The second time Arnold saw Lysa, she was not supposed to exist.
She was standing at the end of the corridor, barefoot, sleeves rolled up, humming softly to herself. The tune was wrong—too steady, too confident for a place where certainty dissolved on contact.
Arnold stopped walking.
So did the corridor.
Not metaphorically.
The hum in the walls stuttered, like a machine missing a beat. The lights dimmed by a fraction—not enough to be seen, but enough to be felt. The pressure behind Arnold's eyes sharpened, then… stalled.
Lysa looked up and smiled.
"Oh," she said. "There you are."
Arnold's breath caught. "You… you don't remember me."
She tilted her head. "I don't remember a lot of things." Then, gently, "But I remember you're important."
Behind reinforced glass, alarms failed to trigger.
---
Maizy Harlan stared at the monitor.
The correction field around Lysa's location was active—numbers scrolling, containment protocols engaged—but the final step refused to execute.
"It's hanging," a technician said. "Just… hanging."
Jack leaned forward. "Define hanging."
"It should've resolved," the technician replied. "Either erase or stabilize. Instead, it's waiting."
Maizy's fingers tightened around her tablet. "For what?"
The technician swallowed. "For him."
---
Arnold approached slowly.
Every step felt like walking against gravity that hadn't decided which way to pull. Symbols flickered at the edge of his vision, clearer than before—fractures folding inward, rules bending around a blank space.
Around him.
"Lysa," he said carefully. "Do you know where you are?"
She nodded. "The place where things get fixed."
"That doesn't scare you?"
She shrugged. "It should. But it doesn't when you're here."
Arnold felt it then.
The correction pressure—present, immense—but divided. Like reality had reached a conclusion… and then reconsidered.
"Please step back," the receptionist's voice said from behind him.
Arnold didn't turn.
"If I don't?" he asked.
There was a pause.
"That outcome is undocumented," she replied.
---
Lysa's smile faltered. "Something's wrong," she said quietly. "They're trying to take something, but it doesn't fit anymore."
Arnold's heart pounded. "What doesn't?"
She met his eyes.
"Me," she said. "Or you. I can't tell which."
The pressure surged.
Then stopped.
The lights froze mid-flicker.
Sound dropped out—no hum, no breath, no distant machinery.
Time did not stop.
Decision did.
---
Jack felt it.
Every veteran did.
That sickening moment when instinct screamed that a rule had just failed.
"Maizy," he said slowly. "This has never happened."
"I know," she replied.
The technician's voice shook. "Correction logic is looping. It keeps recalculating around the subject—Arnold Vale."
Maizy stared at the name.
Not blinking.
"Pull him out," someone suggested.
Maizy shook her head. "If we interrupt now—"
The lights flared.
The correction field collapsed inward, like a breath released.
Lysa staggered—but did not forget.
She gasped, clutching her head. "I can still remember. I still—"
She looked at Arnold, tears in her eyes.
"I didn't disappear."
Arnold's knees almost gave out.
---
Silence followed.
Not relief.
Shock.
The kind that comes when gravity fails for half a second and comes back wrong.
"Status," Maizy demanded.
The technician stared at the screen. "Correction aborted."
Jack turned slowly. "That's not a status."
The technician swallowed. "Then… anomaly created."
---
The receptionist approached Arnold.
For the first time, her voice was not neutral.
"What are you?" she asked.
Arnold opened his mouth.
Nothing came out.
Because for the first time since this began, he understood the truth before anyone explained it to him.
He wasn't resisting correction.
He was making reality hesitate.
---
Lysa wiped her eyes and laughed weakly. "Guess you remembered me too hard."
Arnold didn't smile.
Because he could feel it now—far above, far deeper than systems or entities—something had noticed the pause.
Not with anger.
With interest.
---
That night, in a file that could not be deleted, Maizy wrote a single line:
> "Subject Arnold Vale does not destabilize correction.
He destabilizes certainty."
And somewhere unseen, unseen by gods and systems alike…
Reality considered him.
---