The world was dissolving around her.

  Rosa clawed at the headset, but her fingers sank into it like mist, slipping through the edges of its form as though it had no substance. The rig hummed against her skull, a low, inhuman thrum, vibrating in her teeth, in her bones. She pulled harder. It would not come off.

  ff

  vvvvvvvpppsss…

  A sound - thin and needling - then stretching, unraveling, stuttering and grinding like a hard drive on the verge of catastrophic failure.

  gggggggggggggg…

  A synthetic growl, raw as feedback warping, distorting, layering over itself. It pulsed in uneven waves, as if struggling to form words but constantly slipping into a recursive malfunction.

  The image before her eyes juddered, or maybe her vision was failing. A sea of grey swept in.

  Endless hiss…

  ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss…

  As it thinned away again, or as her vision cleared, a windswept landscape stretched out before her, grey and endless. Heather and gorse, coarse grass, and trees - insubstantial, grey.

  She gasped, and the world peeled back.

  The outline of a cottage emerged from the fog, weathered stone rough with lichen like old scars. The door stood open - just slightly.

  She was not supposed to be here.

  She tore at the rig again, nails scraping plastic, metal - then something else.

  The simulation rippled, and suddenly hands were on her wrists.

  Cold. Too many fingers.

  "No - no, no, no - "

  A bird took flight, black wings slashing through the mist - silent, as if the air itself had swallowed the sound.

  As she gasped the world lurched.

  A chair - its legs dug into the wooden floor like an anchor against some unseen current. A table covered in scrawls - frantic, looping marks, a mind trying to trap a thought that refused to be caught.

  She knew - knew - if she looked, she would understand.

  But the hands tightened.

  And the walls began to whisper.

  She couldn't move. She couldn’t breathe.

  The whispers curled into words she should not know - a litany, a revelation.

  "Here is where you belong."

  The world fractured, a veil of nothingness splitting open.

  The fog pulled closer. The house dissolved.

  She was slipping.

  Her body burned with static, edges fraying, as if she were being unmade - as if she had never truly been real.

  "Let me go."

  She fell into reality, gasping, choking on air that felt too sharp, too solid. Her skin buzzed, her bones aching as though they had been reshaped on the way out.

  The real world slammed back into place.

  Rosa yanked off the VR rig, her hands trembling. The pressure on her skull vanished, leaving behind a faint, ghostly tightness - like the weight of the headset still clung to her. Her mouth was dry. Her pulse throbbed behind her eyes.

  Beside her, Selina had already pulled off her own gear, and was blinking as if she had just surfaced from deep water. She pressed her fingers against her temples, wincing slightly.

  "Okay." She looked worried as she scrubbed her hands over her face, pushing her hair back. "Okay, that was…"

  She didn’t finish. Just reached for the water bottles stacked beside them and tossed one to Rosa before unscrewing her own.

  Rosa caught it clumsily. Her coordination was still off, her fingers tingling with the phantom sensations of virtual textures. As the cool plastic met her skin, it felt odd - too solid, too real. She forced herself to uncap the bottle and drink, the water crisp and grounding.

  Selina took a deep gulp, then rolled her shoulders, twisting her neck. Her leg bounced, restless, a quick jitter she didn’t seem aware of. "Are we going to talk about what just happened, or do we both need a minute to…”

  "That was wrong," Rosa interrupted, voice hoarse. "That whole thing. It…" She shook her head, squeezing her eyes shut as if that might help reorient her senses. "I knew Infinity NexUs had layers, but that wasn’t just a layer. It was a…"

  "Mess," Selina supplied, flexing her fingers as if testing that they still belonged to her. “But…”

  Rosa nodded. "And Dolphin’s Barncar!"

  Selina grimaced, rubbing at her arms as if shaking off a lingering chill. "Of course. A retro-cool hacker dive with a suspiciously welcoming vibe? Might as well have had a neon sign saying Trap This Way." She stared at Rosa, with a look of concern.

