They moved faster now.
Not because any of them felt better about where they were or what they had found. Just because standing still felt worse than moving forward, and none of them wanted to say that out loud.
Caspian stayed in front, but the rhythm from earlier was gone. He pushed through a partially open glass door without slowing, his shoulder driving through it hard enough that it should have swung wide behind him. It didn't. The frame shifted and stopped where he left it. Naomi still tracked the angles and reflections as they passed each glass front, but even she had picked up her pace. Eli could feel it in all three of them, a shared pressure that didn't announce itself but sat under everything. The pressure of not finding anything yet.
The corridor kept going.
That was the first thing that started bothering him. Not in a way he could point to cleanly, just a low, persistent wrongness that stuck the longer they moved. The spacing between the storefronts felt off. A cosmetics store gave way to a phone kiosk, then a shoe store, then a jewelry place with the metal gate halfway down, and somewhere in the middle of all that Eli realized he should have recognized at least one of those corners from a few minutes ago and didn't. The layout wasn't matching what he had been building in his head.
He slowed slightly.
Caspian noticed right away. "What?"
Eli looked back down the hall they had just come through, then forward again. "Nothing. Keep going."
Caspian gave him a look but didn't stop.
They reached another storefront on the left. Sporting goods. The front was open, but one of the glass doors had been shoved inward hard enough that it sat crooked on the hinge, the frame slightly bent at the corner from the force of it. Inside, rows of shelves cut the floor into narrow lanes. Shoes on the right. Equipment farther in. A wall of athletic bags near the back.
"Check it," Eli said.
Caspian nodded once and stepped in first. Naomi peeled right to watch the entrance and the glass, picking up angles from outside while Eli took the center lane. The store was cleaner than the others had been. Too clean, almost. Most of the shelves still stocked, but not full enough to look real, like somebody had built the idea of a store rather than a space that people actually moved through and used and left their mark on.
"Back room?" Caspian asked quietly, his voice low enough that it stayed between them.
Eli looked toward the rear wall. "Should be."
Naomi pointed with two fingers from just inside the entrance. "There. Past the bags."
They moved deeper in, the lane narrowing as they passed the equipment shelves.
A narrow door sat behind the display wall, half hidden by two standing racks of basketballs and rolled yoga mats pushed slightly in front of it. Caspian reached it first and tested the handle, his grip firm, trying to find what was holding it.
Locked.
He looked back. "You want me to force it?"
Naomi was already shaking her head. "If it's part of the layout, they'd want it accessible."
"Or they want us to figure out how to get in," Caspian said.
Eli stepped over and looked at the handle himself. No keypad. No visible latch. Just a simple metal knob and a frame that looked slightly wrong, sitting just a little too tight in the doorway, like something was holding it from the other side.
Eli stepped in and pushed into the door. The pressure should have shifted through the frame.
It didn't move.
Caspian stepped forward and drove his shoulder into it. The impact carried through the wood, the frame cracking slightly under the force, but the door still held.
Naomi stepped in last, placing her hand flat against the frame. The tension in it tightened for a second.
"Something's holding it," she said.
Then she looked down.
A rubber doorstop had been jammed into the crack near the bottom, angled in crooked like someone had shoved it there in a hurry without caring whether it sat flush.
She crouched and pulled it free, the rubber catching slightly on the floor before it came loose.
The door opened immediately, swinging inward without resistance.
Caspian stared at it. "Seriously? That was stopping all three of us."
Naomi's expression tightened. "That wasn't left there for us to find."
Eli stood back up, still holding the wedge in his hand. It was a cheap black stopper, the kind that lived wedged under office doors in any ordinary building. Something completely unremarkable that had no reason to be where it was.
"It was there for someone," he said.
Caspian looked at the wedge, then toward the hallway behind them. "So another group did that."
"Or one of the third years," Naomi said.
"Same difference," Caspian muttered.
Eli slid the wedge into his pocket without thinking about it, the motion automatic, and pushed the door all the way open.
