The café was nearly empty, as expected at this hour. Fluorescent tubes overhead buzzed faintly, their glow mixing uneasily with the flicker of a neon sign outside that blinked Open in stubborn defiance of the late night. Mia sat at a corner table, elbows resting on worn laminate, her journal opened to a half-filled page. The smell of coffee—burnt at the edges, oversteeped—hung heavy in the air.
She had met here with mentees before. It was her neutral zone, somewhere between the world and the machine. The place where she could pretend that time had weight but not consequence. A creak of wood under her moved her to shift; the stool rocked slightly, as if reminding her it still existed.
Across from her sat a student—maybe Sarah, maybe not. The face felt right. The tone of voice familiar. But the name—
Mia blinked.
"I'm sorry," she said, her voice thin. "You were saying?"
The girl smiled. A soft curve of lips. Faint lines by her eyes. Her mouth moved.
Mia didn't hear the words.
Instead, she watched the way the steam curled from the mug between them, the way it distorted the light. Her fingers reached for her pen, but her hand stalled mid-air.
What was her name?
She had written it earlier. She always wrote it.
She flipped back a few pages in her journal. Each page carried its usual coded marks—location, time, fragment index. But the lines she searched for were gone. No mention. Not even initials.
Her breath caught. Her heart gave a stuttering beat.
She turned another page. Then another.
Still nothing.
Across from her, the girl waited patiently.
"You okay?" she asked.
Mia nodded too quickly. "Just tired."
She fumbled for the pen, fingers tightening around it like it might anchor her to the moment. Its metal body was cold. Familiar.
She pressed the nib to the page and forced herself to write: FutureAlert-004? Triggered?
A wave of nausea followed.
The café blurred around the edges. Sounds distorted. The clink of a spoon against porcelain became distant thunder. The buzz of neon a swarm of whispers.
She gripped the pen harder.
Focus.
Name. She needed the name.
"Sarah," she tried, testing the word aloud.
The girl tilted her head, uncertain.
"Yes?"
But it didn't feel right. Not like before.
Mia looked down at the page.
Her handwriting had changed.
The letters were familiar, but the rhythm was off—looped differently, pressure lighter. She flipped back another page.
There.
A note in the margin.
Written in her own ink, but not in her hand.
"If you find this—run protocol 6-3."
Her vision narrowed.
She closed the journal.
Took a breath.
Then another.
"You ever get the feeling," she asked softly, "that your thoughts aren't anchored right?"
The girl across from her frowned. "Like déjà vu?"
Mia shook her head. "Like the room's real. But your memory of it was borrowed."
The girl didn't respond.
Mia reached for her mug, hand trembling slightly. The ceramic was chipped. White glaze peeling. She stared at it.
Memory Blur Level: rising.
She needed grounding.
Needed to see the sun. To remember what light looked like outside of fluorescent fixtures.
"Sorry," she muttered. "I think I need a moment."
She stood, the stool creaking again as if in protest. Her journal remained on the table, pages fluttering slightly as the front door opened and shut for a delivery.
At the counter, she asked for water. The barista—someone she had seen before but could not place—handed her a glass.
The liquid steadied her.
For a moment.
Back at the table, the girl was gone.
Only the journal remained.
She sat again, slower this time.
Opened the book.
Her breath caught.
Across the last page was a single phrase, written in ink she didn't carry.
"You are near the Hidden Realm."
She ran a finger over the words.
They were fresh.
And beneath them, another line in faint pencil:
Memory anchor collapsed. Anchor Drift confirmed.
She looked up.
The café was dimmer now.
Or maybe the neon had gone out.
The hum was gone too.
Only the heartbeat remained—hers, echoing too loudly.
She closed the book.
And whispered:
"Not yet."
But the sense of shifting hadn't stopped.
In the mirror behind the counter, her reflection was delayed. Half a second. Enough to notice.
Mia blinked at herself. The reflection blinked a beat later.
"Too soon," she muttered. Her hand brushed against her coat pocket, finding the emergency glyph—the one she hadn't used in over six months.
She didn't activate it.
Yet.
Instead, she flipped her journal back open. A new page. Blank.
She wrote one word at the top: Fixpoint.
Then beneath it:
Re-establish identity loop: visual recall / vocal pattern / timestamp consistency.
The ink bled slightly. Just enough to unsettle.
She checked her watch.
No second hand.
Just the hour.
But hadn't it been moving earlier?
A breath. Shaky. Intentional.
She turned the page again.
Anchor Drift – active. Memory Blur Level: 6. Hidden Realm: threshold proximity.
This time she didn't flinch.
She wrote it with full pressure. Let the words bite into the paper.
Across the café, a light flickered.
Then another.
And slowly—deliberately—the lights failed.
Darkness didn't fall. It expanded.
She sat still.
Waited.
And within that expanding quiet, she heard the scrape of a chair move back. Not her own.
She didn't turn around.
Not yet.
The hum of reality itself grew faint, replaced by something else—a layered sound, like paper tearing underwater. Her fingertips lifted slightly from the journal.
Then—
She whispered again, more firmly this time: "Not yet."
The lights snapped back on.
A blink. A breath. The café returned to shape.
The mug, still warm.
The barista, yawning.
The girl—gone.
The moment—held in stasis.
And Mia, steady once more, lowered her pen.
The page did not tear.
But her knuckles were white.
Outside the window, the neon sign blinked back to life.
Mia didn't watch it. Her gaze remained on the journal as she turned to a fresh page.
She wrote:
Perception re-stabilized, but only partial.
Below that:
Request: hidden nodes audit.
And then:
Possible passive memory leak from overlapping Echo Line? Unconfirmed.
She underlined the last phrase.
Her pen hovered.
Then one last line:
Still me.
For now.
The sound of a plate being dropped startled her—not because it was loud, but because it was perfectly timed. Too perfect. As if choreographed by a system she couldn't see.
She looked toward the counter.
The barista wasn't there.
The café was empty.
And the plate… unbroken.
Her pulse quickened.
Reality, for all its edges, suddenly felt curved.