Chapter 1 The Sky Glitches

Ayana POV

I noticed the problem before anyone else did.

The coffee machine on the fourth floor had a red light on the side, and it was blinking wrong. Three fast flashes. A pause. Two slow ones. Then nothing. Then it started again.

I stood there with my cup and watched it through two full cycles.

"Machine's broken," I said.

Priya didn't look up from her screen. "It's fine."

"The light's blinking in a pattern. Three, pause, two. That's an error code."

"It's a light, Ayana."

"I'm telling you it's an error code. That's not how it blinks when it's working."

Priya sighed the way she sighed at hold music.

Kershaw came past with his folder and took the coffee I hadn't poured yet.

"You going to stand there all morning?"

I stepped back. He pressed the button. Coffee came out. He walked off.

The light kept blinking.

The office smells of toner and other people's lunches. I sit by the radiator, which knocks every eleven minutes. Only I hear it.

At 9:40 Kershaw carried my reroute into Marchetti's office.

I watched through the glass. He held the printout with both hands, the way he never holds anything. He tapped the eastern loop and said something that made Marchetti nod. My handwriting sat in the corner of the page. He had folded it over.

He came out and dropped the folder on my desk.

"Good work, new girl." Loud enough for Priya to hear. She smiled at him.

I opened my mouth. I closed it.

The radiator knocked.

Across the street, the billboard above the phone shop stopped showing the woman with the phone.

It showed lines. Angles. No letters I know.

I counted to four and it was still there. The advert had never lasted longer than two.

The lines moved. Not like a video. Like something underneath the screen rearranging itself.

The woman came back with her smile.

"Priya. Look at the billboard."

"Mm."

"Look at it."

She looked for less time than a blink. "It's an advert."

"It was symbols. For four seconds. It's never on for four seconds."

"It's an advert, Ayana."

Then the sound went out.

Half a second. No more.

The phones stopped ringing. Priya stopped typing. The fan above the door stopped turning.

Then the phones rang and Priya typed and the fan turned and Kershaw laughed at his screen and nothing had happened.

I sat still with my hand on the desk.

It came again. And again. Eleven minutes apart, every time.

By the fourth one I was at the window with both palms on the glass.

The clocks were wrong.

Marchetti's wall clock said 10:44. My phone said 10:52.

The lift display went from four to seven to two to a number that isn't a floor.

Downstairs a man started shouting about the signal. Someone at reception started praying. Another man filmed her.

A woman near the door said the whole city was on a prank. A man beside her said it was the sun. Neither of them had looked outside.

I went down. Not to run. To look.

Outside, the street had stopped behaving.

Cars sat at angles they couldn't have reached. The traffic light showed red and green together.

A cyclist was on the kerb with both hands over his ears. A woman laughed at nothing and kept laughing.

Two men argued about whose network dropped first. A third filmed them. A fourth was already pulling at the shutter of the phone shop.

The air felt thick. Not hot. Thick, like the second before a storm, except the sky was clear and had been clear all morning.

Then I saw him.

Grey coat. Hands in his pockets. Standing perfectly still in a street that had come apart.

He wasn't watching the sky. He was watching the exits. The revolving door. The fire door on the left. The alley between the phone shop and the café.

Everyone here was looking up. He was counting ways out.

He turned and looked straight at me, and I had the cold thought that he'd been counting me too.

"Move," he said.

His voice didn't carry. It didn't need to.

"Move where?"

"Anywhere that isn't under glass."

I looked up.

The sky tore.

A seam opened from the tower block on Marrow Street to the overpass and kept going.

Behind it there was nothing. Not black. Not light. An absence with edges, and the edges moved.

Colour drained out of everything. The red of the bus, the yellow of the shop sign, all of it going grey.

The wind stopped. A crisp packet hung at head height and stayed there.

The city froze. One second. Maybe less. A man mid-stride with both feet off the ground. A pigeon stalled in the air. The laughing woman with her mouth open.

The pulse hit.

I was on the pavement with one hand on the kerb. The man in the grey coat was gone.

A thin grey line crossed the back of my right hand. Not a shadow. Not a scar. It didn't wipe off.

It widened into a panel, in front of my eyes and behind them at once. Cold. Flat.

THE SYSTEM IS ONLINE.

ZONE ALLOCATION IN PROGRESS.

ONE RULE ABOVE ALL OTHERS.

The street read it off the empty air. A man dropped to his knees. Another ran four steps and stopped, because there was nowhere yet to run to.

The panel cleared.

LEVEL UP OR DIE.