Clara sat on the foot of her bed in only her underwear and pink painted toes, a perk of snagging one of the few single dorms — no roommate. Hours had passed since the buzzing and nausea stopped.
A full-length mirror caught a slice of her reflection. She lifted a hand to her cheek. The ghost-white pallor she'd been carrying around all day had faded, and the hollowness beneath her eyes were gone as well.
She pushed herself upright, stretching the stiffness from her limbs, and padded barefoot toward the kitchen.
Usually, on a night like this, the brick buildings of the co-ed student housing would be flooding with music and laughter, but tonight the air was quiet enough for her to hear the hum of the refrigerator.
She opened her cupboard, pulling out a glass cup, and filled it from the purified tap, taking slow sips as she leaned against the counter. The cold water was refreshing. For a fleeting moment, she thought maybe she'd been imagining the earlier buzzing sensation — it was just stress, or dehydration, or something she could explain away if she tried hard enough.
Then it hit—
A white-hot jolt speared through her chest and stole her breath.
Her grip loosened — the cup that was in her hand moments before was now in an array of sharp, glistening pieces on the ground.
She didn't hear the crash — she never even realized it had fallen.
A scream was stuck in her throat.
She felt like she was being pried open from the inside, like her heart had misfired and was trying to shock itself back online.
The buzzing roared back to life, not faint the way it was earlier — furious. It crackled up through her bones, hot and metallic, flooding her blood like she'd been plugged into a live circuit.
Light flared at the edge of her vision.
"What's happening to me?!"
She looked down.
Her hands were sparking. Thin veins of blue-white light crawled beneath her skin, racing toward her forearms. Electricity snapped between the tips of her fingers, hungry and alive.
Panic slammed through her.
She stumbled toward her bedroom, clutching the desk to keep herself upright and dragging herself to the mirror. She barely recognized the girl staring back.
Purple lightning-veined tendrils spread higher — across her ribs, her throat, the inside of her thighs — pulsing like something alive.
"Run."
The word wasn't a thought — it was instinct. Primal. Commanding. And she didn't question it.
She grabbed the nearest dress and dragged it over her head, half-buttoned, half-not.
She didn't remember shoving her feet into the flip-flops by the door. Didn't remember crossing the parking lot, or starting the car… or even that she entered it, only that she was pulling out of the parking lot going fast and precise.
She drove without choosing a direction. The magnet pull chose for her. Streetlights smeared into white streaks.
Every nerve in her body screamed toward something unseen, pulling her like a tether, the hum of the pounding in her head and the crackling in her fingertips keeping her conscious.
The electrical shocks kept coming, unforgiving, rippling through her body like violent waves. Every turn of the wheel sent more sparks shooting across her skin. Her hands twitched on the steering wheel, snapping and crackling against the leather, leaving faint scorch marks behind.
By the time she slowed, she had realized she was pulling into an old industrial shipping district. It had been mostly unused after the Amazon and online shopping boom but a few warehouses remained. The roads were unkept, weeds growing through cracks in the pavement.
Looming in front of her was a massive abandoned warehouse, its walls streaked with graffiti and the windows were dark and broken. Its presence made her shiver.
And yet… she felt it. That pull. That magnetic force that told her she was needed to be here.
A black SUV was tucked behind an embankment nearby, angled in such a way that it would be invisible to passing cars. It looked too clean to be abandoned. Her stomach dropped.
"I should just leave…" she thought, her fingers gripping the wheel tightly. "What am I even doing here?"
Her eyes darted across the lot, scanning every shadow for movement. Nothing. No guards, no lights, no signs of life. Just the SUV, ominous and still.
The buzzing grew louder, as though her own body was calling to something inside the warehouse.
Her instincts screamed at her to go home, to lock her door, to hide under her blanket and pretend none of this was real. Instead, she opened the car door and stepped into the night.
The warm evening air did nothing to stop the shiver that ran down her spine. Her boots crunched softly against the pavement, the sound deafening in the eerie quiet.
She reached for a nonexistent pocket and realized that in her panicked rush, she had forgotten to grab her phone.
"Shit", she muttered, crossing her arms against herself tightly as if that would shield her from the invisible current pulsing around her.
She moved cautiously, drawn forward like a moth to a lantern. The sparks on her hands flared brighter, buzzing louder, reacting to… something. Like a beacon.
Her steps carried her to the side of the building where a shattered upper-level window gaped open. It reminded her of a jagged-tooth mouth waiting to swallow her whole. Below was a dark storage area filled with wooden crates and pallets, too dark to see anything else.
She climbed on top of a pile of pallets that were stacked under the window and carefully climbed up and pulled herself through the opening, her fingers gripping rusted edges of metal and crumbling concrete. She lowered herself into the shadows. Her flip flops landed softly, a puff of dust kicked up as she hit the floor.
The air smelled like damp wood and rust. The thick dust that lingered in the air was heavy and suffocating.
Then she froze. Her breath loud in her ears.
She wasn't alone.