"I did it!" Jan proclaimed, a huge smile spreading across his face as he looked over at Lucien.
For the past few weeks, nearly all their free time had been consumed by the hacking project, and now, at last, they had broken through the security protocol. The deadline for Lucien’s participation in the sleep experiment was drawing closer, and this breakthrough had come just in time.
"What?! How?" Lucien asked, his voice filled with amazement as he hurried to the other side of the table, eyes locked onto Jan’s monitors.
"It was actually way harder than I expected," Jan admitted, still grinning. "Honestly, if we hadn’t learned how to prevent FIA on Thursday, I don’t think I would’ve cracked it." He looked up from the screen, his excitement still evident. "I jolted the chip at different intervals during the boot sequence until it was forced to dump the encryption key into the memory."
Jan was speaking faster than usual, his eagerness making his words tumble over each other. "When Metis explained it, it clicked for me—of course they wouldn’t focus on protecting against something like this. No one in their right mind would ever be dumb enough electrocute themselves just to break in to the chip.
He turned to Lucien, waiting expectantly for well-earned praise. Instead, he got a sudden, enthusiastic hug.
"You’re a fucking boss, man!" Lucien laughed, releasing him. "Now, how do we use this encryption key to unlock my chip?"
Jan rubbed his bloodshot eyes, slumping back in his chair. "Simple," he said, waving vaguely at the monitor while stretching his body. "We decrypt it, sift through endless lines of code, and figure out which command triggers the Wi-Fi protocol. Then, we pray that all the chips really are identical and that we can send the same command to yours without getting busted."
He let out a long exhausted sigh and leaned back, stretching his arms over his head. "But I’m completely spent, man. Let’s get something to eat and call it a night."
The next morning, they woke up and got straight back to work. Now that they knew what to do, their efficiency had increased tenfold. Even though they should have been focusing on their upcoming test, they couldn''t tear themselves away from their pet project—not when they were so close to the finish line.
Midday came and went, both of them still lounging in the clothes they''d slept in. Lucien, for once, felt somewhat rested. A rare occasion, considering he hadn’t had nightmares the night before.
A few days ago, he had spoken to Professor Moea about his recurring dreams and how to control them. Her advice had seemed frustratingly simplistic—Before falling asleep, tell yourself: My dreams are mine to control—but he had followed it nonetheless. Surprisingly, for the past two nights, the nightmares had stayed at bay. When he noticed his dreams taking a darker turn, he had managed to pull himself from REM sleep back into slow-wave sleep.
The downside, however, was that it left him more irritable and scatterbrained. But compared to his usual exhausted mental state, this was a vast improvement.
Lucien was staring intently at a piece of code when Jan suddenly broke his concentration.
"I''m getting tired of eating toast, and we’re out of a few things," Jan said, pushing himself up from his chair and heading to his room. "I’ll go to the dispensary and grab some supplies. You want anything?" He raised his voice slightly as he pulled on some clothes.
"Just don’t forget the coffee," Lucien muttered, barely looking up, his eyes locked on the screen as he struggled to find the line of code he had been reading seconds before. His vision blurred, the text smudging together, and despite his restful night, the familiar weight of mental exhaustion crept back in.
"Yeah, of course, man," Jan said, reentering the living room. Now somewhat presentable in a pair of sweatpants and an old, faded T-shirt—neither particularly clean.
"We also really need to do laundry," Lucien said, raising an eyebrow at the stains on Jan’s shirt. "When you get back, we’ll eat, call it a day, and do some washing. Deal?"
Jan smirked, pretending to be offended by the scrutiny, but he merely nodded. "Yeah, yeah, you’re right… See you in half an hour," he said as he stepped through the door, closing it behind him.
The sound of the latch clicked shut seemed to stretch endlessly for Lucien, wobbling the air like a loose bike bell on a gravel round while a deeper infrabass like sound made is eardrums reverberate at a near imperceivable slow frequency. A wave of drowsiness crashed over him, as though unseen hands had pinned him to the chair, injecting sedatives into his veins, dragging him toward unconsciousness.
He fought against it, forcing himself upright and out of his worn leather chair. His steps were sluggish as he trudged across the light brown floorboards toward the kitchen counter. Holding himself upright using the dinner table.
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There, just out of reach, on the kitchen counter a mere spitting distance away, stood the life-giving coffee machine, still half full of a freshly brewed batch of caffeinated salvation. The room seemed to stretch, making progress impossible.
Lucien fell forward, the floor racing up to meet him as his world went topsy-turvy, he smashed his head into something with an audible crack, then darkness enveloped him…
You must return to us.
"Lucien?" A faint voice called. "Hey, Lucien—what the fuck are you doing? Get up, you idiot!"
He felt a gentle kick to the ribs. Groaning, he tried to open his eyes and lift his head.
