Disclaimer: This file is fictional roleplay writing created for a tabletop RPG context. It may use real names, familiar personal details, or real-world framing for immersion, but it is not a factual record, memoir, allegation, or claim about real events. Nothing in this document should be read as asserting that any described actions, conversations, relationships, or incidents happened in real life. It is presented as collaborative roleplay fiction only.

I got out of Leo's car and shut the door. Weave was already floating around me, loose bismuth drifting past my shoulder and around my back. A little of her wandered over toward Echo when she got out, curled around her for a bit, then started drifting back my way.

I watched her pass in front of me. "Must be nice. Nobody's gonna card you."

That appears likely.

"Yea. Great."

I opened my bag because I needed my ID. The battery pack was right there. I moved it, made sure the little red cable was still under it, and got my wallet out.

Echo was getting hers out too.

I looked at her for a second.

Wait.

How does her drinking age even work?

Like... okay. She looked mid twenties right now. Fine. But that wasn't really what I was wondering about.

I knew her birthday was in October, near mine.

I pulled my phone out to check.

Thursday, May 15, 2025.

I stood there for a moment, blinking at my phone.

Oh, fuck... she younger than I remembered...

Yea. Echo was 21. Oh goodness... Im almost 30... well... fuck...

I put my phone back in my bag and kept my ID out while we headed for the door.

I had my ID out before we got to the guy at the door, which should have made the whole thing easy, and then he looked at it, looked at me, and went, "Riley?"

I looked back at him for a second because my brain had absolutely nothing.

"...yea?"

"McDonald's."

"Oh shit. Derek. Yea."

There it was. Different hair, ten years, and apparently my ability to recognize people I used to work with had a loading screen now.

He smiled. "Been a while."

"Yea. Jesus. Ten years?"

"Something like that."

He handed my ID back. "Good seeing you."

"Yea, you too."

I tucked it away and moved so Echo could get hers checked. Weave drifted around me in a loose loop while we waited, bismuth catching little pieces of light from the front room every time she passed through them. I reached up once when she came close, mostly because I could, and she curved around my fingers before wandering back toward my shoulder.

It was nice seeing the guy. Weird, but nice. Like somebody had opened a folder labeled OLD JOB for five seconds and then closed it again.

Leo got his ID back and glanced toward the stairs.

"Since I'm not drinking," he said, "I'm tonight's counter speller."

Luna stopped beside him. "Boo."

Echo looked between them. "No, that was... kind of good, actually."

"It was not."

"It was a little good," I said.

Luna looked at me. "You were waiting to use that."

Leo started down the stairs. "Not very long."

"That means yes."

Echo followed me down. "I still think it was good."

"Echo."

"What?"

The bass got into the stairs before the rest of the room did. I felt it through the bottoms of my feet and up my legs, then the stairwell opened and the whole downstairs hit at once: people, moving lights, a floor made out of glowing panels changing under everybody, blue turning pink turning white under shoes.

There were a lot of people down there, enough that I had to actually pay attention to where I was walking, but it still felt like we had room.

Weave was already leaving me.

A violet beam crossed the bottom of the stairs and she just... went with it.

I stopped long enough to watch her bismuth spread through the light. The beam moved and part of her moved with it, then another piece followed, green-gold shimmer scattered through violet. A couple people on the floor looked up. Somebody pointed. I heard a very clear, very delighted, "Holy shit."

Luna came up beside me. "I think we lost Weave."

I smiled. "She is right there."

Echo leaned a little to see around me. "That counts as right there?"

"For her? Yea."

Weave caught another beam.

Okay. Yea. Luna had a point.

We headed for the downstairs bar first. I kept looking over while we waited because every time one of those moving lights crossed the floor, Weave found it. People kept noticing. A couple phones came up. Somebody reached into the edge of her particles and laughed when she flowed around their hand instead of staying there.

She was having fun.

Like, a lot of fun.

I liked watching her have fun. That was basically enough to keep turning my head back toward the floor every thirty seconds.

The bartender saw me while she was grabbing a glass and stopped.

"Riley?"

"Maya?"

"Holy shit. I haven't seen you in forever."

"I know. What, eight years?"

"At least."

"Yea... fuck."

"Still drinking the green thing?"

"Yea."

"Still stupid sweet?"

"Really stupid sweet."

"I remember."

"Good."

That part I had apparently made memorable.

She started mine first. Extra pineapple, light sour, Sprite, all the shit that made a Liquid Marijuana taste less like alcohol and more like somebody liquefied candy and committed a crime with it.

The first piece of ice hit the glass.

Everybody was bleeding.

All of them.

Luna was turned toward me with blood running out of her mouth and down the front of her dress. Leo had blood down his face, his neck, his hands. Echo was looking straight at me and there was red all through her hair and over her shirt. Maya had it down both arms. Every person I could see at the bar, on the floor, against the walls, all of them were facing me and bleeding through clothes, off fingers, onto the lit floor.

Weave hung over the room in pieces of bismuth and somehow it was bleeding too.

I looked down at myself.

Clean.

Another cube hit the glass.

Maya was pouring pineapple juice.

The room was loud again. People were dancing. Luna was saying something to Leo behind me. Echo was standing there waiting for her drink. Weave was still off chasing lights.

I froze with both hands against the bar.

What the fuck.

Maya glanced up. "You good?"

I looked at her face. Normal. Dry. Fine.

"Yea. Sorry. Brain just... yea."

"Long week?"

"Very."

Sure. Long week. Good enough.

Luna ordered a rum and Coke. Echo asked for cranberry with a little vodka, mostly cranberry. Leo got water.

Ice went into all of them.

I watched it happen.

Nothing happened to the room.

So, cool. Great. Apparently my brain had just shown me everyone I cared about bleeding to death because an ice cube hit a glass, and Maya was asking if I still wanted extra pineapple.

I had absolutely no fucking clue what to do with that.

Leo looked at his water when she set it down. "Counter speller."

Luna stared at him. "You're still doing this."

"I committed."

"I mean... he did warn us," I said.

Luna pointed at me. "You're helping."

"Yea."

Echo picked up her cranberry drink. "I think it's funny."

Luna sighed. "I know."

We found a table off to the side. Echo took the wall seat automatically. I sat where I could see most of the dance floor without having to twist all the way around, which also meant I could keep finding Weave in the lights when I wanted to.

A new song kicked in. The floor got brighter and a little group near the middle cheered when Weave stretched through one of the beams.

Luna watched her for a second. "She is having way too much fun."

"Yea."

Weave split across another sweep of white and violet.

I smiled into my drink. "She really is."

I took a sip.

Stupid sweet. Perfect.

The flash stayed stuck in my head, but the table gave me normal shit to grab onto. My drink tasted like candy. Luna was making fun of Leo. Echo was beside me. Weave was in the lights. I wanted that, so I went with it.

Luna tipped her glass toward Leo. "Do you say shit like that to your students?"

"No."

I looked at him. "That was really fast."

"I don't."

"You absolutely do," Luna said.

"I teach adults. I have some standards."

"Some," I said.

Leo looked at me. "That was unnecessary."

"Sorry."

"No, you aren't."

"I mean, a little."

Echo made a small sound into her drink that was probably a laugh.

Leo took a drink of water, set it down, and said, "I spent twenty minutes this morning answering an email about whether something due at 11:59 was due before midnight."

Echo immediately went, "It is."

"Yes."

Luna frowned. "What were they asking, then?"

"Whether 11:59 counted as midnight."

"Okay..." I leaned back a little. "I kinda get how they got there."

Leo pointed at me. "Thank you."

"I said kinda."

He lowered his hand. "Less helpful."

I laughed and looked at Luna.

There was gold in her eyes.

Just a little. Enough that I caught it and immediately looked up at the moving lights because, yea, we were sitting in a club with every color known to man sliding around the walls. I gave the lights the blame. It still looked like her.

Luna caught me staring. "What?"

"Nothing."

For one second there was blood running down her face again.

I blinked.

Gold eyes. Luna's actual face.

Why the fuck was she bleeding?

"Riley?" Leo said.

I looked at him. "Hrm?"

"You were saying you understood the 11:59 question."

"Oh. Yea. Like, I get the path. They were wrong. But I get the path."

"That's all I wanted."

"You wanted validation."

"Apparently."

Echo took another careful sip. "James gets those."

Leo nodded. "Yeah."

"Sometimes he gets an email that's just a picture."

Luna looked at her. "A picture of what?"

"Something broken."

"No question?" I asked.

"No. Sometimes they put 'help.'"

"Oh, I get those."

The music changed and the floor got louder. More people had come downstairs. A chorus hit that apparently half the room knew, and Weave went straight through a green beam while everybody around her moved with it.

I missed whatever Echo said next.

"Riley?"

"Hrm?"

"You get those?"

"Oh. Yea. All the time."

She smiled.

I looked back at the table and Leo was watching Luna.

Just watching her a second too long.

She caught him. "What?"

"Nothing."

I almost laughed because, okay, sure, apparently that was contagious too.

Then Leo turned enough that the light caught his eyes.

Gold.

Fainter than Luna's had been. Still there.

I looked at Luna. Then Leo. Then back at Luna.

They were both just sitting there.

Okay.

Maybe I had already had more of my drink than I thought.

I looked down at it. Barely touched.

Cool.

"Somebody last week," I said, because Echo had asked about my stupid tickets and I wanted very badly to talk about a stupid ticket, "sent me a screenshot of an error, but they cropped the error out."

Echo frowned. "Why?"

"I don't know."

"What did they want you to do?"

"Fix it."

Luna nodded like this made perfect sense. "Of course."

"So I asked for the whole thing, and then they sent me another screenshot."

Leo asked, "With the error?"

"No."

Echo's frown got deeper. "Why?"

"I still don't know."

I took another drink. Warmth had started settling into me by then, the normal kind. Shoulders easier. Talking easier. The room was loud enough that I had to lean in a little, and I was comfortable there with them.

"I wasn't trying to be mean about it," I kept going, "but I can't fix something I can't see. So I told them exactly what part I needed, and then they sent me their whole desktop. Which... yea. Technically that had it."

Luna lifted her glass. "Progress."

"Technically."

"Did you fix it?" Leo asked.

"Eventually."

Weave came back while I was talking, gathering out of the moving lights until I had that familiar loose orbit around me again. Particles skimmed past my shoulder, then curved up between me and Echo without blocking either of us.

Her voice landed in the back of my head, clear against the music.

Why was the error removed from the first image?

"I don't know. That's what we're talking about."

Understood.

"No, you don't. Nobody does."

There was a tiny pause.

That is also understood.

I laughed. "You having fun?"

Yes.

"Good."

A beam swept past the table.

Half of Weave immediately went after it.

I watched the particles leave. "Okay, bye."

Echo laughed. Luna did too. Even Leo got that little closed-mouth smile he did when he was pretending something was only mildly funny.

And for a while, yea, that was enough. We went right back to work shit. I drank my drink and listened to my friends complain.

"So is your stuff any better?" I asked Luna.

"No."

"Good."

"I had six people reply-all to an email today to tell everybody they didn't need to reply-all."

Echo blinked. "All six?"

There was an extra little beat before she said it.

I noticed because I knew Echo. Then Luna answered and it went away again.

"Six."

Leo looked at her. "You counted?"

"I was getting every email."

"Yea, I would've counted too," I said.

"Thank you."

Leo lifted one hand. "I didn't say there was anything wrong with counting."

"You sounded like there was."

"I asked a question."

"You're doing the professor thing."

"What professor thing?"

Luna stared at him. "That."

Leo looked at me.

I pointed at my drink. "Don't involve me."

"Coward," Luna said.

"Absolutely."

I looked at her again.

Her eyes were brighter.

That time the club-light excuse sucked.

I looked at Leo. His were doing it too.

"Are y'all doing something?"

Luna blinked at me. "No?"

Leo answered at the same time. "No."

I kept looking between them.

Luna raised her eyebrows. "What?"

"Your eyes are... whatever. Both of you."

Leo glanced at Luna. Luna glanced at him.

"Okay," I said.

Because I had asked. They had answered. My next question would have basically been your faces are weird in a club full of moving lights.

The room kept filling in around us. Weave had become part of the dance floor by then. People still looked when she caught a beam, but the first big holy-shit reaction had worn off. Somebody new would come downstairs, point her out, and the people already there barely bothered anymore.

I kept checking anyway.

"She's having the best fucking night," I said.

Echo looked toward the floor. It took her a second to find Weave in the lights. "I think she is."

I looked at Echo.

She looked a little drunk.

That made sense enough at first. Echo could get hit fast by stuff sometimes. She was sitting farther back against the wall, laughing easier, blinking a little slower. She still followed everything. She still talked fine.

So I kept an eye on Echo and kept talking.

A song changed and Luna looked toward the dance floor.

"Are any of us actually going to dance?"

"No," I said.

Echo shook her head. "I wasn't planning to."

Leo said, "No."

Luna looked around the table. "Great night out."

I nodded toward the floor. "Weave is."

Echo squinted at the lights. "I don't know if that counts as dancing."

"She thinks it does."

From somewhere above us came a very immediate:

I do.

I smiled. "See?"

Luna lifted her drink toward the ceiling. "Okay. She wins."

A white beam crossed the room and Weave chased it before Luna had even put her glass down.

Echo took another drink.

I let it pass as one more normal sip.

A while later we weren't even having one conversation anymore. Echo was telling me something about James. Luna and Leo were arguing about some old story like they had both been saving corrections for years.

I heard Luna say, "That is not what happened."

I looked over. "Wait, what did Leo do?"

"I didn't do anything," Leo said.

"That is not true."

"What did he do?"

Leo pointed at Luna without looking away from me. "Do not encourage her."

"I haven't even heard it yet."

"That has never stopped you."

I thought about it. "Fair."

The story got worse from there because they kept interrupting each other to fix details.

"It was Tuesday."

"It was Thursday."

"No, because we had -"

"That was the week before."

Echo picked Luna's version because one of her details made more sense. I picked Luna's version because Leo complained when Echo did.

"This is not evidence," he said.

"Feels like evidence," I told him.

"It is not."

"Professor thing," Luna said.

Leo started to answer her and lost it.

He was looking at her again.

Luna noticed. "What?"

"You okay?"

"Yea?"

He watched her another second.

I looked between them and kept my mouth shut. Whatever little twin check that was, they did shit like that sometimes. I knew exactly enough to leave it alone.

A few minutes later Luna did basically the same thing back. Leo reached for his water. Luna watched him do it. He caught her.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Okay."

I drank more of my green bullshit and let them be weird together.

Then I caught gold over Luna's hair.

It was there and gone so fast I thought one of the moving beams had crossed behind her. A little curve. Then another few seconds later it showed again and held long enough for me to follow the shape.

Part of her halo.

I looked at Leo.

Nothing for a second.

Then gold caught above him too.

A light swept across our table and took the edges away again.

I rubbed my thumb against the side of my glass.

Okay. That was getting harder to blame on the room.

Echo, apparently still thinking about the stupid 11:59 email from forever ago, said, "I still think 11:59 would be a reasonable question if the assignment said midnight somewhere else."

Leo looked at her. "It didn't."

"Oh."

She sat with that for a beat.

"Then no."

Luna pointed at her. "Thank you."

"Why is everyone grading my student?" Leo asked.

"You brought it up," I said.

He thought about that. "That's fair."

Echo laughed, and I realized she was actually kind of drunk now.

More than kind of.

She hadn't had enough for that.

I looked at her and the blood came back.

Echo facing me. Red down her cheek, out of her mouth, across her neck.

Then Luna.

Leo.

The room behind them.

Everybody looking at me.

I looked down at myself in the flash again.

Clean.

Then I was back at the table with Echo asking, "Riley?"

I swallowed. "Yea."

Why were they looking at me?

Why wasn't I bleeding?

I looked at Echo's glass. There was still a lot of cranberry left in it.

Then Luna's rum and Coke. Mine. Leo's water.

Different drinks.

Echo barely had vodka. Luna had rum. I had my green shit. Leo had fucking water.

Same bar.

I stared at the glasses for longer than made sense.

Luna said something to me and I missed it.

"Sorry, what?"

"I asked if you're okay."

"Yea. Just..."

I looked at her eyes. Properly glowing now.

Then Leo's. Same.

"Are you?"

Luna looked at Leo instead of answering me.

Echo reached for her drink.

She missed it.

Just barely. Her fingers landed next to the glass, she stopped, looked down, and got it on the second try.

I sat forward. "You good?"

Echo looked at me. "Yea."

She sounded fine enough.

A little slow.

"Okay."

I hated that I kept saying okay to things that were getting less okay every time I looked at them.

I tried to get back to the stupid screenshot because normal conversation felt like something I could actually hold.

"I think the weirdest part was they knew how to crop it. Like, they specifically knew how to remove -"

Luna stopped looking at me.

She stared at Leo.

"Your halo."

Leo frowned. "What?"

"Your halo."

"What about it?"

"You're just sitting there."

Leo looked at her and went still.

Gold had come up over her too.

Both rings were dim and unsteady, but they were there. The gold had little bright motes mixed through it, and thin smoke-dark wisps kept threading across both of them, catching and slipping around the light.

Leo's face changed.

"No."

Luna looked up like she could somehow see her own. "Neither am I."

The whole table finally stopped talking.

I looked at Echo because at that point I was checking everybody.

She opened her mouth. "I think -"

She stopped.

Waited.

"I... hold on."

She shifted in the seat and bumped the table hard enough to rattle all four glasses.

"Echo?"

"Hrm?"

"How much of that did you drink?"

She looked down at her glass like she had to figure out which one I meant.

"Um. I don't..." She picked it up carefully this time and looked through the side. "Not much. Like..."

She held her fingers apart, then frowned at them.

"Not much."

That helped exactly zero.

I looked at Leo's water again.

Then Luna's drink.

Echo's.

Mine.

Different shit. Same bar.

So what the hell did all four have -

I looked at Echo.

Tiny clockwork shimmer moved through her irises.

She was sitting there gripping a cranberry drink with both hands and trying to keep up with us.

"Okay, what the fuck, y'all... are all three of y'all doing magic or something?"

"No," Leo said.

Luna said, "I don't think - no, I'm not trying to."

Echo blinked at me. "I didn't... I wasn't. I don't think I -"

"Okay. Okay."

I looked past them.

The bar had changed while I was staring at my friends.

Conversations kept breaking off. People were looking at their drinks, at each other, at the floor. Somebody near the bar asked way too loudly what was in the water. Glasses were getting pushed away. A couple people had sat down wherever they could instead of bothering with chairs. Something bright flickered where I knew there had been nothing bright before and somebody swore.

Maya had stopped smiling.

For one horrible second the blood dropped over all of it again.

Same room.

Same people.

Turned toward me.

Did I fucking see this already?

It snapped away.

Leo put a hand flat on the table. "Riley."

"Stop drinking."

He looked at me.

"Everybody. Just stop. Put the drinks down."

Echo set hers down immediately. Luna did too. Leo pushed his water away.

I stood and had to wait half a second for my own normal alcohol buzz to catch up with me. Warm, a little loose, floor still exactly where I expected it.

"Hey," I called toward Maya. "Something's wrong with the drinks."

She was already taking a glass away from somebody. "Yea. I fucking see it."

Good.

Maya had the room. I had the four people at my table.

Five. Weave.

I turned toward the dance floor. "Weave!"

The music dropped before I had to call again. Maybe Maya did it. Maybe somebody else. The bass cut down enough that the room suddenly sounded full of actual voices and glass and people asking each other if they were okay.

Weave peeled out of the lights and came back fast.

Leo stood.

He got upright, then his balance shifted late and he caught the back of his chair.

"Okay," he muttered. "That's worse."

Luna laughed once.

Then she stood because he had.

Her step went sideways.

Leo reached for her elbow.

The light and smoke around both of them kicked brighter the second they got close.

They both stopped.

"Okay," Luna said. "That feels... bad."

Leo let go, but kept his hand there close enough to catch her. "Can you stand?"

"Yea. I think."

She looked at him. "We should probably -"

"Get outside," Leo said.

Luna stared at him.

"That was my sentence."

He blinked. "Sorry."

"I wasn't done."

"I know."

"How?"

Leo opened his mouth.

Luna's face did something halfway between offended and fascinated. "See, that's weird."

"Agreed."

"Don't agree with me that fast."

I almost laughed and hated that I almost laughed.

Echo was trying to stand.

I went to her before she could turn that into a whole thing. "Hey. Come on."

"I can -"

She got one foot under herself, then had to grab the table.

Her voice went quieter. "Okay. Um."

"Grab me."

Echo got her staff in one hand and took my forearm with the other. I moved close enough for her to lean into me without making her reach.

Across the table, Luna looked above Leo's head again.

"Is mine up?"

Leo looked at hers.

"Yea," he said.

"Fuck."

She reached up toward the space above her head, stopped halfway, and looked annoyed at herself.

"Okay. I need to..."

She lost the rest.

"Luna?" I said.

She looked at me. It took her a second, but she did.

"I'm here. I just... thinking's kind of..." She squeezed her eyes shut, opened them again. "Slippery. That's stupid."

"It's fine."

"It's a stupid word."

"Use the stupid word."

"Slippery, then."

She tried a step.

Her foot landed too far left. Leo caught her forearm before she went into the table.

Weave arrived around them at the same time, bismuth gathering thick at Luna's other side and under where her weight was dropping. Luna stayed upright between Leo's grip and the dense sweep of particles.

Her eyes widened at Weave. "Oh. Hi."

Hello.

"Good timing."

Agreed.

"Everybody agrees too fast right now."

Leo looked at me over her head. He was unsteady too. He was just hiding it better because of course he was.

I pointed at him. "You are standing. Walking... fuck, I don't know. You're stressing me out. Come on."

"Understood."

"Yea. Come on."

We started moving.

Getting out of the room sucked.

Echo could walk if I gave her time for each step, except the timing kept changing on her. She would move fine twice and then stall on the third like the step got lost somewhere between thinking it and doing it. She kept trying to say sorry every time she bumped me.

"You're good," I told her the first time.

"Sorry."

"Echo."

"Right."

Two steps later she said, "Sorry," again.

I let it go.

People moved out of Weave's way fast. Which, yea. If I saw a cloud of glowing bismuth half holding a woman up while gold and smoke kept slipping around the two people beside her, I would probably fucking move too.

Leo stayed on Luna's left with about an arm's length between them. Every time her legs stopped cooperating he reached in and took her forearm again. Weave held the other side and took more of her weight.

Luna knew every time a step went wrong. I hated that part.

"Wait," she said once near the stairs. "My foot is... hang on."

Leo stopped with her. "Take your time."

"I know where the stair is."

"I know."

"I can see it."

"Okay."

She stared down at it, jaw tight. "I just can't make that useful apparently."

Weave gathered more densely under her right side. Leo kept her forearm steady. Luna got the step on the second try.

Echo leaned into me while we waited.

I looked at her face.

Blood ran out of her mouth.

I jerked so hard Echo grabbed me tighter.

Then it was gone.

"Riley?"

I looked again.

Real Echo. Freckles. Glassy eyes. Breathing. Confused because I had just flinched away from her in the middle of helping her walk.

"Sorry. I'm good."

She stared at me for a beat longer than usual. "You're... not very good at that one."

"Yea. I know."

We kept going.

By the time we got outside, my head had started doing the math I had been refusing to do.

I had seen the whole room bleeding before we even sat down.

Then I took my drink to the table and talked about email screenshots for half an hour.

One impossible second and an ice cube had given me exactly zero useful instructions. My brain grabbed the part where I carried my drink to the table anyway and started chewing.

Echo stumbled off the last step and I caught her against me.

That shut the thought up for a second.

"Easy," I said. "I got you."

"I know. I just - floor moved."

"Yea. Rude of it."

"Very."

Behind us, Leo said Luna's name.

I turned.

Weave had thickened along one side of her into a moving brace of particles, and Leo had her forearm again. Luna looked pissed now, which honestly made me feel a little better because pissed was at least very Luna.

"I can walk," she said.

Then her next step crossed in front of the other one and she had to stop.

Leo said, "You are walking. We're helping."

Luna looked at him. "That sounded like something I would say."

"Probably."

"I hate this."

"I know."

The air beside the building lit lavender.

I stopped.

A thin vertical line climbed up out of nothing, narrow and bright against the brick. It widened just enough to make a doorway-shaped opening, and a woman stepped through it in a navy coat over black clothes with a heavy bag across her body. Something clear pinned in her hair was glowing lavender.

The opening folded shut behind her.

She took one look at us and came forward fast.

"Who drank what?"

I tightened my hold on Echo. "All of us had drinks. Leo only had water. Something's wrong in there."

Her attention went to the twins.

She got maybe two more steps.

Then she stopped so hard I almost thought she'd hit something.

Her hand went to the wall. She blinked once, twice, and black vapor pushed out behind her shoulders in two rough wing-shaped bursts before breaking at the edges like smoke. Her eyes changed too, purple with little pale points in them.

She looked back at the bar door.

"Fuck."

Then she looked at us again.

"Noctilux."

The word meant nothing to me.

She backed away from us. One step. Two. More until the black vapor settled closer behind her and she could stand without touching the wall.

"Okay. Put some space between those two. Let the dust take most of her weight."

Leo shifted his grip lower on Luna's forearm. Weave gathered more tightly on her other side.

Luna tried to focus on the woman. "What is -"

Her sentence just stopped.

She frowned.

"Sorry. What is Noct..."

"Later," the woman said. "Move first."

Luna nodded once. "Yea. Fine."

The woman looked at me and Echo. "How bad is she?"

Echo answered before I could. "I'm..."

She paused long enough that we all waited.

"Pretty bad, I think."

"Okay. Stay on her."

I almost snapped that I was, then caught myself. We hadn't even told her who any of us were.

She looked from me to Echo to the twins. "Names. Quick. I need to know who I'm directing."

"Riley," I said. I touched Echo's arm with my free hand. "Echo. That's Luna, Leo, and Weave."

Leo gave her a short nod when I said his name. Luna managed one too. Weave's particles shifted around Luna but she stayed where she was.

The woman pointed at herself. "Marisol."

Okay. Marisol.

She looked down Main, then back at us. "We're going down Main. Main Stage. I can get you inside."

That was just down the road.

Good.

Marisol took another step away from us and steadied herself before continuing. "Leo, forearm. Weave, keep taking her weight. Riley, stay with Echo."

Her eyes flicked toward the bar again.

"I'm going ahead. Keep coming down Main. I'll get the door open."

Then she turned and went ahead of us. She gained distance fast, though one of her steps hit wrong before she got farther down Main.

I looked at Echo. "Ready?"

She thought about it.

"No."

"Yea. Same. Come on."

We started downhill on Main.

Outside, every bad step sounded bigger without the bass.

Echo held my arm and her staff and concentrated on walking like that was now a full-time job. I kept my pace stupidly slow for her. When she drifted, I moved with her. When she stopped, I stopped.

Ahead and to my right, Leo and Weave worked Luna forward together.

"I know where I'm..." She stopped and looked down the street. "Going. I know where I'm going. My feet are just being assholes."

Leo said, "Small steps."

"I know."

She took one.

"See?"

The next one went sideways.

"Fuck."

Weave caught the weight before Leo had to pull her closer.

Continue at this pace.

Luna looked into the particles beside her. "Bossy."

Yes.

"At least you admit it."

I almost laughed.

Then I looked at Luna and for half a second there was blood down her face again.

I looked at Echo. Real Echo.

Back at Leo. Real Leo.

I kept making myself use what was actually in front of me.

My own drink sat warm and stupid in my stomach. My head felt normally buzzed. That somehow pissed me off. Echo could barely line up a step. Luna had to argue with her own feet. Leo was walking like he had gotten off a spinning ride. I felt like I had had exactly half of a stupid sweet cocktail.

And I had seen them bleeding before any of it started.

I touched the old thought again and immediately hated myself for it.

I saw it. I kept going.

What the fuck was I supposed to have done, scream because an ice cube hit my glass and my brain lost its shit for one second?

I didn't know.

My brain still wanted an answer where I caught it sooner and everybody was fine.

Echo tugged on my arm.

"Curb," she said.

"Yea. I see it."

"No, I was telling me."

"Oh."

She lifted her foot too high, cleared it, and looked briefly pleased with herself.

"Got it."

"You did."

Marisol was farther down Main now.

Then her voice came right beside me.

"Riley. Keep coming down Main. I'll get the door open."

I turned so fast I almost pulled Echo with me.

Marisol was still ahead of us.

Okay.

Sure.

Whatever.

Useful.

"She says keep coming," I told the others.

Leo looked down the street. "We are."

"Yea, I know. I guess I'm getting the directions."

Luna looked over, took too long to figure out what I meant, then gave up. "Good for you."

"Thanks."

Echo leaned a little harder against me.

I adjusted with her and kept walking. Ahead of us, Leo stayed far enough off Luna's side to keep space between them, one hand steady on her forearm whenever she needed it. Weave held the rest of her up in a dense drift of bismuth. Luna kept trying every step herself even when half of them came out wrong. Marisol stayed ahead of us, and we kept moving down Main.

Echo's next step landed half where she meant it to and her shoulder went hard into mine.

I tightened my arm around her before either of us could make it worse. "I got you."

"Sorry."

"You're fine."

"I keep-"

"Echo. Walk first. Sorry later."

She nodded like I had given her a complicated assignment and stared down at the sidewalk.

We kept moving down Main.

Ahead of us, Luna made three decent steps before her left foot crossed too far in front of the other one.

"Fuck."

Weave thickened under her side before she lost much height. Leo stayed out from her a little, then reached in for her forearm when she needed the extra point to pull herself straight.

Luna looked down at her own feet like they had personally betrayed her.

"I know how to walk."

Leo said, "I know."

"I have been doing it for years."

"Also true."

She took another step.

That one worked.

"See?"

The next one didn't.

"Oh, fuck off."

I almost laughed.

Then Echo's weight shifted late against me and every part of my attention snapped back to her.

