The streets outside M.A.S.S. were a void, silent but for the whisper of rain against concrete. The glow of distant sodium lamps stretched in liquid smears across the wet tarmac, the smell of industrial sterility blowing through the air.

  Neither woman had wanted to come back. And yet, every other option had unraveled in their hands, leading back to the same place. They had circled the problem from every angle, grasping at alternatives that never quite settled, until, inevitably, they found themselves here, as if something had been steering them all along.

  Leaving the car buried in a dead end of the industrial estate, now the research facility loomed - monolithic, windowless - as they crouched in the shadows, watching for security patrols. The place gave off an institutional coldness, like an abandoned hospital where the voices had never stopped whispering.

  A circling drone hung in the air above the far side of the facility. Not the commercial kind - no palm-sized hobbyist quadcopter. This was heavier, built for security: a matte-black shell, rotating optics scanning in erratic bursts, its movements sharp and birdlike. It drifted in a loose, shifting pattern, sweeping the perimeter.

  From the shelter of a neighbouring unit, Rosa pulled Selina’s VR headset over her eyes. Until now it had been lifeless, remaining inert even when switched on. But now…

  She hesitated. "If this does something weird, don’t freak out."

  Selina gave her a look. "It’s a VR headset, not a ghost detector."

  Still, she shifted uneasily as Rosa slid it over her eyes.

  The world bled away.

  Night unraveled into something else. The rain stopped mid-fall, droplets hovering in the air like suspended glass. The dark fa?ade of M.A.S.S. peeled apart, layer by layer, as if reality were shedding its skin. And underneath…

  Hazy layers.

  Corridors behind the walls, ghostly green outlines pulsing with half-forgotten energy.

  Echoes.

  Not sound, not exactly - but something like it.

  A pressure in the skull, a whisper felt rather than heard.

  The rasp of breathing.

  The scrape of metal on metal.

  The scratch of nails against glass.

  A faint, shuddering exhale, as if something had been holding its breath for too long.

  Figures emerged in flickers, caught in the half-light of the simulation. Technicians in spectral whites, their faces blurred, their movements disjointed - skipping frames like a corrupted reel of film. Their distant voices slithered through the walls, stretched and distant, repeating in hollow loops.

  Cages rose out of the dark like the ribs of a great, long-dead beast. Metal bars flickered in and out of phase, stretching into infinity. Monkeys huddled inside - shadows within shadows, their small forms barely perceptible. They were silent. They did not move, did not struggle. Just watched.

  Somehow, they were interconnected - cables and conduits festooning their heads and torsos, forming a complex mesh of data and signal flow. Tiny orange lights flickered along their scalps, pulsating with faint, rhythmic intensity as wires and tubes snaked like veins between them in a network of circuitry.

  The creatures twitched - not individually, but together. A synchronised jerk of their limbs as if a common thread was pulled tight.

  Their heads then snapped toward her, one by one, their bodies frozen in time but their gaze alive.

  They saw her.

  She staggered back, breath catching in her throat. The layers of time rolling one upon another.

  And then…

  Rowan.

  Face close, liquid eyes gleaming.

  Not of flesh, not of code - something in between.

  His black fur shimmered with an ethereal glow, the edges of his body fraying like ink dispersing in water. He slipped through the layers like smoke. An error in their pattern. A refusal. A flaw in their perfect synchronisation.

  He stood, his gaze locking onto Rosa.

  The past blurred, dissolving into streaks of luminous verdigris and shadow.

  Then he bounded away, his luminous form hurrying around the image of the building, beckoning Rosa to follow.

  His outline jittered and abruptly reality snapped back.

  The rain struck Rosa in a cold sheet. The world slammed into focus with a jarring finality, the headset now simply transparent. Rosa staggered, breath shuddering, the vision unraveling at the edges of her mind, slipping through her grasp like water.

  Selina caught her by the elbow. “You with me?”

  Rosa swallowed hard. Rowan was somehow here - she was sure of it.

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  She nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.”

  They crept around the hulking concrete facility, keeping close to the wall as shadows stretched long beneath the amber glow of the security lights.

  Following Rowan’s path, Rosa and Selina approached the area of the industrial wheelie bins.

  “No,” Selina breathed. “Tell me you don't expect me to climb up there again.”

  A low hum cut off their conversation, just at the edge of hearing. Rosa stiffened. The sound sharpened - a mechanical whir, the distant click of stabilizers adjusting. Then, a flicker of movement, ghostly in the darkness - the security drone came into view around the far corner of the building.

  It drifted - silent, gliding through the night like some dark omen. Its matte-black casing caught the weak light from the security lamps, shimmering under the rain.

  The red line of its scanner rose and fell methodically. A pulse of judgment sweeping over everything in its path.

  The drone moved toward them, the lens of its eye adjusting, testing the air. Its dark body swiveled, scanning the space, giving no hint of its precise focus. The rotors hummed, a low, vibrating thrum whispering at the shadows.

  Rosa’s hand moved to the headset, and Rowan’s spectral form flickered back into view - his black-furred face momentarily sharp, his head jerking toward the shadows, urging her forward with a silent, desperate urgency.

  “Move,” Rosa whispered, voice tight with fear.

  Selina was staring at the drone. Her pupils dilated, her breath shallow, barely perceptible. “I hate this.”

  Rosa hissed, “Come on.” She pulled Selina into the shadow of the nearest waste container.

  The drone advanced, its optics sweeping in jerky bursts. Rosa felt her heart race - each sweep of that eye dragging her deeper into panic.