The left side of his face felt sticky as he slowly managed to raise it. The sound of paper bags being rapidly dropped stabbed at his eardrums, making him groan even louder.
"Hey, man!, Hey Luc... oh easy there, not so quick! Oh shit, oooh shit!"
You must return to us.
Lucien felt hands gripping him under his armpits as he finally managed to get onto his elbows and knees, his eyes unwilling to see reality. He was hoisted to his feet. The sound of something metallic rolling over the floorboards rang in his ears like a thousand bells.
"Oh shit! Are you okay?! Come sit here!"
Lucien was slumped on the couch, his head throbbing.
"Lucien! Look at me, man!"
Two earth shattering kabooms rattled his brain as his friend banged his hands together in front of his face. Desperately trying to get a reaction.
You must return to us.
He threw his arms up to shield himself from the sonic booms, his eyes darting around the room, searching desperately for something, anything to anchor himself to.
But his efforts were futile, like trying to hold on to smoke. The world around him refused to settle, stretching and morphing between two separate realities neither of able to fully take hold.
One was twisted and vast, an endless expanse of darkness, strobing light, and tangled purple strands stretching infinitely, like the frayed remains of an ancient, decaying spiderweb, its strands barely touching, fragile, unraveling.
The other was a mundane, piece of shit coffee table cluttered with junk, his friend standing and four beige walls.
Neither world felt real. Yet both belonged, entwined as if one could not exist without the other.
You must return to us.
The faint sound of fingers tapping against glass hammered into his skull, breaking his mind apart.
"Hello? Yes, I need an ambulance! Second ring, Northeastern quarter, apartment 401, fifth floor! My friend has fallen, and he has a major head injury. It’s really bad, come quick!"
You must return to us.
Lucien became aware of a faint choir repeating a sentence in his mind. The rhythmic chant played over and over, drumming exhaustion into his bones, the chant slowly picking up speed, his very essence sagging under its weight.
You must return to us.
His skeleton shuddered with every sound, each syllable dragging through the air like a million voices spoken in reverse, breath drawn inward instead of released. His ribs ached, stretching as if something inside him was pressing outward, straining against the cage of his bones, desperate to escape
You must return to us.
The chant rose and fell like the wheezing of an ancient squeeze box, breathing with him, through him, as if his own body had been rewired to house the sound. A constant eerie rhythm repeating over and over again.
"Don’t worry, buddy. Help is on the way. Just sit still!"
You must return to us.
Lucien''s awareness sharpened as he lifted his hand to his head. His fingers pressed into something wet and warm, the sensation delayed, as if his nerves were buffering behind reality. He pulled his hand away, blinking down at the dark smear glistening on his fingertips.
For a moment, his brain refused to acknowledge what he was seeing.
You must return to us.
He stared in horror at his crimson-stained hand, as the voices in his head reached a crescendo. Small writhing movements in his blood made a violent jolt of adrenaline tear right through him, his stomach twisted, his vision sharpened to needle points.
You must return to us.
His hands trembled, then clenched. The voices mutated, twisting into unnatural guttural roars that ripped through his skull, his blood on his hands lifting off his flesh, hanging weightlessly in the air.
You must return to us!
He thrashed, his body rolling against the sofa, hands on his ears, his muscles locked as the two worlds inside his mind crashed together, smashing into each other like tectonic plates, warping, breaking, then suddenly snapping into place.
THE EMPRESS COMMANDS IT!
"UUAAAH!" Lucien cried out with an ear shattering roar, leaving Jan with a ringing in his ears. "What the fuck, man?! Where the fuck am I?! What the fuck is going on?!"
The voices kept screaming in his ears, resonating with absolute dominion over his psyche.
He scrambled backward, arms and legs flailing against the sofa. The rough hemp textures scorched his bare hands as he kicked against the cushions, panic igniting in his chest.
A firm yank pulled him crashing back onto the couch.
"Get the fuck off me!" he yelped. Kicking and screaming, slinging his head from side to side, sending streams of crimson blood everywhere.
"Lucien, RELAX!" Jan bellowed, his eyes wide with fear. "I called an ambulance, but you need to sit still! You’ve got a huge gash on your temple! Ah fuck man, there is blood everywhere"
Jan stood over him now, pressing down with his entire weight, his expression somewhere between blood red dread and frustration. "What the hell happened?! I was gone for twenty minutes, man!"
Lucien swallowed hard, his mind finally forming a single constructive thought, one that wasn’t steeped in pure terror.
That was a good question. How had this happened, and how had he returned to his apartment? He had been somewhere else. In a void of infinite possibility, pure being, endless darkness.
Yet now, his memory was a void. There was nothing, except the endless stretch of time slipping away, stretching space infinitely, leaving the single echoing tone of what should have been a click before his world had felt silent, collapsing into black.
He tried to speak his mind, his voice croaked as his mind finally snapped, plunging him into darkness.