The Sentence

The darkness was absolute.

When consciousness returned, it came like drowning in reverse—gasping, clawing back to awareness through layers of chemical fog. My eyes opened to blackness. Hands fumbled forward, meeting rough wood inches from my face. A shelf. I was in a closet.

The temporal transit drug. They’d warned me about this—that the jump would leave me disoriented, that I’d wake confused. But they’d also promised I’d know where I was going. They’d shown me the facility: white walls, containment chambers, somewhere they could study what they’d need to study.