cup. The papers were stacked in neat, squared-off piles.
And his notebook.
It was sitting in the exact center of the desk, closed.
Ethan approached it slowly, warily, as if it were a bomb ticking down. He remembered the last thing he had seen before the darkness took him: the notebook lying face down on the concrete floor, a page torn loose by the force of the blast.
He reached out, his hand trembling, and flipped the cover open.
The spine was intact. No pages were torn. He leafed through to the end, his breath catching in his throat.
October 24th.
Subject: Quantum Field Generator, Pre-Test.
Anomalous spike in the theta band. 0.004 variance.
The entry was there. The ink was dry. But the last lines—the frantic scrawl he remembered writing as the second hand frozen, the words Clock slips and I am not alone here—were gone.
In their place, in a handwriting that looked like his but possessed a fluidity and neatness he had never achieved in his life, was a single, new line.
Simulation Initialization: Stable.
Ethan stared at the words. The ink didn't look like it had flowed from a pen; it looked like it had been pressed into the paper. He ran his thumb over the text. It was perfectly smooth. It didn't smudge.
He looked at the date on his digital watch.
Thursday, October 27th.
"Two days," he breathed. "I lost two days."
He patted his pockets, panic flaring in his chest like a match struck in a dark room. The stone chip. The grey, jagged rock he had shoved into his pocket before the explosion. It was his anchor, his proof. He jammed his hands into the lab coat, feeling the lint, a spare pen, a crumpled receipt.
The pocket was empty.
"Looking for something, Dr. Maddox?"
The voice came from the doorway. It was smooth, rich, and cultured—a baritone that sounded like expensive scotch poured over ice.
Ethan spun around, adrenaline flooding his system.
A stranger stood in the entrance to the lab.
He was a tall man, impeccably dressed in a charcoal three-piece suit that looked tailored to within an inch of its life—a stark contrast to the rumpled tweeds and cardigans usually worn by the faculty. His hair was silver, swept back with perfect precision, and his eyes were a pale, piercing blue behind rimless spectacles. He held himself with an air of relaxed authority, the kind of man who didn't need to shout to be heard because he assumed the world was always listening.
Ethan backed up until his hips hit the edge of the desk. He grabbed a heavy stapler, his knuckles white.
"Who are you?" Ethan demanded. "How did you get in here? This is a restricted zone."
The stranger smiled. It was a warm smile, crinkling the corners of his eyes. It radiated support, pride, and a paternal affection that felt instantly, terrifyingly wrong.
"You gave us quite a scare, Ethan," the man said, stepping into the room. He ignored the stapler. He didn't look at the generator; his eyes were fixed solely on Ethan. "Thirty-six hours straight. I know you're dedicated, but passing out at your desk is a level of commitment even the board finds excessive."
"I asked you a question," Ethan snapped. "Identify yourself."
The man stopped. He tilted his head, studying Ethan with a look of mild, indulgent concern. He chuckled, a soft, genuine sound.
"Concussion? Dehydration? Or just the usual post-project amnesia?" The stranger extended a hand. "I'm Reginald Voss, Ethan. The Director of the Institute? Your boss? The man who keeps signing your grant extensions against the better judgment of the financial committee?"
Ethan stared at the hand. "Director? No. The Director is Arthur Hargreaves. I spoke to him two days ago. He was threatening to fire me."
Voss's smile didn't falter, but his eyebrows drew together in a performance of worry. "Arthur? Arthur Hargreaves retired three years ago, Ethan. He moved to Florida. You spoke at his farewell dinner. You gave a very touching toast about entropy."
The world seemed to tilt on its axis. The detail was so specific, so mundane, that for a second, Ethan doubted his own mind. Did he? Did he give a toast? The memory felt fuzzy, like trying to recall a dream.
"No," Ethan said, shaking his head violently to clear the fog. "No. That's a lie. I don't know you. I've never seen you before in my life."
Voss sighed, clasping his hands behind his back. He looked like a disappointed father. "This is more severe than Lily suggested. She said you were disoriented when you woke up in the infirmary, but this..." He pulled a small penlight from his pocket and stepped closer. "Ethan, look at me. Follow the light."
Ethan swatted the hand away, the movement jerky and uncoordinated. "Get away from me. I'm not concussed. I was thrown across the room. The generator overloaded. There was a blue light... a voice... the room was destroyed."
Voss paused. He lowered the light, his expression shifting from amusement to a grave, deep sympathy.
"We warned you about the neural feedback loop," Voss said gently. "The new interface you were testing. You said the shielding was adequate. Lily said it was risky. It seems she was right."
"Neural feedback?" Ethan laughed, a harsh, jagged sound. "I don't use neural interfaces. I use keyboards. Analog controls. What are you talking about?"
"You suffered a seizure, Ethan. Tuesday night. Lily found you slumped over the console. We rushed you to the infirmary, but you were catatonic. The doctors said it was extreme exhaustion coupled with a mild localized magnetic disruption to the temporal lobe. Hallucinations, paranoia, memory displacement... all expected side effects."
Ethan looked around the pristine lab. "So this is the hallucination? The lab being cleaned? The equipment fixed? A stranger claiming to be my boss?"
"The lab wasn't destroyed, Ethan," Voss said, his voice soothing, hypnotic. "You didn't turn the machine on. You collapsed before you could initiate the sequence. Lily and the janitorial staff tidied up while you were recovering. We didn't want you waking up to a mess."