Rain hit the windshield in rhythmic bursts, blurring the neon city into streaks of red and blue.
Arin Sen leaned forward over the steering wheel, eyes half-closed from exhaustion.
He'd spent the last week running sleep-deprivation trials for his lab — studying brain fatigue, not death, not souls.
But tonight, death was about to find him anyway.
The traffic light flickered yellow. For a heartbeat, time itself seemed to hesitate.
Then — the blinding glare of another car.
Metal screamed. Glass shattered.
Darkness.
When he opened his eyes, the world was gone.
He stood on a street of shifting light, buildings rising and melting like reflections in water.
Above him hung a clock, enormous and suspended in the sky. Its hands ticked backward.
03 : 00.
---
Arin's breath fogged in the still air. His pulse should have been racing, but there was no heartbeat—only a faint hum that seemed to come from everywhere.
He walked forward. Each step rippled the ground like disturbed water.
A woman's voice whispered behind him.
"Not yet."
He turned—but no one was there.
The clock ticked down.
02 : 54
The hum grew louder, vibrating through his skull. Shapes flickered at the edge of vision—people, maybe—but when he looked directly, they vanished.
He shouted into the silence.
"Where am I?"
The city answered with an echo that wasn't his own voice:
"Borderline."
The word sliced through him like static. He clutched his chest, gasping—
—and the world shattered into light.
Beeping. Shouting. Hands pressing against him.
"Stay with us! He's back!"
Arin's eyes flew open to fluorescent hospital lights. He coughed hard, lungs burning.
A nurse leaned over him, tears in her eyes.
"You were gone three minutes," she said.
Arin blinked, hearing the echo of that other word still ringing in his head.
Borderline.
---