Chapter Text
The pain is blinding.
It feels like someone’s drilling into Lucy’s skull.
Is this what they call a thunderclap headache?
Oh God—
Is she having a stroke?
A brain bleed?
Is she dying?!
Oh God.
Oh God.
Okay, maybe not jump to the worst conclusion.
It could just be a particularly bad migraine.
She hasn’t had them in ages, though. Not since her senior year, when her nana dragged her to her TCM practitioner after a flare that lasted for a few days. The lovely old gentleman proceeded to tell her that her migraines came from a constrained flow of, and therefore now stagnant, qi, especially in the liver system.
(Translation: You push yourself too hard. Relax.)
Relax.
Funny.
Like you can just flip a switch and get instant zen. No. There was acupuncture, yoga and a lot of herbal tea, and maybe she did manage to relax in the end, because eventually the migraines went away.
However…
Relax.
Right.
When was the last time she was even relaxed-adjacent?
Lucy can’t remember. She’s been stressed since the start of her rookie year. Which she expected—anything else would just have been naive. What she didn’t anticipate, though, was that her T.O. would be the main source of that stress.
Right.
Maybe I was naive.
Tim barely has to look at her to make her cortisol level skyrocket. And it’s clear he’s still working through some of the personal stuff that hit him last week because he’s been a pleasure ever since.
So—migraine.
Lucy should probably make an appointment with her nana’s acupuncturist.
But that’s a long-term solution. Right now she needs something more short-term. Like ibuprofen.
So…
Get up. Get pain meds. Get back to bed.
And call in sick, because there’s no way she can work like this.
Only…
Only Lucy isn’t in her bed.
She’s lying on her side, her body twisted awkwardly like she just keeled over where she stood: her right arm is stuck under her and her cheek resting on a cold, hard surface. Something hard is digging uncomfortably into her right hip—the butt of her gun.
What?
She wrenches her eyes open despite the pain. A wave of nausea washes over her, and she instantly regrets it. She sucks in a deep breath—don’t throw up, don’t throw up, don’t throw up—and another one until her heaving stomach settles a little. Her vision is blurry at first, then the world shifts into focus so suddenly the nausea returns with a vengeance.
Oh God.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Grey marble.
Lucy’s lying on the floor. A floor. She has zero idea where she is.
And she can’t move.
Panic starts to coil in her gut.
Was she in an accident?
Did she hit her head?
Did she injure her spinal cord?
Is she paralysed?
(So much for not jumping straight to worst case scenarios.)
Then, all of a sudden, the pain in her head balloons, stretches till her skull is too small for it and it erupts. The pain rushes through her body, reaching all the way to her toes.
But she can’t move.
Can’t even make a sound.
It feels like every nerve ending lights up simultaneously, overloads, every single pain receptor’s dialled up to a thousand—and going up and up and up.
Lucy wants to scream, because it’s pure agony—
She’s never been in this much pain—
And oh God, this is how they used to kill people, burning them alive—
The pain stops.
It doesn’t fade. It simply ceases. One moment she feels like someone set her on fire. The next there’s—nothing.
Lucy draws a shaky breath.
But she can move now, thank all the Gods there are. Her fingers flex obediently, as do her toes. She feels weak, though, every muscle sore like she just did a particular strenuous full body yoga session.
What the hell happened to her?
Was there an accident?
There must have been—what else could have knocked her out like this?
Lucy pushes herself up and gets on her knees. Slowly. Very slowly. But the world immediately wobbles unsteadily and she clamps her hand in front of her mouth, fighting the urge to throw up.
She’s not going to throw up on scene.
And she is on a scene somewhere even if she has zero recollection of where or why; she’s still in uniform. Tim would never let her live it down if she fucking barfed. He’d take it personally, because he takes every failure personally (especially at the moment), and then he’d find a creative way to punish her for it.
No, thank you.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Breathe in.
Breathe out.
Lucy is still feeling dizzy and disoriented, but she makes herself assess the situation.
She’s in what looks like an entrance hall. Futuristic-looking. Lots of glass and steel. Sunlight streaming in the curved windows. People hurrying past outside. Morning, she thinks. Early morning, judging by the angle of the sun. Too early for her shift to have started. But that’s not the real issue, even if it’s a little weird.
The real issue is that she’s alone.
