I woke up to a strange stillness, my body pressed against a surface that was smooth and cold. The air felt sterile, devoid of the heavy static hum that had suffused the ruined city. For a moment, I thought I had died.
Then I blinked, and the world around me resolved into sharp focus.
I was inside a room—a sterile, metallic chamber bathed in a dim, bluish light. The walls were smooth and featureless, their surfaces gleaming faintly as though coated with some advanced material. I sat up slowly, wincing at the stiffness in my muscles. The floor beneath me was perfectly smooth, its reflective surface making it hard to tell where the walls ended and the floor began.
I glanced down at myself, noting that my clothes were intact, though still torn and bloodied. The harness strapped across my chest hummed faintly, its wires pulsing with a dull light. Whatever had happened at the obelisk, it hadn't undone the damage I'd taken in the ruined city.
As I was about to look up, the face of someone looked back at me in the reflection. Slowly, my gaze focused on the man staring back. His face—my face—was a puzzle I had no memory of solving.
Sharp cheekbones and a square jaw, giving him a hardened, almost regal appearance. His dark hair hung loosely around his forehead, messy but controlled, like it didn't care to be neat. But it was his eyes that struck me: a piercing, almost unnatural shade of grey, like they had seen too much and understood too little. They were distant, calculating. Not mine, yet they were.
I leaned closer, tracing the features with my eyes, as if expecting him to speak to me, to tell me who I was. But he remained silent, a stranger's face staring back, offering no clues.
My head throbbed, a dull ache that seemed to pulse in time with the lights on the harness. I pressed my fingers to my temples, willing the pain to subside.
"Where am I?" I muttered, my voice sounding small and hollow in the vast chamber.
As if in response, the room came to life. Panels on the walls slid open soundlessly, revealing rows of screens that flickered to life. The screens displayed lines of code, complex equations, and schematic diagrams that made no sense to me.
And then, a voice.
"Identity confirmed. Quantum Navigator Kael Amari."
I froze. The voice was cold and mechanical, yet it carried an unmistakable weight of authority.
"Who's there?" I demanded, my voice echoing in the empty chamber.
The screens shifted, their displays coalescing into a single symbol: an intricate, angular design that pulsed with a faint, golden light.
"This is Nexus Command. You are currently in a secure stabilization chamber following a critical breach during Experiment Theta-13. Your quantum signature has been detected and partially reintegrated."
Experiment Theta-13. The words struck a chord, a faint echo of a memory I couldn't fully grasp.
"What breach?" I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. "What happened to me?"
The symbol on the screens pulsed again, and the voice responded.
"During Experiment Theta-13, a catastrophic energy surge disrupted the quantum stabilization matrix. Your consciousness was fragmented and scattered across multiple realities. Partial reintegration has been achieved, but significant memory loss and spatial instability persist."
I stared at the screens, my mind racing. Fragmented consciousness? Multiple realities? None of it made sense, but at the same time, it explained the chaos I'd experienced—the disorientation, the missing memories, the strange city.
"How do I fix this?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
"Correction of the breach requires retrieval of memory shards distributed across affected realities," the voice replied. "Reintegration is critical to restoring operational stability."
Memory shards. The words sent a chill down my spine, evoking flashes of images: the obelisk, the machine, the ruined city.
"And what if I don't?" I asked, though I already knew the answer.
"Failure to reintegrate will result in progressive quantum degradation," the voice said, its tone as emotionless as ever. "Continued existence in this state is unsustainable."
I took a shaky breath, trying to process the weight of what I'd just heard. My survival depended on finding these memory shards, scattered across realities I couldn't even begin to comprehend.
"What about the obelisk?" I asked, grasping at the one concrete detail I remembered. "I touched it, and—"
"Dimensional anchors such as the obelisk serve as stabilizing points within fractured realities," the voice interrupted. "Interaction initiated an emergency transfer to this chamber. Further use of anchors will be necessary for continued traversal."
I let out a hollow laugh, the sound echoing in the chamber. "So, what? I just keep jumping from one broken world to the next until I piece myself back together?"
"That is correct," the voice replied without hesitation.
I leaned against the wall, letting the cold surface ground me. My mind was a storm of fear, confusion, and determination. The memory shards weren't just about saving my life; they were the only way to answer the questions gnawing at the edges of my fractured mind.
"What about the others?" I asked suddenly, the image of the towering machine thqt chased me, flashing in my mind. "Are there... things out there hunting me?"
The screens flickered, and for the first time, the voice hesitated. "Hostile entities have been identified in affected realities. Additional information requires higher clearance levels."
"Of course it does," I muttered.
The room began to hum faintly, and the floor beneath me vibrated. I pushed myself to my feet, watching as a section of the wall slid open to reveal a circular portal. Beyond it was a swirling vortex of light, its colors shifting and pulsing like the sky in the ruined city.
"Dimensional transfer commencing," the voice announced. "Destination: Reality Beta-7. Objective: Retrieval of first memory shard. Prepare for transit."
I stared at the portal, my stomach twisting with a mix of fear and anticipation. This was it—the start of a journey I hadn't chosen, into worlds I couldn't imagine.
Taking a deep breath, I stepped toward the portal.
The moment I crossed the threshold, the world around me dissolved into chaos. My body felt weightless, pulled in every direction at once, as though I were being unraveled and reassembled piece by piece.
And then I was falling.
---
The ground rushed up to meet me, and I landed hard, the impact driving the air from my lungs. I rolled onto my side, coughing and gasping, as the world around me came into focus.
I was back in a city, but this one was different. The buildings were sleek and metallic, their surfaces polished to a mirror-like sheen. The streets were lined with glowing pathways, and vehicles that hovered silently above the ground glided past in perfect, orderly rows.
This world was alive, bustling with activity. People moved with purpose, their clothing crisp and futuristic, their faces serene.
I pushed myself to my feet, trying to blend in as I scanned my surroundings. This place was pristine, almost too perfect. There was no sign of the ruin or chaos I'd seen in the previous city.
But beneath the surface, something felt... off.
As I walked, I noticed small details: the way people avoided eye contact, the faint hum of drones patrolling the skies, the way everyone moved with synchronized precision.
I turned a corner and stopped dead in my tracks.
There, in the distance, was another obelisk. This one was smaller than the first, but its angular design and faint glow were unmistakable.
My pulse quickened. If the voice was right, this obelisk might lead me to the first shard. But getting to it wouldn't be easy.
The streets leading to the obelisk were heavily monitored, drones hovering at regular intervals. I would need to move carefully, stay out of sight.
The first shard was here. I could feel it. Or at least I thought that much.
And I wasn't leaving without it.