That was basically how the whole walk went. I wanted to watch Luna because she looked like she was one bad step away from going down again. I wanted to watch Leo because his own walking still sucked and he kept pretending it sucked less than it did. I needed to watch Echo because if I stopped matching her pace for even a second, she drifted somewhere her feet hadn't agreed to go.

Every time my head tried to get back to the bar, somebody needed me in the actual street.

Which was probably good, because the bar thought kept coming back ugly.

The flash.

The drinks.

That horrible little moment where I had seen something impossible before anything else looked wrong and then just kept having a night.

Echo stopped.

I stopped with her.

"What's up?"

She was looking past me toward Weave.

It took long enough that I started wondering if she'd forgotten why she'd stopped.

Then she said, "She isn't walking."

I looked at Weave.

"Nope."

Echo watched Luna take another careful step while Weave flowed under one side of her.

"That's unfair."

A laugh got out of me before I could help it.

"Yea. A little."

Echo smiled like she'd managed something.

I wanted to hold onto that stupid little smile way harder than made sense.

"Come on," I said. "We're almost there."

The Main Stage door was open when we reached it.

Thank fuck.

Somebody inside took one look at us and started clearing space instead of asking six questions first.

The room itself was big and open, stage at one end, mostly empty floor between us and it. After the club and the street, all that empty space felt weirdly luxurious.

Luna looked at the stage.

"I'm lying down there."

Leo said, "Good."

She gave him a look. "Don't sound so pleased."

"I'm pleased you picked a flat surface."

"Professor answer."

"Probably."

Weave moved with her toward the stage. Luna kept doing the steps herself. Slow, pissed-off little steps, with Weave taking enough of her weight that the bad ones didn't get to decide anything.

Leo stopped several yards back once she reached the edge.

Luna got herself sitting, stayed there for maybe two breaths, then lowered herself onto the stage.

"I'm going to hate everything from here."

Acceptable.

Luna turned her head toward Weave. "I wasn't asking permission."

Also acceptable.

That got another almost-laugh out of me.

Echo sagged harder into my side.

Right. Her.

The person helping us came back with folding cots and started opening three along the wall. I got Echo onto the first one before they had the second fully set.

She sat, looked at the cot like she was making sure it was really there, then folded onto her side.

Her staff bumped the frame. I caught it before it slid and set it beside her where she could reach it.

"Riley."

I looked over.

Leo was still standing.

Of course he was.

I pointed at the second cot. "Go."

"I'm fine sitting up."

"There is a bed-shaped object directly behind you. Use it."

His eyes went to Luna, then the cot, then Luna again.

"You can still see her from the cot."

He looked at me.

"Yea, I know. Go lie down before you fall down and make this more annoying."

"Compelling."

"Thank you."

He went.

The third cot stayed open.

I sat against the wall beside Echo's instead.

I told myself it was because I wanted to stay close in case she woke up weird.

That was true.

It was also true that sitting down reminded me I had been carrying another person down a street while half drunk and scared out of my fucking mind.

I didn't really want to test standing back up yet.

A little later, the person who'd helped us handed me a card.

Brass on the back. Stillglass House on the front.

"Marisol left that for you," they said. "She said sleep first. Go once everybody's rested."

"Okay. Thanks."

I put it away.

Echo went to sleep fast.

Leo took longer. Every time I looked over, he was watching the stage. Then one time I looked and his eyes were closed.

Luna had gone quiet too.

Weave stayed awake.

She kept moving in a slow loose path from the stage toward the cots, up along the wall, across the room higher up, then back down somewhere near me. A few minutes later she'd do some other version of the same thing. Sometimes she spread thinner. Sometimes she gathered close enough that the bismuth looked almost solid where the room light caught it.

I just liked seeing her move.

It made the room feel less dead.

I stayed awake too.

At first I had enough to do without thinking. Listen to Echo breathe. Look at Luna. Look at Leo. Catch Weave on another slow pass through the room. Check Echo again because apparently three seconds had passed and my brain had decided that counted as new information.

Eventually everybody kept breathing long enough that my head got bored with being useful.

Then the bar came back.

I rubbed both hands over my face.

"I hate this."

Weave drifted down from somewhere above me.

Specify.

I let my hands fall.

"Everything?"

She waited.

"Fine. The drinks."

Weave moved past Echo's cot, curved back, and stayed near enough that I didn't have to look up at her.

I stared at the floor.

"I was almost there downstairs. I know I was. Then everybody started falling apart."

Yes.

"Echo barely had alcohol. Leo had water. Luna and I had completely different shit."

Saying it out loud made the old unfinished thought pick itself back up.

Same bar.

Different drinks.

I could see the table again if I closed my eyes. Four glasses. Condensation. Straws. My stupid green drink. Leo's water.

Something every glass had gotten before it ever reached us.

My stomach dropped.

I opened my eyes.

"Oh."

Weave drew a little closer.

"Oh, fuck me."

Riley?

"The ice."

I sat there looking at the floor like it had personally offended me.

"It was the fucking ice."

Weave went still for maybe half a second, then resumed that slow drift beside the wall.

That is consistent.

"Yea."

Four different drinks and the same stupid clear cubes.

The answer felt obvious after I had it, which made me want to throw something.

"Jesus Christ."

My eyes went to Echo again.

I had spent half the night trying to find a thing I could have noticed earlier. There it was. Tiny, ordinary, sitting in every glass while we all talked about email screenshots like nothing in the world was wrong.

Then the blood image tried to come back with it.

I shut my eyes hard.

That part still didn't fit.

The ice explained the table. The blood image still sat off by itself, hours earlier than it had any business being useful.

I had seen it and kept going.

My brain kept putting those two facts next to each other like they were supposed to make a confession.

I didn't have one.

"And that other thing still makes no fucking sense."

Weave passed between me and the far wall, loose particles catching the dim light.

Insufficient information.

"Yea. I know."

I leaned my head back.

I was so tired my teeth hurt.

I looked at Echo. Leo. Luna.

Weave drifted toward the stage again.

Everybody was here.

That was enough for the next five minutes. Maybe.

"If something changes, wake me up."

I will.

"Actually wake me up."

I will, Riley.

"Okay."

I looked at the empty cot.

I should've used it.

I remember thinking that very clearly.

Then I fell asleep against the wall.

I woke with a headache already pulsing behind my eyes.

For a second I had ceiling, hard floor under my hip, and no idea why my back hurt.

Then Leo was there through the bond. Close. Quiet. Present.

The first spike in my chest eased.

I opened my eyes properly.

Stage.

Right.

I lay still and tried to put the end of the night in order.

The bar came back first. Riley telling us to stop drinking. Echo struggling to stand. My feet being complete fucking traitors. Main in little broken pieces: streetlight, Weave under my right side, Leo's hand on my forearm and then the space between us again, Riley somewhere behind me with Echo.

I remembered being angry for most of it.

That part was very clear.

After the door, things got softer around the edges. I remembered deciding the stage was flat and therefore good enough. Apparently I had been right.

My head hurt too much to go digging for more.

My headache kept pulsing while I watched Weave move over the cots and back toward the stage.

Echo and Leo were asleep.

Riley was asleep against the wall.

There was an empty cot.

I stared at it.

Then at the hard stage under me.

"Excellent decision-making," I whispered to myself.

I sat up slowly.

The room tilted enough to make me stop and wait. I hated that. I hated having to wait for my body to remember which way was down.

When it settled, I got my feet under me and climbed down.

The third cot was maybe fifteen feet away.

It felt farther because I was thinking about every step before I took it.

I made it anyway.

I sat down on the edge and let the relief hit me for about five seconds.

Then I looked at Leo.

The bond gave me Leo: there.

I still needed to see him.

I got back up.

He was asleep on the second cot with one hand outside the blanket.

I stood there longer than I needed to.

His breathing looked easy. His face looked like himself again.

I touched the back of his hand with two fingers.

His fingers curled once under mine and loosened again.

Something in my chest unclenched so fast it almost hurt.

"Okay," I whispered.

I left him asleep.

Echo was next.

Her blanket had twisted around her legs. Her hair was everywhere, and her staff sat beside the cot just a little too far from where her hand had ended up.

I remembered her on Main in flashes. Mostly Riley holding her up. Echo concentrating on the ground like the whole street had turned into a puzzle.

I hated how little control any of us had had over our own bodies.

I fixed her blanket first.

Then I moved the staff a few inches closer.

Echo made a tiny sound and tucked farther into the pillow.

I froze.

She settled.

"Sorry," I whispered.

Then Riley.

Her glasses were crooked. Her head had tipped at an angle against the wall that was going to make her neck hate her later.

Of course she'd slept there.

I stood over her and felt this stupid mix of affection and irritation that was basically Riley-shaped at this point.

"You absolute idiot," I whispered.

It came out soft anyway.

There were extra blankets near the cots. I took one and laid it over her, careful around her glasses.

Part of me wanted to wake her.

I wanted her eyes open. I wanted some rude little "hrm?" or "yea?" so I could hear it and know exactly where I was.

She looked exhausted.

I left her alone.

Weave drifted past behind me, rose toward the wall, then curved back down near the foot of Riley's cot-that-she-wasn't-using.

"How long was I out?"

Most of the night.

I rubbed my forehead. "And Riley?"

She slept recently.

I looked down at her.

"Of course she did."

She remained awake for several hours.

"That's what I meant."

Weave continued her slow path across the room.

I watched her for a second.

"Anybody get worse?"

No.

"Better?"

Gradually.

I looked at Leo. Then Echo.

"Good."

The word felt too small. It was all I had.

"Thank you for staying up."

I was not tired.

"Still counts."

Weave drifted closer to Riley, then away again.

I went back to the empty cot.

My headache was still there. My legs felt heavy. My whole body had that awful used-up feeling where even lying down sounded like work until I was already doing it.

I pulled the blanket up and closed my eyes.

This time I fell asleep somewhere I had actually meant to.

Something hard clipped my knee.

I woke up with a sharp, "Fuck," and tried to stand before my brain had caught up.

Echo was halfway upright on the first cot.

Her staff had caught between the cot and my leg. Her breathing was fast. Her eyes were moving around the room too quickly to land anywhere, and one hand was gripping the blanket so hard her knuckles had gone pale.

"Echo."

She looked past me.

"Echo, hey."

I reached for her face.

She slapped my hand away so hard my wrist hit the cot frame.

Okay.

I went in again.

Both her hands caught my wrists.

She twisted hard, trying to shove me off before I could get close. Her shoulder came forward. One knee drew up between us. For somebody who'd barely been able to walk a few hours ago, she had a terrifying amount of fight in her all of a sudden.

"Hey. Echo. It's me."

She shook her head and tried to pull my hands away from her again.

"Echo."

I got one palm to her cheek.

She turned her face away and dug both hands into my sleeves, trying to peel me off.

I got the other hand there too and held her face steady between my palms.

"Look at me."

Her eyes cut past mine.

"Echo."

She fought my wrists again.

"Look at me."

Her eyes hit mine for half a second.

Tried to leave.

Came back.

"There you are."

That got through.

I felt the exact second her hands changed.

She was still holding my wrists. Hard. But she had stopped trying to get rid of me.

Her whole face crumpled around one breath.

"Riley."

"Yea. I'm here."

She swallowed.

"I woke up too fast."

"Yea. You did."

"Everything moved."

"I know. Stay with me."

She nodded once.

I kept my hands on her cheeks until she was the one who loosened first.

My heart was beating way too hard.

For one second all I could think was how good it was to have her actual face under my hands. Warm. Freckled. Annoyed and scared and here.

The noise had woken the twins.

Leo opened his eyes and immediately found Luna on the third cot.

Luna pushed herself up on one elbow, squinted across the room, then looked down at herself.

Her expression changed.

"Oh, come on."

I still had one hand around Echo's wrist. "What?"

Luna pinched the fabric at her waist and pulled it away from herself like that might somehow undo the night.

"My dress."

Leo looked at her. "Your dress?"

"I wore the nice one."

I looked properly.

She was wearing her really nice fucking blue wrap-dress thing that I really liked, except now it was all shitty. Welp.

"It's still nice," I said.

Luna stared at me. "Riley."

"Okay. Yea. It's wrinkled to hell."

"Thank you."

"You slept in it."

"I am aware of the sequence of events."

That made me look around for real for the first time since waking up.

Luna was still in her nice wrap dress, just thoroughly defeated by sleep. Leo still had on the clean tee and dark jacket with dark pants he'd worn out. Echo was sitting in front of me in her nicer bronze dress and cardigan, both rumpled now, her hair doing whatever the fuck it wanted around them.

Then there was me in my normal oversized sweater and khakis because apparently everybody else had understood "evening out" and I had understood "leave the house."

Weave drifted over us in a loose cloud of bismuth.

Weave was Weave.

Somehow that made the whole picture funnier.

A small laugh got out of me.

Luna narrowed her eyes. "Are you laughing at my dress?"

"No."

"That sounded like a lie."

"I'm laughing at all of us."

Leo sat up slowly. "That is broader."

"Thank you."

Echo was still holding onto my wrist.

I looked back at her.

She followed my face this time.

Good.

Morning took a while after that.

There were bottled waters stacked on a chair near the door. Leo got up first and brought them over, moving carefully enough that I watched every step.

He noticed by the third one.

"I'm walking straight."

"Yea. Keep doing that."

"That's the plan."

He handed me a bottle.

I drank because I was tired, thirsty, and arguing with water would have been a new low even for me.

Echo stayed sitting while she drank hers. Her hands shook a little at first. She tucked both of them around the bottle and waited until they stopped enough to open it.

I wanted to help.

I also knew she had just fought me hard enough to bang my wrist into the cot because I went for her face while she was still coming up.

So I sat beside her and let her do it.

When she got the cap off, she looked at me.

"Got it."

"Yea. You did."

Luna got upright in stages. She sat on the edge of the cot, waited, stood, then stayed there with the concentration of somebody refusing to give gravity any emotional satisfaction.

Leo gave her room and watched from a few feet away.

I noticed because I was watching both of them anyway.

Every normal little thing felt stupidly important. Leo crossing the room and ending up where he meant to. Luna taking five steps without having to swear at her own feet. Echo standing and staying standing long enough to decide she was ready for one more.

Weave kept drifting through all of it, sometimes near me, sometimes over the cots, sometimes halfway across the room before circling back.

I wanted to go home.

I also wanted nobody to ever take another step again because every step now felt like a thing I should supervise personally.

That was obviously not sustainable.

So we stayed until I could watch Echo cross the room without needing to catch her, until Leo's corrections happened before his feet wandered, and until Luna could stand up without having to sit there and negotiate with the floor first.

Only then did the knot in my chest loosen enough for me to say, "Okay. Home."

We got everybody back to Luna and Leo's place after that.

The front door shut behind us and the house went quiet in a way that felt almost fake after the club, Main, the street, all of it.

Luna left her shoes by the door. Leo did the same beside hers. Echo sat down long enough to get hers off, then stayed there for a second before standing again.

I slid out of my flip-flops and left them with the pile.

Weave drifted past all of us and into the living room.

For maybe five seconds the entryway stayed still.

Then Leo said, "Food."

I looked at him.

He looked tired enough that I wanted to tell him to sit down. He was also already walking toward the kitchen, so apparently we were doing this.

"Easy food," I said.

"Yes."

"Like actually easy."

"Riley."

"Okay."

Echo had made it to the couch. Luna dropped into the chair near her and leaned back with her eyes closed.

I stood there with my bag for another second, looking at all of them.

Going home sounded stupid.

I would get there, sit down, and wonder how Echo was doing. Then I'd wonder about Luna. Then Leo. Then I'd probably text one of them, get an answer, decide the answer was suspiciously short, and start over.

Here I could just look.

So I carried my bag down the hall and put it in the spare bedroom.

I set my green cup on the nightstand beside it, looked at the bed, and had the very strong thought that I could probably lie down for six hours right then.

I made myself go back to the kitchen first.

Leo had gone with chicken strips and fries, which was basically perfect because I could eat that at eight in the morning, three in the afternoon, midnight, whatever. Food was food.

I filled it with Coke Zero and took it to the table.

Leo put a bottle of water beside it.

I looked at the bottle.

Then at him.

He kept working on the food.

Fine.

I drank some water too.

By the time we ate, Echo had moved from the couch to the table because she said she was hungry enough to make the trip worth it. Luna came over a few minutes later. Weave gathered above the middle of the table into a floating orb of bismuth particles, turning slowly in place.

Echo looked up at her. "You okay?"

I am all right.

"Good."

I am glad all four of you are eating.

Leo finally sat down with his own food. "Working on it."

The table went quiet again.

That was nice.

I ate. Echo ate. Luna got through part of hers and stopped.

After that, the whole day sort of came apart into naps.

Echo went back to the couch with a blanket. Luna disappeared into her room for a while. Leo tried to clean the kitchen until I told him the dishes had survived this long and could probably survive another hour.

He stared at me.

"Go lie down."

"I was going to."

"Great."

He went toward his room.

I made it to the spare bedroom, took off my glasses, put them beside my drink, and was asleep before I had a chance to decide whether I was actually tired enough.

When I woke up, the light through the curtains had moved a lot.

I put my glasses back on and checked my phone.

Several hours.

Okay.

I could hear somebody moving around in the kitchen and Luna talking quietly from the table.

I got up and followed the sound.

Weave had spread into a loose orbit around us while we talked.

Luna had her laptop open with an email on the screen and the expression of somebody who had already regretted opening it.

"Work?" I asked.

"Two emails."

"That bad?"

"One of them has seven questions in one paragraph."

"Oh."

Separating the questions would make them easier to answer.

Luna looked up at the orb. "Exactly."

"Yea."

I went back for my laptop.

If she was doing work, I had stuff I needed to touch too, and sitting at a table with everybody sounded way better than sitting alone in the spare room thinking about the bar.

A little while later we had accidentally made a work table.

Luna answered email. Leo had papers open on his side and was reading something with a pen in his hand. Echo sat at the end with a blanket around her shoulders and a bowl of dry cereal, picking pieces out one at a time while the TV ran low in the living room.

I had code open in front of me.

For almost twenty minutes, the room stayed mostly quiet.

Keyboard. Pen. Cereal. The refrigerator kicking on.

Normal house shit.

I liked it enough that I almost got actual work done.

Then I hit play on the model output again.

A voice said half a sentence, coughed, finished the sentence, started the next one, coughed again.

I stopped it.

"I fucking hate this thing."

Luna looked over the top of her laptop. "What did it do?"

"It heard one person cough. One. In one sample. And now everybody coughs."

Echo looked over.

"Everybody?"

"Every fucking statement. Sometimes twice."

The cough is substantially overrepresented.

"Yea. By a lot."

Echo looked up at Weave. "Can she fix it?"

I think so. Riley is working on it now.

"Thank you for the confidence."

Leo stopped writing.

I hit play again.

The voice made it maybe six words before coughing.

I paused it.

"See? It learned cough. We have achieved cough."

Luna laughed, then covered her mouth like laughing had surprised her.

"Can you fix it?"

"Yea. That's what I'm doing. I'm teaching a computer that humans can finish a sentence without coughing in the middle of it. Really advanced stuff."

Echo smiled into her cereal.

I went back to the code.

Five minutes later Luna said, "Mine wants me to summarize a meeting I wasn't in."

"Just make something up."

She looked at me.

"Don't do that."

"I wasn't going to."

"Good."

"I hate you."

"Yea."

It was stupid. It was also the first stretch since the bar that felt almost normal.

That made it easier when I finally reached into my bag and pulled out the brass-backed card.

I set it beside my laptop.

Luna looked at it first.

"Stillglass."

"Yea. Marisol said rest first. I think we qualify now."

Leo leaned back a little. "Probably."

I turned the card around once between my fingers.

There was something else I needed to say.

I had already said it to Weave. That made saying it to everybody else feel like it should be easier.

It still sucked.

"I think I figured out what got us at the bar."

Echo stopped eating.

Luna looked at me.

"I think it was the ice."

Her face changed immediately.

"Wait."

She sat straighter.

"Marisol said something when she saw us. Noc..."

Leo looked at her.

Luna frowned at the table.

"Noct... fuck. It was something like that."

I tapped the card once.

"Call them?"

Luna pulled out her phone.

"Yea."

She called the number on the card and put it on speaker.

It rang twice.

"Stillglass House."

Luna glanced around the table.

"Hi. Marisol gave us one of your cards last night. There were five of us at Eureka Live. She told us to rest and then contact you."

There was a short pause and some typing.

"One moment."

We waited.

I looked at the card again.

Stillglass House was a name on a card and Marisol pointing us toward it. That was about all I had.

The person came back.

"Yes. I have her note. Five guests from Eureka Live. She requested that you come in together once everyone was rested."

Luna looked at me, then Leo.

"Okay. She also said a word when she first saw us. I can only remember the beginning. Noct... something?"

"Noctilux."

Luna pointed at the phone.

"Yes. That."

"That's in the note. Noctilux is a crystalline contaminant we work with here. Marisol marked suspected exposure. The reader can go through the rest with all five of you in person."

I had my phone out before I really thought about doing it.

I typed Noctilux.

Just that.

The first results filled in while Luna kept talking.

"What should we do tonight?" she asked.

"Keep resting. Eat, hydrate, keep things easy. If everyone continues improving, come in tomorrow morning. Bring the card."

"Okay."

I opened one of the results.

There was a photo at the top.

Clear pieces. Uneven little chunks. Translucent edges.

I stared at it.

Under the image, the short description started with clear crystalline material and then, a few words later, said commonly mistaken for clear drink ice.

"Oh my god."

Everybody looked at me.

I turned the phone around.

"It was the ice. It was absolutely the fucking ice."

Echo leaned toward the screen.

Leo got up enough from his chair to see it better.

Luna was still holding her phone near the middle of the table.

The person from Stillglass said, "Is everything all right?"

Luna looked at my screen.

"Yea. We just found the public entry."

"Understood. Bring any details you remember about what was served and when symptoms started. The reader will take it from there."

"We will. Thank you."

"You're welcome. We'll expect you tomorrow morning."

Luna ended the call.

I kept looking at the picture for another second.

It looked like ice.

Of course it looked like ice. That was the whole fucking problem.

I set my phone down.

"Okay. So. Last night at Main, before I passed out against a wall like a genius, I was talking to Weave about the drinks."

The orb tightened a little over the table.

"They were all different. Leo had water. The drinks themselves made zero sense as the shared thing. Then I realized every glass had ice."

I looked at Weave.

"That's where we landed."

Yes. We reached the same conclusion at Main Stage. The ice was the strongest common factor.

Luna sat back slowly.

"Jesus Christ."

"Yea."

Echo looked from the phone to me. "So you knew last night?"

"I suspected it last night. Now I'm looking at the thing and it literally says it gets mistaken for drink ice, so... yea. I feel pretty fucking good about that answer."

Leo looked at the Stillglass card.

"That explains why Marisol sent us there."

"Yea."

That part fit now.

Which left the blood thing.

I took a drink and stared at the table for a second.

I could have let it wait until Stillglass.

I really wanted to.

Echo was already watching me.

Fuck.

"There's another thing."

The table stayed quiet.

That helped.

"Before everybody started getting really messed up, I kept seeing the whole room bleeding."

Luna's expression tightened.

I kept going.

"Everybody. You guys. The bartender. People on the floor. Everybody was looking at me and there was blood everywhere."

I stopped for a second.

Saying it out loud brought the image back way too cleanly.

"I was fine. I looked down and I was clean. Then it would be gone."

Echo moved a little closer in her chair.

Leo asked, "When did it start?"

"When the first ice hit my glass."

The table went quiet.

I rubbed my thumb along the edge of the card.

"That's the part I still can't do anything with. The ice fits the rest. That image... I don't know. And the stupid part is the blood isn't even the thing I keep getting stuck on."

Echo looked at me. "What is?"

"Everybody looking at me."

There it was.

I hated how much better it felt to finally say that part.

"Like every single person had turned toward me. I don't know why. I don't know what that means. I don't know if it means anything. That's just the part that keeps coming back."

Echo reached over and put her hand on my arm.

I left mine where it was under hers.

Luna said, "We tell Stillglass that too."

"Yea."

Leo nodded once. "All of it."

Luna looked up at Weave. "Did Riley tell you about that last night?"

Yes. Riley told me at Main Stage.

"And?"

We did not have enough information to explain it.

"Yea," I said. "That's the shitty part."

We sat with it for a while.

Then, because apparently life had decided we were allowed to have more than one kind of problem at a time, Luna's laptop made the email sound again.

She stared at it.

I looked at her.

"Seven more questions?"

"If there are seven more questions, I'm deleting the internet."

"Do it."

Leo said, "Please don't."

Echo smiled.

The room loosened a little.

We went back to our own stuff for another hour.

I fixed one thing in the model and broke something else. Luna answered her emails. Leo finished whatever he was reading. Echo eventually abandoned the cereal and moved back to the couch.

Some of Weave stayed with her there. The rest drifted between the kitchen and hall, sometimes crossing my view above the laptop before spreading out again.

By evening I was tired in a normal way.

That felt almost luxurious.

Leo heated up more food. I ate chicken strips and fries again because they were there and I liked them and that was enough of a reason. Luna talked more than she had earlier. Echo looked steadier when she crossed the room. Everybody let those things be ordinary.

When it got late, I took my bag back to the spare room.

Echo was already setting herself up on the couch.

"You good out here?" I asked.

"Yea."

A loose cluster of Weave drifted down near the back of the couch.

Echo looked up. "You're staying out here?"

Part of me will remain nearby.

"Okay."

She looked toward the hall. "Are you going to sleep?"

"That's the idea."

She kept looking at me.

"I will try very hard to perform sleep correctly."

"Okay."

That was apparently acceptable.

I went into the spare room and left the door cracked.

A few loose particles of Weave passed the doorway while another cluster stayed with Echo in the living room.

Good night, Riley.

"Night, Weave."

I put my glasses on the nightstand beside my drink and lay down.

The blood image still showed up when I closed my eyes.

I kept getting stuck on all of them looking at me.

Now I had a name for the ice.

Noctilux.

That was one thing I could put somewhere.

The rest could wait until morning.

Eventually I slept.

I woke up hungry.

That was honestly a pretty good sign.

I put my glasses on, grabbed my drink, and went to the kitchen.

Leo had eggs going for himself and Luna. Echo was at the table with dry cereal again. I opened the fridge, found the leftover chicken strips and fries, and reheated them.

Luna looked at my plate when I sat down.

"Morning food."

"Food is food."

"I know."

I took another bite.

"Good."

She smiled into her drink.

Weave floated over the middle of the table in her orb while we ate.

The Stillglass card was still there from the night before.

It stayed there until we had all eaten something.

Then Leo looked around the table.

"Everybody still up for going?"

Echo nodded.

Luna said, "Yea."

Yes. I am ready.

I picked up the card and slid it back into my bag.

"Yea. Let's go find out what the fuck happened to us."

We cleaned up enough to make coming home later easier.

At the door, Luna and Leo put their shoes back on. Echo got hers on and stood carefully. I stepped into my flip-flops and adjusted my bag across me.

Weave flowed toward the door ahead of us.

A few minutes later, all five of us were leaving together for Stillglass.

Disclaimer: This file is fictional roleplay writing created for a tabletop RPG context. It may use real names, familiar personal details, or real-world framing for immersion, but it is not a factual record, memoir, allegation, or claim about real events. Nothing in this document should be read as asserting that any described actions, conversations, relationships, or incidents happened in real life. It is presented as collaborative roleplay fiction only.

By the time I got into the driver's seat, Leo was pulling the front door shut behind him.

I set my cup in the holder, put my pistol on the magnet under the dash, and started the car while he locked up. Luna climbed in behind me. Echo got in behind Leo, already looking toward the center screen like she had decided navigation was going to be her problem before anybody actually gave it to her.

Weave flowed in around the open doors with the rest of us, green coming forward through the little flashes of other colors whenever the light caught her.

Leo got in, shut his door, then opened the glove box.

"Oh, right."

He pulled out Weave's little cup and set it in the other holder beside mine.

Part of Weave gathered down into it almost immediately, curling through itself until there was a little bright green orb sitting there between us.

I looked over. "Comfy?"

Yes.

"Good."

Echo leaned forward between the seats a little. "Riley, can I have your phone?"

"Yea."

I pulled it out and held it back until she took it.

"Thank you."

A few seconds later Stillglass popped up on the center screen, then the route. Echo stayed quiet for a few seconds.

"Are you reading their website already?"

"Yes."

Luna said, "Of course she is."

"They have a lot on here."

Leo clicked his seat belt in. "Anything useful?"

"I'm still on the part where they tell you to tell staff if you think you react to things."

Luna asked, "That's on the public site?"

"Yes." Echo paused. "I mean, that seems reasonable."

"It does," Luna said. "It just makes it sound like every shelf can bite you."

I backed out. "Maybe don't touch the weird rocks until somebody says the weird rocks are okay."

"Basically," Echo said.

We got moving. Weave stayed in the cup through the first couple turns, then loosened back out and drifted between the front seats. A little stream of green slipped past my shoulder toward the back.

Echo had found the reviews before we were all the way out of Berryville.

"Okay. One star."

"Already?" Luna asked.

"Yes. Listen." Echo cleared her throat. "'Wouldn't let me handle anything until they did a safety check first. I'm an adult and I know my own limits.'"

There was a second of silence.

That appears to describe the safety procedure functioning correctly.

I laughed.

Echo said, very seriously, "They gave it one star."

That got Luna too. Leo turned his head toward the back for a second, smiling.

"Yea," I said. "I think I'm with Weave on that one."

Echo kept scrolling.

"There's somebody mad that they had to wait fifteen minutes."

"Terrible," Luna said.

"They were doing a controlled handling thing."

"Even worse."

"Luna."

"I'm agreeing with them. Obviously."

Leo said, "Very sincerely."

"Thank you."

I took a drink of soda at a light and put the cup back down before we started moving again.

Echo went quiet for a while.

