The dorm lounge was usually a place of low-stakes drama and half-finished homework. Now, it was a war room of vibrating glass and frantic light.
Every phone in the room was buzzing in a rhythmic, terrifying unison. Mira had the TV on at max volume, the screen flickering with shaky, high-definition chaos.
"...reports flooded in from Tokyo, London, São Paulo; virtually every major hub is reporting the same atmospheric event," the news anchor stuttered, her professional mask slipping.
"Okay," Mira said, her thumb hovering over the remote to pause the clip. "Why is this everywhere? Why now?"
Lucien wasn't sitting. He was pacing a tight, frantic line in front of the window. "It wasn't just the campus. We aren't just special; we're just part of the map."
"It's global," Orion added, his voice unnervingly flat. "Total atmospheric synchronization."
Seris was hunched over her tablet, her medical textbooks forgotten. "Emergency rooms are already hitting capacity. The reports are identical."
"Identical how?" Garrick asked, his arms crossed over his chest like a shield.
"Neural overload. Heart rates through the roof. Overstimulation of the nervous system." She paused, looking up with a pale face. "And the light. People are glowing, Garrick."
Kaida nodded, her voice a ghost of a sound. "They're lighting up like bulbs."
Mira shoved her phone toward Nox's face. "Look at this. It's trending everywhere."
It was a shaky, vertical video from a subway platform in Berlin. A man in a suit was leaning against a pillar, faint, blue-white light pulsing under the skin of his forearms like a heartbeat. He looked at his hands, let out a confused sob, and then hit the tiles. The comment section underneath was a cesspool of religious prophecies and pure, unfiltered terror.
Lucien stopped pacing and turned toward Nox. "You expected this. You've been waiting for the other shoe to drop all week."
"Yes."
"Stop saying 'yes' like that," Lucien snapped. "Give us a real sentence, Nox."
Nox exhaled, the sound heavy and jagged. "It was a start. A beginning."
"A beginning of what?" Mira demanded.
"Selection," Kaida whispered, her eyes tracking the flickering TV screen.
The room went cold. Lucien looked at her, then back at Nox. "Selection for what? A sports team? An execution?"
Nox hesitated, the weight of a previous lifetime pressing against the back of his teeth. "For something that isn't finished yet. It was a pressure test for the world."
"That's not exactly helping the panic, Nox," Mira said, her voice rising.
Garrick stepped forward. "Are we in danger? Right now, in this room?"
"Yes," Nox said plainly.
Mira stared at him, her eyes wide. "You're not even going to try to sugarcoat it? Not even a little?"
"No."
Seris watched Nox carefully, her clinical mind trying to find a pattern. "The resonance earlier, that tone we all felt. It was measuring us, wasn't it?"
Lucien turned sharply. "Measuring what?"
Orion's voice was quiet, almost reverent. "Compatibility."
The TV cut to a live press conference. A government official stood at a podium, looking like he hadn't slept in forty-eight hours. "We are declaring a temporary national emergency as a precaution. All citizens are ordered to remain in their homes or current locations..."
"Lockdown," Mira groaned.
"No," Kaida corrected. "Control."
The official on screen continued. "Individuals experiencing unusual physiological responses; glowing, fever, or sensory shifts are advised to report immediately to designated military-medical facilities."
Lucien scoffed. "Facilities? They make it sound like they're taking people to a spa."
"They're going to isolate them," Seris said quietly. "They're scared of the people who resonate."
The feed cut to a new clip: a mob outside a hospital. Someone was screaming, "It's a blessing! It's the new world!" while another person shrieked, "It's the end of world!"
Mira muted the TV. The silence that followed was worse. Outside the dorm windows, the air was filled with the low, rhythmic thrum of helicopters and the distant, mournful wail of sirens. The silver seam was still there, a jagged scar against the night clouds.
Lucien turned to Nox again, his eyes searching. "When does it try again? When is the next 'test'?"
Nox didn't look away from the window. "Soon."
"How soon?"
"I don't know."
Lucien paused, his brow furrowing. "That's new. You always seem to have the timeline in your head."
Nox's jaw tightened. "It's accelerating. The schedule is breaking."
"Because of what?" Garrick asked.
Nox didn't answer. He couldn't. He didn't know if his presence or his interference was the very thing making the world react more violently.
Kaida spoke up softly. "It didn't complete calibration. It felt... snagged. Like a gear didn't catch."
Orion agreed. "Interrupted."
Lucien's eyes sharpened. "Interrupted by what?"
Nox finally spoke, his voice barely a whisper. "By deviation."
"What deviation?" Lucien demanded.
Nox met his gaze, and for a second, the mask of the stoic student slipped. "Something isn't matching the original pattern. The world is reacting to a variable it didn't expect."
"Original pattern?" Mira repeated, her voice incredulous. "What pattern are you talking about? How could you possibly know the 'pattern' of the sky breaking?"
Nox realized he'd let the past bleed through too far. Lucien stepped closer, his presence commanding. "You talk like you've seen this before. Like you're reading from a script."
Nox held his stare, his pulse thrumming in his throat. "I have."
The room went dead still. Mira blinked, her hand frozen near her phone. "...Excuse me?"
Garrick frowned. "What does that even mean, Nox?"
Lucien didn't look away. "Explain yourself. Now."
Nox exhaled, a long, weary sound. "Not now."
"You don't get to say that anymore," Lucien said, his voice dropping to a dangerous low.
Before Nox could answer, a sudden surge of shouting erupted from the courtyard below. They all scrambled to the window. In the center of the quad, a student was glowing again. It wasn't the violent flash from before, but a soft, rhythmic blue light tracing faint, circuit-like lines across his arms. He wasn't screaming. He was just staring at his hands in a trance.
Lucien stepped toward the door.
"Don't," Nox said immediately.
Lucien paused, his hand on the handle. "You said stay close. You said we were a unit."
"Yes."
"Then come with me. Let's see what we're actually dealing with."
Nox hesitated, then nodded once. The group moved out together; not as a scattered bunch of panicked kids, but as a tight, wary line.
Outside, the glowing student looked terrified. "It's back," he whispered as they approached. "The humming. It's back."
Seris stepped forward cautiously, her hands out. "Are you in pain? Can you feel your heartbeat?"
He shook his head, his eyes wide. "No. It just... it feels like something is pulling. Like I'm being tugged toward the sky."
Mira muttered, "Great. That's super comforting."
The faint glow flickered once, twice, and then died out. The student's knees buckled, and he collapsed into Garrick's arms.
"He's breathing," Seris said quickly, checking his neck. "Pulse is normal. He's just exhausted."
Lucien looked at the unconscious boy, then back at Nox. "This isn't random. It's looking for something."
"Yes."
"And it's targeting us."
"Yes."
Lucien exhaled, looking up at the silver seam that refused to fade. "Then what happens when it finally succeeds? When it doesn't 'error out'?"
Nox looked at the fracture in the blue. He could feel the pressure building again, a cold, systematic weight.
"It won't fail next time," Nox said.
The sirens kept wailing, the helicopters kept circling, and for the first time, they stopped pretending the world was still the same.