The room they were brought to on Wednesday morning had no name on the door. It was not in the

The auditorium was the only space in Neurovia designed for an audience. Everything else on campus minimized the distance between

The conference room on the fourth floor of the research annex had no windows. Dr. Miriam Halvorsen designed it that

Neurovia welcomed them back…silently. The gates did not open with ceremony. The walkways did not brighten to greet them.

The notification arrived while Julian was halfway through a piece of artisanal sourdough topped with avocado and microgreens, the flavors

Someone had turned the common room's fluorescents down to amber. The ceiling felt lower. The walls sat further

Dr. Ananya Patel had been in the analytics suite since eleven. The lighting had shifted to amber two hours ago.

Soren let the hot water run for a full fifteen minutes after the match ended. The steam filled the stall

Dinner tasted wrong the moment Julian lifted his fork. Not because the food was poorly made, but because his body

Leena lay still beneath a lattice of sensors, each one cemented to her scalp with conductive gel. Her dark hair