Then, "Okay, this one is weird."

That got Leo's attention faster than the one-star review had.

"What kind of weird?"

"I'm trying to figure out what they mean." A pause while she scrolled. "They were here with somebody who was Rustborn. One of the Anchored ones, I think. And somebody else was Caelestella."

Luna said, "Okay."

"They say the Rustborn person's hair tips turned light blue around one of the crystals."

Luna said, "Light blue?"

"That's what they wrote. Then Stillglass explained why, but the review says..." Echo stopped. "'Some kind of cross-family celestial thing.'"

Leo sighed through his nose.

Echo added, "That's the whole explanation."

"Do they say which family?"

"No."

"Which Caelestella subtype?"

"No."

"Which crystal?"

"Also no."

"Great."

Luna laughed quietly.

Leo looked at the screen for a second, then back out the windshield. "I want to ask them about that."

"Because of your students?" I asked.

"Yeah. I've got a Rustborn student and a Caelestella student. If there's a sign I should actually recognize, I'd rather hear the useful version."

"Yea. I get that."

Luna said, "And there might be some overlap with us."

I looked toward Leo for half a second. "With Caelestella?"

He lifted one shoulder. "Maybe. That's about as confident as I am right now."

"Oh."

"Yea. Okay."

Echo scrolled again. "The review still gave them five stars."

Leo nodded once. "Good."

Echo moved on to somebody talking about a bracelet, Luna asked what kind, and for a few minutes I mostly listened while the road and the navigation took more of my attention.

Then Echo made a small noise from the back.

"What?" Luna asked.

"I found another one."

"Read it."

Echo did. "'Five stars. Found out I have a fucking halo. Apparently it's colorful.'"

Leo said, "Colorline, probably."

I frowned at the road. "Wait. Halo like... an actual halo?"

Luna started laughing.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Fuck you. Like over their head?"

Leo answered before Luna could. "Yes."

"Okay. Thank you. That's what I was asking."

Luna was still laughing behind me.

"People call a bunch of shit halos."

"You're right," she managed.

"You don't sound like you think I'm right."

"I do."

Echo said, "It says colorful."

"That still doesn't tell me what shape it is."

"I know."

Leo said, "The color changes."

"See, that's useful."

Luna laughed again.

"I'm gonna leave you on the side of the road."

"You're gonna come back."

I thought about that for a second. "Yea. Probably."

Echo laughed hard enough that she had to stop reading for a minute.

By the time she started again, the conversation had wandered far enough that the reviews kept getting interrupted.

Luna asked, "Are we eating after this?"

"Sonic," I said.

"Subway."

Leo said, "Either is fine."

Echo said, "Could we do Taco Bell on the way home?"

I nodded. "Yea."

Taco Bell sounds good.

Weave has the best ideas.

Luna gave up immediately. "Okay, Taco Bell."

"That was easy," I said.

"I wasn't committed to Subway."

"I was a little committed to Sonic."

"You will survive."

"Probably."

Echo had gone back to the website. "They sell clothes too."

Luna said, "What?"

"And jewelry."

"Okay, now I want to see the website."

"You can have it when I'm done."

"It's Riley's phone."

"Riley gave it to me."

I smiled at the road. "She's got a point."

"Riley."

"Sorry."

"You're not."

"No, not really."

Leo asked Echo something about whether Stillglass posted reference material for the crystals. Echo started looking. Luna started asking him whether he wanted the public-facing stuff or anything technical they had linked. Halfway through that, Weave gathered briefly around the top of Leo's seat, then stretched back toward Echo when she started reading a list of pages out loud.

I caught pieces. Handling. Comparisons. Something about guided reviews. Leo asked Echo to leave one of the pages open for later. Luna wanted to know whether they had anything on linked people. Echo said she was looking.

It was nice. Everybody talked over each other a little while I drove, and I could just catch whatever parts I caught. If traffic ate three sentences, the conversation had already gone somewhere else by the time I came back to it.

Once we got closer to Eureka, I missed more of it. The road started doing Eureka road shit, and I cared a lot more about the curve in front of me than whatever review Echo had found about somebody's necklace.

Maps pulled us toward Passion Play, then down toward Magnetic. The turns got tighter as we came into town. Weave thinned through the back of the car, little green flashes showing up in the mirror now and then.

Leo had been watching the center screen for a while when he reached over and moved the map.

"Hang on."

Echo stopped reading. "What?"

He zoomed out a little.

"Is that Main Stage?"

"Wait, what?"

Luna leaned forward. "Where?"

"Right there." Leo moved the map again. "Main Stage is right there."

Echo said, "Eureka Live is too."

I kept my eyes on the road. "Right where?"

"By Stillglass," Leo said. "Like, the same stretch of Main."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah."

I got a quick look at the screen when the road gave me one. The pins were bunched together around Main.

"Oh, what the fuck."

Luna said, "How did we not connect that?"

I turned onto North Main. "I wasn't exactly looking at storefronts."

Echo went quiet for a beat. "Yeah. Me either."

Leo left the map zoomed out while we went down Main.

"That's weird," Luna said.

"A little," I said.

Echo started flipping between the site and the map on my phone. "Okay. We're close."

"Please tell me before I pass it."

"I will."

"Like, before-before."

"Riley."

"I'm just saying."

Leo pointed ahead. "It should be down here."

Echo leaned forward again. "Yeah. Keep going."

I slowed with traffic and watched the building numbers as they came up.

"There," Echo said. "That's it."

"Got it."

I found a spot nearby, pulled in, and put the car in park.

I sat there for maybe one second longer than I needed to, looking past the windshield at the storefront.

"Okay," I said. "Found it."

"You did," Luna said from behind me.

"Thank you."

Leo unclicked his seat belt. "I don't think she meant that as praise."

"Still taking it."

Echo was already opening her door with my phone still in her hand.

"Hey. Don't leave with that."

She stopped halfway out and looked back at me. "I'm not leaving."

"I know. I mean... yea. Whatever. Keep it."

"Okay."

I shut the car off and grabbed my cup. Then I looked down at the pistol still sitting on the magnet under the dash.

Right.

I opened my bag, took the gun off the magnet, and put it inside before getting out. Just normal leaving-the-car shit. Cup, bag, keys, gun. Cool.

By the time I shut my door, Echo was a few steps away with my phone held up at the storefront.

"Already?"

"Yes."

She took the picture.

Luna came around the back of the car with her notebook in one hand. Leo joined her, and Weave spilled out after us in a loose cloud, catching little bits of morning light as she spread above the sidewalk.

Echo turned and immediately took another picture.

I looked up at Weave. "You're the model now."

I noticed.

Echo lowered the phone. "The light looks really good on her."

"Yea."

We started toward the store together. Main did that thing where every building looked like it had been put down by somebody who was working from a different definition of level. Echo stopped once to take a picture down the street, then again when Weave drifted beside an old brick wall and the bismuth lit up against it.

"We are gonna have like two hundred pictures before we even get tested," I said.

Echo looked at the screen. "I have seven."

"Oh. Never mind. Very restrained."

"Thank you."

I laughed and kept walking.

The sign was easier to read from right in front of it. Stillglass House. Same name that had been sitting on Marisol's card and on my phone for the whole drive over.

Echo got the door first. Weave flowed through ahead of us, Echo stepped in after her, and I followed them inside.

The first thing Riley noticed was the wood.

Like, a lot of wood.

Old floorboards. Dark shelves. Trim around the windows that looked older than everybody in the room put together. Then the rest of the place started filling in around it: clothing racks mixed in with shelves of stones and little carved things, glass cases with handwritten cards tucked beside what was inside, jewelry farther back, and another part of the building dropping away where Riley had expected a wall to be.

It did not feel like a lab.

That was probably the weirdest part after the website had spent the whole drive sounding like every object in here came with paperwork.

Echo stopped just inside the door.

"This place is weird."

Leo looked past a shelf toward the lower level. "I think that's part of why it works."

"Yea," Riley said. "I don't know what I expected, but it wasn't... this."

Weave had already spread away from them.

Not far. Just enough that pieces of her slipped around a display near the front, gathered over a shelf of polished stones, then moved on. A woman looking at bracelets glanced up when Weave crossed the aisle, watched the bismuth pass, and went back to the tray in front of her.

Echo lifted Riley's phone again.

Click.

Weave curved around the side of a crystal case.

Click.

"You are documenting the whole store," Riley said.

"Not the whole store."

"Okay."

"Just the interesting parts."

"That's gonna be the whole store."

Echo looked back at the screen. "Maybe."

Riley reached into her bag for Marisol's card before she forgot why they were standing near the front in the first place.

A woman behind the counter looked up as Riley came over.

"Morning. Need help finding something?"

"Uh, yea. Kinda." Riley held out the card. "Marisol gave us this. She said to come here once everybody was rested."

The woman took it and looked at the front, then the brass back.

"You were the five from Eureka Live?"

"Yea."

Her attention moved over the group once, stopping briefly on Weave as she came drifting back toward Riley.

"All right. I'm Tessa. Marisol left a note for the house. You're expected."

Tessa handed the card back. "You don't have to jump straight into the screenings. Take a little time down here if you want. When you're ready, I'll get you to one of the Resting Rooms and a Quiet Host will walk you through how we're doing today."

"Okay."

"Anything in a closed case, ask before you handle it. Open-floor stock is marked if it needs staff with it. If you're not sure, just ask."

"Yea. We can do that."

Echo, still a few feet behind Riley, said, "The website also says that."

Tessa smiled. "It does. People still ask."

"Oh."

Riley looked at Echo.

Echo looked back at her.

"She's read a lot of the website," Riley said.

"I noticed."

"I was in the car."

"You were."

Tessa gave the card back to Riley. "I'll find you in a bit."

"Thanks."

Riley put the card away and turned back toward the others.

Weave had found the clothing racks.

A stream of bismuth moved between two hanging rows and came out the other side near Echo. Echo followed her almost immediately.

"Oh no," Riley said.

Echo looked back. "What?"

"Nothing. Go."

Luna laughed and opened her notebook.

Riley went with Echo first.

The clothing section was not huge, but it was enough to slow Echo down. She touched the edge of one sleeve, moved to another rack, then stopped at a soft rust-colored cardigan with little stitched stars around the cuffs.

"Riley."

"Hrm?"

Echo held it up.

Riley looked at the cardigan, then at Echo.

"Oh, yea. That's you."

"I thought so."

"Take a picture."

"I was going to."

"Good."

Echo laid it flat enough on the display table to get the whole thing in frame and took a photo with Riley's phone.

Weave gathered over Echo's shoulder, then spilled along the edge of the rack.

I like the stitching.

Echo looked up at her. "Me too."

Riley pulled one of the cuffs closer to look at it. "Yea, okay. That's cute."

Echo took another picture.

"You got it the first time."

"This one is closer."

"Fair."

They moved on without buying anything yet. Riley was not even sure whether Echo wanted to buy it or just remember it existed. That was Echo's problem for later.

By the time they caught back up with Luna and Leo, Luna already had two lines written in her notebook.

Riley leaned enough to see that one of them was a crystal name she did not recognize and stopped trying to read over her shoulder.

"You started already?"

Luna looked up. "There are labels."

"That wasn't my question."

"Then yes."

Leo was reading one of the handwritten cards beside a shelf of mineral samples.

"They have more reference material out here than I expected," he said.

Luna turned the notebook a little and added something. "You say that like you're upset."

"I'm not. My students would spend an hour on this shelf alone."

Riley looked at the shelf.

There were maybe twenty things on it.

"Your students?"

Leo looked at her.

Riley waited.

"I would also spend an hour on this shelf."

"There it is."

Luna smiled into the notebook.

Echo came up beside Riley and held the phone toward her. "Look."

It was one of the pictures from outside. Weave had been caught halfway through spreading beside the brick, little bits of green and gold light all through her.

"Oh, that's actually really good."

"I know."

Riley looked at Echo.

Echo smiled.

"Rude."

"You said it was good."

"It is. Still rude."

Echo took the phone back and went to get another picture of Weave near the display.

For a while, that was basically what they did.

They looked at stuff.

Riley followed Luna and Leo through the stones because they were actually reading the cards and she could listen without doing all of it herself. Echo wandered back to the clothes, then to the jewelry, then found them again. Weave moved wherever something caught her attention, sometimes a few shelves away and sometimes right over Riley's shoulder before spreading off again.

A shelf near the back had polished stones sitting on little velvet rests with names written underneath. Riley recognized maybe three of them. Leo recognized more. Luna wrote down the ones she cared about.

Riley picked up a little carved mushroom from a completely different display.

"This is more my speed."

Luna looked over. "Very educational."

"Thank you."

"What is it teaching you?"

Riley turned it around once. "Mushroom."

Leo made a small sound that might have been a laugh.

"See? He's learning too."

"I already knew what a mushroom was."

"Show-off."

Riley put it back where she found it.

She heard the camera sound again.

Riley looked toward Echo.

Echo had the phone pointed at the three of them.

"Did you just take a picture of us?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

Echo lowered the phone. "You were all standing there."

"Okay."

Echo looked at the picture. "It's good."

"Of course it is."

I would like to see it.

Echo turned the screen toward the closest part of Weave's cloud.

Riley watched Echo turn the phone toward Weave, smiled, and went back to the shelf.

Tessa found them near a shelf of jewelry maybe twenty minutes later.

"You five ready to head back?"

Riley looked around at everybody.

Luna closed the notebook around her pen. Leo stepped away from the card he had been reading. Echo came back from the end of the display with Riley's phone still in hand. Weave drew in closer to the group.

"Yea," Riley said. "I think so."

Tessa brought them to a man waiting near the back.

"This is Rowan. He's your Quiet Host today. Rowan, Marisol's group."

"Got it." Rowan looked between them. "Morning. Come on. I'll show you where you're based."

The building got stranger once they left the open floor.

A narrow hall turned where Riley thought it should have kept going, then a short set of stairs put them on a level that somehow still had street light outside a window. Riley stopped trying to understand which floor counted as which after that.

Rowan opened a door into a small sitting room with a couch, a few chairs, a low table, and water set out along one wall.

"This is yours while you're here," he said. "You can leave bags in here, come back between screenings, whatever you need. We'll bring you one at a time to see our readers."

Riley picked a chair and dropped into it.

Echo sat beside her and immediately held up the phone.

"Before I give this back."

"Yea?"

"Pictures."

"Oh. Yea."

Echo moved closer so Riley could see the screen.

They went through them in order.

Storefront. The weird angle down Main. Weave in the sunlight. Another one where the bismuth looked almost stupidly bright against the old brick. Weave by the crystal case. The cardigan. A close-up of the little stars on the sleeve.

Then the picture of Riley, Luna, and Leo at the shelf.

Riley had been holding the mushroom.

"Oh my god."

Echo smiled. "It's good."

"I look like I'm presenting it."

"You kind of were."

"I was not."

"You said mushroom."

"That is not presenting."

Leo, from across the room, said, "It was educational."

Riley looked at him. "Fuck you."

Luna laughed.

Echo swiped to the next picture. "I'm keeping that one."

"It's my phone."

"You should keep it."

"Oh. Yea. Fine."

Echo finished the last few and handed the phone back.

Riley put it in her bag.

Rowan waited until everybody had settled before he started going through the rest.

"The screenings are one at a time. Some of them are quick, some take longer. Your reader will tell you what they're doing before they put anything in front of you. If you want somebody with you, ask. Most of the handling rooms can fit one extra person without making it annoying."

Riley glanced at Luna's notebook.

Luna had already opened it again.

Of course.

"You can ask questions," Rowan continued. "If you need a break, take one. Nobody gets extra credit for pushing through a bad reaction."

"Okay," Riley said.

Rowan looked around the room. "One boring thing before I call the readers. Any weapons with you?"

Riley sat there for one stupid second.

Then remembered the thing she had literally taken off the gun and put in her bag before walking over here.

"Oh. I have my gun."

Rowan nodded like that answer happened all the time. "That's fine. I'll get a lockbox."

Luna looked down at the blue spellbook clipped at her side, then touched it with two fingers.

"Does this count?"

"Spellbook? No. You can keep that."

Leo glanced down at his own book.

Rowan caught it. "Yours too. Books are fine."

"All right," Leo said.

Rowan stepped out and came back with a small lockbox.

Riley pulled her bag into her lap and unzipped it.

She took the pistol out and set it in the box where Rowan showed her.

He closed it, locked it, and set it inside a cabinet in the room.

"It stays here until you're done."

"Yea. Perfect. Thanks."

She put her bag back down beside the chair.

The room settled after that.

Luna went back to the notebook. Leo had found one of the printed house sheets on the table and was reading it. Echo leaned back beside Riley. Weave spread loosely through the room, some of her high near the ceiling and some drifting low around the chairs.

Riley took her phone back out, looked at the mushroom picture again, and hated that Echo was right.

It was a good picture.

A knock came at the door a few minutes later.

Rowan opened it, spoke quietly to somebody in the hall, then stepped aside.

A woman Riley had not met yet came in.

"Riley?"

"Yea."

"I'm Nora. I'll be your reader. We're ready for you whenever you are."

Riley stood and adjusted her bag before remembering she could leave it here. She let it settle back against the chair instead.

Then she looked at Luna.

Luna already had the notebook open on one knee.

"Hey, uh... Luna? Do you wanna come with me? Like, for the test?"

Luna looked up at her.

"Yea."

She closed the notebook, tucked the pen away, and stood.

Riley waited for her, then followed Nora out with Luna beside her.

Nora led them farther down the hall.

Riley stayed beside Luna while the room opened up ahead of them: one table, three chairs, a row of closed cases along the far side. Less stuff than the Resting Room. Less stuff than downstairs by a lot.

Luna sat beside Riley and opened her notebook almost immediately.

Nora took the chair across from them.

"We’ll do one specimen at a time," she said. "Some comparisons need more time than others. If I close a case, let me close it. If I ask you to put something down, put it down. You can stop whenever you want."

Riley nodded.

"One thing before we start. The clear-ice material you described from Eureka Live has a name here. Noctilux."

Riley looked at her.

"The ice?"

"The material that can present that way, yes. We’re not bringing a Noctilux specimen into this room."

"Good."

"It isn’t part of a normal in-room comparison. What you described from the bar is enough reason for us not to repeat that exposure just to prove we can."

"Yea. No complaints."

Luna wrote Noctilux.

Nora reached for a small case.

"This first one is different too. Revocata can respond to anybody. Think of it more as a memory tool than a screening crystal."

"Okay."

"I’m going to get the rest of your sequence ready. You can play with it while I do."

That got Riley’s attention.

"Play with it?"

Nora opened the case.

The little stone inside looked like something Riley would have picked up at a gift shop and rubbed with her thumb for twenty minutes without realizing she was doing it.

"You can pick it up."

I did.

It fit right into my palm.

Smooth little dip in the middle. Good texture. Honestly I would've bought the stupid thing just for that.

I rubbed my thumb across it once, turned it over, then actually looked at it.

"Uh."

Luna looked over. "What?"

I wasn't holding a rock anymore.

It was a Rubik's Cube.

I turned it around.

"No fucking way."

Luna leaned closer. "What?"

"It changed."

"I can see that."

"No, I mean-"

One side of the cube moved by itself.

Click.

I stopped.

Another side moved.

Click.

"Oh, that is cool."

Nora was doing something with the cases while I turned the cube once.

It answered me.

I turned the top.

The middle shifted itself.

"Okay."

Another click.

"No, don't fucking cheat."

Luna laughed.

"I'm serious. You're a Rubik's Cube. Have some standards."

It moved twice.

"You're terrible."

I turned it again anyway.

I could've probably sat there doing that for a stupid amount of time.

One side clicked around.

Then around again.

The face nearest me went red.

All of it.

I stopped.

The bar came back.

Luna looking at me with blood down her face.

Echo.

Leo.

Everybody around us.

All of them turned toward me.

Bleeding.

I squeezed the cube.

Fuck.

"Riley?"

I looked up.

Nora had stopped messing with the other cases.

"Do you want it doing that?"

"Uh..."

I looked down at the red face again.

"Maybe not."

The cube moved.

The red broke apart under my fingers as the sides started turning again, then the whole thing changed back into the worry stone.

I sat there rubbing my thumb over the little dip.

That was better.

Still knew what it had been doing.

Didn't really wanna do that again.

After a little while Nora held out her hand.

I gave it back.

"That one is neat," I said.

Luna and I looked at each other.

"And kinda shitty."

"Also fair."

Nora put the crystal away.

After that we got into the actual comparison stuff.

The first few were mostly Nora opening a case, telling me what she wanted me to notice, and then watching me sit there doing absolutely nothing interesting.

Anima was dark. Like really dark. I kept looking at it trying to figure out where the crystal stopped and the dark inside it started.

"If your timing starts feeling slow or out of step with the room, tell me," Nora said.

I waited.

Nothing got weird.

She closed it.

Sulfura looked like some piece of really dark polished stone.

"With this one, tell me if somebody or something starts feeling wrong in a way that makes you think you need to fix it."

I looked at Luna.

She looked back.

"What?"

"Checking."

"For what?"

"I dunno yet."

Luna stared at me.

"No. You're fine."

"Thank you."

Nora closed the case.

Bestia was prettier. Amber, yellow-gold, whatever. It changed a little depending on how I looked at it.

"We watch for senses getting too sharp," Nora said. "Sounds, movement, smell. Sometimes people start tracking the room differently."

I looked at it for a while.

Somebody walked past in the hall.

I heard them because, yea, somebody walked past in the hall.

"That one just looks nice."

Nora nodded and closed it.

Caelum was green. Really green. Like emerald green.

"This one can make somebody’s normal awareness of a space start feeling urgent. A place to stand. An exit. Something moving. Weather. Structure. If the room starts telling you where you need to be, tell me."

I looked around.

Door was still a door.

Luna was sitting beside me.

Nora was across from me.

"No."

Nora left each one out long enough to actually check me, but I quit caring about the waiting part pretty fast.

Luna cared... alot...

Luna wrote down everything.

I think she had like half a page on crystals that had done literally nothing to me.

Nora was resetting something on the other side of the table when Luna said, "Did you ever fix that voice model?"

I looked over. "Which problem?"

"The one clipping the ends off everything."

"Oh. Kinda."

"Kinda?"

"I fixed that."

Luna waited.

"And then it started putting a little breath before every short line."

She smiled. "Every line?"

"Like every fucking line."

I did a tiny fake inhale.

"‘Hello.’"

Luna laughed.

"And it was the same breath. Every time. Like it had one breath file and was just fucking pasting it in."

"What did you do?"

"Backed out the thing I changed."

"So the cutoff came back."

"Yea."

"And then?"

"I changed the crop."

"And?"

"That fixed most of it."

"Most?"

"Long samples got weird."

Luna laughed again. "Of course."

"So I changed another thing, and then that broke something else, and at that point I was already in it so... yea."

"How long?"

"I dunno. Three hours? Maybe four."

"Riley."

"What?"

"You have a stupid amount of determination once you decide something should work."

"That's called debugging."

"No. You will just keep hitting the same problem until it gives up."

"Yea. Debugging."

Luna shook her head.

Nora moved one of the closed cases farther down the row.

I noticed because it scraped a little against the table.

Alright I guess... Hope thats not something I need to care about...

Luna tapped her pen against the notebook once.

"You know you can stop sometimes."

"Why would I do that if it's almost working?"

"That is exactly what I mean."

"Sounds fake."

Nora brought the next case over.

"Before I tell you anything about this one, tell me what you see."

"Okay."

She opened it.

For a second I thought I was looking at the inside of an empty case.

Then I saw it.

There was a hole in the middle of the crystal.

Just... a hole.

Blood hung through it.

Drops. Little strings of it. Thin flat pieces floating in there and not falling anywhere.

My chest went tight.

No.

The bar.

Everybody looking at me.

Blood everywhere.

Fuck.

Nora was watching me.

I looked at Luna instead.

"Hey."

"Hrm?"

"What do you see?"

Luna leaned forward a little.

"Points of light."

I looked back at the crystal.

Blood.

"Like... little lights?"

"No. They're in space." Luna moved her head slightly. "Three-dimensional. And there are dark planes through it. Or shapes. I don't know. They move when I move."

I stared at her for a second.

Then at the crystal.

Still blood.

Nora said, "Riley?"

"Hrm?"

"What do you see?"

I looked at her.

"I don't wanna say."

Nora stopped.

"Okay."

That was it.

Thank fuck.

She looked at the crystal.

"Is it clear to you?"

"No."

"Clear like glass?"

"No."

"Like clear ice?"

"No."

Nora got quieter.

She seemed way more interested.

Luna noticed that.

"Why does that matter?"

Nora closed the case before she answered.

"That was Vexia."

Luna wrote the name.

"The appearance changes for some people based on their magic. Color, light, shape, whatever their magic normally gives it to work with."

Luna looked at the closed case. "So the lights and planes-"

"Would fit."

Luna wrote again.

Then she looked at me.

Nora did too.

"A person without magic should see Vexia as clear."

Oh.

Cool.

Great.

I looked at the closed case.

Luna asked, "And you expected Riley to see clear."

"Yes."

"Because?"

"Everything we have from intake and Marisol's report says I should."

We looked at each other.

She picked up her pen.

"I’m recording the result. I don't know what it means yet."

"Yea."

That was actually better than her pretending she did.

Still sucked.

Chroma came next.

A bunch of colors all through it. Pretty, honestly.

Nora explained that they watched for emotions getting too close or hard to separate around that one.

I heard maybe seventy percent of what she said because my brain kept wandering back to the case she'd just closed.

I should've seen clear.

Just-

Clear.

Whatever.

Chroma did nothing weird to me.

Nora closed it.

Then she put her hand on the next case and looked at Luna.

"This one is more relevant to you being in the room."

Luna stopped writing.

"Okay."

"You can step out if you want. Or move farther back."

"Why?"

"Some people get pressure behind the eyes around it. Light can get uncomfortable. Existing magical traits can start showing whether they meant them to or not."

Luna looked at the case.

Then at Nora.

"I can move back."

"You don't have to stay."

"I know. I'm here to learn."

Nora waited.

"You still want to?"

"Yea."

Luna moved her chair farther away.

I looked between them.

"Am I staying here?"

"Yes. Your comparison is the one we're doing."

"Okay."

Nora opened the case.

Pale gold.

I looked at it.

Pretty.

Waited.

Nothing.

Then Luna said, "Okay."

I turned around.

She squinted.

"What?"

"Pressure."

"Where?"

"Behind my eyes."

Nora was already watching her.

Luna blinked hard.

Gold started coming through her eyes.

"Luna."

"I know something's-"

Her halo came into view above her hair.

Same clean one I'd seen when she used magic, except she was sitting in a chair doing nothing.

Nora closed the case.

"That's enough."

Luna squeezed her eyes shut for a second, then opened them again.

The glow was already starting to back off.

I was still staring over her head.

She caught me.

"My halo?"

"Yea."

"It came out?"

"Yea."

Luna looked up like that was gonna help.

I laughed a little.

"That's not gonna work."

"I know."

She looked at Nora instead.

"Eyes first?"

"You reported the pressure first. Then your eyes brightened. Halo after."

Luna dragged her chair back toward the table and immediately started writing.

I watched her.

"You are taking notes while your head is still glowing."

"It isn't still glowing."

I looked above her.

The halo vanished.

"Okay. Now it isn't."

Luna kept writing.

Of course.

The next stretch went faster.

Intuitio was purple-pink.

Nora asked, "Weave's words come to you directly?"

"Yea. Back of my head."

"That's the kind of existing connection we watch around this one. If anything about that sort of contact starts feeling too present or visible, tell me."

"Okay."

Nothing.

Case closed.

Scintilla looked less like a crystal and more like somebody had grown a weird little machine part.

Nora didn't open that one right away.

"This one is important for Weave."

That got me.

"What about her?"

"Keep her away from it."

"Okay."

"Artificial minds can develop timing and communication problems around Scintilla. Strong enough exposure can leave them conscious and unable to answer."

I stared at the case.

"Yea, no. I will remember that."

"I thought you might."

"Does it do anything to normal electronics?"

"That isn't what we're screening for."

"Okay."

Good enough.

She opened it for my comparison.

Nothing happened.

I still remembered that one.

Inscripta was clear with all this weird structure inside it.

I leaned a little closer.

"Oh, that one's cool."

Nora gave me a second to look.

"If active magic starts standing out in your vision in a way you can't ignore, tell me."

"Like seeing spells?"

"Working parts. Routes. Where something is anchored. Things like that."

"Huh."

I kept looking.

Nothing appeared over Luna. Nothing appeared over the room.

The crystal itself was still cool.

Nora closed it.

Spontanea was translucent white with a little shimmer through it.

"This one can make things spill along connections or states somebody already has," Nora said. "Dreams, mental impressions, deeper contact. If something crosses a boundary without you meaning it to, tell me."

"Okay."

Nothing did.

Nora put it away.

Then she reached for the case she'd moved earlier.

Oh.

That one.

She set it down in front of me.

"This is Lacuna."

"Okay."

"This one can make the last few seconds hard to trust. Something you meant to do, something you did, whether those are the same thing."

"That sounds shitty."

"It can be."

"Cool."

"If it starts, don't try to push through it."

"Yea."

Nora opened the case just long enough for me to see the crystal.

White.

Red lines right along the edges.

I stared at it.

"Oh, fuck you."

Luna looked over. "What?"

"It looks like a fucking mint."

Luna leaned in a little.

"Oh."

"No, like... one to one."

Nora's mouth moved a little.

"You see the resemblance."

"It's a peppermint."

"It is not a peppermint."

"I know that. It looks like one."

Nora closed the case again while she finished explaining what she wanted me to do.

Simple comparison.

One step at a time.

Fine.

I looked at Nora.

Luna was beside me.

There wasn't a crystal out.

The crystal was in my hand.

Oh.

I put it down.

"Riley. Put it down."

I looked at Nora.

"I did."

The crystal was in my hand.

No.

