The morning after her dream, Lyra walked through the halls of school like a ghost.
Not because she felt invisible—she was invisible.
No one spoke to her.
No one looked at her.
It was as if the world had quietly shifted one layer to the left, and she hadn't been invited.
She checked her phone. Still no reply from Juno. The message had been delivered. No "Read." No dots. Nothing.
She tried calling. Straight to voicemail. Not even Juno's usual snarky greeting. Just the standard mechanical, "The person you are trying to reach is unavailable."
A chill ran through her bones.
She glanced at the mirror inside her locker door. Her own eyes stared back—but not entirely.
Her reflection blinked a moment after she did. Subtle. Almost imperceptible. But wrong.
She slammed the locker shut.
In chemistry class, the substitute stood silently at the board, scribbling equations that didn't match the syllabus.
"Is Mr. Halloway okay?" Lyra asked.
The substitute didn't respond.
Neither did the other students.
Lyra looked around.
Everyone was frozen—moving, breathing, but frozen in the script of the day. Not seeing. Not hearing.
She took her notebook and left.
No one stopped her.
Not even the security camera by the hallway stairs, which usually tracked movement. It stayed still.
Like the eye above the storm.
The sky outside was white. Not overcast—white.
Uniform. Empty. A blank canvas someone forgot to paint.
She walked to the edge of the school field, where the grass ended in a jagged line against the woods.
There, the wind spoke again.
Not in words.
In shapes.
Leaves fluttered in a circular motion. Dead branches cracked without falling. A ripple passed through the air—like heat distortion, but colder.
And then… she heard her own voice.
"It's looping. Stop listening."
She spun around.
No one.
But the sound had come from behind her ear—from inside her head, like a buried thought being re-broadcast.
She ran home, ignoring the bus. Her feet ached, her lungs burned, but she didn't stop until she was behind her locked door.
She collapsed into her room, pulled her laptop into her lap, and opened the recording software.
The microphone was already on.
She hadn't touched it.
It has already been recorded.
For how long?
The timestamp read 1:33:07.
One hour and thirty-three minutes.
She hadn't been home for even half that time.
She hit play.
At first, it was just static. Layered, rhythmic. Then came a whisper.
But not hers. Not like before.
This voice was male. Distorted. Calm.
"Layer four active. Subject remembers partial loop."
"Disruption detected. Unstable consciousness."
"Rewriting in progress..."
Her screen flickered.
Then the static shifted into a sound—like reversed breathing. Long exhales looped into sharp inhales. Then, buried beneath it all…
A laugh.
Childlike. Familiar.
Her own, from years ago.
A memory she'd buried.
The day her father left.
She stopped the recording, heart racing.
How was that laugh on tape? She never recorded that. It wasn't even digital. It was from a camcorder tape she'd never digitized.
Her fingers trembled.
Then her laptop's screen glitched. For just a second.
And on the screen, written in reversed binary:
You are not the original.
She slammed the laptop shut and backed away.
The world tilted.
She stumbled and grabbed the edge of her desk. Her vision blurred—and for a moment, the room melted.
The walls rippled like heatwaves.
The shadows twisted in the wrong direction.
And in the mirror across her desk—her reflection was gone.
Just the room. Empty.
She blinked, and everything snapped back.
But something had changed.
The air was heavy. Thicker than before.
Like reality had folded, just slightly, and didn't quite iron itself flat.
Later that evening, after the panic dulled, she found herself staring at an old drawer under her bed—the one with her dad's things.
She hadn't touched it in years.
But something pulled her to it. A hum. A vibration she couldn't explain.
She opened it.
Inside, beneath layers of dust and silence, was an old cassette recorder. The one her dad used for his interviews back when he was still a journalist.
She hadn't seen it since she was ten.
She turned it over in her hands. The battery light blinked.
Blink. Blink. Hold.
Low. High. Low.
The same pattern as the mic.
She pressed play.
"If you're listening to this, Lyra... it means they found you too."
Her father's voice.
"I tried to hide you from it. From them. From the transmission. But it always finds its source. You were born marked. Wired was different. Your brain is... tuned."
"You can hear what the world tries to forget."
Lyra covered her mouth.
"Do not listen to the sky. That's how it starts. Then the loops begin. Then the layers fold. And when you reach the center..."
"...you won't be you anymore."
Then silence.
Tears welled in her eyes.
She never knew why he left. Never got a letter. Never a call. Nothing.
But now, here he was—warning her from a decade past.
What did he know? What did he find?
And why did it all lead to her?
She opened her laptop again.
This time, the recorder opened by itself.
A new message blinked.
Record Session: Channel 7 Accessed
She didn't remember opening it.
She didn't even know there was a Channel 7.
Then her mic kicked in on its own.
And a new voice—female, distorted, distant—spoke.
"The sky remembers you, Lyra Solane."
"You left a crack when you were born."
"We've been trying to close it."
"But you keep listening."
"And now others are beginning to hear."
The file is saved automatically.
Its name: REMEMBER_YOURSELVES.wav
When she clicked to view it, a strange visual appeared—not a waveform.
A circle.
Inside it: an eye.
And beneath it: a mirror fracturing into a thousand shards.
Each shard held her face.
But in every one, she was different. Some older. Some younger. One with white hair. One with no eyes. One smiling with her head tilted at an impossible angle.
All of them looking back.
"You've cracked your code," said the whisper from the speaker, growing louder.
"Now... you must choose which version you remember."
And then—
Her reflection smiled before she did.