Romy Reed had never been known for her delicacy.

So, every time she ripped off the tape holding the electrodes to her skin, a hissed “ow” escaped through clenched teeth. She started with the ones on her arms, then squirmed around to reach those on her back, those she tore off with zero finesse, her patience already worn thin, and finally, she pulled off the cap with a satisfying click.

For a moment, she stopped, ready to hear the machine beep or the phone ring, but after a few minutes of flat silence, Romy carried on. With a quick gesture, she swept the blankets aside and jumped out of bed.  Cold immediately settled over her, and Romy couldn’t suppress a shiver when her feet touched the floor, grimacing as her migraine flared the moment the cold crept into her muscles. With all the fees students paid every semester, and still the university couldn’t be bothered to heat all the rooms ?

Romy grabbed her bag of clothes from under and dropped it heavily onto the bed. She began to get dressed, her thoughts already drifting to an escape plan. The room was on the second basement level of the Lionel-Groulx building, the same building where she usually had class, but on the fourth floor.  

The Université de Montréal, perched on its self-declared throne, the mountain it stood on, was famously a labyrinth, whether you were a regular or not. To make winter months easier for students, all the buildings on the hill were linked together by tunnels, turning the place into a kind of concrete anthill. The hallways all looked alike, long, flanked with identical doors, going off in every direction and on several floors. 

The buildings themselves were so numerous and scattered across campus that two metro stations served the area, one of them embedded directly inside the Roger-Gaudry Pavilion, the tower looming over the rest with its pretentious height.

It was exactly that metro entrance that Romy was aiming for, to head down four stations. If she played it right and the metro timing lined up, she could be back in an hour and a half and slide innocently back into bed.

But first, she had to navigate the hellscape of unfamiliar corridors.

She prowled toward the door of the antechamber, trying to shove her foot into her second sneaker with one hand while turning the handle with the other. Cautiously, she poked her head through the crack, ready to pull some bullshit excuse out of thin air if Aloys happened to be doing rounds or still working at his desk. But the only thing that greeted her was an uninviting gloom. 

The soft, color-shifting glow from the TV screen slipped through the narrow opening, and Romy jumped when the bands of light turned white, briefly illuminating a large machine beside her. Her heart still thudding, she reached into the pocket of her baggy jeans for her phone and turned on the flashlight, holding it out like a shield that might burn away any lurking shadows.

The squeaking of her soles was the only sound echoing in the lab, but Romy kept walking toward the second door ahead. The shadows moved in time with her, growing as the flash approached, shrinking as she passed, and yet Romy couldn’t shake the feeling that behind every object, a pair of eyes might be watching her. 

She passed Aloys’s desk, the only tidy area, where neatly stacked papers formed leaning towers around an old PC. Her flashlight, and her gaze, passed over the unsteady piles, until her eyes narrowed, trying to make out her name printed in capital letters on the side of a cardboard folder.

Romy froze. That was her file. And it was chunky. What the hell could they have written about her in there? She bit her lower lip, the folder practically taunting her from the edge of the pile. She didn’t have time for reading, obviously, but if everything went smoothly, maybe she could swipe it on the way back. Just for scientific curiosity. Just a little peek.

Her hand reached out, fingertips brushing the cardboard folder that seemed to call to her.

In an instant, her migraine exploded.

Her vision turned black, veiled with sparks of static, the pain flooding her skull so violently that she lost all sense of space. Romy didn’t feel herself fall, but the snowy blur in front of her eyes cleared just enough for her to see the ground rushing toward her. At the last second, she caught the desk with an outstretched hand, her phone dropping in a muffled clatter under the crash of papers collapsing around her, painfully loud in the heavy silence. Her strength faded, her grip on the wood loosened, and her body crumpled gently to the floor amid the flying sheets.  

She clutched her skull with a groan, her jaw clenched tight. The pain seemed to pour through her whole body, flaring up around her jaw, then gripping her throat and neck, until she felt her nerves twitching all the way to her fingertips.

Then, as suddenly as it had come, it disappeared.

