“Okay, Monday,” she murmured, rubbing her eyes. She reached for her glasses on the nightstand and slid them onto her face with a sigh. “Let’s not make this worse than you already are.”
She swiped through the notifications without much thought—weather, email, some half-hearted meme from a group chat—and then paused.
A message from Mom.
“Remember that we love you.”
Cass blinked.
It wasn’t weird for her mom to be sweet. It was weird for her to be this sweet every single day for the past two weeks. As if she were… preparing her for something.
Cass stared at the words, then let out a soft sigh. “You’re not dying, right? Please tell me this isn’t your passive-aggressive way of saying you have cancer or joined a cult.”
She sat up and stretched, bones cracking like an old floorboard, then padded barefoot across the cool wood of the apartment. A mug in one hand, toothbrush dangling from her mouth, she wandered her space like a half-functioning human. Her plants were still alive, somehow. The sky outside looked like it hadn’t had coffee either—gray and unmotivated.
Once dressed in jeans, a wrinkled button-down, and a cardigan two sizes too big, she tied her curls into a loose bun and stepped out, earbuds in, bag slung over one shoulder like she was going to war instead of work.
As she waited for the elevator, a muffled argument echoed from apartment 402—sharp voices, a rising tone. Cass sighed. It was too early for other people’s drama.
She pressed the elevator button and waited. The doors opened with a polite ding.
She stepped in, alone, leaned back, and pulled out her phone. News.
Missing Persons Cases Spike Citywide
Meteor Shower Expected Tonight
Local Cat Wins Mayoral Election
Her thumb hovered over the third headline—“Local Cat Wins Mayoral Election”—but before she could tap it—
DING.
The elevator jolted gently. The doors slid open.
Cass took a step forward.
And the world slipped out from under her feet.
No crash. No sound.
Just the sudden, undeniable wrongness of falling without falling.
Her breath caught in her throat. She looked up—but there was no ceiling.
Her phone dropped, vanishing into the darkness.
Then everything vanished.
She came back to herself curled like a child in the dark. Not on the floor. Not anywhere she could name.
Cass floated, limbs adrift, like she was suspended in thick, invisible water. Her clothes were gone, her body pale and bare, untouched by the cold, if there even was cold. Her hair swirled around her in slow motion, a fiery cloud in a starless sea.
What the hell?
She tried to move an arm. It twitched, slowly. Like her nerves were responding from far away.
Am I dead? Is this what dying feels like?
Her thoughts chased each other like anxious dogs.
No. No, this isn’t death. This is something else. Something stupid. Am I hallucinating? Am I dreaming? Did someone drug me on the elevator?
Did Mom know something? Is that why she kept sending those messages?
Her breath—if she was breathing—grew shallow. Panic edged her throat, but the sound couldn’t escape. She was a ghost in her own skin.
And then—
A pressure built around her. Not pain. Not heat. Just… weight. Like the air had noticed her.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
Before her, a soft light bloomed. It gathered into shape. A shimmer. A square.
No… a screen.
Cass stared.
Blinking didn’t make it disappear.
She floated. Nude. Bewildered. Somewhere between a sci-fi movie and a fever dream.
“This can’t be happening,” she muttered.
The screen pulsed faintly, as if waiting. She didn’t want to touch it. She didn’t even know how.
And then—without warning—something pulled at her. A force, furious and unseen, yanking her soul-first into motion.
“NO—NO! You’ve got to be kidding me!” she screamed as the darkness warped, the screen shattered, and the void gave way to blinding light.
There was no answer. Only the sinking realization that whatever this was, it wasn’t home—and it wasn’t a dream either.
Her voice echoed, warped, and vanished—
And a new world swallowed her whole.
.
.
.
.
.
Cass awoke again, but this time the confusion ran deeper.
Her body—small, soft, unfamiliar—didn’t move the way she wanted it to. Her limbs barely twitched, her head lolled to one side. She wasn’t just groggy; she was trapped within herself, encased in flesh that didn’t quite respond.
Before panic could set in, a translucent screen floated before her bleary eyes.
Cass’s heart—or whatever organ counted now—raced. She couldn’t move, couldn’t speak, and the countdown above ticked forward relentlessly.
Shadows moved nearby. Voices, muffled and warped, filtered into her ears like sound underwater. She tried to focus, tried to make sense of the language, the figures that hovered just beyond the veil of her perception, but her brain—a child’s brain—wasn’t ready for this level of thought.
The world twisted at the edges. Like a fog descending not over the eyes, but over the mind.
She fought it. Fought to stay alert. Her fingers didn’t move, but her thoughts still sparked, flickering.
Status.
The word rang clear in her thoughts.
Another screen emerged, replacing the previous one, but just as useless:
“Damn it,” she would’ve cursed, if she could speak.
The fog thickened. Her thoughts tangled. It felt like her brain was folding in on itself.
Okay. Think. What does a child need to survive? Her thoughts came slower now, like trying to swim through syrup.
Vitality? Health? Constitution? Luck? Growth?
Each word flared and faded in her mind.
And then—
A memory surfaced, unbidden.
“Sweetheart,” her father had said, one warm, dust-swirled afternoon, pointing to a construction site across the street. “The most important part when building something… is the foundation.”
He watched as massive machines carved into the earth.
“If the base is solid, then no matter what happens, the rest of it has a much better chance of surviving.”
Young Cass, perched on his shoulders, eyes wide with wonder, had watched as steel, dirt and dreams began to rise.
Foundation.
The word echoed.
As the last threads of clarity slipped through her grasp, she clung to that memory. That principle. That truth.
A sound rang out—clean and soft.
DING.
Just like the elevator.
Her consciousness faded.
A new screen appeared, though her eyes had already closed.
Another screen followed immediately.
And with that, the screens faded.
And the newborn that had once been Cass drifted into the quiet dark, wrapped in a blanket of strange warmth and stranger fate.