Zhang woke to the scent of burning paper. His dorm room walls pulsed like a living thing, every inch covered in brokerage statements that rustled against each other with insectile precision. The nearest sheet fluttered against his cheek—$230,000 transferred to a Cayman Islands account, signed *Song Luying* in ink that faded even as he watched, leaving only the ghost of her looping *L* before vanishing entirely.
He rolled off the bed, knees cracking against linoleum. The floor was littered with more statements, each stamped with yesterday's date in bold red—except the dates kept changing. March 14th became October 9th became a string of numbers that hurt to look at directly. The air tasted like static and spoiled milk.
A shadow moved in his peripheral vision. Zhang whirled, scattering papers that dissolved before hitting the ground. The figure standing by his closet wasn't Song or Lin or even *him*, but a distorted reflection of himself—wearing the protagonist's trademark leather jacket from Chapter Eighteen, except the collar was soaked in something dark and viscous.
"You're late," Mirror-Zhang said. His voice came from everywhere at once, layered with whispers Zhang recognized as his own internal monologue from pivotal novel scenes. "She's already at the coordinates."
Zhang's throat seized. "Who—?"
The reflection smiled with too many teeth. A brokerage statement materialized in its hand, this one printed on what looked like human skin. The numbers bled at the edges. "You know who." It pointed to the bottom line—$197,843—where someone had scribbled in frantic handwriting: *THE EDITOR WEARS MY FACE*.
His dorm door burst open without sound. The hallway beyond stretched into impossible dimensions, walls lined with security monitors showing the same rooftop scene from seventeen angles—except in each version, one of them was always missing. Lin stood alone in Monitor #12, her hands pressed against empty air where Zhang should have been. Song's Porsche flipped end-over-end in #7 with no driver. Monitor #3 showed *him* clawing at the physics building door from the wrong side, his mouth open in a silent scream.
Mirror-Zhang stepped through the doorway, his body elongating to fit the warped perspective. "Bring a lighter," he said, and dissolved into a shower of ticker tape printed with stock symbols that hadn't been invented yet.
The monitors flickered off one by one. Zhang reached for the nearest statement—only for the paper to disintegrate into black dust that clung to his fingers like ink. A single phrase remained etched into his palm: *MEMORY IS COLLATERAL*.
Outside his window, the campus clock struck three. The minute hand jumped backward mid-chime. Zhang grabbed his jacket—the real one, not the novel's—and found the pocket weighted down with a Zippo lighter he'd never owned, its steel casing engraved with Lin's equations from a lecture that hadn't happened yet.
He didn't remember leaving the dorm. Didn't remember crossing the quadrangle where students moved like wind-up toys, their laughter arriving a half-second too late. The physics building loomed ahead, its fire escape rusted shut in this iteration—except for one ladder rung that gleamed unnaturally bright, as if polished by countless hands grasping in desperation.
Zhang's phone buzzed. A notification from an app called *Narrative Integrity* flashed: **[CHARACTER #0421: MEMORY FRAGMENT DETECTED]**. The attached image showed Lin standing on the rooftop three stories above him, holding a burning page to the sky. Even through the pixelation, he recognized the header—*CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: THE PROTAGONIST'S CHOICE*—except someone had crossed out *Choice* and written *Sacrifice* in cramped handwriting that matched the notes on his walls.
The ladder rung burned cold under his grip. As Zhang climbed toward the roof, his pockets grew heavier with phantom brokerage statements, each one whispering a different version of the same lie: *This time, you'll save them all.*