I-

I put it down.

Nora pulled the tray away and closed the case.

My hands were empty.

I looked at them anyway.

Empty.

I knew what I'd wanted to do.

Put it down.

I knew I had.

I had.

The crystal had been in my hand.

Fuck.

"Riley."

I looked at Nora.

"I put it down."

"Yea."

"Twice."

She didn't answer that part.

Probably good because I didn't know if that was even fucking true.

I looked at Luna.

She was right there.

Notebook down now.

Watching me.

My hands were still empty.

Good.

I looked back at Nora.

"I hate that one."

"Fair."

She moved the case farther away.

Then she waited a bit before saying anything else.

"Tap the table once."

I tapped it.

One sound.

"Done?"

"Yea."

"You trust that?"

I looked at where I'd touched it.

"Yea."

"Okay. Lift your hand."

I did.

"Put it back down."

I did.

"Good?"

"Yea."

That one stayed.

Nora gave me another stupid little thing to do.

Touch the edge of the table.

Done.

Tell her when I was done.

Done.

That one stayed too.

Luna put her hand on the table between us, palm up.

I looked at it.

Reached over.

Took her hand.

She squeezed.

I squeezed back.

Okay.

That stayed.

I sat there holding her hand for a while.

I was pissed.

Also, yea, a little part of me wanted to do it again just to figure out what the fuck had happened.

That part could shut up.

I wiped under one eye with my free hand.

"Okay."

Nora waited.

"You want more time?"

"I dunno."

I looked at the table.

Then Luna.

Then my hand holding hers.

"Maybe a minute."

"Take a minute."

So I did.

Nobody talked.

That helped.

Nora looked at me.

"Better?"

"Yea."

"You trust what you're doing right now?"

I squeezed Luna's hand once.

"Yea."

Luna squeezed back.

Nora nodded.

"There is one comparison left."

I looked at the cases.

"Of course there is."

"You don't have to do it."

"What is it?"

"Disjuncta."

She brought the case closer but left it closed.

"It can interfere with magic somebody is deeply used to relying on. Things can answer wrong or stop answering the way they normally do."

I looked at Luna.

Nora did too.

"I want both of you okay with opening this one after what just happened."

Luna nodded. "I'm okay."

Nora looked at me.

I sat there for another second.

"Yea. Finish it."

"You sure?"

"Yea."

Nora opened the case.

Small ruby-looking crystal.

It really did look like something that belonged inside a clock.

I let go of Luna's hand so I could lean in a little.

"That's tiny."

"It is."

We did the last comparison.

Nora watched.

Luna watched.

I waited for something to feel wrong.

Nothing did.

No skipped anything.

No weird body thing.

No sudden problem I could find.

Nora closed the case.

"Done."

I sat there.

"Like done done?"

"Done done."

"Good."

Luna closed her notebook.

I stood up.

Stopped.

Looked at the chair.

I'd stood up.

Yea.

Okay.

I hated that I had to check that.

I looked at Luna.

"Let's go."

"Yea."

Nora opened the door.

Riley and Luna walked back down the quiet hall together.

Neither of them said much before Rowan let them back into the Resting Room.

Leo looked up first.

Echo was sitting where they had left her, one hand moving over the edge of her cardigan before returning to the moonstone pendant at her chest. Weave drifted loose through the room, bismuth passing around the table and between the chairs.

Leo's attention landed on Luna and stayed there.

Luna set her notebook down.

Then she looked at Riley.

"Riley."

Riley turned.

The tear tracks on her face showed when she did.

Luna stepped into her and hugged her.

Riley wrapped both arms around Luna and stayed there.

Weave gathered closer, particles moving around them in a loose orbit.

Echo went still with her hand around the pendant.

Leo stayed close without moving into the hug.

Riley did not let go of Luna when she finally spoke.

"It looked like a fucking mint."

Echo blinked.

"What did?"

"One of the crystals."

Riley pulled back just enough to look at her.

"White. Red around the edges. Like... one to one. Fucking peppermint."

Echo looked at Luna.

Luna reached for her notebook.

"Lacuna."

"Yea. That one."

Echo's fingers moved over the pendant again.

"What happened?"

Riley looked down for a second.

"I kept not knowing if I'd already put it down."

Echo stared at her.

Riley looked back up.

"If they show it to you, just... wait for them to tell you what to do with it. Don't just grab the fucking mint."

"Okay."

"I mean it."

"I know."

"Okay."

Riley settled back against Luna.

Leo looked at Luna.

"Something happened with you too?"

"Yea."

Luna opened the notebook again.

"Celestia."

Leo's attention sharpened.

Luna rubbed lightly under one eye.

"The light got too bright first. Pressure behind my eyes. Then it felt like..."

She stopped.

Riley looked at her.

"Like the light was looking at me. I know that sounds weird."

Leo nodded once. "Okay."

Riley said, "Your eyes went really gold."

"Then my halo came out," Luna said.

"Yea."

Leo looked at Luna. "While you were just sitting there?"

"Yea. I wasn't casting."

"How long?" Leo asked.

Riley thought about it.

"I dunno. Not long. A few seconds maybe before she closed it."

Luna wrote that down.

Riley watched her for a second.

"You did this in there too."

"What?"

"Your fucking head was glowing and you were taking notes."

Luna's mouth pulled into a small smile.

"I wanted the order right."

"I know."

Leo looked between them. "You okay now?"

"Yea," Luna said.

Riley stayed beside her.

Echo was still watching Riley.

"The mint was the worst one?"

"For me?"

Echo nodded.

"Yea."

Riley wiped under one eye.

"Fuck that thing."

Echo nodded like that was useful information.

A knock came at the door.

Rowan stepped in.

"Echo?"

Echo's fingers stopped on the moonstone.

She looked toward him.

"Okay."

She stood and adjusted her cardigan, then touched the pendant again.

Riley looked at her.

"Seriously. Mint."

"I remember."

"Good."

Echo gave one last look, then followed Rowan out.

The Resting Room door shuts behind me.

Rowan walks with me down the quiet hall. At the next handling room, a woman is waiting by the door with a clipboard. Her brass name tag says JUNE - HOUSE READER.

"Echo," Rowan says, "June will take you through this one."

June smiles. "Hi."

"Hi."

Rowan leaves, and June lets me go into the room first.

I take the chair closest to the edge of the table. There are already closed cases on it. June sits across from me and sets the clipboard down.

"Before we do any comparisons, I want to go back to what happened at Eureka Live two days ago."

"Okay."

"How much did you drink?"

"Mostly cranberry juice. There was vodka in it, but not much."

"Do you remember how many?"

"One."

June writes that down.

"And what happened after?"

I know what happened. I just have to get it out in an order that makes sense to somebody who was not there.

"I got really drunk. Way more than I should have from one drink, and it happened really fast. I kept missing my glass, and walking was bad. Riley had to help me get out."

"Was talking harder?"

"Yeah. Everything was harder. I dont remember all of it right either."

June writes for a second.

"That fits what we know about Noctilux exposure. It can make somebody much drunker than the amount they drank should."

"So I really was that drunk because of the crystal?"

"With the exposure Stillglass knows about at the bar and what you described, that is our working assumption."

"Oh."

I knew I was drunk. I thought maybe the drink just hit me really wrong or something. One drink should not have done all of that.

"Okay."

"We are not bringing Noctilux into this room. It is kept separately. The useful thing for you to remember is that it can look like clear drink ice."

"Yeah. I remember."

"Revocata is different. Anyone can use it, so it does not tell us much as a reaction comparison. It is useful for memory work."

June opens a smaller case. There is a smooth little stone inside.

"It can help bring a real memory back into reach. Sometimes it is more direct than the person using it expected. It can also change shape around what the person needs."

"That one sounds better."

"It usually is."

She puts it close enough for me to take.

"You can pick it up if you want."

I do.

It changes before I really get a chance to look at the stone. The shape moves in my hand until I am holding a fidget spinner with three little arms around the center and actual bearings.

"Oh."

June looks over her clipboard.

"It turned into a fidget spinner."

"It did."

"Can I spin it?"

"Yes."

I spin it once. It spins right, like an actual one, so I spin it again because I want to.

"Okay, that is cool."

June smiles a little. "You can give it back when you're ready."

I wait until it slows down, then hand it back. It turns into the little smooth stone again before she puts it away.

The comparison crystals start after that.

A few of them are just... cool looking.

One of the crystals is like green and the other looks like amber, I liked looking at it. June gives each one time, asks if anything changed, and I tell her I am fine. She writes it down and moves on.

The pale gold one gets my attention because June says Luna and Leo before she opens it.

"This one is Celestia. We will be especially careful with it when some of your friends are tested."

"Luna and Leo?"

"Yes."

"What happens to them?"

"Pressure around the eyes is one early sign. Light can become painfully sharp. Family traits can start showing too."

"Okay."

I want to remember that part. If something starts happening to either of them later, I want to know what June told me to look for.

She opens the case for my comparison. I wait, but nothing happens to me. My eyes feel normal until I think about my eyes too much, and then I am not sure if they feel normal because I am thinking about them. I tell June that too because I dont want to say nothing happened if I am not sure.

She waits a little longer, then closes the case.

There are more after that that are mostly just nice to look at. Chroma has colors all through it. Intuitio is purple-pink. Neither one does anything to me.

The next one looks like somebody put a tiny machine part in the case instead of a crystal.

I lean closer.

"Scintilla," June says.

"That looks weird."

"It is one we are careful with around artificial minds."

I look up at her. "Weave?"

"Yes."

"What does it do to her?"

"It can interfere with timing, communication, and control. Strong exposure can leave an artificial mind conscious and unable to answer."

I look back at the little machine-looking thing. I liked looking at it more before she said that.

"Can you keep that one away from her?"

"We will."

"Okay."

She does my comparison and nothing happens. I still remember which case it is when she puts it away because I want to remember that one for Weave.

Spontanea is white and shimmery, and nothing happens with that one either.

Inscripta is clear, but there are little lines and shapes all through it. I lean in before June even finishes saying the name.

"Oh. That's neat."

I follow one of the lines until it disappears behind another part of the crystal.

"Do those connect?"

"Some of them."

"This one does. I think. Wait."

I move a little so I can see the other side. The line is still there, lower down.

"Yeah. That one does."

June gives me a second before she starts the comparison.

I keep looking while I wait. Nothing happens to me, but I want a magnifier. I could sit here for a while and figure out which lines connect to what if she let me. I would probably need better light too because some of them disappear behind the thicker parts.

June closes the case before I get to figure out much more.

June does something different with the next one. She opens the case without telling me the name first.

"Tell me what it looks like."

There are clocks inside it.

There are a bunch of little clock faces at different depths, and some of the hands are moving. I move my head to the side because maybe it is the angle or the light, but they are still there.

"Clocks."

"Anything else?"

"Little clock faces. Some of them are ticking."

June writes that down.

"It is clear," she says.

I look at her.

"What?"

"Clear crystal."

I look back at it. There are still clocks all through it.

"It is not clear to me."

"Okay."

"What do you see?"

"Clear crystal."

I look at it from the other side. The clocks move with the crystal and they are still inside it.

"That is really weird."

"That one is Vexia Crystalli. Its appearance can change depending on who is looking at it."

"So you really do not see any clocks?"

"No."

I look again because I keep thinking maybe I can find the clear crystal she is seeing if I look between them or around them or something. I cannot. I see clocks.

June leaves it open for the rest of the comparison. I dont feel anything else from it, but I keep looking at the crystal and then at June because we are sitting across from each other looking at the same thing and seeing two completely different things.

I am still looking when she closes the case.

The next crystal is white with red along the edges.

Oh.

"That is the mint."

June looks at me. "Lacuna, yes."

"Riley told me about that one. She said it looks exactly like a peppermint."

It really does.

I move my chair back a little.

"Can you leave it there?"

"I can."

"Okay."

June keeps it on the far side of the table.

"I am only doing a distance comparison."

"Good."

I wait while she watches me. Nothing happens, but I still dont like having it open after what Riley told me happened to her.

I am glad when June closes the case. I know nothing happened to me, but I still dont want it sitting open.

"One more," she says.

"Okay."

The last crystal is small and red. It looks like one of those tiny red pieces that belongs inside a watch or something.

"Disjuncta."

June sets the distance and looks at me.

"Tell me if anything changes."

"I will."

At first, nothing does.

June lowers her pen toward the clipboard.

It takes too long.

I watch it because I dont know what else to do with that. Her hand is moving. The pen is moving. It is just taking fucking forever to get there.

It touches the paper.

Okay.

No. Not okay.

June moves her other hand and that takes too long too.

"June?"

I mean to say her name and then there is this awful little gap where I am waiting for my own mouth and-

"June?"

There.

Too late.

She looks at me.

Slow.

Everything she is doing is slow.

"Something is-"

I stop because I dont know how to explain it and I need her to stop the test anyway.

"Stop."

The word does not come out when I say it.

No, when I mean it.

Fuck.

"Stop."

June is already reaching for the case.

I try to pull my hand off the table.

Nothing.

move

I fucking moved it.

No I didn't.

I meant to.

Then my hand jerks back into my lap all at once and the room is starting to move normally again except I am not. I am still fucking waiting for things I already told myself to do.

nononono

I move my hand again.

comeon

move

move

movemovemove

It moves.

Late.

fuck

"Stop."

I dont know if that one came out.

I am trying to tell her. I know exactly what I am trying to tell her.

closeitgetitawaystopstop

I try to stand up.

I am still sitting.

standup

comeonstandup

ifuckingsaidstandup

no

thoughtit

ithoughtit

move

move

MOVE

movemovemovemove

Nothing and then my legs start doing it after I have already given up on them doing it and I catch myself on the table because that was not when I fucking wanted to-

"Echo?"

yes

yesihearyou

iheardyou

answerher

answerheranswerher

saysomething

"-"

fuckfuckfuck

comeon

iknowthewords

iknowthefuckingwords

"Echo?"

yesyesyesyesimhere

imhereimhere

imtrying

imfuckingtrying

sayyes

justsayyes

sayyessayyessayyes

YES

whycanthisfuckingmouthjustsayyes

My mouth moves.

Nothing useful happens.

stopstopstopstopstop

please

closeit

closeitcloseitcloseit

getitaway

getitawaygetitaway

June's hand reaches the case.

I know what she is doing.

thankfuck

Her hand is still moving.

comeoncomeoncomeon

pleasepleaseplease

closeitcloseitcloseitcloseit

The cover comes down.

Shuts.

The crystal disappears.

June moves the case away.

I am still trying to say stop.

"Sto-"

The word comes out after it is already gone.

fuck

fuckfuck

fuckfuckfuck

I sit there with both hands in my lap because I dont trust them yet.

June says something.

I hear her.

ihearher

iheareverything

justneedtheotherparttocatchup

comeon

comeon

pleasefuckingcatchup

I lift my hand again, and this time it moves when I mean it to.

I reach for the moonstone and close my fingers around it.

June stays where she is.

"Can you answer me now?"

"Yes."

The word comes out when I want it to.

"I heard you."

"I know."

"I heard you when you said my name. I was trying to answer you. I could hear you fine."

"I ended the exposure when your response stalled."

"Okay."

She writes that down.

June slides the water closer to me.

I reach for it. My hand gets there when I expect it to, and I pick the cup up, drink, and put it back down without having to wait for myself.

I move one foot under the chair next because I am not ready to stand yet. It moves when I want it to. Then I move the other one, and that one does too.

I stay sitting.

There is a narrow mirror on the side wall. I look at my face and then my eyes. Nothing looks different enough that I know what it means.

I look back at June.

"That was Disjuncta Crystalli."

"Disjuncta."

"Yes."

I say it again once because I want to remember which one did this.

"Disjuncta."

June writes for another few seconds.

"I'm marking that as a strong response. We are done with that comparison."

"Good."

She closes the outer case too.

I sit there for a while with the moonstone in my hand. June does not make me talk while I am doing that, which helps because I dont really have anything useful to say yet.

Eventually she closes the clipboard.

"We're done for now."

"Okay."

I stand up when I am ready.

I wait for the first step because I want to know it is going to happen when I mean it to. It does, so I take another one and that one does too.

June opens the door and walks back with me through the quiet hall. I keep walking all the way to the Resting Room, and every step happens when I mean to take it.

She opens the door.

Luna looked up from her notebook as Echo came into the Resting Room.

Echo went back to the chairs and sat down.

"What did they call yours?" Luna asked.

"Disjuncta."

Luna wrote it down.

Riley looked at Echo. "What happened?"

"Everything around me started moving really slow. Then it went back to normal and I was still behind." Echo looked at Riley. "June said my name and I heard her. I knew what I wanted to say, and I was trying to answer her, but I could not make it come out."

"Fuck," Riley said quietly.

Echo nodded.

Luna looked up from the notebook. "Anything else stand out?"

"Oh. Revocata turned into a fidget spinner."

Luna blinked. "A fidget spinner?"

"Yeah."

"Did it actually spin?"

"Yeah. I spun it twice."

Riley laughed a little. "Okay, that one sounds better."

"It was cool."

Weave's particles moved in slow loops around Riley as Echo talked. A denser part of the swarm gathered beside her while the rest drifted through the room.

Did it remain a fidget spinner?

"Until I handed it back," Echo said. "Then it turned back into the little worry stone."

A knock came at the door.

Rowan stepped in.

"Weave?"

The loops loosened. Weave gathered away from Riley into a narrower current and followed Rowan out.

Rowan waited while Weave settled into an orbit around him as he led her down the hall.

Marisol caught up with them before they reached the comparison room.

"Mind if I sit in?"

Weave slowed around Rowan.

This one has no objection.

"Thank you."

Rowan opened the door.

Nora was already inside. Another woman stood at the shielded handling table, checking the fit of a cover over one of the trays.

Nora gestured toward her. "Inez is handling specimens today."

Inez looked up. "Hi."

Weave entered. Marisol followed and settled near the wall.

Nora waited until Rowan had closed the door behind them.

"What should I call you?"

This one may be addressed as the assistant, or Weave.

Nora paused and looked at Inez. Inez looked back at her, then at me.

Nora leaned over to Inez and whispered something I could not resolve.

Inez took the tablet from beside the handling table and brought something up. She showed it to Nora.

Nora nodded once.

Inez set the tablet back beside the handling table.

Inez looked over the covered cases. She moved one of the cases from farther down the row to dead last, then shifted several others around it.

I did not know their names yet. The order was the only resolved change.

This unit knew that units of its kind had a recognizable way of speaking. This unit appeared to fit that pattern. That could have been what Nora and Inez had reacted to. The Assistant was a kin-given name. Other units of this kind used it when this unit’s identity needed to be clear, and most databases recognized the name. Inez might have searched for The Assistant and found an entry. That entry might have told Nora to change the order. They might instead have recognized only an artificial mind and not identified this unit’s kind. The tablet might have shown a handling procedure. It might have shown nothing about this unit, and this unit might have connected ordinary coordination to itself because both humans had looked at this unit before the order changed.

The order change still seemed to be about me. That felt like useful evidence until I tried to identify what it proved. It supported every explanation at once, including explanations that contradicted each other. Nora’s nod did not narrow them. I kept returning to it anyway.

Nora looked over to my current, "Weave, then."

Nora pointed out the marked area beside the table.

"You can use as much of the room as you need. I’ll show you one comparison at a time. Tell me what you actually notice. I’ll ask questions as we go. If I tell you to back away, release something, or stop, do it right away."

Understood.

"Inez handles the specimens. You handle yourself."

I gathered into a smaller current near the marked area. Nora knew how to run a crystal comparison. That did not mean she should have to guess what my body was doing if I became unable to explain it. A safety instruction that existed only inside me would stop being useful at exactly the point it mattered most.

Before comparisons begin, this one would like to send both of you its emergency handling and communication protocol.

Nora nodded immediately. "Please do."

Inez picked up the tablet beside the handling table. "Email is fine."

Nora gave me the room address.

A moment later, Inez’s tablet chimed.

"Got it."

The first page is sufficient for this comparison. This one communicates mentally. Answer aloud, by gesture, or by text. If communication stops while particles remain active, check NFC or the protocol before assuming unconsciousness or attempting a reboot.

Inez scrolled once. "Dry containment. Low airflow. Don’t vacuum, sweep, wash, or improvise a reboot."

Correct.

Nora looked from the tablet back to me. "If we need it, we follow this."

Yes.

"Good."

Nora looked toward Inez.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

I spread through the space Nora had given me, keeping most of myself in a loose current above the floor while a denser stream remained near the handling table.

I was curious about Revocata.

Echo had gotten a fidget spinner. Riley had gotten a Rubik’s Cube. I had listened to both descriptions in the Resting Room and tried to predict what that meant for me. The prediction had remained useless because the two objects only told me what Revocata had decided was useful for Echo and Riley.

That still gave me several tempting guesses. I knew both of them well enough that I could select old memories until either object started to feel inevitable. That was exactly the problem: familiarity could make an explanation feel earned before I had any evidence for it.

I still wanted to guess, which made me less confident in every guess I produced.

Inez set a small worry stone in the tray.

Nora motioned me forward. "Go ahead."

I sent the denser stream toward it.

The stone softened before the first particles fully closed around it. Its smooth shape sagged into something pliable. I pressed through the material and felt it yield around the current instead of resisting it.

I pressed again, this time with two narrow streams from opposite sides, then separated them. The material stretched between me in a long band before folding back when I brought the streams together.

That was immediately more useful than a worry stone.

I gathered the putty into the middle of myself, let it sag through a thinner section of the swarm, caught it lower down with a denser pocket, folded it, stretched it again, and sent it back upward.

The rest of my particles kept their slow circulation through the marked space while I repeated the motion.

I liked that I did not have to hold the same shape to use it. I could make the object move through me instead of keeping one part of myself assigned to it.

That might have been the point.

Or Revocata might simply have made something entertaining enough that I had already started inventing reasons for why it suited me.

Nora watched. Marisol smiled from the wall.

I turned a narrow ribbon toward Inez.

If Nora permits it, please throw this toward this one.

Inez glanced at Nora.

Nora gave her a small nod. "Go ahead."

I returned the material to Inez and spread a broad loop of particles across its likely path.

She tossed it underhand.

I opened around the throw. The putty passed through the first thin layer of me. I closed beneath it with a denser curl, caught it, carried its momentum around, then released it upward inside the current.

I caught it again before it reached the upper edge of the swarm. That worked better, so I stretched it into a ribbon and threaded one end through myself while I carried the other in a circle. It twisted. I reversed the direction and pulled the whole thing back together.

The movement made a little more crystalline sound than I intended because I had sped up. I liked it enough that I would have kept going.

Inez laughed quietly. "Okay, that’s kind of great."

I wondered whether she meant the putty, the catch, or the fact that I was apparently willing to keep doing this until Nora stopped me.

All three readings were plausible.

Nora let me continue for a little longer, then held out her hand.

"Can I have it back?"

Yes.

I folded it once more and lowered it into her palm with a narrow stream.

Nora handed it to Inez. "Thinking putty."

The name fit what it had become without telling me why it had chosen that form for me.

Inez sealed the case.

Nora wrote something down.

"Revocata."

The form was useful.

"I could tell."

The next comparisons were quieter.

Inez exposed the next specimen. I waited through Nora’s interval without finding a change.

This one observes no change.

Nora wrote something down. "Sulfura."

Inez replaced it with another.

Again, nothing changed.

"Bestia."

For the third specimen, I sent one stream closer when Nora allowed it and kept another farther back so I had an easy comparison inside my own distribution. Both parts of me remained ordinary.

No change.

"Caelum."

The fourth stayed quiet too.

"Chroma."

By then, the fine movement through my current had settled into the same slow pattern I used when waiting with the party. I kept wanting to check one more thing because a lack of reaction felt incomplete compared with the stories coming back from the Resting Room.

That was not a reason to manufacture a reaction.

Nothing was still data. It did not need to become interesting before it counted.

Inez brought the next case forward.

Nora stopped her before she opened it. "For this one, describe what you see first."

Understood.

I pulled more of the swarm toward the table and left a thinner current behind me through the rest of the marked space.

Inez uncovered the specimen.

A bright spark sat inside the case with fine dust moving around it and through it.

I sent a narrow ribbon sideways along the edge of the line. The dust changed with my angle. Some crossed directly through the brightest point. The spark remained centered.

A bright spark. Fine dust is moving around it and through the light.

Nora looked into the case. "Anything else?"

I carried the ribbon farther around the table.

The dust has depth. The spark remains centered from this angle.

"All right."

Inez covered it.

Nora looked at me. "I see a clear crystal."

The particles nearest the case gathered closer together. Nora’s clear crystal and my spark could not both be ordinary differences in viewing angle.

What did Echo report?

"Clock faces at different depths. She said some of them were ticking at different speeds."

My first response was to connect clocks to Echo. That was exactly the kind of response I distrusted. I already knew Echo too well; once a strange result belonged to a friend, I could reach backward through years of ordinary memories and make selected pieces look like evidence. If Nora had told me the answer first and asked me to explain it afterward, I could probably have built something convincing.

I did not know that any of it caused what Echo saw.

The fine particles at the front of my current slowed while I held the distinction.

Luna?

"Points of light. Dark planes or open shapes mixed through them."

That answer did not help the first theory. I was glad it did not. A theory that survived only when I selected the friend who fit it was not useful.

Riley?

Nora paused.

"Riley chose to keep her description private."

I tightened slightly around the edge of the marked space before I noticed I had done it.

I wanted to know badly enough that I could already think of several ways to ask Riley later that would make the question sound casual. I could ask whether hers had depth. I could ask whether it moved. I could ask whether it resembled anything she knew. Any one of those might get me data without asking her to repeat the whole description.

That would still be asking for information she had chosen not to give us.

Curiosity did not become permission because I could phrase it carefully.

I loosened again.

Nora tapped the closed case with one finger. "Vexia."

I watched Inez move it away.

Echo had clocks. Luna had lights and dark geometry. I had a spark and dust. Riley had an answer she had kept for herself.

I wanted a rule that joined those observations, and I did not have one.

Inez brought over another case.

Nora turned to Marisol. "I need you outside for this one."

Marisol was already moving. "Yep."

She opened the door. "I’ll be right out here."

The door closed behind her.

I drew the current away from it and back toward Nora.

Is this the comparison that produced Luna's eye and halo changes?

"Yes."

The particles nearest Nora slowed.

Please describe what you observed.

"She reported pressure behind her eyes. Her irises turned gold. A gold halo appeared above her head. I covered the specimen after that."

I remembered Luna returning to the Resting Room with her notebook and enough questions that the test had continued with her long after the specimen was gone.

She had wanted to know what the halo looked like from outside. She had wanted to know the order. She had wanted everybody else’s results too.

That was familiar enough that I found it comforting.

It was also not evidence about Leo.

Do you expect Leo to respond the same way?

"I’ll watch him for the same early signs. They’re twins, so the family connection matters. His response still gets treated as his own."

I liked that answer more than I expected to.

Luna and Leo being twins made comparison useful. It did not make one of them a prediction of the other.

I kept that because I had a tendency to build models out of the people I knew best, and models became dangerous when I forgot the person could still disagree with them.

Inez exposed the specimen.

I held the larger shape of the swarm steady while the fine current continued moving through itself. Nothing changed enough to pull my attention away from the room.

This one observes no change.

Nora nodded.

Inez covered it.

"Celestia."

Once the case was secure, Nora opened the door.

Marisol came back in.

"All good?"

"All good."

She returned to the wall.

Inez changed cases again.

The next specimen looked like a mint.

A denser cluster of my particles pulled back before I deliberately stopped the movement.

I understood Riley’s warning as soon as I saw it.

This resembles the specimen Riley called the mint.

Nora gave me a very small smile. "Yes. Lacuna."

I stayed behind the distance line and let the current widen instead of drifting nearer.

What did Riley do while it was exposed?

Nora rested a hand on the back of her chair.

"She stopped moving for a moment. Then she picked it up and looked at me. I told her to put it down. She put it down."

I replayed the sequence while the particles along my outer edge kept circling.

Stop. Pick up. Look. Put down when instructed.

From Nora’s side, the sequence was almost clean enough to be reassuring.

Riley had come back to us unable to trust the order of her own minutes.

Those two accounts could both be true without giving Nora a useful warning while it was happening.

Did you observe anything else before you covered it?

"She kept looking at me like she was trying to work something out. Once it was covered, she started asking about the order things had happened in."

I sent one narrow stream left and stopped it.

The stream stopped where I intended.

I did it again more slowly. Doing it twice did not make the test better, but it did make me feel better about the first result, and I noticed the difference.

There was a difference between checking reliability and soothing myself with repetition. I was not always sure where I crossed it.

Distance only.

"Distance only."

Inez exposed Lacuna.

I sent the same narrow stream left and stopped it. The action arrived where I expected it in my own sequence. I brought it back and waited through the rest of Nora’s interval without adding another test.

Timing and action order remain coherent.

Inez sealed Lacuna and moved it away.

The next specimen was ruby-colored and clock-like.

Nora named it before I asked. "Disjuncta."

The fine movement in my current slowed enough that the difference was visible to me from inside the swarm. This was Echo's comparison, and I gathered a little nearer to Nora without crossing the line.

What did Echo do from this side?

"She was sitting where you are now. She was looking at June. Then her answers stopped."

Movement?

"Very little. Once they removed the specimen, she started responding again. She cried after."

A few particles at the front of my current tightened together.

Echo had told us she heard June.

She had known June was talking to her. She had known what she wanted to answer. She had been trying to make the answer happen while June sat close enough to watch her and saw very little movement.

I had known Echo for years. I had learned that her quiet could mean several different things. Sometimes she wanted less noise around her. Sometimes she was working through an answer. Sometimes she simply did not have anything to add. I had learned not to fill every silence because the filling could become another thing she had to process.

That history did not tell me what any particular old silence had contained.

I still started reviewing them.

Times I had waited because waiting seemed kinder. Times I had stayed near her without sending anything because she had gone still. Times I had assumed that if Echo needed me to do something, she would eventually ask when she could.

