Chapter 1: The Girl Who Shouldn't Exist

Chapter 1: The Girl Who Shouldn't Exist

The universe outside Kevin’s window hummed a single, mournful note. It was the color of a day-old bruise, a swirling infinity of purple and black that pressed against the panoramic glass of the 47th-floor food court. Down below—or was it up? Direction had lost all meaning—a distant, silent nebula spiraled like cream in cold-brew coffee. He’d counted 832 sunrises he hadn’t seen.

Day 832 was, in most respects, identical to Day 831. His laptop, a relic from The Before, was open. The Wi-Fi signal, miraculously strong and unwavering, was his only tether to a world that may as well have been a dream. He was scrolling through a decade-old forum about a cancelled sci-fi show, the digital ghosts arguing about a finale that no longer mattered. It was comfort food for the soul.

Actual comfort food, however, remained elusive. His stomach grumbled, a familiar protest against the culinary purgatory of The Lucent. He eyed the pristine, gleaming counters of the food court. Panda Express. Sbarro. Cinnabon. All perfectly stocked, perfectly clean, and perfectly replenished every morning at precisely 3:47 a.m. by unseen hands. A daily miracle he’d long since accepted with the same weary resignation as the moaning void.

His desire was simple, almost primal: a greasy, MSG-laden plate of Orange Chicken. The obstacle, as always, was his own apathy. Getting up required effort. It required acknowledging the silent, twitching residents scattered around the food court, the human debris of whatever cosmic event had marooned them here.

He saw Brenda from accounting, now the high priestess of the CrossFit Coven, leading two gaunt followers in a series of silent burpees near the defunct Jamba Juice. He saw Gary, the former marketing manager, holding court at the Pinkberry. Gary wore his crown of frozen yogurt cups and duct tape, his wild eyes scanning his flock—the Order of Eternal Soft Serve. Kevin shuddered. Last week, Gary had declared a holy war on the Sbarro, claiming the pepperoni was blasphemy against the "Great Swirl." It had been messy.

Kevin was a neutral party. A Switzerland of cynical survival with a population of one. His rule was simple: don't make eye contact, don't get involved, and for the love of God, stay away from the froyo.

He was about to finally push himself to his feet when he saw her.

And the world tilted.

She was sitting at a small table near the Burger King, a notorious dead zone no one ever went near. She wore a simple black hoodie, dark jeans, and white earbuds that snaked into her pocket. Her dark, straight hair fell over her shoulders. She was eating a Whopper, methodical and unhurried.

Kevin froze, his fingers hovering over the trackpad.

He knew every single person in The Lucent. All 114 of them. He knew their names, their pre-banishment jobs, their particular brand of insanity. He knew that Dave from HR believed the void was whispering stock tips to him and that Susan from legal was building a raft out of Cinnabon trays.

He did not know this woman.

She wasn't one of the lunatics. She wasn't one of the catatonic ones who stared into space. She was… normal. Utterly, disturbingly normal. She looked like she had just walked in off a busy San Francisco street, maybe on her lunch break. There was a profound stillness about her, an unreadable calm in her sharp features that was more alien than the cosmic horror show outside.

Who was she?

The desire for Orange Chicken evaporated, replaced by a frantic, clawing need to understand. This was the obstacle. In a world governed by twisted, but predictable, rules—the daily food reset, the absence of escape, the same 114 faces—she was an impossibility. A glitch in the system.

Kevin’s mind raced. Maybe she was from one of the residential floors he avoided, the upper levels where the crazier cults had taken root? No, he’d done a full census in his first year, a desperate project to maintain his sanity. 114 souls. No more, no less.

His action was involuntary. He began to close his laptop, a magnetic pull drawing him toward her. He had to ask. He had to know. He stood up, his chair scraping against the polished floor. The sound was unnaturally loud in the cavernous space, drawing a brief, twitchy glance from one of Gary’s yogurt acolytes.

The woman didn't look up. She took another bite of her burger, chewed, and swallowed. Her movements were economical, precise. She seemed completely unaware of the moaning abyss, the cultists, the sheer wrongness of it all. It was as if she were in a different reality entirely, one that just happened to be occupying the same physical space.

Kevin took a step. Then another. His heart hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat against the low hum of the void. This felt more dangerous than confronting Gary during a lactose-fueled sermon. The insane, you could understand. The impossible was something else entirely.

He was halfway to her table when she finished her burger. She carefully placed the wrapper on her tray, consolidated her trash, and stood up. For a fleeting second, her eyes met his across the food court. They were dark and depthless, holding an unnerving neutrality. There was no curiosity, no fear, no recognition. It was like looking at a security camera.

Then she turned and walked away.

The turning point. Panic seized him. He couldn’t let her just disappear.

“Hey!” he called out, his voice cracking. “Wait!”

She didn’t stop. She didn’t slow down. She walked toward the service corridor behind the Burger King, a dark hallway that led to the loading docks and, presumably, the edge of their pocket dimension. She pushed open the grimy double doors and was gone.

Kevin broke into a run, his sneakers squeaking on the pristine floor. He ignored the startled looks from the CrossFit Coven and the suspicious glare from Gary’s throne. He shoved the service doors open, expecting to find her just inside.

The corridor was empty.

It was a short hallway, barely thirty feet long, ending in a massive, sealed metal bay door. There were no other exits. A stack of flattened cardboard boxes sat against one wall. A mop bucket leaned against the other. The air was stale with the smell of old grease.

She was gone. It was impossible. He hadn't been more than five seconds behind her.

He stood there for a full minute, his breath coming in ragged gasps. Had he imagined it? Was he finally cracking, his mind inventing new faces to break the monotony before it shattered completely?

He stumbled back into the food court, a cold dread seeping into his bones. He walked to the table where she had been sitting.

It was empty. Not just empty of her, but empty of everything. There was no tray, no burger wrapper, no empty soda cup. The surface was wiped clean, reflecting the eerie purple glow from the windows. It was as if she had never been there at all.

This was the surprise, the final, terrifying twist of the knife. It wasn't just that she had vanished. It was that reality itself was erasing her.

A desperate idea sparked in his mind. The cameras. The Lucent’s security system still worked, looping its footage to a central server he’d hacked into months ago. It was his private, all-seeing eye.

He sprinted back to his table, his hands shaking as he flipped his laptop open. He bypassed the login, his fingers flying across the keyboard, typing in the familiar command strings. He pulled up the feed for Food Court Camera 4, the one with the clearest view of the Burger King seating area. He rewound the footage by five minutes.

He watched the screen, his blood turning to ice.

There he was, sitting at his table. He saw himself stand up, stare intently at something across the room, and then start walking. He saw himself call out, run to the service corridor, and then stumble back to an empty table.

The chair she had been sitting in was vacant for the entire duration of the clip. The table was clean. There was no woman. No Whopper. Nothing.

According to the unblinking eye of the camera, Kevin had been chasing a ghost.