The stranger at the corridor's end didn't hurry. That was the first thing Ira noticed that unnerving, leisurely pace. They moved as if the very air belonged to them, treating the thousands of shimmering threads lining the walls as nothing more than cheap wallpaper.
Ira's heart was still a frantic hammer against her ribs, the adrenaline from crushing the red fragment refusing to subside. Her palm throbbed with a rhythmic, searing heat. When she looked down, she saw faint crimson fissures webbing across her skin, pulsing in and out of existence like something living was trying to breathe beneath her flesh.
"This isn't real." She repeated the words like a prayer, her voice barely audible over the hum of the corridor.
The corridor stretched beyond all reason. There was no ceiling in sight, just an endless gallery of drifting fibers cerulean, gold, emerald, and deep violet. And the red ones. She swallowed hard, realizing the suffocating gray threads from her apartment had vanished entirely. Even the floor beneath her felt different; it was solid, yet it shifted with a subtle, organic tremor, as if she were standing on the back of a massive, breathing beast.
As the figure drew closer tall, draped in a dark coat with hands shoved deep into pockets Ira took an instinctive step back. The corridor reacted instantly. Several nearby threads shivered, their cool tips brushing her shoulder and triggering a violent rush of memories. Voices of strangers, hurried apologies, and quiet, devastating lies flooded her mind in a dizzying blur.
She gasped, jerking away as if burned.
"Careful," the stranger remarked. The voice was calm, devoid of anger, but carried a terrifying weight of certainty. "You're bleeding into them."
"I'm what?" Her voice cracked, hitting a note of pure hysteria. She stared at her hand again just as the red cracks flared, causing a nearby blue thread to wince and dim.
A cold pit formed in her stomach. "I didn't mean to," she blurted out, her defense sounding weak even to her own ears. "I didn't even know this place existed."
The stranger stopped just a few paces away. Up close, he appeared younger than she'd imagined perhaps late twenties. His eyes were sharp, carrying a shadow of exhaustion that suggested he'd seen far too much. He studied the corruption on her hand before finally meeting her gaze.
"You crushed a red fragment," he stated. It wasn't an accusation; it was an autopsy of her current situation.
"I panicked."
"Evidently." The simplicity of his agreement made her chest tighten. He wasn't surprised at all. "You weren't supposed to survive the feedback from that," he added casually.
Ira's breath hitched. "Survive?"
He tilted his head, reassessing her like a specimen under glass. "That fragment wasn't a stray. It was marked."
"Marked by who?"
A long, heavy silence stretched between them. "That's a conversation for a time we don't currently have."
The fear in Ira's gut curdled into a sharp, jagged anger. "You don't get to say that! Someone was at my door. Those gray threads were crawling into my home they knew my name!" Her voice shook, but she pushed through. "You said 'beginner.' What does that mean? How many of you are doing this?"
The lights in the corridor flickered in sympathy with her temper. The stranger glanced at the ceiling, then back at her, his expression darkening. "Lower your voice. This place listens."
That silenced her faster than a threat would have. She lowered her voice to a jagged whisper. "Answer me."
He watched her for a moment before letting out a slow, measured exhale. "Broken promises don't just vanish, Ira. They are recorded, stored, and tracked."
"By you?"
"By the Network."
The name felt like a weight dropping into a deep well. They belong to us, the text had said. Ira's fingers curled instinctively, remembering the ghost of the jar she'd held.
"You've been collecting them outside the sanctioned channels," he continued. "That creates an imbalance."
"I wasn't trying to break your system!" she snapped. "They just fall. I see them, and no one else does. I thought I was helping."
"You aren't the only one who sees them."
Her heart skipped. "There are others?"
"A few."
Relief flickered in her mind for a heartbeat, only to be extinguished by suspicion. "Are they here? Working for this... Network?"
"Some."
She hated the vagueness. "Why me? Why can I see them?"
Instead of answering, his gaze drifted to the thick red threads on the far wall. "You shouldn't have been able to touch a red fragment without training," he said quietly.
Training. The word made her feel dangerously out of her depth. "I didn't ask for any of this."
"No one does."
A gold thread drifted down from above, brushing her skin before she could react. A wave of warmth a memory of a father promising to stay by a hospital bed flooded her, then vanished into a biting cold as the thread snapped. Ira's knees buckled. The stranger moved with surprising speed, catching her by the elbow.
"Don't touch the gold ones," he warned sharply.
She pulled away, embarrassed. "I didn't try to."
"You're unstable. Crushing that fragment broke something open inside you."
"Then fix it!" she challenged. "If you're so damn organized, fix it!"
His jaw tightened. "It doesn't work like that. You aren't registered with the Network."
"Registered? So you tag people? Put them on a list?"
He didn't deny it. "We keep track of everything, Ira. Forty-three blue. Two gold. One red."
The precision was terrifying. "You were watching me. For how long?"
"Long enough."
The lights dimmed further. He glanced over his shoulder, his voice urgent now. "We're out of time. They've noticed the spike from the red energy you released. They'll want you processed."
"Processed how?"
He hesitated, and that silence was more chilling than any explanation. "They'll remove the faculty that allows you to see. They'll hollow you out until you're just another person walking past the threads."
Ira instinctively covered her eyes. "You can't let them take that."
"They can."
A low vibration began to hum through the floorboards. Far down the hall, the shadows between the threads began to coalesce. Three figures were approaching, their movements synchronized and swift.
"If I go with you," Ira asked, her heart racing, "do I get a choice?"
"That depends on how useful you are."
Useful. Not safe. Just an asset.
The shadows were close enough now that she could see the faint silver insignia on their coats. Uniforms.
"Fine," she said, her head spinning. "I'll go with you."
"Are you sure?"
"No. But staying here seems like a death sentence."
She took a step toward him, but that movement was the catalyst. The red cracks on her palm flared with a violent light. The corridor shrieked, threads snapped like whipcord, and the floor beneath her split with a sickening crack.
Ira lost her footing. The stranger lunged for her, his fingers brushing her wrist, but he couldn't get a grip.
She fell.
Tangled, screaming light rushed up to meet her as she plummeted through the gap. The last thing she saw was the stranger's face leaning over the edge the calm was gone, replaced by a look of genuine, desperate worry.
Then, the world went black.