The room behind it was small. Lockers on one wall, shelves on the other, a bench running down the middle of it. No hostage. No restraints. Nothing that made the detour worth the time it had cost them on paper. Still, they checked it anyway, moving through it the same way they had moved through everything else. Locker by locker. Shelf by shelf. Quick and efficient and thorough even when thorough meant coming up empty.
When they stepped back out, Caspian looked more annoyed than before. "That was a waste."
"It wasn't," Eli said.
Caspian looked at him. "There was nobody in there."
"There was a sign somebody passed through it. That matters."
Naomi glanced at Eli, brief but noticeable. He usually would have kept something like that to himself, filed it away and moved on without saying it. This time he said it out loud, and something about that registered with her even if she didn't comment on it.
Caspian let out a short breath. "Fine. So somebody's ahead. We know that already."
"Not just ahead," Eli said. "Close enough to leave things behind."
That quieted him. Just for a second, but enough.
They moved out and kept going.
A few stores later the corridor bent slightly, and the whole feel of the floor changed with it. Fewer open fronts. More shuttered entrances pulled down at uneven heights. A perfume store with mirrored columns that made the hall look wider than it actually was, the reflections adding depth that wasn't there. A luggage shop with displays stacked too close together, the cases piled in a way that left almost no clear sightline through the interior. One small electronics place where a monitor near the back was still glowing blue, a pale cold light in an otherwise powered-down space.
Naomi stopped at that one.
"What?" Caspian asked.
She pointed. "That screen wasn't on when we passed the entrance."
"We didn't pass it," Caspian said.
Naomi frowned and looked back down the corridor behind them, her eyes tracing the path they had taken. "I thought we did."
Eli turned with her, looking back the same way.
For a second, he thought the same thing. That store should have been behind them already. Or maybe it should not have been there at all. He could not place it cleanly against the mental map he had been building since they entered the hallway, and that bothered him more than it would have if he had simply never registered it.
Caspian stared between both of them. "Are we doing this right now?"
Eli looked at him. "Actually, yeah."
Caspian went quiet, something shifting in his expression, the edge of impatience giving way to something that was listening instead.
Eli pointed behind them, then to the store in front of them. "The spacing's been off for a while. The store order too. And that doorstop in the sports store means somebody passed through there recently. This place isn't staying consistent."
Naomi nodded immediately. "I thought the same thing with the screen."
Caspian's expression changed a little more. Less annoyed. More focused. "You think they're changing the layout on us?"
"I don't know what I think," Eli said. "I'm saying if something feels wrong, say it. Don't just keep moving like it doesn't matter."
That landed differently than the other things he had said. He could feel it in the way the two of them received it, the small adjustment it made in how they were standing.
Naomi gave a small nod. "Okay."
Caspian rolled his jaw once, then nodded too. "Fine."
It wasn't a big moment. No speech. No sudden shift in the dynamic. Just the three of them adjusting to something they had all needed to say and hadn't, because they had been too focused on keeping pace to stop and account for what they were actually moving through.
They pushed on.
A voice carried around the bend ahead. Not loud, but fast. Uneven in a way that had nothing to do with distance.
"...I'm telling you it's not the same, it's not—"
They all slowed at the same time, the sound pulling them out of their pace before any of them decided to stop.
Caspian shifted toward the wall near the corner, not fully stepping out, keeping himself back from the edge. Naomi stayed just behind him, her attention splitting between the sound ahead and the reflections in the glass beside them, covering both.
Eli listened. Footsteps. More than one person. Coming toward them at a pace that was not quite running but was not the controlled steady movement he had been watching all day either.
"Another group," Caspian said quietly.
"Yeah," Naomi said.
Eli nodded once.
A second later, they came into view.
Three students rounded the corner first. Mira in front, her posture tight and deliberate, the expression on her face set into something that was managing a situation rather than just moving through one. Perrin just behind her, shoulders carrying more weight than usual. Alina on the other side, keeping pace but watching everything around them instead of just the path ahead, her attention moving the way someone's did when they had learned not to trust the space they were in.
And between them, a fourth person.
Not moving on his own.
He was being held up between Perrin and Alina, one arm over Perrin's shoulder, the other gripped at the wrist by Alina to keep him from listing sideways. His feet were moving, but only just, the kind of movement where the body was complying without fully committing to it.
