The rain had stopped, and the world outside the shelter felt eerily calm as we walked back toward the village. Vale led the way, her strides purposeful despite the muddy streets and the lingering tension in the air. 

Harris followed behind, his expression as sour as ever. I trailed after them, still clutching the small device Vale had given me earlier, the weight of everything that had happened pressing down on me.  

The shelter, Rio, her promise—everything felt like it was swirling in my head, a storm of its own. But I didn’t say anything. I wasn’t sure I could trust my voice.  

We turned down a side street, and Vale stopped abruptly, turning to face me. Her gray eyes were sharp, studying me like she was searching for something.  

“You’re serious about this?” she asked.  

“About what?” I said, though I already knew what she meant.  

“Joining the Rift Control Agency,” she said. “You’re serious about wanting to be part of this?”  

I hesitated, glancing at Harris. He didn’t say anything, but the look on his face was clear—he thought this was a terrible idea.  

“Yes,” I said finally, my voice steady. “I’m serious.”  

Vale raised an eyebrow, crossing her arms. “You realize this isn’t some adventure, right? This isn’t about saving the day or playing the hero. This job is messy. It’s dangerous. People die.”  

“I know,” I said. “And I still want to do it.”  

Harris let out a low scoff, but Vale ignored him.  

“Normally,” she said, “you’d never even get a chance. The head of the Agency, the great General Jackson Appalachia, doesn’t let anyone in that he doesn’t already know and trust.”  

“So what does that mean for me?” I asked.  

“It means you’re lucky I’m his daughter,” Vale said bluntly.  

I blinked, caught off guard. “Wait—what?”  

“He trusts me more than anyone,” she said. “If I tell him to give you a shot, he will. That’s how Harris joined the Agency. But if I do this, you need to be absolutely sure this is what you want.”  

“I am,” I said quickly. “I know it won’t be easy, but I want to help. I want to be part of this.”  

Vale studied me for a long moment, her expression unreadable. Then she nodded. “Fine. I’ll vouch for you. But don’t make me regret this.”  

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” I said, trying for a smile.  

Harris muttered something under his breath, shaking his head as he turned away. “You’re going to regret this,” he said to Vale, his tone dripping with disdain.  

“Noted,” Vale said dryly.  

The walk to the Rift Control Agency’s secret headquarters felt like something out of a spy movie. We left the village behind, crossing a narrow path that wound through dense woods until we reached a large outcropping of rock. At first, I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, but Vale pressed her hand against a small, seemingly random section of the rock.  

There was a faint click, and then the ground beneath us rumbled as a hidden door slid open, revealing a metal staircase leading down into darkness.  

“Welcome to HQ,” Vale said, stepping inside.  

Harris followed without a word, and I hesitated for only a moment before heading down after them.  

The staircase led to a long, brightly lit corridor lined with doors. The walls were sleek and metallic, and the air smelled faintly of antiseptic. Agents passed us in the hallway, their suits identical to the ones Vale and Harris wore, and I couldn’t help but feel out of place in my rain-soaked jacket and muddy sneakers.  

We entered a large, open room filled with rows of desks and monitors. Agents hurried between workstations, their voices blending into a constant hum of activity.  

“This is the Operations Center,” Vale explained as we walked. “It’s the heart of the Agency—where we predict the next rifts, coordinate missions, and analyze data.”  

I tried to take it all in, but it was overwhelming. Everywhere I looked, there was something new to see: maps with glowing markers, agents typing furiously at keyboards, strange devices scattered across desks.  

“Don’t get lost,” Harris said gruffly. “It’s bigger than it looks.”  

We passed through another set of doors, entering a quieter area filled with offices and meeting rooms. Vale led me to a small office near the end of the hall and motioned for me to sit.  

“Wait here,” she said. “I need to check in with Dad… I mean General Appalachia.”  

Before I could respond, she and Harris disappeared, leaving me alone in the sterile, unfamiliar space.  

The quiet of Vale’s office was almost worse than the chaos of the Operations Center. I sat in the stiff, too-clean chair, tapping my fingers on the armrest while my thoughts spiraled.  

I was in. Or at least, I was about to be. The Rift Control Agency. A place I knew almost nothing about, except that it dealt with storms and entities that shouldn’t exist. And that it had just become the center of my life.  

The door creaked open, and Vale stepped inside, her expression as composed as ever.  

“Good news,” she said, leaning against the desk. “General Appalachia agreed. You’re officially part of the team—on a probationary basis.”  

“Probationary?” I repeated.  

“Don’t mess it up,” she said with a faint smirk.  

“This is a mistake,” Harris muttered, crossing his arms.  

