I charged. My boots cracked against the stone. The cold pressure at the base of my skull surged, fueling my momentum. It wasn't just anger. It was a demand for blood.
He didn't move. The pistol hung at his side. The blur of his face shifted, but the smirk remained. He just looked bored.
I crossed the distance and threw my weight into a swing at his jaw.
He stepped aside.
My fist met air. My momentum carried me forward. Before I could catch my balance, a blow caved in my ribs. The air left my lungs. My vision flashed white.
I hit the stone hard. It tore the skin from my palms. I tasted blood.
I scrambled up. The cold feeling in my head pushed me forward. I lunged again, throwing blindly.
He caught my wrist. His grip felt like iron. He twisted my arm back. Pain shot through my shoulder, and then he kicked my legs out from under me.
I fell. My chin smashed against the edge of the fountain. Blood poured down my neck.
I tried to stand. A boot pressed down on my spine, pinning me flat against the stone. I thrashed, clawing at the ground until my fingernails cracked. The boot didn't budge.
I pushed my bleeding hands against the ground, twisted my body, and broke the pin. I rolled onto my back.
He stood above me. The barrel of the pistol aimed directly between my eyes.
I threw a final punch straight up at his jaw.
My knuckles hit solid glass.
The courtyard vanished. The smell of gunpowder evaporated. The world dropped away into blackness.
I lurched forward. Cold air hit my burning lungs. My eyes snapped open. I wasn't in the courtyard. I wasn't looking up at the man in the red coat.
I was leaning out of an open window.
Night air whipped my face. I looked down. The ground was four stories below. My center of gravity was already tipping over the edge of the sill.
I threw my weight backward. My hands scrambled against the window frame. I tumbled into the dark room.
I hit the floor. My shoulder slammed against a desk. I lay there on the carpet, chest heaving. Cold sweat drenched my clothes. My hands shook so badly I couldn't form a fist.
I looked around the dark room. My college dorm. The heater hummed in the corner. Across the room, a figure shifted.
"What the hell are you doing, Ashen?"
George sat up in his bed and rubbed his eyes.
I stared at him. George. He was alive. His head was intact. There was no blood on the stone. There was no man in a red coat.
I pressed a shaking hand over my face.
"I fell," I managed to say. "I just fell out of bed."
George groaned and flopped back down. "Fall a bit quieter next time, man. Some of us need sleep."
He pulled the blanket over his head.
I stayed on the floor. The images wouldn't stop. George dead on the stone. Mia reaching out. The smirk of the man in the red coat.
"It wasn't real," I whispered. "It was a dream."
I repeated the words until the pounding in my chest eased. I was just a student. I crawled back into bed. I didn't sleep.
The campus lawn looked different in the morning.
Dew clung to the grass. Students milled about the courtyard clutching coffee cups. The air smelled of roasted beans and damp soil. It was a familiar scene that usually brought me peace.
But today, a heavy disquiet stirred in my stomach. Something was wrong.
I sat on the stone steps outside the lecture hall. My notebook rested on my knee. I pretended to read. My eyes were fixed on George.
He stood in the middle of the walkway. He gestured with his hands as he recounted a story to Mia. Mia had her arms folded. She was trying not to laugh.
I should have felt at ease. But I felt that metallic itch at the back of my skull. It was the same pressure I felt during the nightmare.
George spotted me. He waved his arm.
"Ashen, you walking zombie. Stop pretending to study and come suffer with us."
I closed my notebook and walked over.
Mia gave me a small smile. "Morning. Don't tell me you got up early to revise again?"
"Habit," I said.
George groaned. "See? This is why we're best friends. Ashen does the studying. I do the charming. Mia does the eye-rolling."
"Nonsense," Mia muttered. But she kept smiling.
We headed toward the cafeteria. The chatter of students washed over us. It was the standard soundtrack of our lives. Normal.
But underneath the normalcy, the dread persisted. Why did it feel like I had walked this path a thousand times before?
The cafeteria was packed. It smelled of grease and coffee. We squeezed into a booth by the window. George claimed the middle seat.
"If I fail this math exam, I'm blaming both of you," George said between bites of a bagel. "Ashen for not tutoring me, and Mia for distracting me."
Mia rolled her eyes. "Your failures are your own doing, George."
"Wrong." George pointed a finger at her. "They are communal failures. If I go down, you're both coming down with me."
I laughed.
The sound came out too loud. Too sharp.
