Mental Density

I woke up tasting concrete.

Again.

My bed floated three feet above me, and I was sunk to the ribs in the foundation like some kind of architectural fossil. Stellar. Just stellar.

The panic hit second—that drowning-in-air feeling when you can’t tell if your lungs are real or just the memory of breathing. My chest flickered, half-solid, half-ghost, wedged somewhere between the subfloor and the century-old stone beneath the Prism Institute’s gothic bulk. The cold aggregate bit into my sternum, grit scraping my ribs with every shallow pull of air.

Not again. Not tonight.

I’d been dreaming about the labyrinth. The one with walls that shifted every time I touched them, corridors that bled into each other like wet watercolor, and no exit. Never an exit. Just me, walking and walking and wanting to find the way out until the wanting made me slip right through the floor.

Metaphor, thy name is my subconscious.

I tried to pull myself up. Failed. My hands were still solid—small mercy—but my torso was locked in stone like some kind of Renaissance sculpture reject. The Prism foundation didn’t care that I was nineteen and had only been phasing for two years. It didn’t care that I had class in six hours or that this was the fourth time this month.

It just held.

My fingers scrabbled at the floorboards above me, nails catching splinters. I forced myself to breathe—one, two, three—and tried to remember what Professor Halen had said in Mutation Theory last week.

“Your power is tied to your emotional state. Fear makes you unstable. Desire makes you permeable. You must find the calm center, the eye of the storm, or you’ll slip through the cracks of your own mind.”

Great. Very helpful when you’re halfway to becoming a fossil.

I closed my eyes. I tried to find the calm center. Tried to ignore the fact that my lungs were starting to burn and my pulse was hammering in my ears like a countdown.

Let go. Stop wanting to be solid. Stop wanting anything.

Easier said than done when your entire existence was built on wanting things you couldn’t have. Like a family that wasn’t dead. Like a body that stayed in one piece. Like a future that didn’t end with the Null-Point Shot—one of those hollow-eyed shells wandering the Institute halls, stripped of passion, of rage, of everything that made you you.

I shoved the thought down. Focused.

Let. Go.

The stone released me all at once.

I dropped.

Not up, back into my bed like a normal person—no, I went down, phasing straight through the rest of the foundation, through twelve feet of empty air, and onto the common room floor below with a thud that knocked the wind out of me all over again.

I lay there on the cold tile, gasping, staring up at the vaulted ceiling with its iron chandeliers and the faint glow of bioluminescent moss creeping along the stone arches. The Prism Institute’s idea of mood lighting. Gothic charm meets biotech mycology.

My whole body was shaking.

Solid, though. Mercifully, humiliatingly solid.

I sat up slowly, checking myself over. White shorts—wrinkled but intact. The pink crop top was bunched slightly, still smelling faintly of lavender detergent. No visible injuries except for the splinters under my nails and the fresh bruise blooming across my hip.

Small victories.

The common room echoed with emptiness. It was just past three in the morning, and even the insomniacs had finally crashed. The only sound was the low hum of the heating grid beneath the floor and the distant crash of waves against the island’s cliffs. Fog pressed against the tall, leaded windows like something alive, trying to get in.

I pulled myself to my feet, legs wobbling, and made my way to the nearest chair. Sat down hard. Let my head fall into my hands.

Fourth time this month.

Last semester, it had been once a month. Before that, maybe a few times total. But ever since winter break—ever since I’d gone home to the empty house—it had been getting worse.

The more I wanted to hold on, the less I could.

Irony was a real bitch.

I glanced up at the ceiling, half-expecting to see a Sloane-shaped hole in the floor above. Nothing. Of course not. I didn’t leave marks. I didn’t leave anything. Just slipped through the world like I’d never been there at all.

My throat tightened.

I forced myself to stand. To move rather than sit here spiraling. The infirmary would have hot tea and possibly someone who’d pretend to care. Or I could go back upstairs, crawl into bed, and pretend this hadn’t happened.

Except it had.

And it would keep happening unless I figured out how to stop it.

“Your power is tied to your emotional state.”

Right. So all I had to do was stop feeling things. Stop wanting. Stop caring.

Easy.

I was halfway to the stairs when the lights flickered on.

I froze.

Dean Korr stood in the doorway, backlit by the hallway’s blue-white glow, her sharp features carved from shadow and disapproval. She wore her usual black suit, crisp and immaculate despite the hour, and her silver hair was pulled into a bun so tight it could’ve been a weapon.

“Miss Cray,” she said, her voice clipped. “Third floor to ground floor in under a second. Impressive.”

“I’m working on my dismount.” My mouth twitched, but the smile wouldn’t hold.

She didn’t laugh. Dean Korr never laughed.

Instead, she stepped into the room, her heels clicking against the tile with the precision of a metronome. Her pale grey eyes swept over me, cataloging every bruise, every tremor, every sign of failure.

“You phased in your sleep again.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yeah.” I crossed my arms over my chest, suddenly aware of how exposed I was. How thin. “Bad dream.”

“Fourth time this month.”

“You’re keeping track?”

“The Institute monitors all students with unstable manifestations.” She stopped a few feet away, hands clasped behind her back. “Yours is accelerating.”

The words settled like stones in my gut.

“I’m working on it,” I said, keeping my voice level. “Professor Halen says—”

“Professor Halen is an optimist.” Dean Korr’s gaze didn’t waver. “You are a liability, Miss Cray. To yourself and to this institution. If you cannot stabilize your Emotional Engine by mid-term evaluations, the Board will have no choice but to recommend the Null-Point Shot.”

There it was. The threat that hung over every student at Prism like a guillotine blade. One wrong move, one loss of control, and they’d strip you down to nothing. No passion. No power. No you.

Just Grey.

“I’m trying.”

“Trying isn’t enough.” Dean Korr’s expression softened—barely. A hairline crack in granite. “Which is why I’m assigning you a stability partner.”

She pulled a slim tablet from her jacket and tapped the screen.

“Cillian Vex. Telepath. First-year, like yourself. He’s been on a modified schedule—isolated sessions due to his sensitivity to mental noise—but I’m transferring him to your regular class rotation. He’ll begin anchor sessions with you tomorrow.”

“I don’t need—”

“You phased through your bed, Miss Cray. Through the foundation. You could have suffocated.” Her voice was ice. “This is not a request.”

I wanted to argue. I wanted to tell her I didn’t need some stranger poking around in my head, didn’t need to be anyone’s charity case. But the words stuck in my throat, tangled up with the taste of concrete and the memory of drowning in stone.

She was right.

I hated that she was right.

“Fine,” I muttered.

Dean Korr inclined her head, a sharp, satisfied nod. She tapped at her tablet. “Session one is scheduled for fourteen hundred hours in the Anchor Labs. Don’t be late.”

She turned on her heel and left, the click of her shoes fading into the distance.

I stood there alone in the empty common room, the fog still pressing against the windows, and let out a long, shaky breath.

Cillian Vex.

I’d heard the name before. A telepath who heard thoughts like radio static. Who walked the halls with his jaw clenched and his eyes half-shut, like the world was too loud to bear.

And now he was supposed to anchor me.

I laughed—a short, bitter sound that echoed in the vaulted space.

This was going to be a disaster.

I turned and headed for the stairs, my legs still unsteady, my hands still trembling. Somewhere above, my bed waited. Empty. Cold.

I climbed anyway.