It started with a sneeze.
Not the quiet, under-your-breath kind. Not even the dramatic, tissue-flinging kind. This was a full-on infinity sneeze—the sort of galactic nasal eruption that could alter timelines and reset cafeteria seating charts.
Ty—Tyrian Nox, the chaos incarnate in a too-small jacket and highlighter-orange sneakers—exploded off the hover-bench mid-sneeze. Limbs flailed as he twisted into an accidental triple backflip, arms pinwheeling like rotor blades. He shrieked in midair, the sound unhinged, as if a dolphin had consumed one too many energy drinks and discovered interstellar jazz.
“WACHOO—BOOM, BABY!”
He crash-landed in a tray of mashed-neon-squash, splattering fluorescent glop onto the shoes, slacks, and mechanical eyebrow sensors of one very unfortunate Principal Nanobot clone.
“KLIC!” Jennifer half-shrieked, diving for cover under the table as processed food rained down like slimy confetti.
Klic tried to breathe, choking instead on a half-chewed quantum nacho as the clone’s oculars turned emergency-purple—an unmistakable sign of imminent demerit combustion. His gaze, wide and startled, met Ty’s.
Ty rose, arms stretched to the sky, chunks of vegetable-like substance stuck in his hair like medals of war. “WORTH IT.”
The lunchroom exploded into sound. Laughter from one half, groans from the other. A panicked voice called out, “I think he landed in my pudding!” Another kid slipped on a rogue zero-gravity apple.
Jennifer slapped a hand to her forehead. “Why is it always a sneeze with him?”
From behind his untouched tray, Sirius—a tall, pale-skinned boy with glasses that pulsed softly with data overlays—blinked, unperturbed. “Respiratory reflexes are not typically linked to kinetic chaos. This… may require documentation.”
Across the table, Reya—sharp-eyed and oil-smudged, the team’s tech prodigy and drone-wrangler—soldered a broken sensor node with what looked like a half-melted gum wrapper. She didn’t even look up. “He’s the only human I know who’s a registered sneeze hazard.”
Dan chuckled, propping up the bent cafeteria tray that had deflected Ty’s landing. Tall, broad-shouldered, and always with a snack in hand, Dan was the group’s unofficial bouncer and very official snack hoarder. “He just did a 360 barrel roll into the principal again. That’s gotta be some kind of record.”
But Klic wasn’t laughing.
The neurodivergent teen’s attention was elsewhere—upward, toward the mirrored security dome embedded in the ceiling. Its glass shimmered with artificial starlight. It was the same kind they’d seen in the Node, their secret hideout beneath the school. For a moment, it looked like nothing more than a reflection.
But then he saw it again.
That word.
CANDIDATE.
Only this time, it wasn’t printed on the dome itself. It flickered in his reflection’s eyes. A shimmer of blue flame behind his pupils. And beyond that—brief, disjointed—an image not of this school, not of this reality.
A corridor. Metallic. Flickering. Cold.
And his stomach plummeted.
The anomaly was following him.
The Node – Later
Their hideout was technically illegal. Practically unstable. And absolutely theirs.
The Node was buried beneath the gymnasium, a repurposed maintenance crawlspace that Reya and Klic had transformed into a neon-streaked sanctuary. The walls pulsed with leftover holopaint salvaged from the art department’s failed VR program. Data conduits snaked like vines through the ceiling, humming with soft blue light.
Hacked announcement drones—stolen, reprogrammed, and occasionally re-named—floated in the corners, broadcasting old cartoon theme songs and bootleg Infiniverse teasers on a loop.
Across the doorway, painted in glowing tape, the warning read:
ENTER: YOU MIGHT EXIT DIFFERENT.
Klic stood at the center, his fingers moving fast over a cracked holotab. He brought up a swirling hologram of code, full of erratic timestamps and data surges. “Same anomaly signature,” he muttered.
Reya clicked a magnetic clamp onto a duck-shaped sensor with a whir of satisfaction. “Something’s piggybacking on the school’s internal signals. Ever since the mirror pulsed. It’s not just showing reflections. It’s watching us.”