“Noted,” Vale said again, brushing him off.  

She gestured for me to follow her. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to the General. After that, we’ll see how useful you are.”  

I stood, my legs feeling oddly heavy, and followed her out into the hallway.  

We walked past rows of offices and labs, the faint hum of activity seeping through the walls. I tried to keep up, but it was hard not to get distracted by the glimpses of strange equipment and glowing screens. It felt like I’d stepped into another world.

Vale led me into a spacious room with a long, polished table at its center. A tall man stood at the far end, his back to us as he studied a wall-mounted screen.

“General Appalachia,” Vale said, her tone formal.  

The man turned. He was imposing, with broad shoulders and a square jaw. His dark hair was streaked with gray. One of his eyes was a cloudy blue, the other a dark brown.

“This is him?” the General asked, his voice deep and steady.  

“Yes,” Vale said. “Ben Carter.”  

The General’s gaze lingered on me, and I had to fight the urge to squirm under his scrutiny.  

“You don’t look like much,” he said bluntly.  

“Thanks?” I said, unsure if that was supposed to be a compliment.  

Vale cleared her throat. “He’s new, but he’s willing to learn. Like I said, I’ll take responsibility for him.”  

The General raised an eyebrow, his expression unreadable. “You’d better,” he said. “I don’t have time to babysit.”  

Vale nodded, and I breathed a small sigh of relief as the General turned back to his screen.  

“Welcome to the Agency,” he said over his shoulder, his tone flat.  

The rest of the day was a whirlwind. Vale wasted no time putting me to work, dragging me into her lab and explaining her current project in rapid, technical detail.  

It didn’t take long for her to realize I was completely out of my depth.  

“You’re useless with this, aren’t you?” she said, raising an eyebrow as I stared blankly at a monitor covered in graphs and equations.  

“Pretty much,” I admitted.  

She sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose. “Figures. All right, we’ll start simple. You can help me organize these reports.”  

It wasn’t glamorous, but I was happy to be useful. I spent the next hour sorting through piles of data, most of which made no sense to me, while Vale muttered about deadlines and incompetence.  

I was beginning to wonder if I’d made a huge mistake when the door to the lab burst open, and a whirlwind of energy swept into the room.  

“Cassandra!”  

The woman who’d entered was a stark contrast to everyone else I’d met in the Agency. She was small and slender, with blonde curls that bounced as she moved and a wide, infectious smile. She wore a bright floral dress, completely at odds with the sterile lab environment, and carried a tray of what looked like cookies.  

“Mia,” Vale said, her tone weary.  

Mia’s smile widened. “I brought snacks!” she said, setting the tray down on the nearest table. “You’ve been working so hard—I thought you could use a break!”  

Vale sighed. “Mia, we don’t have time for—”  

“Who’s this?” Mia interrupted, her bright eyes landing on me.  

“This is Ben,” Vale said reluctantly. “He’s new.”  

Mia gasped, clapping her hands together. “Oh, how exciting! Welcome, Ben!”  

“Uh, thanks,” I said, unsure of how to respond to her overwhelming enthusiasm.  

She grabbed a cookie from the tray and handed it to me with a grin. “Here, try this! Everyone loves them!”  

I took the cookie, hesitating for only a moment before taking a bite. It was surprisingly good—soft and buttery, with just the right amount of sweetness.  

“Wow,” I said. “This is great.”  

Mia beamed. “I knew you’d like it! I’ll bring more next time.”  

Vale muttered something under her breath, but Mia didn’t seem to notice.  

“Anyway, I should go check on Jackson,” Mia said cheerfully. “He’s been so stressed lately, poor thing. You know how he gets.”  

“Right,” Vale said dryly.  

Mia waved brightly at me before sweeping out of the room, leaving the tray of cookies behind.  

I turned to Vale, raising an eyebrow. “So your first name is Cassandra? And who was that?”  

“Yes, my name is Cassandra, and the woman with the cookies was my stepmother,” she said, her tone flat.  

I blinked. “Your stepmother?”  

“Yeah.” Vale said, clearly uninterested in elaborating.

I barely had time to process this information before I was whisked off to meet someone Vale called “the brain behind the Agency.”  

“Dr. Odium’s the lead scientist here,” Vale explained as we walked briskly through a series of corridors lined with reinforced glass walls. Behind the glass, strange machines hummed and pulsed with energy, their designs looking more like something out of a sci-fi movie than anything I’d seen before. “He’s been studying rift entities since the Agency was founded. Don’t let his appearance throw you off—he’s brilliant.”  

“His appearance?” I asked, slightly nervous.  