Leaning against the desk, Romy blinked, dazed, and looked around. Her flashlight faced the floor, casting only a thin beam, but it was enough to see the extent of the damage in the white patches now covering the ground. A curse escaped her mouth at the chaos around her. What the hell had just happened ?

She checked her head with the tips of her fingers, then her face, half-expecting to find blood. She’d had migraines before, sure, but that? Maybe she should go to the hospital when she got back. Or call Aloys.

The silence settled back in, pressing around her like fog. But Romy snapped back to her goal. She grabbed the edge of the table to pull herself up, easier than she expected, picked her phone up from beneath a page, and kept moving.

She had only a few steps left now, and would’ve rushed for the door if the movement hadn’t caused the shadows to ripple in a sudden, chaotic wave.  Her right hand finally landed on the handle, the dampness of her palm meeting the chill of the metal with relief. Then, driven by instinct, she made the mistake of looking to the far-right corner of the room. To her right.

Her heart stuttered.

Her breath caught short, and without even realizing, she froze in place, trying not to make a sound. That corner of the room was thick with darkness. And she was sure, absolutely sure, that earlier that evening, nothing had been there. Now, two red dots glared back at her from the black.

Romy wasn’t thinking anymore. Her head emptied of all logic.  She stood frozen for a long moment, just staring at those two tiny lights that were staring back, unwavering.

With a sudden jerk, Romy pointed her flashlight toward the corner, ready to blind whatever-it-was and make a run for it. But instead of a monster spawned from the depths of hell (or her imagination), her light revealed just another machine she hadn’t noticed earlier. The two red lights blinked calmly, probably to indicate the thing was on or in sleep mode, how was she supposed to know?

She burst out laughing, a loud, uncontrollable cackle that released all the tension in her chest. Her hand ran through her hair, and she exhaled sharply.  God, she was going insane, and it had only been five minutes since she left the damn bed. She grabbed the handle and pushed open the door, determined to get out of this lab that had easily cost her ten years of her life expectancy.

As expected, she ended up in a long corridor, both sides so alike she had no idea which one she’d come from.  As she crossed the threshold, the white neon lights of the hallway blinded her.  A second curse slipped out, and she grimaced, lifting her arms to cover her eyes until they adjusted.  When she looked up again, Romy scanned both sides, searching for something that looked familiar, but nothing stood out.  All the doors were made from the same cheap wood, no labels, no panels.

“All roads lead to Rome,” she whispered, taking the path to the right.

She walked past an endless line of doors that only continued past the next junction, forming a maze with no clear end. Fatigue crept in, cold slipping back under her oversized sweater and jeans, one shoulder bare to the air. Under the flickering lights, her headache began its return, and she wondered if maybe she should go back to the hospital bed.

Until a sign caught her eye, a pictogram for an elevator.

Convinced her karmic balance had to be back to neutral by now, Romy threw herself toward the indicated direction with long, purposeful strides. But out of the corner of her eye, something odd stopped her in her tracks. On one of the many, many identical doors, a strange sign. 

Screwed in at the corners, a pictogram she didn’t recognize: a minimalist silhouette of a person with a round skull, next to a strand of DNA.  The whole thing framed inside a threatening yellow triangle that screamed for caution. Curiosity hit her hard. The last time she’d let it take over, she’d caused Aloys’s Pisa tower of papers to collapse. So, standing in front of this door, Romy hesitated, was it really worth it to open it? Just a little peek.  A quick crack of the door.  Two seconds and she’d be back to chasing the elevator. She groaned. 

She was going to do it.

Romy gently opened the door, holding her breath.

The harsh hallway light cast her long shadow across the white tile of what turned out to be, disappointingly, another lab. Romy frowned, shoulders dropping at the sheer normalcy of it. Nearly identical to the one she’d just left. Same floor. Same clutter, although differently arranged. 

Same desk, Aloys’, now pressed against the back wall. Or rather, against the glass window. This time, the glass was clear, offering a direct view into the antechamber, once again identical down to the disgusting plastic yellow phone.