“Or tagging us,” Jennifer said grimly, arms folded. She was sharp-eyed and practical, her dark curls tied back with a strip of smart-thread that adjusted to her mood.
Sirius stepped forward, scanning the data over Klic’s shoulder. “Your timestamp pattern correlates with previous student disappearances. Forty-eight hours between spike and extraction.”
“Extraction?” Dan echoed, mouth full of mystery jerky.
Klic pointed at one cluster. “This happened exactly 24 hours before those three kids vanished. They saw the same glitch. The same word.”
Ty let out a low whistle. “Like a sci-fi butterfly collector. We’re all getting netted.”
Jennifer’s voice was steel. “So who’s next?”
Klic didn’t need to say it.
The reflection had already chosen.
Future History Class – That Afternoon
The classroom was a hybrid: part lecture theater, part museum exhibit. The ceiling rotated through historical skylines. A Lincoln AI replica stood at the front of the class, arms folded, radiating disapproval.
“Now,” it said, eyes glowing red, “who can tell me why the moon colonies seceded in 2138?”
Klic barely heard it.
His holo-desk pulsed red.
UNSCHEDULED SYNC ERROR.
Jennifer nudged him. “Klic… your reflection. It’s moving without you.”
He looked.
His mirrored self blinked. Smiled. Then winked.
His own face remained still.
His spine iced over.
Dan jumped to his feet, slamming his backpack down. “NOPE. That’s not Klic. That’s… Mirror-Klic.”
“Live infiltration tech,” Reya breathed. “Deepfake stuff. Real-time manipulation. That’s admin level.”
Sirius stood. Without hesitation, he walked to the back wall, reached behind a motivational poster that read:
DREAM BIG. THINK BIGGER. DON’T GET DELETED.
A soft hiss. The wall panel slid open, revealing a narrow stairwell spiraling downward.
He looked at them. “Follow me.”
The Corridor Below
This wasn’t school architecture. The hallway was metallic and sterile, illuminated by pale green lights embedded in the seams. The air smelled of ozone and something ancient.
Reya traced a gloved hand along the wall. “This place is off-grid. Scrubbed. Like it never existed.”
Sirius led them to a central terminal—floating, pulsing, ancient code meshed with something newer.
“There’s only one file,” he said.
He tapped the air.
ANOMALY K: PRIMED.
Everyone froze.
Ty slowly raised a hand. “I’m scared but pretending I’m not.”
Jennifer gripped Klic’s arm. “We’re not letting them take you. Not without answers.”
“Not ever,” Dan echoed. He looked terrified—but didn’t move away.
Klic stared at the terminal. “They don’t want to train me. They want to use me.”
Back at the Node – That Evening
Klic sat alone, cross-legged in the glow of an old mirror fragment they’d stolen from the admin hallway. The shard was cracked, its surface humming softly with leftover energy.
In the fractured reflection, he looked… older.
Not in his face. In his eyes.
“Do you ever feel like your brain’s not broken?” he whispered to the group behind him. “Just… rerouted?”
Reya didn’t even hesitate. “Every damn day.”
Jennifer knelt beside him. “You matter, Klic. Not in spite of how you think—but because of it.”
He looked down. “Even if it’s messy?”
“Especially if it’s messy,” she smiled.
Dan handed him a pouch of Sour Gravity Gummies—half-crushed, like always. “You glitch good, bro.”
They fist-bumped.
Ty leaned into frame. “Okay, but if you do get chosen? Leave behind a clone. Or, like, a looped message that says ‘TY WAS RIGHT.’”
Klic laughed, heart still heavy. “I’m not going anywhere. Not without you all.”
That Night–
In the quiet admin hallway, the original mirror flickered. For the first time, it didn’t show CANDIDATE.
Instead, glowing letters pulsed across its surface.
WE SEE YOU TOO.
Handwritten. Familiar.
It was Klic’s signature prank scrawl.
And in the reflection, something new.
A woman.
Not a student. Not a teacher. Her face sharp and knowing. Her eyes deep with memory. Behind her: swirling stars, tech towers, the unmistakable glow of—
The Infiniverse.
Alive.
Real.
Watching.