That makes her more uneasy than the pain from earlier (completely gone now, so maybe she imagined it?) or the gaps in her memory because…
She shouldn’t be alone.
If there was an accident and she got injured, there would be people. Lots and lots of people. And Tim. He was a total ass to her all morning (and all of last week ever since his wife overdosed) and likes to act like a total ass in general, but he would never leave her side if she got hurt. That much she knows.
So what the hell is going on here?
“Ouch! Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Startled, Lucy whips around—and relief washes through her. A young man has just popped up behind the reception desk and rubs his head, lips pressed together. He jabs the keyboard in front of him with his other hand, face already red and angry and getting redder and angrier by the second. He mutters something under his breath in a language Lucy doesn’t know.
It sound like Czeck.
Maybe.
Which is also completely irrelevant right now because:
She.
Is.
Not.
Alone.
“Oh, hey, hi!” she exclaims brightly as she scrambles up.
The man doesn’t react.
Like—at all.
Only then does it strike her as a little weird—
(A little?)
—that he’s been going about his job while she was lying on the floor, unconscious. Who does that?!
“Hey!”
No so much as a twitch. The guy stares at his screen, takes a deep breath, then takes off his glasses to clean them on his shirt. But he doesn’t look at her. Or even up.
Nothing.
Nothing to indicate that he heard her.
Or sees her.
Like…
Like..
Like she doesn’t even exist.
Which is ridiculous, because of course she exists, she’s standing right here and...
“I’m talking to you!”
No acknowledgement.
No response.
Nothing.
Lucy’s mind starts spinning.
How long was she unconscious?
Or maybe…
Maybe she still is unconscious, because otherwise none of this makes any sense:
Why that guy can’t see her or hear her and why she’s alone.
Or maybe she’s dead.
(Woman!)
But…
But if she’s dead, then maybe it does make sense.
Maybe this is some sort of antechamber to the afterlife.
Right.
Not exactly how she envisioned it. Technical and bureaucratic. Then again, it’s not like she spends a lot of her time thinking about dying or what comes after. That’s just depressing. And not exactly life-affirmative.
But she for sure thought it would be greener. More trees and less glass and steel.
Okay.
Okay.
Calm down.
Besides, if this is the entrance to the afterlife, then that guy’s doing a pretty shitty job. Shouldn’t he be welcoming her or something? Give her a tour?
So—unconscious and dreaming. Not great, but not horrible either.
Or—in a coma and dreaming. A lot less great, but people wake up from comas.
They do.
Okay.
Unconscious.
(Or coma.)
Less permanent.
The glass doors, invisible till now, swoosh open—and at the sound her mind reluctantly releases a memory.
“Go interview her,” Tim said, motioning at the receptionist. “I’ll talk to that guy.” That guy being a nervous-looking man in a white lab coat who seemed to be in charge.
Right.
Lucy remembers now.
This is some sort of physics lab. Nexus… Nexus something or other. And something was stolen, but she doesn’t know what; the person who called 911 didn’t specify.
A robbery.
Maybe.
She isn’t sure, because the rest of her memory is a little fuzzy—like when she’s had too much to drink.
Oh.
Maybe that’s what happened. Maybe she just dreamed up the whole thing:
Tim yelling at her for no (good) reason just before the call came in.
The call itself.
This.
Maybe she just had too much tequila last night, while complaining to John and Jackson about how easy they have it compared to her. Their T.O.s didn’t make them jog along next to the shop on their first day.
Maybe she’s still asleep—and this is just some super, super weird dream.
Better than unconscious (or in a coma).
A lot better than dead.
Her eyes snap back to the receptionist. The guy is in his twenties, her age maybe, or a little younger. He’s tall, he sports a well-groomed beard and a man bun and wears glasses. And he’s definitely not the woman Tim wanted her to talk to.
Unconscious (possibly alcohol-induced).
Coma.
Dead.
I don’t want to be dead.
“Morning, Zelenka.”
The man—older, grey hair and a grey suit with a purple tie, black briefcase—that just entered the building is walking towards her. Straight towards her.
Thank God.
“Hey, hi, sir?” she says, relieved.” I’m Officer Chen with the LAPD. Could you—”
The man suddenly veers to the left.
No.
That’s not right.