“You’ll see,” she said, smirking faintly.  

We reached a door marked with a bright red Restricted Access sign, and Vale swiped her ID card to let us in. The room on the other side was a large lab filled with equipment that I couldn’t begin to understand. 

Tubes of glowing liquid lined one wall, while charts and diagrams covered the other. In the center of the room was a tall, wiry man with wild white hair sticking up in every direction. He wore a lab coat that looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks, and a pair of thick glasses magnified his sharp, almost predatory eyes.  

“Agent Vale!” he called out, his voice surprisingly deep. “And who’s this?”  

“This is Ben Carter,” Vale said. “The General approved him as a probationary assistant.”  

Dr. Odium looked me up and down, his eyes narrowing. “Interesting. Do you know anything about dimensional anomalies, young man?”  

“Not much,” I admitted.  

“Good,” he said, clapping his hands together. “You’re a blank slate! Easier to teach that way.”  

He motioned for me to follow him as he moved toward a workstation piled high with papers and strange gadgets. Vale walked away.  

Dr. Odium launched into a rapid-fire explanation of something involving dimensional energy fields, stabilization matrices, and “reality harmonics,” none of which made any sense to me. I nodded along, trying to look interested, but my brain quickly gave up trying to keep up.  

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” he said, pausing to peer at me over his glasses.  

“Definitely,” I said, though I had no idea what I was agreeing with.  

“Here, let me show you something,” he said, picking up a small, handheld device with blinking lights. He handed it to me carefully, as though it were made of glass.  

“What does it do?” I asked, turning it over in my hands.  

“Don’t press anything,” he said quickly.  

“Noted,” I said, holding it gingerly.  

Before I could ask more questions, the door opened, and Mia burst into the room.  

“Doctor!” she said brightly. “I brought you tea!”  

Dr. Odium sighed but took the cup she offered, muttering something about interruptions. Mia turned to me, her smile as bright as ever.  

“Ben!” she said. “How are you liking it here so far?”  

“It’s... a lot,” I said honestly.  

“Don’t worry,” she said, waving a hand dismissively. “You’ll get used to it. It’s all very exciting, isn’t it?”  

As she spoke, I took a step back, accidentally bumping into a stack of equipment. The device in my hand slipped free, and I instinctively reached out to grab it—but before I could, I froze.  

Literally.  

I was hovering a foot above the ground, the sensation strange and weightless. I blinked, trying to make sense of what was happening, and then noticed Mia standing a few feet away, her hand stretched toward me.  

“What the—”  

She let out a nervous laugh, lowering her hand. As she did, I dropped gently to the floor, my knees wobbling as I steadied myself.  

“Are you okay?” she asked, her tone overly cheerful.  

“You... you just—”  

“Telekinesis,” Dr. Odium said matter-of-factly. “Quite remarkable, isn’t it?”  

I stared at Mia, who was fidgeting with the hem of her floral dress, avoiding my gaze.  

“You’re a rift entity,” I said, the realization hitting me like a punch to the gut. 

“No!” Mia said quickly, waving her hands. “Of course not! That’s absurd!”  

Dr. Odium sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Mia, please.”  

She huffed, crossing her arms.

“She’s an entity,” Dr. Odium confirmed, adjusting his glasses. “But she's stable. She doesn’t produce a storm, nor does she fade. She’s completely integrated into our reality.”  

“How?” I asked, still trying to wrap my head around it.  

“Well, this is all theoretical, but,” he said, gesturing to one of the charts on the wall. “I believe that if an entity has a strong enough reason to stay in this reality, that reason can bind them fully to our reality, kind of like an anchor. In Mia’s case, it’s likely her... enthusiasm… for the General.”  

Mia beamed at the mention of General Appalachia, her earlier embarrassment forgotten. “He’s the love of my life,” she said dreamily.  

I felt my stomach turn. “So... she’s just stuck here?”  

“Precisely,” Dr. Odium said. “Though all of this is only a guess based on the information Mia has given me about her experiences in this world. There's no other reported instances of this happening, so it's hard to confirm whether its true or not. But you can't tell anyone about this, the fewer people who know about Anchor Theory, the better.”  

Mia stepped closer, her bright demeanor slipping slightly. “You won’t tell anyone, will you?” she asked, her tone uncharacteristically serious. “Especially not Jackson.”  

I hesitated, the weight of her request sinking in. “I won’t say anything,” I said finally.  

Dr. Odium nodded, satisfied. “Good. This knowledge could cause chaos if it got into the wrong hands.”  

But I barely heard him. My mind was racing, a single thought blazing through the haze of confusion.