Chapter 1: The Dead City
At exactly 09:06:13, every person in the city disappeared.
Cars rolled through intersections without drivers. A train screeched to a halt halfway across an elevated track. Phones rang in empty houses, and a traffic signal continued changing colours for people who no longer existed.
The city hadn’t been destroyed. Its people were simply gone. Three kilometres underground, Anamika stared at the live footage on her monitor.
“No. No, no, no…”
She refreshed the feed. Nothing changed. Every camera showed the same impossible sight: an empty city.
“Farhan!” she shouted. “Tell me this is a network failure.”
Dr. Farhan rushed towards her workstation, still holding his half-finished coffee.
“If the entire city has lost its network, I’ll happily resign and become a farmer.”
“Farhan!”
He looked at the screens. His smile disappeared.
“Oh.”
“That’s all you have to say?”
“I’m trying to decide whether to panic first or resign.”
“Do both later. Check the population feed.”
Farhan rushed to the secondary console.
The population counter flickered and the numbers suddenly changed from
CITY POPULATION: 2,184,672
to
CITY POPULATION: 0
Farhan froze, staring at the screen. His coffee slipped from his fingers and splashed across the floor.
“Anamika... there’s not a single person left in the city.”
He refreshed the display, hoping it was some kind of system error. But the number remained unchanged.
Anamika’s eyes fell on her phone. Three missed calls.
AMMA.
The last call had come at exactly 09:06:13.
For a moment, she forgot about the screens, the machine and the alarms.
“Amma!” she cried, immediately calling back. But the call never connected.
She had spent three years working towards this experiment. Three years studying strange signals that appeared in their instruments and vanished before anyone could explain them. The signals behaved like patterns that seemed to belong to a world almost identical to theirs, but not quite.
She believed they were evidence of parallel realities. Most people had called the idea an interesting theory. Her director had called it an expensive obsession. Today, her team was supposed to detect the first stable signal from another universe. Not to erase an entire city.
Anamika stared at her mother’s name on the phone. Her mind raced. How could an entire city vanish in a single second? What kind of force could do something like this? Had someone deliberately tampered with their experiment? Was something controlling the machine from somewhere? Something beyond Earth? Something not even human?
“ANAMIKA! STOP THE MACHINE!” Farhan’s desperate shout snapped her out of her thoughts.
She shoved her phone aside and rushed towards the emergency controls. Whatever was behind this, she had to find it. And somehow, she had to bring everyone back.
“I’m trying.”
Anamika typed the emergency command.
ACCESS DENIED.
She tried again.
ACCESS DENIED.
“Manual override!”
“I’ve already disconnected the backup power!” Farhan shouted.
“Then disconnect the main supply!”
“Already done! Both power sources are off. The machine should have shut down automatically, but it’s still running!”
At the heart of Laboratory 7 stood a circular chamber surrounded by rotating metal rings. The machine was designed to detect and briefly connect with parallel realities. Its first controlled test had begun less than a minute ago.
Now, blue light pulsed through the rings, and the air inside the chamber shimmered like a road under the summer sun. Anamika hurried towards the emergency lever. A warning appeared above it.
WARNING: MANUAL SHUTDOWN MAY DESTABILISE THE BRIDGE.
PREDICTED RESULT: UNKNOWN.
“Unknown?” she muttered. “That’s not a prediction. That’s a confession.”
“Anamika, the field is expanding!” Farhan shouted.
She looked at the city map.
A dark circle was spreading outwards from the laboratory. Every neighbourhood it crossed lost its population signal. If it reached the outer districts, the entire city could be affected.
Anamika grabbed the lever and pulled it down. It moved, but the machine continued running.
She tried again, pushing the lever back and pulling it down once more. Nothing changed. The blue field kept growing.
“Why isn’t it stopping?” she shouted, staring at the unresponsive controls.
Before she could try anything else, a figure appeared inside the chamber.
A man.
He stood between the rotating rings, wearing a dark shirt. One hand rested against an invisible barrier. He wasn’t looking at the machine. He was looking straight at her.
“Farhan, is someone inside the chamber?”
Farhan turned sharply.
His face went pale.
“That room was empty when we started.”
Anamika reached for the microphone.
“Can you hear me?”
The man shook his head. She increased the audio gain and tried again. He struck the barrier with his palm. Then he pointed towards her console. A new message appeared on the screen.
IDENTITY REQUIRED.
Anamika frowned.
“What identity?”
Letters began appearing beneath the message.
ANAMIKA.
She stepped away from the keyboard.
“I didn’t type that.”
“I know,” Farhan said.
Across the room, Farhan was frantically working at the secondary console, trying to regain control of the machine. Anamika stood near the chamber, watching the blue field pulse against the glass.
