The room was always cold after midnight. Machines hummed like insects in a glass jar, and the blue light from the monitors painted Aiden's face the color of sleeplessness.
He hadn't been outside in three days. Maybe four. Time had lost its edges—everything after she died felt like that.
On the main screen, a slow cascade of numbers streamed down, steady and precise. Temporal coordinates. The language of ghosts.
Aiden adjusted the visor on his head and stared at the countdown.8 minutes. That was all the system allowed before the brain started to blur the line between "observer" and "participant."
He used to tell his students that time was a river—you could watch its surface, but never touch it. Now he was building a bridge made of light, desperate enough to ignore his own warnings.
When the machine clicked, the room folded inward. Sound vanished. So did air.
Then came her world.
Sunlight. Morning dust in the air. The faint smell of turpentine.
Elara stood by the window, painting. The brush in her hand moved with that same quiet rhythm he remembered—the way she used to hum under her breath, just loud enough for the world to listen if it wanted to.
Aiden froze. Every time, this moment hit him like a wave. She was alive. Her hair caught the light, and for eight minutes, he could almost believe the world hadn't ended.
He walked closer. His feet made no sound; his reflection didn't exist in the glass. He could reach out, but his hand would pass through her like mist.
"Hi," he whispered, even though he knew she couldn't hear.
Elara tilted her head slightly, as if reacting to a sound too small for the air.
Aiden's breath caught.
He knew it was impossible. The system was one-way—consciousness projected backward through the echo field. No communication, no interference. He'd written those rules himself.
But still, she turned her head toward the window, her brush hovering midair.
"I thought I heard…" she murmured, then smiled to herself, shaking her head.
Aiden felt something break inside him—something small and sharp that had been holding him together.
He checked the timer.2 minutes left.
He sat down on the edge of her table, though the wood didn't feel solid. Just light pretending to be real. He watched her paint a streak of blue that wasn't in the reference photo. She never followed patterns; she said rules made art predictable.
When the alarm buzzed, the world started to fade. The sunlight peeled away.
Elara glanced toward the empty space near the window one last time, a tiny crease forming between her brows.
Then she whispered something.
Aiden couldn't hear it.
And then—nothing.
He woke up in the lab, breathing hard, his hands shaking. The hum of machines returned, the sterile air, the glass walls. Reality, if that's what it still was.
He sat there for a long time, staring at his reflection on the dark screen. His face looked older. The lines around his eyes deeper.
He saved the data log, but not before renaming the session file:"Elara_07."
There would be more. He knew that already.
The dead don't answer—but sometimes, if you keep calling, they start to listen.