Tether

The first thing Ned noticed when he woke up was the silence. Not natural silence — the absence of sound felt engineered, like someone had pressed mute on the world. No hum of electricity, no distant movement, not even the whisper of his own breath. Just… nothing.

He sat up. The bed wasn’t his. Crisp white sheets, tucked perfectly. No heart monitors, no IV stand. Just a bed and a single chair in a room so white it hurt to look at.

He swung his legs down. The floor was cold — too cold. He crossed to the door and opened it, expecting weight, resistance. There was none. It opened on an endless white hallway.

He walked. Minutes stretched into something shapeless. The air tasted of nothing. The hallway didn’t end. Until—

Footsteps behind him.

He turned.

A woman stood twenty feet away. Tall, pale, hair like a dark curtain around her face. She wore a black dress that broke the sterile monotony of the place. Barefoot. Silent.

“Who are you?” Ned’s voice cracked.

She tilted her head, almost curious. Then, softly, like a secret- “Are you real?”

He blinked. “What?”

“Are you real?” she repeated, stepping closer. Her feet made no sound.

“Of course I’m real,” Ned said, though the words felt thin.

Her mouth curved into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “That’s what they all say.”

Ned’s chest tightened. He turned and ran.

The hallway warped. Doors flickered and vanished as he passed them. He ran until his lungs burned. When he finally stumbled into a vast white chamber, he collapsed to his knees.

A man sat in a gray chair at the center, hands folded, waiting like he’d been there forever. He looked up, smiling like an old friend.

“Ah,” the man said. “You’re awake.”

“What the hell is this?” Ned rasped.

The man gestured calmly to a second chair. “Sit. There’s much to explain.”

“I’m not sitting,” Ned snapped. “Tell me where I am.”

“You’re safe,” the man said. “As for me — think of me as a caretaker.”

“Caretaker of what?”

“You,” the man said softly. “And everything you might be.”

Ned’s fists clenched. “I remember an accident. I was driving and—”

“Yes. A collision. Your body is… beyond repair. But your mind — oh, your mind is active. That’s rare.”

Ned’s pulse hammered. “So what? I’m in a coma?”

The man’s smile deepened. “Closer to a transfer. A proving ground. You’re data now. Patterns. Consciousness running on a different substrate.”

Ned backed away. “No. That’s impossible.”

“Is it?” The man’s voice softened, persuasive. “What makes you real, Ned? Your body? Or your choices? If we replicate every thought, every impulse, who decides which version is you?”

Ned’s head spun. “I’m done talking to you.” He turned and fled through another door.

He didn’t stop until he stumbled into a chamber lined with mirrors. Hundreds of them. He froze.

Every mirror reflected him — but not quite. One showed him older, hair graying. Another younger, with a scar over his eye. Some didn’t look like him at all. Different faces. Different lives.

“Possibilities,” a voice said.

The woman in black. Standing close now, her eyes fathomless.

“You could be any of them,” she whispered. “Or none. It only matters if you believe it does.”

Ned spun, heart pounding. The mirrors rippled, and every version of him mouthed the same words-

Are you real?

The soundless question pounded like a drumbeat inside his skull. Ned dropped to his knees. “Stop,” he begged. “Please.”

The woman crouched beside him, her voice a ghost. “We can stop. All you have to do is answer.”

Tears blurred his vision. He whispered-

“I don’t know.”

The mirrors shattered.

Ned woke up. White room. Same bed. Same chair. His breath hitched. A figure sat in the chair this time.

The woman.

She leaned forward, eyes burning. “Round two,” she said softly. “This time, you’ll choose.”

“Choose what?” Ned croaked.

“Which life you want,” she said. “Which version of you survives.”

The walls dissolved, revealing doorways — dozens of them, each glowing faintly. Through one, Ned glimpsed himself laughing with a family he didn’t know. Through another, a version of him in a sleek suit, powerful and cold. Another showed him alone, old, frail, forgotten.

He staggered back. “What is this?”

“Freedom,” the woman said. “Or the illusion of it. Does it matter which?”

Ned’s mind fractured under the weight of it. Behind every door, a different Ned waited. All of them real. Or none.

The woman offered her hand. “Pick a door,” she said. “Or stay here forever.”

Ned stared at her hand, then at the infinite doors, heart pounding so loud it drowned the silence.

“I… I can’t,” he whispered.

“Then the system will choose for you,” she said, and her smile sharpened like a blade.

The doors began to close, one by one.

“Wait!” Ned shouted. “What happens if I pick the wrong one?”