But Romy’s eyebrows shot up, and her mouth parted slightly when, instead of an empty bed, she saw a person curled up in the sheets.

Their head was turned toward the window, dark hair visible, face nearly as pale as the linens. For a moment she thought they were dead, until she saw their side rise and fall.

A chill crawled up her spine as the absurd voyeurism of the moment hit her. She closed the door quietly, promising herself she’d never speak of it.

Disoriented, Romy returned to her search for the elevator at the end of the hall. The rest of the way was uneventful, no surprises, no new terrors. Her heart finally found a steady rhythm again.

The metal doors slid open instantly when she pressed the button, and as she stepped inside, Romy wondered idly who’d used it last. Her? Aloys? Or that ghostly boy in the bed?

She hit the button for the ground floor. As the elevator moved, gravity shifted. Her stomach lurched. Bile rose in her throat, and she slapped a hand over her mouth to keep from puking on the gleaming metal walls.

“Probably caught a cold in that stupid freezing lab,” she thought bitterly, “what a night this was turning into.”

The elevator jolted to a halt, rattling through her bones. She clenched her jaw, fighting the acidic taste and saliva flooding her mouth. She burst out of the elevator before the doors had fully opened, smacking into the metal sides on her way out, and stumbled toward the nearest trash bin to empty her stomach with a pitiful groan. Spitting the leftover saliva, she shuffled to a water fountain to rinse her mouth.

Finally, Romy straightened up.

Her headache still pulsed faintly, but throwing up had lifted a weight off her. Like she’d vomited up the stress from the floors below, too. But when her eyes landed on the sign pointing toward yet another tunnel, this one leading to the metro, a flicker of anxiety brushed against her mind.

Instead, she turned to the building’s exit. The cold slapped her face, making her eyes tear up, and she almost missed the lab’s chill. It was only November; the snow was still thin across the lawns and hadn’t stuck to the roads or sidewalks, only leaving behind brown slushy puddles. Romy walked down the steps to the sidewalk and spotted a row of self-serve bikes. She didn’t live far, if she took an electric one for the uphill parts, she could be home in fifteen minutes, max.

The process was quick.  She unlocked a bike, adjusted the seat with a flick of the wrist, and rode off, wind tangling her hair.

Little clouds of condensation escaped her slightly parted lips at regular intervals. Her thighs burned with the effort of pedaling uphill, but she welcomed the heat, it kept her from fully feeling the bite of a Canadian November evening. Her thoughts wandered, distracted, as she blew through red lights without the slightest hesitation. The residential streets were nearly deserted at this late hour.

Romy was thinking about her file, lying crushed on the lab floor beneath a storm of loose pages. How the hell was she going to explain that to Aloys? That she’d just taken off, left everything behind, to go help a girl she’d only had coffee with once? She could already feel the repair fees slipping through her fingers. All that for what ? To help a girl who might now be crying outside her apartment.

***

Romy jumped off the bike and shoved it forcefully into the docking station, waiting to hear the little beep confirming the end of her ride. She was only two minutes from home now, her apartment just a bit further up the street. She decided to jog the last stretch, not wanting to get caught in the cold. Her headache had nearly vanished by now, and with each building she passed, brick, wood, gardenless and bare, she felt her energy return little by little. The tall trees lining the street, spaced every few meters, were shedding their final red leaves under the streetlights.

Finally, Romy slowed as she caught sight of the familiar, dilapidated wooden staircase that led directly to the first floor. The lack of lighting made it hard to see who was standing by the door of the entryway, but from the straight posture and broad shoulders, she knew it was Ezia. She didn’t turn around as Romy climbed the stairs, her steps heavy now that the adrenaline was wearing off.

“Oh, Ezia,” she panted, “are you okay?”

She reached the top step, standing on the creaking boards of the porch. The other woman turned around, as if surprised to see her. Romy squinted, trying to make out her face in the gloom. Only one thing stood out, too white. Too bright.

A too-wide grin.

Suddenly, rage flared in Romy’s chest.

“Ezia, you son of a bi- ”