The bus was late. Then traffic. Then Lucien's left shoe caught on a curb and the tape finally gave.
He half-jogged the last two blocks with his sole flapping against pavement. By the time he pushed through the side entrance, his phone read 12:09.
The time clock beeped. CROSS, LUCIEN. SHIFT START. Nine minutes late.
"Cross."
Lucien turned. The boss stood in the hallway outside the break room, clipboard in hand. Greaves. Mid-forties, thinning hair, permanent expression of mild inconvenience. He'd been running Carver Street for six years and would probably run it for six more. Some people found their level and stayed there.
"Sorry. Bus ran behind."
Greaves waved it off. "You're here. That's what matters." He held out the clipboard. "Inventory's on the second page. Storage B and C need logging before six. Auditors coming Monday and I'm not explaining gaps."
Lucien took the clipboard. Scanned the list. Containment supplies, emergency equipment, ration packs for extended lockdowns. Nothing complicated.
"Should be done by four," he said.
"Good." Greaves was already turning away. "I'll be in the office. Paperwork."
"You're staying?"
"Until the inventory's filed. Then I'm gone." Greaves paused at the office door. "Don't burn the place down."
Everyone said that. Lucien had never understood why.
He headed for the control room. The hallway lights buzzed overhead, one of them flickering near the supply closet. Same one as Wednesday. Same one as last month. Some things never got fixed. You learned to walk past them.
The control room was empty. Anthony's shift had ended at midnight—he'd left everything logged and the monitors cycling through their feeds. Lucien settled into his chair, the one with the squeaky wheel that maintenance had promised to replace since March.
Three monitors. Twelve camera feeds. The rift on camera four, shimmering behind its barriers. Rift 23-D. D-rank. Stable since 2019.
Lucien set the clipboard on the desk and pulled up the inventory system on the secondary monitor. Storage B first. Then C. Then done.
Outside, the city was quiet. The access road empty. The containment field hummed its low constant note, the same frequency it had held for years.
He thought about Leo's bag. The photo the kid had sent before bed—overstuffed, definitely more than three shirts, the speaker wedged in the side pocket. Lucien had texted back a single word: really?
No response. Leo was asleep. Tomorrow they'd sort it out. Tomorrow they'd be on the road.
Lucien opened the first inventory file and started counting.
Storage B took an hour. Storage C took another forty minutes.
Lucien logged the last entry at 2:14 AM and pushed back from the desk. His neck popped. His eyes burned from screen glow.
The break room coffee had been sitting since Anthony's shift. Burnt, lukewarm, closer to sludge than liquid. Lucien poured a cup anyway and added enough sugar to mask the taste.
He leaned against the counter, letting his legs rest. The auxiliary monitor by the microwave showed regional rift activity—a map of southern California dotted with status indicators. Green for stable. Yellow for elevated. Red for breach.
Everything green.
A ping.
Yellow, flickering at the edge of the map. Far northeast, somewhere past San Bernardino, near the desert border. The indicator blinked once. Twice. Then settled back to green.
Lucien glanced at it. Looked away.
Sensor glitches happened. If it was real, the stations out there would handle it. That was the point of the network. Redundancy. A hundred people watching a hundred rifts so no single monitor had to carry the weight.
He finished his coffee. Rinsed the mug. Left it in the sink for the morning crew.
The control room was unchanged. Monitors cycling. Feeds rotating. The rift on camera four, pulsing behind its barriers. Same rhythm. Same shimmer.
2:47 AM.
Lucien checked his phone. No new messages. Leo still asleep, bag still overpacked, trip still happening in nine hours.
He pulled up the inventory report, formatted it for the shared drive, and sent it. Done. Greaves would find it in the morning. The auditors would have their numbers. Everyone happy.
Three hours until dawn.
Lucien leaned back in his chair. The wheel squeaked. The containment field hummed. Somewhere in the building, a pipe rattled—old infrastructure settling, nothing more.
He closed his eyes. Just for a second.
The rift pulsed.
The monitors glowed.
Normal.
Then something hit the building.
The sound came from the east corridor. Metal buckling. Concrete cracking. A deep structural impact that Lucien felt in his chest before he heard it with his ears. The monitors flickered. The lights stuttered. His coffee mug rattled in the sink down the hall.
Lucien was on his feet before his chair stopped spinning.
The office door swung open. Greaves stood in the frame, papers in hand, face pinched.
"What was that?"
"East corridor." Lucien was surprised his voice worked. "Something hit the building."
"Hit it how?"
"I don't know."
Greaves set the papers down. Slow. Deliberate. "Go take a look. I'll check the feeds from here."
Standard protocol. Human staff investigate first. Call in Awakened if necessary. Most disturbances were nothing. Vandals. Equipment failures. Animals in the ventilation. The system worked because most emergencies weren't.
Lucien walked toward the east corridor.
Each step felt too loud against the linoleum. The main lights had stabilized, but just barely—they pulsed at the edge of perception, a faint strobe that made the hallway stretch longer than it should. Emergency strips glowed orange along the baseboards. Shadows pooled in the corners.
Twenty feet to the turn.
Lucien's hands were shaking. He shoved them in his pockets. It didn't help.
This wasn't his job. He monitored cameras. He counted supplies. He was here because a billing error hit his account and he wanted Leo to have spending money at the beach. That was all. He wasn't supposed to walk toward whatever had cracked the building's foundation.
Fifteen feet.
The containment hum held steady. The rift wasn't breaching. If the rift was breaching, alarms would be screaming, Awakened would be mobilizing, and Lucien would be sprinting the other direction. None of that was happening.
That should have been comforting.
Ten feet.
The air changed. Lucien noticed it in his lungs first—a heaviness. A density. Then the smell reached him. Copper. Something organic underneath.
He slowed.
Five feet.
The corner waited. Storage rooms on the left. Maintenance access on the right. Beyond that, the loading bay. Reinforced doors. Security cameras. Badge access.
A sound reached him. Breathing. Ragged and wet, catching on something broken inside.
Not his breathing.
Lucien stopped.
His hand found the wall. Concrete. Cold. Real. He pressed his palm flat and made himself inhale.
Protocol said announce yourself. Identify. Assess. The training was there, buried somewhere. He knew what he was supposed to do.
His mouth stayed shut.
Two feet from the corner. He could see the edge of something on the floor. The lip of a shadow that didn't belong. A shape. A boot.
Movement.
The breathing turned into a voice. Thin. Broken.
"Don't—" A wet cough. "Don't come closer."
Lucien's feet had stopped. His heart hammered in his throat, his wrists, behind his eyes. The copper taste coated his tongue now, thick and real.
Ahead, past the corner, someone was dying.
He didn't step forward. Not yet.