Glitch

They were halfway across the cavern when the world stuttered.

There was no other word for it. Grix stopped walking because for a fraction of a second — less than a blink, less than a breath — the cavern ahead of him appeared twice. Two versions of the same space, offset by inches, overlaid on each other like a photograph taken with a shaking hand. Then it was gone, and there was only one cavern again, and his own heartbeat was very loud in his ears.

"Did anyone—"

"Yes," all four of them said at once.

They stood still. Nobody suggested moving yet.

"A visual anomaly," Kate said carefully.

"It wasn't just visual," Gwen replied. "I felt it. In my chest. Like a hiccup of the air."

Grix turned slowly, scanning the cavern in full. Nothing had changed that he could identify — same stalactites, same moving shadows, same sourceless gold-white glow. But something about the space felt thinner now, like a layer had been peeled back and not quite replaced.

"What if the cave does that regularly?" Suzy said. Her voice was quieter than usual. "What if we're in a place that just — skips sometimes. Like a record that jumps."

"A glitch," Mark said.

"A glitch," she agreed, and despite everything, she looked at him in a way that said: I'm scared, but I'm glad you're here. And he looked back in a way that said: I know. Me too.

It happened again. This time longer — nearly two full seconds — and this time with weight. The doubled image of the cavern pressed in on Grix from all sides, both versions trying to occupy the same space he was standing in. He felt it in his teeth, in the roots of his eyes, a deep vibrational wrongness that belonged in no taxonomy of human experience. Then it snapped back to one.

"We move faster," Grix said. "We don't stop unless we have to."

Nobody argued.

They crossed the cavern at a near-jog, Kate still sketching as she moved — a talent born of many previous situations requiring exactly this. The glitches came twice more, each one brief, each one pressing the wrongness slightly deeper into the skin. By the time they reached the far side, all five of them were breathing like they'd been running hard for much longer than they had.

The passage on the other side was wider. The air changed — heavier, laden with something mineral and damp. And then they heard it.

Water.

"Aahhh", in unison. As they fell back to the ground. The anomaly gravity that had kept them all on different walls fell through. Everyone on ground completely taken by what had happened. Mark reached out to help Suzy, he held her tightly in his arms.

"Get a room!", Kate exclaimed as she gets herself up from the embarrassing situation.

"The gravity went back to normal?", Grix said as he got up dusting his clothes. He extends his hand to Gwen. She looks at it for a while then takes it up.

"Flirting out in the open. Making me be by myself. Fine, I am fine alone," Kate exclaimed.

"It isn't like that at all," Mark replied, "here, take my hand if you want."

"womanizer..."

"Huh, isn't that too cruel."