The letters appeared again.
SUBJECT CONFIRMED.
The machine fell silent. The rotating rings stopped. Every light in the laboratory went out.
For two seconds, Anamika could hear nothing except her own heartbeat. Then a man’s voice spoke directly behind her.
“Don’t turn around.”
The voice was so close that she felt a chill run down her spine.
She spun. Nobody was there. The emergency lights flickered on. Farhan stood beside the console, staring at her. The chamber was empty. The man had vanished. Anamika approached the glass, searching every corner.
“Where did he go?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Farhan replied. “And for once, I’m not being sarcastic.”
A metallic bang echoed through the laboratory. The main door locked. The speakers crackled.
“Reality stabilisation initiated,” announced a calm female voice. “Please remain inside the designated safe zone.”
Farhan looked up at the ceiling.
“That’s not our system.”
A new display appeared.
REALITY STABILISATION: 00:30
Thirty seconds.
Anamika rushed back to the console. She tried to cancel the command, but the system ignored her.
“Farhan, can you override it?”
“I’m trying!”
“Try something that works!”
“Excellent suggestion!”
The countdown reached twenty seconds. Then the screen changed.
SUBJECT: VIKRAM ADHITHIYA.
Before she could answer, the chamber door unlocked. A man stepped out. The same man who had disappeared. He looked around the laboratory as if he had been there before. Then his eyes settled on Anamika. For a moment, something softened in his expression.
“You’re here,” he whispered.
Anamika immediately raised her hand. “Stop. Right there.”
He stopped.
“Who are you?”
“Vikram Adhithiya.”
Anamika stared at Vikram. He looked at the city map, where the population counter remained at zero.
“What time did it happen?”
“09:06:13,” Anamika answered.
Vikram closed his eyes. For a moment, he looked as though those numbers hurt more than any wound.
“You knew this would happen?” she asked.
“No.”
“Then why are you here?”
“To stop it.”
“Bit late for that, isn’t it?”
He looked at her again.
“Yes.”
His answer was so quiet that she had nothing to say. Anamika returned to the console. The countdown had reached eight seconds.
“Can you stop this stabilisation process?”
Vikram approached the screen, but she immediately stepped in front of it.
“Don’t touch anything.”
He obeyed.
“Good,” he said. “You’re cautious.”
“I’m standing beside a machine that erased a city. Cautious is the nicest word you can use for me right now.”
Despite everything, he almost smiled.
“Fair enough.”
She turned back to the console.
“What do you need to stop it?”
Vikram studied the controls.
“Anamika, listen carefully. When the countdown reaches zero, the machine will make a choice.”
“What choice?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then what are you afraid of?”
Vikram glanced at the countdown. “I’m afraid we won’t be able to bring them back.”
The countdown reached ten seconds.
Vikram stepped closer, his voice suddenly urgent.
“Whatever happens, don’t let me leave this room.”
Anamika looked at him.
“Why?”
His eyes held hers.
“Because if I leave, you’ll have to find me again.”
The countdown reached zero. Every screen went black. The machine stopped. For one terrible moment, nothing moved. Then a green light appeared on the console.
REALITY STABILISATION: COMPLETE.
Farhan sank into his chair.
“I’m never drinking coffee again.”
Anamika barely heard him. The city feeds were returning one by one. But the streets remained empty. The machine had stopped. The city was still missing its people.
Her eyes moved across the screens, desperately searching for a familiar face or sign of life. Nothing. Her fingers trembled as the terrible truth began to sink in.
She turned towards Vikram.
“You said you came here to stop this.”
“I did.”
“You failed.”
“Yes.”
“Who are you really?”
He looked at her for a long time.
“I wish I could give you an answer you’d believe.”
“Try me.”
He glanced at the date displayed on the console.
Then he looked back at her.
“My name is Vikram Adhithiya. And I’m not belonged to this universe…”
He paused.
“Today has gone wrong before.”
Anamika felt a chill run down her spine.
“What do you mean, before?”
Vikram looked at the empty city on the screen.
“I mean this isn’t the first time I’ve watched everyone disappear.”
The laboratory fell silent.
Anamika had spent three years searching for evidence that another universe existed.
Now a man from another universe stood in her laboratory, speaking as though he had lived through a disaster that hadn’t happened yet. She wanted to call security. She wanted to lock him away. Most of all, she wanted to know how he knew her name before she had ever spoken to him. Instead, she asked the one question she couldn’t stop thinking about.
“Vikram, why did the machine recognise me?”
His face changed.
For the first time, he looked genuinely afraid.
“Because,” he said, “it wasn’t looking for another universe.”
He met her eyes.
“It was looking for another ANAMIKA.”
