The Collision

In the alleyway behind the warehouse, Elias stared at the red "CONNECTION LOST" on his monitor.

He looked at the warehouse. It was a condemned brick monolith. The freight elevator shaft ran up the south wall.

He looked at the van’s dashboard. He looked at his hands, trembling on the steering wheel.

He wasn't bold. He was the guy in the chair. He was the safety net.

"Safety isn't working," he muttered.

He thought of Val. Not the adrenaline junkie, but the girl who laughed at ketchup jokes. The girl who saved him from his own loneliness.

He slammed the van into gear. He revved the engine until it screamed.

"Hold on, Val," he whispered.

He floored it.

The surveillance van surged forward, tires screeching on the wet pavement. It hit the brick wall of the warehouse at sixty miles an hour, aimed directly at the base of the elevator shaft.

* CRASH.*

The impact was cataclysmic. Metal sheared. Brick exploded. The van crumpled, but the force was enough. It severed the hydraulic line of the elevator. It shattered the counterweights.

The physical shockwave traveled up the cable, vibrating through the dimensions.

In the Echo Zone, the sky cracked.

A jagged fissure of pure, blinding white light tore through the violet clouds. The ground shook violently, knocking Caspian off his feet.

Val looked up from her nightmare. Through the crack in the sky, she heard it. Not a voice. A sound.

The horn of the van. A long, desperate, mechanical wail.

* Elias.*

He had crashed the car. He had broken the rules. He had done something incredibly, stupidly bold.

Val grabbed the ground—which felt like skin—and pushed herself up.

The ink on her hands was receding. The madness was still there, swirling in her head, but it wasn't drowning her anymore. It was a weapon.

Caspian scrambled up, his face twisted in fear. "No! The seal is breaking!"

Val looked at him. She looked at the glitching, terrified magician who just wanted to go home.

"You want chaos?" Val said, her voice echoing with the power of the Zone. "I’ll give you chaos."

She focused. She didn't try to build a bridge. She didn't try to fly.

She remembered the diner. The smell of grease. The flickering fluorescent light. The absolute, crushing mundanity of a Tuesday night.

She projected that reality onto Caspian.

"You are not a Prince," Val declared. "You are just a sad man in a cheap suit."

The neon city screamed. The reality warp hit Caspian like a tidal wave.

His top hat dissolved into moth-eaten felt. His glowing eyes turned dull brown. The floating sidewalk slammed into the ground, obeying gravity for the first time in decades.

Caspian fell, hitting the concrete with a heavy, human thud. He gasped, air rushing into lungs that hadn't breathed real air in a century.

"No," he wheezed. "Don't make me real. Please."

"Goodbye, Caspian," Val said.

She looked at the crack in the sky. She reached for the tether—not the earpiece, but the feeling of Elias’s hand in hers.

She jumped for the white light.