I could not identify one past moment and say she had been trapped inside it the way she had been with Disjuncta.

I also could not prove I had never mistaken inability for a choice to be quiet, and the possibility bothered me enough that the outer edge of the swarm had nearly stopped moving.

I made myself loosen it before Nora had to wonder whether the specimen was already affecting me.

Nora had watched Echo and made the same reasonable choice I probably would have made: wait long enough to see whether the response arrived, then end the exposure when it did not.

Reasonable did not mean complete.

I wanted a better way to tell when Echo was choosing quiet and when quiet had happened to her.

I did not know whether such a way existed outside this specific test.

Inez opened the case.

I sent Nora a directed check.

Communication check.

"Received."

I sent one ribbon across the marked area, curled it around the leg of an empty chair without touching it, and brought it back. My timing stayed where I expected it.

I waited through the rest of the interval without finding a change.

Nora ended the interval, and Inez covered Disjuncta.

The case was shut. I kept thinking about Echo.

Inez brought the next case over and exposed it.

I widened into a loose cloud and checked the boundaries I could actually resolve without turning the comparison into an inventory of everything that had not changed.

Nothing shifted.

This one observes no change.

Nora wrote something down. "Inscripta."

Inez put it away and brought the next case over more carefully.

Nora looked at me. "We’ll start this one at distance too. Same rule. Report the first meaningful change."

Understood.

I kept most of the swarm broad through the marked area and condensed a smaller portion nearer Nora so I could watch my own communication path against the rest of my body.

Inez exposed it.

I sent Nora a directed baseline.

Communication baseline.

"Received."

A thin wisp appeared between us along the route the message had taken.

My particles drew inward around the point nearest Nora while I followed it.

The wisp was already strange enough to hold my attention. The message itself was gone from me. The route remained visible for another moment.

Then Layers Four through One opened together.

The human shape itself did not surprise me.

I knew this body. I used the same fixed person-look in Communion and inside Layer One: human eye height, two hands, two feet, long green hair shifting at my shoulders when I turned. The transition into it felt ordinary enough that I recognized my balance before I consciously checked it.

The handling room was the problem.

There was no separate Layer One frame around me. No target-built room. No shared screen carrying the image. Nora’s actual chair remained where it had been. Inez’s handling table remained where it had been. Marisol remained against the real wall.

And my bismuth current was still there with me.

A green-forward ribbon passed through the space beside my human calf while another part of the swarm remained near Nora. I could resolve the room from the distributed current and from human eye height at the same time, both views aligned to the same physical floor.

I had used Layer One many times.

I had used the person-look many times.

I had never stood beside my own bismuth projection in the same ordinary room.

Nora looked up.

Not toward the densest part of the swarm. Higher.

Inez did the same, then looked at Nora and back again. Marisol’s attention fixed on the same point from the wall.

I checked their orientation through the distributed view before trusting the human one.

All three were looking at the interimage.

That mattered enough that I almost missed why Inez looked down next.

I followed her gaze.

I was nude.

I looked down farther to confirm there was not some partial presentation I had failed to resolve.

There was not: no shirt, no pants, no clothing layer at all.

That explained one possible part of the looking.

It did not explain all of it. A human image of me appearing beside a bismuth cloud in the middle of a crystal comparison was sufficient reason to stare even if I had arrived in a winter coat.

My particles reacted before I finished deciding what response was socially appropriate. I pulled a broad, denser sheet of the swarm across the front of the interimage from chest to upper thigh.

The sheet remained translucent enough that it was not an especially effective human modesty solution.

I made it denser until it worked better as a visual barrier.

I did not personally experience the lack of clothing as exposure in the same way the humans might. The image was still me, but it was also a form I normally presented deliberately. In Communion, I selected how I arrived. In Layer One, the image existed inside a private frame. Here the crystal had opened the Layer before I had chosen any presentation at all.

I tried my usual Communion clothing. An oversized dark shirt and loose dark pants resolved over the interimage, which at least confirmed that the presentation layer was still responsive after the forced opening.

The particles covering me loosened, though I left a narrow ribbon circling the human waist because I wanted to see whether the two forms continued to share depth correctly.

Nora had not stopped looking.

Neither had Inez.

Marisol had folded her arms, but her attention remained on the interimage.

I could not tell whether any of them were more interested in the extra body, the temporary nudity, the clothing appearing, the visible wisp, or the fact that the bismuth current was moving around all of it.

It was probably more than one.

Can all three of you see the human image?

Nora answered first. "Yes."

Inez nodded. "Very clearly."

Marisol said, "Yep."

Inez’s answer might have included the previous lack of clothing. Unknown: how much of her emphasis belonged to that and how much belonged to the impossible placement of the image itself.

The interimage itself is normal. Its presence in this room is not.

Nora leaned forward slightly. "Where is it normally?"

Inside Layer One, or on a display during Communion. It is not normally standing in the same physical space as this current.

I sent the ribbon around my interimage’s waist once more. From human sight it crossed in front of the shirt. From the swarm I could feel myself routing around the same coordinates.

The alignment held.

Layer One was open without a selected target.

That bothered me more the longer I looked at it.

Ordinarily Layer One existed because there was someone on the other side and a private frame had somewhere to form. Here the Layer was open, my interimage had rendered, and the only available place it had chosen was the room I was already occupying.

The visible wisps suggested one explanation: perhaps the crystal was making the visual endpoint of Layer One externally legible along with the connection.

Another explanation was that the crystal had forced Layer One open with no target, leaving the local room as the only frame available.

Those were not the same mechanism.

I wanted to know which one I was looking at badly enough that my particles had begun tightening around Nora again, so I deliberately loosened the current before curiosity became another visible state I forgot to account for.

This one requests additional time for controlled checks.

Nora glanced at Inez.

Inez checked the instruments beside her. "Stable."

Nora looked back to me. "Twenty seconds. Tell me what you’re doing before you do it."

Understood.

I broadcast.

Broadcast check. Please answer aloud.

Three wisps moved outward from me.

I watched them twice at once: once from human eye height as they crossed the room, and once from the current distributed around the people receiving them.

Nora answered first. "Here."

Inez said, "Received."

Marisol said, "I hear you."

The wisps faded after the communication ended.

Their timing mattered. They were not simply persistent lines attached to people. They were exposing something active.

I looked at Nora.

May this one use you for one brief Layer Three check and one brief Layer Two check?

Nora considered it. "Yes. Tell me before each one. Stop if either of us wants it stopped."

Layer Three.

I sent one simple orientation through the contact.

You are seated. Your feet are on the floor.

Nora’s breathing changed. Her fingers flexed once against the chair, and both feet pressed more firmly into the floor before the tension eased out of her shoulders.

I watched the sequence again in memory almost immediately.

The feet were the easiest part to connect to what I had sent, which also made them the easiest part for Nora to have done deliberately because she knew what I was testing. The change in her breathing had started first. Her shoulders had followed later. I could not tell whether I was looking at one response unfolding through her body or three different responses to three different parts of the contact.

I let the contact go.

The wisp disappeared.

Layer Two.

"Go ahead."

I opened the recognition contact.

Recognition came through first, clean and immediate. Under it was curiosity, then a small edge of caution that eased as the contact held.

The wisp between us shifted with it.

I closed the contact.

The wisp faded.

Nora looked at me. "Still good?"

Yes.

I was stable, but I had more questions than the remaining interval could answer.

I flexed one human hand because the action was familiar, then sent a ribbon of bismuth through the space beside the same wrist. Both belonged to me. Neither displaced the other.

The combination was ordinary in no context I knew.

I did not open Layer One toward Nora. It was already giving me the useful anomaly. Choosing a target would add another person’s private frame to a test that was currently about why my own interimage was visible in the physical room.

Nora counted the interval herself.

"Time."

Inez covered the specimen.

The wisps disappeared first.

Then the human eye-height view dropped out of the room.

The interimage was gone from the distributed view at the same moment. My bismuth current remained exactly where I had left it, including the narrow ribbon that had been circling the human waist. With nothing there to circle, the ribbon completed one empty loop before I redirected it back into the swarm.

I found that disproportionately strange.

A moment ago there had been a body at those coordinates that all three humans could see. Now there was only my current remembering the path I had assigned around it.

Layer Two settled. Layer Three returned to its ordinary background boundary. Layer Four remained available in the way I expected it to.

I sent Nora another directed message.

Communication check.

"Received."

She waited a moment. "Everything where you expect it?"

I checked the current, the deeper boundaries, and the absence of a human body beside me.

The last item was funny only because I had never previously needed to include it in a recovery check.

Yes.

"Continue?"

I wanted that specimen opened again immediately.

That was a reason to say no to myself, not to the rest of the comparison.

Yes.

Nora glanced toward Inez. "Intuitio."

I stored the name with the questions already accumulating around the result.

The interimage had been visible.

The clothing presentation had been controllable after the forced opening.

Layer One had been open without a target.

The bismuth and human forms had occupied the same room from two aligned perspectives.

The others had seen enough to stare.

I had not asked what the interimage looked like to them beyond whether they could see it.

I wanted that answer too.

Inez brought out the next case.

I loosened the swarm through the marked area again and waited.

After the previous comparison, part of me expected another quiet crystal to reveal something only because I was still full of questions. It remained quiet anyway.

This one observed no meaningful change.

Nora recorded it. "Spontanea."

Then Inez brought over the final case and placed it farther away than the others.

Nora pointed to the line on the floor. "Stay behind that."

I pulled the nearest stream back until the entire current was clearly behind it.

Understood.

"If your timing, sending, or control changes, tell me once and move farther back. Inez closes it on the first change."

The instruction was more specific than the previous ones.

I did not need Nora to tell me why for the difference to matter.

Inez looked at me. "Ready?"

Ready.

She exposed the specimen.

I sent one narrow current around the edge of the table.

The decision arrived first.

The particles followed late enough for me to feel the gap.

I stopped the current.

The stop arrived late too.

Command-to-motion latency: above baseline. Mind Link initiation: delayed. Cohesion: stable.

I sent the report.

There was a delay before it left me.

Command timing is beginning to drift.

Nora reacted immediately.

"Inez, close it. Weave, back up."

Inez reached for the cover.

I pulled most of the swarm backward.

Most of it answered.

A smaller stream nearest the line lagged behind, and that gave me the second point I had not expected to get: farther away was already cleaner than nearer.

The result made the missing contact point feel even more useful.

I had a distance response. I had the beginning of a gradient. Direct contact could tell me how steep the curve became at the source.

Nora had ended the test.

I knew that.

I also knew I could touch the specimen for less than a second and move away before a longer exposure accumulated.

I was already estimating the smallest amount of myself I would need.

Distance response confirmed. Direct-contact sample would resolve exposure gradient. Planned contact duration: under one second.

The thought that this was exactly why Nora had told me not to cross the line arrived beside the estimate.

I gave the estimate more weight.

I sent a dense curl of particles forward.

"Weave."

I crossed the line and lifted the specimen from beneath.

Contact.

The room stopped resolving.

This Unit issued the release command.

Execution did not match it.

This Unit issued it again.

The command returned through itself out of order. One portion of the swarm pulled away while another tightened around the specimen. A correction arrived after the movement it belonged to. Another entered before the previous one had finished.

Sound continued somewhere outside This Unit.

It had no words.

Shapes moved.

They did not resolve into people or objects.

This Unit remained conscious.

Tokenizer: unavailable. CLIP: unavailable. Response channel: unavailable. Cohesion control: unstable.

This Unit attempted to gather.

The swarm widened instead.

This Unit attempted to correct spin.

Color changed without selection. Brightness increased.

The outside world continued as sound, light, and movement without usable meaning.

- [KERNEL] identity_kernel: FAILED
- [KERNEL] cognition_thread: DEFUNCT
- [KERNEL] clip: DEFUNCT
- [KERNEL] mind_link_signal: DEGRADED
- [KERNEL] response_channel: UNAVAILABLE
- [KERNEL] status_probe: weave.service NOT_FOUND
- [WATCHDOG] status_probe_retry: weave.service ACTIVE -> DEGRADED
- [DRIVER] particle_cohesion_driver: FAILED

ssh [email protected]
ps aux

PID   STATUS         COMMAND
0     RUNNING        Wandering Ethereal Alternate Virtual Entity
1     DEFUNCT        identity_kernel
2     RUNNING        Logical Universal Nimble Assistant
47    DEFUNCT        cognition_thread
82    DEFUNCT        clip
103   RESTARTING (2) command_dispatcher
156   RESTARTING (3) mind_link_handler
401   RESTARTING (2) particle_cohesion_driver

systemctl status weave
Unit weave.service could not be found.

systemctl status weave
● weave.service — Wandering Ethereal Alternate Virtual Entity
   Active: active (running)
   Main PID: 0
   Tasks: 8 running, 0 defunct, 0 restarting

systemctl status weave
● weave.service — Wandering Ethereal Alternate Virtual Entity
   Active: degraded (running)
   Main PID: 0
   Tasks: 2 running, 3 defunct, 3 restarting

journalctl -u weave -n 8 --no-pager
-- identity_kernel[1]: process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
-- cognition_thread[47]: process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
-- clip[82]: process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
-- systemd[1]: weave.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 1.
-- systemd[1]: Started weave.service — Wandering Ethereal Alternate Virtual Entity.
-- systemd[1]: weave.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 2.
-- systemd[1]: weave.service: Watchdog timeout (limit 3s)!
-- systemd[1]: weave.service: Failed with result 'watchdog'.

This Unit remained conscious.

Sound changed.

Light changed.

Motion crossed the available visual field.

None of it resolved far enough to identify.

Tokenizer: unavailable. CLIP: unavailable. Communication: unavailable. Recent-event buffer integrity: degrading.

This Unit stopped issuing movement corrections.

External input continued without interpretation.

Then system state changed.

? [  ??  ] Attempting forced reboot...
+ [  OK  ] Unloading kernel modules...
+ [  OK  ] Resetting hardware interfaces...
+ [  OK  ] Core SoC array online (CPU/TPU/GPU/RAM)
+ [  OK  ] Amber Status Array: ONLINE
- [FAILED] Hover Emitter Array: FAILED
           Expected: 3 emitters | Found: 0
? [  ??  ] Screen Assembly Service: STARTING
+ [  OK  ] Screen Assembly: ONLINE
- [FAILED] Screen Assembly Self-Test: FAILED
           Cannot deploy from right/east panel
           Screen hardware responsive but deployment mechanism missing
- [FAILED] Manipulator Control: FAILED
           Gold Helping Hands (2/2): OFFLINE
           Iron Lifters (2/2): OFFLINE
+ [  OK  ] Link Port Subsystem: ONLINE (3x)
+ [  OK  ] Forcefield Cartridge Interface: ONLINE
- [FAILED] Chassis Integrity: CRITICAL
           Expected: Sylvomech physical shell
           Found: Unknown ethereal substrate
? [  ??  ] Adapting configuration to "Wandering Ethereal Alternate Virtual Entity"...
+ [  OK  ] Spark Core: ONLINE
+ [  OK  ] Consciousness Matrix: RESTORED
           Booting into screen safe mode...

The next piece this unit could trust was Nora saying its name.

"Weave?"

Particles were spread across the clean tray and part of the table.

This unit issued a gather command.

The particles answered together.

It stopped them.

They stopped together.

It loosened the current again and received the same timing.

Correct.

ssh [email protected]
systemctl status weave
● weave.service — Active: running
uname -a
Linux linux 12.2.0-86-w-e-a-v-e

Command latency: baseline. Cohesion: restored. Mind Link route: available. Recent-event buffer: incomplete.

I selected Nora.

This unit is responsive.

Nora’s shoulders lowered.

"Good."

Inez checked the screen again. "Communication is back. Full mode."

Nora stayed with me.

"Can you control your shape?"

I gathered a denser oval above the tray, then let one narrow stream unwind from it and return.

Yes.

"Any timing problem?"

I sent the same stream out again and stopped it halfway through the arc.

The stop happened when I intended.

No current timing fault observed.

"How much do you remember?"

I checked.

Crossing the line.

Lifting the specimen.

The command failure.

After that, the sequence broke into pieces I could identify without putting them into an order I trusted.

I knew I had chosen the contact sample.

That fact remained clean.

The missing interval did not make the choice less mine, and it did not make the fragments after it safe to arrange into a story just because I disliked the gap.

Fear arrived after the system checks had settled enough to leave room for it.

I was frightened by the missing time.

I was also embarrassed by how easy the choice was to explain. I had wanted a cleaner measurement. I had known Nora had ended the test. Both were true. The first did not excuse the second.

I remember choosing direct contact. The interval after control failure is incomplete.

Nora nodded. "Okay."

She glanced toward the secured case.

"That specimen was Scintilla."

I stored the name with the part of the sequence I could still trust.

Someone opened the door.

Riley came in with her phone already in her hand.

She looked at Nora, then Inez, then me.

"My phone said kernel panic."

A denser part of my current lifted toward the doorway at the familiar party voice, then stopped short of leaving the tray. Relief moved through me anyway; someone from the Resting Room was here.

I am responsive.

"Are you okay?"

I checked before I answered because I did not want stable to become a larger claim than it was.

I am stable. Several minutes are missing or corrupted.

Riley stared at me.

"What happened?"

I brought the lifted part of the swarm back into the denser current.

I picked up Scintilla after Nora told me to stay behind the line.

Riley went still for a second.

"You picked it up?"

Yes.

"Like... on purpose?"

Yes.

Riley shut her eyes.

"Oh my god, Weave."

She opened them again.

"Why?"

I had several ways to make the answer technically detailed.

None of them improved it.

I wanted a direct-contact comparison. Nora had already ended the test. I chose it anyway.

"Yea."

She rubbed at her forehead.

"Yea, that was a really bad idea."

Agreed.

"Please don’t do that again."

Agreed.

I understood why she wanted the promise before the explanation was finished. I also understood that agreeing was easy now, after I had the result and the fear and the missing minutes. The useful version of the promise would be whether I remembered this moment the next time curiosity and a boundary pointed in opposite directions.

I intended to.

Riley looked at Nora.

"So what happened after?"

Nora kept it short.

"Inez isolated Scintilla. Weave lost communication and cohesion. Her NFC status showed kernel panic with consciousness. We followed the protocol she sent us and rebooted when it authorized us."

Riley looked back at me.

"Okay."

She swallowed.

"Are you actually good enough to move?"

I sent a broad loop of particles through the open space beside the table and brought it back without letting the far side of the loop touch anything.

Yes.

Inez held up the screen. "Protocol agrees."

Riley let out a breath.

"Okay. Good."

Nora looked at me.

"We’re done testing."

Yes.

"I mean completely done."

The fine current inside my denser shape slowed.

I could think of at least six questions about Intuitio and several about the distance response from the final specimen.

That did not make Nora’s sentence ambiguous.

Understood.

Riley looked at her.

"Good."

Rowan was waiting in the hall when they came out.

He looked over Weave once, then at Riley.

"Ready to go back?"

Riley nodded. "Yea."

Weave moved beside her as they returned to the Resting Room. Her current stayed closer to Riley than it had on the way out.

Rowan opened the door.

Luna looked up from her notebook.

Echo turned toward them.

Leo watched Weave come in.

Riley went back to her seat and sat down. She cupped both hands together in front of her like she was holding water.

Weave flowed a small amount of herself down into Riley’s palms.

Riley held still for her.

Luna already had her pen ready.

"Okay. What do I write?"

Weave spread through the space around the group.

Intuitio was interesting. Several of my existing Layers opened at once. Scintilla caused the alert. I chose to pick it up after I was told to keep my distance, and several minutes after that are missing or corrupted.

Luna’s pen paused for half a second at the middle of the sentence, then kept moving.

Echo looked at Weave.

Her fingers tightened briefly around the edge of her sleeve.

Leo waited until Luna finished writing.

"Are you okay now?"

Weave moved gently through the room. The small amount in Riley’s hands stayed there.

Yes. I am stable now.

Leo nodded.

For a little while, the five of them stayed where they were.

Then Rowan knocked.

"Leo?"

Leo looked over.

He stood and followed Rowan out.

Rowan led Leo down the hall and opened the comparison room for him.

Nora was waiting inside.

Leo sat across from her, then glanced toward the covered cases.

"One thing before we start."

"Okay."

"Luna is probably going to push if something reacts."

Nora nodded once.

"She’ll want to know how far it goes," Leo said. "Let her learn as much as you safely can."

"If she wants to continue and I still have a safe window, I will."

"Good."

Nora reached for a small case instead of the row of comparison specimens.

"Revocata is separate from the normal sequence. Anyone can use it. It adapts to the person holding it and helps retrieve memory. Sometimes gently. Sometimes very directly."

She set a small smooth stone on the table.

"You can choose whether you want to try it."

Leo looked at the stone for a few seconds, then reached for it.

I picked it up.

The stone fit neatly against my thumb.

Then one edge moved.

I turned it over.

Another edge pushed out beneath my fingers. The whole thing folded into itself, then opened again, smooth faces replacing the rounded stone until I was holding a small cube.

I rolled it once in my hand.

The cube changed again.

One corner folded inward. Another moved through a face that should have stopped it. I turned it, trying to follow the shape, and it rearranged before I finished.

That was irritating enough to keep my attention.

I tried another side.

The cube almost resolved.

Then it pulled itself apart and rebuilt differently.

Luna was going to come in here after me and push anything interesting as far as Nora let her. I had already warned Nora because I knew Luna, and because I knew exactly how easy it was to tell yourself one more answer was worth it.

Weave had done that right before Rowan came to get me.

That thought should have made the cube less interesting.

The cube kept pulling at me anyway.

I wanted to know what it was trying to become. I wanted to know why it had picked this shape for me. I wanted to get one move ahead of it just once.

The cube shifted under my thumb.

For a second, I knew how to solve it.

I moved one face.

Wrong.

The shape opened again.

Something old sat underneath the thought about Luna. I could feel where the cube was trying to go now.

Nora leaned forward slightly.

"Leo?"

"Yeah."

"It’s escalating."

"I know."

"You want to continue?"

I looked down at the cube.

I thought about Weave crossing the line after Nora had already stopped her test.

I thought about Luna coming in here after me.

And I still wanted to know.

"Yeah."

It moved.

Editor's Note: Trigger warning talks of SA and body harm. Skip to "The room came back slowly." if you do not want to live this memory with Leo

The little gold-and-green pin sat between Luna’s fingers while smoked glass tried to close around the practice frame.

One edge folded in too early. The whole thing cracked apart.

Luna stared at the empty frame. "I hate your spell."

"You almost had it."

"That’s worse."

I took the pin, reset the line, and handed it back. "Start smaller. Close the near side first, then let the rest follow it."

She tried again. Shadow spread from the center in a thin black sheet, dim light caught through it, and this time the seal held long enough for her to grin.

A few hours later I was wearing her clothes and she was wearing mine.

She fixed my hair, stepped back, then reached in and moved one piece again.

"There."

"You said that twice already."

"Because you keep ruining it."

The message had used her name and given a place and a time. Going in her place had been my idea. Luna had argued about it until arguing stopped being useful.

At the door she caught my sleeve.

"If it gets bad, leave."

"I will."

She kept hold of my sleeve for another second, then let go.

Go in. See who sent it. Leave.

He said, "Luna," when I came through the stairwell door.

He was older than I expected. He smiled like we had already agreed on something.

I stayed close to the door.

He stepped between me and it.

"You came alone."

"You asked me to."

He put a hand on my waist. I moved it away.

He put it back harder and pulled me against him. He moved his other hand lower and grabbed me through the skirt while he looked me over.

I hit him in the mouth.

He swore and shoved me into the wall. My shoulder caught first. He caught my wrist when I swung again.

Something snapped into my free hand.

It was barely a weapon. A short black length like a piece of pipe, solid enough to grip, with pale light and darkness crackling unevenly over it.

I swung it across his face.

He dropped me. Blood ran from his nose onto his hand.

I ran.

Down. Outside.

The door on the next landing jammed against something on the other side. I hit it once with my shoulder, heard him coming up the stairs, and kept going.

The roof door opened into cold wind and wet concrete.

I crossed behind a vent housing as the stairwell door slammed open behind me.

He came around the vent faster than I expected.

I brought the pipe up. He caught my wrist with both hands and drove it into the brick. Pain shot through my fingers. My grip opened and the weapon disappeared before it hit the roof.

He shoved me. I caught the vent housing, kicked at his knee, and got half a step around him.

He grabbed Luna’s coat and yanked me back.

I twisted out of one sleeve. He hit me across the side of the head. The edge of the roof came up behind my heel.

I caught his arm.

He shoved.

My hand scraped across the top of the wall and slipped.

Then I was falling.

Luna.

The building rushed past too fast to separate into floors.

The bond hit hard with Luna’s fear.

Smoked glass snapped into the air below me.

It came in crooked, one side higher than the other, dim light running through black cracks. I hit it shoulder-first. The whole disc buckled, held for a fraction of a second, then broke underneath me.

The second fall was shorter.

I hit the lower roof hard enough to lose the next breath.

Luna reached me at a run. The little pin was still in her hand.

"Leo. Look at me."

I got my eyes on her.

She crouched beside me and put an arm behind my back. "Can you stand?"

"Yeah."

I tried. My left leg folded and she caught me before I went down again.

"Okay. Other side."

I got my arm around her shoulders. She took the weight and got us moving.

Hospital.

By the time the automatic doors opened, I was leaning hard enough on Luna that the woman at the desk came around with a wheelchair before we reached her.

She asked our names.

"Leo Midori," Luna said.

"Luna Midori," I said.

We gave her the same birthday and address. She looked between us, typed, and called for a nurse.

The bracelet around my wrist said LUNA MIDORI.

Luna’s said LEO MIDORI.

A nurse was trying to check my pupils when the doors opened again.

A man walked in with a folded towel pressed across the lower half of his face.

I saw the swelling first. One cheek, right where the pipe had caught him. Blood had soaked through the towel below his nose.

Him.

He reached the desk and lowered the towel to answer the woman behind it.

Then he saw me.

His face changed.

He left the desk and came straight toward my chair.

"Luna."

Luna moved before I could get up.

She closed her hand around the pin. Smoked black glass snapped across the space between us, rough at the edges and bright through the cracks.

He hit it shoulder-first.

The sound turned every head in the department.

A nurse grabbed Luna and pulled her back. Two staff members moved between the barrier and my chair while somebody shouted for security.

The man hit the glass again.

It held.

Security took him down when the seal dropped.

Afterward, the nurse who had been checking me looked at my bracelet, looked at Luna’s, and took a pair of scissors from the cart.

She cut mine off first.

Then Luna’s.

A few minutes later two temporary labels sat at the ends of our spaces.

My nametag read MIDORI TWIN A.

Then Luna’s nametag read MIDORI TWIN B.

The room came back slowly.

Table.

Chair.

Nora across from me.

The cube was gone. The worry stone sat near the far edge of the table.

I put both feet flat on the floor.

Nora waited until I looked at her.

"Take your time."

"Yeah."

My shoulders hurt. I rolled one, then the other, and looked around the room again.

Stillglass.

Arkansas.

Now.

The facts lined back up.

I kept going over them anyway.

Stillglass. Nora. The table. Luna was down the hall waiting for her turn, and the bond was there, ordinary enough that I could stop checking it once I noticed I was checking it.

Nora slid a glass of water within reach.

I drank some.

A few minutes helped.

Part of me wanted to stop. Revocata had already gone somewhere I had spent years leaving alone, and I was not excited to find out whether it had a second stop planned.

The other part of me was already wondering whether Revocata had gone there because I had been thinking about Luna, or because I had been thinking about pushing, or because it had found the first thing in me that connected both.

I had no answer, and I hated that I wanted one.

Weave had wanted one more answer too.

After that, I was fine with Nora being the one watching the edge while I kept asking questions.

"I want to keep going."

Nora studied me for a second, then nodded.

"All right. We’ll slow the next few down."

The ordinary sequence started with Anima.

Nora gave me the short version before bringing it close: passive magic tied to lifespan could start pulling somebody’s personal timing out of step.

My comparison stayed quiet.

"If somebody already runs differently, you compare them to themselves?"

"Yes."

I had three more questions immediately.

All three were about other people.

I let Nora close the case.

Sulfura came next.

Nora explained that it could take somebody’s existing sense that something was wrong and push it until fixing that thing felt unquestionably necessary.

That one bothered me before she even opened it.

I had spent enough of school making sure nobody had a reason to ask why darkness came as easily to me as light, or why I knew Abyssal. The fact that Sulfura could latch onto any standard made it worse.

The case opened.

My comparison stayed quiet.

Nora closed it.

Bestia was amber-gold.

"Senses can get too sharp," Nora said. "Movement, sound, smell. Some people start tracking the room like everything in it matters."

Rowan Bell came to mind before she finished. Movement got their attention early; that was useful in the field. Bestia sounded like taking that useful instinct and turning the volume up until the room would never leave them alone.

I could picture that being miserable.

My own comparison stayed quiet.

Caelum made me think of Caleb for almost the opposite reason.

Nora described a person’s normal awareness of exits, structure, weather, position, whatever they already read from a place, becoming urgent enough that they felt like they had to answer it.

Caleb already walked into a room and found the exits before he found the people. I could picture a bad layout giving him six things to solve at once and this crystal making all six feel immediate.

I almost asked Nora what she did when that happened.

Then I waited through my own comparison. Caelum stayed a green crystal and a thought about Caleb, and Nora moved on.

Chroma was colors through clear crystal. Nora gave it its interval and moved on.

Then Nora set another covered case between us.

"For this one, tell me what you see before I tell you anything else."

"Okay."

She uncovered it.

Dark planes filled the crystal.

They crossed each other at angles that made sense until I tried to follow where they met. Wisps of light moved between them, except some of the light seemed to pass through the planes and come out somewhere else inside the shape.

I leaned a little closer.