He looked older. Third year, probably, the difference visible not just in the uniform but in the way he carried himself even now, or the way he was failing to.
Light brown hair, pushed back and messy, like he had been running his hands through it repeatedly for the last however long. Taller than Perrin but bent forward, his posture pulled inward by something that had nothing to do with his height. His breathing was uneven, chest rising and falling too quickly for the pace they were moving at, and his eyes moved across everything without landing on any of it.
"...we shouldn't have gone that way," he was saying, his voice low but coming too fast, the words stacking up against each other. "I told you it felt wrong, it didn't line up, it—"
"We're not doing this again," Mira said, cutting him off. Not loud, but with enough firmness in it that he stopped for a second, the sentence just ending where she interrupted it.
Both groups came to a halt a few steps apart. No one spoke right away. Just the two groups taking each other in, reading the situation on both sides before anyone committed to breaking the silence.
Caspian broke it. "You guys good?"
Mira nodded once. "Yeah." Her eyes moved over Eli's group quickly, taking stock of them, then flicked past them down the hallway behind.
"You found anyone yet?" she asked.
Eli shook his head. "No."
Perrin adjusted his grip slightly on the guy between them, redistributing the weight. "We got him."
Eli looked at him again, slower this time, trying to place him. He had not seen him before. Third year, definitely. The uniform was slightly different up close, and the way he carried himself, even in this state, had a different quality to it, like someone who was used to moving through spaces like this and had run into something that his experience had not prepared him for.
The guy looked back at Eli for a second. His eyes focused, like he was making an effort to hold onto the present moment.
"You just get in here?" he asked, the words still coming a little fast.
"Yeah," Eli said.
"Then don't—" he started, then stopped himself, shaking his head once. "Just... don't take the wide paths. They don't... they don't stay right."
Mira tightened her grip slightly on his arm. "You're not helping."
"I am," he said quickly, conviction pushing through the uneven breathing. "You're just not—"
"Caleb."
That was Alina. She did not raise her voice. She did not need to. There was something in the way she said it, flat and precise, that cut through the spiral without adding to it.
He stopped talking. Not because he had calmed down, but because something in her tone reached him in a way that the running thoughts apparently could not.
Eli caught the name. Caleb.
Caleb dragged a slow breath in through his nose, trying to steady it. It did not fully work. His chest was still moving too fast, and his eyes were still restless, but something in him made the effort. His gaze found Eli again.
"The hallway doubled back on us," he said, quieter now but still tight. "We took a turn that should've led out and it didn't. Then there was a storefront that was closed when we passed it the first time and open the second time and I know that sounds—"
He stopped again, his jaw tightening around whatever else he had been about to say.
Mira did not shut him down this time. She was listening now, her expression shifted from managing him to taking in what he was actually saying.
Eli spoke before he overthought it. "We've seen that too."
Caspian looked at him, a quick glance that lasted just long enough to register surprise.
Eli did not back off from it. "The layout's been off since we left the first section. Spacing doesn't match. Order of stores doesn't match. Things aren't staying where they should be."
Naomi nodded once. "We had a door blocked that shouldn't have been."
Perrin frowned, his grip on Caleb shifting slightly. "Yeah. That's—"
Caleb let out a short breath, not quite relief but something adjacent to it. "Okay. So it's not just us."
"No," Eli said. "It's not."
The space between the two groups felt heavier than it had a moment before. Too many people standing still in the same stretch of hallway, the air between them thick with things being said and not yet acted on.
Mira looked between both directions of the hallway, the practiced calculation of someone who was used to making calls and did not like making them without enough information. Then back at Eli.
"You going deeper or heading back?" she asked.
"Deeper," Caspian answered, no hesitation in it.
Mira hesitated. Just for a second, something working behind her expression. Then she nodded, the decision settling. "We're taking him back."
"Yeah, that makes sense," Caspian said.
Caleb shifted slightly between Perrin and Alina, testing his own weight, trying to pull himself more upright. It half worked. His eyes stayed on Eli. "You should—"
"Don't," Mira said.
