The rose was dying.
It was the most beautiful thing Ethan had seen in three days.
He sat on the floor of the living room, his back pressed against the cold plaster, watching the flower sitting in the crystal vase on the coffee table. When it had appeared the night before—manifesting in the empty air while he drifted into unconsciousness—it had been a tight, crimson bud, perfect and waxen.
Now, twelve hours later, the edges of the petals were curling, turning a bruised, velvety black. One petal had already fallen, resting on the polished mahogany surface like a drop of dried blood.
Ethan reached out and touched the fallen petal. It was soft, cool, and fragile. He crushed it between his thumb and forefinger, and it smeared, leaving a faint red stain on his skin.
It was organic. It was imperfect. It was subject to entropy.
In a world of self-cleaning floors, perpetually green trees, and students who moved with the synchronized precision of a ticking clock, this dying flower was a violent anomaly. It was the only thing in this entire terrifying simulation that felt real.
"Who sent you?" he whispered to the empty room.
The apartment didn't answer. The refrigerator hummed its perfect B-flat note. The air conditioning whispered its climate-controlled lullaby.
Ethan stood up, his joints popping. He hadn't slept in the bed. He refused to sleep in the bed. It was too soft, too comfortable; it felt like a sarcophagus designed to keep him docile. Instead, he had slept on the rug, wrapped in his own coat, using his messenger bag as a pillow.
He went to the window. Outside, the city of Cambridge—or this sanitized, high-resolution copy of it—was waking up. The morning light was a brilliant, golden hue, the kind of light you only see in insurance commercials. The Charles River didn't look like a river; it looked like a ribbon of blue glass, unperturbed by wind or current.
He checked his watch. 7:30 AM.
He had a meeting with Voss at 9:00. The Director had sent a message to his phone—a device Ethan now regarded with the suspicion usually reserved for a loaded gun. "Come to the lab. I have a surprise for you. A solution to our resource problem."
Ethan rubbed his face, feeling the grit of stubble. He hadn't shaved. He hadn't showered. He wanted to hold onto his grime, his sweat, his exhaustion. They were his armor. They were proof that he was still biology, not geometry.
He grabbed his notebook from the floor. He checked the binding, the spine, the page he had written on last night. The ink was still there, the jagged, desperate scrawl: I need… I need…
And then the rose had appeared.
Was it a gift? A taunt? Or was it a patch update? Maybe the system realized its subject was becoming unstable due to isolation and had generated a comforting object to lower his cortisol levels.
If it's a simulation, Ethan thought, it's learning. It's watching my biometrics.
He went to the kitchen and poured a glass of tap water. He stared at the liquid. It was perfectly clear. He drank it. It tasted like nothing. Not chlorine, not minerals, just cold wetness.
He grabbed the vase with the rose. He wasn't going to leave it here. If it was real, he needed to study it. If it was fake, he needed to find the seams.
He shoved the vase into his messenger bag, wrapping it in a spare shirt to keep it upright. He felt like a thief stealing a diamond from a dragon's hoard.
He unlocked the door—three deadbolts that felt purely decorative—and stepped out into the hallway.
The world was waiting for him.
The walk to the campus was a lesson in paranoia.
Ethan moved through the crowds, his eyes darting from face to face. He was looking for the glitches now. He saw them everywhere, or perhaps he was just projecting his own madness onto the world.
A man reading a newspaper on a bench turned the page, but his eyes didn't scan the text. A dog barked at a squirrel, but the squirrel didn't run; it just sat there, frozen, until the dog looked away. A bus drove by, and for a split second, the passengers inside looked like mannequins, featureless and grey, before snapping into high-definition humanity.
Ethan kept his head down, clutching his bag against his chest. He felt the weight of the stone chip in one pocket (gone, lost in the transition) replaced by the phantom weight of the notebook.
He reached the McKay Physics Building. The brickwork looked too red, the mortar too fresh. He pushed through the doors and descended into the sub-basement.
The air in the lab was different today.
Usually, it smelled of lemon cleaner and ozone. Today, there was a new scent underneath—something warm, floral, and slightly spicy. It smelled like jasmine tea and old books.
Voss was there, standing by the main console. He looked immaculate, as always, in a navy suit that absorbed the light. He was smiling, that benevolent, paternal smile that made Ethan want to scream.
But Voss wasn't alone.
Standing next to him, her back to the door, was a woman.
She was looking at the generator—at the pristine, copper-coiled machine that Ethan knew should be a melted wreck. She was leaning forward, her posture intensely focused, her hands clasped behind her back.
"Ah, Ethan," Voss said, his voice booming in the quiet room. "Right on time. Punctuality is the virtue of the bored, but in your case, I assume it's eagerness."
The woman turned around.
Ethan stopped. His breath hitched in his throat, a physical reaction that bypassed his brain entirely.
