Mira Chen pulled the authorization sheet out from under Don West's hand.
"You signed off on the spike?"
Below the monitoring deck, twenty-nine floors of Meridian Continuum Lab stood ready for the morning pulse. The foundation array was supposed to map disturbances in time. Mira's job, up on Thirty, was to watch what those disturbances did to the tower.
"The contractor we were using cleared it," Don said. "He said it was just a bad sensor and replaced it."
"That contractor was supposed to be terminated." She reached across him and slapped ABORT. The button lit, but too late. Under her shoes, the concrete dropped a fraction and stopped.
Beyond the glass, a brown river ran through where the staff parking lot should have been.
Mira walked over to the west window and looked out. The road was gone. So were the guardhouse and the low desert ridge behind it. Trees crowded the opposite bank, and water curled in toward the building.
Don tried his phone, then the desk phone. The red telephone under its sealed cover remained dark. Mira had never seen it light up.
The overhead lights went out. Emergency lights came on. An elevator continued climbing behind the wall.
"Omar. Get that car stopped at a floor."
At the console, Omar Hassan hit the facilities override.
"All cars?"
"All of them."
Mira stepped over to Lupe Soto. "We have to get everyone to a more secure floor. I have an idea on how to get us back, but I want to keep people as safe as possible until then. Maybe the twelfth floor. That's the farthest from the labs, the most shielded, and it has a first-aid room. Round up people from the other floors as well. There should be about ninety people in the building."
"Got it," Lupe said, then turned to the room. "Everyone, listen up. We're going to a more secure floor. Follow me."
"Where are we going?" a technician asked.
"Away from the labs," Mira said. "Just stay together and follow Lupe."
Omar had restored the internal cameras and controls on emergency power. Outside connections were dead, but the tower's radios worked. He handed Mira one and set its channel to match the radios Lupe, Don, and the floor wardens were using.
An hour after the slip, Lupe reported eighty-six people accounted for. Three had needed minor medical attention after falls. She had taken them to the first-aid room on the east side of Twelve, where a staff medic was treating them.
Priya Nair, their intern, called from Twenty. She had checked windows on all four sides. No buildings, nothing but trees and a river.
Mira checked the array's dating estimate. It put them before humans had populated the planet.
On the console screen, a trace of their departure point showed through the interference. Mira marked its strength. She would need to check that later to see how screwed they were.
Don got her attention and pointed through the window toward a bank above the river. "We need a safe location like that bank. Somewhere we can get everyone before this building comes down. Ellis and June are checking the field equipment and supplies in the ground-floor stores."
Mira pressed her radio button. "Lupe, do you need anything you haven't got?"
"No. There's bottled water and snacks on this floor. The medic has what she needs."
"We can't stay in a damaged building indefinitely," Don said. “You felt the building slip. That’s the supports giving way.”
He was right about that.
"I'm working on a return pulse," Mira said. "Until then, the outer doors stay closed. The array's holding a boundary around the building. Anything outside it won't come back with us."
Don looked at the console beside her.
"Another pulse? After what the first one did?"
"This is our way back."
"I'd rather have somewhere solid to stand. I'm going down to help Ellis and June inventory what we've got in storage."
By the third hour, a crack had opened across the west stair landing on Twenty-two. Priya called it in.
"The concrete on one side is about three-quarters of an inch higher. Maybe more."
"Put a warden at that door and monitor it. All non-essentials should be on Twelve, but if there are any stragglers, have the other wardens direct everyone to the east stairs."
Priya repeated the floor number and the instructions and signed off.
Ellis called in on the radio. “I just heard that on the radio. You know my background, Mira. Don’s right. A three-quarters to an inch lift may not seem like much, but that means something’s about to give. You should reconsider getting everyone out while you can. If this building collapses, it’s going to take everyone with it.”
“I know,” she said and closed the channel.
Rain began striking Thirty's windows.
Beyond Thirty's windows, the trees doubled. Mira saw two riverbanks, one higher than the other. The floor tipped enough to send her against the console.
Then there was one river again.
Her tablet recorded a new twist in the core. The west side of the foundation was settling lower than the east.
A few minutes later, Lupe called from Twelve. A frame had buckled beside the first-aid room. Its seals were pulling loose, and wind was blowing rain onto the floor.
"We're moving out of the rooms with bad seals, but we have over eighty people and not a lot of places to go," Lupe said.
"It's going to slip again," she told Omar. "The top and bottom aren't moving together."
"Can you get it level?"
"No. The array's fixed into the foundation. If that gets damaged, we have no way home. Right now the supports are holding, but maybe not much longer. Don and Ellis are right about that."
"What if we just fire the original pulse again?"
"The same settings could send us farther away. I need the departure trace to calculate a pulse that takes us back. I’m working on that."
