The world was no longer turning.

Not in the way it used to.

Time felt fractured. Digital clocks blinked out of sync. Algorithms failed to predict even the simplest human behaviors. People stopped trusting their own memories. For every face they recognized, there was the flicker of doubt—was it truly someone they knew? Or just someone who remembered knowing them?

Emma’s return from the Echo Chamber wasn’t gentle.

It was violent.

Her body convulsed as the simulation chair ejected her ...