The Drift Chamber buzzed softly in the low light—like the nervous hum of a sleeping machine. On the other side of the observation glass, Jordan Ames lay still, strapped into the neural harness. Sweat clung to his brow even before the drift began.

  “Vitals?” Cael asked.

  “Stable,” Rohan replied from the console, but his voice carried a hitch.

  The room was dim. The fluorescent lights above flickered once and settled into a low pulse. Cael narrowed his eyes at the flicker but said nothing. The neural feed began its calibration—thin tendrils of soft light pulsed from the crown of Jordan’s helmet into the data columns of the interface. The dream lattice, they called it, though it was far from dreamy.

  Lena monitored the sync rate. “Target lock in fifteen seconds. Drift status: green.”

  “Proceed,” Cael said, almost absently, eyes glued to the feed.

  Jordan had been prepped for this drift more carefully than the others. His neural profile showed high coherence across multiple cognitive fields—math, memory, even emotional balance. If anyone could stay anchored in a foreign consciousness, it was him.

  Ten seconds.

  The room grew quieter. Even the soft whir of the climate vents seemed to fade.

  Five.

  Three.

  Two.

  A breath caught in Cael’s throat.

  “Drift initiated.”

  The screen blinked—and static burst across the visual monitor.

  “Wait—” Rohan sat up. “Why static?”

  “No visuals,” Lena muttered. “All channels scrambled.”

  “Still getting vitals,” Miles added. “Pulse rate climbing—fast.”

  On the table, Jordan’s body arched slightly.

  “Elevated theta,” Lena said. “He’s deeper than we expected. Should we pull him?”

  Cael hesitated.

  “No. Give it a moment. Let the sync stabilize.”

  It didn’t.

  Jordan’s mouth twitched.

  Then opened.

  Then—

  The scream was abrupt and guttural, like something had grabbed his lungs and twisted.

  Everyone froze.

  Rohan lunged for the manual override. “We’re pulling him!”

  Alarms chimed. The system buckled. Jordan convulsed in the chair, arms fighting the straps, a single word bubbling from his throat between panicked gasps:

  “They’re—”

  And then his body collapsed.

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  Unconscious.

  The Days After

  They kept Jordan under medical supervision in the lower levels of the facility. Cael requested direct access to his charts—VIRE denied it.

  “He’s stable,” they said. “Just give it time.”

  No press statements. No visitors. Not even a whisper from Jordan’s family.

  “We contacted them,” was all VIRE’s HR rep said. “They’ve been informed.”

  But Cael knew something was wrong.

  He wasn’t the only one.

  Lena stared at the blank Drift report for hours. “His brain patterns spiked in ways we haven’t seen. Not even in the failed drifts. Cael—this wasn’t just an error.”

  “Something linked with him,” Rohan said, more quietly. “And I don’t think it was another mind. Not just a mind.”

  Cael didn’t respond. He hadn’t slept. He barely left the lab. Each time he replayed the telemetry data, he saw the same pattern emerge: a perfectly stable drift, then a sharp divergence—an impossible neural echo, like Jordan had tapped into a system with laws unlike anything in their own world.

  And yet the sync held.

  Almost too well.

  It was what Cael had feared.

  It was what he had hoped.

  Late Night – Rooftop

  Miles sat on the edge of the research wing’s rooftop, one leg dangling over the railing, a steaming paper cup of synthetic coffee in his hand. Below him, Safe Haven flickered in quiet motion — night shift rotations, flickering lab windows, hums of generators running on backup grids.

  His earpiece clicked on.

  “You’re not answering your terminal.” It was Zero. Calm, clipped. Too calm.

  “I needed air,” Miles muttered.

  “The lab's sealed. No one’s talking. Is Jordan alive?”

  Miles didn’t answer immediately. He took a sip, swallowed hard.

  “Technically.”

  Zero exhaled. “Word’s getting out. People think you’re drilling through people’s minds to chase God.”

  Miles huffed. “We’re not chasing God.” He looked at the stars. “We’re tracing how consciousness writes the laws of its own universe.”

  “Yeah, I know the brochure.” Zero’s voice flattened. “Say it like I’m not a philosopher or a cultist.”

  Miles rubbed at his temple. “Okay… Think of every person as a reality generator. Their mind doesn’t interpret the world — it generates it. Logic, gravity, memory, time — all painted over raw experience by expectation. Their brain fills in the blanks so fast they can’t even tell.”

  “So... the Matrix, but everyone’s got their own?”

  “Not a simulation. Real. Their version of the universe is complete — from birth to death, physics and all. We’re trying to locate where those realities overlap. Where resonance between consciousness allows drift.”

  Zero went quiet.

  “Jordan screamed,” he said eventually. “What the hell did he see?”

  Miles stared down at the dark between the rooftops.

  “I think,” he said, voice low, “he landed in a world that plays by rules our minds weren’t built to survive.”

  Next day - Inside the Lab

  Cael reviewed the raw data again, eyes bloodshot.

  Jordan’s patterns weren’t random. They weren’t a breakdown—they were too clean. It was as if his mind had adapted to an entirely different rule set. Language centers shifting. Spatial memory reconstructing. It was subtle, but consistent.

  More importantly—it didn’t kill him. It reformed him.

  Sixteen drift trials had shown failure or static. But this… this was success.

  A horrifying success.

  And if it could be replicated…

  Cael turned toward the drift chair, quiet now in its casing. He imagined himself in Jordan’s place. Calculated risk. Measured exposure. Controlled entry. He wouldn’t let the fear get in the way. There was something there. Something real.

  He could feel the shape of the proof forming in the numbers.

  And if each drift accessed a real world—then there were endless timelines. Endless futures.

  Which meant endless chances to find something that could change everything.

  And after what happened to Jordan…

  He knew he couldn’t trust VIRE to control it.

  Questions Begin

  Lena spoke in hushed tones that evening. “Why hasn’t anyone come for him? His parents? Girlfriend? The media?”

  “They shut it down,” Rohan said. “No external comms. They’ve got this place locked tight.”

  Miles sat in the corner, laptop open, his eyes scanning the last logs. “Guys. I checked the network. Jordan's ID is no longer listed on the system.”

  “Wait—what?”

  “I mean his badge. His records. Even his employee file. It’s gone.”

  “Like he was never here?” Lena whispered.

  They all went silent.

  Cael finally spoke, voice low. “They don’t want this getting out. Whatever we saw—it’s more than data. It’s access. VIRE knows it now.”

  Lena looked at him. “You’re not actually considering—”

  “I have to,” Cael said.

  “Why you?”

  “Because I know how to limit exposure. I understand the process. I can enter shallow, record what I see, and come back before any divergence destabilizes cognition.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “No. But I’ve seen enough to say it’s worth the risk. And we need to know what’s on the other side. Before they try to control it without us.”

  A long pause.

  Outside the lab windows, the wind howled quietly over the glass dome, as if the world outside was holding its breath.