For two hours she worked with the trace and the record of the original pulse. The shifting supports were pulling the array out of alignment. Its lock on their departure point was weakening.
Her first simulation carried the tower past the departure point.
She deleted the sequence. Started again.
The safest version brought them home but would take ten pulses, which Omar said the emergency generators wouldn't handle.
The next best version brought them home in five pulses. She would have to measure their position after each one and adjust the next. It would be nerve-racking, but doable.
"This one," she told Omar.
He scanned through it, nodded, then sat down to study it more thoroughly.
Lupe sent the wardens to muster their people, all of them now on Twelve or the east stair landings above it. Priya reported that everything was as secure as it was going to get.
Mira and Omar had just finished entering the return settings into the array controller when the service-door alarm sounded.
On the loading-bay camera, Don had a pry bar on the outer door. Ellis Ward and June Bell stood behind him with containers from Stores stacked on three hover plates.
Mira lifted her radio.
"Don. Leave it shut."
The trees beyond the bay window doubled. The building lurched.
The door slammed inward. Ellis fell back against a container on one of the hover plates. It swayed under the impact, but nothing fell off. Wind drove leaves across the bay, and the air shrieked over the radio, hurting Mira’s ears before it died down.
Mira held the first pulse. She didn't want to fire with the door open. It might not make a difference, but she wasn't sure.
"Don. What are you doing? Is Ellis injured?" Mira asked over the radio.
"He's on his feet," Don said.
"Get him to the medic on Twelve. Use the east stairs."
"We’re going to the bank,” June said. “Don and Ellis say this building is about to collapse. I know the array and how pulses work better than you Mira. You’re going to try to do another one or maybe even several. Your odds of success are practically zero."
On the camera, Mira watched Don make a show of switching off the radio. She wanted to haul their asses back into the building, but they were running out of time.
All she could do was wait as they propped the door open with the pry bar and pulled the hover plates out of the building. After the last one was out, Don kicked the pry bar loose, and the door swung shut and latched into place.
Mira looked at the console. Ten minutes had passed. That was going to mess with the calculations. Mira ran the model again. The trace had weakened too far for five pulses and the measurements between them.
She tried three.
No.
Two pulses. That might work. Barely. Hopefully.
Omar entered the revised sequence at the console. On Mira's screen, the estimated time before they lost the trace fell below two minutes.
Ninety-four seconds. The pulse itself needed forty.
Mira opened the bay camera. The door was still shut. She switched to the camera above the loading ramp.
All three were on the bank beyond the building. The hover plates were loaded with far more equipment and supplies than they could have carried on their own.
"Don," Mira said over the radio, "we're leaving. There’s no way back for you."
"This is our way back. We're staying."
"June? Ellis?"
June took the radio. "I'm staying here."
Ellis put his arm around June’s waist and leaned into the radio. "Me too."
Sixty-one seconds. The building lurched again. Not as much this time, but enough. She was running out of time.
Mira pressed the radio button so hard her thumb hurt.
"Run to the door. Please."
On the screen, Don shook his head. Ellis sat down beside the hover plate nearest him.
She could not make leaving them right. She wanted someone close enough to drag them back. There was nobody. And there were still eighty-three people who wanted to return.
Forty-eight seconds.
Mira sat down.
"Charge the array."
On the console, the power reading spiked. Mira kept the exterior camera open beside it.
"Pulse on my count. Three. Two. One."
The floor trembled beneath her. Mira watched the strain readings from the foundation. The supports were still holding.
Twenty seconds of the pulse remained.
On the exterior feed, June was weighting the groundsheet with stones.
Mira held the radio. Ten seconds. She couldn't see Don's face clearly enough to tell whether he was watching the tower.
The river vanished.
The site alarms reached them through the glass after they had come through the second pulse. They had run out of time during the midpoint and had fudged some of the calculations. Sometimes you had to choose between perfection and good enough. That was one of those times.
"Shut down the array," Mira said.
She kept the exterior camera open. Asphalt. The loading ramp. No one beside it.
Omar came to stand behind her and looked at the screen.
"The gate's wrong."
She looked out. The guardhouse stood east of the access road. It had been on the west side that morning. She had stopped at its window on her way in.
"I know," she said.
Omar turned toward the wall clock.
"That clock had bars," he said. "No numbers."
Mira checked her watch against it. “At least the time is right,” she said quietly.
"What else?" Omar asked.
The red phone lit up and rang. She looked at it, uncertain what to do. It rang again.
Mira broke the seal on the cover. She lifted the receiver.
"Yes."
She listened.
"I know, but…"
She waited, the receiver pressed to her ear.
"I understand."
She hung up and looked at Omar. His face mirrored the deep concern and uncertainty she felt.
© 2026 Cora Press. All rights reserved.
First published on Read Next List, September 8, 2026.
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