FIRST BRUSH WITH THE NUCLEUS

Halcyon Sector Nine always smelled like someone tried to sanitize a corpse. Too much citrus. Too much floral perfume. Too much “nothing to see here” painted over everything that desperately needed seeing.

Jessi shoved her hood lower as they crept toward the museum’s side entrance.
Paul bounced beside her like a caffeinated stress ball.
Victoria ghosted behind them, fingers brushing surfaces Jessi couldn’t even see, listening to harmonics nobody normal could hear.

“This plan blows,” Jessi murmured.

Paul threw both arms wide. “It blows with STYLE.”

Victoria whispered, “Something’s… off. The frequencies are mismatched.”

Paul gasped. “THE CITY IS DOING JAZZ??”

“Focus,” Jessi hissed.

They reached the maintenance door. Paul body-checked it. It popped open.

Jessi stared. “You used your face.”

“It was a tactical decision,” Paul groaned, rubbing his forehead. “The door respected my sacrifice.”

Inside, the museum looked like money had been poured directly into the walls and buffed until sterile.

In the center of the exhibit sat the artifact.

A copper sphere.
Unimpressive.
Dull.
Weirdly heavy in the air around it.

Paul whispered, “That looks like something my grandmother would hide spare buttons in.”

Jessi rolled her eyes and reached for it.
Victoria hovered close, inspecting the base.
Paul clung to Jessi’s arm, craning his neck to see.

“Guys,” Victoria murmured, frowning. “Don’t—”

Too late.

Jessi grabbed the sphere.
Paul leaned over her shoulder.
Victoria touched Jessi’s back to steady herself.

All three made contact at once.

And the world — not visibly, not audibly — wobbled.

Not a big wobble.
Not a cosmic beam of revelation.
Just a faint pulse that buzzed through their bones, like a tiny static shock delivered straight into their spines.

Jessi jerked slightly.
Paul hiccupped.
Victoria gasped — the tiniest sharp inhale, almost swallowed.

The sphere grew warm for half a second.

Then it was just a sphere again.

Nothing happened.

Nothing obvious.

Jessi blinked. “What was—”

A motion sensor chirped.
A drone hummed awake.
Paul screamed.
Victoria yanked them both backward with inhuman speed.
Jessi grabbed Paul and the sphere, tripped over a bench, knocked over a holographic display, and swore loudly enough to wake the dead.

Chaos detonated.
Real, honest, full-body chaos.

By the time they escaped out a shipping bay and tumbled into a garbage-scented alley, all three were covered in dust, panic sweat, and the lingering humiliation of museum security chimes.

Jessi dumped the sphere onto the concrete.

“This was the worst plan,” she groaned.

Paul flopped backward dramatically, limbs starfished in despair. “I have aged seventeen years.”

Victoria sat with her knees up, rubbing her temples. “The lights… flickered strangely back there. Did you see that?”

“No,” Jessi said.
“No,” Paul echoed.
Both absolutely lying.

Jessi opened her pack to check for damage—
and stopped.

The interior lining was warped.
Not torn.
Not burned.
More like softened and pulled subtly inward.

Victoria leaned close. “Is that new?”

Paul crept closer. “It smells like… warm pennies and… libraries?”

Jessi touched the warped patch.
Nothing unusual happened.
No hum.
No glow.
Just weird fabric texture.

“You think the orb did it?” Jessi asked.

Victoria frowned. “Maybe… some kind of heat transfer? Or chemical residue?”

Paul nodded vigorously. “Yes. Science. Absolutely. Let’s blame science.”

Jessi sighed and shoved the sphere back into the bag.

And none of them saw—
none of them even felt—
the faint shimmer that crawled from the sphere to Jessi’s wrist,
then to Paul’s fur,
then to Victoria’s sleeve.

A microscopic pulse.
A thread of something ancient, patient, and curious.
Too small to notice.
Too subtle to fear.

Just a touch.

A hello.

Jessi stood, slinging the pack over her shoulder. “Let’s get back to Daichi before someone notices we robbed a museum for a paperweight.”

Paul scrambled up her arm, clinging like a terrified barnacle. “If it turns out we risked our lives for home décor, I’m setting something on fire.”

Victoria smiled faintly. “Let’s hope it’s something that deserves it.”

They walked away—
laughing, arguing, exhausted, alive—
and behind them, the alley lights flickered once,
so softly it might’ve been a coincidence