  Rosa dragged a hand down her face. The world still felt unsteady, like she hadn’t fully shaken off the simulation. She blinked hard, trying to rid herself of the afterimage of fog and digital sleet.

  Selina opened her mouth, but Rosa spoke first. "Dolphin’s Barncar… I can’t get past it. How does a passage from a decades-old book predict what happened in there? You must have noticed the assistant’s eyes."

  Selina’s reply was terse. "Yeah…," she muttered, shaking her head. "I take your point. It's weird. But…"

  She took a few steps, testing her balance, then gave up and leaned against the desk.

  Then, after a beat, Rosa said, almost to herself, "Ulikah’s."

  Selina blinked. "What?"

  "Ulikah’s," Rosa repeated, staring out the window, brow furrowed. "I saw it. In the adscreen. That flickering mess at the edge of the court. Just for a second."

  Rosa’s pulse kicked up. "Did you see it? I swear there was a wine glass in there too."

  Selina nodded slowly. "It glitched in, then out. I thought I imagined it, but… yeah." She exhaled, rubbing her forehead. "If Infinity NexUs is built on predictive algorithms, it’s probably feeding us references it thinks we expect - stitching together fragments from our memories, stray thoughts, even things we've read." She hesitated, her fingers tapping idly against the desk. "Maybe it was pulling from our expectations? But that Auditant thing…" She trailed off, shaking her head. "That felt… different."

  Rosa stared down at the bottle in her hands, rolling it between her palms. "At least it let us out."

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "Did it?" Selina muttered. “Look, I need to…”

  “Georgie!” Rosa’s voice lifted. “Where've you been?” The fox loped into the room, his rust-colored coat catching the molten glow of the setting sun that poured through the glass wall. His paws barely made a sound against the floor, but Rosa welcomed his return, his presence a tether to something familiar, something real.

  Rosa crouched, her hands immediately tangling in his fur, seeking comfort in the warmth of his body. Georgie tolerated it with a quiet huff, his nose twitching as he scented the air. But Selina barely noticed.

  A dozen thoughts screamed for her attention, fighting to be said all at once. Her mind twisted around half-formed words tangling in her throat. What happened next gave her the help she needed.

  The temperature in the room seemed to plummet, a static charge prickling along Rosa’s skin. Georgie froze mid-step, his pupils blown wide, ears flattening as a low, uneasy whine slipped from his throat. The lights flickered - just once, a brief stutter - and then the space near the desk ripped open.

  Pixels of light scintillated in the air, seeming to fragment and recombine, before a wet, organic pop echoed through the room. Suddenly, he was there.

  Rowan’s black fur gleamed like it had been freshly rendered, the sheen sharp and slick, as if yanked from another reality mid-frame. His breath came in jagged bursts, visible in the shafts of evening light as curling wisps of vapor. His limbs twitched with micro-adjustments, muscles recalibrating like a puppet remembering its own strings. His amber eyes scanned the room.

  Then the world lagged.

  The evening light thickened, smearing like slow-spilled honey, dust motes hanging in syrupy suspension. The twitch of Georgie’s tail flowed in slow motion, like anemone fronds in water. Selina’s voice dragged, her words drawn out, “Rowowowwwww…”

  And then, in a split second, time snapped back. Georgie unfreezing only to re-flinch in perfect repetition, Rosa’s fingers slipping free of his fur before re-entangling, the moment unraveling and redoing itself as if reality had second-guessed its choices. Rowan jolted forward an inch, as if some unseen force had corrected his placement.

  The black macaque’s fingers flexed against the floor, the matte surface making them glitch - only for a moment, like the world itself was struggling to decide if he belonged here. Then his gaze locked onto Rosa. His lips peeled back in a slow, mechanical baring of teeth - slow and deliberate. A corrupt file loading.

  A low, inhuman modulation vibrated in his throat - half growl, half distorted feedback.

