It was a lie. Ethan knew it was a lie in the same way he knew gravity pulled down. The memory of the blue light, the crushing pressure, the voice saying Wake awake—that was real. It had weight. This reality, this clean, warm, lemon-scented room, felt thin.
But as he looked at Voss, he felt a strange, syrupy fog descending on his mind. It was hard to hold onto the anger. It was hard to hold onto the fear. Voss felt safe. Voss felt like an ally.
"Lily," Ethan said, grasping for a lifeline. "Where is Lily?"
"She's in the archives," Voss said, checking a sleek, expensive watch. "Retrieving the files you asked for. She's been worried sick, poor girl. Sat by your side for the first ten hours."
Voss walked over to the generator. He ran a hand along the smooth casing, a gesture of possessive admiration. "It's a magnificent piece of work, Ethan. Truly. Even dormant, the potential is staggering. The board is very excited about the preliminary data you logged before the... incident."
"The data?" Ethan asked, his eyes narrowing. "You saw the data?"
"The spike," Voss nodded. "The signal. It's unprecedented. You were right, of course. You're always right. That's why I protect you."
He turned back to Ethan, his blue eyes locking onto Ethan's hazel ones. For a second, the warmth vanished, replaced by a cold, analytical scrutiny that pinned Ethan to the wall like a butterfly in a display case.
"But you need to rest," Voss said, the warmth returning instantly, as if a switch had been flipped. "The mind is a fragile instrument. If you push it too hard, it breaks. And we need you whole. The work needs you whole."
Ethan stepped away from the desk. He felt trapped. The air in the room felt too thick, as if the atmospheric pressure had been cranked up.
"I need to see Lily," Ethan said, moving toward the door. He gave Voss a wide berth.
"Of course," Voss said, stepping aside gracefully. "Go. Take a walk. Breathe the air. Reacquaint yourself with the world. It's a beautiful day, Ethan. Try to enjoy it."
Ethan pushed past him, stumbling into the corridor. He expected Voss to stop him, to call security, but the man just stood there, watching him go with that faint, enigmatic smile.
The hallway was bright. Too bright.
The walls were a creamy off-white, the floor tiles polished to a mirror sheen that reflected the overhead lights with painful clarity. The smell of lemon cleaner was stronger here, cloying and sweet, masking the underlying scent of old concrete.
Ethan walked. He needed to find the exit. He needed to see the sky. He needed to prove to himself that the world outside hadn't been erased.
He passed the Geology department. The door was open. Inside, he saw students huddled around a rock sample. They looked... normal. But they were attractive, well-dressed, their posture perfect. They moved with a fluidity that seemed rehearsed, their laughter hitting the air at perfectly spaced intervals.
He reached the main lobby. The sunlight streaming through the glass doors was blinding, a solid wall of white gold. He pushed through the heavy doors and stumbled out onto the quad.
The air was warm. It was late October in Massachusetts, but the temperature felt like a balmy spring day.
Ethan stopped. He looked at the trees.
Two nights ago, they had been shedding. The ground had been covered in dead, brown foliage, the branches bare and skeletal against the grey sky. Now, the trees were full. The leaves were a vibrant, impossible green. The grass was emerald, manicured to perfection, without a single brown patch.
"No," Ethan whispered.
"Professor!"
Ethan turned. Lily was jogging toward him from the direction of the library. She was wearing the same clothes she had worn the night of the experiment—the sweater, the jeans—but they looked cleaner, brighter. Her hair was loose, flowing around her shoulders in a way he had rarely seen; usually, she kept it tied back in a messy bun.
She stopped in front of him, breathless, her face flushed with health.
"You're up," she said, a smile breaking across her face. "Voss texted me. I thought you were going to sleep for another week."
Ethan stared at her. She looked like Lily. She sounded like Lily. But there was something missing. The fatigue. The cynicism. The way she usually chewed her lip when she was worried.