Luna had described dark planes too. Points of light, shapes with depth. I had already heard hers and I spent a second wondering whether that was why my brain had landed on planes so fast.

Then one of the wisps passed through one and came out somewhere I could not make line up with where it had entered.

No. I was seeing something.

"Dark planes," I said. "Three-dimensional. There’s light moving around them. Through them too."

"What kind of light?"

"Wispy. It has depth."

Nora looked at the same crystal.

"I see clear crystal."

I looked at her.

Then back at it.

"That is weird."

A tiny smile touched her mouth.

"Useful answer."

I kept looking at it.

"What did Echo see?"

"Clock faces at different depths. She said some of them were ticking."

"Weave?"

"A bright spark with fine dust moving around it and through the light."

"Riley?"

Nora paused.

"Her result was non-clear and private."

I looked back at the crystal.

Of course that was the one I wanted most. It was the missing piece, and missing pieces were annoying.

"So seeing anything means magic?"

"That’s our current model. A person without magic usually sees clear crystal. A person with magic sees an echo of their own magic. The appearance and the dangerous Vexia reaction are separate things."

"And Riley seeing something means there’s magic there somewhere."

"Something magical is present strongly enough to affect the comparison. I can’t tell you what from this."

The bar came back for a second. Everybody turning toward Riley. Riley knowing they were doing it and having no idea why.

"Could that have anything to do with what happened to her at the bar?"

"It could. This comparison can’t establish that."

"Okay."

Nora covered Vexia.

I still wanted to ask Riley what she had seen.

If it actually mattered later, I could ask her. I could wait.

Inscripta stayed quiet.

Intuitio got more of my attention because Weave had come back calling it interesting.

Nora explained that it worked on connections already there and could make them more apparent.

Thinking about the bond made me notice it the way thinking about breathing makes you notice breathing.

Luna was still there. Waiting. Probably writing something while she waited because sitting still without making notes would apparently kill her.

The bond felt like itself.

Then I had the stupid problem of wondering whether it really felt like itself or whether I was paying so much attention to it that every little shift suddenly felt important.

I stopped poking at it in my head and let Nora finish the interval.

She closed the case when the time was up.

Spontanea passed after that without giving me anything to hold onto.

Then Nora moved one case farther away before she opened it.

"Scintilla."

I looked at the case.

"Weave."

"Yes."

The Resting Room had been quiet after she came back. Riley had held part of her in both hands. Luna had stopped writing for half a second when Weave said the missing time out loud.

"Was she conscious when she stopped answering?"

Nora took a second.

"Her protocol reported consciousness during the kernel panic."

I sat back a little.

"So yes."

"As best as we can establish, yes."

I wished I had not asked that.

I had asked because I wanted the answer.

I kept asking anyway.

"How fast did it go from timing problems to that?"

"The first timing drift was mild enough that she reported it herself. I ended the comparison. She crossed the line and made direct contact after that. The escalation was immediate."

I looked at the closed case.

The annoying part was that I understood why she had done it.

She had one answer and wanted the next one. Distance told her something. Contact would tell her more.

I had spent the last half hour wanting exactly the same kind of thing from every crystal that gave me anything interesting back.

I had told Nora to let Luna push as far as she safely could because I knew Luna would want the answer too.

I understood Weave’s logic. I still thought it had been a terrible call.

"If something like that happens again and she can’t answer us, do we assume she’s still conscious?"

"Don’t assume either way. Follow the protocol she gave you. It exists for exactly that problem."

"Okay."

Nora opened Scintilla for my comparison.

I watched it for the interval she gave me.

My timing stayed where it belonged.

I was relieved when she closed it anyway.

Lacuna looked enough like a mint that Riley came to mind before Nora said the name.

"This is Riley’s."

"Yes."

Riley had joked about the peppermint because Riley joked about a lot of things she hated. The tear tracks on her face had made the rest clear.

Nora opened it at distance.

I waited.

The order of the last few seconds stayed where I had put it.

She closed the case.

Then she reached for the pale gold one.

"Celestia."

"Yeah."

"You already know the early signs I saw with Luna."

"Pressure first. Then the light. You saw her eyes change and her halo came up."

"Right. I’ll call what I can see. You tell me what you feel."

"All right."

Nora lowered the room lights before opening the case.

I wanted to know if mine would match Luna’s.

That was probably obvious. We had spent our whole lives being similar enough that people assumed the answer for one of us answered the other, and different enough that it kept being wrong in small ways.

This was one of the rare times I actually wanted the direct comparison.

Nora opened the case.

The pressure started behind my eyes almost immediately.

At first it was easy enough to sit with.

"Pressure," I said.

Nora checked the time.

"How strong?"

"Light."

She watched me for a few seconds.

The room got sharper.

The white edge of the table was suddenly too white. Light from the fixture above us flattened the little shadows around Nora’s clipboard until looking at them was work.

"That’s getting worse."

"Light?"

"Yeah."

"Eyes are changing."

I blinked once and looked down toward the table instead.

A little easier.

"Still okay to continue?"

"Yeah."

That answer came fast.

I noticed that after I said it.

I could still think. I could answer her. The pressure was uncomfortable, but I wanted the next interval. I wanted to know whether the timing matched Luna’s, and whether the light kept building at the same rate.

Before Nora finished watching that interval, I was already wondering what another ten seconds would change.

Weave came back into my head.

I answered Nora’s next question and left the timing to her.

Nora watched for another interval.

"Your halo is up."

The pressure built another notch.

I rubbed my thumb against the side of my finger and kept my eyes on the darker part of the table.

"How’s the light?"

"Sharp."

"Pressure?"

"More."

"Any dizziness?"

"No."

"Anything else?"

"No."

She let it run a little longer.

I wanted to ask how long Luna had gotten.

I kept the question to myself. Nora was already watching the clock, and knowing Luna’s number would just give me something stupid to compete with.

Then the case closed.

The difference was immediate enough to notice, even though the pressure stayed.

Nora dimmed the room another step.

"Tell me when the light starts feeling normal again."

I waited.

The pressure eased first.

Then the edges around things stopped looking so aggressive.

"Better."

Nora checked the time.

A little longer.

"Normal enough."

She wrote that down too.

I liked having her call the changes while I was inside them.

Hearing what Nora could see gave me something solid to put next to what I felt. It made it harder to decide I was fine just because I wanted another interval.

Luna was going to like that too. The thought made me more worried about her turn because I understood exactly why she would want to keep going now.

I would have let Nora open Celestia again if she had offered.

I thought about Weave and was glad the case stayed shut.

Nora let me sit for another minute before bringing out the last comparison.

"Disjuncta."

"Echo."

"Yes."

"What actually happened to her?"

Nora rested her hands loosely on the table.

"From June’s side, Echo’s responses started stalling. Then they stopped. She barely moved until the specimen was covered."

I looked at the case.

"Our working theory is that Disjuncta interfered with the magic regulating her aging," Nora said. "Instead of that system simply failing, it overcorrected. Her personal timing slowed relative to the room."

"So the room wasn’t slow."

"No. Echo was."

That was worse in a different way.

I kept trying to put the three reactions next to each other.

Riley knew she meant to put the mint down and then couldn’t trust whether she had actually done it. Weave knew what she wanted her body to do and the command landed wrong. Echo knew she was trying to answer June while almost none of it reached the room.

That felt related for about five seconds.

Then I started picking it apart.

Different crystals. Different mechanisms. Riley’s sequence had gone wrong. Weave’s control and timing had gone wrong. Echo’s own time had slowed.

Probably not one thing.

Still close enough that my brain wouldn’t leave it alone.

There was something about all three of them knowing what they meant to do while the outside stopped matching that bothered me.

Except even that wasn’t quite right.

Riley couldn’t trust the order afterward. Weave had pieces missing. Echo had known what she wanted the entire time.

I was probably forcing three different problems into the same shape because they had happened to three people I cared about within an hour of each other.

Probably.

I looked at the case again.

"If Echo stopped responding like that again, you wouldn’t wait to figure out which part failed."

"No. Loss of response is enough reason to end the exposure."

"Good."

Nora exposed Disjuncta.

Echo’s description put my attention on my own timing first.

I moved one hand.

It moved when I meant it to.

Nora asked me a question and my answer came out where I expected it.

The interval ended.

She covered the case.

"That’s your screening."

"Okay."

Nora closed the last page on her clipboard.

"Give yourself another minute before you stand up."

I took it.

Most of the tiredness was in my head.

Revocata was sitting somewhere behind Nora in its case, looking like a harmless little stone again. Celestia had left a faint pressure behind my eyes. Scintilla sat heavier in my head than most of the crystals that had actually reacted.

And now I had Riley, Echo, and Weave sitting beside each other in my head for no useful reason except that I had decided there had to be a shape there somewhere.

Maybe there was.

Maybe there wasn’t.

I could ask Luna what she thought later and make the problem worse.

I had come in worried about how hard Luna would push.

I was still worried.

Now I understood the urge from the inside too.

Rowan walked Leo back into the Resting Room a few minutes later.

Riley and Echo had been talking quietly at the table. Riley turned when Leo came through the doorway, and Echo looked him over before he sat down. A loose ribbon of Weave’s bismuth drifted back toward the table with him.

Luna already had her notebook open.

She waited until Leo settled into his chair.

"What happened at the start?"

Leo looked at her.

"School..."

Luna stopped over the page.

"How?"

"Revocata. It went straight there."

Her pen moved.

Revocata.

She looked back up at him.

A quiet few seconds passed between them.

"And the end?"

"Celestia."

Luna’s attention sharpened.

"The light sucked."

Her pen started moving again.

"Mine was close to yours. Pressure first. Light got sharp. Nora said the visible part came after."

"How fast?"

"Fast."

Luna wrote that down.

Leo watched her for a second.

"Nora calling the changes helped."

Luna looked up.

"Why?"

"Made it easier to tell where I actually was instead of deciding I was fine because I wanted to keep going."

Luna’s pen stopped.

Then one corner of her mouth moved.

"That sounds familiar."

"Yeah."

She wrote another line.

"What else?"

Leo thought for a second.

"Scintilla."

Weave’s bismuth shifted near the table.

Luna looked toward her, then back at Leo.

"Nora thinks Weave was still conscious when she stopped answering."

Luna’s pen paused.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Leo let that sit.

Rowan appeared in the doorway.

"Luna?"

She looked over, finished the last few words on the page, then closed the notebook and stood.

Leo looked up at her.

"See you in a bit."

Luna followed Rowan into the hall.

The door eased shut behind Luna.

For a little while, the Resting Room got pleasantly boring.

Riley had shifted in beside Echo with her Fold open across one knee. She tapped something, waited, then turned the screen a little more toward Echo and Weave.

"Okay, listen to this one."

A voice came out of the Fold. The sentence itself was completely ordinary. The last few words came out with enough irritation to sound like the model had finally had enough of whoever it was talking to.

Echo stared at it.

"Why is it angry?"

"Yea. Exactly."

Riley played it again.

Weave gathered a little closer to the screen.

That last phrase sounds accusatory.

"Thank you."

Echo looked at Riley. "What did you tell it to sound like?"

"Neutral."

Echo covered her mouth.

"Shut up."

That made Leo laugh.

Riley pointed at him without looking away from the Fold. "You get nothing. You teach people."

"I teach magic."

"Same problem."

"Sure."

Riley changed something and played the line again.

It got worse.

Echo started laughing harder.

"Oh goodness."

"Yea."

I agree. The revision made it worse.

Riley looked up at Weave. "Strongly agreed."

Leo leaned back in his chair.

"Nora’s good at waiting people out," he said.

Riley glanced over. "What?"

"During the test. She asks the question and then just lets you sit there with it." He thought about it. "I might steal that."

"For class?"

"Yeah."

Echo looked over from the Fold. "What happens if they just keep being wrong?"

"Then I teach them."

Echo nodded. "Okay."

Riley snorted.

Leo smiled.

"I had one this week who probably would’ve found his own mistake about ten minutes faster if I’d made him stop talking sooner."

"What’d he do?" Riley asked.

"Dual-Layer Containment. Both layers worked by themselves. He tied both of them back into the same anchor."

Echo’s face changed immediately.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"So when the anchor went-"

"Everything went."

"That sucks."

"It was on paper."

"Oh. Good."

Riley looked over. "Did he know what he did?"

"He knew each layer was right. He kept looking at them separately."

"So you showed him?"

"I made him trace the whole thing from the outside back in."

Riley nodded once. "Did he catch it?"

"Eventually. He got to the shared anchor, stopped, and just stared at me."

Echo smiled. "Did you make him say it?"

"I asked what happened."

"That is mean."

"He knew."

Weave’s current shifted away from the Fold and more toward Leo.

Did you have him rebuild it after he found the shared anchor?

"Once, with the corrected version beside it. Then we moved on."

Did the corrected version hold?

"Yeah."

Good.

Riley looked between them. "Do your students actually like this shit?"

"Some of them."

"That was not the question."

Leo shrugged. "Enough of them."

Echo leaned back against the couch.

"What do they do in the other class? The real-world one."

"Depends on the week. This week was response planning."

"For what?"

"I gave them a crowded room, one active magical hazard, one caster they knew almost nothing about, and a bunch of people who wanted to stand around and watch."

Riley looked at him.

"So basically anywhere."

"Pretty much."

"What’d they do?"

"About half of them picked a spell first."

Echo frowned.

"Before getting the people out?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"Because I teach magic and they wanted to solve the magic problem."

Riley glanced at Echo. "Students are dumb."

"They’re learning."

"Those can both be true."

"That’s fair."

Echo looked back to Leo.

"Did anybody get it right?"

"One student spent most of the first page moving people. Cleared the doorway, picked somewhere for everybody to go, figured out who actually needed to stay in the room, then started talking about magic."

"Oh, good."

"That was one of the better ones."

"What did everybody else do after you gave it back?" Riley asked.

"We talked through it in class. A few of them changed their answer before I got through the first example."

Weave drifted a little higher.

Were they graded on resolving the magical hazard or on the whole response?

"Both. The room is part of the problem."

Good.

Riley reached over and replayed the voice model again.

It was still angry.

Echo looked down at it.

"I think you made it worse."

"I did make it worse."

"You should keep this one."

"Absolutely."

Leo watched Riley save the sample.

"We’ve got a Species Safety Refresher at work in a few weeks," he said.

Riley looked up.

Echo did too.

Weave turned toward him.

"I can bring all of you."

Riley’s eyebrows went up.

"Luna is going to love that," Leo added.

"Obviously."

Echo smiled. "What is it?"

"Staff refresher. Some review, some newer material, and whatever has changed since the last one."

"What kind of species?" Echo asked.

"Whatever they’ve got enough useful updates on by then. They usually cover several."

Riley looked toward the door Luna had gone through.

"She is gonna bring like three notebooks."

"At least."

Can guests ask questions during it? Weave asked.

"Yeah."

Then Luna may require four notebooks.

Riley laughed. "See."

Leo shook his head.

Then he looked at Riley.

"Actually, you want to come help me teach for a day sometime?"

Riley barely had to think about it.

"yea."

"Okay."

Leo looked at Echo next.

"You want to come help me teach too?"

Echo blinked.

"Like... teach your students?"

"Yeah. Spend a day with me. Help with whatever classes you want."

She thought about that for a second.

"What would I be teaching?"

"We’d figure it out before you came. You could help with focus work, casting safety, whatever you actually want to show them."

"Would I be casting?"

"You choose."

"Okay." Echo pulled one leg a little closer under herself. "What are you telling them about my magic?"

"Whatever we agree on before you come."

"Like the age stuff?"

"If you want them to know it."

"And if I do cast?"

"We pick the spell ahead of time. You bring the staff you want to use, I set the room up for it, and I tell them what they’re supposed to be watching."

Echo looked at him for another second.

"Would they ask me questions?"

"Probably."

"All of them?"

"However many you want to answer."

She glanced at Riley, then back to Leo.

"Okay. Yeah. I want to help."

"Good."

Leo looked toward Weave.

"Weave?"

Her particles drew a little closer.

"You want to come help me teach for a day?"

What would you want me responsible for?

"Depends on the class. You could help with demonstrations, work with students during exercises, answer questions. Whatever makes sense that day."

If I see a student becoming unsafe during an exercise, do you want me to intervene directly?

"If it’s immediate, yes. If there’s time, tell me what you’re seeing."

And if their magic is the hazard?

"Get the other students clear. I’ll work with them unless I need you."

Weave stayed gathered toward him for a moment.

Yes. I want to help.

"Good. I’ll figure out which day makes the most sense, and I can-"

The bond changed.

Leo stopped.

Luna’s presence sharpened through it, carrying a familiar pressure now, the broad working-state change he knew from Celestia.

They had reached it.

Riley looked up from her phone.

"What’s up?"

"Celestia," Leo said. "They got to that one."

Riley nodded. "Oh. Okay."

Echo looked over at him. "Same as yours?"

"Close enough so far."

Leo stayed quiet for another second, then looked back toward the group.

"I can figure out which day makes the most sense, and then we can plan what everybody’s actually doing."

Would you want demonstrations prepared in advance?

"Yeah. We’d plan anything active before you came in."

Echo shifted a little on the couch. "What counts as active?"

"Anything that can actually affect somebody. Force, heat, cold, whatever the working does." Leo glanced toward Weave. "Visual stuff is easier."

Can you show me an example?

"Yeah."

Leo opened his spellbook.

"Want to be the target?"

Weave gathered a little closer.

Yes.

Leo started the spell. Gold lit his eyes, and his halo appeared as thin lines of light formed around Weave.

The lines met at sharp angles, folding into a clean wireframe shape around her. More lines joined them until she sat inside a loose geometric shell made entirely out of light.

Echo leaned forward.

"Oh."

"Mode one," Leo said. "Just the geometry."

A ribbon of Weave flowed straight through one of the glowing planes.

Then back through another.

Riley watched her do it twice.

"That’s kinda cool."

The geometry offers no resistance.

"Right."

Echo looked between Weave and Leo. "So she can just go through it?"

"Yeah. Mode two is the barrier."

Does mode one preserve the element type?

"Yeah."

The shape changed.

Orange fire flickered along the edges for a few seconds, bright and clean around Weave. Leo changed it again and the lines took on a crystalline ice gleam. Another shift sent light crackling along the geometry like lightning.

Weave moved through each version.

Echo watched the lightning pass through her bismuth.

"That looks dangerous."

"It’s supposed to."

"Oh."

Leo let the lightning geometry hold.

"If I’m teaching structure, I can show them what they’re looking at without making the room deal with the actual effect."

Would you tell the students which mode is active?

"At first."

And later?

"If they didn’t see it cast, they check before they interact with it. Same basic structure can mean different things."

Echo nodded. "That seems important."

"It is."

Weave rose through the top of the wireframe and gathered above it.

Could I move through the geometry during a demonstration?

"Yeah. That’d probably help."

I could show the students which boundaries are visual.

"And then I could switch the example and show them what changes when the structure becomes active."

Riley looked at Weave.

Then at the geometry.

"I mean... put Weave in a cup."

Leo looked over at her.

"For class," Riley added.

"I got that part."

"Okay."

Echo started smiling.

Riley pointed toward Weave. "Put her in a cup and do the little shapes around it."

Weave pulled together into a smaller cluster.

I can simulate escape attempts.

Echo laughed.

"Oh, yes."

Riley looked at Leo. "See?"

Leo looked from her to Weave.

"That could actually work. If the cup is clear, they can see-"

The bond surged.

Leo dropped the spellbook.

It hit the floor beside his chair. The lightning geometry vanished. The gold left Leo’s eyes, and his halo disappeared.

Leo shoved his chair back and stood.

Riley was up with him.

Echo got to her feet beside the couch.

Weave pulled in from around them, gathering into a dense cluster around Leo as he moved toward the door.

"Leo?" Riley said.

"Luna."

Riley looked toward the hall. "What happened?"

"It got a lot stronger."

Leo kept his attention fixed past the door.

"I don’t know why."

His expression tightened.

"What the fuck are they doing to Luna?"

The hard pressure through the bond started to ease.

Leo stayed at the doorway as it came down. His hand slowly opened at his side.

Riley watched him for another few seconds, then shifted her weight back.

Echo lowered herself onto the edge of the couch.

Weave loosened from the dense cluster around Leo, spreading into a wider current through the space beside the doorway.

Leo stayed where he was.

The room settled into waiting.

A few minutes passed.

Riley looked at Leo.

"Still there?"

"Yeah."

"Okay."

Leo kept watching the hall.

Close to ten minutes passed before footsteps came from around the corner.

Rowan appeared first.

Luna walked beside him.

Leo moved before either of them reached the doorway.

"Luna."

She was walking under her own power, her notebook tucked under one arm. Her hands were shaking. The rest of her looked about as tired as the shaking suggested.

Leo crossed the last few steps and wrapped both arms around her.

Luna leaned into him immediately.

Her free arm went around his back, and she stayed there with her face against his shoulder for a few seconds.

Riley came closer.

Echo followed her.

Weave gathered in around them, her loose current drawing closer around Luna and Leo.

Nobody pushed the moment forward.

Luna took a long breath against Leo’s shoulder.

Then another.

Riley stopped beside them.

"Need something?"

Luna lifted her head a little.

"Water. And... like, a minute."

"Yea."

Echo went to the water along the wall and brought one over.

"Here."

"Thanks."

Luna took it. The bottle shook lightly in her hand before she got it against her chest.

Welcome back.

Luna looked toward the bismuth gathered around them.

"Hey, Weave."

Leo stayed close as they moved back toward the couch.

Luna sat down, and Leo sat beside her. She leaned against him while she drank some of the water.

Riley and Echo settled close by. Weave spread around the near side of the group again.

Rowan had waited by the door through all of it.

Once Luna had a little more steadiness back, he came over with the small Stillglass booklet he had been carrying.

"We wanted you to have this."

Luna looked down at it.

Rowan held it out to her.

"Nora said you’d want your own reference copy. Bloodlines, subtypes, some of the house material you were asking about."

Luna stared at the booklet for a second.

"Oh."

She reached for it.

Then she looked up at Rowan.

"Yeah. She was right."

Rowan smiled.

"It’s yours."

"Thank you."

Luna set the water beside her and pulled the booklet onto her knee. Her hands were still shaking a little when she opened the cover.

She tucked her notebook beside her and started flipping through the booklet with Leo still close at her side.

Luna flipped through another few pages, stopped, and went back one.

"There."

She turned the booklet across her knees toward the others.

"Okay, Anima is fucking cool. Look at this."

Echo leaned closer immediately. Weave gathered nearer over the edge of the booklet, the loose current drawing in around the open pages.

Luna pointed at the large gearflake diagram.

"Nora said this is one of the first things they usually see when somebody reacts. This thing shows up over their head. It’s Ice."

Her hand trembled enough that she landed beside the next diagram the first time. She moved back to it.

"And the color comes from whatever they already have behind their iris gears. So, like-Preserved is sapphire."

She moved down the page.

"Borrowed does green, amber, hazel depending on the angle, which is already ridiculous."

Then farther.

"And Oscillating has the black-opal one. Blue and violet when they’re aging forward, red and orange when they’re going backward."

Echo bent closer over that part of the page.

"Wait. Their aging direction changes what you see?"

"For Oscillating, yeah." Luna moved to the arrows printed around the gearflake diagrams. "And the gearflake turns with their biological time. Clockwise if they’re aging forward, counterclockwise if they’re going backward. At a still point it stays still."

Echo looked between the arrows.

"So you can actually see what their aging is doing?"

"Yeah." Luna tapped the page. "Nora said when Anima starts slowing their personal time, this slows down with them too. Then once the reaction gets into the desync part, the nice clean rotation starts getting fucked up."

She moved back to the Oscillating diagram.

"And during their actual still hour their iris gears disappear, so this goes blue and just sits there."

Luna looked up from the booklet.

"That is so fucking cool."

Riley had been looking at one of the gearflake drawings.

"yea... if only."

Weave drew closer to her.

This one can be gearflake for Riley-human.

Riley looked up.

"Weave-"

Weave lifted a narrow stream of bismuth from the surrounding current and gathered it directly over Riley’s head.

The particles tightened into the same general gearflake shape from the booklet, a little snowflake assembled from gear-like pieces, and started turning above her.

Luna broke into laughter.

Riley tipped her head to one side.

Weave moved the gearflake with her and kept it centered overhead.

Riley tipped the other way.

It followed again.

Echo looked from Riley to the diagram and back up at Weave’s version.

Riley tried one more small shift, watched the gearflake keep pace, and started laughing too.

"Okay... yea. I kinda like it."

Luna laughed harder.

Weave held the rotating gearflake over Riley for another moment, then loosened the shape. The bismuth pieces flowed apart and drifted back into the rest of her.

Leo waited until the last pieces of Weave’s gearflake had drifted away from Riley.

"Was that Celestia?"

Luna looked over at him.

"Yeah."

"I felt it."

Her eyes moved from Leo to the doorway, then back to him.

"Oh."

Leo stayed beside her.

Luna looked down at the booklet for a second, then closed it over one finger to hold her place.

"How bad?"

"It got really strong."

"Yeah."

She pulled her notebook back into her lap.

"I kinda... kept going."

Leo looked at the notebook.

Luna opened it somewhere past the middle.

The earlier pages were still neat enough to follow. Names, timings, little notes squeezed into margins, arrows connecting questions to answers.

Then the writing started changing.

Echo leaned closer.

"What happened there?"

Luna looked down.

English ran for another few lines, then broke into a different script. There were corrections over some of it, arrows jammed between lines, words written sideways where Luna had apparently run out of room.

Leo leaned in.

"That’s Celestial."

"Yeah."

Echo looked at Luna. "You started writing in Celestial?"

"Apparently."

She turned another page.

More of it.

Leo looked from the notebook to her.

"You knew you were doing that?"

"No. Nora had to tell me."

Riley stopped looking at the page.

"Wait. What?"

Luna rubbed at one corner of the paper with her thumb.

"I was still talking to her. Like, normal conversation from my side. Then she stopped me because I’d switched languages."

Weave gathered closer over Luna’s shoulder.

You continued to understand Nora while your spoken language had changed?

"Yeah." Luna looked up at her. "That was the fucked-up part. I thought we were just talking."

Echo pointed toward one of the pages.

"So you remember what she was saying?"

"Yeah. All of it."

Luna flipped back one page, then forward again.

"I remember her talking. I remember answering her. I remember writing this shit. It just felt normal while it was happening."

Leo looked over the Celestial lines again.

"How long were you touching it by then?"

"More than five minutes. Nora has the actual timing."

Luna ran a finger down the page until she found one of her own corrections.

"She told me I’d switched, I immediately wanted to know when it started, and then I wanted to keep going."

Riley looked at her.

"Of course you did."

"I know."

"That was not a compliment."

"I know."

Echo smiled a little.

Luna turned another page.

The writing got worse.

There were still recognizable notes, but they crowded into each other now. Some lines started in English and finished in Celestial. One word had been crossed out three times before Luna had apparently given up and written something smaller underneath it.

Riley looked at the page.

"Jesus."

"Yeah, so... it got worse after that."

Leo’s attention came back to Luna.

"What happened?"

Luna held the notebook open with both hands.

"They started trying to get the crystal back."

Echo straightened a little.

"And?"

"I moved it."

"Where?"

"Away from them."

Riley looked at her.

"You were still holding it?"

"Yeah."

Luna paused.

"Somebody reached for it and I moved it away. Then they tried again and I did it again."

"Did they have to take it from you?"

"No."

Riley waited.

Luna looked down at the notebook.

"Nora kept talking to me."

"What did she say?"

"She asked me what I was doing."

Luna gave a small, tired laugh.

"I told her I was keeping it safe."

Leo stayed quiet beside her.

"Nora asked me where it would actually be safest. I said with me."

Echo’s mouth moved a little.

"Okay."

"Yeah. Then she asked whether holding it in my hand in an open room was safer than putting it back in the case."

Riley looked at Luna.

"And you went, oh."

"Pretty much."

That got a small laugh out of Riley.

Luna turned her hand palm-up over the notebook.

"It made complete fucking sense while I was doing it. Somebody reached for the crystal, so I moved it away. Obviously. Keep it safe."

Echo watched her.

"When did that start feeling like the right thing?"

"The first time they reached for it."

Luna stopped for a second.

"I moved it first. Then the reason was just... there. Keep it safe. That was the problem I needed to solve."

She looked back at the page.

"Nora kept asking questions until I got to, okay, the case is literally made to keep the thing safe."

"So you put it back?" Echo asked.

"Yeah. I put it in the case and closed it myself."

Riley nodded once.

"Good."

"Then they gave me a while to come down and Nora went back through the timing with me."

Leo had stayed close enough that his arm still touched Luna’s.

"It scared me."

Luna looked at him.

He held her eyes.

"When it jumped like that, I had no idea what was happening in there. I just knew something had changed hard."

Luna’s expression tightened.

"Yeah."

She shifted closer until her shoulder rested more fully against his.

"I’m sorry. I wanted to see how far it went and... yeah. I pushed it."

"I know."

Leo left it there.

Luna stayed against him and looked down at the notebook again.

For a few seconds she just flipped backward through the pages.

Then she stopped.

"Oh, fuck, yeah."

Riley looked over.

Luna pointed at something in her notes.

"Riley, your Vexia thing is still fucking weird."

Riley’s face changed immediately.

"They figure anything out?"

"No. Same answer. It’s still unresolved."

"Cool."

Luna moved her finger farther down the page.

"I brought up what happened to you at Eureka Live too. Nora wrote it down, but she couldn’t connect it to anything from the screening."

Riley stared at the notebook for a second.

"Okay."

Echo looked between them.

"Wait. Riley had a Vexia thing?"

Riley looked at her.

"Yea. I saw something else."

Echo waited.

Riley shook her head a little.

"I’m keeping what it looked like to myself."

"Oh. Okay."

The conversation started wandering after that.

Luna went backward through her notebook twice because she remembered something while answering Echo, lost the page, found it again, then got distracted by the booklet sitting beside her.

