The facility was a labyrinth of hidden doors and secret passages, the kind of place where you half-expected to find a white rabbit or a masked bandit, apprehended by a gang of young adults and a Great Dane. At the center of it all was Dr. Richard Calhoun, a man who, Elias increasingly suspected, knew far more about the missed steps than he let on. He was a Great Dane.
It took some doing, but with Dylan's (the Voice of Reason) help, Elias breached the secure servers, uncovering information that stretched the grin of madness across his face, like bubblegum. Calhoun had been experimenting with consciousness, treating it as a game where minds were the pieces and reality the board. The missed steps were part of it—a method to destabilize the mind, shifting it between realities as easily as shuffling a deck of cards.
Elias pored over the data, his thoughts electrons spinning in wild, uncontrolled, orderly orbits. Calhoun had been trying to harness the missed steps, to use them to transfer consciousness from one reality to another. It carried a sort of grotesque logic.
"You're losing yourself, Elias," Miranda said, her voice trembling slightly as she took in the implications. "This isn't healthy. You're chasing shadows."
She was right. He was not chasing shadows; the shadows were closing in on him.
YOU ARE READING
The Step After
Short StoryIn the unremarkable confines of his fleeting apartment, Elias Wren experiences a misstep that irrevocably alters his perception of reality. As the fabric of his world begins to fray, each faltering step draws him deeper into a labyrinth of alternate...
