His fingertip waited a single trembling atom above YES.
"Caleb," Detective Stone said, the name firm as a hand on a shoulder. "Look at me."
Caleb didn't. He looked at the space where light pretended to be matter, where two options hung with the politeness of knives laid out on linen. He could feel the card's edges against his left palm—cool, dry, insistently real.
Officer Brooks shifted her weight on the bed. The cheap frame answered with a small whine. Ms. Parker didn't move at all. Somewhere outside, a door thudded, and the sound came into the room thin and late, like mail delivered to the wrong address.
"Put the card on the desk," Stone said. "Do it slow."
Caleb's fingertip lifted a breath. The YES dimmed from the attention it wasn't getting. He set the rectangle on the blotter, careful, as if the wood were waiting to judge his manners. The white ring stared at the ceiling in perfect geometry.
The buttons didn't go away.
They hovered in front of him exactly where they'd been, crisp and alive. Stone's face cut through them when he leaned closer, his features briefly overprinted with NO, the outline in his cheekbone. He didn't blink at the phantom.
Ms. Parker found a voice. "Detective, unless you have a warrant—"
"I'm asking," Stone said, mild but not soft. He kept his eyes on the card. "Caleb, step back from the desk."
"What are you seeing?" Brooks asked, eyes flicking from the rectangle to Caleb's face. "Be specific."
"A rectangle," Caleb said. "Black. Minimalist branding. 'SIN' on the back. 'INFINITE' on the front."
"Anything else?" Brooks asked.
"Gloss level—matte with metallic undertones," he said. He let a tiny smile rest where it wouldn't offend anyone. "Good design."
Stone reached into his jacket and came out with a quart-sized clear bag. He pinched it open, the plastic making a wet whisper.
"We're not seizing property," Ms. Parker said, quick. "We're not agreeing to a search."
Stone kept the bag still, watching Caleb the way people watch dogs they don't know yet. "Then we're voluntarily putting it somewhere safe while we keep talking."
Caleb looked at the card. The air above it was quiet, flowers of text already gone to seed, only the question surviving.
[Do you stake your life to begin the Infinite Dimensional Adventure?][YES / NO]
He heard his own voice say, "What would 'safe' look like to you, Detective?"
"Not in your hand," Stone said.
Brooks's pen hovered again, a bird afraid of landing. "Caleb, you look pale."
"I don't sun," he said.
"Put the card in the bag," Stone said.
Caleb reached.
The instant his fingers closed around the edges, there it was again—that micro-torque in the air, like a thought tightening. He slid the rectangle forward. The buttons followed, keeping station at arm's length, as if they were attached to his regard.
Stone brought the bag closer.
Caleb started to drop the card inside. He could feel the plastic licking at his knuckles, the air inside the bag warmer from Stone's hand.
The card didn't slip in.
It hung at the mouth of the bag like two magnets disagreeing. The plastic quivered a fraction, the rectangle barely touching it, not quite willing to belong. The bag crackled.
Stone frowned. "Push."
"I am," Caleb said.
"May I?" Stone took the card by the corner, his fingers careful. Both men pushed, plastic buckling.
The corner entered the bag and then the bag… learned it didn't like the idea. The card eased back out with a slow elasticity, like the air had viscosity, like physics was making an exception nobody had voted on.
Stone went very still. "Huh."
Brooks took in a sharp breath. Ms. Parker whispered, "Okay," to nothing in particular.
Stone stepped back the distance of one thought and let the plastic fall. "All right. That's a new trick."
"It's a card," Caleb said, because lies should be simple enough to survive.
Stone didn't push the lie or the plastic. He put the bag on the desk, thumbs hooked in the pockets of his slacks, and looked at Caleb as if he'd just found the edge of a map. "You seeing anything I'm not?" he asked conversationally.
Caleb let his silence be the answer.
Brooks turned the notebook around in her lap, eyes like soft lamps. "What are you feeling?"
"Observed," Caleb said.
"By us?"
"By the test," he said.
Stone nodded once, as if approval were a coin. "All right, kid. Let me try something." He reached with two fingers poised to retrieve a live wire and pressed their pads against the glossy—no, matte—front of the card.
Nothing happened.
The buttons didn't flick. The air didn't ripple. Stone's fingers rested a heartbeat, then two. He pulled back and looked at his skin like he expected a stamp. "Feels like… a card," he said, slightly annoyed to be right.
Ms. Parker exhaled an idea. "Could it be some kind of augmented reality? Caleb, do you wear contacts?"
"No overlays," he said.
"Don't help me, Counselor," Stone murmured, but it wasn't sharp. He returned his gaze to Caleb. "Whatever's going on, it's interested in you." He paused. "That makes me very interested in you."