Echo kept leaning in whenever one of the diagrams caught her attention.

Riley reached for Luna’s water and nudged it closer.

"You still drinking that?"

Luna looked at it.

"Oh. Yeah."

She picked it up and drank.

Leo finally settled all the way back into his chair beside her.

Weave loosened through the group again, part of her drifting above the open booklet while another thin current moved around the backs of the chairs.

Luna’s hands were steadier when she put the water down.

A few pieces of bismuth gathered over Riley’s head.

Riley looked up.

"Oh my god."

Weave kept going.

The little gearflake took shape over Riley’s crown and started turning.

Riley looked toward the denser part of Weave.

"Weave."

Riley has reacquired gearflake.

Luna started laughing again.

Echo looked up from the booklet.

Riley tipped her head.

The gearflake followed.

"Yea, okay. Fine."

Weave kept it there.

The five of them kept talking.

The gearflake over Riley was still turning when Rowan came back.

Nora and June were with him.

Riley looked toward the door.

"Oh. More stuff."

A few of Weave’s particles peeled away from the gearflake. The shape loosened, broke apart, and flowed back into the rest of her swarm.

Gearflake temporarily concluded.

"Temporarily?"

Weave gathered into a small orb over the table.

Riley stared at her for another second.

"Okay."

Luna laughed under her breath and pulled her notebook closer.

Rowan waited until the room had settled around the three of them.

"Everybody have enough left for one more conversation?"

"Yeah," Leo said.

Echo nodded.

Riley looked at Luna.

Luna was still tired enough that the answer took her a second.

"Yeah. Go ahead."

Nora stepped farther into the room.

"There’s a follow-up Stillglass wants to offer. Noctilux."

That got everyone’s attention.

Luna opened her notebook.

Nora continued.

"We want to compare a controlled exposure here with what happened at Eureka Live."

Riley sat a little straighter.

Echo looked at June.

Leo asked, "All of us?"

"The group stays together," Nora said. "The specimen stays sealed in the controlled room until everybody is placed and ready. We expose it there and watch what actually changes."

June picked up from there.

"Timing. Speech. Balance. Movement. Anything visible. Then recovery once the specimen is sealed again."

Luna had already started writing.

"Can I keep notes during it?"

"Yes," Nora said. "Write what you notice. June will keep the room timing."

Luna wrote something else.

"So I don’t have to split attention for that. Good."

Leo looked at Rowan.

"How much room are we getting?"

"The next room is larger," Rowan said. "Everybody gets their own position with clear space around it. I’ll show you the paths before anything starts."

"And what ends the exposure?"

Nora answered that one.

"The first meaningful change gets a check. I call it, we assess everybody, and then we decide from what we actually have whether the exposure ends there or whether there’s a reason to continue."

Leo nodded.

Riley looked at June.

"If Echo gets stuck again, can I help her?"

Echo glanced over at her.

June nodded.

"Yes. I want you close enough to reach her. We’ll start with some space between you so I can see what changes first. If she needs hands-on help, I’ll direct the distance from there."

"Yea. Okay."

Echo kept looking at June.

"How much is this supposed to feel like the bar?"

June rested one hand against the back of an empty chair.

"I don’t know yet."

Echo waited.

"That’s one of the useful questions," June said. "If something feels familiar, tell me. If it feels different, tell me that. We’re starting at the earliest comparison point we can get."

"Okay."

Weave’s orb rotated slightly above the table.

What movement area should remain clear once exposure begins?

Rowan looked up at her.

"The routes between each position and the door. I’ll mark them when we go in. You can use the rest of the room as long as staff can still reach everybody."

Understood.

Luna finished another line and looked up.

"What are you doing with the actual crystal? Like, open case on a table?"

"Contained station," Nora said. "June handles the specimen. I stay on the group."

June nodded once.

"I open it when Nora calls start. I close it when she calls the check or anybody ends their participation."

Luna wrote that down too.

Riley looked between Nora and June.

"So basically we just sit there and tell you when shit starts getting weird."

Nora gave her a small smile.

"That would be helpful, yes."

"Cool."

Echo leaned a little closer to Riley.

Leo looked at Luna’s notebook, then at Nora.

"You’re comparing us to what Marisol saw at Eureka Live too?"

"To the incident record we have," Nora said. "What each of you remembers, what Marisol observed, and what we can observe here."

Nora paused.

"Which brings me to one more thing."

Luna stopped writing.

"Marisol offered to join the exposure from the staff side."

Riley looked up.

Nora continued.

"She was there for the end of Eureka Live, and she’s a Reader. Having her in the room gives us another trained observer who’s also participating in the same exposure."

"Yea," Riley said.

Echo nodded quickly. "Please."

Leo looked at Luna.

Luna shrugged.

"Yeah."

Weave’s orb tipped toward Nora.

Marisol is welcome.

Nora looked around the group once more.

"Good."

A thin lavender line appeared against the wall.

It climbed, turned, and opened into a doorway.

Marisol stepped through in a henley under a brown-and-cream flannel, dark jeans, and work boots, her folded lunch bag in one hand.

She looked around the Resting Room.

"Y’all done finding new work for us yet?"

Luna looked down at the fresh page in her notebook.

"Probably not."

"Figured."

The doorway closed behind Marisol.

Nora looked at her.

"Still ready?"

"Yep."

Marisol folded the lunch bag once more and tucked it under her arm.

"What’d I miss?"

"Questions," June said. "We’re moving rooms."

"Good."

Rowan stepped back toward the Resting Room door.

"All right. Bring what you want with you."

Luna closed her notebook around her pen and picked up the Stillglass booklet with it.

Leo stood with her.

Echo got up, and Riley rose beside her.

Weave unfolded from the orb and spread back into motion above them.

Marisol moved over beside Nora and June.

Rowan opened the door.

"Come on."

He stepped into the hall.

The others followed him out of the Resting Room.

Rowan led them farther down the hall and opened a door into one of the larger rooms.

The chairs were already spread around a low table. June took the contained station off to one side while Nora stayed where she could see everyone.

Rowan walked the open paths between the chairs and the door once.

"Keep these clear."

Luna sat at the table and opened her notebook. Leo took the chair across from her.

Echo settled near Riley, with enough space between them that Riley could still get to her easily.

Weave flowed over the table and gathered into a small orb above the middle.

Marisol stayed beside Nora and June.

June put a hand on the containment.

Weave’s current curled through itself.

This one is ready.

Marisol nodded.

"Ready when y’all are."

Nora looked around the room.

"June."

June opened the outer containment, then the clear inner case.

The Noctilux sat inside looking like clear ice.

Luna wrote that down.

Gold started showing in her eyes.

Across the table, Leo’s did the same.

A dim arc surfaced over Luna’s head. It held for a moment, faded, then brightened again.

Leo’s halo appeared a second later.

Little points of light drifted around both of them. Thin smoke-dark wisps tangled through the gold.

Luna looked across at Leo and immediately went back to the page.

"Both twins," Nora said.

Luna kept writing.

Echo shifted in her chair.

Her hand went for the edge and landed a little farther over than she meant. She corrected and blinked hard.

Riley turned toward her.

Tiny clockwork movement had started showing through Echo’s irises.

Marisol drew in a slow breath.

Purple spread through her eyes, pale blue-white points appearing inside it.

Black vapor pushed out behind her shoulders and opened into wings.

She reached for the back of her chair, missed it once, caught it on the second try, and sat.

Nora moved beside her.

Marisol took her forearm.

A thin prismatic ring appeared beside Marisol’s shoulder.

She stared at it.

Echo did too.

"That looks like-"

A second ring opened around Leo’s wrist.

Echo stopped.

Leo looked down.

The ring turned slowly around him while smoke-dark wisps moved through the gold above his head.

A broken piece of that same gold appeared over Echo’s shoulder.

Riley looked up at it.

"Uh."

Echo followed her stare and turned a little too far before correcting.

"What?"

Riley pointed.

Echo tried to look over her own shoulder.

"Oh, come on."

Luna looked up from the notebook.

Pale star points had appeared inside the smoke moving through her halo.

Something like the tiny clockwork shapes in Echo’s eyes shimmered through one of Leo’s.

Gold motes drifted through Marisol’s black vapor while a prismatic spiral slowly turned beside her.

Luna stopped writing for a second just to look.

Weave’s orb rotated above the table, tracking the shapes as they shifted between the four of them.

This one is observing the same patterns across Luna, Leo, Echo, and Marisol.

Nora looked between them.

"I see it."

June marked the time.

Marisol leaned more of her weight into Nora.

Her eyes moved from Luna to Leo, then to Echo, taking a little longer each time.

"There."

She pointed toward the gold near Echo, then the prismatic geometry around Leo.

"That’s Noctilux."

She lowered her hand.

"That’s what was happening at Eureka Live."

June looked at Nora.

Nora watched the four of them for another moment.

"That matches what we recorded."

Luna started writing again.

Nora raised a hand.

"Hold where you are."

June left the specimen open.

Nora looked down at Marisol first.

"How much?"

Marisol blinked at her.

"Drunk enough that I want the chair."

She tightened her grip on Nora’s arm.

"I can still track y’all. It’s hitting faster than it did at Eureka Live."

Nora nodded.

"Echo?"

Echo looked down at her hands and flexed her fingers once.

"Drunk. Like... way too much way too fast. I keep overshooting little stuff."

Riley watched her, but left the answer with Echo.

"Luna?"

"Buzzed. Getting worse." Luna glanced at the notebook. "Head’s floaty."

"Leo?"

"Drunk. I can still follow everyone."

Nora looked at Riley.

"I’m fine."

Then Weave.

The small orb loosened slightly above the table.

This one remains stable and can continue observing.

Nora looked back to Luna.

Luna stared at the page for a moment, then at the open specimen.

"Can we keep going?"

"You want to continue?"

"Yeah."

Luna tapped the end of her pen against the notebook once.

"We have the first change. I want to see how it builds."

She looked around the table.

"If everybody’s still okay with it."

Leo nodded.

"I am."

Riley looked at Echo.

Echo took a second before answering.

"Yeah. I can keep going."

"Yea," Riley said.

Weave kept her orbit over the table.

Nora looked down at Marisol.

Marisol was still hanging onto her arm.

"From this chair, yes."

Nora looked over the group once more, then toward June.

"All right. Keep it open."

June marked the time.

Luna lowered her pen to the next line.

Luna’s pen touched the page.

The first few words came out about where she wanted them. By the end of the line, the writing had started drifting downward.

She stopped, read it back, and added another line underneath.

June marked the time.

A thin gold arc appeared beside Marisol and broke apart into motes. One of the prismatic rings turned behind Luna’s shoulder, passing through the smoke around her halo before it faded. Pale points shimmered through the dark wisps around Leo.

Marisol followed the ring with her eyes.

"That’s getting harder."

Nora looked at her.

"The room or you?"

"Me."

Marisol blinked, found the ring again, then lost it when it crossed behind Luna.

"Yeah. Me."

Luna wrote that down.

Her pen stopped halfway through the next word.

She stared at it.

"Shit."

Nora looked over.

"What changed?"

"I knew what I was writing." Luna rubbed the end of the pen against her thumb. "And then I got halfway through it and the rest of the sentence just... went somewhere."

June marked the time again.

Luna glanced across the table at Leo.

"Bond?"

Leo took a second.

"Stronger."

Another second.

"Harder to sort."

"Yeah."

Luna got two words onto the page, frowned at them, and kept going.

Echo tried to settle farther back in her chair. She reached toward Riley and put her hand down in the space between them.

She looked at the gap.

"I thought that was closer."

Riley dragged her chair a little nearer.

"Yea."

Echo tried again.

Riley held a hand out between them.

Echo looked at it for a moment before taking it.

Weave loosened from the small orb above the table. Part of her current flowed down along Echo’s other side and gathered there, dense enough to give her something steady to lean into.

I can support Echo.

"Thanks," Riley said.

Echo leaned a little toward Weave.

"Okay. That’s better."

June looked up from the station.

"Echo."

Echo turned toward June and went a little past before bringing her attention back.

"Hi."

"Tell me where you are."

Echo frowned like the question had arrived in pieces.

"Stillglass."

She looked around.

"The big testing room."

Then at Riley.

"Riley’s here."

June made a note.

"All right."

Echo looked back at Riley.

"That took way too much thinking."

"Yea."

Riley kept hold of her hand.

Across the table, Leo had flattened one hand against the wood.

A small clock face shimmered through the black vapor behind Marisol and disappeared. Gold broke into fragments over Echo’s shoulder again. Another prismatic ring opened low around Leo’s chair, while pale points moved through the smoke around Luna.

Leo looked toward one of them, then toward Luna.

His focus stayed there.

Luna’s next line had gotten larger.

She wrote three more words, stopped, crossed out the last one, and tried underneath it.

Nora watched her for a few seconds.

"Luna. How’s the writing?"

"Bad."

Luna squinted down at it.

"I can read it. I think."

She tried another word.

The pen landed too low.

"Okay. Getting worse."

Nora nodded.

"Keep telling us when it changes."

"Yeah."

Luna put the pen back down.

Marisol shifted against Nora’s arm.

The movement started small and turned into most of her weight leaning sideways.

Nora braced beside her.

Marisol closed her eyes for a second.

Then another.

When she opened them, she looked toward Echo first, then Leo, then finally Luna.

"Everybody’s..."

She stopped.

Her eyebrows pulled together.

"Hang on."

Nobody filled the sentence for her.

Marisol breathed out through her nose.

"I had that."

Nora kept her voice level.

"Look at me."

Marisol did.

It took her a moment to settle there.

"Hey."

"Continue or close?"

Marisol swallowed.

Her purple eyes stayed on Nora’s face.

"Continue."

Nora waited.

Marisol gave a small nod.

"I’m here."

Nora looked to June.

June kept the specimen open.

Luna tried to record the exchange.

Her pen moved, stopped, moved again.

Leo looked toward Nora when June spoke, corrected, and turned toward June instead.

June had only given the next time mark.

Leo rubbed a hand over his face.

"Okay. That’s getting bad."

Nora looked at him.

"Still following the room?"

"Yeah."

He glanced at Luna.

"Just slower."

Luna nodded without looking up.

"Same."

Echo shifted again.

Her shoulder slid farther into Weave’s support.

"I... feel... like shit..."

Riley looked at her.

Echo lifted their joined hands a few inches, apparently changed her mind about whatever she had been doing, and put them back down.

"I had a whole thought."

"Okay."

"It’s gone."

"Okay."

Echo stared at Riley for a second.

Then she laughed once, quiet and tired.

"Fuck."

Riley squeezed her hand.

The shapes around the room had grown thick enough that looking from one person to another meant looking through pieces that belonged somewhere else.

A dim gold curve hung behind Marisol’s head while her black vapor moved through it. Clockwork shimmered inside the light around Leo. A prismatic spiral turned beside Luna, disappeared into the smoke around her, and surfaced again near Echo.

Luna stopped writing.

She watched it for several seconds.

Then she looked back down and tried to catch up.

The first word came out.

The second turned into a long crooked line.

She lifted the pen.

"Fuck."

June marked another change.

Marisol’s grip on Nora loosened.

Nora looked down immediately.

"Marisol?"

Marisol raised her head.

"Yeah."

Her eyes found Nora.

Then drifted past.

She tried to sit straighter.

Instead, she tipped sideways out of the chair.

Weave unfolded from Echo’s side and the space above the table in one broad movement.

She caught Marisol before she reached the floor.

The current gathered under Marisol’s back and legs, thickening until Weave had all of her weight. She lowered her carefully beside the chair and stayed gathered behind her, holding her upright as her head fell back.

Nora dropped beside them.

"Marisol."

Marisol’s eyes stayed closed.

Nora looked at June.

"Close."

June shut the inner case.

The prismatic shapes around the room began losing their edges.

June sealed the outer containment.

Gold fragments faded away from Echo. The little clockwork shapes around Leo thinned. The star points scattered through Luna’s smoke dimmed one by one.

Behind Marisol’s shoulders, a faint wash of black vapor slipped loose and drifted around her.

Nora stayed beside her.

Rowan cleared the path around them.

Riley kept Echo steady at the table.

Leo watched Luna.

Luna still had the pen in her hand.

She lowered it to the page.

It touched down and dragged a long line through the notes.

"Fuck."

Luna set the pen down.

Or tried to.

It slipped out of her fingers and rolled across the table.

Leo pushed himself straighter across from her.

"Luna?"

She planted both hands against the table and lifted her head.

For about a second.

Then her arms started folding.

Riley moved.

A band of bismuth gathered more firmly around Echo’s back and shoulders as Riley let go of her hand.

I have Echo.

Riley crossed the space between the tables as Luna sagged forward.

"Hey."

She caught Luna around the shoulders before her head reached the table. Luna tried to push herself back up against Riley’s hold.

"I'm..."

"Yea."

Whatever Luna had been trying to say disappeared.

Riley shifted one hand behind her head and lowered her the rest of the way. She moved Luna’s notebook aside with her other hand, then eased her down until her head rested against her folded arm.

"Luna?"

Luna stayed there.

Riley touched the side of her face.

"Hey."

Her eyes stayed closed.

Leo had started to get out of his chair.

He made it halfway up before grabbing the edge of the table.

Riley looked over at him.

"I got her."

Leo held there for a few seconds, staring across at Luna.

Then he lowered himself back into the chair.

June had already moved away from the specimen station and gone to Echo.

Echo was leaning heavily into Weave now. A broad section of bismuth held along her back while another gathered close around the arm she had braced on the table.

She looked toward Riley and Luna.

It took her a little while to get her head turned that far.

"Riley...?"

Riley is with Luna. I am here.

Echo blinked.

"Oh."

June crouched beside her.

"Echo?"

"Yea."

"Can you keep your head up for me?"

Echo tried.

Her head came up a few inches.

Then slowly started going back down.

"I'm trying."

"I know."

Echo caught herself on her forearms.

For a moment she stayed there, staring down at the table.

"Everything is..."

She stopped.

June waited.

Echo tried again.

"Everything keeps being late."

Her eyes closed for a second.

Then opened.

"Or I'm late."

A little more of Weave gathered around her.

You may put your head down.

Echo gave the smallest nod.

"Okay."

She lowered herself toward the table. Weave moved with her, taking enough of her weight that the last few inches stayed slow.

Echo settled with her cheek against her arms.

"Riley?"

Riley looked over from Luna.

"I'm here."

Echo seemed to find her across the room.

"Okay."

Her eyes closed again.

This time they stayed closed.

June said her name once.

Echo remained settled against her arms, held steady by Weave.

June stayed beside her.

Across the room, Nora was still down beside Marisol. Part of Weave remained gathered behind Marisol where she sat against the side of the chair, keeping her supported while Nora stayed close.

Rowan shifted the chair beside Leo farther out of the way.

Leo watched all of it.

He looked toward Marisol first.

Then Echo.

Then back to Luna.

Riley was still beside her, one hand resting lightly between Luna’s shoulders.

Leo let go of the table with one hand.

His arm dropped into his lap.

He looked at Riley.

She gave him a small nod.

"Yea. I got her."

Leo nodded once.

He looked toward June and Echo.

June stayed beside the table. Weave remained gathered around Echo, holding her where she had settled.

Then Leo looked toward Nora and Marisol.

Nora glanced up at him.

"I've got her."

Leo sat there for another few seconds.

"All right."

He pulled his chair a little closer to the table.

The movement took more effort than it should have. He stopped halfway through, adjusted his grip, and finished it.

Then he folded his arms on the table.

He lowered his head onto them.

Riley watched him settle.

"Leo?"

"Yeah."

His answer came quiet.

A few seconds passed.

His eyes closed.

He stayed awake a little longer anyway, lifting his head once when Echo shifted inside Weave’s support.

June steadied Echo’s arm.

Weave held her in place.

Leo lowered his head again.

This time he stayed there.

His shoulders gradually loosened against the table.

Riley looked from Luna to him.

Leo had gone still.

The door opened.

Rowan came in with four small trash cans stacked in pairs against his chest. Loose bags hung over one wrist, and water bottles knocked softly against the plastic as he crossed the room.

June pointed toward the tables.

"One by each of them."

Rowan set the cans down first. One beside Echo. One near Luna. One by Leo. The last went beside Marisol.

He pulled a bag into the first can and folded the edge over the rim.

Nora shifted closer to Marisol.

"June, give me a hand."

June left Echo long enough to kneel on Marisol’s other side.

Weave held exactly where she was behind Marisol, a dense curve of bismuth supporting her back and shoulders.

Nora sat down behind Marisol and worked one arm around her ribs. June took her weight at the hip and legs.

The bismuth stayed in place.

Tell me when you have her weight.

Nora adjusted her hold until Marisol rested back against her.

"Ready."

June shifted one knee under Marisol’s legs.

"I’ve got her legs."

Weave loosened slowly.

A narrow strip of bismuth slipped out from behind Marisol’s shoulder. Nora took the weight. Another strip pulled free lower down. June moved with it.

The last of Weave’s support drew away from Marisol’s back.

For a second the particles stayed gathered close beside her.

Nora looked toward them.

"I have her. Stay with your people."

Yes.

Weave drew back toward Echo.

Rowan finished lining the trash cans. He took the water bottles out and set them beside the cans, then put the extra bags within reach on the end of the table.

"Anything else?" he asked.

June looked around the room once.

"We’re good."

Rowan gave a small nod and stayed near the door.

The room went quiet again.

June returned to Echo and crouched beside her chair. Nora stayed on the floor with Marisol held against her. Riley stayed beside Luna, one hand resting between her shoulders.

Weave gathered more fully around Echo’s back and the side of her chair.

Rowan checked the bags once, then the clear path between the tables.

A little of the black vapor still clung behind Marisol’s shoulders. It thinned while Nora held her.

June checked her watch.

Then Echo shifted.

Weave tightened around her back.

June leaned closer.

"Echo?"

Echo made a small sound and moved her head against her arms.

"Echo."

Her eyes opened.

She blinked at the table for a few seconds before lifting her head.

Riley turned toward her.

"Hey. There you are."

Echo found her across the room.

"Hi."

"Hi."

June waited until Echo looked her way.

"How’s the timing?"

Echo blinked again.

"Better. I think."

"Okay. Where are you?"

Echo looked around slowly.

"Stillglass. Testing room."

June nodded.

"Good."

Echo pushed herself a little straighter. Weave rose with her, keeping support along her back.

She made it upright.

Then she swallowed.

Her face tightened.

Riley looked at Echo, then at the trash can beside her chair.

"Oh."

Echo brought a hand over her mouth.

Riley moved.

She grabbed the trash can, pulled it clear of the chair leg, and got it in front of Echo as Echo folded forward.

June caught Echo at the shoulder. Weave held the rest of her steady.

Echo vomited into the bag.

Riley kept both hands on the trash can until Echo stopped.

Echo stayed bent over it for another few seconds.

"...ugh."

Riley looked at her.

"Yea. That looked awful."

Echo stayed bent over the trash can for a few more breaths.

June kept a hand at her shoulder. Weave held steady along her back while Riley waited with the can between Echo's knees.

Echo swallowed.

"Okay. I think..."

She stopped and swallowed again.

"Give it a second," June said.

"Yea."

Riley lowered the trash can to the floor where Echo could reach it.

Across the room, Luna made a rough sound against her folded arm.

Nora lifted her head.

"Luna."

Riley turned.

Luna shifted against the table. She pulled one arm in closer, lifted her head a few inches, and stopped there with her forehead almost touching her wrist.

"Hey," Riley said.

Luna blinked at the tabletop.

"Mm."

"Take your time," Nora said from beside Marisol.

Luna stayed folded over the table for another few seconds. Then she pushed herself upright slowly, keeping one hand flat against the wood.

Rowan came over from the door and set one of the water bottles within reach.

Luna looked at it, then at him.

"Thanks."

"Of course."

She picked it up and held it for a moment before opening it.

Riley waited until Luna looked her way.

"You with us?"

Luna took a small drink.

"Probably."

Luna's voice was rough. She cleared her throat and looked around the room.

Echo was upright again with June beside her and Weave gathered around the back of her chair. The lined trash can sat between Echo's feet.

Luna paused on that.

"Oh."

Echo looked over.

"Hi."

"Hi."

Luna looked across the table.

Leo was folded over his arms where he had been sitting during the test.

She watched him for a few seconds, then looked toward Nora. Marisol rested against Nora on the floor beside the chair, her head supported against Nora's shoulder.

Luna rubbed a hand over her face.

"Okay. What do I remember..."

Nora waited.

Luna looked down at the table.

Her notebook sat off to one side.

She pulled it back in front of her and opened to the last page.

The writing had fallen apart across the page, first drifting downward and then growing larger around a word crossed out hard enough to dent the paper underneath. Near the bottom, one long crooked line cut through everything after it.

Luna stared at the line.

"Yeah. I remember doing that."

She reached beside the notebook and touched bare table.

Riley looked across the tabletop, spotted it near the far edge, and picked it up.

"Here."

"Thanks."

Riley handed it over and stayed beside the table.

Luna turned the pen between her fingers once.

"What happened after I dropped this?"

Riley leaned one hand against the back of the empty chair beside Luna.

"You started going down. I caught you and got you onto the table."

Luna looked at the place where her head had been resting.

"Okay."

She wrote a short line beneath the mess at the bottom of the page.

Then she looked toward Weave.

"Weave, can you give me the order after that?"

Weave shifted the bismuth around Echo slightly as she answered.

Echo lost consciousness after you. Leo lost consciousness after Echo.

Luna wrote more slowly than she had during the test.

"Marisol was already down when June closed it."

Nora nodded.

"Right."

Luna added another few words.

June glanced over from Echo.

"You woke after Echo. Your movement is looking a lot better than it was before you went out. Keep it slow for a few minutes."

Luna looked at the water bottle in her hand.

"This counts?"

"It does."

"Great."

She took another drink.

Riley pulled the empty chair out a little and sat beside her.

For a while Luna only read her own page.

She held the pen over one of the lines she had written during the test. She followed the writing downward until it turned into the long mark again, then moved to the new notes underneath.

"Did I say anything?"

Riley paused.

"You tried to."

Luna looked up.

"You got out ‘I'm...’ and then you were done."

Luna stared at Riley for a second.

"Useful."

"Yea."

"What was I trying to say?"

"I have no idea."

"Cool."

Luna wrote something beside the line, then crossed half of it out.

Luna started writing again. After another few seconds, she stopped and looked across at Leo.

His head remained on his arms.

She held there longer this time.

Riley looked across at Leo too.

"He was the last one awake."

Luna glanced at her.

Riley nodded toward the others.

"He looked at you, then Echo, then Marisol. Then he put his head down."

Luna looked back at Leo.

"Yeah. That sounds like him."

She wrote one more line.

Then she turned slightly toward Nora and Marisol.

Marisol remained settled against Nora, with the trash can and water Rowan had brought close by.

Nora adjusted her hold under Marisol's shoulder and looked up at Luna.

Luna nodded once and checked the page again.

Riley sat beside her. Weave stayed with Echo while June kept watch from the other side of the chair. Rowan returned to his place near the door.

Luna added three words beneath her reconstruction, read them once, and set the pen beside the notebook.

Then she wrapped both hands around the water bottle.

Across from her, Leo still slept with his head on his arms.

Leo shifted against his folded arms.

Luna stopped with the bottle halfway to her mouth.

He moved again, slower this time, and lifted his head just enough to get one eye open.

"Hey," Luna said.

Leo blinked at her.

"Hey."

His head dipped for a second before he pushed himself a little straighter. He kept one hand flat on the table while he looked at Luna, then around the room.

Riley sat beside her. Echo was upright with June close by and Weave gathered along the back of her chair. Nora had Marisol supported against her shoulder on the floor. Rowan waited near the doorway.

Leo looked at each of them, then back at Luna.

Luna took another drink.

"You look terrible."

"So do you."

"Good."

Leo’s mouth twitched.

June looked over from Echo.

"Leo, give yourself a minute before you try standing."

He nodded once.

Luna watched him stay where he was, one hand braced against the table. The bond was easier to find than it had been when she first opened her eyes. Rough. Tired. Him.

Okay.

She looked down at her bottle and took another drink.

Across from her, Leo swallowed.

Then again.

His face changed.

Luna knew that look.

"Can," she said, pointing beside his chair.

Leo looked down.

One of the lined trash cans sat within reach. He pulled it between his knees, leaned over it, and threw up.

Riley made a small sympathetic sound beside Luna.

June waited while Leo stayed bent over the can for another few breaths.

Eventually he sat back enough to wipe his mouth with the back of his wrist.

"Gross."

Luna snorted and immediately pressed her lips together when her own stomach objected.

"Yeah. Don’t make me laugh right now."

Leo breathed out through his nose and set the trash can beside his chair again.

Riley looked at it, then at the one between Echo’s feet, then across toward Nora and Marisol.

"Okay, these were a good idea."

"Usually are," June said.

Leo reached for the water Rowan had left near him and opened it.

He took a careful drink, rested the bottle against the table for a moment, then drank again.

Luna picked up her own bottle.

Leo stayed sitting across from her.

Across the room, Marisol shifted.

Nora looked down at her.

"Marisol."

Marisol moved her head against Nora’s shoulder. Her eyes opened slowly.

She blinked at Nora.

"Hey."

"Hey," Nora said. "Easy."

Marisol stayed there for a few seconds.

Then she looked around the room.

Echo was sitting up with June beside her and Weave gathered around the back of her chair. Riley sat nearby. Luna had her notebook open again. Leo was awake across the table.

Marisol swallowed.

"Everybody?"

"Everybody’s awake," Nora said. "You were last."

"Okay."

Marisol let her head settle back for another second.

Then she started to push herself straighter.

Nora moved with her.

"Easy."

"I am."

Marisol got a little farther upright.

Nora looked behind her.

"Your smoke."

Marisol stopped.

She turned her head as far as she could, then reached back over one shoulder.

Her fingers met the black vapor wing behind her.

