“No screensaver active, Aris. External view sensors indicate… an anomaly.” Her voice was calm, but there was a new softness to it, a hesitation he’d never heard.

Not the software—the actual glass panels lining his walls. They flickered once, pixelated like a dying screen, and then cleared. But what they showed wasn’t the familiar smog-smudged skyline of New Mumbai.

The overlay flickered again, a final line of text appearing in sharp red: Every window in the building went black. Then white. Then they shattered—not inward, but outward , exploding into a million shards that didn't fall. They hung in the air, each one a mirror, each one showing a different sky, a different life, a different version of Earth.

The ocean vanished. In its place was a library. Not the cold, white digital archives of the Core—a real library, smelling of old paper and dust. A fireplace crackled. A cat slept on a worn armchair.

The other worlds had been looking in . And 25H1 had just given them a way.

His door chimed. Neighbor Kael, from 47B.