Brooks slid off the bed and came a step closer, palms half up. "Caleb. If something is trying to make you decide something, you don't have to cooperate. You can refuse. You can set it down and step away."
"Sure," he said.
He didn't step away.
The YES hung there, a quiet coin waiting to be picked up. The NO was a door painted on a wall—perfect, convincing, not necessarily usable.
Stone's voice lost more of its Sunday. "You don't press any invisible buttons in my presence, son. That's a rule I'm inventing on the spot."
"I didn't know you had jurisdiction over metaphors," Caleb said.
"Over rooms where people bleed after," Stone said, "I like to have it."
The room smelled faintly of disinfectant and the lemon cleaner the custodial crew used on Thursdays. The radiator's soft ticking marked the impatience of things that didn't care about people.
Caleb reached and angled the card, watching how the ring caught the light. The buttons stayed anchored in front of him, motionless and patient. Up close, the white wasn't flat—it had texture, like paper lit from inside.
Brooks's voice softened. "You're shaking."
He looked at his hands. They weren't. He found that funny, and then he didn't.
"Caleb." Ms. Parker edged forward. "Honey, this is—"
He glanced at her. "I'm not your honey."
"I know," she said. "I'm trying to help."
"By what mechanism?" he asked, genuinely curious.
She blinked. "By being on your side."
He nodded once, a courtesy.
Stone dragged the desk chair two inches back with a rasp. "Let me put it like this. If you push whatever you're thinking about pushing and you drop dead, I get paperwork and nightmares. If you don't push it and hand me that thing, we get to walk this out slow and boring. I'm a fan of boring."
Caleb watched the two white glyphs. "If I drop dead, the paperwork will be brief."
"Not the comfort I was looking for," Stone said.
A laugh tried to happen in Caleb's throat and chose not to. He let the card rest, feeling the way its weight refused to be guessed. He had the strange impression it wasn't heavy or light; it was important.
Brooks lifted her free hand to shoulder height, palm open. "Can I see?"
He offered the rectangle without letting go. She touched the edge with one finger. Her skin made contact; the world didn't react. "Texture," she murmured. "Like… graphite."
"Storm cloud," Caleb said.
She shot him the smallest glance of surprise, as if they'd agreed on a secret word.
Stone cut through the air with his hand. "Enough. Caleb, step back. Put the card down. Keep your hands where I can see them."
Caleb did neither. He angled his body a fraction so the desk edge kissed his hip, a minor barricade. He felt the small ache of pressure and liked it; it meant he was still a person and not just a subject.
The YES glowed very slightly as if heartbeat-synced. The NO refused to be jealous.
"I'm going to open the door," Stone said evenly. "We're going to get an evidence tech up here. You're going to sit on your hands like a statue of good decisions."
"I'd rather not," Caleb said.
"Not a menu."
Stone took two steps and put a hand on the knob.
And then the card hummed.
Not sound—he still couldn't call it sound. A filament of attention ran through the room, thin as wire, tight as a drawn bow. The ring on the card tightened, the white narrowing, like an aperture closing to sharpen focus.
[Timer Engaged: 00:10]
The numbers weren't numbers so much as an idea of numbers: ten, then nine, changing not by turning segments but by being replaced with new truth.
Caleb's chest forgot the rules against sudden movement. He took a breath that arrived from far away.
"Talk to me," Stone said instantly. "What just changed?"
"Ten," Caleb said.
"Ten what?"
"Seconds," Caleb said. He watched the 08 become 07. The buttons stayed where they were, faithful. YES did not get brighter. NO did not get friendlier.
"Caleb." Brooks's voice sharpened without getting louder. "Can you cancel it?"
"I don't see a third option," he said.
Stone left the door. "New rule," he said. "No one in this room presses anything for ten seconds. We all survive and we celebrate with bad coffee."
"Seven," Caleb said.
"Count it," Stone ordered.
"Six."
Brooks's pen clattered as she dropped it and stepped in toward him, hand extended. "Give me the card."
"Five," Caleb said. He looked at her hand. It looked like a promise and a threat. He didn't take it.
Ms. Parker said his name again, small and useless. "Caleb."
"Four."
Stone put his palm out, the universal sign for Stop reinventing the wheel. "Don't touch it."
"Three," Caleb said.
"Listen to me," Stone said, the calm peeling. "No hero moves. We let the thing time out."
"Two," Caleb said.
"Caleb." Brooks's eyes were wide, not with fear but with the precise awareness of a person counting the places a day can break. "Look at me."
He did. For the length of one digit, he did.
"One," he said.
He didn't know if zero would be a number or a decision. He didn't know if the world would punish him for cowardice or for daring.
He knew only that the room had the geometry of a moment he would never escape, and that sometimes doors weren't painted on walls at all.
Caleb lifted his finger into the bright.
He pressed YES.