They turned to look. The room's far wall had begun to ripple, like heat waves rising from summer pavement. The mechanical spider skittered suddenly to life, its legs clicking rapidly against the floor as it rushed toward the distortion.
"Should we..." Surya took a step back, but Angela was already moving forward. She reached down and picked up the spider just before it reached the wall. In her palm, it went still again.
"Not yet," she said to the spider, or perhaps to the wall itself. Then she turned and walked away, taking the mechanical creature with her.
Alexander and Surya exchanged glances. "Did you ever notice," Surya asked carefully, "how weird she's been acting lately"
"Started not too long ago, sometime earlier, she seemed like she woke up from a nightmare"
"I've noticed she's the only one who sleeps," Alexander replied. "Maybe that's not really sleep at all."
Before either could pursue that thought, Riley appeared in the doorway. Her expression suggested she had news, but something in the room's atmosphere made her pause. "Everything alright in here?"
"Just admiring Surya's handiwork," Alexander gestured to the remaining mechanical spiders. "Care to help us plan something special for Dana and Kayode? Might give them something to agree on, for once."
Riley's smile suggested she knew this was deflection but chose to play along. "Actually," she said, "I think we might have bigger concerns soon." She glanced over her shoulder, then lowered her voice. "The ceiling in my room has started counting down."
"Counting down to what?" Surya asked, but they all knew there would be no answer. Not yet, anyway.
The countdown appeared in softly glowing numbers, hovering near the ceiling of Riley's room. The others gathered beneath it, their earlier conflicts forgotten in the face of this new development. Even Angela had emerged from her room, more alert than usual.
"Five hours," Shen noted, his journal open in his hands. "And it's not just numbers—look at the patterns around them."
Strange symbols flickered around the countdown, forming and dissolving like smoke. They resembled no writing system any of them recognized, yet somehow they felt significant, as if they should understand their meaning.
"It started in my room first," Riley explained, "then spread to the others. Every ceiling, same countdown." She glanced at Angela. "Except yours."
Angela nodded slightly but offered no explanation. She hadn't taken her eyes off the floating numbers since entering the room. The mechanical spider still rested in her palm, occasionally twitching its legs as if responding to some unseen signal.
"We should prepare," Kayode said, stepping forward. "Pack whatever we can—"
"Pack what?" Dana interrupted. "We have nothing. Everything here appears and disappears at random. Even the clothes we're wearing might not be real."
"She's right," Alexander added. "But we should still do something. Five hours is a long time to just wait."
Surya, who had been unusually quiet, suddenly spoke up. "Maybe that's the point. Giving us time to..." he trailed off, searching for the right words.
"To say goodbye," Riley finished softly. "To this place, to who we were before."
The group fell silent, letting that sink in. Despite their confinement, despite the strangeness of their situation, this space had become a kind of limbo where they could avoid facing what came next. Now that comfort was being stripped away.
"We should talk," Alexander suggested, his voice gentle but firm. "Really talk. About what happened to each of us, about what we remember. We've been avoiding it, but maybe that's why we're still here."
Shen's pen hesitated over his journal. "Are we ready for that?"
"Does it matter?" Dana asked, but her usual sharp tone had softened. "Whatever's coming, it's coming whether we're ready or not."
The countdown continued its silent progression above them. One by one, they settled into a rough circle on the floor. Riley noticed how they naturally paired off—Dana next to Kayode, Surya close to Angela, Alexander within arm's reach of herself. Only Shen remained slightly apart, his pen poised to record whatever came next.
"I'll start," Alexander offered, looking around the circle. "I was performing at a bar when..." a loud noise rang out, interrupting him. There was a new urgency now.
None of them noticed when the first hologram appeared in the corner of the room, observing their circle with mechanical patience. The Axis system had begun its evaluation, though they wouldn't understand that until much later, until after everything had changed.
The countdown continued its silent descent above them. They had gathered in a rough circle on the floor of Riley's room, the earlier conflicts forgotten in the face of whatever transformation awaited them. The mechanical spider in Angela's palm twitched occasionally, responding to unseen signals.
