The knock came like a metronome against the dorm's white door—three evenly spaced taps, patient enough to be confident. Caleb White set his mug on the coaster, smoothed the edge of his desk blotter so it lined up flush with the wood, and called, "It's open."
Detective Sam Stone filled the doorway first—broad-shouldered, tie loosened half an inch, the kind of posture that suggested he liked rooms to announce what was wrong with them. The fluorescent in the hallway cast warm light around him. Behind, Officer Lauren Brooks slipped in with a small notebook already unsleeved. Ms. Parker from Counseling trailed last, clutching her tote like she was late to a meeting she didn't want to attend.
"Caleb." Ms. Parker tried a smile that didn't survive the door closing. "We just want to ask a few questions."
"Of course." Caleb stood. The bed was made tight enough to bounce a quarter; the trash can held only a neatly tied bag; even the curtain cords hung level. He stepped to the side and gestured—a gloved usher to his own life. "Please."
Stone surveyed the space from the threshold. Something in his eyes ticked—calculation or boredom. He took in the books aligned by height, the single plant on the windowsill, the folded dish towel on the radiator. He pointed at the desk chair.
"You sit," he said amiably. "We'll take the cheap seats."
Caleb nodded and settled, hands folded on the blotter. Lauren perched on the edge of the bed, spine straight. Stone remained half-standing, half-leaning against the dresser like he needed leverage. Ms. Parker claimed the corner near the door and started worrying a pen cap between her teeth.
"Appreciate your time," Stone said. His voice had a Sunday warmth to it. "I'm Detective Stone. This is Officer Brooks. You know Ms. Parker."
"I do."
Brooks offered a quick, courteous smile. "Caleb, how are you feeling today?"
He considered. "I was going to say 'fine,' but that sounds like a court transcript. I'm functioning."
"Good." Stone slid a card across the desk without looking at it, like the motion had been rehearsed in a mirror. "You heard what happened downtown."
Caleb fixed his gaze on the wood grain, where someone else's coffee had once left a faint ring. "Everybody has."
"Chase Quinn," Stone said. "Name ring any bells?"
"He went to my middle school," Caleb said. "We weren't friends."
Ms. Parker cut in fast. "Caleb is a good student, Detective. He keeps to himself. He hasn't been in any—"
Stone lifted a palm. "I'm just making sure we're all looking at the same map."
Brooks glanced at her notes. "When was the last time you spoke with Chase?"
"In middle school," Caleb said. "We weren't friends."
Stone's mouth twitched. "You said that."
"I like the sound of it," Caleb said. "Accurate statements deserve to be repeated."
Ms. Parker gave him a small warning look that he pretended not to see.
Stone let a breath out through his nose—amused, maybe—and reached into his inner pocket. "Rumor mill's been busy. People like to attach stories to the kind of thing that makes their hands shake. There's talk about a 'game.' You heard that one?"
"People will say anything," Caleb said.
"True." Stone set a glossy rectangle on the blotter. It was a photo, not a card—angled shot of asphalt, numbered placards, a length of metal glinting with the innocent light of a noon sun. "The weapon they recovered. Long knife, illegal in this state if you carry it around like a personality. The blade's got an aftermarket polish. You could use it as a mirror if you were a narcissist or a barber."
Caleb kept his eyes on Stone's, not the picture. "You think I gave it to him?"
"I don't know what I think yet," Stone said. "That's why I ask questions."
Brooks's pen whispered. "Caleb, can you describe your day yesterday?"
"Class. Lunch. Studying. A run on the track." He kept the rhythm even, the beats distributed like weights on a scale. "Room. Shower. Sleep."
"Anybody with you?" Stone asked.
"Several thousand people in the city," Caleb said. "In the room, no."
"Funny," Stone said. "Officer, write down 'comedian.'"
Brooks's mouth almost twitched into a smile; she went back to writing. Ms. Parker's pen cap clicked between her fingers.
