The dream always ended the same way: with the city screaming inside Kayden's skull.
He jolted awake so violently the chair screamed across linoleum. For one suspended heartbeat he was still there: sky erased, streetlights bleeding black oil down their poles, every mind within a mile vomiting raw terror straight into his own. His mother's thoughts ripping open like wet paper (please don't let them hear me please don't let them hear me) while something with too many teeth smiled in the dark.
Then the fluorescent tubes of classroom 3-B buzzed back into existence, harsh and ordinary and safe.
Kayden's hands shook so badly he had to press them flat against the desk. Copper coated his tongue. His heart felt like it had been yanked out, shown the void, and shoved back in crooked.
The room was full.
Maya sat three rows over, twirling a strand of dyed-pink hair while tracing tiny hearts in her notebook margin. Her mind: panic about the vodka bottle hidden in her gym bag.
Jamal's earbuds leaked tinny hi-hats while his thoughts replayed last night's shouting match with his dad (the exact pitch of the slammed door, the sour smell of beer).
In the back corner, Liam and Sarah kissed with the desperate focus of people who believed the world might end at 3:30.
Kayden heard none of it.
Today the hive was muffled, wrapped in cotton and then wrapped again. A low, distant surf instead of the usual hurricane.
He pushed his glasses up (cheap black plastic, slightly bent from sleeping on them). Behind the lenses his eyes were a green so vivid they looked radioactive: new leaves after rain, the colour of secrets people weren't meant to see.
He was seventeen, tall enough to duck under doorframes, thin enough that his hoodie hung off him like it belonged to someone else. Dark brown hair that refused every comb. Hoodie sleeves chewed to threads. Jeans faded almost white at the knees. Sneakers held together by hope and duct tape.
He moved like he was apologising for existing.
Kayden stood, slung his battered backpack over one shoulder, and drifted toward the door. The bell hadn't rung yet, but time had never been his strong suit.
The hallway hit him like a wall of heat, noise, and cheap body spray.
Lockers slammed like gunshots. Someone's phone blasted trap beats that rattled teeth. A freshman attempted a TikTok dance in front of the trophy case, counting under her breath. Two guys argued fantasy football stats loud enough to be heard in the next county. A couple leaned against the wall sharing earbuds and shy smiles, pinkies intertwined.
Tyler came barreling through on his skateboard, varsity jacket flapping, wheels rattling like bones in a box.
He saw Kayden half a second too late.
The board clipped Kayden's ankle hard enough to send pain shooting up his shin. He stumbled, arms windmilling, caught himself against locker 189 (still sticky from last Thursday's spilled Monster).
"Watch where you're going, freak," Tyler spat, flipping the board up without slowing. Laughter trailed behind him like exhaust.
Kayden didn't answer. Never did.
A dozen pairs of eyes flicked over, lingered half a second, slid away. That was the rule: look once, decide he was weird, move on.
He pushed his hair out of his face and kept walking, slipping between bodies the way smoke slips through fingers.
Curiosity was his original sin, and the world had never forgiven him for it.
He noticed everything.
The hairline fracture in the ceiling tile above locker 218 had grown exactly 3.2 millimetres since Tuesday.
The janitor's keys played a syncopated 11/8 rhythm.
The faint smell of ozone near the science wing (like a storm that had been threatening for three years and never arrived).
The way Maya's left eyebrow twitched when she lied.
The exact second Jamal's smile went fake.
The microscopic pause before Tyler's laugh turned mean.
Then a voice cut through the chaos like a lighthouse beam.
"Yo, Sleeping Beauty finally decided to join the living?"
Jake.
Six-foot-four of effortless mythology leaning against locker 212. Shoulders broad enough to block doorways, brown eyes the colour of fresh coffee on a winter morning, hair styled with money that didn't need to try. Varsity jacket worn like armour. The kind of jawline that made freshmen forget their own names.
Emily stood beside him, ponytail flicking like a banner in a breeze only she could feel. Sunlight painted gold streaks in her hair and turned her smile lethal. Class president, debate assassin, the girl who once made Vice Principal Hargrove apologise in front of the entire assembly.
They were the only two people whose thoughts didn't scrape his brain raw.
Jake slung an arm around Kayden's shoulders. "Tell me it was at least an interesting apocalypse this time."
Emily laughed, bright and sharp. "Let me guess: surround-sound existential dread in 4K Ultra HD with Dolby Atmos?"
Kayden's mouth curved (small, rare, real). "Something like that."
Jake ruffled his hair hard enough to ruin it further. "You gotta stop checking out mid-class, man. Park's two seconds from strapping a GoPro to your forehead."
"Technically," Kayden murmured, "I'm aware the entire time. Involuntary lucid daydreaming with occasional prophetic undertones."
Emily snorted. "Only you could weaponise napping."
Jake grinned, flashing perfect teeth. "This is why we keep him. Built-in cheat code for every test."
Emily's eyes softened. "You okay, though? You're quieter than usual."
Kayden hesitated. The dream clung like damp wool.
