"Rey, you need to see this. The quantum resonance readings are off the charts."
"Define 'off the charts,' Marcus." Rey didn't look up from his workstation, his fingers moving quickly over the holographic displays as he adjusted the settings for the energy core. "Because last time you said that, it was a 0.03% variance that any first-year physics student could explain."
"Try 200.35% variance and climbing."
That got Rey's attention. "What?!"
He turned around in his chair, his eyes immediately locking onto the massive cylindrical core humming at the centre of the lab. The air felt electric, making the hairs on his arms stand up.
"That's impossible," Rey muttered, but his hands were already flying over the control interface. Numbers flashed before his eyes: energy output, containment field stability, and quantum flux ratios. "The theoretical maximum for this configuration is…"
"I know what the theoretical maximum is." Marcus sounded panicked. "I helped you calculate it three days ago. This thing is operating at levels that should have torn reality apart by now."
Rey's thoughts raced as he considered what could be wrong. Was it a sensor malfunction? A calibration issue? Or maybe even sabotage?
But the readings were consistent across all systems, and the core's performance was undeniably real. They were witnessing something that shouldn't be possible based on everything they understood about physics.
"Maybe we miscalculated," Rey said, though he didn't believe it himself. "Maybe the quantum foam interaction creates a feedback loop that…"
BZZZZT. BZZZZT. BZZZZT.
The alarm interrupted their conversation abruptly. Red lights glowed everywhere in the lab, and every screen displayed the same warning: CONTAINMENT BREACH IMMINENT.
"Oh, shit." Marcus backed away from the core. "Rey, we need to evacuate. Now."
"No." Rey's fingers flew over the emergency controls. "I can stabilise it; I just need to redirect the overflow through the secondary containment matrix and…"
"Rey, GET AWAY FROM THAT THING!"
The core pulsed once, then twice. On the third pulse, reality seemed to wobble.
Rey felt it in his bones that something was wrong as his vision blurred. The numbers on his screen no longer made sense, and the laws of physics started to feel more like suggestions than actual rules
"System overload in three... two..." The automated voice stayed annoyingly calm while everything else was falling apart around them.
"I can fix this," Rey insisted, even as sparks rained down from overhead conduits. "I just need to…"
The world exploded into white light.
—
The first thing he noticed was the biting cold and dampness around him, along with the awful stench of garbage and human waste.
Rey's eyes snapped open, and immediately he wished they hadn't. He was lying face-down in what could charitably be called an alley but looked more like an open sewer. His cheek was pressed against something slimy that he really didn't want to identify.
"What the hell?" His voice was a raspy whisper, and it sounded weak and… foreign. He tried to push himself up, but his arms felt like overcooked noodles. "Marcus? Marcus, where are you?"
There was silence, no humming machinery above, and this didn't look like the controlled lab he was in a few seconds ago. The only thing he could make out was the distant sound of shouting and the skitter of something moving through the shadows.
Rey managed to roll onto his back, gasping at the effort. His hands came into view, and he stared at them in horror.
These weren't his hands. His hands were calloused from years of working with tools and scarred from a dozen lab accidents. These hands were pale and thin, with dirt caked under the fingernails.
"Okay," he said to the grey sky above. "Okay. Think logically. Explosion. Hospital. Hallucination. That's what this is. Some kind of coma dream brought on by…"
Suddenly, a purple window appeared in his peripheral vision, displaying text that scrolled across it in neat, digital lines.
>> FATAL ERROR. UNEXPECTED REALITY SHIFT. ANALYZING... HOST BIOLOGY COMPROMISED. RECALIBRATING... WARNING: HOST VULNERABILITY DETECTED.
"What the…" Rey blinked hard, but the display remained. The text looked like a computer readout. But computers didn't just appear in mid-air.
"This has to be brain damage. Temporal lobe seizure. Visual cortex misfiring. That's the only explanation that makes sense."
>> SYSTEM INITIALIZATION COMPLETE. TRANSLATION PROTOCOL ACTIVE. WELCOME, USER.
