Attendance was taken at 8:32 AM.
Ren knew the time because the clock on the wall clicked over with a soft plastic snap that arrived half a breath after he saw the second hand move.
Still wrong. Still late.
He sat in the third row, left arm bound tight against his chest, shoulder throbbing in a dull, rhythmic ache that matched the lag in the room. The classroom smelled like wet jackets, floor wax, and marker ink. Normal. Almost comforting.
Almost.
Mr. Calderon stood at the front, flipping through his clipboard. He was a tall man with a calm voice and the permanent, tired patience of someone who taught teenagers for a living.
"Settle down," he said.
The words reached Ren's ears before the man finished shaping them with his lips.
Ren lowered his gaze to his notebook.
Rule #6, he reminded himself. When sound breaks, run.
But there was nowhere to run. He was trapped in AP History.
"Alright," Mr. Calderon continued, clicking his pen. "Let's do attendance."
Ren's pen hovered over the page. Jian sat two seats over, hunched forward, chin in his hand, eyes unfocused. He hadn't looked at Ren once since the incident in the stairwell.
Good, Ren thought. If Jian is quiet, it means he's calculating.
"Alvarez?"
"Here."
"Bennett?"
"Here."
The responses came normally. Mostly. Some voices arrived early, overlapping with the teacher's call. Some arrived late, echoing faintly. The lag wavered, unstable but contained, like a video buffering on bad Wi-Fi.
Ren counted his breaths. One. Two.
"Morales?"
The room didn't answer.
Ren's head snapped up before he could stop himself.
Morales. Evan Morales.
A girl near the window frowned, looking around. "Who?"
Mr. Calderon glanced up, confused. "Morales. Evan."
Silence stretched.
It wasn't the normal awkward silence of a missing student. This silence had weight. It pressed against Ren's eardrums. It felt like fingers walking down his spine.
"That's weird," Mr. Calderon muttered, checking his clipboard. "He was marked present yesterday."
Ren's ears rang. High pitched. Piercing.
Jian's foot tapped once. Stopped.
"Probably absent," Mr. Calderon said after a moment, shrugging. He made a small mark on the paper. "Moving on."
The pressure eased instantly.
Ren's lungs finally pulled in air.
The class resumed like nothing had happened. Pens scratched against paper. Someone coughed. A chair scraped, its sound arriving late again. The narrative had corrected itself.
Ren leaned toward Jian, keeping his voice barely above a breath. "They said his name."
Jian didn't look at him. "Yeah."
"And nothing happened."
"Something happened," Jian replied quietly, his eyes fixed on the blackboard. "It just didn't happen here."
Ren swallowed. "Is that… good?"
"No," Jian said. "It means the system accepted the correction."
Ren stared at the whiteboard, the dates of the Industrial Revolution blurring together. "Correction for what?"
Jian's jaw tightened. "For him not being here anymore."
A ripple moved through the room.
Not on the floor. On the ceiling.
Ren noticed it just as the fluorescent lights flickered. The hum overhead dropped in pitch, stretching low and wrong—WUUUB—like a recording being slowed down.
Several students groaned.
"Ugh, are the lights dying?" someone muttered.
Mr. Calderon tapped the switch. The lights steadied.
Too quickly.
Ren's shadow twitched under his desk. He pressed his shoe down on it.
Don't acknowledge. Don't react.
"Ren."
The voice came from behind him.
It wasn't loud. It wasn't distorted. It sounded perfectly, terrifyingly normal.
That was the problem.
Ren turned slowly.
The seat behind him was empty.
The voice came again, closer to his ear. Wet. Breathing.
"I'm here."
Ren's heart slammed against his ribs.
Jian stood abruptly, his chair screeching as it scraped back. The sound arrived a full second late, jarring everyone.
"Bathroom," Jian said sharply to Mr. Calderon. "Medical emergency. Ren's nose is bleeding again."
Mr. Calderon blinked, confused by the interruption. "Both of you?"
Ren didn't wait for permission. He grabbed his bag and followed Jian into the hallway, his pulse roaring in his ears.
The door shut behind them.
The hallway was empty.
Too empty.
The ambient noise of the school—the distant chatter, lockers slamming, footsteps—was muted. It sounded like someone had wrapped the world in heavy cotton.
Ren leaned against the lockers, dizzy. "Someone spoke to me."
Jian's face went pale. "Say that again."
"A voice," Ren said, wiping sweat from his forehead. "It said, 'I'm here.'"
Jian cursed under his breath. "That's not possible."
"Why?"
"Because," Jian said carefully, "names that get corrected don't answer roll call."
Ren's stomach dropped. "But he did. Didn't he?"
Jian didn't respond.
The air behind Ren rippled.
Not visually. Audibly.
Scrape.
Ren spun around.
Behind them, in the middle of the empty hallway, stood a school desk.
Just one.
It hadn't been there a second ago. It didn't fade in; it glitched into existence—a flicker of wireframe, then solid wood and metal.
A boy sat in it.
Evan Morales looked exactly like he had in the stairwell. Same hoodie. Same backpack hooked over the chair leg.
But his eyes were wrong. They were unfocused, staring straight ahead at a blackboard that didn't exist.
He raised his hand slowly. Mechanical. Jerky.
"Here," Evan said.
The word echoed.
Here... here... here...
Then it kept echoing, stacking on itself, each repetition quieter, flatter, less human.
Ren staggered back, hitting the lockers. "You said he couldn't answer."
"I said he shouldn't," Jian replied hoarsely, stepping between Ren and the desk.
Evan's head turned.
His gaze landed on Ren.
Recognition flickered in those dead eyes.
"Oh," Evan said softly. "You."
The hallway stretched. The lockers bent inward, metal groaning. Ren's ears popped as pressure built, like the moment before an elevator drops.
"I'm not supposed to be here," Evan continued calmly. "But they keep asking. They keep writing my name."
Ren felt something cold slide through his chest.
"Who keeps asking?" he whispered.
Evan smiled.
It wasn't malicious. It was tired.
"The class," he said. "The bell. The list. Every time they say my name, I wake up again."
The lights overhead burst.
POP.
Glass rained down.
Jian grabbed Ren's collar and yanked him backward as the desk scraped forward on its own, dragging Evan with it.
"Do not answer him!" Jian snapped. "Do not say his name!"
Evan's smile faltered. The echoes warped into a high-pitched screech.
The hallway folded inward like a closing book. Ren's shadow peeled away from his feet, stretching toward the desk, desperate to join the distortion.
Rule #6 screamed in his head. Distortion precedes manifestation.
This wasn't a manifestation. This was a response.
SCREEEEEEE!
The fire alarm shrieked.
This time, the sound arrived before the alarm lights flashed.
Everything snapped.
Ren blinked.
The hallway was empty.
No desk. No Evan. No broken lights. Just the deafening roar of the fire alarm and the flashing strobe lights.
Students poured out of classrooms, confused, annoyed, covering their ears.
Ren slid down the lockers, shaking uncontrollably.
Jian crouched in front of him, gripping his shoulders. "Listen to me," he said urgently, his voice barely audible over the alarm. "The system reset. The alarm broke the loop."
"He answered," Ren whispered. "He answered the roll call."
Jian nodded grimly.
"If attendance calls him again," Jian said, "you run."