  Rosa recoiled, nearly fumbling the bottle still clutched in her hand. "He just…" Her voice cracked, her brain tripping over itself. "He just appeared. Out of thin air!"

  She scrambled backward, Georgie pressing against her legs, his ears still pinned flat. Her pulse throbbed in her temple as she scanned Rowan’s rigid form, the aftershocks of his arrival still rippling through the air.

  "That’s not possible," she breathed, shaking her head. "That’s not possible." But even as she said it, the weight of something half-formed pressed at the edges of her thoughts.

  Her mind flashed back to the shed - the way they’d searched every inch of it, found no trace of him. No signs of a struggle. No clues.

  Had he - had this happened before?

  Had Rowan disappeared the same way he’d just appeared?

  She turned to Selina, words tumbling out in a frantic rush. "That would explain it, wouldn’t it? Why we never found anything in the garden? He didn’t leave, he just - he just wasn’t there anymore."

  Selina had been standing stock-still, watching Rowan like she expected him to pixelate out of existence again at any second. But as Rosa spoke, something in her expression twitched.

  "Rosa," she said sharply.

  Rosa barely registered her tone, too wrapped up in her own spiraling train of thought. "This is why we couldn’t figure out how he got out - there was no ‘how.’ There was no means of exit, because…"

  "Rosa!"

  Something in Selina’s voice cut through. Rosa snapped her head up, frowning.

  Selina exhaled sharply, then finally - spilled it.

  "You did the same thing," she said, her voice edged with something between disbelief and unease. "Just now. When we logged out."

  Rosa blinked. "What?"

  "You weren’t there when I took the rig off." Selina’s fingers drummed once against the desk, an anxious, restless movement. "You weren’t anywhere." She shook her head, as if trying to make sense of the words even as she said them. "And then - just like him - you appeared."

  Rowan shifted his weight, rolling back onto his haunches. Then, suddenly, he leapt toward the window, pressing a palm against the glass as if testing its solidity. His fingers splayed, and his breath fogged the surface.

  A low, warning snarl came from Georgie. His hackles rose, making him look larger than he was. When Rowan didn’t react, the fox took a hesitant step forward, his stance rigid, muscles coiled.

  "You didn’t just log out, Rosa," Selina said. "You… came back."

  Rosa let out a sharp breath - half a laugh, half a sound of pure incredulity. "No," she said immediately. "That’s - that’s not what happened."

  Selina just looked at her.

  Rosa shook her head harder, as if sheer force could unravel Selina’s words before they took root. "That’s ridiculous. I was in VR, and then I logged off, like normal. You must have - have missed me getting up or… "

  "You weren’t there," Selina repeated, voice flat. "And then - just like him - you appeared.”

  Rosa opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her stomach twisted, the disbelief curdling into something colder, something worse.

  "That sensation when she woke - wrong. No. Just cybersickness. Just immersion lag.

  But…

  Her fingers tightened around the bottle in her hands.

  Rowan’s fingers scraped softly against the glass before he turned his head, his eyes locking onto Georgie this time. His body stilled. The fox froze too, their gazes locked, something ancient passing between the two animals.

  If she hadn’t been in the room when Selina logged off… if she had appeared the way Rowan just had…

  Her mind lurched through the implications, grasping at something solid, something logical.

  A dull ache crept up the back her head.

  "What does that mean?" she murmured, half to herself.

  No answer came.

  The room felt still, charged, like the air before a lightning strike.

  Her grip slackened, the bottle rolling against her palm.

  If Rowan had vanished from the shed without a trace - if she had just… been somewhere else…

  A slow, cold realization coiled through her.

  Had she…

  Her mind clawed for an escape route, a distraction - anything to shove this impossible thought aside before it took hold. She exhaled sharply, pressing her thumb against the ridges of the bottle cap, feeling the resistance, the slight give of plastic. Real. Real. The cold weight in her palm. The faint crinkle when she squeezed it. Focus on that. Not on...