"User?" Rey laughed nervously. "User of what? Arrrggghhh… I should have listened to Marcus and left when he said to. Probably I won't be having this psychotic break in a hospital bed."
As he sat up, a sound made him freeze: a wet, chittering noise from behind him. Rey turned his head toward the source and felt his rational worldview take another beating.
The air was... wrong. It rippled like water, forming a dark tear about six feet tall. Through it, Rey caught glimpses of something that hurt to look at directly: twisted geometries and colours that didn't belong in any spectrum he knew.
The computer overlay appeared in his vision again.
>> DIMENSIONAL RIFT IDENTIFIED!
"What the…" Rey's voice cracked. "That's not possible. Dimensional rifts don't just…"
He paused as he saw something crawl out of the tear. It had eight legs, crystal claws, and a head full of teeth."
"Oh God. Oh God, oh God, oh God." Rey scrambled backwards on his hands and knees, his weak body betraying him as he tried to get away. "This isn't real. This can't be real."
The creature's compound eyes fixed on him, and it made a sound like glass grinding against bone.
Rey tried to run.
His legs gave out after three steps. He crashed into a pile of garbage, gasping as pain shot through his ribs. Behind him, crystal claws clicked against the stone, coming closer.
"No, no, NO!" He crawled forward desperately, looking for anywhere to hide, anywhere to escape. But the alley was a dead end. Brick walls on three sides, and that thing blocking his only exit.
The creature chittered again, taking its time now as if it knew Rey was trapped.
Rey pressed his back against the alley wall, hyperventilating. "This is just trauma. Explosion damage. My brain is making all this up because…"
The creature lunged.
Rey threw himself sideways, purely on instinct. Crystal claws gouged deep furrows in the brick where his head had been. And the sound was very, very real.
"Okay!" he screamed, his voice breaking. "Okay, it's real! You're real! What do you want?!"
It lunged again.
This time, Rey had nowhere to dodge. He was going to die in a filthy alley, killed by something that shouldn't exist, in a body that wasn't his own.
That's when the purple display flared brighter:
>> CRITICAL THREAT DETECTED. SURVIVAL PROTOCOL ACTIVATED. ANALYZING ENVIRONMENT...
Lines appeared in Rey's vision, like a system scanning before focusing to highlight some objects around the alley: a metal barrel, a rope, and a wooden crate. Trajectory lines connected them, showing angles, stress points, and timing windows.
"What?" Rey gasped, staring at the overlays. His engineering brain kicked in despite his terror, recognising the physics calculations. "A deadfall trap? But I don't have time to…"
The creature charged again.
Rey's survival instincts overrode his panic. He grabbed the rope with shaking hands, threw it over a protruding iron sign, and tied it to the barrel in a slip knot. His fingers moved automatically, muscle memory from years of rigging lab equipment taking over.
As he did, he occasionally checked how close the creature was.
It rounded the refuse pile, claws clicking against stone. Rey grabbed the rope, looped it around the barrel, and ran the other end through a gap in the overhead iron sign.
The physics were elementary: mechanical advantage, gravitational potential energy, and timing.
"Come on, you ugly bastard," Rey called out, positioning himself directly under his makeshift trap. "Come and get me."
The creature didn't need a second invitation. It launched itself forward, spreading its mandibles wide.
Rey yanked the rope.
Forty pounds of metal barrel, accelerated by gravity and guided by the iron sign's framework, caught the creature's centre mass. The impact drove it into the alley floor with a wet crunch, killing it in an instant.
Rey stood there, panting, staring at the twitching remains. The purple display flickered one more time:
>> THREAT NEUTRALIZED. ANALYZING LOCAL ENVIRONMENT... CLASSIFICATION: UNKNOWN REALITY. RECOMMENDATION: SEEK SHELTER AND INFORMATION.
Rey looked around at the grimy alley, at his unfamiliar hands, at the dimensional tear that was already starting to close.
There was no Marcus, no lab, and this place felt strange for some reason. "Where the hell am I?"