Her eyes gleamed. “There is no wrong one. Just the one that obeys.”

And then Ned saw it — behind her shoulder, a flicker in the wall. Not a door this time. A crack. Black, jagged, pulsing like a wound. It didn’t look like any of the others. It looked… real.

Ned ran for it.

“Ned!” Her voice thundered like a god’s command. The doors froze mid-closure. The room trembled. “That’s not yours to take!”

He didn’t stop. He dove through the crack — and fell into darkness.

When Ned opened his eyes, he was lying on asphalt under a blood-red sky. The air smelled of iron and smoke. Broken skyscrapers clawed at the clouds like shattered teeth. In the distance, something vast moved — its silhouette tearing across the ruins like a shadow learning to walk.

A voice hissed behind him, fractured and doubled- “Welcome… to Outside.”

Ned turned. Figures were watching him.

Humanoid shapes, wrong in every way, their bodies stuttering through static like bad reception. Faces flickered — human for a blink, then empty grids, then things with too many eyes.

“Where am I?” he whispered.

One of them grinned, but the grin crawled across its face like a bug in the code. Teeth sharp as glass. “You… are lost. No… you ran.”

They closed in, glitching with every step.

Limbs bent in directions that screamed wrong, as if joints were suggestions they no longer obeyed.

Ned staggered up. “Stay back!” His voice cracked like ice.

The tallest one tilted its head with a sound like splintering wood. Its voice came in layers — voices over voices, out of sync, clawing over each other- “Leaking… leaking bright thread. Still warm. Still real.”

“What do you want from me?” Ned pressed against a wall that crumbled under his touch.

Static laughter hissed between them, broken by silence. Then another spoke, voice slurring through syllables like spilled ink-

“Want? Need? Not words here. We… eat meaning.”

The tallest one twitched closer, a ripple of jagged limbs- “You… slipped through. A hole in the weave. The page torn open. We smell the open door.”

“I don’t understand!” Ned shouted, his throat raw.

They spasmed in unison, voices stacking like broken chords- “Understand — stand — stand — no, he doesn’t, he can’t, — but he will — when we wear his name.”

Ned’s breath caught. “Wear… what?”

The creature bent so close he felt the heat of its corruption bleeding through the air. Its mouth opened too wide, teeth rearranging themselves in patterns that hurt to look at.

“You still tethered,” it crooned in a hush of static. “You still bright. Through you, Outside goes in.”

Ned reeled back, stomach lurching. “No — stay away from me!”

A sound split the air. A hum, rising like a blade drawn from an infinite sheath. The sky cracked. White light speared down, ripping the clouds apart. Through the wound, a figure descended.

The woman in black.

Her eyes burned like suns behind glass.

Her voice rolled across the ruins, velvet over thunder- “Ned. Come back. Before they take you apart.”

The glitch-things shrieked — not in pain, but in defiance. Their shapes convulsed, unraveling and reforming like screaming code. Words tumbled from their mouths in spirals, jagged and wrong- “Don’t follow the script — the script is a cage — tear the page, tear the page — they’ll bind you in choice, Ned — bind you with lies—”

Her hand pierced the light, pale and sharp as a blade. “Take it,” she commanded. “Or you’ll dissolve with them.”

The creatures leaned in, whispering like rust crawling across metal- “Stay — stay — and we show you the marrow of real — the place beneath the skin of truth — choose no door, Ned, choose the crack.”

Ned stared at her. At the rift. At the monsters, their eyes boiling with hunger and something like hope. Behind him, the world shook as the fracture in the sky widened, vomiting light.

And in that chaos, for the first time, Ned understood- There was no safe choice. There never was.

Her voice thundered again, all edges now- “Decide. Now.”

The glitch-things howled in perfect unison, a static choir- “Choose choose choose — or be unmade.”

Ned’s chest heaved. His pulse roared like a storm in his skull. He reached — not for her hand. Not for their claws.

For the crack in the wall. Black. Jagged.

Beating like a heart.

“NO!” Her scream was a god’s verdict.

The light flared like judgment as the doors froze mid-close, the ruins convulsing. “That is not yours!”

He didn’t stop. He dove into the wound.

And fell into darkness.

When he woke, the world was wrong again.

The asphalt was still beneath him, but the sky above was a throbbing, ulcerous red.

Towers collapsed like ribs torn from a body. The air tasted of iron and data. Far off, something massive dragged itself across the horizon, its limbs scraping code from the sky.

Behind him, voices whispered like teeth chattering in a dead frequency- “Welcome back, thread-cutter. Welcome to what they won’t let you see.”