The guard moved through the corridor like he had done it a thousand times.
His boots made dull sounds against the floor, softened by years of polishing that no longer served a purpose. The belt around his waist pressed into his potbelly, proof that nothing here demanded urgency.
Stopping at a door midway down the hall, he pulled a key from the ring at his side. It slid into the lock with a familiar resistance.
Click.
Creak.
The hinges protested as the door opened.
Neon lights from the corridor spilled into the room, revealing a boy with pitch black hair and light bronze skin sleeping in blissful ignorance.
The guard clicked his tongue.
"Tsk, wake up boy. It's time."
He hit his baton on the door.
The boy inside sprung up at once, his face betraying how drowsy he still was.
"Time to go," the guard repeated.
"Get ready" he gestured with his head.
I got up, grabbed my bag, and closed the door. As I did, I looked back at the room I'd called home for the past ten years.
I stared at the name on the door tag: Thomas Miles.
"Ugh"
'Still creeps me out every time.'
I turned my back, knowing I might never see that door again, and followed the guard.
'Change is beautiful, but it still hurts. Does everything have to hurt?'
We stepped out into the corridor.
Doors opened as they passed. More children emerged—some sleepy, some confused, some already dressed as if they'd been expecting this moment. The guard collected them without hurry, counting under his breath as they walked.
"Good morning, Tom. How was your night?"
I jerked a little then turned my head to the right,
"Noah, when will you stop doing that?"
A pale young boy of average height smirked to himself.
"Mine was fine too, thank you for asking"
"Old man Jenkins seems peachy as always," he said, gesturing to the cranky man ahead of us. "Maybe he's sad to see us go"
"Yeah right, he's probably sad because he has to repeat this cycle all over again" I scoffed.
"Anyway, you ready for this new chapter of our lives?"
"As ready as any orphan ever is," Noah said.
"Oh, don't be like that," I assured him. "Everything will be just fi-"
I froze.
'Better not jinx it this time'
Noah shakes his head to himself, "see, even you don't believe that"
By the time we reached the end of the hall, there were twelve of us.
They were led through a series of checkpoints, each quieter than the last, until the air changed and the walls widened.
As we crossed through the main doors, the harsh morning sunlight greeted us, causing us to squint our eyes to adjust.
A familiar sight greeted us.
The perfectly symmetrical slabs of stone that covered the courtyard grounds, the tall 7-inch-thick silver walls that made me wonder if we were prison mates on a death row,
the guards that seemed to hate their jobs but liked it too much not to quit, and the basilisk-like gate that felt like it was meant to keep things out not in.
Everything was normal.
Except the sky was purple, and the clouds were silver.
I stared at the pale violet sky, silver-lilac clouds drifting above.
"Yep, it's going to take a while to get used to this."
The gates swing open to a sleek white bus rolling in.
It stopped a few paces before it reached us.
"Alright," old man Jenkins said. "Line up and file in kids. In order."
A new guard with a sturdier build got down from the bus and stood beside the bus entrance as we formed a queue in front of it.
"Take good care of them," he whispers to the guard as I pass by.
The bus doors folded shut with a pneumatic hiss, sealing us inside.
I slid into a seat beside Noah who had already brought out a book titled "Theories on the convergence".
Across the aisle, Mira was already arguing with Eli about legroom, their voices low and familiar, like this was just another transfer, another stop along a route none of us had chosen.
"Move your knee," she said.
"It is moved."
"Then explain why it's still in my space."
Someone laughed from the back.
"If this bus stalls, I swear, I'm blaming Mira," another muttered from the back.
"You blame Mira for everything," another voice said.
"Because I'm usually right."
Someone else told them to shut up. It felt normal enough that my shoulders loosened despite myself.
'Sigh, sounds like this'll be a long ride.'
The engine rumbled to life.
As the orphanage walls disappeared behind us, I watched the road ahead stretch under the purple sky, silver clouds drifting lazily above like they had all the time in the world.
Seconds turned into minutes and minutes into hours.