"Lily," Ethan said, grabbing her shoulders. Her body felt solid, warm. Real. "Tell me what happened. Tuesday night. The test."
Lily's smile faltered. Her expression shifted into one of pure, unadulterated concern. It was convincing. It was heartbreaking. "You... you fainted, Ethan. I told you. You hadn't slept. You were standing at the console, checking the bypass, and then you just... crumpled. I caught you before you hit the floor."
"The explosion," Ethan pressed, shaking her slightly. "The blue light. The voice. The clock stopping. The stone chip!"
Lily sighed, reaching up to gently remove his hands from her shoulders. "Ethan, you were dreaming. You were out cold. There was no explosion. The generator never even powered up. We blew a fuse in the breaker box when we tried to bypass the grid, and then you went down. That's it."
"Who is Voss?" Ethan asked, his voice low. "Why does he act like he owns the place?"
"Because he does?" Lily looked at him with genuine confusion now. "He's been the Director since I started here. He hired you, remember? He gave you the lab space when no one else would touch your research."
"No," Ethan stepped back. "No, Hargreaves gave me the lab."
"Hargreaves?" Lily frowned, searching her memory. "I think I saw a portrait of him in the alumni hall? He was Director in the nineties, wasn't he? Ethan, you're mixing up your timelines."
Ethan felt the ground sway beneath him. The history was being overwritten. Or rather, he had been dropped into a history that wasn't his.
"And the weather?" Ethan asked, gesturing wildly at the green trees, the warm sun. "It's October 27th, Lily. Why is it seventy degrees? Why are the trees green? I walked through dead leaves to get to the lab two nights ago!"
Lily looked around, as if noticing the world for the first time. She shrugged, a casual, dismissive gesture. "Indian summer? It's been a warm fall. You know New England weather. Wait five minutes, it'll snow."
She reached out, taking his hand. Her skin was soft. Too soft. Her grip was firm, anchoring. "Come on. Let's get you some food. You look like you've seen a ghost."
"I think I am a ghost," Ethan muttered.
He let her lead him toward the campus center, but his mind was racing, spinning, clawing for traction. Every instinct he had was screaming that this was wrong. The light was too golden. The shadows were too sharp. The people were too happy.
He reached into his pocket again, desperate for the grounding weight of the stone chip. It wasn't there. But his fingers brushed against something else.
Paper.
He pulled it out. It was a crumpled, torn corner of a page from his notebook. The edge was jagged, as if ripped in haste. It was the page he remembered tearing loose when he fell.
On it, in his own handwriting—but shaky, hurried, the ink splattered as if written in the dark during an earthquake—were three words.
NOT YOUR SKY.
Ethan stopped dead. He looked up.
The sky was blue. A perfect, cloudless, azure blue. It stretched from horizon to horizon, unbroken, vast.
But as he stared, squinting against the glare, he realized what was wrong.
It wasn't a glitch. It wasn't pixelation. It was the silence.
There were no contrails. No white lines of jet streams cutting the atmosphere. He was in Boston, one of the busiest air corridors in the world. The sky should be crisscrossed with vapor trails.
But it was empty. A perfect, pristine, impossible blue dome.
And the clouds on the far horizon... they were identical. Three cumulus clouds, spaced perfectly apart, with the exact same fluff and curl. It was a pattern. A loop.
Ethan looked down at the note in his hand. He looked at Lily, who was watching him with a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes, a smile that hung there a second too long, waiting for his cue.
He shoved the note back into his pocket, his hand trembling.
"You're right, Lily," he said, forcing his voice to be steady, forcing a mask of compliance onto his face. "I'm just hungry. Let's eat."
He started walking, matching her pace, blending into the stream of the campus. But inside, the cold was spreading.
He knew, with a terrifying, absolute clarity, that he hadn't woken up. He wasn't home.
He was in the box. And Reginald Voss was watching him through the lid.