"Let me make this easy," Stone said, as if he were skipping to the end of a manual. "We have witnesses who place you near the commercial street last week. We have a classmate who turned a sidewalk into a war movie yesterday. We have an idea—just an idea—that something connects those two facts that isn't coincidence or city planning. I'm not here to scare you. I'm here to make sure there isn't a piece of—let's call it software—running around in kids' heads telling them to do stupid things."
"Software," Caleb repeated.
"Game. App. Cult with good branding. Pick a noun." Stone shrugged. "We don't like nouns that get people killed."
Brooks adjusted her posture. "Caleb, have you ever heard the term 'Infinite Dimensional Adventure'?"
He watched her face, not her pen. "Is that the part where you ask me to say the phrase so you can decide if my pupils change size?"
Brooks didn't flinch. "Is it familiar?"
"No," he lied, because he liked testing fences, and because telling the truth felt like letting someone else drive.
Stone's gaze was steady now, friendly stripped away. "If something… reaches you, kid, I'd rather you hand it to me than let it whisper in your ear."
"Detective," Ms. Parker said, "Caleb has rights."
"Everyone in this room does." Stone nodded toward the plant on the sill. "Even the cactus."
"It's a jade," Caleb said.
"Of course it is." Stone checked his watch as if the time, stubborn and linear, would explain everything. He looked around again, slower. "You keep a tidy ship."
"It stays quiet if you feed it routine," Caleb said.
Brooks looked up. "When did you last talk to Chase?"
"In middle school," Caleb said. "We weren't friends."
This time, nobody smiled.
A car alarm bleated somewhere on the lot, the sound arriving like a faint argument through the double-glazed window. Caleb's mug breathed steam into the still room. He imagined the steam making a pattern the way breath does on glass—a circle that would evaporate and mean nothing.
Stone tapped the desk with two fingers, all rhythm gone. "If you get anything weird—message, object, whatever—call me first." He slid another card over. "I don't care if it glows in the dark or sings opera. You call."
Caleb glanced at the card. Name, phone, embossed seal pressing through the paper like a thumbprint. He nodded and set it next to the other, aligning corners. "If it sings opera, I'm calling the music department."
Ms. Parker exhaled, a sound that wasn't quite a laugh.
Stone's eyes tracked the neat stack of cards for a fraction of a second too long, then moved to the wastebasket, the bed, the closet door. He gestured toward the nightstand. "Mind if I look?"
"It's boring," Caleb said.
"That's my favorite kind." Stone didn't wait for an invitation. He opened the top drawer with two fingers, polite as a doctor lifting a sheet. Socks, folded in pairs. A pack of index cards. A spare phone charger coiled with rubber bands. Stone closed the drawer, looked at Caleb, opened the second. Pens arranged by ink color, a stack of receipts bound with a binder clip, a tiny roll of clear tape. The third drawer: nothing but a playerless deck of blank white cards still in plastic and a black rectangle so thin it looked like a shadow someone had filed.
Caleb's neck prickled. He hadn't put a black card in his drawer.
Stone blinked once. "What's that?"
Brooks stood without meaning to, then checked herself and stayed by the bed. Ms. Parker shifted as if to block someone's view, then realized there was nothing to block.
"I don't know," Caleb said. The sentence felt true and false at once. He leaned forward as Stone lifted the rectangle out between thumb and forefinger. It wasn't glossy, not really—more a matte black with a metallic undertone, like graphite pretending to be a storm cloud. The back had a single word stamped into it, not printed.
SIN.
Stone turned it over. The face was spare: a white ring, thin and precise at the center, and the word INFINITE ghosted into the lower margin so faintly it almost wasn't there.
"College promo?" Stone asked. "Some kind of puzzle game?"
"It's not mine," Caleb said.
Stone's gaze slid from the card to Caleb to Ms. Parker. "You bring swag in here, Ms. Parker?"
She was busy going pale. "No."
Brooks's eyes were on the ring. "Looks like a gimmick."
Stone offered the card. "If it's yours, say so."