The trees along the road blurred past, green leaves flashing silver in the morning sun, like someone had dusted them with frost.
The scene barely changed, enough to make me wonder if we were moving at all—or just being shown the idea of it.
Lost in thought, a feeling of strangeness hit me. I focused back outside.
Everything looked normal.
Then it went dark.
Not dim. Not overcast. Night.
'Damn, not agai—'
vrmmm
The bus trembled.
Not violently. Just enough to rattle the loose metal above our heads.
"Bad patch," the driver muttered, more to himself than anyone else.
The shaking didn't stop.
It changed.
The vibration slipped out of rhythm, as if the road no longer remembered how to be a road. The hum of the engine warped, stretching thin, then snapping back into place a half-second too late.
Conversation faltered.
I felt it then—a pressure pressing inward, not against my skin but against the space around me. Like the air had thickened. Like my breath had to push harder to exist.
Noah frowned. "Tom," he whispered, "do you feel—"
The bus dipped.
Not down. Sideways.
A guard stood immediately. "Seatbelts," he said.
Too calm.
The tires screamed as the bus swerved.
Something scraped along the side—not metal, not stone. Resistance. As if we'd brushed against a place that didn't want us passing through.
Mira yelped. Someone hit their head against the window. Eli swore loudly and then went quiet.
The pressure intensified.
My ears rang. The world felt delayed, like my thoughts were arriving moments after I had them. I looked down at my hands and felt an unsettling disconnect— as if they belonged to someone seated just a little to my left.
The driver jerked the wheel again.
The bus lurched forward.
Silence followed, heavy and wrong.
My stomach dropped as the pressure released, fading reluctantly, like something letting go.
Through a small gap in the curtain, I saw the road behind us.
It was still there.
Just… longer than it should have been. The asphalt bent upward slightly, reflecting a version of the sky that lagged behind the real one, silver clouds drifting out of sync.
SNAP!
The curtain slammed shut behind us, and the world outside vanished in a single motion.
No one asked questions.
The bus sped up.
Minutes passed. Maybe more. Time felt unreliable.
Eventually, the guard switched on his transmitter.
"Distortion at zero-eight-two. Civilian transit cleared. No casualties reported," he said, like he was logging the weather.
And turned it off.
Noah leaned closer. "That wasn't minor," he said quietly.
I nodded.
Outside, the road looked normal again.
Too normal.
I couldn't shake the feeling that if we'd stayed just a little longer—if the bus had stalled, if the wheel hadn't turned when it did—we wouldn't have been able to leave at all.
Not because something would have attacked us.
But because the world would have forgotten how to let us exist.
Time moved on, and ease came—the kind that didn't forget to leave invisible marks.
The road began to climb.
Not sharply—just enough that the trees thinned and the bus leaned into the curve of the mountain path, tires humming steadily as the city slid into view from the side.
It revealed itself in layers.
Tall buildings rose first, clustered near the center of the valley. They weren't jagged or glowing, just clean and deliberate—smooth faces of stone, glass, and metal catching the pale daylight in muted reflections.
Some towers curved slightly, others stepped back as they rose, as if shaped to give the sky room rather than challenge it.
Nothing smoked.
Light traveled through the city instead—soft bands moving along elevated rails, thin lines of traffic threading between districts, reflections sliding over windows like slow water.
Farther out, the buildings shortened, spreading into wide blocks and open terraces, greenery stitched between them in careful patterns. From above, the city didn't feel crowded. It felt managed.
Planned down to the last quiet detail.
I pressed my forehead lightly against the glass.
For the first time since leaving the Evaluation Centre, the world felt… big.
Not dangerous. Not kind. Just vast enough that whatever almost caught us back there felt like a small part of something much larger—something already handled, already filed away, already forgotten by people better equipped to remember it.
I wondered how many things happened out there every day that never made it into stories.
And how many people lived their entire lives without ever knowing how close they'd come to stepping somewhere the world didn't want them to be.
The bus continued its descent.
The city waited below.