  Rowan’s digital representation moved with them, darting ahead like a flickering shadow. He clambered onto an invisible ledge, perching on nothing, his gaze eerily intense. His nostrils flared as if sniffing the air, his crest twitching.

  The shelter of the refuse skips felt pitifully thin, a child’s hiding place against something that could navigate with such precision.

  Rosa felt her hands shake against the cold concrete as she crouched low. The light of the drone's scanner bathed the nearby wet ground in blood as it stopped.

  Rosa could barely breathe. Her body screamed to run, to escape, but she held herself still, too terrified to move. She could feel Selina trembling beside her, the fear radiating off her like heat. The drone was right there, just a few meters away.

  The red light reflected briefly off the wall, flashed over their faces, their bodies, turning them into silhouettes. It lingered.

  Rowan made a jerky, clawing motion. Not yet. Not yet.

  Without warning something was on them, beneath them, around their ankles, squirming. Selina jolted as if electrocuted, a strangled noise catching in her throat. She stiffened, every muscle locking as the rat twisted between them, its slick tail flicking against her skin.

  Rosa gasped, sharp and shallow, her body thrumming with the instinct to kick, to shake it off, to get it away. But she didn’t dare move. Not with the drone so close.

  Then the rat bolted, a streak of greasy fur skittering into the dark. The hovering sentinel snapped to attention, its sensor locking onto the sudden movement. It swung after the fleeing rodent.

  Rosa pressed a shaking hand over her mouth, her skin crawling with the ghost of tiny claws. Selina was rigid beside her, breath coming in rapid, silent gasps, her hands curled into fists so tight her knuckles had gone bloodless. Then, slowly, her fingers twitched, brushing Rosa’s wrist - light, urgent. A signal. Move.

  Rowan made an urgent, wild gesture. Go. Go now.

  They were off, slipping low, their bodies pressing against the skips as they darted to the next one, keeping as silent as possible.

  Twenty metres away, the drone left off pursuing the rat and its optics snapped back to their position.

  Their backs met the wall, the cold seeping through their clothes. The air smelled of damp concrete and the metal of industrial containers, thick enough to taste.

  The mech prowled once more slowly forward, silent, red lens blinking in slow, predatory pulses.

  Rowan scrambled up an invisible surface, perching as if hanging from a branch that didn’t exist. His crest raised, his eyes darting ahead. He saw something.

  Rosa risked a glance sideways. Just beyond the bins, set flush against the wall, was a door - plain, metal, unmarked. A service exit, most likely used for waste disposal.

  For a split second, hope flared in her chest - until she saw it had no handle on the outside.

  Useless.

  She forced her breath steady, refocusing. The mechanical eye swept past them again, red glow skimming the containers.

  Selina shifted beside her, so close Rosa could feel the tremor in her limbs. They were running out of room, out of time.

  A movement. Barely there. The faintest whisper of a hinge.

  Rosa’s eyes snapped back to the door.

  It was ajar.

  A gap - small, almost imperceptible in the dim light, but unmistakably there.

  She stared, her mind catching up. It hadn’t been open before. She knew it hadn’t.

  She felt Selina tense, following her gaze.

  Rowan’s avatar leapt for the opening, clearly expecting to be followed.

  They should have been relieved. But instead, dread curled low in Rosa’s stomach. Someone - or something - had opened it.

  *****

  Art Numier sat rigid in his wheelchair, staring at the monitor.

  A notification pulsed on his tablet.

  Security Alert: Anomalous Activity Detected.

  He stared at the screen. No forced entry. No external breach.

  Something inside.

  He pulled up the security feeds. The footage stuttered, jumping frames, freezing on empty corridors before flickering to life again - only to show nothing out of place.

  He rewound. Played it at half speed. The same gaps. A subtle warping of time, like the system itself was second-guessing what it had recorded.

  Art frowned. The AI logs should have a record of any disruptions. He ran a diagnostic.

  No irregularities detected.

  That wasn’t right. He checked the system’s internal logs.

  Error: Data Unavailable.

  His mouth tightened. The logs weren’t just missing - they were being removed. Actively. Now.

  His fingers moved quickly, querying deeper, trying to access raw footage.

  Error: Insufficient Privileges.

  His own security clearance blocked him.

  LumiGard.

  Art scowled. The AI was intervening. Not responding to a threat - concealing something.

  He angled his chair and reached for the VR rig. If the system wouldn’t show him what was wrong from the outside, he’d have to go in himself.

  He slipped the headset on, took a breath…

  And dived into the grid.

  As the physical world dissolved, Art’s avatar came to life, shrouded in its lattice of glowing filaments, twisting and shifting around him. The M.A.S.S. security network took shape, an abstract, fractured landscape stretching before him.

  The digital blooms that flickered upon his form dissolved into particles as he surveyed the layered construct of pulsing green pathways and translucent data streams, stretching in all directions.

  A persistent red beacon pulsed overhead - an alert he should be able to trace to its source. But when he reached for it, the interface shifted, twisting the data structure like a trick of perspective.

  The system wouldn’t let him look.

  LumiGard was actively steering him away.

  He moved forward, the space around him twisting - phantom afterimages clinging to his form like frozen echoes of his gestures

  The simulation tightened with a strange energy, charged and unsettled, as if the grid recognized him as something more than human - a force outside the current moment.

  And then, a voice echoed in the stillness - his voice - layered, distant, reverberating from multiple points in the grid, coming from versions of himself that had yet to exist or were slipping away into oblivion.

  "What are you hiding from me?"

  The question whispered through the fragments of reality, less like an inquiry and more like an accusation. The AI’s silence was suffocating.