He shrugged. "Bad static."
Jake barked a laugh. "We're upgrading your nightmares to Dolby Atmos now?"
"Better than calling them visions," Kayden said under his breath.
Emily studied him like she could crack him open and read the source code. Then she let it go.
Jake clapped once. "Therapy later. Pizza now. Domino's. My treat before Mom's accountant notices the black card abuse."
Emily's eyes lit up. "Garlic parmesan wings or I riot."
Kayden nodded. "I could eat."
Jake raised an eyebrow. "High praise."
Emily looped her arm through Kayden's, tugging him toward the exit. Jake fell in on the other side, steering them through the river of bodies like twin suns pulling a lonely planet into orbit.
For four perfect minutes the world was nothing but laughter, strawberry shampoo, and the smell of Jake's cologne that probably cost more per ounce than Kayden's entire existence.
He didn't see the lights overhead flicker (just once) like something enormous had passed between them and the sun.
Domino's, 4:27 p.m.
Jake drums an impatient rhythm on the tablecloth.
Emily flips pages in a magazine she isn't reading, eyes flicking to the door every five seconds.
"Thirty-one minutes," Jake mutters.
"Thirty-two," Emily corrects. Her foot bounces hard enough to rattle the parmesan shaker.
Across town.
Kayden walks the alley behind the old record store, hands buried in his hoodie pocket, eyes fixed on the ground like it owes him answers. Puddles reflect a sky the colour of old bruises. His sneakers scuff over broken glass that catches the light and throws it back in tiny, cruel rainbows.
Inside his head, questions circle like vultures:
Why does breathing feel like trespassing?
Why do people smile with their mouths while their minds scream?
Why does the sky look the same every single day, like it's stuck on a loop no one else notices?
He steps out of the alley mouth. The restaurant glows across the street (warm gold windows, red neon promising normalcy). Guilt settles in his stomach like cold dough.
He reaches the crosswalk.
The light is red.
Red.
Red.
Red.
Then it flips to the little white walking man.
The crowd surges forward, parting around Kayden like water around a rock.
He steps off the curb.
Everything is normal.
Until it isn't.
A low growl rises behind him (too fast, too close).
He feels it first in his spine, the way animals feel earthquakes.
The growl becomes a snarl.
He turns his head (slow, dream-slow).
A black sedan is already on top of him.
No screech of brakes.
No desperate swerve.
Just raw, unstoppable momentum.
The grille fills his vision like chrome teeth.
Headlights flare white-hot.
Behind the windshield, the driver's face is a frozen scream (mouth wide, eyes bulging, hands locked at ten-and-two).
Time fractures into shards.
One heartbeat.
The hood ornament catches sunlight and becomes a falling star.
Two heartbeats.
He sees the exact moment the driver realises there is no escape (pupils blown wide, knuckles white).
Three heartbeats.
Kayden's legs refuse the command to move.
His lungs forget how to pull air.
Four heartbeats.
The bumper is inches from his knees.
He can read the licence plate: 7KX-429.
He can see the tiny crack that will spiderweb into a galaxy in half a second.
Five heartbeats.
He thinks, absurdly clear:
This is how I die.
Here.
In front of Domino's.
With garlic-parmesan breath I never got to taste.
Six heartbeats.
The world narrows to a tunnel: the car, the grille, the oncoming impact.
Sound vanishes.
Even his own pulse is silent.
Seven heartbeats.
He pictures the way his body will fold (ribs accordioning, skull kissing metal, blood blooming across asphalt like spilled paint).
Eight heartbeats.
He waits for the pain.
Nine—
BOOM.
A wet, catastrophic explosion detonates in the exact space his torso occupies.
Blood erupts in a perfect, impossible sphere (thick arterial ropes, chunks of something that used to be alive, a red mist so fine it hangs like scarlet fog).
The shockwave rips outward.
People are lifted off their feet and flung backward like dolls tossed by a furious child.
Phones spin end over end.
A little girl's ice-cream cone explodes into white shrapnel.
A man's briefcase bursts open, papers fluttering like panicked birds.
Glass becomes glittering red confetti.
The sedan's windshield blooms opaque scarlet.
Screams finally arrive (delayed, as if sound itself had to travel through water).
And Kayden…
Kayden is on his knees in the exact centre of the carnage.
Untouched.
Not a single drop on his grey hoodie.
Not a scratch on his pale skin.
His glasses hang crooked, one lens cracked in a perfect starburst.
A single drop of blood slides down the cracked lens and hangs on the edge (refusing to fall).
The sedan sits twenty feet back, front end crumpled like tinfoil, steam hissing from the radiator.
Sirens begin far off (thin, wailing, too late).
Kayden stares at the empty air where his heart should have been pulped into red mist.
Inside his skull, something that is not Kayden whispers, soft and intimate:
Not yours.
Not yet.
The world tilts.
His vision collapses to a pinprick.
He folds forward, palms hitting warm, wet asphalt, and the darkness swallows him whole.
But something in the darkness is already waiting.
And it knows his name.