Caleb didn't reach immediately. He looked at the ring until the room seemed to tilt toward it, until the hum of the ceiling machine, the tick of the cheap clock, the weight of three other people became not background but cost. He put out his hand.
The card hit his skin and the air changed.
There was no sound—not really—but the room pinched with the sensation of something folding and unfolding itself right at the edge of what humans are built to notice. The temperature didn't drop; it clarified. The overhead light didn't flicker; it forgot its own job for a blink and remembered. Caleb inhaled because his body decided oxygen was a good idea.
The text appeared in the air above his desk—not on a screen, not projected, but simply there, letters with the weight of things that don't need permission.
[SPECIAL ITEM BOUND]
Caleb didn't move. Stone didn't move. Lauren didn't move. Ms. Parker's pen fell and hit the carpet soundlessly, as if the room were suddenly underwater.
No one else reacted to the text.
It hovered in stark white, crisp as a brand-new road sign, then evaporated at the edges like sugar meeting heat.
[SIN SEQUENCE ACTIVATING…]
Caleb's hands were both holding the card, but the card felt like it was holding him. Stone cleared his throat. "You okay, kid?"
Caleb heard the voice, filed it unprocessed.
[ACTIVATION FAILED — NO REINCARNATOR ID]
The letters were so clean they hurt to read. His pulse seemed to sync to a rhythm that wasn't the clock's or his own.
[CORRECTING…]
Stone reached toward the card. "Give me that for a second."
Caleb did not hand it over. He heard Ms. Parker say his name like a sentence that needed an object. Brooks took one step closer and stopped, eyes on Caleb's face.
The world narrowed to the rectangle in his palms and the space in front of his eyes where language made a machine out of the air.
The glow sharpened; the ring on the card seemed to draw breath.
[Do you stake your life to begin the Infinite Dimensional Adventure?]
Two buttons blinked into being below the sentence, clean and luminous, each with its own gravity, each with a future nested inside it.
[YES / NO]
He could feel Stone's attention pressing him like a thumb through a shirt. He could feel Brooks's caution, the way some people lean away from the edge of cliffs because their bodies distrust altitude. He could feel Ms. Parker's worry reaching for him like a hand under cold water.
None of them were looking at the text. None of them could see it. Or else they all could and were made of ice.
"Caleb?" Stone said, gentle and loaded, the name a fishing line cast into a lake. "You with me?"
Caleb blinked. The buttons did not waver. The left one—YES—was not brighter than the right. The right one—NO—was not safer than the left. They simply existed, options rendered like metric.
His mouth was dry. He looked at Stone as if he might borrow a line reading. Stone gave him a detective's patience, the kind that says This is the part where I find out if I like you.
Brooks's pen hovered an inch above her page. "Caleb, what are you holding?"
"A card," he said. He heard how calm he sounded and wondered if that would turn into a story about him later.
The air held still. The ring on the card was exactly the size of his thumbnail. His thumbnail was exactly the size of the ring.
He lifted his right hand an inch away, card balanced open on his left palm, the way you might hold a religious object you didn't belong to. His index finger hovered over the space where the buttons floated, though there was no surface to touch.
"Don't," Ms. Parker said softly, instinctively, to the wrong problem.
Stone's voice went flatter. "What's on that card?"
Caleb looked at the detective as if looking might change the question into an answer. The buttons waited. He could feel the way choices create heat. He could feel the room's geometry memorizing this moment for later.
He brought his fingertip down until it kissed air where there should have been nothing at all. The light under YES pulsed once as if greeting pressure, and the skin of his finger tingled like somebody had drawn a clean line through his fingerprint.
"Caleb," Stone said, not soft now.
He did not press. He hovered. The space between touch and confirmation narrowed, thin as a breath he hadn't yet let go of.
Outside, the car alarm finally choked and quit. Inside, the ring on the card focused to a pinhead and the white of the buttons became a color too bright to have a name.
The room held the pose—the detective in the door glow, the officer on the neat bed, the counselor with her empty hands, the kid with the card and the air that answered—and Caleb's fingertip waited a single trembling atom above YES.