"You're the fourth," the child said. "The first three screamed. Don't scream. It makes the memory-pain worse."
So Elena sat down in the alien wheat, under the two suns, and began. 3a6f6f3d-8a7a-42a8-9ddc-0c5ac89d6004 4 -NEW
Elena felt the weight of the real world pressing at the edges of the vision — her hand still on the orb, her heartrate spiking on the monitor outside. She had three minutes before neural feedback fried her cerebral cortex. "You're the fourth," the child said