  Not on what it meant. Not on the unraveling logic, the creeping sense that the boundaries of reality weren’t as firm as she’d believed. Not on the terrifying possibility that she…

  No.

  Selina watched quietly, giving Rosa time.

  The silence of the house felt heavy. Rosa latched onto the bottle again, grounding herself in its texture, its physicality. Infinity NexUs still clung to her, tangled up in the static fuzz of cybersickness.

  The black macaque turned away from the window and sprang with effortless grace up onto Rosa's slate desk, the smooth surface rippling with faint pulses of light in response to the weight of his feet. The ultra-slim monitor slid up from the edge, flickering to life with the familiar image of her R-Gen firewall. The dramatic, slow-motion hero stood with arms folded, his gaze one of smoldering intensity.

  Rosa watched mechanically as Rowan tilted his head slightly, his dark eyes fixed on the screen. There was no urgency in his movements, no agitation - just a quiet, deliberate focus.

  Selina glanced between them, frowning. "What is he doing?" she muttered, as if expecting the macaque to answer. Rowan didn’t react to their confusion. Instead, he reached out, one careful hand pressing against the edge of the monitor, as if granting permission.

  Then, the hero on-screen blinked - his smirk faltering for the briefest moment before the image stuttered. At the periphery of the screen, tiny pixelated figures gathered.

  The tiny monkeys emerged in clusters, their chittering bodies forming jagged, erratic shapes as they scuttled closer. R-Gen turned, cracking his knuckles. Rosa jumped up and hurried to the desk. “Not again.”

  Selina’s eyes narrowed at Rowan. “Did he cause that?”

  Rosa didn’t answer right away. Her pulse was still racing, her mind teetering on the edge of something she wasn’t ready to confront. But as she stared at the screen - at the tiny pixelated monkeys creeping toward R-Gen - they were something immediate, something tangible.

  Selina let out a slow breath. “Well, at least this makes some kind of sense.”

  Rosa huffed a short laugh, barely more than an exhale. It didn’t make sense, not really - but it was easier than the alternative.

  “Yeah,” she muttered, stepping closer to the desk. “Let’s deal with this first.”

  The firewall figure lashed out, delivering a sweeping kick that sent a handful of monkeys flying - but more took their place. Instead of simply swarming, they moved with unnatural coordination, clustering together, their limbs locking and twisting like puzzle pieces until…

  “Oh, goodness no.”

  The tiny figures had coalesced, their forms merging into a singular, colossal entity - a giant monkey, its pixelated fur shifting like a screen on the verge of static collapse. It towered over the digital hero, a monstrous amalgamation of writhing simian bodies. With one massive hand, it swatted R-Gen aside, sending him tumbling in a flurry of glitched-out pixels.

  Rosa leaned in next to Rowan. Her hands hovered over the controls. “I can…”

  “Run an antivirus?” Selina asked, her own pulse audible in her voice. “Because now would be a great time.”

  Georgie, the fox, let out a low growl from beneath the desk. His ears flattened. He knew something was wrong beyond the screen. Rosa leaned closer, ready to deploy countermeasures - but then…

  Rowan turned on the edge of the desk. His dark eyes gleamed, still watching the screen intently. And then - he reached out.

  His small fingers curled gently over Rosa’s wrist. A deliberate gesture. A command without words.

  Rosa hesitated. “Rowan, what…”

  The giant pixel-monkey turned its glowing eyes toward them, and then the firewall shattered, the remnants dissolving like ash. The pixelated form pushed inward, its jagged edges smoothing, resolving into something sleeker, more streamlined, before slipping deeper into the system. The screen returned to Rosa's desktop.

  Rosa exhaled sharply, staring at Rowan. “You wanted this?”

  Rowan didn’t blink. Didn’t flinch. He simply met her gaze with unshaken certainty.

  Selina muttered under her breath. “You better have a good reason, monkey.”

  A sharp chime interrupted them.

  A file appeared on the desktop.