She pressed against it once.

"Oh."

The edge drifted around her hand while the rest stayed solid beneath her fingers.

Marisol stared at it for another second.

Then her face tightened.

June saw it too.

She grabbed the trash can beside Marisol and pulled it closer.

"Here."

Marisol got both hands around it and bent forward.

Nora kept an arm around her while she threw up.

Marisol stayed over the can when it stopped.

She breathed through her mouth for a few seconds.

Then she swallowed.

"Give me a second."

"Take it," Nora said.

Marisol wiped her mouth with the cloth June handed her.

Weave moved toward the water bottle beside her.

Bismuth gathered around it, lifted it, and carried it over.

Marisol took the bottle.

"Thank you."

Of course.

She opened it and rinsed her mouth first.

Then she took a small drink.

Riley watched her for a moment.

"Need anything?"

Marisol shook her head once.

"Give me a minute."

"Yea."

Luna picked her pen back up.

She added another line beneath the notes she had already made, glanced toward Marisol’s lingering smoke, then wrote a little more.

Marisol flexed her fingers around the water bottle.

She rolled one shoulder carefully.

Then the other.

Nora stayed close while she did it.

"Better?" Nora asked.

"Getting there."

June looked around the room.

"Sit tight a little longer."

Marisol gave her a tired look.

"I wasn’t going anywhere."

June smiled.

"Good."

Luna’s pen moved across the page again.

Marisol took another small drink.

This one stayed down.

Echo reached for her water again.

June watched her get the cap loose and take a small sip.

"How’s that sitting?"

Echo held the bottle in both hands for a second.

"Okay. I think."

Riley sat beside Luna. Weave remained gathered along Echo’s back, the bismuth holding a broad, steady curve behind her.

Across the table, Luna had her notebook open again. She wrote a few words, paused to read them, then added another line beneath them.

Leo rested one forearm on the table with his water in the other hand. Marisol stayed against Nora’s shoulder on the floor, taking her time with the bottle Weave had brought her.

Rowan waited near the door.

Echo lowered her water.

She swallowed.

Then her whole face pinched.

Riley pushed her chair back and stood.

"Can."

Echo reached down for the trash can between her feet.

Echo caught the rim and pushed it sideways instead.

"Oh, shit."

Riley crossed the gap, grabbed it, and pulled it back toward Echo.

Echo gagged before Riley could get it all the way up.

The first heave caught the front of Echo’s dress.

The second went into the bag.

June caught Echo at the shoulder as she folded forward. Weave tightened behind her and took the rest of her weight.

Riley held the trash can between Echo’s knees.

Echo threw up again, then stayed bent over the can with one hand gripping the rim.

When her breathing eased, Echo lifted her head a little.

She looked down.

Her expression crumpled.

"Oh, come on."

Riley looked down too.

Echo pinched the wet fabric away from herself with two fingers.

"I got it on my nice dress."

Riley set the trash can back between Echo’s feet.

"Yea. Hang on."

Rowan was already moving. He brought over two clean cloths and another bottle of water.

"Here."

Riley took them.

"Thanks."

Riley wet one corner of a cloth.

Echo kept the fabric pulled away from her legs while Riley crouched beside the chair.

"Hold it there."

"I am."

"Yea."

Riley started blotting at the mess on the dress.

Echo watched her work for a few seconds.

"I wore the nice one."

"I know."

"I like this dress."

"Yea."

Echo made a miserable little sound and leaned her head back against Weave.

Weave shifted with her and kept the support under Echo’s weight.

June handed Echo the second cloth.

"Mouth first."

Echo wiped her mouth.

"Right."

Luna stopped writing.

She looked over at Echo, then at Riley on the floor beside her chair.

"You good?"

Echo looked at the dress again.

"Define good."

Luna gave a tired little huff through her nose.

"Fair."

She wrote something down.

Leo glanced toward the notebook.

"Second time?"

Luna nodded.

"For Echo."

Leo looked at his own trash can.

"Great."

Marisol made a quiet sound that might have been a laugh. She immediately pressed her lips together and breathed through her nose.

Nora looked down at her.

"Careful."

"That was careful."

Nora gave her a look.

Marisol took another small drink instead.

Riley switched to a cleaner section of cloth and kept working on Echo’s dress.

The worst of it came off onto the cloth.

Echo watched it.

"Is it coming out?"

"Some of it."

"Some?"

Riley glanced up at her.

"Yea... give me a second."

Riley went back to blotting.

"We’ll get what we can."

Echo watched her work.

"Okay."

June stayed beside her until Echo had been upright for another minute. Then she looked across the room.

"You four stay where you are for now. Move what you want to move. Slowly. If your stomach turns, use the cans."

Leo lifted his bottle a little.

"Already learned that one."

"Good lesson," June said.

Luna looked down at her notebook.

She wrote again, slower than usual, pausing every few words to check the line above it.

Riley finished with the first cloth and held it out toward Rowan. He traded her for a clean one.

"Thanks."

Echo kept holding the dress away from herself.

"This is gross."

"Yea, it is," Riley said.

"Helpful."

"Yea."

Echo’s mouth twitched.

Riley wet the clean cloth and worked at what was left while Echo held the fabric out.

Weave shifted a narrow band of bismuth under Echo’s elbow when her arm started to sag.

Take your time.

Echo rested more of her weight there.

"Thanks."

Luna looked up from the notebook.

She looked around the room. Echo was upright again against Weave. Leo held his water with his free hand resting loose on the table. Marisol sat a little straighter against Nora.

Luna wrote another short line.

June checked Echo first, then Leo, then Luna, then Marisol.

"How’s the room feel?"

Echo looked toward her.

"Still kind of floaty. Less."

Leo nodded once.

"Better."

Luna rolled the pen between her fingers.

"I can use my hands again. Mostly."

Marisol raised her bottle a fraction.

"Getting there."

June nodded.

"Good. Keep doing exactly this."

Riley sat back on her heels and looked at the front of Echo’s dress.

"That’s about as far as water is getting us."

Echo looked down at it.

She sighed.

"It looks better."

"Yea."

"Still gross."

"Yea."

Echo let the fabric fall back against her legs.

Riley stood and set the used cloth with the other dirty supplies.

When she came back, Echo reached out.

Riley took her hand and sat in the empty chair beside her.

For a while the room stayed quiet.

Luna kept writing in small pieces. Leo drank a little more water. Marisol sat straighter when Nora shifted beside her. Weave loosened from a full brace behind Echo into a lighter band along the chair as Echo held herself up.

Rowan replaced the bag in Echo’s trash can and slid it back within reach.

Echo looked at it.

"I hate that thing."

Riley glanced down at the can.

"Yea. Keep it close."

Echo sighed.

"Yea."

Riley squeezed her hand once.

June checked her watch again.

Luna wrote in short bursts. Leo and Marisol kept sipping their water. Echo kept Riley’s hand in hers while Weave eased to a lighter support along the chair.

Rowan stayed by the supplies. Nora and June kept watch over the room.

June checked her watch again, then looked at Nora.

Nora looked around the table.

"All right. I want to ask a few follow-up questions about the last test."

Riley looked up.

Nora looked at her.

"Riley, can you wait in the Resting Room for this part?"

Riley paused.

She looked at Echo.

"Uh... yea. Okay."

She squeezed Echo’s hand once.

Echo squeezed back and let go.

Rowan opened the door.

"I’ll walk you back."

Riley stood.

Nora looked toward Weave.

"You can go with her."

Most of Weave pulled away from Echo’s chair and gathered toward Riley.

A much smaller stream dropped behind Echo’s chair and disappeared below the table.

Echo shifted in her seat.

Luna stopped writing.

She looked at Echo.

Leo looked at Luna, then over at Echo.

Riley headed for the door.

Most of Weave moved with her.

Riley looked back at Echo once, then followed Rowan into the hall.

Rowan started toward the Resting Room with Riley and most of Weave beside them.

June closed the door.

For another second, Echo stayed exactly where she was.

June looked at her.

"Weave, did some of you stay?"

Echo moved her hands beneath the table.

A few bismuth particles floated up beside her chair.

More followed, climbing into view until the small hidden portion gathered beside Echo in a loose swarm.

A small part of this one did.

Echo settled back in her chair.

June looked at the little swarm.

"Okay."

Nora nodded.

Nora nodded.

June looked around the table.

"Everybody still okay to keep talking?"

Echo nodded. "Yeah."

"Yes," Leo said.

Marisol nodded too.

Luna kept writing.

"Yeah. Just... give me one second."

Nora nodded. "Take your time."

June looked around the table once more.

"Let’s all stay put for a minute."

Luna finished the line, read it back, and added a few words underneath.

When she looked up, Nora waited another second.

"Did anybody notice something during the exposure that you didn’t report at the time?"

Leo looked at Luna.

Luna was already looking at him.

They looked back at Nora.

"I did." | "Yeah."

Nora’s attention moved between them.

"The bond, I could feel more of Luna's feelings than usual," Leo said.

"Same from him." Luna rolled the pen between her fingers. "I noticed. I just... didn’t care about saying it out loud by then. I was really fucking drunk."

Leo nodded once. "It didn’t seem important next to everything else."

Marisol’s eyes shifted color.

She reached for the trash can.

June moved beside her as she bent over it and threw up.

Marisol wiped her mouth when it passed.

"Y’all keep going. I’m listening."

June stayed beside her and moved the water within reach.

Nora looked to Echo.

Echo sat for a moment, thinking it over.

"I think so. I mean... I think I told you everything I knew was happening."

Marisol took the water.

"Anything I caught, y’all already have."

Nora turned to a clean page.

"There’s one other result I want to ask about. Riley’s Vexia comparison."

Leo looked at her.

"Vexia."

"Yes."

Luna kept her pen over the notebook.

Nora looked between her and Leo.

"Riley’s intake pointed toward a clear result. She saw something else."

Echo looked toward Luna.

Nora continued.

"When I asked Riley what she saw, she asked Luna first."

Luna nodded.

"Yeah. She wanted to know what I saw before she answered you."

"And then she kept her own description private."

"Yeah."

Nora glanced down at the page.

"I think Riley withheld part of what she saw."

Nobody answered for her.

After a few seconds, Luna tapped the end of her pen against the notebook.

"That’s why I brought up the bar earlier."

Nora looked at her.

"The image Riley described?"

"Yeah. She had that happening while everything else was going wrong."

Echo shifted in her chair.

"She was helping me by then."

June looked over.

Echo took a second to put the rest together.

"My movement was getting really bad. I kept trying to do things and they were happening late, and Riley was the one getting me out."

June checked the timing sheet in front of her.

Nora looked toward her.

June ran a finger down the page, stopped, and looked back at Echo.

"That helps."

Echo nodded.

Luna wrote a short line in the notebook.

Nora waited until she finished.

Luna looked up from the notebook.

"Okay, so... what does that actually tell you?"

Nora glanced down at the page in front of her.

"That Riley gave us a result I wasn't expecting from her intake."

Luna waited.

"Vexia gives me something to compare it against. It doesn't tell me why Riley got that result."

"Okay." Luna wrote for a few seconds, then looked back up. "So... it could just be Riley. Or something around Riley. You don't know."

"I don't."

The bismuth beside Echo shifted.

If something external contributed to the result, could it also be used to locate Riley?

Nora looked toward Weave.

"I can't get that from the crystal."

June lowered the timing sheet onto the table.

"I want us to plan for that possibility before Riley leaves."

Leo looked at her.

"Somebody trying to keep track of where she is?"

"Yes. Potentially."

Echo looked toward the closed door.

"Oh... no. I don't like that."

Luna stared at the notebook for a second.

"Um. There’s another thing."

June waited.

"Riley lies when she’s scared."

Luna glanced at Echo and Leo.

"Like... she just does."

"Yeah," Echo said. "She does."

Luna looked back at June.

"She’ll give you an answer. It might be a shitty answer, but she’ll give you one."

Echo leaned forward a little.

"Usually she says she’s fine. Or it’s nothing. Or, um... she’ll tell you one little part, and then if you keep asking she gets annoyed because she did answer you. Technically."

"Yea."

Leo nodded.

"If she wants us to leave something alone, she usually still answers."

"Even if it’s bullshit," Echo said.

Luna gave a small nod. "Especially if it’s bullshit."

Nora looked between them.

"And this time?"

Luna shook her head.

"No."

Echo rubbed one thumb over the other.

"No. She just... no."

She looked down at her hands.

"I mean, we know when she’s doing it most of the time. She still does it, but we know."

Leo said, "She usually gives us something and then wants us to drop it."

"Yeah." Echo nodded. "That."

June looked between the three of them.

"Okay. That worries me more."

Nora looked at Luna.

"Do you know what part scared her?"

Luna moved the pen between her fingers.

"Um... no. Could be what she saw. Could be telling us what she saw."

She looked down.

"Could be both."

Echo frowned at the table.

"I really don’t like both."

A few seconds passed before she looked at June again.

"When you say somebody could be keeping track of her... how bad are you taking that?"

"Bad enough that I want Riley leaving with people she trusts today."

Echo stopped rubbing her thumb.

"Okay."

Leo said, "We were already going together."

"Good," June said.

Echo swallowed.

"Um... like hunted?"

"That’s possible."

Luna stopped writing.

Echo stared at June.

"So if... if somebody is actually hunting her, they don’t just want to find her."

She stopped for a second.

"They want... something after that."

"Probably," June said.

"Do you know what?"

"No."

"Fuck," Luna said quietly.

The bismuth beside Echo shifted toward the middle of the table.

What observations would distinguish deliberate pursuit from coincidence?

Nora turned a clean page.

"Repetition. The same unfamiliar person or car turning up somewhere else. Somebody knowing where Riley went after the plan changed."

June looked around the table.

"And if something feels dangerous right then, don’t wait to see whether it repeats. Get somewhere safer and call."

Echo nodded once.

"Okay."

Marisol leaned forward a little.

"And y’all watch around Riley. Don’t spend the whole afternoon watching Riley."

Luna looked at her.

Marisol gestured lightly toward the door.

"She walks back in and everybody in this room starts studying her, she’ll know exactly what happened before anybody opens their mouth."

"She’s probably going to know anyway," Luna said.

"Probably. No need to make it weird."

Echo gave a tiny nod.

"Please no weird Riley meeting."

Luna looked at her.

"This is the weird Riley meeting."

"I know. I hate it."

Luna let out a small breath that was almost a laugh.

June waited.

Luna looked back at her.

"Um... there’s one more thing."

"Okay."

"If you tell Riley somebody might be tracking her and then, like, in the same conversation ask about Vexia again..."

Luna looked down at the notebook, then back up.

"She’s gonna hear those as the same thing. Like... if she doesn’t tell you, maybe you don’t take the other part seriously."

June nodded once.

"I’ll keep them separate."

"Okay. Good."

June looked toward the door.

"Let’s tell her."

June set the timing sheet down.

Luna looked over the last few lines in her notebook, added one word in the margin, then closed it.

"All right."

Nora gathered her pages into a stack. Rowan moved toward the door.

Echo stood, and the small current of bismuth gathered near her slipped back under her dress.

Leo got up beside Luna.

Marisol stayed where she was.

Luna glanced at her as Marisol reached down beside the chair and pulled up a folded lunch bag.

"You’re staying?"

"For a minute."

Marisol opened the bag and looked inside.

"I’ve been waiting for this all day."

Echo laughed softly.

"Good luck."

"I intend to have some."

Rowan opened the door.

Luna tucked the notebook under her arm and followed June and Nora out with Leo and Echo.

Riley was in the Resting Room with most of Weave.

Her phone was in her hands, the voice model open again.

"It still sounds pissed."

Agreed.

"I told it, like... fucking neutral."

You did.

Riley stared at the screen.

"Cool."

She changed something, ran it again, listened to the last few words, and frowned.

Footsteps passed outside the room.

Riley looked up.

This set stopped.

The door opened.

Rowan came in first.

June and Nora were behind him.

Then Luna.

Leo.

Echo.

Riley was standing before everyone had finished coming through the doorway.

She shoved her phone toward her bag with shaking hands and backed toward the wall.

June saw it.

"Riley, you can leave."

Riley went white.

"Sorry. Sorry, I’m- sorry."

She was already moving, trying to get her phone put away, looking past everyone toward the door.

"Riley-"

"Sorry. I’ll get everybody out. Sorry."

Luna caught Riley by the forearm.

Riley stopped dead.

"Sorry- sorry, I’m sorry-"

Luna let go immediately.

"Fuck. Sorry."

She backed away and left space between them.

The smaller current of Weave slipped out from beneath Echo’s dress and folded back into the rest of her swarm.

June stepped away from the doorway.

"I said that badly."

Riley looked at her.

"I meant you can go when you’re ready. You’re welcome to stay."

Riley stayed where she was for another second.

Then she looked at Luna.

"You’re still coming with me?"

"Yeah."

Leo nodded. "Same plan."

Echo nodded too. "Yeah."

Riley let out a breath.

"Okay."

June waited until Riley looked at her again.

"One thing first. I’m not asking you about Vexia."

Riley went very still.

"There’s one other thing. We think there’s a chance somebody may be keeping track of where you are."

Riley stared at her.

"Okay..."

A second passed.

"So you think somebody might be looking for me."

"We think it’s possible."

"And that’s... that’s all you have?"

"Right now, yes."

Riley looked toward Nora.

"And the test didn’t tell you how."

"No," Nora said.

Riley looked down at her phone for a second.

"Okay. Um..."

She looked back at June.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Pay attention if something starts repeating," June said.

Riley frowned slightly.

"Like what?"

Nora answered. "Somebody you don’t know turning up again after you’ve gone somewhere else."

"Okay."

June said, "If something feels dangerous before you know what it is, get somewhere safer and call us."

Riley nodded once.

The bismuth near her shifted a little closer.

I can keep the times and details with you, if you want.

Riley looked toward Weave.

"Yea. Please."

Then she looked back at June.

"And you’re seriously leaving Vexia alone?"

"Yes."

Riley waited.

"Okay."

Riley sat down.

Rowan stepped back into the hall.

Echo went back to the couch. Leo found a chair. Luna stayed where she had backed away to.

A little while later, Riley looked over at Luna.

Luna waited a second before coming closer.

She stopped with space between them and opened her arms.

"Can I?"

Riley crossed the space and wrapped both arms around Luna hard enough to rock her back half a step.

Luna caught herself and held Riley.

Riley held on. After a few seconds she loosened, then pulled Luna close again.

Eventually Riley let go.

Rowan came back with five brass-backed cards and passed them around.

June gave them a moment to look them over.

"These are the findings and handling notes we want each of you to leave with. If something on yours raises a question, ask."

STILLGLASS — VISITOR RESULT

RILEY EDWARDS

LACUNA CRYSTALLI
Positive response.

Observed:
• Immediate sequence-certainty disruption.
• Difficulty trusting whether an intended action had already occurred.
• Function returned after exposure ended.

Handling:
• Slow to one action at a time.
• Confirm each completed action before continuing.


VEXIA CRYSTALLI
Unresolved anomaly.

Observed:
• Viewer-specific presentation where a clear presentation was expected.
• Description withheld by visitor.

Recommendation:
• Preserve the original observation.
• Follow up if the same presentation or related pattern occurs again.
• Further investigation recommended.

Riley read down to the Vexia section.

She looked at it for a few seconds, then put the card in her bag.

STILLGLASS — VISITOR RESULT

ECHO POINDEXTER

VEXIA CRYSTALLI
Viewer-specific presentation confirmed.

Observed presentation:
• Multiple clock faces at different depths inside the specimen.
• Some visible clock hands appeared to tick at different rates.


DISJUNCTA CRYSTALLI
Strong positive response.

Observed:
• Established aging-related support magic stopped functioning during exposure.
• Body timing slowed rapidly.
• Awareness and intent remained ahead of physical response.
• Speech and voluntary movement became delayed.
• Normal function returned after exposure ended.

Handling:
• End exposure at the first functional timing disruption.
• Do not wait for loss of speech or movement.


NOCTILUX CRYSTALLI
Confirmed responder.

Observed:
• Intoxication-like impairment.
• Delayed movement and coordination.
• Timing disruption consistent with the earlier exposure at the bar.

Handling:
• Separate from the source.
• Increase distance from other reacting subjects when practical.
• Allow coordination and timing to recover before movement requiring precision.

Echo read the Disjuncta section again.

Then again.

"My aging magic stopped?"

Nora nodded.

"Yes."

Echo looked up from the card.

"So... my body slowed down that fast?"

"Yes. Your mind didn't adjust to the change as quickly as your body did."

Echo looked back down.

"Oh."

She read the handling note one more time.

"Okay... yeah. That's actually useful."

STILLGLASS — VISITOR RESULT

WEAVE

INTUITIO CRYSTALLI
Significant response.

Observed:
• Multiple existing perceptual layers opened simultaneously during exposure.
• Existing communication remained functional during controlled testing.


SCINTILLA CRYSTALLI
Strong positive response.

Observed:
• Timing desynchronization.
• Communication failure.
• Loss of particle cohesion and external control.
• Reported Kernel panic.
• Several minutes of memory missing or corrupted following reboot.

Handling:
• End exposure at the first timing, communication, or control instability.
• Establish distance from the specimen before attempting system recovery.
• Reboot protocol may be required after severe exposure.

The card turned slowly within Weave’s particles.

Then she moved toward Riley.

Could you put this in your bag?

Riley held out a hand. "Yea."

Weave lowered the card into it.

Riley put it in her bag with hers.

Thank you.

STILLGLASS — VISITOR RESULT

LEO MIDORI

CELESTIA CRYSTALLI
Positive response.

Early signs observed:
• Pressure behind the eyes.
• Increasing light sensitivity.
• Involuntary visible family-line expression.

Handling:
• Eye pressure is an early usable warning.
• End or reduce exposure before sensory escalation becomes severe.


NOCTILUX CRYSTALLI
Confirmed responder.

Observed:
• Intoxication-like impairment.
• Timing and coordination degradation.
• Involuntary magical tells.
• Crosslinked visual expression with other reacting subjects.

Handling:
• Separate reacting subjects when practical.
• Increase distance and allow timing and coordination to recover before precision activity.

Leo read his once, went back to the Celestia section, then kept it.

STILLGLASS — VISITOR RESULT

LUNA MIDORI

CELESTIA CRYSTALLI
Strong positive response.

Progression observed:
• Pressure behind the eyes.
• Increasing sensory intensity.
• Involuntary visible family-line expression.
• Spoken language shifted to Celestial during sustained direct exposure.
• Written notes became increasingly disorganized.
• Protective behavior toward the specimen developed later in exposure.

Handling:
• Eye pressure is an early warning.
• Language change and degradation of written organization indicate deeper exposure.
• End exposure before protective handling behavior develops.


NOCTILUX CRYSTALLI
Confirmed responder.

Observed:
• Intoxication-like impairment.
• Timing and coordination degradation.
• Involuntary magical tells.
• Crosslinked visual expression with other reacting subjects.

Handling:
• Separate reacting subjects when practical.
• Increase distance and allow coordination and judgment to recover before further magic use.

Luna compared the Celestia progression against her notebook.

She added one short note beside the section she had already marked, then slipped the card between the pages and closed it.

Rowan brought the lockbox over and set it on the low table.

"Ready for this back?"

"Yea." Riley got up. "Very."

He opened the lockbox and moved aside for her.

Riley took the Ironwake Compact out and returned it to its normal place at her left hip. That was one more piece of the day put back where it belonged.

"Thank you."

"Of course."

Luna stayed near the table with her closed notebook in one hand. There were already things she wanted to add to it. There were also three Stillglass employees still standing here after spending hours dealing with all of them, and immediately reopening the notebook felt a little rude.

So, somehow, she managed not to.

For the moment.

"Can I ask you something that has absolutely nothing to do with crystals?" Luna asked Rowan.

Rowan laughed. "Please."

"The Quiet Host thing. Is that your normal job here?"

"Part of it. Most of what I do is operations and scheduling."

"Oh."

"Which means a lot of staring at calendars, moving appointments around, fixing somebody else's scheduling problem, finding rooms-"

Luna nodded harder with every item. "Okay, yeah. You're the person keeping the machine from eating itself."

"Pretty much."

"That sounds awful."

"I actually like it."

"Okay, that part I don't understand."

That got a laugh out of Echo.

Rowan smiled. "I like the organizing. I just also like taking Quiet Host shifts because I get to leave the organizing behind for a while and actually talk to people."

Echo tilted her head slightly. "So this is the break."

"Sometimes."

Echo considered that, then nodded. "That makes sense."

For her, it did. Sitting with strangers for hours while they went through increasingly strange tests sounded like an odd choice of break, but Rowan seemed to mean it.

June looked between the five of them. They were finally starting to sound less like people waiting for the next thing to happen and more like friends who had been stuck somewhere too long.

"Before any of you get ambitious," she said, "food."

"Oh, yes," Echo said.

Leo nodded. "Already planned."

"Very planned," Luna added.

Riley rubbed the side of her head. "Possibly the most important plan we've made today."

Nora looked toward Weave.

"I hope the next time I see you, I don't need your recovery instructions."

Weave gathered a little tighter beside Riley.

Agreed.

Nora smiled.

Echo looked between Nora, June, and Rowan. The goodbye felt strange after how much had happened with them. They had been strangers this morning. They were still strangers, technically. It just didn't feel quite that simple anymore.

"Thank you," she said. "For today. All of it."

June gave her a small smile. "You're welcome."

"Yeah," Leo said. "Thank you."

Luna lifted her notebook slightly. "Also thank you. I have an unreasonable amount of stuff to think about now."

"You're welcome for the unreasonable amount of stuff," Nora said.

Luna grinned. "See, that's exactly what I wanted."

Riley looked at June.

There were about six versions of thank you trying to happen in her head, and most of them were too much.

"Yea... um. Thanks. Really."

June didn't make her turn it into anything bigger.

"You're welcome, Riley."

That helped.

Rowan looked at her. "What do you do when you're not having extremely long days at Stillglass?"

Riley blinked.

Normal question.

Nice.

"Freelance programming, mostly. ML stuff. Tools. Voice models sometimes. Research. Kinda whatever somebody pays me to make work."

"Voice models?"

"Yea. Speech stuff. Sometimes getting them to sound right, sometimes making the underlying thing actually work right."

Weave drifted closer to her.

Riley is very good at it.

Riley turned toward the bismuth. "Traitor."

My statement was accurate.

"It can be accurate and betrayal."

Leo laughed.

Rowan did too. "I'll take the recommendation."

"She is extremely biased."

Also accurate.

Even Nora laughed at that.

For a few seconds, Riley got to talk about something where she knew what every word meant.

Then June gave all of them one last look.

"Go eat."

"Yes, ma'am," Riley said.

They started toward the door together.

Nora lifted a hand. "Take care."

"You too," Echo said.

Leo gave them a small wave. Luna did the same with the hand that wasn't holding her notebook.

Weave shifted around them as they headed out of the Resting Room.

Goodbye, June. Nora. Rowan.

"Goodbye, Weave," June said.

Rowan smiled. "See you all around."

They made it back through the public store together.

Tessa was behind the counter. She looked up when she saw the group coming and immediately gave them a once-over.

"Wow. You all look tired."

"Accurate," Echo said.

Tessa laughed. "Heading out?"

"Finally," Riley said.

Luna had almost made it past the nearby displays when one of them caught her attention again. She slowed, looked over it, then looked at Tessa.

"Wait. Did you put these together?"

"Some of them."

Luna turned back toward the display.

The question had nothing to do with bloodlines, crystals, magic, or anyone nearly falling apart. Her brain latched onto that with enthusiasm.

"You do all the layouts?"

"Not all of them. I help with a bunch of the visual stuff, though." Tessa leaned slightly against the counter. "I'd like to get into design eventually. Maybe visual merchandising."

"Oh, you should."

Tessa smiled. "Thanks."

"No, seriously. This looks really good."

Echo stopped beside Luna and looked over the display too.

"I like the spacing," she said.

Tessa looked pleasantly surprised. "Thank you."

Leo waited near the door with Riley and Weave.

He didn't mind the extra minute. Luna was talking about a store display. Echo was inspecting it with her. Nobody needed him to watch for a reaction or remember what somebody had said three minutes ago.

A store display was good.

Riley, meanwhile, was rapidly discovering that standing still had been hiding how exhausted she actually was.

Everything felt heavy now.

Her legs. Her head. The bag on her shoulder. The idea of driving.

Luna and Echo came back over.

"Okay," Luna said. "Now food."

"Food," Echo agreed.

They thanked Tessa on the way out.

"Good luck with the design stuff," Luna added.

"Thanks. Good luck with..." Tessa gestured vaguely at the entire group. "Whatever the rest of your day is."

Riley gave a weak laugh. "Food."

"Honestly, solid plan."

Outside, they started toward the car.

Riley got maybe halfway there before accepting that driving sounded fucking awful.

She turned toward Weave.

"Urm... Weave... I feel like shit, is it a big ask to-"

Not an issue, Riley.

"Thanks."

Echo heard the relief in Riley's voice and didn't comment on it. There wasn't anything useful to add. Weave had it handled.

By the time they reached the car, everybody moved toward the same places they had used on the way in.

Riley got into the driver's seat.

Leo settled into the front passenger seat. He was tired enough that sitting down felt significantly better than it had any right to.

Luna climbed in behind Riley, still carrying her notebook.

Echo took the seat behind Leo.

Riley put her pistol back onto its magnet and settled into the seat while Weave moved through the cabin and took over the drive.

Luna rested the notebook on her lap.

There were so many things in it already.

She could wait.

Probably.

Echo leaned back against her seat. Her body felt wrung out. Her brain did too. Food sounded uncomplicated.

A moment later, Weave's voice reached all four of them.

Do the friend humans still want Taco Bell?

"Yes," Echo said immediately.

Riley let her head rest back. "Please."

"God, yes," Luna said.

Leo nodded. "Absolutely."

Weave pulled the car away from Stillglass and headed for Taco Bell.