I swore I had heard that exact laugh before. The exact pitch. The exact rhythm. The realization hit me like a physical jolt. It wasn't just deja vu.
My stomach dropped. I glanced around the cafeteria. Sunlight spilled through the windows. Students ate and argued. It all looked normal. But the artificial sound of my own laugh echoed in my skull like a recording.
"Ashen?" Mia asked. Her voice broke through my panic. "Are you okay?"
I blinked. I forced a smile. "Yeah. Just tired."
She studied me for a moment. She nodded slowly, but she didn't look convinced.
George noticed nothing. He launched into a story about his roommate. I clung to the sound of his voice. I focused on the warmth of the sunlight. These were the anchors keeping me grounded.
The day passed in broken fragments. Classes blurred into a gray haze. Chalk scraped on slate boards. Professors droned on. I went through the motions. I answered questions. I nodded at the right times. My body performed the routine, but my mind was trapped.
And the metallic itch inside my head never stopped.
Sometimes it was a flicker in the corner of my eye. When I turned my head, they were gone.
Sometimes it was a smell. The sharp scent of iron. Blood.
The final class was advanced calculus. I sat at my desk and gripped a pencil.
Professor Kendall stood at the front of the room. He scribbled equations across the blackboard. The chalk squealed in short bursts.
George leaned back in his chair. He jabbed me in the arm.
"Oi, Ashen," George whispered. "Help me out here. I'm toast if I don't copy something down."
I slid my notebook across the desk. George began scribbling.
"If you spent more time studying and less time chasing Mia, you'd pass," I muttered.
"Flirting," George corrected in a stage whisper. "A man has to have priorities."
Two rows ahead, Mia sat upright. She glanced back and rolled her eyes at George.
Everything was how it was supposed to be.
Then the squeak of the chalk stretched. It dragged into a high-pitched scrape that sent a shiver down my spine. I blinked. The sound returned to normal.
Then George laughed.
It was a loud laugh. But it sent a shiver down my spine. It was wrong. I had heard it before. The exact laugh. The exact length. The exact rhythm. The exact intake of breath at the end.
It was a digital duplicate. A glitch.
My hand froze. I stared at the numbers in my notebook. The classroom seemed unchanged. But everything felt duplicated. A plastic copy.
The school bell clanged. Desks scraped backward.
"Lunch is on me," George announced. He slapped my shoulder. His grin was glued in place. "You look like you've seen a ghost, Ashen. Food will fix that."
We joined the river of students flooding into the hallway. For everyone else, it was an ordinary afternoon. But for me, every time I blinked, something shifted.
A crack appeared across a window, only to vanish a second later. A student bumped into my shoulder, but when I glanced back, they were gone.
And the air. Underneath the perfume and floor polish, the scent of blood lingered.
We pushed through the doors and stepped into the courtyard. Sunlight poured over the benches. I inhaled, trying to shake off the weight.
I looked at the stone walls. My gaze landed on the fountain.
I remembered the blood. I remembered the man in the red coat. I remembered my fist hitting glass.
A sharp pain spiked at the base of my skull. The cold feeling uncoiled. It watched the fake courtyard through my eyes. It knew exactly where we were.
The pencil in my hand snapped in half.
I dropped the broken pieces. I stopped walking.
George turned around. His smile didn't waver. "Are you coming, Ashen?"
I stared at his face. I stared at the hollow spaces behind his irises. The facade was cracking.
"This isn't real," I said.
The wind died. The birds stopped. The fountain went silent.
George tilted his head. His smile stretched a fraction too wide. "What did you say, buddy?"
I took a step back. My heart hammered. I looked at Mia. She stood perfectly still, like a mannequin.
"You aren't real," I said louder. "None of this is real."
The sky flickered. The blue washed into a digital gray. A jagged crack tore through the sun.
The courtyard shuddered. The illusion was breaking.
The stone walls, the fountain, and the green grass fractured into sharp geometric shards. George and Mia dissolved into ash. The sky went completely black.
I wasn't in the courtyard anymore. I stood in a dark, empty room. The floor beneath my boots was smooth glass.
A massive mirror towered in front of me. Its edges disappeared into the shadows above.
I stepped closer. My boots echoed in the silence. I stopped in front of the glass and looked at my reflection.
I looked at the hard, set lines of my jaw, the tension pulling at the corners of my mouth, and the hollow exhaustion buried deep in my eyes. I was entirely alone.