There’s nothing sudden about it. There’s no hesitation or surprise. He never breaks his stride, just steps around her like he always meant to. He does look a little confused, she thinks—his eyes slide over her, unfocused, and he frowns, just slightly. And then Lucy blinks, the guy walks past her, and maybe she imagined the whole thing.
Please.
Please let me still be asleep.
Or unconscious.
She’d settle for that, too.
And also—
Looking at this logically, what else could it be?
She sure as hell didn’t just wake up in some alternate reality where she’s invisible.
What would even be the point of that?
No.
She’s either asleep or unconscious or dead.
What if…
What if she is dead and this is her afterlife? A different plane of existence that still overlaps with the world of the living.
Unease coils in her stomach.
I don’t want to be dead.
And she definitely doesn’t want this to be her eternity:
Wearing her scratchy, uncomfortable, hot uniform and haunting the place where she died.
(You’re not dead.)
But how did she die?
An accident?
An explosion?
This is a physics lab, who knows what kind of stuff they’re working on here. Maybe an experiment went wrong.
God.
Six weeks into her rookie year and she managed to fucking die.
(You’re not dead.)
Perfect.
She’s fixating. She knows she is. She sometimes does when she’s stressed—
(Sometimes?)
—and she’s definitely stressed now.
Oh, Lucy can just imagine what her parents would say:
It’s a stressful job. If it’s too much, you should quit. There’s no shame in realising you’re not cut out for something.
But she wants to be cut out for this.
She is.
She knows she is.
She also may be dead, though.
Her family is going to be so upset. They don’t exactly approve of her career choice and have been dropping subtle and not-so-subtle hints about going back to grad school, but she knows her family loves her.
But if she is dead, there’s nothing she can do about it.
(You’re not dead!)
“Morning, sir,” the receptionist says. “Ah, I’m afraid the wi-fi is still down, and IT’s giving me the runaround.”
“What else is new?” The older man sighs, resigned. “I’ll talk to them, and then I’ll be in the clean room all morning. So unless there’s anything urgent…”
The receptionist nods. “Got it, sir.”
“Thanks.”
Well.
That’s a weird conversation to listen to when you’re dead.
So mundane.
(For the love of God, you aren’t dead!)
The man heads to the elevator, which looks just as futuristic as the rest of the building and is almost perfectly hidden behind light wood panelling.
Kudos to their designer.
Focus.
“Talk to me,” Lucy says, louder this time, though she’s not sure why she bothers. “Please!” She can hear and see them, but for them she seems to be invisible, and doing the same thing over and over again hoping for a different result is the definition of insanity.
The earlier memory of her and Tim responding to the call unfolds a little more:
There were dozens of people here. Scientists in lab coats, other staff, and a female receptionist. Not that guy.
Let’s assume, just for a second, that this is the spirit world and she is stuck, then why here?
Also, it’s early.
Lucy isn’t sure when exactly the call came in, but it must have been around nine. She checks her watch just to be sure—
It’s stopped.
Seventeen past nine.
Okay.
Weird.
(What exactly?)
But it answers that question.
Sort of.
What time is it now, anyway?
Lucy eyes the receptionist. His back is to her now; he’s talking animatedly on the phone. Pursing her lips, she considers her options (not that there are many), then strides around the reception desk to look at the computer screen with the company logo—lines in different shades of green intersecting at weird angles.
Nexa Research Group.
Huh.
Lucy for sure thought it was Nexus.
Not important.
Her eyes find the time at the top right corner of the screen and…
Oh.
It’s five minutes to seven.
And it’s also March 30th, 2026.
Which is wrong.
It’s February 6th.
2019.
That’s… odd.
If this is her afterlife, then why would she wake up seven years into the future?
This doesn’t make any sense.
(You are not dead. Get a grip.)
Okay.
Let’s assume for a minute that she’s just unconscious and dreaming (or just dreaming because she had too much tequila), then this is still weird. And sure, you can’t exactly apply logic to dreams. But this is oddly specific.
Why seven years? Why not six? Or eight?
And why is she dreaming about this?
Did something go wrong on that call and her subconscious is trying to process it?
Could be.
Still.
Weird.
So…
And Lucy knows it’s impossible or at the very least highly unlikely. But what if she’s not dream and not unconscious (or dead), then…
Then what’s going on?