He stopped again, but held the look, like the thought was still there whether or not he was allowed to finish it.
"Say it," Eli said.
Mira looked at him. Caleb blinked, whatever he had been expecting, it was not that.
Then he said it anyway. "If something feels wrong, it probably is. Don't stand there trying to figure it out. That's when it—"
He stopped.
Not because Mira cut him off this time. Because the light above them flickered. Once, then again, the brightness dipping and returning unevenly, the quality of it wrong in a way that was hard to describe except that it felt less like a malfunction and more like something adjusting.
Everyone looked up.
It wasn't subtle anymore. The light dipped again, came back inconsistent, then leveled out into something that was technically steady but felt wrong in its steadiness, like it was holding itself there on purpose.
Naomi's voice was low. "That's getting worse."
Eli looked past Mira's group, down the corridor behind them. One of the storefront shutters back there was halfway down now. He was sure of it. He had looked at those shutters when they first came through and that one had been up.
"That changed," Eli said.
Mira turned, following his line of sight. Perrin turned with her.
Caleb's breathing picked up again, the steadiness he had found a moment ago coming apart. "Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly what I meant."
No one spoke for a second. All six of them looking at the same shutter, the same hallway, the same space that was not behaving the way space was supposed to behave.
Eli felt it before he fully understood it. That pressure again, the one that had been sitting under everything since they first entered the simulation. But different now. More directional. Less like something ambient and more like something paying attention.
Then the floor tiles ahead of them seemed to stretch slightly, just for a moment. Not enough to fully distort the space, just enough that the distance between two points looked wrong when he measured it with his eyes.
He did not keep it to himself this time. "It's reacting," Eli said.
Caspian looked at him. "To what?"
Eli looked between both groups, all six of them standing in the middle of the hallway, not one of them moving. "To this," he said. "Us stopping."
Naomi nodded immediately. "Yeah."
Perrin frowned. "That doesn't—"
Caleb cut in, faster now, the urgency in him finding a new outlet. "It does. It's been doing that. Every time we slowed down it got worse."
Mira looked between the two paths again, her jaw set. She did not like what she was hearing. Not because she disbelieved it, but because it was the kind of problem that did not have a clean solution, and Eli could see that bothering her more than the problem itself.
She was thinking too long.
The second stretched. Then stretched again.
The light flickered harder this time, and a low buzz followed it, running briefly through the fixtures overhead before cutting out.
Caspian shifted his weight. "Alright, we're not doing this."
That snapped it. Mira straightened, something in her posture making a decision that her expression had not quite caught up to yet. "We're moving." She adjusted her grip on Caleb's arm. "Straight back. No stops unless we have to."
Perrin nodded. Alina did not say anything, just adjusted herself with them, already oriented toward the direction they were going.
Caspian looked at Eli. "And us?"
Eli looked ahead, then to the side corridor branching off to the right. He did not run through it the way he had been running through decisions all day, turning it over and checking it from different angles until the angles blurred together. He just looked at it and called it.
"Right," he said. "And if something feels off, say it."
Naomi nodded. "Got it."
Caspian gave a short nod. "Finally."
As both groups started to pass each other, Mira slowed just enough to say, low and direct, the words meant only to carry as far as Eli, "If you're right, don't give it time to build."
Eli nodded once.
Then they split, each group moving into their respective directions, the hallway absorbing the sound of their footsteps in that slightly wrong way it had been doing since before any of them noticed.
Eli did not wait until something felt fully wrong before speaking this time. The decision to do that had already been made back where the two groups had stood, and he was not going to undo it by slipping back into the old habit.
"The wall's off," he said as they moved, looking at the right side of the corridor. "It's closer than it should be."
Naomi glanced once and nodded. "Yeah."
Caspian did not question it, did not ask him to prove it or explain it. "Then keep left and keep moving."
It was a small thing. Three people adjusting their line through a hallway based on something one of them noticed and said out loud. But it was different from everything that had come before it, because for the first time they were not just moving through the space and hoping it stayed consistent. They were watching it together, and talking about what they saw, and moving based on that instead of in spite of it.