When I woke, the world was too quiet. No buzzing lights. No distant shouting. No keys jingling on some orderly's belt. Just the slow rush of wind through trees and the sharp cry of birds I didn't know the names of.
I lay there for a long moment, staring at a ceiling made of wooden beams, warm sunlight slipping through the cracks like liquid gold. This wasn't Clockworks. That much I knew. The bed was soft. The air smelled like pine and wet earth. My head still throbbed.
The door opened.
A man stepped in, tall, steady, wearing a dark jacket. "Morning," he said, his voice calm but clipped, like he was reading from a script. "Ptonomy Wallace."
He studied me with an intensity that made me feel like he was walking through my thoughts. No fidgeting. No wasted movements. Just eyes that stayed exactly where they were.
Before I could speak, another figure entered — a woman in a crisp shirt, her hair pulled back in a tight knot. "Peter," she said, "I'm Melanie Bird. You're safe here."
Safe. The word was too easy, too practiced.
They didn't wait for questions. I found myself following them into a hallway, then into a wide, glass-walled room. Beyond the glass was a forest that seemed endless. Cabins stood among the trees, smoke rising from chimneys. People moved between them — some talking, some carrying tools, some doing things I couldn't explain. A man tossing a boulder as if it were a basketball. A girl drawing shapes in the air, the lines glowing and hanging there like spider silk in sunlight.
Melanie glanced at me. "This place is called Summerland. It's a safe haven for people like you— mutants, gifted, however you want to phrase it. Here, you're not broken. You're… understood."
"I'm not—" I began, but Ptonomy cut me off without looking at me.
"You might be. Or you already are. You just don't see it yet."
We turned a corner, and another man joined us — tall, wearing a lab coat splattered with stains like he'd been juggling engine parts and coffee mugs. "Cary Loudermilk," he said quickly, shaking my hand His eyes darted with a kind of restless intelligence. "Your brain scans are… unusual. More Unusual Neural patterns that we see in people with abilities. That's why we came to Clockworks. Not just to get you out — there were others. People who needed rescuing before the wrong hands got ahold of them."
The wrong hands. My mind flashed back to the locked ward, the too-bright lights, the feeling of being watched at certain times.
We stopped outside a cabin. Melanie put her hand on the door. "Someone's waiting for you."
Inside, Syd sat cross-legged on a bed, her face pale but alert, eyes fixed on me like I was the last thing she expected and the only thing she wanted to see.
"Hey, Peter," she said "Took you long enough."
Melanie's hand lingered on the doorknob. She glanced at Syd, then at me, her gaze sharp enough to make my pulse skip. "You two should talk," she said finally.
Ptonomy gave the smallest nod, like this was part of some plan I wasn't in on. Cary muttered something under his breath that I didn't catch, then followed them out. The door closed, and the sound of it shutting felt heavier than it should.
Syd sat cross-legged on the bed, shoulders relaxed but her eyes fixed on me "You can sit," she said, nodding to the empty spot beside her.
I sat down slowly, leaving a safe stretch of space between us. Part of me was still expecting her to flinch like she had back at Clockworks.
She let out a long breath, as if she'd been holding it since before I came in. "This place is… unreal. I keep walking around expecting to see padded walls, but instead it's trees and cabins and people doing impossible things like it's normal. I saw a guy outside earlier pick up a truck like it was made of cardboard. And there's this woman in the dining hall who can make glowing shapes in the air — she was making these… floating spirals while she ate cereal. Nobody even blinked."
I shook my head slowly. "Yeah. Feels like a dream you're afraid to wake up from… but also one you're not sure you want to stay in."
She gave a small, humorless laugh. "Exactly." Then she glanced at me, her expression shifting — more serious now. "Peter… there's something you should know about me."
My stomach tightened. "Okay…"
She hesitated, as if deciding whether to say it at all. "I have an ability. If someone touches me — skin-to-skin — we switch bodies. Instantly. I'm in them, they're in me. And it lasts until it… wears off. Could be minutes, could be hours."
I stared at her, trying to picture it.
"It's real," she said quietly. "The first time it happened, I thought I was losing my mind. But it's not some hallucination. It's who I am." She paused, studying my face. "That's why I reacted the way I did at Clockworks. When you touched my arm… I braced for the swap. But nothing happened. And that's never happened before."
The memory came back sharp — her sudden stiffness, the flash of something like fear in her eyes. I'd thought she was just… weird about personal space.
Her voice dropped. "That's why they're interested in you. People don't just 'not' trigger my switch. You're… different."
I swallowed hard. "They keep telling me I might have an ability. But I don't know what it is. Or if I even want to know."
Syd leaned back a little, but her gaze stayed locked on mine. "Peter… not knowing doesn't mean it's not there. It just means we haven't seen it yet."
The room went quiet again, except for the faint hum of the wind outside.
"Then I guess we'll find out," I said finally giving in.
Melanie reappeared not long after Syd and I finished talking. She didn't knock. Just opened the door and stepped inside like she already knew how the conversation went.
"Peter," she said, her voice calm but leaving no room for argument, "come with us."
Ptonomy was in the hall, hands in his pockets, his eyes doing that still, assessing thing again. Cary stood beside him, clutching a clipboard and grinning faintly like he'd been waiting for this all morning.
I glanced back at Syd. She gave me a small shrug, saying good luck.
They led me down a long corridor lined with rooms I didn't have time to look into. At the end, a wide metal door slid open to reveal something that looked part lab, part gym. Bright lights. A padded floor. Tables crowded with equipment I couldn't name.
Cary stepped forward, already talking. "Okay, here's the deal. We don't know exactly what you can do — if anything — so we're gonna run a few tests. No needles. Probably. Just… stimuli, observation, measurement." He handed me a bottle of water like that somehow made the whole thing more normal.
Melanie crossed her arms. "We've seen unusual responses from you unlike other super powered people like you. Your brain scans show anomalies, but that doesn't tell us how it manifests. We need to push you a little."
Ptonomy's tone was flatter. "See what comes out when you're under pressure."
"No Pressure" Peter said with a sigh.