She was striking. Not in the polished, airbrushed way the students outside were striking, but in a way that felt sharp, vivid, and arrestingly real.
She had dark, unruly hair that was pulled back in a hasty knot, strands escaping to frame a face that was all angles and intelligence. Her skin was pale, dusted with a constellation of freckles across the bridge of her nose. But it was her eyes that held him. They were green—not the flat, emerald green of a gemstone, but the complex, shifting green of a forest canopy or a deep ocean. They were eyes that looked like they were constantly solving a puzzle.
She wore a lab coat that was slightly too big for her, the sleeves rolled up to reveal forearms smudged with graphite. Underneath, she wore a vintage band t-shirt and jeans that were frayed at the hem.
She didn't look like she belonged in this sterile, perfect world. She looked messy. She looked brilliant.
She looked like trouble.
"Ethan," Voss said, gesturing with a flourish. "I'd like you to meet Dr. Sophia Carter. She's joining the team."
Sophia stepped forward, extending a hand. Her grip was firm, her palm warm and dry. "Dr. Maddox," she said. Her voice was low, textured, with a hint of a rasp that sounded like she had spent too many nights arguing over theory. "I've read your papers on non-local causality. The ones the journals refused to publish. I think you're either a genius or completely out of your mind."
She smiled. It was a crooked smile, slightly higher on the left side. It wasn't symmetrical. It was perfect.
"I..." Ethan stammered, his usual eloquence evaporating. He pulled his hand back, feeling the lingering warmth of her touch. "I'm usually both."
"Good," Sophia said, her eyes dancing. "Sanity is a liability in theoretical physics. It keeps you coloring inside the lines."
Voss watched them, his smile widening a fraction of a millimeter. He looked like a man who had just successfully mated two prize racehorses.
"Dr. Carter comes to us from... well, let's just say she was working in the private sector," Voss said, waving a hand vaguely. "She specializes in quantum entanglement and multidimensional topology. When I told her about the anomaly you found—the spike—she insisted on seeing it."
"You showed her the data?" Ethan asked, a flash of protective anger cutting through his daze. "That data is... sensitive."
"It's fascinating," Sophia corrected. She turned back to the generator, walking around it, her fingers trailing over the casing. "But your interpretation is wrong."
Ethan bristled. "Excuse me?"
"You're reading the spike as a signal," Sophia said, tapping the glass of the monitor where the frozen waveform was displayed. "A binary knock. On, off. Yes, no. You're thinking like a radio operator waiting for a transmission."
"It is a transmission," Ethan insisted, moving to stand beside her. He smelled the jasmine scent again. It was coming from her. "It has syntax. It repeats."
"It repeats," Sophia agreed. "But not because it's a message. It repeats because it's an echo."
She reached past him, her arm brushing against his. A spark of static electricity jumped between them, audible in the quiet room. Ethan flinched. Sophia didn't pull away.
She typed a command into the console. The graph shifted, the waveform stretching out, revealing the complex fractals hidden within the spike.
"Look at the degradation on the trailing edge," she said, pointing. "It's losing coherence every time it loops. It's not someone knocking on the door, Ethan. It's the door itself rattling in the wind. It's resonance. Two fields vibrating against each other."
Ethan stared at the screen. He traced the line she had indicated. She was right. The math was subtle, buried deep in the noise, but it was there. The signal wasn't coming from a source; it was the sound of friction.
"Resonance," Ethan whispered. "Between what?"
Sophia looked at him, and for a moment, the playfulness in her eyes vanished, replaced by a somber, intense gravity. "Between here... and somewhere else."
The silence that followed was heavy. Ethan felt a chill run down his spine. This woman—this stranger—had just validated his deepest, most terrifying suspicion in under five minutes.
"Who are you?" Ethan asked again, softer this time.
"I told you," she said, the crooked smile returning. "I'm the new hire. Voss said you needed a partner. Someone to help you carry the load."
"I work alone," Ethan said automatically.
"Not anymore," Voss interjected, his voice smooth and final. "The board has approved the expansion of the project. Dr. Carter has full clearance. You two will work together to isolate the source of the resonance and stabilize it. We need to know what's on the other side of that door."
Ethan looked at Voss. He saw the calculation in the Director's eyes. Voss wasn't asking; he was moving pieces on a board.
Then he looked at Sophia. She was watching him, waiting for his reaction. There was a challenge in her gaze, a spark of intellectual hunger that mirrored his own.
He felt a strange sensation in his chest—a loosening of the knot that had been there since he woke up. For the first time in days, he didn't feel completely isolated.
"Fine," Ethan said. "But don't touch my coffee mug. It has a specific ecosystem."
Sophia laughed. It was a rich, throaty sound that filled the empty spaces of the lab. "Deal. But if you leave your notes unorganized, I'm going to color-code them while you sleep."