"We should prepare somehow," Kayode said, though none of them could say exactly what preparation might mean in this situation.
"Maybe we already have been," Riley suggested quietly. "These past five days - maybe that was the preparation."
Alexander nodded. "Learning to trust each other, even if we don't fully understand why we're here together."
The walls rippled more frequently now, the space itself seeming to pulse with growing urgency. In the corners of the room, holograms flickered into existence, their presence still unnoticed by the group. The Axis system had begun its final evaluation.
Shen's pen moved across his journal, recording these last moments in their strange limbo. He paused occasionally, as if wanting to say something, but always returned to his silent documentation. Some truths would have to wait.
"Look," Dana said suddenly, pointing to the countdown. The numbers had begun to pulse with a subtle blue light, and the strange symbols around them moved more quickly now, forming and dissolving like smoke signals they almost understood.
Angela stood, still holding the mechanical spider. "It's time," she said simply, and for once, no one questioned her certainty.
The countdown approached zero, and the room filled with a light that seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. The walls dissolved, the floor became transparent, and they found themselves suspended in a void that crackled with potential.
The transformation was beginning.
The light intensified until it seemed to pass through them, rendering their bodies translucent. They could see the gentle pulse of their own heartbeats, though they hadn't needed hearts in this place between deaths. The mechanical spider in Angela's hand dissolved into points of light that scattered like stars.
A screen materialized before each of them, glowing with the same strange symbols that had surrounded the countdown. But now the symbols resolved themselves into readable text:
"This is the Axis speaking. If you are here, you are dead. Per the contract agreement signed and notarized in the moment before your death, you will be enlisted in various missions across multiple universes. Your objective is clear: prevent universes from falling into critical failure. For this first excursion, your race and other benefits have been pre-assigned. In future excursions, you may choose these attributes at will."
None of them remembered signing any contract, yet the words carried the weight of undeniable truth. The void around them began to shift, taking on texture and depth. It felt as though reality itself was being rewritten around them, through them, within them.
"Stay together," Riley called out, her voice seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once. But they were already separating, drawn apart by currents they couldn't resist.
Shen's journal dissolved in his hands, its pages scattering like autumn leaves through the void. He reached for them instinctively, but his own fingers had begun to lose substance. The last thing he wrote hung suspended in the air: "We are becoming..."
The transformation accelerated. Their bodies, already translucent, began to fragment into particles of light. Yet consciousness remained. They were aware of being unmade and remade, of being stretched across dimensions and compressed into single points of possibility.
Angela, who had been so still and quiet in their liminal space, suddenly seemed the most solid among them. Her eyes were clear and focused, as if she alone understood what was happening. "Remember," she said, her voice cutting through the chaos of their transformation. But before she could say what they should remember, the void claimed her too.
The holograms that had gathered in the corners now filled the space completely. The Axis system's evaluation was complete, though they wouldn't understand its significance until much later. Their fates had been measured, their roles assigned, their new bodies chosen.
They felt the pull of their next existence - a world of sickness and ash, of underground cities and sacred flames. The void began to fill with images: crowds gathering for a great raid, armies marching into darkness, a creature of concentrated malice waiting in the depths.
Their consciousness collapsed inward, compressing into single points of awareness. The last thing they shared was a sensation of falling, of being drawn inexorably toward their new purpose. Then even that faded, replaced by the cold certainty of transformation.
They were no longer who they had been. They were becoming what they needed to be.
The void claimed them completely, and for a time that might have been moments or millennia, they ceased to exist as individuals. They became pure potential, waiting to be reformed in a world that needed them.
When awareness returned, it would be different. They would open borrowed eyes to see a monk's weathered face peering down at them, his expression caught between horror and wonder. They would breathe air thick with ash and sickness, feel the weight of bodies that weren't truly theirs.
But that was still to come. For now, they were nothing and everything, suspended between what they had been and what they would become.
The transition was complete. The mission had begun.